The Sixth Key(20)

Those endless, careless days now seemed to Rahn like another life. In his pocket sat Weisthor’s envelope and the card from the man on the train, side by side, as if to underline to him how much things had changed. Even so, he would have to go on as if nothing had happened until he could figure things out.

He was about to cross the street when he had a strange feeling. He looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary, and put it down to his mind playing tricks. Still, the feeling remained with him until a sudden downpour interrupted his thoughts and forced him to make a run for it. Once inside the café, he removed his soaked black coat and his fedora and looked around. It was early and the café was quiet. In one corner, a man ate an omelette, his poodle beside him on its own chair, lapping at a bowl of soup. At the far end of the room two lovers sat entwined, kissing. Behind the bar, the waitress argued with the manager and threatened to leave, both ignoring a middle-aged blonde, perhaps a femme de la nuit, asking for a glass of wine. All in all, an average afternoon.

As expected, La Dame was at his usual table by the window and when he looked up from reading the Paris-Soir, he cried, ‘Rahn!’

He was shorter than Rahn but more athletic and so when they embraced warmly it was rather a mismatched affair.

‘The reason for your unreasonable treatment of my reason so enfeebles my reason that I have reason to complain of your beauty!’ he said, quoting Cervantes and bowing graciously.

‘And the high Heavens, with which your divinity divinely fortifies you with stars, makes you the deserver of the desert that is deserved by your greatness!’ Rahn returned with a courteous bow.

‘I took the privilege, knowing your tastes.’ La Dame sat down and poured Rahn a glass of brandy with one hand while he puffed on the cigar he held in the other, a Hoyo de Monterrey, purchased, as usual, from the oldest tobacconist in Paris near the Louvre in the rue Saint Honoré. La Dame liked Cuban cigars, fast women and expensive clothes because it made him feel less Swiss, which in France was another word for prosaic, or, as some would say, l’ordinaire.

‘I see you still possess your vices,’ Rahn said, sitting down.

‘Consistency, my dear Rahn, is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Who said that?’

Rahn sniffed the brandy; the note was comforting. ‘Oscar Wilde.’

‘You look wretched!’

‘Thank you.’ Rahn took a good sip and let the fruity fire sit on his tongue a moment. ‘And you, my dear La Dame, look a little portly.’

There was a flash of panic in La Dame’s eye and his hand explored his middle to test the veracity of the vile statement.

Touché! Rahn thought.

There was a narrowing of the eyes and a shaking of the index finger of the hand that held his cigar. ‘You almost had me believing it!’ he said, with a smile, straightening his tie and biting into the cigar with a virile ferocity. He took a glance at his reflection in the mirror opposite and sat back, satisfied that he cut a good shape. ‘I’ve been working at teaching imbeciles to think logically, a task that, I have to say, is starting to lose its lustre. At this rate I’ll die of boredom before I’m forty.’ He watched Rahn drink the remaining contents of his glass down in one gulp with amusement and blew smoke rings in the air. ‘Hold on, Rahn! That’s expensive, you know.’

‘I’ll pay.’

La Dame raised a lazy brow. ‘Well, in that case . . . bottom’s up!’ He drank his glass in one gulp too and set it down for a top-up.

Rahn poured another for both of them, then held up his glass and looked at La Dame through the golden liquor. ‘Nice colour . . .’ He sniffed it. ‘Oak casks, extra old; Napoleon or Vieille Réserve; aged at least six years. So you haven’t been cheap, La Dame, but you haven’t spent all the rent money either!’

‘How can you know so much from one mouthful, Rahn?’

Rahn ignored him. ‘Do you know how they tested brandy in the old days? They put gunpowder in it and set fire to it. If the gunpowder took, the brandy was good.’

La Dame sat back. ‘How you manage to retain so many completely useless but terribly impressive facts in that head of yours simply astounds me. Lucky for me, I have my looks to fall back on.’ He sighed. ‘This is good, isn’t it? Just like those nights at the Leila in Montmartre! The only difference is we’re not waiting for the bartender to turn around before running out of the place without paying. Things do change, thank goodness. But we did have rather a lot of fun, didn’t we? Drinking brandy and la Fée Verte.’

Rahn nodded. ‘Yes, I also remember those days with fondness.’