Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

Happily we had come under the lee of the further shore by now, and were soon docking at a wooden pier. It attached to the grounds of another lakeside villa, though this one came from a very different world of taste from the Villa Barolo. The Villa Bellavecchia was in the neo-classical style, and the floodlit gardens through which our party now unsteadily passed were filled with Roman statuary, of a sumptuous kind I had never before seen. As you came from the lake, it was the buttocks that assaulted you first: buttocks on an archetypal scale, buttocks whose memory could cheer you in some distant place where misfortune had fallen or the weather was grim. They belonged to Mars and Venus; Mars’s were the larger by a cubic foot or two, but Venus’s the plumper and more comely. When you passed and looked back, you found similar grand ambitions had gone into the frontal aspect: the largest of figleaves did little to restrain Mars’s sturdy and outgoing nature, nor conceal the vast pelvic fecundity of the goddess of love.

But looking back was a mistake. There again was Cosima Bruckner, in her leather trousers, loitering amid the statues right behind me. I sensed her following me still as we entered the villa and found ourselves in a vast salle de réception , filled with more vast statues in Carrera marble. Among them stood a smaller and more human figure; Professor Monza had once again been spirited on ahead of us. ‘Attenzione, bitte!’ he cried, clapping his hands, ‘Pleasa be seateda! The weather gets worsa, and this means the concerta will be shorta!’ In the room gilded chairs with ducal crests had been gracefully arranged in a half-circle around a small raised podium, as at the aristocratic soirees of an age I thought was gone. A few other guests were there; men in excellent grey suits, women with chignons wearing backless and in some cases sideless dresses. But the group from Barolo was evidently the main party, and, thanks to our loss of numbers, we conspicuously failed to make the room seem full.

I watched out for Doctor Criminale, and there he was, taking his seat by Monza right in the middle of the front row. Miss Belli then approached, smiled, said something, and took the seat next to him. They leaned toward each other, possibly sharing a programme or some other small intimacy. I took a seat towards the back, in a position from which I could observe them; this was a relationship I wanted to understand better. Then someone took the seat next to mine; I turned and saw that it was, once again, Cosima Bruckner. ‘I think, Mr Jay, it is time to be quite frank with you,’ she whispered, leaning close to me, ‘Please understand I too am not what I seem.’ ‘Really?’ I asked, ‘So what are you then?’ ‘The face that you see is only my cover,’ said Bruckner, glancing round. ‘You’re not from the European Community?’ I asked. ‘Let us say not from the beef section as I have been maintaining,’ said Bruckner, ‘Ssshhh.’

She pointed to the podium, onto which was filing a small chamber orchestra. Its members, all in white shirts and bow ties, were youthful but stylish, the young men with long hair, the girls with short. After a brief moment, a similarly youthful conductor, in long black tails and wearing long flowing locks, entered, took centre stage, bowed to our warm applause. The orchestra tuned up. ‘A fine acoustic!’ Criminale could be heard saying. Then the conductor stepped forward. ‘Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagione ,’ he said, The Four Seasons.’ Here was another composer who had, I seemed to remem­ber, died in poverty in Vienna, and then revived to bring us neo-classical joy. The orchestra, a good one, now set about Vivaldi’s meteorological work with gusto; I leaned back to listen and enjoy.

It was in the middle of Spring that Cosima Bruckner resumed her whispering in my ear. ‘Do you realize that here we are within ten kilometres of the Swiss border?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘And you know Switzerland is the world’s financial paradise?’ I nodded. ‘Also it is not a member of the European Community.’ I smiled sympathetically. ‘That means this border is alive with fraudulent traffic and financial irregularities of every kind.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘You know that ten per cent of the European Community budget disappears in fraudulent trans­actions?’ I raised my eyebrows even higher. ‘Much of it goes out of Italy and through these passes.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘So perhaps now you understand why I am at Barolo,’ said Cosima Bruckner, sitting back as the movement came to its end.

When Summer started, she was off again. ‘What could be better than an international congress for passing illicit traffic?’ she murmured. ‘These are all famous international scholars and writers,’ I murmured back. ‘Exactly, people from all over the world that no one would suspect,’ whispered Cosima. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I whispered back. I saw the conductor turn and look at us with irritation. ‘Listen, I will trust you,’ hissed Cosima Bruckner, ‘I require your helps.’ know nothing about these things,’ I hissed back. ‘You would be wise to consider,’ susurrated Cosima Bruckner, ‘Remember, I could have you ejaculated from this congress entirely. You understand?’ ‘What do you want, then?’ I susurrated back. ‘Have you see anything at all suspicious, at Barolo?’ asked Cosima Bruckner, ‘Financial transactions, unexpected contacts?’ ‘Nothing like that,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all that is unusual?’ asked Cosima. The movement came to its sprightly end. I looked again at the front row, wondering how things were with Bazlo Criminale. It was then that I realized that, somewhere during the course of Summer, he and Miss Belli had both disappeared.

Autumn began, and midway through it the heavens opened. A tempestuous downpour clattered violently on the tiles above us, and by the end of the movement rainwater was swilling over the marble floors of the salle de reception and lapping around our feet. When the music ceased, Monza rose and had a few words with the conductor, who then stepped forward. ‘Grazie, thank you very much, The Three Seasons,’ he said. The applause that followed was undeservedly brief, for Monza was up there again, clapping for attention. ‘Now may I ask you to returna to the boata! These storms can sometimes go on all through the nighta, so I think we must returna to Barolo quickly.’ We hurried out of the hall and to the boat through the classical gardens. Rain tumbled down and Mars and Venus dripped and spurted from every cleft, orifice and protuberance. Water filled the gunwales of our waiting speedboat, and we huddled in the cabin. I looked round for Criminale and Miss Belli. There was no sign of them, but no one except myself and Cosima Bruckner seemed to care.

We set sail quickly towards the Isola Barolo. The lake had fallen into a strange calm. To the north, where the Alps rose up, the view was magnificent and terrible. Wild lightning flashes lit the mountain tops, disclosing vast ranges of snow-covered ridges we had never seen before. Rushing clouds skittered over their tops; the trees below the tree-line were dipping under rushing wind and then rising again. Thunder echoed from mountainside to mountainside, with the racket of an enormous military barrage. Then in the lightning flashes we could see that, from the top end of the lake, a ruffle of violent wind was moving along, tearing at the still surface of the water. Only Cosima Bruckner seemed to be without fear; she stood up in the front of the boat and shouted ‘Storm, go away!’ The rest of us huddled in the cabin as the boatman made the engine surge, and we drove for the Barolo pier.

The storm was striking Barolo now; the trees began to dip and crack, the crag above the village was garishly backlit, the villa itself illuminated in a sudden son et lumière . I thought about Ildiko, hoping hard that she had safely returned from her shopping on the evening boat. It was only by moments that we ourselves outran the windstorm that swept down Lake Cano that night. Even as our boat tied up at the pier, the waves began leaping violently, and the water spumed and boiled. We ran through the pouring rain to the minibuses that had come down to collect us, and by the time we reached the gates of the villa it was clear something had happened to paradise. Water swept down the drive as if it had turned into a riverbed; the branches of trees were bending, twisting, snapping to the ground.