by Simon Raven
‘Such mysteries, honoured Balbo, are to be revealed only to converts – to those who have expressed a will to be initiated. For the time being at least you have other interests, you tell me, another mission. Enough for you to know that sign is on you… or in you, or somehow with you, as the case may be. Now then. You’ve been a good and patient fella,’ said Syd Jones, watching the receding Madonna, ‘and there’s just time for a nice big drinkeroo before we berth.’
It was not until he was halfway through his nice big drinkeroo that Balbo remembered that no more had been said about the nature of the ‘necessary’ task, to the fulfilment of which all this talk, effort and expense were presumably directed. Somehow it seemed indelicate to raise the matter. Syd Jones was now off duty, his mien indicated; further questions about the matters or ‘mysteries’ which his embassage served would have to wait until he called the next session.
From Brindisi they caught an aeroplane to Rome, and from Rome, only minutes later, an aeroplane to Venice.
‘Quickest way,’ said Syd Jones. ‘I’d have brought us from Corfu to Brindisi by air if they still ran the ’plane.’
‘What’s the hurry? Trains are more soothing.’
‘My bosses don’t grudge money well spent, but they do object to loitering.’
But when, after they landed at Venice airport, Balbo suggested taking a speedboat across the lagoon, Syd chivvied him towards the overland bus.
‘We’ll get the vaporetto from the Piazzale Roma,’ Syd said. ‘How’s that for loitering? Your way will take four times as long as a water-taxi.’
‘My bosses don’t grudge money well spent, but they do object to extravagance.’
‘What they object to,’ grumbled Balbo, ‘is any sort of pleasure or comfort.’
‘On second thoughts,’ said Syd, ‘we will take our own speedboat. I think the money may be well spent after all… because I want to know,’ he said a few minutes later, ‘what this lagoon reminds you of.’
Balbo looked out of the little cabin into the dismal night. The Marshes of Styx, he thought. Charon the Ferryman.
‘Death,’ he said: ‘“oozy death.” Bodies in the mud, or tangled in the reeds.’
‘Very good sport. And not only in the mud or the reeds. There’s one of these islands where they bury them; that’s San Michele, on our way in. And there’s another island, not on our way this trip, where they take what’s left of ’em after they’ve spent such and such a time on San Michele. Because there’s a lot of customers who want lodgings on San Michele, and after you’ve been a while there the law says you’ve got to move on, to let others have their turn. So then you’re directed,’ said Syd Jones, ‘to this other island, which I’ve just been telling you about.’
‘I’ve heard of it. Where the skeletons are dumped. The island of dead men’s bones.’
Balbo lit a cigarette and coughed thickly.
‘Why are we having this morbid conversation?’ he said.
‘To give my bosses their money’s worth.’
‘How does it help your bosses?’
Jones, S, pointed ahead of them. A clump of reeds swayed up out of the dark waters in the headlight of the boat, then gave place to a tiny island, on which a ruined chapel was perched above a narrow, muddy beach.
‘Once a monastery,’ said Syd. ‘By day you can see that the monks had their own graveyard. They certainly wouldn’t have wanted their dead to go on to San Michele. Oh dear me, no’.
‘Why not?’
‘Trouble and expense. And then later, you see, the corpses of the good brothers, like those of every cobber else, would have been translated to…the island of dead men’s bones, as you just called it.’
‘“Where or in what manner he is buried”,’ Balbo quoted Lord Chesterfield, ‘“must be indifferent to any rational man?” ’
‘But that’s just it sport. When they got to the second island they weren’t buried. To use yer own words again, they were “dumped”.’
‘And so?’
‘They weren’t only skeletons, either. Sometimes quite a lot of meat was left on the carcasses.’
‘Sydney, what on earth has all this to do with you or your bosses?’
‘Rats, man. Rats.’
‘Rats getting at what was left…on the carcasses?’
‘Right. That’s what warned off the good brothers in that monastery back there.’
‘I don’t see why it should have bothered them unduly. I certainly don’t see why it should concern you or your department.’
