“I remember two. The rest, I’m afraid, are gone from my mind. Sometimes I dream about the other tortures, but when I wake I cannot remember them. I remember when they put the alligator clip onto my lips — my genitals, William. They shocked me. I cannot describe the pain of that. In the other, they wrapped wet towels around my head and tied me down and then poured water over the towels.”
“My God,” he said. Manning felt sickened, as though he had taken part in the tortures himself.
“Yes,” she said. “I told them everything, I knew I would. I only hoped the others would be able to escape in time. I told them everything. I told them about the cell and about the structure of our organization and about the leaders. Much later, I realized they had managed to arrest the leaders because of my betrayal.”
“Jeanne.” But Manning realized he had nothing to say. Jeanne Clermont had recited all her horrors in the same flat voice, like a student required to tell a history of the First World War; it was as though what she described had happened so long ago that mere emotion was not permitted to cloud the recitation. He wanted to repeat her name again but he had nothing to say to her; he had no comfort to give her.
“I betrayed them.” Her voice was dull and tired. “For a long time, I believed that my betrayal was mitigated by the torture. I was not a martyr, not a saint; I could not stand the pain. I betrayed them because I could not do anything but betray them. But those were rationalizations.”
She turned and looked at him on the wrinkled bedsheet. “I could not be forgiven.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you reach me?”
“You were gone, William. You had said you would leave me. I had wept for you, but God had not permitted you to return and so I had stopped my tears.”
“Those men.”
“I could not forgive them. I prayed, you see, for a long time in the cells after the secret trial. I was charged with acts of treason, it was all absurd. There was nothing to do in the cells. I could stand the confinement but I couldn’t stand the idleness. So I prayed; they would not permit any books but the Bible.
“I prayed for my captors and for my mother and father, who were dead; I prayed for the old and the starving and the crippled; I prayed for the two men who had raped me and humiliated me that third night. I prayed for you, William.”
He did not speak to her.
“Did you hear my prayers? Did God intervene for you? In all the years you were away from me?” The voice was ironic, the tone was gentle; she might have been recalling a childhood fantasy that she regretted not believing anymore.
“When I was done with my prayers, God remained. I couldn’t pray to Him anymore because He would not be reached by me, but He remained. He didn’t need my prayers to exist. So I did what I had to do.”
“How did you get out of prison?”
“Giscard. He had pitied me. I told you. And when I was freed, I found the names of those who had raped me. Poor Giscard. He thought I was deluded. I found them. One had retired from the police and bought a farm in Brittany.”
He knew what she would reveal and he tried to stop her. He got up and went to her and held her. Her body was cold. She permitted him to hold her. She spoke softly, her voice to his ear.
“I reminded him. He begged my forgiveness. And then I killed him. But I couldn’t kill the other. One killing was too much. I had been wrong, utterly wrong; they were made brutes that night they raped me, used me. I could not hate them all my life. I killed the one but I never sought the other.”
“Don’t tell me these things,” he said at last.
“Why, William? Do you suppose I can pretend it did not happen to me? Or is it you who wants to pretend? Do you hold me? Or your memory of me? Fifteen years, William; I am not Jeanne Clermont whom you had loved.”
“I love you,” he said. “Jeanne Clermont. Now. This minute. Listening to the windows shattering in the Quarter. Now.” He spoke with an urgent whisper and held her tight, but she did not respond to him. Naked, they stood in the balcony window, facing the city; his arms were wrapped fiercely around her.
“I love you now,” he said again.
“Do you?”
“I love you.”
And, at last, she let her arms come around his back, to feel the muscles and ribs, to touch the nape of his neck. She kissed him then and they pressed against each other.
He took her back to the bed and they lay down on the wrinkled sheets. He covered her again with his body. He made love to her. And they slept in their nakedness, arm in arm, breath against breath.
He woke and felt her next to him. He was very awake, as though he had slept all his life to this moment. He knew what he would do; the mission was finished, he would tell Quizon. He would not leave her again, he would not betray her again.
He got up and found his clothing and put it on.
The edge of dawn scratched at the dome of night over the city.
“William?”
Her voice was soft, full of dreams.
“No. Sleep, Jeanne. In a little while, I’m coming back.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“No. Not now. I won’t leave you again,” he said, pulling up his trousers. He fitted the belt and pulled his zipper. He sat down on the leather chair and pulled on his socks.
“I have things to tell you. I want to do something first. I want to get…some things straightened out.”
“At this hour?”
“Yes. Now. Nothing can wait until morning.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after four.”
She made a noise that was half sleep, half contentment. She pulled the sheets over her. She made the noise again.
“I love you,” he said to her.
She smiled to him, half in sleep, half in the dim world of wakefulness.
He pulled on the light wool jacket. It was a matter of calling Hanley first; just before eleven at night in Washington. And then confronting Quizon.
Jeanne Clermont would not be used again.
The sleepy concierge, grumbling and full of resentment, watched him cross the courtyard out the front door of her building. Rue Mazarine was shuttered and sleeping, the cafés closed and the apartments shuttered against the light chill on the predawn breeze. Manning walked down the narrow street to the quay and the broad expanse of the sleeping dark river. When he had been young, he had walked in Paris before dawn; Paris had seemed less like a city than like a day that had to begin. He walked along the quay of the Left Bank, across from the Île de la Cité. In the dim light that was half-night and half-day, the spires of Notre-Dame poked at the leaden sky.
I love you. It was the first time he had said it to her on this second, chance meeting with her. He knew it was not memory speaking; or lies of an agent. He loved her, and it was the first thing he had been certain of in fifteen years.
The black Renault car stopped abreast of him at the curb. The passenger door of the front seat opened and a policeman in uniform climbed out. Manning stopped and looked at him.
“Monsieur.” The policeman spoke in the flat tones of official French. “May I ask you why you are abroad tonight? Do you speak French?”
“Yes. I’m an American. I’m going back to my room.”
“And where were you, monsieur?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I see. Do you have a passport?”
Manning removed the blue passport from the inner pocket of his jacket. The Paris policeman pulled a penlight from a pocket of his uniform and threw the light on the page that revealed Manning’s portrait. The policeman studied the photograph and then cast the penlight on Manning’s features. Manning blinked. The policeman looked at his face for a moment and then looked again at the passport.