1.21 Alenby Abandoned
1.21.1 Alenby and Ada Enjoy the Water of the Vienne
Château Mourey, Chezelet
About 8:30 am Friday 10 April 1987
It’s Friday, market day at Richelieu, Alenby reminded himself as he finished his early-morning swim. Just one week after arriving at Château Mourey….
Breathing deeply, he climbed out of the pool, toweled off and wrapped himself in the largest of the terry-cloth robes Ada kept on hand in the cabana for her various lovers. After a little while his breathing subsided, and he could hear the rhythmic surge and rumble of Ada’s stroke as she continued to swim lap after tireless lap. Good form, he acknowledged, and good endurance.
Ada kept saying it would be "nice" if they had a common interest in swimming. It was the old intimacy thing, Alenby thought, impossible to avoid once one tangles with the weaker sex. Shared interests and activities and all that sort of thing. And it would be nice, he allowed, but only if he could approach her proficiency and pleasure in the water.
Was that possible? Perhaps; he’d had some early successes as a competitive swimmer at Hamilton, but after his growth slowed at the age of sixteen or so he was soon surpassed by taller competitors, and he lost interest in the sport. Still, he retained the correct technique he’d learned as a youth, and in the week since arriving at Château Mourey he was swimming farther and more comfortably every day.
He sat on the tiled edge of the pool and idly dangled his feet in the water—the living clean water of the Vienne, as Ada liked to remind him, water continuously piped in from the river and returned to it some kilometers downstream.
He was marginally aware of minnows darting about his feet, jostling for fragments of the dead skin that had long accumulated in foul-smelling wads between his toes. Recently—a week ago as a matter of fact—he’d noticed that this dead skin had started to slough off. At the same time, the smell and the annoying burning and itching sensation of athlete’s foot had abated noticeably. Evidently his athlete's foot medication, Nodor, had started to work as advertised, just as R-solace and the other inner-man meds had done. Another one of those fortunate coincidences….
It was almost exactly a week ago, right after Professor Ducru’s lunch, that Ada had persuaded him to take a turn in the pool. He’d plunged with misgivings—didn’t you have to wait a whole hour after a meal? But in reality he felt none of the post-prandial heaviness familiar from his life before u. What he did feel was childlike exuberance in the initial chilly shock, in the thrust of his strokes and the feel of the slightly cloudy, pale-green water gurgling about his body.
That first lunch itself had its points of interest. Pleasant fruit smoothie. Delightful green-pea and lettuce flavors in the purée, and a fine match with the Salmon Billecart Rosé, too. In the dessert sorbet, the rugged taste of raw chocolate--a sensation he'd not experienced since a long-ago lunch at Pic in Valence. And another association caught him by surprise: On a chilly, misty day in Paris, in semi-deserted Restaurant [name here], warm chocolate soup with toasted brioche.
Subsequent meals in u had been simply-prepared produce from Maison Mourey's vegetable garden. The produce most amply in season—in April that was asparagus and lettuce and various other salad greens—was brought to the kitchen every day by the gardener, one Jules-César, a taciturn figure in blue overalls. Jules-César's wife--what was her name, Lucretia?-- came in after every meal and cleaned up, washed the dishes and so on and so forth. She didn't actually have to wash the dishes, a quick rinse sufficed. There wasn't much to clean up from meals whose most oleaginous ingredient was a vinaigrette of citrus juice and avocado....
All in all, Alenby felt, it was possible to have a life in u. A pale, austere life to be sure, but a life nonetheless.
But that life, pale and austere as it was--could it last? After only one week, PROFATPOL would still have their books open in the case of one's evasion of their road block. Aside from one early report, the tabloids had been uncharacteristically silent on the matter, and had offered no speculation on the identity of the driver, the "Red Baron" as they called him. Perhaps the authorities, lacking leads and wishing to play down news of police incompetence, had prevailed on the media to let the whole affair die quietly.
