by Paul Bailey
He was to lose that copy, which was in French, and replace it with the English edition he still carried everywhere. Professor Costea, hearing of his enthusiasm for Marcus, had chastised him for not tackling the Meditations in the original Greek. ‘He was right to do so. I should have persevered.’
‘In Greek, Virgil? Why did he write in Greek?’
‘Because he found it difficult. It was a challenge for him. I think that’s the reason. Or perhaps he wished to keep his journal a safe secret from his officers and servants. He was writing to, and for, himself and no one else. It is an accident – no, let’s say it’s a miracle – that his little book has survived.’
(‘Why don’t you write your poems in English from now on?’ she asked him that same evening. He stared at her across the kitchen table. He put down the fork with which he was eating spaghetti and said, ‘I don’t write my poems in English because English is not my limbã maternã, my mother tongue. Romanian is the language I heard at my mother’s breast. I did not acquire it, as I acquired the other languages. It was given to me. Such a gift has to be respected, to be honoured.’
‘Your poems would reach a wider public, Virgil.’
‘Oh, Kitty. Oh, Kitty.’ He shook his head slowly and smiled at her. ‘What are you saying? A wider public? I am not concerned, believe me, with a wider public, a narrower public, or any public whatsoever. I am not interested in a public. If I wrote poems in English, they would be different poems. No, Kitty, I have need of the sounds I was born with.’)
‘It is a deep mystery to me why Marcus’s son was so obscenely wicked. Of anyone in history, he had a father to look up to, a father to be proud of. And what did Commodus do when he was made Emperor? He betrayed his father’s legacy. He chose to be bad. He was iniquitous, Kitty, more iniquitous – if it is possible to measure iniquity in quantities – than the present benign leader of my country.’ He stopped and smiled, and continued: ‘It occurs to me that the Conducãtor and Commodus have something in common. Commodus called himself the Roman Hercules because of his skill with bow and arrow. But Hercules fought with beasts in the wild and always at the risk of his own life, whereas Commodus killed them in the amphitheatre, from a safe distance. Hercules, indeed. No labours for him. He shot his arrows and down went the ostrich, the panther, the elephant and the rhinoceros. Easy prey, easy targets. Teams of trained hunters had captured them all for Commodus to slay in front of the admiring crowd. The glorious hunter took aim, the animals fell and the common people cheered.’
‘I predict, Virgil, that you’re about to have a laughing attack.’
‘I am, I am.’
‘I can see the Communist tooth.’
‘It’s ludicrous, ludicrous,’ he said when he was able to speak again. ‘Our great and merciful leader is a hunter, too. Yes, yes. There is a story, Kitty, my friend Radu Sava heard from a patient he was treating. The man whispered it to Radu because he was afraid of being overheard, even though he was mortally ill. He spoke as a privileged witness.’
‘To what, Virgil? Witness to what?’
‘To the Conducãtor’s prodigious brilliance as a hunter. He saw our leader shoot a big black bear.’
‘Well? Why is that funny?’
‘The bear was drugged, Kitty. The bear was so sleepy it couldn’t stand up to be sacrificed. Two strong guards were needed to hold it aloft. They brought the dope-ridden bear to within a few yards of its mighty killer, who lifted his rifle and took aim. And missed. He missed, Kitty. The bullet grazed the arm of one of the guards, who stared at his master in total disbelief. The master had missed, at close range. He aimed once more and this time the bullet hit the bear. Everyone applauded the bear’s conqueror and drinks were served to toast his triumph. The hero led his consort and their courtiers into the hunting lodge, and the guard whose arm hadn’t been grazed dispatched the still living bear with a single accurate shot. The dying man who told this to Radu had been among the courtiers and begged Radu to be as indiscreet with the story as he reasonably could. It was his last request, he said, that everyone should know what only the Conducãtor’s intimates knew – that the saviour of the nation fired at a drugged bear and missed.’
(The prematurely aged Radu Sava would confirm that he had examined the party official with advanced liver cancer and decided not to operate. The man, hearing that death was imminent, had confessed to the doctor who despised him and his kind that he regarded their leader as a figure of fun: ‘He is a clown. No, no. Clown is too kind. He is a moron, a thickhead. I must tell you how the thickhead hunted a bear.’
