Frantic Page 4

  Julien was having an affair! The truth exploded in her, tore her apart.

  And it couldn’t be Denise. Oh, she wouldn’t have minded if Julien were driving his secretary home. Not the way she felt now. Even though Denise was a lot prettier than a secretary should be. But this stranger? Who wasn’t half her own age!

  She’d been paralyzed with pain, but a lust for revenge got her moving again. She’d tear the eyes out of the little bitch, she’d.… The Frégate started to roll while she was still twenty yards away. It turned the first corner and disappeared.

  Geneviève screamed. A woman passing by joined in. People rushed toward them. Someone was asking her:

  “Anything wrong, Madame?”

  She was panting, her lip chewed, her face twisted:

  “No … no … I’m all right, thanks.… It’s my heart. But it’s all right now. I’m much better, thank you, it’s … it’s nothing.”

  She stayed where she was, waiting for the witnesses to drift off. Regretfully, the crowd started to leave. Some glanced back at her seeming secretly to hope that she’d drop to the sidewalk.

  Geneviève suppressed her fury until she was alone. Then she let it loose, and threw herself at the door of the building. Her fingers clutched around the bars, she started shaking the grill.

  Ten and a half stories up, Julien was throwing himself at the metal doors of his prison. He was filled with a mindless rage. At all costs, he had to get out of this tin can, this horrible trap. Somebody might see the rope hanging outside his office in full view of the world. Anyone at all might find him locked up in the building with a corpse. And Geneviève. Geneviève would start worrying in exactly five minutes, would think God knows what.

  “Albert! Albert! Let me out, for the love of God!”

  He held his breath, so he could hear the slightest answer. Nothing. A terrifying silence. Maybe, he couldn’t be sure, maybe he heard, from the bottom of the shaft, a few smothered sounds … the roar of a car motor … far away … far away …

  A policeman came up to Geneviève, throwing his cloak back professionally, to free his nightstick.

  “What d’you think you’re doing, Madame? It’s closed, don’t you see?”

  He fought against the impulse to take her in. Always the well-dressed numbers who raised hell. She lowered her head, her chest heaving, scarlet with shame.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.… Yes.…”

  “Well, then, what’re you doing here?”

  “It’s my husband!” she spat out.

  “What about your husband? Is he inside?”

  “No, he just left …”

  “All right, you’ve got no business here, then. Move along, Madame.”

  She obeyed. Her anger was only a means to put her out of her real misery: Julien didn’t love her. Now she had proof.

  A taxi at last.

  “32 Rue de Varenne!”

  She still couldn’t cry.

  Along the Seine, on the road to Marly, the red Frégate kept on rolling.

  Chapter V

  A thin rain was falling. Fred was caught up in a boy’s daydream: hunched forward, hugging the wheel, he was narrowing his eyes and frowning into the night; he was about to win the world’s racing championship. Theresa, in her corner, was overcome by curiosity: what was the name of the “type” they’d stolen the car from? She lifted her arm to turn on the ceiling light. Letter by letter, she spelled out aloud the plate on the dashboard:

  “J u l i e n C o u r t o i s …”

  “And what the hell is that?” he growled.

  “That’s the owner’s name.”

  “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? Julien! Hah. That’s a candy name for you.”

  She retreated into silence. It was hard to talk to Fred, he was so much more intelligent and educated than she was. As for Fred, he’d had enough of the Ventimiglia run.

  “Julien Courtois! No, you know who that is? A guy like my old man, you know? A tub of lard. A real sly-boots, shot in the ass with money. Stocks here, bonds there, ticker tape all over. Everything he needs to spit on the poor bastards who’ve only got their hands and their heads. Huh, I’ll bet he’s a real bear for work—for his employees! My old man, large as life. His goddam twin brother.”

  He couldn’t tell himself whether he was attacking his father or the stranger.

  “And they send me rain! Neat, huh? The one time I go for a run in the country!”

  He flipped the switch for the windshield wiper. Nothing happened. The glass was getting muddier by the minute; he couldn’t see a thing.

