by Paul Bailey
‘They will laugh and play when you have gone,’ Aureliu Florescu assured her. ‘When I have said the little I have to say concerning my brother.’
The little he had to say, after his wife had left the room with a pitying smile aimed at Kitty, contained no revelations. Virgil, she heard, was a natural outcast, a man out of tune with the times. ‘He was not a sportsman. If he had boxed or played football his life would have been easier. He lived too much inside his head.’)
‘Is this the prelude to another story? Tell me about the Russian soldier, then.’
The dirtiest of all the devils, the fiendish Scaraoski, was running away from his joyful tormentor when she stopped the car in front of Derek Harville’s Tudor cottage.
‘Happy birthday, Daddy.’
‘Thank you, my dearest darling. Where are the years going? Where have the years gone?’
‘A fondness for rhetorical questions is one of the more irritating characteristics your father has assumed since you were here last summer. Be prepared for a plethora of them this afternoon. Monkey’s bums at the ready, if you please, Crozier.’
‘Have you a monkey’s bum for me, Kitty darling? I shall quite understand if you haven’t.’
‘Of course I have. I always have.’
‘That’s my daughter.’
They kissed twice, and then she hugged him.
‘Welcome back, Virgil. I scoured Green Park in search of you a couple of Wednesdays ago. I fell to wondering, I confess, if you had fled the country.’
‘I am in another park. I am working in Kensington Gardens.’
‘Virgil’s a gardener now.’
‘Kitty exaggerates, Derek. I plant the bulbs and seeds as instructed and I pull out the flowers when they are dying. You are a true gardener. I am a novice.’
‘Your flattery does you proud. And so does your modesty.’
‘You remember Virgil, don’t you, Daddy?’
‘Ah, yes. The Albanian.’
‘Romanian.’
‘Same neck of the woods. I hope he’s treating you well.’
‘Ask him.’
‘No, no. No necessity, I’m sure.’
‘Absolutely no necessity, Crozier. I’m afraid we shall have to be housebound today. Crozier’s Maker, as you can hear, is in a skittish mood regarding the weather. Or must we suppose the thunder and lightning are some kind of celestial tribute to the grand old man on his – I hesitate to risk a number – on his umpteenth birthday?’
‘You may mock, Derek.’
‘May I? That’s gracious of you. May I also fetch the champagne and open it?’
‘Permission granted.’
Derek Harville walked backwards out of the room.
‘What a sarcastic so-and-so Derek is. Picks me up on every word I utter.’ Felix Crozier put a thumb to his nose and twiddled his fingers at his companion. ‘That elegant package you’re holding, my dearest darling – it isn’t for me, is it?’
‘Yes, Daddy. It is.’
‘I hope you haven’t spent money you can’t afford.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘Because your terrible father doesn’t deserve expensive presents.’ He tore off the wrapping paper with a child’s eagerness. ‘It’s a tie, Kitty. A lovely silk tie. Italian, I see. Very discreet, very tasteful. You should not have bought it, but you did, and I am deeply touched. Thank you. Another monkey’s bum is in order, I think, while that wretched Derek is in the kitchen.’
They kissed again, in the way he had taught her to kiss that far-off Easter, by the monkey house.
‘Unhand her, Crozier, and clear the newspapers from the table.’
‘Allow me.’
‘You are courteous, Virgil. Toss them in the empty jardiniçre, s’il vous pîait.’
‘Look what Kitty has given me, Derek. Isn’t this the loveliest tie?’
‘Loveliest? It’s certainly becoming.’
‘Only five years ago it would have been the ideal present for me. I was still a touch vain then. I admit it, I admit it. The ageing peacock still cared about his appearance, more fool he. But he has changed since his return to England. I mean I have changed since my return. I’m not vain any more. I am even a bit of a country bumpkin. I hardly dress up at all. Except for church, that is. I like to be presentable in church. Not ostentatious, oh no. Not that I was ever really ostentatious in my dress – just smart. I shall wear your lovely tie to Evensong this week, Kitty darling. That’s a promise.’
‘You never used to be a regular church-goer.’
