Water Theatre (7 page)

“It's been a century since Sir Elgin Rokesby deprived us of our liberty,” Emmanuel smiled. “I dare say we can endure a few more hours of servitude.”

“In the meantime,” Grace frowned out into the gusting white whirl, “it looks like we're all in jail.”

Once Hal was gone, Adam seemed to relax back into friendship with his guest. When they returned to the attic, he became more talkative, less barbed with sarcasm. Their conversation moved onto the safe ground of their common interests – music, films, books – and this led to the question of whether or not writers should be politically engaged, and whether their writing could ever amount to more than bourgeois self-indulgence if they were not. Which brought them back to Hal and the question at the back of Martin's mind.

“So is your father a communist?” he asked.

Adam raised his brows at him. “Why do you ask?”

“Some of the books I noticed downstairs. And didn't Emmanuel say something about having been to Russia?”

“He's been to many places. Washington is as interested in him as Moscow.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“Now you sound like that grubby little demagogue Joe McCarthy:
Answer the question, answer the question. Is Hal, or has he ever been, a member of the Communist Party
? Would it bother you very much if he were? I mean, if you don't care about politics, what's it matter either way?”

“It's just that I'd like to know what I'm dealing with here.”

“In case Hal might try to brainwash you? What kind of people do you think Hal and Emmanuel are? If you want to know about their politics, you should ask them. But ask seriously. They're serious men. The issues they care about are serious. Probably the most serious issues in the world right now”

Until this moment the wider context of Hal's endeavours had seemed too far removed from this house perched on the Pennine edge for serious consideration, and too distant from Martin's own preoccupations to excite more than puzzled interest. But now, even as the snow shut them in, he sensed horizons sweeping open round him.

“I can see that,” he said. “It's why I want to know more.”

“All right, then forget your prejudices, forget the propagandist labels. Hal's thinking owes a lot to Marx, but he's not in the Party, not any more. He's his own man, a thinker in his own right, a political theorist. Emmanuel has the chance to put his theories into practice. It really is about changing things… and not just in Equatoria. In fact, independence for Equatoria is only the start. They're working on a development plan that will transform the country in ten years and set an example for the whole continent. Africa has vast resources – which is why it's been carved up and plundered by the imperial powers to no one's advantage but their own. Imagine what it could be like as a continental union – a federation of independent countries, each running its own affairs, resisting exploitation by international capital on the one hand and the crude oppression of state control on the other. In fact, absolutely refusing to take sides in the paranoid madness of the Cold War. Its influence would be unstoppable. It would be like accelerating history.”

Here was a dream on a scale unfamiliar to Martin's thinking. Caught up in Adam's enthusiasm for Hal's plans, he was told how the long collaboration with Emmanuel had given Hal a
rare chance to realize a philosopher's dream that was at least as old as Aristotle: to shape world events through the proper education of a man of action. To most people Equatoria might be no more than a minor page out of a stamp album, a sweltering stretch of rainforest and savannah, populated by half-naked savages. But it had an ancient tribal culture of its own – in the sixteenth century the Portuguese had been sufficiently impressed by its wealth to send ambassadors to the court of the Olun of Bamutu, the region's most powerful king. And the country was rich in minerals – diamonds, copper, zinc, and possibly uranium. If properly administered on behalf of the people by the new radical intelligentsia, the country could quickly be transformed. A hydroelectric dam in the Kra River Gorge would power new industries. The profits would finance a national programme of education for all. Ancient tribal rivalries would be dissolved by a growing sense of a national commonwealth. As a place to make a stand for the future, Equatoria had much to commend it.

With growing wonder Martin realized that the telephone in Hal's study really did reach, operator by operator, and often with difficulty, from this remote Yorkshire house to secret rooms in Africa, where brave men were conspiring to end a century of imperial oppression. And once you were put through, the whole mysterious continent might have lain steaming just the other side of the Pennines. His heart beat high in his chest when he considered how he had cycled out to High Sugden and stumbled on these new horizons. He was a privileged insider, close to the start of what might be world-shaking events.

