Doctor Criminale

by Malcolm Bradbury

  The padrona was as good as her word, and, even before the morning session of the congress had started, Ildiko and I were outside the gates of the Villa Barolo. ‘They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprang’ was how John Milton put it, I remember, when he was telling a somewhat similar tale. Our luggage too had been dumped in a careless and undistinguished pile outside the well-locked villa gates; we picked it up and walked disconsolately down into the village. This was how we found ourselves, before lunchtime, unpacking in a dusty back-room at the Gran Hotel Barolo, the only hotel on the island open out of season. ‘Why why why?’ I demanded bitterly, as I unloaded my socks and knickers yet again, ‘What’s wrong with making a programme about Bazlo Criminale?’ ‘Maybe you should have explained to Monza what you were making,’ said Ildiko. ‘You were the one who told me to be a little Hungarian,’ I said. ‘I hope you do not blame me,’ said Ildiko, ‘Sometimes you can be a bit too much Hungarian.’

  ‘You realize we’ve been expelled, booted out, no more villa,’ I said, ‘The padrona has forbidden us ever to set foot in it again. And all because of that bastard Codicil.’ The professor?’ asked Ildiko, ‘He seemed quite a nice man.’ ‘He’s not a nice man,’ I said, ‘That man has decided he wants to destroy me. My comfort, my programme, my career.’ ‘Why do you think you are so important?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘He’s a professorial elephant and I’m just a flea. He ought to be not seeing his students in Vienna. So why come all this way just to get us thrown out of Barolo?’ ‘Perhaps he did not come for you at all,’ said Ildiko, ‘By the way, I do not think this is such a nice room as the other.’ ‘Why did he come, then?’ I asked, ‘Did he say anything to you last night?’ ‘Last night?’ asked Ildiko, ‘What about last night?’ ‘You were with him last night, chatting him up in the lounge when I came in, remember?’ ‘Oh, when I came back from the shopping,’ said Ildiko, ‘You want to see my shopping?’ ‘No, not really,’ I said, ‘I want to know all about Codicil.’ ‘No, you do not?’ said Ildiko, standing there with an expression of deep disappointment, ‘Pig!’ ‘All right, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘Go ahead, show me your shopping.’

  I now realized Ildiko had scarcely taken in our predicament at all; her mind was totally on other things. In fact it had plainly been wildly over-stimulated, if not almost unhinged, by the excitements of her shopping trip in the West the day before, which she began to describe minutely. It seemed that she had not only visited but eternally memorized the name of almost every single store in the small town at the end of the lake, which must have wondered what had hit it when she landed off the hovercraft with my wallet and went to work. The dollars (the money, of course, that Lavinia had cabled to me in Budapest to pay for our quest for Criminale) had run out quite early in the day. But by this time she had caught on to the advantages of plastic, which apparently did very nicely if you simply wrote a reasonable facsimile of my signature on the bottom of the bill at the end of each new purchase. ‘They were so nice,’ she said. ‘You used my credit card, Ildiko?’ I asked, ‘But I don’t have any credit.’ They said it was all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know what you did was illegal? ‘Well,’ said Ildiko, ‘Maybe a little Hungarian.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘What did you spend? How much did you buy?’ ‘Ah, you want to see all these?’ she asked, opening up an Armani leather suitcase I had never seen before, and unpacking from it plastic shop bag after plastic shop bag. ‘All that?’ I asked. ‘Look,’ said Ildiko, ‘You know I only bought it all for you.’ I looked. What Ildiko had bought for me was the following: three dresses in Day-Glo colours; shoes of electric blue; anoraks of outrageous purple; racing drivers’ sunglasses; a baseball cap saying ‘Cleveland Pitchers’; skin-tight Lycra bicycling pants with startling pink flashes; Stars and Stripes knickers; Union Jack bras; a tee-shirt that said on it ‘Spandau Ballet’, and another that declared ‘Up Yours, Delors.’ ‘Do you really like them?’ she asked. ‘Frankly?’ I asked. ‘Yes, of course, frankly,’ said Ildiko. ‘Well, frankly, I like your Hungarian miniskirt much better,’ I said.