‘True, my darling, true. I led a life devoted to Mammon, and to Mammon alone, as you know all too well. I wish I could somehow compensate for my wrongdoings, but time is no longer on my side. Sitting in that Norman church –’
‘Saxon, Crozier. It’s Saxon.’
‘Sitting in that ancient church, where so many have sat before me, I feel – oh, what do I feel? – I feel humbled. Yes, that’s what I feel. And uplifted, too. Humbled and uplifted.’
‘How very affecting, Crozier. Take a glass.’
‘Bless you, Derek.’
‘What was that work you used, Virgil? Noroc, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s wish the birthday boy masses of noroc.’
‘Noroc, Daddy.’
‘Noroc, Felix.’
‘Thank you, thank you. It may surprise you, Kitty, but if Daisy walked in right now, guns blazing, I would find it in my heart to be polite to her. I honestly believe I really would. What’s more, I believe I could forgive her for those incredibly nasty phone calls and letters she bombarded me with.’
‘But would she forgive you, Crozier? Has it not occurred to you that Kitty’s termagant twin may not have achieved the state of grace her absent parent has attained – with the minimum of anguish – in his dotage?’
‘I said guns blazing, Derek, and guns blazing is what I meant. What news of her, Kitty darling?’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unusual.’
(‘He’s not like our ghastly father, is he?’ Daisy had remarked to her sister the night before her wedding. ‘No one could describe Cecil as a handsome beast. I must be the only girl who has ever given him a second look. It stands to reason that I’m not infatuated with him. Besides, I’m not the type for infatuations. He’s dependable, is Cecil. I want some safety, Kitty, and Cecil has safety written all over him.’)
‘You haven’t revealed my whereabouts?’
‘No, Daddy. Of course not. Consider yourself safe from Daisy’s blazing guns.’
‘Well, my darling, as I say, I have it in my heart to forgive and be forgiven. And how is your splendid mother?’
‘Nelly’s still splendid. She’s off on one of her Egyptian jaunts. She sent me a postcard from the Sudan last month, with the cryptic news that she is thriving.’
‘The Sudan, Kitty? My word – the Sudan. Just fancy – the Sudan. Not a place for a single woman of any age, let alone Eleanor’s, the Sudan, I should imagine. I hope, for her sake, she’s wearing sensible headgear. The Sudanese sun must be pretty fierce, what with the amount of sand there is. I once posed with a camel, Kitty darling. Not in the Sudan, naturally. No, this brute came from the Bronx Zoo. I had to stand alongside him – I presume he was a him; I didn’t explore below – dressed in a white tropical suit and my, did the creature stink. He yawned an awful lot, I remember, and when a camel yawns it shows its yellow teeth and fouls the air with its rancid breath. Yet in the photograph, which is in one of my albums upstairs, the camel and I come across as the best of old friends – the master and his trusted steed, as it were. Not a hint of stink. But then, the camera can’t capture a smell, can it?’
‘The thunder’s getting nearer. We shall be eating wild salmon, Virgil, as a mark of respect to your feelings. There will be no blood on our plates today.’
‘You are kind, Derek.’
‘I read an article just this morning about the man with the unpronounceable name who runs your country. How do you
pronounce it?’
‘Please do not be offended, but I would prefer not to say it. His is a name I never speak. I call him the Conducator. The Leader.’
‘As you please, in that case. It seems that he is destroying villages and building himself a monumental palace.’
‘He is, yes. He is.’
‘I assume he is short in stature. The worst tyrants tend to be small. They resent having to look up at their fellow men.’
‘They do. This one certainly does. When the French president, who is immensely tall, visited Romania, his height caused problems for our respectful photographers. He stood way, way above our Leader. He towered over him. The photographer who reflected this obvious fact would lose his job, even be certified insane, perhaps, since what is obvious to the man who has eyes to see is not obvious to the Conducãtor and the people who keep him in power. When the photographs of the two smiling presidents appeared, one was distinctly smaller than the other. The Frenchman had undergone a severe cropping – is that the term? – and was now two or three inches shorter than his host. They say the camera never lies and maybe it doesn’t. But the person behind it does – when he has to; when his life is dependent on the lie itself.’
