The Same River Twice (44 page)

The walls were limestone. At the tunnel intersections were brass plates, various in design, announcing the streets aboveground. Odile grew calmer.

“I come here to cleanse my mind,” Chantal said apropos of nothing.

“It’s so dark,” Odile whispered, “so unbelievably quiet.”

“Yes, that’s it. You understand.”

With two more corners turned, they found themselves at the foot of an ancient stone staircase that rose far beyond the reach of their headlamps’ beams. Without a word they started up it, Chantal in front. It occurred to Odile that a stumble here could easily mean a broken ankle, and she tried to match Chantal’s footsteps exactly.

They climbed for what seemed to Odile a very long time, and she was out of breath when they reached the top. The stairs delivered them onto a kind of extended balcony, a platform, really, whose features Chantal
silently pointed out with her headlamp: stone benches carved into the walls on three sides; original graffiti, carefully dated, from the revolutions of 1789 and 1968; a stone bas-relief rendering of a castle, impressively detailed but undated; a rather large wooden flat in which someone was cultivating mushrooms, several species of them thriving nicely; and a table made from one of the great circular saws originally used to mine the limestone with which Paris was built. Then, as if by silent agreement, both women turned off their lamps and sank down onto the stone benches to rest. Complete blackness, silence, erasure from the world. Peace.

“Are you really an anarchist?” Odile said after a while.

Chantal sighed. “If you mean do I throw bricks through windows all the time and spray-paint everything black—no. But I
am
in solidarity with the great American statesman and friend to France, Thomas Jefferson, who said, ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.’” She paused sadly. “As you see, we have a government, but no longer do we have a truly free press …”

A silence passed.

“By any means necessary?” Odile couldn’t help but ask.

“By any means necessary,” Chantal confirmed.

“Yes,” said Odile after a time. “Me too.”

The two women embraced but said no more. How her father would have loved to have heard this, seen this, been part of it, thought Odile. On the other hand—and here lay the true genius of life, what really made it worth the suffering and stupidity and apparent senselessness—none of this would ever have happened had Sebastien actually been present to witness it. And so one was called forward once again, against one’s will, into a battle without tears or mercy—a war worth fighting, however impossible the terms. You went on with it because you were born to it. And that was enough.

A moment later, Chantal said, “I know you’re worried about Allegra, but I promise you she’s okay. Maybe we should get going, though. We’re really close now.”

They turned their headlamps on simultaneously. Blinking in the sudden light, they stood up.

“Close to what exactly?”

“It’s called the Bunker. It was a German bomb shelter and communication center during World War II. That’s where the party is. Just stay close to me.”

Odile stayed close. Shortly they emerged into an extended area where
each intersection was marked by a lit votive candle—at least a dozen flames visible in the distance. They followed this path, and before long Odile thought she could hear music, the same strange music she’d heard coming from Chantal’s apartment last Friday during the dinner party. It had a funny-sad character to it, beaten-up and spare: the occasional looped piano chord, a bass line spaced so wide that Odile was continually surprised that she could still pick out the rhythm when the next notes sounded, a few electronic figures that might have come from another keyboard but probably didn’t. Youthful voices half-sang their rhymes quadruple time in a Cockney English heavily inflected with African and Caribbean accents, working their hip-hop lyrics first against the music, then in time with it, then against it again. It took her a while to be sure the sounds were recorded, not live, but as they got closer, she began to hear live voices too, speaking French—the partygoers, she assumed. She could smell hash, though before she could say anything Chantal told her once more not to worry, Allegra was definitely fine. Much to her surprise, Odile accepted this reassurance without protest—her compliance, she thought, likely the result of having been guided such a long distance through the dark. Anyway, there was nothing to be done until they got to the scene of the action.

Which, sooner than she expected, they did.

“I’m sorry,” said Chantal, “I forgot to tell you about this part. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

“Not really,” Odile lied.

