With Myatt’s passport in one hand, the other on his silver chain, he obeyed, and they moved the lights from his feet to his head. He had no overcoat and shivered with the cold. One of the men laughed and prodded him in the stomach with a finger. ‘They want to see if its real,’ the driver explained.
‘What real?’
‘Your roundness.’
Josef Grünlich had to feign amusement at the insult and smile and smile. His self-esteem had been pricked by two anonymous fools whom he would never see again. Someone else would have to bear the pain of this indignity, for it had been his pride, as it was now his grief, that he never forgot an injury. He did his best by pleading with the driver in German, ‘Can’t you run them down?’ and he grinned at the men and waggled the passport, while they discussed him point by point. Then they stood back and nodded, and the driver pressed the starter. The car lifted over the rails, then slowly climbed a long rutted lane, and Josef Grünlich looking back saw the two red lamps bobbing like paper lanterns in the darkness.
‘What did they want?’
‘They were looking for someone,’ the driver said. But that Josef knew well. Hadn’t he killed Kolber in Vienna? Hadn’t he escaped only an hour ago from Subotica under the eyes of a sentry? Wasn’t he the cute one, the cunning fellow, who was quick and never hesitated? They had closed every road to cars and yet he had slipped through. But like a small concealed draught the thought came to him that if they had been seeking him, they would have found him. They were looking for someone else. They thought someone else of more importance. They had circulated the description of the old slow doctor and not of Josef Grünlich, who had killed Kolber and whose boast it was—‘five years now and never jugged.’ The fear of speed left him. As they hurtled through the dark in the creaking antique car, he sat still, brooding on the injustice of it all.
Coral Musker woke with the sense of strangeness, of difference. She sat up and the sack of grain creaked under her. It was the only sound; the whisper of falling snow had stopped. She listened, and realized with fear that she was alone. Dr Czinner had gone; she could no longer hear his breathing. Somewhere from far away the sound of a car changing gear reached her through the dusk. It came to her side like a friendly dog, fawning and nuzzling.
If Dr Czinner is gone, she thought, there’s nothing to keep me here. I’ll go and find that car. If it’s the soldiers they won’t do anything to me; it may be . . . Longing kept the sentence open like the beak of a hungry bird. She put out a hand to steady herself, while she got upon her knees, and touched the doctor’s face. He did not move, and though the face was warm, she could feel the blood as crisp and dry round his mouth as old skin. She screamed once and then was quiet and purposeful, feeling for the matches, lighting a spill. But her hand shook. Her nerves were bending, even though they had not given way, beneath the weight of her responsibilities. It seemed to her that every day for the past week had loaded her with something to decide, some fear which she must disguise. ‘Here’s this job at Constantinople. Take it or leave it. There are a dozen girls on the stairs’; Myatt pressing the ticket into her bag; her landlady advising this and that; the sudden terror of strangeness on the quay at Ostend with the purser calling after her to remember him.
In the light of the spill she was again surprised by the doctor’s knowledgeable stare, but it was a frozen knowledge which never changed. She looked away and looked back and it was the same. I never knew he was as bad as that, she thought. I can’t stay here. She even wondered whether they would accuse her of his death. These foreigners, whose language she could not understand, were capable of anything. But she delayed too long, while the spill burned down, because of an odd curiosity. Had he too once had a girl? The thought robbed him of impressiveness, he was no longer terrifying dead, and she examined his face more closely than she had ever dared before. Manners went out with life. She noticed for the first time that his face was curiously coarse-featured; if it had not been so thin it might have been repulsive; perhaps it was only anxiety and scant food which had lent it intelligence and a certain sensibility. Even in death, under the shaking blue light of a slip of newspaper, the face was remarkable for its lack of humour. Perhaps, unlike most men, he had never had a girl. If he had lived with somebody who laughed at him a bit, she thought, he would not now be here like this; he wouldn’t have taken things so seriously; he’d have learnt not to fuss, to let things slide; it’s the only way. She touched the long moustaches. They were comic; they were pathetic; they could never let him seem tragic. Then the spill went out and he might have been buried already for all she could see of him and soon for all she thought of him, her mind swept away by faint sounds of a cruising car and of footsteps. Her scream had not gone unheard.
