IBO HAD NO IDEA HOW TO WORK WITHOUT Agathe. Without Agathe, he had nobody to open his mail, nobody to fill out his diary, nobody to read it to him. He had wasted a whole day, sitting with his feet on the desk because he refused to let her into the room and tell him what to do. Without Agathe, there was nothing to do. And now, after he had washed himself in the bleach-smelling Gents at the end of the corridor, after he had unwrapped his parcel and changed his underwear, after he had picked a dozen pins from his new shirt and put it on and confirmed—beyond any possible doubt—that it did not go with his tie, he sat down in his office and went to sleep.
But, in the flat in Canal Street, Agathe was just getting out of bed. She was alone and she moved about the room, confident and naked although she could not shake the feeling that she had forgotten something, something that had happened or something she was supposed to do. It hung about her like a half-remembered dream until she dismissed it with a shake of the head. Agathe noticed the door to the street was standing open and the curtains had fallen from the window to lie in a pile at its left-hand side while the rail which had held them hung by a single nail at the right. She pushed them out of the way and washed herself in the sink, looking out at Canal Street as she did it, just as anybody in Canal Street might have looked in at her.
And while she was doing that, Achilles came home, tail up, shoulders swinging, wearing a smug “Boy, oh, boy, just don’t ask” look after a festive night of rats and fights and lady cats. Because he loved Agathe, he came to wind himself around her legs as he always did but he had barely begun, he had just nudged her with the top of his head, when all his weary contentment disappeared and he recoiled with a panicked yowl. Achilles found himself trapped, with Agathe between him and the door and fear gripping him. His tail exploded into a terrified brush and he broke away from her, bounding across the table and on to the bed, running so fast he actually clawed his way around the wall for a couple of paces until he fell off and smacked his nose against the door which began to swing shut.
Achilles scratched and scrabbled pitifully against it for a second or two, screaming like a fire siren but, when Agathe moved to comfort him, he leapt for the collapsed curtains and dragged himself up the pole to the top where he squatted, spitting and fizzing like a Catherine wheel.
“Bad cat,” said Agathe. “It’s me. It’s just me. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” And then she gave the most delicious shimmy that started at her heels and went up to her neck so her calves flicked one way and her thighs another, so her bottom flicked one way and her tummy another, her breasts flicked one way and her shoulders another and surprised beads of soapy water flew away from her body in a cloak of sparkles.
Achilles was unimpressed. He coiled and spat at the top of the pole and said, “Nerrryauummrrrrr,” a lot.
“Be quiet,” said Agathe. “It’s a perfectly sensible way to dry yourself.” And she wondered, “Now, do I still need clothes for going to work?”
She decided that, yes, she did and she took her blue dress from the cupboard in the corner. Her shoes were hiding under one of the upturned chairs. She picked them up, let the chair fall back where it lay and left for work. From his place at the top of the curtain pole, poor Achilles watched her go. When she did not return, he leapt to the floor and streaked out of the open door, hugging the cobbles.
Of course Agathe had no wish to harm Achilles and, anyway, by the time he fled from the flat, she was already far away. She had decided to walk to work but it seemed to be taking much longer than usual. Dot was suddenly so much more vivid, so much more interesting and full of so many things to be investigated. As she walked, Agathe crossed and recrossed the pavement, entranced by the mysterious smears and stains outside The Three Crowns, fascinated by the sausages left hanging outside Mrs. Oktar’s delicatessen, drawn from one glorious lamp post to another, stopping to explore each of them, hurrying on to the next. “Fantastic! Incredible! They are like iron orchid stems. Why did I never notice?”
When, at last, she arrived in City Square, Agathe was very late for work but, since the mayor was sleeping across his desk and quite unaware of the time, that hardly mattered. She sat down and looked at her typewriter. Nothing happened.
Then, at eleven o’clock, a barrage of bell notes through the open window woke Tibo and sent him shambling out of his office, looking for coffee. And Agathe was sitting there at her desk and Tibo saw her and his voice broke in a sob and he said, “Oh, Agathe. Oh, dear God. He hit you.”
