Tibo preyed on her mind. That evening, sprawled across the bed while Hektor sat at the table and drew her, saying nothing, she raged over him. “He has no right,” she thought. “It’s none of his business. He had his chance. He had plenty of chances. I won’t let him spoil this with his snivel, snivel, snivel. Not now I’ve got a real man.” She tilted her head to look at Hektor.
“For God’s sake be still,” he said.
“Sorry.” Agathe moved back to where she had been. “Can’t you talk to me?”
“No. I’m working. You think I’m playing at this or something? Look, just shut up.”
Agathe sighed and went back to a respectful silence.
There was a spider’s web in the corner of the ceiling and three tarry-coloured blobs, two large and one small. How could they have got there? And what about that Tibo Krovic? It offended her that he was so upset. It offended her more that he refused to show it. He should rage and scream and call her horrible names, plead to win her back—hit her even—but he wouldn’t. He just persisted in pretending that he wished her well when anybody could see that he was broken up inside. He was doing it to get at her.
“You moved your leg. Put it back. No, the other leg. Now you’ve moved both of them. Wider. Good.”
But it was Tibo’s obvious suffering that upset Agathe most. It offended her womanly instincts, all the motherly, nurturing, nourishing, healing urges that she had in abundance. He needed fed. She could feed him. “I could, I suppose. I could. I mean I was ready to before. It wouldn’t mean anything. It would be an act of kindness. I could. Once.”
Hektor snapped his sketchbook shut. “Keep still,” he said. “Stay absolutely still. Hold it. I want you exactly like that with just that look on your face.” He tossed his trousers over the bed and leapt on her.
HE NEXT MORNING—IT WAS A THURSDAY and the last Thursday morning of Mamma Cesare’s life—Mayor Tibo Krovic went to The Golden Angel as usual, drank his Viennese coffee with plenty of figs, taking his time, then he left a packet of mints by his saucer and walked out into Castle Street.
As usual, Mamma Cesare hurried towards the Mayor’s table as soon as he was finished but this time, instead of clearing things away carefully, she took the mints, tucked them into a pocket of her apron, rushed through the swing doors and left Tibo’s cup and saucer abandoned on the table behind her.
Outside on the street, Mamma Cesare had to hurry to keep Tibo in sight. She ducked between the passers-by, weaving through the morning crowds on short legs, amongst people she had never seen before, people who were always outside, on their way to work, when she was inside, serving coffee and torte. Their breath hung in the air above her head, whispering, twisting rope-wraiths of steam all the way down Castle Street like the chill reflection of moisture that hangs over a quiet river on summer mornings and marks it out in the middle of still fields or hidden at the bottom of a valley. It was a very cold day. People remarked on it to one another as they went to work and later, in The Golden Angel, they wondered whether perhaps, if Mamma Cesare had stopped to put on her coat, instead of rushing down Castle Street wrapped only in a brown cotton apron, she might not have lived a few years longer.
But Mamma Cesare did not feel the cold when she was running. It tugged at her sleeve to slow her as she hurried down the street, it forced burning fingers into her lungs as she ran, but she did not notice. She concentrated on Tibo, watching to make certain that he followed his usual route, down Castle Street, over the icy Ampersand across the efficiently gritted square and into the Town Hall. Only when she was standing under the broad arcade of square, granite pillars at the front of the building, peeking out, sweeping her eye across the square, up Castle Street, both ways along Ampersand Avenue and back again, watching, only then did she begin to feel the cold winding itself around her, gripping her, piercing her and dragging her down like prey.
She danced a shuffling dance behind the pillar, hugging herself, muttering dark curses in her old mountain dialect, beating clenched fists around her body, blowing on her bent brown fingers until, when Agathe came past, she shot out an icy claw and grabbed her by the wrist.
Agathe clutched at her chest. “Good God, you terrified me!”
“Is a good thing.” There was a shiver in Mamma Cesare’s voice. “You should be plenty scared. You come tonight.”
