Famous Last Words (41 page)

Freyberg turned away and said; “no”.

It was an arbitrary ‘no’ and Quinn was sure of it. Just because it was obvious he wanted to get away from the walls, Freyberg was going to prevent him. No better reason. Just the hate. “Come along to my office,” the captain said. “I have something I want to show you.”

Quinn stood back.

Captain Freyberg was saying something into the Crypt—

something to one of the soldiers there which Quinn could not quite hear; though he quite distinctly heard both “bottle”

and “brain”. And the smell of formaldehyde was very strong on Freyberg’s clothing as they strolled along to the Operations Centre in the Garbo suite.

“You’re very subdued,” said Freyberg.

“Yes sir.”

They got inside the room where Dufault was typing and

Freyberg went around and sat behind his desk. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing with the formaldehyde?”

he asked—not looking up but rummaging through a litter of notebooks and papers, opening and closing drawers.

“No, sir.” Quinn could already guess. Bottie, brain and formaldehyde could only mean one thing—and why did

Freyberg feel he had to tell it, say it, spell it out? It was like a sickness in him. Just as Isabella Loverso had said ambition was a sickness, so was this mordant streak in Captain Freyberg: his dreadful will to force your nostrils into the dirt and your ears into the centre of the scream.

Thank God—the Captain found what he was looking for

and the dreadful thing that Quinn had feared was never said aloud.

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“Look at this,” said Freyberg, shoving an official-looking piece of paper through the litter across the desk at Quinn.

Quinn’s hands were still in mitts as well as gloves and he had to take them off in order to pick the piece of paper up.

“What is it?” he said.

“Just read,” said Freyberg, sitting back with his hands behind his head. “I thought you should be the first to know.

I haven’t even filed it yet.”

Quinn opened the double-folded page. It was an official communique from OSS-G-2. Freyberg was watching him—

and the sound of Dufault’s typing forced the words on Quinn like a hammer driving nails.

Ezra Pound had been arrested at Rapallo. Up on the hill above the town, at Sant’Ambrogio in the house of Olga Rudge.

A reward had been posted: WANTED FOR TREASON.

HALF A MILLION LIRE. DEAD OR ALIVE.

No one had got the reward, however. Pound had delivered himself into the hands of his captors and now the Americans were holding him in a cage at Pisa.

“Looks like the round-up has finally begun,” said Freyberg.

“Yes

sir.”

. Quinn double-folded the page again and handed it back across the desk.

“May I go now, sir?”

“If you like,” said Freyberg.

“Thank you, sir.”

Quinn pulled his mitts back on and saluted.

Then he wheeled around and was gone through the door

before the captain could find some other reason to call him back.

Going down into the lobby, Quinn was nearly knocked off his feet by a large metal plate being struggled up the stairs by a pair of men the size of lumberjacks.

“What the hell is that?” he said, and the lumberjacks,

grateful for the chance to lay their burden down, set it against the iron balustrade on the landing and drew aside the burlap bags that covered it.

^-ys’ ‘a’:

“Captain Freyberg wants it in his office over his desk,”

said one of the lumberjacks.

“But what the hell is it?” said Quinn again, tipping his head towards one side in order to read the writing.

“Don’t ask me,” said the articulate lumberjack, whose

friend was so out of breath he was sitting down on the steps with his head thrown back. “All I know is it comes from over the gate at some prison camp—and it’s part of Freyberg’s collection… .”

Quinn didn’t even reply. He knew already where it was

from and what it was. Dachau. ARBEIT MACHT FREI, it

said.

He closed his eyes and turned away.

“What’s it mean?” said the lumberjack.

“It means that work shall set you free,” said Quinn.

And he went down the stairs in his blanket and his mitts and he pulled his scarf up over his ears as he went even further down across the lobby, making his way past Annie’s Crystal Saloon and the six wide marble steps that led to the great glass doors with their ironwork design, and out beyond the word Elysium into the snow, where he turned to the left and walked across the courtyard and out around the mountain through the blizzard, following the paths of goats and

sheep, seeking a place where he could bury the ghosts of the fifty-five dead who lay on the lawns at Government

House and the one who was eaten by birds and the one who was crouching in his cage at Pisa and the one whose hand was reaching back towards the past he could not prevent, the one whose silver pencil had burned the walls…and with every step, Quinn tried to hate himself for having made the mistake of thinking they were human beings. And for having memorized their names.

