The Death Instinct (40 page)

    Madame Curie took Colette under her wing the entire evening as if the girl were her daughter. Colette was still wearing the stylish dress, with its low-cut back, that she'd worn in Prague. It was true that she had nothing else to wear, but Younger nevertheless considered the dress too revealing. Plumed and pomaded Polish men flocked continuously around Madame Curie, doubtless moved by the opportunity to converse with one of the world's greatest scientists. The men bowed deeply when introduced to Colette; they twisted the ends of their moustaches; they kissed her hand. Invariably Colette averted her eyes, flashing a glance at Younger as if she knew he would be watching, which he was.

    After midnight, Younger lay on his four-poster bed in the Hotel de Crillon, smoking. His jacket he had flung to the floor, but otherwise he was fully clothed. Even his shoes were on.

    He had shown Colette to her room. She was skittish in the hallway, nervous, unable to work the key. He thought the strong drink might have gone to her head, except that he was pretty sure she had only sipped at it. When at last he had taken the key from her and opened the door, she practically fled into the room, leaving Younger in the corridor, with the door ajar. He closed it for her and went to his own room.

    Younger stared at the gilt ceiling and at the dancing particles of smoke illuminated by the lamplight. Then he got up, extinguished his cigarette, and returned to the hallway.

    He unlocked Colette's door. Her sitting room was empty. He walked past the stiff and formal Empire furniture. At the threshold of the bedroom, he saw the door to her bath cracked open. Through it, he caught glimpses of her moving back and forth, wrapped in two white towels - one for her hair, one for her torso. Apparently she hadn't heard him; she had been in the bath.

    She opened the bathroom door, saw him, and froze. Her long neck was bare, her shoulders bare, her slender arms and legs bare, her skin wet.

    He walked toward her. She backed away, into the bathroom, against a wall, shoulders lifted in apprehension. There was nowhere to go. The air was thick with moisture from the hot water, the mirror blurred by condensation. He took her by the arms. She struggled; he had to use more force than he expected, but he was prepared to, and he did. Their kiss went on a long time. When it was done, her body had softened, her eyes had closed, and the towel about her hair had fallen to the floor. He picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down on the crisp sheets.

    Colette's hair spread out darkly over the pillows. Moonlight from the window silvered her limbs, still gleaming with moisture. One of her hands lay on her chest, the other over her waist, holding the white bath towel in place. He kissed her neck. He heard her murmur, 'Please.' He heard, 'No.'

    Younger said, 'Do you want me to stop?'

    She answered in a whisper: 'I don't want you to ask.'

    He ran his hand through her long hair. He tilted her chin and kissed her mouth. Later she called out to God, biting her lip to keep her voice down, so many times he lost count.

    Still later, as they lay next to one another in the moonlight, her cheek resting on his chest, she said, 'Do you forget?'

    'Forget what?'

    'This. Does it fade away?'

    Her head rose and fell with his breath.

    'I remembered this before it happened,' he said. 'I saw it before.'

    'Me too,' said Colette, smiling. 'Many times.'

    She found Younger downstairs the next morning, eating breakfast at a white-linen table in a grand salon with rococo columns and a floor of checkerboard black and white marble. Daintily robed cherubs cavorted on the ceiling. Colette looked simultaneously happy and alarmed.

    'Have you seen the policemen?' she asked quietly. 'They're everywhere.'

    'Nothing to worry about,' replied Younger. 'Just another American male wanted for murder. Movie star, I'm told. His wife, also a movie star, was found dead on their bed on top of a hundred fur stoles, naked. It was their honeymoon. Something to eat?'

    'Madame took me aside last night before we left,' said Colette, troubled, as she sat down across from him. 'I've never seen her that way. She never shows anyone her feelings.'

    'What happened?'

    'She burst into tears. She said that Monsieur Langevin doesn't love her anymore because she's old. That she gave up her name for him. That she let the whole world condemn her. All she wants now is her science, her experiments. But without radium, she says, she's nothing. She told me she's ready to die.'

    A waiter whisked into view, set a place for Colette, and with a flourish unfolded a linen napkin for her. She barely noticed. Then she saw the piece of paper next to Younger's plate.