She waved him away saying, “Don’t be silly, Tibo. Nobody hit me.”
But Tibo was on his knees in front of her, grasping her by the legs with tears in his eyes as he reached up to brush her face with his fingers.
“He did this. The bastard. He did this. Oh, my poor Agathe, I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
She smiled down at him with the indulgent look she would have given an idiot child. “Tibo, stop being so silly. Nobody did this. Nobody hurt me.”
“But your face. Your poor face. My poor darling, look what he did. The bruise on your face. Oh, Agathe.”
Very gently she brushed his hand away and held it between her own two hands and said, “Tibo, you have to understand. You have to be my big, brave mayor and try to understand. Hektor did not hit me. How could Hektor have hit me? Why would he hit me?”
“Because you went home without the money, without the eighteen hundred, and he hit you and it’s all my fault.”
“No, Tibo, that’s just silly. Only a very bad man could hit a woman and I’ve been with Hektor for a long time and, if he was a bad man, I would have known. I turned my whole life upside down to be with Hektor. There was you and me, for example, and Stopak—everything. How could I have done that for a bad man, for a man who wasn’t nice and didn’t love me? That’s ridiculous. Tibo, listen. This isn’t a black eye. It’s part of my skin. I am turning into a dog.”
Tibo slumped on the floor in front of her. “A dog? You are turning into a dog?”
“Yes. It’s a bit strange and a bit wonderful but you’re not to be afraid.”
“Where is he?”
“Who? Hektor?”
“Where is he? I have to kill him.”
“Now you really are being silly,” she said, “so it’s just as well I don’t know where he is.”
“He hit you and ran away.”
Agathe sighed impatiently. “Tibo, I’ve explained all this. Nobody hit me. I’m turning into a dog—a Dalmatian, I think. Remember how I always dreamed of going there—to Dalmatia?”
“A Dalmatian,” Tibo said. He sounded defeated.
“Yes. I’ve got this black patch across my eye—which I think is very attractive—and there are some more on my legs already. I expect there will be others soon—as it goes on, as I change more.”
“As you change more. Agathe, you are not a dog. You are not about to become a dog. You’re just a little upset.”
She shook her head. “Tibo, I’ve never felt better. Except, obviously, it’s going to change things for us. I’m handing in my notice. I can’t really work for you any longer. Dogs can’t type.”
“Or talk.”
“Silly.”
Tibo looked at her for a little and decided there was still room to appeal to her rational nature. “Agathe,” he said, “have you thought how you’ll live? You can’t just wander the streets. Dot has quite a good dog catcher. He’ll put you in the pound and then, if nobody claims you after ten days—and nobody will since you don’t belong to anybody …” Tibo gripped himself by the ears and made a noise like electricity. “Dzzzzzztttt!”
Agathe looked wounded but she said, “Yes. I’ve thought of that and I was hoping that I could come and stay with you.”
“With me.”
“Yes, Tibo. Come on, tell me the truth—when you were a little boy, didn’t you wish, sometimes, that a puppy would follow you home and you could keep it? Didn’t you? You did, I know you did! Well, now it’s happened.”
Hearing her say that, Ti
bo could see himself, as a boy, standing on a street corner in a not very nice part of Dot, looking at a little dog with yellow feet, waiting, willing it to cross the road so it would be with him, so it would choose him and be his. But the dog went home. The dog always went home. And now here was Agathe, wagging her tail.
“All right,” said Tibo, “you can stay with me. When the time comes.”
“When the time comes,” said Agathe.
“Yes, you can stay.”
“Stay!” she said, firmly, with an upraised finger.
“I didn’t mean that! Agathe, you are not turning into a dog. I won’t allow it. I won’t hear it spoken of. You are simply a little overwrought, that’s all.”
She made a solemn face.
“Agathe, please. Listen to me. I have to go out. Some things I need to do. Will you come? But, if you do, I need you to promise that you’ll be good. None of this ‘turning into a dog’ nonsense.”
“Tibo, it’s not nonsense. Please try to understand. It’s just the way things are and I’m not embarrassed about it and I’m not about to shut up about it.”
