The Same River Twice (51 page)

“Does that mean no?” Groot asked her.

“It means I wanted to slap you.”

“Then do it again.”

She did, harder still.

“Exactly,” said Groot. “So this is what I think.” He took her elbows in his palms to gentle her. “Odile, our friend, has asked us to help her. We have agreed, because the circumstances are unusual, and because she’s our friend. But you don’t really want to do what she asks. You want me, the upright Dutchman, to be the one to bear the bad news and say, ‘No, what you ask of us is illegal. No, it would endanger our safety and maybe that of our boat. Besides, and for no particular reason, we don’t
want
to do it.’”

Max zoomed further in until his subjects’ heads and shoulders were tightly confined within the frame. He could tell that Rachel wasn’t sure whether Groot was acting, telling the truth, or telling a truth he thought was hers.

“No!” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous, putting words in my mouth like that. Even a child could see what you’re up to. Pig!”

He smiled and, superbly, became one.

She lunged, but he easily fended her off. She lunged again and, slipping one ankle behind the two of his, pushed him over backward, onto the deck. His surprise, Max saw, was genuine. She stood over Groot, hands on her waist, panting, as he propped himself up on his elbows and forearms to contemplate her.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I mean, I’ve been wanting to do that for awhile, but it doesn’t really make me feel any better.”

“Love in its savage state,” said Groot, getting to his feet. “So invigorating.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Rachel demanded.

With a slow roll of his hand, Max beckoned Odile into the action. She came at the pace indicated, a languid stroll suitable for a moonlit night on shipboard, but when she entered the frame, Max’s heart inexplicably began to race, just taking off on him, up, up, and away. There was no time to wonder why. Instead, he reminded himself that, even if he wasn’t entirely in charge here, his own receptivity, properly cultivated, would eventually reveal what he’d come to record.

Odile said, “I’ve just had the strangest dream.”

Max moved in on their three faces until they were framed close, like clover leaves bleached silver by the moon.

“Tell us,” said Rachel.

“It was in a railway station, I don’t know where. Eastern Europe, maybe. We were in the main hall, all four of us—a place that had once been thought grand but now was like a ruin, very dilapidated, you know? And there was a huge crowd surging around us, people trying to escape some kind of disaster. A war, I think. There was artillery fire nearby. Anyway, we couldn’t speak the language, and we didn’t have any money or tickets. The last train out was due to depart at any minute. I thought,
We’re trapped. We’ll die here.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” said Groot.

“But what I sound like and what I am are often very different things. Surely you know that, Groot.”

“Anyway,” said Rachel. “The dream.”

“Yes. So just as I was thinking these thoughts—of resignation, you might say—a great stillness came over the departures hall. I looked around me. Everyone but the four of us had all at once been frozen solid, like ice statues. In the blink of an eye. No one could speak or move. Only us. Max was the first to realize what this meant and he pushed forward, knocking people aside. Some of them, a lot of them, shattered when they hit the marble floor. We didn’t care. We were also knocking over these frozen supplicants, almost as if it were a game. I wondered if this was death for them—breaking into a million pieces like that—or whether being frozen had already killed them. It didn’t matter, though. I was completely detached. We made it to the window, grabbed tickets for ourselves, and ran to the platform. The conductor took our tickets, and we got on just before the train pulled out. We got away.” She drew inward, speaking now to herself. “We escaped.”

A short silence followed. Max made motions to proceed.

“This, I think, is quite positive,” Groot said. “In adversity, we were resourceful together. Survivors amid the calamities of the world, which are always legion. You should be happy.
We
should be happy.”

“But we weren’t the ones who froze those people. That just happened.” She deliberated further, then declared, “We weren’t resourceful, we were lucky.” She glanced at Groot to see if she’d offended him, then recoiled. “Oh my God! Your cheek, what happened?”

“Does it show?” He touched the inflamed area. “Yes, well, Rachel was expressing some dissatisfactions. And in this case I
wasn’t
lucky.”

“Liar,” Rachel said.

“It had to do with the guests we’re expecting,” he told Odile. “Your friends.”

