There was no way around it. Nadir needed a new set of evening clothes.
Not so long ago, he had been in possession of a perfectly serviceable suit made up of very nice black fabric, and worn with a fine white shirt. But in the course of a single night, that perfectly serviceable suit had been all but destroyed. It had started with the abuse of the jacket lapels—grosgrain, in the American fashion—which had been turned and twisted every which way to disguise the brightness of the fine shirt. Thereafter, the suit had been run it, pressed into small hiding places, the jacket repeatedly taken on and off in the room of mirrors, and the whole thoroughly drowned and then dried out again.
Darius, standing ready with his tailor's kit, had despaired over the suit as much as he had rejoiced in its wearer's relatively safe return.
His best suit had not been a matter of concern to Nadir, either on that fateful night or on any of the following nights. Of course, now that he was standing in his second best evening suit—nearly fifteen years old, shiny at the elbows, and with a distressing tendency to pull over the stomach— it was a matter of great concern.
There was nothing for it, alas. Darius had already gone off to finish his errands and then to romance his pretty widow. But even if he had been home, Nadir did not relish another quiet night in. In fact, the very thought of it chaffed badly. He put on his overcoat and scarf, locked the apartment, and hailed a carriage.
He had the cabbie drop him off a little ways before the Avenue de l'Opera met the Boulevard des Capucines and walked the last few blocks. The massive edifice of the Opera Garnier loomed before him. The new electric lighting poured out of the many windows in a flood of pure white. It glinted off the damp sidewalks and damp patrons and caught the gold sentinels of Harmony and Poetry in an artificial inferno.
It was a splendid thing, Charles Garnier's vision of Imperial glory. But there was something in the austere columns—or perhaps the perfect arches—that struck Nadir as sinister. He had seen echoes of those lines a lifetime before. It was Erik: ever the Angel of Death, even if his more recent heavenly guises had lacked such obvious malevolence.
Had that put-on angelic role finally been made reality? Nadir had never been a theologian. He felt, too, that he had long ago lost the right to arbitrate right and wrong. Who was he to say that a monster of darkness in life might not be remade a being of light in death?
If, indeed, Erik was dead. Oh, he had let go of his box of treasures. But to do that, he must have been well enough to make the walk to the post office, and Nadir didn't think that such activity befitted a man moments away from death.
Nadir could not say how long he stood, looking at the Opera. He should go in. He should find his way to the gate on the Rue Scribe, should force his way down to the little lake house. He should look on the corpse, no longer the Animate Corpse, and lay an old responsibility to rest.
Erik is dead. The little Daaé girl would read those very words in the Époque, put there by Nadir's request. And perhaps it was true, or perhaps it would be true tomorrow.
The Daroga, a man made for the execution of duty, would have discharged this one with all proper haste. Difficulties would not have counted for much with him; desire, even less.
Nadir, who had grown too accustomed to his quiet, pointless little life in exile, could claim no such virtue of determination.
"I am a coward," he said aloud, in French.
In the spirit of all great cowards, he turned and walked away with the barest twinge of conscience.
He set a quick pace in the general direction of the Madeleine Church. He shook his head at the memory of Erik declaring that holy place to be the site of his future, rather unholy nuptials.
Clearly, Erik was not a topic that Nadir was going to be rid of easily. He briefly considered stopping into some random café and seeking an elegant anesthetic of some sort. He almost regretted the fact that he was not the sort of man to indulge so.
He eventually sought refuge in a more familiar setting.
The smoky, steamy warmth of the hookah lounge was a welcome respite from the inhospitable weather. Nadir offered polite nods to a few of the regular patrons. They were mostly gentlemen of middling standing in some of the more far-flung embassies that were scattered about the neighborhood. Foreign merchants made a good showing, and the occasional French Orientalist dilettante found be found hanging about the fringes. The smallest collection of was of true expatriates who had left their homes without hope of a return.
Nadir supposed that he must be counted amongst this last grouping, though he found little in common with the others so branded. He was well-liked by the men of standing, who never denied him a game of checkers or a seat at the bar.
