The desk clerk recognizes me right away and favours me with a big grin.
“Here, Monsieur (and he remembers my name), there’s a message. The lady asked me to give it to you; she said you’d be dropping by.”
The clerk holds out a sealed blue envelope with no address.
“If you’d like a room for tonight, I can offer you one with a view of the lake, the same one you had yesterday. It’s free again.”
“No, thank you …”
“Goodbye, Monsieur …”
With trembling hands I open the blue envelope while I’m still in the lobby. I recognize K’s beautiful handwriting and I read her latest message: “The boss had an unexpected visitor this afternoon. Something incredible, I’ll tell you about it later. Bank transactions suddenly disrupted. I leave for the north tonight; the boss is going to visit friends on the Côte d’Azur. No matter how your approach to the bank president works out, I imagine you’ll go back to Montreal to see to our interests there. Come back. K.” As a postscript, she has added two lines: “Hamidou D. sends his regards. It’s a small world …”
17
VERY LITTLE time passed between my solitary stroll along the shore of Lac Léman and my arrest in Montreal in the middle of summer. After I read K’s message, everything came in a rush in disorderly succession: my departure from Lausanne, the firing of the four Rolls-Royce engines of the Swissair DC-8, the flight that looped over the range of the Jura, the endless celestial nothingness and then passing through federal customs at the Dorval airport. All things considered, nothing happened between my departure and my forced landing, nothing except the time it takes to move from one city to another in a high-speed jet. In Montreal I first went to 267 Sherbrooke Street West. There I found several open-necked Hathaway shirts, some books scattered here and there, and a keen sense that I had come home. Meanwhile, K was somewhere in the Hanseatic mist of Antwerp or Bremen, not with me; I’d become once more a lonely man deprived of love. I checked the newspapers; I found nothing about our “interests.” From a phone booth I tried to reach my contact: the operator (recorded) told me repeatedly that the number I had called was not in service. Very well. Now what? Thinking it over, to readjust more quickly, I walked endlessly. Of course I could risk proceeding irregularly since I couldn’t reach my contact by phone. Why not take the risk? After all, I’d have to establish a relationship with a member of the network. I decided to speak to M by phone. Just then I was ambling along Pine Avenue past the Mayfair Hospitaclass="underline" I went down the Drummond Street staircase, then stopped at the Piccadilly for a King’s Ransom. After that I made my way to the phone booths across from the Québecair office in the hotel lobby and dialled M’s number. We exchanged some remarks that would be disconcerting to the RCMP wiretappers but were meaningful to us: through this hypercoded language I learned that our network had been short-circuited by the anti-terrorist squad, that several agents had been detained in the Montreal Prison for nearly three weeks now, and that, as might have been expected, the money collected by our tax specialists was now part of the central government’s consolidated budget. A disaster, in conclusion, which M had miraculously escaped. Upset by these ambiguous revelations, I downed another King’s Ransom at the Piccadilly bar. The next day I cleared out my savings account at the Toronto-Dominion Bank, 500 Saint-Jacques Street West. I pocketed a hundred and twenty-three dollars in all, enough to live on for eight days, with no luxuries. From the outside phone booth across from Nesbitt Thompson, I called M again as arranged. We agreed to meet on the stroke of noon in the lateral nave of Notre-Dame basilica near the tomb of Jean-Jacques Ollier; of course we didn’t mention the illustrious abbé’s name or utter that of the old church whose presbytery stands next to the Montreal Stock Exchange.
It was precisely eleven when I stepped out of the glass booth. And as I had an hour to kill, I strolled down rue Saint-François-Xavier to Craig Street and went into Mendelson’s. I love that place; when I go inside, I always have a hunch that I’m going to turn up General Colborne’s pocket watch or the revolver with which Papineau would have been well advised to kill himself. On my left as I came in was the collection of swords and sabres, including a Turkish scimitar I’d have liked to hang above my bed. But I knew from experience that their knives are generally overpriced; for that matter, I know the clerk and he’s intractable: no bargains to be got from him. I went to look at their helmets; I was particularly struck by a Henri II armet, a dilapidated object with a very impressive curve. They were asking forty dollars; I could have bargained a little and got it for less. It still would be an extravagance though, in view of what I had in my pocket. Besides, what would I do with this helmet? Next to it there was a full set of armour: gauntlet, couter and armband. It was sixteenth century, rather hard to identify but a fantastic model. The disjointed arms in black iron had something tragic about them and resembled a hero’s amputated limb. If it were on the wall of the apartment, I’d be unable to look at it without shuddering. To escape the clerk’s enthusiasm, I went back to the front of the store where a showcase held an amazing number of pocket watches and other timepieces. I’ve always been fascinated by old pocket watches: I like their two-part gold cases covered with arabesques and the engraved initials of their former owners. I looked at a few just to kill some time. Finally, I noticed a pocket watch, its gold dull but elegantly engraved with the monogram of some anonymous dead man. My mind was made up: I took out a ten-dollar bill. But the clerk reminded me that I’d have to add the cost of the chain, making twelve dollars and seventy-five cents in all. Oh well, it wasn’t exorbitant; and I really did want a pocket watch to measure lost time. The case, made in England, contained a Swiss movement which turned with eternal steadiness. I moved the hands to the correct time: precisely eleven-forty-five. My time had come.
I went back onto Craig Street, then climbed the steep hill up Saint-Urbain in the direction of Place d’Armes and crossed it diagonally. Before I entered the church, I bought a newspaper. As usual, I was careful to retrace my steps, zigzagging a little to thwart anyone who might be following me. I entered the Aldred building at 707, then left at once through the door on Notre-Dame. I ran across the street, and after a few athletic strides I was inside the dark church.
There was something terrifying about the silence inside: suddenly the mystery of this dark enchanting forest grabbed me by the throat. My footsteps rang out all around. I went to the transept, spotting no one in this deserted church and hearing nothing but the multiplied echo of my own procession. A shuddering purity filled this sacred place. I was a few seconds ahead of M, and while I waited, I sat very close to the secondary apse, lost in contemplation and prayer. I was careful not to open my newspaper in an excess of enthusiasm, though I longed to see if there was anything about the preliminary investigations. When M showed up, coming towards me from the altar (God knows how!), I repressed a surge of emotion. Everything happened so quickly. There was a sound on my right: the door of a confessional opened. I caught sight of a properly dressed man who came hurrying towards me. Then another individual seemed to loom out of the transept crossing. He too was respectable looking. M and I had time to exchange a desperate look but not a single word. They led us to the porch. We went out by way of the staircase on rue Saint-Sulpice, our wrists shackled. An unmarked car was waiting; we piled into the back, following the police orders. I know the rest: an informal event that had gone on not being fulfilled for three months’ time, an uninterrupted series of stains and humiliations that take me into the death-like density of writing.