The Great Game

by Michael Kurland

  GS tells me the Interior Ministry believes Russian agents increasing activity in Hungary and Serbia ...

  -

  The report went on for another page and a half. He ended it with the note:

  -

  I have just come into possession of a list that might be important but at present tells me nothing. I shall continue to stare at it from time to time to see if its meaning suddenly leaps out at me.

  -

  When he was done, he put the pen back in its holder, capped the inkwell in his small writing desk, and carefully checked over what he had written. It said what he wished to say; it was comparatively tersely written; it would have to do. He spent the next two hours encrypting the report with his own specially devised cipher: page after page of a specially composed "Paul Donzhof" tone poem for chamber orchestra, written with thick black pencil on pre-lined paper. The musical score he created was playable—not enjoyable, but playable; and that would suffice. Then he carefully burned all his notes and the plain text message in the room's small fireplace and went to sleep.

  -

  Late the next morning, when most of the citizens of workaday Vienna were done skittering about on their way to their employment, Herr Paul Donzhof hailed a passing fiacre and took Fraulein Giselle Schiff to the Café Prinz Eugene for breakfast.

  "I do so enjoy being out with you," Giselle said as they settled at an outdoor table to the right of the entrance, one that would get more of the March sun and less of the March breeze. She looked up at him with a wide smile on her full red lips and her head arced just so. "We are such an attractive couple, passersby cannot help but stop and admire."

  "Well," Paul said, "half of us is, anyway. You must have practiced in front of a mirror to look so artless."

  "For hours," she agreed. "Klimt is painting me as Mary Magdalene with just this look."

  "Ah!" Paul said. "In that case your wonderful innocent look might become quite well known. Klimt's work has been described as 'degenerate' by the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, which might draw a large audience to his next show." He intercepted a passing waiter and demanded two coffees and the pastry tray.

  "What do they mean, these critics, when they say 'degenerate'?" Giselle asked.

  Paul considered. "It depends on just whom the 'they' is," he told her. "The word has come into vogue, and different groups are using it to mean just what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less, as Humpty Dumpty once said."

  "Who is this Humpty Dumpty?"

  "A childhood friend, never mind about him."

  Two waiters descended on them, one with their coffee and the second wheeling a heavily laden pastry cart. After due deliberation they made their selections: a Linzer törtchen for Giselle and a mohn strudel for him.

  "This is, perhaps, degenerate, is it not?" Giselle suggested. "Pastry for breakfast?"

  "Decadent at least, if not fully degenerate," Paul agreed. "But then breaking one's fast at"—he twisted around to peer at the clock on the wall inside the café and then twisted back—"almost eleven, would be considered in itself degenerate enough by the respectable burgers of Vienna. Early rising is synonymous with morality and industry."

  Giselle used her knife and fork to cut a tiny sliver from her törtchen and convey it to her mouth. "And what else is degenerate, my sweet?"

  "I know that voice." Paul said. "You're wondering now many degenerate acts we can accomplish before you sneak out of my room tonight."

  "No such thing!" Giselle stated, contriving to look shocked.

  Paul laughed. "All right. Let's see," he said, "there's the church's definition of degenerate: Whenever you hear a priest fulminating against degenerate behavior, you can be pretty sure he's talking about s-e-x. Then there's the Italian Doctor Cesare Lombroso, who thinks that criminals are degenerates, and he can pick them out by the shape of their nose and the angle of their earlobes. The police have a problem with his theories, as they've had little luck identifying criminals by their earlobes, and besides the police's definition of 'degenerate' usually involves blatant homosexuality. If the homosexuality isn't blatant, then the person involved is spoken of in hushed tones as an 'invert.' "

  "This is something I do not understand, homosexuality."

  "You wouldn't," Paul said. "Any man who doesn't look at you with great interest is beyond your understanding."

  "Well, I am interesting to look at, am I not?" Giselle asked, arching her back slightly and smiling her most innocent smile at him.

  "You certainly am," Paul agreed. He continued his linguistic excursion: "There's the pseudo-Darwinian theory of degeneration, based on a misunderstanding of the theory of natural selection, which holds that some races of humans or animals or plants— although they don't seem very interested in plants—are reversing their evolutionary rise to higher forms and degenerating back into lower forms. Lombroso's notions are an offshoot of this sort of thinking."

  "And this is not so?" Giselle asked.

  "Evolution does not have a direction," Paul explained. "Wherever it gets to is where it was going."

  "So."

  "And then there's the inventive pan-Germanic idea of the degenerate: anyone or anything that is not German, particularly if it is Czech, Hungarian, or Jewish."

  Giselle thoughtfully cut herself another sliver of törtchen. "Sometimes you surprise me with these things that you know," she said.

  "I believe that mankind can best be studied by its follies," Paul told her.

  "Which is why I study you," she said. "You are a folly all to yourself."

  Paul laughed. "And you are my folly," he told her. "I am mad about you."

