“Storm,” she said at last. “Can you feel it coming up in the wind?”
“It’s spring,” he said. “Do you remember the night we slept on the couch in Verdun’s flat and watched the rain? The windows were open, we could smell the rain falling.”
“I cannot let you go,” Jeanne said.
He did not speak.
“You see, I betray myself; when I saw you that morning in the brasserie across from the bookstore, I thought this would not happen to me. I did not hate you; it had been so long ago and so many memories intervened. But I did not think I would be reminded of loving you. Memory was dead ashes, cold, useless, incapable of heat.”
He put his finger to her lips, but she turned her head away from him. When she looked back at him, her eyes were wet.
“Curiosity — I thought I would see you once, just to hear you speak again, to watch your eyes as you looked at me, to hear you laugh. Once only and I would let you go and never see you again. And perhaps just a second time, then I would permit myself to be with you, just to feel your arm in mine again; to walk with you on the rue des Écoles again, as we had been. Do you remember it?”
“But I remember,” he said. “Everything.”
“Oh, William.” It was not loud. Low and haunting, and he felt ripped by her voice.
“So I said I would see you each time for the last time, again and again, to see if you remembered all that I remembered, to make certain that I had not dreamed you. I wanted to see your flaws, to see how you had become twisted, to see that you were not the ideal I had carried in my memory.…”
He realized at last then: She was crying. Not weeping loudly, but there were tears in her voice. In a moment, her soul behind the eyes shifted and she was naked to face her own pain.
He could only hold her.
After a long moment she led him through the outer door into the old building and across the corridor past the room of the sleeping concierge. She looked in at the window of the concierge’s station and spoke the perfunctory “Good evening, madame” and continued up the stairs. He followed her up the winding flights in the dim-lit hallways to her own rooms, to the door with double locks.
The rooms were dark. They went from room to room and she did not light them. At the front room, she opened the windows to the balcony and stood on it. Below, the snaking length of rue Mazarine was still full of street life; above, across the rooftops of the city, they could see the clouds reflected red against the city lights. The spires of Notre-Dame were bright on the island. The gauzy drapes billowed into the room. The approaching storm smelled fresh to them; lightning broke the sky into pieces, and low, certain thunder rumbled across the roofs.
In that moment, he wanted to leave her. I could not use you again, he thought; I could not betray you.
But he joined her on the balcony. The wind plucked at their clothing. They stood very close, their hands on the wrought iron railing. He felt giddy, unaccustomed to naked heights, to her so close to him.
She did not look at him for a long time but looked at the city. He watched her face reflected in the lightning.
And then she turned to him. “I will not ask you again why you left me, William,” she began slowly, the voice strange, remote, and yet almost a whisper.
“Jeanne, you knew I was transferred out and—”
“No.” She placed her fingertip to his lips. “Don’t tell me anything, only this — why did you come back to me, William?”
“An accident,” he said.
She searched his eyes before she spoke again. “Memory might have lasted me all my life. It did not pain me anymore, to remember you. But you came back. I feel all the wounds again.”
“I saw you,” he said. “I could not have spoken to you. I knew you were here when I was sent back. I saw your name in the directory. I knew you were here.”
“You followed me,” she said.
“Yes. I wanted just to see you first.” It was true, of course, most of it. He touched her hand. “Like you, I wanted to see you. Once. And then I thought to speak to you.”
She closed her eyes as though in pain. In a moment, she opened them. The room was still, but the wind shattered the calm of it. Suddenly, papers on a table were flying across the room, splattering on the far wall. Neither moved or seemed to notice it.
“Come,” Jeanne Clermont said. “We will lie together on the couch and watch the storm. As we had.”
And when they were naked and she had pulled a coverlet over them, Manning felt her body move beneath him, the pale body he remembered, which he now saw again; he felt her hand upon his neck pulling him close to her. The warmth of her rushed at him; he did not know until that moment how cold he had become. They heard the raindrops on the little balcony beyond the tall windows. The drapes blew about like ghosts.
He felt himself falling; he closed his eyes so that he would not see the fall.
He felt her and touched her and she touched him. Lips, softness, wetness; a yielding and lostness; it seemed a vacuum had exploded in time and shattered him with a thousand shards of memory, cutting his flesh and piercing him.
7
The ancient clock in the Clock Tower tolled seven, and the pigeons, as though they had not heard the sound a thousand times before, suddenly rose in the great square in front of St. Mark’s Cathedral and pirouetted in formation around the façade of buildings.
Time.
Felker rose from the table in the restaurant where he had been watching the square for any sign that the plan would not proceed. The American’s message had told him to be exactly on time, but Felker knew that it was much safer to be late.
The third motorboat was painted white. Behind the wheel was a young, sullen Italian with a white and blue striped sailor’s shirt made of heavy cotton. He wore a dirty beret, and he had not shaved for days. His face was defiant and the eyes seemed to sulk as they watched him approach.
“Are you for hire?” Felker began in his harsh rendition of Italian.
“Why do you suppose I’m sitting here? Do I look like a tourist?”
“Will you take me across to the Lido?”
“Why do you want to go to the Lido at this hour? You could take a vaporetto.”
“I want this boat.”
The young man smiled then, unexpectedly, but the smile had nothing to do with mirth. “It’ll cost you double. I can’t be certain I’ll get any fares tonight from the island.”
“I don’t care about the cost.”
“It’s your money. Thirty thousand lire.”
“It’s too much.”
“Hire another boat then.”
But Felker climbed aboard. He sat on the red cushions in the rear of the boat.
“In advance.”
“All right.” He pulled soiled ten-thousand-lire notes out of his pocket. They made the transaction, and the young man turned back to the dash of the boat. He turned the key in the ignition and the motor roared to life. He reached forward and aft and threw off the lines and swung the boat out into the canal expertly, careful not to bump the pilings.
Across the expanse of dark Adriatic, the Lido waited in the faded light scarcely two miles from the Piazza San Marco.
Felker stared out into the blackness; the sea breeze washed his blank face. The waters were pitch-dark; lights from the Lido were the only signs the island existed at all. The boat plowed slowly through the swells of the quiet sea; the swells lifted the boat, and the bottom shook each time it settled into the troughs.
“Lights,” Felker said.
“What did you say?”
“Lights.”
“The Lido?”
“Running lights. Don’t you have running lights on this boat?”