Field Gray

31

Things were quiet at the Pension Esebeck, and there was little to do except eat and read the newspapers. But Die Welt was the only paper I was keen to read. I was especially interested in the small ads at the back, and on my second morning in Göttingen I found the message for Field Gray that I had been waiting for. It was some verses from the Gospel according to Saint Luke, 1:44, 49; 2:3; 6:1; 1:40; 1:37; and 1:74.

I took the Bible from the shelf in the sitting room, and went to my own room to reconstruct the message. It read as follows:

Having burned the note I’d made of the message, I went to look for Vigée and found the Frenchman in a little walled garden overlooking the canal. As usual, he looked as if he hadn’t slept; his eyes were half closed against the smoke from his cigarette, and there was a little cup of coffee in the palm of his hand, like a coin. He regarded me with his usual indifferent expression, but, as before, when he spoke it was frequently with the added emphasis of a firm nod or a quick shake of the head.

“You made your peace with God, yes?” His German was halting but grammatical.

“I needed some time to reflect,” I said. “On something that happened in Berlin. On Sunday.”

“With Elisabeth, yes?”

“She wants to get married,” I said. “To me.”

He shrugged. “Congratulations, Sébastien.”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“She’s waited five years for me, Émile. And now that I’ve seen her again…well, she doesn’t propose to wait any longer. In short, she gave me an ultimatum. That she would forget all about me unless I married her before the weekend.”

“Impossible,” said Vigée.

“That’s what I said, Émile. However, she means it. I’m certain of it. I never knew this woman to say anything she didn’t mean.” I took one of his offered cigarettes.

“That’s hardly civilized,” he said.

“That’s women,” I said. “And it’s me, too. Up until now, everything in the world I ever wanted was never quite as good as I thought it would be. But I’ve a strong feeling that Elisabeth’s different. In fact, I know she is.”

Vigée picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and for a moment regarded it critically, as if it might have been the answer to all our problems.

“I was thinking, Émile. The POW train won’t be here until next Tuesday night. If I could spend Sunday with Elisabeth, in Berlin…Just a few hours.”

Vigée put down his coffee cup and started to shake his head.

“No, please listen,” I said. “If I could spend a few hours with her, I’m sure I could persuade her to wait. Especially if I arrived with a few presents. A ring, perhaps. Nothing expensive. Just a token of my feelings for her.”

He was still shaking his head.

“Oh, come on, Émile, you know what women are like. Look, there’s a shop full of inexpensive jewelry on the corner of Speckstrasse. If you could advance me a few marks—enough to buy a ring—then I’m sure I could persuade her to wait for me. If this wasn’t my last chance, I wouldn’t ask. We could be back here by Monday evening. A full twenty-four hours before the train is even due in Friedland.”

“And what if you chose not to come back?” he said. “It’s very difficult bringing people out of Berlin across the Green Border. What’s to stop you from just staying there? She doesn’t even live in the French sector.”

“At least say you’ll think about it,” I said. “I mean, it would be a real shame if I allowed my own disappointment to cloud my eyes next Tuesday evening.”

“Meaning?”

“I want to help you find Edgard de Boudel, Émile. Really I do. But there has to be a little give-and-take, especially in a situation like this. If I’m to work for you, then surely it’s best that I’m completely in your debt, monsieur. That there’s nothing unpleasant between us.”

He smiled a nasty little smile and threw his cigarette over the wall and into the canal. Then he quickly gathered the lapels of my jacket in his fist and smacked me hard across both cheeks.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten La Santé,” he said. “Your boche friends, Oberg and Knochen, and their death sentences.” He slapped me again for good measure.

I took it as calmly as I was able and said: “That might work on your wife and your sister, Franzi, but not on me, see?” I caught the hand he was waving near my ear and twisted it hard. “No one gets to slap me unless I’ve got my hand in her panties. Now, take your paws off this cheap French suit before I teach you the Method on tough.”

I looked him in the eye and saw that he seemed to relax a little, so I let go his hand in order to prize his fingers off my coat, and that was when he punched me with a right hook that rocked my head like a balloon on a stick. Probably he’d have punched me again but for my own presence of mind, which is another way of saying that I banged its hard bony covering firmly against the bridge of his long hooked nose.

The Frenchman yelped with pain, and finally letting go of my coat, he pressed his fingers to the side of his nose and took several steps back until he reached the garden wall.

“Look,” I said, “stop trying to polish my chin and take it easy, Émile. I’m not asking for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, just one lousy Sunday afternoon with the woman I love. Some compassionate leave, that’s all. And none of that gets in the way of me helping you find your traitor. I help you, you help me. Unless you want me to enroll in a course at the university, it’s not like I have anything much to do before next Tuesday evening.”

“I think you broke my nose,” he said.

“No, I didn’t. There’s not nearly enough blood. Take it from someone who’s broken a few noses in his time. Although nothing on the scale of that Eiffel Tower on your face.” I shook my head. “Hey, I’m sorry I hit you, Émile, but for the last nine months a lot of people have been getting tough with me and I’ve had enough of it, see? I have to look at my face every morning, Frenchman. It’s not much of a face, but it’s the only one I’ve got. And it’s got to last me for a while yet. So I don’t like it when people think they can knock it around. I’m sensitive like that.”

He wiped his nose and nodded, but the incident hung strong in the air between us like the smell of burned hops from a brewery. And for a moment we both stood there stupidly, wondering how to proceed.

It could have been worse, I told myself. There had been a brief moment when I had actually contemplated tipping him over the wall and into the canal.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it as if he thought it might improve his humor and take his mind off his nose, which, now that he had wiped away the blood, was already looking better than he might have supposed.

“You’re right,” he said. “There’s no reason at all why this thing can’t be fixed. After all, it is, as you say, just one Sunday afternoon, yes?”

I nodded. “Just one Sunday afternoon.”

“Very well. We will fix it. Yes, I tell you, I would do anything to get de Boudel.”

Including lie to me, I thought. After I had served my purpose and identified de Boudel, there was no telling what the French might do with me: send me back to La Santé, to the Amis, even the Russians. France was, after all, cozying up to the Soviet Union in its foreign policy, and the return of an escaped prisoner was not beyond its perfidy.

“And a ring?” I asked, as if such a bauble really mattered to me or to Elisabeth.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure that can be arranged also.”