  “Great!” he cried. “Now we can really swing! You know what? They can’t even get their hardware right, your goddam bourgeois friends. We can break a leg, just because your cornball’s too tight to buy a wiper that works!”

  Theresa’s head was working; maybe the ceiling light and the wiper couldn’t be on at the same time. She raised her arm to turn it off. Her young breast stretched against the sweater: Fred’s right hand instantly traveled toward her body. The wheel yawed, and the car followed suit.

  “Goddamit,” he swore.

  The Frégate zigzagged from side to side. Theresa crouched in her corner. Fred managed to straighten the car, but took his fear out on the girl.

  “No, that’s bad business. Bad business to do me like that, kid. Goddam kid. No, you know what? Good thing I know how to drive, we’d have been necking with a tree. But you don’t care, you’ll get us smashed up, as long as you can show off your waterwings.”

  Still wet with fear, he braked slowly, with a shaking foot. The wheels screeched.

  Geneviève cried out:

  “Stop! Stop!”

  The old cab skidded on the Esplanade des Invalides, skinned the corner of the Rue de Varenne and came to a halt at the curb. The driver, who had a whisk-broom mustache that he seemed to be using for a nicotine filter, wasn’t happy at all.

  “Lady, how d’you expect me to drive? Don’t holler like that! It’s not nice! What’s your trouble?”

  Geneviève didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “I’ve changed my mind. I … I’d rather you took me home.”

  “Uh-huh. So where’s home?”

  “In Auteuil, on the Rue Molitor.… I’m sorry, I just realized my husband must’ve gone straight home, maybe … So I thought, you know …”

  Turning around in his seat, the old whisk broom stared at her. Embarrassed, she added fuel to the fire:

  “Rue de Varenne, that’s my brother’s …”

  The driver threw his log in:

  “Your brother or the bureau of internal revenue, what’s it to me?”

  Offended silence.

  “All right, said the driver, “we’re all set, right? Auteuil it is.”

  “Yes,” she said shortly. “Rue Molitr.”

  She tightened her lips. These working people, really.… The car turned slowly around to the right and picked up speed. Geneviève fought down a giggle. She was happy. How could she be so stupid? How many hundreds of red Frégates were there in Paris? There was nothing, absolutely nothing to prove that the one she’d seen leaving was her husband’s. The poor boy must be pining away at home. And when he had to wait all alone, he drank. You know, just out of boredom. Unfortunately, he didn’t carry his liquor well. She leaned forward.

  “Hurry, please, please!”

  “Ah! Now she’s in a hurry! If you hadn’t got me all balled up, we’d be there already. Well, this is as fast as she goes. This is a ’38, the hack, look it over.”

  Geneviève took off her gloves, pulled them on again. The whisk broom was working up a lecture on the history of automobiles.

  “It’s got its points, the hack. Heater’s nice to have in the winter, but her body, you know, it can’t stand up to the new ones.”

  She wasn’t listening. “Please don’t drink too much, my love,” she warned Julien mentally. “It’s al
l right, I’m coming, you’ll see …”

  Wait until she told him about her suspicions, her anger. He’d say, stroking the hollow between her shoulder and her neck: “Crazy girl. You know you’re the only one I love …” —“I know,” she’d say. “I can’t think what possessed me …” Besides, that little girl wasn’t Julien’s type at all. He liked mature women, maternal women. Like Geneviève. He liked to be spoiled, he hated having to take the responsibility. “The day I go for one of those little girls,” he used to say, “you’ll know I’m getting old!”

  And he’d burst out laughing, not even realizing he was turning the knife in the wound.

  The taxi came to a stop. She paid, tipping the driver royally. Not out of generosity. Out of cowardice. As she was getting out, a doubt crept in. She turned to him, timidly:

  “Uh, if you’ve got nothing better to do, would you mind waiting five minutes? … Maybe …”

  “Maybe he isn’t home? I get it. Go ahead.”

