Magic Terror (5 page)

The switch beside the stairs turned on the lights for a carefully timed period which allowed him to reach the second floor and press another switch. A sour, acrid odor he had noticed as soon as he entered the staircase intensified on the second floor and worsened as he approached his room. It was like the smell of rot, of burning chemicals, of a dead animal festering on a pile of weeds. Rank and physical, the stench stung his eyes and burrowed into his nose. Almost gasping, N shoved the key into his lock and escaped into his room to discover that the stink pursued him there. He closed the door and knelt beside the bed to unzip his laptop satchel. Then he recognized the smell. It was a colossal case of body odor, the full-strength version of what he had noticed six hours earlier. “Unbelievable,” he said aloud. In seconds he had opened the shutters and pushed up the window. Someone who had not bathed in months, someone who reeked like a diseased muskrat, had come into his room while he had been scrambling around on a mountain. N began checking the room. He opened the drawers in the desk, examined the television set, and was moving toward the closet when he noticed a package wrapped in butcher paper on the bedside table. He bent over it, moved it gingerly from side to side, and finally picked it up. The unmistakable odors of roast lamb and garlic penetrated both the wrapper and the fading stench.

He tore open the wrapper. A handwritten sheet of lined paper had been folded over another, transparent wrapper containing a thick sandwich of coarse brown bread, sliced lamb, and roast peppers. In an old-fashioned girlish hand and colloquial French, the note read:
I’m hoping you don’t mind that I made this for you. You were gone all evening and maybe you don’t know how early everything closes in this region. So in case you come back hungry, please enjoy this sandwich with my compliments. Albertine.

N fell back on the bed, laughing.

The loud bells in the tower of the Montory church that had announced the hour throughout the night repeated the pious uproar that had forced him out of bed. Ignoring both mass and the Sabbath, the overweight young woman was scrubbing the tiled floor in the dining room. N nodded at her as he turned to go down into the lounge, and she struggled to her feet, peeled off a pair of transparent plastic gloves, and threw them splatting onto the wet floor to hurry after him.

Three Japanese men dressed for golf occupied the last of the tables laid with white paper cloths, china, and utensils. N wondered if the innkeeper’s drunken friend might have been right about the Brasserie Lipp serving sushi instead of Alsatian food, and then recognized them as the men he had seen at the auberge in the mountains. They were redistributing their portion of the world’s wealth on a boys-only tour of France. What he was doing was not very different. He sat at the table nearest the door, and the young woman waddled in behind him.
Café au lait. Croissants et confiture. Jus de l’orange.
Before she could leave, he added, “Please thank Albertine for the sandwich she brought to my room. And tell her, please, that I would like to thank her for her thoughtfulness myself.”

The dread possibility that she herself was Albertine vanished before her knowing smile. She departed. The Japanese men smoked in silence over the crumbs of their breakfast. Sullivan, N thought for the seventh or eighth time, also had been assigned a backup on his last job. Had he ever really believed that the old pirate had killed himself? Well, yes, for a time. In N’s mid-twenties, Sullivan had seemed a romantic survivor, unadaptable to civilian tedium. Could a man with such a life behind him be content with weekly cello lessons, a succession of good meals, and the comforts of women? Now that he was past Sullivan’s age and had prepared his own satisfactions—skiing in the Swiss Alps, season tickets to Knicks and Yankees games, collecting first editions of Kipling and T. E. Lawrence, the comforts of women—he was in no doubt of the answer.

Was there something else they wanted you to do?

No, there had not been, for Sullivan would have seen the evidence on his face as soon as he had produced his question. Someone else, an undisclosed backup of N’s own, had done the job for them. N sipped his coffee and smeared marmalade on his croissants. With the entire day before him, he had more than enough time to work out the details of a plan already forming in his head. N smiled at the Japanese gentlemen as they filed out of the breakfast room. He had time enough even to arrange a bonus Sullivan himself would have applauded.

