L'Affaire (29 page)

‘Do not budge,’ Pamela told Posy and Rupert on the phone. ‘There is nothing to do here, for him or for me, and I want you to stay and talk to Victoire’s French lawyer, a Mr Antoine de Persand.’

That afternoon, Emile went down to the hospital, wanting to see for himself the woman whose remarkable vision was already being spoken of at the hotel. In her room, a crowd of strangers and hospital staff stood around Kerry, who was saying, as if addressing her own question, ‘This was not a vision, it was an actual woman. There was nothing supernatural about it. It was a woman in armor, I’m not saying who it was, it’s you who are calling her Joan of Arc. I have my ideas, of course. But it was real, she was really there…’

‘Jeanne d’Arc – “the bulb is burned out in the bathroom,” get it?’ said Kip to Victoire, who had been there since morning. She laughed politely, frowned.

‘No,’ she admitted. Neither did Emile.

‘Might it also have been Marianne?’ Victoire suggested
after a moment. ‘Symbol of France? Or any of several local saints? But she must tell us about this herself.’

Dr Lamm had appeared, and the nurses shooed the reporters, and the mayor, out into the hall. It had struck Emile, in his role as television commentator, that this all had considerable news value, and he stepped backward into the midst of the people who crowded the hall outside the room to talk to the locals who had come to listen to Kerry. The first person he spoke to identified herself as a representative of the Maid of Orléans Society, which interested itself generally with sightings, legends, and memorabilia concerning the warlike saint.

‘Until now, she has never been associated with this area, but her appearances have been increasingly far afield and no longer confined to the area around Orléans,’ she said.

‘
Sans doute, madame,
the saint was defending the whole of France, whether against the English – that is to say, poor Mr Venn – or against the American airplanes is hard to know,’ smiled Emile, who was realizing that there was much to enjoy in the St Joan furor.

A reporter for the local paper agreed with the saint’s probable motives. He had come to write up the incident, and been chatting with Dr Lamm for some time in the corridor outside Kerry’s room. The reporter’s own view was that the saint had appeared at this time because, with her military connections, she was responding to the presence of foreign military planes and NATO, entities that had exerted their effect on the local collective unconscious, especially at this moment of international turmoil. Emile kept to himself the objection that Kerry had been in a coma and unaware of the military presence, and also, as
a foreigner, perhaps didn’t have access to the collective unconscious of the French, itself sensing however subliminally the troubled gathering of war clouds in the world.

He was not surprised to see CNN arrive by dinnertime.

Sitting with Joe Daggart and Paul-Louis in front of the television in the lounge after a bracing day on the slopes, Amy was amazed to see it was Emile Abboud being interviewed on CNN, standing with another man against a backdrop of Alpine peaks of blazing white and a sky of gentian blue, a springlike conjunction she had not personally observed during this somber week of January weather. A close-up focused on a simple wooden cross emerging from drifted snow. The two men were talking about the local mountain traditions – saintly apparitions, and certain historic ghosts who emerged at holidays. Amy tested her responses for signs of frisson at the sight of the man who had driven her into the arms of the baron, but she didn’t feel anything except interest, and admiration of his telegenic demeanor.

‘Professor Emile Abboud, Ecole Supérieur des – uh, that translates to “Science and Politics.” It is the first time, Professor, is it not, that St Joan has been seen around here?’ His tone was the jocular one reserved by CNN reporters for lighter news features about odd tribal customs, pagan fetes, cute animals.

‘Yes, she is not generally associated with this region,’ said Emile. ‘She confines herself to the area around Orléans where she lived, fought, and died. The fact that she now turns up here – I suppose it is globalization.’ On television, his harmonious features were even more
compelling, his smile the smile of a film actor, his French accent more pronounced than in person. Now Amy felt the familiar stirring, but suppressed it sternly.

‘Is it significant that she has appeared to an American?’

Emile thought about it. ‘That her victim was English is perfectly consistent with tradition, at least. The devil is known to take the form of the godly. What could be more suitable for Jeanne to do to the English and their avatars, the Americans, than to remove them?’

‘Could it be a hoax?’