“I don’t know,” said Agathe. “I’ll try. Look, are you all right? You look frozen. Come in and warm up for a bit.”
“Never mind that stuff and never mind ‘I don’t know.’ You come. Long time I’m waiting. You keep saying you’re going to come. Tonight. Come tonight. You just better.”
Even through the cuff of her winter coat, Agathe felt the little woman’s grip like a talon.
“Long time I’m waiting,” she said again. “You come.”
Agathe looked down at her wrist and tried to twist away. “All right. Yes, if it’s that important, I’ll come.”
“Promise me now. You promise.”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Ten o’clock. Same as before. You promise.”
“Yes. I promise. Ten o’clock.”
Only then did Mamma Cesare release her grasp and she turned away and began shuffling on bent legs towards White Bridge without another word.
The icy cold that was already worming its way towards Mamma Cesare’s heart had penetrated Agathe too. She felt it as she climbed the green marble staircase, rubbing her wrist and scowling. It hung about her in the office and deepened. The place was chill. The place was frosty. The lamp under the coffee pot was out. Tibo was grey. She saw him hurry into his room as she approached. When she reached his door, it was closing quietly in her face. She raised a hand to knock, thought better of it and went to hang up her coat.
Agathe was still determined to make her offer to Tibo. Not for her own sake. Not that she wanted it but she felt it would be a resolution for him, a full stop, the drawing of a line which she would generously make possible for him. It would free him and, after it, they would both move on. She sat at her desk, behind a mountain of papers ready for typing, clackety-clacking her fingers mechanically over the keys and perfecting the words she would use. “Tibo, I was thinking … No. Tibo, I’ve been thinking … No. Have you ever wondered, Tibo? Look, if, just once, we … Oh, God.”
After two hours, the pile of papers on one side of Agathe’s desk had dwindled considerably and the pile of papers on the other side was mounting higher. She was getting ready to tidy up and go downstairs to Peter Stavo’s little office for a coffee when the door opened and Peter came in.
“There’s a man downstairs asking for you,” he said. “Don’t like the look of him much. Rough looking. Says his name’s Hektor. What do you want me to do with him?”
Agathe sighed and tapped a bundle of typed papers together on the edge of her desk. “It’s all right. I know him. I’ll come.”
He was waiting in the tiled space at the bottom of the stairs, shuffling about with his hands in his pockets, looking untidy and glancing up eagerly as if to hurry her on. When she saw him there, shambling and messy, the thought of Tibo, so neat and quiet up in his office, flashed into her head but, in spite of it, Agathe brightened when she saw him anyway. She couldn’t help it and she hurried down the last few steps towards him. Peter Stavo shut the door of his booth without saying a word and made a great show of reading the paper.
“You got any money?” Hektor said.
She was crestfallen. “Yes. A bit.”
“Give it to me, then.”
“It’s in my purse. It’s up in the office.”
Hektor just stared at her as if she was an idiot. “Well?”
“Yes. Right. Hang on a minute. Sorry.” Agathe hurried back up the stairs, asking herself, “What am I apologising about?” but she said nothing.
Hektor was anxious and jumpy when she returned. She opened her purse and said, “How much do you need?” but his hand snaked out and dipped away with every note she had.
“
Is that it?” he asked. “It’ll do, I suppose.”
“Hektor, that’s all the money I’ve got.”
He snatched the purse from her and looked inside. “There’s the tram fare in there still. You can get home. Whaddya need it for anyway?”
“What do you need it for?”
He suddenly chilled. His eyebrows knitted and his mouth formed into a hard line. There was a movement, just a slight twist of his hand that made her gasp and draw back and, inside his glass booth, Peter Stavo dropped his newspaper and stood up.
“So that’s how it is, is it? You grudge it. I’m grudged a few coppers. I’m like a little kid, waiting for pocket money from Mummy, is that the story? Have it back. Have the bloedig lot!” And he flicked the money at her with his thumb so it exploded against her chest like a bullet wound and the notes fluttered to the floor.
