Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  ‘Should we care…?’ Ourglass was somewhat baffled by the speed with which the physically inert Bultitude appeared to be taking charge of his affairs.

  ‘Certainly. We will go out there, Ourglass, and investigate quite quietly. We may avoid scandal. Of course it may mean squaring the girl.’

  ‘Squaring the girl?’ Ourglass, who now felt himself being propelled gently out of the crush, looked helplessly at his companion. ‘I am willing to believe that Geoffrey may be engaged in dramatic composition – although I have never suspected him of cherishing any literary ambitions of the sort. But your hypothesis – apparently your preferred hypothesis – of a girl–’

  ‘Quite so. We must discuss it.’ And Bultitude gave Ourglass a soothing – and again alarmingly flattening – pat on the back. ‘And we might well consult Geoffrey’s tutor – Birkbeck, would it be? – in a perfectly confidential manner. I think, Ourglass, that you had better dine with me. I believe Birkbeck is dining. We will plan out what is best to be done.’

  ‘Really, Bultitude, you are very kind. But I fear the hour is somewhat late for your putting down a guest.’

  ‘Not a bit of it, my dear man. At Bede’s our arrangements in such matters are entirely domestic. Have you twopence? I said twopence. I’ll slip into this box and give our kitchen a ring.’

  And at this Mark Bultitude, much as if among his other angelic attributes was that of diminishing his bodily frame at will, contrived to insert himself into an adjacent call box. He emerged again in a couple of minutes, appearing to dilate as he did so. All his fondness for slow motion had returned to him, and he made several majestic pauses en route to Ourglass, much as if the latter had been a beacon on a distant eminence. ‘Well, that is capital,’ he said. ‘We shall meet–’

  ‘I really ought to say,’ Ourglass nervously interrupted his prospective host, ‘that this – um – conjectural female–’

  ‘Quite so, quite so!’ And Bultitude raised a large, soothing hand – thereby causing Ourglass, now wary, to edge nimbly away from him. ‘Seven-fifteen in my rooms, if you please. And remember that on weekdays at Bede’s we don’t wash or change.’ Bultitude paused for a moment to make sure that this parting witticism had sunk in. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I must address myself to that damned hill.’

  3

  Where Friars Entry narrows to burrow beneath the shops of Magdalen Street two women were edging past each other with prams. The wheels locked. Zusammenstoss, Kolmak thought – and then realized that the delay might be fatal to him. ‘Bitte!’ he called out in his agitation. One of the women stared. He still hated that stare – the insular stare of the uneducated at any cadence of foreignness. But he smiled politely and swept off his hat. ‘Excuse me…but my bus…if I might possibly–’ The woman squeezed against the side of the passage – but without any answering smile. Perhaps taking off his hat had been a mistake. And he still hated all the mistakes, worrying over them far more than was reasonable in a man endowed with philosophic views, dedicated to liberal purposes.

  As he feared, it made him just too late. He jumped for the moving bus and missed. The indignant yelp of the conductress chimed with his own exclamation of pain as he fell heavily on one knee. An undergraduate stepped forward and helped him to his feet, slapped at him in a friendly ritual of getting the dust off, was gone before he could be thanked.

  Kolmak stood on the kerb, breathing fast. He looked up the broad vista of St Giles’ and saw the bus disappearing. It was a Number 2. There wouldn’t be another for ten minutes. His quarry had escaped him. Unless… He peered ahead to the cab rank – the one in the middle of the road, in front of the Taylorian. It appeared to be empty. Besides, you could not do such a thing in Oxford. You could not conceivably say to a taxi driver ‘Follow that bus’. It would be ridiculous. A group of students – of undergraduates – might do it. Then it would be what is called a ‘rag’. But a Docent who acted in that way would be judged mad. Many of them, for that matter, were mad. But in their own English way…

  Caught out by himself in mere dreaming, Kolmak jerked into movement. It was intolerable that he should be baulked in this way. Getting off the Abingdon bus, he had had the fellow virtually in his grasp. And now he was gone again. Was it worthwhile taking the next Number 2, going as far as the terminus, and then prowling a waste of suburban roads on the off chance of once more picking up the trail? He joined the queue that was forming at the bus stop. No – it was no good. There was nothing to do but go back and report failure. As he slipped from the line of patiently waiting people he thought that several looked at him curiously. Perhaps it was ‘bad form’ to change your mind in such a matter. Kolmak walked rapidly off, clicking his fingers – an involuntary gesture to which he was driven when under some burden of embarrassment.