Good Mayor Krovic brushed his hand across her face, just as he had dreamed of doing for years—except he had always seen it as a prelude to a kiss and never imagined he might be soothing a black eye. He said, “Oh, Agathe, my poor darling. I’m so sorry.” Then, going quickly to the door, he said, “Wait here,” and locked her in.
Tibo took the back stairs to Peter Stavo’s booth and gave firm instructions that nobody was to go anywhere near the mayor’s office for the next half hour—“not even if it goes on fire”—then he left.
IBO WAS NOT WELL KNOWN FOR HIS ATHLETIC prowess. The people of Dot were unlikely to turn to one another over a glass of something in the evening and say, “I saw Mayor Krovic running along Castle Street again this morning.” But he ran that day and he hit the doors of The Golden Angel like a runaway train and didn’t stop. Behind the coffee organ, Cesare’s eyebrows shot so far up his face they almost vanished into his brilliantined hair but he managed a thin smile of welcome. It turned to a look of alarm when Mayor Krovic defied protocol and crossed behind the counter. “Cesare, a word.” That was all he said.
The situation was so grave that Cesare was unable to communicate by eyebrows alone. He raised a finger and summoned Beppo from his place at the other side of the cafe. “Brother, you are in charge,” he said. “Do not fail me.” And then, in the moment or two that it took for Beppo to grow another six inches in height and become solemn as an undertaker, while the other waiters looked on and sighed like the wind moving through the reeds at the mouth of the Ampersand, Cesare led Tibo into his parlour.
He said, “There seems to be some misunderstanding. I serve—that does not make me your servant.”
And Tibo, who knew he had behaved abominably and was too embarrassed to apologise, simply clenched his teeth and said, “Make it stop.”
Cesare flashed his eyebrows again. A student of such things would have seen the gesture and read, “So, just the other day I came to you bringing coffee and cakes, talking to you as a friend, showing respect to your office and to you as a man. Today you humiliate me in front of my staff and my customers and you refuse to make any apology. Who are you, little man? Don’t you know, in the old country, I could cut your throat for this?” But the only thing that Cesare said was, “Stop what?”
“Stop the curse. The curse I asked you to put on somebody. Make it stop.”
“I never heard you ask for a curse,” said Cesare.
He took an enormous bunch of keys from his pocket, selected the smallest, a tiny sliver of golden metal, and, with that, he opened the marquetry escritoire by the window and rolled back the lid.
“This is yours, I think.” And he handed Tibo a familiar brown envelope. “Take it. It’s just as it was. I never touched it. And you never asked for a curse.”
Tibo looked inside the envelope. The twist of dark hair was still there as he had left it, fresh from her brush, still covered in his kisses. He said, “I am very sorry.”
And Cesare responded with an eyebrow flash which might have meant “Too late,” or “Well, that’s all right, then.” At that angle and with the light falling from the window that way, it was difficult to tell.
Cesare said, “Tell me about the curse,” as if he had been a doctor from a long line of doctors and he was asking for a list of symptoms.
Tibo told him. “But it’s not true, of course. She is not really becoming a dog.”
“Foolish man, of course she is. This is bad,” said Cesare, “very bad.”
“What do I do?”
“You could find the person who has done this thing and make them stop. Of course, that person might be you.”
“It’s not me!” Tibo protested.
“Even so, there is probably no cure—except love, perhaps even unto death. That cures most things.”
“I have not found it so,” said Tibo and excused himself.
UT IN CASTLE STREET AGAIN, TIBO HAILED A cab. The run to The Golden Angel had left him hot and sticky, the interview with Cesare had left him clammy. He took off his jacket as the cab nudged through Dot’s lunchtime traffic, undid his top button, loosened his tie. “Canal Street,” said the driver. “This is as far as I go. Can’t get the cab through the tunnel and I’m not sorry. They’d have the wheels off before I could turn her round.”
Tibo got out and paid.
“D’you want me to wait?” “No,” said Tibo.
“Thank God for that.” The cab reversed hastily away.
