V. (24 page)

"We can always so easily give the wrong reasons," he cried; "can say: the Chinese campaigns, they were for the Queen, and India for some gorgeous notion of Empire. I know. I have said these things to my men, the public, to myself. There are Englishmen dying, in South Africa today and about to die tomorrow who believe these words as - I dare say as you believe in God."

She smiled secretly. "And you did not?" she asked gently. She was gazing at the rim of her parasol.

"I did. Until . . ."

"Yes."

"But why? Have you never harrowed yourself halfway to - disorder - with that single word? Why." His cigar had gone out. He paused to relight it. "It's not," he continued, "as if it were unusual in any supernatural way. No high priests with secrets lost to the rest of the world, jealously guarded since the dawn of time, generation to generation. No universal cures, nor even panaceas for human suffering. Vheissu is hardly a restful place. There's barbarity, insurrection, internecine feud. It's no different from any other godforsakenly remote region. The English have been jaunting in and out of places like Vheissu for centuries. Except . . ."

She had been gazing at him. The parasol leaned against the bench, its handle hidden in the wet grass.

"The colors. So many colors." His eyes were tightly closed, his forehead resting on the bowed edge of one hand. "The trees outside the head shaman's house have spider monkeys which are iridescent. They change color in the sunlight. Everything changes. The mountains, the lowlands are never the same color from one hour to the next. No sequence of colors is the same from day to day. As if you lived inside a madman's kaleidoscope. Even your dreams become flooded with colors, with shapes no Occidental ever saw. Not real shapes, not meaningful ones. Simply random, the way clouds change over a Yorkshire landscape."

She was taken by surprise: her laugh was high and brittle. He hadn't heard. "They stay with you," he went on, "they aren't fleecy lambs or jagged profiles. They are, they are Vheissu, its raiment, perhaps its skin."

"And beneath?"

"You mean soul don't you. Of course you do. I wondered about the soul of that place. If it had a soul. Because their music, poetry, laws and ceremonies come no closer. They are skin too. Like the skin of a tattooed savage. I often put it that way to myself - like a woman. I hope I don't offend."

"It's all right."

"Civilians have curious ideas about the military, but I expect in this case there's some justice to what they think about us. This idea of the randy young subaltern somewhere out in the back of beyond, collecting himself a harem of dusky native women. I dare say a lot of us have this dream, though I've yet to run across anyone who's realized it. And I won't deny I get to thinking this way myself. I got to thinking that way in Vheissu. Somehow, there -" his forehead furrowed - "dreams are not, not closer to the waking world, but somehow I think, they do seem more real. Am I making sense to you?"

"Go on." She was watching him, rapt.

"But as if the place were, were a woman you had found somewhere out there, a dark woman tattooed from head to toes. And somehow you had got separated from the garrison and found yourself unable to get back, so that you had to be with her, close to her, day in and day out . . ."

"And you would be in love with her."

"At first. But soon that skin, the gaudy godawful riot of pattern and color, would begin to get between you and whatever it was in her that you thought you loved. And soon, in perhaps only a matter of days, it would get so bad that you would begin praying to whatever god you knew of to send some leprosy to her. To flay that tattooing to a heap of red, purple and green debris, leave the veins and ligaments raw and quivering and open at last to your eyes and your touch. I'm sorry." He wouldn't look at her. The wind blew rain over the wall. "Fifteen years. It was directly after we'd entered Khartoum. I'd seen some beastliness in my Oriental campaigning, but nothing to match that. We were to relieve General Gordon - oh you were, I suppose, a chit of a girl then, but you've read about it, surely. What the Mahdi had done to that city. To General Gordon, to his men. I was having trouble with fever then and no doubt it was seeing all the carrion and the waste on top of that. I wanted to get away, suddenly; it was as if a world of neat hollow squares and snappy counter-marching had deteriorated into rout or mindlessness. I'd always had friends on the staffs at Cairo, Bombay, Singapore. And in two weeks this surveying business came up, and I was in. I was always weaseling in you know, on some show where you wouldn't expect to find naval personnel. This time it was escorting a crew of civilian engineers into some of the worst country on earth. Oh, wild, romantic. Contour lines and fathom-markings, cross-hatchings and colors where before there were only blank spaces on the map. All for the Empire. This sort of thing might have been lurking at the back of my head. But then I only knew I wanted to get away. All very good to be crying St. George and no quarter about the Orient, but then the Mahdist army had been gibbering the same thing, really, in Arabic, and had certainly meant it at Khartoum."

