Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

“Glug,” said Otto. “Gll gll. Glug “

“Yes?” the driver asked. “Do you want me to notify someone?” The driver tried to look around for help, but Otto gave a sudden spastic tug on his lapels, and gulped ever more dramatically and impressively.

The left front wheel of the truck trailer went by.

The left rear wheel of the truck trailer went by.

“Yes?” The driver, though remorseful, was also becoming impatient. “You wish to say something? Say it, please, say it!”

“Help me up,” said Otto, in a clear and distinct voice.

“Are you sure you should be moved?”

“Oh, yes,” Otto said. “Absolutely. Help me up.”

A frown of bewilderment creased the driver’s face. He reared back, the better to look at Otto, but Otto continued to clutch his lapels and therefore came along with him. The driver kept rearing back, trying to get away from this suddenly-healthy-looking face, and in that manner both the driver and Otto finally came erect, at which point Otto released the lapels and said, “Thank you very much.”

The driver gaped. “Aren’t you—?”

“I feel much better now,” Otto said, and turned away, and reached out his hand. Providentially, it would seem, a black Volkswagen convertible beetle screeched to a halt right next to them, in such a manner that the VW’s doorhandle nestled in Otto’s waiting fingers. Otto opened the car door, entered the VW, and was driven away.

The truckdriver stared. Horns honked all around him, to indicate that he was standing in the middle of impatient traffic. Shaking his head, he turned around, reached out his own hand for the handle of his truck door, and stopped, frozen, staring.

His truck was gone.

The driver of the silver-garbed truck struggling northward up the hills of Ménilmontant tapped his brakes when he saw the dirty white delivery van bouncing down the street toward him, veering left and right on the uneven cobblestone street. “He’ll cause an accident, that one,” the driver muttered to himself, and then watched with horror as a baby carriage, alone and unattended, all at once appeared from the side street, rolling out directly into the path of the oncoming delivery van.

Which didn’t stop. Which didn’t even slow down. “Look out! ” the driver of the silver-garbed truck screamed, and released his wheel to clutch at his temples as the delivery van crashed into the baby carriage, reducing it to a model of the Beaubourg Museum. Several pieces of something flew up and out of the baby carriage, red and juicy, and splatted onto the cobblestones.

“MY GOD!” cried the driver of the silver-garbed truck. Slamming on his hand brake, he jumped out of the truck and ran forward, staring at the horror spread across the street.

The delivery van, its path altered by the accident, had bumped up over the tall curb and come to a stop against a shop window, which was still shimmering from the impact but which had not quite broken. The baby carriage, reduced to modern sculpture, lay twisted in the middle of the street. And the red juicy stuff?

The driver went down on one knee. He picked something up and stared at it. Meantime, shopkeepers and pedestrians and coffee-drinkers and aperitif-drinkers of the arrondissement were running forward, clustering around, staring and clucking and looking sick to their stomachs.

The driver was reduced to stuttering. “Passe-passe,” he said, displaying the red sticky juicy stuff to revolted onlookers; but “passe-passe” means conjuring, magic, sorcery, which was surely not what he meant. Onward: “Passe-temps,” he stuttered next, which had to be another error, as “passe-temps” means in English pastime, game, foolery. And at last the driver got it out: “Pastèque!” he cried, and to all those who thought he was still babbling, he was absolutely correct, because in English the word “pastèque” is—

“Watermelon!”

“Honk!” said a vehicle, and the driver with his hands full of watermelon moved to one side, and a truck labored on past him and up the hill. A large heavy truck, its cargo sheathed with silver tarpaulins, and its wheel manned — though the driver couldn’t know this — by Bruddy Dunk.

“My truck!” The driver pointed the watermelon he held. “They have my truck!” And he ran forward, only to have his way blocked by the sudden appearance across his path of a black London taxicab.

A London taxicab? In Paris? What foolishness? “Out of my way!” cried the driver. “They have taken my truck!”

The passenger of the London taxicab, who happened to be Andrew Pinkenham himself, lowered his window and spoke in oblivious unconcern (and in English), asking the truckdriver, “I do beg your pardon, but can you direct my driver to Calais?”

The truckdriver didn’t speak English even when life was calm; at a moment like this, he barely spoke French. “My truck!” he yelled, pointing the watermelon he held over the taxi roof at the vehicle in question, which was now just cresting the top of the hill and disappearing down the long straight rapid slope of the other side.

“No,” Andrew said, unruffled and unheeding, “Calais. I’m afraid my driver is lost.”

Whereas the truckdriver went berserk: ” My truck! My truck! Out of the way!” And he kicked ferociously at the side of the taxi.

“I don’t believe he knows,” Andrew said, and leaned forward, calling to Sir Mortimer at the cab wheel, “Drive on.”

“Right, guv,” Sir Mortimer said, in a terrible attempt at a Cockney accent (but what do the French know about Cockney accents anyway?), and the London taxicab rolled serenely away.

And the former driver of the silver-garbed truck, completely out of his mind, stood throwing pieces of watermelon at people in the middle of the street until the gendarmes came and sympathetically hit him on the head with their sticks and carried him away.

Eustace was going crazy. Everything was organized, everything was in motion, but was everything going the way it was supposed to go?

What Eustace wanted, what Eustace needed, was for the entire city of Paris to suddenly be magically reduced to the size and aspect of a model train layout, with himself on a high stool overlooking the whole thing. Then he could see if the English contingent was doing its job in Ménilmontant, he could see if the French contingent was successfully performing its task in the Gare de la Chappelle, he could see whether the Italians and the Germans were performing profitably at the Arc de Triomphe. Instead of which, here he was on this windy hotel roof, seated in this wobbly folding chair at this rickety folding table, holding down all his maps and charts and memorandums with these god damn walkie-talkies, and trying to get somebody somewhere to tell him what in hell is going on.

Eustace picked up a walkie-talkie at random, then slapped his palm down on the two maps and the diagram before they could blow away. Into the walkie-talkie he said, “Group—” then hesitated, frowned, turned the walkie-talkie over, and read the white letter painted there: “—C. Group C, come in. Come in, Group C.” Then he held the walkie-talkie close to his ear, and listened to several people laughing in French: “Rire, rire, rire, rire, rire,” they were saying.

“Oh, really,” Eustace said, slapped the walkie-talkie down, yanked up another, grabbed for the memos too late, watched them blow off the roof, swore in English, read the letter on the walkie-talkie, and yelled into it, “Group D! Say something, Group D!”

Shrill voices gabbled in Italian.

“Stop it,” Eustace said, very sternly, into the walkie-talkie. “Now, just stop all that. I’m serious about this. This is a serious business.”