Nazis in the Metro Read Free Page B

masterpiece. I would very much like to have met him, but your colleagues aren’t letting anyone near him.
    She pushed her cart over to a small circular room set up as a cafeteria and sat down on a chair.
    —There’s no point, you would only see a swollen face with tubes in its nose and mouth … I’ve read all of his books, passionately; it’s unbearable to see someone who has moved you so much in a condition like that … I was a nurse before I was a librarian, and believe me, I’m used to worse sights … But with this, it was like the first time …
    —He’s badly banged up?
    She swayed her head back and forth, lost in her thoughts.
    —Yes … he’s a mess. You wonder how he managed to survive …
    This was the trademark of professional thugs, Gabriel thought, the final stroke of intimidation: to leave the target on the verge of death, one foot in, one foot out.
    —Do they know what happened?
    —Not really … From what I’ve been told, one of his neighbors discovered him slumped in the stairway to the parking lot in his building, around one in the morning. Some cops from Boulevard de l’Hôpital brought him to us. They determined that André Sloga had just returned from vacation, and that he was attacked by a group of thieves who stole his luggage … It’s true that he lives in a pretty sketchy neighborhood …
    —In the paper, they said Rue Jeanne d’Arc … That street’s been cleaned up for several years now, it’s almost become residential, and with the new library …
    He gathered from her pout and the way she wrinkled her nose that she did not share his point of view on the improved standing of this pocket of the 13th Arrondissement.
    —Do you know if he can speak?
    —I watched him for two hours, early this morning … He experienced sudden bouts of terror, like anyone who comes in like that … He yelled …
    —Were you able to understand any of it?
    —No. Actually, he didn’t yell, he didn’t have the strength … He murmured, but you could see that he was trying to yell. Then he calmed down and started to speak.
    —What exactly did he say?
    —Nothing. Disconnected words with no meaning …
    Gabriel leaned toward her.
    —What words? It’s important … Try to remember, please.
    She closed her eyes for a few moments.
    —He said “loudspeaker” several times, yes, that’s it … “the loudspeaker on the square …” That came back every ten minutes or so … He also repeated “the bank, the bank,” and once, just once, he said a name …
    Gabriel placed his hand over the young woman’s.
    —What name?
    She looked at him square in the face.
    —“Max.”

4
THE REFRIGERATOR ARTISTS
    “Max, the bank, the loudspeaker on the square …” Gabriel left the Pitié-Salpêtrière, his head spinning like an old scratched record with the words the writer had spoken on his sickbed. “Max, the bank, the loudspeaker on the square.” He got into his car and sat there for a moment, motionless, his elbows resting on the steering wheel, as he tried to figure out the magic combination that would be the key to the puzzle.
The bank of Max beneath the loudspeaker on the square. A max of banks for the crowd-speakers on the square. The proud speaker of Max’s square. Speak loudly, Max, on the banks of the square
 … The roar of a train on the elevated tracks snapped him out of his reverie. He started the car and took off toward Rue Jeanne d’Arc, which he followed almost as far as Tolbiac. Before getting out, he took the precaution of shoving two pieces of licorice chewing gum that had been softening on his dashboard into his mouth and removing about twenty centimeters from a spool of orange mending thread.
    The artists who’d been squatting in the neighborhood had pasted colorful hand-painted posters to walls and posts, and taped them to the windows of sympathetic shopkeepers. If you came close enough and spent a little time, it waspossible to decipher the