GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE (6 page)

But the white starved hand withdraws. The
Prefect tugs back on the glove. The hungry lizard is muzzled. With
his gloved hand the Prefect comforts her bare shoulder. Her
shoulder flinches at the freezing contact that turns her heart to a
block of ice.

Margaret backslides to Maggie as she tries
to make up for the involuntary recoil. She smiles timidly up at the
death-mask in a flutter of eyelashes. Then she stops doing that
terrible inciting thing. Margaret again, she lowers her head in
deep humility. Her heavy cascade of once fiery hair, now
extinguished, falls forward, masking her face like a fundamentalist
Moslem veil. Possibly she isn’t aware that the displaced hair has
bared her downy neck vertebras, praised by countless lovers.
Staring down at them, the Prefect asks in a cavernous boom that
carries:

“Who ordered that this woman be exited
without the habitual inquiry?”

“
I did,
Monsieur le Préfet
,” says Sub-Prefect Marchini, still at
rigid attention and staring into space past the Prefect’s left
epaulette. “In her case and in three others.”

“
I was unaware that you were vested with
the authority to do so,
Monsieur le Sous-Préfet
.”

“
Technically I am not,
Monsieur le
Préfet
. But the
anomalies, numerous and glaring, testified to obvious erroneous
handling. [
On your part, as everybody knows.
] As you are doubtless aware,
Monsieur le
Préfet
, administrative
inquiries can take months or years. [
Again, your entire responsibility, as
everybody knows.
] During
that time, the Receiving Department is responsible for the
detention of the investigated individuals, with no budgetary
provision for their upkeep. [Whose fault?] I believed it to be in
the best interest of all concerned, in view of the obvious
anomalies, to take immediate action. Allow me,
Monsieur le
Préfet
, to enumerate
these anomalies. One: the complete nudity of the Five, partially
rectified by the Receiving Department. The towels that now
imperfectly clothe them are State property. Two: the absence of
exit-date and sojourn-date conformity. The dates of exit range from
1927 to 2000, the dates of sojourn from 1899 to 1951. Three: the
flagrant violation of the criterion of Goodness in the case of four
of the five: criminal abortion activities, theft, desecration of a
national shrine, tax evasion, indecent behavior in the Reception
Department …”

“
Precisely what sort of indecent
behavior,
Monsieur le Sous-Préfet?
”

Sub-Prefect Marchini glances right and left.
The women functionaries are within earshot. Much smaller than his
superior (superior for the time being) the Sub-Prefect elevates
himself to extreme tiptoe and whispers something long in the
Prefect’s ear.

“Be more
precise,
Monsieur le Sous-Préfet
.”

Once more, Sub-Prefect Marchini tiptoes to the level
of the Prefect’s ear and whispers something long.

“
Kindly eschew garbled Latinisms, laborious
euphemisms and obscure circumlocutions,
Monsieur le
Sous-Préfet
. Express
yourself in plain French.”

The Sub-Prefect sees the trap but sees no
way to avoid it. He whispers something very brief in the Prefect’s
bloodless ear.

Prefect d’Aubier de Hautecloque looks coldly
at Sub-Prefect Marchini.

“
I am surprised at the use of such vulgar
language here in the
Préfecture de Police, Monsieur le
Sous-Préfet
.” His voice
carries to the furthest corner of the room. Then he forgets
Sub-Prefect Marchini altogether and gazes musingly down at
Margaret.

Sub-Prefect Marchini’s gun-metal features
acknowledge nothing of the public humiliation endured. He follows
the Prefect’s gaze at the woman’s bare shoulder, the exquisite
slope of it, and remembers the hushed-up scandal involving the
Prefect and the platinum-blonde silent-film starlet in the August
1923 batch. Sub-Prefect Marchini is certain that the Prefect will
again yield to temptation. Certain too that retribution will be
devastating this time.

The cold dish, the cold dish, how delectable
that cold dish, further seasoned by this latest humiliation, will
soon be.

