Goya'S Dog (37 page)

He was excited and tense all the way up to the ballroom. Saturday night, ten o'clock, and something was up: a swing band peppering the room. “Have a ball!” the black bandleader finished singing, and then the musicians were swaying left and right quickly, like storm and wash. Over on the dance floor was chaos, a thousand wedding cakes spinning around and around. He'd walked into a festival: perfect. He sashayed giddily between the tables, and the idea of Darly in the car pounded in his groin with each drumbeat. As he passed a table of loud, large men—they were laughing boisterously at something the fattest-faced one had said, they all had the same slicked-back hair—one of them clung at him with a question, but he couldn't make it out and couldn't be bothered to hear it twice. They looked like greedy local politicos: you're nothing, all of you, Dacres said under his breath; I am everything. Spinning away, he almost fell into the arms of a sallow, bald chap leaning against the wall, framed in the diamond pattern. He apologized and the fellow stared at him with uncomprehending eyes the colour of bad teeth, and Dacres pecked him on the cheek to cheer him up. But trumpets flourished, and Dacres took it as his cue to try somewhere else: the dark bar, downstairs. Could even have checked there first of all, he thought. No matter.

Once through the doors with their inlaid green glass border, Dacres shifted his weight from foot to foot; all he saw were a few tables like islands, visiting couples who had been lost there for decades. The bartender was attending to a mannish blonde. It was too quiet here for him—he didn't want it to slow him. Twitching,
Dacres waited at the bar to be noticed. Come on world, he thought eagerly.

“I'm looking for the manager—assistant manager.”

“Is there a problem sir?” The bartender leaned towards him: shorn white hair, purple nose, hard of hearing. “Max Edelweiss? It's a personal matter.”

Dacres repeated the name.

“He's not here.”

Dacres cursed, damn and blast, and the barman looked sharply at him.

“I know he is,” Dacres said like a spy. Edelweiss was in his office, or upstairs in his room. The man would soften and call up if Dacres could find the right trick of words. “I know he is. Why don't you tell him I'm here. Dacres. Edward Dacres. We're old old friends.”

Though as he said this Dacres almost regretted it: the bartender did look wise and decent, in spite of the hairy boil that disfigured the tip of his nose. If he said no, Dacres thought, he could always leave Edelweiss a note:
I know it's been a while since, a lifetime really since we
…

“But he doesn't work here anymore, sir,” the man was saying gently. “That's the thing. He took a job in Chicago. He's gone. Lovely chap, sir, but he's gone.”

Dacres swallowed.

“English, are you?”

The barman nodded.

“Why are you here? What do you make of it?”

But a waiter was next to Dacres with a drinks order. The barman looked at Dacres blankly, then turned to his colleague.

“Well if you see him, tell him I said hello. Tell him I apologize.”

The man looked back. “I certainly will, sir,” he said. He had to work.

“Edward Dacres.”

He nodded again, avuncular, but he was already otherwise engaged.

Darly looked at him expectantly. Side by side.

“I couldn't find my friend,” he told her.

“Can't we just have a drink?” said Darly. He looked for her expression, wondering if she'd already had more champagne than she was used to. Her knee bounced up and down, charged with adrenaline. “I have my purse,” she said. Really she looked delighted.

“You'd run into someone, Darly. I want to go somewhere no questions will be asked,” said Dacres, smiling. “No register to sign.”

“Like Mexico?” she said.

“Right.”

He was putting the car into gear, wondering if they could make it there by dawn, when she grabbed his face and kissed him long and hard. Sandpaper.

Dacres banged at the glass door of the Lion Grill. It was very much closed, but in the half-light through the shutters he could see a slight, slow-moving figure sweeping up between the counter stools. Darly stood a step behind Dacres, then up on tiptoe to look, trying to rest her chin on his shoulder. Each spot on his body she touched burned and sizzled.

“Who's that?” she asked.

“Not sure,” Dacres replied and banged again. It was the boy, Janusz, who came to the door. It took him a moment to recognize Dacres, but then his features gathered, from unshaped tired plainness into surprise and uncertainty. He was as thin as the broom he was holding.

