Passport to Peril

by Lawrence Block

  Guiltily, she lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first and sat back, smoking nervously. It was only natural, she thought; she was still shaky from the purse snatching—and at the time it had seemed that they might be after far more than her near-empty purse. She blew out a cloud of smoke, and her eyes followed it on its way to the ceiling. When she finished the cigarette she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes and thought about the odd combination of events that had brought her to London…

  It had begun with a fearfully official envelope with DEPARTMENT OF STATE in its upper lefthand corner. The letter inside explained that she had been selected to represent the United States at the Third International Festival of Folk Music and Dancing, to be held in West Berlin during the second week of October. While she would receive no fee for her performance, the United States Government would be pleased to reimburse her for first-class air passage to and from Berlin, and the West German Government would provide her with food and lodging during the week of the festival. She would be required to accept or reject the invitation within ten days and to submit to the State Department, in triplicate, a tentative program of ten songs that she would be prepared to perform during the festival competition.

  The invitation had thrilled her. While other events were considerably more important in the world of folk music, the Berlin festival was internationally recognized and carried a certain amount of prestige. And she would be going to it as one of the American representatives. The honor of having been selected would benefit her professionally, and the chance to travel was even more exciting. She wrote back at once, submitting a detailed program of the songs she would sing and expressing her delight at having been chosen.

  Her agent was as happy as she was. “This is a big break for you, Ellen,” he told her. “You’ve been getting nothing but small stuff, the minor folk-music clubs in the Village, a couple of concerts, college campus dates. Your albums are good, and Folklore is happy with them, but it’s no secret that they’re setting no sales records. This’ll give us a good publicity hook. Don’t kid yourself—all it amounts to is that you got on a list that the cultural exchange people in Washington are using. But I ought to be able to get you some good bookings on the strength of it.” He pursed his lips, regarding her thoughtfully. “Do you just want to hop to Berlin and back? Or would you like to make a trip out of it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  And he showed her what he meant. With nothing more than the State Department invitation to back him up, he had gone to Folklore Records and persuaded them to pick up the tab for a few weeks in England and Ireland. “They’ve done very well with Irish ballads lately,” he told her. “They’ll pay your expenses to travel through Ireland gathering material. Go right through the country, stop in the small towns, take your tape recorder, and get yourself some fresh material. When you come back you’ll have enough for an album, and they’ll go for the album. Maybe even two albums…”

  “And I could record some material by native singers,” she suggested. “They might want that for their Ethnic series. Ballads in Gaelic. I could…”

  He smiled. “You’re getting the idea now. That’s not all. You’ll go to London first. I’m pretty sure I can book you into a pair of concerts there. The pay won’t be the best in the world, but it should more than cover your expenses. And then when you come back we’ll have a lot of selling points to back you up with. ‘Ellen Cameron, recently returned from a tour of Western Europe with triumphal appearances in London and Berlin, performing her repertoire of folk ballads unearthed in the hamlets of Western Ireland.’ You’ll get a Town Hall booking out of that one, and possibly even Carnegie, though I wouldn’t guarantee it.”

  “It sounds fantastic.”

  He grinned. “You see what it is, Ellen? It isn’t enough to be good. You’re a good singer, your voice is smooth and strong and you handle it well, and it’s a fact that your guitar playing is a good two hundred percent better than it was two years ago. But that’s not enough. They have to know you, they have to know your name and your face and what you’ve done and who you are. Once you start to establish yourself, everything you do helps everything else. Your albums bring people to the concerts, and your concerts help sell record albums, and suddenly you begin to make it. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, but time is something you have plenty of, a young kid like you, and this trip could be a big help to you.”

  “I can hardly wait. How long would I be gone altogether?”

  “Say a week in London and two or three weeks in Ireland. Then a week in Berlin and then home. So figure a month altogether.”

  “It sounds heavenly.”

  “Don’t expect luxury, unless you’ve got money of your own stashed away. Do you?”

  She thought of the years since college, the years of working at odd jobs, picking up a little money at concerts, occasional payments for recording sessions. It was remarkable that she had managed to stay out of debt. She had never been able to set any money aside.

  “No,” she said.

  “Then you won’t be living high. You wouldn’t want to anyway, not if you want to go among the people and collect new songs. You’ll stay in inexpensive hotels and eat at cheap restaurants. But it should be fun for you. You’ve never been out of the country before?”

  “Never.”

  “I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “I know I will.”

  And she would, she thought fiercely. True, London had been a disappointment, but London was only a small portion of the trip. She had had two bookings in London, and they had not added up to what she had hoped for. The first concert turned out to be more rock ’n’ roll than true folk music, and they had let her sing only three songs, toward the end of the show. The audience, while polite, was generally unresponsive.

  The second concert, because of some fluke, had been canceled entirely. The folk singers she had hoped to see in London—a trio she had met in New York and the only persons in England she knew well enough to speak with—had picked that particular week to fly to New York. So she’d been stranded, friendless and alone, in a city that had been less than kind to her. The sightseeing and the theater had not made up for all of this. Now the purse snatching was the crowning blow, the finishing touch.

