The Bay of Foxes: A Novel

by Sheila Kohler

  “What is?” Dawit says, trying to understand. He sits down on the sofa, still naked and shaking. All he can imagine is a picture of himself in the paper with the word MURDERER underneath. Gustave says impatiently, “M.’s disappearance, of course. The police are looking for her. Look, I gave them your address in Rome. I had to. I wanted to warn you.”

  “I see,” Dawit says, already imagining himself once again in a small cell, this time for life. He is tempted to get up and walk out onto the terrace and throw himself down onto the famous steps below. He thinks of Keats and the house where he died, which is very near here, he has noticed on his arrival. He thinks of the photo he saw of Keats’s death mask in a book. He, too, will die young in Rome, but without having lived or written any poems. What is there left to live for, in any case? What is the point of going on? Get it over with, he thinks.

  But Gustave encouragingly says, “Look, don’t worry. It’s just a formality. Nothing is going to happen to you. I spoke to them very highly of you, of course, and of your relationship with M. Everything should be fine. Just tell them where you were the night she took off. Perhaps she’ll turn up, and in the meantime, it’s good for business: a lost author! Very good for business. It couldn’t have been better if we’d made it up!” he says with a laugh. He does not sound particularly concerned about his lost author. Did he ever really care about M.? Was this simply a business arrangement? “We’re going to get that book out as soon as we can. November, probably,” Gustave says.

  “I see,” Dawit says. Why should he care? he would like to say. Gustave is thinking of his sales. These French intellectuals, for all their fancy talk, think about nothing but money in the end.

  But Gustave surprises Dawit once again. He says in a concerned, fatherly way, “Call me as soon as you have spoken to the police. They may want you to stay on in Rome for a while. Can you stay where you are?”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose so,” Dawit says indifferently, looking out the window, all the charm of Rome fled.

  “Do you have enough money? That’s a fancy address you gave me,” Gustave says.

  Everyone seems to want to give him money all of a sudden, Dawit thinks, and cannot help smiling at the irony. “Money. Yes, I have plenty of money,” Dawit says, without much interest. He presumes his large allowance will continue without M. there to stop it, and in any case what is he going to do with money? How is he going to go on living, totally alone? Will he ever see Enrico again? Will he betray him? How quickly he had fled out the door!

  “Well, let me know if you need anything at all. And in the meantime, if you’ve nothing to do, I’d suggest you start writing something. You knew her better than anyone, you know,” Gustave says.

  XXXVI

  THE POLICE ARRIVE THE NEXT MORNING. DAWIT HAS JUST come back to the apartment, having found a café nearby where he has had a cup of coffee with milk and a brioche. He had eaten nothing since he left Cala di Volpe the morning before, and he woke from fitful sleep on the fold-out couch, on Enrico’s brother-in-law’s elegant striped sheets, he presumed, realizing he was terribly hungry.

  He had also bought the newspapers, both the French and the Italian ones. The headlines were more or less the same in French and Italian: “Famous French Writer Missing,” they announced in large letters, with information about M.’s life and work. He shuffled from one paper, one language, to the next, hardly able to read the print or concentrate on the text that danced alarmingly before his eyes. He started reading one in French and then read another in Italian, the facts, the languages, everything jumbled in his mind, while he perched on a stool in the bar of the small café, people coming and going around him distractingly. Any loud noise terrifies him: the sound of the coffeemaker steaming milk almost made him fall to the floor. Calm down, calm down, you’ll get through this, he told himself.

  There was no photograph of him, and no use of the word murder, but in one of the papers he did find a reference to an unnamed Ethiopian secretary who was staying with M. in her villa at Cala di Volpe and was presumably the last person to have seen her before she disappeared, though her editor and publisher was reported to have spoken to M. since then on the telephone. Had Gustave really believed him or was it convenient for him to pretend to? What does Gustave know and what does he care? Suddenly the whole struggle to go on with his life seemed absurd to him, and he was filled with a dead hopelessness. It was all too difficult. How could he bear his secret?

