It was astonishingly easy, John. Heaven bless whatever chemistry made it so! Was he alone these days? I enquired. André smiled and sighed: Oui et non. He believed I knew of his little arrangement with the Blank woman? That had become quite impossible. He was both relieved and sorry to hear that she had involved herself with the peculiar M. Bray; felt perhaps even sorrier for Jacob Horner for having “rescued” her and — as was said to have been the custom in prerevolutionary China concerning preventers of suicide — thereby assumed lifetime responsibility for her welfare. Himself, he satisfied his needs with whatever lay untroublesomely to hand — I would be amused to hear that the Bernstein girl, for example, had conceived a veritable passion for him, which he saw fit to indulge shrug-shoulderedly whilst deploring her want of personal hygiene — but he had no companion; he was alone, and neither happy nor wretched so to be. But how was it between me and my friend, whose ex-wife had unbecomingly reported about him so many and poisonous things? I was, André was gratified to observe, in my own clothes again: might he take that to mean that Ambrose and I had worked out our difficulties and were happy?
Things had indeed been troubled, I replied, but seemed less so presently. And I loved Ambrose, yes.
Eh bien. And he me?
In his way. As you did, André. My fate.
For some moments we reflected silently in the dark. André bade me excuse him for thirty seconds. It took some doing not to clutch at his jacket sleeve, but I said, “Just now I could almost excuse you these thirty years.” He brushed my forehead with a kiss; stepped into the shadows behind our bench; returned smiling in half a minute or less. Then: Would I take a short drive with him? He had a thing to show me. I smiled and declined. He clucked his tongue. The scent of the roses was preternaturally strong; no doubt the hashish intensified my perceptions. When André put an arm about my shoulders and drew me to him on the bench, I kissed him unhesitatingly, but without passion. His tone changed. He touched me; I responded. Just into the car, he whispered; please? I shook my head, but permitted myself after all to be led off, a proper Clarissa. The drug really was getting to me; the little walk from bench to curb seemed miles.
Even so, I drew back when he opened the door of a small black car. André Castine in a dusty Volkswagen? He was huskily urgent: Who cared where? In the road, in the treetops, in the sky! Firmly now I said no. And he — what a grip! — yes. Really, I would call out! He clapped a hand over my mouth, forced me toward the car like any rapist. I bit his finger; felt at once a tremendous shock from behind (where he now was), as if I’d backed into one of those electric cattle-prods the riot police used to be so fond of. I managed (I think) a single shout.
Dot dot dot.
Hashish plays hob with time! Ambrose and Joe Morgan discovered me on the park bench in the rose garden in less time by far, so it seemed to me, than it had taken to walk the fifty feet from that bench to that car (now gone) with André (ditto). They were of course alarmed to have found me “passed out” (they’d heard no cry; my clothes were intact; I seemed uninjured; no aches or pains, though my head was woozy). Casteene? He had been with them the whole time, in the pavilion; had joined them directly I left to find him, thinking his company not welcome to me since our little difference of June, concerning which he assured Ambrose he bore no grudge. I was okay?