At Derek Harville’s request, and to Felix Crozier’s annoyance, Virgil described the Conducãtor’s other ‘endearing foibles’. He mentioned the insensible bears and the fearless hunter shooting – and sometimes missing – them at close range; Comrade Corbul, the black Labrador, riding in lone state down the Street of Victories; the gargantuan, ghostwritten speeches, delivered with a robot’s attention to nuance; the books of those same speeches, in a multitude of languages, attracting nothing but dust in a bookshop in the capital from which all other books are banished; the tasters of wine and food, employed to eat the presidential meat and drink the presidential claret before each and every meal – ‘There might be a poisoner in the building. The tasters perform this daily ritual to protect the Conducator and his consort. It is of no importance if they foam at the mouth and die. That’s their duty.’
‘The notion of poisoning Crozier, with a dash of ratsbane in the beef stew or the poulet à l’estragon, has not lost its appeal for me. Did the tasters apply for the job, Virgil? Did they supply references from other demented, but satisfied, employers?’
‘Oh, that is – that is – that is – that is felicitous.’
(Her lover shouted the word he had struggled to find. Virgil’s triumphant ‘felicitous’ was the prelude to an outpouring of laughter that followed a now familiar course. He spluttered to begin with and tried to say ‘felicitous’, but could not get beyond the second syllable. A sound from somewhere deep in his throat rose steadily higher and higher and ended, eventually, in a gasp for breath. Then he sighed and said ‘felicitous’ quietly.
‘That was his last outburst,’ she would tell Dinu Psatta in Paris. ‘I never heard him laugh like that again.’)
‘Are you finished, Virgil?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘You are the perfect audience, the ideal listener. My witticisms usually fall with a thud on the none too responsive ears of Crozier, who is slow to appreciate the pearls I cast before him. But you are generous with your laughter and I am grateful to you.’
‘I used to be frightened of thunderstorms, Kitty darling. I was a real cowardy-custard. I crawled under tables and hid in wardrobes. I turned to instant jelly as soon as a storm started. Not any more, though. I’m not hiding, am I?’
‘No, you aren’t hiding, you brave soul. You are courage incarnate. We are drawing inspiration from your heroic presence among us.’
‘Mock on, Derek. Mock on. I need my lunch. I’m starving. And so is Kitty’s friend, if I am any judge of appearances.’
‘He has a name, Crozier. Call him Virgil.’
‘I am only peckish, Felix. I do not starve in England.’
‘You’re too thin, young man. Peckish, indeed. Even in my heyday, when I was svelte, I had a healthy appetite. Peckishness is for women. You could do with fleshing out.’
‘Could I?’
‘Yes, you could. You’re lost inside those clothes. That jacket is several sizes too big for you. I’m not the snappy dresser I once was, I admit, but at least everything I wear fits me. Nothing fits you, young man. Your shoes, yes, but nothing else. I’m surprised Kitty allows you out of the house.’
‘Don’t be surprised, Daddy.’
‘Where on earth do you get them?’
‘My clothes, Felix?’
‘Exactly.’
‘In shops. You have such shops here that sell – what is the word? – cast-offs. I wear cast-offs. I am happy to wear things other people have worn.’
(‘I love to hold a book that has passed from hand to hand. I feel a kinship with the readers who were there before me. It’s as if I am communing with them when I turn the pages.’
The feeling had come to him first in early childhood, he told her, and had never deserted him. The thought of his great-grandparents reading the story of Harap Alb by candle-light from the selfsame book his mother had just left at his bedside was strangely exhilarating. ‘They were dead, Kitty, but I felt they were with me. In spirit.’
The copy of George Herbert’s Poems, which he was to buy at a stall on the Left Bank and which she would take out of the Galeries Lafayette bag when she knew he was gone from her life, had been the property of a Mr Cedric Tiverley, who had acquired it on 19 September 1895, as his yellowed ex libris testified. ‘I am passing Mr Tiverley’s precious book on to you. It is not a cast-off, like the clothes I wore that so upset the stylish Felix. Mr Tiverley died, I think, and then it set off on its travels. Now it is travelling from me to you, with love.’)
