by Muriel Spark
‘You leave my girl alone, you dirty old man.’
‘With whom,’ said Arnold, ‘am I talking and to whom do you refer?’
‘I’m Serge Pancev, second cousin and fiancé of Lina Pancev. You come from London? I’ve been in London. I know the quality of person that you are’
‘My dear young man, I’ve only taken an interest in the poor girl, a refugee from the Iron Curtain and the oppression of her co-nationals. I am a former headmaster and I do think it behoves us to show some charity to these strangers in our midst.’
‘I like to know what you mean by the oppression of her co-nationals,’ Serge said. ‘I like an explanation. As a co-national and a cousin.’
‘I understand,’ Arnold said. ‘I think in cases like this we must call for a compromise. What are you doing out here, by the way?’
‘I’ve come for Lina and I’m going to take her back.’
‘I’m a married man, myself,’ Arnold said, ‘so, you see, I understand your point of view.’
‘You don’t ask her to any more fancy dinners and fancy lunches,’ stated Serge.
‘I hope she won’t get into trouble in her country,’ said Arnold.
Serge banged his fist on the table to the effect that the lid of the metal coffee-pot sprung open as if its hair was standing on end, and a spurt of coffee splashed from its spout on to the white tablecloth.
‘I hope,’ said Serge, ‘that you won’t get into trouble, yourself, when you return to your own territory.’
‘… a spirit of compromise,’ Arnold was saying. ‘I haven’t been a headmaster of a boys’ school all these years without knowing something. …’
Serge was already leaving the dining-room, and the waiter stepped forward to place a clean napkin over the coffee-stains on the tablecloth.
Arnold went to the desk clerk and sent off a wire to Anthea: ‘Beautiful weather here home next week Arnold.’
Chapter Sixteen
IT WAS THE NEXT DAY, SATURDAY, before Curran could get together enough dollar currency to satisfy the Butcher’s precise demands as they were relayed to him by Violet. All of Friday afternoon he had been ringing up his lawyers and banks. Violet had told him that Italian lire were out of the question, too traceable and too likely to be false; and still, in the early evening of Friday when the arrangements were complete, there was another crisis, a hitch. Violet had received a phone call to say that the Butcher wanted deutschmarks after all. But it all blew over, and after some more cautiously worded phone calls it was agreed that Curran should take his pay-off dollars to the altar of Santa Barbara at the Church of Santa Maria Formosa at five o’clock precisely the next day.
Punctually then, on Saturday, Curran was in the church with a briefcase in his hand, and an angry throbbing in his ears and in the region of what he felt to be his thyroid gland. The church was dark and still. An old woman prayed at the altar of the large and predominantly red Santa Barbara.
Curran knelt before Santa Barbara. The old woman moved away and dragged slowly round the church, muttering her own secrets to herself or to God or whatever. Curran then caught sight of the Butcher, and although he had seen him frequently with the young blonde woman since he had come to Venice, this was the first time that Curran felt he recognised in the puffy face and thickened shoulders the features of that young apprentice of the summer night of 1945, there in the garden of the Pensione Sofia, getting down to business with the older butcher.
Curran put his briefcase on the floor in front of Santa Barbara, and started to leave the church casually, looking here and there, as a sightseer. He noticed that the Butcher was loitering at an altar at the back of the church beside the small dark stylized painting of the Madonna. Curran hurried to the entrance of the church quite sure that his business was settled. The old woman was still roaming around and the Butcher had not moved. Curran then noticed another woman, in a shawl, standing in the shadows of the first alcove near the door: Lina Pancev, the last person Curran wanted to be bothered with.
Lina skipped forward to confront him. ‘I looked for you this morning at your hotel,’ she said. ‘I have to tell you that your friend Violet is so mean to me, it—’
‘Look, I’m in a hurry,’ Curran said. ‘You have to excuse me.’
‘You hear from Robert?’
‘No, nothing at all.’
‘I come here to this church every evening to look for Robert. He—’
But Curran was gone.
