After Zenda

by John Spurling

  ‘Is hard,’ said Anna, still standing behind me.

  I looked round in surprise - she’d never volunteered any remark to me before.

  ‘You know what’s in this letter?’ I asked, waving it towards her.

  ‘You write,’ she said, making the movements of writing, ‘then Maria come back.’

  ‘What does she want - a written contract?’

  Anna shrugged again, then turned and clattered out into the kitchen - she always wore hard-soled shoes. I started to re-read the letter, then heard her returning. I took no notice, assuming she’d come to clear something, but when she remained standing beside the table, I looked up.

  ‘La mano.’

  She pointed to my left hand lying on the table while I held the letter with my right. I looked at my hand and turned it over, not understanding what she meant, thinking perhaps she wanted to read the lines and tell my fortune. She quickly put her closed right hand in my palm, opened and withdrew it. Lying on my palm were the crumpled picture of the Virgin and the little bunch of Yelena’s hair in its rubber-band which I’d had in my shirt-pocket on the day of my near-execution. The shirt had been washed several times since then and other clothes provided for me and I’d assumed the tokens had been thrown away or disappeared in the wash.

  ‘Thank you, Anna.’

  ‘Is good,’ she said. ‘L’amore. Don’t worry!’

  She smiled and clattered out. Did she mean Yelena might really love me in spite of her letter? Or that I should persist in loving her? Or that she thought the hair combined with the picture implied a higher, religious sort of love of which she approved? At any rate I felt cheered by her sympathy and followed her advice:

  Dear Yelena, Sorry! I don’t doubt your mission, but, unlike you, I have never had a great love and thought I might have found one. Silly me to be turned on by a serious person With a frivolous background like mine you should pity me and try to make allowances and if you ever look in a mirror you surely can’t blame me? I would much prefer, of course, to dedicate myself to you than to regaining my paltry inheritance, but you give me no alternative. I shall emulate Flavia and put my country first Onwards and upwards, then, and never until you say so yours, Karel.

  I left the letter on the breakfast table and went out for a run, then, after a shower, settled down on my bed to read a disapproving German account of King Charles I, a man both serious and silly, religious and unreliable, dedicated and inept. I dozed off for a while and when I came yawning downstairs in the early afternoon in search of something to eat, saw a pair of man’s legs stretched out towards the fire from one of the chairs. The owner was hidden behind a newspaper.

  ‘Hello!’

  It was Fisher John. He jumped up and shook my hand warmly.

  ‘The news (nooz) is very good,’ he said. ‘It looks as if there will be an inquiry into the Kapitsa Atrocity. The government is sending a minister to talk with the Second Regiment and they hope to agree details and free up the hostages in time for Christmas.’

  ‘Is Yelena back?’

  ‘No. That’s partly why I came - to let you know Maria would be away for a while. She’s in retreat.’

  ‘If it’s anything to do with me,’ I said, ‘I’ve written her a letter.’

  ‘I have your letter, Karl, and I’ll deliver it to her.’

  ‘You’ll be seeing her in retreat?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Why is she in retreat?’

  ‘To prepare for Christmas. This will be a big event in our programme, of course, and, given the latest news from Kapitsa . . .’ he flourished the newspaper, ‘. . . I should say a turning-point.’

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘I’d guess after Christmas, but we shall all meet up in Chostok on that day.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do meanwhile?’

  ‘That depends on you, Karl. Maria seems a little uncertain where you stand. But if you’re still going along with our programme, she asked me to tell you not to let up on your studies.’

  ‘You mean I’m just to go on reading by myself? That’s a bit fruitless - I need her to keep me up to the mark.’

  ‘Two points there, Karl. First, she wants a change of emphasis.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She thinks you’ve had enough historical orientation - she wants you to fill in on sociological, psychological, human problems.’

  I looked at him suspiciously. This sounded like the punishment cell.

  ‘How am I supposed to approach these problems?’