  Giselle nodded. "Yes," she said. "And I am sane about you." She put her hand on top of his and squeezed gently. "We will discuss this. And now I had better go. I am posing for Klapmann today. I am a water nymph, and it takes me half an hour to properly arrange the construction of papier-mâché and gauze that he thinks is appropriate costume for a water-nymph." She stood up. "And what are you planning to do today?"

  Paul considered for a moment. "I plan to wander about the city disconsolately searching for truth and beauty, knowing I will find neither until I see you this evening."

  Giselle smiled down at him. "Keep that thought," she said, kissing him on the forehead. "I'll be home around four, but I want to work on my dolls for a few hours. You may take me out to dinner."

  "Thank you, you are so kind," Paul said. "I kiss your hand." And he did so, following the old Viennese custom with perhaps a shade more ardor than was absolutely correct.

  "You certainly do!" Giselle agreed. And she walked off down Verdegasse toward Klapmann's studio a few blocks away. There was, perhaps, a shade more sway in her walk than there would have been if she hadn't known that Paul was watching.

  Charles Summerdane looked out through Paul's eyes and wondered how Giselle would react when he proposed marriage to her; when he confided to her that he was actually an English gentleman. The fact that he was immensely rich, he knew, would not bother her in the least. He would have to give up the great game, but perhaps it was time he stopped playing games, even for the good of the Empire. There were other ways he could be useful. Besides, he was already pushing his luck. There were signs that some of Paul's associates were getting suspicious of the perhaps-too-carefree composer. Paul was half convinced that the young man in the fur-trimmed greatcoat who had entered the café shortly after they had was the same young man he had seen loitering across the street from their apartment building when they had come out this morning.

  Not for the first time he found he was glad that he was the younger son of a duke. If he were heir to the title and estates, it would be impossible to consider marrying a Viennese artist's model. The crowd, as the aristocracy called themselves for some reason, would never allow it. Even as it was it would be difficult.

  He could, of course, marry someone else and keep his artist's model discreetly in a flat in London. But he didn't want to marry someone else. And Giselle would not easily
consent to being kept in a flat in London. Well, he would marry her—if she'd have him—and the crowd could just make what they would of it. If they became too oppressive, he and Giselle could just buy a house in Paris. Perhaps they should do that anyway. Giselle would love living in Paris.

  Paul sighed and sipped at his coffee. A few minutes later he rose and entered the cafe, and headed straight back toward the lavatory. When he left he paused at an empty table to tie his shoe. "I think I'm being followed," he said in an undertone to a placid-looking, balding gentleman one table over, who seemed totally absorbed in the morning edition of the Neue Freie Presse and his half-eaten napoleon. "You don't know me."

  The man frowned slightly and kept reading. Paul dropped a thick white envelope containing his latest tone poem onto the chair next to him, shielding the action with his overcoat, and then returned to his table, threw a few coins on it, and headed off down the street.

  CHAPTER SEVEN — CHANCE

  Kingdoms are but cares.

  State is devoid of stay;

  Riches are ready snares,

  And hasten to decay.

  —Henry VI

  Age, Barnett reflected, was creeping up on him. Or perhaps it was merely his sedentary habits. Four days of playing tennis with the Bulefortes was taking an unfamiliar toll on muscles he had forgotten he had. Two sets of tennis each day was proving to be much harder work than he remembered it being. And, despite the fact that he kept telling himself he would benefit from the exercise, it was not getting easier as the days passed. His calf muscles were complaining bitterly now that today's session was over. Other muscles, he was sure, would soon join in. He should either play more often or give it up entirely. He soaked himself in the bathtub for half an hour, until the water grew quite tepid, and then set about dressing for dinner.

  Barnett found himself taking more care than usual over assembling the right evening costume. The new dinner jacket that he had been saving for Paris. And the gold links and studs with the opal insets that Cecily had given him for his last birthday. He rejected three collars before finding one that seemed to have the necessary pristine whiteness.

  Cecily was closeted in her room with Bettina, a young round-faced domestic that the hotel had sent up to act as her lady's maid, and Barnett felt odd about entering until her toilette was completed lest he should see her partially clad with a third person in the room.

  Being alone with one's wife was one thing; and how one chose to dress or not to dress was then one's own business. But, with even a maid present, seeing one's wife deshabille was just not done. Wasn't it amazing, Barnett reflected not for the first time, how the French had words for everything.

  Barnett had no doubt that Cecily would emerge looking elegant. She always looked elegant. What he wanted was her reassurance that he looked, if not elegant, at least passable. Somehow the impending dinner with the Bulefortes made him want to look as close to elegant as he could manage. This was, for him, a most unfamiliar feeling. He peered into the glass and struggled with the ends of his bow tie.

  The mummer trotted in and perched his tiny frame on the edge of the chaise longue. Dressed in a suit of wide, light brown cheeks and carrying a dark brown bowler, he looked like a cross between a racetrack tout and a bill collector. "Evening', Gov," he said. "My, don't you look swell."

