The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown (25 page)

Mr. Brown looked back upon his unforgettable, silently weighing up the particular cross-road of his life which she represented and what might have happened if he had been free to take it.

‘Despina taught me that one can love without agony. Not the highest form, perhaps, but a step on the way, a step on the way. The perfect, lasting honeymoon. Sad to think it would have ended in sheer boredom like the harps of heaven. She? Well, soon she would have been off with that damned Holgar on a round of engagements. She knew there could be no permanency for us. And permanency—does a woman ever
give her whole soul without at least a dream of it? Standing among the smoke of the burning bras but still at heart invincible monogamists! She was no girl to be in tears before the Ikon of the Virgin. A Lilith, not an Eve. I had no restless anxiety about her future. I was able much later, anonymously, to do a little something for her.’

What he did worry about—and the sharpness of it surprised him—was Nadya. He wanted to see a life for her, not a living. She was all right for that; her face and her nature and the help of her compatriots would carry her through. But all those difficulties of privacy which he had settled for her were insistent. A slip-up could easily lead to the question: are you Nadya Stepanov?

The next day he decided to go up to her room to prepare her, but just to sit on the edge of a bed was too callous for what might be a last meeting. It was spring, warm enough to laze outside in the afternoon. Russia had receded into its melting snows and the Mediterranean, out of barracks, was feeling for the empty space beyond the Balkan Mountains. He walked to her restaurant, taking for the first time precautions that he was not followed. When she appeared, he suggested that they drive—choosing a hairy cabman—out to the chain of lakes which formed a crescent around the north of Bucarest.

They walked off into the silent world of the rushes, she ecstatic at the ending of the cold which, all the same, she had so much enjoyed. Her people had learned to live happily with the seasons of the year, he thought, unlike the English who sulkily tolerated winter or the Spaniards who cursed the discomfort.

‘Nadya, I want to talk to you seriously,’ he said. ‘Come here and stop dancing around!’

‘About Holgar?’

‘Holgar? What’s he got to do with it? No, I may have to leave Bucarest suddenly.’

‘With Despina?’

‘Not with Despina.’

She took his arm with a quick little gesture of sympathy.

‘This is to do with the reason why you won’t speak English?’

‘It is.’

‘I told you my life, David. Why don’t you tell me yours? You know I can keep secrets.’

He did. She had kept theirs perfectly. And there might be others. For example, what the hell had Holgar been up to that she should think him a reason for driving out to the lakes? She had a right to be told why he had to disappear. Despina would learn some of it from the questions which the police asked her. Nadya, however, being merely a Russian refugee whose only known connection with him was that she happened to live in the same house, was unlikely to be bothered.

‘Yes, I’ll tell you all of it.’

They sat on the water steps of a deserted summer tavern with the brown lake at their feet, motionless as it had been under the ice but already with green spears sprouting from the shallows. He gave her the story quite shortly from Lequeitio to the Principesa, though reliving all the past with the speed of thought. When he began to speak of Romania—omitting for her the Crucea de Piatra—he realised for the first time how his affection for country and people had grown. Partly it was due to Despina, coming in as an epitome of the tall and lovely women so much more competent than their men, but it had begun with music in a ditch, the roar of the Moş and Nadya herself, the dripping orphan received in a war-ravaged country with such pity and kindness.

It was the plain he loved, not the mountains. Mountains were the same everywhere unless they had the sea at their feet. Willows and reeds, birds and buffaloes and wine, the low chant of the rivers as they glided from the rim of Transylvania to the Danube—those would be his memories. Yes, it was a country where a mooring post was quite likely to pull out under strain, which would seldom happen in
Hungary. That was an example of the difference, of the reason why that romantic and aristocratic people should despise the mixture next door, ignoring the fact that the mixture had its roots in the Eastern Roman Empire. There were no counts and barons, only peasants with a stake in the land and a middle class, with melancholy and intelligent eyes, nearly as poor as they.

Beyond exclamations of sympathy Nadya’s only comment was that he should never have denied his religion.

