Cont'd

‘Not this one.  Let’s go to that one.’  He pointed to the Café de la Paix.  ‘We could have something to eat there.’

‘All right,’ said Jeanne, ‘it looks nicer.’

She made her telephone call and came back to where he was sitting.

‘They say there’s another train around half past ten.’

She took off her little hat with its short veil.  The man extricated himself from his tunic.  Underneath, he had on a vest-like woolen shirt of a mauvish blue.  Jeanne saw that his eyes had a touch of mauve in them.  He lit a cigarette.  His fingernails, unusually delicate for a man’s, were rimmed with blue – obviously traces of paint.

‘You’re a painter,’ said Jeanne, closing her eyes, ‘and you have a fondness for blue.’

‘For grey too,’ he said with a laugh.  ‘The grey of your eyes, the grey of this material …’  He reached out a finger and touched the end of Jeanne’s sleeve whilst running an eye over the menu.  ‘What’ll you have?’

‘A omelette.’

‘Is that all?’

‘And a cup of tea.’

‘An omelette and a cup of tea for the lady, please, and a Bon Soir for me,’ he said to the waiter in French.

‘How long have you been speaking French?’ asked Jeanne.

‘I was brought up by a Breton lady by the name of Mademoiselle Élise.  My father spoke French:  he used to do a lot of business with France.  He was killed in a pogrom.’

‘When was that?’

‘In 1902.  In Jitomir.  Lev Trotsky is my cousin.  Ever since that day’ – he ran his finger down his nose – ‘I’ve had this head of hair.  It looked pretty strange when I was fourteen.’

‘It still does,’ said Jeanne.

The waiter brought them their drinks.

‘Your health!’ the man said, proffering Jeanne his glass.

Jeanne took a sip and gave it back to him.

‘I never knew my father,’ said Jeanne.  ‘And I can’t say that I’ve ever felt the lack of him.  Having a father you love, knowing that he’s always there to protect you, and then losing him – ‘well, that’s a sorrow I’ve been spared.’

‘My name is Samuel.  In the film credits your name appears as Vera, but your real name is Jeanne.  Gauer’s told me a lot about you.  About your mother, too.  And even about the way you were brought up.  But not about your child – did you have it after Gauer left for America …?’

‘He wasn’t my own,’ said Jeanne.  ‘Not that it makes any difference.’

‘No, it doesn’t make any difference,’ echoed Samuel.

‘We were very happy together.  I never realized at the time quite how much of a support he was to me.’

‘You’ll have to find another.’

‘I don’t think it happens quite like that.’

‘Waiter, another Bon Soir and a bottle of Sancerre, please,’ said Samuel.

I don’t know about this, thought Jeanne; but there was something about this man which made it impossible to go against him.  She picked at her omelette.  Samuel downed his second Bon Soir and set about emptying the bottle of wine.  He drank in a mechanical fashion, without displaying the slightest relish.  Jeanne observed no hint of pleasure in anything he did.  There was a quality of detachment about the way he held his glass, the way he looked at this or that, even the way he spoke.  Not that he seemed weak; it was rather that his engagement with events around him, obvious though it was, was inconsistent.  And in this ambiguity Jeanne felt there was a certain grace.  She was quite simply at ease in his company.

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