    'You received a wire?' she asked. 'Is it from Dr Freud?'

    'No. Littlemore. I went back to the cable office this morning to see if he'd replied.' Younger showed her the cable:

    where heck have you been stop you have court date

    november twenty second stop two pm stop you

    better be here

    'Court date?' asked Colette. 'What for?'

    'For assaulting Drobac.'

    'Assaulting him?' she protested. 'He kidnapped me. He killed that woman on top of the building.'

    'Yes, but he hasn't been convicted yet. In the eyes of the law, he's an innocent man.' 'You mean you could go to jail?'

    'Littlemore says it's very unlikely,' he answered.

    'What are you going to do?'

    'Go back. I have to.'

    'Why?' she asked. 'Just stay away until they convict him.'

    'Littlemore got me out of prison after they arrested me. If I don't appear in court, it will be bad for him. Very bad. I have to go.'

    'I'm coming with you.'

    'No,' he said. 'It could still be dangerous for you.'

    'How? Even if anyone were looking for me, they couldn't possibly know I came back into the country.'

    'Someone was watching you in New Haven. Whoever it was may still be there.'

    'I won't go to New Haven.' Colette sat quietly for a long time. At last she said, 'I have to come with you; I'm going to raise the money for Madame's radium. Mrs Meloney told me I could do it. She said I just had to be nicer to one rich man, and we could make up the whole shortfall. Besides, Luc will be with Dr Freud for at least two months. I can't stay here by myself and worry about him.'

    That afternoon, they caught a train to Rouen from the Saint-Lazare station. The next day, they went on to Le Havre, where they boarded a ship for New York.

    With her hand at his elbow, Colette allowed Younger to lead her on an exploratory tour of their ocean liner. They wandered through a glass-domed rotunda, observed ladies and gentlemen playing
belote
in the hall of Louis XIV, and took tea in a blue-tiled Moorish saloon. In an empty smoking room, they kissed beneath a gently swaying crystal chandelier. And many levels down, as a hard rain began to fall, causing passengers to scurry indoors, they saw a thousand human beings confined to less opulent and more redolent quarters.

    'You're corrupting me,' said Colette as they climbed the stairs back

    to the upper deck - the first-class deck. A steward readmitted them into the Louis XIV hall. 'You like it.'

    'I feel like Dante,' she said, 'emerging from the inferno, with you as my Virgil.'

    'No, you're Beatrice, and you'll rise to heaven while I end up below. But,' he considered, 'I'd pay the price again. I'd pay it every time.' 'What price?'

    'Eternal damnation,' he answered, 'for a night in your arms.' 'Only one night?'

    That evening, despite a fierce storm outside, the ocean liner erupted with merrymaking, toasts, and the blowing of party whistles. In all the dining rooms and lounges of every class, bands and orchestras played American music while the rain beat on the portholes.

    'What's happening?' asked Colette. They were descending the grand red-carpeted stairwell into an Edwardian ballroom. Dancers whirled around the floor.

    'The United States has elected a new president,' said Younger. 'Who won?'

    'A man named Harding.'

    They took a seat at a table in silence.

    'What's the matter?' she asked him.

    'Nothing.'

    'All right,' she said. 'Then ask me to dance.' He did.

    Well after midnight, they returned to their luxurious stateroom. 'Only one room for both of us?' she asked him, cheeks flushed. 'Monsieur is very presumptuous. Is my corruption never to end?'

    The next morning, in their cabin bed, she was happier than he had ever seen her. Lying on their backs, she made him extend a leg in the air and put hers alongside it. She tried to persuade him that despite the difference in their overall height, her leg was almost as long as his. Certainly it was smoother and more appealing in shape.

    In the afternoon, however, as they strolled through the ship's exotic outdoor palm court - open to first-class passengers only - she grew contemplative. 'What does Dr Freud mean,' she asked, 'when he says I may be the cause of Luc's condition?'

    'I don't know,' said Younger, telling the truth.

    'I always thought I could take care of him.'

    'You did take care of him.'

    'But what if I did the wrong thing keeping him with me all these years?' she asked. 'What if I wanted him to be different? What if I wanted him to be mute?'

    'Why?'

    'So that I wouldn't have to be alone.'

