by John Elliott
She decided to buy some fruit and go back to the apartment. Ahead round the next corner, she spotted a yellow and black illuminated sign saying Gallo Mart, which she recognised from her visit to the gallery. The ‘o’ after ‘Gall’ was malfunctioning, switching itself off and on. Inside the automatic door, her nostrils breathed a waft of recycled heated air. Soft muzak filtered between the shelves and round the gondolas. Following the signs suspended from the ceiling, she moved to the right and back of the store where she quickly located a packet of instant soup. On her way back to the checkout, she picked up a net of clementines from a special offer bin. The yellow and black striped plastic carrier bag she put them in informed her that Gallo Mart cared for local people.
In Tara Village, once she had finished a bowl of the soup and had eaten two of the clementines, she felt better. She picked her way through the rack of CDs that she had already christened ‘Emily Brown music’. Selecting one from the middle, she loaded it into the cheap hi-fi on the occasional table by the window. Neither the singer nor any of the numbers were familiar. She scanned the contents on the reverse of its jewel box—‘Forgotten Lips’, ‘Cuban Party Time’, ‘My Midnight Ghost’, ‘Rumba Nova’, ‘Mister Quitter’, ‘Angels In Ohio’—then programmed one and four.
While it was playing, she made herself a coffee and knelt in front of the low bookcase in the bedroom. Emily Brown’s books consisted of well-thumbed second-hand paperbacks with a decidedly romantic fiction slant. The Return to Manderley stood next to Judith Remington followed by the fat tome of Folly of the O’Regans and its slimmer sequel Madcap Mistress. She pulled out Fading Wisteria from the bottom shelf and saw a thin hardback jammed against the wall. Extricating it, she went back into the sitting room and programmed another track of the CD.
The book she held had a bluish-purple cover. Its pages were edged in gilt. The title page informed her that Encounters on a Mountain Road by Werner von Clems (born Koblenz 1886 died Montevideo 1935) had been translated by Alexander McGillvary (Regius Professor of German, St Andres University). A photograph of the author, covered by a sheet of tissue paper, on the next page led on to one headed ‘Encomia’. She read the first two entries.
‘Often, partly in jest but yet with a degree of deep-seated seriousness, Robert Musil would say, “What I wouldn’t give to have written von Clems’s books. Encounters On A Mountain Road in particular. One could die happy with the attainment of that shining summit.”’ (Stefan Zweig, My Conversation With Musil)
‘I would not be standing here today if Werner von Clems had not been my guide and inspiration.’ (Knut Hamsun from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech)
Always preferring to start a book anywhere but the beginning, Agnes tucked her feet beneath her body on the sofa and spread the book open at page 43. She speed-read another three pages before settling down to join the narrative.
Matthias Lemmel had never felt truly happy until he arrived in Sweden in the spring of 1906. The realisation dawned on him as he sat in the midst of a crowded mail train carriage, somewhere between Alvesta and Karlskrona. A piercing shaft of joy lit up his very being. He was overcome by a delicious and ever-increasing tide of contentment, which, in spite of his normally reticent nature, set his feet to tapping, his pulses to racing and his mouth to alternate between an inane grin and a hearty chuckle. He felt quite as though he had taken leave of his senses, such was the passion with which he viewed his fellow travellers pressed around him. Gazing with delight at the passing landscape of meadow, forest and lake, he saw himself striding out down the track, momentarily framed in the window between the pines and silver birches to the road that wound afar to a dimly visible farmstead in the blue distance. He imagined the sweet, clear air suffusing his newly ruddy cheeks, while the breeze tugged at his burgeoning beard. His cap was set at a jaunty angle. He held an ash plant firmly in his right hand. Ready for the road, he thought. Oh yes, at last I am ready for the road. Matthias was so encouraged he began to talk excitedly with the man and woman sitting opposite. Soon, in an unaffected way, he had drawn in the elderly gentleman seated beside him and those others curious enough to give heed to his conversation. He told them of his plans, his hopes and his dreams. He painted the picture of his past sufferings and numerous privations, which had weighed so heavily upon his soul in his journey from youth to manhood. ‘Now,’ he declared, ‘those chains of resentment, for so long forged in a gnawing, sullen fire, are nought but webs of gossamer, idly rent asunder and forgotten in the slanting rays of the sun. I’ve become myself, for the first time I believe I am finally I.’ He was twenty-eight years old.
