by Muriel Spark
‘Oh, dear,’ said Anthea.
‘He left rather suddenly. No doubt he has written to you,’ Curran said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’m only here for a few days myself, on business, before returning to the States.’
‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ Anthea said, feeling the weight of Curran’s objective importance and his unforeseen, casual claim to the overwhelming States. ‘I know you’ve been very kind to Robert in the past,’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ Curran said. ‘I shouldn’t worry about him, Mrs Leaver, if I were you.’
‘Will he return to Paris, do you think?’
‘I don’t know his plans but if I should bump into him I’ll tell him you called.’
‘Oh, don’t do that. Please, no. He’ll think I’m interfering with his life.’
‘They do incline to think in that way,’ Curran said. This must be an expensive call for you, Mrs Leaver. I’m sorry I haven’t more information.’
‘I’m sorry to have—’
‘Not at all. Any time—’
‘It was only that my friend Grace Gregory rang me up and she sounded rather funny about Robert. And I hesitate to ask Robert’s father, I mean my husband Arnold, because he’s supposed to be having a rest. …’
The line had broken down or Curran had hung up. Anthea decided that the former had happened. She told herself, in a panic, that Curran had probably thought she had hung up angrily on her own last words ‘Arnold … he’s supposed to be having a rest’. She dialled again, and again after a while got Curran on the phone.
‘I’m sorry, we got cut off,’ she said.
Curran said, ‘Yes? I thought we had finished the conversation. Is there anything else?’
‘No. Oh, no. I just wanted to thank you for being so kind to Robert.’
‘Not at all. Don’t mention it. Goodbye, goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Curran, I’m sorry to—’ she said, but he had rung off without waiting for her answer. She bustled about in some fury after that, turned on the television, changed the channel, turned it off, then settled herself down to read her novel: it was a long one but she had almost come to the final chapter. She preferred to read in a chair before going to bed. When she read in bed before going to sleep the novel would lie on her bedside table affecting her dreams so that in a sense, by the morning, she had finished the whole book without actually reading it, and without remembering a word.
Matt, Joyce and Beryl finished their supper in semi-silence, looking enquiringly at each other. Mark, John and Maimie were asleep and only Khorinthia lay awake in her cot looking the image of Beryl as she must have been. The letter from Colin lay open on the table like a time-bomb. Since ever she could remember, Joyce had been waiting for this moment.
At length Matt ventured as he raised his beer-can to his lips, ‘This had to happen, I guess.’
The rain poured outside.
Somewhere up the street a car pulled up.
Joyce’s arms, rounded and beautiful, were propped on the table. The baby began to cry. Beryl looked at Matt as Joyce got up to attend to Khorinthia.
‘It’s your choice,’ she murmured.
‘What choice is there, what choice ever, in the world of today?’ he asked violently. Then, drinking his beer, he sighed, ‘I could take the job for a limited time. …’ He reached for his guitar.
Anthea felt sleepy, but she wanted to read on. She was thinking of making another phone call to Venice. She decided to wait an hour till Grace was sure to have returned to the Pensione Sofia. Sure to be home by midnight. … Anthea fell asleep in her chair. She did not dream of the book but of her grandmother from Scotland who used to chant to her:
For her I’ll dare the billow’s roar,
For her I’ll trace a distant shore,
That Indian wealth may lustre throw
Around my Highland lassie, O.
Chapter Thirteen
TUESDAY AFTERNOON. CURRAN HAD spent the morning with his Italian lawyer who had been summoned overnight from Milan, and even with this old acquaintance Curran had seen the poison of Robert’s missive working. The man was plainly uncertain how much Curran had to hide. If there were indeed two halves of a man’s body in the garden of the Pensione Sofia, the lawyer pointed out, and should they be exhumed, it might be easy for Curran to deny knowledge of them, but certainly he would be involved in a scandal such as the newspapers of Europe would rejoice in for weeks on end. Yes, said the lawyer, it was true, he was sure, that Curran had not murdered Pancev (imagine it!) but there was no doubt he had known Pancev well. …
Then, the question of drugs. Boys and drugs. This is Italy, and you know you would be interrogated. Yes, the young man Leaver would eventually, of course, go to prison for calumny; that was, if he could be found, and if he could be proved to have written these accusations voluntarily. But the publicity would be enormous. On the other hand, if there were not two halves of a body. …
‘I’m afraid there are,’ said Curran.
