And they kissed – holding close – and it lasted for almost ten minutes.
FLOATING AND IN LOVE, Jules went inside to work on his homage to Bach’s Sei Lob, and found that he couldn’t. All he could do was vibrate with pleasure and love as he replayed the kiss again and again and again. Although he knew it would never happen, Jules wanted to return with élodi to her tiny apartment and forget everything that had kept him from her. He felt and imagined this so strongly it was as if he were with her in a new life that other than in dreams was impossible. And on the train, numb all the way home, hardly turning her head, élodi would feel intense pleasure echoing through her entire body, with sadness following insistently in its wake.
But on the street outside the Shymanski compound, reality was still in command. After élodi turned the corner on her way to the station, Arnaud and Duvalier simultaneously and explosively opened the doors of their car. Arnaud spoke for both of them as he alighted onto the pavement. “Who the hell is that?” For as Jules and élodi had embraced and kissed, Nerval, in his nondescript Peugeot, was using the motor drive on his camera, and the two detectives had watched him, unable to move until Jules and élodi had left.
As if it were a person to be interrogated, Arnaud approached the Peugeot at an investigative forty-five-degree angle. He was massive enough that it seemed as if he could have actually blocked the car had it tried to drive away. Duvalier rapped on the driver’s window. Nerval calmly turned his head and sneered. Duvalier rapped again. Nothing.
“Open the window,” Duvalier ordered.
Nerval stared at him without moving, “Why?” He asked so quietly that Duvalier knew what he said only because he read his lips.
Duvalier yanked open the door. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded to know.
“I am,” came the answer, royally, “Damien Nerval, investigateur. Who are you?” He was still sneering, not because he wanted to, but because his face was constructed that way.
Duvalier held up his identification. “I am,” he said, echoing and mocking Nerval’s tone, “Duvalier Saidi-Sief, flic. If you don’t want to be arrested, you’ll tell me what you’re doing.”
“Arrested for what?” Nerval asked, and actually laughed.
“For obstructing an investigation. You’re ten seconds away.”
“Me? You’re investigating him, too?”
“Who?”
“Lacour,” Nerval answered. “What are you investigating him for?”
“That’s not your business,” Duvalier told him. “What are you investigating?”
“I asked first.”
“Get out of the car.”
“All right, all right, irregularities in the purchase of an insurance contract.”
“Really,” Duvalier said. “That’s fascinating, but we take precedence. You’ll leave now and if I see you here again you’ll be lucky to be arrested, understand?”
“No no no,” said Nerval. “You don’t get it. My employer is … well, I won’t say anything. Believe me, you can’t step all over our investigation.”
“No no no no no,” Duvalier echoed, wagging his finger. “My employers are … well, I will say that they don’t have to bribe, trade, or ask for favors, because they’re the people of France. Get it? Remember the Bastille? Yes? Good. Fuck off.”
“We’ll see,” Nerval said, starting his engine. “We’ll see what the minister says. I believe he’s your employer, although at such a high level he could not possibly have heard of you.”
“He can fuck off, too,” Arnaud said.
Nerval tried to close the door, but Duvalier blocked it, pulled him out of his seat, pushed him up against the side of his car, and hit him in the face – not half as hard as he could have. “Give the minister that message for me. And if I see you here again, I’ll shoot you.” He pushed the finally ruffled Nerval back into his car.
After the Peugeot sputtered up the street, an amazed Arnaud asked Duvalier, who was still shaking with anger, “Is that how you do it in Marseilles?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve heard.”
“We have to.”
IT WAS DARK, almost time for dinner, everyone was hungry, his visitors had pulled Jules from the music he was writing, and he had to receive them in his quarters rather than Shymanski’s study. But he didn’t care, because kissing élodi was still with him.
They thought he had a saintly nature, because at this rare moment he was as beatific as a Tibetan monk. He offered them food and drink. They refused politely. He told him that the apartment was a study he had built as a private retreat. Would they like to go upstairs? No, they said, not necessary. They had a feeling that something was off, because he fit the profile and because he didn’t. They had already eliminated almost everyone else in the rowing club. Of course this alone had elevated their suspicion, although logically it should not have.
“We’re investigating an incident,” Arnaud said. “We’d like to ask a few questions.”
“Certainly. What incident?”
“We’ll get to that later.”
“That’s strange.”
“We’re roundabout,” Duvalier stated.
Jules countered, “I’m roundabout too, and I have all evening. I have all day. Whatever you’d like. We can have dinner. We can go bowling.” He was elated.
“You seem quite happy.”
Jules just laughed.
“The girl?”
“You saw?”
“Yes. She’s young for you.”
“Far too young,” Jules agreed. “Impossible. I don’t understand. This kind of thing is happening to me now, when life should be quieting down.”
“You’re not taking it further?” Duvalier asked. “I saw her. I would.”
“I would, too, but she’s half a century younger than I am. That’s insane. I do love her, but I don’t know if she feels anything for me other than curiosity and, perhaps, respect, or, who knows, pity.”
“People carry such things further every day.”
“You mean, like the one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old man who married a young woman of twenty? I’m not that stupid.”
“Well, in your case it’s only fifty years. What have you got to lose?” Duvalier asked. Everyone was amused, certainly Jules, who understood the humor better than did his guests.
“Listen, there are two ways of meeting death.”
“Death?” Duvalier asked. This alone was enough to wake up a policeman.
“I collapsed on the RER and lay there half dead for as many stops as it took for someone to suspect that I might not have been a drunk. It was at the Gare de Lyon, very convenient to the hospital. Had I gone to the end of the line I’d be dead. I have what’s called a basilar aneurysm, and could go at any moment. The guy on the street with the camera? Suddenly I attract scrutiny, because I bought an insurance policy just before it happened.”
“He’s not there anymore.”
“You met him?”
“We did. We told him to get lost.”
“Oh.”
“So, the girl. You’ll keep yourself from her?”
“Yes. It’s crazy that I love her, but I do. Still, I know that to meet death, and for me death is near, you either strip all things of their value so as not to regret too much, or you learn distance.”