‘Or a form of mass hysteria. The vision raises some questions: Is there a collective unconscious? Does a young Mrs Venn from America have access to our French one? What is the mechanism by which we see something that is not there? Is it suggestion, or something material visible only to some eyes? An intuitive sense only? These have always been the questions asked during, say, the séances held by the mediums in the nineteenth century, and the explanation has always been: fraud, delusion, the collaboration of someone desperate to believe with someone desperate to have them believe for some ulterior reason. Here, however, we have a declaration by someone who has no reason to believe or disbelieve, it is a disinterested testimony, an apparently true account.’

‘Will the Vatican attempt to verify this event?’ asked CNN.

‘The Vatican? No, I seriously doubt it. Especially as Mrs Venn is not Catholic.’

‘And what about the allegations that American planes were behind the recent lethal avalanches?’

‘I believe that is being investigated,’ said Emile.

‘Thank you, Professor Abboud, for giving us your time,’ said CNN.

‘Abboud knows that if there were planes, they were French planes. That’s our conclusion. I told him myself, French or British, the joint-venture SST people who built the Concorde,’ Daggart said.

‘Why don’t they come out and say so, then? It’s easier to let Americans take the rap, as usual,’ said Amy.

‘The problem is, we’re not so sure an airplane can cause an avalanche. It’s far from clear,’ cautioned Joe. ‘It’s actually far from clear that there were airplanes there at all, though there are some witnesses to say so. We haven’t been able to study the flight plans yet, French or American.’

Tonight was, again, the weekly welcome cocktail in the upper lobby, and for those staying longer than a week, it gave almost the feeling of blasé belonging Amy could remember having as an Old Camper, to watch the uninstructed newcomers in their clean clothes, with their earnest, cooperative expressions. As she had done at the last party, Amy began by talking to the American, Joe Daggart, but now that she was more widely acquainted, she also had a few subjects in common with others of the cheerful Eurotrash skiers, like Marie-France Chatigny-Dové or the prince Mawlesky. It would not have occurred to her to bring up Silicon Valley with anyone. It had stopped amazing her how unconcerned everyone here was with software, a world apart. But now she could discuss outrageous rulings in Brussels, and war crime trials in The Hague.

‘Amy, my dearest dear,’ said Robin Crumley, taking both her hands. ‘To think we are leaving, the Mawleskys and I, first thing in the morning. Back to London for me. But tell me when you’ll be in Paris – I’ll come see you. With the Eurostar it’s a matter of three hours, and we mustn’t let our friendship die.’

Amy could not but be gratified to be designated the friend of a well-known British poet, and smiled despite the slight uneasiness his enthusiasm made her feel, at remembering her rudeness to him in the hotel van. She gave him Madame Chastine’s phone as a way of getting in touch with her, for she had no idea where she’d be.

Baron Otto, too, made his way to her side, pronouncing cheerful banalities – ‘the Boucle Noire was entirely
glacée
by this afternoon’ – remarks that she was not able to discover any double meaning in, if any were intended – along with special emphatic looks for her alone. She fervently hoped that he would not single her out for too much attention that others might understand. Despite herself, she found that she had a feeling of intimacy with Otto, which she was afraid must show, and she was glad the quarrelsome Frau Otto hadn’t come to the party.

To her discomfort, he had joined her and Paul-Louis at lunch on the pistes that afternoon, at one of the little mountain restaurants that dotted the vast slopes. In he came, in his Tyrolean kit of woolen knickers and green socks, looking for her. He used cross-country skis, telemarking impressively down the slope they could see outside the picture window of the restaurant, and bursting inside with a great deal of heartiness. Amy was wary, but his manner had been perfect. Even so, thinking of the
attractive younger guys like Paul-Louis, or even Rupert Venn, whom she had seen in a new light when she noticed Marie-France looking at him at lunch, it had embarrassed her again to think of what had happened with the baron. Still, no regrets, as a matter of principle.

