Saturn Over the Water (12 page)

If I’d hoped to take her by surprise, I’d been too optimistic. At this game she could make rings round me. ‘It was a foolish thing to say,’ she said very calmly. ‘I think I said it just because you are English.’

‘You mean they don’t like the English at the Institute?’

‘That would be too much to say, Mr Bedford. But – I like you – ’

‘I like you, Mrs Candamo. You’re worth fifty Rosalias.’

‘No, I am not. But – well – there were these two Englishmen – the one whose wife had to take him away, poor man. And then the younger one – I forget his name – ’

‘It was Farne.’ I said it very quietly. I knew something was coming, something I wanted to know, I could feel it in my bones.

‘Yes, I think it was. And I remember seeing him when he first came – looking so healthy and strong and sure of himself – and then – the morning he left – having to be almost carried into the car. Not drunk of course, but a very sick man. But you must do your painting, Mr Bedford, and I am busy too – ’

I went away loving that heavy middle-aged Peruvian woman. If I’d been a caliph with twenty wives, I’d have asked her to be the twenty-first. After poking round a bit, trying one place after another, I did it the hard way, climbing a cliff behind Uramba from which I could get a heat-hazy shimmering view of most of the Institute buildings. The haze and shimmer removed some of the curse of the monotonous roofs and hard rectangular forms; but even so it wasn’t my kind of painting, and I just bashed away at it, in the hope that it might please old Arnaldos. While I was working up there, still sweating it out but not so thirsty this time, I decided that Mrs Candamo hadn’t been careless, telling me about Farne. She wasn’t that kind of gossipy woman. If she’d told me something, and of course she had, she’d done it deliberately, knowing somehow that I was asking questions about Farne. He hadn’t simply gone to Chile, he’d been taken there, something I now felt I’d half-suspected all along. Whatever people might say, I just couldn’t see steady Joe Farne, who thought twice before risking a bottle of Bass, going off on a great
pisco
blind. Incidentally, I discovered that the port of Pisco, which gave its name to this Pacific South American brandy, pale but powerful, was not a very long way south of Uramba. I was already beginning to take to
pisco
, but I couldn’t imagine Joe lushing up on it.

On my way back to the house, the sketch finished, I thought I’d take a chance on not finding Rosalia in her studio. It was unlocked and empty. The mounts were still in the same place on the table, and I found one that fitted the sketch and hastily made off with it. After all, I was going to make the old man a present of the sketch. I took my time having a bath and changing, and when I finally arrived at cocktail corner with my sketch, all nicely mounted, Arnaldos was there with Rosalia. The girl had now gone to the opposite extreme. She was wearing a gold and black evening creation that didn’t suit her; she’d worked on her hair, probably assisted by two Peruvian slaves; and had plastered on a lot of lipstick and some eye shadow that she didn’t need. She’d tarted up her manner of course, as they always do, and behaved to her grandfather and me as if we were forty-five smart people drinking cocktails at the
George Cinq
or the
Waldorf
-
Astoria
.
It was all a waste of time and energy; her grandfather was probably too old and tired to notice the difference and thought her half-barmy anyhow; and if I wasn’t downright rude, I was certainly a bit surly and made it plain I didn’t intend exchanging any bright cocktail-party glances with her. The old man, looking more like a tiny emperor than ever, was genuinely pleased with the sketch, the first of its kind of the Institute. He insisted upon pointing out what he thought were its merits to Rosalia, whose party manner had to take the strain. ‘I would be very grateful if you would allow me to purchase this from you, Mr Bedford,’ he said finally. ‘I would be very sorry to see it taken away from us.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of selling it to you, Mr Arnaldos,’ I said. He looked unhappy. ‘I did it specially as a little present for you. Please take it.’

‘Why – Mr Bedford – I am very grateful indeed to you.’ And he really seemed happy about it. He looked at the sketch, then at Rosalia, then at me. ‘This must be the first time for many years that I have been given anything. It is an experience with a charming and unusual flavour. I must have this suitably framed as soon as possible. It can go up to Lima in the morning.’ He left us to put the sketch on a desk and make a note on a pad there.

‘That was a fine thing to do, Tim,’ Rosalia whispered. ‘Didn’t you see how happy you’ve made him?’ She put a hand on my arm.

