“Who are you?” Lewis asked again.
The man shook his head; shook his body, in fact, his gloved hands gesturing around his mouth. Was he dumb? The shaking of the head was more violent now, as though he was about to have a fit.
“Are you all right?”
Suddenly, the shaking stopped, and to his surprise Lewis saw tears, large, syrupy tears well up in the stranger’s eyes and roll down his rough cheeks and into the bush of his beard.
As if ashamed of his display of feelings, the man turned away from the light, making a thick noise of sobbing in his throat, and exited. Lewis followed, more curious about this stranger than nervous of his intentions.
“Wait!”
The man was already half-way down the first flight of stairs, nimble despite his build.
“Please wait, I want to talk to you,” Lewis began down the stairs after him, but the pursuit was lost before it was started. Lewis’ joints were stiff with age and the cold, and it was late. No time to be running after a much younger man, along a pavement made lethal with ice and snow. He chased the stranger as far as the door and then watched him run off down the street; his gait was mincing as Catherine had said. Almost a waddle, ridiculous in a man so big.
The smell of his perfume was already snatched away by the north-east wind. Breathless, Lewis climbed the stairs again, past the din of the party, to claim a set of clothes for Phillipe.
The next day Paris woke to a blizzard of unprecedented ferocity. The calls to Mass went unrequited, the hot Sunday croissants went un-bought, the newspapers lay unread on the vendors’ stalls. Few people had either the nerve or the motive to step outside into the howling gale. They sat by their fires, hugging their knees, and dreamt of spring.
Catherine wanted to go to the prison to visit Phillipe, but Lewis insisted that he go alone. It was not simply the cold weather that made him cautious on her behalf; he had difficult words to say to Phillipe, delicate questions to ask him. After the previous night’s encounter in his room, he had no doubt that Phillipe had a rival, probably a murderous rival. The only way to save Phillipe’s life, it seemed, was to trace the man. And if that meant delving into Phillipe’s sexual arrangements, then so be it. But it wasn’t a conversation he, or Phillipe, would have wanted to conduct in Catherine’s presence.
The fresh clothes Lewis had brought were searched, then given to Phillipe, who took them with a nod of thanks.
“I went to the house last night to fetch these for you.”
“Oh.”
“There was somebody in the room already.” Phillipe’s jaw muscle began to churn, as he ground his teeth together. He was avoiding Lewis’s eyes.
“A big man, with a beard. Do you know him, or of him?”
“No.”
“Phillipe -”
“No!”
“The same man attacked Catherine,” Lewis said.
“What?” Phillipe had begun to tremble. “With a razor.”
“Attacked her?” Phillipe said. “Are you sure?”
“Or was going to.”
“No! He would never have touched her. Never!”
“Who is it Phillipe? Do you know?”
“Tell her not to go there again; please, Lewis —” His eyes implored. “Please, for God’s sake tell her never to go there again. Will you do that? Or you. Not you either.”
“Who is it?”
“Tell her.”
“I will. But you must tell me who this man is, Phillipe.” He shook his head, grinding his teeth together audibly now.
“You wouldn’t understand, Lewis. I couldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Tell me; I want to help.”
“Just let me die.”
“Who is he?”
“Just let me die. . . I want to forget, why do you try to make me remember? I want to —”
He looked up again: his eyes were bloodshot, and red-rimmed from nights of tears. But now it seemed there were no more tears left in him; just an arid place where there had been an honest fear of death, a love of love, and an appetite for life. What met Lewis’s eyes was a universal indifference: to continuation, to self-preservation, to feeling.