Now, at the party, however, she found his portly glow almost endearing. To her chagrin, Amy had found herself thinking about the baron all day, wondering, for instance, if he often slept with clients, and how old he was, and whether he had been good at school. Apart from the vague erotic yearning probably triggered by Emile, she was still at a loss to explain how she had found herself going to bed with Otto – was it his sudden, ardent declaration, his air of worldliness, his terrible wife, that had animated her sympathy? Or all of these? Yet there was nothing to regret – and no regrets was a rule for living if there ever was one. It crossed her mind that she might indeed like a little chalet in the Alps, but of course that was ridiculous. Still, she could come for a month or so each winter and rent it out the rest of the time, she and Otto would… But, no, she didn’t even like him. And to his credit, Otto had not brought up the subject of real estate again.

In truth, Amy had another more insistent worry. People at the cocktail were talking about the vision of Joan of Arc that Kip’s sister Mrs Venn had experienced before the avalanche. She had seen the short CNN sequence starring Emile, and then the TV in the bar before this party had been switched to Euronews, which ran twice through an avalanche sequence and then had shown statues and old engravings of Joan of Arc, the
meaning clear enough to her without her understanding French. For the first time, it crossed her mind to wonder where she herself had been that afternoon of the slide.

This was because of something that had struck her that morning. After breakfast, as she put on her ski stuff and was leaving her room, a ray of light from the window, striking her reflection in the mirror, had startled her. What she saw was an image of glittering silver, now seeming, to her mind looking back, almost like a suit of armor, as if she herself could have been mistaken for Joan of Arc. Of course it was preposterous that it could have been her; yet she thought of it.

‘It is an alternative theory to the theory of American warplanes,’ she heard someone saying.

‘It is an American plot, exploiting local superstitions to divert attention from the warplanes,’ said someone else.

‘If someone saw a person uphill, that person would almost certainly have been killed in the slide,’ said someone else, a comfort for Amy in that as she wasn’t dead, it couldn’t have been her.

Emile Abboud was now here in this room, surrounded by admirers – people were such fools for anyone on TV – and it was said that he would be making other appearances on CNN, besides his normal round table on Antenne Deux, both channels interested in the mounting public attention to the Maid of Orléans so strangely transported to the Alps.

‘The U.S. has no female icon,’ Emile was in the course of saying to his admirers. Amy edged nearer.

‘The Statue of Liberty,’ said the
princesse
Mawlesky. ‘The Statue of Liberty is a woman.’

‘Yes, true, but sent them by France. Liberté, Egalité – the virtues are always feminine, in Latin languages if not in life, because the words are feminine. America has an icon in Uncle Sam, though whether he is a potent emotional symbol the way St Joan or the Virgin Mary are, I am unable to say, not being American.’

Amy thought about the skinny figure in striped pants, with his tall hat and rather scraggly beard – who was he? Definitely not a compelling personification of patriotic emotions, except perhaps feelings of guilt and duty: Uncle Sam wants you. But she had never felt he had wanted her, particularly.

‘We don’t need a rallying symbol,’ she could not forbear remarking, though it was intruding into the general conversation.

‘You rally around your presidents, even when they’re rascals. Of course, none have been such rascals as French presidents, I’ll admit.’ Emile and the others laughed indulgently, and someone said, ‘Félix Faure.’

‘Mitterrand.’

‘And they are Protestants,’ put in Madame Chatigny-Dové. ‘Americans, I mean.’

‘What has that got to do with it?’ Amy wondered.

‘The Catholic tradition of praying to the Virgin has accustomed them to matriarchal figures of reverence. The Anglo-Saxon countries are more macho,’ said Robin Crumley. ‘John Bull, Uncle Sam.’

‘We don’t rally around our presidents,’ Amy protested. ‘Only half the people do, at any one time. In France, people forget this, they think we are all alike.’

‘Honestly, one hears such very silly things about America, that French people believe, I mean,’ said Victoire. ‘Misconceptions, for instance that the dogs don’t bark there. I have actually heard that.’

She looked at Amy, as if waiting for assurance that this was not true. With patriotic indignation, Amy withheld it; let her think dogs don’t bark in America.

‘Buffon thought the dogs didn’t bark and the people were stunted on account of the climate,’ Emile said. ‘Is that not true then?’

‘He is joking. Of course we know that is very silly,’ said Victoire.

‘Poor Amy, the French are so savage on the subject of Americans,’ said Baron Otto. ‘Don’t pay attenion to them at all.’ He had an urbane smile for his French friends and gave Amy a sort of Teutonic bow.