  ‘I’ve brought a pile of books for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And the second point is that I’m here to help you through them.’

  It was the punishment cell. I looked at him with undisguised horror. He looked back with a steady eye and an expression of deep concern.

  ‘To a Republican like myself, Karl, the idea of a king in the modern world is very alien. Having thought about it, though, I believe it could be a great idea and could even catch on in relatively small and backward countries like this. But if we’re going to make the experiment and back it with our own organisation, we need to know we’ve got the right material to work with - the right man in the starring role. That’s where I come in. Social psychology and related studies are my area of expertise and I want to pass some of it on to you.’

  I had a strong urge to demand my letter back. It wasn’t in the contract that I had to swop tutors. On the other hand, Christmas wasn’t all that far away, I had no desire to spend it with Freddy and Jennifer, and I thought I might just hold out.

  Fisher John moved into the chalet and set to work on his corner of the clean slate.

  20 The Three Kings

  I couldn’t make anything of Fisher John’s pile of books. That’s to say, I could have done if I’d wanted to, but their earnest tone and convoluted jargon and worst of all their stench of cheap moral perfume made me so angry that I threw several out of my bedroom window, where they sank pleasingly into the snow. My discussions with Fisher himself were no better. The ostensible subjects weren’t the issue at all. He was there to brainwash me, to give me what he called ‘a moral dimension’, to replace my ‘random reactions’ with a ‘thought-through agenda’. It wasn’t just cussedness that made me reject this completely. His ‘agenda’ was a mixture of simple Christianity with Middle American social problems and I couldn’t see it as any more relevant to Ruritania than my own brand of English consumerism. If Fisher was meant to be Yelena’s counterweight to Machiavelli, she couldn’t have done more to raise the old cynic in my esteem.

  I looked forward to Christmas and the end of this abysmal servitude to my contract with passionate longing - only to discover that the True Faith celebrated Christmas - like the Orthodox Church - on January 6th. I had to survive twelve more days of Fisher John’s tuition. I must say the man had patience. I never managed to make him lose his temper, even though when I’d first met him in the bar of the Astoria Hotel he’d seemed easy to annoy. But of course he saw me now not as a nosey outsider but a key element in the ‘programme’ and was determined somehow to discharge his role as my teacher and turn me into a good Disciple of the First Instance.

  I pressed this patient determination of his to every limit I could think of. He would come out on runs with me, when I would deliberately go extra miles or lose the way and land us in snowdrifts, and still, bedraggled and exhausted - he was older and a lot less fit than me - he would try to talk about my relationship with my father, my sexual experiences at school, my resentment towards authority, my feelings about race, gender and colour. He wasn’t a fool, he didn’t take the responses I gave at face value, he was just trying to ‘find my wavelength’. Then he would accompany me to the bar in the barracks and toy steadfastly with a glass of orange-juice while I knocked back beer and schnapps. After he’d helped me home a few times he gave up coming, having twigged that I only drank too much when he was with me.

  I’d feel more ashamed of this wh
ole episode - I do feel slightly ashamed - if it had been in any way my fault. Fisher - and certainly Yelena - should have known better. But of course fanatics, however worldly in some ways, never do: they would cease to be fanatics and lose all their purpose in life if they didn’t believe that somewhere round the corner every Saul is bound to fall off his horse on the way to Damascus. But I had another particular reason for resisting Fisher’s ‘agenda’: I suspected his own ‘moral dimension’ of being phoney.

  I kept quiet about what the Count had told me during the concert at Bilavice until just before our mutual torment was due to end. We were jogging towards the dam and passed through a small wood of trees without leaves. One of them was dead, a stump more or less my height, and as I drew level with it - Fisher was struggling along about fifty yards behind - I paused, running on the spot, for him to catch up.

  ‘Strange tree!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He was very short of breath, but continued manfully treading the snow beside me.

  ‘Looks human.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Reminds me of carving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thing in church.’

