The Untouchable

by John Banville

  “That’s a lovely thing, isn’t it,” he said, pointing the stem of his cold pipe at it. “Degas. Beautiful.” He blinked shyly. “I dabble a bit myself, you know.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Watercolours. It’s just a hobby, though my missus will insist on getting my things framed and hanging them about the place. As a matter of fact, I did a copy of that very one, from a book. Mine’s only on cardboard, though.”

  “So is the original.”

  “Oh.”

  “And it’s Degas, by the way; the s is pronounced.”

  We drank our sherry in the study. He did not remark the Poussin. There were two chairs—one of them already waiting for you, Miss V., although it did not know it—yet we remained standing. I wondered what account of me he would give his missus. The dry type, Mabel; and stuck-up, too. It was a chrome and copper evening in October. Boy and the Dour Scot had made their first appearance in Moscow to talk to reporters, spouting a lot of solemn claptrap about peace and fraternity and world revolution; Party Congress stuff, written for them, probably, by our friends in the Kremlin. The thing was televised, apparently in a snowstorm—I owned a primitive set by then; it was supposed to be for Patrick’s amusement, but I was already a secret addict—and I found it a depressing and slightly nauseating spectacle. Heartbreaking, really, that all that passion, that conviction, should have shrunk to this, two raddled, middle-aged men sitting at a bare table in a windowless room in the Lubyanka, putting on a brave face and desperately smiling, trying to convince themselves and the world that they had come home at long last to the Promised Land. I dreaded to think how Boy might be faring. I remembered, that night in the thirties when I was whisked off to the Kremlin, the wife of the Commissar of Soviet Culture looking at the champagne in my glass with a curled lip and saying, “Georgian.” A fellow from the British embassy claimed to have spotted Boy one night in a Moscow hotel, slumped at the bar with his forehead on his arm, noisily weeping. I hoped that they were whiskey tears.

  “Think they’re happy, your two chums?” Skryne said. “Not much in the way of beer and skittles over there.”

  “Caviare is more their taste,” I said coldly, “and there is plenty of that.”

  He was toying with things on my desk; I had an urge to slap his hand away. I do hate people to fiddle.

  “Would you go over?” he said.

  I took a sip of sherry. It was very good; I hoped Skryne could appreciate it.

  “They urged me to,” I said. They had; Oleg had been anxiously solicitous. “I asked them, if I went, could they arrange regular working visits for me to the National Gallery and the Louvre? They consulted Moscow and came back very apologetic. No sense of irony, the Russians. Just like the Americans, in that.”

  “You don’t like Americans, do you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re perfectly decent people, individually. It’s just that I’m not a democrat, you see; I fear mob rule.”

  “What about the dictatorship of the proletariat?”

  “Oh please,” I said, “let us not descend to polemics. Some more sherry? It’s not at all bad, you know.”

  I poured. I like the oleaginous quality of this drink, but otherwise even the best of it has a bitter edge that reminds me of some unpleasant taste from childhood—Nanny Hargreaves’s castor oil, perhaps. No, I prefer gin, with its mysterious hints of frost and forest, metal and flame. In the first days after Boy’s flight I practically bathed in the stuff from first thing in the morning until the dead hours of the night. My poor liver. Probably it was then, all those years ago, that the cells essayed the first drunken steps of their dervish dance that is now consuming my insides. Skryne stood gazing glassy-eyed before him, the thimble of drink seemingly forgotten in his fingers. He often went blank like that; it was unnerving. Concentration? Deep thought? A trap for the unwary, perhaps?—one did tend to let one’s vigilance slip when he went absent in this way. Late light from the window was throwing a nickel-bright sheen across the surface of the Poussin, picking out the points of the pigment and shading in the hollows. Someone at the valuers has raised a question as to its authenticity; preposterous, of course.

  “Consider this picture,” I said. “It is called The Death of Seneca. It was painted in the middle of the seventeenth century by Nicholas Poussin. You are something of an artist, you tell me: the civilisation that this picture represents, isn’t it worth fighting for?” I noticed the faint shiver on the surface of the sherry in the glass I was holding; I had thought I was quite calm. “The Spartan youth,” I said, “complained to his mother that his sword was too short, and her only reply was, Step closer.”