  "Thank's, Mummer," Barnett said, adjusting the points on his collar. "It's my swell disguise. I'm going into swell company this evening."

  "I knows it. Who says I don't?" the mummer said, nodding sagely. "A big dinner with them Bulefortes what you been associatin' with."

  "That's right," Barnett agreed. "Signor Buleforte has invited us to a private dinner before our evening of bridge. It's to be very spoff."

  "Cook it himself, will he?" the mummer inquired. "Of course not, Mummer. Don't be silly."

  "There's somethin' off about them Bulefortes," the mummer said.

  "What? What do you mean 'off'?"

  "I don't know, Gov. They ain't what they seem, if you can see what I mean. They's got more servants than what they should, for one thing. I been hob-nobbin' with the population below the stairs 'cause of that other job you gave me. Only in this here establishment, they mostly resides up in the attic. And them Bulefortes got too many servants. And a couple of strange ones, too."

  Barnett decided that his bow tie looked as good as it ever would, and turned to face Tolliver. "You've got my interest, Mummer. How do you mean 'strange'?"

  "It's hard to say. They ain't really servants, I guess is what it is. At least not the sort what I has come to recognize as of the servant type."

  "That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the Bulefortes," Barnett pointed out. "You're not really a servant, when it comes to that."

  " 'At's the truth," the mummer admitted. "But then our provenance is not really of the most respectable, you and me, if you get my drift. We has a few old bones in our closet what might keep us off the honors list."

  Barnett took this attack on his respectability calmly. From anyone else he would have been insulted, but from the mummer these hints of shared memories of unspeakable crimes were a sign of friendship and respect. "What function do you think these nonservants of the Bulefortes fulfill?" he asked.

  "I don't rightly know. They looks like toughs to me."

  "Toughs?"

  "Yes. That's what I thinks. I heard them down in the pantry yammerin' away in some foreign tongue, of which I didn't understand a thrip. But the sense I gets out of it, if you know what I mean, was that they was toughs of some sort. Pro—you might say—fessional maulers and scrappers. They goes out in the scullery yard once a day and practices doing exercises simul—as it were—taneous, like. One of the serving girls told me that. She thinks they is bodyguards. She says they is annoyed with Signor Buleforte for not letting them stay right up next to 'im and 'is missus the whole time."

  Some Cockneys omitted their H's, some added them at every opportunity, some reversed their usage; Tolliver wove them in and out of his sentences with a random artistry.

  "Interesting," Barnett said. "What about that other business? You get anything on Lindner?"

  " 'Course I did. Who says I didn't?"

  "What'd you find out?"

  "Well, he may be an artist, like he says, but he ain't been doing it very long. His easel and all his paints and brushes and stuff are pretty much brand new. And he's got a couple of pamphlets hidden away in his dresser drawer in his room on how to mix paints and set up a canvas, and like that. The kind of stuff you'd study if you were trying to convince everybody you was a artist. And besides, he's only got a small tube of zinc white. First thing you learn if you're really trying to paint anything is to get a big tube of zinc white. A great big tube. And he picked the wrong shades of blue and yellow. If he mixes them he'll get mud."

  "Where did you learn so much about oil painting?" Barnett asked the little man.

  "I used to do portraits at Brighton Beach. One shilling for an amazing likeness, done at breakneck speed in charcoal. Two and six for a formal portrait done somewhat slower in oil. I was quite popular. The customers got quite a kick out of seeing a small person standing on a wooden box and painting away at their likeness. I don't know nothing about art, you see, but I does know a bit about oil painting."

  "You're priceless, Mummer," Barnett said.

  The mummer looked pleased. "I got me price," he said. "And there's something else what you might find interesting about that Lindner cove—he's got himself an helio-stat."

  "A what?"

  "One of them devices what with you send messages by sunlight. A little wooden stand with a mirror, and a kind of scrunched-up telescope for aiming."

  "How odd," Barnett said. "What can you see out his window?"

  "Water," the mummer said. "You get a grand view of the lake."

  "Thanks, Mummer," Barnett said. "We'll ponder that one for a while."

  Cecily came through and stood, like a goddess in shimmering red, in the doorway. She nodded
at the mummer and then turned to Barnett. "Dinner, my love," she said. "Shall we go down? We mustn't keep our host and hostess waiting."

  "I was going to ask you how I look," Barnett told her, taking her arm, "but with you beside me, no one will glance at me anyway. Let us go."

  Cecily smiled. "Now I remember why I married you," she said.

  The dinner, served in a private room off the regular dining room, was delightful. The room held a small but ornate wicker table, just right for four, with matching chairs and sideboard. There was a large pair of French doors giving a fine view of the mountains on the far side of the lake. The sort of room, and sort of view, that encouraged pleasant dining. Ariste Buleforte played host, having arranged the entire meal beforehand with the chef of the pensione, who was delighted to show off what he could do given a free hand and a slight monetary consideration. Three waiters and a pair of busboys were kept busy running back and forth with assorted dishes.