Antal Szerb - Oliver VII

SANDOVAL THE PAINTER had tactfully left the young couple to themselves — the word ‘young’ being used here in a rather specialised sense. The dancer certainly was young. Officially seventeen, she could not in truth have been much older. Count Antas, however, was more like sixty, at the very least.

The Chateau Madrid coffee house, on whose terrace they were sitting, was the supremely fashionable place to be seen in in early spring, with its pavilion under the celebrated hundred-year-old plane trees beside the little lake in the park that began where the city ended. Given the small number of these open air coffee houses in the state of Alturia during those years before the war, you might have expected to have to fight for a seat. However, at the Chateau Madrid the breeze was included in the bill. With a cup of coffee costing three Alturian taller, the clientele consisted solely of the social elite and the demi-monde. On this particular day, with the steadily worsening financial crisis, it was less than full.

In front of the Count rose a tall stack of side plates, one for every drink he had imbibed. The Count drank himself into a stupor most evenings, but, not being a man of narrow principles, he had no objection to drinking in the afternoon as well. In fact, he had probably been at it that morning too — it was hard to say quite when he had begun: normally he would have known better than to appear before so large a gathering in the company of a little dancing girl of such dubious reputation. (In those years before the war women still had such things.) Luckily the trellised bower they were in offered a shield from prying eyes.

“My gazelle!” he murmured amorously. The little dancer acknowledged this compliment with a guarded smile.

“My antelope!” he continued, developing his theme. He sensed the need for yet another animal, but could think of nothing better than a pelican.

At that precise moment Sandoval burst in, with an anxious face.

“Your Excellency! … ”

“My boy,” the Count began, in a voice that verged on a hiss. He did not welcome intrusion. But Sandoval cut him short.

“Count,” he insisted, “Her Ladyship is here, with her companion.”

Antas clapped the monocle to his eye and stared around. It was beyond question. Slowly, terrifyingly, like a fully rigged old-style frigate, his wife was negotiating the entrance.

“I’m done for!” he stammered, his eyes darting hither and thither, as if some unexpected source of assistance might come sailing through the air.

“We can still get away,” whispered Sandoval. “We can nip out through the kitchen and straight into the car. Come on, Count, be quick … and try to look like someone completely different.”

“And the bill?” demanded the grandee, a gentleman through and through.

Sandoval tossed a fifty taller note onto the table.

“We must go. Quickly!”

They dashed out of the bower, Antas with averted face. Almost immediately he collided with a waiter balancing a tray in his hand. The crash of broken crockery brought all eyes to bear upon them. Antas began to apologise, but Sandoval seized him and led him, at a speed scarcely to be credited, through the kitchen, out onto the street and into the car, losing the girl somewhere along the way.

“You don’t think she saw me?” the Count asked, slamming the door shut behind them.

“I’m afraid it’s quite certain she did. When Your Excellency knocked the waiter over everyone — including the Countess — turned to look. So far as I could make out, in my state of agitation, she was shaking her parasol at you.”

Antas slumped back into the seat.

“That’s it. I’m dead,” he whimpered.

Sandoval meanwhile had started the engine and swerved out onto the main road leading to the city. There had been no time to send for the driver, and they left him to his fate.

“If I might make a suggestion … ” said Sandoval, breaking the horrified silence.

“I’m listening,” the Count whispered, in the tones of a man whose life was about to expire.

“The fact that Your Excellency met Her Ladyship is not something we can do anything about. But time is always a great healer.”

“What do you mean?”

“For example, if Your Excellency were to disappear for a few days — a week, shall we say? During that time her rage would subside, and she would start to worry, not being able to imagine where you might be … and it would give me time to think up some story or other to put a plausible front on what happened … ”

“How could I disappear, my boy? Me, the Royal Chief Steward? How could you think that? Such a prominent public figure!”

“True, true. Just let me think for a moment … I have it! I’ll take Your Excellency to the country mansion of a friend of mine, up in the Lidarini Mountains. It’s utterly remote. The post takes a week to get there. Trenmor, my friend, is abroad at the moment, but the staff know me well — they’ll obey me without question — and you’ll be completely safe up there, where no bird flies. Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t be able to leave until I came for you with the car.”

“Good, good, my boy. Take me wherever you wish. Just don’t let me see my wife, and above all, don’t let her see me! And make sure you never get married.”

The car turned round and set off in the opposite direction, away from the city. Soon the Count was fast asleep. He woke again only when they reached the mansion. There Sandoval handed him over to the household staff and took his leave, promising to return once the skies over the marital home had cleared. Antas thanked him profusely for his services, and Sandoval hurried back to the capital.

It was late evening when he arrived in Lara. There were far fewer people than usual on the streets, but he noticed a lot of soldiers. The storm that had overtaken his car on the road had now died down, but dark clouds continued to race across the sky.

“It’s the same up there,” he thought, studying them with his painter’s eye. “The sky is as restless as I am. Well, not many artists get the chance to play a role in major historical events. Perhaps only Rubens … ”

The car squealed to a halt outside a large, unlit building and he leapt out. “The Barrel-makers Joint Stock Trading Company,” proclaimed a rather tasteless sign.

“Even the notices in this country need a revolution,” he muttered to himself.

He applied his weight to a bell.

A narrow section of the vast door opened, and someone peered out cautiously.

“The barrels from Docasillades,” he announced, with significant emphasis.

“Come in — we’re checking the staves,” a voice replied, and Sandoval entered.

“Good evening, Partan,” he said to the doorman, who was wearing a leather coat and bandolier. “The eighteenth?”

“Upstairs in the balancing room.”

He made his way rapidly up the poorly lit stairwell and arrived at a door. In gold lettering on a black plaque he read the word ‘Accounts’. Inside, a group of about ten men were sitting on benches around the walls. They were oddly dressed, with the sort of intense faces you see only in times of historic upheaval. “Who are they? And what might they be in civilian life?” he wondered. The majority had strange bulges in their clothing, caused by ill-concealed pistols. They seemed to know who he was and simply stared at him without interest. A young man got up from a table at the far end of the room and came rapidly over to him.

“Well, at least you got here, Sandoval. We’ve been waiting a long time. Come this way.”

Sandoval followed him into the next room.

It was small and almost completely empty apart from an oddly shaped telephone — one of the stages along the secret line. Beside it sat two men, smoking.