The four of us got into the Aston Martin used on nights when the aim was to make a good impression or to toady up to someone, that night it had been the former; it was quite a tight fit, but we couldn't send the couple off in a taxi, we were the hosts, and, besides, it was only a short ride. We took them to their hotel, the opulent Ritz no less, near Hatchard's bookshop in Piccadilly, which I had visited so often following in the footsteps of past notables, Byron and Wellington, Wilde and Thackeray, Shaw and Chesterton; and not far from Heywood Hill, which I frequented more when I lived in Oxford, and not far either from the shops of Davidoff and Fox in St James's Street where Tupra probably bought his Rameses II and where I obtained my rather less magnificent Karelias cigarettes, from the Peloponnese.
When I said goodbye to Flavia, I had a presentiment – or was it prescience – that if she were still disappointed or disconcerted by the incident and the removal of the young man, after a while, in the darkness, when she and her husband were lying silently in their respective beds or together in their double bed, what she would remember most were the compliments paid to her during the evening and she would fall asleep feeling calmer and more contented than when she had woken up that morning; and this meant that she could still wake up the next day thinking: 'Last night, I was fine, but will I be all right today?' So at least, in that one respect, I had done my job and had, indirectly and extravagantly – the best way – given her a further extension. (How she would love to have known that she had been the cause of violence.) One more extension before the day on which her first thought would be: 'Last night, I wasn't fine, so what will happen today?' She kissed both Tupra and myself and went inside, not noticing the commissionaire who held the door open for her and not waiting for her husband to finish saying his goodbyes. He wouldn't tell her off for that, and she must have been eager to study her sfregio in a magnifying mirror and in a better light, and to start summoning up the more pleasant moments of that long night, when she had still been in such excellent spirits that she could urge me in mock-reproachful tones: 'Su, va, signer Deza, non sia cost antipatico. Mi dica qualcosa di carino, qualcosa di tenero. Una parolina e sara contenta… Anzi, me fara felice.’
As for Manoia, he shook Reresby's hand in what passed for effusiveness in such a mild, anodyne, Vaticanish man – the mildness, of course, was phoney – and I assumed that they had, in the end, reached some mutually convenient agreement, or had got from each other what each of them had asked for or proposed or had imposed by dint of some unspoken threat.
'It has been a great great great pleasure, Mr Reresby,' he said in his heavy Italian accent: he probably didn't know how else to translate 'grandissimo'. 'An evening full of incident but no less of a pleasure for that. Be so kind as to keep me informed.' In contrast, he was extremely cold with me, indeed, he left the hand I held out to him hanging in mid-air and merely inclined his head slightly, like an old-fashioned diplomat (and 'inclined' is something of an exaggeration). He did not even look at me, or, rather, I could not see his dull, zigzagging eyes behind his large, reflecting glasses. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with his thumb one last time, although they had not in fact slipped down, and said: 'Buona notte.’
Then he scuttled off after his wife, he probably found separation from her painful. He looked then more like a diligent civil servant than a rapist, not so much Mafia or Camorra or 'ndrangheta as Opus Dei or Christ's Legionnaires, or perhaps Sismi, whatever that was. But Flavia was nowhere to be seen in the lobby, not at least from the street. She must be in the lift, on her way up to their room, where she would lock herself in the bathroom for a while alone and thus postpone her husband's private reproaches. She would have warned him not to speak to her through the bathroom door, and in such matters he would doubtless have obeyed her.
He had not even added: 'Egrazie.' Nor was there any reason why he should, he was unaware of my growing anger or my unease. He may even have believed that I had been responsible for handing out the beating whose result must have pleased him when he visited the toilet to check. He may have taken me for a mere henchman, an underling, a flunkey, a thug. And the truth is that, at that moment, I did feel like a henchman and an underling, and even like a flunkey too: I had placed Tupra's victim precisely where he had wanted him to be. But not a heavy or a hitman or a goon, not a thug, because I hadn't laid a finger on anyone and had no intention of doing so. Just as I hoped no one would lay a finger on me, with or without the benefit of a sword, even with or without a comb.