Radu had listened to the story impassively. ‘I did not even smile, Kitty. Those were the days of wariness. I could not trust a man who had risen so high in the ranks of the party. He was a privileged witness, one of the chosen. He had shaken certain hands. I heard what he whispered to me and I did not respond. I was not going to be the fly to his spider. He urged me to be “carefully indiscreet’ with his anecdote: “It’s for safe ears, remember,” he cautioned. But whose ears were safe? Virgil’s, to be sure, and those of my dear ones, but otherwise … I said nothing more. I summoned a nurse to his bedside, wished him good day, and left.’)
‘Soon there will be no Romanian bears for him to shoot. What will he do when he has made them extinct? Will he have brown bears flown in from Russia, and polar bears from Greenland and Iceland, and other bears from wherever there are bears? When he has shot – after first missing; yes, Kitty, after first missing – all the bears in the world, will he be reduced to shooting the cuddly little koalas from Australia?’
‘Open some wine for us, my mad sweetheart.’
‘Oh, India,’ said Daisy.
‘Is that it?’ Kitty asked, after a long silence. ‘Is that all you have to tell me?’
‘No, silly. No, of course it isn’t. Oh, but India.’ She went silent again. ‘Thank God for Nepal and the fresh mountain air. But as for India, India itself, well, Kitty, I’m afraid I have to shudder just thinking about the place.’
(And shudder she did, Kitty noticed in amazement. This theatrical shudder, this not quite convulsive shiver, was to become Daisy’s automatic reaction to every mention of India. ‘Oh, India,’ she would sigh, and shudder. Sometimes in later years, Kitty – in devilish vein – would goad her sister into shuddering with a seemingly impromptu reference to the one distant country Daisy had visited. ‘Oh, India,’ would result, accompanied by a shudder that varied in exaggeration, depending on Daisy’s mood.)
‘Was it the poverty that upset you? You were expecting to be shocked, weren’t you?’
‘Was it the poverty? Yes, yes, it was. But it wasn’t only that, not in Calcutta anyway. And not just the constant noise, though that was irritating enough. It was all sorts of things put together, to be precise.’
‘Which things?’
‘The cows. The cows come to mind. Kitty, those sacred cows – and I have to say they don’t look sacred; they look like what they are, which is cows – those cows are everywhere. They bring the traffic to a complete standstill. They do their doings right there in the middle of the road, with the cars and trucks and I suppose you’d call them rickshaws trying their best to avoid them. Avoid the cows, I mean. Not a sacred sight, if you want my opinion.’
‘Come and eat, Daisy. I toyed with the idea of making you a celebratory curry, but I decided on grilled halibut instead.’
‘I’m very relieved you did. You know me and spices.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, silly. I had to be very careful with food in Calcutta. Even so – I will spare you the grim details – I had an accident with what I took to be a simple bowl of spinach. Runs and runs for hours and hours. Some creepy-crawly hadn’t been washed out of it, I suspect, and ended up wreaking havoc in my stomach. That’s India for you.’
‘Is it really, Daisy?’
‘In my recent experience, it is.’
‘But you managed somehow to enjoy Nepal?’
‘No crowds, no dirt, no noise, no heat �
� yes, I was in my element up in Nepal. Which was just as well, given what I discovered in Darjeeling.’
‘Not a skeleton in the family’s Indian cupboard, by any chance?’
‘You can remove that mocking tone from your voice, Kitty. There is a skeleton as a matter of fact. Is, was – I can’t decide which. Our McGregor grandfather was a coward.’
‘Was he?’
‘He did not die of malaria. As we’ve been led to believe.’
‘That doesn’t make him a coward.’
‘Yes, it does. He killed himself. He blew his brains out. That makes him a coward in my book. People who commit suicide are always cowards. They choose the easy way.’
‘I rather think I’d find it difficult to blow my brains out. Have some horseradish.’
‘Horseradish with halibut sounds complicated to me. No, thank you, Kitty. You do realise, don’t you, that Nelly has been lying to us all these years? She could have told us the truth.’
