The Good Mayor: A Novel

by Andrew Nicoll

  The camera sweeps round the little group. With grim smiles, they shake hands, embrace, clap each other on the back. They go their separate ways. Cut to lingering shot of the full moon and fade to black.

  “Your best friend—what was her name?”

  “Cara.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “Pretty girl.”

  “Was she tall and blonde?”

  “She was short and dark like me. Like all the girls in our village. Nobody got enough to eat. Very dark. She had a bit of a moustache.”

  “That’s not so good,” thought Agathe. “We can ignore that—artistic licence. Sometimes the cinema is more real than real. I’m seeing: ‘With Aimee Verkig as Cara, her best friend.’”

  Mamma Cesare said, “Turn your teacup over, spin it three times and hand it to me in your left hand.”

  The cup made a grinding sound as Agathe turned it on the saucer. “So what happened next?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Not for a long time.” Mamma Cesare turned the cup over and began studying the tea leaves inside, looking for pictures, searching for stories. “Nothing here we didn’t know. See, there’s a ladder but everybody knows Stopak is a paperhanger and that drop of tea at the bottom, that’s a journey over water.”

  “Oh, never mind about that. There’s always a drop left at the bottom and you told me this morning I’d cross water to meet the love of my life.”

  Mamma Cesare gave her an encouraging look. “So you met him?”

  “I haven’t been anywhere. Just to work. Tell me about Cesare and the village and the red and the blue.”

  Mamma Cesare was quiet for a moment. She held the teacup tilted loosely in her hand as if it might slip from her fingers. Small bright eyes that had been probing Agathe’s future a moment before were gazing now at a faraway past. After a while she said, “Nothing happened. We didn’t hear anything. Of course we worried but the war stayed away so it looked like the plan was working. We stayed in the village all that summer. We had to work twice as hard in the fields with all the young men gone and then, in the winter with all the young men gone, it was twice as cold in our beds at night. The snows came. They protected us. Nothing could get through the passes. We went from house to house and sat together, telling stories and singing songs. It saved on wood when we all sat round one fire. But, always, our hearts were in the snow with our young men and Cara would sniff and sob on my shoulder about Cesare, how she loves Cesare and, please God, Cesare will come home and marry her. And I am sitting there, in front of a fire of cinders, my fingers blue, saying nothing, listening, listening to the wolves howling on the mountain, and hating her quietly.”

  Agathe pictured the scene—a tiny cottage, black against the blizzard, a single light shines from a small square window, the camera closes in. We see two young women in a humble kitchen. They are wrapped in shawls against the winter storm. Aimee Verkig, as Cara, speaks softly, movingly, of her love for the heroic Cesare, tears fill her eyes, she rests her head on the breast of the beautiful Agathe Stopak, who gazes out into the storm, impassive as marble, as cold as the blizzard, resting a motherly hand on Cara’s hair aaand CUT!

  “And then it was summer again,” said Mamma Cesare, “and things started to go badly for the blues. Some of them came through the village in a hurry. They were in a bad way but they knew all about us and how loyal our village was and they told us we’d better get out because the reds were coming. We said we’d stay and they said they were very sorry but they were going to have to blow up the bridge on the far side of the village and that’s what they did. They crossed over and they blew it up. Not that it was much of a bridge and they didn’t blow it up very well, but they left a hole in the middle so we couldn’t use it. Then, the next day, the reds came.”

  “I bet you fooled them. I bet you all ran into the street cheering to welcome them,” said Agathe.

  The shot opens with a close-up on trees in bloom, birdsong, open out to women, children, old men, running into the street throwing flowers at marching troops.

  “You must be joking! We yelled at them. We called them every name we could think of. The old men stood in the street and demanded to know where they had been. The whole world knew this was the reddest village in the whole country—none redder—but, when those blue cowards ran through here, where were the courageous red forces? How could we defend ourselves when all our young men were away with the armies of red? Every woman of the village would gladly entertain a dozen brave red soldiers but, after the horrors inflicted by the diseased blue scum, that would be a dangerous and unpatriotic act. And all us girls howled and hid our faces in our shawls.

