Whitehead listened to the fluting voice lay these ironies out. Of course, he hadn’t suffered: he’d lived a life of delights. Mamoulian read the thought off his face.
“If I’d really wanted you to suffer,” he said, snail-slow, “I could have had that dubious satisfaction many years ago. And you know it.”
Whitehead nodded. The candle, which the European now lifted onto the table beside the dealt cards, guttered.
“What I want from you is something far more permanent than suffering,” Mamoulian said. “Now play. My fingers are itching.”
71
Marty got out of the car and stood for several seconds looking up at the looming bulk of the Hotel Pandemonium. It was not completely in darkness. A light, albeit frail, glimmered in one of the penthouse windows. He began, for a second time today, across the wasteland, his body shaking. Carys had made no contact with him since he had started on his journey here. He didn’t question her silence: there were too many plausible reasons for it, none of them pleasant.
As he approached he could see that the front door of the hotel had been forced. At least he’d be able to enter by a direct route instead of clambering up the fire escape. He stepped over the litter of planks, and through the grandiose doorway into the foyer, halting to accustom his eyes to the darkness before he began a cautious ascent of the burned stairs. In the gloom every sound he made was like gunfire at a funeral, shockingly loud. Try as he might to hush his tread, the stairway hid too many obstacles for complete silence; every step he took he was certain the European was hearing, was readying himself to breathe a killing emptiness onto him.
Once he reached the spot he’d entered from the fire escape, the going got easier. It was only as he advanced into the carpeted regions he realized-the thought brought a smile to his lips-that he’d come without either a weapon or a plan, however primitive, of how he was to snatch Carys. All he could hope was that she was no longer an important item on the European’s agenda: that she might be overlooked for a few vital moments. As he stepped onto the final staircase he caught sight of himself in one of the hall mirrors: thin, unshaven, his face still bearing traces of bloodstains, his shirt dark with blood-he looked like a lunatic. The image, reflecting so accurately the way he’d pictured himself-desperate, barbarous-gave him courage. He and his reflection agreed: he was out of his mind.
For only the second time in their long association they sat facing each other over the tiny table, and played chemin de fer. The game was uneventful; they were, it seemed, more evenly matched than they’d been in Muranowski Square, forty odd years before. And as they played, they talked. The talk too was calm and undramatic: of Evangeline, of how the market had fallen of late, of America, even, as the game progressed, of Warsaw.
“Have you ever been back?” Whitehead asked.
The European shook his head.
“It’s terrible, what they did.”
“The Germans?”
“The city planners.”
They played on. The cards were shuffled and dealt again, shuffled and dealt. The breeze of their motions made the candle flame flicker. The game went one way, then the other. The conversation faltered, and began again: chatty, almost banal. It was as though in these last minutes together-when they had so much to say-they could say nothing of the least significance, for fear it open the floodgates. Only once did the chat show its true colors-escalating from a simple remark to metaphysics in mere seconds:
“I think you’re cheating,” the European observed lightly. “You’d know if I was. All the tricks I use are yours.”
“Oh, come now.”
“It’s true. Everything I learned about cheating, I learned from you.” The European looked almost flattered.
“Even now,” Whitehead said.
“Even now what?”
“You’re still cheating, aren’t you? You shouldn’t be alive, not at your age.”
“It’s true.”
“You look the way you did in Warsaw, give or take a scar. What age are you? A hundred? Hundred and fifty?”
“Older.”
“And what’s it done for you? You’re more afraid than I am. You need someone to hold your hand while you die, and you chose me.”