  ‘Church?’

  ‘Our Lady of Chostok - remember?’

  He looked very wary.

  ‘Uh-huh!’ Some cowboy sound like that, as we kept treading.

  ‘Did you save it?’

  ‘Uh-huh!’

  I started forward again, slowly so that he could keep up.

  ‘Where is it now?’

  There was no reply that I could hear.

  ‘Did you try Previce Castle?’

  Still no reply.

  We came to a small road leading to the end of the dam. There was a guard-post here, manned now by two of the guerrillas. I waved as we approached and the soldiers came out smiling and put their right hands on their hearts. This had become the soldiers’ own special salute to me, something between friendship and deference, and I returned the compliment as I ran past. At the point where the dam left the shore there was a kind of embrasure with a magnificent view along the dam itself, back up the lake to the triple peaks and down the sheer wall of the dam to the river and the hydro-electric plant directly under us. We stopped here, still jogging gently, to take in the view, as we often did before returning to the chalet.

  ‘Those soldiers think a lot of you,’ said Fisher, still breathing very heavily.

  I nodded, waiting for the catch. Fisher never paid me a compliment except as a sweetener for some moral pill to follow.

  ‘But there’s always a danger in taking these things too personally.’

  ‘It might make me vain?’

  ‘You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself already, Karl. You know that, I know that. We’ve talked about your superiority complex.’

  He meant he’d told me I had one.

  ‘So what’s the danger?’

  ‘The danger is using other people . . .’

  I reproduce the panting delivery of this sermon:

  ‘. . . for your own . . . purposes, when your real role ... is a conduit . . . Look at this dam! It’s ... a mighty thing ... a breath-taking spectacle . . . but if the dam . . . thought it was here just for its own purpose ... to be admired and saluted . . . for its beauty and size . . . wouldn’t we have to tell it ... that was false? . . . It’s only here as part of a whole system ... as a conduit . . . for electricity ... to the whole community.’

  He was still vaguely stamping his feet, but had stopped jumping up and down in his anxiety to get his message across.

  ‘Keep moving, Fisher!’ I said, ‘You’ll get chilled, your muscles will seize up.’

  ‘What we want you to do, Karl, what Maria and I want you to do, is declare yourself . . . for Jesus. Show everyone that you do accept your power and responsibilities in the name of a greater than yourself.’

  ‘I don’t see it matters what the dam thinks,’ I said, ‘Whether it’s just here to impress people or is a conduit for electricity. Or even whether it declares itself for Jesus. So long as it doesn’t crack and does its job. It could easily imagine, for instance, that it’s really meant to be a bridge across to the other side.’

  I climbed up on the wall of the embrasure, beside a locked iron gate which led down steps to the top of the dam. It was possible to jump down from here and I did.

  ‘What are you doing, Karl?’

  ‘Seeing how it responds as a bridge,’ I said and started to walk along the top of the dam.

  The thing was several feet wide and the water on the lake side a foot or two below it, so that in summer it would have been easy to walk along. Now, of course, it was covered in snow, which made it a bit treacherous, and there was also the nerve-wracking drop into a whole different landscape on my left. I was doing it, I suppose, partly to get away from Fisher, partly to show off, mainly because having mentioned the bridge idea I felt challenged to try it. I turned, unsteadily, to look back at Fisher. He was leaning on the parapet looking very worried indeed.

  ‘That’s an incredibly foolhardy thing to do,’ he said, ‘it’s irresponsible, Karl. You’re giving me kittens.’

  ‘The view’s terrific,’ I said.

  I turned and went on, but as I looked down at the view I slipped and almost lost my footing.

  ‘Please, Karl, please!’

  ‘Come and try it!’

  I had no thought that he would, but he jumped down and advanced a few steps along the dam, then stopped.

  ‘I want you to come back, Karl. I’m pleading with you to come back.’

  ‘In a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m enjoying myself.’