A narrow wash of light flowed under the ill-fitting door; voices spoke; and the car came humming gently down the road outside. The footsteps moved away, a door opened, and through the thin walls of the barn she heard somebody routing among the sacks next door; a dog snuffled. It brought back the level dull Nottingham fields, on a Sunday, the little knot of miners with whom she once went ratting, a dog called Spot. In and out of barns the dog went while they all stood in a circle armed with sticks. There was an argument going on outside, but she could not recognize any of the voices. The car stopped, but the engine was left softly running.
Then the door of the shed opened and the light leaped upward to the sacks. She raised herself on an elbow and saw, through a crack of her barricade, the pale officer in pince-nez and the soldier who had been on guard outside the waiting-room. They crossed the floor towards her and her nerves gave way; she could not bear to wait all the slow time till she was discovered. They were half turned from her and when she got to her feet and called out, ‘Here I am,’ the officer jumped round, pulling out his revolver. Then he saw who it was, and asked her a question, standing still in the middle of the floor with his revolver levelled. She thought she understood him and said, ‘He’s dead.’
The officer gave an order and the soldier advanced and began to pull away the sacks slowly. It was the same man who had stopped her on her way to the restaurant-car, and she hated him for a moment until he raised his face and smiled at her miserably and apologetically, while the officer bombarded him from behind with little barbed impatiences. Suddenly, as he pulled away the last sack at the cave mouth, their faces almost touched, and in that instant she got as much from him as from conversation with a quiet man.
Major Petkovitch, when he saw that the doctor made no movement, crossed the shed, and shone the light full on the dead face. The long moustaches paled in the glow and the open eyes cast back the light like plates. The major held out his revolver to the soldier. The good humour, the remnants of simple happiness, which had remained somewhere behind the façade of misery, collapsed. It was as if all the floors of a house fell and left the walls standing. He was horrified and inarticulate and motionless; and the revolver remained lying in the major’s palm. Major Petkovitch did not lose his temper; he watched the other with curiosity and determination through his gold pince-nez. He had all the feeling of a barracks at his finger’s end; beside the worn books on German strategy there stood on his shelves a little row of volumes on psychology; he knew every one of his privates with the intimacy of a confessor, how far they were brutal, how far kind, how far cunning, and how far simple; he knew what their pleasures were—rakia and gaming and women; their ambitions, though these might be no more than an exciting or a happy story to tell a wife. He knew best of all how to adjust punishment to character, and how to break the will. He had been impatient with the soldier as he pulled so slowly at the sacks, but he was not impatient now; he let the revolver lie in his palm and repeated his command quite calmly gazing through the gold rims.
The soldier lowered his head and wiped his nose with his hand and squinted painfully along the floor. Then he took the revolver and put it to Dr Czinner’s mouth. Again he hesitated. He laid his hand on Coral’s arm, and with a push sent her face downwards
to the floor, and as she lay there, she heard the shot. The soldier had saved her from the sight, but he could not save her from her imagination. She got up and fled to the door, retching as she ran. She had expected the relief of darkness, and the glare of the head-lamps outside came like a blow on the head. She leant against the door and tried to steady herself, feeling infinitely more alone than when she woke and found Dr Czinner dead; she wanted Myatt desperately, with pain. People were still arguing beside the car, and there was a faint smell of liquor in the air.
‘What the hell?’ a voice said. The knot of people was torn in two, and Miss Warren appeared between them. Her face was red and sore and triumphant. She gripped Coral’s arm. ‘What’s happening? No, don’t tell me now. You’re sick. You’re coming with me straight out of this.’ The soldiers stood between her and the car, and the officer came from the shed and joined them. Miss Warren said rapidly in a low voice, ‘Promise anything. Don’t mind what you say.’ She put a large square hand on the officer’s sleeve and began to talk ingratiatingly. He tried to interrupt her, but his words were swept away. He took off his glasses and wiped them and was lost. Threats would have been idle, she might have protested all night, but she offered him the one bait it would have been against his nature to refuse, reason. And behind the reason she offered she allowed him to catch a glimpse of a different, a more valuable reason, a high diplomatic motive. He wiped his glasses again, nodded, and gave in. Miss Warren seized his hand and squeezed it, imprinting deep on the wincing finger the mark of her signet ring.
