Going After Cacciato (35 page)

   The days were warm. Holding hands, he would stroll with Sarkin Aung Wan in the way he imagined lovers must stroll. They would follow the river to Pont du Carrousel, stopping there to watch the canal boats, then they would cross over to the Right Bank with its expensive-looking people browsing in expensive-looking shops and galleries. They would have a slow lunch, and he would watch her, noticing things he hadn’t noticed before. The way she removed her sandals, curling her legs beneath her. The way her chrome cross bounced on her sweaters, or the way her hair, arranged differently each day, seemed to shine like black silk. They touched in ways they hadn’t touched before.

In Paris, where it ended, it was right to fall in love, and so he did.

“I’m in love,” he told her.

She was walking barefoot along the river. “How lovely!” she said. “Isn’t love nice?”

“It’s true.”

“I thought you only spoke of possibilities, Spec Four.”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s the truth.”

They turned back to the hotel. Sunlight flowed through gauze curtains. He liked that. He liked the room’s musty smell, a sparrow singing on the terrace, a vacuum cleaner purring down the hall. He liked it when she removed her gold hoop earrings.

“Such a wonderful possibility.” She smiled. “How very lucky for you. How very fortunate.”

“Don’t make fun of it.”

“Oh, no! I am very happy for you. To be in Paris and to be in love. How lucky!”

   Details: the cool quiet he found in Place Dauphin on the Ile de la Cité, where there were pigeons and old-fashioned lampposts and chestnut trees. Someone practicing the piano in a salon across the square. A dog frisking in new grass. All the simple, shy things. A black man in a checkered shirt and purple pants playing
La Rose de la France
on his accordion.

Except for Oscar, no one mentioned Cacciato. The search was leisurely. There was no talk about mission or duty or responsibility.

At night they would go to one of the cheap sidewalk restaurants along Montparnasse. They would eat fried potatoes and drink wine, then afterward they would go to the dancing places. Eddie would bring girls to the table, and everyone would have great fun with the helmets, pretending they were goblets, and then they would get up to dance. Strangers would buy drinks. Policemen would smile and shake their heads. Money was never a problem, passports were never required.

   “Spec Four?”

He kept his eyes closed. It was near dawn, and already there was traffic on the street outside. Below, in the tiny courtyard, he could hear crickets.

“Are you sleeping, Spec Four?”

“Yes.”

“May I wake you?”

He heard a moth playing against a lampshade. His feet tickled.

“Am I being gentle, Spec Four?”

“What is it?”

“A feather,” she said. She laughed and tickled his toes. “There is a duck in our bed.”

“A yellow duck?”

“Heavens, no! A
red
duck. It will make us a fine supper.”

He opened his eyes. She was kneeling at the foot of the bed. Her skin was dark, very smooth, and there were pillow feathers in her hair.

“Spec Four?”

“It’s a wonderful name, isn’t it?”

“Spec Four … do you think we might see about getting an apartment? Just for us? Nothing expensive, but—you know—a place to have of our own?”

“Isn’t Spec Four a great name?”

“Yes,” she said. She sat up, rubbing a feather against his knee. “Spec Four is my most favorite of all names. But—”

“I had it changed, you know.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“It used to be a very common name. I had it changed to Spec Four.”

“I love your new name. But what about an apartment? Couldn’t we find one?”

“Don’t you like it here?”

“Oh, yes! I do. But this is a
hotel
. Hotels are for visiting or passing through a place, but a real apartment … it would be permanent. Do you see the difference, Spec Four? If we could find a nice apartment, then we could be
settled
. It would be lovely, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

She looked at him.

“Then shall we do it? Shall we find an apartment?”

“I guess. Later, after—”

“After what?”

He sat up. “Look, I can’t just walk out. There’s Eddie and Doc and the lieutenant, all of them.”

“Your friends,” she murmured.

“Sort of.”

“Your great and wonderful and true friends.”

“They’re all right.”

“Your sweet friends.”

“That’s not the point. We’re still soldiers.”

“Forget them,” she said. She looked at him softly, curling her legs up. “Can’t you simply forget them? We could find a splendid apartment. I would make curtains and we could … so many things. Be happy! This very instant, we could get dressed and be gone before the others are awake, and we could be
happy
. We can
do
it.”

