“What? Do they, that is, do you, have detectives?”
Armand let seconds pass. He inched forward on his chair, and leaned in toward Jules. Then he raised his head so as to look at Jules directly. “They have a lot of detectives, whose incentive is a percentage of whatever policy they can void.”
“What percentage?”
“Ten. That is, ten percent of whatever you’ve paid in, if fraud is discovered before the policy pays out. If it has paid out and the company can claw back the money, the incentive is still ten percent, which in your case, with your policy, would be a million Euros. If after the policy goes into effect there’s a hint of irregularity, you’ll be very popular, I assure you.”
“So I couldn’t even write a little ditty?”
“Ditty, symphony, sonata, song, to them it would all be the same.”
AFTER AN HOUR and a half of filling out forms, obtaining the proper signatures, and receiving a check for the first quarterly payment when the physical was completed and successful, Armand exited onto the street and turned left into a golden sunset spreading across a powder-blue sky. His round and ruddy face was orange and glowing, his blue eyes like aquamarines.
He breathed hard and held his briefcase tightly. Perhaps it was a dream, but no. Now he felt that he could sell such policies quite easily, maybe even several a month. Assuming that Jules would pass the physical, Armand Marteau would be the top performer. Edgar Auban would reprimand and threaten him the next morning, and Armand would say, nonchalantly, “Yesterday I sold a ten-million-Euro policy to a man who’s going to be seventy-five in June. I have his signature. I have the check.” And then he would watch Edgar Auban either faint or float up to the ceiling.
Walking through Saint-Germain-en-Laye, through air that despite the date was balmy, and in light that was magically bright, Armand thought, is this what it’s like to be thin? To be handsome? To be rich? To be admired?
Spring Fire and Smoke
JULES WENT INTO the physical for which, without intending to, he had prepared all his adult life. But as in war, preparation was no guarantee. Things go wrong in the body independently of will, devotion, discipline, or virtue. It can happen any time, but is sure to happen to the old, then to cascade, and then to end. The tests would bring to light processes and balances that he could neither read nor directly influence. As there was only so much he could do, he entered the assessment in a state of calm and with a prayer that he didn’t pray but felt. For the Jews of Eastern Europe, who for ages had their synagogues in unheated hovels, there were cathedrals in the air, which amplified modest prayers, if heartfelt, into a choir of confirming voices. If perhaps the assimilated Lacours of Holland and France had thought themselves different from the Jews of the East, the war had made them one.
Cathérine and David were now prepared for Luc to die, and as he declined they crossed into despair. All they could manage was to take care of him day by day. Everything else was defeat. Death, their own as well, seemed very close. Both of them had come to look much older than they were. Jules understood only too well that were Luc to die it would be the end of the line for a chain of life that had started at the beginning of time. It happens every day, but is no less painful for being commonplace.
Although his possessions – paintings, photographs, books, letters, clothing – were only material, they had received the impress of his life and of his little family when it was young. These things would all be dispersed and destroyed. How many photographs of people who were deeply loved ended up in junk shops and flea markets, curiosities treated without respect for the souls that, were one to look closely, one could see in them? Photographs and letters would go to Cathérine, but then where?
Though he hardly knew élodi, he loved her as if he were twenty, but he wasn’t twenty. So she, like the composition for the Americans, like his career, his works, his whole life, he accounted his failure. The one thing left to him, his last act, might yet fail as well, although he was certain that, like everyone else, he would succeed in hitting the center of the black target to which he felt himself rushing faster and faster, the target that, once struck, ends the game. Not only would he not resist the increasing acceleration, now he would push it along, aiming himself at reckless speed, a missile in love with the point of impact.
With such thoughts, he submitted to examination at the Clinique de Grève, a neglected and secondary facility where, to be in residence, the doctors must have done something wrong. Maybe they weren’t even doctors, although they said they were. Jules was sure that, given the circumstances, his blood pressure would be the kind of number that could break the bank at Monte Carlo.
“UNBELIEVABLE,” THE DOCTOR said, after the third measurement. “One ten over seventy. I thought there was something wrong with the machine, or that the cuff was not on right. No medicine?”
“No medicine.”
“Are you sure? For someone your age ….”
“I don’t take any medications whatsoever.”
“How can that be? It’s crazy. Your blood work is in the normal range except for bilirubin, which is high – Gilbert’s syndrome. You’ll live forever.”
“I’ve been told that,” Jules said, “but I think it’s optimistic.”
The doctor was Russian, bald, thirty-eight, and amazed. “And I’ve never seen anyone over fifty with normal liver function, especially a Frenchman. It’s always at least a little out of whack.”
“No medications,” Jules said, almost like an idiot or a fanatic. “I hesitate to take aspirin. Virtually no alcohol. No caffeine. Chocolate, yes. Never tobacco even once. Exercise like an athlete in training. Sleep like a dog. Spend hours on the terrace, doing nothing. Play music.” He began to laugh because he sounded insane, and his laughter made him seem even more so.
But the doctor was Russian, so it didn’t matter, because they can’t tell the difference. “Terrific,” he told him. Then, “Horoshow! You must have good genes. How long did your parents live, assuming they’re no longer with us?”
“They died in the war.” This, the Russian doctor did understand. “I’ll never know how long they might have lived. They certainly would not be alive now. When they would have been a hundred, I felt a kind of relief, as the years that were taken from them were finally over.”
“Okay. Lie down.”
After a thorough and uneventful physical exam, Jules had an uneventful EKG, a chest x-ray, and an assessment of his mental acuity. He passed. Then, with the EKG leads still attached, they put him on a treadmill.
“You do this to old men?” he asked.