The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown

by Geoffrey Household

  Giurgiu was easy to reach. On his day off he was free from seven in the morning till ten p.m. the following day, thirty-nine hours if he did not sleep. He told himself—having no clear idea what sort of quixotry he intended—that he was killing two birds with one stone. He had always wanted to see the Danube.

  After a couple of hours in the train there it was: a majestic river of silvers and browns rather than blue with a swirling, noticeable current although the water was at its autumn low. Barges and tugs seemed to be the main interest of the port, and two ocean-going tramps were alongside the quay with its familiar line of warehouses and consulates including his own. For a moment he was tempted to go in. But better David Mitrani than that badly wanted Bernardo Brown, that unspeakable outcast who had assaulted His Majesty’s representative.

  The fairground was on the flood plain, upstream and well inland. He found it half dismantled with travelling carts packing up. He could see no sign of the Stepanovs, but did not explore too closely in case the man should spot him and become suspicious at his second appearance. It looked as though they had left. The time-table of the ferry showed only one crossing early every morning.

  Recognising a small menagerie which had been close to the ‘interesting’ exhibition at the Moş, he stood around waiting for a chance of casual conversation. The mangy animals, each in a cage hardly bigger than itself, were being hoisted on to an open truck: a leopard, a lion and a bear at the bottom, wolves, snakes and monkeys together with the empty exhibition cages on top. Short lives they must have, with hardly room to lick their sores. The bars of the wolf cage broke, but it made no attempt to escape, cowering utterly uninterested while the lid of a packing case was nailed in place.

  ‘Going to Bulgaria?’ he asked the showman.

  ‘Not me! A cruel lot the Bulgars are—no better than Turks!’

  ‘Does anyone go over there?’

  ‘Only if the show is big enough to put on rail. That’s too expensive for most of us chaps.’

  ‘What about putting a cart on the ferry?’

  ‘No room. But it will tow a boat. There’s one dirty dog is going that way. Next to me he was, exhibiting his own daughter. Pfui!’

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  ‘Four tits.’

  Bernardo showed a proper disgust, asked a few questions about the animals and strolled off. ‘Is going’ not ‘has gone’. So Stepanov must be waiting somewhere till next morning. There was no sign of him on the waterfront, on waste ground or in back streets, and so, after searching for a couple of hours, Bernardo settled down at a café table from which he could watch most of the activities of the port. His pro fessional eye observed that it was difficult to load a showman’s cart from the quayside; it would have to be lifted by crane. In the barge basin anything could be wheeled on board, but there the lighters were too large, built for strings behind a powerful tug and probably unmanageable behind a small steam ferry in a current.

  The thing to do was to ask questions, though his Romanian was not yet up to nautical technicalities. However, in a busy port it did not matter if he gave himself away as a foreigner. He got his answer at once. No, the ferry could not tow a barge, but at this time of year, if there were cargo which could not be accommodated, it would take a flat-bottomed boat picking it up from a hard beach above the town. The steamer had to go upstream anyway to Rusciuc.

  It was now evening. Bernardo walked out of Giurgiu along the Danube towards the marshes at the mouth of the River Vedea. A rutted earth road led him along the embankment to a distant maze of rushes beyond which a golden gleam of water reflected the low sun. He left the road and wriggled his way through the reeds to see without being seen.

  Just below him was a gravel bank with one flat-bottomed boat, plainly rotten, drawn up for repairs and another moored to two posts with only its stern aground. The current of either the Vedea or a backwater of the Danube rippled against the starboard beam. The ferry boat could go astern, take a line and tow it off with a minimum of delay.

  The eunuch’s travelling cart was on the hard, loaded with the poles, canvas and furniture of his booth. Nadya and Stepanov were eating something out of a pot suspended above the ashes of a fire. The pair of horses rolled on the gravel, shook themselves and stood hopefully over Nadya waiting for a piece of bread. An idyllic picture if one did not know the physical misfortune behind it all.

