Grand Days (33 page)

Edith felt the evening was slipping the reins of her personal order, and she felt she might very well fall, fall down some trap door into a dark, sensual chamber. Maybe a silken chamber in Azerbaijan. Did they have silk? She tried again to recall what
she'd read about Azerbaijan. Nothing much was coming up. She knew that after the Soviets had taken them over, they had applied as a government in exile to be accepted by the League but had been refused because of the border problem.

Ambrose and his young dance partner stopped where she and Mr Huneeus were sitting.

‘Introduce us, Edith,' Ambrose said, in a jealous falsetto voice, standing there holding the hand of the younger man.

She stumblingly introduced Ambrose by his female name of Carla and the young Englishman also by his
nom déguisée
.

‘Mr Huneeus is an émigré from Azerbaijan,' she said, thus recklessly granting him his claim, she observed.

It turned out that the younger one knew much about Azerbaijan and displayed his knowledge. This pleased Mr Huneeus.

After some small talk, Ambrose and the young man danced on.

When they'd finished their drink she felt it was safe to invite Mr Huneeus to join the others. He gathered up his bottle of cognac and the glasses. She was uncertain whether Mr Huneeus was now attached to her for the evening, and what he might construct on their remaining together after the dance. But what did she care? Here in this club her own etiquette seemed inapplicable, rules of behaviour were either nonexistent or they were ‘unspoken'. What, she asked herself, are ‘unspoken rules', and from where do they come? No, she was sure that even in this inverted world, there were rules. She knew that you couldn't always see the rules simply by looking at people mixing together, but she suspected that strict rules always commissioned social life even when there was a claim to social illicitness. She had no intention of bothering to learn them.

Ambrose exchanged inquisitive glances at her, curious and maybe unsettled by Mr Huneeus's presence. It wasn't possible
to answer him, and she then realised that she couldn't answer herself — what was she at the club for? Why was she in the company of this Mr Huneeus? Was she also laying herself open to the turn of events? Was Mr Huneeus a ‘turn of events'?

She hadn't had quite enough to drink, nor was she yet quite relaxed about the nature of her surroundings, to be free to throw herself into the turn of events. She knew about a timidity within herself when it came to allowing things to just happen. A threshold over which she had to be led, preferably blindfolded, or which she had to make herself jump like a shy horse. She landed well, though, she thought, on the other side. When and if she made the jump. On those two or three occasions in her life that she had made that jump.

During a toilet absence of Mr Huneeus, Ambrose, in a lapse back to his everyday self, leaned across to ask her if she'd told Mr Huneeus about their being League officers.

She said she hadn't.

Ambrose said that it might be wiser to avoid the subject, and then said, ‘But if it comes up, so be it.'

Edith wasn't sure that so be it at all. Émigrés always had problems to be solved and always looked to the League to do the solving. Problems of constitutional legitimacy. Problems of missing treasury gold. She did not wish to be used as an intercessor for the forsaken Republic of Azerbaijan.

‘And has he become your escort for the evening?' Ambrose asked, in a quite different voice from that which had talked about their being officers of the League; he had returned to the effeminate voice belonging to his role that evening. It carried a suggestion of jealousy, but it lacked sharpness. His was a played-out jealousy, some sort of obligatory courtesy. As well it should be, given his own early musings and declarations of desire.

Before she could answer, there was a commotion at the
bottom of the stairs, where the foyer opened into the club.

About ten youths with black armbands entered the club, most wearing black leather caps, black leather gaiters, and many carrying batons, pushing aside the doorman, and causing a scared lull in the exhilarated noise of the club. The lull was immediately followed by a louder nervous resumption of the noisy chatter, competing with the music — as if the club guests were pretending that nothing was happening.

But as the youths pushed and shoved their way deeper into the club, the noisy chatter and laughter died down. Soon the sounds of conversation had died away, leaving only the music of the orchestra playing on bravely, but ignored, with the dancers slowing to a shuffle, then stopping, and then standing, holding their poses while the music went over and around them, but unable to move.