  Do I only ever enjoy myself provoking other people? It’s probably a tribute to my stint with Fisher that I ask myself such a question at all, but I reject it all the same. Making other people sweat is by no means my only enjoyment. I picked my way on along the dam.

  ‘Karl!’

  ‘Yes, Fisher?’

  I didn’t turn round. We were having to shout now anyway.

  ‘I believe this is an evil impulse in you. Please stop!’

  I did stop and stood with my feet apart looking down at the river far below in the valley. A light wind blew off the lake against my back and I stretched my arms out like wings and felt the chill starting to freeze the sweat on my torso. Then I turned my head towards Fisher. He had retreated a few steps and was leaning against the wall of the embrasure.

  ‘The evil impulse is telling me to jump,’ I called out, ‘but I’m resisting it.’

  He made no reply and I lowered my arms and walked slowly back towards him. When I was a yard or two away, I said:

  ‘It was a temptation.’

  ‘I could see that. I prayed for you.’

  ‘Would an angel have held me up?’

  ‘No, Karl.’

  ‘Then what were you praying for?’

  ‘That you wouldn’t be a damn’ fool and start dancing or waving your arms about.’

  ‘What about Our Lady of Chostok?’ I said. ‘The wooden one. Is it at Previce Castle or has it left the country?’

  ‘What do you mean, left the country?’

  ‘I know you considered it very valuable.’

  ‘I’d never do that, Karl.’

  ‘Never do what?’

  ‘Take it out of the country.’

  Pressed against the wall he looked and sounded like a small crook being interrogated by a bigger one.

  ‘Where is it now?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s safe. It’s quite safe for the present.’

  ‘At Previce Castle?’

  ‘I don’t think

  I started a slow dance where I stood, a sort of Highland fling, with my feet weaving and my arms curved over my head. He was right, it was very foolish. I hoped I wouldn’t have to go on for long.

  ‘It is at Previce, yes.’

  I stopped dancing.

  ‘That’s good. Does the Count know it is?’

  ‘Karl, it’s getting very cold.
We should start for home.’

  ‘You climb up, I’ll follow.’

  It wasn’t so easy to get up as to jump down and Fisher was nervous about making the sort of upward leap that was needed, in case he landed on the roof of the hydro-electric plant some hundreds of feet down.

  ‘Shall I go first?’ I said, ‘then I can give you a hand.’

  He pressed himself to one side while I jumped at the wall a couple of times and at the third attempt got my hands over the top and hauled myself up.

  ‘You can rest easy now,’ I said, straddling the parapet of the embrasure, ‘at least your valuable pupil is safe. But before we go any further I really want to know more about that statue. It means something to me. I nearly destroyed it that day in the church and then you kindly mentioned that it was a valuable part of my country’s heritage. You’re always urging me to think of the community and not myself and every time you say it I have this nagging memory of somebody telling me you wanted to get that statue out to the West.’

  ‘It’s not true, Karl. You’ve been misinformed.’

  ‘I’m relieved,’ I said, getting behind the parapet and leaning over, with one hand dangling towards him, ‘but I still want more details. Does the Count know what it is, does he know where it is?’

  By the time I’d pulled him up the wall to safety he was shivering uncontrollably. The wind had strengthened and it was certainly very cold. We warmed up again running home, but we were probably lucky not to catch pneumonia. According to Fisher, he’d visited the Count and suggested the export deal solely so as to look over the castle and see if there was a suitable hiding-place. Then he’d arranged the trip for the Count and Vladek to the concert at Bilavice and at the same time organised a visit to the cinema in Chostok for all the staff at the castle, while two trusty members of the True Faith had hidden the statue for him. So no one at the Castle had any knowledge of it and he very much hoped I wouldn’t tell them.

  ‘Its safety is all I mind about,’ I said. ‘But is Yelena in the secret?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That kind of thing doesn’t bother her. She wouldn’t consider it an issue.’