“I WANT to study this one,” said Aaron Black, tapping with his middle finger on a reproduction in a large art book open in front of him; the reproduction was of the very famous painting by Jan Van Eyck widely known as The Arnolfini Wedding. (The setting was the reception room of a suite at the Strand, not a particularly luxurious hotel but one which Aaron Black had got used to frequenting at an earlier time when he was still virtually broke. At this moment a visit to the National Gallery, the home, notably, of the Arnolfini portrait, was being planned.)
Julienne protested, respectfully, that the picture was too well known, that it was reproduced in every illustrated art reference book, that there were far more unfamiliar splendors to discover at the National Gallery, etc.
“You don’t understand, Julienne,” said the little man in his three-piece anthracite-gray suit, light blue shirt and dark blue striped tie. “You think I’m interested in painting just so I can show off on the social circuit. But I don’t look at pictures to talk about them. Only for my own quiet pleasure, do you understand?” He turned his attention back to the reproduction. “And for my own quiet pleasure, I want to know things. Why are those shoes on the floor on the left? Why is something written on the wall at the back? And is the little lady expecting, because it sure looks like it?”
Julienne, who had various art history diplomas, long blond hair and a black leather pantsuit, gave a mild sigh.
“The young lady is probably not pregnant,” she said. “A fashion of the period creates that impression. What’s more, since the picture records the moment the couple take their marriage vows, it would hardly be seemly to show Giovanna Cenami in the family way.”
“Who’s that?”
“That’s the name of the young lady. And what’s written in the background is the painter’s name, showing that he is a witness to the contract.”
“And the other witnesses must be the guys in the mirror!” cried Aaron Black.
“Exactly,” said Julienne gaily. “And the painter is there too.”
“And the clogs in the left corner, what about them?”
The telephone rang. For a while now two men had been sitting silently in the reception room. One of them got up and picked up the phone with his left hand. When he had finished talking and hung up he crossed the room diagonally and opened a drawer.
“Nouaceur is downstairs and on his way up,” he said contradictorily, took from the drawer a nickel-plated Walther PPK pistol with ivory grip plates that had a very fifties look about it, and put it in the pocket of his blue blazer, which had three brass buttons. He was also wearing light-gray pants, elegant gray suede gloves, and a gray silk scarf knotted high up beneath his chin. “Nouaceur,” he said, “has the feeling he is being tailed.” The man spoke in a loud whisper, his face was narrow and worn, his hair very black save at the temples, and his eyes topazine yellow. His PPK was chambered for .380 ACP and took seven cartridges.
“In the hotel?” asked Aaron Black.
“In London.”
“Well, my goodness, that’s his problem,” said Black, turning quickly towards Julienne because she was making motions to leave. “No!” he said. “Stay. It will be better if he has the impression he’s disturbing us. Plus you’ll have something to tell your French friends at Territorial Surveillance.”
“I don’t . . .” began Julienne, but there was a knock at the door and Aaron Black called “Come in.” Hocine Nouaceur slipped into the room, closed the door carefully, and rather anxiously contemplated the four people present.
Nouaceur was a blond Kabyle with blue eyes, which made his life easier in France, but he rarely stayed in France, fearing the FLN rather than the police. He wore a navy-blue suit and a light-blue knit tie. Aaron Black invited him to sit down on a pouf. Julienne had remained standing behind Black’s armchair. The man with the Walther, after scrutinizing Nouaceur, had turned away and was by the window watching red double-decker buses and cars, Morrises or Hillmans or some other make, passing in the street. Aaron Black offered the Kabyle coffee or something else to drink, but he did not want anything.
“Hocine, my friend, how are things?” asked Black.
“From what point of view?”
“From the point of view—how would you put it? Politico-military?”
“They’re doing just fine.”
“Liar.”
“I came here for weapons, not to talk politics,” said Hocine, looking down at the carpet.
“The Bellounis maquis, your maquis, Hocine, still holds Jebel Nador, but precious little else. You should have done a deal either with the FLN or with the French. You did deal a little with the French, or so I’m told—a little meaning a lot. In France itself your fundraisers have been turning FLNers over to the police, from what I hear. You’re on the wrong track.”
Hocine stiffened and looked Black straight in the face.
“The arms we need are for just that—to get out of the clutches of the French.”
“So you’re going to win a war on two fronts?”