SEVEN

1941

Beneath the sagging roof

The stylist has taken shelter,

Unpaid, uncelebrated…

1*1 Ezra Pound

Mauberley was working in a corner etching the story of the Spitfire Bazaar.

Outside Herr Kachelmayer was sitting out in the sun with his wife. All the smaller children were playing in the snow.

Only Hugo was not in the courtyard.

It was almost the end of April. The edelweiss was pushing through the snow on the lower slopes below the hotel and the sound of bird-song came from the valley, rising with the

updraught. Sometimes an eagle was seen—but this was very rare.

Frau Kachelmayer noticed the woman first—and she nudged her husband. “Look.”

The woman’s hair was covered with a woollen scarf, and

she wore a moleskin coat and a pair of army boots. She

looked, in fact, very much the sort of woman who might

have been in the army, were it not that she was limping and had no uniform.

Herr Kachelmayer told his wife to leave things up to him, and not to interfere and not to show the least concern. His reading of the woman in the boots and moleskin coat was that she might be dangerous. A hungry deserter from one of the work groups who were clearing roads in the valley.

A gypsy, perhaps, escaped from a concentration camp—or

maybe even a spy. The fact that she carried no luggage did not bode well.

Still, he approached her with all his usual charm and

expansive hospitality. What could be the harm in showing her how innocent he was.

Hugo was watching from the Kristall Salon—ticking off

her features on his fingers: fur coat; dark complexion; ugly expression—and as he watched her remove the scarf—shorf hair—“like the hair of a man.”

He ran up the stairs and burst into Isabella’s suite.

de Broca’s aeroplane had just begun its magic writing in the sky when die weisse Batte entered, desperately out of breath and gasping the words: “Quick, quick! She has come.”

Mauberley at first was so engrossed in his work he was

quite unable to make out what it was that Hugo meant.

“Short hair!” the boy hissed. “What should I do?”

Estrade.

At last. And the story on the walls unfinished.

Mauberley looked at Hugo, all the colour draining from

every extremity.

Hugo had the strangest look in his eye. A sort of wavering smile that did not reach out to his lips. His lips were still severe and pale.

“Has she spoken my name?” said Mauberlev.

ilL

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Hugo paused just a second and then said, “Yes. But of

course.”

Mauberley reached inside the lining of his greatcoat, drawing out the useless nickel-plated revolver.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Have you bullets for this?”

No.

“Dear God,” said Mauberley. “Then how am I to stop

her?”

“Maybe I can stop her,” said Hugo.

“Then go and do it!”

“Well,” said Hugo. “It will be dangerous. And what if I have to kill her?”

“No. You mustn’t kill her,” said Mauberley. Not that he didn’t want Estrade dead. It was just that he could not ask a child to kill. Not even Hugo, whom he knew would kill in ten seconds flat if paid the right price.

“Can you just get rid of her? Get her away? Tell her I was here—and have moved on to Innsbruck. …”

Hugo still waited.

The bastard, thought Mauberley. And my life at stake.

“All right,” he said, “here.” And he drew a huge uncounted wad of bills from the lining of his suit and held out half of them to Hugo. “Send her away.”

Hugo took the money and weighed it like an expert, balancing the roll of paper without even looking at it.

But still he waited.

Mauberley could hear, quite plainly, Herr Kachelmayer’s voice in the lobby below. But Hugo did not move.

And Mauberley said, “I will give you the rest of this…”

holding up the other half of the wad, “when you return and prove to me she is gone.”

Hugo left.

Mauberley barricaded the door when die weisse Ratte was gone and knelt and prayed to St Teresa—a thing he had not done since his sojourn in Spain with Isabella.

