30
PARTISAN REVIEW
and answered the telephone and dealt with the valet and waiter.
He had done all this without a single conscious thought, functioning
like an automaton whose responses to any stimulus are built into the
mechanism. Only at the moment of contact with the cold water under
the shower had the sound track been suddenly switched on again.
He knew then that his wife was dead and that he was alone to carry
the burden of his freedom.
He glanced into the mirror and saw with wonder that nothing
in his appearance had changed. He spread a street map on the table–
the Cultural Attache had provided him with one at his request, for
Leontiev disliked asking people for information and being at the
mercy of cab drivers. He saw that he only had a ten minutes' walk
to Monsieur Anatole's He knew that for the next few hours he was
still physically safe; that it would be more prudent not to return to the
hotel, but that he must leave his things as if he intended to return.
He did not care about their loss, except for the six new shirts which
he had bought yesterday; they were of a quality unobtainable at
home. This reminded him for the first time of his library, his country
house, his swimming pool. He knew that without Zina the house would
be a sepulchre; still, it was not easy to accept the loss of the fruits of
thirty years of labor. Fifty-five was a difficult age for a man to start
his life again, alone. Yet he felt braced by the prospect.
It
would be
a bitter but a clean struggle.
He threw a last glance at the room, changed his mind, wrapped
one of his new shirts, a razor and a toothbrush into a small parcel,
using the paper in which the shirts had arrived. It was an inconspi–
cuous parcel, it looked like a present. Avoiding the lift, he made his
way downward over the soft carpeted stairs. The porter and the
bell-boys bowed respectfully as he walked across the hall; he won–
dered which of them was employed to keep a check on him. He also
thought that they were eyeing him with more than usual curiosity,
but that was probably only his imagination.
As
he walked down the Rue de Rivoli, the blue dusk of the sum–
mer evening had just begun to soften the contours of houses and
trees. His feet were light as
if
the magic of the Paris pavement were
counteracting the force of gravity. He had only been to Paris once
before, twenty years ago, also at a Peace Rally-it had been in the
days of the Popular Front. This time he had almost succeeded in