Coral slid to the ground. Miss Warren touched her and she tried to shake herself free. After the great noise the earth was swimming up to her in silence. Very far away a voice said, ‘Your heart’s bad,’ and she opened her eyes again, expecting to see an old face beneath her. But she was stretched along the back seat of a car and Miss Warren was covering her with a rug. She poured out a glass of brandy and held it to Coral’s mouth; the car starting shook them together and spilled the brandy over her chin; Coral smiled back at the flushed, tender, rather drunken face.
‘Listen, darling,’ Miss Warren said, ‘I’m taking you back with me to Vienna first. I can wire the story from there. If any dirty skunk tries to get at you, say nothing. Don’t even open your mouth to say no.’
The words conveyed nothing to Coral. She had a pain in her breast. She saw the station lights go out as the car turned away towards Vienna and she wondered with an obstinate fidelity where Myatt was. The pain made breathing difficult, but she was determined not to speak. To speak, to describe her pain, to ask for help would be to empty her mind for a moment of his face; her ears would lose the sound of his voice whispering to her of what they would do together in Constantinople. I won’t be the first to forget, she thought with obstinacy, fighting with all the other images which strove for supremacy, the scarlet blink of the car down the dusky road, Dr Czinner’s stare in the light of the spill; fighting desperately at last against pain, against breathlessness, against a desire to cry out, against a darkness of the brain which was robbing her even of the images she fought.
I remember. I haven’t forgotten. But she could not restrain one cry. It was so low that the humming motor drowned it. It never reached Miss Warren’s ears any more than the renewed whisper which followed it: I haven’t forgotten.
‘Exclusive,’ Miss Warren said, drumming with her fingers on the rugs, ‘I want it exclusive. It’s my story,’ she claimed with pride, allowing somewhere at the back of her mind behind the headlines and the leaded type a dream to form of Coral in pyjamas pouring out coffee, Coral in pyjamas mixing a cocktail, Coral asleep in the redecorated and rejuvenated flat.
PART FIVE
CONSTANTINOPLE
‘Hello, hello. Has Mr Carleton Myatt arrived yet?’
The small lively Armenian, with a flower in his buttonhole, answered, in an English as trim and well cut as his morning coat, ‘No. I am afraid not. Is there any message?’
‘Surely the train is in?’
‘No. It is three hours late. I believe the engine broke down near Belgrade.’
‘Tell him Mr Joyce . . .’
‘And now,’ said the reception clerk, leaning confidentially over the counter towards two rapt American girls, who watched him with parted lips, under beautiful plucked brows, ‘what can I advise for you two ladies this afternoon? You should have a guide for the bazaars.’
‘Perhaps you, Mr Kalebdjian,’ they said almost in the same breath; their wide avaricious virginal eyes followed him as he swung round at the buzz of the telephone: ‘Hello. Hello. Long-distance personal call? Right, Hello. No, Mr Carleton Myatt has not arrived yet. We expect him any moment. Shall I take a message? You will ring up again at six. Thank you.’
‘Ah,’ he said to the two Americans, ‘if I could, it would be such a pleasure. But duty keeps me here. I have a second cousin though, and I will arrange that he shall meet you here tomorrow morning and take you to the bazaar. Now this afternoon I would suggest that you take a taxi to the Blue Mosque by way of the Hippodrome, and afterwards visit the Roman cisterns. Then if you took tea at the Russian restaurant in Pera, and came back here for dinner, I would recommend you to a theatre for the evening. Now if that suits you, I’ll order you a taxi for the afternoon from a reliable garage.’