  While it was still light, the boatman came out from Giurgiu passing close to the invisible Bernardo, and after chatting with the Stepanovs let down the stern bulwark of the boat to form a ramp. Stepanov harnessed the horses, backed the cart on to the boat and helped the boatman to lash it down to ring-bolts so that all was ready for the morning. He then locked Nadya into a tiny, inconspicuous cabin between the driver’s seat and the load and strolled off into town with the boatman, leaving the horses picketed and munching at a pile of maize stalks.

  The flimsy cabin seemed inadequate protection for a lonely girl. However, there was nothing else worth stealing but the horses, and since Stepanov did not bother about one essential half of his livelihood it was natural that he would not feel much anxiety about the other. Bernardo went on board the boat and knocked on the wooden side of the cart’s cabin.

  ‘I am David. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  ‘Can you get out?’

  ‘Easily. I have another key. He does not know it.’

  She climbed down to the boat where she took his hand, not right to right but right to left like a child. He led her up to the bows where they sat in half light and silence except for the derisive racket of the frogs.

  ‘If you can get out, why don’t you escape?’

  ‘Where to?’

  Without knowing more of her history it was irresponsible to try to answer such a question. If like the wolf which would not leave its cage she had never known any other life, apathy would be understandable. But at some time, seven or eight years earlier, she had left a civilised world which included governesses.

  ‘You are not really his daughter?’

  ‘No. That is only what our papers say.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Not for a long time. He has gone to drink with the boatman.’

  ‘And you are off to Bulgaria in the morning?’

  ‘I don’t want to. It’s a frontier. I don’t want to.’

  So there could be emotion in those calm eyes. He had been on the right lines thinking of the wolf. But it looked as if her cage was larger than the cabin and the exhibition booth; it could be Romania which she considered safety.

  ‘Well, I suppose you needn’t,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘No. Not now. I shall come with you.’

  Bernardo was appalled. He had intended to talk, to give her advice and all his money if it meant a hope of freedom for her. This sudden trust out of the blue was completely unforeseen. Or perhaps sub-consciously it had been foreseen; perhaps it was just her instinctive trust which had compelled him to return, like turning back to pick a starving kitten out of the gutter when a cat was the last damned thing you wanted. And there it was! He couldn’t temporise. He couldn’t hand her over, like a decent, chivalrous caballero to a home for—for what? For four-breasted show-girls? He could only take action himself and alone without even a Sancho Panza to plead common sense.

  ‘What papers have you, Nadya?’

  ‘None. He has a passport with me on it.’

  ‘I suppose that as a Russian refugee you could get a Nansen Passport,’ he said more to himself than to her.

  ‘I don’t know what that is. But if I’m found he’ll have me brought back to him by the police.’

  As his daughter. Of course. Seduction of a minor—or, if she was not a minor, some other Romanian offence—was still another crime about to be added to the list. He considered his hours in Giurgiu. He had left no trail of curiosity behind him. Good enough for himself, but not for her. She would be picked up by the police in no time at all. He
looked at the figure sitting on the side of the boat opposite to him with the stained-glass face and pretty feet and the hunched peasant blouse. Would it be possible to dress her as one of those grossly overfed boys one saw about eastern Europe? And what happened afterwards? That was up to her with a bit of help from him. From him? It was only a few weeks since he had begun to be able to help himself.

  The sudden flash of hope and trust had died right out of her eyes.

  ‘You stared at me like they do. It’s not my fault.’

  ‘I was only thinking about dressing you up as a boy, Nadya.’

  ‘But I can’t! I mean—less than most.’

  ‘No, more than most. A fat boy.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘You might want a bit of—er—stuffing—well, in the middle,’ Bernardo said, very embarrassed, ‘if you could, I mean, manage it.’

  ‘I do already. I’ll try. We could forget it then.’