    'Oh, stop it,' Younger replied. 'Pure self-indulgence.'

    'You're the one who said I didn't love him.'

    'I never said that,' replied Younger.

    'You said it with your eyes,' she answered. 'Because I left Luc behind when I took the train to Braunau. You thought killing Hans Gruber was more important to me than taking care of my own brother.'

    Younger didn't answer. He hadn't thought any such thing, but she must have.

    'If I had died,' she said, 'you would have raised him, wouldn't you?'

    'That's why you wanted me to come to Vienna.'

    She tightened her grasp around his arm. 'You would have done it - raised him - wouldn't you?'

    'If you had died chasing Heinrich?'

    'Yes.'

    'No, I would have put him in a home for deaf-mutes. Where he belongs. So that he wouldn't remind me of you. But then he couldn't have reminded me of you because I would have killed myself. Besides, you wouldn't have wanted me to raise him: I'm a pauper. Have I mentioned to you how much I have left?'

    'No.'

    'I don't have anything left. Our stateroom took the last of it. Fortunately, that comes with meals for two, so we won't starve until we reach America.' He stopped, disengaged himself from her arm, and put his hands in his pockets. 'I'm serious. I'm ashamed of my poverty. I should have told you about it. I'm not penniless. I still have my house in Boston, and I believe Harvard will take me back as a professor. But I seduced you under false pretences. No, I did. The worst cad could not have behaved more basely. All this luxury - first-class cabins, grand ballrooms - you'll never see it again. You'd be perfectly justified to leave me now that you know the actual state of things.'

    'What a long speech,' she said, taking his arm again. 'And so foolish. I like you much better poor.'

Part 4

Chapter Nineteen

    Telegraphic instructions flew from station to station, east to west, across the United States on the morning of November 18, 1920 - the day after Littlemore found the secret cache of Mexican documents. Their point of origin was the War Department in Washington, DC. The most important of these wires was issued to Fort Houston in San Antonio, Texas. It ordered Major General James G. Harbord, commander of the Unites States Army, Second Division, to mobilize for immediate deployment to the Mexican border.

    Colette Rousseau held Younger's hand at the ship's rail, steaming into New York Harbor that same morning. All around them, passengers crooned over the fantastical Manhattan skyline, lit by the morning sun. 'This time, even I think your skyscrapers are beautiful,' said Colette.

    Over the course of the voyage, they had discovered certain intimacies about each other. She would insist, at night, on his extinguishing every light and candle before emerging from the dressing room in her slip and darting into bed, where she would pull the bedclothes up to her chin. She had an additional scruple - that he was not to be naked in her presence. She seemed to like it when he took off his shirt, but that was as undressed as she was prepared to have him.

    'Strange,' said Younger. 'I was going to say that this time even I find them unsettling.'

    From coast to coast, the newspapers that morning were filled with strange items concerning Mexico. There were rumors - unattributed to any official sources - of a military mobilization and of an imminent threat that American-owned oil wells were to be nationalized. From Washington, the following was reported:

The Mexican Embassy issued a statement last night declaring that it had been authorized by General Obregon, President-elect of Mexico, to deny that Elias L. Torres, who last Tuesday extended an invitation to Senator Harding to visit Mexico, was acting on behalf of the Mexican government. 'The Mexican Embassy,' the statement said, 'is in receipt of a telegram from General Obregon, in which he categorically denies that Elias Torres is his representative.'

    No further details were offered to explain this curious report.

    Also that morning, in an antiseptic room in New York City, with perfectly white walls and a single hospital bed in the middle, a girl with long red hair opened her eyes. She tried to speak, but something in her mouth prevented her from doing so. She would have removed this impediment, but her wrists were tied to the bed rails with leather straps.

    'Will she be clean?' asked a male voice. Whoever spoke was out of her sight. She tried to turn her head, but couldn't.

    'Yes,' answered a man she could see, wearing a white medical coat. 'The last one wasn't clean.' 'It's acidic. It will clean.'

    'Will it hurt?' asked the male voice, out of her sight.

    'Probably,' said the man in the white jacket.

    'Can you give her something?'

    'For the pain - now?'

    'Please.'