  Skryne gave a curious, creaky sigh. I had to acknowledge, there in the confined space of the study, that he exuded a faint but definite smell: tobacco, naturally, but something behind that as well, something drab and unsavoury; something very—well, very Hackney.

  “Wouldn’t it be better, Dr. Maskell,” he said, “if we were to sit down now, here, and get it all over and done with?”

  “I told you, I am not willing to undergo interrogation in my own home.”

  “Not interrogation. Just a… just a general clearing up, you might say. I’m a Catholic—well, my mother was a Catholic; Irish, like you. I still remember how it used to feel, when I was a lad, to come out of the confession box, that feeling of… lightness. Know what I mean?”

  “I have told you everything I know,” I said.

  He smiled, and gently shook his head, and set his glass down carefully on a corner of my desk. He had not touched the sherry.

  “No,” he said. “You’ve told us everything that we know.”

  I sighed. Was there to be no end to this?

  “What you are asking me to do is betray my friends,” I said. “I won’t do that.”

  “You’ve betrayed everything else.” Still smiling, still gently avuncular.

  “But what you mean by everything,” I said, “is nothing to me. To be capable of betraying something you must first believe in it.” I too put down my glass, with a clunk of finality. “And now, Mr. Skryne, I think, really…”

  In the hall I handed him his hat. He had a way of putting it on, fitting it carefully to his head with rotating motions, using both hands and crouching forward a little, that seemed as if he were screwing the lid on to a container of some precious, volatile stuff. At the door he paused.

  “By the way, did you see that thing that Bannister said when he met the chap from the Daily Mail in Moscow? We haven’t let him publish it yet.”

  “Then how would I have seen it?”

  He smiled cannily, as if I had made a sly and telling point.

  “I wrote it down,” he said, “I think I have it here.” He produced a bulging wallet and extracted from it a slip of paper carefully folded. I could see he had planned this little gesture, even down to the last-minute timing; after all, he was a fellow thespian. He put on a pair of wire-frame spectacles, threading the earpieces carefully behind his ears and adjusting the bridge, then cleared his throat preparatory to reading aloud. “Don’t think I’m starry-eyed about this place, he says. I miss my friends. I’m lonely sometimes. But here I’m lonely for the unimportant things. In England I was lonely for what is really important—for Socialism. Sad, eh?” He proffered the slip. “Here, why don’t you keep it?”

  “No, thank you. The Daily Mail is not my paper.”

  He nodded, thinking, his gaze fixed on the knot of my tie.

  “Are you lonely for Socialism, Dr. Maskell?” he said gently.

  I could hear the clank and gurgle of the lift ascending; it would be Patrick returning from the pictures, probably still in a huff. Life can be very trying, sometimes.

  “I’m not lonely for anything,” I said. “I have done my work. That’s all that matters.”

  “And your friends,” he said softly. “Don’t forget your friends. They matter, don’t they?”

  16

  Miss Vandeleur has just left, in rather hangdog fashion, I�
�m afraid. She will not be seeing me again; or, more accurately, I shall not be seeing her. Her visit was a moving occasion; last things, and so on—and not so on. I had bought a cake—it turned out to be somewhat stale—and put a small candle on it. I have a special licence to be silly, now. She eyed the cake suspiciously, in some bafflement. Our first anniversary, I said, handing her a glass of champagne with what I judged to be just the right shading of old-world gallantry; I would not want her to think I harbour any feelings of rancour against her. But in fact, as she pointed out when she checked back to the beginning of her by now dog-eared notebook, this was not the date on which she first came to me. I waved aside these petty details. We were sitting in the study. Although she did not seem to notice it, I was acutely conscious of the awful blank space on the wall where the Poussin should have been hanging. Miss V. was in her greatcoat, yet still seemed cold, as she always does; her mechanic must have the devil of a time warming her up—girls always blame their young men for the prevailing temperature, don’t ask me how I know. She also had on her leather skirt, as of old. How account for the pathos of people’s clothes? I envisioned her in her room in Golders Green, in the grey light and fetid air of morning, with a mug of cold coffee on the dressing table, creakily getting into that skirt and contemplating another day of… of what? Perhaps there is no such room in Golders Green. Perhaps it is all an invention, her father the Admiral, her uncouth mechanic, the glum commutings on the Northern Line, my biography. I asked her how the book was coming along and she gave me a resentful stare, looking like a sullen schoolgirl who has been caught smoking behind the bicycle shed. I assured her I did not feel harshly toward her, and she put on a show of incomprehension, saying she was sure she did not know what I was talking about. We regarded each other for a moment in silence, I smiling, she with a cross frown. Oh, Miss Vandeleur, my dear Serena. If these really are her names.