Warmed by that thought, by the morning sunshine and the inner fire ignited by exercise, Alenby felt uncommonly well. His thoughts turned to lunch.
A problem occurred to him: the Friday-morning market at Richelieu was an event not to be missed, but the town had no restaurant to which a discriminating gourmet might reasonably repair after shopping. At least that last was true in the Richelieu of U, and Alenby saw no reason to suppose that fundamental reality might fail to hold simply because one happened to be in a different universe. Was there a way out? As usually happened when his mind encountered a difficulty, his thoughts drifted.
Ada churned by, and her wake slopped about his calves. Amazing vitality there, he mused. And when it came to erotic activities, she was amazingly good at the sort of thing one had previously encountered only in the works of certain novelists such as John Updike. All this despite her complete disregard for health-supporting protocols of modern medical science, and her dangerously inadequate diet....
Too bad about her desire for the Czarinaship. She hadn’t mentioned it since the day before, but he knew she still longed for it. Perhaps as ardently as he himself longed for Roquefort.... Hmm, Roquefort--one could certainly use a chunk of that rich, creamy but slightly crumbly white mass shot through with blue-green veins and smelling powerfully of crushed ants and wet Harris tweed.... In a spasm of remembered ecstasy, he rubbed his submerged feet together, clouding the water with dead skin and sending the minnows into a feeding frenzy.
He started at Ada’s voice—hadn’t noticed that she’d left the pool. Market day, she reminded him, mopping her hair, hopping about and arching her sleek figure to shake water out of one ear and then the other. "D’you know a nice place for lunch in Richelieu?" she asked between hops.
"Not in Richelieu" Alenby admitted. He had a flash of insight: when searching for answers to the big questions one must search in the right direction, in this case due west. "However, a short trip to Pouant, a mere six kilometers, to the charming Relais des Deux Provinces?"
"Oh, I love the idea! And I’m sure Georges will too—I remember now, they serve an excellent swill." Ada picked up her locket from a table and restored it to its place behind her right ear. She wheeled about. "Now," she said, "suddenly, I feel a flush of optimism!"
Misplaced optimism, Alenby feared, if she was talking about the Czarina thing. Her ambition seemed hopeless. After a week of trying, she still had not managed to contact Her Extreme Lowness Madame Beaucaillou. None of her phone, fax or email messages had elicited any response whatever, and contact by om seemed altogether off-limits. Now everything depended on getting the reclusive Professor Ducru to intercede, and the prospect of help from that quarter seemed as bleak as ever.
1.21.2 Alenby, Ada and Georges at the Market—and the Kitty Kat Salon
Place du Marché, Richelieu
About 10 am Friday 10 April 1987
"Steady, Georges!" said Ada, stooping to pat the piglet’s shoulder. "That’s right, trot along beside me like a good little piggy-wiggy, and later we’ll have a nice dish of swill, and a pear for dessert."
She half turned to Alenby, who was following three steps behind on the narrow sidewalk. "Excuse me, Alenby, Georges always becomes over-eager as we approach the market. Not that I blame him—I feel the same way, especially the market here in Richelieu. Ah, here we are...."
The couple—or threesome, counting Georges—passed from the chilly morning brilliance of the outdoors, through the wide-arched entrance and on into the dimness of the seventeenth-century covered market. After pausing to allow their eyes to adjust to the comparative gloom, they joined the crowd of shoppers sauntering the broad central thoroughfare, eyeing the produce stalls to either side.
"Hmm, look at those pears," Alenby said. In the last few days his appreciation of pears had sharpened considerably. "Comices, large, delightfully aromatic though as yet slightly under-ripe."
"You’re right, Alenby, they’re magnificent. We should get four." Georges, sitting by the heel of his mistress’ right sandal, grunted a quiet protest. "Six, I mean. Six, s'il vous plaît—" Alenby handed her one of the several string bags he was carrying, and she held it open to receive the plump fruit.
He took the bag and they moved on, stopping at different stalls, chatting with merchants, buying produce. They soon filled the bag, and another and another.
