‘My name’s Bedford,’ I told him. ‘And I’m a painter by profession.’
Mr Jones beamed his approval. ‘If you have come to paint our Chilean landscapes, Mr Bedford, then you must go south, to Valdivia and Puerto Montt, where there are lakes, volcanic mountains, most striking scenes.’
‘I’m going down there anyhow, though not to paint. I have to see some people who are near the Emerald Lake.’
‘Ah – Emerald Lake – very fine, most striking. It is best you fly to Puerto Montt. There is a service by D.C.3 – not very comfortable perhaps – but you save much time, Mr Bedford. You cannot leave today. It is too late. But tomorrow morning, if you wish. I can arrange it for you. Only as a friendly service, Mr. Bedford, a Chilean poet helping an English artist, please understand. I am not a tourist agent or travel guide or anything of that sort. You will have a drink with me now perhaps.’ He called a waiter.
After the drinks came he asked me if I would like him to telephone the air line to book a seat on the Puerto Montt Plane. As soon as he went farther into the café to do his telephoning, two men got up from a table a few yards away. One of them followed Mr Jones. The other came over to me. He was one of those Americans, rare now among the podgy or smooth types, who look as if there had been a Red Indian warrior in the family.
‘You an American, mister?’ he asked, standing close to me and speaking in a low voice.
‘No, I’m English. Why?’
‘I could be doing you a favour, so let me ask the questions. Known this guy long?’
‘About half an hour. We met in a bank. Why?’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘He told me he’s a poet. Again – and for the last time – why?’
The American regarded me coldly. ‘I wouldn’t get mixed up with his kind of poetry, mister. Could be trouble. If you get into something you can’t handle, you could call me, even though you are British.’ He put a card in front of me, then went back to his table. The card said he was F. Erwin Morris, representing the Galveston and South American Oil Company, which had an address and a telephone number here in Santiago. I was still staring idly at the card, wondering what it was all about, when Mr Jones came waddling back, mopping himself.
‘It is all arranged for you, Mr Bedford,’ he said as he sat down. Then, with an astonishingly quick movement of the hand still holding the handkerchief, he flicked the card across and gave it a glance. ‘He spoke to you of course. What did you tell him, Mr Bedford?’
‘I told him you said you were a poet, Mr Jones.’
This time his smile was so wide and fat that his eyes almost vanished. ‘American secret service. Only Coca-cola is less secret. They followed us in here. I knew if I went to telephone, one of them would speak to you. He warned you against me perhaps, Mr Bedford.’
‘He said your kind of poetry might be trouble. I don’t think he believes you’re a poet.’
‘They do not believe anybody is a poet. But I am one. You do not understand Spanish perhaps. If you did, I would recite to you some of my poetry. You know the poetry of Pablo Neruda?’
‘No, though I’ve heard or read something about it.’
‘He is better than I am,’ said Mr Jones, with such enormous modesty that he almost seemed to be boasting. ‘His Indian blood perhaps. A fine poet. I have always said to myself that when I have time I will try to translate his best poems into English. But now, Mr Bedford, is there any other small service I can perform for you? I feel we are friends. So do not hesitate to ask me.’
This is when the recklessness, which I mentioned earlier, broke through. ‘Thank you, Mr Jones. There is something. As I’m leaving in the morning, I wonder if you know a jeweller who could do a rush job for me? It’s no use if he can’t do it today. I want him to make a small gold badge – the cheapest gold will do, or even something that only looks like gold with a fairly simple design that I’ll draw for him. But it must be done today because I want to take it with me. Now is there anybody you know who could do it, Mr Jones?’
‘But of course,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘My friend Pietro Danelli will do this for you, at my special request. We will take a taxi at once to his shop. It is only a small shop, as you will see, but he is an expert craftsman – and a topping old fellow. Let us go.’
