The Janeites (7 page)

You have to have the gift. Some people can tame lions, whisper to horses. I’ve come to like Ray and I’ve noticed a few things about him. He doesn’t have technical manual skills – but that’s another trick word. A skilled touch and he says that’s a lot of practice. And discipline; a mass of fears but won’t let himself get jumpy.

This attack – he didn’t imagine that! Can’t think what it’s all about, ‘he says’. But now he’s looking round at every corner and wondering when it’s going to hit him next, and I can see he suffers – sure, he laughs that off, and the more credit to him – but if you think you’re going to get kneecapped it’ll be as painful as the real thing: a doctor, he can see inside his own knee!

Dogged does it; I haven’t got beyond the two simple scenarios a cop thinks of. (1) A fellow’s got something you want, so you intimidate him into giving it to you. (2) The fellow might do or say something you
don’t
want: intimidate him into thinking better of it. But Raymond says that neither or these applies.

Sweet-reason means nothing to a lot of people; the fanatics, the monomaniacs, they’ve wheels missing. Not loony in any legal sense. Familiar problem; not a lot you can do but be ready; they’re apt to be sudden.

An ex-professional respects the professional approach. A government guard sees to it that he’s on a good footing with the local
marechaussée,
and where possible that he has also informal contact within. William is quite recently-ex, and these channels are not altogether
silted. A place like Strasbourg, Chiefs-of-State, important ministers (and a ruck of attendant politicians) are forever in and out of, and William knows a man in the PJ. The police-judiciaire service is largish here, and important. He does not know the boss;
Le
Patron
is ambitious, on the way up, and intent on a good job in Paris. But he does know the chief of staff for that is a man whose local knowledge is valuable and impressive, and tends to stay where he is for several years. Xavier Picarlat is a middle-grade commissaire of much experience and doesn’t miss much of what happens in his territory.

“Sure there was a complaint. Proc did nothing with it because it doesn’t amount to anything, so there’s no instruction, there ain’t no witnesses neither. Nothing in that bloody alleyway of course, people are up and down there all day. Fella probably had a goodish idea when your Doctor Valdez would be coming home, wouldn’t want to hang around much. Darkish anyhow, rush-hour, nobody saw a thing. So we did a neighbourhood inquiry, likewise zilch, yer-man is well liked, keeps himself to hisself, all correct with his bills and his taxes, not known as heavy drinker or better: or touchy, inclined to argue, unpopular with local teenagers.

“Not thus a local brawl. Where do we go from there?”

“A Funny, maybe? – little boys? No sign of it. Why’s he living in a place like that?”

“Artist.”

“No law against it, I know of. Brief, couldn’t see anything to interest us, meaning it stays on the file but dead in the water. Try the neighbours.” He means the political police, interested in Turkish conspirators, Iranian subversives, Albanian Banditry.

“Keep as a rule the grievous-bodily-harm within the Brotherhood.”

“True. Well, remember to wash your feet, keeping company with the likes of us.”

William has plenty of professional relationships, also a friend or two, and after a fruitless day he went to see Albert, who was gardening; one reason why William feels little enthusiasm for this pursuit, because Albert is so damned meticulous, and his quite large suburban garden is always fiercely impeccable. Albert says things like
‘Look before you leap’ or ‘Fast bind fast find’, means them quite literally (little twists of string stowed in his pocket) and William’s real friend is Mrs Martin who is a judge of instruction. But he likes and respects Albert who is a good man, devotes much time and money to the poor, is a municipal councillor in Geoffrey de Sainte-Anne’s territory (which was how William first met him), is an accountant by profession, but isn’t only the soul of integrity; has very good judgment and an unfailing kindness.

“There,” taking due pride in his compost-heap, “lovely out, perhaps we’ll have a beer when I’m ready. Bernadette might be late in that office, she so often is.” He took his gloves off to get the phone out of his pocket. “Good… she’s on her way. You can stay for supper? Splendid.” He suspects rather that William living alone is ‘not properly nourished’.

It’s an orderly household. Rather a ceremony of cleaning and polishing tools. Bernadette, the picture of exactitude in the office, is almost sloppy in her kitchen; a quick-moving energetic woman with grey hair, good legs, something of a bosom, she has also good judgment: between them, William thinks he’ll get good advice, and he’s quite right.

