by MARY HOCKING
‘We drank a lot of brandy and made extravagant offers of hospitality. I told him, why I can’t imagine, that my family had a distillery in Dublin.’
‘Perhaps he invented the vineyard.’
‘I rather doubt it. He was very intense about the excellence of Swiss wines and the need to break down the snob barrier erected by the French. Most certainly he has a vineyard. Come with me and I’ll prove it to you.’
‘Thanks, but I think I’ll take your advice and have a look at Chillon.’
Burke winced. ‘I was in sentimental mood last night. Don’t expect too much.’
Burke took the car. Mitchell refused a lift and walked slowly down the hill towards Chillon. He stopped at Alperin’s hotel and made a few enquiries. Alperin, it seemed, was not well and he was staying in his room; he did not, the receptionist informed Mitchell, want to see anyone. So far, so good. Mitchell went on his way convinced that his long-delayed holiday had begun.
He had breakfasted early and it was only nine o’clock when he reached the castle. There were a few cars parked outside, but no coaches had yet arrived. Mitchell stood for a moment on the far side of the drawbridge, watching a paddle steamer waddling through the water like a pregnant duck. It was pleasantly cool still and the light was clear; there were children playing in a sailing boat beached nearby, and out on the lake someone was water skiing, wearing the bizarre black outfit now thought so necessary. Water skiing would be pleasant, Mitchell thought; if only he was not so stiff still.
He turned towards the castle, paid his admission fee, and crossed the drawbridge, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of being a tourist. There were two Americans just ahead, the quiet, earnest kind who would do the castle inch by painstaking inch. The woman, gazing round the small, cobbled court, said, ‘It’s so peaceful, like stepping into another world.’ The man rebuked her, ‘A hard world for some.’ He was right, of course; one had only to look at the massive stone walls broken only by the archers’ loopholes to see that this was a world from which men never looked outward with much hope.
The Americans were moving towards the underground vaults, intent on inspecting Bonivard’s prison. Mitchell looked up at the sky, blue, flecked with small, friendly tufts of cirrus, and decided that he did not want to visit the prison at this moment. The Americans would probably make very heavy going of it. Instead he went down to the crypt and from there quickly made his way to the second courtyard and on into the Grand Hall of the Governors of the Castle.
Burke had been right, the castle was well-preserved; and as Mitchell wandered from room to room he was conscious of some kind of atmosphere, though he doubted whether it was generated so much by the past as by the design of the place. A fortress is a prison for all who move within its confines at whatever time. He wondered, as he stood at a window high up in the Grand Hall of the Count, what the Governors had felt as they looked from this window at the view of the lake and wooded shore. Had they acknowledged unity with the men below in the dungeons, prisoners all in the Castle of Chillon? Probably not, those had been dangerous times, not conducive to self-analysis.
He went on through a torture chamber with a low window only a foot above the floor, through the museum where there were several models of the castle as it had been at different periods, to the treasury. From this room a wooden staircase led up to the keep. A middle-aged woman was coming down the staircase. She was saying, ‘All right, then! You carry on alone. I’m not going one step further.’ Her plump hand gripped the wooden rail and when she reached the bottom she leant against the wall, snuffling like a distressed bulldog. She was followed by a red-faced man protesting loudly; in spite of his protests, Mitchell noticed that the man made no attempt to return on his own. Interested, Mitchell mounted the stairs as soon as the couple moved away.
The staircase was steep and narrow, the treads badly worn, it seemed to go up indefinitely; not a venture for anyone with heart trouble or an overworked imagination. At the top there was a small room with sloping roofs and several recessed windows from which lookouts had once surveyed the surrounding countryside. The view was rewarding. Over the intervening roofs one could see the lake widening beyond Montreux and to the east, the green valley of the Rhône overhung by Les Dents du Midi. Below, the pattern of the castle unfolded; interesting, provided one had a good head for heights.
A youth and his girl friend had clambered up behind Mitchell. The girl peered down at the pointed roofs of the towers below.
