The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Now the man set off again, but on a new course, between the café and a news-stand, presumably towards some side exit.

  ‘Tell me something I really want to see,’ she said in English.

  ‘I fear, dear Flora, that you want to see the paintings of Klimt.’

  ‘I do want to see the paintings of Mr Klimt, if they’re anything like their descriptions. It interests me to see how men see women.’

  ‘Entschuldigung, sehr geehrte Fräulein.’ Another man had stopped, this one right in front of her, and she looked up into his face. ‘Sprechen Sie Englisch?’

  She nodded. ‘Thank goodness,’ he went on, and she could see the tension in eyes and stance. ‘I’m looking for… for a friend of mine. He came this way and now I can’t see him. Wearing… a jacket, a… greeny-browny sort of jacket.’ Unconsciously he was miming buttons high on the chest. ‘And… and a hat. Oh, a…’ – he mimed something close to his head – ‘a thin thing, not much brim. With a—’

  ‘A funny little thing with a feather?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, that’s the chap.’

  ‘He ducked down this way.’ She pointed between their café and the news-stand.

  ‘Splendid. That’s really – really a great help. Thank you.’ He touched his hat, and started to move, then stopped. ‘Your English is… well, exceptional.’

  ‘You’re most kind. I’m from Derbyshire, but we had a good travelling library.’

  For the first time she saw him relax: just an instant as he understood, and laughed once, and life sparked in his eyes and mouth. Then it was gone, the eyes hard, and he touched his hat again and the same to Gerta and was off through the crowd with long strides.

  Hathaway watched him go, with curiosity.

  ‘Ah,’ Gerta said mournfully; ‘and now alas we have no interest in Klimt.’

  ‘Gerta: you’re about to be vulgar.’

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  ‘Just a typical Englishman.’

  Gerta nodded in the direction the man had gone. ‘If that’ – she hit the word – ‘is a typical Englishman, then German propaganda is wrong indeed, and I have been holidaying in the wrong places.’

  ‘Dozens like that in every college. Long-faced and sad-looking and incapable of considering a woman – let alone her body – in any natural or healthy way.’

  ‘Perhaps he instead should go to see Klimt.’ She found her purse. ‘I think he looked at me in a most friendly way. I at least would appreciate him.’ She put a pair of coins on the table.

  ‘You’re welcome to him.’

  ‘And did you think that story of losing his friend really made sense? No.’ Gerta stood, and glanced again in the direction the man had taken. ‘You English abroad: really a most unusual breed.’

  There was a message at the Hotel Stefanie. Gerta’s acquaintance had got them tickets for a performance of Mahler songs that evening; a rare opportunity; they should certainly go; they would be collected at the hotel at seven. The lift doors released them back into the lobby as the clock above the lift tinkled the hour.

  ‘Only the good God knows how I’ll get along with Martine,’ Gerta was saying.

  They made for the desk. ‘We’re not seeing much of her anyway, I think you said.’

  ‘No. We should have arranged other escorts. If you had been more friendly to that man today, perhaps. We need him.’ Gerta placed her key on the desk, then pulled herself to artificial erectness and said in English: ‘Or perhaps Major Knox.’

  ‘It’s you who likes these dry Englishmen, Gerta. I need—’ But Gerta was telling one of the staff behind the desk about a problem with her tap, while Hathaway rummaged in her bag for her key.

  Afterwards, Hathaway would suppose that she had noticed the man nearby, who had happened to be moving towards the desk as they were. Another sober-coated businessman. In truth she was only conscious of a presence adjacent to her, and then words that were more surprising because they came without introduction: ‘If you’re acquainted with Major Valentine Knox, you need to listen to me, right now. I’ll be across the lobby.’

  He handed over his key, asked directions to somewhere, and turned away.

  Hathaway was still frozen there. Key half out of bag, head not daring to turn, brain racing.

  She handed over her key, and turned. Across the lobby: she could see him looking at some kind of display.

  This is a trap.

  They had not got her at the Margaretenhof. No doubt German Intelligence were active in Austria, and powerful.

