A Stranger in the Family (18 page)

‘The breakdown of those marriages?’

‘Of course.’ He leered. ‘How could such a marriage continue for long? Neither men nor women are naturally monogamous. First of all things go well, and they did for Frank and his wife. They had a girl and a boy, the ideal of a
natural marriage, marriage as photographed by a society photographer. And then there is a little disagreement. She wants more children. He does not. Children cost too much in the way of time and attention. She thinks children are the whole meaning of life. She is a Catholic in this, though in other ways her Catholicism is skin-deep. She gets pregnant, and Frank suspects this is because she has left off taking the pill. When you arrive in the world Frank sees only his wife in your face, her in your walk, her in toto. Then he gets taken over by even more extreme ideas.’

‘He thinks I am the son of some actor called Harry Bradley-Perle.’

‘Ah, you discovered that. So he told me. It justified Novello in taking no notice of you.’

An idea struck Kit.

‘Did Isla think: if he’s going to clutch on to a silly illusion like that I might as well make it a reality?’

‘Something like that. You realise I kept myself informed of his affairs through my Glasgow contacts.’

‘Why do that?’

‘Because you could never know when they might come in useful. All my whole life – my career, let’s call it – was based on storing knowledge. And there was a special reason for doing it too.’

‘What was that?’

‘When I met Frank he was a third-time father. You were about three years old. The poison had been working in his mind all those three years. He told me all about you, and he obviously wanted to believe that this minor actor was your father. And at one point he said, “It would serve her right if I got someone to abduct the little bastard.”’

‘And you looked at each other …’

Greenspan looked ridiculously pleased.

‘Exactly! I misjudged you. You’re quite a sharp boy. We looked at each other and he put me down for possible future use and I put him down for possible future use.’

‘You can’t have needed money by then?’

‘Now you are being silly. One always needs money. Money’s power. There was another reason why I kept myself well informed about Frank.’

‘What was that?’

‘I had a particular use for an abducted child.’

‘You’d been in touch with Jürgen?’

‘Yes. One of those fantastic coincidences that turn out to be a little more – or perhaps I mean a little less – than a coincidence. I met him on the last day of that conference – the one we’ve been talking about.’

‘But that must have been a coincidence, surely?’

‘Not entirely, in fact. Jürgen had been in touch with me. He was one of many who’d been in touch with Helmut Erheim in Vienna after the war, and he’d heard of the name Durataverdi. When the Italian government started its big
anti-Mafia
crusade the name cropped up in English newspapers, and Jürgen used the consulate in Naples to get the address of my lawyer. He sent me, through the lawyer, a letter – a long letter telling me about his loss of his mother, his happiness with the Philipsons, his sister, his work, his marriage to an art expert who was quite often in Italy. He wondered if I thought it a good idea that we got in touch.’

‘And you said yes?’ said Kit, surprised.

‘I said no! Silly boy – what use could he be to me? But then when the Glasgow peacemakings came up, it amused me to go, and I wondered if I should just contact him, talk to him about my great achievements as a Mafia capo. It would amuse me. I had met my daughter in Vienna. She had wanted to like me, but had failed. I tried to woo her, so to speak, but she had found me unattractive, uncharming. She thought us Machiavellian. Apparently she never told her brother about the visit.’ He shrugged. ‘In the event Jürgen turned up on the last day, when peace was secure – for a time at any rate – and I was
introduced to the deputy editor of the
Glasgow Examiner.’

‘He realised who you were?’

‘Oh yes, of course. We talked – calmly, sensibly – which came naturally to Jürgen, and I could put on a good performance when needed. I told him I had replied negatively to his letter because I didn’t think someone who had been involved for years with the Mafia and the Camorra would be a good father for a crusading journalist to have. We circled round all sorts of subjects until eventually I said: “No children yet?” And I could tell by the look of pain how deeply that fact hurt him. I made a sudden decision. I said: “I know someone – a sister of my current woman – who’s had an illegitimate baby, which she kept, and she bitterly regrets that decision. She hasn’t made a second decision about it yet – it’s a big one for an Italian woman – but if she does …?” and he said at once: “I am interested.” I said: “The child is half English,” and he said: “It couldn’t matter less.” I said: “This sort of arrangement, quite informal, is common in Italy. If any decision is made I’ll let you know.” And so the deal was made.’