A different man, Nadir supposed, would have made such a place his daily haunt. He could not deny the pleasure of listening to his language fall from fluent tongues, nor the interest that must be roused by hearing a familiar name mentioned. But he found the lounge could be nothing more than an occasional escape—enjoyed in the moment, not quite regretted in the aftermath, and forgotten for stretches at a time.
The mere presence of friendliness did not make for real friends, after all, and the display of hospitality could not quite disguise the noisome reality of charity.
But for the moment, Nadir did not mind much. He was in no great hurry to return to his little flat, and so set himself up in a comfortable corner with a good pipe. The lounge filled as the night went on, and Nadir time and again allowed himself to be pulled into some discussion or another. The future of Chinese-French diplomacy was the topic of the hour, though the reappointment of Prince Kamran as War Minister back home was being picked apart in some quarters, and the economic ramifications of the assassination of the American president some weeks before was a matter of interest for a few.
It was nearing midnight when Nadir thought to bestir himself to catch a carriage home. He was thwarted when Masood, the personal attaché to the Persian ambassador, strolled in. By chance, they had arrived in France around the same time and had been peripheral participants in each other's lives for many years.
"Daroga," Masood inclined his head with vague diffidence before arranging himself on the couch nearest Nadir, "I heard that your man was in the office today. My wife tells me that good servants are impossible to find. I tell her she's never met good old Daryush."
"I value his loyalty and long years of service," Nadir replied mildly, settling in for another long chat. What did it matter, at any rate? What early appointment had he to keep? Who was waiting on Nadir Khan anymore?
"One of the reasons I would never try to lure him to our staff," Masood said, "the other being that my wife would probably fire him within the month, no matter how skilled he was. Frenchwomen are so fickle. No matter. I didn't see Darius today, or would have sent my greetings."
Nadir waved this away. "I am not surprised you did not see him. I had heard that there was quite a lot of activity today."
This was all the invitation Masood needed to launch into a recital of his professional woes. Never mind Egypt and never mind the naughty baroness—it was the Shah's new envoy that had caused the most consternation. Reza Gholi Khan was man intent on turning the world on its ear, Masood insisted. A cunning fox who had assumed the mantle of an aged dandy—and carrying an entire folio of sealed instructions from the Shah to boot. It was enough to drive a man mad.
"And he brought his wife," Masood continued without letup. "He just handed her down from the carriage like it was nothing in the world! Introduced her to the senior staff at the Embassy! And there she was, all corseted and heeled and wearing a net veil over this little velvet turban—as if that was proper hajib!"
Nadir did not resist poking a bit of fun at his agitated acquaintance. "I'm sure your wife would be gratified to hear you say such a thing."
"You don't understand. She isn't some European like my Sophie—he brought his wife from Tehran."
"Then I am scandalized," Nadir commented.
"No, you are not. Nor am I, truth be told. It is a tactical move of great genius on Reza's part." He finally admitted, "I am annoyed that I did not think of it. Mark me, la Khatoun will do very well in society. Not a great beauty, here or there, but she has pretty manners and Reza will show her off to great advantage, I'm sure."
"Is her father someone?" Nadir asked.
"What good father would give his daughter over to such a scheme?" Masood shrugged. "No, she's a nobody back home, though I'm sure her husband will make her somebody here." Masood took a long drag from his pipe and seemed to be settling into a contented silence. "What of you, Daroga? What have you been up to these past few weeks?"
What he had been busy with for the past several weeks was something Nadir had absolutely no desire to discuss. He made his excuses and his escape in good order.
In a prodigious waste of his pocket money, Nadir directed the carriage driver back to the Palais Garnier. The very last of the straggling subscribers were leaving and the earlier brilliance of the white lights had dimmed to little more than a shadow.
It was a shadow that would haunt Nadir—if he allowed it to.
"Forgive our dead and our living," Nadir murmured, "our present and our absent."
Tomorrow, he would not run away. Tomorrow, he would face Erik.