Night Journey (6 page)

She came in, buttoning a couple more buttons of this peach silk flowered house-coat Underneath I could see she wore only a black brassière and short black knickers.

She half smiled and murmured a greeting, and I made some stiff conventional reply, understanding very well now why my too early call had been so unwelcome.

She was a very attractive girl.

In my life I have had little time for courting women or making love to them; but
I
have always enjoyed women's company and they seem to have enjoyed mine. Perhaps it has helped that there has been a lack of challenge in my attitude, but never a lack of interest. Just at the moment of course I was off balance, concerned only to make an excuse which would end this embarrassment and enable me to leave; but I still could not help but notice how very attractive she was, and wonder what she could possibly see in Andrews.

We made a few moments more of conversation, but I was guarded, aware that Andrews obviously confided too much in his mistress. What
was
the point of introducing me as Mencken when it should be Catania?

“My passport,” I said to him, refusing a cigarette, “I should be glad of it now.”

“Of course. I'll get it.” He scratched his plump chin. “But there are one or two things I still have to explain to you.” He went off into the room from which she had emerged.

The girl lit the cigarette she had just been given. Her quiet, serious face bent over the lighter, dark curling fringe over pale brow, lashes hiding brown eyes. This done, she perched on the arm of the only easy chair in the room, one slim leg swinging free, the mule an inch or so fallen away from the heel above it. She had brought a scent of jasmine into a room not previously over-savoury.

“Had you any problem with Captain Bonini?” she asked.

So she knew the whole story. Where in God's name did Andrews' confidences begin and end? The man was imposesible. Colonel Brown had delivered me over to a lunatic who risked not only my freedom but his own.

“None so far. D'you know him, Miss Howard? … Or perhaps I shouldn't call you Miss Howard?”

She smiled again. “Perhaps you shouldn't. It's Mrs Howard, to be correct.”

“Oh … I'm afraid I had not thought of that. My memory was being overtaxed with Bercziks and Brevios.”

“A lot of B's, aren't there,” she agreed. “ Berczik, Brevio, Bonini.… I've seen Captain Bonini more than once. The last time I saw him—at a social function— he tried to get me into a private room.”

“I don't wonder,” I said.

Her eyes widened slightly, but before she could reply Andrews came back.

“Here it is. All set for the next stage.”

“Is this visa genuine?”

“No, Mencken, it isn't. But no frontier official will be able to tell the difference.”

Mrs Howard slipped off her chair arm and tapped the cigarette in the ash-tray. “Excuse me.” She went back into the bedroom.

Andrews and I ran through our little lesson. “That seems to be all,” he said. “Now before you go, is there anything else yoo want? The less we meet henceforward the better.”

“I'd like to know how many other people have details of this scheme.”

His small black eyes went over me. In any account of me there wouldn't be a detail missing.

“You don't need to worry about Jane. She's as tight as the Bank of England. She has to know because she's helping in this.”

“D'you mean she's part of the organisation? I thought——”

“Yes, indeed,” said Andrews, as the girl came back. “One thinks a lot of things. But anything you like to ask is all right with me.” He scratched the balding patch on the crown of his head and then carefully smoothed back the thin black hair with his fingers, patting it over and over again. “Going, Jane? Let's see, had I a job for you?”

She had taken off her dressing-gown and replaced it with a frock, a neat black thing of wool or something, with padded shoulders which made her look younger and still more slim.

“About the radio?”

“That's it. What I felt was——”

“It's time I went,” I said harshly. “ There's nothing more to arrange, is there?”

Andrews took his fingers from his head and looked at them. They were greasy. “Nothing, except to remind you to put the minimum on paper. Nothing if you can avoid it. Say things over in your head until you're sure of them. So—good luck, Signor Catania.”

He had the politeness to wipe his fingers down the side of his jacket before he shook hands.

She must have followed me from the square quite soon and by chance have taken the same route; she overtook me in the Caile San Zaccaria as I stopped to look in a window.