The Prefect removes his gaze from Margaret’s
shoulder. He makes a tiny dismissive gesture in the direction of
the Exiters. They stiffen with a creak of leather, salute and march
out of the Reception Room. The Prefect orders the concerned
functionaries to accompany the Arrivals to the Living Quarters.

The Arrivals stagger out of the Reception
Room into a gigantic circular passageway that seems suspended in
darkness. A drab alternation of doors and open corridors, hundreds
of both, run about a black pit a mile in diameter and delimited by
a shoulder-high iron fence bristling with needle-sharp spikes and
barbs. Dim lights in the circular wall illuminate no more than the
initial curve of what must culminate in a gigantic dome. To one
side of the Reception Room is an ornate Greco-Roman peristyle. Six
identical marble nudes uphold the Doric roof topped by a giant
bronze eagle. A carpet leads to an impressive door. Any doubt as to
the occupant of this dusty grandeur is dispelled when the Prefect
marches stiffly towards that door. It opens obediently and closes
behind him.

On the other side of the Reception Room is
another ornate door, but much smaller and in sad disrepair.
Fastened to the wall above it is another emblematic bird,
originally an eagle but much smaller than the Prefectoral eagle and
so battered that it resembles a crow.

The five Americans, maybe good, maybe not,
stand there shivering. The stern-faced middle-echelon female
functionary with iron-gray hair blows inaudibly on a smaller
whistle. In a minute three policemen join the group. While they go
on waiting for something or somebody else, Helen tries to soothe
Max. She touches his arm. “Maybe you’re right, Max. Maybe they’ll
take you to the airport.”

But Max doesn’t believe that anymore. He
pulls away from her hand. He knows the score now. And maybe this
woman is in cahoots with his captors.

Sub-Prefect Marchini passes by jerkily,
heading for the inferior door and bird.

“
Monsieur
,” Seymour Stein inquires timidly: “What
will happen to us if we are not voided? Where will we go? And how
long will we have to wait here?”

“You will be informed in due course,” says
the Sub-Prefect without breaking his jerky stride. “Learn to arm
yourself with patience in this place. As we all do.”

Chapter 6

In The Corridors

They go on shivering in the gloom. After a
while they hear a
clump-jangle, clump-jangle
, and another gray-smocked functionary joins the
three
flics
and the
stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary. He’s bald and
immensely tall and thin. There’s a hint of drab eyes at the bottom
of the shadows that fill his bony eye-sockets. His cheek-bones
protest sharply against his parchment-like skin. Three whistles
hang from his neck. Attached to his belt is a great metal ring with
dozens of big keys. On his left foot is a thick-soled orthopedic
shoe.

The turnkey leads the way. He pitches and tosses
like a rusty freighter in heavy seas. The orthopedic shoe makes a
clumping sound, the keys a dull jangle. He turns into a corridor
and the others follow.

Clump-jangle,
clump-jangle
, past
obscure doors set in cracked walls covered with blistered gray
paint and scratched graffiti, illegible in the gloom. There are no
windows. Feeble light filters down from wicker-enclosed bulbs of
thrifty wattage pitched at regular intervals and dangling from the
ceiling. Sometimes a succession of bulbs are smashed or dead. When
that happens the gaunt turnkey halts and folds to a squat and makes
notes in a notebook on his knee, noting the number and location of
the burst or dead bulbs for later administrative action. Then he
unfolds to his full height and convoys them through the long zone
of darkness,
clump-jangle, clump-jangle
.

Left turns, right turns, up creaking staircases,
down creaking staircases with wobbly banisters. In certain
staircases, rectifying obvious miscalculation, the last few steps
are much higher or lower than the others. Max and Seymour stumble
and sprawl several times. Sometimes the new corridors, turning,
deviate from the normal ninety degrees and veer off at
unconventionally acute angles. Without warning, and for no apparent
reason, the ceiling of a new corridor swoops down oppressively low
or soars to a fantastic height. The building-plan seems to have
been slapped together on some unimaginably huge draftsman’s table
by a stoned or stewed architect. Or perhaps – the notion will often
occur to Seymour in the long time to come – by a trembling hand
poorly commanded by a brain suffering from senile dementia.

