‘I’ve come here to propose an arrangement, Mr Visconti. I’d hoped to have you out of circulation for a while so that I could convince Miss Bertram in your absence.’
‘I would have agreed to nothing,’ my aunt said, ‘until I had talked to Mr Visconti.’
‘We could still make a pack of trouble for you here. Every time we put pressure on the police it would cost you money in bribes. Now suppose we persuaded Interpol to close the files on you and we told the police we were not interested any more, that you were free to come and go …’
‘I wouldn’t entirely trust you,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘I would prefer to stop here. Besides I am making friends.’
‘Sure, stay, if you want to. The police wouldn’t be able to blackmail you any more.’
‘It’s an interesting proposal,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘You obviously imagine I have something to offer you in return? Let me fill your glass again.’
‘We are prepared to do a deal,’ O’Toole said.
‘I’m a businessman,’ Mr Visconti replied. ‘In my time I’ve had dealings with many governments. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Vatican.’
‘And the Gestapo.’
‘They were not gentlemen,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘Force of circumstances alone impelled me.’ His way of speaking reminded me of Aunt Augusta’s. They must have grown together with the years. ‘You realize, of course, I’ve had other offers of a private nature.’
‘A man in your position can’t afford private offers. Unless you deal with us you’ll never be able to live in this house of yours. I wouldn’t bother about buying the furniture.’
‘The furniture,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘is no longer a problem. My Dakota did not return empty yesterday from Argentina. Miss Bertram had already arranged with Harrods at Buenos Aires to deliver the furniture to a friend’s estancia. So many chandeliers for so many cigarettes. The bed was an expensive item. How many cases of whisky did we pay, my dear? To my friend of course, not to Harrods. An honourable firm. It takes a lot of whisky or cigarettes in these days to furnish a few essential rooms, and I admit frankly that I could do with a little ready cash. A beefsteak is sometimes more necessary than a chandelier. Panama cannot deliver again for two weeks. I’m in the position of a sound business with good prospects, but short of petty cash.’
‘I’m offering you security,’ O’Toole said, ‘not money.’
‘I’m used to being insecure. It doesn’t worry me. In my situation cash alone has a tongue.’
I was wondering what kind of an overdraft I would have granted Mr Visconti on his say-so alone, when my aunt took my hand. ‘I think,’ she whispered to me, ‘that we should leave Mr Visconti alone with Mr O’Toole.’ Aloud she said to me, ‘Henry, come with me a moment. I’ve got something to show you.’
‘Has Mr Visconti any Jewish blood?’ I asked when we were outside the room.
‘No,’ Aunt Augusta said, ‘Saracen perhaps. He always got on well with the Saudi Arabians. Do you like him, Henry?’ she asked with an appeal which touched me under the circumstances. She was not a woman who found it easy to make an appeal.
‘It’s early for me to judge,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t seem to me very trustworthy.’
‘If he were, would I have loved him, Henry?’
She led me through the kitchen – one chair, a drying rack, an ancient gas stove, tins of food stacked upon the floor – to the back of the house. The yard was full of wooden crates. My aunt said with pride, ‘You see our furniture. Enough for two bedrooms and a dining-room. A little garden furniture too for our celebration.’
‘And for the food and drink?’
‘That is what Mr Visconti is discussing now.’
‘Does he really expect the CIA to pay for your party? What happened to all the money you had in Paris, Aunt Augusta?’
‘It was very expensive settling with the police, and then I had to find a house worthy of Mr Visconti’s position.’
‘Has he got one?’
‘He has walked in his time with cardinals and Arabian princes,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘You don’t imagine that a little country like Paraguay will hold him down for long.’
A light went on at the bottom of the garden and then was extinguished. ‘Who is it prowling there?’ I asked.
‘Mr Visconti doesn’t altogether trust his partner. He has been betrayed too often.’ I couldn’t help wondering how many he had himself betrayed; my aunt, his wife, those cardinals and princes, even the Gestapo.
My aunt sat down on one of the smaller crates. She said, ‘I am so happy, Henry, that you are here and Mr Visconti is safely returned. Perhaps I am getting a little old, for I shall be quite content with a spell of family life. You and me and Mr Visconti working together …’
‘Smuggling cigarettes and whisky?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the bodyguard in the garden.’
‘I wouldn’t want my days to peter out, Henry, with no interest in them at all.’
Mr Visconti’s voice called from somewhere in the vast house. ‘My dear, my dear. Can you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fetch me the picture, dear.’