  Threading his way through the crowd in Cornmarket Street, Kolmak thought of the Kärntner-Strasse. The jostling around him faded as he walked. He was in the Café Scheidl with a girl for a Dansing. Or – what was yet more delightful – he was there alone and had taken his favourite paper from the rack; had carried it, like a flag half-furled about its handle, to where his cup of coffee awaited him, dark and strong under its little mountain of whipped cream, and flanked by its equally delicious glass of the marvellous Wiener water… Kolmak thought of the Oxford water, chlorinated and flat, and he shuddered as he walked. Then once again his fingers clicked. He felt abased by this increasing tendency to weak, nostalgic reverie.

  Kolmak pushed into shops that were almost closing; he bought food, and stuffed what he could into his briefcase. In the Rathaus Keller there had been a table prescriptively reserved for a group of Privatdocenten to which he belonged. If you kept to the unpretentious part things were very reasonable there. Why, Olli had liked to say, pay extra for a tablecloth? He remembered having been told that they had made Olli’s death a very horrible one…

  But it was no good thinking that. Undoubtedly the food in the Rathaus Keller had been excellent. And the place had been so snug in winter! Those tremendous Januaries, when the snow had been high along the sidewalks; when one envied the rich their great fur collars and the police the little muffs on their ears; and when he could watch, from his garret at the corner of the Otzeltgasse, the endless gyrations of the skaters on the Eislaufverein!

  Kolmak found he had got blindly on his bus. It was really blindly, because there were tears in his eyes – tears of shame at all this weakness. As if he had not – great God! – something else to think about. And tonight he must go out and dine in the college. He had not done so for a week, and it would probably be accounted discourteous in him to stay away longer. Besides, it was a good dinner, and free. To save one’s Groschen might make all the difference one day.

  The bus was stationary at his own stop. He blundered out – apologizing too much, too little; he was uncertain which. In front of him a terrace of tall, narrow houses exposed the absurdity of its Venetian Gothic to a bleak evening sky. Kolmak thought it horrible. The dwellings suggested to him the remnant of some enslaved population, degraded in an alien place. Still, once more he had been lucky. There was, of course, the climb. But had he not a bath, even, at the end of it? And there was an empty room! If only Anna…

  Kolmak bit his lip, turned from the road into a small garden, and paused under a steeply pitched porch. This was supported on a massive, stumpy pillar which was just what it seemed to be: a sketch by John Ruskin retranslated into stone by some hand devoid of artistry or care. And you had to go under the porch dead centre if you were not to bump your head against its trifoliations. What a fantastic race the Victorian English must have been!

  Kolmak opened the door and went quietly through the hall. The house belonged to the Misses Tinker, ancient women who had owned some august connexion with the University very long ago. Kolmak believed that their brother had been Rektor Magnifikus – Vice-Chancellor – something like that. It distressed the Misses Tinker to have tenants in their attics. When they encountered Kolmak coming or going they were
disconcerted; and because of this they would hold him in embarrassed conversation when it would have been mutually more agreeable to pass by with a smile. Kolmak knew that when he came in at the front door – or out of the little door that shut off the attic stairs – he ought to bang it loudly. For the Misses Tinker might then remain closeted in their own apartments and he would be able to go by unimpeded. But the bang invariably took more resolution than he possessed. He would close the door softly and tiptoe forward. And then one or other of the Misses Tinker – who since letting the upper part of their house had taken to going about nervously on tiptoe too – would bump into him in the shadows – shadows that were pervasive since the staircases were lit only by lancet windows filled with purple and blue and orange stained glass, and nervously converse.

  It was the elder (as he supposed her to be) Miss Tinker who appeared on this occasion. She was carrying a bowl of chrysanthemums as withered as herself, and her form brushed against him like a ghost’s as she came to a stop.

