6

Jonathan sat on the edge of his bed, sipping coffee which Gaby had just brought. It was coffee the way he liked it, strong with a dash of thick cream. Jonathan had awakened at 7 a.m., then gone back to sleep until Wister had knocked on the door at 10.30 a.m.

‘Don’t apologize, I’m glad you slept.’ said Wister. ‘Gaby is ready to bring you some coffee. Or do you prefer tea?’

Wister had also added that he had made a reservation for Jonathan at the Hotel – Victoria was its name in English, anyway, where they would go before lunch. Jonathan thanked him. No further conversation about the hotel. But that was the beginning, Jonathan thought, as he had thought last night. If he were to carry out Wister’s plan, he mustn’t be a house-guest here. Jonathan, however, felt glad he was going to be out from under Wister’s roof in a couple of hours.

A friend or acquaintance of Wister’s named Rudolf something arrived at noon. Rudolf was young and slender with straight black hair, nervous and polite. Wister said he was a medical student. Evidently he did not speak English. He reminded Jonathan of photographs of Franz Kafka. They all got into the car, driven by Karl, and set off for Jonathan’s hotel. Everything looked so new compared to France, Jonathan thought, and then recalled that Hamburg had been flattened by bombs. The car stopped in a commercial-looking street. It was the Hotel Victoria.

They all speak English.’ Wister said. ‘We’ll wait for you.’

Jonathan went in. A bellhop had taken his suitcase at the door. He registered, looking at his English passport to get the number right. He asked for his suitcase to be sent up to his room, as Wister had told him to do. The hotel was of middle category. Jonathan saw.

Then they throve to a restaurant for lunch, where Karl did not join them. They had a bottle of wine at their table before the meal, and Rudolf became more merry. Rudolf spoke in German and Wister translated a few of his pleasantries. Jonathan was thinking of the hour 2 p.m., when he was due at the hospital.

‘Reeves —’ said Rudolf to Wister.

Jonathan thought Rudolf had said it once before, and this time there was no mistake. Wister – Reeves Minot – took it calmly. And so did Jonathan.

‘Anaemic,’ said Rudolf to Jonathan.

‘Worse.’ Jonathan smiled.

‘Schlimmer,’ said Reeves Minot, and continued to Rudolf in German, which seemed to Jonathan as clumsy as his French, but was probably equally adequate.

The food was excellent, the portions enormous. Reeves had brought his cigars. But before they could finish the cigars, they had to leave for the hospital.

The hospital was a vast assembly of buildings set among trees and pathways lined with flowers. Karl had again driven them. The wing of the hospital where Jonathan had to go looked like a laboratory of the future – rooms on either side of a corridor as in a hotel, except that these rooms held chromium chairs or beds and were illuminated by fluorescent or variously coloured lamps. There was a smell not of disinfectant but as of some unearthly gas, somewhat resembling the smell Jonathan had known under the X-ray machine which five years ago had done him no good with the leukemia. It was the kind of place where laymen surrendered utterly to the omniscient specialists, Jonathan thought, and at once he felt weak enough to faint. Jonathan was walking at that moment down a seemingly endless corridor of soundproofed floor surface with Rudolf, who was to interpret if Jonathan needed it. Reeves had remained in the car with Karl, but Jonathan was not sure if they were going to wait, or of how long the examination would take.

Dr Wentzel, a heavy man with grey hair and walrus moustaches, knew a little English, but he did not try to construct long sentences. ‘How long?’ Six years. Jonathan was weighed, asked if he had had any weight loss recently, stripped to the waist, his spleen palpated. All the while, the doctor murmured in German to a nurse who was taking notes. His blood pressure was taken, his eyelids looked at, urine and blood samples taken, finally the sternum marrow sample taken with a punch-like instrument that operated faster and with less discomfort than Dr Perrier’s. Jonathan was told he could have the results tomorrow morning. The examination had taken only about forty-five minutes.

Jonathan and Rudolf walked out. The car was several yards away among some other cars in a parking area.

‘How was it? … When will you know?’ Reeves asked. ‘Would you like to come back to my place or go to your hotel?’

‘I think to my hotel, thanks.’ Jonathan sank with relief into a corner seat of the car.

Rudolf seemed to be singing Wentzel’s praises to Reeves. They arrived at the hotel.

‘We’ll pick you up for dinner,’ said Reeves cheerfully. ‘At seven.’

Jonathan got his key and went to his room. He took off his jacket and fell on to the bed face down. After two or three minutes, he pushed himself up and went to the writing desk. There was notepaper in a drawer. He sat down and wrote:

April 4, 19—

My dear Simone,

I have just had an examination and will know the results tomorrow morning. Very efficient hospital, doctor looking like Emp. Franz Josef, said to be the best haematologist in the world! Whatever the result tomorrow I shall feel more at ease knowing it. With luck I may be home tomorrow before you get this, unless Dr Wentzel wants to do some other tests.

Will telegraph now, just to say I am all right. I miss you, I think of you and Cailloux.

