Tanner’s Tiger

Chapter 7

The tub in which I sat was nearly as deep as it was long. It had claw feet, and I felt that it would come to life if I could only utter the proper incantation. I scrubbed myself diligently with an oval cake of sandalwood soap. A trifle effeminate, perhaps, but anything was preferable to essence of wino.

Arlette’s voice filtered through the oak door. “There is ample hot water, Evan?”

“Yes.”

“I have put your clothing in the incinerator. I could not abide them in the apartment. You are not angry with me?”

“Not at all. Uh… the shoes-”

“I did not burn your shoes.”

“Good.”

“There is clothing in the closet for when you have finished your bath. I will purchase the newspapers for you now. You wish copies of all of them, no?”

“If you please.”

“Evan?”

“What?”

“The English ones as well?”

“Please.”

“It saddens me to purchase the English newspapers. Would not the French suffice?”

“I’m afraid not. I have to find out as much as I can, Arlette.”

“The French papers are excellent.”

“I know that.”

“They probably contain all the news that is to be found in the others.”

“Even so-”

Her sigh was barely audible through the door. “Very well,” she said. “I shall do as you ask. Au revoir.”

“Au revoir.”

I soaped and washed and soaked, over and over, and I might well have spent eternity in that bathtub, but I wanted to be out and dressed when Arlette returned. I got out, drained the tub, and wrapped up in a large blue towel.

Arlette’s apartment, just a few blocks from Emile’s conspiratorial cellar, consisted of a large room with a skylight, a kitchen, and the bathroom I had just vacated. The furniture may have been Arlette’s or her landlord’s, but I suspect that the previous owner was the Salvation Army. The sole note of elegance, and one which contrasted sharply with the pervading Poverty Program flavor, was a tigerskin throw which covered the bed. It wasn’t fake anything. It wasn’t even real dynel. It seemed to be genuine tigerskin, a perfect match for her beret.

The air was thick with the pungent scent of Gauloise cigarette smoke. I found clean shorts and socks laid out for me on the bed. In the closet there was a variety of male attire, much of it in my size. I found a maroon shirt and a pair of dark gray gabardine slacks. I donned all of these things and was lacing up a shoe when Arlette returned, her arms overflowing with newspapers.

“All of them,” she said triumphantly. “The English as well.”

“Thank you.”

“I behaved poorly before. You must understand, the authorities make use of the circulation figures for the English newspapers. Businessmen must buy them for certain of the business news, and so by presenting circulation figures, the authorities may suggest that the English minority in Montreal is more literate than the French. One does not care to play into their hands, so one avoids buying English papers.”

“I understand.”

“But what difference can these few copies make? This is what I tell myself as I buy them, eh? But you look so much better in clean clothes, Evan. Such a disgrace to have seen you for the first time dressed and perfumed as you were.” She came closer, sniffing. “You smell delightful now. You have used some of my perfume?”

“It was the soap.”

“But certainly.” She lit a cigarette. “I shall make coffee. Will you be comfortable in that chair? I do not think the light is good. Why do you not make yourself more comfortable upon the bed?”

I stretched out on the bed with the stack of newspapers. I checked through all of them, and for all the good they did me, she needn’t have bought the English ones. Or the French ones either, for that matter. They had all gone to bed before my little adventure with Prince Hal, so the only coverage of me dealt with my earlier attempted crossing and my successful illegal entry at Fort Erie. Several of the papers went into some detail on that point. The consensus seemed to be that I had broken into the home of one Jerzy Pryzeshweski, a Buffalo bakery salesman. (No two papers spelled the bastard’s name the same way.) I forced him at gun-point to take us across the Canadian border. Then, in Fort Erie, I left his truck after striking him on the head with the gun butt and slashing his tire to discourage pursuit.

Evidently a cop had happened on Jerry while he was changing a tire, and the clod had panicked instantly and then made up a cover story to protect himself. But it certainly hadn’t done me a world of good.

The papers didn’t provide the most important thing of all – a lead to Minna’s whereabouts. It had occurred to me earlier that some Canadian cop might have snatched her at the fair, thinking that her disappearance might cause me to come out into the open. If that was what had happened, I would hear about it soon; now that they had her, and now that they no longer had me, they would have to use her as bait.

“Coffee, Evan.”

The coffee was strong, with chicory added for extra taste, along with a generous slug of cognac for authority. I sat up and sipped it, and Arlette crawled onto the bed beside me, tucked her legs under herself. She drank coffee and smoked another Gauloise. I rather liked the smell of it, but I couldn’t understand how anyone could manage to smoke it.

She asked if the papers had been helpful. I said that they had, which was not entirely true, and that we might find more information in the morning papers or on the radio. There was a radio beside the bed. She switched it on and we got the tail end of a Beatles record. Penny Lane , I think it was. She said there would be news on the hour. It was then a quarter after ten.

“I hope it will not be necessary to kill the Queen,” she said.

I had been trying not to think about all of that.

“Is she a bad woman, Evan?”

“Not at all,” I said. “She’s rather a good queen, actually. Of course she’s a usurper.”

“She is?”

I nodded. “They call it the House of Windsor now, but that doesn’t really change a thing. It was the House of Hanover when George I took over in 1714, and no matter what Betty Saxe-Coburg calls herself, it doesn’t alter the legitimacy of the Stuart claim to the throne.”

“And the Stuarts, they still exist?”

“Yes. The French supported the Stuart Pretenders for many years. There’s a Stuart Pretender alive today, a Bavarian Crown Prince, actually.” I sighed. “But he doesn’t work at it very hard, I’m afraid.”

“Do the French support his claim?”

“No. Only the Jacobite League.”

“Are you of this Jacobite League?”

“Certainly.”

