The Betrayals(97)
‘What?’
‘We might have something in mind … as long as you cooperate.’
Léo leans one shoulder against the wall and makes a sort of vertical rolling movement so that he’s facing back into the room. A candle collapses into darkness and the room seems smaller. ‘Oh, certainly,’ he says. ‘After a year of nothing but studying the grand jeu masters I’ll waltz back into government. If you expect me to believe that …’
Emile’s face puckers into a weary half-smile. ‘Humour me. I’d like to be sure that you’re still … one of us.’
‘Of course I am.’ The word catches in his throat. He doesn’t know if it’s true. He thinks of Claire, and her contempt for the Party. A second later he thinks of the food he’s been leaving for Charpentier, the lies he’s told for him. Poor Charpentier, who’s hardly crossed his mind, except as an irritation; and yet if someone found out Léo had been helping him … Sweat tingles on his palms and hairline.
Emile stares, his pudgy face blurring and slipping into two fleshy, shadowy masks. Léo blinks until his eyes focus again. At last Emile nods and leans back, scratching a scab of wax from the tablecloth. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘You haven’t changed, then. I’m glad to hear that.’
31: the Rat
There is something wrong. Her head is full of things that aren’t there. She raises her head to listen when there’s nothing to hear; she flinches, when all that lurks at the far end of a corridor is a shadow. Since that night – when was it? but a rat wouldn’t remember, wouldn’t try to count days – she hasn’t seen Simon again. Perhaps he has fallen victim to hunger or fever or an accident. But still she finds herself mouthing the two syllables of his name, trying out the shapes they make on her tongue. Si-mon. Si-mon. Every time it makes his face rise in her mind’s eye like a mirage, wavering. He is dangerous. He is a trap, a particular insidious human trap, and she should swerve aside. But she doesn’t. She wants to see him again, without understanding the wanting. She thinks of him in that room, and something blurs inside her. She thinks of his hunger and she is hungry too.
No rat would go looking for trouble. No rat would creep towards a box of poison, knowing that one lick would make her tongue start to fizz and her stomach dissolve. But somehow tonight – wrong wrong wrong – she has come back from the kitchens a different way. What is she doing here? She looks up. It’s only now that she can name here as the place under there. There is where he is. That room. She hates that place – she can feel it, above her head, like a boulder waiting to fall – and yet she came. A rat would have taken the shortest path from the kitchens to its nest. A rat wouldn’t have paused, wondering, drawn by an elusive waft of something, a not-scent that made the not-hunger flare … A rat wouldn’t run the risk. A rat would be safe and eating now, gnawing at salty sausage, unthinking.
She wants to turn aside. She wants to take the safe path. But she wants to go up the little staircase and the next, until she can push open the door and see him again. She wants him to say, Oh, it’s you, in the way he did. And she wants to hold out the bundle of food in her hand, and … what? The rival desires knot round her like threads, until she can’t move at all. A rat would despise her for her helplessness.
Someone is coming. It isn’t Simon. The footsteps are clipped, like hooves, but slow. She doesn’t like the sound of them. They stride. They wander. They pause until she thinks it might be safe to move, and then come closer the instant she steps out of the shadows. She freezes. There is a figure at the end of the corridor. If she takes another step he’ll see her. She is trying to breathe silently but it’s getting harder and harder; fear is rising like water, up to her shoulders, her chin, her nose. How has she let herself get cornered like this? She could run. Is it better to run or to stay still? A rat would know, but she doesn’t. When did this hesitant human voice take over, instead of her clever unthinking instincts?
She crouches, hunkering down like a gargoyle. She doesn’t know why, except that perhaps this way she’ll be out of his eyeline. In the shadows. Or maybe it’s because her knees have gone soft, like rotten fruit. There is something about the sound of him, the smell … A faint bitterness on the air. Smoke. Something else. The hairs on her skin stand up.
He walks past her. He doesn’t seem to see her, but there is something slippery about him, something that makes her unwilling to trust her senses. There is a narrow window at the far end of the corridor, beyond the stairs, and he stands by it. Now – in the thin strip of moonlight – she can see him better. He is overfed, but still nimble. He has thick curling hair, slicked to his head, and a line of shadow along his top lip. He slides a hand into his jacket and brings out something shiny and flat. It opens like a shell and inside there are dark-and-gold cylinders; it’s only when he puts one between his lips and produces a flame that she realises it’s a cigarette. She has seen those before, although she doesn’t understand what they’re for. Is it some kind of medicine? He inhales and exhales. The smoke billows across the edge of moonlight, white and dark.
The exhalation goes on and on. As if his lungs contain enough smoke to fill every passage and room and crevice. Whenever she breathes, he’ll be there.
His face. Tightness in his mouth, narrow eyes. It creates a space around him, as if even the air doesn’t want to get too close. She trembles, unable to run. Predator. Predator who would break your neck and leave your corpse where it is, without eating. He looks round at the blank walls, and through some sickening magic she sees what he sees: termite mound, wasp-ball, rat’s nest. Kick it apart and stand back.