Nazis in the Metro (13 page)

—So that’s not where we need to be looking …

Gégé closed the window and took advantage of his upright position to open a sumptuous Clos-Vougeot.

—We’ll let it breathe for a minute. If we don’t, it’ll be worse than these intellectual atrocities! I don’t know. You can’t rule out an act of individual will. Men are always more complicated than the most astute theories about them … I don’t want to compete with you, but a philosopher is, in a way, a detective of thought … On one side, the commies
have cleaned house, though not exactly a full spring cleaning; on the other side, the fascists need public struggles to demonstrate their powers of seduction … Sloga isn’t causing them any problems. So you may as well not tax your neurons in either of these directions …

—So what’s left?

The philosopher brought his nose expectantly to a point just above the neck of the wine bottle.

—A clandestine conductor … An underground orchestra … There are those who are impatient, who fold their hand as soon as their luck turns, and others who bluff with a grin on their faces … Agents in waiting. Imagine that your novelist had fallen in with some people who were above suspicion; who were preparing, tranquilly, under cover of their reputations, the coming of a new order … People get bludgeoned for that, and I think they even get killed!

He placed his hand on the label of the Clos-Vougeot and tipped the bottle toward the mustard jars.

It was almost ten o’clock the next morning when Gabriel awoke on a mattress nestled between piles of books on psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Gilbert Gache had pinned a note to the door to inform him that the stash of Burgundy was in a niche in the middle of the landing beneath the stairway, and that, in addition, all he had to do was push the button on the coffee machine for a dose of Arabica.

The previous night’s storm had washed the sidewalks of Paris clean. The air, cool and fresh, perfumed the plane trees, the soil, and the wet grass. Gabriel waited for the traffic warden to finish filling out her ticket and proceed to the next victim before he took his place behind the wheel of the Peugeot. The army of enforcers had been uncannily effective all day: the Minister of the Interior would only need to consult their duplicates to know, to the hour, the details of Gabriel’s movements. He drove back up Rue de Bellville to the Porte des Lilas and hopped onto the ring road for a stretch, just for fun. The library at the Pitié-Salpêtrière was taking the day off, as was the nurse of chapters and verses. He went directly to Intensive Care, carrying his red and brown evidence in a shopping bag. The young doctor on duty informed him that André Sloga had been transferred to a regular unit, as his condition, judged to be satisfactory, now required little more than careful supervision. He directed Gabriel to the appropriate wing. The dragon lady who was watching over Sloga and a dozen other delicate cases followed regulations with a tenacity against which Gabriel had to muster buried stores of energy.

—Monsieur Sloga has suffered an extremely violent
head trauma. He is just beginning to remember bits and pieces of his recent past. What he needs now is absolute and total calm …

Gabriel held up the manuscript of
Moon over the Marshes
, the assorted notes, the dictionary of citations.

—I repeat, I am his private secretary … This manuscript absolutely must be submitted to the publisher before the end of the week, so the book can be in stores at the beginning of October … He just needs to sign off on the final proofs.

He approached the Tatar and lowered his voice, taking on a confidential tone.

—It’s on the official shortlist for the Goncourt …

He could feel her being swayed.

—If he comes to his senses in two or three days and finds out that the publication of his book has been postponed until after prize season, I’m afraid there’s a real possibility he could relapse …

Gabriel hadn’t completely convinced her, but she didn’t want to risk being responsible for a literary disaster of such proportions.

—Fine. You can go in. Five minutes, not one second more. You ask him to sign, and you leave immediately.

André Sloga turned his head toward the door. He smiled at Gabriel.

—Is it you, doctor?

The detective drew the visitor’s chair close to the bed.

—I’m not with the hospital. My name is Gabriel Lecouvreur, and I’m trying to find the people who attacked you …

Sloga took a deep breath.

—I was attacked, are you sure? You must be mistaken. They are very nice here. I can’t remember …

—You’re in a hospital, and for good reason. You were found in the parking lot of your building, on Rue Jeanne d’Arc. Your assailants fled, and I want to know who they were …

—Why? Are you with the police?