“It had to do,” Rachel corrected him, “with your putting words in my mouth.” She turned her back to the others and, leaning on the rail, gazed moodily out over the river, into the translucent white.

“Listen,” Odile said, “if this is about us getting those people out of Paris tonight, let’s just call it off. I’ll tell them—”

Thinking he’d probably end up running Odile’s words in voice-over, Max panned left to focus solely on Rachel, whose sultry sulk was quickly taking on a power of its own. At precisely the same moment, however, a large white yacht ran by, very fast and close, throwing up great curls of frothy water that were nonetheless almost invisible in the fog. The roar of its engines drowned out whatever Odile was saying and the sudden swell cast the
Nachtvlinder
back against her mooring. As the houseboat rebounded off the quai, Rachel was in turn thrown hard against the rail. She held tight. Some seconds later, when the wake had subsided, she leaned over and peered down into the Seine—looking for something she’d dropped, it seemed to Max. But whatever it was, it was well and truly lost. She turned to the camera, and Max saw that her glasses were gone, her deep blue eyes as large and liquid as mountain lakes.

“That was my last pair,” she said ruefully.

Max zoomed in slowly on her features and held the shot, waiting. When she blinked a second time, he cut. “That was great, you guys. First rate. Take five.”

Groot drew Rachel aside. “Do you want me to get my mask and go down after them?” he asked.

“Thanks, but you’ve already had enough river toxins for a lifetime. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the lens prescription below somewhere.”

Max stepped back to insert a new cartridge into the camera. Something about Odile’s improvised dream account had caught his fancy, as if it contained a message for him, but he couldn’t decipher it. He looked around to see if the light was holding. It was.

Then he heard Odile say, in a hoarse whisper quite unlike the voice she’d used to recount the dream, “They’re here.”

Looking to the gangway, Max saw Jacques backing slowly onto the boat, filming. He was soon followed by an athletic young woman Max had never seen before, then a fastidious-looking man with sparkly eyeglasses and shaven scalp, then by the man whose picture the CRS had shown Rachel shortly before Max received his punch to the gut. The doctor. As they came
aboard, Jacques peeled off along the quai-side rail, still filming, but no longer an obstacle to Max’s field of view. Unthinkingly, he turned his own camera a hundred and eighty degrees on its tripod, put it on automatic, and went forward, along with everyone else, to greet the new arrivals.

Odile gave him a dazzling smile, and he returned it. Quite possibly, he thought, he was the most inventive and daring filmmaker of his time.

“I am Groot Gansevoort, captain of this boat,” the Dutchman said. “As I understand it, you want us to take you to England. This is correct?”

“Yes,” said the woman, who didn’t introduce herself. She wore a white denim jacket and carried a turquoise purse. “We would be so grateful. And we can pay you.”

“This is Rachel, my first mate,” Groot continued. “It will take us at least twenty minutes before we can get under way. I think the best thing would be for you to stay out of sight for now, and since I’ll need Rachel’s assistance, her friend Odile, whom you’ve obviously met, will escort you below.”

The doctor whispered something into the other man’s ear. Without hesitation, the latter addressed himself to Max. “Our guest of honor is a little worried about the cameras. Is it possible to know what they’re for?”

“Of course,” Max said. “We’re making a short feature film about this boat, which has been recently restored, and its owners, whom you just met. I am Max Colby, and film is my profession. Your friend has absolutely no cause for alarm.”

“Thank you,” he replied. But his eyes remained fixed on Max.

Odile was already shooing the new arrivals below. When the one facing Max failed to respond, she called impatiently after him. “Thierry! Hurry up!”

At this, Max stayed the man with a hand against his chest. “You are Thierry Colin?”

He nodded almost imperceptibly.

“The person who went to Moscow with my wife, smuggled the flags, counterfeited my film, and vandalized its ending. Correct?”

Colin looked both surprised and perturbed, as if he were receiving this news about himself for the first time. But after drawing a long breath he said, “Yes, I’m afraid that
is
correct. All of it. Though if you’d allow me the opportunity, I would very much like to explain myself.”

Max didn’t respond.