  No matter, she told herself. London, after all, was the least important part of her trip. Tomorrow she would be off for Dublin, and then she would have days on end to spend touring Ireland with tape recorder and guitar. With any luck at all she would return with enough material on tape for half a dozen albums. True folk songs, sprung from the hearts of the Irish people and passed on from generation to generation as part of a vibrant oral tradition and heritage.

  She got undressed, laid out clothes for the morning, and got into bed. She pulled the covers over her and settled her head on the soft feather pillow.

  For a moment the memory of pursuit in the dark London streets came back to her in a flash. The man, moving into the glow of the streetlamp, his features sharp and terrifying. Running, and slipping, and being caught. The firm grip on the back of her neck, the dull pain, slipping, falling, the world turning black…

  But it was over now. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, certain that it would be hours before she could sleep; and then, surprisingly, sleep came in a rush.

  Her travel alarm woke her at eight. It rang so softly that she almost slept through it, but she awoke in time, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, slipped into her trench coat (“Use your raincoat in place of a bathrobe,” the guide books had suggested, “and save room in your suitcase”), and walked down the hall to the communal bathroom. She bathed quickly, thinking again how odd it was to be charged for every bath you took. The price was just a shilling, only fourteen cents, but it did seem odd to pay extra to be clean.

  In her room, she dressed quickly and went down the stairs for breakfast. Crichton Hall served an excellent breakfast, three eggs and sausages and juice and cereal
and toast and a pot of tea. She shared a table with two spinster ladies from France who spoke French to one another and ignored Ellen entirely. When she finished breakfast she asked the landlady to prepare her bill and call a taxi.

  She paid her bill, got her suitcases from her room, and took the taxi to the airport bus terminal. The cab driver offered to take her straight to the airport, but she was afraid the ride would cost too much. She rode to the bus terminal instead and took the bus to the airport. She checked her suitcase and guitar and decided to carry her tape recorder onto the plane with her. It was a small model, fully transistorized and not too heavy but good enough to record music faithfully.

  Sitting on a bench in the airport, the tape recorder on her knees, she wondered if that might be one of the reasons she had felt ill at ease in London. Here she was, with her tape recorder and her guitar, and she hadn’t been putting either of them to good use yet. In Ireland things would be different. She could picture herself in the singing pubs in Dublin or in the counties in the south and west, Tipperary and Cork and Kerry, seeking out the native singers and learning new songs and getting exciting new material on tape. She was anxious to get to work, anxious to be doing what she had come across the ocean to do.

  Soon, she thought. Soon.

  She went through exit customs, had her passport stamped, and moved into another room to wait for her Aer Lingus flight to be called. everyone was very polite. The young man who stamped her exit visa on her passport gave her a big smile. “Off to Ireland, are you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, you’ll like it there. Come back and visit us again, will you?”

  “Oh, I will,” she said. And she knew that she would. Her disappointment with London, she decided, had been a very personal thing, an unfair judgment of a great and grand city. The coldness and impersonality of it could be balanced off by some very fine things, she knew. The sweet red-haired woman who had helped her last night, the gentle civility of the passport clerk, the efficient politeness that had greeted her everywhere she had gone. And the fine breakfasts at Crichton Hall, and the sense of History echoing in ancient streets. Yes, she thought, she would be back.

  Her flight was called. She got to her feet, followed a herd of passengers through a flight gate and out toward a sleek green-trimmed jet. A stewardess, looking trim and pretty in the Kelly-green uniform of the Irish international airline, welcomed her and the rest of the passengers aboard in English just faintly touched with a melodious Irish brogue. Then she repeated the welcome in Gaelic.

  Ellen drank in the words, savoring the texture of the Gaelic tongue. She had heard the old Irish language sung—indeed, she could sing two or three songs in Irish—but she had never heard the language spoken before. She would have to hear a great deal of it, she decided. She couldn’t hope to learn it, but if she let her ear grow accustomed to the sound of the language it would be much easier for her to render Irish songs effectively.

  She sat by the window. The plane was still filling with passengers for the nonstop flight to the Irish capital. She looked out the window at the crowds of people boarding and leaving other planes. It was a busy airport, even busier than Kennedy.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss. Is this seat taken?”

  She turned at the voice. A tall man was bending over her. His hair was dark, and he wore the turned collar and black robes of a Catholic priest. He was in his late thirties, she guessed, though she had always found it hard to tell the ages of clergymen. There was something ageless about them, some quality that set them apart.

  “No, it’s not taken,” she said. “Please sit down.”

  He sat beside her, buckled his seatbelt, and sighed. “Ah, it’s a beautiful day for flying,” he said. “And are you going home to Dublin this morning?”

  “I’m going to Dublin, but it’s not my home. I’m an American.”

  “I’ve never been to America, but it’s a second home to many an Irishman. I’ve relatives in Boston and Philadelphia, and family on my mother’s side in Chicago, as well. What part of America are you from?”

  “New York.”

  “And might I ask if you’re of Irish descent?”