  “The Captain was very impressed. He says how sorry he is and he extends a thousand sympathies for our suffering which is as great as anything endured by his men and all of it will count as part of the great national liberation effort and did we have anything to drink? And then, when they have drunk all the wine on show and all the wine we hid for them to find, the Captain says he is very sorry but there must be one more small sacrifice. He says they must repair the bridge and, a thousand apologies, that means they must blow up somebody’s house and throw it in the gorge.

  “The whole town is holding its breath but we know what he’s going to say and, sure enough, the Captain says that the best house for blowing up, a thousand, thousand apologies, if you don’t mind, is the house of Cara’s father.”

  Agathe gave a little gasp of delight which she quickly transformed to horror behind a hand at her face. “No! She must have been distraught. Did she scream? Did she faint?”

  “Oh, you never knew Cara. She is like ice. She walks up to the Captain and sits on his knee with her arms round his neck and she says, ‘Oh, Captain, I know a much better house, much bigger, made with real good stones, much closer to the river and it belongs to the only lousy blue in this whole village. We chased him out of town. Now you can make sure he’s never coming back. We don’t need that sort round here.’ That’s what she said. I remember like yesterday. I see her face like I see yours.”

  Mamma Cesare was still for a moment and then she said, “You know whose house it was, don’t you?”

  Agathe’s heart was pounding inside her chest. Yes, she knew. “It was Cesare’s house.”

  “Cesare’s house.” Mamma Cesare nodded gravely. “Sure enough, that afternoon, we heard the explosions.”

  Agathe saw it all now. The beautiful but faithless Aimee Verkig laughing as she kisses the drunken red Captain (dramatically portrayed by Jacob Maurer) full on his cruel mouth. Outraged villagers look on in disbelief. They refuse to speak to her on the street. They turn their backs as she approaches. Labouring in the fields under a pitiless sun, no one will share a drink of water with her. Walking home in the dark, she hears her own curse whispered from the shadows. Terrified, she goes to the only house where she can be sure of safety. There, framed in the doorway, is the beautiful Agathe Stopak. Inside her humble cottage, the fire blazes warmly, a table is laid with fresh bread and summer fruits.

  Aimee Verkig, portraying the faithless Cara, runs to her. “You must help me,” she sobs. “I was wrong. I made a mistake. Hide me. Take me in.” The beautiful Agathe Stopak looks at her with contempt. She steps back, blocking the door. Her face is a cruel mask as she says, “We don’t need that sort round here.” She slams the door. Aimee Verkig collapses against it, weeping. Fade to black aaaaaaand CUT!

  “How you must have hated her,” said Agathe. “I bet the whole village wanted her dead.”

  “Not really. I hated her of course, but then I was her best friend and I was entitled to loathe her but nobody else had the right. I suppose they understood. Anybody would have done the same. My house, Cesare’s house, let’s blow up Cesare’s house—who knows if Cesare’s even coming home. But he did come home.”

  It is dawn. A little band of travellers is picking its way up the rocky valley. From the opposite hillside there is a loud shepherd’s whistle. Another group approaches. A wave of recognition. The
two groups of village boys meet at the same crossroads where they had parted under that full moon so long ago. They are tired and careworn, thin, tough, battle-hardened. Above all, they are fewer. Where is Francesco? Where is Luigi? Francesco won’t be coming and Luigi stayed behind at Sand Ridge. But I was at Sand Ridge. We were all at Sand Ridge but we will never speak of this again. Grimly, the little band of survivors continues its climb into the mountains.

  Cut to a door opening in the awakening village, the first of the morning. The beautiful Agathe Stopak begins her day’s work, broom in hand, tidying her humble but spotlessly clean cottage. She begins the day—as she begins every day—with a prayer. “Heavenly Father, let this be the day that our boys come home to us but, if we must wait still a little longer, keep them safe in your care, until we meet again.” We see Agathe in close-up, a lingering shot of her face, eyes closed, lips moving gently in devotion as soft organ chords play distantly. Her eyes open. She looks down the valley. Does she see something? Can it be? After all these months of waiting? Is it them? And is Cesare with them? He must be there. He must be safe. Agathe drops her broom and rushes out of the village.