“No,” she said, “I didn’t mean that. Hektor, I just asked.” Agathe crouched on the floor, picking up the cash but, by the time she had gathered it together, the door to City Square was banging and Hektor was gone. She hurried after him and he had slowed down enough to let her catch him at the corner, by the letter box, just where she had run into him that first day. “Hektor, Hektor,” she tugged at his thin black coat. “Hektor, I’m sorry. Of course you can have it if you want it.”
He wouldn’t look at her.
“Hektor, please, take it.”
She made the notes into a bundle and pushed them into his coat pocket. She felt his fingers close around them. She felt his hand make a fist.
“Well, so long as you’re asking,” he said. “Just don’t do me any favours.”
“No. No. It’s not a favour. We share. It’s your money too. I want you to have it.” Agathe put her face up to be kissed.
He did not kiss her. “Right, then. So long as we’re clear. So long as it’s sorted out. I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, for Chrissakes, Agathe! I’m not a bloedig puppy. I’m not on a string. Is that what you think, is it? That what you think of me? You want another Stopak, is that it? Is that what you want?”
“No, Hektor. No. I want you. I just asked. Hektor, don’t be like this. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t come and go? It’s like you think you own me or something. I’m some bloedig toy.”
“No. It’s not that way.”
“I’m not clocking in and clocking out for you.”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Right.” That was all he said and he turned away towards the tram stop with his head down and never looked back but, before he was out of the square, she saw him reach into his pocket and hunch over the bundle of notes and spread them flat and count them and shake his head and walk on.
Agathe turned back towards the Town Hall where Peter Stavo was waiting at his open door. “Coffee’s about ready,” he said.
“Thanks. I’d better get back to work.”
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Fine. I’m fine.”
“He’s a wrong’un, that one.”
“He’s not. He’s all right.” She plodded up the stairs.
At the door to the mayor’s office, she met Tibo hurrying out. He had taken the chance to leave when she was away from her desk and, meeting her like that, he was suddenly dry-mouthed and awkward. He pushed a hand through his hair. He spun on his heel to go back to his desk, realised he was trapped, spun round again to face her. He said, “Good morning, Mrs. Stopak.”
“You’re going to sack me.” Agathe’s lip trembled.
“Should I sack you? Have you done something that deserves sacking?” He might have said something kinder, something gentler, something a bit reassuring like, “Don’t be silly. Why should I sack you? Of course I won’t sack you. I love you.” But that sort of thing had been beaten out of him—she had beaten it out of him—and now he was more inclined to come out fighting and save himself from more beatings.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think I’ve done something?”
Tibo tightened his tie into a pea-sized knot and said, “I’m not going to sack you.”
“You called me ‘Mrs. Stopak.’ You haven’t called me ‘Mrs. Stopak’ for a long time. I thought you were working up to something. I thought you were going to sack me.”
Tibo looked over her shoulder at a spot on the wall just on the other side of the passage. “Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Stopak, I’ve been meaning to … Well … After some thought, I decided that it would probably be for the best if, in the light of the circumstances, we reverted to a more formal style of address. If it’s all right with you, I will call you ‘Mrs. Stopak’ and I’d prefer it if, from now on, you were to call me ‘Mayor Krovic’ or just ‘Mayor.’”
“So you’re not going to sack me?” Her shoulders slumped. “Mayor Krovic.”
“No, I’m not going to sack you.”
“Or transfer me?”
“No.”
“I like this job.” That was a lie. She hated it. She hated the atmosphere that had hung about the office for weeks, the embarrassment, the pain, the coldness.
Tibo said, “You are an extremely competent and efficient secretary. I can’t think of anybody who knows the job better or who could do it as well. Things have been difficult this past while— there’s no point pretending otherwise—but we are both adults and we can find a way to … Yes … Quite.”
His eyes were hurting from staring at the same bit of wall. He might have said, “I have no reason for getting up in the morning except for the thought that I can be near you all day and it’s killing me but being away from you would kill me quicker,” but he didn’t.