“Good. Then everything will be fine.” With her headlamp, she indicated a small crevice in the wall, perhaps two feet above their heads. “That’s how you get in. What you do is, first, throw in your pack. Then I’ll boost you up, you’ll go in headfirst, pushing your pack ahead of you, and crawl through the passage, which is maybe four meters long at most. I’ll push you from the back, then you’re in. I’ll be right behind you.” She shook back her hair. “Okay?”

“Let’s go,” Odile said firmly.

Chantal took a preparatory breath, grasped Odile around the tops of her thighs, lifted her up, and pushed. Odile, with no more than six inches leeway on either side, wriggled forward along the passage, pushing her pack ahead of her, tasting dirt and lime. In less than a minute, the two of them were standing side by side in the Nazi bunker, with perhaps a hundred people dancing, drinking, talking, and smoking around them.

The party was very much louder inside than out, its roar muffled by the limestone walls, and at first Odile felt a little dazed.
I gave you / the doubt of/
the benefit!
a singer insisted again and again over a rising and falling triplet of … what? Digitized flute, maybe, or keyboards, along with bass, drum, and guitar samples. On the far wall an old metal sign read
RAUCHEN VERBOTEN
, though this clearly wasn’t stopping anybody.

“Let’s find the girls first,” Chantal shouted. Odile nodded vigorously, and they set out, following the room’s perimeter counterclockwise. The crowd was multiracial, of varying sobriety, everyone obviously having a good time. Several smaller rooms stretched beyond this one but seemed empty.

They passed another sign, unmistakably authentic, that read
RUHE!
with a swastika emblem beneath it that Odile suspected was a later addition. Halfway around the bunker, she caught sight of Dominique, who was smoking furiously and swaying to the music, a water bottle in her hand. Assailed by misgivings, Odile hurried over to her. “You came!” Dominique said, dropping both cigarette and water bottle to throw her arms around her. “We really hoped you would!”

“Where’s Allegra?” Odile asked in the calmest tones available.

“She’s here somewhere. With that guy Fabien. Dancing, I think.”

“Great. Perfect.”

Odile’s irony, though, was lost on the girl, who was glowing with sisterly goodwill. “Your haircut,” she said, examining it closely, then touching it here and there with gentle fingers. “Very, very cool! May I ask who did it?”

But these words didn’t even register on Odile, who was scanning the room for Allegra, panic rising in her throat. “How long ago did you see her?”

When Dominique failed to answer, Odile gazed into her eyes and, with dismay and sudden comprehension, noticed at once what she should have seen from the start. The girl’s pupils, glistening liquid black, were dilated to the size of shirt buttons.

“DO I HEAR TWO FORTY?”
cried the auctioneer. “Two hundred forty thousand francs for lot number two?”

Turner saw a man nearby tug twice, very gently, at the handkerchief in his jacket’s breast pocket.

“Thank you,” replied the auctioneer, without looking directly at the bidder. “We now have a price of two hundred fifty thousand. Who will go to two sixty? Two sixty?”

A woman at the back raised her paddle. “Thank you, Madame. Two
hundred sixty thousand francs. Can we go to two seventy? Two seventy? Anyone? No? Fair warning, then. Going once at two hundred sixty, going twice…” He waited for a moment, looked pointedly around the room, then brought the hammer down firmly. “Sold to Madame for two hundred sixty thousand francs.”

It was a good price for so early in the game, and Turner was pleased. Still, it often happened that if the oxygen got sucked out of an auction too quickly, then the excitement disappeared with it, and later lots sold poorly or not at all. As with anything traded or desired, nothing, finally, could be guaranteed. Perhaps that was why the system worked—at least to the extent that it did.

While the porters removed the lot from the stage and replaced it with the next one, Turner stole a look at Max, Kukushkin, and the exceedingly confident blond girl he presumed to be Nikolai’s—the word came back to him quite unpleasantly—consort. As a trio, they made a hard read. How could they possibly even know one another? And why, if not for the obvious reasons, were they actually here?

Either Kukushkin or Max or both could have come to confront Turner over their presumably distinct grievances with him. However, Max’s apparently accidental encounter with the blond girl, and her clear, even deliberately stagy connection with Kukushkin, threw everything into question.

