“No. You know I’m not. You got out of Paris and mended your broken heart. You were in Laos, you were in Vietnam when November was sent home. You know I’m telling the truth. You’ve done your hits, you’ve grown up, Manning; you know what the world really is now.” Quizon’s twisted mouth was rimmed with congealing blood, but still the old man would not acknowledge the consequence of the blow. The blood dripped onto the flowers of the dressing gown and stained the roses a different red.
“Why do you suppose Hanley cares that you fell in love with Jeanne Clermont? Or anyone in the Section? Why do you think Hanley would care now? You don’t wish me to disparage the honor of the ‘lady.’ I commend your gallantry, though I don’t believe in it. You’ve been an agent too long to believe anything you’ve just told me.”
Manning stared at the old man and realized he felt terribly tired. It was true, of course; Quizon saw things clearly, had always seen them clearly, and Manning had been playing a little game within the game.
Everything in Paris this spring had reminded him of the first spring, the one with Jeanne; everything had reminded him of the moments of his life before it had been colored by his first act of betrayal. Betrayals had followed in all the gray years since — death and secrets, lies and dirty little jobs that no one spoke of and that were never recorded, even at the Section — but this spring with her again had reminded him of the colors of his youth, before the world turned gray. He had been foolish and Quizon saw it and Quizon had thought to warn him now, even as he had saved him fifteen years before. Manning’s life was of no importance to anyone but Manning. And in the years since that first spring in Paris, even Manning had come to value his life less dearly. Death seemed less awful as he grew closer to it. Until now, until he saw Jeanne Clermont again.
“I don’t know what I should do,” Manning said at last. The voice was hollow, barely audible above the hum of calls on the Paris police radio.
“There’s nothing to be done,” Quizon said. His voice had become gentle again. He had still not touched the smear of red blood on his upper lip. “There is nothing to do but what we have been told to do.”
“If Hanley wants to end the assignment, it would be all right.”
“No. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. Jeanne Clermont became important the moment the informant told me of her disappearance. You see that, don’t you?”
Manning said nothing.
“There is nothing to do but to continue, at least for a time, until we find out the truth about Jeanne Clermont and find a way to use her.”
“Again,” Manning said dully. “Only this time to turn her, to work her for us.”
“Yes.” Quizon spoke with sudden gentleness, as though letting a child understand that there are truly demons in the world, more awful than those he has seen in dreams.
“I don’t want to betray her again.”
“But you will,” Quizon said.
Manning only stared at him for a long time.
12
They made love for a long time. Twilight passed to evening and yet they were so intent on their lovemaking that neither noticed the changes of light or the passage of time. They might have been locked in a compartment on a sealed train through a foreign country, alone in the middle of an endless night, unable to experience any sight or sound beyond the locked windows. The journey might have had no ending.
Manning touched her for a long time as though retracing memory. He touched the pale skin of her gently rounded belly and then traced the form of her breasts as she lay on the bed next to him. Gentle night: Beyond their windows, they could hear the explosions of glass that signaled the beginning of the commemorations. In May each year since those nights in 1968, the students of the Sorbonne had gone through the district and broken windows and raised again the cries of the revolution. Some were pranksters; some criminals; but most were quite serious, in the way that the young are serious about the world. Worlds are made to be made over; Quizon might have said it.
In the middle of the afternoon, Manning had staggered into the gray light of a sullen May day, and left Quizon’s building on the boulevard Richard-Lenoir. He had walked across the city along the right bank before meeting Jeanne. In that long walk, he had seen everything clearly: Everything was constrained and preordained, in the way that all men know they must live for a time and then die.
He must betray Jeanne Clermont or use her. And if he did not, Jeanne Clermont would be of no use to anyone. She might, at the end, know that he had betrayed her again. Or she might not; it did not matter. Jeanne had her own role, ordained as surely as his, and she had accepted it a long time before.
When they met, he had few words for her. They had kissed and strolled arm in arm across the Île St. Louis to the Île de la Cité. As had become their custom, they dined at the Rose de France. When she spoke to him, he had responded sluggishly, like a sleeper who does not want to be awakened from his dreams.
He had watched her through dinner with sad, faraway eyes, as though seeing her from the perspective of a dead man given the chance to revisit the earth for a day.
And then, in the darkness of her rooms in the old apartment building on the rue Mazarine, he had hungered for her. He had touched her through her clothing, he had kissed her to breathlessness; he had made love to her for a long time and then, after scarcely a moment, made love to her again. He had consumed her on her own bed, tangled in sheets, wet with glistening sweat and the juices of their lovemaking commingled. No words. Only their sounds beneath the coverlet. His still-lean body had pressed itself against the gentle curves of her body. Once, she spoke his name, over and over, crooning as a mother croons to a sleepy child. Or a frightened child. Everything is all right; sleep will come.
At two A.M. while Paris slept uneasily, she sat at the window smoking a cigarette. She rarely smoked at all, but kept the cigarettes in a little case on a low table in her sitting room. She was naked but it was not cold; it had been a warm day, and the warmth had lasted all night.
He watched her smoking in the light of the moon.
He lay on the open bed, naked, one arm propping his body.
“I love you,” he said at last.
She did not look at him but out the wide French windows. She saw the city before her. Her arms were folded across her breasts; her legs were crossed and she sat, Indian-fashion, in the leather chair that was next to the window. Her eyes shone brightly in the clear evening light; it was as though the moon had plucked at the soul behind the eyes and made it glisten with unseen tears.
“I love you,” he said again, wishing the words had never been spoken before.
“When you left,” she began slowly, like the beginning of a stream.
“When I left,” he repeated, a child learning lessons.
“I was without consolation. I wept for three days. You told me you would leave, but after you had gone to Orly, I could only weep, I missed you so.”
He stared at her, at the pale body in the moonlight, at the eyes seeing now only those things that had happened long before.
“You should not have left me, William.”
“I never wanted to leave you.”
She turned and looked at him. “I know,” she said softly. And she turned again and stared out the window at the city. From far away, they both heard the sound of shattered glass.
“The events,” she said, using the common French term to evoke the days of May of 1968. The inevitable riots would come again, the inevitable vandalism, the inevitable police cordons around the Pantheon and the riot police lined up indiscreetly along the boulevard St. Michel. The café owners in Cluny and along the boulevard would move their chairs from the windows so that patrons would not be splattered by broken glass if the worst happened. The events. Manning thought it seemed every great thing must be trivialized with words: events, matters, incidents.