A bientôt with all my love,
Jon

Jonathan hung up his best suit, which was a dark blue, left the rest of his things in his suitcase, and went downstairs to post his letter. He had changed a ten-pound traveller’s cheque, from an ancient book of three or four, last evening at the airport. He wrote a short telegram to Simone saying he was all right and that a letter was arriving. Then he went out, took note of the street’s name and of the look of the neighbourhood – a huge beer advertisement struck him most forcibly – then went out for a walk.

The pavements bustled with shoppers and pedestrians, with dachshunds on leads, with hawkers of fruit and newspapers at the corners. Jonathan gazed into a window full of beautiful sweaters. There was also a handsome blue-silk dressing-gown set off against a background of creamy white sheep pelts. He started to figure out its price in francs and gave it up, not being really interested. He crossed a busy avenue where there were both tramways and buses, came to a canal with a footbridge, and decided not to cross it. A coffee, perhaps. Jonathan approached a pleasant-looking coffee bar which had pastry in the window, a counter as well as small tables inside, and then could not bring himself to go in. He realized that he was terrified of what the report tomorrow morning would say. He had suddenly a hollow feeling with which he was familiar, a feeling of thinness as if he had become tissue paper, a coolness on his forehead as if his life itself were evaporating.

What Jonathan knew also, or at least suspected, was that tomorrow morning he would receive a phoney report. Jonathan mistrusted Rudolf’s presence. A medical student. Rudolf had been no help, because he hadn’t been needed. The doctor’s nurse had spoken English. Mightn’t Rudolf write up a phoney report tonight? Substitute it somehow? Jonathan even imagined Rudolf pinching hospital stationery that afternoon. Or maybe he was losing his mind, Jonathan warned himself.

He turned back in the direction of his hotel, taking the shortest way possible. He reached the Victoria, claimed his key, and let himself into his room. Then he took his shoes off, went into the bathroom and wet a towel, and lay down with the towel across his forehead and his eyes. He did not feel sleepy, just somehow odd. Reeves Minot was odd. To advance a total stranger six hundred francs, to make the insane proposal that he had – promising more than forty thousand pounds. It couldn’t be true. Reeves Minot would never deliver. Reeves Minot seemed to live in a world of fantasy. Maybe he wasn’t even a crook, but merely a bit cracked, a type that lived on delusions of importance and power.

The telephone awakened Jonathan. A man’s voice said in English:

‘A chentleman waits on you below, sir.’

Jonathan looked at his watch and saw that it was a minute or two past 7 p.m. ‘Would you tell him I’ll be down in two minutes?’

Jonathan washed his face, put on a polo-neck sweater, then a jacket. He also took his topcoat.

Karl was alone with the car. ‘You had a nice afternoon, sir?’ he asked in English.

In the course of the small talk, Jonathan found that Karl had quite a vocabulary in English. How many other strangers had Karl ferried around for Reeves Minot, Jonathan wondered? What business did Karl think Reeves was in? Maybe it simply didn’t matter to Karl. What business was Reeves supposed to be in?

Karl stopped the car in the sloping driveway again, and this time Jonathan took the lift alone to the second floor.

Reeves Minot, in grey flannels and a sweater, greeted Jonathan at the door. ‘Come in! – Did you take it easy this afternoon ?’

They had scotches. A table was set for two, and Jonathan assumed that they were going to be alone this evening.

‘I would like you to see a picture of this man I have in mind,’ Reeves said, hauling his thin form from the sofa, going to his Biedermeier desk. He took something from a drawer. He had two photographs, one a front view, the other a profile in a group of several people bending over a table.

The table was a roulette-table. Jonathan looked at the front-view picture, which was as clear as a passport photograph. The man looked about forty, with the square, fleshy face of lots of Italians, creases already curving from the flanges of his nose down to the level of his thick lips. His dark eyes looked wary, almost startled, yet in the faint smile there was an air also of ‘So what’ve .’ done, eh?’ Salvatore Bianca, Reeves said his name was.

‘This picture.’ Reeves said, pointing to the group picture, ‘was taken in Hamburg about a week ago. He doesn’t even gamble, just watches. This is a rare moment when he’s looking at the wheel ... Bianca’s probably killed half a dozen men himself or he wouldn’t even be a button man. But he’s not important as a Mafioso. He’s expendable. Just to start the ball rolling, you see …’ Reeves went on, while Jonathan finished his drink, and Reeves made him another. ‘Bianca wears a hat all the time – outdoors that is – a homburg. A tweed overcoat usually …’

Reeves had a gramophone, and Jonathan would have enjoyed some music, but felt it would have been rude to ask, though he could imagine Reeves flying to the gramophone to play precisely what he wanted. Jonathan interrupted finally, ‘An ordinary-looking man, homburg pulled down and coat collar turned up – and one’s supposed to spot him in a crowd after seeing these two pictures?’

‘A friend of mine is going to ride the same underground from the Rathaus stop, where Bianca gets on, to the Mess-berg, which is the next stop and the only stop before the Steinstrasse. Look!’

This had set Reeves off again, and he showed Jonathan a street map of Hamburg which folded like an accordion and showed the U-bahn routes in blue dots.

‘You’ll get on the U-bahn with Fritz at the Rathaus. Fritz is coming over after dinner.’