‘Then the women are guilty of a crime. Mutilation and concealment of a corpse. Would they accuse you of complicity? And the Countess de Winter?’
‘I don’t take or traffic in drugs,’ was Curran’s answer.
The lawyer looked at the pavemented floor of Curran’s room in the Hotel Byron where he sat with his client, and smiled wisely.
The two women at the Pensione Sofia. … I don’t know,’ Curran said. They might say anything.’
‘I tell you,’ said the lawyer. ‘You’re a wealthy American and you have this young man who says he’s been kidnapped. Why don’t you decide to pay them something? I can arrange for a colleague here in Venice to treat with the kidnappers as soon as we know who they are. They’ll be in touch with you, of course. They’ve calculated your reaction very finely. But you must not inform the police because it’s illegal to treat with kidnappers. The magistrate will block the money. In fact this advice I’m giving you is illegal. I just want to help.’
‘Thank you,’ Curran said. ‘I think that’s all.’
The lawyer said, ‘The young man has written under duress.’
‘I don’t think so. I think he’s joined the gang.’
‘What a monster! How did you ever get in the hands of such a youth?’
‘It was the dangerous element that I liked, I suppose. When I met him he was a prostitute on the streets of Paris, posing as a student. As in fact he was, on paper. He has a good mind, too, but … I always felt the danger. I didn’t … I didn’t think. … Oh, well. I’ll think over your advice and let you know.’
‘Be careful what you say on the telephone. Very careful.’
‘I always am.’
The lawyer was in a hurry to leave. It was past two o’clock. Curran wanted to miss lunch; he went for a walk in the cold bright air of the great Piazza, wondering if he, alone, of all the people around him, the sauntering tourists who walked round the arcades and the purposeful Venetians who crossed the square in order to get to the other side, was afflicted with a living nightmare.
He went down to the quay and looked at the scene, with its coffee-table picture charm, along the Riva degli Schiavoni. The gondolas were lined up in wintry abeyance between the mooring-poles; some drivers stood on the landing-stages beside their water-taxis chattering amongst each other under the shadow of the Doges’ Palace, enviably in full charge of their own history. Curran felt an urge to go back to the Lord Byron and wait for a message from Robert’s end. It would surely come. He felt an equal urge to avoid the hotel for that very reason. He could not remember a time in his adult life when he had not fully coped with his own life, not to mention the lives of others.
‘Curran, I want to speak to you.’
He turned to find Mary Tiller by his side dressed in her mink coat and her tight boots, with her brass-coloured curls arranged neatly; and yet she looked unusually in disorder, perhaps because her eyes were wider open than usual. ‘I want you to know, Mr Curran, that I’m not a poisoner.’
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br /> ‘You may call me Curran, Mrs Tiller.’
She relaxed a little and smiled. ‘Curran, I am not a poisoner. Whatever Robert has told you, it isn’t true. My first husband died of typhoid in Boulogne; I have the death certificate. I wasn’t there. I—’
‘You’ve had a letter, too, Mary?’
‘I have nothing to hide,’ she said.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Well, we all have something, I suppose, to hide but—’
‘Not necessarily what Robert says it is.’
‘Not what he says. That’s right. Did he tell you about me,’ Mary said, ‘in that letter you got from him at the Pensione Sofia yesterday? What did he tell you about me?’
‘What did he tell you about me?’ said Curran.
‘I feel embarrassed,’ said Mary, ‘Has he written like that to anyone else?’
‘Probably quite a few people have received letters from him,’ Curran said, ‘The more the better in my opinion. So that we can know for a fact that he’s mad.’