“Hello Janusz,” said Dacres.

“Ed-ward
,
”
Janusz said. Then he saw Darly, and stared. She smiled and extended a hand in greeting, and introduced herself, and he brought them a few feet into the empty, dark restaurant. They stopped, by the counter, Dacres next to the cash register, Darly nearest the door, and Janusz close to the first empty table. It was completely quiet. Leo liked his place with the radio off; that was all right, there was more than enough music in Dacres's head. Janusz's coat lay bundled on the counter like a sleeping cat.

“You shaved off your moustache,” said Dacres. Without it he looked less Slavic. Janusz put his fingers to his lips.

“One month ago,” he said.

“How's life at the mill?”

“I keep trying to sign up but they say I cannot, because of my heart.” He patted at his chest.

“Sign up?”

“For the forces. For Poland.”

“Oh, of course. Your heart.”

“If things get worse maybe they forget to test me, I think. People say.”

Dacres looked behind Janusz into the grill. His English was better, his accent softer; but Dacres missed its old thick syrupy sound. He didn't want to slow down too much: he wanted to be spry now, he wanted to keep on the move.

“Janusz: where's Leo? I have to ask him something.”

“Upstairs. Asleep. Leo is not so well these days. His foot, his stomach … That's why I, I help him a little. At nights.”

He tilted the broom towards them, then back. They nodded, depressed.

“Janusz, I really am sorry about that awful letter I sent you.”

Janusz's eyes wondered, waiting for Dacres to say more. When he looked at Darly he did so nervously, like a twelve-year-old discovering bodies and Beauty, though still drawn to his own toys too. Scalded and unsure but having to look, more than once.

“Yes I was sort of mad then and I said all kind of things I really didn't mean and I just want you to know I apologize.” Dacres was speaking with his hands.

Janusz leaned into the broom handle, resting his face against the cylinder of wood.

“But you didn't send me letters.”

“I didn't?”

“You've never sent me a letter either, Edward,” Darly chirruped.

“I didn't send you an angry letter?”

Janusz shrugged.

“Well, good,” Dacres said, discombobulated. “Listen Janusz,” he began again.

“You disappear.”

“What?”

“You disappeared. Leo wondered how you are. But you never called, or came.”

“Oh Christ,” said Dacres. “Well in that case I'm sorry about that.”

“It is too bad.”

“Yes, well …”

A car sped past outside at tremendous velocity and they stopped to look. Dacres imagined what was happening at the Burner house now: nervous attacks and police officers, notepads and calmatives. He gulped. Now they were examining his Great Work. The Detective Chief Inspector was unimpressed. His lip curled.

“When someone is a friend,” Janusz began, “he is expected—”

“I've met you!” said Darly, and poked Janusz in the arm. “I've met you twice—he's the one who told me to try the hotel! That's how I found you,” she told Dacres.

Janusz blushed.

“I knew where you were,” said Janusz to Dacres, shyly.

“That was very kind of you,” said Darly more softly, in an almost amazed tone.

“No,” he said.

If we're quite finished, Dacres wanted to say. The next item on our agenda is—

“How have you been occupied, Edward?” asked Janusz; it sounded like a phrase he'd learned in a primer.

“Listen Janusz,” he said, “this is awkward, but I'm going to be frank with you: we've a problem. I need somewhere to hide out for an evening, no questions asked, do you see? I thought Leo could put me up in his back room again. Put us up. Just overnight.” He explained this, “One night.”

Janusz stretched his teeth out wide and shook his head.

“His cousin is here. He is asleep there. Just arrived. There is no space.” This he whispered.

“Damn and blast,” Dacres muttered.

“It's not such a nice room,” said Janusz, to Darly.

“That doesn't matter,” she said.

“Who's his bloody cousin?”

“His cousin Tomas. Maybe there is space for one, on the floor, maybe—but not both.”

He looked from Darly to Dacres uneasily. They were all silent. Darly's lips pouted forwards.

Then Janusz's head popped up.

“You could stay in my room,” he said. “I could stay here, on the floor.”

Dacres smiled.

