Against the Day (139 page)

   
“Since
you put it that way.”

“One
of those conclusions I find I jump to more and more these days. Do you know who
it is?”

   
“I
think they’re local. But some Russians as well.”

The
schoolgirl confidence he remembered was no longer there—something
significant had shaken her. He was surprised at how far he thought he could see
into her present difficulties, farther than she would have known how to give
him credit for, farther than he could have himself imagined a year and a half
ago. He patted her gloved hands, he hoped not as awkwardly as it felt. “If it’s
only the Okhrana, that’ll be easy—there isn’t one who can’t be bought,
and they work for kopecks. The Austrians might prove a bit more problematic,
especially if it’s the Kundschaftsstelle.”

“The
city police I could understand, but. . .” With such unstudied bewilderment in
her voice that he had to step away, pretending to brush his hat, so as not to
lunge into the obvious and counterproductive embrace this might, to another
smitten youth, have called for in the circs.

“If
you are willing to wait a few days—no more than a week, say—there
might be a way I can help.”

Having
no doubt heard this sort of thing, with required changes of emphasis, from
other men in lessperilous times, she narrowed her eyes, yet waited another
halfmoment, as if allowing some further point to become clear. “You have had
dealings with them before. Both offices.”

“The Okhrana are playing on a
somewhat unpredictable pitch just now. Doings in the East—the Japanese
war, rebellions up and down the rail lines. It’s a good time to redeem one’s
tickets
. . .
so I’m told. As for the
Austrians
. . .
they may require a
bit more intensive labor.”

   
“Cyprian,
I cannot—”

Resisting
what was almost the need to place a gloved finger across her lips, “The
question will not arise. Let us see what will happen.” Perversely, he was
pleased—though less pleased with himself for feeling so—at the way
she hesitated now, as if unwilling to lie because she could no longer gauge how
successfully he might catch her out.

He
tried to stay off the subject of what he’d been up to himself, assuming she’d
think whatever she thought. When Venice came up, she only said, “Oh, Cyprian,
how lovely. I’ve never been there.”

“In
a strange way, neither have I. As a matter of fact—do you have a moment?”

They
were in the VolksPrater, and there happened to be nearby a popular facsimile of
Venice known as Venedig in Wien. “I know it’s frightfully decadent of me, but
I’ve come to think of this as the real Venice, the one I never get to see.
These gondolas are real, actually, and so are the
gondolieri.
”

Cyprian
and Yashmeen bought tickets and boarded one of the gondolas, and lay back
together and watched the foreign sky stream past. Every now and then, a replica
of some Venetian landmark—the Doge’s Palace, or the Ca’ d’Oro—would
come looming up. “First time I rode in one of these,” Cyprian said, “was here.
If I hadn’t come to Vienna, I probably never would have.”

   
“I
doubt I ever shall.”

Her
voice brought him a twinge. He couldn’t remember seeing her ever quite this
miserable. He would have done anything, for that instant, to see her somehow
restored to her old impossible ways. Except perhaps blurt, “I’ll take you. I
promise.” Instead he thought he’d better go in to speak with Ratty McHugh.

“So!”
cried Ratty with a certain forced joviality, “here we all are again. Yashmeen
still in the picture, I see.” He seemed to Cyprian not so much puzzled as
curious in a professional way.

   
“Not
quite as she was.”

“She always made me think of Hypatia.
Before the Christian mobs of course.”

“More of a sibyl these days. Deeper
than maths, but that’s as far as I can see. Perhaps because of some rogue
psychic gift, perhaps only the secular gravity of whatever her father is up to
out in Inner Asia, she’s being bedeviled

by two or three Powers at once,
England as you must know something of already, Russia, of which she is
officially still a citizen, and Austria, with of course Germany towering in the
shadows backstage, whispering cues.”

“The Shambhalan Question no doubt.
Yes and it hasn’t half been playing havoc with the old rota, putting blokes
into Colney Hatch at quite an unprecedented rate. If it were my department I’d
have had Auberon Halfcourt pulled back years ago. No one even knows where the
bloody place is, for pity’s sake.”

   
“Perhaps
if we—”

“Oh
of course we should meet, I’m only complaining in a recreational way, or do I
mean therapeutic? Let’s make it the Dobner shall we, that’s the look we’ll
need, a simple reunion of English coalumni.”

So
amid the click of billiard balls and exquisite whores with tiny waists and huge
darkened eyelids and lashes and sumptuously plumed hats, Yashmeen and Ratty
shook hands across the moderate distance produced by a few years out of
University, though Cyprian was pleased to see him semismitten and then
embarrassed because of it. Not that Yash hadn’t gone out of her way today with
an ensemble of beaded crêpe lisse in some æthereal shade of violet, and a
terribly smart hat whose plumage sent enchanting shadows across her face. After
a spell of appropriate theatre, they went off carefully, separately, to
rendezvous at a nondescript apartment nearby, behind the Getreidemarkt, one of
several maintained by Ratty’s shop for purposes just such as these.

By
the unwritten rules of these transitory dwellings, the cupboards yielded a
sketchy culinary history of those who had passed through—bottles of
Szekszárdi Vörös, Gewurztraminer and apricot brandy, chocolates, coffee,
biscuits, tinned sausages, wine, boxes of dried noodles of various shapes and
sizes, a white cloth bag of tarhonya from the previous century.

   
“Are
these the same Russians you remember from Göttingen?”

   
She
raised her brows and turned up her palms.

“For or against the Tsar I mean, it
does make a difference. Obviously there’s the AngloRussian Entente, but the
other lot, though technically Russians I suppose, are also the most evil sort
of bombchucking Socialistic dregs aren’t they, more than happy to see all
Romanoffs obliterated, and no hesitation to make deals with anyone, including
Germany, that might hasten the day.”