‘If you fell from here, you might be skewered on that,’ the young man said, pointing to a spike on one of the tower roofs.
There was a glimpse of a courtyard, far below, which looked a kinder, though equally final, resting place.
The girl said, ‘You say that kind of thing on purpose to upset me. You were just the same about the Pagoda at Kew.’ The freckles on her face stood out like cinnamon on milk. Mitchell left the young man to comfort her and threaded his way back to the first courtyard.
The American couple would have finished their inspection of Bonivard’s prison by now. Nevertheless, he lingered in the courtyard where the sun glanced between the towers and he could feel its warmth on his back. He knew that it was not really the Americans who had made him avoid this part of the castle. He did not want to turn away from the sun; he dreaded the moment when its warmth was cut off and still more he dreaded the moment, at the turn of the stair, when even its reflected light would be blotted out. But one could not go round Chillon without seeing Bonivard’s prison, so he turned reluctantly to the vaults. He passed through the first prison quickly and came to Bonivard’s prison, a long, gloomy room with heavy stone pillars. Byron had signed his name on the third pillar and the signature was carefully preserved behind a glass screen. The fifth pillar, according to the guidebook, was the one to which Bonivard had been chained for four years because he was ‘favourable to the Reformation.’ Four years . . . What belief could a man hold so strongly that he was prepared to accept such a terrible deprivation of liberty? What kind of a man was he? Mitchell, who had been intent on getting out of this place, found himself imprisoned by his own fascination with these questions. He sat on a ledge near the pillar. Four years . . . Now, in a century when the edges of truth had blurred, it was difficult to conceive that any belief could endure so long a test. It was quiet in this place, a hopeless, stone-deadened quiet . . . How did the mind survive? While he thought about this, he realized that sound was not completely deadened; he could hear water lapping against stone. He looked up and saw, some distance from where he was sitting, a narrow slit of a window. So Bonivard would have heard this sound, gentle, caressing, inexorable, night and day, day and night. Mitchell wondered whether it had helped to keep him sane. He could not see out of the window from where he was sitting, but no doubt if Bonivard had crawled to the full extent of his chains he would have seen water, had a glimpse of sky, a bird in flight. When he was too ill to move, the sound would paint the picture for him; perhaps gradually it would ease him into sleep. Mitchell was nearly asleep himself; his mind strayed and he found himself muttering with a tense, desperate urgency, ‘As long as they never brick up that window!’ His heart missed a beat, dust caught in his throat, he began to cough; he hurried to the window, absurdly close to panic. For some reason, as he stood there fighting for breath, he was thinking not of Bonivard but of Mikail Kratz. He had not intended to think of the Kratzes, man or wife, again. Gradually, the paroxysm of coughing ceased. Through the slit window the air came in fresh, with a hint of spray. That was the place to be, out there on the lake with the sun warm across your shoulders! He turned towards the stairs and left the castle more quickly than he had entered it.
It was good to be outside again. He crossed the drawbridge and turned at once towards Montreux, taking the path that descended to the lakeside. He did not turn back for a last view of the castle. As he reached the lake a water skier swung round in a wide arc and passed close to the shore. A pity he was so stiff still, Mitchell thought. The arc had been to
o wide and suddenly there was no connection between the skier and the boat; the engine cut off and the boat turned back. Mitchell walked on and after a few minutes the boat passed him, the skier riding the water again, black skin gleaming.
Ten minutes later, Mitchell came to the quayside from which the skiers were taking off; there was a group of them hunched over the lake looking like a Cocteau variation on the Rhine Maidens. Mitchell stopped to watch. The boat had set off on another trip; it was a long way away, the skier a moving speck connected to the boat only by the pattern of movement, the long graceful arc, the outward curve held at the boat’s axis. The boat did not seem to be following its usual staid course this time; it, too, weaved, curved and frolicked. One sensed that they were enjoying themselves out there. As the boat came nearer it became obvious that the skier was something of a clown, tripping and swaying and almost falling but never actually going down, his idiocies marvellously timed. It was inconceivable, watching him, that this was not his natural element; he seemed a creature born of boat and the pull of water. But he looked quite magnificently human male as he came closer, wearing only the briefest of bathing trunks.
