Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

Now Slatko’s brutal face pursued him. Squire sat up and put the light on, feeling ill.

He padded over to the bathroom to get himself a sip of water — he had been warned that Ermalpa water was contaminated, but he had heard similar tales wherever he went. He caught sight of the unopened envelope lying on the table. After drinking, he took the envelope back to bed and ripped it open.

Inside was one sheet of paper with the hotel’s crest. The letter read,

Dear Tom,

For reasons you know well, I can bear no more of the talk round the conference table. Let me get away just in the morning. You must come with me and pay. We can take a No 9 bus to the little town called Nontreale. It is a cheap fare but you know our government keeps us poor as saints — which we otherwise are not — when we are out of our country. Besides, you are rich.

Tell nobody our plan. I must not tell my ‘comrade’ Kchevov. We will play truant, and talk like men, and view Nontreale cathedral to educate you and make me thirsty.

The bus leaves at 9.05 in the morning. Meet me just outside the hotel at ten minutes to nine tomorrow and I will take you to the bus stop. Nobody shall know where we go, so please be safe and flush this sheet in your toilet bowl (we Russians have a passionate admiration for secrets, you know that). I trust you.

Yours

Vasili Rugorsky

Squire laughed. He laid the letter by his bed, switched off the light, and in a moment was sound asleep, worries forgotten.

The No 9 bus was crowded, but they managed to sit together. Rugorsky’s mood was somewhat withdrawn. He had missed his breakfast in order to get away from the hotel without questioning.

‘I am a man who likes much to eat. But more I like to see foreign countries. When shall I again be allowed outside the sacred frontiers of my own country? It is naturally cosy in there, because it is so well guarded. But I feel a necessity to store up some images of Sicily, other than that room of mirrors and electronic equipment in which we sit.’

He lapsed into silence. Both men sat staring out of the windows as the bus wound through the suburbs of Ermalpa with many a stop, a pachyderm surrounded by flocks of Fiats.

On the outskirts of town, the buildings became drab and decrepit. Squire was reminded of the older parts of Cairo. Coppersmiths and sadlers and vulcanizers worked in tiny open-fronted shops beneath the room in which they and their families lived. The bus had transported its passengers from a twentieth-century city to some outlying byway of history. People, animals, and scruffy fowls were everywhere. Piles of refuse filled yards and gardens, spilling into the street. Here and there an elderly tree defied its destiny by sending forth bright blossom, carmine on purple.

Squire made an idle remark about the filth.

‘No, you see, you are a man of the world,’ said Rugorsky, looking at him askance in his teasing way. ‘But your world is limited. Here it is no real filth. It is merely untidy. That’s all. Merely a little untidy.’

He sank into silence again.

Outside the city, the bus turned onto a good dusty road and began forging steadily west. The way wound upwards, yielding increasingly fine views of the Mediterranean. At every broken-walled village en route , the bus stopped, and women and goats ceased their activities to stare at it.

Half an hour later, they arrived in Nontreale. The bus nosed along narrow streets hardly wider than the vehicle, entered the main square, and stopped with a protracted sigh. All the passengers climbed out.

The air was cooler than it had been in Ermalpa. Squire and Rugorsky stood together while the latter wiped his brow thoroughly with a brown handkerchief.

Nontreale held two points of historical and aesthetic interest, a ruinous castle and a cathedral. The cathedral filled one side of the small square. As they stood looking across at it, the crowd generated by the arrival of the bus slowly disappeared. Most of the people appeared to be locals; it was early as yet for tourists. In front of the cathedral, shopkeepers were setting up stalls loaded with bright tourist goods.

Rugorsky nodded and grunted. ‘Byzantium. A common heritage of East and West, you see. It looks promising, Tom. Perhaps we shall enjoy it more for having an icecream first.’

‘There’s a bar over there. Would you prefer a drink?’

‘I don’t wish for a bad reputation. Let us proceed first to an ice cream.’

They sat down at open-air tables to one side of the square, and the sun shone on them. Rugorsky asked,’ You don’t mind to pay for me?’

‘I’m pleased to do so.’

‘It does not make you feel too superior to me?’

Squire laughed. ‘You are not the sort of man one easily feels superior to, Vasili.’

‘That’s good — but be careful. I am aware of the terrible sinful power of money. Well aware. Money is very corrupting.’

‘So people say. The lack of it corrupts, too.’

They ordered cassati from the waiter.

Rugorsky reopened the subject. ‘You perhaps assume that as a good socialist I naturally preach about the evils of money. But that is not all my meaning. You see, I also feel on the personal level, and not just as a theory, that money corrupts. It has corrupted me. I am a corrupt man, Tom. Very corrupt, unfortunately. It’s not my wish.’

‘I don’t see you like that.’

An impatient gesture, made slowly to remove any offence. ‘You do not know me. You see, Tom, I do not wish to argue about how corrupt I am. That a man must decide for himself. The scale in such judgements is merely internal. You agree?’

Squire was silent. Howard Parker-Smith had phoned him from the Consulate earlier in the morning, catching him just before he left his hotel room. Rugorsky certainly had money problems. Squire wondered with some apprehension what exactly Rugorsky was planning to do.

He ate the ice cream slowly. It had a delicious flavour and texture. As they ate, they watched the life of the square. An old woman had brought two donkeys down from the hills, and was tying them to a railing a short distance away, talking to them loudly as she did so.’ I was speaking with the Italian Morabito last night,’ Rugorsky said. ‘He has been once to your house in England. It is in the country.’

‘Yes. Norfolk. Only six or seven miles from the sea.’

The Russian sighed. ‘Perhaps I may myself come there one day and stay with you, as I have stayed with Lippard-Milne and his wife. They live in Sloane Street, in London.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve been there.’ Squire had caught sight of Howard Parker-Smith. At least he was certain he recognized those well-knit shoulders, clad in an English blazer, and the sleek well-groomed head, before the figure disappeared down a side-alley off the square. He glanced at his watch; it was before ten-thirty. He and Parker-Smith had been talking over the phone less than two hours earlier. What was the man doing here, if not keeping an eye on the two of them? Perhaps he was expecting a sudden move by Rugorsky.

Squire paid the waiter. He and Rugorsky rose, and they strolled across the square to the cathedral, soon entering into its grand shadow.

The main part of the building was twelfth century, with a grandiose porch built on four centuries later in a Gothic style. They stood for a while before moving into the great shell of the interior. Here, all was shadowy, the slanting bars of light from the high windows creating a sense of space and mystery. The shell was full of dusty scents, as if the departed still breathed. Squire stood gazing into that majestic space, seeing it as a convincing rendering of the true reality in which all things had their being, as well as an unwitting representation of that luminous hole in the rear of the skull, the lantern hidden in bone in which alone he believed — and in which, he reflected, he probably believed alone.