Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

This is very nice,’ I observed, looking round the elevator, carpeted not only on its floor but its walls and ceiling. This is very nice too, where are we?’ I asked, as we stepped from the elevator into a large, plant-filled lobby. A fire extinguisher I leaned against for support while Cosima felt for keys fell off the wall, for some reason. ‘Please be quiet,’ said Cosima, ‘My neighbours are very bourgeois.’ ‘Your neighbours?’ I asked, This is your apartment?’ ‘Please, this is no place to discuss deeds of property,’ said Cosima, unlocking some door. ‘It’s really kind to bring me back to your apartment at this time of night,’ I said. Another door opened nearby and someone stared furiously out. ‘Come inside, you do not know who is listening,’ said Cosima. As I’ve said, it was curious how, when Cosima instructed, one always obeyed.

The apartment we entered was large and fine, with a wonder­ful view of the lighted domes of Brussels, but it was also clear that Cosima led a somewhat ascetic existence. The living-room was lined with bookless bookshelves and random prints. There was a wide sofa, a coffee-table stacked with files. The kitchenette was filled with compact, colourless German appliances, the bedroom had one large mattress laid across the floor. ‘Excuse me, this is not so tidy for you,’ said Cosima, shifting files and papers, ‘I did not really expect if to expect you.’ ‘The Prince of Announcements?’ I asked. ‘Bitte?’ ‘Monza was really in the restaurant?’ ‘You didn’t see?’ asked Cosima, removing a vacuum cleaner from a very tidy broom cupboard, ‘Monza is a friend of Villeneuve, and Codicil is a friend of Monza. I suppose they are all masons together, something like that.’

She began hoovering the apartment furiously. ‘So what does it mean?’ I called, ‘Look, there’s no need to start doing housework now.’ ‘It means when I go to his office on floor thirteen tomorrow, he will wave my report and say it is fine,’ cried Cosima, bitterly, ‘However we must not stain the destiny of the New Europe, ruin our Ostpolitik. And so the destiny of the New Europe will be the same as the destiny of the Old Europe, I think, don’t you?’ ‘Turn that off,’ I said. ‘The files I have worked on for two years will disappear,’ shouted Cosima, ‘Codicil will be released and go back to Vienna to his students.’ ‘If he can find them,’ I said. ‘Lift up your feet, please,’ said Cosima, ‘And so it will go on, and on. The old men will remain, in new hats. The young ones will learn the same lesson. The nomenklatura will live on forever. Lift up your feet again.’

‘Cosima, turn that off,’ I said. ‘And I will get a nice congratu­lation for my investigations, and they will move me elsewhere,’ said Cosima, ‘Maybe the Beef Mountain, where I can do less harm. Well, I tell you this, I hate the Beef Mountain. I shit on the Beef Mountain.’ ‘Cosima, calm down,’ I said, holding her ‘Look, the place is fine, I’ve never seen a cleaner apartment. Why all this?’ ‘Because if we are going to bed together I like my place to be really nice for you,’ said Cosima. ‘What did you say?’ I asked, ‘Turn it off, Cosima.’ ‘I said, I like my place to be really nice for you,’ said Cosima, switching off the machine. ‘The conditional clause,’ I said. ‘Our bed together?’ asked Cosima ‘Maybe you don’t like to. There is the sofa also, I will tidy it for you.’

‘Come here a minute, Cosima,’ I said, ‘Do you mean you’d like to?’ ‘Didn’t you know it all the time?’ ‘I told you,’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything.’ ‘But that is why I really followed you at Barolo,’ said Cosima. ‘No, that was Criminale,’ I said. Then I was not interested in Criminale,’ said Cosima, ‘It was Monza. Because he was a friend of Villeneuve. I followed Criminale because you did. And because you lied about your newspaper and because I liked to be with you. But all the time you were with the Hungarian agent, except on the night of the storm. I checked on her, of course. You know she went to Cano to meet Codicil?’ ‘She did? Why?’ I asked. ‘He wanted her to help him to those accounts,’ said Cosima. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Perhaps you’re right. Our stories have more in common than I realized.’ ‘Please, I tidy the bedroom,’ said Cosima. The bedroom,’ I said, ‘looks great as it is.’