When he climbed on to the quayside no one greeted him. The black-clad figures turned heads to look at him, their expressions a mixture of admiration and the suspicion which men feel when confronted with someone who lives outside the herd. The man did not even notice them. He walked past them and paused beside the bench where Mitchell was sitting; he was breathing heavily and one hand was pressed to his side. An older man than one would have thought, watching his performance out there; he would do this kind of thing once too often, but then he was not the kind to tiptoe into old age. Mitchell looked at him and saw a dark head, close-cropped, a strong-boned face with deep-set eyes and a mouth that would clamp hard on the bit of life. Not a disappointed man. There had not been much time, Mitchell guessed, for the seed of disillusion to grow as it only can when the wheels begin to run down. He has been more fortunate than Claus and me; he still trusts life to offer him the kind of experience he needs . . . As these thoughts formed in his mind, Mitchell realized that he had found Josef Novak. It seemed a pity to let him go, so he said casually:
‘We’ve met somewhere, surely?’
The eyes that turned to him were a vivid blue; they seemed to be laughing and the laughter was only just this side of normality. He would look at you like this when he was going to kill you. He studied Mitchell for a long time and then answered:
‘No, we have not met. But I think perhaps we should have done.’
He sat down on the bench and began to rub himself vigorously with his towel. He talked about Montreux and water skiing. He had a slight foreign accent and a rather staccato delivery. His conversation was not as interesting as his personality; but there was something naïve about his enthusiasm which was rather disarming and his approach to the listener had a directness that could be disconcerting. A strange mixture; one would never be able to calculate one’s moves with this man. When he had finished drying himself, he said to Mitchell:
‘Perhaps we met in South America?’
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘A pity. But since we have met now, perhaps we should celebrate.’
They strolled towards the big hotels with long gardens bordering the lake. They did not exchange names or ask questions. They had several drinks in the bar of the hotel and lunched together. In the afternoon, they went out in the man’s speedboat. He maneuvered it in a way that must have made others on the lake think that a madman was at the helm; but Mitchell saw that he was not really reckless, he simply calculated much quicker than most men. In a tight spot, he would make his decisions coolly and he would make few errors. They came back to Montreux in the evening, ripping a path down the sun’s last beam. They had more drinks, and then to clear their heads they went on the lake again.
In all that time, they made no confidences. They accepted each other and a certain limited community of feeling which was best expressed in action. One of the joyous things about speed, Mitchell thought, was that all extraneous thought and emotion were pared away in order to achieve a supreme coordination of mind and body, an exquisite moment of balance. He could not remember when he had felt so confident, so refreshed in spirit. He went back to his hotel at five in the morning, and as he walked up the stairs to his room he was thinking that life was still very good, that it was all a question of balance.
The light was on in his room and Burke was sitting in a chair, waiting for him.
Chapter Thirteen
Burke was sitting with his shoulders hunched, his head thrust forward so that it seemed to jut out from his chest. One hand hung down at the front of the chair, holding a piece of paper; the forward thrust of the arm made his whole body seem more twisted than ever. His face was haggard. Mitchell said:
‘Your friend wined you well!’
Burke said, ‘I didn’t stay with him. I’ve been to Lausanne.’ He was dead sober.
‘Lausanne?’ Mitchell sat on the corner of the bed. ‘Come on Dan, out with it!’
‘He showed me over his vineyard; he took me down to the cellars where the wine is stored. It was damp and very unwholesome; not the kind of thing I enjoy. While he gave me a little lecture on wine storage, I flicked through the pages of some old papers someone had left there. Incredible that it should have been that particular page of that particular paper that attracted my attention, isn’t it?’ He held out his hand and Mitchell took the torn sheet of paper from him and read:
‘The body of Claus Hesselmann, the well-known climber, was found by a monk at the foot of a slope close to the hospice in the Great St. Bernard Pass on Tuesday, 7th May. He had severe head injuries. Police are puzzled that an experienced climber should have had an accident in this particular place . . .’
