by David Miller
“Use the reward for that,” Fidelman cagily whispered, “buy Holy Mothers.”
If he heard, Susskind gave no sign. At the sight of a family of nine emerging from the main portal above, the refugee, calling addio over his shoulder, fairly flew up the steps. But Fidelman uttered no response. I’ll get the rat yet. He went off to hide behind a high fountain in the square. But the flying spume raised by the wind wet him, so he retreated behind a massive column and peeked out at short intervals to keep the peddler in sight.
At two o’clock, when St Peter’s closed to visitors, Susskind dumped his goods into his raincoat pockets and locked up shop. Fidelman followed him all the way home, indeed the ghetto, although along a street he had not consciously been on before, which led into an alley where the refugee pulled open a left-handed door, and without transition, was “home.” Fidelman, sneaking up close, caught a dim glimpse of an overgrown closet containing bed and table. He found no address on wall or door, nor, to his surprise, any door lock. This for a moment depressed him. It meant Susskind had nothing worth stealing. Of his own, that is. The student promised himself to return tomorrow, when the occupant was elsewhere.
Return he did, in the morning, while the entrepreneur was out selling religious articles, glanced around once and was quickly inside. He shivered – a pitch black freezing cave. Fidelman scratched up a thick match and confirmed bed and table, also a rickety chair, but no heat or light except a drippy candle stub in a saucer on the table. He lit the yellow candle and searched all over the place. In the table drawer a few eating implements plus safety razor, though where he shaved was a mystery, probably a public toilet. On a shelf above the thin-blanketed bed stood half a flask of red wine, part of a package of spaghetti, and a hard panino. Also an unexpected little fish bowl with a bony gold fish swimming around in Arctic seas. The fish, reflecting the candle flame, gulped repeatedly, threshing its frigid tail as Fidelman watched. He loves pets, thought the student. Under the bed he found a chamber pot, but nowhere a brief case with a fine critical chapter in it. The place was not more than an ice-box someone probably had lent the refugee to come in out of the rain. Alas, Fidelman sighed. Back in the pensione, it took a hot water bottle two hours to thaw him out; but from the visit he never fully recovered.
In this latest dream of Fidelman’s he was spending the day in a cemetery all crowded with tombstones, when up out of an empty grave rose this long-nosed brown shade, Virgilio Susskind, beckoning.
Fidelman hurried over.
“Have you read Tolstoy?”
“Sparingly.”
“Why is art?” asked the shade, drifting off.
Fidelman, willy nilly, followed, and the ghost, as it vanished, led him up steps going through the ghetto and into a marble synagogue.
The student, left alone, for no reason he could think of lay down upon the stone floor, his shoulders keeping strangely warm as he stared at the sunlit vault above. The fresco therein revealed this saint in fading blue, the sky flowing from his head, handing an, old knight in a thin red robe his gold cloak. Nearby stood a humble horse and two stone hills.
Giotto. San Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero.
Fidelman awoke running. He stuffed his blue gabardine into a paper bag, caught a bus, and knocked early on Susskind’s heavy portal.
“Avanti.” The refugee, already garbed in beret and raincoat (probably his pajamas), was standing at the table, lighting the candle with a flaming sheet of paper. To Fidelman the paper looked the underside of a typewritten page. Despite himself, the student recalled in letters of fire his entire chapter.
“Here, Susskind,” he said in a trembling voice, offering the bundle, “I bring you my suit. Wear it in good health.”
The refugee glanced at it without expression. “What do you wish for it?”
“Nothing at all.” Fidelman laid the bag on the table, called goodbye and left.
He soon heard footsteps clattering after him across the cobblestones.
“Excuse me, I kept this under my mattress for you.” Susskind thrust at him the pigskin brief case.
Fidelman savagely opened it, searching frenziedly in each compartment, but the bag was empty. The refugee was already in flight. With a bellow the student started after him. “You bastard, you burned my chapter!”
“Have mercy,” cried Susskind, “I did you a favor.”
“I’ll do you one and cut your throat.”
“The words were there but the spirit was missing.”
In a towering rage, Fidelman forced a burst of speed, but the refugee, light as the wind in his marvelous knickers, his green coattails flying, rapidly gained ground.
The ghetto Jews, framed in amazement in their medieval windows, stared at the wild pursuit. But in the middle of it, Fidelman, stout and short of breath, moved by all he had lately learned, had a triumphant insight.
“Susskind, come back,” he shouted, half sobbing. “The suit is yours. All is forgiven.”
He came to a dead halt but the refugee ran on. When last seen he was still running.
PARSON’S PLEASURE
Roald Dahl
Best known to millions of children for works like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda, Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was also a master of the manipulative short story, many published in The Sunday Times, Esquire and The New Yorker, and adapted for television as Tales of the Unexpected. His screenplays include You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. On writing he said, “A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.”
Mr Boggis was driving the car slowly, leaning back comfortably in the seat with one elbow resting on the sill of the open window. How beautiful the countryside, he thought; how pleasant to see a sign or two of summer once again. The primroses especially. And the hawthorn. The hawthorn was exploding white and pink and red along the hedges and the primroses were growing underneath in little clumps, and it was beautiful.