  ‘Good evening, Dr Kolmak. Has it not been a delightful day?’

  ‘It has, indeed, Miss Tinker. Have you cared to go out, at all?’

  Kolmak spread out the fingers of his free hand very wide, so that he would remember not to click them.

  ‘My sister and I went out – on foot.’ It was always an implication of the Misses Tinker’s conversation that their pedestrianism was a healthful alternative to calling out their carriage. ‘We walked round to Northam Road – the sunshine was really delightful – and called on Lady Bronson. You will be glad to know that we found her well.’

  Kolmak bowed, and there was a faint click – but this time from his heels. ‘I am most happy to hear it.’ He restrained an impulse to edge away from Miss Tinker. Because she was a feeble and useless old woman she always conjured up in his mind the image of a gas chamber. It hung behind her now, a frame to the scant wisps of her silver hair. Kolmak tried shutting his eyes – an action which the shadows rendered undetectable. But at that his nostrils took up the evocation. Perhaps the chrysanthemums had a part in it. They ought to have been thrown out some days ago.

  ‘But Lady Bronson’s sister in Bournemouth has suffered an attack of bronchitis.’

  ‘I am deeply sorry to hear it.’ Kolmak felt that he might now with decency edge towards the next flight of stairs. Even when he had first come the Misses Tinker had been kind. But they had been relieved when he had become ‘attached’ – when Bede’s, that is to say, had thrown some sort of mantle over him. Since then the Misses Tinker had lost no opportunity of introducing him to the other old ladies who constituted their circle of acquaintance. They had also put up the rent.

  ‘And now I must rearrange these flowers. You will find your aunt at home, Dr Kolmak. Until a few minutes ago I believe she was at her piano. And how delightfully she plays! My dear brother used to remark that only Ger – that only the countrymen of Beethoven really know how to play the pianoforte.’

  Kolmak backed upstairs, bowing. Did the old woman mean that Tante Lise’s playing was a nuisance? He didn’t know. Often he was helpless, not knowing whether in things said to him there was some underlying sense, some hint or warning or rebuke given under the form of irony. But at least Miss Tinker was retreating into her drawing-room. He had a glimpse of Morris paper, of spindle-legged tables and chairs, of blue and white china, and engravings after Botticelli and Luini. Probably the Misses Tinker had already begun looking after their brother while Walter Pater’s sisters were still looking after him. Their drawing-room was in that style.

  Kurt Kolmak, expatriate Kunsthistoriker from Vienna, climbed higher. Now he had indeed to nerve himself. Whether or not Tante Lise was at her piano, he must confess this failure, this pitiable letting slip of –

  For a moment he thought that he heard his aunt playing very softly. Then he knew that it was only the little aeolian harp that she had insisted on hanging up on their ‘landing’ – the fragile contrivance of pine and catgut that he seemed to remember, all through his childhood, discoursing its alternate discords and harmonies at an upper window from which one could see, piercing the sky beyond the Hofburg, the great south tower of the Stephans-Dom. He opened the door separating his own domain from the Misses Tinkers’ and stood for a moment by the little instrument. A light breeze was blowing in through an open window and brushing the strings to a faint murmuring. He glanced out and saw – what never failed to give him pleasure – the fine lines of the Radcliffe Observatory, tranquil upon the evening. On its roof whirled an anemometer, ceaselessly propelled by the same force that was raising the low music at his side. If one looked at the anemometer fixedly, its four rapidly revolving hemispheres had the trick of appearing to slip instantaneously into reverse; to do this without stopping or even slackening the headlong speed of their revolution. And then as one continued to look they would have changed again: clockwise and then anticlockwise in an impossible alternation. It was an image of life, Kolmak thought – life that one so anxiously scans, and that cheats one ever and anon with some apparent sign of a reversal of one’s fate, but that nevertheless bears one uninterruptedly –

  ‘Kurt – you have news, hein?’