  Now Dawit slowly ascends the worn, dark stairs, remembering the wild climb with Enrico the day before. He can still feel that hot, eager hand achingly in his. The voice is back in his head recounting his actions, and he realizes he is muttering to himself. He looks up and sees men waiting for him on the landing outside the apartment. There are two of them in dark suits, obviously policemen though not in uniform. He had hardly slept all night, repeatedly going over what he planned to say to them, but now that they are here he is tempted just to tell them everything. He wants desperately to unburden his heart of everything that Enrico has not wanted to bear. He imagines falling on his knees before them, bowing his head, and telling the whole sordid story.

  The policemen are not as beautiful as Enrico had proclaimed all Roman police were, though the older one is elegant, with his cape draped over his shoulder and a supercilious air about his dark, lean face. The younger one is tall and heavy-set, with a thick black mustache and a red face. He is in the process of scratching himself in a delicate spot with no semblance of elegance at all. Perhaps it is this that stops Dawit from falling onto his knees before them. How can he tell this vulgar policeman what has happened? How could the man possibly understand? Instead of feeling contrite, he is suddenly filled with irrational loathing. The policeman’s bushy mustache seems particularly hideous.

  The older one, with somewhat lined, tanned skin and an intelligent gaze, appears to be in charge as far as Dawit can tell, though it is the younger one who wishes him a “Buon giorno, signore” and asks if they may come in, adding rather rudely that they have been waiting awhile, as though this is Dawit’s fault. They have a few questions they want to ask him.

  Dawit apologizes, asks them please to follow him, and lets them inside the sunlit apartment.

  Dawit has left the window to the terrace open, and the younger one strides across the living room and exclaims about the view, as though he has already taken over the apartment. The older one calls him to order with a discreet clearing of the throat, standing by the sofa, which Dawit has folded up neatly. The man fusses with his French cuffs with their gold cuff links. Then they sit down, without being asked, side by side on the gray two-seated sofa, where Dawit has sat beside Enrico. The older man motions to Dawit to sit in the straight-backed leather chair opposite them, his back to the view. “What can I do for you?” Dawit asks politely, drawing himself up and buttoning his jacket, trying to maintain some semblance of calm and dignity.

  “You speak very good Italian.” The young one seems surprised by this ability, though how they planned on conversing otherwise, Dawit cannot tell.

  The young one asks him what he can tell them about M. “When did you last see her?” he asks.

  Dawit says he’s not sure he can give him the exact date but it was early September, when he dropped her at the airport. She had told him she was leaving for Switzerland. “She has a house in Switzerland,” he says, looking at the older policeman, who is perusing papers he has in hand, as though not particularly interested in their conversation. From time to time he stifles a yawn, and his gaze is drawn toward the view out the window. His uninterest in the proceedings, though surely to his advantage, seems discourteous to Dawit, who tries to draw him into the conversation, addressing his answers to him.

  “There seems to be no record of her on any of the flights during September,” the young policeman says, pressing his lips together in an expression that might be either a sardonic smile or a snarl of disapproval. Dawit has him repeat what he has said, pretending not to understand.

 
“Really!” Dawit says, getting up, unable to sit still before them. He paces back and forth nervously. “How strange,” he says. “Molto strano! Where could she have gone?”

  The young one wants to know if he saw her through the gate at the airport, or if he just dropped her off at the terminal. Dawit says he did not take her inside, as she had told him she did not like lengthy good-byes and wanted to go in alone. Clearly he can hear M. telling him, “I don’t like lingering good-byes.” He sees her going up the steps to her suite, closing the wooden door on him. In the end, though, she had had a rather long, drawn-out departure.

  As he speaks, feigning surprise and wonder, he has the feeling that there is no point to all of this charade. Why is he telling all these absurd lies? What does it matter anymore?

  “Did you happen to book her ticket for her or, perhaps, check on the time of her flight?” the older policeman asks, looking up from his papers and speaking for the first time, watching Dawit move back and forth in the small space. “Perhaps you’d be good enough, signore, to sit down. You are making me feel a bit seasick,” he says with a hint of a smile. Dawit resumes his seat and wonders about the reference to the sea. Has anything been found? He looks from one to the other. He says M. made the arrangements herself, as she had her trip to Sassari that day. He had thought she was going to spend the night there, but she came back in the afternoon.

