Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

To be truthful, it wasn’t as convenient as all that. I was flying home the day after, and I’d arranged a farewell lunch with my journalist friend. I cancelled it, of course. In the middle of a world where most things were unexpected, I had suddenly met my philosopher’s second wife – called something else, doing something else, living a new and amazingly different life. Yet for some reason she was happy to talk to me, and I would never have such a chance again. In some odd fashion I was back where I didn’t wish to be, but felt I had to be: on the quest for Bazlo Criminale. And so, on the Saturday (by which time I had, incidentally, met two more mistresses of Borges), I was picked up from my hotel by a middle-aged couple, smartly dressed in Burberry for a day in the country, and was driven out of town.

It was a strange trip, from the middle of a near-European city into something else. As we drove away, a heavy cloudburst exploded, overflowing the city’s non-existent drains and forcing us into unexpected routes. We drove through uncomfortable, threatening areas of the city; the couple in front of me locked the car doors on the inside. We passed the Army Engineering School, which was, they told me, a place of terror during the Repression. Then, out on the autopista, the weather cleared. Parrilla stalls and balloon vendors stood at the roadside. There was a wide flat plain, grey with eucalyptus trees and scattered with cattle and horses. We were stopped at endless tollbooths, which, my companions told me, had not even been there the previous week. ‘They call it free-market, Thatcherism,’ said my driver, ‘They have sold the roads.’ We drove out somewhere past Hurlingham, founded by the British, weekend land of the rich.

Finally, at the end of a vast long drive, we found Gertla Riviero’s hacienda: a long, low, verandah-ed house, around it paddocks for polo ponies, a pool for swimming, courts for tennis, enclosures for calves and goats. In cashmere sweater and designer slacks, Gertla came over to the car; either she or her husband was very seriously rich. She led me to the verandah, where a weekend house-party sat drinking. Children played on great lawns; other guests splashed in the pool. ‘Do you like it, Argentina?’ asked one of the guests. ‘Very exciting,’ I said. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Gertla, handing me a glass of wine, ‘Inflation 130 per cent. When Menem tries to fight corruption, he has to arrest his own officials first. Here rich are rich, poor are poor, and only the army holds them apart. It is exciting.’ ‘And what a beautiful estate,’ I said. ‘Very,’ said Gertla, ‘And if you are wondering where is my husband, he is out riding the estate, by the way. He will not be back for a long rime.’ ‘When did you come here?’ I asked. ‘When Hungary became impossible, seven, eight years ago,’ said Gertla, ‘Now I live very nicely and worry about inflation and cancer from the ozone layer. Enjoy your drink now, and we will take a walk together after lunch, all right?’

Gertla turned to talk to the other guests; I sat and looked at her, the woman I had, I recalled, seen nude in Budapest. Well, she was no Sepulchra; this one had kept all the grace and dignity I had noted up there on Bazlo’s walls. No wonder he had been attracted to her; the wonder was he had then gone off with La Stupenda, the Great Ship. Then I recalled what Ildiko had said, about an affair with the chief of secret police; I wondered if this was the man now out riding the estate. But his name was Riviero, and who knew what to think of anything Ildiko had told me? In any case that all seemed strangely remote, here on the pampa, a southern sky spreading flatly to a distant horizon, grey eucalyptus trees blowing in the wind. When natural functions called me and I went inside for the bathroom, I found expensive furniture, and walls covered in flamboyant and experimental paintings, all signed ‘Gertla Riviero’. She was a woman of character; a woman of wealth as well.

There was a barbecue lunch (beef and some curious black pudding) served by, presumably, a daughter of the house; she bore no Criminale characteristics. Then, while the other guests continued earing and drinking, Gertla walked me towards the paddocks. If there was something she intended to tell me, she seemed in no great hurry. ‘You were going to tell me about the unofficial Criminale,’ I said. ‘You know, if you want really to understand Criminale, you must understand first how he was with women,’ she said, stopping to look over the horses, ‘They really possessed him. With each one he had different thoughts. You know about Criminale’s women?’ ‘Well, there was Pia, you, Sepulchra,’ I said, counting them off on my fingers, ‘And wasn’t there one more?’ ‘One more, many more,’ said Gertla, laughing, ‘But I think you mean Irini. This one he loved but never married.’ ‘So what should I know about them?’ I asked.