The silence in the room lasted longer than it took Mitchell to read the short paragraph. Eventually, he said:
‘The seventh May . . . that was the night we were there.’
‘Yes.’
Mitchell looked up at Burke, waiting. Burke went on:
‘I went to Lausanne and saw Eliot. He was ill in bed, a haemorrhage. He explained the whole thing to me, lying like a corpse having the last word from his winding sheet. He told me that London had a rather delicate operation planned just about the time Eliot recalled us from leave. It involved letting the East Germans get hold of some information; that information had to be believed, so it was important they shouldn’t come by it too easily. Something had to be sacrificed. This problem was handed to Eliot at short notice. He solved it by arranging our rendezvous with Claus through a contact he knew was suspect.’
Mitchell said in a dry voice, ‘But he cancelled those instructions.’
‘He cancelled our instructions.’
Burke was losing control; his face twitched and his hands were shaking, he clenched them together to try to stop the shaking. His voice was pitched a little higher as he went on:
‘He sent Claus to meet us, carrying the prepared documents. Claus, of course, thought they were genuine. Claus was murdered, according to plan, and the documents changed hands. But then we intervened and spoilt the murderers’ get-away, to say nothing of Eliot’s plan! The memory of it made him so angry he had a coughing fit and brought up blood. It was like seeing a waxwork bleed. He said that the damage caused by that night’s happenings was incalculable.’
Mitchell sat looking down at the rug at his feet as though he expected it to tell him something; his eyes followed the outline of a faded pink flower, travelled down a brown stem, explored a stained green ivy leaf. What he was really seeing all this time was the figure of a monk running down a path, his habit billowing behind him as he emerged just in front of the car. ‘A flying monk!’ he had said and he had laughed.
‘This is really true, is it, Dan?’ he said to Burke.
Burke did not answer and eventually Mitchell looked up at him, like a man hoping for a reprieve. Burke looked back, filled with his ow
n longings, waiting for the storm to break at last. He was desperately lonely and afraid; like Claus, he was expendable. He wanted a gesture of solidarity now more than anything; he wanted a wild, extravagant, drunken night bitter enough to take away the taste of fear. He couldn’t do it alone, he had to have companionship. But Mitchell, seeing the answer to his question etched deep in every line of Burke’s face, said only, ‘I see.’ He looked round the room as though faintly surprised to find it unaltered.
Burke said, ‘Do you?’ A little colour stained his neck, spread slowly along the sides of the jaw and upwards to burn bright on his cheekbones. ‘Do you really understand what I’ve been telling you? Claus went up to the Pass thinking he was going to meet friends, you in particular. Eliot sent him into a trap and he used you as bait.’
Still Mitchell said nothing. Burke went across to the dressing table and picked up a bottle of whisky.
‘I brought this along because I thought you’d need it.’
He poured a good measure into Mitchell’s tooth mug and drank, watching Mitchell with eyes that still implored a response. Anger was draining away and fear was encroaching; he took another gulp of whisky. Mitchell sat, his hands dangling limply between his knees, his face impassive as he gazed at the rug. Burke poured another measure, threw it in Mitchell’s face and went out of the room.
Mitchell sat without moving for a time after he had gone. Then he got up and went out of the hotel into the street. He walked slowly down the hill to the main road. Cars were racing up from the direction of Villeneuve; he crossed without looking and horns blared angrily. There was a turning to the left which led away from the noise and lights; he went gratefully into the darkness. After a few minutes he came to the lake. It was very early, the water was black and still. He leant against the rail, looking towards Villeneuve. There was that strange breathless expectancy which comes at the moment when night has taken its last long breath. Soon, he saw the glimmering outline of Les Dents du Midi; he stood a long time watching the great fangs soften, the ivory turn to rose. When he looked away, he saw the curve of the lake vanishing into mist and nearby the furred outline of trees and shrubs. His eyes registered the scene with great clarity; but he himself was remote from it, as though it was a world seen at the wrong end of a telescope.