  The young policeman wants to know what Dawit did after he had left her at the airport. Dawit hesitates, listening to the sound of the traffic in the street. Should he give them Enrico’s name? Doing so would probably save his own life. Will Enrico really vouch for him as he said he would? What might he actually say?

  Dawit says, deliberately avoiding their gaze, that he had met a friend in a bar, and they had spent the night together. The young one wants to know how to contact his friend. Dawit hesitates again. He keeps hearing Enrico’s long, low moan, his cry to his God for mercy. He hears him say, “Who are we to decide?” Indeed. He says he would rather not give them this information. It might be compromising for his friend. He looks at the older man, who is watching him carefully now. “You do understand, don’t you?” he says, appealing to the older man.

  “Why is that?” the young man says with a hint of irony in his voice, stretching his long legs out before him casually and fingering his bushy black mustache.

  Dawit studies the carpet and asks if they can be discreet. His friend is a married man, he explains, looking down at the pattern in the carpet where he and Enrico lay together in vain. He adds that his friend is from the nobility and the wife is from a prominent family. He doesn’t want to cause a scandal or any trouble in the marriage.

  The younger policeman looks at the older, as if for guidance on this delicate point. There is a hint of a smirk on the younger one’s face, probably thinking, un frocio. The older man just stares at Dawit. There is a moment of silence before the older one says slowly, “I understand fully. We will be as discreet as possible, but this information is important to us.”

  Dawit provides Enrico’s name, and they look at each other again. “L’architetto?” the older one asks, raising his eyebrows, opening wide his dark eyes. Perhaps he even knows him, Dawit thinks. He nods his head.

  Now the older policeman puts down his papers altogether and turns toward Dawit. He wants to know what his relationship is exactly with M. How did he meet her?

  Dawit tells his story truthfully and in some detail. He directs his confession to the older man, speaking at some length and with considerable frankness of his life in Paris, his poverty, and his inability to find work, prior to the meeting in the café. He thinks he may be saying too much, that the policeman probably does not want to hear about all of this, about his friend Asfa and his poor wife, Eleni, and their generosity to those in need. Absurdly he even speaks of little Takla, and as he does so he longs to be with his friends, with people he knows, people who would not judge him whatever he did. He cannot stop himself from speaking of them at length and at the same time he wonders if he will ever see them again.

  He tells the policeman he has worked as a secretary to M. through the summer. He helps her with her correspondence and edits her manuscripts, he can truthfully say. “She has been so good to me. I am very grateful,” he says, looking from the older one to the younger. “I hope she’s not in any trouble?”

  The young policeman wants to know if M. seemed different in any way the last day they were together. “Do you think she might have been depressed?” he wants to know.

  Dawit says it’s possible, and certainly she seemed tired. He thinks of her gray skin, her greasy hair, the fetid breath. He thinks of her saying she was exhausted. She was worn out, he thinks, worn out with loving him. Her obsession with him had gradually worn her down. He tells them she had said she was planning to do a reading but felt too tired to go through with it and left. She has recently completed a new book, which he has helped her edit.

  “Had she been drinking when you left her? She’s a drinker, is she not?” the older one asks. Apparently he has done his homework.

  Again Dawit hesitates, as if reluctant to speak ill of his friend, but then concedes, “She is rather a heavy drinker and is used to drinking several vodkas most evenings. But if she had drunk more than usual, I wouldn’t have let her go,” he says.

  The young one looks at the older for a second, an inquiry in his eyes, raising his eyebrows. The older policeman tells Dawit they would be glad if he would stay on in Rome for a while, in case they need to question him further. “Would it be possible for you to stay on for a while at this address?” he asks courteously, getting up and striding around the room. For now, that is all they need from him. Dawit feels a wild, violent joy at his words. They are not going to arrest him, or at least not immediately. Apparently they have no conclusive evidence of his role in this crime. Perhaps they have no indication that there has been a crime at all. No traces of M.’s body, he surmises, must have been discovered. It must still be lying somewhere in the depths of the bay, disintegrating slowly. The bay has kept his secret.