I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jonathan wanted to say. He felt a twinge of guilt for having led Reeves on to this extent. Or had he led him on? No. Reeves had taken a crazy gamble. Reeves was probably used to such things, and he might not be the first person Reeves had approached. Jonathan was tempted to ask if he were the first person, but Reeves’ voice droned on.

‘There is definitely the possibility of a second shooting. I don’t want to mislead you …’

Jonathan was glad of the bad side of it. Reeves had been presenting it all in a rosy light, the Bob’s-your-uncle shooting followed by pockets full of money and a better life in France or wherever, a cruise around the world, the best of everything for Georges (Reeves had asked his son’s name), a more secure fife for Simone. How would I ever explain all the lolly to her? Jonathan wondered.

‘This is Aalsuppe,’ Reeves said, as he picked up his spoon. ‘Specialty of Hamburg and Gaby loves to make it.’

The eel soup was very good. There was an excellent cool Moselle.

‘Hamburg has a famous zoo, you know. Hagenbeck’s Tierpark in Settlingen. A nice drive from here. We might go tomorrow morning. That is’ – Reeves looked suddenly more troubled – ‘if something doesn’t turn up for me. I’m half-way expecting something. I should know by tonight or early tomorrow.’

One would have thought the zoo was an important matter. Jonathan said, Tomorrow morning I get the results from the hospital. I’m supposed to be there at eleven.’ Jonathan felt a despair, as if 11 a.m. might be the hour of his death.

‘Yes of course. Well, the zoo maybe in the afternoon. The animals are in a natural – natural habitat…’

Sauerbraten. Red cabbage.

The doorbell rang. Reeves did not get up, and in a moment Gaby came in and announced that Herr Fritz had arrived.

Fritz had a cap in his hand, and wore a rather shabby overcoat. He was about fifty.

‘This is Paul,’ said Reeves to Fritz, indicating Jonathan. ‘An Englishman. Fritz.’

‘Good evening,’ Jonathan said.

Fritz gave a friendly wave to Jonathan. Fritz was a tough one, Jonathan thought, but he had an amiable smile.

‘Sit down, Fritz,’ said Reeves. ‘Glass of wine? Scotch?’ Reeves spoke in German. ‘Paul is our man,’ he added in English to Fritz. He handed Fritz a tall, stemmed glass of white wine.

Fritz nodded.

Jonathan was amused. The oversized wine glasses looked like something out of Wagnerian opera. Reeves was sitting sideways in his chair now.

‘Fritz is a taxi-driver,’ Reeves said. ‘Taken Herr Bianca home many an evening, eh, Fritz?’

Fritz murmured something, smiling.

‘Not many an evening, twice,’ Reeves said. ‘Sure, we don’t—’ Reeves hesitated, as if not knowing in what language to speak, then continued to Jonathan, ‘Bianca probably doesn5t know Fritz by sight. It doesn5t matter too much if he does, because Fritz gets off at Messberg. The point is, you and Fritz will meet outside the Rathaus U-bahn station tomorrow, and then Fritz will indicate our – our Bianca.’

Fritz nodded, apparently understanding everything.

Tomorrow now. Jonathan listened in silence.

‘Now you both get on at the Rathaus stop, that’ll be around six-fifteen. Best to be there just before six, because Bianca for some reason might be early, though he’s pretty regular at six-fifteen. Karl will drive you, Paul, so there’s nothing to worry about. You don’t go anywhere near each other, you and Fritz, but it may be that Fritz has to get on the train, the same train as Bianca and you, in order to point him out definitely. In any case, Fritz gets off at Messberg, the next stop.’ Then Reeves said something in German to Fritz and extended a hand.

Fritz produced from an inside pocket a small black gun and gave it to Reeves. Reeves looked at the door, as if anxious lest Gaby come in, but he didn’t seem very anxious, and the gun was hardly bigger than his palm. After fumbling a little, Reeves got the gun open and peered at its cylinders.

‘It’s loaded. Has a safety. Here. You know a little about guns, Paul?’

Jonathan had a smattering. Reeves showed him, with assistance from Fritz. The safety, that was the important thing. Be sure how to get it off. This was the Italian gun.

Fritz had to leave. He said good-bye, nodding to Jonathan. ‘Bis morgen! Um sechs!’

Reeves walked with him to the door. Then Reeves came back from the hall with a brownish-red tweed topcoat, not a new coat. This is very loose,’ he said. Try it on.’

Jonathan didn’t want to try it on, but he got up and put the coat on. The sleeves were longish. Jonathan put his hands into the pockets, and found, as Reeves was now informing him, that the right-hand pocket was cut through. He was to carry the gun in his jacket pocket, and reach for it through the pocket of the coat, fire the gun preferably once and drop the gun.

‘You’ll see the crowd,’ Reeves said, ‘a couple of hundred people. You step back afterwards, like everybody else, recoiling from an explosion.’ Reeves illustrated, his body leaning backward, walking backward.

They drank Steinhäger with their coffee. Reeves asked him about his home life, Simone, Georges. Did Georges speak English or only French?

‘He’s learning some English,’ Jonathan said. ‘I’m at a disadvantage, since I’m not with him a lot.’