“That’s running.”

“Exactly!”

He shrugged. He fumbled for a cigarette and tried to think clearly.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Just maybe?”

He tried to smile. “No, it’s a real possibility.”

She clapped a hand against her hip. It made a loud, spanking sound that startled him.

Glaring, she got up and went to the window. A large red welt spread across her hip.

“A possibility,” she said. “Possibilities unending. Possibilities and possibilities.”

“I’ve got to think.”

“Thinking! Think and think and think! You are afraid to
do
. Afraid to break away. All your fine dreams and thinking and pretending … now you can do something, Spec Four. Don’t you see? Why have we become refugees? To think? To make believe? To play games, chasing poor Cacciato? Is
that
why? Or did we come for better reasons? To be happy? To find peace and live good lives? No more thinking, Spec Four. Now we can make it permanent and real. We can find a place to live, and we can be happy. Now. We can do it now.”

She turned from the window. Quietly she crossed to the bed, held him, rocking, holding his head.

He closed his eyes. Soap and joss sticks, time spinning itself out in long yellow ribbons. Possible?

“Spec Four?”

He nodded. They would do it. Yes, they would: He would find a way to explain it to the others. He asked if she was happy.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Now I am happy.”

   They rode the canal boats. They visited the Rodin Museum, sat through afternoon mass at Notre-Dame, took a bus out to Versailles. They had picnics in the Luxembourg Gardens. They climbed the Eiffel Tower, where, at midnight, a tour guide looked out on the city lights and said to them, “Paris is not a place. It is a state of mind.” Paul Berlin smiled, but secretly he hoped it was more than that.

   They looked at four apartments. Two were impossible. One, only a block from the hotel, had a rose garden and shutters and oak floors, but Sarkin Aung Wan said she wanted something higher up. She wanted perspective. In the mornings, she said, she wanted to get up and go to the windows and be able to see rooftops and open spaces and even the river.

“Am I too hard to please?”

“No. We’re doing it for pleasure. There’ll be other places.”

“I do so want it to be perfect,” she said.

“It will be.”

“I know that. I wanted to hear you say it.”

“Perfect,” he said.

The fourth apartment was near the top of a steep hill behind Invalides. A row of shops occupied the ground floor, and above them were a dentist’s office and a small fabric store. The concierge’s son showed them the way up. They were out of breath when they reached the sixth floor.

“Many stairs,” the boy said. He seemed shy about his English. “The woman and gentleman are to be very strong, yes?”

The place was not much to look at. Three tiny rooms, a brown-painted
floor of simple pine, a ceiling that gradually angled off so as to force Sarkin Aung Wan to stoop as she hurried toward the rear of the apartment. The boy smiled and shrugged apologetically. In the bedroom there were two old bureaus and a mirror and a dangerous-looking plank bed. The walls were badly cracked and the place had the sharp, oily smell of an exterminator’s shop.

Sarkin Aung Wan loved it.

“A good scrubbing,” she said. “Just soap and water and paint.”

They moved through the kitchen and out into a small sun porch that overlooked the belfry of a church. He could see a bronze bell and the eyes of a dozen pigeons roosting there. To the left, looking down the hill, there were narrow alleys and houses crowded close together, a small playground, laundry hanging to dry from rope pulleys.

“Isn’t it splendid?” she said. “We shall have our breakfast here in the mornings. We shall drink coffee and—”

“And hear bells.”

“You don’t like bells?”

“Sure,” he said. “Bells are terrific. Especially big bells. Bells outside your window so close you can read the manufacturer’s stamp on the clappers.”

“You can’t!”

“Made in Hong Kong.”

She made a face, then turned to the boy and said something in French. The boy laughed. He spoke rapidly, pointing at his wristwatch.

“There,” she said. “You see? He says the bells play only three times a day. Six times on Sunday.”

“You like it, don’t you?”

“I would like it if Spec Four Paul Berlin liked it.”

He laughed.

“All right. Ask the boy if we’d pay as much rent as the roaches.”

She spoke to the boy.

“He says it is three hundred francs a month. The bugs pay only half that.”

“A steal.”