  Had it been a Scottish accent? Was it less likely that a German agent would have picked up a Scottish accent?

  She began to walk across the lobby. Gerta was talking to someone at the front door. Nothing wrong in walking across the lobby, surely; nothing wrong in an exchange with a stranger; the name a misunderstanding, perhaps.

  On the table, a plaque declared that an orange jug was Stil Erste Jahrhundert.

  ‘What did—’

  ‘One hour ago, Major Knox was under arrest at the station.’ He leaned forwards to examine the detail on an urn, then turned and strode away.

  Why had Knox been here? The souvenirs blurred in front of her. What was she trapped in?

  Amid the chaos of her thoughts, the impossibility of Knox being restrained.

  If I cannot step out of the current, I can at least divert its course.

  Gerta was at the top of the steps, a man in a frock-coat beside her. ‘Gerta, I find I am… not yet ready. Please go on ahead; I’ll follow in ten minutes.’ Intensity of gaze; a woman seeking a woman’s understanding. ‘You gave me the address before.’ And she turned and walked back into the lobby and hurried up the stairs to her room.

  She splashed some water on her face, and sat in a chair. It was too narrow, and the seat of her dress bunched up around her hips. She gripped the arms, and released them.

  If there is a trap, I cannot know it. Ergo, it is futile to try to avoid it. I am effectively alone here. Ergo, I cannot think of aid or sanctuary.

  I have been afraid before.

  The cab rattled and jolted through the city; the hooves and the wheels and the cobbles between them made a constant chattering that battered her head. She tried concentrating on the city as it softened in the dusk. She tried concentrating on her thoughts. Neither was comforting. She slumped back against the upholstery.

  A scolding of girlhood. She sat up again in the carriage. Discipline. Defiance. She would not—

  The cab stuttered to a halt. The driver was peering past the horse’s head at something. ‘What is it?’ she asked. Being rude to Gerta’s acquaintances was not her intention.

  ‘Can’t see. Some accident maybe. There’s a tram further up.’ Hathaway stretched up from her seat. They were in an anonymous residential street, and past the outlines of the driver’s shoulder and the horse she could see a huddle of people staring down at something. ‘You’re better walking, Fräulein.’

  I have feared something, and something has happened. Walking towards the huddle, she had the uneasy sense of a dream: of observing a tragedy that was supposedly happening to her and yet seemed to have left her unharmed. She tried to listen for the sound of her boots on the cobbles; to find something real.

  Perhaps ten people, a cross-section of Viennese pedestrians, and all the faces were sickened and unable to turn away, and through the shifting of hats and shoulders she could see a body in the gutter, someone in shirtsleeves bent over it.

  The tram was thirty yards off, and empty. Its solitude, gleaming subdued under the street lamps, seemed like shame.

  Hathaway took a breath, and peered over the shoulders. She knew that she would see her own face on the body.

  It was worse. There was no face, only a mess of gore. That was the nightmare – the effacement of her self, the final loss of identity – and she coughed out a cry and pushed out of the huddle and hurried away along the street.

  She walked the rest of the way to the Cäcilien Conservatoire. Air. Control of herself. />
  A uniformed footman let her in. Of course; I am on the stage of an opera. A clock on a mantelpiece showed seven thirty-five; she was only five minutes late, despite everything. Then there was another man, in evening dress, tip-tapping down a staircase. The Fräulein was most welcome. There had been some confusion about the time. The performance was at eight thirty, not seven thirty. The other Fräulein had gone for a little supper with one or two others; if the Fräulein would wait for a few minutes, he would find out for her where they had gone.

  Mirrors and gilt and second-rate portraits of Austrian musicians and Hathaway had been led to a conservatory at the back of the building, its glass walls and ceiling presenting the city as if in an aquarium. The buildings that rose up over her, lamplit backs with weird shadows, were a suitably unreal backdrop.

  The door had closed behind her. She sat.

  And she thought: It is not I who am looking on. I am the other side of the glass; I am the subject.

  This, then, was the trap. Gerta’s acquaintance somehow, perhaps unconsciously, complicit; Gerta and she separated. The doors were locked.