Outside a number of people were running. These were the family and friends of someone who had been taken ill and who was being carried by two hospital men, Venetian style, in a chair to the hospital-boat which awaited them at the canal. Curran dodged the puffing group, so old, some of these people, that they themselves seemed to be risking a heart attack. Eventually Curran got ahead of the procession, so that he did not notice that Lina was pursuing him, as best she could, among the anxious relatives of the sick person. Lina was indeed trying to catch up with Curran; she had his briefcase in her hand, under the impression he had forgotten it.
By the time the invalid and some of the crowd of friends had packed themselves into the ambulance-boat, Curran had disappeared. There were several alleys and waterways leading from this point, but Lina couldn’t see him anywhere. The remaining relatives of the sick person were excitedly arranging for another boat to take them after their stricken one. Lina stood among them, still looking around her. Her arm was then wrenched by a middle-aged man with a puffy face whom she seemed to recognize, but as he was without his usual companion, the blonde girl, she failed exactly to place him as the man who had been cropping up so frequently in her path and Robert’s. She said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Give me that bag.’
‘I will not. Don’t touch me. I’ll call the police. This bag belongs to a friend of mine. I saw him leave it behind in the church.’
The man tugged at the briefcase. Lina shouted ‘No!’ and started an eloquent appeal to the people around her, to the boatmen who had just arrived with their water-taxis and to the skies. She peppered her protest with plenty of demands for the police, then she got into a boat with some of the people, leaving the man still protesting on the landing-stage.
‘Well, Arnold,’ said Grace, ‘I just popped round to see how you are. You must be lonely without Mary. But can you blame her?’ Leo was smiling by her side.
‘Mary is entitled to lead her own life, whatever she’s up to. I’m on my holidays, Grace, if you please.’
‘Such things are going on in Italy,’ Grace said, sitting down beside him in the hall of the Hotel Lord Byron. She pointed to another vacant chair. ‘Sit down, Leo,’ she said. ‘Leo,’ she said, ‘has been translating the news for me. It’s worse than London. Look at this.’ She put a newspaper down on the table open on the second page, and pointed to a headline with underneath it the police identikit of a young man and a young woman. They looked stylized, almost Byzantine in the photokit drawing.
‘I’ve seen the paper this morning,’ said Arnold. ‘There’s always crime. I like the real news.’
‘Young boy and girl rob jeweller in Verona’ Grace said. ‘Jeweller seriously wounded. And that’s the identikit that the witnesses put together. Both got away. Stolen car.’
Arnold gave only a passing glance at the pictures lying before him on the page.
‘Must have been a fast car,’ said Leo.
‘I’ll be going home next week,’ said Arnold.
‘Well, that’s nice. I’ll tell Anthea when I ring tomorrow.’
‘Naturally I’ve already sent her a telegram,’ said Arnold.
‘Well’ said Grace, ‘we’d better be trotting along. Just a bit like Robert, that photo, isn’t it?’
‘Robert? Nothing like Robert. All these students look alike.’
Grace and Leo left, and Arnold took off his looking spectacles and put on his reading ones.
Robert and Anna stood at a bar in Padova. A dark, small young man came up to Robert. ‘Hallo’ h
e said.
‘What do you want?’ said Robert.
‘Your documents, please.’
‘Who are you? Carabinieri?’
‘That’s right’
‘Your documents, please,’ Robert said.
The man showed his police identification. Robert and Anna then showed their papers: Robert without his moustache and Anna with her hair cut short and dyed brown, just as they looked at that moment. They were James Rooke of Taunton, Devon, and Maria Graziella Lotti of Milan.
The policeman let well alone. The bar was crowded.
Shortly afterwards they were approached by an older man.
‘Who are you?’ said Robert.
‘A talent-spotter,’ said the man. ‘You can depend on us. We can give you guarantees. Let me congratulate you both. Precise, quick-limbed, beautiful style. We can offer you a future.’