There wasn’t much of the morning left by the time we’d found a taxi and Mr Jones had directed it to Danelli’s shop, which was well away from the centre of the city, in a hot and smelly tangle of back streets, populated by handsome sluts, amiable drunks, and all the wild kids they’d produced between them. Mr Jones explained that on paper Chile was one of the most progressive welfare states in the world, but that it lacked the kind of people to set the social machinery to work. He was surprisingly severe about this difference between theory and practice, and I felt I couldn’t tell him that these boozy ragamuffins and their kids seemed to me to be enjoying themselves far more than our highly privileged citizens, swarming into the Underground twice a day to pay rents, rates and taxes. Danelli’s shop looked as if it had been bankrupt for years and was now only waiting for the whole street to fall down. But Danelli himself, sitting behind his counter doing something to a watch, was one of those magnificent-looking elderly Italians who might be Toscanini’s cousins. He’d only a few words of English, so Mr Jones acted as interpreter. I made a sketch of the design I wanted, the wavy line with the figure eight above it, and after some discussion about size, I made Danelli understand that nine-carat gold was quite good enough for me, and he agreed to make the badge for something between five and seven pounds. There was then more talk between him and Mr Jones.
‘At seven tonight it must be ready,’ said Mr Jones, all smiles. ‘Pietro gives a party upstairs tonight for one of his daughters. In Chile we are very fond of parties, all kinds of parties. So tonight when you come for this article he makes for you, you are also invited to the party, Mr Bedford.’ He came closer and made a special conspirator face I hadn’t seen before. ‘I think it would be jolly good for the party if you paid for the article now perhaps. You can trust my friend. He will have it ready for you. And I will be coming too.’
I wouldn’t have paid Mr Jones himself any money in advance for anything, but I felt there was a kind of good craftsman’s integrity in Danelli, so I left about five pounds worth of pesos with him as an advance on the job. When we returned to the taxi, which we’d kept because this wasn’t a taxi neighbourhood, Mr Jones invited me to lunch with him, but I muttered something about meeting a British Council man. If I was seeing Mr Jones again that night, I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day with him. Finally we agreed that he should pick me up at my hotel round about six-thirty to take me to Danelli’s party.
Perhaps I’d have done better lunching with Mr Jones. The main course of the hotel lunch seemed to be boiled horse with plain rice. I washed it down with a bottle of the local red wine, and then went up to my room feeling as if I weighed a ton. As soon as I saw my bed I peeled off my shirt and pants, and as soon as I stretched myself out I fell asleep. After a shower, about half-past five, I felt much better, arranged for my plane ticket to be sent round to the hotel, then settled down over a drink to wait for Mr Jones.
His dark suit looked just as crumpled as his light one. His emerald green shirt had gone but in its place he was now wearing a cobalt violet one, which made his face look as if it had been modelled out of pale margarine. He seemed even more pleased with himself and with life than he had been in the morning, and he insisted upon standing me a drink before we set out for Danelli’s. He may not have actually called me ‘Old bean’ but a lot of Edwardian slang came into his talk now, as if he’d spent the afternoon brushing up his English with early Wodehouse.
The room above Danelli’s shop was surprisingly large but not big enough for that party. I’ve often thought that parties bring out the worst in the English and the Americans, but these Chileans seemed to be natural party types, delighted to be jammed in with sixty other people in a room tha
t could comfortably hold only about thirty. After the first half-hour or so, I lost sight of both Mr Jones and Danelli. Red and white wine and pisco were poured without stint. There was plenty of food, but boiled horse and rice were back on the menu, and the various kinds of shellfish, including some little black crabs that seemed to be still alive, looked a bit sinister, so I satisfied what little appetite I had with macaroni and tomato, bread and cheese. Some of the girls were gay and pretty, and some of their young men talked to me in fairly fluent English. Finally, a space was cleared, God knows how, for a strange-looking middle-aged woman, her face a dark ruin of Indian sorrow, who sang folk songs to a guitar. By the time she’d finished I was ready to go, but I still hadn’t been given the gold badge I’d ordered and mostly paid for, and I began asking for Danelli and Mr Jones. It was then that a young man I hadn’t spoken to before, had never even noticed, pulled me out of the party, not roughly but firmly, and took me up a short flight of stairs into what appeared to be Danelli’s bedroom. Above the bed, sardonically presiding, was a portrait of Lenin.
