So Mr. Visconti was rid of both dog and general and was able to ride in reasonable comfort to Florence. Mental comfort was another matter, and the generals wife was hysterical with grief. I think Curran would have dealt with the situation a great deal better than Mr. Visconti. At Brighton, Curran would offer the last sacrament in the form of a ritual bone, which the poor beast of course could not possibly chew, to a dying dog. A lot of dogs were killed by cars on Brighton front, and the police were quite annoyed by owners who refused to have the bodies shifted until Curran had been summoned to give the corpse absolution. But Mr. Visconti, as I have told you, was not a religious man, and the consolations he offered, I can well imagine, were insufficient and unconvincing. Perhaps he spoke of punishment for the Frau Generals sins (for Mr. Visconti had a sadistic streak), and of the purgatory which we suffer on earth. Poor Mr. Visconti, he must have had a hard time of it all the way to Florence.
What happened to the general?
He was captured by the Allies, I believe, but Im not sure whether or not he was hanged at Nuremberg.
Mr. Visconti must have a great deal on his conscience.
Mr. Visconti hasnt got a conscience, my aunt said with pleasure.
Chapter 15
For some reason an old restaurant car with a kind of faded elegance was attached to the express after the Turkish frontier, when it was already too late to be of much use. My aunt rose that day early, and the two of us sat down to excellent coffee, toast and jam: Aunt Augusta insisted on our drinking in addition a light red wine, though I am not accustomed to wine so early in the morning. Outside the window an ocean of long undulating grass stretched to a pale green horizon. There was the talkative cheerfulness of journeys end in the air, and the car filled with passengers whom we had never seen before: a Vietnamese in blue dungarees spoke to a rumpled girl in shorts, and two young Americans, the man with hair as long as the girls, joined them, holding hands. They refused a second cup of coffee after carefully counting their money.
Wheres Tooley? my aunt asked.
She wasnt feeling well last night. Im worried about her, Aunt Augusta. Her young mans hitch-hiking to Istanbul. He may not have arrived. He may even have gone on without her.
Where to?
Shes not sure. Katmandu or Vientiane.
Istanbul is a rather unpredictable place, Aunt Augusta said. Im not even sure what I expect to find there myself.
What do you think youll find?
I have a little business to do with an old friend, General Abdul. I was expecting a telegram at the Saint James and Albany, but none came. I can only hope that theres a message waiting for us at the Pera Palace.
Who is the General?
I knew him in the days of poor Mr. Visconti, my aunt said. He was very useful to us in the negotiations with Saudi Arabia. He was Turkish Ambassador then in Tunis. What parties we had in those days at the Excelsior. A little different from the Crown and Anchor and a drink with poor Wordsworth.
The scenery changed as we approached Istanbul. The grassy sea was left behind and the express slowed down to the speed of a little local commuters train[153]. When I leant from the window I could see over a wall into the yard of a cottage; I was in talking distance of a red-skirted girl who looked up at us as we crawled by; a man mounted a bicycle and for a while kept pace with us. Birds on a red tiled roof looked down their long beaks and spoke together like village gossips.
I said, Im awfully afraid that Tooleys going to have a baby.
She ought to take precautions, Henry, but in any case its far too early for you to worry.
Good heavens, Aunt Augusta, I didnt mean that how can you possibly think?
Its a natural conclusion, my aunt said, you have been much together. And the girl has a certain puppy charm.
Im too old for that sort of thing.
You are a young man in your fifties, Aunt Augusta replied.
The door of the restaurant car clanged, and there was Tooley, but a Tooley transformed. Perhaps it was only that she had put on less shadow, but her eyes seemed to be sparkling as I had never known them do before. Hi, she called down the length of the car. The four young people turned and looked at her and called back Hi, as though they had been long acquainted. Hi, she greeted them in return, and I felt a small ache of jealousy, irrational as the irritations of early morning.
Good morning, good morning, she said to the two of us; she seemed to be speaking a different language to the old. Oh, Mr. Pulling, its happened.
Whats happened?
Whats happened?
The curse. Ive got the curse. I was right, you see. The jolting of the train, I mean it did do it. Ive got a terrible belly-ache, but I feel fabulous. I cant wait to tell Julian. Oh, I hope hes at the Gulhane, when I get there.
You going to the Gulhane? the American boy called across.
Yes, are you?
Sure. We can all go together.
Thats fabulous.
Come and have a coffee if youve got the money.
You dont mind, do you? Tooley said to my aunt. Theyre going to the Gulhane too.
Of course, we dont mind, Tooley.
Youve been so kind, Mr. Pulling, she said. I dont know what Id have done without you. I mean it was a bit like the dark night of the soul.
I realized then that I preferred her to call me Smudge.
Go gently on the cigarettes[154], Tooley, I advised her.
