The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

Author:Timothy Schaffert [Schaffert, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

35

In the morning, I’m in the very back of a long black car. I’ve been driven before, but never by this man. I tell him he’s taken a wrong turn. And when he says nothing, I fret. We take another turn, then another, each twist in the path angling me farther from home, and farther from Pascal’s house.

“I know you can hear me.” I’m raising my voice above the scratch of the tinny, hectic music from the dashboard radio. This time the driver responds, but only with a shake of his head. And then I say it in German, or I hope I do. I don’t know the words well enough to know if I’ve used the right ones. And again. I know you can hear me. He begins to sing along to a song.

Voss is onto me. I’m to be registered. Fingerprinted. I’ve heard these stories. You report to an office, you sign a paper, you check a box, and next you’re arrested.

My first instinct is to think back, to stumble over all my missteps, but that’s an amateur’s trap. Was there something I said last night, at the cabaret? Could he read my disgust on my face? Is he closer to Lutz than I thought? I’m frightened for a moment, but a moment of fright is all you can allow yourself. At the first bristling of fear, you turn it useful. Because it’s fear, not fearlessness, that gets you to let go of the good sense that keeps you still. Sometimes that means running away even if a gun’s at your temple.

But, of course, I’m an old woman. I won’t get far on foot.

And what if this is nothing at all? What if I’m not being abducted? Leaping from a moving car—I can think of no more efficient admission of guilt. How would I explain my fear to Voss?

So I sit and I wait and I wonder about all the people of Paris who’ve fallen victim to common sense, all those who’ve gone along without struggle, because it’s illogical to expect the worst. It’s crazy. You’ll hurt yourself. Just follow.

Then I see that I couldn’t tumble out even if I wanted to. There’s no handle on my door.

I say, or try to say, I can pay you something if you take me home.

The driver just tosses a box of cigarettes into the backseat. And some matches.

I decide this is a good sign, these cigarettes. If I were his captive, what would stop me from dropping a match down his collar? Sticking the hot end of the cigarette on his neck?

I consider lighting a cigarette, to fall into a coughing fit. Turn it into a production. A collapse. A raspy, wheezing cough, an old crone choking on her own tongue. He’d have to stop. He’d have to let me get some air.

I light a match, let it burn. But that’s all I do. It burns to the tips of my fingers. I blow it out.

And the car stops, with the puff of my breath.

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