Doctor Frigo (6 page)

As Elizabeth’s bedroom is practically part of the studio it aways smells faintly of turpentine. This is a smell I find pleasant and when it is mingled with the scent she uses the effect is curiously exotic. On getting back to my own bed I often find that some parts of my body, particularly the arms
and shoulders, have brought the mixture with them. This reminder of Elizabeth is always an agreeable prelude to sleep.

But that night it was different. We were lying there quietly in bed and I was thinking drowsily that soon I would have to get up, dress and walk back to my apartment, when all of a sudden she announced that she wanted to go for a swim.

I wasn’t utterly flabbergasted, but I was a bit surprised – and puzzled. Swimming at night is for Elizabeth a kind of instant psychotherapy, a means of ridding herself of excess adrenalin, reducing tensions and restoring equanimity. But when she had resorted to it before I had always known about and understood her immediate reasons for doing so – we had had a heated argument, she had received a letter from her mother, or was worked up over the tax man’s cheating her – and the decision had always been made when we were both dressed. There had never before been talk of swimming
after
we had gone to bed. So, I was puzzled. It seemed to me – and I don’t think I am unduly vain or inclined to delude myself in these matters – that any tensions she may have been experiencing had already been thoroughly and satisfactorily relaxed some twenty minutes earlier.

And then a thought occurred to me. There had been one thing left unresolved. ‘About that camera,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t really being serious you know. You’re right. It would be an extravagance.’

‘You don’t have to decide now.’ She got out of bed. ‘We’re going for a swim.’

‘We? You know, I have to be …’

‘At the hospital early, of course. You also have an appointment to examine the great Villegas, your country’s man of destiny. You need sound sleep. A good swim will ensure that you get it.’

It had rained heavily that evening. I pointed out that the hotel pool would probably be unusable.

‘Would you prefer to swim in the sea?’

The question was rhetorical. In these parts swimming in the sea at night is a recognized way of committing suicide. I reached for my clothes.

We drove to the hotel in her Peugeot station wagon.

Ajoupa is the old Carib word for a palmetto or plaited bamboo hut. The Hotel Ajoupa (‘200 air-conditioned rooms on a white sand beach’) is neither. It has a stylized representation of an ajoupa on its writing paper and some beetle-infested cabanas of similar design down by the Beach Bar, but the connection ends there. The Ajoupa is owned by a Franco-Swiss hotel corporation and is, according to Elizabeth, one of what the North American package-tour operators now call ‘five-star automats’.

The term is not an architectural criticism – though many of these vast concrete slabs with their serried rows of windows do indeed look like outsize automatic food dispensers – but a description, far from critical, of their role in a profitable confidence trick. Once the customer, bemused by the promises of sun, sea, sand and palm trees in the brochure, has put his money in the slot he has to take what comes out. It will, of course, be precisely what the brochure said it would be, because people might be able to get their money back if it weren’t. Only the flavour of the dish may be a little unexpected. The brochure never claims that what is promised will always be palatable.

The Ajoupa swimming pool, for instance, looks spendid in the hotel’s brochure because the photograph was taken in the dry season. What is not explained is that the landscape architect, more familiar with the French Riviera than the French Antilles, sited the pool at the front of a slope artificially created by bulldozers. So, every time it rains heavily a torrent of mud pours down over or around the retaining wall into the pool area. The cost of providing adequate drainage for the site without rebuilding the pool is currently estimated at a million francs. Management has responded to the challenge so far by removing the warning signs about the dangers of sea bathing and giving out-of-season
visitors free rum-punch vouchers redeemable only at the Beach Bar. Casualties to date have been light and caused mainly by sea-urchin spines and jellyfish.

That night the rain had had its usual way with the pool. The water was dark brown with a thick coating of muck on it. The skimmer outlets were choked with leaves and twigs. But for the smell of chlorine we might have been swimming in a mangrove swamp.

I did two lengths, then got out and stood under the freshwater shower to clean myself off. I was still wondering why we were there. Obviously Elizabeth had had a delayed reaction to something said earlier in the evening. If the new camera was out, that left Villegas.

And then I thought I saw light. She had referred to him slightingly as ‘the great Villegas, your country’s man of destiny’. No doubt she had heard something to his discredit and hadn’t been able to make up her mind whether or not to tell me about it. That would certainly bother her. Elizabeth has quaint ideas about the doctor-patient relationship. She is not alone in this, of course; lots of people have them. The main fallacy is that between doctor and patient there must always be mutual liking and respect, that it is not enough merely for the patient to trust the doctor: a doctor who secretly dislikes or disapproves of a patient cannot effectively treat that person’s ills.

In the past I have told her that she is thinking of witch doctors; but that evening she was obviously in no mood for levity. While she swam to and fro I recalled the standard professional arguments on the subject.

None of them was needed. When she had showered she sat down beside me in the darkness, still drying her hair, and began to cross-examine me about my interview with Gillon.

‘What role did he adopt?’

‘Role?’

She snapped her fingers impatiently. ‘What was his manner, his approach? Surely you understand what I am
asking. I don’t suppose he bullied you. You may be a foreigner but you are also, after all, a doctor and a respected member of the community. But these types have ways of saying things. The words they use may read harmlessly enough when they are transcribed from a tape recording, but the tones of voice in which they have been said, the manner and gestures which accompanied them, can sometimes mean more than the actual words.’

‘Was he unpleasant, do you mean? No. At times he was quite amiable in fact. Of course, he mentioned at one point that if and when I apply for naturalization his office will have to pass on the application.’