In the ensuing weeks and months, he carried all before him in the surge of his newfound euphoria. Townspeople were genuinely glad to make his acquaintance. Everywhere he went he was met with a wave of recognition and a smile. Shopkeepers addressed him by name after one perfunctory visit to their establishments. Business colleagues attended to his suggestions without ill feeling. Workmen good-naturedly followed his commands. His peers lauded him like the very devil, clapping him on the back as the soundest fellow they had come across for a very long time. Members of the board even spoke of Lemmel as a coming man, followed by no less a worthy than the Director himself.
‘Young dog,’ said Gunnar Lovestrom approvingly to the burly figure of Eric Johansson, the chairman of the company, who was in the act of parting his frock coat and warming his backside at the corner of the stove, when they had retired for French cognac and cigars. ‘Young dog,’ repeated Gunnar.
‘Young Lemmel. New blood.’
‘A chip off you and I, Gunnar,’ replied Johansson, contentedly. ‘In our youth, eh, in our not-forgotten youth.’
Nor was the interest shown in Matthias solely confined to the male sex. Young women noticed his appearance at church. Their eyes pursued, whenever possible, his daily comings and goings, his promenades, his courtly bows, his gracious leave-takings. No suspected casual dalliance or engineered tête-à-tête escaped their attention. Mothers and, if truth be told, some ladies of a certain age and reputation discreetly bade him leave his card in the unspoken understanding that they, as well as their daughters, would be at home should he chance to call.
Not surprisingly in view of this general approbation, Matthias began to regard himself as an exceptional person. He prided himself as an arbiter of taste for the town, a positive harbinger of the future age. Silver and lemon, he opined, were the new colours. Accordingly, he ordered them to be incorporated into the weave of his suits, the dots and stripes of his cravats and ties. Old Ventona Paraguayan railway stock, he decided, stood at a particularly advantageous entry point for substantial gains. He, therefore, boldly bought when others sold. Day by day, because he saw it flattered and amused both his coterie and his public, he contrived to become more and more Swedish. He felt, at root, that his patriotism was more heartfelt and touching than theirs, which he noted was always tempered by a degree of self-deprecating irony. Similarly the pride he professed in Swedish achievements, be they in science or industry and commerce, struck him as all the more genuine because its source was altruistic. The ‘Little Swede’, as he became known throughout the town, held an opinion on everything and deemed everyone had a right to share it. In other words, Matthias Lemmel was poised on the brink of settling down, buying a house and finding a wife.
No matter that in later years he glossed over this fugue, this charmed interlude between the struggles of his youth and the despairs and terrors of his maturity. No aquavit or soused herring, no waving of the yellow and blue, could resurrect these few carefree months. The malignity of his fate soon overwhelmed them, snuffing them out as unthinking fingers extinguish the guttering candle flame. Swedish Matthias Lemmel, the Little Swede, might never have existed.
As no further mention of Matthias Lemmel occurred on that or subsequent pages, Agnes riffled forward searching for his name. Two thin, folded pieces of paper were lodged in the middle of the book.
Smoothing them out, she saw that they consiste
d of six thumbnail sketches of differing sizes and irregular spacing. What two of them represented eluded her. The remaining four showed: an olive tree under whose laden branches a man and a woman rested with a sickle lying at their feet, a black cat with its paw raised in a street lined with Japanese-style houses, a steep bank of pebbles encased in protective netting and a window display of pails, hammers, hinges and door locks, which gave the impression of belonging to a hardware store, except that standing in the background was a tailor’s dummy.