“Why on earth attack this man? Violent, and looks premeditated, certainly a waylay. Liked, around there: most of them don’t even know he’s a doctor, hardly any that he’s a Jesuit. That makes no sense. His professional frequentations, just as preposterous. Intellectual jealousy? – he’s getting the credit for my work – utter bullshit.” Albert doesn’t believe in ‘bad language’ and would never say even ‘bullshit’. Bernadette hears much worse in the Palais de Justice, had been called a motherfucker that morning (unlikely though this seems) said, “This sounds like a fanatic.”

“I’d agree there, but on what grounds? Some private belief of his own? Somebody unbalanced about Jesuits? Or about doctors?” Albert wiped his mouth, said “Maybe both. Where does Doctor Valdez stand, for example, on the subject of abortions?”

“Legal termination of unwanted pregnancy,” corrected Bernadette. “A tricky subject, and people get very heated indeed.”

“You may have got something there.”

“Opens up a number of hypotheses. There is for example euthanasia. Or the move to legalize cannabis in certain therapies. Within the deontology there are several grey areas. We might for instance assume that Doctor Valdez would have unrestricted access to morphia. Which is very far from any supposition that he has made any illegal or even irresponsible use of medicaments.”

“But from what you tell us,” suggested Albert, “might he have made an unguarded remark? Frivolous, or just ironic. Fanatics have no sense either of humour or proportion.”

“Lacking any shred of evidence” in very much the ‘judge’s voice’, “this is vulgar and tendentious speculation, reminds you only to keep your mind alert to different possibilities which may exist. We’re going to have supper off the kitchen table.”

Dr Valdez hasn’t at all made up his mind what – if anything – he can do about William. Essential facts – the wife, and he’ll have to talk to Professor Rupprecht. Early days yet. But the Crab – people think of it as slow and lumbering, and so it often is. But one day out in California, where they think about these things, a friend in the Santa Cruz faculty brought him to the beach. He had seen there an extraordinary crab, of phenomenal speed and agility. Put on his mettle he had tried to catch it – the local people laughing heartily at mounting frustration and fury towards the skitter-critter. ‘Popularly known as a Sally Lightfoot.’ Seen as a lesson, salutary.

It wasn’t any affair of Silvia’s so that he had rung the Marquis’s secretary.

“Joséphine’s address? Sure but I have to ask permission; will you hang on?” Then a throat-clearing noise and the Marquis, sounding amused.

“That will be very good for her. And we’ll grease the slipway. Patricia will tell her to await you in a proper frame of mind. That will be better than her thinking herself important at your coming to see her. I can’t stop for a chat dear boy, I’m rather pressed.”

The Santa Cruz campus was in an area ‘zoologically interesting’.

“Are there pumas?” he’d asked, impressed.

“Certainly. Saw one the other day out of my bedroom window.”

“What was it doing?”

“Drinking out of the swimming-pool.” Didn’t sound Menacing.

“Do you do anything about that?”

“No. Keep the dogs indoors.” Somebody changed the subject, pumas being no cause for excitement hereabouts. Raymond is wondering now what you do if when out for a walk you meet a puma. You’d stay still, wait quietly for it to go away; it’s concerned with its own affairs. Supposing it decided it didn’t like you? He has no ideas.

The Strasbourg-Paris shuttle is what you’d expect: perfunctory, boring and offensive with chemically perfumed cleansing agents, like a public shithouse. Takes less than an hour but you have to drive out to that horrible airport. Raymond mounted on his donkey in early-morning traffic is content to be unhurried and do some exercises to loosen a stiff neck: the fellow in the car behind would be thinking oh-dear-god, the things they allow out on the roads nowadays. Well then, why doesn’t he pass me? Since I’m trundling in the centre lane why does he sit so stupidly behind me? Unforgivable, thus to sink into a morass of footstep-doggers; spies; Assassins. This ghastly man stayed glued to his heels, was next door in the all-day parking lot, behind him at the check-in, herded with him into the waiting-room; destabilizing him.

Climbing aboard the shuttle, with these sinister manifestations about him – now he can’t move at all. Dr Valdez slips into the narrative style of the Bloods.

‘Boogie grim-lipped passes to the Attack! Obscured by fog the mighty mass of Illtyld looms to starboard. Illtyld the only Tunnel passable by four-motored planes! This is the moment – the pilot glued to his instruments – Blackhawk chooses to launch the deadly assault… Blackhawk slim and muscled, embodiment of greeneyed evil, now known to be a
WOMAN
!

