Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Umh,’ Mandlebaum had said, also sitting back.

  ‘I would presume that whoever arranged such a cutting would expect a fairly large commission, wouldn’t you?’ Joel had asked. ‘And I would also presume that they would get it, without any argument.’

  ‘You’d have to go one of the finest cutters,’ Mandlebaum had said, reflectively. ‘Someone like Yussels, or Steinberg, or maybe Frederick Goldin. To take a three-hundred carat diamond anywhere else would be – well, if you’ll pardon the expression, criminal.’

  Joel had grinned. ‘I understand. But tell me, out of those three cutters you’ve just mentioned, which of them would be most likely to take on the job without asking any questions or spreading the word around? I mean, just out of interest?’

  ‘Frederick Goldin, no doubt about it,’ Mandlebaum had said. ‘All he cares about is what he cuts. A stone like that, he’ll see as a challenge, a step forward in his career. He’s very jealous of Yussels, you see. He thinks of himself as some kind of prodigy. He believes he can keep more of the original weight of a diamond than Yussels, while still matching Yussels’ make.’

  Joel had nodded. ‘You know him well, Goldin?’

  ‘As well as anybody.’

  ‘All right, then. Why don’t you ask him the same question that I’ve asked you? Just out of interest.’

  Mandlebaum had sipped some more tea, cautiously. ‘Also as a matter of interest, perhaps I should tell you that a reward of one per cent is being offered throughout the trade for a very sizeable South African diamond of 350 carats known as the Natalia Star.’

  Joel looked Mandlebaum calmly in the eye. ‘I’m offering a commission of two per cent,’ he said. And that was why, a little over a week later, he was helped into Frederick Goldin’s workshop, hopping on one crutch, and given a ladderback chair to sit on beside the well-worn bench where Frederick Goldin himself was studying a parcel of diamonds through his 10 × loupe.

  ‘Mr Deacon,’ said Mandlebaum, introducing Joel, and then stood back with his thumbs tucked into the tight pockets of his black vest.

  Frederick Goldin laid down his loupe, wrapped up the parcel of diamonds, and then turned to face Joel with a lean, rather dog-like face. He was tall, with frizzy gingery hair, and a complexion as freckly as bread-and-sultana pudding. His wrists seemed to be so loosely articulated that his large hands flapped this way and that like slapsticks.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re Mr Deacon, the man with the very large diamond.’

  Joel coughed. ‘Correction. I’m the man who’s interested in knowing whether you might want to cut a very large diamond, and that’s all.’

  ‘You don’t have to play word games,’ said Frederick Goldin. ‘I know what you want, and why you’re here. You want a huge stone cut as near to perfection as possible, but instead of having to endure the usual publicity that accompanies such an event, you want it done silently.’

  Joel said nothing. However much Goldin committed himself, Joel preferred to wait until he was absolutely sure of Goldin’s trustworthiness before he admitted that he actually had the stone in Antwerp with him.

  ‘All I can say to you is that you have not only come to the right man, you have come to the only man,’ said Goldin. ‘You could have gone to Itzik Yussels, and he probably could have done you a fair job, but sooner or later he would have let the cat out of the bag. He is a vain and pompous old man, and he would not be able to resist telling the world how wonderfully he had cut your stone.’

  ‘And you?’ asked Joel, quietly. ‘You’re not vain at all?’

  ‘Of course I’m vain. Anybody who possesses as much talent as I do will always be vain. But I am an outsider in the diamond industry. They do not care for my methods; and they do not care for the way in which I challenge their traditional ways. I have spoken out for years against the second-rate cuts they impose on some of the beautiful gems that pass through their hands. There is a famous cut, a twelve-facet cut called the Antwerp Rose. Most of the cutters here won’t hear a word against it; it is Antwerp’s own, after all. But it is one of the dullest and most lifeless cuts of all, a cut that not even a topaz deserves.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Joel, ‘that’s all very well. But what guarantee could you give that you wouldn’t change your mind – that once you’d cut the stone, and made a really beautiful job of it, you wouldn’t be tempted to win some professional kudos by letting it slip that you’d been responsible?’