The two indecipherable sketches occupied the top left-hand corners on each page. Agnes held them up in front of her. She was convinced they were more than mere doodles. Reminded of Gestalt tests, where sooner or later the viewer constructed a recognisable face or image, she studied them close to and at arm’s length, but the density of their marks, the whorls and ellipses of their shading and cross-hatching, defied all her attempts at synthesis. Were they by the same person as the others? It was difficult to say. Certainly the same pencil seemed to have been used throughout. A vague feeling arose in her that she had seen something tantalisingly like them before, but where or when it had been, or whether it had appertained to someone else, someone in a book she had read or in a film she had seen, she could not say.
She picked up Encounters on a Mountain Road again. It was the only hardback in the apartment. Its fustian style was completely at odds with the rest of Emily Brown’s library. Had it slipped down behind the other books by accident, or had it been deliberately concealed in the hope that she would find it? The answer, she guessed, lay with Chance Company and the person who had stage-managed her surroundings. Roberto Ayza? He was absent from the scene for some reason, leaving Emmet Briggs, a newcomer like herself to their procedure, as the only link.
The intercom buzzer sounded in the hall. No one was expected. She put the book down.
‘Emily Brown? I have a package for Emily Brown.’
‘Come up. I’m on the second floor.’ Agnes pressed the release button for the outer door and opened her own. She listened to the ascending footsteps clumping up the stairs. The sketch image of the cat with its paw raised came into her mind, then in its place appeared the head and shoulders of a young, helmetless motorcycle courier dressed in black leathers and long boots. He handed her a shallow box and a receipt form. ‘Sign here,’ he said, indicating the bottom of the slip.
‘Do you have a pen?’
He shook his head. Agnes retreated inside. When she returned he had advanced into the doorway and was looking around with feigned indifference. She wrote Emily Brown on the form and handed it back. He met her eyes for a second then turned to go.
‘Where did you pick it up?’ she asked.
‘Sender’s on the back,’ he called out, ‘in Polygon.’
A moment later she heard the outer door slam and the revs of a bike. Turning the package over, she read, ‘From Amadeo Cresci Foundation, 70 Westgate, The Polygon, Greenlea.’
*
The woman, who had called herself Elizabeth Kerry, met Harvard Smith for lunch. Da Giovanni on Rokler Street was the venue he had suggested.
Outside the swim of current fashion, it was a shabby, cavernous restaurant near Belvedere Station, which most Greenlea residents assumed had gone out of business years ago. Amid the continual surrounding upheaval of building sites and office conversions, its unchanging, reassuring menu of Parma ham and melon, spaghetti a la vongole, scallopine or bollito misto and zuppa inglese, washed down with a flask of Chianti Putto under the world-weary gaze of its waiters, whose whole existence seemed dependent on its confines, fostered a refuge of what used to be for an older, out-of-town clientele.
Harvard, the back of his head and shoulders reflected in the foxed glass of a rococo mirror, was waiting for her at a small banquette table through an archway when she arrived. He looked older and more careworn than at their last face-to-face encounter.
‘Are you ill?’
‘I think so, a little.’ He got to his feet and kissed her cheek. ‘It’s nothing. The air we breathe. The life I lead. A debit against my account.’
The waiter hovered. They ordered and, without meaning to, after a bout of inconsequential gossip, began to eat their first course in a companionable silence reminiscent of their latter days as lovers. Neither spoke again until Evangeline Simpson Jnr had finished toying with her risotto Milanese and Harvard had spooned up his last mouthful of clam sauce. ‘Tell me about our progress,’ she said, as the waiter removed the plates.
‘Emily Brown here and running. She’ll be at the exhibition tonight. I’ve got her plugged in for Alakhin tomorrow, and, of course, there’s Louman’s concert.’
‘Did you give her Ayza’s name?’
Harvard nodded.
‘I gave him a message yesterday at your office.’
‘What kind of message? Evangeline, we didn’t discuss that.’
‘My kind of message. You don’t need to know everything in advance.’