I moved away. She might have been sincere, and then again she might not; anyhow, I didn’t care. ‘Does a car go to Lima every day?’

‘Nearly every day. Why?’

‘I’d like one whole day out sketching,’ I said, as impersonal as I’d been before. ‘And then I must go.’

She turned away, perhaps to put her glass on the table, perhaps not. We went into dinner. The old man, whose day’s rest must have done him good, took charge of the talk. After this and that, he got on to Nietzsche. He had read Nietzsche as a young man when the first Spanish translations were appearing, and later he had collected French and English translations not being able to read German. He told us that Nietzsche’s very last works, written when he was considered to be already more than half dotty, were really his most profound, mistaken for mere ravings just because they were so profound. There was a lot more along this line, but after a time I wasn’t really listening, being busy with my own thoughts, and not knowing or caring much about Nietzsche. (I could have kicked myself afterwards for my lack of attention that night.) After we had had our coffee on the balcony and he was still talking away, telling me among other things – and very pleasantly too – that on the previous night Steglitz had been right and I had been wrong, I got up and asked to be excused. I said I had to go out.

‘You wish to see somebody at the Institute?’ he said. ‘Or perhaps they are showing a film there.’

‘No, it’s nothing to do with the Institute.’

‘Well, there isn’t anywhere else to go,’ said Rosalia rather sharply.

I risked the true explanation, even if I didn’t tell the whole truth. ‘Yesterday in the village I ran into a young Englishman who’ll be an alcoholic soon if he isn’t one already. I want to have another talk with him, and not waste daylight on it, so I’ll go across to the village and see if he’s still around.’

Freece was where I’d expected him to be – in that dim and smelly grog shop. When he saw me, he left the group playing cards near the counter – with no drink to bring with him, I noticed – and after I’d ordered a couple of
piscos
, he followed me into a corner we had to ourselves. He needed a drink or two badly. It wouldn’t be difficult to make him talk, if he really had anything worth hearing. But it would be hopeless, I decided, to let him ramble on, particularly as his very sloppy speech made him hard to understand.

‘Now listen, Freece,’ I said, after we’d lowered some of the
pisco
and had chatted a few minutes, ‘I’m trying to find out what happened to a man called Farne. So if you know anything about him, tell me.’

‘All right, you listen, chum. ’Cos I know plenty about Farne. After I got the push from the bloody Institute and was getting short, he give me the price of a bottle once or twice, maybe more. Then when any more touches was out, I sold him this pointing mike I got from the drunk Yank in Callao.’ When I asked him to explain what he meant, he took so long and got so involved, in a
pisco
mixture of technicalities and unnecessary details, that it’s only worth giving the gist of it. He’d bought or stolen from this Yank in Callao a special and extra-sensitive type of microphone that could be pointed at people like a gun and would then pick up talk at a distance, the talkers thinking it impossible for them to be overheard. Having listened to Freece boasting about this mike, and then having given it a rough test in the village, Farne had bought it from him for about five pounds worth of
sols
. ‘It was giving it away, chum, but I needed the money bad – see? Then after I’d worked steady for a time selling and mending radio sets – and had made a bit on a lucky gamble – I wanted to buy it back. But Farne had gone – and no good-bye neither. Just went. How about ordering us a couple more, chum?’

By the time we’d nearly finished our third
pisco
each – half a tumbler a time of raw spirit, and I was beginning to feel muzzy – he didn’t care what he said. When I told him I’d heard that Farne had been loaded into a car looking very ill, he made a noise as if he was going to puke, but it was just scorn. ‘You’re telling me nothing, chum. He had it coming to him, Farne had. Bloody lucky to get out alive, if you ask me. Why? I’ll tell you why, chum. He was too curious. Like me. And English of course, like me. He knew, just like I did, there was something behind all this research caper.’ He jerked his head sideways, to indicate the card players near the counter. ‘You might think these blokes are stupid. So they are up to a point. But even they know there’s something goes on – behind the scenes. All this coming and going, for instance! Big pots! One bloke I saw might have come straight out of Hitler’s General Staff. All right if I have another? How you doing?’