  “Despite appearances,” I said, indicating the champagne bottle and the ruined cake with its Pisan candle, “I am officially in mourning.” I watched her closely for a reaction; none came, as I had expected; she already knew. “Yes,” I said, “you see, my wife died.”

  Silence for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said faintly, looking at my hands.

  April. Such wonderful skies today, great drifting ice-mountains of cloud, and beyond them that delicate, breakable blue, and the sunlight going on and off as if a capricious someone somewhere had control of a switch. I do not like the springtime; have I said that before? Too disturbing, too distressing, all this new life blindly astir. I feel left behind, half buried, all withered bough and gnarled root. Something is stirring in me, though. I often fancy, at night especially, that I can feel it in there, not the pain, I mean, but the thing itself, malignantly flourishing, flexing its pincers. Well, I shall soon put a stop to its growth. Mouth very dry now, all of a sudden. Strange effects. I am quite calm.

  “It was dreadfully sad,” I said. “It seems she starved herself to death. Refused to eat, just turned her face to the wall, as they used to say. Such desperateness to die! She wouldn’t let them send for me; said I should be left in peace. She was always more considerate than I; braver, too. The funeral was yesterday. I am still a trifle upset, as you can see.”

  Why, with death attendant upon me at every moment, tirelessly prowling the rickety defences of my life, am I still surprised when it makes a kill? I had always taken it for granted that Vivienne would outlive me. And yet when Julian telephoned, I knew, before he said it, that she was gone. We stood for a long moment, listening to each other breathing through the ether.

  “It’s better this way,” he said.

  Why do the young always think it better that the old should be dead? The question answers itself, I suppose.

  “Yes,” I said, “better.”

  She had requested to be buried by the Jewish rite. I was astonished. When we were married first she used to take the children to church services, especially when she was in Oxford, but that, I realised now, must have been merely to annoy her mother. I never knew she cared for the God of her fathers. No accounting for people, no accounting. There were more surprises at the funeral. Nick wore a yarmulke, and so did Julian, and during the prayers, the Kaddish or whatever it’s called, I saw Nick’s lips moving as he joined in with the cantor. Where did all this devoutness come from all of a sudden? But obviously it was not sudden.

  The cemetery was on the outer fringes of north London. It took us more than an hour to get there, despite the indecent speed at which the hearse cut its way through the northbound traffic. It was a harsh, blustery grey day with squalls of rain and a gash of infernal, yellowish light lying along the horizon. In the car I sat in the back seat, feeling shrivelled and cowed. Beside me Blanche sobbed to herself, her face all blotched and swollen. Julian sat stiffly upright at the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road. The empty seat beside him was lugubriously symbolic of his mother’s absence. Nick travelled alone, with his chauffeur. At one stage in the journey, when we were briefly on the motorway and our two cars drew level, I saw that he was working, papers and gold pen in hand, the Ministerial red box open beside him on the seat. He felt my eyes on him, and looked up at me unseeingly for a moment, remote, expressionless, his thoughts importantly elsewhere. Even now, when he is in his seventies, corpulent, bald, his face all fallen and his eyes rheumy and pouched, I can still see in him the beauty he once was; is it real, or do I put it there? That was what I was for, that was always my task, to keep his image in place, to kneel before him humbly with head bowed and hold the mirror up to him, and in turn to hold his image up to the world’s inspection.