‘Which truth is that?’
‘The truth that Grandfather McGregor shot himself. The coward blew his brains out. He absolutely did not die of malaria.’
‘Perhaps Nelly was protecting us, Daisy.’
‘We weren’t even born when he did it. Why should she want to protect us from history?’
(‘Why, Kitty? I’ll tell you why. When the two of you were very young and Felix started behaving like the Felix we know, it didn’t seem appropriate to burden you with the sad truth about my father’s death. I wanted my little girls to be happy. Foolish me. I’d planned to sit you both down one day and go through the whole sorry business, but then Daisy had her breakdown and I considered it wiser to wait. And then, as the years passed and you grew up, the fact that my father didn’t die of a tropical disease wasn’t of such consequence any more. Mea culpa, I fear, Kitty.’)
‘How did you learn the news? The historic news?’
From an old missionary, Daisy said. The vicar at the Presbyterian church had advised her to call on him, because he would remember her grandfather if anyone would. He did, indeed, but he certainly took his time remembering.
‘He meandered, Kitty. He actually apologised for meandering. I was itching to say to him “Get to the point” but stopped myself out of sheer politeness. He really tried my patience with his tittle-tattle. I couldn’t believe my ears when he told me Grandfather had eaten porridge for breakfast on the last morning of his life. As if it mattered. Thanks to him, I know what Grandfather ate for lunch as well – a soup or broth with pieces of haddock floating in it. He drank whisky, too, that Christmas Day. Lots of it, I shouldn’t wonder, to judge by what happened. Dutch courage for the coward. The missionary said he must have felt depressed.’
‘People usually are when they put guns to their heads. I’m sure there are a few cheerful suicides – but not too many, I imagine.’
‘He wasn’t alone, apparently, our grandfather. According to the old missionary, there was a spot the locals called Suicide Hill. That’s where he went, with his gun in his pocket.’
Kitty must realise that it hadn’t been easy getting up to Darjeeling. She and her friend Harriet had to have their passports stamped at Bagdogra, and what an early afternoon nightmare that turned out to be. They’d had to queue in front of a hut – a hut, not a proper office – inside which three typical Indians were pretending to be efficient. The hut was dusty and cobwebby, with a filthy filing cabinet against the wall and on the top of it was a heap of mouldy ledgers which Harriet said were still offering nutrition to famished insects. Two of the men were writing in pen and ink in only slightly fresher ledgers while the third man, who did all the speaking, looked on.
‘Scratch, scratch, scratch – I’ll never forget the scratching sound of those silly pens. Scratch, scratch – I thought my nerves would give way, I honestly did. Harriet smiled, she has a smile for every emergency, she’s that type of person, but I felt like screaming.’
‘What were the two men writing?’
‘Our names, our dates of birth, our passport numbers. That was all. The work of a minute you might suppose, but they stretched it out to eternity. In silence, Kitty, in total silence. Scratch, scratch. What a country.’
Then it was bump, bump, bump on the winding roads up to Darjeeling in a Land Rover driven by a man in a turban who certainly couldn’t be accused of slowness. Although she’d feared for her life, especially when he was negotiating the bends, she had to admit that, after all the annoyances of India, she was excited. The pure air kept hitting her through the open window – pure, pure air, with no smells of sacred cow dung, or human dung either – and her spirits lifted.
‘And dropped again when the old missionary told me how Grandfather died. I’m beginning to wonder if Nelly has fibbed to us about anything else.’
‘Stop wondering, Daisy. Please stop. What we owe Nelly in gratitude can’t be measured. Please stop wondering.’
They continued eating in strained silence.
‘How is the Romanian lover?’
‘Loving.’
‘I should hope so. But not loving enough to want to marry you. You are strange, Kitty.’
‘Am I?’
‘Of course you are. I have to tell you that Andrew and Janet were quite impressed with him. Your Mr Florescu. They were actually moved to words, for once. Andrew thinks he’s “real” and Janet finds him “doomy”. “He’s wonderfully doomy” was what she said to Cesspit.’
‘Doomy? I guess he is.’
