Victor Serge - Unforgiving Years

D had seen him coming. He folded the Berliner Tageblatt .

“Er… yes, an excellent meal, thank you very much… Couldn’t be better.”

Both felt that the emptiness of these words had done nothing to clear the air. Something made each of them hang on to the other. In D’s case, the desire to know “what’s eating this stool pigeon with the face of a worried bedbug” made him adopt a hypocritically debonair expression that was almost engaging. More complex emotions raged within Monsieur Gobfin as he wrestled with indecision, on the brink of small but unknowable risks.

“Why, you haven’t touched your coffee, Monsieur Battistini…” (Was it some kind of a ploy, to mispronounce a name he knew perfectly well?) Have you sampled our vintage marc, Monsieur?”

“Not yet.”

Monsieur Gobfin summoned the waitress. “Elodie, some marc for the gentleman… No, not a shot, bring the decanter…” He hovered between the white tables, a yellow smile suspended between his sunken cheeks. A vague sense of embarrassment gathered with each passing second. “Something’s up,” thought D. “The bedbug’s being too friendly by half…” It was a relief when the amber-filled decanter arrived with its retinue of miniature glasses.

“Let’s try some, then,” said D with composure. “But we must touch glasses together. Please sit down, Monsieur.”

Monsieur Gobfin was only too pleased to accept. The hovering stopped. “If I may be so bold…” The opaque marbles that passed for his pupils probed the room; he sat down so as not to present his back to anyone. “No good lunch is complete without some old marc,” he said meditatively. “That’s what I always say. You be the judge.” At three paces he was no more than unpleasant-looking; at a foot and a half, he looked scrawny and tough, a withered skin stretched over a narrow skull. His personality emerged from a sickly, malevolent weakness. D felt himself observed from all angles and broken down by unknown methods. He glanced ostentatiously at his watch. “Oh, but if you’re in a hurry, Monsieur Battisti…” “No, not at all.” (If I let him go, I’ll never figure it out.)

“The fact is, I’m quite perplexed,” Monsieur Gobfin began.

D appeared to be astonished.

“And why might that be? It’s none of my affair, of course, but since you bring it up…”

“The foreign press is better informed than the Paris papers, I suppose?” asked Monsieur Gobfin, either playing for time or committing a major blunder.

Very significant, that remark. Whenever he scented danger, D became perfectly, sinisterly calm.

“Surely that’s not what’s perplexing you?”

Mr. Gobfin’s wandering gaze locked for a split second onto the eyes of his companion.

“No indeed, Monsieur Battisti, you are an honest man and I don’t need to know you to be convinced of it. A man of experience too.”

All this is recklessly direct. He’s sounding me out. I’ve been nailed. How did They trace me so quickly…? D advanced a clenched, square fist across the table. A clean and daunting fist.

“I certainly hope we’re among honest folk here,” he said. “As for experience, I don’t mind saying I’ve had my share. Some rough experiences… the colonies, and I don’t mind skipping the niceties sometimes. And too bad for people who are a little too smart for their own good.”

Gobfin responded to the veiled threat with rapture.

“Ah, then I made no mistake, Monsieur, in turning to you! I am dreadfully perplexed, and in need of advice.”

“Spit it out,” D said succinctly — perplexed himself.

“It concerns a murder.”

“You know what, I’m not a detective and I don’t care a fig about murders. I’ve seen enough of them. Just forget it. Will that do for advice?”

“No.”

Gobfin drew a small photograph from his cuff — or from a secret pocket in his sleeve, or from his tie, or from his long straight nose with a twist at the end — and flicked it with his finger in the direction of Monsieur Battisti’s fist. It was the picture of a black man, wreathed in a professional smile — the smile of jazz musicians entranced by their own cacophony.

“The murderer.”

This could be a consummately skillful move. D was nonplussed. What could be neater, at the right moment, than to whip out the ace of spades where the ace of clubs was expected?

“So what,” he said, his breathing labored. “There are murderers all over Paris. What’s it to you?”

(Are They about to have me arrested for murder? To request extradition, after framing me? There’s no treaty… but there might be an international police convention I don’t know about… hadn’t thought of that… This Negro fellow might have accomplices, he’s been bribed to accuse me…)

Monsieur Gobfin, having produced his effect — or simply unstoppered by relief — now became garrulous, pouring himself out in breathy tones of irresistible intimacy. “The place de Clichy murder… Come come, Monsieur, you must have read the newspapers, it was exactly a week ago…”

(Exactly a week? I have no alibi, I’ll never be able to say who I was with… We were working on the Crime of the Capital of the World…)

“A young sculptor, queer, you know, very good family, millionaire parents, does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Found in his studio, hands tied, throat cut… naked… Now do you see?” “Vaguely…” D searched his memory, at the same time wondering whether it wasn’t a fiction. Adolescence, nakedness, tied hands, he recalled the gist of it or imagined he did. “But between you and me, like I said, I don’t give a good goddamn!”

The “get off my back with your sordid gossip,” clearly implied in that last retort, could scarcely escape the cloying attention of his host. Either because he had made up his mind to persist or because he was just bursting with it, Monsieur Gobfin became even more confidential.

“Look straight ahead. I believe we have the killer.”

The Negro wiped his mouth and inserted a toothpick. His placid stare brushed against the more troubled gaze of Monsieur Battisti. “A trap,” thought D. “They’re both in it together, the black and this creep… To mix me up in some botched arrest — and by mistake — fine jam I’m in.” There was an obvious resemblance between this sharply etched, vigorous, shiny black head and the one in the photo. The living head, with its purplish lips and sharply etched eyes, pure white and pure black, appeared to D is if about to be chopped off. He saw the coppery tint, paler at the cheek-bones — a sign of previous interbreeding, like the delicate ridge of the nose. “The man in the picture is much blacker, I’d say…”

“A trick of the light. The light is behind us. Look at his hand.”

Darker than the face, the big hand curled loosely on the white cloth suggested animal strength refined by the exercise of some craft — a hand deft with a mandolin, a trapeze bar, a sharpened razor… Why not?

“Hmm. An honest hand, why not?” Monsieur Battisti said. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you.” Monsieur Gobfin eyed the clenched fist on their own table and felt an unpleasant intimation of anxiety.

“In short, Monsieur Battisti, what do you think?”

“I’m loath to think anything. Except you should err on the side of caution. A mistake could land you in all kinds of trouble…”

To stand up with no more ado, to say to this groveling sneak, “I’ve had enough. Now get my bill, you’ve thoroughly put me off your grisly fleabag…” — would that be reasonable? D weighed up the unspoken tenors of the conversation. “It needs careful consideration. Do you have any other pictures of the same sort?”