25
Anything I sensed or knew about him and anything he knew or sensed about me – since you cannot, at will or with impunity, crouched or invisible like someone watching from a house or like a ghost, decipher another person who is, in turn, studying and deciphering you – came from observing someone who was also continually observing me, someone equipped with identical faculties and with the same or similar or possibly superior weapons; or perhaps all that can emerge from such a situation is a kind of sterile, reciprocal neutralisation, an impenetrability, a blockade, a cancelling out and a blindness – a sort of Cold War peace and detente – the mutual defusing of curses or gifts, paralysed and rendered useless when confronted by another mind that also suffers or enjoys them, if he and Wheeler were right and were not lying and I really did live up to their predictions. I was still so unconvinced of this that I did not quite believe it, despite Wheeler having persuaded me -invoking the authority of Rylands which there was now no way of refuting – that I did possess such a gift, and despite having grown bolder with each day spent on our one-eyed task in the building with no name, goaded by the faith of the others or by their demands: 'Tell me what else, don't stop, what else do you see, just say whatever comes into your head, don't delay or linger, the next to last thing we want is for you to keep quiet, to hesitate, to watch your back, we don't pay for your prudence, that isn't why we employ you, and the very last thing we want is for you to know nothing and to say nothing. Everything has its time to be believed, remember, so never keep silent, not even to save yourself, there's no room for that here and there's no cat either to get anyone's tongue, any of our five tongues, and you can't swallow it, not even if you wanted to choke yourself…' Or else: 'Why, you haven't even started yet. Go on. Quickly, hurry, keep thinking. The really interesting and difficult thing is to continue: to continue thinking and to continue looking when you have the feeling that there is no more to think and no more to see, that to continue would be a waste of time. In that wasted time lies the truly important, at the point where you might say to yourself there can't be anything else. So tell me, what else, what else occurs to you, what else can you offer, what else have you got? Go on thinking, quickly now, don't stop, go on.' That was what my father used to say to us during any discussion, even from when we were very young.
And that possible situation of stalemate or of a draw and of resignation, of an absence of any duel, of holding back among one's peers, could happen not only with Tupra and, of course, with Wheeler, but with the other three, with young Perez Nuix and Mulryan and Rendel, and who knows, even with Branshaw and Jane Treves, if it came to that. And possibly with Mrs Berry too.
When Manoia had disappeared (at a trot), Tupra looked at me very seriously, almost ominously, outside on the pavement by the lights of the Ritz Hotel, Ritz Restaurant, Ritz Club. Then he smiled broadly and said: 'Shall I give you a lift? It's Dorset Square, isn't it, or a square near there? In that area, anyway.’
I knew, for example, that he knew the precise details of my address and that all these approximations were a pretence, he would have memorised the floor and the number and the letter of my apartment, as he did with all his collaborators. I also knew that he wanted to give me a lift, for some reason that went beyond mere thoughtfulness. He wanted to talk, to comment on the events of the night. Or to warn me about something. Or to give me advice and perhaps instructions for other such occasions, after my baptism of fire, as a witness and in the presence of a sword. I didn't think he intended giving me a
n explanation or apologising, smoothing away any rough edges. But he wanted something. I assumed, therefore, that he would end up giving me a lift in his Aston Martin, velis nolis. And that if I declined his offer, he would insist. And that if I refused, he would insist further.
'There's no need, I'll take a taxi,' I replied, and he must have realised that my indignation had not abated.
The two of us were standing on the pavement outside the Ritz; he had left the car door open while we were saying our rapid farewells to the Catholic couple, the nearside door, the co-pilot's door, from which I had emerged. The commissionaire kept shifting from one foot to another, as if his feet were cold. He was keeping an urgent eye on us, we weren't supposed to park there, of course, or even to stop.
'Oh, come on, it's no bother, besides, this whole business has woken me up. It'll only take ten minutes; it's the least I can do, you deserve it. Come on, get in, we're in the way here.’
I would have taken a taxi and that would have been an end to it, but no taxis were passing at that moment, and the hotel taxi rank must have been elsewhere, I couldn't see it, or perhaps that was it, right there, and it was deserted. However, I knew now, very clearly, that he wanted to or, rather, intended to give me a lift.
The prospect didn't please me. I would have preferred to see no more of him that night and not to run the risk of confronting him and reproaching him and demanding an explanation, and it seemed to me impossible not to do this if we were to go in the car alone. The following morning – we would start late, that was the norm when we had had a late night because of work, and our timetable was, anyway, fairly flexible – I would feel calmer, I thought, and might have come to terms with it more. And although he knew exactly where I lived, I didn't much like the idea of his encroaching on my territory, not with my knowledge and in my company. When someone drops you off or follows, you or tails you or spies on you, and sees you open your front door as night fells or evening falls, they have seen much more than they appear to have seen or should have seen: they have seen you – how can I put it – in retreat, probably tired and even on the point of succumbing to passivity after the long day of pretence and effort and of false alert; they have, moreover, seen something that we repeat every day, perhaps the most everyday event of our external lives. People allow themselves to be accompanied or given lifts without a qualm, they even expect it and are grateful, as is often the case with women, but from then on it is as if someone knew where to find us – as if they knew it with their own eyes and had stored away the image; which is different from merely knowing something -and at approximately what time too. (Indeed, this is the first thing that burglars and kidnappers, rapists and murderers, spies and policemen find out and observe, what time you come home, when you are at home or when the house is empty, depending on their intentions and whether or not they would prefer you to be there or safely out of the way.) Yes, it makes a lot of difference being seen in our own territory or environs, even more so being seen