  Cut back to the returning soldiers, led by the quiet and courageous Cesare, tellingly portrayed by Horace Dukas. Already they see Agathe running towards them. They wave, they cheer. They meet. She embraces them in turn. She takes their hands in turn. “Darling Chico! Dear Zeppo! It’s so good to see you, Beppo!” [we can work on the names later] and then she turns, the music swells, she is looking into the face of the man she loves with a secret passion. Cesare! “Welcome home,” she says softly. She lays a sisterly hand on his arm. “Cara will be overjoyed.” But there is a look in Cesare’s eye, a look that says, “All these lonely months of fighting and killing and pain and suffering, I have carried the image of only one woman in my heart. Damn Cara to hell, it’s you that I want. You and you alone forever!” And Cesare, sensitively portrayed by Horace Dukas, takes her in his strong hands and kisses her. Hold that shot, close in, resolve to pinhole aaaand CUT!

  “It was the middle of the night when he got to the village,” said Mamma Cesare. “The dogs are barking. Everybody knows what it means. Nobody is any more frightened. The war is over. I hear the noise. I look from my window. I see him. I say nothing. I keep my door shut. I say nothing.”

  “So what happened? Where did he go?”

  Mamma Cesare nearly fell off the bed. “You crazy? This is a young man! For months he’s been away at the war and all that time he’s thinking about just one thing and when is he going to get it. You crazy? He went to Cara.”

  Agathe was aghast. “He went to Cara! After what she’d done? And you let him?”

  “Sure I let him. It’s not me who is crazy.”

  This was difficult. This was tricky. Agathe felt this might have to involve some really quite far-reaching script revisions—even for the sort of sophisticated audience who might be drawn to an Agathe Stopak–Horace Dukas vehicle.

  “All right,” she said, “you let him. Then what happened?”

  Mamma Cesare said, “I wasn’t there. How do I know what happened? All I know is he walks back out of the village before dawn and, this time, when he passes my house, I wait awhile and I follow him with my little bit of money and my little bag of clothes. And then, at the crossroads, he is waiting for me, looking back along the road as I come. And I say, ‘Take me with you,’ and he says, ‘You’ll do.’ So that was it.”

  “That was it? That was it? That can’t possibly be it. How could you possibly know he would leave the village again? Why should he? What’s to make him? He’s come home after a war to the girl he loves—why is he going to leave all that again? It’s not natural.”

  Mamma Cesare shook her head. “I knew he’d never stay. Not when he saw that sign I painted where his house should be—‘Cara did this’ in big white letters. It must have glowed in the moonlight.”

  Agathe’s jaw dropped. She didn’t know whether to react with horror or admiration for a woman who was so determined to get the man she adored. She whispered, “So you left Cara to marry one of the other boys?”

  “What other boys?” said Mamma Cesare. “Nobody else came home. That village died and I wasn’t going to stay for the funeral. Cesare and me, we left for America.”

  “And ended up in Dot.”

  “It’s a long story and I’m all of a sudden tired. This thing I wanted to show you, it will have to wait. Will you come again another night?”

  Agathe said of course she would and Mamma Cesare must rest and she thanked her very much for the tea as they walked uncertainly together down the corridor to the street and especially for Cesare’s story and, of course, for the fortune-telling.

  “Oh, I forgot about that,” said Mamma Cesare. “Tell me, who is Achilles?”

  “I don’t know an Achilles,” said Agathe. “I know a Hektor and I don’t like him very much.”

  “Your cup says you met Achilles. Maybe even today. I am never wrong. I am strega from long line of strega. You know Achilles. He is your friend.”