“Why, Ratty,” said Cyprian, mild as
could be. “Some would say they’re the only hope Russia has.”

   
“Oh
don’t let’s
. . .
please. Was there
anyone else?”

   
“People
who said they were from Berlin. They would appear without warning. Wishing to
meet. Sometimes we did. Usually in the rooms of a Dr. Werfner.”

“The one Renfrew was always on
about,” Ratty nodded, writing rapidly. “His socalled conjugate. And
. . .
this was something political?”

 
  
“Ha!”

   
“Ever
so sorry, delete that—”

“It sounded disingenuous,” she
smiled. “What isn’t political? Where have you been since we were children at
Cambridge?”

   
“The
suburbs of Hell,” said Cyprian.

“Bringing
you from Göttingen to Vienna—might it have been merely some loco parentis
tactic of the T.W.I.T. to separate you from this Otzovist lot? Aren’t Chunxton
Crescent aware of how simply teeming with Bolshies Vienna is these days?”

“It
may not be the whole story,” she admitted, “. . . there seemed also to be an
. . .
Hungarian element.”

   
Ratty
took hold of his head and held on to it firmly. “Explain. Please.”

 
“We did spend a week or two in BudaPesth. Took the steamer
down the Danube, met with some rather peculiar people in smocks
. . . .
”

   
“How’s
that.”

“This sort of antifraud uniform
everyone has to wear when they’re doing research into what they call down there
the ‘parapsychical.’ No pockets, all but transparent, rather short hemline . .
.”

   
“I
say. You didn’t, ehrm, happen to bring one back with you, or
. . .
?”

   
“Why,
Cyprian.”

“Yes
actually Gyps, if we could stay on the topic for just a moment longer—
what I suppose we are most interested in knowing, Miss Halfcourt, is why they
all left Vienna as suddenly as they did.”

“I
must be very clear with you, that this aptitude of mine, if it exists, has
little to do with ‘predicting the future.’ Some of those who were with me here
and in BudaPesth believe that
they
can. But—”

“Perhaps
somebody ‘saw’ something? Compelling enough to leave town because of? If it’s
anything we can verify
. . .
please,
do go on. Since Mrs. Burchell’s astoundingly prophetic account of the Serbian
outrage, my principals have been quite receptive to the lessorthodox sources.”

“They
were terrified. Not a matter of whether but of how soon, something—some
event, or set of events—would happen. The Russians above all—far
beyond the usual
nervnost’
, which since the revolution has been the
national malady.”

“Was
anyone specific?”

   
“Not
with me. I would come into a room, they would literally have their

heads together, and when they saw me,
they’d stop talking and pretend everything was normal.”

“And
it hadn’t to do with a certain . . .” pretending himself to finger a dossier,
“Monsieur Azeff, notorious for blowing up Romanoffs whilst shopping his
comrades, in on whom the Socialist Revolutionary hounds are said now to be closing
at last—”

“Oh,
Yevno, that clown. Not particularly, no. Though of course his name has been
coming up for years. But not enough to cause this degree of fear. As if what
towered above them out there in the dark, across the lines, were not exactly a
new and terrible weapon but the spiritual equivalent of one. A desire in the
mass coconscious for death and destruction.”

   
“I
say, how jolly. And so you woke up one morning and found—”

“They
didn’t all vanish at once. After a bit one began to notice this ominous vacuum.
But I saw no point in asking. Having twigged that no one intended to tell me.”

“Was
that to spare you information that might’ve upset you? Or did they imagine that
you were involved somehow?”

“Whatever
they had expected of me in BudaPesth, I had failed them. But that might have
been separate from this other matter of the departures. Could I borrow a
cigarette from somebody?”

Fresh flowers in the room
, silver coffeepots and cream jugs, surrounding a
darázsfészek, a somewhat oversize Dobos torte, a Rigó Jancsi, rain at the
windows, a single opening in the dark sky allowing a shaft of sunlight far down
Váci út to illuminate the dismal slum of Angel’s Field.

Madame
Eskimoff looked pale and grim. Lajos Halász, one of the local sensitives, had
fallen asleep in the bathtub, remaining that way for the next three days.
Lionel Swome was seldom observed away from the telephone, either murmuring with
apprehensive glances at the others or listening attentively to the schedule of
telephonic transmissions—which the hotel subscribed to and were available
to all guests—listening for a stockexchange report, a sports result, an
operatic aria, an unnameable item of intelligence
. . . .
“Why not just have the bloody thing surgically sewn to
your ear!” screamed the Cohen. “Here’s another idea,” Swome replied, at this
point actually attempting, in a somewhat more than halfhearted way, to insert
the instrument into the Cohen’s anus, the presence of trousers notwithstanding.

   
Everyone
had lost patience, bickering even when silent—

   
“As
if by telepathy,” Ratty suggested brightly.

“No. They were all talking out loud.
Telepathy under those conditions would’ve been impossible.”

After the interview
with old Ratty, Yashmeen seemed to regain her spirit.
 
“Lovely to see you back to your old
self,” said Cyprian.

   
“And
who would that be?”

They
were out strolling in the evening and had wandered into Spittelberggaße, where
Viennese of both sexes, in the limitless civic passion for windowshopping, were
inspecting a variety of women intriguingly displayed in lighted showwindows up
and down the street. Yashmeen and Cyprian paused before one of these, through
which a lady in a black corset and matching aigrette, with a certain air of
command about her, gazed back.

Yashmeen
nodded at his visibly erect penis. “You seem interested.” She had suspected in
men—particular men, now and then—a desire for selfsurrender, having
noted it in Cyprian as long ago as Cambridge. All but pulling him through the
streets, she approached and inspected a number of cafés before arriving at one
in Josephstadt. “This looks all right. Come along.”