Kitty & Virgil

by Paul Bailey

  ‘Good night, Daddy.’

  15 January 1991

  Kitty, you see their photographs in the newspapers from time to time. I am thinking of the plump old survivors, cornered in Brazil or the Argentine and put on trial. But they are everywhere, and there are some whose photographs you will never see. That courteous gentleman walking his dog. The spruce and boyish figure on the tennis court. The kindly grandfather, pulling funny faces to amuse the sons or daughters of his son or daughter.

  Constantin Florescu – my brother informed me – is worshipped by his grandchildren.

  (‘Radu, I think I have to see him. Can you arrange a meeting?’

  ‘Are you sure of this, Kitty?’

  ‘It’s a gut feeling. I need to take a look at him and to hear his voice.’

  ‘He speaks no English. I should have to interpret for you. And for him as well if you wish to address him.’

  The meeting would be arranged. It would be an honour for Constantin Florescu to be introduced to the Englishwoman who had loved his unhappy Virgil.

  Radu would come to the lobby of the once opulent hotel and draw her discreet attention to the Sicilians who were discussing business with a government official. ‘We have the Mafia with us now. We have truly arrived, Kitty.’

  They would walk in the summer sunshine through the Lipscani market, past stalls selling cakes and rissoles and mass-produced icons and nylon underwear, and Radu would stop and show her a plaque commemorating the journalism – ‘Not the serene poetry’ – of Mihai Eminescu. ‘His noble schemes for our young country.’

  They would step over bags of stinking refuse in the courtyard and climb the decrepit stairs to the apartment where Constantin Florescu lived alone. A cleaning woman with a mop in hand would lead them into his presence.

  Constantin Florescu, omul pragmatic, would rise from the chair in which he had been reading the morning’s news, and come towards her and kiss her hand. ‘I am honoured. I am deeply honoured.’

  ‘Good day to you.’

  ‘Sit down, please. The maid will fetch tea or coffee.’

  Radu would decline the offer, and the pink-faced, corpulent survivor would return to his chair and let out a long, weary sigh before he began to speak to her.

  ‘This was a handsome apartment once, when my wife was alive and my boys were small. Alas, I have had to dispose of the antique furniture, some of it from France, Matilda and I inherited from our families. The velvet curtains remain, but they are frayed and faded, and do not merit close inspection. We have lived through hard times. You have seen something of our city already?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Then you will be aware, perhaps, of the grandeur it enjoyed. Our boulevards, our parks, our Parisian buildings. In the years between the wars we had more restaurants in Bucharest than any other city in Europe.’

  ‘Virgil,’ she would say. ‘Virgil.’

  ‘He is the one son who has failed me. His brother has risen high in the ranks of the army, and commands respect and admiration. But Virgil wasted the life I gave him. I loved him. I love him, you must understand, in spite of our differences.’

  ‘I can translate the words for you,’ Radu would observe, ‘but I leave it to you to detect the character of the man behind them.’

  She would stare at the father of her lover and he would smile faintly, and she would continue staring at him and he would flinch under her steady gaze.

  ‘You murderer,’ she would shout at him. And then she would turn to Radu. ‘I am a coward, aren’t I? What is the Romanian word?’

  ‘You have a choice, Kitty. There is uciga and asasin.’

  She would get up from the chair in which she had felt imprisoned and go to Constantin Florescu, and look down on him, and spit out: ‘Uciga. Asasin.’

  There would be a silence, and then he would say to Radu: ‘The Englishwoman is too neat, too tidy, in her accusation. Tell her the English have made heroes of the Dresden bombers. Tell her she is as ignorant of history as my foolish elder son. Tell her to get out of my sight.’

  He would follow them to the landing. ‘The Jews were what they were, Englishwoman.’

  She hugged Radu in the courtyard. ‘It smells much sweeter down here, doesn’t it? Let me buy you a seriously strong drink for arranging that unforgettable meeting.’)

  His five Roman Romanian granddaughters.

  ‘You are Roman Romanians.’ That is what he told Aureliu and me when we were little. ‘You must always be conscious that you have Roman blood in your veins.’