  She forced herself to move. To be an actor, not a prop. Back and forth, feeling her body’s movement, feeling feet and thighs, holding her head poised.

  I fear pain; the pain of death. That is rational; but I can do nothing about it.

  I fear embarrassment; the weaknesses of woman, the proof that I am weaker after all. I must be strong in what I am.

  I fear my own hypocrisies. But if there be hypocrisies, they cannot be erased; I am on this path, a spy for a system that I have scorned.

  Voices through the door. Instinctively, she pressed close. ‘There is a British agent out there,’ said the voice. ‘You know what you must do.’

  She pulled away from the door.

  I fear that I may be insufficient in what I have proclaimed; that I may be wrong. That in the end I shall betray what I have believed in.

  But that at least is undetermined. I may yet be everything that I can be.

  It came as serenity. And when the door opened, and a man walked in with a pistol pointing at her stomach and told her that the time had come, Flora Hathaway actually smiled.

  Then the world shattered around her.

  Ballentyne

  The station clock struck six as Ballentyne stood in the queue to leave the platform, eyes fixed on the hat a few yards ahead of him.

  Enough of running; enough of concealment. He would now be the hunter. The only way to end it was to track it to its source. A stab of cold in the fug of the station, as he thought of Hildebrandt.

  Belcredi was a dozen places ahead in the queue. Two policemen quizzing each traveller, and Ballentyne thought of the highland ritual of questions for visitors. Ceremonies performed by the natives of the country to disarm strangers of their magical powers. Belcredi’s hat – Austrian thing, perhaps; made him look like a fisherman – marked him nicely. The queue shuffled forwards. The policemen at the gate were indifferent. Belcredi was waved through. Shuffle forwards.

  Vienna seemed German – policemen, procedures, the sense that he was on dangerous ground. But the people were more varied: the stronger bones of Slavs, suits a little shabbier and nattier; a few faces with the faintly darker skins of Albanians or Greeks; and one or two costumes that might have come up from Constantinople.

  Forwards. Papers out. Belcredi’s hat was twenty yards ahead now. ‘Papiere.’ Ballentyne handed his pass to the policeman. ‘Englisch?’

  ‘Ja.’

  The paper was passed to another policeman standing adjacent, who looked at it then up at Ballentyne. ‘A moment please, Mein Herr.’ The accent was thick.

  ‘But… yes, of course.’

  ‘You come from…?’

  ‘Belgrade.’ Shifting so that he could look for Belcredi without seeming to ignore the policeman.

  ‘Your visit here is for…?’

  ‘Oh… Tourism.’ Thirty yards. Other passengers were being waved through past him.

  ‘You stay how long?’ The ponderousness was nightmarish.

  ‘A week, perhaps.’ He couldn’t see the hat any more. Straining up over the bobbing sea of the things. ‘Look, is this…?’

  The policeman’s face dared him to finish the thought. ‘Routine, Mein Herr.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘The Bristol.’

  ‘Enjoy your visit to Vienna, Mein Herr.’

  He was pushing past and trying not to start running, legs striding hard, ducking and swerving through the buzz of people and hopping over cases. In seconds he was at the point where he’d last seen the hat.

  But now it was nowhere. He stared towards the main exit, glanced left and right.

  An inconsistency on the edge of his brain – English – two women at a café table on the edge of the current of people, and he thought they’d spoken English.

  He mustered what he could remember of his German – gesture of politeness – and yes, the woman did speak English. He tried to seem calm, felt the strain in every muscle. She’d seen him! And he hadn’t taken the main exit. The risk of stopping and asking had been vindicated. Now he registered the faces at the table: the companion was a glamorous thing; the one doing the talking less so – sort of handsome, healthy-looking. He contrived a compliment about her English.

  ‘You’re most kind. I’m from Derbyshire, but we had a good travelling library.’

  A second, and then Ballentyne saw the ridiculousness of it all: himself, chasing shadows; two English visitors colliding in these bizarre circumstances; the accent and the humour flickering warmly and so out of place.