Sitting on the bed, probably ruining it, was Mr Jones. In his left hand was a glass of pisco, and in his right, pointing straight at my navel, was one of the nastiest-looking automatics I’ve ever seen. It waved me into the only chair in the room. Danelli was standing before the window, looking noble and melancholy, Toscanini about to conduct an adagio movement. The young man who had brought me here was now leaning against the door, and another young man, a tough type, was keeping him company there. I had time to glance round, taking all this in, before Mr Jones spoke. He was in no hurry; he was enjoying himself.
‘I’ve come for that badge, Mr Jones,’ I told him. ‘And would you mind putting that automatic away? You’re four to one, and those things have a nasty habit of going off if people get excited.’
‘Very well, Mr Bedford.’ He put it down beside him on the bed. ‘And you shall have your badge when you have answered some questions.’
‘Go ahead. I’ll try.’
‘I think you are working with Nazis, Mr Bedford.’
‘Then you can think again, Mr Jones. To begin with, I wouldn’t know how to work with Nazis, even if I wanted to, because I don’t know any. And I certainly wouldn’t want to, not after spending some years of my life fighting Nazis. I was fighting Nazis when Stalin and all your Russian friends were still sending Hitler anything he wanted.’
Mr Jones ignored this last crack. ‘You are going to Osparas, to the German chemical company there.’
‘I’m going to Osparas, certainly, but I didn’t even know there’s a German chemical company at Osparas.’
‘There is nothing else at Osparas but this company and its staff and workers. You told me yourself this morning that you were not going to the Emerald Lake to paint its scenes but to see some people there. Your exact words, Mr Bedford. And we have thought for some time that the company at Osparas is an undercover Nazi organisation. At the head of it is a man called von Emmerick who was a high-ranking German General Staff officer during the war.’ He must have noticed my reaction to this last statement. He gave me a very sharp look and his hand moved towards the automatic. ‘Well, Mr Bedford?’
‘What you say interests me, Mr Jones. I met von Emmerick not long ago at a party in America, and he struck me then as being a German General Staff type. But I’m not here because of him, and I didn’t even know he was running this company at Osparas. I’m here because I’m trying to find a cousin of mine, a bio-chemist, who took a job in Peru and then disappeared. And from what I learnt in Peru I believe I might find him down there at Osparas. And don’t think he’s a Nazi sympathiser – far from it. I don’t believe he went to Osparas of his own free will. But I promised his wife I’d find him, and that’s why I’m going to Osparas.’
Mr Jones and Danelli exchanged glances and then spoke rapidly in Spanish. Danelli produced a small box, took the gold badge out of it and handed it to Mr Jones, who stared at it a moment before he turned to me again. ‘My friend Danelli wishes to know the meaning of this badge. And so do I.’
‘Not more than I do. I’ve spent the last week wondering what the hell it means, Mr Jones. But as long as you’re against these people at Osparas, I’ll tell you why I want that badge or whatever it is. I thought I might use it to bluff my way into that organisation down there, so that I could find out if my cousin’s there. That figure eight above a wavy line stands for something – ’
‘It replaces the swastika perhaps. A new secret Nazism.’ Mr Jones was friendlier now, almost his old self. ‘We have been warned to look for it. Southern Chile, around Valdivia, has had a German community for a hundred years, Mr Bedford. They speak German. They refuse to assimilate. Many of them were Nazi sympathisers in the war. What are your own political opinions, Mr Bedford?’
‘I’m anti-Communist,’ I replied promptly. ‘I’m also anti-capitalist. I’m anti the whole goddam political mess the world’s in nowadays – ’
‘That is childish, my friend – ’
‘Then I’m childish. And there are a whale of a lot of other people who are also childish, mostly the kind I like. But as you’ve called me your friend and have put that gun down, I’ll tell you something. When you call these people at Osparas and elsewhere so many new undercover Nazis, I believe you’re on the wrong track. I was told that in Peru, but after giving it some thought I turned down the idea. It’s too simple and it doesn’t fit all the facts.’