  Frederick Goldin leaned forward over his worktable. ‘Mr Deacon,’ he said, ‘let us speak quite frankly. I believe that the diamond you have brought here to Antwerp for cutting is the diamond that went missing earlier this year from the Blitz Brothers mine in Kimberley – the diamond they now call the Natalia Star. De Pecq’s have had at least two letters about it, one with a sketch showing approximately what the diamond looks like. The letters warn that the diamond will probably be in the possession of Mr Joel Blitz, whose most noticeable feature is that he has only one leg.’

  Joel rubbed his chin, slowly and thoughtfully. ‘All right,’ he replied, ‘if you know that much, then answer me one question and one question only. Will you cut the diamond, and will you cut it in complete secrecy?’

  ‘That’s two questions.’

  ‘If you don’t cut it in secrecy, then you don’t get to cut it at all.’

  Frederick Goldin stood straight. He looked across at Joseph Mandlebaum, who simply shrugged.

  ‘It will be a considerable risk,’ said Goldin.

  ‘Not that much of a risk,’ Joel told him. ‘Fifty per cent of the diamond already belongs legally to me.’

  ‘You want me to cut half of it only?’ joked Goldin.

  ‘I want you to say yes or no – will you cut it for me or won’t you?’

  There was a moment when Joel genuinely feared that Frederick Goldin was going to turn him down; when the diamond cleaver’s face seemed to be collecting itself into an expression of regretful refusal. But then Goldin looked a little more whimsical, and mischievous, and then he nodded, and kept on nodding.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If anybody finds out what I am doing, it will probably shock the industry to its very roots. But it is the kind of diamond that every cleaver wants to get his hands on before he dies. A diamond that only occurs once in a lifetime. I say yes.’

  Without another word, Joel reached into his coat pocket and took out the package of green tissue paper. He set it on Goldin’s work-table, and sat back.

  Goldin stared at the package as nervously as if it contained a live snake. But then he reached forward with his long loose fingers, and tweaked the tissue open. At last, the Natalia Star lay exposed, brilliant and jagged; and next to the five- and ten-carat diamonds that were scattered on Goldin’s table, it looked improbably huge.

  Goldin sat down. ‘Why didn’t you show me this diamond the moment you walked in?’ he asked. ‘It has a morality all of its own.’

  Joel smiled self-deprecatingly, and glanced at Joseph Mandlebaum in amusement. But Joseph Mandlebaum had his eyes on the diamond, and his mouth open and Joel had the feeling that he would have had to let off firecrackers to divert his attention away from it.

  Frederick Goldin picked the diamond up and turned it one way, and then the other. ‘This will have to be my sole occupation for the next two years,’ he breathed. ‘But what an occupation!’

  ‘Won’t de Pecq’s get suspicious if you don’t turn out your regular number of gemstones?’ asked Joel.

  Frederick Goldin said, ‘No. Not at all. In any case, I will still be able to carry out two-thirds of my routine cleaving. They give me a free hand, you see; partly because I am so talented, and partly because I am so obnoxious to them. Besides it will take me six or seven months just to study this diamond and mark it out for cutting.’

  ‘And two years before it’s finished?’ asked Joel.

  ‘Maybe a little less. But cutting a stone like this can never be hurried. It is a question of exact degrees, exact angles, and inspired cleavin
g. Properly cleaved and cut, this diamond should yield one stupendous gemstone and anything up to five others, all of extraordinary size.’

  Frederick Goldin went to the window, and held the diamond up in his hand as if it were a piece of the moon. ‘To feel the weight of this diamond in my hand is a privilege in itself,’ he said. ‘I have never, ever, seen anything like it. I doubt if I ever shall again.’

  Joel spent the rest of the day with Goldin, while the cleaver explained how he would study the diamond and determine which way its cleavage planes ran so that he could split it. No matter how talented the cleaver might be, he told Joel, there was always a danger that an invisible stress point inside the diamond would cause it to split the wrong way, and ruin it. But if the cleaving was successful, the stone would then be bruted into outline shape by rubbing another rough diamond up against it – a process which also required remarkable skill. Then, the stone would go for grinding or blocking. The blocker would mount it in a metal arm called a tang, and press it against a revolving wheel dressed with olive oil and diamond dust, gradually grinding down the flat top of the diamond, the table. After that, the blocker would grind the crown facets that slope from the side of the table to the middle of the diamond, the girdle. He would then turn the diamond over and grind the pavilion facets below the girdle; and finish up by grinding the culet facet at the base of the diamond, which had to be precisely parallel to the table.

