Marcel Theroux - Strange Bodies

I turned to face him on the pavement. My drunken vision moved blurrily and took a moment longer to stop than I did. ‘He came to you?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised, Nicky. There aren’t that many of us. And technically, I am your senior.’ Saul drunkenly rattled one of those huge iron horse-hitches cemented into the walls of a palazzo.

The approach had been identical to the one they’d made to me. Saul remembered that it had been towards the end of February: an email to his academic address from Hunter’s assistant, suggesting lunch.

‘And what did you do?’

Saul put his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and shrugged as though the answer was obvious. ‘I said I was too busy.’

‘Were you?’

‘Not really, but I had better things to do and besides, there’s something a little unsavoury about the guy, don’t you think?’

‘Which guy?’

‘Hunter Gould.’ He said the name with a falling intonation that made it sound like an unpleasant medical condition.

‘Then what happened?’

‘He pestered me for a while. Someone sent me transcripts of some letters. I had a look at them to get him off my back.’

‘And?’

‘They looked pretty sound to me. But how can you be sure without seeing the originals?’

Horst came back from the shadows and Saul seemed reluctant to continue the conversation.

‘Do you remember who sent them?’

He shook his head.

Horst rejoined our party and the conversation turned towards academic politics and the disappointments of middle age.

And then the gloom that I thought I had outrun during the flight over Europe seemed to catch up with me. I started missing Lucius and Sarah. I left the others drinking at a table inside an unlikely plastic tent near the Palazzo Strozzi and walked back to my room to try and sleep.

*

While I was away, I had switched off my mobile phone to save money on roaming charges. As soon as I arrived back at Heathrow, there was a text message asking me to call; it had been sent from an unfamiliar phone number which I assumed was Leonora’s. I rang it from the train into Paddington. Vera answered. It had been several weeks since our last communication. Through crackly, tunnel-hampered reception, she informed me a bit briskly that she needed to see me about a medical matter.

I remember the journey in with a peculiar vividness: the texture of the fabric on the seats of the train; the rosacea on the face of the man opposite who was reading Kerouac; the dusty trees of Green Park; the glint of chrome in the Audi showroom; garish sugar peaches in the window of the Japanese confectioner’s where Vera was waiting for me, upstairs, in a private tea-room.

She was kneeling serenely in front of a low table when I arrived. In a blather of guilt and embarrassment, I apologised for not having been in touch.

A hostess poured green tea for both of us. ‘I’m not so young to expect you to send me flowers,’ Vera said. She thanked the hostess in Japanese and the woman discreetly withdrew.

‘I apologise for imposing on you, but there is some news I must share. It appears that I am pregnant.’ In the pause that followed, I began to speak. She held up her hand. ‘Before you say anything, it is undoubtedly a consequence of our liaison,’ she said. ‘Of course, there is no question of my keeping the child.’

Even then, it struck me that her icy detachment conflicted with that word : child; but she gave no indication that the decision had caused her any pain.

I felt that some response was demanded of me. There was a ghastly symmetry between this and Leonora’s accidental pregnancy all those years earlier. ‘That’s …’ I began, and trailed off. In the alcove behind her hung a scroll-painting of a white crane. ‘That’s your decision.’

‘This is a seasonal wagashi ,’ she said, passing me a plate holding a single sweet. ‘It’s made with bean paste and cherry blossom.’

It was the colour and texture of uncooked pastry. I took it and ate it. I have no recollection of its flavour.

‘I never foresaw this happening,’ she went on. ‘Because of my unusual physiology, it’s important to act early. I have consulted my own doctor in Moscow and he has agreed to oversee the procedure.’

At that moment, I experienced a surge of relief: Vera was presenting me not with a problem but with a solution, and one so elegant and simple that it seemed to have been arrived at using formal logic. My anxiety gave way to a deep sense of magnanimity. ‘If there’s anything you need from me, Vera, just say the word.’

Vera sipped her tea with tiny, pecking movements. It was impossible to reconcile the woman in front of me with my fragmentary recollection of the night we had spent together. She glanced up at me. ‘You may ask why I bother telling you at all.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It involves both of us.’

‘I’m letting you know as a courtesy, in case you have strong feelings to the contrary.’ She set down her cup and let the implications of her words sink in. There was an unmistakable challenge in her eyes. I felt the profound insincerity of everything that I had said and I looked away.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

‘Then that is decided.’ She poured more tea. ‘I will need, therefore, to ask your assistance.’

‘Whatever it is, I’ll do it.’

‘I have obligations here that must be attended to in my absence.’

Rather blithely, perhaps, I promised her my complete co-operation.

‘Given the delicacy of this matter, it’s of the utmost importance that I can speak to you in total confidence,’ she said.

‘Of course.’ I couldn’t imagine a bigger secret than the one we already shared.

‘You must swear , Nicholas,’ she said, and her nostrils flared with a passion that brought a chastening flashback of our entwined bodies.

‘I swear,’ I said, though the intensity of her voice was making me nervous.

She glanced towards the door as though she feared another intrusion, then leaned forward and paused. She was clearly waiting for me to do the same. Hesitantly, I extended myself towards her across the low table. I moved closer with some trepidation and averted my eyes to the jade brooch on the lapel of her coat. Her breath provoked a strange tingle on my neck as she lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Jack is not dead,’ she said.

For a moment, I didn’t know how to respond. ‘Hunter told me …’ I began.

‘Hunter had reasons for telling you what he did. Your continued interest in my brother is potentially awkward for Hunter and Sinan.’

‘Why? They seemed pretty certain that I’m the one who should feel awkward: I couldn’t tell your brother’s work from Johnson’s.’

‘My brother owes his livelihood to a certain facility for pastiche. Let me say that there are papers extant … There are papers whose value has been … compromised.’

‘Johnson papers?’

‘Not only Johnson.’

‘Your brother can do other writers?’

‘My brother is simply the only such savant that you are aware of, Nicholas. The work is not of a kind that I can easily explain. Nor would it be in your interest to know more.’

As I recall the conversation now, it strikes me that the word ‘savant’ was bracketed by the tiniest hesitation.

‘Meaning there are others?’

The look she gave me left me in little doubt that the answer was in the affirmative. She seemed to want me to understand that whatever Malevin was up to had been wider in scope than I had ever conceived of. More savants like Jack Telauga? A factory of forgers, working like Victorian copy clerks in the bowels of the St James’s Square mansion? I told her she was embarrassing herself, but even as I said it, I regretted my choice of words.