And I looked at Arlette. Well, here we are, I thought. Here we are, in her room and, uh, in her bed, and everyone sort of assumed I would wind up here – evidently, Arlette included – and-
I said, “ La Jeanne d’Arc de Québec.”
“Oh, not I, Evan.”
“But that was what Emile called you.”
“Emile makes jokes. Or perhaps he means that I am like the sainted Joan because I too am the most fervent of patriots.” She turned toward me. “I am, you know. My heart pounds in my breast with patriotic zeal.”
“I can believe it.”
“Right here,” she said, pointing.
“Eh.”
“Feel it, Evan. You can feel it pounding.”
I placed my hand in the center of her chest. “I feel it,” I said. “I feel it, all right.”
“Not in the middle, cabbage. On the left side. The heart.”
“Ah, yes. Yes, I, uh, feel it, uh.”
“Evan.”
“Uh.”
“You smell so much nicer since your bath. I like this aroma.”
“It’s your soap.”
“Yes. Do I smell the same?”
She smelled of luxuriantly strong tobacco and sweet subtle perfume and, yes, sandalwood soap. She tasted of coffee and chicory and brandy. Her hand moved and she said, “Oh, how nice,” and I said “Arlette,” and we were in rather a hurry. She wrestled the tight black denim slacks down over her hips, and I got out of the slacks and shorts that some obliging man had left behind, and she said “Oh, oh,” and I don’t remember what I said, if anything. I don’t think the earth moved, but that only happens in Spanish sleeping bags, if ever.
“Not Joan of Arc,” she said a while later.
“Helen of Troy. Cleopatra. Eve.”
She purred. “But not Joan, not the Maid of Orleans. Because, you see, I am not a maiden at all, am I?”
“Not quite.”
“But sometimes I do hear voices.”
“Oh? What do they say?”
She took me in hand, so to speak. “They say, ‘Do it again, do it again!’”
When such voices speak, one obeys.
Chapter 8
I had breakfast ready when Arlette awoke the next morning. I scrambled eggs, buttered toast, browned spicy sausages, and perked coffee. All but the last of these efforts turned out to be superfluous as far as the Unmaid of Orleans was concerned. She grunted unintelligibly, poured herself a cup of coffee, tasted it, made a face, laced it liberally with cognac, and sulked over it in a corner.
Few persons are at their best in the morning. I cannot honestly recall what it was like for me, the process of waking up, but I do know that it was something I did every day for eighteen years, and I can’t believe I could have done it very well. The whole concept of being torn roughly from the fantasy we call dreams to the other fantasy we call reality – what is it, in fact, but the trauma of birth repeated at twenty-four-hour intervals throughout the whole of a person’s lifetime.
If I had to pick one reason above all others for treasuring my permanent insomnia, it would be simply this – I never have to get up.
Arlette did, though, and poorly. I tried to pay as little attention to her as possible for the half hour during which she came gradually to life. This was not only simple courtesy but a matter of personal taste. She was less than charming. Her ragged mop of hair, so charming a few hours earlier, now looked like the coiffure of a small-time Medusa, a nest of lifeless earthworms. Her complexion bordered on jaundice. Her eyes were puffy. And her entire demeanor was the sort only to be viewed in those horror movies in which corpses walk.
Rebirth took half an hour. It was like a death scene – the last act of “Camille,” say – filmed via time-lapse photography and then shown backward. The eyes un-puffed, the mouth ungrimaced, the body firmed up, the whole person came back to the land of the living. At last she was sufficiently in control of herself to find her way to the bathroom, from which she emerged as the Arlette I had known and loved (and loved, and loved) just a little while earlier.
“Evan, my heart,” she said. “What a beautiful morning!”
It was all of that, bright and warm and clear. “And you are beautiful, Arlette.”
“I am horrid in the mornings. Such beautiful food you created, and I could eat none of it.”
“I ate your share myself.”
“Commendable. But how could you eat with such an apparition as myself in the room?”
“You are always beautiful in my eyes, Arlette.”
“And you tell magnificent lies. Did you sleep well, Evan?”
“I have not slept better in years.”
“And why should we not be tired, eh?” She chuckled, then turned serious. “But your little girl,” she said. “We must act, is it not so?”
I had told her of Minna the night before, somewhere between Acts Two and Three, and she had been madly indignant, wildly anxious about the girl’s fate. She had wanted to do something at once, but I pointed out that there was nothing to do before morning, at least as far as Minna was concerned, but that there was something we could do, just the two of us, without leaving the apartment. Shortly thereafter Minna was, for the time being, quite forgotten.
“I meant to get the newspapers,” I said.
“You should not leave the apartment. I will go.”
“All right.”
Once again she purchased all the papers, the English-language ones as well as the French, and once again I worked my way through all of them. There was some marvelous copy about me that Arlette insisted upon clipping. I was presently the object of the greatest manhunt in Montreal ’s history since Francois Somebody butchered seven young boys with a straight razor in 1911. I was somewhat relieved to learn, however, that I had not butchered anyone. A dozen persons had been treated for injuries in the auto wrecks Prince Hal had caused, but all but two had been sent home immediately, and those two would live.
So would Sergeant William Rowland, RCMP, although it would be a while before he was back on a horse. He had landed on his head, all right, but I guess his Smoky The Bear hat served a purpose, because he came out of it alive. He had a fractured skull, but it takes more than that to impair a Mountie.
Prince Hal had not turned up by presstime. I found this pleasing news, too, and only hoped the little boy was taking good care of him.
And I, I was thoroughly castigated by every newspaper around. It no longer looked as though my capture would result in prompt extradition to the States. The Canadian authorities had a score of their own to settle with me, and charges would be brought against me for everything from subversive conspiracy, malicious mischief, resisting an officer, assault with a deadly weapon (a horse?), and unlawful flight to running a red light and jaywalking. By the time they sent me back to face the kidnaping charge, I would be at least a hundred and fifty-three years old.
It looked as though it would not be a good idea to let them catch me.
It also looked as though the police did not have Minna, did not know where she was, and did not especially care. Almost all of the papers mentioned the girl, referring to her variously as my daughter and my “young female friend” – I suppose they planned to add statutory rape to my list of crimes. The general journalistic opinion seemed to be that Minna was being cared for by terrorists with whom I was associated, although one scandal sheet – in French, yet – hinted that I had murdered her and floated the body out to sea.
I put the last paper aside and looked up at Arlette, who had been waiting more or less patiently.
“Well?”
“They don’t have her.”
“Who does?”
I stood up, performed my caged-lion imitation, then turned to face her again. “I keep coming back to those damned Cubans,” I said. “I can’t think what motive they might have had-”
“Nor could I. After all, she is not the Queen of England!”
She was the someday Queen of Lithuania, but I had not brought this fact to Arlette’s attention. She was also my little friend and ostensible daughter, but I had similarly failed to tell Arlette that I was an American agent, much as I had failed to tell the Chief that I wasn’t. I had to agree, though, that she was not the Queen of England.