My aunt rose. ‘The deal, I think, must have been concluded,’ she said. ‘Come, Henry.’ But I let her go without me. I walked away from the house towards the trees. The stars were so brilliant in the low sky that I must have been easily visible to anyone watching from the trees. A small warm breeze blew around me the scent of orange and jasmine. It was as though I had plunged my head into a box of cut flowers. As I entered the shade a light flashed on my face and went out again, but this time I was ready for it and I knew exactly where the man stood. I had kept a match ready and I struck it. I saw leaning against a lapacho a little old man with long moustaches; his mouth had fallen open with surprise and perplexity so that I could see the toothless gums before the match burnt down. ‘Buenas noches,’ I said, which was one of the few expressions I had picked up from my phrase-book, and he mumbled something in reply. I turned to go back and stumbled on the uneven ground and he flashed on his torch to aid me. I thought to myself that Mr Visconti could not as yet afford much in the way of a bodyguard. Perhaps with the second load from Panama he would be able to afford something better.
In the dining-room I found all three of them, gathered round the picture. I recognized it from the frame, for it had been propped up in my cabin for four days.
‘I don’t understand,’ O’Toole said.
‘Nor do I,’ said Mr Visconti. ‘I expected a photograph of the Venus of Milo.’
‘You know that I can’t stand torsos, dear,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘I told you about that murder on the chemin de fer. I found this photograph in Wordsworth’s room.’
O’Toole said, ‘I don’t understand what in hell all this is about. What murder on the chemin de fer?’
‘It’s too long a story to tell you now,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘Besides Henry knows it, and he doesn’t care for my stories.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I was simply tired that night in Boulogne …’
‘Look,’ O’Toole said, ‘I’m not interested in what happened in Boulogne. I made an offer for a picture which Mr Visconti here stole …’
‘I did not steal it,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘The prince gave it me quite voluntarily to present to Field-Marshal Goering in recognition …’
‘Oh sure, sure, we know all that. The prince didn’t give you a photo of a lot of African women …’
‘It should have been the Venus of Milo,’ Mr Visconti said, shaking his head in perplexity. ‘You had no need to change it, dear. It was a very fine photograph.’
‘It should have been a drawing of Leonardo da Vinci’s,’ O’Toole replied.
‘What did you do with the photograph?’ Mr Visconti asked.
‘I threw it away. I won’t have any torsos to remind me …’
‘I’ll have you pulled in again in the morning,’ O’Toole threatened, ‘whatever bribes you pay. The Ambassador himself …’
‘Ten thousand dollars was the agreed price, but I’ll accept payment in the local currency if it’s more convenient.’
‘For a photograph of a lot of black women,’ O’Toole said.
‘If you really want the photograph I would throw it in with the other.’
‘What other?’
‘The prince’s picture.’
Mr Visconti turned the frame over and began to tear away the backing. My aunt said, ‘Would anyone like some whisky?’
‘Not after champagne, dear.’
Mr Visconti removed a small drawing which had been hidden behind the photograph of Freetown. It could not have been more than eight inches by six. O’Toole looked at it with wonder. Mr Visconti said, ‘There you are. Is anything wrong?’
‘I guess I thought it would be a madonna.’
‘Leonardo was not primarily interested in madonnas. He was the chief engineer of the Pope’s army. Alexander VI. You know about Alexander?’
‘I’m not a Roman Catholic,’ O’Toole said.
‘He was the Borgia Pope.’
‘A bad guy?’
‘In some respects,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘he resembled my patron, the late Marshal Goering. Now this, as you can see, is an ingenious device for attacking the walls of a city. A sort of dredge, very much the same as they use on building sites today, though motivated by human power. It grabs out the foundations of a wall and throws the stones up to this catapult which projects them into the city. In fact you bombard the city with its own walls. Ingenious, isn’t it?’
‘Ten thousand dollars for this … Would it work?’
‘I’m no engineer,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘I cannot judge it practically, but I challenge anyone today to make so beautiful a drawing of a dredge.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ O’Toole said and added with reverence, ‘So this is the real McCoy. We’ve been looking for this and for you for nearly twenty years.’
‘And where does it go now?’
‘The prince died in prison, so I guess we hand it over to the Italian government.’ He gave a sigh. I don’t know whether it was of disillusion or satisfaction.
‘You may keep the frame,’ Mr Visconti said kindly.
I went with O’Toole down through the garden to the gate. There was no sign now of the old bodyguard. O’Toole said, ‘It goes against the grain to see the US government pay ten thousand dollars for a stolen picture.’
‘It would be difficult to prove,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was a sort of present to Goering. I wonder why they shut the prince up.’
We stood together by his car. He said, ‘I got a letter today from Lucinda. The first in nine months. She writes about a boyfriend of hers. She says they are hitch-hiking to Goa because Vientiane wasn’t right for him.’
‘He’s a painter,’ I explained.
‘A painter?’ He put the Leonardo carefully on the back seat.
‘He paints pictures of Heinz soup tins.’
‘You are joking.’
‘Leonardo drew a dredge and you paid ten thousand dollars for it.’
