GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE (27 page)

He rummages in Louis’ do-it-yourself hoard
and comes up with a stout padlock, the key to it, a hasp and nails.
He secures the door against her incursions.

But he frequently misplaces the key and is
locked out himself for a week. He’s sure Stupid comes across the
key during her weekly cleaning job on the Living Quarters, uses it
for a week to violate his sanctuary and then puts it back where he
finally finds it, under a cot or deep in a drawer. When he lets
himself into his room he finds new charcoal smudges on the sea,
proving the point.

Finally he wears the key permanently around
his neck like a religious insignia. There are no more smudges on
the sea after that.

Once, he thinks he hears the feeble whisper
of her footsteps, then nothing. He eases the door open a crack.

She’s seated against the wall opposite his
sanctuary, slumped forward, head bowed. Her stringy hair hangs in
front of her face like a mop. He thinks he can make out her eyes,
white with inward focus. He retreats back into his room. For a long
while he can’t work. He feels besieged.

He’s about to go back to his street and
sketch a remembered geranium on a third-story window-sill when he
hears a sound he hasn’t heard in years. He drops the pencil in
fright at the sudden
clump-jangle, clump-jangle
, not faint and a long way off, giving you
warning, but sudden and loud,
clump-jangle clump-jangle
, as though the pitching and tossing Turnkey had
materialized in that corridor.

The
clump-jangle clump-jangle
stops in front of his door. Nothing
escapes those drab eyes set deep in that skull-like head. He’s sure
to see the open padlock on the door. Any moment now his bony fist
will try the doorknob and then hammer on the door, hammer and
hammer till the rusty bolt is wrenched off and the door flies open
and the drab eyes will stare at the wall and Seymour be exited for
willful deterioration of State property. And worse, his precious
creation – recreation – of the lost street be censored by
administrative tar.

Seymour grabs the knife he uses to sharpen
his pencils and stands before the street in a crouch, ready to
defend it at all costs.

But Turnkey’s rusty voice addresses, it can
only be, the girl outside. His words aren’t distinct. The girl’s
stammering reply isn’t distinct. Distinct now, Turnkey’s: “Shirking
again.” Indistinct the girl’s imploring words. Very distinct,
Turnkey’s: “You have been warned. Come.”

Now a wail, faint but unbearable.
Clump-jangle,
clump-jangle
, moving
away from the door with the padlock. The unbearable wail fades
away. The sound of the orthopedic shoe and the keys fades
away.

Seymour lets himself down in the chair and
sits there till his heart calms down.

He’s about to try to force himself back to
the projected geranium when the wail comes back, much louder,
expressing all the desolation and despair of two worlds, it seems
to him. “It’s the wind,” he mutters. Finally he gets up and slowly
pulls back the bolt. He slowly opens the door a crack, then wider.
The corridor is empty.

As he’d suspected, it’s the wind, a powerful
gale sweeping past and pulling wails out of her abandoned pail
opposite his door. At the end of the corridor a ghostly column of
dust rotates wildly.

He picks up her dangerously situated pail. A
functionary might very well return for it and notice his door.

He abandons the pail in a distant corridor.
By then the wind has dropped and it’s stopped wailing.

For a long time – months it must be – a
bitter-mouthed middle-aged female functionary brings them their
meals. She doesn’t answer their questions concerning the former
cleaning girl. The new female functionary doesn’t say anything, not
even hello or goodbye. Seymour can’t help thinking that she does a
better cleaning job than her predecessor.

One day, Gentille is back, pushing the
creaking cart with their trays. She seems shriveled. Her lips are
compressed to a thin line as though invisible catgut has sewn them
shut. She doesn’t say hello or goodbye either. When they address
her she seems to shrivel even more. She doesn’t look at them. Her
eyes are downcast, concentrating on her task. She does a better job
cleaning up now, even sweeps out under the cots.