  I asked him, years later, how he knew. He replied by advising me to examine my reflection in a mirror. The refinement of my features was evidence of my Romanness. Was my nose a peasant’s nose, a gypsy’s nose? Was it not similar to the noses on Roman coins? ‘Blood makes distinctions, my son. Blood indicates who we are. A man may be silent, but his blood will speak.’

  I hear him, Kitty. I hear him.

  He never talked of the Roman soldiers, the peasantry, the names in the dark. It was Trajan, Trajan, Trajan, the conqueror of Decebalus and his Dacian hordes who was on his lips. We Florescus were descendants of Trajan – not Nero, not Caligula, not Commodus. Not the men who fashioned terror. Not the men who killed for sport.

  It is one of the worst sadnesses of history that Marcus Aurelius sired Commodus. It should have been the other way around.

  I tried to persuade you, when I was still full of secrets, that your father, your father who admits – vainly – to being terrible is not so terrible. If I had the power, I would sanctify him for his shallow stylishness, his facile metaphysics. St Felix, the saint of (relatively) harmless selfishness. St Felix, the breaker of hearts that have the capacity to mend. St Felix, the father who would have irritated me beyond endurance if I had been his son. His grateful son, Kitty. I would welcome a father who lamented his jowls, who showed me his guilty affection with kisses that resembled the bums of monkeys.

  Daisy also should count her blessings.

  ‘Kitty.’

  ‘Nelly.’

  ‘Am I expected?’

  ‘Soon, I think. Quite soon.’

  ‘My holdall is packed.’

  ‘I’ll phone.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  16 January 1991

  Kitty, I want to write about Cerberus, the dog with three heads who guards the entrance to Hades. My feeble poem merely hints at his resourcefulness. His six eyes and ears have ensured his eternal survival. The entrance to Hades cannot be demolished; it is a permanent fixture, and the gifts, the talents, of Cerberus will always be employed.

  Constantin Florescu has those gifts, the necessary gifts for survival. He tried to pass them on to me. Why did I resist? Why did I feel that being watchful, constantly (or Constantinly) watchful, was a bad, a degrading way to live? These are perhaps rhetorical questions, even though I asked them of myself more times than I can remember. Being watchful means being suspicious – suspicious of friends, of lovers, of every decent gesture, of every act of kindness.

  Cerberus will growl when he has to growl, will roll over and offer his tummy for tickling, will bark at those who are out of favour and pant for those the state approves of, and because he has six eyes and six ears he is never short of the latest information. The Conducator growled and barked and panted, and had his tummy tickled when Gheorghiu-Dej was the master, and when the master died he bided his time until he and his bitch could take command of Hades. And having gained control, the Cerberus-that-was called for his Cerberuses-in-waiting to gather at the gates, and with what fleetness, Kitty, they appeared. With what stealth. With what deep, dark cunning.

  (We will excuse the ‘Baskervilles’ from these scrictures, and the Dobermann I encountered in Yugoslavia, and Comrade Corbul, that bemedalled innocent.)

  The man who sired me – the father of Aureliu – has been a Cerberus for sixty years. He is ever watchful. He is ever suspicious. His six Roman Romanian eyes and ears will not fail him. Here he is, Kitty, at the gates. Throw him a b
one.

  ‘Kitty, it is Dinu. Dinu Psatta.’

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘I feel I broke the news badly for you. It was a big problem for me. Virgil did not make things easy. Your trout was wonderful to eat. I hope, please, you will come to Paris.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I omitted to mention one tiny fact. Virgil broke a pane of glass in the window of his room before he died. He was remembering the Orthodox faith of his mother, I think. He was letting his soul, at least, go free.’

  17 January 1991

  The photograph is on the top of the cabinet. The Oltenian carpet is on the floor. My mother’s box of treasures is on her dressing-table. Tatã is at his desk in the government building, sifting through his papers, keeping the status quo in place, as it is his lawyer’s business to do.

  And I am happy to be ill in bed, because I am alone with my Mãmicã, who is reading to me the silly story of the old Russian soldier who thought he could outwit Death.

