green or yellow he would never again see in her the woman who, that day ten years earlier, he had desired so much when she had nonchalantly held out her long violet gloves to him.
Henri smiled at her gently. ‘Dance with me,’ he said.
‘Yes, let’s dance,’ she replied in a voice so ardent that it made him freeze up. Their life together had been so dismal during the past year that Paula herself had seemed to be losing her taste for it. But at the beginning of September, she changed abruptly; now, in her every word, every kiss, every look, there was a passionate quivering. When he took her in his arms she moved herself hard against him, murmuring, ‘Do you remember the first time we danced together?’
‘Yes, at the Pagoda. You told me I danced very badly.’
‘That was the day I took you to the Musée Grévin. You did not know about it. You did not know about anything,’ she said tenderly. She pressed her forehead against his cheek. ‘I can see us the way we were then.’
And so could he. They had stood together on a pedestal in the middle of the Palais des Mirages and everywhere around them they had seen themselves endlessly multiplied in a forest of mirrored columns. Tell me I’m the most beautiful of all women … You’re the most beautiful of all women … And you’ll be the most glorious man in the world …
Now he turned his eyes towards one of the large mirrors. Their entwined dancing bodies were infinitely repeated alongside an endless row of Christmas trees, and Paula was smiling at him blissfully. Didn’t she realize, he asked himself, that they were no longer the same couple?
‘Someone just knocked,’ Henri said, and he rushed to the door. It was the Dubreuilhs, heavily laden with shopping bags and baskets. Anne held a bunch of roses in her arms, and slung over Dubreuilh’s shoulder were huge bunches of red pimentos. Nadine followed them in, a sullen look on her face.
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Did you hear the news? The air force was able to deliver at last.’
‘Yes, a thousand planes!’
‘They wiped them out.’
‘It’s all over.’
Dubreuilh dumped the load of red fruit on the couch. ‘Here’s something to decorate your little brothel.’
‘Thanks,’ Paula said coolly. It annoyed her when Dubreuilh called her studio a brothel – because of all the mirrors and those red draperies, he said.
He surveyed the room. ‘The centre beam is the only place for them; they’ll look a lot better up there than that mistletoe.’
‘I like the mistletoe,’ Paula said firmly.
‘Mistletoe is stupid; it’s round, it’s traditional. And moreover it’s a parasite.’
‘Why not string the pimentos along the railing at the head of the stairs,’ Anne suggested.
‘It would look much better up here,’ Dubreuilh replied.
‘I’m sticking to my holly and my mistletoe,’ Paula insisted.
‘All right, all right, it’s your home,’ Dubreuilh conceded. He beckoned to Nadine. ‘Come and help me,’ he said.
Anne unpacked a pork pâté, butter, cheese, cakes. ‘And this is for the punch,’ she said, setting two bottles of rum on the table. She placed a package in Paula’s hands. ‘Here, that’s your present. And here’s something for you,’ she said, handing Henri a clay pipe, the bowl shaped like a bird’s claw clutching a small egg. It was the same kind of pipe that Louis used to smoke fifteen years before.
‘Remarkable,’ said Henri. ‘How did you ever guess that I’ve been wanting a pipe like this for the past fifteen years?’
‘Simple,’ said Anne. ‘You told me.’
‘Two pounds of tea!’ Paula exclaimed. ‘You’ve saved my life! And does it smell good! Real tea!’
Henri began cutting slices of bread which Anne smeared with butter and Paula with the pork pâté. At the same time, Paula kept an anxious eye on Dubreuilh, who was hammering nails into the railing with heavy blows.
‘Do you know what’s missing here?’ he cried out to Paula. ‘A big crystal chandelier. I’ll dig one up for you.’
‘Don’t bother. I don’t want one.’
Dubreuilh finished hanging the clusters of pimentos and came down the stairs.
‘Not bad!’ he said, examining his work with a critical eye. He went over to the table and opened a small bag of spices; for years, on the slightest excuse, he had been concocting that same punch, the recipe for which he had learned in Haiti. Leaning against the railing, Nadine was chewing one of the pimentos; at eighteen, in spite of her experiences in the various French and American beds, she still seemed in the middle of the awkward age.
‘Don’t eat the scenery,’ Dubreuilh shouted at her. He emptied a bottle of rum into a salad bowl and turned towards Henri. ‘I met Samazelle the day before yesterday and I’m glad to say that he seems inclined to go along with us. Are you free tomorrow night?’
‘I can’t get away from the paper before eleven,’ Henri replied.
‘Then stop by at eleven,’ Dubreuilh said. ‘We have to go over the whole deal, and I’d very much like you to be there.’
Henri smiled. ‘I don’t quite see why.’
‘I told him that you work with me, but your actually being there will carry more weight.’
‘I doubt if it would mean very much to someone like Samazelle,’ Henry said, still smiling. ‘He must know I’m not a politician.’
‘But, like myself, he thinks that politics should never again be left to politicians,’ Dubreuilh said. ‘Come over, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Samazelle has an interesting group behind him. Young fellows; we need them.’
‘Now listen,’ Paula said angrily, ‘you’re not going to start talking politics again! Tonight’s a holiday.’
‘So?’ Dubreuilh said. ‘Is there a law against talking about things that interest you on holidays?’
‘Why do you insist on dragging Henri into this thing?’ Paula asked. ‘He knocks himself out enough already. And he’s told you again and again that politics bore him.’
‘I know,’ Dubreuilh said with a smile, ‘you think I’m an old reprobate trying to debauch his little friends. But politics isn’t a vice, my beauty, nor a parlour game. If a new war were to break out three years from now, you’d be the first to howl.’
‘That’s blackmail,’ Paula said. ‘When this war finally ends its coming to an end, no one is going to feel like starting a new one.’
‘Do you think that what people feel
