La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

  But worst of all was when he felt his pride had been injured. He disgraced himself on a daily basis, but when he got the impression that someone else was trying to do that, the piazza was too small for the both of them. He cracked the jokes, including the jokes about himself, and anyone getting it into his head to make him the butt of one became an arch enemy, at least for as long as he remembered, and that was never very long, and in any case never longer than until the next morning.

  But outbursts like this were relatively uncommon. I began to worry about something else. There was also a quiet, dejected, melancholic Don, and I began to see him more and more often. The expat friends we had in common noticed it, too. When we asked after the cause, he’d just say he was thinking. And if we carried on asking, he’d say even less. But we could guess what he was thinking about. A lack of money put a recurring damper on the party mood. His depressions almost always overcame him during the last week of the month. As soon as he’d been to the bank to collect his pension he’d drown himself in happiness again. But it went deeper than that. Sometimes he’d get a card or a letter from his sister in Birmingham. He would carry it with him in his inside pocket for days and tell us night after night that he’d gotten a card or a letter from his sister in Birmingham. He seemed just as surprised as we were that he had a sister and it made him melancholic, like someone taken unawares by a realization of lost time.

  Don’s family was a concept no one could get their head round. He was one of those rare characters who, like Athena, must have sprouted fully armed out of someone’s head. Don was born with a gin and tonic in his hand; it was the only possibility, because without a gin and tonic in his hand, Don wouldn’t be Don. It was inconceivable that he’d ever been a normal toddler with anything as banal as a sister. Even more unimaginable, if that was possible, was the thought that he’d had ever had children himself. He was much too happy with his own cocky independence and his role as a maverick singleton at the heart of the crowd and much too faithful to his glass, his only mistress. And yet he had them. He had a daughter, who lived in Greece, and a son whose stage name was “Dicko” and had made a fortune in Australia playing a malevolent judge in TV talent contests. We found this out by chance. Don never talked about them. All contact had been cut off. And there must have been a wife involved, or in any case a mother to his children, but we never found anything out about her, not even by chance. He was in denial about his hidden past and trying to forget it, but its ghosts haunted his mind more and more often when he didn’t have enough money for the gin he needed to deny or forget.

  He was getting old, that was it. He began to grow older than he’d ever imagined possible. He no longer had the strength for his forward flight every evening. He was being sucked back into his own past, which he wouldn’t share with anyone whatever bottle you plied him with. He resembled a wounded animal, hiding away under the roots of a tree to die out of sight of the cameras that continued to play for as long as he could see them.

  11.

  “I really can’t talk about it, but I know I can trust you. I’ll tell you on the condition that you don’t write it down. It was just before I graduated from Cambridge. My thesis on the metaphysical poets had been approved. Better still, I’d been given the highest possible grade. I’d been celebrating that in my own way for a few days. And one evening I came home and found an official letter from the dean on my desk. One of the bedders must have put it there. This was highly irregular. The college post was always delivered to the pigeon holes in the main hall, just next to the entrance. The next morning, when I’d sobered up, I opened the letter. The dean had invited me for tea at his home. This was highly, highly irregular.

  “I was received in the drawing room. The dean’s wife served tea with a wide assortment of sandwiches, cakes, and petits fours. The dean joined us in the drawing room and began a very amicable conversation about a series of amusing trivialities. He told me stories about his time as a student and the short period during which he had been politically active. He seemed exaggeratedly interested in my thesis’s conclusions and my other views on English literature. He nodded and smiled friendlily at everything I said. His wife kept on topping up the teacups and proffering new delicacies. Meanwhile I felt more uncomfortable by the minute. Something was fishy about this. It was highly, highly, highly irregular. What was going on? What did he want from me?