  He had the big, wine-soaked laugh that went with his mustache. She hated him. Of course, strangers couldn’t be expected to understand, but this one was nastier than most. She couldn’t find her key, lost her patience, and rang. The maid answered.

  “Has Monsieur been here long?”

  “Monsieur? Monsieur?”

  “Yes, yes, Monsieur!” she shouted, running towards the living room.

  “Oh, no, Madame, I haven’t seen him at all.” She stopped, nailed to the floor.

  “Well, did he phone?”

  “No, Madame, there weren’t any calls today.” Geneviève had used up all her energy on her first fit of anger. All she had left was the strength to cry to cry herself to death. The maid remembered something:

  “Oh, except … I forgot. Madame Dormien called, she wanted to speak to Madame.”

  Geneviève waved her away. Slowly, she went toward the bedroom. But she was already terrified of being alone. The cab …

  She rushed outside.

  “Wait!”

  “Tsk, tsk, wasn’t there, was he?” the driver said. “Well, don’t tear your hair. There’s always Big Brother on the Rue de Varenne. Now it’s nothing worth spilling your eyes over, it’s no calamity. This kind of thing always works out in the end.”

  She really had misjudged him, mustache and all. This stranger understood her better than her own husband.

  Hunched on the elevator floor, his head thrown back, Julien was trying to sort out his thoughts. More than anything else he was afraid of what Geneviève might do. You could never predict that hysteriac. She might get the whole town after him.

  How long would he have to stay here?

  His brain, in spite of himself, ground out the answer he’d been avoiding. A day and two nights. Thirty-six hours.

  Monday morning, Albert would come in and turn on the current.

  Until then, he was absolutely alone. Not quite. Besides himself, there was a corpse: Bordgris. Even if Julien could explain away the rope—how?—he’d never be able to convince anyone he didn’t know the man he’d been alone with for so long. He in an elevator; the other in a seedy little room. He could hear the police laughing: “You think we’re going to believe you spent the whole time in an elevator?”

  He had to get out. No matter what. Never let anyone guess about the elevator. Allow no possible connection to spring up between him and Bordgris. But first—he had to get out!

  In a frenzy, he flung himself against the door. There was a click. Julien, wild with hope, forced his fingers around the edge, pulled on the door with all his strength. Slowly, with a screech, the door began to give.

  Fred was swearing. He’d pushed on the starter and the “goddam discount engine” wouldn’t start.

  Theresa, still smarting from his last remarks, didn’t dare say a word. Still, it seemed to her that if Fred wasn’t turning on the ignition …

  “Fred …”

  “Now what d’you want?”

  “The … the …”

  The word wouldn’t come. She pointed to the key instead. To her bottomless surprise, Fred started laughing.

  “Imagine that. You’re right. You know, you might not be as thick as you look.”

  He watered down the compliment:

  “Of course it’s a freak, this time.”

  The car started smoothly. Theresa blushed with pride, while Fred ran through a list of the geniuses of the past who’d been absent-minded—like himself. Encouraged, she finally reached up to turn off the ceiling light. Fred approved:

  “Better and better. There may be hope; you’re making progress.”

  Theresa was in seventh heaven. They drove quietly, at a moderate speed. She was no longer afraid.

  “Well, now. Isn’t this the cream? What d’you think? C’mon, say something!”

  Not too sure of herself, she lifted one thumb. “Like that.”

  “Yes, now,” said Fred. “I tell you, this is life as I comprehend it. You’ve got your little wagon, huh? You run it out whenever you feel like it, you go to the country to count the sticks, huh? Clear your head … relax … Ah, we don’t live in a well-planned world. I’ll say we don’t! There’s some people got to have a certain minimum for the good of society, you know.… House, servants, loot, wagon …”

  She threw her escort a look loaded with admiration: he was so intelligent. Of course. A man like him needed to spread himself once in a while, He ran on:

  “Now that’s a little thing you couldn’t make my old man understand. Can’t say a word without getting his poverty-stricken boyhood in the face, ‘How I broke my ass on the milking stool’ How in his day, see, it was different, working his way up, he was, always thought about the job before himself, all the rest of it. No, you know what? That’s great for the ancient Greeks, you know? But this is the twentieth century. All day. And people my age, we’ve got too much up here …”

  He took his hand off the wheel to slap his forehead. Theresa held her breath. But there was no trouble.