‘What with one thing and another, Balbo, the rats got to chewing up the bones as well. The skeletons were broken apart. Dispersed.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, the good brothers would have believed in the Resurrection of the Body, Balbo. And being specially religious they would have set a lot of store by it. Now, you or I might think that the Almighty God would find it pretty well as easy to reassemble broken bones and get ’em up decent as he would to bring out something presentable from six foot down; but the brothers might not have seen it that way. Simple men they were, mostly; peasants. To their crude minds, it might have seemed that a corpse on its own in a coffin had a better chance of coining up nice and neat on the Last Day than a heap of bust-up vertebrae and well-gnawed femurs which were anyways all mixed up with those of thousands of bazzas else. Peasants might think that even God might fit ’em out with some oilier bastard’s pelvis or stick their swedes on the wrong fucker’s neck. And being peasants, they wouldn’t care for that at all.’
‘How does this concern you?’
‘Have a good think about the rats, Balbo. The rats.’
‘No doubt they were tolerably contented.’
‘Oh yes indeedy. Were, and are, tolerably contented. And will be – for a time at least. But what happens…when the amenity is withdrawn? The habits of those rats have become very thorough, very fierce and very entrenched – the good brothers knew all about that. Those rats were and are very bad news indeed, Balbo; but, not quite so bad, as long as they stay in their own place. So what happens when supplies stop reaching them there?’
‘Supplies, in this instance, are surely inexhaustible?’
‘Not if the enlightened Municipality of Venice decides that from now on the remains removed from San Michele are going to be incinerated instead of dumped.’
‘The Roman Church forbids cremation.’
‘Not very volubly. Not nowadays. The Roman Church already lets individuals choose cremation in certain circumstances. It won’t bother about a spot of quiet combustion en masse. Not if it’s discreet…and for the social and sanitary good of the community. The Church, Balbo, is just as concerned with things like sanitation or finding plum jobs for niggers, these days, as it is with the word of God. So the Municipality goes ahead with the Church’s blessing and burns its deados, as soon as their time is up on San Michele; and our rats, Balbo, our intelligent but narrowly specialized rats, have lost their long-accustomed livelihood. My goodness, but they’re going to feel deprived. Whatever are they going to do now? Die? Migrate? Migrate where? And with what, precisely, in their sharp little rodent minds?’
‘That’s a problem for Venice – when and if it ever happens.’
‘How very true, sweetheart. It’s also a problem for England – where it is already happening.’
‘Essex marshes. Saint Cuthbert-Juxta-Aestuarium,’ Syd Jones said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Saint Cuthbert-Juxta-Aestuarium. Saint Cuthbert next to the Estuary. Meaning the Estuary of the Thames, not twenty miles from the centre of London. I’ll tell you over lunch. Harry’s Bar for that. You’ll need to be well nourished.’
Syd and Balbo were walking through the Campiello Barozzi, having just come out of the Europa e Britannia Hotel. They were in fact staying at the much cheaper (but entirely adequate) Pensione Flora, a hundred yards away, and their visit to the Europa had been the result of a simple piece of logistic analysis by Syd Jones.
‘Th
e Municipal Casino in Venice,’ he had said, ‘is partly owned by, or is at any rate closely connected with, the Company of Italian Grand Albergi, or CIGA. If we want permission to visit the Palazzo Vendramin before the Winter Casino opens up there, from CIGA we can get it. The nearest influential representative of CIGA will be the manager of the nearest CIGA hotel – the Europa e Britannia.’
Whither they had gone, and whence they were now bearing away a letter which would ensure their admission to the Vendramin for a private view of the apartments at any time after 15.00 on any or all of the next three days.
‘Luncheon at Harry’s Bar,’ Syd Jones repeated, ‘and a little look into the Church of San Moise on the way. It’s just over the bridge and always good for a laugh.’
‘Do you often come to Venice, Sydney?’
‘Venice is my passion, Balbo. I first came here on a very simple mission as a messenger boy. I was only here three hours, but that was enough. From then on I’ve spent a large part of almost all my leaves in Venice… Yes, San Moise is still open. You can see why that façade annoyed Ruskin so much – and of course that loony reredos of Moses on the Mount. Ruskin would surely have been much keener on the Church of Saint Cuthbert-Juxta-Aestuarium, Balbo, sometimes known as Saint Cuthbert in Insula Paludis, Saint Cuthbert on the Island in the Marsh. Early English, Balbo. Plain and wholesome. And yet not so bleeding wholesome either, since the river tides changed and the island subsided and the churchyard started sinking right into the swamp. And now I’ve seen enough of that bad-tempered old yid with his nagging Commandments, Balbo. Quick march for Harry’s Bar.’