Back in his room, he pulled a chair up to a corner of the window where he could watch the parking lot and the road without being seen and sat down with his book in his lap. Rain pelted down onto the half-empty parking lot. Across the road, the innkeeper stood in the shelter of the terrace with his arms wrapped around his fat chest, talking to the woman in charge of the display case stocked with jars of honey, bottles of Jurançon wine, and
fromage de brebis.
He looked glumly businesslike. The three Japanese, who had evidently gone out for a rainy stroll, came walking down from the center of the village and turned into the lot. The sight of them seemed to deepen the innkeeper’s gloom. Wordlessly, they climbed into a red Renault L’Espace and took off. An aged Frenchman emerged and made an elaborate business of folding his yellow raincoat onto the passenger seat of his Deux Chevaux before driving off. Two cars went by without stopping. The cold rain slackened and stopped, leaving shining puddles on the asphalt below. N opened
Kim
at random and read a familiar paragraph.

He looked up to see a long gray tour bus pulling up before the building on the other side of the road. The innkeeper dropped his arms, muttered something to the woman at the register, and put on his professional smile. White-haired men with sloping stomachs and women in varying stages of disrepair filed out of the bus and stared uncertainly around them. The giant bells set off another clanging tumult. The innkeeper jumped down from the terrace, shook a few hands, and led the first of the tourists across the road. It was Sunday, and they had arrived for the Mutton Brunch. When they were heavy and dull with food and wine, they would be invited to purchase regional delicacies.

Over the next hour, the only car to pull into the lot was a Saab with German plates, which disgorged two obese parents and three blond teenagers, eerily slim and androgynous. The teenagers bickered over a mound of knapsacks and duffel bags before sulking into the auberge. The muddy Renault turned in to park in front of the bar. Dressed in white shirts, red scarves, and berets, the innkeeper’s two friends climbed out. The hound-faced man was holding a tambourine, and the other retrieved a wide-bodied guitar from the backseat. They carried their instruments into the bar.

N slipped his book into the satchel and ran a comb through his hair and straightened his tie before leaving the room. Downstairs, the fire in the dining room had burned low, and the sheep turning on the grill had been carved down to gristle and bone. The bus tourists companionably occupied the first three rows of tables. The German family sat alone in the last row. One of the children yawned and exposed the shiny metal ball of a tongue piercing. Like water buffaloes, the parents stared massively, unblinkingly out into the room, digesting rather than seeing. The two men in Basque dress entered from the bar and moved halfway down the aisle between the first two rows of tables. Without preamble, one of them struck an out-of-tune chord on his guitar. The other began to sing in a sweet, wavering tenor. The teenagers put their sleek heads on the table. Everyone else complacently attended to the music, which migrated toward a nostalgic sequence and resolved into “I Hear a Rhapsody,” performed with French lyrics.

Outside, N could see no one at the kitchen counter. The air felt fresh and cool, and battalions of flinty clouds marched across the low sky. He moved nearer.
“Pardon? Allô?”
A rustle of female voices came from within, and he took another step forward. Decisive footsteps resounded on a wooden floor. Abruptly, the older woman appeared in the doorway. She gave him a dark, unreadable look and retreated. A muffled giggle vanished beneath applause from the dining room. Softer footsteps approached, and the girl in the bright blue dress swayed into view. She leaned a hip against the door frame, successfully maintaining an expression of indifferent boredom.

“I wish I had that swing in my backyard,” he said.

“Quoi?”

In French, he said, “A stupid thing we used to say when I was a kid. Thank you for making that sandwich and bringing it to my room.” Ten feet away in the brisk air, N caught rank, successive waves of the odor flowing from her and wondered how the other women tolerated it.

“Nadine said you thanked me.”

“I wanted to do it in person. It is important, don’t you agree, to do things in person?”

“I suppose important things should be done in person.”

“You were thoughtful to notice that I was not here for dinner.”

Her shrug shifted her body within the tight confines of the dress. “It is just good sense. Our guests should not go hungry. A big man like you has a large appetite.”

“Can you imagine, I will be out late tonight, too?”

Her mouth curled in a smile. “Does that mean you’d like another sandwich?”

“I’d love one.” For the sake of pleasures to come, he took two more steps into her stench and lowered his voice. “We could split it. And you could bring a bottle of wine. I’ll have something to celebrate.”

She glanced at his satchel. “You finished what you are writing?”

She had questioned her boss about him.

“It’ll be finished by tonight.”