They both opened their mouths at once and said, ‘That’ll be swell, Mr Kalebdjian,’ and while he was ringing up his third cousin’s garage in Pera, they moved across the hall to the dusty confectionery stall and wondered whether to buy him a box of candies. The great garish hotel with its tiled floors and international staff and its restaurant in imitation of the Blue Mosque had been built before the war; now that the Government had shifted to Ankara and Constantinople was feeling the competition of the Piraeus, the hotel had sunk a little in the world. The staff had been cut, and it was possible to wander through the great empty lounge without meeting a page and the bells notoriously did not ring. But at the reception counter Mr Kalebdjian opposed the general inertia in his well-cut coat.
‘Is Mr Carleton Myatt in, Kalebdjian?’
‘No, sir, the train’s late. Would you care to wait?’
‘He’s got a sitting-room?’
‘Oh, naturally. Here, boy, show this gentleman to Mr Myatt’s room.’
‘Give him my card when he comes in.’
The two Americans decided not to give Mr Kalebdjian a box of Turkish delight, but he was so sweet and pretty they wanted to do something for him and they stood lost in thought, until he appeared suddenly at their elbow: ‘Your taxi is here, ladies. I will give the driver full directions. You will find him most reliable.’ He led them out and saw them safely away. The little stir and bustle subsided like dust, and Mr Kalebdjian went back into the silent hall. For a moment it had been almost as in the old days at the height of the season.
No one came in for a quarter of an hour; an early fly nipped by the cold died noisily against a window-pane. Mr Kalebdjian rang up the housekeeper’s room to make sure that the heating was turned on in the rooms, and then he sat with his hands between his knees with nothing to think about and nothing to do.
The swing doors turned and turned, and a knot of people entered. Myatt was the first of them. Janet Pardoe and Mr Savory followed him and three porters with their luggage. Myatt was happy. This was his chosen ground; an international hotel was his familiar oasis, however bare. The nightmare of Subotica faded and lost all reality before Mr Kalebdjian advancing to meet him. He was glad that Janet Pardoe should see how he was recognized in the best hotels far away from home.
‘How are you, Mr Carleton Myatt? This is a great joy.’ Mr Kalebdjian shook hands, bowing from the hips, his incredibly white teeth flashing with genuine pleasure.
‘Glad to see you, Kalebdjian. Manager away as usual? These are my friends, Miss Pardoe and Mr Savory. The whole of this hotel is on Kalebdjian’s shoulders,’ he explained to them. ‘You are making us comfortable? That’s right. See that there’s a box of sweets in Miss Pardoe�
�s room.’
Janet Pardoe began softly, ‘My uncle’s meeting me,’ but Myatt swept aside her objection. ‘He can wait one day. You must be my guest here tonight.’ He was beginning to unfurl again his peacock tail with a confidence which he borrowed from the palms and pillars and Mr Kalebdjian’s deference.
‘There’ve been two telephone calls for you, Mr Carleton Myatt, and a gentleman is waiting to see you in your room.’
‘Good. Give me his card. See to my friends. My room the usual one?’ He walked rapidly to the lift, his lips pursed with exhilaration, for there had been in the last few days too much that had been uncertain and difficult to understand, and now he was back at work. It will be Mr Eckman, he thought, not troubling to look at the card, and suddenly quite certain of what he would say to him. The lift rose uneasily to the first floor and the boy led him down a dusty passage and opened a door. The sunlight poured into the room and he could hear the yapping of cars through the open window. A fair stocky man in a tweed suit got up from the sofa. ‘Mr Carleton Myatt?’ he asked.
Myatt was surprised. He had never seen this man before. He looked at the card in his hand and read Mr Leo Stein. ‘Ah, Mr Stein.’
‘Surprised to see me?’ said Mr Stein. ‘Hope you don’t think me precipitate.’ He was very bluff and cordial. Very English, Myatt thought, but the nose betrayed him, the nose which had been straightened by an operation and bore the scar. The hostility between the open Jew and the disguised Jew showed itself at once in the conjuror’s smiles, the hearty handclasp, the avoidance of the eyes: ‘I had expected our agent,’ Myatt said.
‘Ah, poor Eckman, poor Eckman,’ Stein sighed, shaking his blond head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘My business here really. To ask you to come and see Mrs Eckman. Very worrying for her.’
Stamboul Train Page 21