“Thank you, Mayor Krovic,” Agathe said and she walked on slowly towards her desk. “School party visiting the Town Hall at three o’clock,” she said. “Don’t forget. You wanted to greet them personally.”
“I won’t forget. Thank you, Mrs. Stopak.” Tibo stumbled down the stairs as if he had been shot and had not yet plucked up the courage to die.
And Agathe, when she sat down at her desk, empty and exhausted, was astonished to see that The Rokeby Venus was still pinned up there, a little dusty and lopsided, forgotten. She pulled it down and read it once more. “More beautiful than this. More precious. More to be desired. More to be worshipped than any goddess. Yes, I AM your friend.” Then she tore it into pieces and dropped them in the bin. The drawing pin stayed stuck in the wall but it wasn’t worth gambling a nail on and she decided to leave it there.
Strangely, though the postcard had hung there, unnoticed, for weeks, that drawing pin seemed to catch her eye all the time and, when it did, the torn picture came back to life—the postcard, the message Tibo had written on it, what it meant, Hektor’s version of it, what that meant, what she thought it meant. It was there when she came back from eating her sandwiches in Peter Stavo’s glass booth—too cold to eat them in the square now. It was there just before three when she looked up from her work and went to the door of Tibo’s office to knock a reminder of the visiting school party, it was there when she sat down again and there at five when she cleared her desk and turned out the lamp.
“Dammit,” she said and left.
GATHE BOUGHT A PAPER FROM THE ONE-LEGGED vendor who stood at his usual spot, on the corner next to the bank, roaring slurred and unintelligible headlines at the passing crowds. He was dirty and a bit smelly, standing there in the same thick coat he wore, winter and summer and wearing a cap that gave off fumes of creosote as she dropped a coin into his hand. “Somebody’s baby,” she thought. “Somebody’s baby. Like my baby. Poor baby.”
Waiting in the queue for the tram, Agathe saw Tibo leave the Town Hall, heading for Castle Street and home. She watched him for a moment until he turned his head and looked towards her. Quickly, she glanced down at her paper and buried herself in an article on record-breaking cabbage exports at the docks. She read the headline and then, without m
oving her head, she flicked her eye back to where Tibo had been standing a moment before. He was still there, still looking towards her. She turned her back and bored into the evening paper again, hating him. “Mr. High-and-Bloedig-Mighty Call-Me-‘Mayor’ Krovic. My baby, my poor baby.”
Her eye caught on “sauerkraut” and she read it, that same word, over and over again until the tram came and the queue shuffled forward.
Spring was still a long way off and the six dim bulbs that lit the inside of the tram turned the windows to blank sheets. The passengers sat ignoring one another, reading their papers, looking out the impenetrable, steamy windows, studying their gloves or pretending to read, over and over again, the coloured cardboard adverts for Bora-Bora Cola stuck along the edge of the ceiling. At the back of the tram, face-to-face across the aisle, there were two bench seats lengthways, along the sides of the tram. Agathe hated sitting there, forced into confrontation with whoever was sitting opposite. She looked down at the floor, she riffled pointlessly through the contents of her handbag and then, at the second stop along Ampersand Avenue, when the conductor yelled, “Ash Street! This is Ash Street!,” the tram filled up.
Almost a dozen passengers squeezed in from the cold and damp of the riverside and seven of them had to stand. They shuffled along the aisle, reaching up for the red leather straps hanging from the brass rail that ran the length of the tram and there, right in front of Agathe, looking right at her, was Mrs. Oktar from the delicatessen.
They each did exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. They each looked at one another, they each recognised a nice woman they knew and liked, a neighbour from Aleksander Street, somebody they hadn’t seen for a while and they each smiled and they each said, “Oh, hello” happily and then they remembered why they no longer saw one another and embarrassment fell across their faces.
“Mrs. Stopak,” said Mrs. Oktar.
“Mrs. Oktar,” said Mrs. Stopak.
The Good Mayor: A Novel Page 25