Alenby took a detour to buy tea, seeking a hearty Assam for a change from what seemed to him a somewhat over-refined Darjeeling single-estate leaf that was the only kind on hand at Château Mourey. The price, twenty euro, seemed ridiculously high for a mere 100 g of a mere blend, and the whole transaction seemed had a surreptitious air about it, but he went through with it anyway. One needs a bracing cup of Assam now and then, no matter at what cost.
When he returned to Ada’s side she was making her last purchase of the morning: "Deux kilos de truffes—deux euros cinquante? Merci, au revoir, Madame!"
The three gourmets emerged from the market-place into the pale sunshine of the square. Ada walked ahead, leading the way toward where they had left the car. Georges ambled a half-step behind, and Alenby, burdened with several bulging string bags, brought up the rear.
He narrowed his eyes against the brightness. The bags were heavy. He was even more pleased than before to have found a convenient parking spot. He’d been somewhat dismissive of Ada’s claim that polyandry had eased the universe’s parking problems, but now he saw its virtues.
"That’s the entrance to Her Extreme Lowness’ Soy-food shop," said Ada, pointing across the square. "Her apartment is on the floor above."
At first the words emblazoned on the red and white striped awning over the doorway—KITTY KAT SALON—struck Alenby as inconsistent with the dignity of the lady’s position as a stateswoman. But then he recalled that in France, politicians no matter how prominent, generally maintain business interests and a political base in their home towns. No doubt Madame Beaucaillou was the mayor of Richelieu. But there was still something wrong with the sign—merely SALON instead of SOY-FOOD SALON. Was that not deceptive?
"Deceptive of legal necessity, " Ada explained. "Highly processed or refined foods of plant origin, including bread and pasta as well as soy products, generally have a low nutrient-density index and so are frowned upon by mothers and other influential trend-setters. While such foods are not prohibited, advertising them in any way is against the law as it stands at present.
"And quite rightly, too," she added. "The most vulnerable segment of the population needs to be shielded from this temptation."
Quite right, Alenby agreed, since he did not himself feel any attachment to soy products. But he had a question: "By that segment of the population needful of protection, Ada, you don’t, by any chance, mean...youth?"
Ada made her "how absurd" face. "No," she said, laughing, "I mean the elderly!" She explained that the elderly made up the one group that had not benefited fully from modern understanding of the link between nutrition and health. As children born before Prohibition, they were likely fed animal milk and other dangerous food-like substances, with consequent long-term weakening of their resistance to all kinds of health hazards including the dreaded CHAOS AND OUCH.
"Yes," said Alenby, "but mightn't protecting the elderly turn out counterproductive? I should've thought we already have too many feeble, dotty old people. With their ever-increasing demands on health services, at a time when there aren't enough powerful new medications and innovative surgical techniques and so on and so forth to meet the needs of the more productive elements of society--well, surely these old folk are getting to be a dangerous nuisance!"
"Oh, in u we have the solution to that," said Ada, laughing again. "It's called the assiette noire, a popular choice of exit for the elderly person done with life." She explained that the assiette noire is a dish of ripe olives, trompettes de la mort, black truffles, and other mushrooms of which one must be toxic and of a type known to cause death rapidly and painlessly, without risk of a cleanup problem or of any unduly lengthy valediction.
Misinterpreting Alenby's grimace--he'd found the pairing of mushroom with olive somewhat grotesque--Ada hastened to assure him that the assiette noire was not only perfectly legal, it was required to be served on demand at hospitals, prisons, senior centers and the like. "And of course," she added, "it is completely free of excessive and/or inappropriate protein and fat.
"But in one respect," she went on, "the the assiette noire has flopped utterly. It hasn't been at all well accepted by the sub-set of elderly people sharing a penchant for loud music."
"Loud music--you mean...rock?"