The waiter returned with their second course. He placed Evangeline’s scallopine in front of her and uncovered the meats of the bollito misto on his trolley. Harvard pointed in turn at the beef, the tongue and the cotechino and, as he watched the waiter carve and dribble each slice with its own broth, said, ‘A low-key approach, that’s what we agreed. Sonny’s peripheral, a bit of insurance. Keep him that way.’
‘Mashed potato, sir?’
A creamy, yellow mound was transferred to his plate. Christ, Harvard thought irritably, she doesn’t change. She’s been busy tilting it her way. Anything to get herself noticed, indulging in God knows what. He leant over and refilled their glasses with water.
Evangeline laid down her fork, took a sip and squeezed more lemon across her veal. The waiter departed. ‘Another hound to chase the hare,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve been sending messages to other buildings in the city.’
Harvard faked a grimace, which then turned real as a stabbing pain throbbed above his left eye.
‘I can play, can’t I? Your strategy isn’t sacrosanct. Mother, by now as I’ve told you, would have been heartedly ashamed of what Chance Company has become. Even Selly Rycart would have had doubts. Hit the company at every opportunity. You know that’s always been my tactic. They started it in jest, so I’m going to go out and play ball in my own way whether you like it or not. To you, Joe May is only a name, just a figurehead, whereas to me . . . ’ Her voice trailed away as her words were drowned by the sudden shouts and animated chatter of a group of people piling through the archway. Outbreaks of laughter accompanied their divesting of coat and headgear as they jostled amongst each other in the restricted space.
Harvard strove to control the annoying pulse he felt beating ominously over his eyelid. He swallowed hard and held his breath. The smell of his food was beginning to make him feel nauseous. Beads of sweat clustered at his hairline. He inclined his head towards Evangeline, who, for the moment, appeared completely absorbed in the bustle opposite where waiters were hurriedly pulling tables together and arranging chairs.
A dapper man, clad in an expensively tailored Prince of Wales check suit, detached himself from the mêlée and came over to their table. He executed an ironic half bow. ‘I hope we’re not disturbing your pleasant assignation.’
Harvard cleared his throat.
Evangeline smiled. ‘I’m with an old flame in a public place. There’s nothing to disturb.’
The man laughed. ‘Feel free to come and join us if you like after your meal. We’d be pleased to see you.’ He gave another slight bow and rejoined his companions.
‘Whatever happens you can’t restore Joe May,’ Harvard said. The waves of nausea were retreating. He felt sufficiently restored to try a mouthful of mash.
Evangeline did not reply. She stopped eating. Her eyes were fixed on the two white people in the group opposite. One of them, a somewhat podgy young man, was licking the neck of the thin ash-blonde beside him. She, meanwhile, was talking lethargically to the thickset man on her other
side. The man who had come over to their table called out, ‘Emmet, I wonder,’ while a renewed barrage of laughter greeted someone else’s remark. The blonde’s hand by now was under the table feeling the young man’s groin. She turned back towards Harvard. He looked pale, even paler than when she had entered. ‘Why did you pursue me? Why did you bother? Even now you’re hardly at the centre of things.’
A wrenching knot twisted then untwisted in Harvard’s stomach. Emmet, could there be another person in Greenlea called Emmet? Another black person? The man’s back, infuriatingly, was towards him. It was impossible to identify him for sure as Emmet Briggs. My God, what have I done? he thought. A flutter of panic assailed him. Here he was in the presence of his contact at last. Time was running out. Soon he would have to give his decision, and now there was a possible administrative error. The centre of things Evangeline had said, without knowing what it meant for him. Money or violence, either another disappearance in a long line of disappearances, or the final settlement; the choice was his. If money fails then fatality must occur, this had been the bottom-line instruction. Betray Evangeline’s trust and erase the demi-god she had fabricated in the image of her putative father or betray the company; either way there was no going back. But Emmet Briggs. Was it possible that, whilst he had recruited him to squire Emily Brown and make sure she was safe, Walter Sembele had hired him to do what the contract stipulated? Stories we tell ourselves, he thought sourly. Future stories others will tell about me.