  Ildiko stared at me, dismay in her eyes. ‘You like it better?’ she said, ‘But that is just from Hungary. These are from the West. They are from shopping.’ ‘Ildiko, you’ll just look like everybody else,’ I said. ‘Don’t you like me to look like everybody else?’ she asked, ‘Beside, when I go back to Budapest I will not look like everybody else.’ ‘I liked you best the way you were when I first met you,’ I said. ‘If you don’t like my clothes, that means you don’t like me,’ said Ildiko. Another passage in Henry James came to mind, about clothes and the self. ‘No, it doesn’t. You’ve only just bought them, and anyway your clothes aren’t you,’ I said, though I was not sure I believed it; Henry James, I recalled, had never seen an ‘Up Yours, Delors’ tee-shirt. ‘They are me, they are my style,’ said Ildiko, ‘I think you don’t like me any more. You are mad with me. Just because I told you I had a little affair once a long time ago with Criminale Bazlo.’ At once I felt a brute, as I was supposed to. ‘I’m not mad with you,’ I said, ‘I’ve no right to be. You had your own life to live. I don’t mind what you did with Bazlo Criminale.’

  ‘Then you do really like me?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, ‘You know I like you, I like you a lot. I like your clothes, I like you even better when you’ve got no clothes on at all.’ ‘Okay, show me,’ she said. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘No, but wait, first I put on for you this new brazer and these pants.’ She pulled off her dress, stripped to the buff, and then strapped herself round bosom and crotch with the bright colours of the British and American red, white and blue. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘For you I am British now.’ ‘Take them off,’ I said. ‘Now?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Because here we go, here we go, here we go.’ And go we did, there on an ancient, tired Italian bed in the dusty back-room of the Gran Hotel Barolo. Ildiko’s shopping-bags lay all around us, spilling with packaged clothes. It was, of course, a pleasing experience, a little spiked with a certain half-anger we felt for each other. But I have to admit to you that even our lovemaking itself no longer had quite the same paradisial feel as before, that our very nakedness with each other had lost some of its splendour, now that we had been expelled from the Villa Barolo. ‘They destitute and bare of all their virtue; silent and in face Confounded long they sat,’ says John Milton of very similar circumstances, and I think I know just what he means.

  Only later, when we had taken lunch and were sitting on the hotel terrace over coffee, was I able to bring Ildiko’s mind to the realities of our situation. We sat staring out across the wintry lake, misted over but calm as a mirror; it had returned to its usual pearly grey, though branches floated in the water, and debris ruffled the surface everywhere. ‘I don’t think today you are in such a nice mood,’ said Ildiko. ‘No, maybe not,’ I said, ‘That’s because we can’t go back to the villa, we’ve got no money, and we’ve lost touch with Bazlo Criminale.’ ‘We could take a trip,’ said Ildiko, ‘I brought back some brochure.’ ‘Please, Ildiko,’ I said, This is work, not a holiday. I have to make a programme about Criminale. And now this bastard Codicil has come along and destroyed everything.’ ‘Why would he like to do that?’ asked Ildiko. ‘Because he doesn’t want old stories raked over, because he’s afraid I’ll find out something I’m not supposed to know.’ ‘What are you not supposed to know?’ asked Ildiko. ‘That’s the trouble,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m not supposed to know, and whether I know it already or whether I was about to find it out. I just know there’s something I mustn’t know. There has to be, to bring Codicil flying down here. Where did you meet him last night? Was he waiting at the villa when you came back from . . .’

  ‘Shopping?’ asked Ildiko, ‘No, he was just there.’ ‘Yes, I know but where’s there?’ ‘Well, first, I went shopping,’ said Ildiko, ‘Then because I had bought so much thing, I had to take taxi.’ ‘A very big taxi, I should imagine,’ I said. ‘I came to
the pier for evening hovercraft, they are really very nice, those boats. And here was this big fat man in green overcoat, and hat with little feather in it, waiting there also.’ ‘So there he was, Professor Codicil,’ I said, ‘Did you already know him?’ ‘No, of course not,’ said Ildiko, ‘I had never met him before. He said he has never been in Budapest. He asked if I spoke German, I said, yes, I do. Then he asked if I knew where was the Villa Barolo, where there was a very big congress.’ ‘So nobody met him,’ I said, ‘He just turned up out of the blue.’ ‘Yes, I think from the blue,’ said Ildiko, ‘I told him I went there too, I could show him the way. I took him on the boat and we came back, just before the storm.’ ‘And on the boat you talked to him?’ ‘Yes, I am a very polite person,’ said Ildiko.