Gabriel saw the surveillante’s nose pause at the window and then move away.

—No, I’m just one of your readers. I saw in the paper what had happened to you, and it stuck in my throat … You do remember that you’re a writer, I hope …

—I don’t know if that’s a good thing …

He touched his forehead.

—Maybe that’s the thing I should have erased!

—Don’t say that … I’ve read at least four of your books,
The Innocents, Hell’s Harvest, Weekend in Nagasaki, Countercurrent …
I’ve also taken a look at your latest manuscript,
Moon over the Marshes …

André Sloga shifted his weight to his elbows so he could lift his head higher onto the pillow.

—
Moon over the Marshes
? You must be mistaken, I would never have chosen such a ridiculous title …

Gabriel took the manuscript from his lap and opened it at random.

—No, I’m not mistaken … There’s not a single sentence in here that could have been written by anyone else! It’s pure Sloga! Listen … “There’s a major arcana in the tarot deck that shows two wolves howling at the moon, from which droplets of blood fall between two enormous towers that
mark the boundaries of consciousness, while a crayfish dives into a deep body of water. It’s the moon, but it represents fear; it’s as old as the planet … And so man remembers that he must die.”

He had glanced up between two sentences and seen Sloga’s lips mouth the shapes of the words. He turned a few pages.

—“The only signs of life. All the rest had plunged into eternity: the starry sky wreathed with clouds, the contrasting shades of silver and ink in the humble duck pond, the moist sand that slowed the steps of bare feet …”

The writer lip-synched the words the instant Gabriel pronounced them, as if tracing a path in his memory.

—I have the feeling that I memorized this text a long time ago, a very long time ago … and you’re saying that it’s mine?

—Yes, it’s your next novel … Do you remember Max, on the square … Loudspeakers?

His face lit up like a child’s.

—No, but that’s odd … Is that also mine?

—You wouldn’t stop repeating those words after you’d regained consciousness … I don’t know if they have something to do with the attack on you, but what’s clear to me is that whoever beat you up did so to make you give up your investigations into the collusion between communist intellectuals and politicians and their fascist counterparts … I have a whole series of quotations here that you took from books, from journals like
Continental Furor …

Sloga painfully furrowed his brow.

—It’s all very blurry … Buried. Buried deeply … You could read me a bit …

Gabriel selected an excerpt from an article in the
Shock of the Month
, July 1992.

—You didn’t record the names of the authors, but I have a feeling that this one is by Ivan Astrapov, a former painter and Soviet dissident … Here’s what he wrote: “We may talk about a flirtation between nationalists and communists in France, but in Russia this alliance is already a reality, in politics and in daily life. On February 23, 1992, opposition forces on Tverskaya Street in Moscow faced off against Yeltsin’s militia, waving flags that were nationalist, monarchist, and Red! … We are living in an era of radical changes of allegiance; everywhere new barricades are being constructed, and we defend these barricades with new brothers in arms … Would you like to see the new red-and-brown flag of the nationalist-communist movement?”

The nurse peered around the half-open door. André Sloga raised his hand to reassure her. He waited until she had disappeared, then looked intently at his visitor.

—My brain is in pieces … They wreaked havoc on my neurons … There are names, phrases, that awaken images, but they’re surrounded by a void … Since this morning, I have been able to see, with incredible precision, whole scenes from my childhood: when my father brought me with him to anarchist meetings, where he played the accordion … The songs are stuck in my head now, every last note … There are also lots of things about Spain, the departure of the Brigades from Barcelona, the Olympic protests … The resistance … 
The closer I get to the present moment, the more foggy it becomes … Read that sentence to me again, the one where he talks about the flags …

—“Would you like to see the new red-and-brown flag of the nationalist-communist movement?” That one?

He lowered his eyelids to focus on Astrapov’s question. His jaw muscles bulged from the intensity of the effort. He started to sputter.

—I know, I know, but I don’t know where anymore … Wait, wait, I remember that painter … I met him in a bookstore, in Paris … There were paintings on the wall … They were all there …

Gabriel drew closer still.

—Which bookstore? And
they
, who are they?