‘I did not. I denied a mere formality. Leave out these names! You should have known Rabbi Kaplan. He looked as fierce as Moses and was as gentle as Christ. His religion was the same as yours.’

When he came to the end and his certainty that the police were making enquiries about him, she said that he must go at once and that she would come with him.

Bernardo was alarmed. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for her as well as himself.

‘You can’t. You have no passport. You must never go away from here until you have it and are safely Miss Andreyev.’

‘I can get one now. To-morrow if I like.’

‘How? What for?’

‘Like the Moş. But worse, I think.’

‘Who found you out?’

‘Holgar.’

‘Before I go I’ll leave him in the Crucea de Piatra with a knife in his back.’

‘It was an accident. You mustn’t blame him.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘He came in while you and Despina were still at lunch and while he was waiting he went to the bathroom. You know how the door sometimes jams. I suppose he was in a hurry and thought it had. So he gave it a kick and broke the lock and I couldn’t get out of the bath in time.’

‘Did he say anything to Despina?’

He was sure that Despina would have kept the secret even from him, but equally sure that she would have discussed it with Nadya.

‘No, but he must have told someone. There’s a man who knows and he talks to me at the restaurant.’

‘Who the hell is he?’

‘I don’t know his name. A Belgian. They say he is going round the cabarets.’

Bernardo could identify him at once—a nasty bit of work called Henri Scheeper with an air of false distinction entirely due to an unlined, massaged face under dyed hair and a white mèche in it. He was scouting for turns sufficiently exotic to interest Brussels. Despina had been interviewed by him and had at first been impressed. He offered good money but would not consider a partner in what he described as intimate cabaret. Holgar had hopefully called at his hotel and spent some time over drinks with him, receiving only vague promises that his name would be kept in mind.

‘He wants me to travel with him. He says he can fix it,’ Nadva went on. ‘I wouldn’t do what I think he wants. But I should be out of Romania and we could find each other somehow.’

Bernard lectured her. Didn’t she know how many of her dreaded frontiers she would have to cross to reach Brussels? And how could she ever find him when he was on the run? He had never heard such blazing, artless lunacy. She must promise him never to speak to the man again.

‘I must, David. You forget I am a waitress,’ she answered meekly. ‘But I promise I will never go with him if you will promise me something too.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Swear you will see me again before you escape and tell me where you will try to go. Come at once to the restaurant or wherever I am!’

‘I promise.’

He had no doubt what had happened. In talking with
Scheeper that simpering ass Holgar had emphasized his gallant sense of responsibility for Despina and had spoken of her lamentable attachment to a degenerate Romanian—shepherdess in his evil grip, as she had put it! Scheeper, finding this threw a new and more promising light on the cool beauty he had interviewed, encouraged details, and out came the shocking Sunday Paper revelations. Mitrani had been a ponce in the most disgusting quarter of the city. Mitrani was a mercenary louse on the face of the earth. Mitrani kept another girl upstairs with four breasts.

Bernardo was sure this had something to do with the enquiries about his past, though there seemed no obvious connection. Giurgiu, perhaps? But not a soul had known of his visit; he had got clean away with his rescue of Nadya. What was it Eva had said? Such intelligence as she had was confined to rat-like scufflings through garbage, but there she was a reliable guide. She had asked if he had taken a girl who belonged to some big man.

Got it! That precious pair! Holgar had also whispered the secret of Mitrani’s bestial enjoyments to his dear friend, the consul, who had licked his lips in lecherous horror. And then Holgar had pressed him to act. Surely a consul could protest to the police and get the fellow removed as a public disgrace?

The police of course would not give a damn whether the floor manager of the Alhambra was ten times more infamous in his pleasures than Pozharski. But since it was a consul—Eva’s big man—who complained that Mitrani was keeping monsters and possibly procuring minors, they had at least made some routine enquiries about his background. And then some knowledgeable cop, unshaven for two days and at the blissful stage when
tsuica
inspired imagination just before imbecility, had wondered how a Spanish-speaking Jew could have been born in the ghetto of Roman.