  That possibly settled that, but nothing else. The boat quivered and creaked at its moorings as if the hand of the river could only reach out to it after darkness had fallen. It was a bloody awful boat, Bernardo thought, not at all what he would choose for crossing the Danube to Bulgaria. Presumably it had taken the tow in safety scores of times, but it would certainly have been condemned by the Port of Bilbao even for the simple run down the River Nervion to the sea.

  ‘Can you forget it? Can you?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about it at all, Nadya.’

  He saw that he would have to be very careful with her. None of his usual silent thinking and dreaming. Silence meant to her amazement and disgust.

  ‘What were you thinking then? About Bulgaria?’

  ‘About making you disappear so that no one would ever look for you.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Drown you.’

  A bit abrupt, but there was enough light from the water for her to see his smile, and she had this extraordinary habit of finding eyes as communicative as words.

  ‘There would be no body.’

  ‘I don’t see why there should be. If you fell off the boat you’d fetch up in the Black Sea or the Danube marshes. Let’s go back to the hard.’

  From there she could watch everything he was doing. He did not want to disappear behind the loaded cart and leave her wondering if he would ever re-appear.

  He inspected the small lighter bit by bit, entirely absorbed by the short-term consequences of his plan; long-term consequences he refused to think of. The starboard bollard to which one of the mooring ropes was attached turned out to be bolted to rotten wood. It was bound to go sooner or later, and any inspector would see that. What he must not detect was that it had been helped with the sledge hammer which Stepanov used to drive in tent pegs.

  ‘Have you got a file in the cart?’ he asked Nadya.

  ‘What is a file?’

  He explained, and she brought out a tool box from under the driver’s seat. Bernardo filed irregularly through the two ropes which lashed down the cart so that they would appear to have broken. Whenever the lighter hit anything on its career downstream and heeled over, the cart would be tipped out with Nadya supposedly locked in the cabin.

  His conscience worried him. The poor were the poor, however vilely they earned a living.

  ‘I hope this won’t ruin him,’ he said.

  ‘He has plenty of money. He sends it home every week. And he had three days’ takings under my bed. I’ll get it.’

  ‘It will look as if you weren’t drowned.’

  ‘No, it won’t, David. It floated away—it floated away!’

  She laughed gaily and naturally without a sign of strain. Her face had never before revealed any likelihood of breaking into laughter.

  ‘And I shall set fire to the cabin.’

  ‘That is not necessary at all,’ he said firmly.

  ‘But God sent you, so God wishes it.’

  It was impossible to equate the juvenile delinquent with the pious angel. He told her to go ashore at once and hide in the rushes in case something went wrong.

  ‘Let me fetch the money and my wallet first!’

  She disappeared into the cabin for a moment, locked the door when she came out and then did as she was told, trotting—almost skipping—up the hard and into the darkness.

  Bernardo took up the sledgehammer and swung at the starboard bollard on the stern of the boat, hitting the loop of rope so that no mark would be left. It didn’t work. He then used a tent pole as a battering ram, which went straight through the rotten wood of the strake. He levered the whole bollard off and did his best to efface the marks of the pole by picking away with the file. With luck all the wood would be spongy when the wreck was found.

  The lighter swung to the stream as he expected, so that the stern was now afloat and held only by the rope round the port bollard. He had not decided on the least suspicious method of dealing with that. Meanwhile he concentrated on his work with the point of the file. When he looked up, at last satisfied with his arrangement of splinters, he made a jump for the hard. The mooring post was bent over and pulling out; a moment later it oozed clear of the ground. The boat, turning round and round in the main current and dragging rope and post most convincingly behind, was clear so far of shallows and on its way to the Black Sea.

  Footprints, now. Nadya’s did not matter. She had been about for hours and must often have gone to and from the boat. What of his own? He could not see any, but perhaps a detective would be able to spot something in the dust of the hard. He walked backwards up to the rushes sweeping Mr. Niculescu’s coat over the ground as he went. That would have to do.