‘She had a smitten look in her eyes, apparently.’
‘You’re making me jealous, Daisy. I can’t cope with a rival. Not at my age. You just warn her to steer her thoughts away from my wonderfully doomy Virgil. She hasn’t seen her aunt on the rampage, but she will if she isn’t wary.’
‘You silly object.’
Her voice came to him as he waited to be served in the expensive confectioner’s. It was the soft and gentle voice of the time before her numbness, when she still spoke of the past wistfully.
(‘Oh, Virgil, that cofetãrie in Sinaia. I used to think it was a fairy-tale place. There is nothing here to compare with it. The pastries were so delicate, so fragile, and there were so many of them it was an agony which one to choose.’
‘Mãmicã,’ he whispered.
‘Yes, Virgil, your Mãmicã loved her summer holidays in Sinaia because they meant a daily visit to Kalinzachis’, where her eyes were treated to a bigger feast than her belly. I swear I have never tasted anything to equal those sweets and chocolates. Not here, not now. You have not been spoilt as I was spoilt, I regret to say.’
She had wanted to spoil him more – and his brother, too – during the precious years of his childhood. The Lord God had surely intended that those should be the carefree years, since the sad and difficult ones came along soon enough.
‘Mãmicã,’ he said again, tasting salt on his lips.)
The assistant behind the glass counter asked the quietly weeping customer if she could be of any assistance.
‘Chocolates, please. I require a selection. I have twenty pounds to spend.’
‘Are they for someone special, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like me to gift-wrap the box?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘With some pretty ribbon?’
‘Yes.’
She handed him a couple of tissues and he told her she was kind.
‘We all have such days, sir.’
‘Tonight I am an expert on the life and mysterious ways of Teresa of Avila. At least I think I am, now that I’ve supplied the index to a book about her. That’s the beauty of my little job, Virgil – the copious knowledge I acquire.’
This year alone she had become a specialist on the English in Sicily in the nineteenth century; on the first governor-general of Bengal, Warren Hastings – whose grateful biographer had taken her to tea at the Ritz the very day she had met the man with the Communist tooth; on the chanteuse Edith Piaf, awash in drink and misery; on – she
couldn’t keep up with all the subjects on which she was currently an authority – oh yes, the Albigenses, whom she’d had to distinguish between in the four hectic days she and Virgil Florescu were separated; on Louis Quinze and Madame du Barry; on the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck; on the Danish composer Carl Nielsen; on Diaghilev, the impresario, and, and – and on other things and other people, already too numerous to remember.
She was an expert, too – though she had no wish to be – on ‘The Times and Crimes’, to give the book’s sub-title, of a man who modestly styled himself the King of London’s Underworld. His unedifying life story had been a torment to index, or rather cross-index, because every one of the King’s shady acquaintances possessed two names – the name that was chosen for him at birth and a nickname descriptive of his talent or character. There was ‘Big’ Jimmy Saynor, for instance, who was always referred to as ‘Slasher’ in the text. ‘Slasher’ Saynor’s feats with a cut-throat razor on the faces of an assortment of anonymous enemies were recorded in manic detail by the admiring King, who also paid tribute to ‘Growler’ Gaisford, Morry ‘Icepick’ Maddox, and ‘Flyweight’ Walsh, alias the ‘Kilkenny Killer’. They were lovable rogues at heart, the King or his ghost insisted, with doting wives and girlfriends and adoring children, whose victims had only got what was coming to them – a scar here, a chopped-off finger there; an eye gouged out, a nose squashed flat and worse, much worse. At this particular moment she knew almost everything anyone needed to know about the King of London’s Underworld and his circle – but the moment would pass and she would soon lose some of her unwanted knowledge, she hoped.
‘What is this ghost? Who is this King’s ghost?’
‘His ghost is the man who wrote the book for him. The King had to employ a ghost-writer. The King gave him the facts and his ghost set them down. The autobiographies of film stars and criminals are usually ghost-written.’
‘Ghost-writer, ghost-written. I like the thought of such a ghost.’
She saw that he was smiling to himself, as he often did when he heard an expression that pleased him.