  As we were pulling in at the gates of the cemetery, Blanche made a fumbling attempt to take my hand, but I pretended not to notice. I do not care to be touched.

  For a second I did not recognise Querell. It was not that he had changed very much, but he was the last person I had expected to see here. What cheek! He was thin-haired, a little stooped, yet still possessed of a watchful, sinister elegance. Or no, not elegance, that is not the word; just sleekness, rather, at once devilish and tawdry, and an air always of malevolent anticipation, like that of an expert swimmer, say, calmly looking on as a clumsy novice ventures flounderingly out of his depth. He carries the aura of his fame with ease. I was always jealous of him. When the ceremony was finished he came and shook my hand perfunctorily. We had not seen each other for more than a quarter of a century, yet he carried off the moment as if we had been in the habit of bumping into each other every day.

  “Trust the Jews,” he said, “they always come back to their own in the end. Just like us—Catholics, I mean.” He was wearing a padded windbreaker over his suit. “I feel the cold more, nowadays. My blood has gone thin from living so long in the south. You don’t look too bad, Victor; perfidy keeps one young, eh?” I could not recall him ever before using my first name. I introduced him to Blanche and Julian. He gave them each in turn a keen, long look. “I knew you when you were in your cradles.” Julian was curtly polite. I do admire his reserve, so rare a thing those days. “You have your mother’s eyes,” Querell said, and Julian gave that stiff little nod of his, which to me always seems to be accompanied by a phantom clicking of the heels. My poor, lost son. Querell had turned his attention on Blanche. She was all of a quiver, flustered in the presence of such a celebrity. She withdrew her hand from his as if his touch had burned her. I wonder if they know about Querell, she and Julian? It is not the kind of thing one asks one’s children, even when they are grown up.

  “When do you go back?” I said.

  Querell gave me a stare.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  The spring wind gusted in the still-bare trees and a handful of rain spattered the wall of the marble temple behind us. Julian attempted to slide a supportive hand under my arm but I shook him off violently. For a moment I clearly saw Vivienne walking toward me, weaving her way among the headstones in her tubular black silk dress and flapper’s high heels. Nick h
ad already sped off in his car, without a word to anyone. Querell was talking about taxis.

  “Oh, no no,” I said, “let us give you a lift.” Julian opened his mouth but said nothing. Querell frowned. “I insist,” I said. One can have fun even at a funeral.

  We fairly dashed back into the city, Querell and I in the back seat now, and Blanche and Julian in front, the two of them sitting like effigies, listening intently to the silence behind them. Querell watched with narrow-eyed interest—ever the novelist— the dreary suburban streets going past, the corner groceries, the launderettes, the brand-new but already dingy shopping malls with their garish window displays and blown litter.

  “England,” he said, and snickered.

  At St. Giles Circus we were brought to a halt by a traffic jam. It was as if we had blundered into the smouldering centre of a herd of big, shiny, shuddering animals.

  “Listen, Querell,” I said, “come for a drink.”

  How like the old days it sounded! Querell gave me an ironical stare. Julian was already edging the car towards the kerb. On the pavement the wind swirled about us callously. While Querell was doing up the complicated zipper of his coat I watched the car nose its way back into the traffic, brother and sister leaning toward each other now in animated talk. Those are the really secret lives, the lives of one’s children.

  “Anxious to be away,” I said. “We have become the tedious old.”

  Querell nodded.

  “I was just thinking,” he said, “my mistress is younger than your daughter.”

  We turned into Soho. The day had brightened, and now a strong sun appeared, shouldering its way out of the clouds, and the sky above the narrow streets seemed immensely high and somehow vigorously in flight. The wind swooped and lunged, wringing the necks of the daffodils in the Square. On the corner of Wardour Street a crone in cocoa-coloured stockings and a shroudlike coat was shrieking abuse at the passers-by. White flecks on her lips, the grief-maddened eyes. The sun flashed suddenly, outlandishly, on a sheet of glass on the back of a lorry. Two club girls went past, in fake-fur coats and three-inch heels. Querell eyed them with sour amusement.