I would have let her pass, but she stopped and spoke. There seemed no reticence in any of them.

“Yes,” I answered, “I'm staying at the San Moisé.”

“I know it,” she said. “It's got that cute little landing stage where the gondolas can moor.”

We walked the length of the street together, through the Sottoportico and out on the Riva degli Schiavòni. This was its usual scene of bustling activity. Postcard stalls, scarf stalls, cameo stalls, strolling crowds, cameras clicking, gondolas bobbing and milling in the churned up waters of the lagoon, a naval pinnace leaving an anchored destroyer; three fishermen, unshaven for a week, mending their nets beside a gaunt and shabby fishing boat; a low-built cargo ship, flying the swastika, in tow of a tug; the smell and feel of the sea.

“I love it here,” she said, but in Italian now. “ Have you ever spent a whole winter here? They have a fair on this quay. Roundabouts and things and candy stalls.”

“I have never been in winter,” I said. “ We used to come for holidays when I lived in Vienna. But it's almost five years now.” I took a breath. “It's strange. Little in this city has changed; but Europe has become a mad-house since then.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “you ought to forget that you ever knew Vienna. It's much easier to live a part if you live it all the time.”

“I have not been encouraged to do that since I came.”

We stopped at the foot of an equestrian statue and she bent to light a cigarette. Her hair wafted about her face, making little magic moves over cheeks and eyes. “Veraon is naughty about these things. But don't be deceived because he
seems
to be casual. It's a—sort of outlet. He has many responsibilities.”

Natural that she should defend him. “ Where do you live?” I asked. “ Or is that not permitted?”

“Yes, yes. On the Grand Canal. With my husband.” She straightened up, eyes glinting in the light from the sea.

“This is out of your way, then.”

“No. I can get a vapcretto from San Zaccaria.”

“How is it you can stay here so openly?”

“My husband is American so I can claim his nationality.”

This privilege was clearly one she did not repay with fidelity. It was all rather difficult, for she did not give me the impression of being a young woman with alley-cat morals. Perhaps my mind was too conventional. Human types cannot be classified as if they exist in a laboratory.

All this, somehow, did not make her any less Interesting. But then perhaps from the first sight my attention had been riveted. The subtle chemistry of attraction is something that this chemist does not even ask to understand.

I walked with her to the landing stage and then, having seen her off, strolled across St. Mark's Square towards my hotel. It was a pity, or it seemed to me a pity, that I should probably never see her again.

Captain Bonini next morning at eleven. The grim business of deception.

He kept me waiting half an hour and then came in naval uniform. The smart severity of the uniform, took away from the fleshiness of his figure; I think he wore a body belt.

We met in a small ante-room and he at once came to the point. “I have bees given limited permission to use you for as long as my own secretary is away. This will not be long. Please let me see your papers.”

“I am extremely obliged to you, sir. You are very kind to have taken this trouble.”

He waved an irritable hand—a hand strangely like Andrews's at first glance, soft and plump and flexible, but lacking some implication of a
dangerous
softness.

“My family,” I said, “will look on this——”

“Save your breath,” be said. “Understand if I engage you, you are here not to talk but to obey orders.”

I was dutifully silent while he thumbed through the papers. “ That seems satisfactory,” he said at length, grudgingly.

I picked them up from the marble-topped table on which he had dropped them as if they were dirty.

“There is nothing to-day,” he said, “ and to-morrow is Sunday when I shall be off duty. Call here at eight-thirty on Monday. On Monday afternoon, you will go to Milan, to the Hotel Colleoni, where you will find two rooms booked in my name. I will join you on Tuesday morning. I shall want you to attend a conference with me on Tuesday afternoon. This will last for two or three days.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Do you understand anything of Naval Ordnance?”

“Er—no, six. But I did reach a good standard in mathematics and physics.”

