“Well, then, why don’t you?” Lucie said. “If you stay in your flat and let the Nazi come over whenever he chooses and do whatever he wants, why do you think you deserve anything in the way of sympathy?”

Again, Monique felt like hitting her. “What am I supposed to do, sneak out of my flat, throw away my position at the university, and sell drugs with you in Porte d’Aix?” Without waiting for an answer, she took her vegetables up to the shopkeeper. He gave her an unhappy look; totting up what she owed made him put down the magazine. She paid, got her change, and went out into the warm air of late summer. The sun didn’t stand so high in the sky as it had a couple of months before. Autumn was coming, and then winter, though winter in Marseille wasn’t the savage beast it was farther north.

Monique was swinging aboard her bicycle when Lucie came out, too. Her brother’s mistress said, “If you want to disappear, Pierre and I can arrange it. It’s easier than you think, as a matter of fact. And if it gets that German out of your hair and out of your bed, why not?”

“You must be crazy,” Monique said. “I’ve spent my whole life training to be a Roman historian. Now that I finally am, I can’t just throw that over.”

“If you say so, dearie,” Lucie answered. “But I’m damned if see why not.” She got on her own bicycle and pedaled away.

With a muttered curse, Monique rode back to her own block of flats. No bloodstains remained to show where the luckless fish seller had been gunned down instead of Sturmbannfuhrer Dieter Kuhn, but she saw them in her mind’s eye. But I’m damned if I can see why it wasn’t him. The words gnawed at her as she went upstairs.

They gnawed even more after Kuhn paid her a visit that evening. As usual, he enjoyed himself and she didn’t. “I wish you would leave me alone,” she said wearily as he was getting dressed to leave again.

He smiled at her-a smile both sated and something else, something less pleasant. “I know you do. That is one of the things that keeps me coming back, sweetheart. Bonne nuit.” He turned on his heel and walked out, jackboots thumping on her carpet.

After he was gone, she got up, cleaned herself off-the bidet didn’t seem nearly enough-put on a robe, and tried to read some Latin. None of her inscriptions seemed to mean anything. She fought them for a while, then sighed, scowled, and gave up and went to bed.

She slept late the next morning: it was Sunday. Church bells clanged as she made her morning coffee. Along with a croissant and strawberry jam, it made a good breakfast. She lit a cigarette and sucked in harsh smoke.

A flat full of books, a university position where promotion would be slow if it ever came at all, a German lover she loathed. This is what I’ve made of my life? she thought, and the notion was far harsher than the smoke.

She didn’t want to go back into the bedroom even to dress; it reminded her too much of Dieter Kuhn’s odious presence. As soon as she had dressed, she left and manhandled her bicycle down the stairs. She couldn’t stand staying cooped up in there, wrestling with a dead language and with dead hopes. Off she rode, away from her troubles, away from Marseille, up into the hills back of the city that rose steeply from the Mediterranean Sea.

The Germans had placed antiaircraft-missile batteries in those hills. Otherwise, though, she had a surprisingly easy time escaping from civilization. Presently, she pulled off a dirt track and sat down on a flat yellow stone. Somewhere a long way off, a dog barked. Skippers flitted from dandelion to thistle to clover. If only I didn’t have to go home, Monique thought.

Here and there in the hills, men scratched out a living from little farms. Others herded sheep and goats. One of them is bound to be looking for a wife. Monique laughed at herself. Not going home was one thing. Spending the rest of her life as a peasant woman was something else again. Next to that, even Dieter Kuhn looked less appalling… didn’t he?

Monique didn’t have to think about the German now. She didn’t have to think about anything. She could lean back on the stone and close her eyes and let the sunshine turn the inside of her eyelids red. She wasn’t free. She knew she wasn’t, but she could pretend to be, at least for a little while.

A bee buzzing round her head made her open her eyes. Another bicyclist was coming up the dirt track toward her. She frowned. Company was the last thing she wanted right now. Then she recognized the man on the bicycle. She stood up. “How did you find me?” she demanded angrily.

Her brother smiled as he stopped. “There are ways.”

“Such as?” Monique said, hands on hips. Pierre’s smile got wider and more annoying. She thought for a moment. Then she got angry for another reason. “You put some miserable Lizard toy on my bicycle!”

“Would I do such a thing?” Her brother’s amiability was revoltingly smug.

“Of course you would,” Monique answered. She looked at the bicycle that had betrayed her. “Now-did the Germans do the same thing? Will that dog of a Kuhn come pedaling up the road ten minutes from now?” If anything, she would have expected the SS man to get out from Marseille faster than her brother. However much she despised Dieter Kuhn, he was in far better shape than Pierre.

“I don’t think so.” Pierre still sounded smug. “I would know if they had.”

“Would you?” Monique didn’t trust anyone any more. I wonder why, she thought. “Remember, the Nazis are starting to be able to listen to your talk on the telephone, even though you didn’t think they could do that. So are you sure the gadgets you have from the Lizards areas good as they say?”

To her surprise, her brother looked thoughtful. “Am I sure? No, I’m not sure. But I have a pretty good notion with this one.”

Monique tossed her head. No matter how good a notion he had, she didn’t particularly want him around. She didn’t want anyone around. Why else would she have come all the way out here? “All right, then,” she said grudgingly. “What do you want? You must want something.”

“I should resent that,” Pierre said. Monique shrugged, as if telling him to go ahead. He laughed, annoying her further, and went on, “There you have me.”

“Say your say, then, and leave me what’s left of the day. Monday morning, I have to be a scholar again.”

Pierre clicked his tongue between his teeth. “And Monday night, very likely, you will have another visit from the fellow you love so well.”

She spent the next minute or so cursing him. One of the main reasons she’d come up here was to forget about Dieter Kuhn for a little while. It didn’t seem she could even do that.

Her brother waited till she ran down, then said, “If you want to be rid of him for good, you really should come down to the Porte d’Aix. He won’t bother you there, I promise you that, and you might be very useful to me.”

“I don’t care whether I’m useful to you or not,” Monique flared. “All I want is to be left alone. I haven’t had much luck with that, and it’s your fault.”

He bowed, more than a little scornfully. “No doubt you are right. Do you care about whether the Boche comes to your bedroom tomorrow night?”

“Damn you,” Monique said. If it weren’t for Kuhn-and it wouldn’t have been for Kuhn except for Pierre… “All I want is to be left alone.” She’d already said that. Saying it again underlined it in her own mind.

Saying it again did nothing for Pierre, though. “You can’t have that. It might be nice if you could, but you can’t. You can have the Nazi up your twat, or you can have the Porte d’Aix. Which will it be?”

Monique looked around for a rock. There by her feet lay a good one, just the size of her hand. If she bounced it off her brother’s head, she might shut him up for good. It wasn’t so simple. It couldn’t be so simple. If she stayed where she was, that didn’t just mean Kuhn. It meant her classes, her research, her friends at the university-not that she’d had time for them lately. And her research had gone to hell; she’d thought that the night before. As for her classes, Kuhn had got to know her through them. So what did that leave her?