  At last, the diamond would be passed to the brilliandeer, who would cut all the remaining facets. Even on a straightforward emerald cut, there would be fifty-eight of them, and each of them would be checked to within fractions of a degree by eye, lining up edges precisely with other edges, and with reflections of edges.

  That evening, Frederick Goldin took Joel for dinner at a French restaurant on Consciencestraat called L’Écstase. They talked nothing but diamonds, and drank four bottles of Chateau Hauteville between them. When Joel finally got back to the Grand Hotel Putte, Anna’s father had to heave him upstairs, puffing garlic in his face with every stair.

  Just before dawn, when the kite-shaped pieces of sky was already light, Joel’s door opened and Anna came in, in her billowy white nightdress. Without being asked, without saying anything, she lifted the nightdress over her puppy-fat hips, and climbed on top of Joel with all the weight of an authentic Rubens.

  By February of the following year, Barney controlled almost all of the Kimberley Mine with the exception of the L-shaped cluster of claims owned by the French Company; and, on the whole, he began to feel content. He felt he needed a rest, too, and to socialise more. He had been working so hard on modernising his mining equipment and buying up his competitors that he had not entertained anybody for dinner at Vogel Vlei for months; and he had neglected his visits to Klipdrift for nearly a year. Pieter must have grown beyond recognition.

  Barney’s friendship with Harold had grown offhand and unsatisfactory, although their increasing estrangement was not entirely Barney’s fault. Harold was so ill with his hearing complaint these days that it was all he could do to climb the stairs to his office, and he frequently went home early. There were no more late-night business meetings, and no more five a.m. starts. Everything was done briefly and breathlessly in Harold’s office, with the minimum of banter. Negotiate, sign, pay, and go.

  Barney had seen Agnes now and again, once with her husband, and once in the company of a brawny young Australian, and he thought about her over and over until the inside of his head felt like a trommel. There was something about Agnes which stirred up a part of his personality which Mooi Klip had never touched; an inexplicable desire for sexual suffering and actual pain. He wondered if he harboured a secret need to be punished for his arrogance, but somehow that explanation did not seem to correspond with the excitement he felt when he remembered how Agnes had dug her sharp fingernails into the flesh of his buttocks. Nor did it correspond with his arousing recollection of hurting Agnes in return. He alarmed himself when he thought too deeply about that, and he made himself change the subject.

  He thought about that Natalia Star more than anything else. He could close his eyes and remember it exactly: its soft and magical colour, its irresistible brilliance. It had been a symbol of his deepest love, and Joel had taken it from him, in just the same way that he had taken the first Natalia.

  To have lost the Natalia Star was, inexplicably, to have lost his direction.

  He left Edward Nork in charge of the mine one Thursday morning early in March and rode over to Klipdrift on his horse Jupiter. It was a dazzling day, with only a few clouds clinging to the far horizon, and Barney felt unusually good-humoured. It had been nearly a year now since Sara had died and his official period of mourning was almost over. He had licked the Big Hole into good shape, so that his combined claims were bringing in more than £75,000 a week. Suddenly the years of work and argument and discontent seemed to be coming to an end, and he could look forward to travelling, and parties, and amusements. Vogel Vlei was almost finished, although he had missed Sara’s good taste when he was decorating the guest bedrooms; and in Edward Nork’s words the parlour looked like ‘the anteroom to Lucrezia Borgia’s outhouse’.

  Barney reached Klipdrift a little after four o’clock, and rode around to Mooi Klip’s house feeling sweaty and tired. He dismounted by her front gate, and to his surprise she was standing by the door, in a summer coat and a bonnet decorated with flowers, and carrying a parasol. Beside her, dark-eyed and solemn, with that short chiselled nose and wedge-shaped forehead that distinguished him as Barney’s son, stood Pieter. Around them was a collection of chests and trunks, all locked and labelled.