  Belcredi. And he was off again. The side exit came out at the top of two or three steps, looking over a street. How many people? Too many people. He forced himself to scan the crowd slowly. Nothing but hats. Ignoring the obviously female. Looking at colour. Brims. Styles. Every hat in Europe was gathering and bouncing in this one Viennese side street.

  Except one. He scanned the street, one hundred and eighty degrees, twice. Belcredi’s little feathered thing was not there. Every other possible hat – hats everywhere – almost no one without a hat—

  One bare head fifty yards away stepping up onto the pavement.

  Got you.

  Ballentyne was down the steps and plunging into the crowd.

  In the middle of this great city of culture, two men were playing a child’s game. But this time Ballentyne felt more confident: any place Belcredi touched was a place of significance, a place that London could use.

  He undid his jacket, felt his rucksack companionable as ever. He began to feel the tides of the crowd, to navigate them, fixed on the man ahead. He adopted motor cars and carriages and news-stands and trees and doorways as his allies, and the ebb and flow of people.

  Belcredi was heading southwards. By the Augarten, he had half turned and was talking to someone, but Ballentyne was absorbed in the window of a hat shop. A minute or two later he happened to look back, but Ballentyne had crossed the street. In Taborstraße he approached a line of cabs, and Ballentyne got within half a dozen yards of him.

  In Stephansplatz, Belcredi slowed, began to look into shop windows, sat for a few minutes on a bench staring up the cathedral, ludicrously tall in the squeeze of buildings around it, its zigzag roof tiles sharp against the dusk. Ballentyne lurked nearby; bought a box of matches; considered tobacco.

  Then he was following down an alley, and two idiots started scuffling and he couldn’t get past, and he had a last glimpse of Belcredi silhouetted against the entrance to a square ahead and by the time he’d pushed through and reached the square the Austrian was gone.

  The square was a kaleidoscope of carriages and motor cars and people in the darkening evening. Ballentyne had had his man for all of twenty minutes. He felt alone, in this enemy capital, and stupid.

  He took a horse and cab to the Bristol. It felt foolish, clip-clopping through this capital of elegance; a sophistication he could no
t live up to.

  Pickford in Belgrade had given him a contact here in Vienna; Belcredi might yet be traced. He dumped his rucksack, and started to climb into another cab. ‘Porzellangasse, Nummer 33.’ Then he realized he wanted to walk. The change and his clumsy miming failed to impress the driver, who gave him cursory directions and, when Ballentyne tried to asked how long it would take, flicked out all his fingers from the reins, which might have meant ten minutes or ‘Clear off’.

  A policeman was arguing with a pavement artist; neither could conjure much energy for it. Ballentyne set off. It was hill walking, of a kind. A rough idea of destination; triangulation from occasional way points, offered by passers-by or shopkeepers. Halfway through his journey Vienna’s churches began to chime seven, and the bells echoed around him, from peak to peak.

  Funny old business. Uncle James: Funny old stick, Ronald. And now funny old stick Ronald was an outcast, fugitive and intriguer in a foreign land. An instinct for solitude, for reflection, had led him to the hills. A sense that people were other had led him to anthropology. And that had led him to the villages, to people at their simplest.

  Porzellangasse. A white plaque on the corner above his head, elaborate black script. A nothing sort of street.

  Trying to uncover the secrets of others; moving among them, yet distinct from them. Still the one distinguished by who he was not, and what he was not.

  The light had leached out of the sky, and the city felt gloomy in spite of the warmth. In the mountains, always the promise of an open door to a visitor; a fire; a good meal; a hand on the shoulder and people who would welcome you precisely because you were a stranger.

  There was a bend in the street, but Number 33 was before it. Somewhere ahead, the whirring of a tram. A plaque by the door said simply ‘Corio’. No one around. He rang the bell.

  He realized that Isabella had been right, just as the door opened.

  A servant. His name, the request to see Herr Doctor Corio. Half a dozen steps to a half-landing, highly polished dark wood and framed pages of musical scores on the wall, then the staircase turned back on itself for another half-dozen steps to the top.