  He says he will be happy to answer any additional questions they might have. He will stay on as long as necessary. He hopes they are able to find M. He is worried about her.

  “I think you might have reason to be worried,” the older policeman says, giving Dawit a curious glance as he goes out the door.

  XXXVII

  DAWIT IS ABOUT TO TELEPHONE GUSTAVE WHEN THE PHONE rings. He picks it up immediately, hoping it might be Enrico, but it is a journalist who wants an interview. He declines. Almost immediately the phone rings again. And again he snatches it up with hope. This time it is a woman who wants to invite him to dinner at her villa, the Contessa Bellini. Does everyone in Rome know where he is staying? How have they tracked him down?

  She says she is an old friend of M.’s and has heard he is staying in Rome. She would be overjoyed if she could entice him to come. She is giving a big party—all of Roman society will be there, and they would be so grateful if he could come.

  “You are—am I right? An Ethiopian prince?” she gushes.

  “Not quite. My father’s title was ras, which is really more equivalent to a duke, I think you might say.” He laughs modestly. He thinks of his sophisticated father, part of the old aristocracy, not generally favored by the Emperor, who, like Napoleon, preferred to create his own coterie of nobles whom he believed would be more loyal to him. Still, his father had managed to keep his position at court due to his fierce loyalty, his wit, and his intelligence. What would he have had to say about his son now?

  He is about to decline this invitation, which fills him with horror, when he realizes that if all of Roman society is coming, Enrico might very well be invited, too. He decides, despite his reluctance to face a crowd of curious strangers, to accept. Perhaps, too, it might be wise to mingle in society as much as possible.

  The contessa gushes with joy at the thought of meeting him. She cannot wait to hear what he has to say about M. They
are all dying with curiosity. Again, Dawit thinks how little anyone really seems to care that M. has vanished. All they want is gossip. He dares to ask how she tracked him down.

  “Ah, we Romans have our sources of information,” she says, laughing, and promises to send a car to pick him up and bring him to her villa on the outskirts of Rome. “You’ll see, it is a wonderful old cinquecento house,” she says.

  He has only just put down the telephone when Gustave calls. Dawit tells him the police have paid him a visit. “How did it go?” Gustave asks.

  “I don’t know,” Dawit can truthfully say.

  Gustave returns to the topic of the book, which he is rushing out, as all of this publicity will be excellent for the sales. “You’ll have to come back to Paris in November when the book appears. I want you to do some publicity for us,” Gustave says.

  “Me, publicity?” Dawit says, bewildered.

  “You’ll be perfect, I know. People will flock to see you, believe me.” He adds, “I’ll find you a place to stay, and we’ll pay your expenses, so don’t worry about any of that.”

  Dawit tells him about his invitation to the Roman party. He laughs at the irony of it all and says, “I seem to be in great demand.”

  “Good, good. Don’t hug the walls. Go out, talk about M., the new book,” Gustave says and tells him to enjoy himself, too. No doubt all the hostesses in Rome will be after him. “Watch out! The women will eat you alive,” Gustave says and chuckles. Dawit wonders what Gustave knows or suspects about his sex life.

  Whatever that is, Gustave does indeed turn out to be correct. Dawit is in great demand, invited everywhere, photographed in the elegant clothes M. had pressed on him, standing smiling broadly on the arms of various society hostesses. His photo is, as he had feared, all over the tabloids, but not with the caption he had feared. How he would have loved all this attention only a few months ago, yet now, with his secret fear of disclosure, it fills him with terror. Journalists hound him, delighted with his story, his photogenic face, his slim form, his elegance, his excellent Italian. They call him the Prince from Abyssinia, the new Rasselas, who speaks perfect French, English, and Italian. When he tries to correct the error with his title, they simply say, “Non fa niente, principe.” They go on calling him “prince,” which makes a better story. The Italians seem to have a loose concept of titles. People are whatever they want them to be. Everyone is dottore or something of that kind.