  ‘Did he explain all about himself?’ I asked. ‘He said he was a very important professor,’ said Ildiko. ‘I bet,’ I said. ‘Also he mentioned Monza,’ said Ildiko, ‘He said he was another very important professor and an old mate colleague.’ ‘So those two are buddies,’ I said. ‘I don’t think buddies,’ she said. ‘So who received him at the villa?’ I asked, ‘Not Monza, he was at Bellavecchia.’ ‘I think Mrs Magno,’ said Ildiko, ‘They had no room for him but he had long talk to her, and then she told the servants to find him something. Why do you ask me all these questions?’ ‘Because it’s strange,’ I said, ‘This is a closed congress, there aren’t supposed to be any extra participants. They warned us people would be turned away if they didn’t get to Milan on the first day. Codicil’s not on any of the lists. He’s not down to give a paper. The congress is more than halfway finished. Mrs Magno wasn’t expecting him. So what makes him turn up suddenly to a congress where he hasn’t been invited and no one is expecting him?’ ‘He said he was late because he had been examining his students,’ said Ildiko. ‘Oh, yes?’ I said, ‘If Codicil ever actually met one of his students, he wouldn’t know him from Schopenhauer. He’s so busy politicking around with the government he never sees his students. That’s why he has all these assistants, to do what people usually call teaching. No, someone must have tipped him off. Maybe his buddy Monza.’

  ‘Monza tipped him off what?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I mean, told him that I was here,’ I said, ‘That’s the only reason I can think of for him to come flying all this way.’ ‘You really think you are so important,’ said Ildiko, laughing, ‘He said he came because it was very proper he should be here. After all, Criminale was the guest of honour and he had written the great book on Criminale.’ ‘Except we know he didn’t write the great book on Criminale,’ I said, ‘And that’s strange too. Why turn up and say he had written the book, right in front of the man who actually had written it?’ ‘So who do you think wrote it?’ asked Ildiko. ‘Criminale wrote it himself,’ I said, ‘Then he got it out to Vienna, and it was published under Codicil’s name.’ ‘Who told you all this?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I thought you knew,’ I said, ‘Sandor Hollo. He took the book to Vienna.’ Ildiko began to laugh. ‘Hollo Sandor?’ she asked, ‘You don’t believe that one, I hope. He never told the truth in his life. I know him very well.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I rather thought so. But if Criminale didn’t write it, then who did?’ ‘Professor Codicil,’ said Ildiko. ‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘He told me last night,’ she said, ‘He tried to make a contract with me to get it published in Hungary. How could he do that if it was written by Criminale?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He said the book was a great achievement, and it had made him sweat for many years.’ ‘I still think that was the central heating,’ I said, ‘But it’s true he’d hardly come and say he’d written it in the presence of the real author. Unless he knew Criminale had gone already.’

  Ildiko put down her coffee cup carefully and then stared hard at me. ‘Criminale has gone already?’ she asked. ‘Yes, he took off again last night, right in the middle of the concert at Bellavecchia.’ ‘And where is he?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, ‘But probably holed up in some hotel across the lake having a wonderful time with Miss Belli.’ ‘He is with Belli?’ asked Ildiko, looking very distressed, ‘Then we must find him.’ ‘I know,’ I said, ‘The problem is how. He seems to have disappeared in a big way this time. Even Monza is worried.’ ‘This is very bad,’ said Ildiko, ‘How did it happen?’ ‘One minute he was sitting there a few rows in front of me, listening to The Three Seasons,’ I said, ‘The next the two of them had gone completely.’ ‘And you went there?’ she asked, ‘You went to the concert without me?’ ‘Of course I went without you,’ I said, ‘I intended to go with you, but you weren’t there. You were off stripping the shelves bare in Cano.’

  There was an expression of jealousy on Ildiko’s face. ‘And of course you went with someone else?’ she said, ‘Miss Uccello?’ ‘No, I didn’t go with Miss Uccello,’ I said, ‘Actually I went with Cosima Bruckner.’ ‘Who?’ she asked. ‘The lady from the European Community, beef section,’ I said, ‘Except now she tells me she’s not from the beef section at all.’ ‘The one in the black trousers?’ asked Ildiko. ‘That’s the one,’ I said. ‘Oh, and do you like them?’ asked Ildiko bitterly, ‘If you had told me you liked them all that much, I could have bought some.’ ‘I don’t like them,’ I said, ‘And no need to be jealous.’ ‘I like to be jealous,’ said Ildiko. ‘Look, Cosima Bruckner is a very strange lady,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what she’s up to here, but I know one thing, she’s been to the opera once too often.’ ‘So, you are not in love with her?’ ‘Definitely not,’ I said. ‘Well, I think she cares for you very much,’ said Ildiko. ‘I doubt it,’ I said, ‘What makes you think so?’ ‘Because she is over there on the terrace, looking for you,’ said Ildiko, ‘In the black trousers.’ I turned to look; there, standing at the further end of the hotel terrace, gazing out spiritually over the lake, was Cosima Bruckner.