‘Ah.’

‘I imagine that’s normal when they want you to do something for them that they know you won’t like.’

‘The spying you mean.’

‘He didn’t call it that, but it was plain what he meant. He was firm but, as I say, not unpleasant. Anyway, what difference does it make?’

But she wasn’t yet prepared to explain. ‘Did he in fact tape the conversation do you know?’

‘If he did, I didn’t see the microphone or the recorder. I would be inclined to think not. He was quite chatty and informal at times. He even admitted at one point to having used a false analogy.’

‘Did he tell you why Villegas has moved his base here?’

‘He said that Villegas has applied for permission to stay here temporarily – vacation and health reasons. I told you.’

‘But surely you didn’t believe it. Didn’t you ask him for the real reason?’

‘He didn’t give me a chance. The decision to let Villegas come here was made in Paris, he said. He also said that
why
the permission was granted was none of his business and none of mine. He also, by the way, advised me not to speculate about or discuss it – not in fact to do what we are doing now.’

She waved the objection away. ‘In other words all this
stuff about vacation and health is just the formula he’s been told to use by Paris.’

‘Probably. If Villegas had a health problem which could be helped by a change of climate of this sort he could have moved somewhere else in Mexico. They have climates of all sorts there.’

‘Then Paris wants him here for some other reason?’

‘It looks like it.’

She put her towel down. ‘Aren’t you going to ask?’

‘Ask?’

‘What possible use could Villegas be here – or anywhere else for that matter – to Paris?’

‘As you obviously think you have an answer, all right. I’ll ask. But what do you mean by Paris? The Quai d’Orsay, the Minister for Overseas Departments and Territories, the Prime Minister, the President?’

‘Being facetious never suits you, Ernesto, but, since you ask, more likely the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs – eventually. But from the way Gillon spoke to you, and from some of the things he said, I would think that, at the moment, S-dec is handling this one.’

I sighed.

‘S-dec – SDECE. Service de Documentation Extérieure.’ She made a slightly obscene island gesture normally used for warding off the evil eye. ‘Secret service.’

‘Oh, those.’

‘Yes, those. They need a success. You must remember the Ben Barka scandal – I showed you that piece about it in
Paris Match.
’

‘I remember.’

‘Of course you do. And so does everybody else. Poor S-dec! They long ago got rid of those brutal Corsicans, or so they say. They have been reformed and reorganized and taken over by the army. They no longer kidnap people and torture and kill. They are pure in heart. But still nobody loves them, because nobody quite believes. They need a brilliant coup to help them with their new image. Once that
is established it won’t matter whether they are loved or not. They will still be feared, but they will look like a responsible and efficient secret service again, steadfastly upholding the glory of France.’

I sighed again, rather more loudly. ‘Elizabeth, I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.’

‘You mean what has S-dec to do with Villegas? Surely, it is obvious. Ultimately they hope to control him. But they can’t do so yet. The DST hates S-dec – always has and always will – that is well known. But while Villegas is on French soil it is DST which has the control. Why do you think Gillon wants these reports from you? Against whom do you think he is warning you when he refers to persons who might approach you seeking information about the occupants of Les Muettes? The Press, the CIA? Well perhaps those also. But mainly he is warning you against S-dec.’

‘Why on earth should S-dec be interested in Villegas? You know you still haven’t told me why you think he’s really here.’

‘No, I haven’t, have I.’

I was beginning to get annoyed. ‘I’ve just thought of one very good reason for myself,’ I said. ‘In fact I’m pretty sure it’s the right one. Climate may have nothing to do with it, but it could be his health. He’s suffering from dyspepsia. He just can’t take any more Mexican food.’

She had the grace to smile and then kissed my cheek. ‘Very good, darling. I wish it were true, but I don’t think it is. I think that there is a game being played and that in it Villegas has suddenly become a card worth having, one that might make the difference between winning and losing a wonderful fortune.’

I got to my feet and yawned.

‘Yes, Ernesto, I know. You’re tired and you have to get some sleep. We’ll drive back now and I’ll tell you about it on the way.’

And in the car, at last, she told me.

‘Three months ago,’ she said, ‘a group of men, four travelling together, spent two nights in the hotel. They were all booked on the Friday Air France flight to Paris, but they broke their journey here, instead of going on through to Fort de France, because one of them had been sick and still had a touch of dysentery. Two of them were French, the sick man was Norwegian. The fourth was a Dutchman and it was him I got to know. He came into the gallery just to look, and ended by buying a Molinet. Naturally we talked.’

I nodded. Anyone who buys a Molinet is always of special interest to Elizabeth. There would have been quite a lot of talk.

After a moment she went on.

‘This Dutchman happened to mention where they had been, where it was that the dysentery had been picked up. They’d all four of them had it in turn, he said, and considered themselves lucky to have picked up nothing worse. They had been in the Coraza Islands. You know them, Ernesto?’

‘I saw them once.’

The very name was an evocation of childhood.

The Corazas are a group of off-shore islands about a hundred kilometres south of the capital and just visible from the mainland at Careya Point. I had been a small boy when I had seen them. It was just after my father had bought his first car, and we had gone down there, the whole family, on a picnic. From the headland where we stopped you could just see two of the islands. They looked like small blue-black clouds on the horizon. I remember asking my father if we couldn’t one day get a boat and go out to them.

It seemed that there were many reasons why we couldn’t do that.

I can still remember what my father said.