‘Has vowed an undying hatred towards Boogie for the rejection of monstrous unnamable Love! Mercifully Orfea the magical musician has foreseen the
DEATHTRAP
, just as she rejected the evil lesbian love of Blackhawk.’ And while regressing comes the childhood query: Why did Orpheus with his lute make trees? It seemed an odd instrument to choose.

A little later in boyhood one tried to put some polish into the narrative. Extremely unconvinced about the sudden rescue of Marina by the Pirates (though these belong to the great-pirate-Valdez, so one has to forgive them.) And why was one reading
Pericles
?
Purely on account of it being judged Forbidden to good Catholic schoolchildren because of the Bordel scenes …

There isn’t even space for his simple stretching exercise. The business-men – instantly pop-crackle-snap went all their locks and lids, and they’re all staring at the little plastic screen praying it might tell them something nice. Failing to move his muscles Raymond tries to limber the mind.

The pilot limbers his wires and his wheels. Exhilarating when he turns the power up. But when he gets the go, takes off the brakes and we run, all the brave knights close their visors and sweat inside their armour; they are Afeared and mustn’t show it. Whereas Raymond is a professional. Death is simply the hope for a moment of dignity and recollection. ‘Into Thy Hands I commend my Spirit’. In the Society we do it every day.

Airborne, it is time to be a Doctor for a moment. He is going to meet William’s wife; a step, one hopes, in understanding suggestions. Only the Fellow can cure himself.

Sure. Just like any doctor, he’d passed his exam, got his diploma, the Society threw him straight in to where they knock the Greeny out of you. Six months – about all you can stand, your first tour – with Médecins-sans-frontièrs: the starving-
black
-babies. Dehydration you learn quick. The pill, the needle, if you can find space for it between skin and bone; you know you haven’t one chance in a hundred. Your reward? – those amazing luminous eyes of the mother willing you to say You-I-Save. The pill and the needle are of no consequence: what you are is Hope.

I am bloodbrother with William. He said, ‘You never know for sure that you will jump to meet the bullet. It’s supposed to be the automatic gesture, taking the place of thought. That was the training.’

To be sure: in Africa he had thought of the professional voice, the Jesuit professor in the quiet classroom.

‘You are standing in line, in the camp. It is freezing, it is burning: that’s no odds. He walked down your line, neither fast nor slow, tapping people. Haircut! – they liked their little cliché jokes. Max Kolbe is said to have made a step to the front, politely. Take me instead – you’ve only to fill your quota. Could you do that? Think.

‘A further fact. Supposing he had been a real SS man. Smart and upright, a man himself dedicated, trained to face death. You could respect that man. He could increase your courage. He might have understood: he would have been capable of saluting you.

‘Instead, it was a slob. Didn’t look at you, pushed you coarsely by the shoulder – stand over there. Left you no dignity, no self-respect. Death was a dirty ignorant slob with bad-smelling breath.’

Were William condemned, it would be harsh. A forged piece of steel, tough and supple, tempered to hold a fine edge. Into this marvellous raw material have been put much money and time.

These ramblings, since you couldn’t call them trains of thought, continued in a limpingly disjointed fashion up to the gates of Paris, at which point Doctor Raymond Valdez disembarked, a bit stiff around the knees but professionally enough, remembering a joke told him by William. Allah sent the Angel of Death to finish with an unpleasant Dictator. The Angel got caught by security guards, was badly beaten up, and sent back in a shocking state. ‘My God,’ said Allah. ‘I hope you didn’t tell them who sent you.’

I too, in my turn, am a security guard, here to try and protect William from a cunning, persistent and imaginative assassin.

They knew how to build houses in Baron Haussmann’s day. Seeking entry Ray was aware of scrutiny, by the electronic eye. Joséphine – she is alone in the flat – looks rather carefully before letting people into the fortress. A youngish man, doesn’t look much like the doctor she has been told to expect; older perhaps than he looks. Expensive clothes, looking rather crumpled. She let him in.

Raymond saw a tall, bony young woman with straight fair hair. Skirt, but would look well in trousers. Large hands and feet, very fine legs (blow your nose and avoid lechery). Living-room, large, well lit, nicely proportioned, Empire furniture, stripy silk upholstery. Plenty of family money. She sat on a chaise-longue, put her
legs up to be admired, sat him in a curule chair (surprisingly comfortable).