Lina took Curran’s briefcase back to the Ca’ Winter, for she had an appointment there with Serge. She intended to take him with her to Curran’s hotel and to make this thoughtful restitution of his briefcase the occasion for a long complaint against Violet, who was expecting her to do work which was less than au pair. When she got to her studio Lina thought she had better look inside, just to see what was there: dollars, one-hundred-dollar bills, fifty-dollar bills, in all one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She stacked them neatly back into the briefcase, put it on her bed and sat down beside it, very still, waiting for Serge.
She immediately told him how she had found the briefcase left behind in the church by Curran. ‘What were you doing in the church?’
‘Looking round for my boy-friend Robert, to give him a big goodbye. It is a nice church, besides. I think perhaps my father went there to pray. Look what is in the briefcase.’
‘American money,’ he said.
‘To think that he carries it round with him,’ she said. ‘It makes me sick.’
‘Bourgeois capitalist pig,’ said Serge.
‘He buys the boys and the girls with it. Then I can’t tell you how I had a struggle with a man who wanted to steal it. The man must have known it was full of money’
‘What you going to do with it?’ Serge said.
‘Take it to Curran at his hotel and hand it over and spit on him.’
Serge seemed to think that she might be entitled to keep the money since this would really only be an act of proletarian re-appropriation, but Lina said, ‘Maybe it’s a trap.’
They did take the briefcase full of bank-notes to Curran at his hotel. Lina told him how she had nearly been killed trying to protect it.
All Curran said was, ‘You should have let the man take it. There’s nothing much inside.’ And he went off, wearily, to make a telephone call, with the briefcase in his hand, and not so much as a good-evening to Serge or a thank-you to her.
Arnold, on Sunday morning, sat at his breakfast. On the front page of his newspaper was an article about a bank robbery at Bologna. Again, the photokits of the two suspects, described as ‘I Bonnie e Clyde d’Italia.’ Apparently they had robbed a bank, killing a customer and a policeman before getting away with a gigantic haul. Arnold turned to the next page.
Anthea was reading her novel, on Sunday evening, but impatiently, for she was hoping that Grace would ring her from Venice. For once, she had information for Grace rather than the other way round.
Matt pushed the second beer-can over to Colin. As he took a draught from his own can, he mumbled, ‘I guess this had to happen.’
The stained check tablecloth lay between them like an accusation.
Colin looked at Matt for a long moment. ‘Did you know that Beryl’s taken a job in a sort of beauty-parlour?’
‘Christ! What does that mean?’
‘It’s a way out.’
‘Beauty-parlour? What’s beautiful about it?’
Matt took a long draught of beer. ‘That’s the way it is,’ he said after a long silence.
The telephone rang. ‘Oh, Grace, it’s you. I can hear you just as if you were in the next room. I’ve got news, Grace.’
‘Arnold’s going home Monday or Tuesday,’ Grace said. ‘And he sent you a telegram.’
‘Oh, yes, Arnold. Well, I’ve got more news than that. This morning there was a ring at the bell. I looked at the clock. Only five past nine. I thought to myself: Who can that be at this hour on a Sunday morning? Well I went to the door and there was a man with a small package for me. He said he was an airline steward, friend of Robert. I asked him to come in but he wouldn’t, he had to be on his way. I could see his car at the door, very smart and sporty. Anyway he left me this package, he said from Robert. Well, Grace, I opened the packet and what do you think? You’ll never believe, it was a diamond and sapphire bracelet, a present for me, with a lovely, very lovely note from Robert. He’s got a fine job as a travel executive and he says he’s going to stick to it. You never saw such a lovely bracelet in your life. I’m so thrilled and, Grace, the relief of it all. I never said so, but I was always afraid he was unhappy and involved in some wrongdoing.’
‘You’re mistaken if you think wrong-doers are always unhappy,’ Grace said. The really professional evil-doers love it. They’re as happy as larks in the sky. I wasn’t a Matron all those years without finding out a thing or two about human nature.’
‘Oh, Grace, all I want to say is I’m thankful Robert’s not in bad company and unhappy. It’s the most lovely present I ever had. I don’t know how much—’
‘The unhappy ones are only the guilty amateurs and the neurotics,’ said Grace. The pros are in their element.’ The telephone buzzed and crackled.