Edith recognised the uniformed youths as Action Civique, a Swiss youth group friendly to Italy and the Mussolini government.

‘Action Civique,' Ambrose said to his two friends. ‘Not nice.'

Mr Huneeus returned from the toilet and looked at the youths with distaste. He seemed to know the Action Civique too. ‘A bad lot,' he said to Edith.

Some of the youths were speaking Italian in a bombastic, showy way, as part of their political exhibition.

The orchestra continued to play but at a faltering volume.

The Action Civique went around the room, stopping in front of some of the
travesti
and using their batons to lift the front of their low-waisted skirts and dresses like theatre curtains, running their batons lewdly up the stockinged legs to their groins, but not going as far as violence, interested only in embarrassment and the parading of the power which flowed from their
uniforms, their batons, and their political arrogance. Some of the
travesti
pretended, with bravado, to like the attention of the young men and bravely played up to it. Weirdly, this play-acting in the face of threat seemed, then, almost natural to the atmosphere of the club, almost part of the evening. The frightened behaviour of the
travesti
with their exposed stockings and knickers unveiled the threatening nature of it all.

The owner of the club came through the crowd and approached the youths. He offered to provide the youths with tables and with drinks but they roughly pushed him away. As the owner reeled back from the shove and fell against the some of the standing couples, the music from the orchestra trailed off and the club became quiet under the revolving glitter-ball.

Of all things, Edith feared first for her fur coat but decided then that the youths were not thieves, and reminded herself that despite their Italianate political posing, they were, after all, Swiss, which she found vaguely reassuring. And that they belonged also to some political organisation and, presumably, had some sort of discipline.

Edith and Mr Huneeus and the others sat down and tried to resume an imitation of conversation but the youths reached their table and stared down at them, especially at Mr Huneeus.

For some reason, Mr Huneeus stood up, not respectfully, but as an assertion of himself. The leader of the group moved very close to Mr Huneeus and said, in Italian and then in French, ‘Your papers!'

Mr Huneeus seemed now quite dark and foreign in his heavy-weave double-breasted suit.

‘I am here as guest of the Swiss federal government and you have no right.'

‘Your papers.' The leader pushed Mr Huneeus's stomach
with the baton. ‘In here, we are the government.' One or two others stood behind their leader, their batons resting in the palms of their hands in a practised way.

‘I am the Deputy President and the Ambassador-at-large for the Republic of Azerbaijan. I request that you honour that.'

Edith was impressed by this information from Mr Huneeus, and wondered whether the Action Civique would respect his position.

‘You have no place in this country,' the leader pronounced, and hit Mr Huneeus across the mouth with the baton, hard enough for a hard cracking sound to be heard. Blood came from his broken lips and he tried to stand his ground, staggering, ignoring the bleeding.

‘Now look here!' Ambrose said, rising to his feet and stepping forward. ‘Easy on.'

His English male voice came through the lipstick and make-up ludicrously and ineffectually. Edith felt embarrassed for him.

The leader lifted Ambrose's dress to reveal his lace underwear and then jabbed at his genitals with the baton. Ambrose instinctively recoiled and pushed his dress down, his hands covering his genitals. One of the youths gave a cry of triumph at the unmasking. In a diminished voice, Ambrose said, ‘Please stop!'

She saw that Ambrose had lost his male authority, his English authority. She felt that even she might have more authority as a woman than he did now as a man dressed as a woman. But she felt that her limited authority could not save Mr Huneeus. Nothing could be done by speaking or appealing to them, and instead she stood up and moved in front of Mr Huneeus, shielding him, and said to the leader, ‘Stop this. Ambassador Huneeus is with me,' hoping still that the use of his title might help.

The leader looked her over and then took hold of her dress
on both sides of her body and pulled her skirt fully up, revealing her underwear, and put a hand on her crotch.

