Dan Vyleta - Smoke

The policeman nods, takes down a note, rings a little bell on his desk. It must be an agreed signal, for a clerk appears carrying a plate with some bread and two boiled eggs. A reward, I understand. We both eat hastily, sharing the plate, left hungry by the interrogation. When we are finished, the fat man licks his fingers one by one, uncaps his pen again, leans forward.

“What name did he use, this man in La Rochelle?”

I note the phrasing of the question. As though he already knows who the man is.

“He never gave his name,” I answer truthfully. “I am sorry.”

The policeman’s face looks placid. If he is keen for this particular piece of information, only his legs show it, uncrossing themselves under the table. His weight sits low, below the belly. Like he has crammed a cushion into his crotch.

“Think, Captain. I beseech you.”

But, faced with his need, I find myself reluctant to speak.

ф

It takes me two days to answer the policeman’s question. I spend them in a cell. The room is clean and heated. Nobody mistreats me. And yet a steady feeling of dread is growing in me. It is as though the world has forgotten me. I try to pray but there is no God in this nameless place, only the cluttering of typewriters, the bustling steps of clerks. Every few hours my interrogator stops by.

“Did you think of anything else?” he keeps asking.

“I’ve told you all I know.”

“Perhaps.”

He has explained to me that he regards torture to be distasteful and contrary to the tenets of British Law. But after that little snack of bread and hard-boiled egg, there is no further food.

Two days. The length of the interval is not chosen at random. If my business partner keeps to the terms of our contract, he will have instructed his bank in Rotterdam to transfer the final instalment within forty-eight hours of delivery. I hope I can trust to his honesty as he has been able to trust to mine. I am a Dutch trader, after all. We do not cheat.

When two days have passed and the hunger starts eating into my guts, I decide that the time has come to reveal my final piece of information. Perhaps the policeman will be satisfied and permit me to leave.

“I remember now,” I tell him when he next makes his visit. “He received a telegram once, the man in La Rochelle. The porter called him over. We were having lunch at the hotel.”

“So you heard his name.”

“Not clearly. In any case, I must have misheard. You see the name was English. But Englishmen are no longer allowed to travel abroad, are they not?”

“Just tell me what you heard.”

“Ashton,” I say. “Mr. Sebastian Ashton.”

The fat man’s eyes light up. “Sebastian Ashton! Ah, very funny.”

He turns to one of his clerks who always seem to be hovering in some corner, just within earshot.

“Find out everything you can about the sewer project in the city. Check on the immigration paperwork for the whole company. And set up surveillance.”

“Am I free to go?” I call after him, as he makes to leave.

“Soon.”

ф

There is a commotion some hours later. Two men bring in a yelping dog. It is a big beast, a bloodhound. Both its hind legs appear to be broken. In between its howls, the dog tries to snap at the men. They throw it in the cell next to me, where it cowers, sniffing at the air, staring at me with blood-rimmed eyes.

The fat man appears in order to have a look at it.

“Make sure you don’t smoke,” he says to me. “It goes wild over Smoke.”

“What is it?”

He shrugs. “A related inquiry.” He reaches through the bars with a stick, touches its side. The dog whimpers, then sinks its teeth in the wood. “My men say they did not see the owner. But I think they saw him and were afraid. Of a schoolboy! There’s a rumour on the loose. . But of course, you already believe in the devil, Captain.”

“What will you do with the dog?”

He looks at me in good humour. “What we do with all our prisoners. Tame it, or kill it.”

“Am I free to go?” I ask again.

“Soon.”

At least they have started feeding me again.

Do you still pray?”

The words are small things, fragile: the hush of the church soaking up Charlie’s voice.

Thomas does not need to think about the answer.

“No,” he says. “It’s all a lie.”

“It is. And yet I do. Despite myself. Late at night: hands folded under the blanket, where even I can’t see them.”

“Why?”

“Habit, I suppose. There could be, you know. Something real behind all this bloody mess — but look at you flinch!”

“You swore,” Thomas complains. “Charlie Cooper swears. In church. Where God can hear.” Then adds, lightly, looking down the length of the nave. “So it appears I also still believe.”

It’s the first smile they have shared since their reunion. Perhaps they came here just for that. A night and a day cooped up at Grendel’s house. Watching Lady Naylor bustling about; Sebastian coming and going. The child in the mask. They needed air. And to see whether Lady Naylor would let them go; whether they were prisoners or free.

They found their way back to the market square almost mechanically. This is where they were meant to have met. But when Charlie arrived here, long after nightfall the previous day, there had been no one to greet him. Cold and hungry, he had sought shelter in the church. The door had been locked but the priest had heard him; had listened to his explanations; and had realised that this dirty, shivering lad was the very Charlie Grendel’s newfound friends were looking for. Next came Charlie’s introduction to the man without Smoke. It made him happy somehow: that such a thing could be. Happy — until Thomas and Livia returned, her mother in tow.

Now he casts around for words to say what he feels.

“My cousin gave me some naughty books last Christmas,” Charlie states abruptly. “Not naughty, really. Risqué. Five volumes that he found in his late grandmother’s study. All five of them romances, translated from the French. They all have the same plot: two men love the same girl. They all end in a duel.”

Thomas does not deny what Charlie is implying. His features are gaunt in the pale light. They have all lost weight these past ten days. It makes them look old. “It may be an illusion, Charlie. A lie. Borrowed emotion. Round here, it drifts on the air.” Thomas frowns, clearly worried by the thought. “In any case, she does not even like me. She hates me.”

“No, not quite hate.”

Their words sound hard in the cold, pewless nave. Suddenly, scared by this coldness, they reach out and grab each other’s hand, fiercely, like two children lost in the woods. They race out of the church, still clutching each other, back out into the square. The sun is low in the sky, and for a moment it is beautiful, London’s haze of sin, soaking up the slanting rays and unfurling in orange Smoke rings high above their heads.

ф

They walk back slowly, recounting to each other the days spent apart. They have done this before, but then there were other listeners and the tales tailored to another purpose. Charlie does not linger on Renfrew; the day he spent chained to the schoolmaster’s bed. He does tell Thomas how he got sick on the way back.

“From the stomach. Rotten potatoes and all the snow I ate tramping through the night. They never write about that in stories. Getting the runs.”

Before long the cramps got so bad that Charlie found himself unable to continue. A farming couple put him up when he knocked on their door, doubled over with pain.

“Imagine it, waking under a stranger’s roof, flailing about every time, my heart pounding, thinking I’d been chained again. Scrambling for the chamber pot, wondering whether Julius was there, watching me, lurking in the shadows. The pain passed within twenty-four hours. Then the farmer made me work off the cost of my lodgings.” Charlie shakes his head, turns up his palms, displaying blisters. “A coarse man, always swearing, complaining about rich people, the chickens, his wife.”