  Bernardo collected Nadya from cover and hurried off on the road to Giurgiu. There was no other way, and Stepanov with or without the boatman might return at any moment. Fortunately the night was black so that they had only to take a few paces off the track and lie down to be invisible. He told her not to talk above a whisper and held her hand to give her confidence although she seemed in fact to be bouncing with it. He wondered what time the shops opened and where in this unknown countryside she could be hidden until he came back from town with boy’s clothing. They had the Danube on their right and, so far as he remembered, blank, open flood plain on their left. His short-term planning had been ridiculously short-term.

  Out on the river somebody appeared to be fishing fairly close to shore with a lit torch. A violent torch. It grew and flamed up. Cart, cabin, tent poles and canvas were all blazing on their course downstream.

  ‘That’s you?’

  ‘Yes, David. Only a candle.’

  ‘I didn’t see any light.’

  ‘I put it under the bed in the box where he kept his money, and some straw from my mattress for it to burn down to.’

  ‘You were supposed to be drowned.’

  ‘Yes, David. But you forgot the cabin was locked, so I couldn’t have jumped overboard. So I had to be burned up.’

  Bernardo did not argue. It was true that he had quite forgotten that Stepanov locked the door. Nadya and God were right. The calm, feminine simplicity of it was more effective than all his meticulous work. The boat had come much closer to the shore than he expected; its dark bulk could well have been spotted when passing the lights of Giurgiu and towed into port intact with no Nadya in the cabin.

  The flames lit up the whole river bank, sending them stumbling away from the water in a panic until Bernardo realised that they were quite safe in the rough grass a hundred yards inland and that it would be wise to lie there and watch exactly what happened. Already nothing was left of the cabin. The bonfire was of poles and canvas. Some of the load had fallen into the river; some was burning along side the cart and reasonably sure to destroy the wheels on that side. It was difficult to make out black outlines among the flames and smoke, but there was no mistaking an audible splash. The remains of the cart had gone overboard.

  ‘So I’m burnt,’ Nadya said with satisfaction. ‘And now nobody will ever look for me.’

  A launch put o
ut from Giurgiu and extinguished small spurts of flame before the boat had burned to the waterline. Then a shadowy line of men came running along the river bank with bobbing lanterns. They would have no trouble in reconstructing the disaster. The starboard bollard was on the beach still attached to the post by its broken line; the marks where the other post had worked loose from the ground and dragged could not be mistaken. The fire—well, after all, was it so unlikely? Nadya might have lit a candle before going to bed. With a lurch of the boat it fell over and her straw mattress caught fire.

  An hour or so later the procession returned with the horses, all talking at once. Their tramplings over the gravel must have wiped out every trace of earlier movements. Nobody, as Nadya had said, was ever going to look for her, but what if she could not be hidden and was seen?

  They moved cautiously over the plain, crossing dry or muddy ditches most unlikely to give adequate cover in daylight. There was nothing for it but to wait till the first grey of dawn when with luck nobody would be about and they could see further. Nadya curled up and dozed. The girl’s faith was all that prevented Bernardo, brooding in the damp dark over his lunacy, from advising her to give herself up. She would be quite safe. She had only to say that she jumped in time and lost herself in the featureless landscape. Then she could face the winter with at least a roof over her head and enough to eat, neither of which could be provided with any certainty by a suspected murderer.

  The light grew, showing a considerable expanse of grey water ahead without a stand of long rushes anywhere. To the west this lake or backwater looked as if it joined the Vedea, in which case there was no way round it; the eastern end was dotted by a few cottages where suspicious movements were bound to arouse curiosity. He woke Nadya and hurried towards the water. At the worst she must sit in it wherever there was a patch of vegetation to hide her head. In another half hour a standing human figure would be seen a mile away. The black raft of duck floating well out from shore was perfectly safe from gunners when they took off.