Using the same hoarse whisper as before, Odile again appealed to the man to get himself out of sight belowdecks.

“She’s right,” said Max, lowering his hand. “Go. Do it now.”

“But—”

“I don’t want your explanations.”

Looking thoughtful, Colin lingered a moment more. But no words came to him, and he went.

When they were alone on deck, Jacques gave Max a thumbs-up. “Let me be the first to say that I understand practically nothing of what just happened, but one thing is certain: we got every bit of it, sound and image.” He pointed to the audio boom he’d propped overhead against the wheelhouse.

“Good work,” said Max. “A decisive moment, for sure.” He gnawed at a thumbnail, mulling things over. “Not that I understand much of it either. The doctor we know. Apparently he’s about to flee the country on our very own
Nachtvlinder
. Tonight.” He fell deeper into contemplation. “And that guy, Thierry Colin. You heard what he said.” Max smote his brow. “Bastard! What’s more, somebody just warned me to watch out for him, right before I called you. But I never imagined I’d see him
here.”

Jacques squinted westward with feigned indifference, his eyes running up the Eiffel Tower. It was still alight, if only for a few more minutes. “What does Odile say? I get the feeling she understands it.”

“So it would appear, yes. Or part of it, anyway. But I can’t ask her.”

“Why not?”

Max smiled grimly and shook his head. “Such are the mysteries of matrimony, my friend. The less you ask, the more you actually find out. Besides …”

Jacques waited for Max to go on, but just then a dark thought intruded, abruptly quashing Max’s need to instruct.

“Forget it,” he said.

Nearby, unseen, a clutch of ducklings and their mother made the occasional small murmurings that waterfowl make when they sleep—to keep track of one another, it was said. Or for reassurance.

“One more question.”

“Yes?” Max said sharply.

“What made you decide to step into the frame? You’re in the picture now. A character.”

Max softened. “I don’t know, it just happened. We can always lose it in the edit.”

“Sure. But I bet we won’t.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

Jacques took off his baseball hat, smoothed some stray hairs back into place, and put it on again, visor in back, as before. “Because it works.”

Max looked sideways at him. “You think so?” he said, chewing again at his thumbnail.

“Under the conditions, namely that we don’t know what’s next, we need all the flexibility we can get. With you out there in the action—your camera left behind, as before, on automatic, and me handling the other one as needed—we maximize our options, no?”

Max inspected him through narrowed eyes. “So you’re telling me you want to take over as director of this picture, is that it? You’re relieving me of my command?”

Jacques shrugged. “I just feel really on tonight, that’s all.”

Bemused, Max watched Rachel hurry past the two of them and down the gangway. A moment later she was at the quai-side hookup, beginning to detach the
Nachtvlinder
from her electrical feed and other assorted umbilicals. Groot was no doubt in the engine room. Things were moving fast.

“You’re right,” Max said. “And I’m feeling the same. So we’ll try it.” He took another small black cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. “Now, Jacques, would you be so kind as to have a quick talk with Rachel down there? See if you can find out the order of business, technically speaking, for casting off?”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Struggling to conceal a smile, Jacques turned on his heel and hurried down the gangway.

Max walked to the stern, his thoughts aswarm. He remembered the man who had called last Friday, during the dinner party, highly strung, asking for Odile without identifying himself, of whom Odile, when informed of the call, had asked,
French guy?
And indeed he’d been French. If, as now seemed entirely possible, the caller was Thierry Colin, and he, not Turner, was the one having the affair with Odile, then things were far more complicated than Max ever could have anticipated.
He has something of mine, something personal
, Véronique had said of Colin. And now the same man had just admitted to having appropriated one of Max’s films. If his film, why not his wife, with an alternative ending for her as well? Impossible. Odile would never knowingly betray his work. Possible.
Paris is quite small in some respects
. And then there was Eddie, cautioning Max to sever all contacts with these people, say no more on the phone, come by first thing in the morning.
Stay safe
.

Out of the corner of his eye, Max glimpsed Jacques running up the gangway to get his camera. Rachel followed with an armload of cable. Max returned to the stern and put his own camera on automatic.