Free The Janeites by Nicolas Freeling

people. Haircut! – they liked their little cliché jokes. Max Kolbe is said to have made a step to the front, politely. Take me instead – you’ve only to fill your quota. Could you do that? Think.
    ‘A further fact. Supposing he had been a real SS man. Smart and upright, a man himself dedicated, trained to face death. You could respect that man. He could increase your courage. He might have understood: he would have been capable of saluting you.
    ‘Instead, it was a slob. Didn’t look at you, pushed you coarsely by the shoulder – stand over there. Left you no dignity, no self-respect. Death was a dirty ignorant slob with bad-smelling breath.’
    Were William condemned, it would be harsh. A forged piece of steel, tough and supple, tempered to hold a fine edge. Into this marvellous raw material have been put much money and time.
    These ramblings, since you couldn’t call them trains of thought, continued in a limpingly disjointed fashion up to the gates of Paris, at which point Doctor Raymond Valdez disembarked, a bit stiff around the knees but professionally enough, remembering a joke told him by William. Allah sent the Angel of Death to finish with an unpleasant Dictator. The Angel got caught by security guards, was badly beaten up, and sent back in a shocking state. ‘My God,’ said Allah. ‘I hope you didn’t tell them who sent you.’
    I too, in my turn, am a security guard, here to try and protect William from a cunning, persistent and imaginative assassin.
    They knew how to build houses in Baron Haussmann’s day. Seeking entry Ray was aware of scrutiny, by the electronic eye. Joséphine – she is alone in the flat – looks rather carefully before letting people into the fortress. A youngish man, doesn’t look much like the doctor she has been told to expect; older perhaps than he looks. Expensive clothes, looking rather crumpled. She let him in.
    Raymond saw a tall, bony young woman with straight fair hair. Skirt, but would look well in trousers. Large hands and feet, very fine legs (blow your nose and avoid lechery). Living-room, large, well lit, nicely proportioned, Empire furniture, stripy silk upholstery. Plenty of family money. She sat on a chaise-longue, put herlegs up to be admired, sat him in a curule chair (surprisingly comfortable).
    “Marky has told me about you. Name of Valdez, you Peruvian or something?”
    “Something. I’m a famous writer. Nobel Prize, magical realism.”
    “And a Jesuit – Witchdoctor!” Deep voice, rare in French women.
    “Mutter charms. Blow the candle out but put a pinch first of the Devils Foot on the wick – make you see things.” Parisian crosschat; if you can’t make me laugh you’re a bum.
    “Come from Strasbourg – provincial puddingdom.”
    “I hear this all the time – in Paris or London – the world revolves around us; now that Is provincial.” She rearranged herself a little pettishly.
    “I’m not very clear about this. Come to give me a talking-to, about God?”
    “Hardly. God can be a bit of an old fraud now and then.”
    Laugh, rather a good one, deep in the throat.
    “Jesuitical thing to be saying.”
    “Most doctors would agree that God has a way of not being around when most needed.”
    “Heresy.”
    “Just unsentimental. The commonplace claim is that God can’t exist, or He wouldn’t allow horrible sufferings and injustices. That’s to have an over-inflated idea of our importance. Saying that God made a lousy job of it strikes me as arrogant.”
    “So we are arrogant. As Marky says – I am an entity; they are nonentities.”
    “How d’you think a doctor survives? Drowned in shit all day. I’ve no time to feel sorry about the horrors. That’s God’s business, so I’ll get on with my own.”
    “Man, you are boring me. You’ve been taking up with William as I hear; that what all this is about?”
    “You didn’t hear that William’s been seen in bad company?”
    “Your own, no doubt.”
    “Better said, the bad