going up the four or five steps that separate the street from our front door in London, opening the latter with our key, going in and closing it behind us with the involuntary slowness of the weary. After a couple of minutes, they will be able to identify our lights and our balconies, from the pavement below, or from behind the trees and the statue -except the window on that side has no balcony; and then they are better able to imagine or to guess at our domestic interiors, to know what kind of lighting we like, and even make out our silhouette if we go over to the window or observe us in our personal frame if we lean out to smoke a cigarette or to admire the twilight or to take the air or water the plants, or to see who it is ringing our doorbell oh a rainy night, who it is who has been following us for ages now, she and I both with umbrellas and she with a white dog, tis tis tis the dog went, its footsteps almost flying. And someone in the square, from a distance, or, more precisely, someone from one of the houses opposite, the house of the proud dancer, for example, could have watched the two of us while we were talking, while young Perez Nuix was asking me a bothersome and awkward favour, and was explaining why it is that our clients are no longer always the State, the army, the navy, a ministry or an embassy, New Scotland Yard or the judiciary, Parliament, the Bank of England, the Secret Service, MI6, MI5 or even Buckingham Palace, the Crown; and also while she was answering my numerous questions, sometimes without my even having to ask them and sometimes once I had asked them, 'What do you know about criminals?', 'Who are these "wet gamblers"?' and 'Who do I have to lie or keep silent about in order to please you?' and 'You still haven't asked me the favour, I still don't know what it is exactly' and 'How long have you been working here, how old were you when you started, who were you or what were you like before?' and 'Which private private individuals do you mean, and how is it that this time you know so much about this particular commission, its origin and provenance?' It could no longer be, nor was it, 'a moment', as she had announced after saying 'It's me' from down in the street. (Everything immediately grows longer or becomes tangled or adhesive, as if every action carried within it its own prolongation and every phrase left a thread of glue hanging in the air, a thread that can never be cut without something else becoming sticky too. Everything persists and continues on its own, even if you yourself decide to withdraw.)
And whenever I've brought a woman home, before, when I was single, or during that time in London (I mean brought someone back to spend the night or at least spend some time in my bed), I have always feared that she might later revisit the place uninvited and unsolicited: precisely because she had once set foot there and had seen me inside my apartment, seen how I lived and then stored away the image. And sometimes I have been quite right to fear this. And if someone has returned to this territory because I wanted them to and with my permission, or even because I summoned them and desired their presence, then, if we don't want them to move in, if we're not prepared for that, there is one room we must never allow them to enter, not even to keep us company while we fix a drink or prepare a snack, and that room is not the bedroom, where it doesn't even matter if they spend the night, nor the bathroom, a single man's bathroom is hardly a place to fire the imagination, but the kitchen, because if a woman enters the kitchen to continue the conversation while we're busy or to help us without our asking or suggesting that she does; if she follows us there on her own initiative, or almost instinctively, the way ducks do, she will probably want to stay by our side sine die – for a moment, she experiences or even smells what it would be like to live together – even though she may not know it and it is only her first visit, and even though she would genuinely deny it if someone were to predict it. This was perhaps one of the more trivial things learned from my gift or my curse, assuming I possessed either.
Tupra wasn't a woman and wasn't going to stay, he wasn't even coming upstairs to my apartment, he was merely going to drive into the square in his speedy Aston Martin and leave me at my door. Nevertheless, I didn't like the idea, because I could so easily imagine him afterwards, or on another night, another evening, another day or at dawn, spying on me from behind the trees or the statue, watching my window, or lying in wait in the hotel opposite, eyes trained on my lights or my window and on the possible woman who might have come to see me, although not necessarily to spend time in my bed. Waiting for her to leave. No wonder he had, from the first, struck me as a man who spent more time padding streets than carpets, more time out of the office than slaving away inside.
I opened the passenger door properly and got back into the car, without saying a word. He walked round to his side. I simply gave him my exact address, rather sarcastically I imagine, as if he were a taxi driver, and that was all. I knew I wouldn't be able to contain myself during the next few minutes that we would spend alone, but I wasn't sure how to begin, perhaps it would be best if I didn't rush things, despite my anger, by saying the first and possibly trivial words of recrimination that sprang to my lips, a mere detail in comparison with the real gravity of what had happened. I had not yet deci
ded to leave this job for good, I needed to think about it more coolly and get myself used to the idea of going back to the BBC, with its ill-paid tedium. I waited for a few long seconds, with the car already moving off" and accelerating, to see if he would say something and thus give me an opening. 'He won't do that,' I thought, 'he's very good at withstanding silences, especially those he initiates.' He was the one who had wanted to give me a lift, but perhaps it was not in order to lecture me or to tell me off (it was my fault that we had got stuck with De la Garza), nor to clarify anything to me, but to hear me venting my rage in the heat of the moment, and thus gauge my capacity for anger. After a while, the silence became that of two people who do not wish to speak to each other.
'It's not exactly a cheap area where you live,' he said eventually; the silence, therefore, was not, I judged, one he had decided upon and chosen, and he was not so good at withstanding those: his permanent state of vehemence and tension demanded that he fill every moment with some palpable, audible, recognisable or computable content. The whole car, free now from the interference of Flavia's rival fragrance, smelled of his aftershave, it was as if the lotion impregnated his skin or as if he were constantly, secretly, applying more. I hadn't seen him do so in front of the cripples' mirror. I wound down my window slightly.
Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream Page 32