Mercifully, he did not catch sight of her comb.

"Did you get maps of Vheissu?"

He hesitated. "No," he said. "No data ever got back, either to F.O. or to the Geographic Society. Only a report of failure. Bear in mind: It was bad country. Thirteen of us went in and three came out. Myself, my second-in-command, and a civilian whose name I have forgotten and who so far as I know has vanished from the earth without a trace."

"And your second-in-command?"

"He is, he is in hospital. Retired now." There was a silence. "There was never a second expedition," old Godolphin went on. "Political reasons, who could say? No one cared. I got out of it scotfree. Not my fault, they told me. I even received a personal commendation from the Queen, though it was all hushed up."

Victoria was tapping her foot absently. "And all this has some bearing on your, oh, espionage activities at present?"

Suddenly he looked older. The cigar had gone out again. He flung it into the grass; his hand shook. "Yes." He gestured helplessly at the church, the gray walls. "For all I know you might be - I may have been indiscreet."

Realizing that he was afraid of her, she leaned forward, intent. "Those who watch the cafes. Are they from Vheissu? Emissaries?"

The old man began to bite at his nails; slowly and methodically, using the top central and lower lateral incisors to make minute cuts along a perfect arc-segment. "You have discovered something about them," she pleaded, "something you cannot tell." Her voice, compassionate and exasperated, rang out in the little garden. "You must let me help you." Snip, snip. The rain fell off, stopped. "What sort of world is it where there isn't at least one person you can turn to if you're in danger?" Snip, snip. No answer. "How do you know the Consul-General can't help. Please, let me do something." The wind came in, lorn now of rain, over the wall. Something splashed lazily in the pool. The girl continued to harangue old Godolphin as he completed his right hand and switched to his left. Overhead the sky began to darken.

IV

The eighth floor at Piazza delta Signoria 5 was murky and smelled of fried octopus. Evan, puffing from the last three flights of stairs, had to light four matches before he found his father's door. Tacked to it, instead of the card he'd expected to find, was a note on ragged-edged paper, which read simply "Evan." He squinted at it curiously. Except for the rain and the house's creakings the hallway was silent. He shrugged and tried the door. It opened. He groped his way inside, found the gas, lit it. The room was sparsely furnished. A pair of trousers had been tossed haphazard over the back of a chair; a white shirt, arms outstretched, lay on the bed. There were no other signs that anyone lived there: no trunks, no papers. Puzzled, he sat on the bed and tried to think. He pulled the telegram out of his pocket and read it again. Vheissu. The only clue he had to go on. Had old Godolphin really, after all, believed such a place existed?

Evan - even the boy - had never pressed his father for details. He had been aware that the expedition was a failure, caught perhaps some sense of personal guilt or agency in the droning, kindly voice which recited those stories. But that was all: he'd asked no questions, had simply sat and listened, as if anticipating that someday he would have to renounce Vheissu and that such renunciation would be simpler if he formed no commitment now. Very well: his father had been undisturbed a year ago, when Evan had last seen him; something must therefore have happened in the Antarctic. Or on the way back. Perhaps here in Florence. Why should the old man have left a note with only his son's name on it? Two possibilities: (a) if it were no note but rather a name-card and Evan the first alias to occur to Captain Hugh, or (b) if he had wished Evan to enter the room. Perhaps both. On a sudden hunch Evan picked up the pair of trousers, began rummaging through the pockets. He came up with three soldi and a cigarette case. Opening the case, he found four cigarettes, all hand-rolled. He scratched his stomach. Words came back to him: unwise to say too much in telegram. He sighed.