  Tante Lise had appeared in the doorway. He went to her quickly, took her hands, and led her back to her chair. The room that she called her salotto, and that was all sloping ceilings and joists awkwardly placed for the head, was crammed with the massive birchwood furniture they had been allowed to bring away with them. Most of the pieces were so high that they had to stand far out from the wall, so that the room would have been a paradise for children to play hide-and-seek in. But, Kolmak thought, there were no children. The attics were as childless as was the faded elegance of the Misses Tinker’s apartments below.

  ‘I have little news, Tantchen. I had thought to gain a great deal. But I have been clumsy and it has come to nothing. See, though! I have been able to buy some salami – and a bel paese too.’

  She took the food in silence and set it out on the Castel Durante dishes that were a relic of her childhood in Rome. Tante Lise’s father had been the most distinguished Kunstkenner of his generation – that and an eminent medievalist, the friend of Winkelmann. These plates were her only material link with that spacious past. ‘The police have been,’ she said.

  ‘The police?’ Kolmak’s hand trembled as he brought finally from his briefcase a bottle of cheap wine. ‘For me?’

  ‘Aber nein!’ And Tante Lise laughed softly – as she used to do when, as a small boy, he had said some inept but charming thing.

  ‘Then about…’

  ‘No, no – not that either. Only about myself.’

  ‘But it is intolerable!’ Kolmak had flushed darkly. ‘Do the ladies below, the Misses…’

  ‘They know nothing of it. A most polite man came – an official of the police, but in ordinary clothing. I gave him Fünf-Uhr-Tee.’

  ‘You gave him tea!’ Kolmak stared at his aunt in mingled reproach and admiration.

  ‘But certainly. Do not forget that I am required to report myself. This official’s visit was to spare me that on this occasion. It was a courtesy, an act of consideration due doubtless to your Stellung – your new position.’ And Tante Lise regarded her nephew with affectionate admiration. She had a high sense of what his abilities had gained him at St Bede’s. ‘Jawohl, Kurt, du bist nicht schlecht gestellt!’

  But he saw that her eyes were anxious and questioning, and he sat down heavily. ‘I do not know that I shall keep the Stellung. It may be that I shall seek employment elsewhere.’

  ‘Elsewhere?’

  ‘With them.’

  She sprang up. ‘Kurt! What can you mean?’

  ‘It may be the only way.’

  ‘But you know nothing of them.’

  He laughed wearily. ‘That is the point, is it not?’

  Tante Lise was silent for some moments. Taking the salami to the large cupboard in the eaves that served as her kitchen, she began to cut it into slices paper thin. Kolmak rose, c
leared a table of its litter of music, laid out mats and dishes. His aunt reappeared.

  ‘But are you not dining with the Professoren?’

  He put a hand to his forehead. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘You must go. It is advantageous to become more familiarly acquainted with the other Professoren. Moreover it is an intellectual stimulus such as I cannot afford you. Do not hurry home.’

  Kolmak nodded obediently and went out to wash. It was something to have a bathroom. When he came back Tante Lise was standing before the empty fireplace – and so placidly posed that he suspected she had been weeping.

  ‘Kurt, there are always the police.’

  ‘No! Certainly not!’ And he made a violent gesture. ‘A hundred times no!’

  ‘This man who came today. He was not courteous merely. He was kindly – understanding. He would not take a brutal view…’

  ‘You do not understand. There is nothing personal in these things. It is all a machine. Your kindly and understanding man would do what some regulation commanded him.’

  She sighed. ‘But if there is real danger for…’

  ‘We do not know. We cannot yet tell. Give me a little time.’

  ‘And today? You hoped much of it.’

  ‘I will tell you when I return. Perhaps I have taken too gloomy a view of its failure. Certainly there is one little thing that I have learnt. Yes, I will tell you what will surprise you!’

  He was boasting – almost meaninglessly, as when he was a child. ‘And I must go. They will be expecting me.’

  ‘Of course they will.’ Tante Lise was practised in providing reassurance at this moment. ‘They looked forward – your colleagues – to your contributions to the discussions. They recognize your great authority in your own field. Remember to smoke a cigar. Whatever your ill success today, you have striven hard, I know; and have deserved it. Shall you be speaking to Mr Bultitude?’