“Ah,” she said. “Perhaps one day a reborn France will support Prince – what is his name?”

“Rupert.”

“ Prince Rupert. Yes.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But in the meantime Betty Saxe-Coburg is the best Queen England ’s got. It might not be a good thing if anything happened to her.”

“She is only to be kidnaped, Evan.”

“Uh,” I said.

“It is for the cause. Of course you support the scheme.”

“Somebody said something about killing.”

“Oh, but that was Claude. He-”

“Dynamite, I heard him say. And plastique.”

“Claude is an extremist.” Who among us, thought I, is not? “It should not be necessary to do anything of that nature, Evan. I personally favor the kidnaping. It will bring us considerable public attention, will it not?”

“No question about it. But-”

“The eyes of the world will be focused upon the MNQ.”

“The guns of the world, too.” I sat up straight, looking into her liquid brown eyes. “You can’t demand that England grant independence to Quebec, Arlette. England has nothing to do with Quebec. If Canada wants to dissolve the Canadian Confederation, that’s up to Canada. I don’t think it will happen as long as the financial community is so closely interlocked, but it’s a future possibility and I’m proud to work toward that end. But frankly I don’t see how kidnaping poor Betty is going to do any good.”

“It will bring us publicity.”

“If that’s all we want, we could swallow goldfish.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Look, the ransom demands cannot be met. Then what happens?”

She shrugged prettily. “That is a bridge we shall cross-”

“After we’ve blown it up, no doubt.”

“Ah, Evan.” She rested her head on my shoulder. “But it is not to worry now, do you see? The important thing is that you are here, that you have joined with us. And you will be of help to Emile in countering the influence of Claude. The membership will listen to you-”

“Claude won’t. He doesn’t much care for me.”

“Well, you bit him, Evan.”

“I know.”

“And he is a very impulsive man. Also a cruel man, you understand? He says that, like all of us, he is a terrorist and a patriot, but at times I think that the terror is more for him than the patriotism. I will get us more coffee.”

I waited on the bed for her. I watched her go, buttocks wiggling pertly in the tight denim slacks, and I watched her return, breasts bobbing provocatively in the tight velour shirtlet, and I remembered suddenly how they had all taken it for granted that I should hide myself with Arlette. As though this was standard operating procedure, as though anyone who drifted by in need of sanctuary would be taken to Arlette’s comforting bosom.

This had not seemed remarkable at the time. I had simply assumed that Arlette’s apartment was most satisfactory in terms of secrecy and available space. Only now did I realize that, whatever the extent of the secrecy, there was certainly not much in the way of available space. There was just that one room, and there was just the one bed, and although I did not sleep and thus did not need to make use of the bed, why, none of them knew this, and thus they took it as a matter of course that I would share that bed, that Arlette and I would share it, and-

“Your coffee, Evan.”

I accepted the cup, held hers too while she joined me on the bed. She settled herself on the tigerskin, and our bodies touched.

“Tigers,” I said.

“A noble animal, is it not so?”

“But of course.”

Her hand stroked the tigerskin in such a way that I found myself envying the animal. “So bold,” she said. “What does the tiger remind you of?”

“Gas stations,” I said.

She looked at me. Sometimes I have a lamentable tendency to say the wrong thing. I tried to fight my way out of it.

“And sugar frosted flakes,” I said, “and, uh, men’s hair tonic, you know. Tigers on your team and in your tank and everything. You know, uh, grrr.”

“Gasoline and cereal and hair tonic,” she said.

“And you, Arlette.”

It was cool now, a rather pleasant night despite the grinding heat of the day. That was one thing about Montreal – it cooled off at night. It was cool then, and quite pleasant, and I thought of Sonya and how little use we had had for each other once my air-conditioner had gone on the fritz. I realized that it had been, actually, quite a while since the air-conditioner died, and quite a while since the thing Sonya and I had had for each other died along with it.

Quite a while, all right.

And I looked at Arlette. Well, here we are, I thought. Here we are, in her room and, uh, in her bed, and everyone sort of assumed I would wind up here – evidently, Arlette included – and-

I said, “ La Jeanne d’Arc de Québec.”

“Oh, not I, Evan.”

“But that was what Emile called you.”

“Emile makes jokes. Or perhaps he means that I am like the sainted Joan because I too am the most fervent of patriots.” She turned toward me. “I am, you know. My heart pounds in my breast with patriotic zeal.”

“I can believe it.”

“Right here,” she said, pointing.

“Eh.”

“Feel it, Evan. You can feel it pounding.”

I placed my hand in the center of her chest. “I feel it,” I said. “I feel it, all right.”

“Not in the middle, cabbage. On the left side. The heart.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, I, uh, feel it, uh.”

“Evan.”

“Uh.”

“You smell so much nicer since your bath. I like this aroma.”

“It’s your soap.”

“Yes. Do I smell the same?”

She smelled of luxuriantly strong tobacco and sweet subtle perfume and, yes, sandalwood soap. She tasted of coffee and chicory and brandy. Her hand moved and she said, “Oh, how nice,” and I said “Arlette,” and we were in rather a hurry. She wrestled the tight black denim slacks down over her hips, and I got out of the slacks and shorts that some obliging man had left behind, and she said “Oh, oh,” and I don’t remember what I said, if anything. I don’t think the earth moved, but that only happens in Spanish sleeping bags, if ever.

“Not Joan of Arc,” she said a while later.

“Helen of Troy. Cleopatra. Eve.”

She purred. “But not Joan, not the Maid of Orleans. Because, you see, I am not a maiden at all, am I?”

“Not quite.”

“But sometimes I do hear voices.”

“Oh? What do they say?”

She took me in hand, so to speak. “They say, ‘Do it again, do it again!’”

When such voices speak, one obeys.