“My friends died as well as my enemies,” he said.
“So, William, it is more terrible then that you cannot raise peace to any place in your mind higher than an annoyance visited upon you by an editor at your news service.”
“Dammit.” She had drawn him this far and he realized he wanted to fight with her, that she had stirred some bit of him that rekindled memory. “What do death masks worn in parades and bonfires and flag-burning and ‘Down with the U.S.A.’ have to do with peace?”
“Who has the bombs if not the Americans?”
“The French for one. And the Soviets.”
“Yes. The revolution should begin here as well.”
“Revolution. You mean Europe now turns to peace after exhausting the world with a century of wars.”
“This is not 1914 and not 1939. This is not the Europe in your history books anymore. These children in the streets wear masks of death but they have no illusions, William. Not about war. Not about nations.”
“I can’t believe I’m talking to a woman who works for the most chauvinist government in the world about peace, the end of nations, mere anarchy.” He leaned forward so that the words, delivered in a low voice, would slap her, would hurt her. “No parades on the Champs-Élysées anymore? No memorials beneath the Arc de Triomphe? Will the president of France give up his memorial walks through Normandy to salute the war dead? Or not lay red roses at the Pantheon?”
“Mitterand is of another time. He cannot help his own history, any more than I, but he can have sympathy with a new time.”
“You’re too old to take this nonsense seriously.”
“Because, as you say, William, I am ‘too old,’ I must take it more seriously. Only children have time for games; only fools, William, have time for patriotism.”
“Does Mitterand know he has an anarchist working for him?”
“Mitterand knows my history.” And now a bitter tinge dulled each word. “I told them the truth. I do not join a government by masking myself. I am not so important to them, but what I think or do or say is more important to me than any position in the regime.”
“I don’t want to fight with you.” It was true, in fact, but the words had carried a force beyond his control.
“But it is noble to fight, isn’t it? War makes one alive.”
“Jeanne.”
“No, William. Let us not have peace between us.”
“Jeanne.”
“No.” For a moment he thought he saw a hint of tears in her eyes, but she did not cry. “No,” she repeated, shaking her head. “You have made me too angry because you are too cynical. You were not cynical; that is the difficulty in remembering when we were young. You must always compare what you have become to what you once were.”
What was I? Manning wondered suddenly. But he spoke lies. “I am what I was. I was young and gallant.”
“You were never that young, William; even when — even in those days — you had a reserve. You had no passion. You seemed never to have had a youth.”
“I had passion,” he said. “For you.”
“Yes.” She gazed at him for a long moment. “I wondered what that reserve was in you. I was fascinated by you. You seem so cool, so distant.”
“Never to you.”
“Yes. Even to me.”
“That’s not true.”
“I loved you,” she said.
“I told you, I loved you,” he said.
“Yes.” Softly. “You told me.”
The old man with the accordion came across the little street to them. Manning pulled a twenty-franc note out of his pocket and gave it to him. The old man bowed and smiled. “Spring,” the old man said to her. “Would you like a song?”
She was distracted. She looked at the old man and her mood shifted again; he could see it in her eyes, in the way they caught the light of the dying afternoon.
“Thank you.”
“What would you wish?”
“Anything.”
The old man began to play again, sweetly, reaching for a soul through the chords. The song was not beautiful but it suited the moment.
“I’m sorry, Jeanne,” he said.
“We won’t talk about it.”
They ate quietly as though the argument had exhausted them; but it wasn’t the fight, it was the memory of fifteen years before that had been stirred to life.
Jeanne Clermont, he thought, what have you become? What did I do to you? But as soon as he thought it, he realized the thought pleased him. The act of betrayal had somehow made the memory of their affair final and quite beautiful. How would it have ended otherwise? Would they have gone on and on until it ended in recriminations and acts of hatred, in nagging days and nights of growing loathing?
She had no lovers now, that was certain.
Three years before, her husband, Giscard, had died of leukemia. His death had not grieved her greatly and she resumed her maiden name, which did not shock anyone who knew her. She had been a good wife to Giscard, her friends agreed, and she had not caused any scandal in the four years of their marriage. Giscard. She had married him out of pity, they said; he had followed her like a dog for years. And she had married him without love but with a certain kindness that was apparent to all but Giscard.
He sipped the last of the wine and contemplated her in the lights of the restaurant that stabbed at the gentle darkness falling over the city. They had sat together in this restaurant fifteen years ago. He had loved her and he had wanted to betray her; did he love her now, even as he sought to use her again?
Yes.
The thought pursued him as they left the restaurant and crossed the Pont Neuf to the Left Bank. Below, the darkened, turgid waters of the Seine surged stubbornly against the ancient piers. She took his arm without a word, and he felt her shiver.
“It’s going to rain” she said. “I can always feel it in the breeze at night, after the first warm day. It always rains at the end.”
Rue Mazarine was narrow and winding, a dirty street despite the daily washing of the street cleaners who came out with their old, long brooms.
He felt the slight weight of her next to him, felt the warmth of her press against him; so they had walked before through the unchanging streets of the city. What was the use of memory, except to cause pain?
She wore the same perfume, he thought; but was that true or only a trick of mind? He had once called her the revolutionary in silk; he had mocked her and she had laughed because that was what he had intended.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I’m remembering,” Manning said. “You were so radical but you always wore makeup, always wore perfume.”
“I’m a woman,” Jeanne said, explaining everything. “Are there no contradictions in your nature?”
“Do you see any?”
“I remembered you were so solemn and yet you would suddenly be a child. Remember when you wanted to fight Verdun over that incident?”
“Verdun wanted you.”
“You do remember.”
“He goaded me. I didn’t mind that; I minded that he was using you.”
“But you used me,” Jeanne said.
He stopped and looked at her. “I loved you.”
“Perhaps Verdun loved me as well.”
“Not the way I loved you.”
“William,” she said as though beginning something. But then she paused. Was there something she didn’t want to tell him?
“Good night,” he said at last. They were at the double doors at the entrance to her apartment building. The building was old and out of fashion, crowned with gargoyles.
He kissed her then, gently. It had been six weeks since he arranged to meet her. It was a difficult matter, he had explained in a report to Hanley; Jeanne was not a fool but she must be made to believe him. He built the lie of his relationship with her carefully.
Unexpectedly now, she held him close and let the kiss linger between them. When they pulled apart from each other, they were breathless, a little surprised, lost. She would not let him go; she held his arm.