‘Each to his own, of course, but I wouldn’t be happy in somebody else’s cast-offs. There’s no way of knowing who that somebody else is or was, is there? He might be the world’s worst scoundrel. And then there’s the matter of somebody else’s body odour. However much you boil his shirts or clean his trousers, his smell is always present, however faint. I presume you draw the line at underpants?’
‘Me? Yes, Felix. I draw the line.’
‘Let us draw a line under you, Crozier, and go in and eat. The sooner your mouth is occupied with food, the better the day will be for Kitty and Virgil, and your embarrassed factotum.’
‘I meant no offence, Derek.’
‘All is made clear. That was ingratiating charm you were exhibiting. How imperceptive of me.’
‘I am not offended, Derek. I am truly not offended.’
After lunch, Felix Crozier talked of his impending death. Soon, too soon, he would be in a place where there was no cucumber mousse, no salmon, no mayonnaise, no Jersey potatoes, no gooseberry fool, no Sauvignon Blanc, no Armagnac – no, not one of the delicacies his good but mocking friend Derek had set before them. It was his profound hope that Derek would continue to treat himself to these modest luxuries when the subject of his mockery was six feet underground. Did he have Derek’s promise, Derek’s solemn word, that this would be the case?
‘You are drunk, Crozier. You are as drunk as a maudlin skunk.’
‘Not maudlin, Derek. Heaven forfend. I am merry. I am a little merry, as an old man deserves to be on his birthday.’
On the journey back to London he finished telling her the ‘half-told story’ of Ivan, the soldier who – unlike Felix, if Felix was to be believed – cannot abide the idea of dying. God has granted him a glimpse of Paradise, where he was bored, and he has been to Hell, too, which was more to his taste, but overall he prefers the known world of rivers and forests, of firelit taverns, of whores and vodka. When Death comes to see him he decides he must outwit her –
‘Her, Virgil? Is Death a woman?’
‘In the folk tales, yes, because my ancestors – in their wisdom, or lack of it – regarded Death as God’s handmaiden, doing his bidding. Sometimes she seems capricious – striking down the young and healthy, snatching the newborn baby from its grieving mother – but
to the old and weary she is a welcome guest. Not to Ivan, though. He is determined to cheat her. He wants what you call the last laugh.’
When he was a boy, reading and rereading ‘Ivan Turbincã’, reading it so often that he knew whole passages by heart, he was most amused, most excited, by Ivan’s cleverest trick, the ultimate coup de main. Ivan has been commanded by his exasperated God to quit fooling – ‘Creangã did not write “quit fooling”, Kitty. I heard “quit fooling” in a movie’ – to quit fooling with Death, who has complained to Him about Ivan’s mad behaviour. God releases Death from Ivan’s knapsack and warns the soldier, who was once kind and compassionate, that enough is enough. Ever since God blessed the knapsack, giving it supernatural powers, Ivan has got above himself and now must rue his fate. It is Ivan’s turn to die; it cannot be avoided. Ivan is contrite and beseeches God, with tears in his eyes, to grant him three days in which to cleanse his soul and make his own coffin. God answers his final prayer, deprives him of his knapsack and instructs Death to take Ivan away after three days.
With his two silver roubles Ivan buys wood, cords, hinges, nails, a pair of rings and a strong chain, and starts to construct his ‘everlasting house’. On the fourth day, while he is standing back and admiring his work, and thinking of the earth that will cover his beautiful little house, Death appears behind him and asks if he is ready. He smiles at her. Yes, he is ready.
Death is relieved to hear this and suggests that he get into the coffin immediately. There is no time to lose, she says. She had people to visit who were waiting for their passports.
It is then that Ivan performs the cleverest of his clever tricks. He gets into the coffin and lies face downwards. Death is mildly irritated by his silliness and tells him to lie in the proper position for a corpse, so he moves on to his side, letting his feet hang out. Death is beginning to be annoyed and reminds him that she is in a hurry. Will he please behave like a sensible corpse? Ivan turns on his other side, with his head dangling and his feet still hanging out, and Death responds with words that are music to him. She calls him a fool and orders him to get up from the coffin. She will show him the correct position for eternal rest.