He took one hand off the wheel and lit himself a cigarette. The best thing now, he told himself, would be to make for the top of Brill Hill. He could see it about half a mile ahead. And that must be the village of Brill, that cluster of cottages among the trees right on the very summit. Excellent. Not many of his Sunday sections had a nice elevation like that to work from.
He drove up the hill and stopped the car just short of the summit on the outskirts of the village. Then he got out and looked around. Down below, the countryside was spread out before him like a huge green carpet. He could see for miles. It was perfect. He took a pad and pencil from his pocket, leaned against the back of the car, and allowed his practised eye to travel slowly over the landscape.
He could see one medium farmhouse over on the right, back in the fields, with a track leading to it from the road. There was another larger one beyond it. There was a house surrounded by tall elms that looked as though it might be a Queen Anne, and there were two likely farms away over on the left. Five places in all, That was about the lot in this direction.
Mr Boggis drew a rough sketch on his pad showing the position of each so that he’d be able to find them easily when he was down below, then he got back into the car and drove up through the village to the other side of the hill. From there he spotted six more possibles – five farms and one big white Georgian house. He studied the Georgian house through his binoculars. It had a clean prosperous look, and the garden was well ordered. That was a pity. He ruled it out immediately. There was no point in calling on the prosperous.
In this square then, in this section there were ten possibles in all. Ten was a nice number, Mr Boggis told himself. Just the right amount for a leisurely afternoon’s work. What time was it now? Twelve o’clock. He would have liked a pint of beer in the pub before he started but on Sundays they didn’t open until one. Very well, he would have it later. He glanced at the notes on his pad. He decided to take the Queen Anne first, the house with the elms. It had looked nicely dilapidated through the binoc
ulars. The people there could probably do with some money. He was always lucky with Queen Annes, anyway. Mr Boggis climbed back into the car, released the handbrake, and began cruising slowly down the hill without the engine.
Apart from the fact that he was at this moment disguised in the uniform of a clergyman there was nothing very sinister about Mr Cyril Boggis. By trade he was a dealer in antique furniture, with his own shop and showroom in the King’s Road, Chelsea. His premises were not large, and generally he didn’t do a great deal of business, but because he always bought cheap, very very cheap, and sold very very dear, he managed to make quite a tidy little income every year. He was a talented salesman and when buying or selling a piece he could slide smoothly into whichever mood suited the client best. He could become grave and charming for the aged obsequious for the rich, sober for the godly, masterful for the weak, mischievous for the widow, arch and saucy for the spinster. He was well aware of his gift, using it shamelessly on every possible occasion; and often, at the end of an unusually good performance, it was as much as he could do to prevent himself from turning aside and taking a bow or two as the thundering applause of the audience went rolling through the theatre.
In spite of this rather clownish quality of his, Mr Boggis was not a fool. In fact it was said of him by some that he probably knew as much about French, English and Italian furniture as anyone else in London. He also had surprisingly good taste, and he was quick to recognise and reject an ungraceful design, however genuine the article might be. His real love, naturally, was for the work of the great eighteenth-century English designers, Ince, Mayhew, Chippendale, Robert Adams Manwaring Inigo Jones, Hepplewhite, Kent Johnson George Smith Lock Sheraton, and the rest of them but even with these he occasionally drew the line. He refused for example, to allow a single piece from Chippendale’s Chinese or Gothic period to come into his showroom and the same was true of some of the heavier Italian designs of Robert Adam.
During the past few years, Mr Boggis had achieved considerable fame among his friends in the trade by his ability to produce unusual and often quite rare items with astonishing regularity. Apparently the man had a source of supply that was almost inexhaustible, a sort of private warehouse, and it seemed that all he had to do was to drive out to it once a week and help himself. Whenever they asked him where he got the stuff, he would smile knowingly and wink and murmur something about a little secret.
The idea behind Mr Boggis’s little secret was a simple one, and it had come to him as a result of something that had happened on a certain Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before, while he was driving in the country.
He had gone out in the morning to visit his old mother, who lived in Sevenoaks, and on the way back the fan-belt on his car had broken, causing the engine to overheat and the water to boil away. He had got out of the car and walked to the nearest house, a smallish farm building about fifty yards off the road and had asked the woman who answered the door if he could please have a jug of water.
While he was waiting for her to fetch it, he happened to glance in through the door to the living-room and there, not five yards from where he was standing, he spotted something that made him so excited the sweat began to come out all over the top of his head. It was a large oak armchair of a type that he had only seen once before in his life. Each arm as well as the panel at the back, was supported by a row of eight beautifully turned spindles. The back panel itself was decorated by an inlay of the most delicate floral design, and the head of a duck was carved to lie along half the length of either arm. Good God he thought. This thing is late fifteenth century!
He poked his head in further through the door, and there, by heavens, was another of them on the other side of the fireplace!
