Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

There on the grey sand he sat, with a bag beside him, buck naked except for a smart blue yachting-cap. He was not alone. By his side was Miss Belli, equally naked, if not more so. She sat stroking his back and talking with Italian vehemence. Suddenly she rose, ran a little way along the tiny narrow beach, stopped at a large rock, and seemed to pose there, wide-legged, straddled against it. Criminale reached in his bag, brought out a camera, and rose to move towards her. ‘See, Criminale Bazlo!’ said Ildiko, stirring suddenly, ‘What is he doing?’ ‘Sit still,’ I said urgently, in a low voice, as the boat rocked alarmingly. ‘And Blasted Belli!’ cried Ildiko, ‘He is with Blasted Belli!’ ‘Quiet, Ildiko, they haven’t seen us,’ I said, ‘Let’s get round the corner, out of sight.’ I heaved at the oars, rowing on hurriedly. Laughter came bubbling from the shore; Criminale, looking like some coarse and hairy satyr, was up close to naked Miss Belli, a Botticelli Venus, framing her through his camera. We turned a bar of rock that hid us from view; sweating heartily, I let the boat drift.

‘You saw it!’ cried Ildiko. ‘It’s probably all quite innocent,’ I said, ‘Just a little nude photography session.’ ‘And he needs to be naked too?’ asked Ildiko, ‘You are the one who is innocent. Those two are making an affair.’ ‘We don’t know that, do we?’ I said. ‘What do you need to understand something?’ asked Ildiko, ‘Why do you think he talked about the Nobel Prize that way the other night? Bazlo has fallen head over feet in love with Blasted Belli!’ ‘It hardly seems likely,’ I said. ‘Affairs are not likely,’ said Ildiko, ‘How about you and me? He is very attractive man and he cannot keep his hands off women. That is how he left Gertla and ended up with Sepulchra. Remember, he is Hungarian.’ ‘But why Miss Belli?’ I asked. ‘Why Miss Belli?’ cried Ildiko scornfully, ‘Are you so blind you don’t look at her? She is the most attractive girl here. And she is sorry for him, because he is stuck with La Stupenda. She told us this in the car.’

‘But he seems so attached to Sepulchra,’ I said, ‘And you told me he worshipped the ground she trod on.’ ‘You saw her, yes, fat as a horse now,’ said Ildiko, ‘And she is stupid, I’m sorry. Criminale depends on her, but not for everything. Don’t you see how he looks at other women?’ ‘Why doesn’t she keep an eye on him?’ I asked. ‘How do you keep an eye on one like that?’ Ildiko asked me angrily, ‘If he can disappear in the middle of a crowd, get lost in a little village a whole day, of course he can get away from Sepulchra, any time he likes it. She is too fat to follow. Anyway he keeps her all day in the study filing away his notes. And if you were famous and could have any woman, would you pick Sepulchra? No. Take me back, I have had enough.’ I looked at her. She was raging with anger; I was not sure why. I began to row back. ‘Not here, I don’t like such deep water,’ said Ildiko. ‘You don’t want them to see us, do you?’ I asked, ‘We have to stay out from the shore.’ ‘All right then, drown me, drown me, I don’t mind,’ said Ildiko.

I wasn’t sure quite what had happened; what I did know was that something had changed in my quest for Bazlo Criminale. Lavinia, at least, would be pleased; he was not such a bourgeois philosopher after all. That night, as Ildiko sat at dinner in the Lippo Lippi room, I looked over at the great philosopher. No one could have been more dignified. He sat in centre place on the top table, hairy body cased in the finest clothes. Mrs Valeria Magno sat on one side, splendid in some Californian creation that wonderfully displayed her eternal tan. Sepulchra sat on the other, her vast evening wig stuck a little erratically on her head. Mrs Magno talked to him with great animation; Sepulchra behaved in her familiar, fussy way, occasionally tapping his arm and pointing to unfinished morsels left on his plate. Miss Belli was nowhere in sight, and nor was the equally splendid Miss Uccello; both were no doubt about their administrative and secretarial duties. It seemed hard even to recall, to take seriously, the naked, stocky goatlike figure I had seen that afternoon on the chilly beach.

I made the mistake of saying as much to Ildiko, as I undressed that night in our great suite in the Boathouse. She lay in the bed already, looking pleasing in some flimsy shirt. ‘I’m sure it was just a photography session,’ I said. ‘No, those two are having a nice little affair,’ said Ildiko, again sparky with anger. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Of course,’ said Ildiko, ‘Don’t you see, I know him very well?’ And now I suddenly began to understand her rage. ‘How well?’ I asked. ‘Very well,’ said Ildiko, ‘I hope you don’t think you are the only person who has been in my life?’ ‘You had an affair with him, you were his mistress?’ I asked. ‘Why not, do I ask you about the lovers you have had?’ asked Ildiko, ‘We only met five day ago. I had a lot of life before that.’ ‘When was this?’ I asked. ‘When, it doesn’t matter when,’ said Ildiko. ‘Is that why you wanted to come here, so you could see him again?’ I asked. Ildiko turned over. ‘I am with you, yes, isn’t that enough?’ she said, ‘Now please, stay away from me, over there. I like to go to sleep, it has not been for me a nice day.’

And, her back turned firmly to me, Ildiko dived down into sleep. I did not; listening to the water slapping on the side of the Boathouse, seeing the moon shine in through the curtained window, I felt angry and jealous, as Ildiko obviously did too. But I had to admit that she was quite correct; I had no right to make claims over her past life, any more than she had to make claims on mine. But as my anger calmed, my sense of bewilderment grew. The situation struck me as strange, somehow, and I began asking myself those teasing questions that can always guarantee a sleepless night. Had Ildiko lured me into bringing her here from Budapest just so that she could meet Criminale again? But then why had she spent her time at Barolo largely avoiding him? And why would she have quite ‘willingly shared a room, and then begun an affair, with me, if that was why she’d come?

And if Ildiko’s behaviour now seemed stranger and more devious than I’d thought (remember, I liked Ildiko very much), then Criminale’s seemed even more devious and strange. If these two were old lovers, then why had he shown absolutely no sign of recognizing her? By now I had come to know him well enough to accept that he lived in such a state of philosophical abstraction, dwelt so high in the stratosphere of his own mind, that he could perfectly well come face to face with an old mistress and fail to know just who she was. But suppose it was an agreed deceit – they had both decided to keep the relationship out of sight, perhaps because Sepulchra too was at Barolo. That didn’t fit either, though; Criminale clearly had no difficulty in avoiding the embrace of Sepulchra, as the events of the afternoon had shown. So why, if he and Ildiko had somehow agreed to meet, had he turned his attentions to Miss Belli? I was admittedly parti pris in the matter, but to me Ildiko’s Hungarian complications seemed far more interesting than Belli’s Italian flair. But love and sex operate by inexplicable laws, and are notoriously hard to decode; perhaps the affair had long been over, and it was jealousy itself that had brought Ildiko here. But amid all these confusions, two things seemed clear. One was that Criminale’s lovelife was far more interesting than I had so far supposed; how Lavinia would cheer, even if it dismayed me. And the other was that, if Ildiko had been Criminale’s mistress and was now mine, I was strangely linked to him through the peculiar rules of sexual intimacy in ways I had not even begun to suppose.