“I’m not going to argue,” said Hocine.
“Five thousand Mauser 1943 short rifles, Spanish manufacture.”
“Half that for now.”
“No, it’s a single lot.”
“Okay,” said Hocine after a moment. “What else?”
“Two hundred and fifty so-called La Coruña submachine guns. A Spanish knock-off of the Swiss Mark IV Rexim-Favor.”
“I know. The FLN gets them from Syria. What else?”
“A hundred Spanish pistols. There are Llamas, Stars, Rubys, a very mixed bag, but they’re all chambered for 9 mm Para except for the Rubys, which are in 7.65, though there are only a dozen Rubys. And ammo for all of them. And that’s all. I don’t suppose you want artillery?”
“Artillery?”
“Cannon.”
“No, but any chance of a few machine guns?”
“Whoa!” exclaimed Black. “You’re really going to war.”
“Yes.”
Aaron Black’s smile quickly evaporated.
“I could maybe get you some light machine guns. MG 13s, I don’t know how many. Ten or so. That should be enough to start with.”
“Yes,” said Hocine. “Unfortunately, yes. There are not very many of us.”
“You shouldn’t wage war on two fronts,” Aaron Black said again. “Look at Hitler.”
Then they talked money. At first they were very far apart on the price of the weaponry, but all of a sudden they came to agreement. It seemed like a much sped-up kind of ritual haggling. Half the payment was to be deposited in advance in a Geneva bank account; the other half came due after delivery. Black asked grumpily whether delivery would again be via Tangier. Morocco, he said, was very dangerous. But Hocine said that the other route was even worse, then he rose and this time Black got up too, calling to the man in gloves looking out of the window at the traffic on the Strand.
“Guido will go with you,” Black told Hocine Nouaceur. “You think you’re being followed?” The Kabyle pouted uncertainly. “Guido will keep a bit of an eye out behind you. If he sees FLN people he’ll tell you, but he won’t do anything, okay?” Black glanced at Guido, who nodded.
“It’s mainly in Belgium and France that it’s risky,” said Hocine. “Over here things are quieter.”
Brief farewells were exchanged and the Kabyle left with Guido.
“I do not tell anything to my French friends!” burst out Julienne Laqueur, who had apparently been containing her anger ever since she was interrupted by the entrance of Hocine Nouaceur. “It was disgusting what you said!”
“Oh pooh! I was joking. I don’t really think that,” grumbled Black distractedly, as though deep in other thoughts.
“Can someone open the window?” asked the man sitting at the back of the reception room. “It stinks of Arab in here.”
Aaron Black in his three-piece suit swiveled his little body and his big totally bald egg-shaped head, complete with its double chin, fleshy mouth, large hooked nose, and two flashing little gray eyes.
“Hocine is a Berber,” he said. “He doesn’t stink, and neither do the Arabs. You are a racist.” He looked towards Julienne. “My son is a racist,” he said in a neutral tone.
“The Arabs want to ram Israel into the sea.”
“True, but that’s another question,” said Aaron Black, who had spent two years in the Buchenwald concentration camp, from spring 1943 to April 1945, wearing a red triangle superimposed on a yellow one on his deportee’s rags, which designated him as both a political prisoner and a Jew. “You are a racist,” he repeated. “And,” he added, “an asshole. I truly regret that Alba is dead. I have no one but you to hand my business over to when I get too old. And you’ll screw up. You’ll wreck everything. You’re an asshole, Simon. You’ll go bankrupt. And it’ll serve you right. I miss little Alba so much.”
Simon Black rose from his armchair. He might have been thirty-five. He was tall and thin with a thin face and eyes gray like his father’s but utterly without the sparkle. His curly black hair was from his mother. He wore a blue velvet suit and a roll-neck shirt. He was smoking a Camel and the index and middle fingers of both his hands, as well as the fleshy part of his thumbs, were stained yellow by nicotine and tar. He spoke rarely. People thought he did not know what to say. He was considered moronic. He fixed his dull gaze on his father, who was staring at him with eyes ablaze with scorn, then left by the communicating door, closing it noiselessly behind him. Aaron Black sighed, pivoted again and sat down once more. He leant over the art book containing the reproduction of the Arnolfini Wedding and tapped with the tip of his forefinger on the lower left-hand corner of the image.
“So, Julienne,” he asked, “what do the clogs signify?”