‘I don’t hear what you’re saying, Grace. It’s difficult on the phone. I hope to see Robert again soon. He doesn’t say, but—’
‘You’ll be seeing Arnold soon,’ Grace said.
‘What’s happened to the student girl? I’ve been thinking it over. Was she the same foreign girl that Robert took up with?’
‘That’s right. You’re a good guesser, Anthea. It was a very paternal relationship, Anthea. The girl well, I say “girl” but she’s no spring chicken is going back to her own country. It’s behind the Iron Curtain but her boy-friend’s a party boss so he can make it all right for her. In fact she told me they’ll welcome her with open arms.’
Anthea seemed to gather that a party boss meant a master of ceremonies at a dance, but she was not much interested in this foreign girl, and the line continued to crackle. She started to give Grace a better description of the diamond and sapphire bracelet until Grace interrupted, saying she was going to an evening mass, for the experience and the atmosphere, with Leo, who always translated the sermons for her.
‘But Grace, don’t tell Arnold about the bracelet. I want it to be a surprise,’ Anthea shouted.
That’s right. And the last time I went to a service here in Venice there was a sermon about birth control that Leo translated for me under his breath. I don’t know why the RC church doesn’t stick to politics and keep its nose out of morals.’
‘I’ll let you see it when you come home, Grace. It’s the most lovely bracelet.’
‘Yes, a lovely holiday. Venice is fantastic, lovely.’
In bed, in her dreams, came Anthea’s Ayrshire grandmother with her song:
There’s a youth in this city, it were a great pity,
That he from our lasses should wander awa;
For he’s bonie and braw. …
Weel-featur’d, weel-tocher’d, weel-mounted and braw;
But chiefly the siller, that gars him gang till her,
The pennies the jewel that beautifies a’.
… the pennie’s the jewel …
… the jewel. …
Chapter Seventeen
ROBERT AND ANNA WERE having a drink in a bar in Trieste, smiling at each other. A middle-aged man in a business suit approached them.
‘What do you want?’ Robert said.
‘I’m a talent-spotter. You two have got everything. You’ve got style. Yo
u can make the top.’
As a result of this meeting Robert and Anna were sent to the Middle East to train in a terrorist camp.
Lina returned to Bulgaria with Serge where she was put to happy use as a first-rate example of a repentant dissident, the moment, besides, being right. News of her re-defection was loudly proclaimed in the western papers and she was encouraged to give interviews to the journalists of all nations on the theme of western decadence and all the vicissitudes of her life in Paris and Venice. She described her tumble-down flat. She described the slave-driving Countess who forbade her to eat meat and gave her no time to do her paintings. She bewailed her father’s grave, which she had never found. She told of the elderly American millionaire who went about with a briefcase full of dollars seducing young people of both sexes.
Curran saw that his briefcase got into the hands it was destined for; then he went to India to see his guru.
Violet persuaded Leo to take over the fine studio at the top of her house and to join her in launching a tourist project called ‘Venice by Night’. Leo became an excellent travel executive and did well for himself and Violet.
Arnold, on his return to Birmingham, was greatly relieved to find Anthea in a good humour, indeed in a state of excitement. She showed him Robert’s diamond and sapphire bracelet.
‘You always thought he had no heart,’ she said.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He was always kind to animals, don’t forget.’
Grace Gregory and Mary Tiller went on a round-the-world tour together in search of adventures which made Mary feel agreeably guilty and Grace happily conscious of the comparative innocence of her own past life.
Katerina and Eufemia were always busy in the Pensione Sofia, whether attending to their guests at all seasons of the year or cultivating their roses in the garden, beyond which the canals lapped on the sides of the banks, the palaces of Venice rode in great state and the mosaics stood with the same patience that had gone into their formation, piece by small piece.
A Biography of Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was an acclaimed Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose rhythmic prose and penchant for dark comedy made her one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive writers.