So they had duly established that Mitrani had indeed been a ponce in the Crucea de Piatra and was no doubt as revolt
ing a character as the consul described. But that was no crime. They were not after Bernardo Brown at all. Far more likely than arrest was a blackmailing approach inviting him to report on any likely artiste who might wish—or be persuaded to accept—the protection of a Captain of Police during her engagement in Bucarest.

Bernardo was satisfied. The future, after all, was still worth dreaming about. He could look forward to a further step in his profession as manager of the proposed new establishment in Ploesti, where he might well make so much money that Despina could retire and their delightful affair need not be interrupted. He had thought that it would be their last night together and intended to implant in his memory every downy, delicious half inch of her. That could equally well be done as a thanksgiving service. The only definite action that he was determined to take was to arrange an accident for Holgar, not fatal but ensuring a longish stay in hospital. It might be profitable to ask which of them had the highest record for septicaemia.

It was not surprising that he was a bit drowsy the following night at the Alhambra, paying no attention to audience or artistes. Shortly after Despina’s turn he had business with the maître d’hotel and walked round behind the band to the service door. From that angle the discreet box on the dais, where Pozharski had sat with Magda, was in full view. There were two Romanians in it. One was the tailor, Mircea Niculescu; the other was grey-faced and baggy-eyed with the plumply satisfied air of a politician or a colonel.

They were looking away from him, perhaps deliberately, but they must have seen his face again and again under the lights at the artistes’ entrance. David Mitrani had been identified as the man on the train in riding breeches. It was no good making a bolt for the street until he saw what the set-up was, so he continued on his way to the maître d’hotel, spoke to him and casually returned as if he had noticed nothing. He looked out of the back door. Across the street
were two brown-uniformed policemen who had never been there before.

The front door was bound to be guarded, but one might as well see. This time he passed round the other side of the hall directly below the dais. As he approached the box Niculescu pretended to be hunting for something under the table. The other man looked through him with a complete absence of expression.

Stelian was in his office. Nothing was to be lost by trying to guess whether the police had warned him or not. Bernardo asked him who the two fellows in the box were. They saw few middle-class Romanians unless a foreigner was paying the bill. Stelian answered that one was a Major Vlaicu of Military Security and the other his tailor.

‘How long have they been here?’

‘Since about half past eleven. Yes, that’s it. Mircea Niculescu didn’t look at all happy. I reckon he wanted his bill paid instead of being softened up with champagne.’

At first sight the front door did not appear to be guarded. Bernardo was tempted to jump straight into a
trasura
which had just delivered late arrivals, but the doorman simultaneously engaged it for a customer who emerged from the cloakroom slightly unsteady on his feet. Fifty yards up the street the cab was stopped by a municipal policeman accompanied by an apparent civilian, and the passenger was asked for his identity card. The other end of the street was blocked as well. Now that Bernardo knew what to look for, he could distinguish two figures in the shadow of a doorway. It was plain that these outside operators did not know his face, though they were bound to have a detailed description. Major Vlaicu had not ordered his men to come inside so that he could point out the suspect.

So much caution was alarming and could not be just for the sake of avoiding a scandal. Straight police arrests had been carried out before in the Alhambra, usually of some young fool who was spending someone else’s money in the
place; he was asked if he would take a drink in Stelian’s office and he went and nobody was any the wiser. No, Bernardo Brown, the international agent and assassin, was such an important catch that nothing was to be allowed which could put him on his guard.

The game was up, but it was impossible for Bernardo to guess how the end would come. He might be grabbed when the cabaret emptied or, if that was too long to wait, whenever Vlaicu thought fit to send a waiter quietly out to the doorman with a message to his operatives. Perhaps Vlaicu was wondering if Niculescu could possibly be wrong, since the suspect must have noticed him and had not shown a sign of agitation. It was lucky that Bernardo had been dreaming on his feet. If he had been more alert, he would have been out of there as soon as the tailor walked in and run straight into the net.