‘Pia you know was a great anti-Nazi, very fierce,’ said Gertla, ‘She helped him a lot, but she died then, quite young, in Berlin. This was before he was well-known. I, well, I am here, you can see what I am. If you don’t mind I say so, with me was his best time, when he grew famous. And then Sepulchra, well, you would not even like to see her. Pretty once, but silly, and now blown up fat like a fish.’ ‘I have seen her,’ I said. ‘Then I think you know what I mean,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘Yes, I think I do,’ I said. ‘For him she was a great mistake, of course,’ said Gertla, ‘Bazlo needed someone who was strong, someone with ideas of her own. Sepulchra was his folly, she had no mind, no politics. But that is what he wanted, that is what he had to have. Always there had to be another woman. But I had other interests too.’ I thought again of what Ildiko had told me, and began wondering once more whether it might just be true.

I said: ‘So with Pia he began as an anti-Nazi?’ ‘Therefore a good socialist, who believed that society must be changed,’ said Gertla. ‘Then with you he was what?’ ‘By now a very important Marxist philosopher, famous in his country,’ said Gertla. ‘And also a frequent traveller to the West,’ I said. ‘That is true, later on,’ said Gertla, nodding, ‘And then with Sepulchra he became, well, what he is today. The big celebrity, the Lukacs of the Nineties?’ ‘That’s what the newspapers say,’ I said. ‘Well, you are the newspapers,’ said Gertla, turning to look at me, ‘I notice you have not asked me about Irini.’ I somehow knew now what the question was I had been brought out here to ask. I said, ‘I’ve always wondered what happened to Irini. Didn’t she disappear, around the time he met you?’

‘She disappeared, that is true,’ said Gertla, ‘Irini was sent to a camp in 1956.’ ‘A camp?’ I asked, ‘You mean to prison?’ ‘In 1956 she went into the streets, fighting the Russian tanks,’ said Gertla, ‘Then she tried to cross the frontier to go to the West. She did not succeed. You will not remember these things, of course. The British were too busy, invading Egypt at Suez. That is what gave the Russians their chance to come in.’ ‘I wasn’t even born then,’ I said. ‘No, of course,’ said Gertla, ‘So it doesn’t even matter to you, I think. But in the Soviet bloc it mattered to everyone.’ ‘When Irini was caught, what did Criminale do? Did he help her?’ ‘What did he do?’ said Gertla, ‘Of course Bazlo did nothing.’ ‘Nothing?’ I asked, shaken. Gertla smiled at me. ‘No, by this time his affair with her was entirely over. Now he was with me. Bazlo did nothing, because Irini and I were not of the same kind at all. You must understand I had a very different opinion of those things.’

It shouldn’t have done, but it took me a moment, as we stood there, to understand just what Gertla meant. I was a nice upstanding young man, and Gertla was calling up battles I had almost forgotten, decisions that I hardly recognized. Then I saw, and said, ‘You supported the Russian invasion, you mean?’ ‘It was the only way,’ she said, ‘If that revolution had succeeded, what has happened now would have happened even then. I was a Marxist then, I still am today. And I hope you realize that what has happened now will not succeed for long? Soon there will be a coup in Russia, these foolish freedoms that are not freedoms will be swept away, the Party will take control again, to hold the empire together. This is just a small moment in a larger process.’ ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘But did Criminale support the Russian occupation too?’ ‘We sat in our apartment above Budapest and watched those tanks roll in,’ said Gertla, ‘I told Bazlo to stay away from his democrat friends and get behind what Kadar did. The coup was bound to fail. I was right, of course. If he had not done it, today he would have been no one. He would probably have gone to a camp too. Then who would have heard of Bazlo Criminale?’