“Would you be comfortable?” Darly asked.

“I just finish and I take you there. I talk to Sofia.”

“Sofia?”

“My landlady. But don't worry, I promise she will understand: she is as if my aunt.”

“They were driving me mad. Lorne can only talk about the invitations, the guest list. He was being so bridey, and telling me that of course when we're married I shouldn't work, why would I? It's not that, it's only just that, it's all the little things that are a part of that. This has been coming for weeks. Months. It's not tonight. It had to happen. We've been in too much of a hurry, I can't be in a hurry … But I don't want to talk about
him
.”

Her voice was quick and defensive and seemed to feed on itself. Dacres wanted to say something to agree with her, but he concentrated on driving, on the cars flowing past. The air in the car was dense with her perfume and there was a dreamlike quality to being behind the wheel, his hands still spattered brown and red with paint and gunk. The occasional wave of terror interrupted the pleasure of
the fast lights. He veered between feelings and then looked over at her, luminous in her silver dress with his jacket over her shoulders, and he grinned. He wondered what Janusz would say about this night to Leo, over chess, at Leo's sickbed. Dacres remembered playing chess with them now: he had forgotten. At Darly's feet he saw a polka-dot scarf, perhaps Lorne's, or Lorne's mother's. Darly hadn't noticed it.

“And my father agreeing with him! Agreeing with him up to the hilt, so that it was the two of them against me, telling me what was what.” Her voice took on a darker edge. Dacres wondered what else he'd missed, what else he had been blind to these last months. “And I had a vista, a real vista of my life stretching out ahead, and these two men were like giants, and Lorne was holding my left hand and Daddy was holding my right hand, and they were leading me along forever. Forever, so that I could never let go.”

They arrived in less than five minutes, during which time neither Dacres nor Janusz was able to say a word. Then Janusz pointed right, indicating to Dacres that he should drive the car up on the sidewalk: it was a small narrow street and if he parked on the road there would be no space for other cars. Dacres thought that since it was a cul-desac they needn't worry. They all got out, Janusz handing Dacres the suitcase he'd brought out of the back, then disappearing into a green doorway. Dacres saw an iron doorknocker in the shape of an eagle and a tiny flap for letters. He leaned back against the door of Lorne's car, his legs aching. Darly paced back and forth before him, on the move, on parade, taking six steps and then halting, switching her weight from foot to foot, turning and marching back, in his ratty jacket, clutching her purse, delicate. She looked heartbreaking. And she suddenly came towards him and put both her hands in his, holding them at his chest. She was looking into his eyes for something. She still had those little flowers in her hair. Then she broke off and went back to marching.

Dacres thought the new damp in the air might signify that summer wouldn't last, but it was impossible to be sure. He looked towards the end of the street and saw fencing, a night watchman's box, a lamp
with a halo. He imagined the guard watching them, an old bearded fellow with a stretched-out face from El Greco. Smile, damn you, he wanted to tell the man.

After an age Janusz appeared with a thumbs-up. Darly kissed him on the cheek in thanks and it seemed Janusz might faint. Dacres shook his clammy hand and tried to read what was written on the boy's face, in the half-light. In the end he patted Janusz's shoulder and thanked him again. And then Janusz slipped back, and then he was gone.

“After you,” said Dacres. He followed Darly inside.

It was a narrow passageway, at the end of which he could make out a kitchen, with a table, a geranium forgotten on the windowsill. On his right was a hook with four coats, a closed door further down, and after that a flight of stairs. Following instructions, they went up, Dacres behind Darly, trailing his hand along the rough stucco, other hand weighed down by the suitcase. He wondered what time it was. He entered a corridor, he passed a dank bathroom and saw closed doors, doubtless other tenants' rooms, and Darly's body ahead of him.

He'd half expected that Janusz kept goats but instead his room was full of books. On the sideboard, on the shelf above the sink in the corner, in long lines on the floor. The titles were full of
C
s and
Z
s and there was a crucifix on the wall but then there were English books too: Darly bent down to pick up two hefty volumes and showed him
Gray's Anatomy
and
History of the Dominion of Canada
.