It sounds cruel, Helen says to the others,
but it would actually be an act of kindness on their part not to
try to talk to her or even notice her. It frightens her when they
do.

So they don’t any more. Soon the Five
assimilate the girl they’d once called Gentille to the drab
furniture she incompetently dusts.

***

Part Three

Chapter 30

Halleluiah!

Bangs her knuckles once on the door of the
women’s room. Doesn’t wait for response. Yanks open the door.
Strides past the sleeper (Number 2). Halts before Numbers 1, 3 and
0 on their knees, stupidly trying to establish direct
connection.

Claps her hard hands and delivers the
information and the orders and withdraws.

Addresses herself to the sleeper now. Claps
her hard hands inches from Number 2’s ear, to no avail. Reaches out
to shake her awake and at the last instant snatches her hands
(although safely rubber-clad) away. Anyhow, Number 2 is now staring
up at her and she delivers the information and the orders.

Helen sees the iron face of the
middle-echelon female functionary they call Sadie, sees her starved
pale lips moving but hears no more than an indistinct whisper like
ashes down a chute. Sadie has already left the women’s room,
heading for the men’s room, when Helen remembers and removes the
protective earplugs she’d fashioned out of the candle to protect a
dream she’s unable to return to. She hears the kneeling trio crying
“Halleluiah! Halleluiah!” She replaces the earplugs and turns to
the wall.

Sadie bends over Number 4. Asleep too. She
claps her hard hands inches from his ear. He jerks awake and she
jerks her hands out of harm’s way and informs him that the Advocate
is coming this very morning and will receive them collectively in
the Common Room. He (Number 4) must dress immediately and be
prepared to present his defense. She leaves.

Seymour hears “Halleluiah! Halleluiah!” from
the other side of the partition. He tries to remember who
‘Advocate’ is. It finally comes back, after all that time.
“Halleluiah!” he says.

With one exception, they’re pathetically
grateful for at last being officially taken notice of. Stalled for
decades, the rusty cobwebbed bureaucratic machinery has suddenly
been set in motion. Their fate is being processed through the
correct channels now. An end, at last, to those hopeless attempts
to short-circuit the system, to emerge by their own devices,
blundering down dark corridors all those years and still in the
dark for all their pains.

So that auspicious morning they stand
wide-eyed and joyous (four of them at least) in the windy corridor,
backs against the wall, awaiting the coming of their potential
liberator.

Seymour can’t help thinking of a parody of
the Liberation of Paris. Instead of those cheering crowds lining
sunny avenues, awaiting their liberators back in August 1944, five
half-lifers in this dim windy corridor, in who knows what year. The
historical comparison strengthens as Seymour hears distant slapping
martial soles and a metallic clatter, constantly interrupted as
though the tank had broken down and been repaired and had broken
down again, all with astonishing rapidity and over and over.

But nearing, the tank turns out to be a
crippled clattering wheelchair and the soldiers two familiar
functionaries, petulant Philippe, pushing the wheelchair at a fast
trot, followed by Hedgehog who is puffing badly.

A white-haired old man in a black gown is
slouched in the wheelchair, rummaging in a sloppy pile of papers in
his lap. His ample sleeves flutter in the wind. Every few seconds
papers take off and Hedgehog scrambles in pursuit, crying,
“
Maître,
Maître
, your papers!”
Philippe halts; the old man recovers his papers; the wheelchair
jolts forward a few yards; more papers fly away; Hedgehog cries:
“
Maître,
Maître,
your papers!”
And so it goes, till finally the wheelchair comes to a screeching
halt before the Five.

Advocate – for who else can it be? –
proves to be sound (if unsteady) of limb despite his advanced age
and his handicapped mode of transportation. He slowly raises
himself out of the wheelchair and lurches toward them with a
benevolent smile. “
Mes enfants!
” he
exclaims in a very rusty voice, communicating at the same time a
powerful reek, like that of an exploding cognac
distillery.

