Night Rounds Read Online Free PDF Page B

the size of the rooms. Where the bed stood. Here's where a boiler used to be. There, a sink. Some people preferred flowered wallpaper, others a version of toile de Jouy. I even thought I saw a colored print still hanging on the wall.
    Place du Châtelet. Zelly's, the bar where the Lieutenant and Saint-Georges are supposed to meet me at midnight. What kind of expression shall I put on when they come walking up to me? The others are already seated at tables as the Khedive, Philibert, and I enter. They swarm around us, each trying to be the first to shake our hands. They clutch at us, squeeze and shake us. Some of them smother us with kisses, others caress our necks, still others tug playfully at our lapels. I recognize Jean-Farouk de Méthode, Violette Morris, and Frau Sultana. "How are you?" Costachesco asks me. We push our way through the crowd that has gathered. Baroness Lydia pulls me over to a table occupied by Rachid von Rosenheim, Pols de Helder, Count Baruzzi, and Lionel de Zieff. "Have a cognac?" offers Pols de Helder. "You can't get any more of it in Paris, it sells for a hundred thousand francs a half-pint. Drink up!" He crams the neck of the bottle into my mouth. Then von Rosenheim shoves a cigarette between my lips and flourishes a platinum lighter set with emeralds. The light grows dim, their gestures and voices fade into soft, shadowy stillness, whereupon surging up before me with vivid clarity comes the face of the Princess de Lamballe, a devoted friend of Marie Antoinette's whom a company of "garde nationale" has come to fetch from La Force prison: "Rise, Madam, you must go to the Abbaye." Their pikes and leering faces are right in front of me. Why didn't she shout " LONG LIVE THE NATION !" just as they wanted her to? It would have kept her head from decorating a pike beneath the Queen's window. If one of them pricks my forehead with his pike-head (Zieff? Hayakawa? Rosenheim? Philibert? the Khedive?), that single drop of blood is all it will take to bring the sharks rushing in. Don't move a muscle. Shout it as many times as they want: " LONG LIVE THE NATION ! " Strip off your clothes if necessary. Whatever they want! One more minute, Headsman. No matter what the price. Rosenheim shoves another cigarette into my mouth. The condemned man's last? Apparently the execution is not set for tonight. Costachesco, Zieff, Helder, and Baruzzi are exceedingly friendly. They're worried about my health. Have I enough cash? Of course I do. The act of delivering over the Lieutenant and his whole ring will net me about a hundred thousand francs, and with that I'll buy a few foulards at Charvet and a vicuña coat for the winter. Unless they settle my hash in the meantime. It seems that cowards invariably die a degrading death. The doctor used to tell me that every person about to die becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, and his hopes. For some, it's a popular waltz; for others, a march. Still another wails a gypsy air trailing off in a sob or a cry of panic. When it's YOUR turn, precious boy, it will be the clang of a trash can clattering into the blackness of no man's land. And just a while back, when we were crossing that open space on the far side of the Boulevard Sébastopol, I thought: "Here's where your story will end." I remember the gentle slope of the road that brought me to the spot, one of the most desolate in Paris. Everything begins in the Bois de Boulogne. Remember? You were rolling your hoop on the lawn in the Pré Catelan. The years pass, you skirt the Avenue Henri-Martin and wind up in the Trocadéro. Then Place de l'Étoile. An avenue stretches out, lined with glittering street lights. Like a vision of the future, you think: full of promise – as the saying goes. You're breathless with exhilaration on the threshold of this vast thoroughfare, but it's only the Champs-Élysées with its cosmopolitan bars, its call girls and the Claridge, a caravansary haunted by the