“A caretaker government under Ram Ibusa, I imagine. As a matter of fact Zad signed regency papers yesterday to be used if he does become too ill to continue.”
Chad shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’ll matter much. Shalmaneser is running the country as of now, isn’t he? And from personal acquaintance I think he’ll make a fine job of it.”
“I hope you’re right,” Norman muttered.
A girl arrived with Chad’s beer and placed it on the table between them. Chad followed her appreciatively with his eyes as she moved away.
“Local recruit?”
“What? Oh, the waitress. Yes, I imagine so.”
“Pretty. If they have shiggies of that calibre here I may enjoy my stay even if I don’t find what I’m looking for. But I forgot—you have a fixation on blondes, don’t you?”
“I don’t have any fixations any longer,” Norman said stonily. “Fixations and Beninia don’t co-exist.”
“I noticed,” Chad said. “I’m glad you finally did, too.” He poured half the beer down his throat and set the glass aside with a contented sigh.
“Speaking of what you’re looking for,” Norman said, a trifle over-eager to switch subjects, “I take it from the requirements you sent me that you—”
“That I haven’t the vaguest notion what I’m after,” Chad interrupted. “You’d better be ready for me to ask for something entirely different tomorrow. In fact, on my way over I realised I should have asked for some biochemists and geneticists as well.”
“Are you serious?”
“Not yet. Give me a week or two and I very well may be. Also priests and imams and rabbis and fortune-tellers and clairvoyants and—Norman, howinole should I know? What I asked for just seemed like a reasonable basis to start from!”
“Ask for whatever you want,” Norman said after a pause. “I have a suspicion there’s nothing more important, not even the Beninia project itself.”
“There you go again,” Chad said. “Feeding my ego. Christ, aren’t I vain enough already?”
tracking with closeups (30)
DÉFENSE D’ENTRER
Approaching from the street, Jeannine thought at first the house must be empty, but she soon perceived a glimmer of light from behind the heavy old-fashioned drapes covering the window of the salon and heard the soft sound of the piano. It was one of her brother’s favourite pieces, La Jeune Fille aux Cheveux de Lin.
The front door, curiously, was unlocked. She went inside. By the distant glow of the street-lamps she saw that the hallway was in disorder; bits of a large vase crunched under her shoes and a Moroccan rug had been kicked against the wall in a heap. The air was thick and sweet with the aroma of kief.
The music ended. She opened the door of the salon and saw her brother silhouetted by a swinging lamp. A kief cigarette burned on a brass dish and a half-empty bottle of cognac and a glass stood beside it on the lid of the piano.
He spoke her name in a neutral voice and she came in and closed the door. Moving to one of the low cushioned benches she said, “Where’s Rosalie?”
“We had a row. She walked out.” He began to let his hands wander up and down the keyboard seemingly under their own volition, framing long wailing lines of melody which somehow suggested the Arab songs no piano could imitate.
Jeannine listened for a while. She said at length, “You heard from the American company.”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes. They took you on, I suppose, and that started the row?”
“On the contrary.” He got abruptly to his feet, shut the piano, drained his glass and brought it and the bottle over to a low table in front of his sister. Sitting down beside her, he poured himself another shot and asked with his eyes if she wanted some. He received assent and made to rise and fetch a glass. She stopped him with a touch on the arm.
“We can share it. Don’t bother to fetch another.”
“As you like.” He stubbed his cigarette and opened the box to offer her one.
“You said on the contrary. Did they not accept you?”
“No. That was why I lost my temper with Rosalie. You?”
“They turned me down as well.”
For a long time after that there was silence. Eventually Pierre said, “I don’t seem to care very much. I ought to. I remember I hoped very strongly that I would be engaged to go to Africa. Here I am not having secured the post and on top of it having lost my wife—yet I feel numb.”
“There’s no chance of a reconciliation?”
“I detest the idea. Is it worth having if it has to be cobbled together from the broken pieces? Only the most precious objects deserve that treatment.”
“I’m in the same gallery,” Jeannine said after a pause. “Raoul did not realise how much the idea meant to me. We disagreed and for the last time. It’s not worth the trouble.”
“Outsiders don’t understand. They can’t understand.” Pierre emptied the cognac glass and refilled it. His sister took a quick sip at it the moment he let it go.
“What are you thinking of doing now?” he inquired.
“I’ve not decided. Now my mind is made up to go to Africa again, I suppose I shall look around for an alternative. Even yet there’s no hope of going home, but certain other countries are tolerant of Europeans, and perhaps they would be better than a swampy little nation in the equatorial rain-belt.”
“Egypt engages many Europeans,” Pierre agreed. “Mostly Germans and Swiss, but Belgians too.”
“There is something else Raoul told me about: how disturbed the Common Europe Board is becoming over the Americans in Beninia, how they may attempt to counter it with aid to Dahomalia and RUNG.”
“That too will need advisors. And yet—” He swallowed hard. “It was such an effort to rein in one’s pride and make application to go and serve les noirs. To be told after humbling oneself that it was all a waste—it’s insupportable.”
“Mon pauvre. I know how you feel.” She picked up the glass again; over its rim as she drank, she found her eyes locked with Pierre’s.
“Yes, you do, don’t you?” he said. “If there were not in the whole world a single person who sympathised, I believe I would go mad.”
“I too.” With what seemed like a great effort of will she detached her gaze from his and put down the glass. Not looking at him again, she said, “I believe—do you know?—it is there, the reason for my chaotic life of disorder. From one man to another, counting it a triumph to remain together for a year … Looking for someone like you, my heart. Never finding anyone.”
“But at least you had the endurance to continue looking,” Pierre said. “I gave up. Only when it was forced on me, the first time and now the second, did I admit my discouragement.”
The air seemed heavy not only with the fumes of kief, but with something that needed to be spoken and could not. He pushed himself to his feet as though the atmosphere physically dragged on him.
“Let us have music. I feel the emptiness of the house.”
“As empty as my soul,” Jeannine said, and filled her lungs with kief again.
“What shall we hear? Triumphal music? A funeral march?”
“Will you play yourself or put on a recording?”
“A recording. I have no heart for more.” He sorted along the rack and dropped a reel into the player. “Some Berlioz for vigour, hm?” he muttered as he put out the swinging lamp. “It is a clever match, the vision on this one. I don’t believe you’ve seen it.”
The small screen of the player lit with patterns of white and gold; by its glow he found his way back to her side. Stiff, they watched for a while. The volume was shattering, the master’s demand for huge orchestras having found its apotheosis in modern amplification.
“I should get a newer player,” Pierre said. “With this one loses the third dimension unless one sits directly before the screen.”