William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

However, sitting in the Taverne that afternoon, waiting for another hour go by uninterrupted, and thinking frustratedly about this child that he had and did not have, he began to think how foolish and absurd this process was, like some child’s game of espionage. He’d been for a row on the lake, watched a film in a cinema and attended a concert in the cathedral. Perhaps he might visit an art gallery, or enjoy a drink in the bar of the Beau-Rivage and fend off the ‘dubious’ women.

In fact there were two young, rather attractive women sitting in the window taking tea. One of them, he thought, kept glancing over at him as he sipped his beer. But no, that would be too risky, even for this child’s game –

Somebody sat down on the next table blocking the view. A widow in black crêpe, he saw, with a flat straw hat and a small half-veil. Lysander signalled a waiter — one more beer and he was off.

The widow turned to look at him.

“Excuse me, are you Monsieur Dupetit?” she asked in French.

“Ah…No. My apologies.”

“Then I think you must know Monsieur Dupetit.”

“I know a Monsieur Lepetit.”

She came and sat at his table and folded up her veil. Lysander saw a woman in her thirties with a once handsome face now set in a cold mask of resignation. Hooded eyes and a curved Roman nose, two deep lines on either side of her thin-lipped mouth, like parentheses. He wondered if she ever smiled.

“How do you do?” she said and offered her black-lace-gloved hand. Lysander shook it. Her grip was firm.

“Have you come to take me to him?” he asked.

“Who?”

He lowered his voice. “Bonfire.”

“I am Bonfire.”

“Right.”

“Massinger didn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t specify your gender.”

She looked around the room, seemingly exasperated, thereby offering Lysander a view of her profile. Her nose was small but perfectly curved, like a Roman emperor’s on a coin, or like some photographs he’d seen of a captured Red Indian chief.

“I am Madame Duchesne,” she said. “Your French is very good.”

“Thank you. May I offer you something to drink?”

“A small Dubonnet. We’re quite safe to talk here.”

She wasted no time. She would meet him tomorrow at his hotel at 10. 00 in the morning and would show him the apartment where the consular official lived. He was a bachelor, one Manfred Glockner. He usually left for the consulate around noon and returned home late in the evening. She had no idea what his official diplomatic role was, but to her eyes he seemed a, ‘smart, bourgeois, gentleman-type — something of an intellectual’. When he started to receive letters from England she became curious and decided to open them. She had missed the first three but she had opened the six subsequent ones. Nine letters in all over a period of eight months from October 1914 to June 1915.

“Opened?” Lysander asked. “Do you work in the consulate yourself?”

“No,” she said. “My brother is a senior postmaster here in Geneva, at the central sorting office. He brings me all the letters I ask for. I open them, I read them, I make copies if they’re interesting, then I close them again and they go to the recipient. Letters coming in, letters coming out.”

No wonder she was Massinger’s prize agent, Lysander thought.

“How do you open them without people knowing?”

“It’s my secret,” she said. Here a normal person might have allowed themselves a smile of satisfaction but Madame Duchesne just raised her chin a little defiantly. “Let’s say it’s to do with the application of extremes of heat and coldness. Dry heat, dry cold. They just pop open after a few minutes. No steaming. When I’ve read them I stick them down again with glue. Impossible to tell they’ve been opened.”

She reached into her handbag and took out some sheets of paper.

“Here are the six Glockner letters.”

Lysander took them and shuffled through them — six pages dense with columns of numbers like the one he’d seen in London. He folded them up and slipped them in his pocket, suddenly feeling unusual trepidation — the child’s game had become real.

“I’ll show you where Glockner lives tomorrow. I would suggest your visit be either at the dead of night or perhaps a Sunday — when the building is quiet.”

Tomorrow’s Friday, Lysander thought. My god…

“I’d better get to the bank,” he said.

“It’s up to you,” she said, unconcernedly. “I’m just going to show you where he lives. What you do next is your affair.” She finished her Dubonnet and stood up. She was tall, Lysander noticed, and he spotted that the material of her dress was of good quality and well cut. She pulled down her half-veil and screened her eyes.

“You’re obviously in mourning…”

“My husband was an officer — a captain — in the French army. We used to live in Lyons. He was killed in the second week of the war in the retreat from Mulhouse. August 1914. He was shot and badly wounded, but when they captured him they left him to die. Untended. I’m originally from Geneva so I came home to be with my brother.”

“I’m very sorry. My sympathies,” Lysander said, a little lamely, wondering what genuine condolences one could offer to a stranger almost two years after such a bereavement.

Madame Duchesne flicked her wrist as if batting the formulaic remark away.

“This is why I’m happy to help you in this war. To help our allies. I’m sure that was your unasked question.”

It was, as it happened, but Lysander thought of something more.

“These letters to Glockner — was there a postmark?”

“Yes, all from London West — English stamps, of course, which alerted me. I have the names of all the staff at the German consulate, my brother brings me their letters first as a matter of routine. See you tomorrow, Herr Schwimmer.”

She gave him a little bow — the slightest inclination of her head — turned and left. She had a firm confident stride — a woman of real convictions. There was something attractive about her bitter severity, he had to admit, her unshakeable sadness and profound melancholy. He wondered what she would look like in bed, naked, helpless with laughter, tipsy on champagne…He called for another glass of Munich lager. He was developing quite a taste for this beer.

Lysander and Madame Duchesne sat in a café almost directly opposite the entry to Glockner’s apartment building. It was noon. Madame Duchesne was inevitably in black, though this morning she had dispensed with the veil. Lysander wondered what her first name was but felt it impossible to ask such a question on so slight an acquaintance. Madame Duchesne did not invite familiarity. As he thought further, he realized that once Glockner had been identified it would probably be the end of their contact — she would have done her duty.

“He’s later than usual today,” she said.

Lysander noticed she had a closed gold cameo on a chain around her neck — doubtless containing a photo of the late Capitaine Duchesne.

“Here he comes,” she said.

He saw a smartly dressed man of medium height come out of the building. He was wearing a lightweight fawn Ulsterette overcoat and a Fedora. Lysander noted the spats, also, and that he carried an attaché case and a cane. He couldn’t see if he had a moustache or not as he had turned and headed off down the street.

“Is there a concierge?” he asked.

“I would imagine so.”

“Hmmm. I’d have to get past her, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m afraid that’s your problem, Herr Schwimmer.” She stood up. “Good luck,” she said in English, then, “ Bon courage .”