They had started to walk together, back to St Mark’s Square,
‘Why do you say that?’ she said.
‘The wilder his accusations, and the more numerous, the more easily we can prove him mad.’
‘Do you want to prove him mad?’
‘Yes.’
Mary said she would like to go into Florian’s for tea. On the way across the square she said, ‘He told you he was leaving Venice, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Don’t you think it possible he is still hereabouts? How would he be able to have these letters delivered if he’s gone far away?’
‘That’s a point,’ said Curran.
‘He must have a friend who’s delivering these letters,’ Mary said. ‘Maybe we’re being followed. I feel creepy.’
‘So do I,’ said Curran.
‘You sound as if you mean it.’
They drifted self-consciously into Florian’s for tea. They settled in one of the decorative seats with a good view of the entrance.
‘You know,’ said Mary, ‘I don’t think Robert’s mad. But he might be evil. What’s his object?’
‘I would like to see the letter he sent you,’ said Curran.
‘But naturally you won’t show me the letter he sent to you,’ she said.
‘Will you show Arnold his letter?’ Curran said.
‘My God! You don’t think I’d let it be made public, do you?’ Mary said. ‘It smears my name. All invention of course, except for a few bits here and there goodness knows how he found out about my affairs. But mud sticks. I couldn’t, I really couldn’t, show anyone that letter.’ She spoke haughtily, almost rejecting Curran’s friendliness. He could not decide whether she was suspicious of him for some reason, or whether she was simply frightened.
‘Mary, are you suspicious of me for some reason?’ he said.
‘Why should I be?’
‘What did Robert say about me in his letter?’
‘I wouldn’t repeat it,’ she said.
‘But you don’t know if it’s true or not? This is a very unnerving situation.’
‘Robert has foreseen that, I think. Robert must have had this in mind for at least a couple of years,’ she said, ‘because before that he didn’t know of my existence. Since then, he must have been collecting information, snooping into my life, distorting it, and now these inventions. When I think of how I went round Venice yesterday so worried about him. … Well, I’m going to tear up the letter and forget it. We shouldn’t even discuss Robert; he’s not worth it.’
‘That’s true. But we are also trying to protect ourselves, aren’t we?’
‘You may be,’ she said.
‘The best way would be to go to the police. Do you have the courage? We should all have the courage—’
‘I would sue when I got home to England, I really would.’
‘You might have to sue here. It’s an offence committed on this territory.’
She said, ‘I have to think of Arnold, don’t I? He thinks the world of his good name and he’s terrified of his wife Anthea.’
‘It might be good for Arnold,’ said Curran, ‘if he, too, got a letter from Robert.’
‘He’s under the impression that Robert’s gone back to Paris. He said last week he didn’t think Robert would ever stay here and write his thesis on that church.’
‘The Santa Maria Formosa?’ As Curran said this it occurred to him that this church might well be a focus-point for contact with Robert. Robert had been studying the architecture; he had been seen in the church and outside it the day he disappeared.
Curran now lost interest in Mary but waited politely till she had finished her tea. He walked back with her to the Lord Byron hotel. There were no messages for him. He phoned Violet. ‘Any message for me?’ ‘No’ ‘Thanks. See you later.’ He then set out for the Pensione Sofia by way of the Campo di Santa Maria Formosa. He found himself looking at the passing faces, suspiciously, so that they looked back with enquiry and suspicion, too.
As he walked, he went over in his mind the meeting with his lawyer that morning: ‘… the women are guilty of a crime. Mutilation and concealment of a corpse. Would they, would the Countess de Winter, accuse you of complicity?’
I will of course leave Venice, he thought. I’ll get out, and quick. But, as if his lawyer himself were arguing the point, he argued with himself. To leave would go against me. Where could I go that a scandal wouldn’t touch me? I’m not a Nobody. Even if I were a Nobody. … And besides, he thought, I would like to see Robert. I would like to see him just once more and tell him what I think of him.