  “‘I know you have a great fondness for orchids,’ he said, ‘Come. I want to show you something.’ Where on earth had he gotten that from? I didn’t like orchids at all. But I went with him. We went outside through the back door, and right at the back of his large garden there was a greenhouse in which he cultivated orchids. He gave me a tour and at a certain point, while he was clipping away a couple of superfluous leaves with a small pair of shears, he casually asked, ‘By the way, have you ever considered joining the Service?’

  “I didn’t have the foggiest what he meant. He carried on coolly trimming his orchids. It was a very finicky task. He leaned in close to scrutinize his work and said, ‘We have selected you as a potential candidate. You aspire to an academic career, don’t you?’ I nodded. ‘That can be arranged. It won’t get in the way of your work for the Service in any way. On the contrary, it would be an advantage because an academic career is a most suitable cover. You’d have to attend a lot of conferences abroad, but you wouldn’t have to worry yourself about that. We’d organize that for you.’ I still didn’t understand where this was heading. He said, ‘What I mean is this: if you cooperate, the Service would guarantee the preconditions, like a lectureship and, in time, a chair. That goes without saying.’

  “I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Because you are one of the few here with a military background. Besides, there are certain facets of your personality that make you a very suitable candidate—you seem to value a varied social life and you are very credible in places where a lot of alcohol is drunk and people tend to be rather more loose-lipped than usual. That’s a characteristic that might come in useful. What’s more, you don’t clam up under pressure. I noticed that when I put you to the test with that condom that ostensibly had been found in your bed. And if you are still not convinced, I’ll give you one final argument.’

  “He walked to the back wall of the greenhouse, where there was a tool cabinet. He took out a rolled-up piece of paper. ‘Do you recognize this document?’ It was my A-level certificate. ‘It’s a forgery,’ he said. ‘Not a bad forgery, I’ll admit, but we’re no fools. Listen, let me put it this way, as an employee of the Service such a demonstration of improvisational ability works in your favor, whereas under different circumstances it might be considered a punishable offence. Do you get my meaning?’ I nodded. ‘To prevent any misunderstanding, I’ll make myself more explicit. If you accept, we’ll put this document back in our archives and you’ll get your first class honors next week and we’ll underwrite your future academic career. If you refuse, I’ll unfortunately find myself compelled to take steps. To start with I’d have to cancel your graduation and following that, legal proceedings would be put into motion.’ I swallowed. ‘So I don’t have a choice?’ Smiling, he laid an arm around my shoulders. ‘No.’

  “That’s how it happened. That’s how I got recruited into the Service. But once again: you have to swear that you won’t mention this to anyone else.” He took a generous sip of his gin and tonic.

  “But what kind of service was it?”

  “Ilja! Don’t you understand anything?” He looked around to make sure no one was listening. He leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, “MI6. Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

  12.

  “In the early years, I was a kind of delivery boy. As a PhD student and later a professor, I was regularly invited to international conferences on the English metaphysical poets. It amazed me that there was so much interest in them worldwide. And the curious thing was that they were mainly held in places in countries which, to put it subtly, were ‘at odds’ with the Unit
ed Kingdom. Peking. Bucharest. Havana. I gave lectures in all those places. And there was a lot of interest in metaphysical poets in Moscow. I went there at least ten times for conferences. And while my international colleagues debated my hasty conclusions, I was supposed to deliver a parcel. A parcel is a bit of an exaggeration. It was usually a newspaper. Or a magazine. It probably had a microfilm hidden in it. They never told me what I was carrying. It wasn’t my business. And I wasn’t supposed to ask questions, I was the delivery boy.

  “I remember one time in Greece. That was during the military junta of ’67-’74. I was in the train. All of a sudden five Greek policemen entered my carriage. I was shitting myself, in a manner of speaking. I didn’t know what I was carrying but I knew I was carrying something. But the other five passengers in my carriage turned out to be Turks. They stripped them from head to toe and left me alone. It didn’t sink in until later that we’d planted those Turks there. But Ilja, you can’t imagine how petrified I was.”

  He asked for some ice and a lacrima. “My darling,” he said. “My darling,” the waitress said back.