Sloga, drained, opened his eyes. He caught his breath.

—I bought books there, lots of books … They’re in my library, at my house … Take the key, in the armoire …

The dragon lady looked demonstratively at her watch when Gabriel exited the writer’s room.

—I said five minutes.

—I’m sorry, he had to correct two or three things … You know how they are …

Just for an extra thrill, Gabriel opened the door to 2 Rue Jeanne d’Arc using the skeleton key from the captain of the fire station on Rue de la Pompe, even though he had André Sloga’s keys in his hand. An old woman with a face like an angry tortoise emerged from the elevator, cursing at the universe. She looked the detective up and down before addressing him authoritatively.

—Where are you going?

—To your place, now that there’s no one else in there!

She spun around to step back into the elevator, but she was too slow: the door closed on her wrinkled nose.

Sloga’s name was engraved on a small plaque mounted on the door, but Gabriel didn’t need to read it to know that he had found the writer’s apartment. A series of dents in the jamb were evidence that the security door had been forced. He cautiously pushed it open.

Steel-backed wood scraped against the papers that were strewn across the carpet. Gabriel stepped inside to take stock of the extent of the disaster. All of the shelves had been emptied of their books; drawers had been thrown to the floor; file folders had been opened, their contents dispersed. The linen closet and the cleaning supply closet had
met a similar fate … He recalled the presence of Inspector Vergeat, the day of his first visit to Rue Jeanne d’Arc, and for a split second he suspected the Bureau of Investigation. He instantly rejected this theory. Their highly specialized search teams had long ago abandoned such crude techniques.

One of his few journalist friends had told him how his cat had proved beyond a doubt that his apartment had been visited by “plumbers.” He had a Chartreux that was agoraphobic and neurasthenic, that hadn’t put a paw outside the apartment in five years and that exhibited signs of extreme anxiety whenever the jounralist so much as opened a window. When returning home one night, he’d found the cat, in shock, sitting on the welcome mat—while he had a clear memory of caressing her, as she lolled on her cushion, before going out. Nothing had been moved in the apartment, not a particle of dust had been displaced, but everything had been inspected. Some person had entered as discreetly as a ghost, and for reasons that were obscure to the journalist, the cat had followed that person out the door.

The situation at Sloga’s was entirely different. Whoever was responsible for this pillaging was not looking for anything, except to make the writer lay down his arms the very moment he returned home from the hospital. Gabriel gathered up a pile of books, an armful of file folders, then another, then again another, and then, discouraged, he flopped onto the chair across from Sloga’s desk. The writer had jotted down ideas, names, and references on Post-its that he had stuck to an old map of the world on which conquered countries and fallen empires still existed, but none of the little yellow squares revealed the slightest hidden meaning.
Though he was probably unaware of it, Sloga suffered from the same disorder as Louis Aragon: he could not let go of postcards, invitations, photos people had sent him. The walls of the hallway that led to the bedroom were covered with such souvenirs, held in place by multicolor pushpins, the wallpaper no longer visible except high up near the crown molding. There were scenes of Venice, of Saint Raphaël; reproductions of works by Picasso and Edward Hopper; invitations to plays and concerts, photos by Doisneau and Willy Ronis; pacifist stickers, remnants of an activist past; a few press clippings … Gabriel had paused at a small mosaic made from exotic stamps when Astrapov’s name caught his eye. It was printed in large white letters on a black card tacked below the light switch.

La Caillera bookstore &
Éditions de la Vielle Gauffre
invite you to meet
PIERRE JUMEL
on June 21, 1995, starting at 6:00 p.m.
34 Rue de Colonel Henry
to celebrate the release of his book
FROM ONE EXTREME TO ANOTHER
alongside an exhibition of “World of Ends”
the last paintings of
IVAN ASTRAPOV

Gabriel pried the thumbtack out with his fingernails and turned the card over. André Sloga had copied down the date of the event along with a single observation: “They’re all here.” The detective found some tools beneath the sink and improvised a crude lock to secure the door. The neighbor was waiting for him at the elevator, flanked by an old man who abandoned any plan for recrimination upon seeing the size of the detective.