  The curse of nostalgia, Kitty.

  3/ii/’91

  Dear Kitty:

  Herewith the recipe for mayonnaise, as promised.

  I am saddened by your news, but I am not surprised. Virgil was a man of some considerable grace. I have chanced upon the right word, for once. He was a man of grace. I have a happy memory of eating raisins with him in Green Park.

  And he was so appreciative of my jokes. A licensed jester could not have played to a more responsive audience.

  I send you my sympathy.

  That living monument to human folly, your father, is demanding his lunch. This may be the moment for the ratsbane.

  Yours ever, Derek H.

  18 January 1991

  Kitty, you can now purchase ‘bodice rippers’ in Bucharest. These tales of ‘unbridled passion’ and ‘steaming lust’ were banned in the days of the Conducator. His First Lady objected to them on the grounds that no one but she could experience such transports of the flesh. Hers was the only pussy in Romania permitted to mew with pleasure.

  There are game shows on the television now, but they are not as diverting as the ones I used to watch with you.

  (‘Oh, it is felicitous. It is irresistible. Come and look, Kitty.’

  A female contestant was guessing the selling price of a dishwasher, a double bed, an ornamental table and a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in a gilt frame, and whenever her guess was correct she was the tearful recipient of sustained applause and cheering.

  ‘She is weeping, Kitty. And the congregation is overjoyed for her. This is a religious ceremony, with Money as the object of worship. It is delightful for me to behold.’)

  And the palace the Conducator had built to celebrate his earthly power and glory stands deserted in the putrid heart of the city he almost razed for eternity. It is said that rats scuttle across its imitation marble floors.

  In the stateliest of the state bedrooms – rumour has it – the ghostly sound of a ghostly pussy’s mew of pleasure can be heard at dead of night.

  ‘Hold me, Nelly.’

  ‘There. There.’

  ‘We must keep Virgil’s death a secret from Daisy. I’ll say he disappeared, when and if I have the strength to face her.’

  ‘Be brave, Kitty.’

  ‘Perhaps I was infatuated. Perhaps I am the silly creature she insists I am. I’m beginning to wish that I’d never seen him in the hospital and that I’d taken a taxi to the Ritz that day instead of walking through the park.’

  ‘Think of him. Think of the burden of guilt he was carrying, Kitty. He was beyond rescue. Weep your fill.’

  19 January 1991

  Kitty, there are people in Romania today who are known as the ‘nostalgics’. They are the men and women, mostly old, who waited in line hour after hour for stale bread and unsightly cuts of meat. The bread is no longer stale and the meat pleases the eye, and both are expensive. The poor ‘nostalgics’ have nothing to wait for now. They, truly, are cursed by nostalgia.

  (She would see a stooped ‘nostalgic’ place a bunch of tired lilies on the nondescript grave of Nicolae and Elena Ceauescu, and Alina would say, ‘My heart aches for the deluded soul. I shall offer her a little money, but she might be too proud to accept it.’

  The woman would not be too proud. She would peer at the note before stuffing it into the pocket of her cardigan. ‘You miss them too, gentle lady?’

  ‘We miss them, yes. They will always be in our thoughts.’

  ‘Life is not the same without them.’

  That evening Doina would remark, as they sat down to eat, ‘Are you sure you lasted two whole years with Virgil? Are you sure, Kitty?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘Do you hear her, Alina?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘We lasted what – two weeks, two months? He was the worst kind of lover, was he not, Alina?’

  ‘The very worst.’

  ‘And what kind is that?’

  ‘Are you saying you do not know?’

  ‘I think I am.’

  ‘He was a mother’s boy. We loved him, we loved him very much, but dear God in heaven, he was a mother’s boy through and through. When I sleep with a man the bed contains him, me and no other. I make that understood in advance now, thanks to Virgil.’

  ‘Matilda came into my bed also, Kitty, and I did not welcome her.’

  ‘I wasn’t bothered. I wasn’t bothered by Matilda. She never really bothered me at all.’)

  And Constantin Florescu thrives. The ancient has a brand-new entrance to guard. There is life – as you say in England, Kitty – in the old dog yet.