Lina Pancev had spent Tuesday morning in bed recovering from her plunge into the canal the night before. Violet’s doctor had given her some antibiotics to take against a possible infection from the canal waters wherein she had tried to cleanse herself from the contamination of Leo. Hugely intrigued by the affair, Leo had come to see her in the middle of the morning.
Violet had gone out, having told Lina firmly that she would not be back for lunch; which meant Lina was meant to get up and get her own lunch. This was already one cause for indignation, for Lina felt she had a right to be looked after. Her indignation at finding out that Leo was a Jew in her bed had been largely exorcised by her dive into the canal, and by the time Leo turned up to visit her, had subsided back into the amorphous mass of half-conscious prejudices that had so far propelled her through her life.
Leo brought up a letter for her from the hall table directed from her old attic address in Venice, and she read it while he made coffee on the spirit-stove. She was not listening to what he was saying at all, but he was telling her how funny she was in general despite the fact that she was a rotten sleep, too excitable. She caught the last word ‘excitable.’ She said, ‘You would be excitable, too, if you got a letter like this.’ She started to cry. ‘I’m having a terrible time, and now I’m losing my refugee grant,’ she said, taking her coffee from Leo’s hands.
The letter was from a woman-friend in Paris, forewarning her of a more official letter to come.
The Group feels this way. Don’t be upset, Lina, but you know you never answer letters, sign petitions or come to our meetings and our demonstrations. Additional to this, there has been a report that you are not seriously a Dissident. Isn’t it true, Lina, that you believe in nothing and know nothing of our struggle? Please do not take this personally, but you should never have left Bulgaria. Nobody was persecuting you. You do not suffer. You do not share our aims. Many stories have been whispered about you. Your ideas. …
Leo listened while she read it out. ‘Let them keep their money. You’ve got a job,’ he said.
‘I’ve got enemies,’ Lina said. ‘All round me, I’ve got enemies. I don’t know what to do.’
‘You could get up and go to the movies this afternoon. I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to meet Grace.’
‘Nobody cares about me. Even Robert has gone away, I don’t know where.’
‘See you,’ said Leo, and left.
Lina got up, feeling sick from her antibiotics and her bad news. She got dressed with the one aim in mind of buying a train ticket for Paris so that she could go there and confront her enemies and save her allowance from the fund.
When she came down to the ground floor in the lift, Violet’s cleaning woman was there, just about to leave. She pointed with a glowing smile to the hall table where a wrapping of cellophane enclosed a bunch of flowers which, as Lina peered closer, turned out to be small, fresh roses of various colours, addressed to her. The offering had a decidedly shop-bought look although the label itself was a home-made cut-out with a typed address.
‘Who sent these?’ Lina enquired of the woman who stood there marvelling, crowing her envy and hopping with curiosity.
‘They were left outside the door. Your admirer didn’t even ring the bell. I found them on the step. They must have thrown them out of a passing boat for you, because no one stopped in a boat at the landing-stage; nothing passed, no delivery, all morning. You must have a cavaliere.’
‘You must be a fool,’ said Lina in the frustration of the morning’s news, the antibiotics and excitement of the moment. She tore at the cellophane. The woman reacted with proper indignation. ‘Cavaliere!’ said Lina. ‘Who has horses in Venice to ride to the door?’ This rude reasoning was lost on the woman, who said it was only a manner of speaking and enquired sanely if Lina didn’t feel so well.
But Lina had found a small envelope tucked into the flowers. Inside she found a card on which was typed:
Be at the Hotel Lord Byron in the lounge this afternoon (Tues.) from 2.30 onwards and await a phone call. You will be paged. Tell nobody repeat nobody.
ROBERT
Lina drew her thick brown shawl round about her shoulders, put the card in her bulky bag and walked out, lifting her skirts above the very slippery side-path till she came to the corner of the Ca’ Winter and, watched by the scornful cleaning woman, disappeared about her business. The woman took the flowers into Violet’s apartment, put them in water and purged the entrance hall of its cellophane, green twine and the mess of little leaves that had detached themselves from the bunch.