  “I love young people, Ilja. I love young people. They say they keep you young. I believe in that with all my heart. That’s why I was always so popular when I was teaching at the university. I always behaved like one of them instead of their professor, but that’s how I felt, too. I remember it well. It was in 1968 or ’69. One day, my students came up to me after a lecture and asked, ‘Professor, do you fancy coming to a concert with us tomorrow? It’s a bit of a drive. But if you want, we’ll come and pick you up tomorrow morning in the car.’

  “The next morning I stood there waiting in a dinner jacket and bowtie. Ready to go to a concert. They said, ‘Professor, you might be a little overdressed. We’re not going to the opera. It’s a different kind of concert.’ ‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I like to dress up for the performers. Out of respect.’

  “It was indeed quite a drive. We were hours away from the city. We drove along country lanes. They said we were close. It seemed an improbable place for a concert. ‘I think we’re lost,’ I said. I could see a farmer on his tractor in the distance. ‘I’ll ask him the way. What’s the name of the place we’re looking for? Stockwood?’”

  He still found it hilarious.

  “Had you stopped working for the Service by then?”

  “No, I’d only just begun. As a delivery boy. Later I was deployed for more serious missions. Well, I don’t know whether they were more serious. You never know with MI6. But I had to gather information. I was brought into contact with rulers and dissidents. I had to drink G&Ts with them. That’s what it came down to. And I’d be debriefed in London. Of course I wasn’t allowed to write anything down—that would have been much too risky. I had to remember everything. That’s where I got my excellent memory. I was never allowed to tell the same story or joke to the same person twice. And in London I was expected to relate everything they’d said. I wasn’t to judge what was important and what wasn’t, that was their business. My job was to relate everything exactly as they’d said it.

  “And to be honest, that’s how I… But wait. You really have to promise me that you won’t mention this to anybody.”

  I promised.

  “But I’m serious.” He disappeared into his thoughts.

  “Cheers, big ears.” He remained silent. “And to be honest, that’s how I witnessed a few important developments. Not to say caused them.”

  I ordered him another gin and tonic.

  “You understand.”

  “Well?”

  He stirred the gin and lime in his family-size glass. “In 1989, I was in the GDR.”

  “For a conference on metaphysical poets?”

  “Yes. And what’s his name again? Kraut. Egon Kraut. I have an excellent memory. No! Krenz. Egon Krenz. I said to him—”

  Some Italians came to kiss his ring. “We all live in a yellow submarine,” I said.

  Don gave me a withering look. “That’s my line,” he said.

  “Sorry. But tell me more about Egon Krenz.”

  “No.”

  13.

  I hadn’t seen Don for a couple of days. People on the piazza began to worry. It was almost the end of the month. Maybe his money had run out. On the other hand, this had never prevented him from clamoring for his right to an advance on next month’s tab before, given his special status. The shutters on his hotel window remained closed. He didn’t answer his phone, but that happened quite a lot because he didn’t know how it worked. And just when we really began to worry and seriously consider calling someone, like the police or the hotel owner, he came coolly sauntering onto the square in characteristic fashion, like a gentleman who has assumed a slow and dignified gait to camouflage the fact that he is struggling to keep his balance.

  “Where were you, Don?”

  He didn’t say anything. He stuck out his arms and crossed his wrists. The gesture meant that he’d been handcuffed. I had to laugh. He didn’t.

  “What happened, Don?”

  He sat down, ordered a cappuccino senza schiuma, and didn’t say anything. He didn’t begin to talk until after his third lacrima. What he said was: “Cheers. To Nick Leeson.”

  A man came by selling roses and Don tried to wrangle a free rose for his buttonhole. After a while, the rose seller became rather receptive to the idea that Don shouldn’t pay for the rose because he was a pensioner, but the deal fell through in the end because Don didn’t like the color. He was wearing a pale blue shirt with a white tie that day and couldn’t compromise on a yellow, pink, or red rose. The rose seller apologized profusely and promised to return the next day with white roses.