“I never met a writer before. It must be an interesting way of life. Romantic.”

“You have no idea,” he said. “Let me tell you something. Last year I was writing a piece in Bora Bora, and I talked to a young woman a bit like you, beautiful dark hair and eyes. Before she came to my room, she must have bathed in something special, because she smelled like moonlight and flowers. She looked like a queen.”

“I can look more like a queen than anyone in Bora Bora.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

She lowered her eyes and swayed back into the kitchen.

After parking in a side street off the Place du Marche, N strolled through shops, leafed through
Kim
and sipped
menthe à l’eau
at cafés, watched pedestrians and traffic move through the ancient town. In a shop called Basque Espadrilles he saw the Japanese from the auberge swapping their golf caps for yellow and green berets that made them look like characters in a comic film. They paid no attention to his smile. Caucasians all looked alike. Passing the extensive terrace of what seemed to be the best restaurant in town, he observed elegant M. Daniel Hubert and adventurous Martine in intense discussion over espresso. M. Hubert’s black silk suit and black silk T-shirt handsomely set off his silver hair, and Martine’s loose white sweater, short tan skirt, and oversized glasses made her look as if she had come from delivering a lecture. Here the reason for his observation was no mystery, but how might it be interpreted? N backed away from the terrace, entered the restaurant by its front door, and came outside behind them. He drank mineral water at a distant table and let their gestures, their moves and countermoves, sink into him. After a sober consideration of his position in the food chain, M. Hubert was getting cold feet. Smiling, intelligent, professorial, above all desirable Martine was keeping him in the game. What can we conclude, knowing what we know? We can, we must conclude that the object of N’s assigned task was not poor M. Hubert himself but the effect the task would have upon his buyers. N pressed button A, alarmingly closing a particular door. Another door opened. All parties profited, not counting the winkled buyers and not counting N, who no longer counted. A series of mechanical operations guided money down a specific chute into a specific pocket, that was all. It was never anything else. Not even now.

N trailed along as they walked back to M. Hubert’s building, and his wandering gaze sought the other, the hidden player, he whose existence was likely as unknown to Martine as it had been to his own naive younger self. Hubert had settled down under Martine’s reassurances. Apparently pausing in admiration of some particularly impressive window embrasures, N watched him unlock his great carved door and knew that the little devil was going to go through with it. Would a lifetime’s caution have defeated ambition had his “consultant” been unattractive? Almost certainly, N thought. Hubert had not come so far by ignoring his own warning signals. They knew what they were doing; Hubert would not permit himself to exhibit weakness before a woman he hoped to bed. But N’s employers had their own essential vulnerability. They trusted their ability to predict behavior.

In the guise of a well-dressed tourist absorbed by sixteenth-century masonry, N drifted backward through the arches and found lurking within the
café tabac
the proof of his evolving theory.

Standing or rather slumping at the back of the bar, the feral-looking boy with messy shoulder-length blond hair was tracking him through the open door. His motorcycle canted into the shadow of a pillar. As one returning to himself after rapt concentration, N looked aimlessly into the square or across it. The boy snapped forward and gulped beer. With a cheering surge of the old pleasure, N thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and walked into the square, waited for cars to pass, and began to amble back the way he had come. The boy put down his beer and moved to the front of the café. N reached the bottom of the square and turned around with his head raised and his hands in his pockets. The boy struck an abstracted pose between the pillars.

If his job had been to instruct the boy in their craft, he would have told him:
Never close off an option until the last moment. Roll the bike, dummy, until I tell you what to do.
The kid thought making up your mind was something you did minute by minute, a typical hoodlum notion. N strolled away, and the boy decided to follow him on foot. A sort of cunning nervous bravado spoke in his slow step forward. All he needed was a target painted on his chest. Enjoying himself, N sauntered along through the streets, distributing appreciative touristy glances at buildings beautiful and mundane alike, and returned to the restaurant where Martine had coaxed M. Hubert back into the game. He pretended to scan the menu in its glass case. Two shops away, the boy spun to face a rack of scenic postcards. His sagging, scruffy leather jacket was too loose to betray his weapon, but it was probably jammed into his belt, another thuggish affectation. N strolled onto the terrace and took a table in the last row.