  ‘Natalia,’ said Barney, tying Jupiter up to the gatepost.

  She stared at him, her face flushed pink by the late sunlight which shone through her parasol.

  ‘Barney … why have you come?’

  He opened the gate, and walked towards her across the yard. ‘What do you mean, why have I come? I came to see Pieter, of course, I came to see you.’

  Mooi Klip appeared to be partially paralysed, unable to move or speak properly. ‘But today,’ she said. ‘Of all days, you had to come today?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Barney. ‘You’re leaving Klipdrift? You’re moving?’

  ‘I sent you a letter,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t see any letter.’

  ‘I only sent it today.’

  He stepped up close to her, and looked around at all the trunks. ‘You were only going to tell me you were leaving after you’d gone?’

  She lowered her parasol. ‘Do you think I could have had the strength to tell you any other way?’

  Barney reached out and held her white-gloved wrist. ‘Is this Natalia Marneweck talking?’ he asked her. ‘The bold Natalia Marneweck?’

  She raised her eyes. They were as dark as an owl’s. ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is Natalia Ransome.’

  There was a very long silence. Barney released Natalia’s wrist and stood with both hands clasped together in front of his mouth, the way the Bantu herdboys held their hands when there were whistling through reeds. Pieter clasped Natalia’s sleeve uncertainly, seeking reassurance that everything was all right, but all Natalia could do was touch his hand.

  ‘You married him, then,’ said Barney.

  Mooi Klip nodded. ‘He’s very kind,’ she said, with a catch in her throat.

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Barney. ‘That’s what I thought about him, when he came to call on me.’

  The sun was gradually nibbling at the tops of the trees on the far side of the Vaal River, and on the opposite bank Barney could see a diamond prospector bent over the slow golden shallows, dredging up yellow ground in a bucket. It seemed a hundred years ago that he had walked along the Orange River, and watched the diggers sorting soil on their rocker-tables.

  He crouched down, and held out his arms for Pieter. ‘How’s my favourite son?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry it’s been so long.’

  Mooi Klip coaxed Pieter forward. ‘It’s
been a long time for all of us,’ she said. ‘The truth is, we’re going to England.’

  Barney was holding Pieter’s hand. The boy seemed so gentle and serious, the same way that Barney had been when he was young. He looked up at Mooi Klip and said, ‘England? For how long?’

  She pursed her lips, and he knew then that she was going for ever.

  ‘His church has sent him, I suppose?’ he asked, and Mooi Klip nodded.

  Barney stood up, resting his hand on Pieter’s shoulder. Pieter obviously wanted to go back to his mother’s side; but there was something about the way in which his mother was looking at him that made him stay where he was.

  ‘I heard about your wife from the newspaper,’ said Mooi Klip. ‘I was so sorry for you, but I knew that I couldn’t come to see you. I would have to leave that to you. I thought sometimes that you might come. I even prepared myself for what I was going to say to Hugh. But you didn’t come, and I had to honour my promises, and think of Pieter as well as myself; and so I married Hugh, in Hopetown, and now we’re going to England.’

  Barney touched Pieter’s hair, and his thin childish neck, and his cheeks, and then let him go back to his mother. ‘I left it too late, then,’ he said, with less assurance than he’d meant to.

  Mooi Klip could not take her eyes off him; any more than Barney had been able to take his eyes off the Natalia Star. The tears slid down her cheeks, and she had to hold her hand over her mouth to suppress her sobs. Barney could do nothing but look at those brown lambent eyes and think of the past, of all those days of love, and of all of those days of loneliness, and it seemed to him now that the past ten years had ruffled by like the leaves of a calendar, page after page after page, a whirlwind of white paper, and that nothing was left on this gilded March evening but regret.

  ‘Kiss me once,’ he asked Natalia. ‘Kiss me once, the way you used to.’

  And in the doorway of that whitewashed strooidak house in Klipdrift, they held each other for the very last time, and kissed like they always should have done, while the evening birds rustled up from the river, and the day began to fade.