In Cambridge Ivor Winstanley too was on his way to lunch. For the second time in only a few days he was to have this with the Under-Collator, Len, whom he was about to collect from the Chamber of Manuscripts. Last time Len had put up a proposition; he had told Ivor exactly how he could help him discredit Jacquiz Helmut and exactly what would be his price for doing so. This time Ivor was to say whether or not he would meet it.
Although he might be able to extract a few minor concessions from Len, the basic clauses of the deal were absolutely set; rigid, ruthless, unalterable – and horrible. Can I go through with it? thought Ivor, who still did not know what his answer was to be. Do I dare to go through with it? But do I dare not to go through with it? Is it really so awful? Yes, it is; it is a betrayal of every kind of trust; it is utterly vile. But in a few weeks now my Fellowship expires. Where would I go if my Fellowship were not renewed? Where could I then find warmth and company?
‘…So the upshot is,’ Syd Jones was saying to Balbo, ‘that the graveyard of Saint Cuthbert’s has begun pretty much to resemble that island out in the lagoon. Easy access for the rats. Get it, Balbo?’
‘Very clearly.’
‘So the local authorities stepped in and started to clean the place up, to cart away the – er –’
‘– detritus?’
‘Yeep. Cart away the detritus and pop it in the ovens somewhere. But by the time they’d cleared about a quarter of the churchyard, they were faced with another nasty little problem…to do with the rats who’d been feeding on the ground they’d cleared. It seems that the other rats in the rest of the graveyard wouldn’t share the remaining provender. Not enough to go round. So the first crowd had to clear off elsewhere.’
‘And by this time,’ said Balbo slowly, ‘they had developed rather rare tastes, I suppose?’
‘Right, chum.’ Syd Jones hooked a pale prawn from its pink shell. ‘They’d got used to their victuals being quite unusually high. Like with those rats in this lagoon, they’d started on their particular diet because it was readily available, and they’d ended up with liking it. At fresher meat, which might once have been preferred, they now turned up their noses. But where were they to go on finding their dainty diet? Well, there were no sources as easy as the one they’d been forced to leave, but there were many quite as plentiful…if they were prepared to work hard. To do some sapping and mining, so to speak.’ Jones, S, looked long and ruefully at Balbo. ‘And here,’ he said, ‘we are coming to the heart of the matter. For whatever reason, you see, they began to prefer vaults to graveyards. Cosier to live in, I suppose, when they finally finished their dig. But I don’t need to tell a cultivated gent like yourself, Balbo, that rats tunnelling into the vaults isn’t the best thing for the fabric and the foundations of, for example, Canterbury Cathedral. You know about all that work they’re doing there?’
‘Yes. I used to contribute something.’
‘Well, they won’t have told you this when they wrote round with their thud-raising forms, but a lot of it’s got to do with repairing the damage done by Old Cuthbertian rats while they helped themselves to a late archbishop or two. They’d crossed the Thames from Essex by the Dartford Tunnel, paused for a while at Rochester but failed to get much joy there because the terrain was too tough, and then continued on their pilgrimage to Canterbury, where the system of canals and town ditches gave them just the approaches they needed.’
‘Why this obsession with cathedrals? Plenty of other churches en route.’
‘Cathedrals,’ said Jones, S, ‘are bigger and fatter and warmer than parish churches.’
Balbo took a long drink of dry Orvieto.
‘So,’ said Syd: ‘two immediate problems. One: get them out of Canterbury. Two: dispose of them. And later on, problem three: what to do with our little friends still at Saint Cuthbert’s.’
‘Leave them there.’
‘Yip. After all, the church was always remote, it is now almost inaccessible, it has been closed without any complaint, and the health authorities have agreed to interfere no further. But,’ said Syd Jones, ‘that graveyard will not for much longer supply our furry friends there. Unlike the island in this lagoon’ – he waved a hand South by South-East – ‘it is not being constantly replenished. Before many moons those rats will have to leave Saint Cuthbert’s, bound for Westminster, Saint Paul’s, York Minster…if they follow the same pattern of behaviour as the last lot. How to stop them, Balbo?’