"No, HVO Minus Two. That's opera performance on HV with two visual personages missing, so you and your partner can step into the action and sound-synch the libretto if you want to. Its devotees like it loud, and to compound the nuisance they like it untamed by sound-canceling technology. These old folk quite fail to honor the assiette noire tradition. It seems they're having too much fun--at the expense of everyone else. Ugh, those loud passages from the Ring, by Wagner. They're earsplitting! Like the hunting scene in Götterdämmerung, for example."
"You mean, I suppose, that passage in Act Three Scene One where the tenor and baritone and male chorus assemble in the dark forest to hunt for boar?"
At the word "boar," Georges looked up, wimpering in alarm. "No, Georges, it’s all right," said Ada soothingly. "Now, be a good little piggy-wiggy...."
She half-turned to Alenby. "How implausible! Why would they go into the forest to hunt about in the dark for a b-o-a-r, when they could find a perfectly nice one in the local pet shop? No, they were hunting for mushrooms!"
So engrossed were the two humans in their discussion, that they failed to notice that Georges had surreptitiously detached himself from them.
Even Ada was slow to notice Georges’ defection. By the time she did so, the piglet was trotting across the cobble-stoned road, heedless of the cries of passing runners and the warning bells of bicycles swerving around him, headed toward the red-and-white striped awning of the Kitty Kat Salon.
"Good Gaea!" Ada cried, "Georges has such acute hearing--he must have recognized Papa’s favorite love ditty--yes, I hear it now--that dreadful duet from Siegfried!"
"Excuse me, I believe you mean Die Walküre—"
Agitated, Ada ignored the correction. "I should have guessed—he’s in the village on a romantic assignation with Madame Beaucaillou. They’re in her apartment above the Salon, and Georges—" She began to run.
"Georges, heel!" she called, but the piglet ignored her and broke into a gallop. Ada sprinted after him, gaining fast but not fast enough to catch up.
Alenby, following as fast as he could, saw first Georges and then Ada pass under the sign and through the entry-way, up some stairs--
He arrived at the bottom of the stairs in time to see the first-floor door open to reveal a scrawny figure—Professor Ducru, surely—smiling, arms outstretched. He saw the piglet leap up into that welcoming embrace, and he saw Ada slip through the door just as it swung shut.
1.21.3 Alenby's and Ada's Paths Diverge
Kitty Kat Salon, Richelieu
About 11 am Friday 10 April 1987
Alenby stood there for a moment, still holding his bags of produce. The he put them down and sank into the place at the semi-circular counter nearest the foot of the stairs. A suitable station at which to await the return of Ada and Georges, he thought. But that might take a while. What now?
The answer came in a voice seemingly bubbling with youthful high spirits, the voice of Cleo, the waitress one had encountered a week ago, at Restaurant Les Dhuits:
"Café à l’émulsion de soja, Excellency?"
A soothing prospect, he thought, to be attended by this ebon nymph, now officiating, it would appear, in the cool, damp-seeming dimness of the Kitty Kat Salon. Yet wasn’t there something improper in her suggestion? He glanced at his watch. Yes, quite improper.
"Excuse me, Mademoiselle," he said, "but if I am not mistaken this café à l’émulsion de soja is white coffee, and surely it is one of the norms of civilized society that white coffee is served only before ten am o’clock."
"But Excellency, this is a soy-food bar, and soy-food bars are not frequented by civilized—I mean, in soy-food bars white coffee’s okay any time!"
Alenby glanced around. There were only a few other customers, each slumped by herself in silent surrender to the blandishments of soy products, or more likely to the so-called "excessive" fat and protein therein. This soy-food bar, at least, was no hotbed of civilization. Perhaps the young lady’s right, he thought.
"In that case," he said, affecting an off-hand manner to cover his unease, "café à l’émulsion de soja." He looked at his watch again. It was definitely after ten.
The girl glided away and returned almost immediately to set down on the table a tray bearing jugs of hot coffee and soy-milk, and a large cup. She picked up the jugs and directed simultaneous streams of the steaming liquids into the cup. "Voilà!" she breathed, stepping back a pace.