  She smiled. “Partly, I think. My name is Cameron and my mother’s maiden name was Paisley. Cameron is Scottish, of course, but I think the first Paisleys came from Northern Ireland. Though our family has been in America for so long that that’s all we are now, really. American.”

  “It must be a grand country.”

  “It is.” She hesitated. “Though I’ve never been anywhere else, until this trip. I’ve had a wonderful time in London” —it was a small enough lie— “and I’m very anxious to see Ireland.”

  “Ah, no more so than I myself.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ve been three years in Africa, and you can’t know how glad I’ll be to get back to my own land. Not that I’m not glad for the opportunity to do the Lord’s work, but I’d be just as happy if the Lord could find some work for me to do in County Clare.” His eyes twinkled. “And I hope you’ll forgive me that little touch of blasphemy. But three years in Tanzania leaves a man lonesome for his own native soil.”

  “What did you do there, exactly?”

  “We had a small mission in a town not far from Dar es Salaam. That’s the capital of the country, you know. There were two countries at first, Tanganyika and Zanzibar, but the two merged. Both were British colonies originally and it’s not very hard for an Irishman to sympathize with other peoples who have spent some time beneath the British flag. We ran a small Jesuit mission in the town and brought the faith to those of the natives who were anxious to receive it. And brought medicines and a bit of education to the others. Oh, it was an exciting experience, to be sure.”

  The engines warmed up, and the plane taxied down a long runway, then took off into the wind. She sat in her seat and listened intently as the soft-spoken priest told of his experiences in the small African village. She hadn’t realized until then how starved she was for conversation. It was a delight to listen to his gentle Irish speech, and she found herself hanging on every word.

  He told her of the primitive superstitions of the natives and of the crude and often squalid lives they led. He talked of assisting a woman in childbirth and the sense of pride he had felt later on officiating at the infant’s christening. “It was a grand feeling,” he said, “for the Reverend Michael Farrell, S.J.”

  “I can imagine it was.”

  “A moving experience.” He smiled. “You’re not a Catholic, are you, Ellen?”

  “No, I’m not. How did you know?”

  “You haven’t called me Father. You may, you know, whether you’re of the Catholic faith or not. It’s what we’re used to being called, you see. My villagers used to call me Father Mike almost religiously, and then they’d go to their tents and pray to their pagan gods quite as if I hadn’t been there at all. But it’s a pity you’re not Catholic, because there’s a Jesuit joke I’d very much like to try out on you, and lacking the background you might not be able to appreciate it.”

  “I’d be happy to hear it.”

  “Well, then, let me try. There were three good workers in the vineyard of the Lord, do you see, and one was a Dominican friar and another a Christian Brother and the third a Jesuit priest, and the three became caught up in a most unholy argument as to who was most important in the carrying out of the Lord’s work. And each grew quite vehement over the whole affair, arguing that his particular order was highest in the Lord’s eyes.

  “Until suddenly, as the three stood arguing amongst themselves, the sky was split by a bolt of lightning and an earthshaking peal of thunder. And the three went all quiet, and a huge finger appeared and began writing upon the face of the sky. ‘You must stop this foolish bickering,’ the finger wrote. ‘You are all equal in my sight. Whether Jesuits or Christian Brothers or Dominicans, you are all doing my work. Continue with the work of the Lord and cease wasting precious time in godless disputation.’ And do you know how the holy messa
ge was signed?”

  “How?”

  “Why, it was signed, ‘God, S.J.’”

  She began to laugh, and Father Farrell smiled at her. “Now tell me,” he said. “Is that joke funny to a non-Catholic? I know it’s a story priests like to laugh at and that some Catholics would appreciate, but does it strike you funny?”

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him.

  He told her another joke, this time in a richly comic Irish brogue, about an old woman smuggling whiskey home from a pilgrimage on the pretext that it was holy water. When the customs inspector tasted it and announced its actual character, the woman feigned astonishment.

  “Saints be praised,” came the punch line, “’tis a miracle!”

  And, after she had relaxed in genuine laughter, he shook his head sadly and apologized for monopolizing the conversation. “Here I am talking away a mile a minute and not giving you a chance to say a word,” he said. “When what I really ought to do is ask you where you’ll be going in Ireland and what you plan to do here. Is it just a brief stop for you, or will you have time to see something of the country?”

  “Oh, I’ll be here for two or three weeks.”

  “Ah, how wonderful! Just in Dublin, or will you travel around?”

  “I hope to travel a great deal.”

  He drew her out with more questions, and she found herself telling him everything about her trip, from the first letter from the State Department to the purse-snatching episode of the night before. He was an excellent listener, evidently genuinely interested in everything she had to say, and she discovered that she had missed the opportunity for real conversation. She told him that she planned to spend several days in Dublin and had made a reservation at a hotel in Amiens Street. After that, she planned to head south and west with no firm itinerary in mind. She wanted to make sure to get to the Festival of Kerry in Tralee and to move on to the tiny town of Dingle for the conclusion of the festival, but beyond that she had no hard-and-fast plans.