Yet his images of Africa were coloured by Hollywood and Rider Haggard and the comic books of his childhood. Emmanuel was the first actual African he had met. In no way did that engaging man resemble the cinema's leopard-skinned warriors and witch-doctors, but surely no one could call him typical? And what about that mask over the sitting-room fireplace? Its barbarous
grimace had left him wondering whether Africa might not still be more preoccupied with superstition and magic than with politics.

Yet Martin was too hungry for a larger sense of life to dismiss everything Adam said as fantasy. And too canny to swallow it whole. So he drew in his breath and marshalled the first arguments he could find against his friend's overwhelming ardour. Then he applied himself to learning, fast.

I came awake to the sight of a woman in a black swimming costume at the edge of the pool. She was drying her tanned thighs with a white towel. A fuzzy aureole of sunlight glittered off her limbs. From the mouth of the lion, water poured loudly into the slipper bath. The sun had shifted. When I sat up, she turned to look at me.

“Ah, you are awake at last,” said Gabriella.

“Have I been asleep long?”

“You were dreaming when I arrived.” She removed the swimming cap and shook her hair free. “I hope it was a good dream.”

“I don't remember anything about it.”

“Then you must try to catch it by the tail, quickly, before it vanishes.”

Massaging the back of my neck with one hand, I said, “If it's anything like the last one, I'd rather let it go.”

She studied me a moment as she dried her upper arm, eyes narrowed, lips lightly pursed in disapproval. She draped the towel over her shoulders, closing its edges with one hand across her breasts. “Even troubling dreams mean well by us. We should hear what they have to say.”

“Oh dear,” I said, “are you some kind of therapist?”

“That would please you less than my being a contessa?” She laughed at my embarrassment. “Did not some clever person say that all professions are a conspiracy against society?” she said. “I agree with him.”

“Perhaps you can afford to.” The doze, the beer, my frustration at the unanticipated delay, my reluctance to be in Umbria at all
– this dislocating mix had made me needlessly rude. She knew it, and I regretted it.

“In any case,” she replied, “is it not good to take an interest in the mysterious facts of our condition? I enjoy working with dreams as I enjoy good conversation or swimming. As I enjoy eating also. Look, Orazio has laid out lunch for us. There is salad, cheese,
prosciutto
and bread. If you like, he will make us omelettes with
tartufi neri
. It will taste of Umbria, I promise. The truffles were gathered this morning.”

“I trust the dew is still on them?”

After a moment, she smiled in response. “Excuse me while I find a robe.” If she was conscious of my gaze as she walked away, it did not trouble her.

The robe was silk, its design Japanese. Under the shade of a mulberry tree, we ate at the marble table in the heat of the afternoon. The Contessa was talkative about everything except Adam and Marina, but I was enjoying her company and in no hurry to ruffle our conversation with pressing questions. Once we had agreed how delicious were the black
frittate
that Orazio had cooked for us, she informed me that truffles were the fruit of lightning. We talked about the previous day's storm, which had been the first of the season, but I said nothing further about my dream. I congratulated her on the beauty of her home and, more wryly, on its grandeur.

“Yes,” Gabriella agreed, “it is perhaps extravagant.” A gesture of her hand dismissed the thought. “Now we shall be serious. You will tell me all about your work. It interests me very much.”