"All right then young Evan," he muttered to himself, "we shall play this thing to the hilt. Enter Godolphin, the veteran spy." Carefully he examined the case for hidden springs: felt along the lining for anything which might have been put underneath. Nothing. He began to search the room, prodding the mattress and scrutinizing it for recently-stitched seams. He combed the armoire, lit matches in dark corners, looked to see if anything was taped to the bottoms of chair seats. After twenty minutes he'd still found nothing and was beginning to feel inadequate as a spy. He threw himself disconsolate into a chair, picked up one of his father's cigarettes, struck a match. "Wait," he said. Shook out the match, pulled a table over, produced a penknife from his pocket and carefully slit each cigarette down the side, brushing the tobacco off onto the floor. On the third try he was successful. Written in pencil on the inside of the cigarette paper was: "Discovered here. Scheissvogel's 10 P.M. Be careful. FATHER. "

Evan looked at his watch. Now what in the devil was all this about? Why so elaborate? Had the old man been fooling with politics or was it a second childhood? He could do nothing for a few hours at least. He hoped something was afoot, if only to relieve the grayness of his exile, but was ready to be disappointed. Turning off the gas, he stepped into the hall, closed the door behind him, began to descend the stairs. He was wondering where Scheissvogel's could be when the stairs suddenly gave under his weight and he crashed through, clutching frantically in the air. He caught hold of the banister; it splintered at the lower end and swung him out over the stairwell, seven flights up. He hung there, listening to the nails edge slowly out of the railing's upper end. I, he thought, am the most uncoordinated oaf in the world. That thing is going to give any second now. He looked around, wondering what he should do. His feet hung two yards away from and several inches above the next banister. The ruined stairway he'd just left was a foot away from his right shoulder. The railing he hung on swayed dangerously. What can I lose, he thought. Only hope my timing isn't too off. Carefully he bent his right forearm up until his hand rested flat against the side of the stairway: then gave himself a violent shove. He swung out over the gaping well, heard the nails shriek free of the wood above him as he reached the extreme point of his swing, flung the railing away, dropped neatly astride the next banister and slid down it backwards, arriving at the seventh floor just as the railing crashed to earth far below. He climbed off the banister, shaking, and sat on the steps. Neat, he thought. Bravo, lad. Do well as an acrobat or something. But a moment later, after he had nearly been sick between his knees, he thought: how accidental was it, really? Those stairs were all right when I came up. He smiled nervously. He was getting almost as loony as his father. By the time he reached the street his shakiness had almost gone. He stood in front of the house for a minute, getting his bearings.

Before he knew it he'd been flanked by two policemen. "Your papers," one of them said.

Evan came aware, protesting automatically.

"Those are our orders, cavaliere." Evan caught a slight note of contempt in the "cavaliere." He produced his passport; the guardie nodded together on seeing his name.

"Would you mind telling me -" Evan began.

They were sorry, they could give him no information. He would have to accompany them.

"I demand to see the English Consul-General."

"But cavaliere, how do we know you are English? This passport could be forged. You may be from any country in the world. Even one we have never heard of."

Flesh began to crawl on the back of his neck. He had suddenly got the insane notion they were talking about Vheissu. "If your superiors can give a satisfactory explanation," he said, "I am at your service."

"Certainly, cavaliere." They walked across the square and around a corner to a waiting carriage. One of the policemen courteously relieved him of his umbrella and began to examine it closely. "Avanti," cried the other, and away they galloped down the Borgo di Greci.

V

Earlier that day, the Venezuelan Consulate had been in an uproar. A coded message had come through from Rome at noon in the daily bag, warning of an upswing in revolutionary activities around Florence. Various of the local contacts had already reported a tall, mysterious figure in a wideawake hat lurking in the vicinity of the Consulate during the past few days.

"Be reasonable," urged Salazar, the Vice-Consul. "The worst we have to expect is a demonstration or two. What can they do? Break a few windows trample the shrubbery."

"Bombs," screamed Raton, his chief. "Destruction, pillage, rape, chaos. They can take us over, stage a coup set up a junta. What better place? They remember Garibaldi in this country. Look at Uruguay. They will have many allies. What do we have? You, myself, one cretin of a clerk and the charwoman."