“Oh God, no!” says Seymour, turning to
Helen. But she’s returned to her room.

Supported by the two lower-echelon
functionaries, Advocate totters into the Common Room and stays
there for hours, probably sleeping it off, Seymour bitterly
comments to the others. And this lush is supposed to defend
them.

Finally Sadie returns and announces that
their advocate (whom they must address as “
Maître
”) is prepared to welcome them. They all go out
into the corridor except for Helen who’s on her bed, back to
statistics. That holds things up.

Sadie strides into the women’s room, halts
at the bed and repeats that their advocate is prepared to welcome
them, Number Two must get up immediately.

“If it’s me you mean, I’d rather not,” says
Helen.

Sadie is scandalized at this passive
resistance. You have no choice in the matter, she says. The
presence of all of the Suspended Arrivals is indispensable.

“I’d rather not,” says Helen.

Number Two is jeopardizing the operation of
administrative review for all concerned, says Sadie.

By this time the others are there and they
beg Helen to join them and not jeopardize their chances for
transfer.

“I don’t mean to be obstructive. If it makes
you feel better I’ll come. But it’s a farce like everything else
here, here and back there. Can’t you see that after all this
time?”

Advocate stands at the head of the library
table, gripping it to correct his sway. He’s a very old man with a
mane of thin dingy white hair, a thin mouth and an aquiline nose.
He looks like Franz Liszt in his final years, the same theatrical
spirituality after youthful excesses. His dominant mask-like
expression with them is paternal benevolence, which he maintains
even during that first visit in his lamentable state. He wears the
traditional French black lawyer’s gown with a white jabot. There’s
a sprinkle of dandruff on his shoulders.

His wide sleeves flap with his eloquent
rubber-gloved gesture of welcome as he invites them to sit down.
Doing that, he resembles a giant bat vainly trying to take off.
Unsupported, he comes close to falling on his face.

His rusty bumbling opening words are even
more outrageous than his aspect.

“
Hem-hem. Er … in my … er … official
capacity as your … harrumph … advocate allow me to … to … hem …
welcome, yes, welcome you to the
Préfecture de Police
. I am … harrumph … without exaggeration,
both happy and … and … yes, truly happy and honored to … er … to be
… defending New Arrivals.”

He beams feebly at them.

New Arrivals! In an outraged babble they let
this sodden parody of an advocate know that they’d been suspended
in this place for maybe a quarter of a century. Why has it taken
him such an incredibly long time to contact them?

He looks at them with rheumy distressed
eyes.

“Has it been – as you say – ‘long’? I have
just been notified of your arrival.”

They explode again.

“Whaddideesay?” Max asks, completely out of
it. Helen quickly translates. Max bellows:

“New Arrivals my ass! Jesus, we been here
forty fucking years and this boozed-up shit-head of a lawyer just
learns about it now!”

Smiling benignly, Advocate addresses the
others and confesses to a “hem, culpable ignorance of the tongue of
Shakespeare.” He requests a translation of his client’s words.

“He’s not happy about the delay,” says
Seymour. “Basically none of us are.”

Advocate leans forward, fearfully glances
about (and, strangely, up at the ceiling) and confides in a low,
less hesitant, voice:

“
Your … er … unhappiness at the state of
affairs in the
Préfecture
is,
alas, all too justified. Things here (and elsewhere, on a much
higher level, I suspect, but shh!) are no longer what they once
were. I dimly remember, oh, dimly, dimly, a distant, all too
distant, past when the … er … channels of communication were free
of encumbrance. Decisions were reached instantaneously. Orders were
immediately carried out. Arrivals in Administrative Suspension were
exceptional. The
Préfecture
itself was kept up. Ceilings were not permitted to crumble,
nor staircases to collapse. You have doubtless had sufficient … er
… ‘time’ to observe the sad state of disrepair of the
Préfecture
. And
decay grows apace. Certain people maintain – I am but citing them –
that a firmer hand on the tiller … But shh!”