There was silence in the bare room as Kit digested this.

‘I think I can understand my father’s succumbing to the offer. There was no question
of abduction, and there was apparently a genuine and close connection with the donor. But why on earth did you make the offer to him? What was in it for you?’

‘Power. It amused me to have a son who was part of the liberal, high-thinking class, albeit in a little, powerless country like Scotland. I knew that if he took the child he would be in my power. I would be magnanimous, I would not involve him in any of the sordid and bloody little crimes I was often party to. But I also knew he was mine.’

‘But you never used that power.’

‘No, I never used it,’ said Greenspan, almost as if he was ashamed. ‘Perhaps I liked him too much. Perhaps he was just too good for me to get pleasure from manipulating him, forcing him to stain that purity he had. I had always got pleasure from power, but I enjoyed exercising it on those who were twisted creatures like me, people who would gladly stoop to anything. I proved myself of the same kind as them, but cleverer, more ruthless, more inhuman and inhumane. That I got great pleasure from. But a good man, one who never stooped, one who examined every step he made morally – I thought about it, and concluded it would not suit me.’

‘I see,’ said Kit. ‘Jürgen sometimes had the effect of making people better than they seemed.’

‘I think Hilde had something of that quality too. As I told you, I met her once in Vienna, but I put her off me – I could not pretend to her. Where her quality – their quality – came from I don’t know.’

‘Their mother?’ put in Kit softly.

‘Maybe, maybe,’ said Greenspan, surprisingly. ‘Maybe I stayed my hand in Jürgen’s case because the watch on me by the Italian state was by then too close for comfort. And the nearer you came to coming of age the less power I had.’

‘Did you know he was told I was abducted?’

The old man perked up immediately.

‘No. Who told him? It must have been Frank.’

‘Yes, it was Frank.’

‘And why did he do it? Power, like me?’

‘Not exactly. He did it six or seven years ago. I think he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. It may have been some sort of revenge. Frank may have thought my father got on his high moral horse too readily. Who can say what thought processes are going through the mind of an Alzheimer’s sufferer?’

‘True,’ said Greenspan, with some kind of relish in his voice. Then he sank for a moment into thought. ‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘you were really very lucky.’

‘Lucky? To be abducted?’

‘Yes. You had an ideal childhood, in the care of people who were loving and very conscientious. You may have felt stifled by their goodness, but you were safe.’

‘Perhaps … Yes, looking back it feels like a very good childhood. Perhaps a lot better than I would have had with the Novellos, in spite of Isla’s love and care.’

The old man again had a look of relish in his eyes as he asked: ‘Have you ever wondered whether she was party to the abduction?’

‘Not until now. Everybody has always said she was devoted to me.’

‘Everyone seems to have been devoted to you. She was also, people say, devoted to Frank, at least in the early stages of the marriage. Were her devotions altogether a good thing, do you think?’

‘In what way?’

‘Your great philosopher Oscar Wilde – what was it he said? She loved him “with a love that made his life a burden”. He tests that love to the absolute limit, and still she says “yes” and remains devoted. What is he to do? All he can do is throw her away. All she can do is hold out for the biggest pay she can get.’

‘You don’t know this,’ said Kit.

‘I read it in his eyes, his squirms, his anger every time I talked to him in Glasgow. What happened after the abduction makes me
convinced I was right. She remained quiet. And why should you complain?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘You had a good childhood. Will your adulthood conceivably live up to it? Adult challenges are much more difficult to survive than childish ones.’

‘Many people would say the opposite was closer to the truth.’

‘Would they? I had a nasty, restrictive childhood. My parents wanted to push me into the civil service, make me a government stooge like themselves. Imagine what harm I could have done in that kind of job after the government of Germany took control of Austria. Instead I made my own way, my own career, my own lifestyle. And my own moral code. Remember, I did a great deal of good as well as some harm. The good always included a sweetener for me – of course it did. How else could I have lived, enjoyed a few of the good things of life? But good came out of it to the people who used me as well.’

‘You’re not on trial in my mind,’ said Kit.