  “We’ve got too much upstairs to dope around like they did, those cornballs. We’ve got no time to lose. We’ve got to get going right away: activate, innovate, tear it down, build it up. I mean … everything.”

  She had a question on the tip of her tongue. An important question that wouldn’t stay down. She brought it out, fearfully:

  “Did your father … pay them back?”

  “Pay ’em back?”

  “The bank?”

  “What bank?”

  “I mean, the cash.”

  “What cash?”

  He wasn’t co-operating. She had to remind Fred that he’d been fired from the bank where he’d been working for helping himself from the cash drawer. He answered with a long fit of stage laughter.

  “Hoo, I can’t remember when I laughed so hard! You should’ve seen the old man; he was purple mad, foamed at the mouth, carried on like an ape, he did.”

  “But he paid anyway?”

  He looked at her sideways, his eyes full of pity:

  “Poor old Theresa! What’d you think he’d do? Let me drag his honorable name through the mud? Not he. No, I’ll tell you what. When I pull off a caper, I know what I’m doing. No risks. Never fear for Fred. Like this little wagon. You didn’t want to try it. Well, did it swing or didn’t it swing? Any troubles? If you’ve got any complaints, let’s hear ’em. Speak freely, girl, this a republic. If, you don’t trust me …”

  “Oh, yes, Fred, I trust you. Honestly I …”

  He didn’t let her finish. Proved to her logically that she didn’t … couldn’t. Because people like him were always ahead of their time: Therefore, they couldn’t ever get anything but misunderstanding and mistrust. But the bank caper, that showed the hand of a master. And why?

  “I’ll just tell you, Theresa. Life, m’dear, is like war. Huh? There’s the poor slob’s service: the infantry. There’s the gentlemen’s service: the air force. If you want to run around in the clouds instead o
f in the mud, you’ve got to make your move before they call you. There you go.”

  Theresa was listening, open-mouthed. He drank it all in.

  “Now, tell me, what’d I risk? A big zero, that’s what. In the first place, the horse I laid the money on could’ve sailed home, eh? So I’d have put the goods back in the drawer. Mmmm, second place, the horse could’ve gone to sleep… Which he did. And then what? Was I scared of the cops, maybe? Not for a minute. I knew they’d go knock on daddy’s door first. That’s where the apples grow. So he shelled out. So I win either way, you know? Because every time you can give your bourgeois buddies a kick in the ass, one gold star. What the hell, did I want to go to work in a bank? It was the old man’s idea. So he’s only himself to blame, m’dear. Me in a bank, feh.… Anyway, I know what I want to do. Either a writer or the movies. The Nobel Prize or Hollywood. Man, I was born to make movies; let me have fifteen million francs and you’ll see. What! Fifteen million! When I asked him, the old man nearly dropped his teeth. Seems he started with forty sous, him. Well, what the bell, everybody knows about bourgeois families. They stifle an artist.”

  He felt the girl’s eyes on him in the shadows. It warmed his heart, almost reconciled him to the human race. He softened.

  “Still, what the hell could he say.”

  “But he paid them back, that’s the main thing.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it! No, I’ll tell you what. Worthless, that’s what he called me. Boy, then I let him have it. Worthless, that’s him. What was I asking for? A lousy fifteen million. That’s absolute rock bottom for a movie. After that, I wouldn’t need anybody.”

  He drove carefully, his eyes shining, dreaming.

  “Hell, Theresa, fifteen million. I’ll get it, too … Know what we’ll do, Theresa?”

  She knew, by heart, but she only wanted to hear it again and always.

  “What’ll we do?”

  “We’ll rent an apartment at the Ritz; we’ll swing.”

  “We’ll get married?”

  “You bet. Only it’ll have to be … wait a minute, what the hell do they call that? Ah, yes, morganatic.”