“And the boy says the bugs are exceptionally quiet. Only once in ten years has a bug been evicted for rowdiness.”

“Tell him I find it hard to believe a bug was ever evicted.”

She told him and the boy chuckled. He had shoulder-length brown hair that was held in place by a leather headband. “
Connais pas
,” he said.

They stayed another ten minutes. Sarkin Aung Wan tested the faucets and oven and electricity, then she went back to the sun porch and stood with her hand shading her eyes. A strong afternoon sun made the room warm.

“May we take it?” she said. “I know we would be happy.”

“I suppose. It’s—”

“Are you backing out, Spec Four?”

“No. It’s just that I keep thinking about Cacciato.”

“Then it is time to stop.”

“Sure.”

“Will you smile?”

He smiled and said, “Okay, we’ll take it, but first I tell the others. The LT, especially. He has a right to hear about it before everything’s settled and done.”

“Yes, I suppose he does.”

“Do you mind?”

“Terribly.” She kissed his cheek. “But we shall come back later, after you have had your talk.”

“Soon.”

“Very soon, I know. Should I leave a deposit?”

“Ask if it’s necessary.”

She asked the boy, who shrugged and said the apartment had last been occupied in 1946. Deposits were not required. She took down the concierge’s phone number and promised to call.

The sun was just over the rim of the city. They walked down the hill toward Invalides, circled around the broad cannon-studded lawns, cut through a park, then followed Rue de Varennes toward
the hotel. The Italian embassy’s flag was at half-mast. Things seemed very still.

“It is a lovely, lovely apartment,” Sarkin Aung Wan said. “Isn’t it better to hunt apartments than people?”

“Much better. Shall we stop for a drink?”

“To celebrate our apartment.”

They had cognac in a small stand-up bar on Rue de Grenelle. A television was playing behind the bar, and there were pictures of students clashing with riot police. The police wore plastic face shields and armored vests. The students were running from gas. Then there were pictures of de Gaulle, hatless, sitting behind a microphone, then more pictures of students waving banners. There was no sound. No one in the bar paid attention.

Later they walked up to Rue St.-Simon. It was dark now, and the hotel’s courtyard was quiet. They stopped and kissed.

Inside, Doc and Eddie and the lieutenant were playing canasta in the sitting room. The lieutenant was drunk.

“Easy does it,” Eddie said. He motioned with his head toward the old man as if to signal something. “Eisenhower’s dead.”

“Ike?”

“It’s in the papers.”

“A chain-smoker,” Doc said. “I keep telling people you can’t smoke like that and expect anything else.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry, sir, I was—”

“Just zip the fuck up.”

It was no time to mention the apartment. Paul Berlin sat in for a few hands, then went up to the room. Sarkin Aung Wan was already asleep. He switched off the light, covered her, then took Eddie’s
Herald Tribune
into the bathroom to read about Eisenhower. There were two pictures on the front page. One showed Ike as a cadet at West Point. The other showed him riding into Paris, the famous grin, his jeep swamped by happy Frenchmen. It was hard to feel much. A generational thing, he supposed. Maybe his father would
feel the right things. He read the story—it was purely factual, stressing those aspects that related to France—then he browsed through the rest of the paper, surprised to see how little things ever changed. The world went on. Old facts warmed over. Nixon was president. In Chicago, a federal grand jury had handed down indictments against eight demonstrators at the Democratic convention the previous summer. He’d missed that—the whole thing had happened while he was in basic training. Tear gas and cops. No matter: Dagwood still battled Mr. Dithers. What changed? The war went on. “In an effort to bring the Peace Talks to a higher level of dialogue, the Secretary of Defense has ordered the number of B-52 missions over the North be dropped from 1,800 to 1,600 a month; meanwhile, in the South, it was a quiet week, with sporadic and light action confined to the Central Highlands and Delta.” Only 204 more dead men. And Ike. Ike was dead and an era had ended.

He folded the paper, leaving it on the stool so he could read the sports in the morning. He showered, smoked a cigarette, and got into bed.

He lay there a long time, thinking about a lot of things. Maybe in the morning he would try calling home. Explain things. Tell how it started as one thing and turned into something else. Get some advice. Whether to take the apartment. How to justify everything.