I nursed mine but risked buying him another. It may have loosened his tongue a bit more, but soon he took to muttering in a jerky fashion, with intervals of silence when he’d either glare round the room or close his eyes as if he was about to fall asleep. ‘Me and Farne chewed it over together . . . had the same ideas more or less. If you ask me he used that mike I sold him – and then he knew too much. . . . Can’t prove it of course, can’t prove nothing . . . Bet a hundred quid, though, if I had a hundred quid, Farne found out what I’d already told him.’

‘What was that, Freece? Come on, don’t fall asleep yet,’ I said sharply. ‘I want to know. It’s important.’

He opened his eyes. ‘You bet your bloody life it’s important, chum.’ He crooked and wiggled his forefinger to beckon me nearer, then leant forward himself. ‘Nazis,’ he whispered. ‘Bloody great organisation. World-bloody-wide. . . . Worked out during the war in case they lost. . . . Centre of network to be South America. . . . Told Farne but at first he wouldn’t buy it – ’

‘I don’t buy it, Freece. It’s an idea, and I’ve thought about it myself. Certainly there’s something going on, some sort of organisation – ’

‘Nazis, I say. Every time. . . . Some of ’em are there at the Institute, like that sod Soultz. . . . The big pots come and go, pretending to be this and that, but all in the Nazi ring. . . . Ever notice that big mast top of the cliff? . . You ought to see the transmitting set they bought themselves at the Institute. . . . God Almighty I ought to know – had to do some work on that set when it broke down. . . . No sending and receiving though by Percy Freece, no bloody fear. . . . Have a German and an Argentino doing sending and receiving. . . . Try asking them any questions and see what you get, chum – ’

He broke off because some kind of policeman was standing over us. We’d never noticed his approach. But everybody else had; no cards were being played, no drinks served, everything was frozen; and the only sound I could hear was one of those tom-cat serenades still yowling on the radio. I couldn’t understand what the policeman and Freece shouted at each other, though I seemed to catch
pasaporte
and
permiso
.
But the policeman got very angry, stepped back and bellowed at Freece, and put a hand on the revolver he was carrying. Freece nodded, got up and turned to me, and said: ‘Bastards have done this before – never at this time of night though, chum – you tell anybody you were coming here to meet me?’

Before I could reply, the policeman started shouting again, and Freece had to go. The fat woman, who could speak a little English, explained that he was not being arrested for any crime but only because there was some trouble about the permit he needed as a foreigner. Having had more than enough
pisco
, I asked her to bring me a beer; and then I lit a pipe and tried to think. (With a pipe at least I look like a man thinking.) I added up what I’d learnt from this useless character, poor Percy Freece, and decided that he’d been more use to my investigation than anybody else so far. I still dismissed his Nazi theory, which was too easy and didn’t seem to me to fit in with the little I did know. But what he’d said did help my idea, which had begun to worry me even in London, that behind all these odd doings was some large-scale and very elaborate organisation. But where he’d been most useful of course was in helping me to decide about what had happened to Joe Farne. Now, thanks chiefly to Freece, it was beginning to seem fairly clear. Farne had been suspicious, and what he’d heard through the mike he’d bought from Freece had made him more suspicious. (This explained some of the queer things he’d scribbled down afterwards, at the end of his letter to Isabel from Chile. He’d remembered them – or at least some of them, because he might have overheard other things in Chile – from what he’d picked up here on that mike.) Now Joe Farne was no cunning intriguer; he’d probably gone and blurted out that he’d found out something he didn’t like; and this put the Institute types or their bosses elsewhere on a nasty spot. If Farne was simply told to clear out, he’d continue talking and asking awkward questions. If they killed him there and then, even supposing they were ready to be as ruthless as that, there might be an official investigation into his disappearance. But if he left apparently of his own will, and yet it was somehow worked that he wouldn’t be able to ask any dangerous questions, then everything would be fine. That probably meant that he was doped or given some sort of treatment, so that he left here looking a sick man and not really knowing what was happening to him. Then instead of being merely let loose in Chile he was definitely taken somewhere. And of course I saw that unless I could find out where that somewhere was – and inquiries through official channels in Chile would obviously be a waste of time – then I might as well pack up and go home. Moreover, I felt pretty certain that if anything more could be learnt from Freece, I’d never learn it, because he’d not be having any more
piscos
here until I’d gone. As soon as I’d left the house, I believed now, Arnaldos or Rosalia or Mrs Candamo or somebody had made a phone call to some very obliging police official.