Over the years I had evolved various strategies to deal with such approaches, and could slip into whichever mode seemed likeliest to impress or deter, silence or seduce the questioner. But what I'd seen in Equatoria had left me finally sickened by all of them. I made evasive noises. She pressed me to say more. The Italian light dissolved around me, I frowned down into the dark of memory. The stench of the death pits hit my nose
again, and I was speaking about people driven to a frenzy by forces beyond their understanding and control, about the grief-crazed women and silent children; tormented and tormentors alike unprotected by ease and privilege, by the glib, talking-head culture that distances us from raw suffering and depletes us of an immediate sense of what is real on the earth. Mentally I ran through footage that would never be screened, the literally obscene out-takes which cannot be erased from the observer's mind, yet slink out of history unshown. I told her about them as plainly as I could.
If you want to know what I do
, I was saying,
this is the bleak news I have to bring you on this bright afternoon
. It left me feeling ashen inside, as though a once ardent heat of moral passion had burnt itself out some time before, almost without my noticing.

She was not looking at me directly when she said at last, “I believe there are more than fifty wars happening right now. Can you tell me why it is men love war so much?”

“I've seen more of it than most people,” I answered, surprised to find her so well informed, “and I can think of nothing loveable about it.”

“Then I wonder why you return to it so often?”

I remembered the despair with which Gail had put the same question only a few weeks earlier. Even then I had not believed my answer. I had no better one now, for the truth was that on each return I'd found it harder to cleanse my thoughts, to be simply present anywhere, least of all inside the care of touch. Out of her rage and hurt, Gail had branded me a war-zone addict, accused me of infatuation with the evil in the world, of eye-fucking its horrors with such lust that nothing could ever hope to match the intensity of its hold on me. Under Gabriella's patient scrutiny now, watching the dazzle from the water drift along a line of cypresses, I saw that I might already have passed beyond such virile craziness into a still more frightening condition.

When I did not speak for some time, she said, “The question disturbs you?”

“Not really. I've lived with it far too long for that.”

“Of course,” she nodded. “And when a man is carrying the troubles of all the world, the taking care of his own soul does not seem so important?”

“I wouldn't say that either.”

“Then what would you say?”

“That there must be better things to talk about on a hot afternoon.”

Gabriella shook her head in mild exasperation. “You are such bewildering creatures.”

“Do you mean foreign correspondents in general,” I smiled, “or men in particular?”

“Men,” she answered. “Men! Yes, men. Men!”

“Spoken with true feeling. So tell me about the Count. I've been wondering where he can be?”

She considered me a moment, aware of the deflection. Very well, she too could be frugal with confession. “My husband lives much of the time in Geneva. He performs work for the United Nations there.”

“A good man then.” Invited to pursue the intimacies of her life no further, I sought a light way out of the corner in which I had left myself. “And does he also believe in oracles?”

“Of course. He too is an Umbrian.”

“That makes a difference?”

“Sometimes I think that in Umbria even those who believe in nothing else believe in signs and portents.” She turned her gaze to where the mountains floated in the haze. “It is our custom. Ever since we learnt to read the fortunes of men in the flight of birds. Perhaps long before that time.”

“I've always thought bird-watching harmless enough.”

“Now I think you are making mockery of me! However, if you keep your eyes wide, there is meaning to be found everywhere – not only in the birds, but in the murmur of trees, in the pictures made in fire or water. Even a voice heard in a crowd may say something that can change us. As with the
radio, there are many places to listen. It all depends how you are tuned – yes?”

“Or which kind of universe you think you live in?”

“Exactly so. I know how it is not respectable now to believe in such a spirited conference of things. But the ancients were wiser. They had great respect for our Umbrian soothsayers.” She glanced away, pointing down the slope of the garden beyond a dusky clump of ilex trees. “For example, there was a powerful oracle at the springs of Clitumnus down there on the plain beneath us. And not far away,” she lifted her gaze to the horizon, “in those mountains, is the cave of the
Sibilla cumana
. From Virgil? You understand?”

“The Cumaean Sibyl? I thought she lived near Naples.”

“Yes. But they say that when Christianity came there, she moved north, to Umbria, to the Monti Sibillini. Regrettably,
la grotta della Sibilla
was closed with stones, a long time ago, by men who did not understand the true nature of her
negromanzia
.”