The bare feet of the Chosen Five encounter
grit and scraps of paper. Once, they turn into a howling corridor
and a ferocious wind almost knocks them down, almost rips the
towels off their shivering bodies. They cough and weep in the
driven dust. Papers blow past them like panicked birds. Their
shadows rock wildly as the overhead bulbs reel in the storm. Some
of the bulbs strike the wall and expire with a feeble pop.

They pass by a cell. Shadowy silent figures
are seated on the floor in attitudes of prostration.

Further on, behind certain of the closed
doors they hear banging noises. The fists of other prisoners
hammering for release or shutters banging in the high wind?

Half-asleep, the Five stumble forward,
leaning against the wind. They have colorless unimaginative dreams
in which they are walking down endless dusty windowless corridors
with doors that never open and when they awaken out of the dreams
it’s to endless dusty windowless corridors with doors that never
open. The notion occurs to some of them that their case has already
been judged, that they have already been exited and that this is
what you do for all time when you are exited.

The notion doesn’t occur to Helen maybe
because she still doesn’t care much about what’s happening to her
personally. But she is concerned about Max, plodding alongside her.
His features are set in an expression of intense suffering.
Naturally Helen thinks the cause is metaphysical and that any
second now he’ll sag to the floor again and howl unbearably at
being dead.

Helen can’t know that Max has rejected the
dismal testimony of the tag. He’s trying to figure out the real
situation. His brain is working hard. It’s a novel exercise and
hurts. That explains his expression of intense suffering.

One thing he’s practically 100% sure of now:
Max Pilsudski hasn’t bitten the big one yet. The tag with that 2000
exit date is some kind of a brain-washing trick. Trying to make him
think he’s gone nuts. Why? Who’s behind it? What are they after?
Something somebody smuggled in his truck? He remembers the load: a
thousand or so cases of Perrier mineral water. French too. Couldn’t
be a coincidence. He doesn’t know what the hustle is yet. There are
plenty of loose pieces in the picture, like that accident (or was
it an accident?) and the plastic surgery job on his body and these
other prisoners, if they really are prisoners. He’s sure though
that the pieces will fit together at the end.

Max is terrifically relieved by the way
things have simplified into the possibility of action. What he has
to do is escape. This is the kind of set-up you can escape from,
not like the other set-up they’re trying to make him buy. But he
isn’t buying. He hasn’t bought it, hasn’t bought it, he keeps on
telling himself.

They turn into a windless acutely-angled
corridor. At the end of it they see a girl on her knees next to a
pail, sponges, rags, a scoop and a bottle. Her scrubbing-brush
moves in feeble inch-by-inch arcs. Clearly she’s daydreaming of
more pleasant places than this. She looks up as they approach and
the rhythm of the scrubbing-brush accelerates furiously in a
foolish avowal of shirking. She’s very young. Her face is frozen in
an expression of fright. Now she starts gasping for breath,
probably to give the impression that she’s been scrubbing at that
furious pace for hours. A pathetically transparent childish ruse.
She looks like a child. Perhaps, though, the three-second burst of
energy really has exhausted her. She’s very thin.

Turnkey speaks for the first time. His voice
sounds like a rusty key turning in a rusty lock.

“
Stupide,
” he says. “You should be preparing the
rooms for the new Arrivals.”

“
Monsieur
,” she replies in a tiny frightened voice,
“nobody told me there were Arrivals.”

“You can see that there are Arrivals, five in all,
two women and three men,” says the stern-faced middle-echelon
female functionary. “Prepare the rooms immediately.”

The girl stares up at Seymour in
dim-witted imploration, as though Seymour, despite his scanty
loin-cloth and dazed expression and chattering teeth, somehow could
exercise powers of intercession. “
Monsieur
, I swear nobody told me …”

The stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary
cuts her short. “It is forbidden to talk to Arrivals. As you well
know. You have been warned dozens of times. You will be reported if
you do so again. Also if you are not gone immediately to prepare
the rooms.”