‘Poison them. Poison them in Canterbury too.’
‘Balbo. Rats who have got used to eating what these rats have got used to eating are not easy to poison. And even before all this happened, these lot, like other strains of English rats, had become pretty much immune to all known kinds of rat poison.’
‘Yes. I remember hearing about that. It happened only in Wales, I thought.’
‘It started in Wales – in 1970. Time shifts frontiers, Balbo.’
‘Time brings new rat poisons, Sydney.’
‘Experiments with those, and experiments in other directions, have gone down the spout. So now they want you, Balbo. The man with the Sign. Think on these things, cobber. Coffee you’d like? And some kind of fancy rot-gut to go with it? Think on these things, fella. And after we’re done here, we’ll check in at the Palazzo Vendramin and see what’s to do about your little problem.’
‘Coffee?’ said Ivor Winstanley to Len.
‘Yes, please Ive. And some of that white raspberry mixture to go with it.’
‘Framboise.’
‘That’s it: Fromboys.’ Len leant foward over the table. ‘Righty, Ive. Decision time.’
‘Not here. Not in public. We’ll go back to the Chamber of Manuscripts after we’ve finished and discuss it all there.’
‘Nothing to discuss, Ive. Either you say “yes” and I do it, or you say “no” and I don’t.’
‘I must be quite clear, first, that I have understood exactly what you want, and exactly how you will do…what you will do.’
‘Righty, Ive. So I’ll tell you again. In the Chamber of Manuscripts. One last time, Ive. Now be a good chap and order that Fromboys.’
‘Jeeze, Balbo,’ said Jones, S, ‘I wouldn’t want to meet him on a wet and windy night in the public urinal.’
Four feet above a raised chair, from which, later in the autumn, the Chef du Parti would preside over the high table of Chemin-de-Fer in the Palazzo Vendra
min, hung a crudely painted portrait of a hatless and totally bald young man, whose cast of features bore some resemblance (Balbo thought) to that of Stavros Kommingi. The resemblance was necessarily no more than general as the man in the painting was somewhat mangled in his particulars: he had one ear, one eye, and what looked like two noses, the lower half of that organ being vertically slit by a deep and narrow weal, possibly (thought Balbo) an old sabre cut delivered at an unusual angle.
The portrait ended about midway down the man’s straddling thighs, between which was written, in neat gold letters,
ANDREA COMMINGI
in anno aetatis trigesimo
Giocale pinxit MDCXCVIIII*
As if to compensate for his ugliness, Commingi had clearly taken enormous pains with his dress, a saffron tunic girdled with a broad belt of scarlet, from which was slung, in an intricately embossed scabbard, a scimitar with unguarded hilt of gold and ivory. An even more remarkable feature was a scarlet plumed codpiece protruding from breeches of white satin, all but a few inches of which were concealed by high black Marlborough boots.
While Commingi’s costume had been painted with considerably more competence than his face, the landscape in the rear, as Count Komikos had told Balbo, had been painted with more skill than either, and also with love.
To Commingi’s left the middle ground was occupied by a stretch of low, rocky coast from which a causeway carried by two arches jutted into the sea and disappeared behind Commingi’s tunic. In the background were three snowy mountains, the tallest and middle of which was partly concealed at the apex by the filthy and jagged index fingernail of Commingi’s raised and commanding left hand. To Commingi’s right was a large, sheer lump of rock, the landward end of which was presumably joined by the causeway somewhere behind Commingi’s upper rump, while the seaward spur was topped by three Doric temples, these being sideways on to the beholder and built along the spine of the ridge. The light was that of a winter’s afternoon; and the effect of the whole was charming, hazy and romantic (as in some fantasy of a much inferior Claude) but at the same time chilling and desolate; for the coast of stone (one conceived) could never have nursed or housed a human being, the buildings had an air as of having been raised by deities or spirits, and the waves which beat on to the steep promontory of the temples had eaten into the base of the cliff in such a way as to leave a kind of diseased and skeletal nose of rock hung some fifty feet above them.