Chapter 9

Along the street, outside the hotel door, Francoise was standing in her usual encouraging stance.

From the point under the boulevard trees where they stood, Ahmed and Raimond could see her clearly. Ahmed's lace was strained and longing, but he kept back out of sight and occasionally he glanced quickly in either direction along the boulevard, or up at the dim-lit windows over it.

"Somebody'll be watching from somewhere," he said. "They may even have seen us already."

"I hope not," Raimond said. "And I doubt it. They'll be watching her from close up."

They stood silently for a minute or two and then Raimond added: "Well, I'll go. Walk up the street a bit and I'll look for you."

Ahmed watched the big man stroll off and head up the street towards Francoise. He hoped this was going to work out all right. It was all much deeper than he cared to think about. From now on their lives were in real danger until such time as the gamble of taking sides paid off.

Raimond strolled along the street, looking at each of the whores who lined it, in turn. Some he spoke to for a few seconds, some he argued with and always he walked on as if dissatisfied until he came to Frangoise.

What a pretty one, he thought. What the devil is she doing in this racket? Even as she smiled at him and he approached her the sadness of the relationships people like these clung on to filled him. He thought of his own wife and imagined his own thoughts if she were forced to take up prostitution as a living.

He remembered just after the war, when things had been so difficult, how she had gone to a hotel with an American in exchange for some tinned goods he'd promised her. They'd all done that, even the nicest, most virtuous girls had done that, rather than see their families short of food in the terrible shortage there had been after the Germans had retreated. She'd told him about that in her honesty and he'd felt agonies for some time, imagining her in the arms of that American, submitting her intimacies to him for a tin of cassoulct. She'd been so young, so alive, so beautiful. He hated that American who tasted her beauty so cheaply. But he'd recovered. Time healed that sort of wound like everything else and, after all, he'd had plenty of women before he'd met Michele. But how did this young Algerian accept that his girl friend should submit to so many strange embraces every night? How could he bear the idea? Did one become accustomed to it? Was it like facing the necessity in the same way that Michele had faced it that time when the American had dangled such bait in front of her lovely eyes?

"Je t'emmine?"

He turned to the girl, seeing her smile, knowing what darkness and horror the smile hid. "How much?" he said.

"Three thousand francs," she said. "All right."

She led the way quickly, almost eagerly, into the hotel and up the narrow staircase. She was a shapely creature, he thought; under different circumstances ...

She opened the door into a small room with just a bed and washing facilities and a small chair to put clothes on.

She began to strip immediately and he let her for a moment to see the sweater whisk off, the bare, unbrassiered flesh beneath and then the skirt, also with nothing underneath. He saw her pert, rounded nudity and felt a movement in his loins. But he was here on business.

"Don't bother," he said. "I'm a friend of Ahmed's."

Her eyes sparked with wild interest and she forgot to cover her body as she turned toward him. Seeing his eyes drop to the lightly-haired triangle at her loins, she began quickly to pull on her clothes as she questioned him.

"Where is he? How is he? What's happened?"

He chuckled at her eagerness and took a note out of his pocket that he'd bought for her. When she'd finished eagerly, joyfully reading it, she looked up at him slowly.

"A flic ... ! But what can you do?"

"Ensure that you people have a life which isn't run by fear. I want a description of the men who came to you and anything else useful you can tell me. Then I'll take a note for Ahmed from you and maybe you'll be seeing him in peace and security before very long."

She looked at the note from her lover again. Normally, informing a flic was the last thing she would have dreamed of doing. But Ahmed urged her to. It was their only chance of seeing each other again in safety, he said, if the NLF were smashed. He also said this man seemed a good man and had been very nice to him. He was, perhaps, a man they could trust.

She looked up into Raimond's straight-staring eyes and remembered that he'd let her get undressed before he'd told her. In certain directions, she reflected, no man could be trusted.

"All right," she said. "I'll tell you what I know-but we must be quick. I don't usually take too long with my . . .my clients, and they'll be watching from across the street."

Quickly she described to him the three men who'd visited her, paying particular attention to the vicious-eyed ringleader. She then told him about the protection ring, whose connections with Algerian nationalist organizations she only vaguely knew about. As she was so young and attractive, she'd been taken to a man named Mahmoud Taluffah, who had told her what she must pay to the protection ring. He'd also made it clear she had no alternative. He'd then forced his attentions upon her-which was the reason why she'd been brought to him instead of being interviewed by one of his lieutenants. This man, then, seemed to be the chief of the protection ring and was probably well up in the nationalist hierarchy, as the two activities seemed to be running hand in hand.

"Where is he, this man?" Raimond asked.

"I don't know much about him at all," she said. "But he runs all sorts of clubs and bars. He-likes to live well, everybody says. He often spends some time in his bars around Pigalle, but there is another near Clichy where he presents his legitimate front-I can't remember the name of it."

"Apart from this you know nothing about his activities-meeting-places, where he lives, etc?"

"No. He has a girl friend. She dances in one of the Pigalle places and sings. She was there when I was taken to him and he sent her off when he wanted to ... be alone with me. They say she has a roving eye herself and doesn't care too much what he does."

"What does she look like?"

"She has black hair with a bleached, gold-silver streak running back from the front. Her hair's long-down to her shoulders. She's about up to your shoulder and very curvaceous. She has big, dark eyes, a rather small nose and a small mouth with a large, pouting bottom lip. I don't know about any peculiarities. I really didn't have time to study her. He called her 'Rolande.'"

Raimond let these details sink into his brain.

"Write your note for the boy friend," he said, then: "I've got to get moving."