  “But hey! White means white! Understood?”

  “Sure, Don. Sorry, Don.”

  The rose seller moved on. Don drank. I waited. Don sighed. “I’ve told you how tight things are sometimes,” he said. “Everything goes on rent, drink, and cigarettes. And it gets less every month because the pound keeps going down against the euro. Last month, the hotel owner raised the rent for that shithole. Not much, but every tenner counts. I protested but he said that I was the only person in the hotel who’d been paying the same rent for years. What can I say? He’s an old friend of mine. And I’d pay at least double that everywhere else. At least.

  “I don’t usually make it to the end of the month anymore. That’s not a real problem for the alcohol—I have tabs all over the city. But my shoes need to be re-soled. And I have to go to the dry cleaner’s. I’ve run out of clean shirts. And you know how important I find it to look tip-top. My dignity is the only thing I have left. If I lose that, I’ve lost everything. Do you understand?”

  I understood. And because I understood about his dignity, I decided to change my mind and not offer to lend him any cash.

  “So.” He stirred his glass pensively with his straw. “Do you know Bruno? From Le Cinque Vele in Porto Antico. It used to have a different name: La Sirena. He has three or four bars around there. I’m sure you know him. He was one of the biggest drugs dealers in Genoa. Years ago. Everyone knew. In the end he got arrested, but he did a deal with the police. He gave up his supplier in exchange for being acquitted or at least avoiding a long prison sentence and then stopped. But what not many people know—”

  “Is that he didn’t stop?”

  Don nodded. “He mainly delivers to the luxury yachts. To the boaties. I know them all, and I know nearly all the captains. They trust me, and Bruno needs a delivery boy from time to time. Which happens to be my former occupation, shall we say. He doesn’t pay much—a few tenners. But I can use the money.”

  I give him a shocked look. “But, Don, what the fuck are you saying? I mean—drug-runner? At your age?”

  “I know, Ilja. I’m a very intelligent man, but not that clever. And I was incredibly lucky, too. When they picked me up, I didn’t have much left on me. A few grams perhaps. Less. I’d already delivered the rest. But still. I had to go to the station. They kept me for a coup
le of days. They wanted to know who I worked for and who I delivered to. They knew damn well that I was a runner, they’re not stupid. But I didn’t give Bruno away, or the boaties, either. I maintained it was for personal use and that I’d bought it from some Moroccan guy on a street corner in the Maddalena quarter. And of course I wouldn’t be able to recognize that Moroccan again. ‘They all look terribly similar, don’t you think?’ They didn’t find that very funny. And they didn’t believe me. But they didn’t have any proof.

  “But the biggest piece of luck was that the police chief is an old friend of mine. He only showed up after a couple of days. To be honest, I think he works for a different department as a rule. I’m not sure exactly how it works. But as soon as he saw me, he was all, ‘Ciao Don. Cappuccino senza schiuma. We all live in a yellow submarine.’ He asked me what had happened. I told him that it was all a misunderstanding and that he should ring the British Consulate at once. I had already said that to the other carabinieri who had questioned me, but they had refused. He knew I still had special protection because of my work for the Service and he was happy to help me. It was all sorted out with a single phone call. I could go.

  “That was an hour ago. So you’ll understand, Ilja—I could use a G&T.”

  14.

  A few days later I was drinking coffee and reading the papers in the little Sicilian bar on Piazza Matteotti early in the morning, when Don popped up from the wrong direction. His hotel was on the Salita Pollaiuoli but he came from the Piazza de Ferrari. It was highly irregular to come across him at such an early hour, but he’d clearly been somewhere else even earlier. He sat down next to me. His face was troubled. He ordered a coffee. That was even more irregular, if possible.

  “How are you doing, Don? Where’ve you just been?”

  He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder in the direction he’d just come from. “From the British Consulate.”