Tibo had never gone to Canal Street. It was the one indulgence of the jilted lover which he had denied himself. He’d never crept around at night, never listened at windows, never concocted fantasies from the contents of rubbish bins or washing lines, never hammered on the door in the middle of the night, never made a drunken, pleading declaration of love or issued a challenge to fight, never stood at the other side of the canal, just watching for hours on end until the snow settled on his hat as thick and stiff as wedding-cake icing. But he had wondered. And now it was real—the dirty cobbles, the rusty railings, the broken street lamps and No. 15 with its door swinging open. Hektor would be there. The man who hit Agathe. The man who took Agathe and hit her every night for three years. His house. And he would be in it and now Tibo would go inside and kill him.
He knocked on the door. He knocked again. He pushed the door open wider. He went in.
There were two doors off the tiny hall. He opened the first—a lavatory with a window to the back. He opened the second and found the single room where Agathe had lived and slept all this time, the curtains collapsed on the floor—“She made those,” Tibo thought—the chairs overturned, the bed in the corner unmade. Tibo turned away. He couldn’t bear the sight of it.
But there was no sign of Hektor. “He’s not coming back,” said Tibo, “and neither is she.”
He looked round the room for Agathe’s clothes but, apart from her coat hanging on the back of the door, there was nothing to show that anybody in particular lived there. He opened the corner cupboard and found her dresses on hooks, her seven pairs of shoes in a soldierly row and her underwear, serene on the top shelf.
Tibo gathered her dresses in one arm and, with his free hand, he began stacking her underwear. He needed a suitcase. He came out of the cupboard and looked around. The bed. If there was a suitcase, it would be under the bed. He draped Agathe’s things across the rumpled sheets and fell to his knees, groping round in the dusty dark below the bed. That was when he found the paintings—pictures of Agathe standing, sitting, lying, mostly lying, displayed like cut fruit on the bed, this bed, that very bed.
He looked at them all, hating himself for enjoying them, sickened by the way they made him feel, slicing himself with jealousy again because Hektor had seen her like this, because Hektor had made these beautiful things and she had helped him. He was there for quite some time before he smashed the first of the pictures. He held it between two hands an
d drove it down on to one of the brass balls on the foot of the bed so the paint cracked and the canvas bowed and bellied but it didn’t tear so he swung it sideways until the stretcher splintered and the whole thing collapsed. That was enough. Tibo looked at what he had done. He looked at the rest of the pictures, piled on the mattress, and covered them over with a flick of the bedspread. And then he took a fallen curtain, spread it on the table, piled her clothes on it and knotted it into a sack.
When Tibo left that place, he closed the door as if he had been closing the door of a tomb.
Nobody in Canal Street paid any attention to the strange man with the large bundle. Canal Street is the sort of place where unexplained bundles are quite often seen but almost never noticed, the sort of place where it’s thought impolite to take too much of an interest in what the neighbours might be carrying around.
Tibo walked as far as Green Bridge before he found a tram and he tossed his parcel into the luggage compartment under the stairs as soon as he got on. By an effort of will, he ignored it all the way into town and he was downright casual about it when he got off. At the Town Hall, he held it below the level of Peter Stavo’s window when he knocked and said, “Sorry, took a bit longer than I thought.” And he wore it like a paunch when he turned his back and climbed the stairs.
“I’ve brought your things,” he announced when he unlocked the office door but there was no sign of Agathe. It took a moment or two of going round the office, calling her name in urgent whispers before he found her, lying curled on the floor under his desk.
“It seemed appropriate,” she said.
Tibo only humphed.
“I have been to Canal Street,” he said.
Agathe lay, open mouthed, with her tongue out, head cocked to one side.
Tibo ignored it. “I have been to Canal Street and you are not going back. You’re coming to stay with me.”
“That’s just what I’ve always wanted, Tibo,” she said.
But there was a lot to do before he could take her home—a vital meeting of the Planning Committee that took up most of the afternoon, discussing a big new sewer project, a budget meeting to talk about next year’s schools spending and all of that before the full council.
The Good Mayor: A Novel Page 32