As far as what then did or did not happen during the rest of my visit to Brussels, I am, as it happens, prepared to say nothing at all. My reasons are roughly as follows. Not much later, I hap­pened to be lying on a mattress in a stripped, bare, uncurtained, perfectly tidy bedroom somewhere above the bright illuminated domes of Brussels. A bathroom door opened close by; in a shaft of light stood Cosima Bruckner, shower-wet where before she had been dry, unveiled where before she had been veiled. Her dark hair was up; there was a gold chain round her neck; she came and stood splendid, shy, in front of me. ‘Francis,’ she said, looking down at me, ‘Do you realize there are at least four hundred and fifty unidentified Stasi agents still working in the Western governments?’ ‘Don’t say a thing, Cosima,’ I said, ‘Just come here.’ ‘You really promise me something?’ asked Cosima. ‘I’m sure I do,’ I said. ‘If anything happens in this room, you will say nothing to anyone?’ asked Cosima, ‘It is between us only?’ ‘Definitely,’ I said, ‘This meeting does not take place.’

As a result of that promise, no more of this scene (and who says it occurred anyway?) can be reported. In any case, the fact is that most sex in stories is only for the children anyway. Adults know perfectly well what happens in such cases, when anything happens at all. There is ordinariness, and something exceptional. There is talk, there is silence. There is pleasure, there is disap­pointment. There is attachment, there is separateness. There is self, and loss of it. There is thought, there is rest. There is being, there is nothingness. There is the room here, the bigger world out there. There is growing up, and staying the same. These are issues the philosophers usually discuss for us, or they did when we had any. And if they have trouble with such matters, why should I or anyone else do better? In any case, surely, even in this tolerant, permissive, late, liberal, over-investigated world of ours, we all have a right to occasional silence. And if there is Heidegger’s silence, and Criminale’s silence, who can object, for once, to Jay’s silence?

So that’s really that. But there is one last item from my brief visit to Brussels that deserves a mention. The next morning, outside an expensive apartment block not unlike the one referred to earlier, you might have observed Cosima Bruckner, in her black trousers again, standing on the pavement as I was about to enter a taxi destined for Zaventem airport. ‘You will really write nothing?’ she was saying. ‘I don’t think I will,’ I said, ‘For me he’s still a great man. He’s the elephant, the others are just fleas. Appendixes, footnotes. And he’s suffered quite enough. Gertla’s after his reputation, the others have taken all his money.’ ‘You may be right about his reputation,’ said Cosima, ‘I think you don’t worry too much about his money. I am sure his rich girl-friend will not let Criminale starve.’

I had just got into the back seat; I wound down the window. ‘You mean Miss Belli?’ I asked, ‘She’s rich and powerful as well as everything else?’ ‘Of course not Miss Belli,’ said Cosima, ‘She was just the assistant of the Prince of Announcements, there to get him to the bank.’ ‘But he ran away to Lausanne to be with her,’ I said. ‘No,’ said Cosima, ‘Don’t you know who was really waiting there at the Beau Rivage Palace?’ ‘No idea, Cosima,’ I said. ‘Mrs Valeria Magno,’ said Cosima, ‘She flew her jet down there and they went off to India together.’ The time was logged quite precisely,’ I said. ‘Of course,’ said Cosima, ‘I think they have been lovers for years.’ ‘You’re wonderful, Cosima,’ I said. She touched her lips to mine. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Good luck with Villeneuve,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Cosima, ‘I think I will have a different job soon. But do you still promise to call me if you ever find anything out?’ ‘Definitely,’ I said. Then the taxi pulled away and I set off for the airport, knowing at last I had not another thing to say on the whole strange affair of Bazlo Criminale.