Without even waiting until it was properly tepid--like many gourmets, he disliked coffee at all hot--Alenby took a sip, and, after a pause for reflection, another. He closed his eyes. Hmm, he was right, the flavor behind that bland curtain of emulsified tofu owed more to robusta than to arabica. Still, he enjoyed it, as he always enjoyed the second-rate provided only that it was good of its kind.
Time passed. One by one the customers rose and slunk away. Another came in, a thin, hard-faced woman a black suit of quasi-military cut.
Alenby ordered another coffee: "Same again, my good young woman." Cleo again poured the black and white liquids to mix in the cup, this time with a flourish from extra practice. "Voilà" she said, but before she had time to add the exclamation mark she suddenly cocked her head, backed away and vanished. A moment later Alenby looked up to see Ada on the stairs. She was carrying Georges in her arms.
As she came closer he saw that her face bore the sort of half-frozen expression that meant, according to his experience with the weaker sex, that she was about to say something he didn't care to hear. Something along the lines of his ex-wife, Blanche de Noire, saying "Alenby, the garage is a mess, please tell Miguel to clean it up this minute!"
It wasn't quite that bad. Still, "I am leaving you, Alenby" was bad enough. Quite a blow, actually.
"I have conferred with Her Extreme Lowness," Ada went on, "and she has given me an assignment of vital importance in the War, and to my chances of securing the Czarinaship. This is something I must do in the service of Gaea, and it is something I must do alone. You will remain at Château Mourey. Georges will stay there with you, and you will attend to his needs." She put the piglet down on the floor, where he remained with his pink-and-beige snout drooped in an attitude of dejection.
Alenby became aware that his mouth had fallen open. He closed it.
"Now, Alenby, you’ll need money. Here’s an ATM card. Be sure not to lose it. On second thought, give me your wallet, that way at least I’ll know the card is safely...now all you have to remember is not to lose your wallet."
Having thus filched Alenby’s folding money including all his remaining C-notes of provenance U (a deficiency he was to discover after it was too late to do anything about it) she handed the wallet back.
"I’ll need the car," she went on. Kindly hand me the keys."
He did so.
"Thank you," said Ada. "The ATM identification number is 2537. The maximum daily withdrawal is 1000 euros, starting tomorrow. Goodbye." She left.
"Wait!" Alenby cried, "Uh, what was that number again? At least let me write it down—"
"Not necessary, Excellency," murmured Cleo, having silently positioned herself nearby. "The number is easy to remember. It is simply the first two Germain pairs, which is to say pairs of prime numbers of the form (p, 2p+1). Really!"
"Really?" Alenby echoed gratefully. He didn't comprehend that (p, 2p+1) part, but it didn't matter, he could always ask Cleo about it later.
He felt a warm muscular mass bearing on his ankle: Georges, obviously wishing to be consoled. But before he could so much as give Georges a friendly pat on the shoulder, he was startled to see Cleo suddenly dart forward and sweep the animal up in her arms, provoking it to loud squeals of distress--squeals that became louder and more anguished as Cleo, still holding the animal in her arms, flew up the stairs to the door of Madame Beaucaillou’s apartment. He started to follow but stopped and watched helplessly as the door opened to let Cleo and Georges pass through, and slammed shut behind them.
Questions crowded his mind: What was Ada up to? What was Cleo up to? What were those germane numbers again?
And upon finding sooner rather than later that Ada had left him without money, he clapped his hands to his temples and fell forward, elbows on the counter, groaning aloud the most agonizing question of all: "What about lunch?"
***
The answer to that last question came from the woman in the black suit, now stationed at his side.
"Excellency, I have the honor to announce you under the arrest," she said, shoving a PROFATPOL badge in front of his face. "Purchase of more than 99 grams of Assam tea, an ancillary substance. By consequence, you will take the lunch in prison.
"Lunch in Prison Simone Weil," she added with a snort of laughter.