  Agathe said, “I’ll remember. Goodnight.” She pulled the door shut behind her and stepped on to Castle Street. High on the hill above, the cathedral bells struck midnight. And a few moments later, allowing for the time that the sound takes to travel over the city even on a clear Dot summer night, the driver and conductor of the last tram to run that evening got up from their seats on its back step, flicked their cigarettes away in bright curving shooting-star arcs, screwed the lids back on their coffee flasks and took the tram out of the depot. By the time it had rolled through town, past the darkened Opera House where the current production of Rigoletto had failed to impress the critics or the customers, through Museum Square, along George Street to find the manager of the Palazz Kinema waiting for his usual ride home and back in a lazy coat-hook loop to where Cathedral Avenue meets Castle Street, Agathe was already standing at the stop, spotlighted in a street lamp’s yellow puddle. She sat at the back of the tram. She did not recognise the manager of the Palazz Kinema when he got off at the stop before hers. She kept her eyes fixed modestly on the floor until he passed and stood up almost as soon as the tram moved off again, holding on to the pole at the back as it crossed the Ampersand.

  At the other side of Green Bridge, when the tram left her, she stood for a moment, enjoying the quiet, the rush of water under the arches, the whirring flight of two ducks as they flashed between the street lamps, the reassuring darkness of The Three Crowns, the distant, diminishing mechanical roll of the retiring tram, out of sight, invisible but still telegraphing its existence backwards through the complaining wires and reverberating rails. Agathe climbed the stairs to her flat, tiptoed into the bedroom, sloughed off her clothes like a dryad bathing in a moonlit pool and lay down, sadly, beside the snoring Stopak.

  Before sleep took her, the little cat clawed its way up the bedclothes and burrowed, purring, under her hand. “Goodnight, Achilles,” said Agathe and slept.

  N THE MORNING, TIBO’S SPAT WITH THE MAYOR of Umlaut was still front-page news in the Daily Dottian. When he stopped at the kiosk on the street corner to buy his morning paper, there was a big yellow bill on the board outside:

  KROVIC & ZAPF-WAR

  A wet stain marked where a passing dog had peed on one corner. In the queue for the tram, three men were reading the story—one of them holding the paper, two friends craning over his shoulders. It differed from the previous evening’s version only by the addition of some quotes from Mayor Krovic who steadfastly refused to confirm anything. Halfway down the last column, under the word “DIGNIFIED,” which appeared without warning in the middle of a sentence, Mayor Krovic had been prevailed upon to say:

  I have no idea how private correspondence between myself and Mayor Zapf of Umlaut could possibly have entered the public domain unless as part of some deliberate attempt to sow discord between our two cities. Consequently, I decline to rise to the goading of the Umlauters by commenting on this issue.

 
Fellow passengers saluted Tibo with approving nods. “You tell ’em, Mayor Krovic,” said a fat lady in a felt hat and she stabbed a pudgy finger at the paper and laughed.

  “Uppity Umlaut at it again,” said the conductor. He clanged the bell.

  Good Tibo Krovic found himself battling the temptation to feel guilty. Should he feel guilty? What was there to feel guilty about? Was he deceiving the people of Dot? Hardly. How could he be said to have deceived them? He had written an angry letter to Zapf. That letter existed. He had refused to say anything about it to the papers. So how could that be a deceit? Anyway, it was good for the Dottians to hate the Umlauters. It made the town football team play better, it made the schoolchildren study harder for the provincial spelling tests, it made the gardeners of the city parks department weed the flowerbeds a little more thoroughly and the Fire Brigade Band shine their brass helmets a little brighter. “Call that polished?” the bandmaster would say. “You’re not in Umlaut now, laddie!” And, before he marched on to the bandstand in Copernicus Park with his mates on a Sunday afternoon, the man with the glockenspiel would polish his helmet thin. It was good for them. Tibo swallowed his conscience.

  When he got to work, his desk was empty. No folders of council documents to wade through, no letters from angry ratepayers to deal with, no plans for new waterworks or demands for replacement trams from the transport department. Nothing.

  “What’s in the diary for today?” he asked Agathe.

  “You’ve got a wedding to do at five o’clock. That redheaded girl from the ferry office. Rush job apparently. No fuss. Get it done and down the back stair quick but, apart from that, nothing.” She snapped the book shut and looked at him with a smile.

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “No letters?”

  “There was one from a schoolgirl asking for information so she could do a class project on life in the Town Hall, and could she please come and visit?”