Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

Cosmo came with a start out of a deep sleep that seemed to have lasted only a moment. But he knew at once where he was, though at first he had to argue himself out of the conviction of having parted from Count Helion at the top of a staircase less than five minutes ago. Meantime he watched Spire flooding the room with brilliant sunshine, for the three windows of the room faced east.

“Very fine morning, sir,” said Spire over his shoulder. “Quite a spring day.”

A delicious freshness flowed over Cosmo. It did not bring joy to him, but dismay. Daylight already! It had come too soon. He had had no time yet to decide what to do. He had gone to sleep. A most extraordinary thing! His distress was appeased by the simple thought that there was no need for him to do anything. After drinking his chocolate, which Spire received on a tray from some woman on the other side of the door, he informed him that he intended to devote the whole day to his correspondence. A table having been arranged to that end close to an open window, he started writing at once. On retiring without a sound, Spire left the goose–quill flying over the paper. It was past noon before Cosmo, hearing him come in again on some pretence or other, raised his head for the first time and dropped the pen to say: “Give me my coat, I will go down to the dining–room.”

By that time the murmur of voices on the piazza had died out. The good Genoese had gone indoors to eat. Coming out of his light–filled room Cosmo found the corridors cold and dark like subterranean passages cut in rock, and the hall downstairs gloomy like a burial vault. In contrast with it the long dining–room had a festive air, a brilliancy that was almost crude. In a corner where the man who called himself Dr. Martel had his table this glare was toned down by half–closed shutters, and Cosmo made his way there. Cantelucci’s benefactor, seated sideways with one arm thrown over the chair’s back, took Cosmo’s arrival as a matter of course, greeted him with an amiable growl, and declared himself very sharp–set. Presently, laying down his knife and fork, he inquired what Cosmo had been doing that morning. Writing? Really! Thought that perhaps Cosmo had been doing the churches. One could see very pretty girls in the morning, waiting for their turn at the confessional.

Cosmo, raising suddenly his eyes from his plate, caught his companion examining him keenly. The doctor burst into a loud laugh, till Cosmo’s grave face recalled him to himself.

“I beg your pardon. I remembered suddenly a very funny thing that happened to me last night. I am afraid you think me very impolite. It was extremely funny.”

“Won’t you tell me of it?” asked Cosmo coldly.

“No, my dear sir. You are not in the mood. I prefer to apologise. There is a secret in it which is not mine. But as to the girls I was perfectly serious. If you seek female beauty, you must look to the people for it, and in Genoa you will not look in vain. The women of the upper classes are alike everywhere. You must have remarked that.”

“I have hardly had time to look about me as yet,” said Cosmo. He was no longer annoyed with the doctor, not even after he heard him say:

“Surely yesterday evening you must have had an opportunity. You came home late.”

“I wonder who takes the trouble to watch my movements?” remarked Cosmo carelessly.

“Town–police spies, of course,” said the doctor grimly; “and perhaps one or two of the most enterprising thieves. You must make up your mind to that. After all, why should you care?”

“Yes, why should I?” repeated Cosmo nonchalantly. “Do they report to you?”

The doctor laughed again. “I see you haven’t forgiven me my untimely merriment; but I will answer your question. No doubt I could hear a lot, if I wanted to, both from the police and the thieves. But as a matter of fact it was my courier who told me. He was talking with some friends outside this inn when you came home. You know you are a noticeable figure.”

“Oh, your courier. I suppose he hasn’t got much else to do!”

“I see you are bent on quarrelling, Mr. Latham,” said the other, while two unexpected dimples appeared on his round cheeks. “All right. Only hadn’t we better wait for some other opportunity? Don’t you allow your man to talk while he is assisting you to dress? I must confess I let my fellow run on while he is shaving me in the morning. But then I am an easy–going sort of tramp. For I am just a tramp. I have no Latham Hall to go back to.”

He pushed his chair away from the table, stretched his legs, plunged his hands in his pockets complacently. How long was it he had been a tramp? he mused aloud. Twenty years? Or a little more. From one end of Europe to the other. From Madrid to Moscow, as one might say. Exactly like that Corsican fellow. Only he hadn’t dragged a tail of two hundred thousand men behind him, and had done no more blood–letting than his lancet was equal to.

He looked up at Cosmo suddenly.

“The lancet’s my weapon, you know. Not bayonet or sabre. Cold steel, anyhow. Of course I found occasion to fire off my pistols more than once, in the course of my travels, and I must say for myself that whenever I fired them it settled the business. One evening, I remember, in Transylvania, stepping out of a wretched inn to take a look round, I ran against a coalition of three powerful heyducks in tarry breeches, with moustaches a foot long. The moonlight was bright as day. I took in the situation at a glance and I assure you two of them never made a sound as they fell, while the third just grunted once. I fancy they had designs on my poor horse. He was inside the inn, you know. A custom of the country. Men and animals under the same roof; I used to be sorry for the animals. When I came in again the Jew had just finished frying the eggs. He had been very surly before, but when he served me I noticed that he was shaking like a leaf. He tried to propitiate me by the offer of a sausage. I was simply ravenous. It made me ill for two days. That’s why I haven’t forgotten the occurrence. He nearly managed to avenge those bandits. Luckily I had the right kind of drugs in my valise, and my iron constitution helped to pull me through. But I should like to have seen Bonaparte in that predicament. He wouldn’t have known what to do. And, anyhow, the sausage would have finished him. His constitution is not like mine. He’s unhealthy, sir, unhealthy.”

“You had occasion to observe him often?” asked Cosmo, simply because he was reluctant to go back to his writing.

“Our paths seldom crossed,” stated the other simply. “But some time after the abdication I was passing through Valence—it’s a tramp’s business, you know, to keep moving—and I just had a good look at him outside the post–house. You may take it from me, he won’t reach the term of the psalmist. Well, Mr. Latham, when I take a survey of the past, here we are, the Corsican and I, within, say, a hundred miles of each other, at the end of twenty years of tramping, and, frankly, which of us is the better off when all’s said and done?”

“That’s a point of view,” murmured Cosmo wearily. He added, however, that there were various ways of appreciating the careers of the world’s great men.

“There are,” assented the other. “For instance, you would say that nothing short of the whole of Europe was needed to crush that fellow. But Pozzo di Borgo thinks that he has done it all by himself.”

At the name of the emperor’s Corsican enemy, Cosmo raised his head. He had caught sight in Paris of that personage at one or other of those great receptions from which he used to come away disgusted with the world and dissatisfied with himself. The doctor seemed inwardly amused by his recollection of Pozzo di Borgo.