He grunted. “ I have some papers here for you to study. Make what you can of them. It is not necessary to understand them fully but only to grasp some of the terms. You may spend the morning in this room. When you have done put them in this drawer. Do not be late on Monday. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. And thank you.”

He left me, clearly intent on doing his part with the minimum of politeness, In some degree perhaps this helped him to salve his uneasy conscience and his fear of being contaminated.

The papers he had left me were the sort he must have pulled out of some odd cubby-hole to lead an air of reality to the charade. They dealt with subjects like armature windings, the permeability of high quality steel, theories of magnetic reluctance. They could well have had bearing on one or other of the subjects at the conference but were of an elementary nature. I carefully read through them, and could not resist adding a footnote to one paper where the writer was making deductions from an incomplete knowledge of his subject. That done, I walked back to the hotel for lunch.

The weather was overcast again to-day and the lagoon had none of its familiar colour. Andrews had said it would be more discreet for me to stay in the general vicinity of the hotel; but the public rooms felt too public and my bedroom was far too private. Although all arrangements were going according to plan, my imagination would not let them alone. Pitfalls, it seemed to me, yawned everywhere. How had Bonini so easily secured clearance for me to attend a high-power scientific conference, an unknown relative engaged arbitrarily as his secretary? Were security arrangements sufficiently lax in Italy? Even if
he
thought he could get me in, I might well be turned back at the doors. Even if I were admitted, as a secretary I should not be invited to examine things as a scientist would, and I might miss the points most needed. If I tried to discover more I would only draw attention to myself. I was no practised spy. At school I had always been the one to be found out.

So, against Andrews's advice, I went for a long walk. I took a vaporetto to the Rialto Bridge and then wandered on north through the Strada Nuova among the Venetian shops and courtyards. Past San Giovanni Crisostomo, I strolled through tiny slits of streets and over narrow bridges. I thought of what Venice must have been like before the introduction of the humped bridge had abolished the horse and made the gondola the universal means of transport. I eventually found myself at the extremity of the island at the church of Madonna dell 'Orto, and then, not wanting to go farther on towards the station, had to retrace my steps to the only bridge, near the Ca d'Oro, which led back into the eastern part of the city. I ate an ice cream opposite the church of Saints Giovanni and Paolo and admired Colleoni's magnificent statue. Then home, feeling footsore but more relaxed.

At the hotel they told me someone had beea ringing me on the telephone. No longer relaxed, I dined early, hoping for the best and speculating on all the different varieties of trouble this could mean.

The gorgonzola had been reached when the waiter came across with the half-expected message. Three kiosks at the door of the hotel. One had the receiver off its hook.

“
Pronto
,” I said.

“Signor Catania?” A woman's voice.

“Speaking.”

“At eight this evening there will be a gondolier at the steps at the side entrance of your hotel. He will wear a white kerchief. If you engage him he will bring you here.” Click.

“Who is that speaking?”

No answer.

“Who is there? Are you there?”

The line was dead.

I came slowly out of the kiosk. Foolish to ask unnecessary questions. Oaly yesterday I had listened to her guttural pronunciation and reflected that she had it both ways: an attractive Colonial burr in English, this soft broken accent in Italian.

I went back to my dinner and finished it quietly.

“Signer Catania?” said the gondolier. He was a tall youngish man with the hooked nose of a true Venetian and a mop of fair hair. He had only one eye, which may have explained why he was not in the armed forces but gave him a sinister look. I thought of a voice carefully imitated, a gondola ride by night, a blow on the head, a splash in the bottle-green water …

“You are from …?”

“If you will be seated,
signore
.”

I looked around. The commissionaire from the hotel was listening. I got in the gondola.

It rocked gently as we were pushed away. I leaned back in the cushions and curtains of the closed interior. It smelled dusty, and of some spicy scent like sandalwood or pine. There was a crude blue picture of the Virgin and two postcards of lesser saints. We mowd off, not towards the Grand Canal but away from it.