“Dear Madame—Santa Teresa—” he said, “—I do not ask or this woman’s death. But only for my life. A little while longer. Please…” And he stayed on his knees for over half an hour.

At last, die weisse Ratte returned. He scratched at the door and spoke his name, and Mauberley let him come in by

inches.

The first thing that came through the crack was Estrade’s scarf, which Mauberley recognized from the train. And this was followed by a pair of boots; first one and then the other, thrown in onto the floor.

Mauberley pulled the barricade aside and Hugo himself

came through the door.

“This scarf,” said Mauberley, “these boots. This looks as if you have killed her.”

Hugo shook his head. His face was swollen and his hands were bleeding and the front of his jacket was torn. But he looked very pleased with himself.

He swore to Mauberley the woman was not dead. But he

said, “She is the next best thing—and she cannot harm you now.”

Then he held out his hand and Mauberley paid him the

rest of the money.

Kachelmayer himself appeared that evening.

It was all too clear that he and his son had discovered in Estrade a vein of gold they meant to mine to the very last speck of dust.

“You are much afraid of this woman. Yes?”

“It is true. Where is she?” ^^-

Kachelmayer looked around the room at all the writing

and instead of answering, he said, “I suppose she would be most interested in all of this. …”

“Yes.”

Kachelmayer snapped his head around, smiling openly.

“One hundred marks the day. That will feed her and keep her away from you.”

“Feed her?” said Mauberley.

“Yes, but of course,” said Kachelmayer. “You said expressly to Hugo you didn’t want her to die.”

“I also said I wanted to be rid of her.”

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“But you are, Herr Mauberley. You are. It’s just…”

“You don’t want her to die, either. Yes?”

Herr Kachelmayer shrugged.

“There’s a war,” he said. “I have a wife and four

children…”

“Five,” said Mauberley.

“Yes, yes. Five. So one hundred marks a day. And you

will never see her again.”

“What proof have I,” said Mauberley, “you haven’t killed her and aren’t just bilking me of money for nothing?”

“You want I should show her to you?”

Mauberley thought about it. “No,” he said.

Herr Kachelmayer got his money. As did Hugo. Every day.

But they were true to their word—and Mauberley never

saw Estrade again.

Nonetheless, he broke an empty bottle and kept its jagged body with him everywhere he moved. Against Estrade. And against the others, too. One of them must have inherited her Rudecki had gone hunting; poking; prying.

Down in the cellars, he heard a tapping noise: the way a rope will slap against a flagpole in the wind—constant in rhythm—all at once stopping, then re-commencing. Tap-taptap.

Out

beyond the kitchens, in a dark and damp stone passageway, he found a row of lockers, each with heavy slatted

doors, and he supposed they must have been used to keep the vegetables in and other things a hotel used that must be cold but not refrigerated.

Tap-tap-tap.

Oddly—even having fought so many battles in the night—

Rudecki had no qualms about the dark. He just walked in.

It was not entirely pitch black. There was a spill of light that followed him.

The smell was damp and like an old latrine.

Tap.

Tap tap.

It could be rats. But there was nothing left for rats to eat.

Unless they ate the wood.

Tap-tap.

Rudecki ventured half way down the row of lockers.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

Then—all at once—a hand reached out and grabbed him

by the ankle of his boot.

He tried to scream. In fact, he thought he had. But all he did was shudder.

Then the hand let go.

Rudecki—stepping back—away. crouched down and looked

across the floor to where the hand lay out against the stones.

It was a woman’s hand, and filthy black with dirt. Its wrist was pale and blue with veins and the arm, that stretched back in beyond the slats, was clothed in a sleeve that was torn.

“Who’s there?” Rudecki asked. “Are you alive…?”

His answer was a movement—and withdrawal of the hand.

“Who put you in there?” he said. “What are you doing

in there?”

“The fat man and the boy,” Estrade said weakly. “The

blond boy and his father.”

Who could she mean?

Then it dawned on him: the bodies they had found.

“Bitte…” the woman whispered. “Wasser. Bitte…”

“Sure,” he said. “You wait. I’ll be right there.”