He couldn’t be sure, but two chairs like that must be worth at least a thousand pounds up in London. And oh, what beauties they were!
When the woman returned Mr Boggis introduced himself and straight away asked if she would like to sell her chairs.
Dear me, she said. But why on earth should she want to sell her chairs?
No reason at all, except that he might be willing to give her a pretty nice price.
And how much would he give? They were definitely not for sale, but just out of curiosity, just for fun, you know, how much would he give?
Thirty-five pounds.
How much?
Thirty-five pounds.
Dear me, thirty-five pounds. Well, well, that was very interesting. She’d always thought they were valuable. They were very old. They were very comfortable too. She couldn’t possibly do without them, not possibly. No, they were not for sale but thank you very much all the same.
They weren’t really so very old Mr Boggis told her, and they wouldn’t be at all easy to sell, but it just happened that he had a client who rather liked that sort of thing. Maybe he could go up another two pounds – call it thirty-seven. How about that?
They bargained for half an hour, and of course in the end Mr Boggis got the chairs and agreed to pay her something less than a twentieth of their value.
That evening, driving back to London in his old station-wagon with the two fabulous chairs tucked away snugly in the back Mr Boggis had suddenly been struck by what seemed to him to be a most remarkable idea.
“Look here”, he said. “If there is good stuff in one farmhouse, then why not in others?” Why shouldn’t he search for it? Why shouldn’t he comb the countryside? He could do it on Sundays. In that way, it wouldn’t interfere with his work at all. He never knew what to do with his Sundays.
So Mr Boggis bought maps, large scale maps of all the counties around London, and with a fine pen he divided each of them up into a series of squares. Each of these squares covered an actual area of five miles by five, which was about as much territory, he estimated as he could cope with on a single Sunday, were he to comb it thoroughly. He didn’t want the towns and the villages. It was the comparatively isolated places, the large farmhouses and the rather dilapidated country mansions, that he was looking for and in this way, if he did one square each Sunday, fifty-two squares a year, he would gradually cover every farm and every country house in the home counties.
But obviously there was a bit more to it than that. Country folk are a suspicious lot So are the impoverished rich. You can’t go about ringing their bells and expecting them to show you around their houses just for the asking, because they won’t do it. That way you would never get beyond the front door. How then was he to gain admittance? Perhaps it would be best if he didn’t let them know he was a dealer at all. He could be the telephone man, the plumber, the gas inspector. He could even be a clergyman… .”
From this point on, the whole scheme began to take on a more practical aspect. Mr Boggis ordered a large quantity of superior cards on which the following legend was engraved:
THE REVEREND
CYRIL WINNINGTON BOGGIS
President of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. In association with The Victoria and Albert Museum.
From now on, every Sunday, he was going to be a nice old parson spending his holiday travelling around on a labour of love for the “Society”, compiling an inventory of the treasures that lay hidden in the country homes of England. And who in the world was going to kick him out when they heard that one?
Nobody.
And then once he was inside, if he happened to spot something he really wanted well – he knew a hundred different ways of dealing with that.
Rather to Mr Boggis’s surprise, the scheme worked. In fact, the friendliness with which he was received in one house after another through the countryside was, in the beginning, quite embarrassing, even to him. A slice of cold pie, a glass of port, a cup of tea, a basket of plums, even a full sit-down Sunday dinner with the family, such things were constantly being pressed upon him. Sooner or later, of course, there had been some bad moments and a number of unpleasant incidents, but then nine years is more than four hundred Sundays, and that adds up to a great quantity of hous
es visited All in all, it had been an interesting, exciting, and lucrative business.
And now it was another Sunday and Mr Boggis was operating in the county of Buckinghamshire, in one of the most northerly squares on his map, about ten miles from Oxford and as he drove down the hill and headed for his first house, the dilapidated Queen Anne, he began to get the feeling that this was going to be one of his lucky days. He parked the car about a hundred yards from the gates and got out to walk the rest of the way. He never liked people to see his car until after a deal was completed. A dear old clergyman and a large station-wagon somehow never seemed quite right together. Also the short walk gave him time to examine the property closely from the outside and to assume the mood most likely to be suitable for the occasion. Mr Boggis strode briskly up the drive. He was a small fatlegged man with a belly. The face was round and rosy, quite perfect for the part, and the two large brown eyes that bulged out at you from this rosy face gave an impression of gentle imbecility. He was dressed in a black suit with the usual parson’s dog-collar round his neck and on his head a soft black hat. He carried an old oak walking-stick which lent him in his opinion a rather rustic easy-going air.
He approached the front door and rang the bell. He heard the sound of footsteps in the hall and the door opened and suddenly there stood before him or rather above him, a gigantic woman dressed in riding-breeches. Even through the smoke of her cigarette he could smell the powerful odour of stables and horse manure that clung about her.
“Yes?” she asked looking at him suspiciously. “What is it you want?”
Mr Boggis, who half expected her to whinny any moment, raised his hat made a little bow, and handed her his card.” I do apologise for bothering you,” he said and then he waited watching her face as she read the message.