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘Is it you, Kitty?’

  ‘Yes, it is. I’ve been a lousy friend to you lately.’

  ‘There are ways of compensating for your lousiness. Restaurant ways.’

  ‘Message received. Oh, Laura.’

  ‘What’s the matter, lousy friend?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘The Romanian?’

  ‘He took his life.’

  ‘Kitty. Kitty.’

  ‘You remember him?’

  ‘I can’t forget him. It was his face as he came out of the lift. I gaped at him, I remember. Perhaps my jaw dropped. I thought to myself: all of this man’s life is in his face and he’s unable to hide it. And then I thought: he is Kitty’s man and I am being rude, and that’s when I noticed you standing beside him. That face, Kitty, that face of his.’

  20 January 1991

  Kitty, there is a village museum in Bucharest. What is not savage in our history is enshrined there. The beautiful wooden huts and churches, with their roofs of mud and straw, were constructed by a host of names in the dark.

  (‘Radu, he blamed himself for what he did to you.’

  ‘I helped many to escape. Blame, blame. We will forget blame. We will brush blame to one side. That rug, Kitty, is it not a marvellous object? Virgil was in awe of it. Those birds, those trees – is it not marvellous? We will dispense with blame.’)

  The life that transcends savagery. The life that crafts bowls and spoons and everyday utensils. The life that is touched with the holiness of the useful.

  ‘Kitty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Cecil.’

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘How’s Daisy?’

  ‘She appears to be very satisfied with your settlement.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘Let’s hope she stays satisfied.’

  ‘Let’s hope. Touch wood. Daisy’s not consistent.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Kitty, I’m ringing you to say I’ve met a Socrates.’

  ‘A Socrates?’

  ‘A real live Socrates. An illiterate Socrates, in Corfu. In Kalami, to be pedantic. I’ve just been there with Gilly and the babe for a winter break. Yes, a Socrates of very few words, but the genuine article.’

  ‘A Socrates, Cecil?’

  ‘Homer Bradley? Your Virgil? Do you catch my classical drift?’
/>
  ‘I catch it.’

  ‘Tell Virgil I’ve bagged him at last, won’t you? A real live, garlic-breathing Socrates.’

  21 January 1991

  Kitty, I have been wanting and wanting to write a poem. The title is intact. It is ‘The Names in the Dark’.

  The stubborn words will not budge. I feel them as stones inside me.

  (‘There is a fresh pane of glass in the window, Kitty.’

  ‘I’m a grieving idiot. There’s nothing of him here. There was nothing of him in the rooms in London. What have I been searching for?’

  ‘Go to Romania. You will meet Radu and Alina and Doina, and the magnificent Teodor Costea, if he is still alive. I will put you in touch with them. You will find there traces, at least, of him.’

  They would leave Virgil’s last address, on rue L’Agent Bailly, and Dinu would take her to a restaurant near the Bastille, where they would eat roast lamb and drink ‘an ocean’ of Burgundy.

  They would return to his elegant apartment on rue de Dunkerque and drink more wine and listen to Dinu’s own ‘mightier namesake’ playing Bach, and then they would stumble into bed, laughing, and attempt to make love, and fail, and Dinu would say, ‘I am so unsinful, Kitty, that I bore my father-confessor to drowsiness. A description of our tumultuous struggle will perhaps awaken him’ and they would laugh again and sleep, entwined, and rise in the morning perfectly content with each other’s company.)

  22 January 1991

  Kitty, this evening I telephoned the man who sired me. The number rang and rang. I thought: He has outwitted me. He has died a peaceful death.

  Then I heard his voice, his familiar rasping voice. It had been my intention to wish him a happy anniversary but I did not have the heart or stomach to do it. ‘Who is there? Who is there?’ he shouted and I slammed down the receiver.

  Fifty years ago today the man who was yet to sire me put on his green shirt of the Legion of the Archangel Michael and tied a bag of pure Romanian soil around his neck and wore it like a sacred medallion.

  And he sang, as he went to the slaughter, the hymns of his childhood. He sang of Mary and Jesus as he bled them as their kind bleed cattle.