Oh, she said, I dont need to economize now. Theyll be easy to get, I mean at the Gulhane. You can get anything at the Gulhane. Even acid. Ill be seeing you both again before we go, wont I?
But she didnt. She had become one of the young now[155], and I could only wave to her back as she went ahead of us through the customs. The two Americans still walked hand in hand, and the Vietnamese boy carried Tooleys sack and had his arm round her shoulder to protect her from the crowd which was squeezing to get through the barrier into the customs hall. My responsibility was over, but she stayed on in my memory like a small persistent pain which worries even in its insignificance; doesnt a sickness as serious as cancer start in just such a way?
I wondered whether Julian was waiting for her. Would they go on to Katmandu? Would she always remember to take her pill? When I shaved again more closely at the Pera Palace I found I had missed in the obscurity of my coach a small dab of lipstick upon the cheek. Perhaps that was why my aunt had jumped to so wrong a conclusion. I wiped it off and found myself wondering at once where she was now. I scowled at my own face in the glass, but I was really scowling at her mother in Bonn and her father somewhere in the CIA, and Julian afraid of castration, and at all those who ought to have been looking after her and yet felt no responsibility at all.
Aunt Augusta and I had lunch in a restaurant called Abdullahs and then she took me around the tourist sights the Blue Mosque and Santa Sophia but I could tell all the time that she was worried. There had been no message waiting for her at the hotel.
Cant you telephone to the general? I asked her.
Even at the Tunis Embassy, she said, he never trusted his own line.
We stood dutifully in the centre of Santa Sophia the shape, which had been beautiful once perhaps, was obscured by ugly Arabic signs painted in pale khaki, so that it looked like the huge drab waiting-hall of a railway station out of peak traffic hours. A few people stood about looking for the times of trains, and there was a man who carried a suitcase.
Id forgotten how hideous it was, my aunt said. Lets go home.
Home was an odd word to use for the Pera Palace, which had the appearance of an Eastern pavilion built for a world fair. My aunt ordered two rakis in the bar, which was all fretwork and mirrors there was still no message from General Abdul, and for the first time I saw my aunt nonplussed.
When did you last hear from him? I asked.
I told you I heard from him in London, the day after those policemen came. And I had a message from him in Milan through Mario. Everything was in order, he said. If there had been any change Mario would have known.
Its nearly dinner-time.
I dont want any food. Im sorry, Henry. I feel a little upset. Perhaps it is the result of the trains vibration. I shall go to bed and wait for the telephone. I cannot believe that he will let me down. Mr. Visconti had a great belief in General Abdul, and there were very few people whom he trusted.
I had dinner by myself[156] in the hotel in a vast restaurant which reminded me of Santa Sophia not a very good dinner. I had drunk several rakis, to which I was unaccustomed, and perhaps the absence of my aunt made me a little light-headed. I was not ready for bed, and I wished I had Tooley with me as a companion. I went outside the hotel and found a taxi-driver there who spoke a little English. He told me he was Greek but that he knew Istanbul as well as if it were his own city. Safe, he kept on saying, safe with me, waving his hand as though to indicate that there were wolves lurking by the walls and alleys. I told him to show me the city. He drove down narrow street after narrow street with no vista anywhere and very little light, and then drew up at a dark and forbidding door with a bearded night watchman asleep on the step. Safe house, he said, safe, clean. Very safe, and I was reminded uncomfortably of something I would have gladly forgotten, the house with the sofas behind the Messaggero.
No, no, I said, drive on. I didnt mean that. I tried to explain. Take me, I said, somewhere quiet. Somewhere you would go yourself. With your friends. For a drink. With your friends.
We drove several miles along the Sea of Marmara and came to a stop outside a plain uninteresting building marked WEST BERLIN HOTEL. Nothing could have belonged less to the Istanbul of my imagination. It was three square stories high and might well have been built among the ruins of Berlin by a local contractor at low cost. The driver led the way into a hall which occupied the whole ground space[157] of the hotel. A young woman stood by a small piano and sang what I supposed were sentimental songs to an audience of middle-aged men in their shirt-sleeves sitting at big tables drinking beer. Most of them, like my own driver, had big grey moustaches, and they applauded heavily and dutifully when the song was over. Glasses of beer were placed in front of us, and the driver and I drank to each other. It was good beer, I noticed, and when I poured it on top of all the raki and the wine I had already drunk, my spirits rose. In the young girl I saw a resemblance to Tooley, and in the heavy men around me I imagined Do you know General Abdul? I asked the driver. He hushed me quickly. I looked around again and realized that there was not a single woman in the big hall except the young singer, and at this moment the piano stopped, and with a glance at the clock, which marked midnight, the girl seized her handbag and went out through a door at the back. Then, after the glasses had been refilled, the pianist struck up a more virile tune, and all the middle-aged men rose and put their arms around each others shoulders and began to dance, forming circles which they enlarged, broke and formed again.