‘I guess I’ll never understand art,’ O’Toole said. ‘Where’s Goa?’
‘On the coast of India.’
‘That girl’s one hell of an anxiety,’ he said, but if she hadn’t existed, I thought, he’d have been anxious just the same. Anxieties in his case would always settle on him like flies on an open wound.
‘Thanks for getting me out of the jail,’ I said.
‘Any friend of Lucinda’s …’
‘Give my love to Tooley when you write.’
‘I’m putting your friend Wordsworth on the next boat. Why don’t you go with him?’
‘My family …’
‘Visconti’s no relation of yours. He’s not your type, Henry.’
‘My aunt …’
‘An aunt’s not all that close. An aunt’s not a mother.’ He couldn’t get his starter to work. He said, ‘It’s time they gave me a newer car. Think about it, Henry.’
‘I will.’
I found Mr Visconti laughing when I returned, my aunt watching him with disapproval.
‘What’s up?’
‘I told him ten thousand dollars was too little for a Leonardo.’
‘It didn’t belong to him,’ I said. ‘And he’s got security as well. The file’s closed.’
‘Mr Visconti,’ my aunt said, ‘has never cared about security.’
‘The boat goes back the day after tomorrow. O’Toole is putting Wordsworth on board. He wants me to go with him.’
‘She said I ought to have asked double,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘for a Leonardo.’
‘So you should have.’
‘But it’s not a Leonardo at all. It’s only a copy,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘That’s why they shut the prince up.’ He was a little breathless with laughter. He said, ‘It was nearly a perfect copy. The prince was afraid of thieves and he kept the original in a bank. Unfortunately the bank was obliterated by the American air force. No one knew, except the prince, that the Leonardo was obliterated too.’
‘If it was so good a copy how could the Gestapo tell?’ I asked.
‘The prince was a very old man,’ Mr Visconti said with all the pride of his mere eighty years. ‘When I came to see him – on behalf of the Marshal – he pleaded for his picture. He told me it was only a copy and I wouldn’t believe him. Then he showed me. If you look through a magnifying glass at the cogwheel of the dredge you can see the forger’s initials in looking-glass writing. I kept the drawing in memory of the prince, because I thought it might prove useful one day.’
‘You told the Gestapo?’
‘I couldn’t trust them not to have it examined by an expert,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘He hadn’t long to live. He was very old.’
‘As you are now.’
‘He had nothing to live for,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘and I have your aunt.’
I looked at Aunt Augusta. The corner of her mouth twitched. ‘It was very wrong of you,’ was all she said, ‘very, very wrong.’
Mr Visconti rose and picking up the photograph of Freetown he tore it in small pieces. ‘And now to our well-earned rest,’ he said.
‘I wanted to send that back to Wordsworth,’ my aunt protested, but Mr Visconti put his arm around her and they went up the marble staircase side by side, like any old couple who have continued to love each other through a long and difficult life.
7
‘THEY described you as a viper,’ I said to Mr Visconti.
‘They?’
‘Well, in fact, it was not the detectives: it was the Chief of Police in Rome.’
‘A Fascist,’ Mr Visconti said.
‘In 1945?’
‘Ah, a collaborator then.’
‘The war was over.’
‘A collaborator nonetheless. One collaborates always with the victorious side. One supports the losing.’ It sounded again like a quotation from Machiavelli.
We were drinking champagne together in the garden, for the house at the moment was impossible. Men were carrying furniture. Other men were up ladders. Electricians were repairing lights and hanging chandeliers. My aunt was very much in charge.
‘I preferred flight to a new form of collaboration,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘One can never tell who will win in the end. Collaboration is always a temporary measure. It’s not that I care much for security, but I like to survive. Now if the Questore had described me as a rat, I would have had no objection. Indeed I have a great fellow feeling for rats. The future of the world lies with the rat. God, at least as I imagine him, created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed – that is the meaning of evolution. One species would die out. I have never understood why Protestants object so much to the ideas of Darwin. Perhaps if he had concentrated on the evolution of sheep and goats he would have appealed to the religious sense.’
‘But rats …’ I objected.
‘Rats are highly intelligent creatures. If we want to find out anything new ab
out the human body we experiment on rats. Rats indeed are ahead of us indisputably in one respect – they live underground. We only began to live underground during the last war. Rats have understood the danger of surface life for thousands of years. When the atom bomb falls the rats will survive. What a wonderful empty world it will be for them, though I hope they will be wise enough to stay below. I can imagine them evolving very quickly. I hope they don’t repeat our mistake and invent the wheel.’
‘It’s odd all the same how much we hate them,’ I said. I had drunk three glasses of champagne and I found that I could talk to Mr Visconti as freely as I had talked to Tooley. ‘We call a coward a rat, and yet it is we who are the cowards. We are afraid of them.’