  Cosima noticed my glance and inclined her head just slightly, indicating that I should join her. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to Ildiko, The black trousers are calling.’ ‘Pig!’ said Ildiko as I walked across the terrace. Cosima neither turned to look at me nor took her gaze away from the lake as I came to her side. ‘Do not attract any attention,’ she said, ‘You know your quarry has fled?’ ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘He has definitely debunked,’ said Cosima, ‘He has been absent from the congress all day. I thought you would like to be informed.’ ‘I knew that,’ I said. ‘And do you also know where he is?’ she asked. ‘Probably in some hotel across the lake with Miss Belli,’ I said. ‘No,’ said Cosima Bruckner, ‘He crossed the Swiss border early this morning.’ ‘He crossed the border?’ ‘It is only ten or so kilometres from here, I told you,’ said Cosima, ‘Our people watch it very carefully, of course. The time was logged very precisely. Six thirty-five to be exact.’ I stared at her in amazement. ‘Your people?’ I asked. ‘Naturally,’ said Cosima. ‘You mean it’s Criminale you’ve been watching?’ ‘Not only Criminale,’ said Cosima, ‘But we think he is a part of it.’ ‘A part of what?’ I asked. ‘Of course I cannot tell you,’ said Cosima.

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘do you read spy novels at all? Someone said they’d gone right out of fashion since the end of the Cold War.’ ‘I do not have rime for books,’ said Cosima, ‘And do not think international problems have now ended. Many are just beginning. Now here. Do not look at it now.’ After a careful glance round, Cosima had slipped a piece of paper into my shirt pocket. ‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘His address in Switzerland,’ said Cosima. ‘And what do I do?’ I asked, ‘Read it in the toilet and then eat it?’ ‘It will not be necessary,’ said Cosima, ‘He is staying in Lausanne at a well-known hotel. When you track him down, please to keep me informed. If anyone questions you, I ask you not to implicate me under any circumstances.’ ‘Keep you informed about what?’ I asked. ‘His companions, his movements, his intentions.’ ‘I don’t see why I should,’ I said, ‘You can’t get me ejaculated from Barolo now. I’ve been ejaculated already.’ ‘I hope you do not think I was the one who was ejaculating you,’ said Cosima Bruckner, ‘You were
far too valuable to us for that. But I hope you are idealist enough to care for the future of our common Europe.’

  ‘I say prayers for Jacques Delors every night before I go to bed,’ I said, ‘But if you really think a world-famous philosopher of Criminale’s distinction spends his time smuggling sides of beef across the Swiss border . . .’ ‘I do not,’ said Cosima, ‘There are enough cows in Switzerland already. These are financial matters. I see you have found out very little after all.’ ‘I think you could say so,’ I said. ‘But I ask you again what I asked last night. Have you see anything at all suspicious while you were at Barolo?’ I suddenly had one useful thought. ‘There is one thing,’ I said, ‘I think you should keep a very close eye on a man called Codicil who has just arrived.’ ‘A new arrival, very interesting,’ she said, ‘You think he is a part of it?’ ‘I’m sure he’s a part of it,’ I said, ‘He’s posing as a professor of philosophy from Vienna.’ ‘My friend, you have been very valuable,’ said Cosima gravely, ‘I will watch him while you watch Criminale. And then we will keep each other informed.’ ‘We must all do our bit for Europe,’ I said. ‘Exactly,’ said Cosima, ‘Now I must go back to the villa. Remember, this meeting has not taken place. Call me tomorrow night. And do not follow me when I leave. Just go back to your companion in a natural way.’

  Frankly, I really did not know what to make of Cosima Bruckner, who seemed to have strayed into my life from some quite different type of story altogether. But there she was, or at least had been (I watched her slip away quietly through the potted palms, avoiding the hotel staff), and paradise seemed to be slipping away from me in quite a big way. There was the mystery of the appearance of Codicil, which I had thought was enough; and now there was the mystery of the disappearance of Criminale, and just when I had begun to see him as a man above fault, a man of virtue, a man I seriously admired. I rejoined Ildiko, who had not failed to take full advantage of my absence: she had ordered herself French brandy and the most expensive ice-cream coupe on the menu. ‘I put all this on your bill,’ she said, looking at me angrily. ‘Why not?’ I asked, ‘I can’t pay for any of this anyway.’ ‘And how was Black Trousers?’ asked Ildiko, ‘Did she tell you she is really crazy for you?’