Here I was interrupted by Danelli, who was probably wondering what was happening to his party and was anxious too to settle the badge transaction. Mr Jones seemed to agree with whatever he said to him, and now handed over the badge and asked me to let him have some extra pesos. When I had passed him the notes, he said: ‘I will strike a bargain with you, Mr Bedford, a jolly good bargain from your point of view. You wish to find your cousin at Osparas, to rescue him perhaps – ’
‘I assure you that’s why I’m here. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’ll have a dam’ good try.’
‘I believe you, old boy,’ said Mr Jones solemnly. ‘But we strike a bargain. I come with you to Emerald Lake, I give you all the help I can – and I have some friends even in those parts – if I can question your cousin. And of course you too, after you have been to Osparas. You agree?’
‘All right, Mr Jones. We form a temporary alliance. You think these people are Nazis, I think they’re something else, though God knows what. But we’re against them. So – ’
‘We shake hands.’ He came off the bed with his hand outstretched. ‘Topping!’ We shook hands, and then I had to shake hands with Danelli and the two young men, comrades all. We had drinks all round, and ten minutes later the two young men were driving Mr Jones and me to my hotel. The same young men in the same car took us out to the airport in the morning.
And that is how I came to fly south, bumpily in an old Dakota, wedged in beside a fat Soviet agent called Jones. During the last two hours, the country we flew over, perhaps trying to match our expedition, quietly went mad. We might have been flying into one of those Chinese brush drawings in which mountains, volcanic peaks, lakes, waterfalls, trees and clouds are all dissolving into one another.
‘What did I tell you, old boy?’ said Mr Jones as we came bouncing to our last stop. It was dusk now over the field that served as Puerto Montt’s airport. ‘Jolly good scenery down here, topping stuff.’
‘I’ll bet.’ But all I felt just then was that I was a hell of a long way from anywhere.
10
I must hand it to Mr Jones: he saved me a lot of trouble and time. I don’t know how good he was as a secret agent, but as a courier and travel arranger he was superb. Everything we needed was laid on without any fuss. Various odd types would pop up, exchange a few words with him, then all would be settled. Whether they were Party comrades or merely old acquaintances, I never knew. We were driven from the airfield to a place called Puerto Varas, where we stayed at an hotel overlooking a lake I couldn’t see, the night being
very dark. After dinner, in the bar, Mr Jones showed me a map of the district.
‘We are here, you see, old boy,’ he said, pointing. ‘At the most south point of Lake Llanquihue. In the morning we go by car along this shore of the lake to Ensenada, that small place there. Then we go – not so jolly good – to this very small place here, Petrohué. A motor boat will be ready for us at Petrohué.’
‘But why? We don’t want to go on Lago Todos los Santos, do we?’
‘Absolutely, old boy.’ He chuckled. I know people are often described as chuckling when they’re not, but Mr Jones, being built for it, really could chuckle. By this time he’d had a good many drinks, but all they did was to increase his ration of ancient English slang and bring out his chuckles. He was one of those heavy men in their fifties who are perhaps never quite sober at any time but are able to drink for hours and hours without ever getting plastered. ‘This lake is so green that its other name is Esmeralda. Emerald Lake, old boy.’
As he looked at me in triumph and began chuckling again, I suddenly thought of poor Joe Farne scribbling that last letter and somehow, for all his obvious haste at the end, getting somebody to post it for him somewhere among these lakes and volcanoes. Then I was back in that train from Cambridge, looking at Joe’s odd list properly for the first time, then seeing Mitchell staring at me. I’d almost forgotten Mitchell. Where was he now?
Mr Jones, as I insisted upon calling him, even to myself, was pointing at the map. ‘Yes, that’s your Emerald Lake, old boy. Now look.’ His fat forefinger moved along the lake. ‘The motor boat takes us to the other end – there, to Peulla. It has an hotel for tourists, and that is where I shall be. Now you see the little road going round what is left of the lake up there? A few kilometres up that road is Osparas, where you are going, old boy.’
Saturn Over the Water Page 14