‘Maybe not. But I don’t think you have any idea of what living in a murderous dictatorship is like. All moral guidelines have been thrown out the window. You have to live each day as though it’s your last. You have to make your own moral
code, yes, but you also have to be ready to tear it up if following it is going to endanger your life.’

‘Morally you were an improviser,’ suggested Kit.

‘I had to be. Also I rather enjoyed it. I was one of those smart boys who enjoy a gamble, enjoy using people because it enlarges their understanding of human types, enjoy being in control.’

‘Nobody could doubt that,’ said Kit. ‘But couldn’t you have used your talents with more kindness and mercy? I’m thinking of my grandmother.’

Greenspan gave his usual shrug.

‘Maybe I could. I did not try. You can’t imagine the wicked pleasure of having a woman entirely at my beck and call – a good woman, too, though not very bright, to put it mildly. She loved me after every first night we had together – because this was an occasional relationship, you understand, a matter of visits now and then. I would have got her out of Germany if I could have, just so I could wash my hands of her for ever. No such luck. But I never went to her after she saw her children off to London. War broke out, every difficult thing became ten times more difficult; my skills were tested every day of my life and before long I began planning for Italy, and a new life there.’

‘Where you became involved with the Mafia.’

‘Inevitably. You could say they were waiting for me.’

‘And eventually you planned an abduction, to provide your son, her son, with a child.’

‘I did. That was in 1990. I did it gladly, had a well-oiled machine, and everything went according to plan.’

‘Yes, it did. I never suspected I was being abducted.’

Greenspan laughed.

‘You were only three. A few years more and you would have understood. You are a bright boy, like I said. Is that all? Can I return to my life on the edge of the law?’  

‘I suppose so,’ said Kit, after a moment’s thought.  

‘You are sure there is nothing more you want to ask me? Ask now because there will be no second opportunity.’  

There was silence in the room.  

‘Did Frank openly ask you to abduct me, his child?’  

Greenspan shook his head at Kit’s naivety.  

‘Openly? What is openly? After I had met Jürgen I met again with Frank. He spoke to me about his doubts about your paternity, the impossibility of his accepting you, the mistrust of his wife that was always in his mind. He looked
at me. I looked at him. Then we got down to planning it.’

Kit thought.

‘That was real wickedness,’ he said. ‘Apparently he cared nothing about who I was given to, whether I would live or die – cared about nothing but himself.’

‘Yes, you’re right. You’re seeing that there is greater wickedness than mine. And remember that Frank had always lived in safe, fair old England, under the rule of law. He had never known the sort of place where yesterday’s acceptable behaviour becomes tomorrow’s capital offence. He had never known the madness of the modern state that embraces the extreme and the insane and makes them the norm. I reacted to my circumstances in my way, but I was not born evil. I just chose it as the only way I could survive. Good morning, Mr Philipson.’

Kit waited to say something, but he didn’t know what. A man entered the room and he felt a touch on his arm. He was cuffed and blindfolded and led out to the car.

On the way back to Palermo he wondered about the new angle he had acquired on Isla. Was she victim or collaborator? Had she chosen Frank over her three-year-old child? Was it her knowledge of Frank’s part in the abduction that
enabled her to gain a lavish settlement when the divorce was finalised?

And did he care now?

In the plane from Palermo to Heathrow Kit meditated on the three mothers whose lives and values had figured so largely in his own and his father’s lives. In the centre, Genevieve, loving, self-sacrificing, warm. On one side of her, Elisabeth, whom many of the actors in the story thought of as stupid beyond measuring. Could not she be seen as a kind of holy fool, always sacrificing herself for others, up to the final hideous sacrifice of her own beloved children? And on the other side was Isla – the sort of mother, Kit now saw, who was so preoccupied with her own wishes and needs that she could be seen as conniving in her own child’s abduction in a final desperate attempt to hold on to her husband’s love. Perhaps there was no villainy in this story, but if there was, it was surely Isla. Kit let his thoughts stray to the man he had just met for the first and last time. He was cunning, ruthless, mendacious – all sorts of undeniable qualities at his command when necessary, and in more terrifying forms than the softer versions shown by men and women in liberal, democratic regimes.