    The white-coated man came to her bedside. She felt his hands on her arm and then the prick of a needle. Presently, her fears and wretchedness subsided. A warmth spread through her body. It felt pleasant, comforting. She wanted more.

    The man she hadn't seen - and, as the room began to swim, still couldn't see clearly - now came to her bedside. He gently parted her lips. Between those lips, a gag pulled against her cheeks, tightly tied.

    The man inserted something bristly into her mouth. It was a toothbrush. He was brushing her teeth, above and below the gag. He went about it methodically, thoroughly, minutely. He brushed in tiny circles, first her incisors, then her canines, then her molars, front and back, upper and lower.

    The doctor had been wrong: it didn't hurt at all. It wasn't even unpleasant. At least not at first. Then she felt a burning on her tongue and in her throat. The gag caused her to choke. Tears began to run from her eyes. The man stroked the tears from her eyes, gently. He parted her hospital gown and looked at her white, soft throat and bosom.

    'I like this one,' he said. 'No defects. Can't you give her more?'

    'She'll be unconscious,' said the man in the white coat.

    'I don't want her unconscious. Can you make her - almost unconscious?'

    She felt another prick in her arm. Soon the man with the toothbrush set to work again, finding every crevice and crown of her teeth, cleaning her, cleaning. The paste burned her terribly, but she didn't mind it anymore. The pleasant, generous warmth spread deeper into her limbs and chest and elsewhere. Then everything became confused, tangled, and she couldn't understand what was happening. She was pulled, mentally as well as physically, in two different directions; someone was now scrubbing at her neck and shoulders with the same astringent paste, which hurt and which she wished would stop, but there was also more of the heavenly flooding warmth, which she wanted to last forever.

    Littlemore went to Secretary Houston's office first thing that morning. Denied permission to enter, he waited in the hallway, reading the newspapers, until, an hour later, Houston appeared.

    'Can't you see I'm busy, Littlemore?' asked Houston as he hurried down the corridor, the detective in his wake.

    'Is it the Mexican business, sir?'

    'Mexican business?' Houston stopped. 'What do you know about it?'

    'Been reading the papers.'

    The Secretary set off again, followed by Littlemore. 'Well, what is it?' asked Houston.

    'Just wondering who chose the date for the transfer of the gold.'

    'What? Why?'

    'I think it may unlock the whole puzzle, sir.'

    'The date? I don't see why,' said Houston. 'Everyone inside the Department knew when the gold was going to be transferred. In any event, it was before my time. The move had been planned for years. The new Assay Office was designed specifically for the purpose. Long before my time.'

    'You didn't have anybody advising you on the date, Mr Houston - making suggestions, reviewing the timing?'

    'Advising me on the date? I had nothing to do with it.'

    On checking in, Younger immediately had the hotel operator ring police headquarters. Informed that Captain Littlemore no longer worked there, he obtained a number for the detective in Washington. Some minutes later, he reached Littlemore in his Treasury office.

    'What are you doing in Washington?' Younger asked.

    'Long story,' said Littlemore. 'What were you doing in France?'

    'Long story. Did they get the radium out of the McDonald girl?'

    'Not exactly. I told her doctor what you said; he looked at me like I was nuts. He said she has syphilis, not radium. And I checked with the Post-Graduate Hospital. They've got no record of her.'

    'She doesn't have syphilis. What's the doctor's name?'

    'Lyme,' said Littlemore. 'Dr Frederick Lyme at the Sloane Hospital for Women. Listen, Doc - Drobac's out of prison.'

    The line crackled; Younger said nothing.

    'You still there?' asked Littlemore.

    'I'm here,' said Younger. 'What is this, the Perils of Pauline? How can he be out of prison?'

    'Because you jumped bail, for Pete's sake,' said Littlemore, 'and took the Miss and the boy with you. His lawyer told the court you fled the country. Whereabouts unknown. The Miss was the complainant. How are we supposed to prosecute a kidnapping when the victims have left the jurisdiction? I told them you'd be back, but the judge ruled we had to let him go.'

    'So the murderer's on the street while I'm to stand trial?'

    'It's not a trial. It's a bail revocation hearing. The judge ordered it after he heard you were out of the country. If you don't show, your bail gets revoked, a warrant issues for your arrest, and I have to pay up on your bail bond. You got to be there, Doc.'