Maybe the Russian just wanted to buy some flags, and Max just wanted to see what his wife had retrieved from the fallen empire of the East. Possible, certainly. But unlikely. Turner felt a headache coming on.

The next three lots sold at similar prices, in comparable bidding, to different parties—all good omens, in his view. Lot number six, however, was particularly desirable and surely one of the three that Wieselhoff had hoped to buy privately for himself. In immaculate condition, the red velvet banner, fringed with braided gold and silver tassels of exceptional luster, depicted, not only the obligatory hammer and sickle, but also Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, standing at attention in a gradually receding line that placed Marx farthest away and Stalin closest. All three gazed skyward toward a vision of the future that seemed all the more palpable, even imminent, for being left to the viewer’s imagination. The flag measured five meters wide, and Turner had decided on a somewhat aggressive pre-sale estimate of six hundred thousand to seven hundred fifty thousand francs. The hammer price on this one might easily determine the course of the rest of the auction, and he worried suddenly that the estimate was too high.

“Lot number six,” said the auctioneer into the microphone. “An exceptionally
fine piece, in most remarkable condition.” He paused, as if reluctant himself to relinquish this particular work to the unruly forces of the marketplace.

Good man
, thought Turner.
Must have a word with him afterward
.

“Bidding for lot six,” said the auctioneer, “will start at … a hundred thousand francs.”

Immediately several hands and paddles went up.

“Thank you. To the gentleman in back. Bidding currently at one hundred thousand. Do I hear one fifty?”

Again several takers, perhaps more than before.

“Thank you, sir. May I get two hundred thousand?”

The phone bank lit up—three ringless phones attended by three very young women in black silk dresses and pearl chokers. The frontmost girl blinked three times in the auctioneer’s direction.

“Very well. Three hundred thousand. Bidding currently at three hundred thousand francs. Do I hear three fifty? Three fifty? Thank you, sir. Four hundred thousand? May I ask four hundred thousand? Who will say four hundred?”

Turner stole a look at Kukushkin. Kolya, leaning back in his chair, had his arms crossed over his chest and a pleasant but distinctly sardonic smile on his face. He didn’t seem to have noticed Turner yet and appeared to be enjoying himself. His blond companion and Max Colby, meanwhile, were utterly absorbed in the spectacle, like children watching television in a dark room.

“Four hundred thousand to the gentleman in back,” said the auctioneer, his eyes darting around the room. The pace of the bidding had begun to pick up. “Four fifty. Five hundred thousand. Five fifty. Six hundred thousand. Six fifty.”

Realizing that Wieselhoff still hadn’t placed a bid, Turner looked over and saw the inscrutable Swiss was following the proceeding very closely. It was clear he intended to acquire this piece and had a strategy for doing so, but as usual he did nothing to give himself away.

One of the girls at the phone bank raised an index finger to the auctioneer.

“Seven hundred fifty thousand,” said the auctioneer. Most of the original bidders seemed to have dropped out, but Turner couldn’t tell who actually remained in the running and who was only waiting for the right moment to join in. Things were going nicely indeed.

“Nine hundred thousand? Who will say nine hundred?”

A man unknown to Turner stood up, looking very convincing in his
finely cut Milanese suit of black summer-weight wool, a trimmed mustache of matching hue, and a silver-and-black striped tie. “One million francs,” he announced in an accent that indeed proved to be Italian. He sat down, creating a silence that shortly was replaced by a general whispering among the bidders.

“Grazie, Signor,”
said the auctioneer, bowing his head slightly. “Your interest, I believe, is not misplaced.”

There was another silence while all present considered the situation, many of them trying to get a look at the Italian. Then another flurry of bidding—both from people who’d previously dropped out and from others who hadn’t yet been heard from. The auctioneer received each incremental price increase with deadpan unsurprise that bordered on piety. He was no longer having to persuade anyone. He named a price, chose among the bidders, and found the next price.

When the flag had reached a valuation of two million, five hundred thousand francs, another pause ensued. It resembled a kind of fear and was known in the trade as “the sighting of the precipice.” Doubt and avarice, almost olfactory in nature, could be felt rising from the crowd.