The Spy Quartet - Len Deighton

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easel.

      ‘Yes, we’ll go to that,’ said Byrd; he was pleased to be organizing us. ‘Are you in your fine motor, Jean?’ Byrd asked.

      Jean nodded.

      Jean’s car was a white Mercedes convertible. We drove down the Champs with the roof down. We wined and dined well and Jean-Paul plagued us with questions like do the Americans drink Coca-Cola because it’s good for their livers.

      It was nearly one A.M. when Jean dropped Byrd at the studio. He insisted upon driving me back to my room over Le Petit Légionnaire. ‘I am especially glad you came tonight,’ he said. ‘Byrd thinks that he is the only serious painter in Paris, but there are many of us who work equally hard in our own way.’

      ‘Being in the navy,’ I said, ‘is probably not the best of training for a painter.’

      ‘There is no training for a painter. No more than there is training for life. A man makes as profound a statement as he is able. Byrd is a sincere man with a thirst for knowledge of painting and an aptitude for its skills. Already his work is attracting serious interest here in Paris and a reputation in Paris will carry you anywhere in the world.’

      I sat there for a moment nodding, then I opened the door of the Mercedes and got out. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

      Jean-Paul leaned across the seat, offered me his card and shook my hand. ‘Phone me,’ he said, and – without letting go of my hand – added, ‘If you want to go to the house in the Avenue Foch I can arrange that too. I’m not sure I can recommend it, but if you have money to lose I’ll introduce you. I am a close friend of the Count; last week I took the Prince of Besacoron there – he is another very good friend of mine.’

      ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the card. He stabbed the accelerator and the motor growled. He winked and said, ‘But no recriminations afterward.’

      ‘No,’ I agreed. The Mercedes slid forward.

      I watched the white car turn on to the Avenue with enough momentum to make the tyres howl. The Petit Légionnaire was closed. I let myself in by the side entrance. Datt and my landlord were still sitting at the same table as they had been that afternoon. They were still playing Monopoly. Datt was reading from his Community Chest card, ‘Allez en prison. Avancez tout droit en prison. Ne passez pas par la case “Départ”. Ne recevez pas Frs 20.000.’ My landlord laughed, so did M. Datt.

      ‘What will your patients say?’ said my landlord.

      ‘They are very understanding,’ said Datt; he seemed to take the whole game seriously. Perhaps he got more out of it that way.

      I tiptoed upstairs. I could see right across Paris. Through the dark city the red neon arteries of the tourist industry flowed from Pigalle through Montmartre to Boul. Mich., Paris’s great self-inflicted wound.

      Joe chirped. I read Jean’s card. ‘“Jean-Paul Pascal, artist painter”. And good friend to princes,’ I said. Joe nodded.

      4

      Two nights later I was invited to join the Monopoly game. I bought hotels in rue Lecourbe and paid rent at the Gare du Nord. Old Datt pedantically handled the toy money and told us why we went broke.

      When only Datt remained solvent he pushed back his chair and nodded sagely as he replaced the pieces of wood and paper in the box. If you were buying old men, then Datt would have come in a box marked White, Large and Bald. Behind his tinted spectacles his eyes were moist and his lips soft and dark like a girl’s, or perhaps they only seemed dark against the clear white skin of his face. His head was a shiny dome and his white hair soft and wispy like mist around a mountain top. He didn’t smile much, but he was a genial man, although a little fussy in his mannerisms as people of either sex become when they live alone.

      Madame Tastevin had, upon her insolvency, departed to the kitchen to prepare supper.

      I offered my cigarettes to Datt and to my landlord. Tastevin took one, but Datt declined with a theatrical gesture. ‘There seems no sense in it,’ he proclaimed, and again did that movement of the hand that looked like he was blessing a multitude at Benares. His voice was an upper-class voice, not because of his vocabulary or because he got his conjugations right but because he sang his words in the style of the Comédie Française, stressing a word musically and then dropping the rest of the sentence like a half-smoked Gauloise. ‘No sense in it,’ he repeated.

      ‘Pleasure,’ said Tastevin, puffing away. ‘Not sense.’ His voice was like a rusty lawn-mower.

      ‘The pursuit of pleasure,’ said Datt, ‘is a pitfall-studded route.’ He removed the rimless spectacles and looked up at me blinking.

      ‘You speak from experience?’ I asked.

      ‘I’ve done everything,’ said Datt. ‘Some things twice. I’ve lived in eight different countries in four continents. I’ve been a beggar and I’ve been a thief. I’ve been happy and sad, rich and poor, master and manservant.’

      ‘And the secret of happiness,’ mocked Tastevin, ‘is to refrain from smoking?’

      ‘The secret of happiness,’ Datt corrected, ‘is to refrain from wishing to.’

      ‘If that’s the way you feel,’ said Tastevin, ‘why do you come to my restaurant almost every day?’

      At that moment Madame Tastevin came in with a tray holding a coffee jug and plates of cold chicken and terrine of hare.

      ‘There’s your reason for not smoking,’ said Datt. ‘I would never let tobacco mar the taste of the food here.’ Madame Tastevin purred with delight. ‘I sometimes think my life is too perfect. I enjoy my work and never wish to do less of it, and I eat your wonderful food. What a perfect life.’

      ‘That’s self-indulgent,’ said Tastevin.

      ‘Perhaps it is – so what? Isn’t your life self-indulgent? You could make far more money working in one of the three-star restaurants but you spend your life running this small one – one might almost say for your friends.’

      ‘I suppose that’s true,’ said Tastevin. ‘I enjoy cooking, and my customers appreciate my work I think.’

      ‘Quite so. You are a sensible man. It’s madness to go every day to work at something you do not enjoy.’

      ‘But suppose,’ asked Madame Tastevin, ‘that such a job brought us a lot of money that would enable him to retire and then do as he wishes?’

      ‘Madame,’ said Datt. His voice took on that portentous, melodious quality that narrators on arty French films employ. ‘Madame Tastevin,’ he said again, ‘there is a cave in Kashmir – Amarnath cave – the most sacred spot on earth to a worshipper of the Hindu god Siva. The pilgrims who journey there are old; sometimes sick too. Many of them die on the high passes, their tiny tents swept away by the sudden rainstorms. Their relatives do not weep. To them this does not matter; even the arrival – which must always be on a night of full moon – is not more vital than the journey. Many know they will never arrive. It is the journey that is holy, and so it is to Existentialists: life is more important than death. Whatever they do, men are too anxious to get to the end. The sex act, eating a fine meal, playing golf, there is a temptation to rush, gobble or run. That is foolish, for one should move at a relaxed pace through life doing the work one enjoys instead of chasing ambition helter-skelter, pursuing one’s ultimate death.’

      Tastevin nodded sagely and I stopped gobbling the cold chicken. Datt tucked a napkin in his collar and savoured a little terrine, pursing his lips and remarking on the salt content. When he had finished he turned to me. ‘You have a telephone, I believe,’ he said, and without waiting for my reply was already on his feet and moving towards the door.

      ‘By all means use it,’ I told him and by a burst of speed was able to get upstairs before him. Joe blinked in the sudden electric light. Datt dialled a number and said ‘Hello, I am at the Petit Légionnaire

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