    'I'll be there.'

    'Say - I'm catching the afternoon train back to town. Why don't you and the Miss come over for dinner?'

    A bellboy rang, delivering to Younger and Colette a packet of telegrams that had arrived during the last week. 'From Freud,' said Younger. 'I let him know where we'd be staying.'

    'Open them up,' said Colette eagerly.

    The first of the telegrams was sent only a few days after they boarded their ship for New York:

    7 Nov. 1920

    
BOY FINE. TWO BRITISH PUPILS HAVE TAKEN LIKING TO HIM.

    VISITED ZOO. STRONGLY SUSPECT INVOLVEMENT OF FATHER IN

    BOY'S SYMPTOMS. PLEASE CONSULT MISS ROUSSEAU AND ASK

    AGAIN WHETHER SHE RECALLS ANY MISTREATMENT OF HER OR BROTHER AT FATHERS HANDS.

                                                                                                                                                               FREUD

    'Mistreatment of me?' said Colette. 'That's the second time he's asked. What does he mean?'

    Younger, who knew exactly what Freud meant, didn't answer that question. 'What about Luc? Did your father ever - I don't know - beat him?'

    'Father doted on Luc. He was the kindest man in the world. What does the next one say?'

       Younger opened the second telegram:

    
11 NOV. 1920

    IGNORE PREVIOUS WIRE. BOY HAS BEGUN SPEAKING TO ME. FOR NOW HE

    WHISPERS, BUT I EXPECT COMPLETE CURE. WEEKS NOT MONTHS. MORE SHORTLY.

                                                                                                                                       FREUD

    '
Mon dieu
,' said Colette excitedly 'Open the next one.'

    Younger did so:

    
13 NOV. 1920

    BOY HAS RECURRENT DREAM. HE IS BACK IN BEDROOM OF HOUSE WHERE BORN.

    IT IS MIDDLE OF NIGHT. GOES TO A WINDOW. SEES WOLVES LURKING IN TREE

    WATCHING HIM. DREAM IS REVERSAL OF LATENT CONTENT. BOY DREAMS OF

    BEING LOOKED AT BECAUSE HE SAW SOMETHING HE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE.

    UNDOUBTEDLY FATHER INVOLVED, BUT ALMOST CERTAINLY ALSO SISTER.

                                                                                                                                     FREUD

    Colette was perplexed. 'Why am I involved?' she asked.

    'There's one more,' said Younger. He read it:

    
17 NOV. 1920

    SETBACK. LUC HAS STOPPED SPEAKING. WILL NOT COMMUNICATE

    WITH ANYONE NOT IN WHISPER NOT IN WRITING NOT EVEN BY

    GESTURE. PLEASE URGE MISS ROUSSEAU NOT TO BE ALARMED.

    TEMPORARY REGRESSION NOT UNCOMMON IN ANALYSIS. POSSIBLY

    POSITIVE SIGN.

                                                                                                          FREUD

    'How could it be a positive sign?' asked Colette.

    'If it was brought on by their getting close to the source of the problem.'

    'What does that mean?'

    Younger ran a hand through his hair. 'I don't believe in psychoanalysis. I told you.'

    'But if you did believe, what would it mean?' 'The way Freud would see it is this,' he said. 'Luc has a memory from early childhood - from a time when he saw something forbidden or wished for something so wrong he had to suppress all consciousness of it. This memory doesn't like to stay hidden; it tries to escape the repression, to force its way into consciousness. That's what produces a patient's symptoms.'

    'What don't you believe?' she asked.

    'I don't believe in the wishes that Freud attributes to children. And I don't believe in repressed childhood memories coming to light years later. It's like a - like a too-neatly-tied-up ending in a novel.'

    Colette considered for a moment - and announced that she trusted Dr Freud.

    Newspapermen so crowded the office of Senator Albert Fall that Littlemore was barely able to squeeze in. The reporters' primary question was whether the Senator could confirm that United States troops were deploying to the Mexican border.

    'That's right, gentlemen,' said Fall. 'The Second Division is on its way.'

    'What are their orders, Mr Senator?'