She pushed his hand away, and pulled her skirt down, in a firm movement which was something she realised that the
travesti
had not done. The leader stood perplexed, having touched her enough to know that she was a woman, feeling maybe that to touch her further would be not so much an abuse of power but an impropriety, something of which his mother would not approve. Or perhaps it entered his mind that he might have committed a criminal offence.

Another of the crowd of young thugs, however, seemed not to be so restrained and came forward saying, ‘Is she a woman?'

The leader said yes, trying to push her away now, to get around her to Mr Huneeus, but she stayed protectively interfering with his efforts, but weakly, defencelessly.

The second man pulled Edith away, and said, ‘Let me carry out a search.'

She struggled with him but another youth moved in to hold her arms. Another two grappled with Mr Huneeus who was trying to come, now, to her rescue, and Ambrose and his two friends were also grappling with youths. As the scuffling began to spread, the second man put his hand up inside her skirt and she felt his hand inside her knickers, felt a finger probing, trying to find her opening.

Mr Huneeus cried out in rage and lunged free from those holding him. In trying to protect her, he was again struck on the head with baton blows.

She kicked out a foot and screamed, and felt her kicks connecting with the youth's legs who simply grunted from the kicks and moved off, resuming an uneasy laughter, smelling his fingers, offering his fingers to his colleagues — ‘Pure woman.' Now some of them acted as if the smell was repugnant. All this
happening under the glitter-ball and in the bizarre decor of the club made it seem even more nightmarish.

Had they really dared to touch her there? She heard herself cry out again.

The leader said to the others to leave her alone but she saw that he now had little command.

The club seemed to erupt, with scuffling breaking out at the other end of the club as well and with others going to their assistance, attention turned from Mr Huneeus and from her.

She caught Ambrose's eye, and cried out in English, ‘Let's run for it!' She reached down and took off her shoes and Ambrose followed her example and took off his shoes also. Ambrose took her hand, she took the dazed, bleeding Mr Huneeus by the arm and pulled him with her. The other two came good and acted as a sort of running guard as they pushed their way towards the door through which other people were also beginning to flee the enveloping mêlée.

The scuffling spread through the club with the Action Civique using their batons and clubgoers using chairs and other objects which came to hand. Glass was being smashed. The black musicians had taken their instruments and disappeared from the stage.

At the bottom of the stairs, before running for the street, Edith thought momentarily of her fur coat but kept on going.

She, Mr Huneeus, and the three men dressed as women rushed up the stairs, burst into the chilly air of the street, and ran.

With her arm around Mr Huneeus, he holding on to her and to Ambrose, they ran for it, along rue de Ia Cité and down towards the lake and Ambrose's apartment.

They all paused on a corner about a block or so from the club, all holding on to each other, breathless, Ambrose had both his shoes and wig in his hand, Mr Huneeus, more breathless
because of age and weight and maybe his injuries, was coughing. The soles of Edith's stockings were holed, her feet were hurt.

They limped up the stairs to Ambrose's apartment, and once inside, fell into chairs, heavy with exhaustion from their fear and running, safe behind the locked door.

Ambrose changed out of his dress into a silk house robe and took up his doctor role, attending to Mr Huneeus's smashed lips and cut head, and to the older of his English friends, who was beginning an asthma attack.

The younger friend went to the kitchen and prepared cocoa which Edith found an incongruously practical thing for the young man in a women's evening dress to be doing.

After regaining her breath, Edith went to the bathroom, and, alone, began to sob from the indignity of the molestation and from the panic of it all. She was burningly aware that her indignity had happened in front of these unknown Englishmen and Mr Huneeus. She kept splashing cold water on to herself. She doubted that she could go back out to the others in the drawing room.

After a while, Ambrose came looking for her. ‘Edith? Are you all right in there?'

She thought for a moment that she did not have the will to open the door, but he remained outside, calling to her, and she did open it and he came in looking worried. She held on to him.

‘Should we call the police?' he said, but without conviction. She saw that he was caught in their private predicament as well as in the urge for justice. She saw instantly too, that the police would be too much for her to take at this time or for any of them to take.