Little Apple (23 page)

He must go, for all that. It hadn't been an easy decision. He couldn't conceive of life without Lucette, but his self-imposed mission demanded a final sacrifice. When the Selyukov business was settled he would go back to her. Constantinople, Ruschuk, Smyrna - he would find Lucette wherever she was. He wouldn't leave her again.

He hadn't found Selyukov in Batum. Selyukov had left for Constantinople five months earlier, and Vit¬torin had followed him there. He'd inquired after him in every hotel in the city, in luxury restaurants and humble eating-houses, in bars, cafes and brasseries, in the seedy nightspots of Galata and the gambling hells of Pera. For three days now, he'd known that Selyukov was in Rome.

Rome, Via Nazionale, Hotel Royal des Strangers - that was where he would find the man. He no longer saw Selyukov as an arrogant Russian officer who had insulted him. Selyukov was the evil personification of a degenerate age. He was the medium through which Vit¬torin hated everything sordid that met his eye - all the crooks, currency speculators and human predators that had shared out the world between them. Constantinople under Allied occupation was swarming with these shady creatures, overflowing with men whose fingerprints were on file at police headquarters. Their vile, greedy, bloated faces were to be seen everywhere. They made money out of war, politics, espionage. While General Wrangel's army was putting up a last stand in the Crimea, they were profiting behind the scenes. They haggled, they cheated, they supplied both Whites and Reds with saddlery, horseshoe nails, revolver holsters, cleaning rag, axle grease, cans of tainted bully beef. They belonged to the highest bidder, and champagne flowed wherever they did business.

They were numerous, invulnerable and ubiquitous - in Paris, in Bucharest, in Vladivostock. Vit¬torin could avenge the humanity they were betraying, the world they had polluted, by exterminating just one of them, and his name was Selyukov.

The city streets were incandescent with heat. Vit¬torin had now reached the Grande Rue de Pera. Down in Galata, police duties were undertaken by carabinieri, but up here British bobbies held sway in blue and white armbands. On the terrace of the Hotel de Londres, British and Greek officers rubbed shoulders with crooks, parasites and vultures of indeterminate nationality, not to mention their painted and bedizened womenfolk. The latter, too, were for sale if the price was right: to such men, pimping was a trade like any other.

The buildings flew the flags of the victorious Allies. Not a fez or tarboosh could be seen on the street. Strangers in their own capital city, the Turks remained indoors.

The members of the Café Élysee's floor show were housed on the first floor of a small hotel. In front of it, swinging his cane and puffing at a cigarette that dangled from the corner of his mouth, stood a young man with an effeminate face and flaxen hair slicked back on either side of a centre parting. He greeted Vit¬torin by raising two fingers briefly to the peak of his sports cap. Vit¬torin was reminded by this touch of familiarity that they had met at cards last night. Uneasily, he wondered what the man was doing outside his hotel. He might have lost all his money, but he didn't owe a centime, so what did Goldilocks want?

Goldilocks didn't appear to want anything. He turned and sauntered off down the street, swinging his cane.

Vit¬torin could hear Lucette's irate voice half-way up the stairs. He found on entering their room that Monsieur Lupescu had shoehorned his bulky frame into an armchair, in which
defenceless position he was having to endure a torrent of insults
and reproaches.

"I don't know how you have the gall to show your face here," Lucette snarled at him, quivering with indignation. "Some nerve, I must say, breezing in as if nothing had happened! You obviously make a habit of getting your friends in the press to vilify an artiste who takes her profession seriously. They're scum, those people, one and all!"

Monsieur Lupescu's face wore the look of a frightened rabbit. He was feeling guilty. Although the piece in the
Courrier
de Pera
to which Lucette took exception had been inspired and
paid for by him, he had unwisely neglected to check it before publication. Because he felt guilty, he strove to mollify the star of his floor show by half-agreeing with her.

"His write-up was a little on the skimpy side, I must admit."

But that only made matters worse.

"Skimpy?" Lucette said furiously.
''Skimpy,
did you say? No, monsieur, no one could have injected more venom into two short sentences. It's vile and infamous, and you choose to call it skimpy. What's more, to crown everything, you stick up for the swine. There, read it yourself, if you really enjoy seeing an artiste assassinated in print!"

She swooped hawklike on the newspaper, which was lying crumpled on the floor, smoothed it out with her fingertips, and held the review, which she already knew by heart, under Monsieur Lupescu's nose.

"Go on, read it and then have the effrontery to say another word in defence of that contemptible creature. Fine friends you have, monsieur! There: 'the programme also' -
also!
- 'featured the Toledo Girls. They gave of their best and were likewise -'
likewise! -
'well received.' It's outrageous. In your place, I'd be ashamed!"

"The
Courrier de Pera
is an unimportant financial paper," said the owner of the Café Élysee, very apologetically. "Nobody reads it."

"Just because nobody reads what he writes, that man has absolutely no right to insult me in such a vile way. He must have been born and bred in the gutter, and you can tell him so from me if he ever has the nerve to show his face again. Was he by any chance a tall, thin streak of a fellow with a goatee beard and horn-rimmed glasses?"

She remembered seeing one of her fellow artistes, Ida Morrison, the Café Élysees's soubrette, in the company of a man with a goatee and horn-rims, but it hadn't dawned on her till now that he was a journalist.

"I've no idea who wrote the piece, I assure you," Monsieur Lupescu insisted.

"No idea, eh? You heard nothing, saw nothing, noticed nothing. You seriously expect me to believe that? Don't play the innocent! There's something behind this and you know it - you're no fool - but it amuses you to see me treated like dirt. Anyway, why are you sitting there like a monkey in a sideshow? Are you really so keen to waste my time? Go on, get out. I'm sick of the sight of you!"

She slammed the door on the hapless Monsieur Lupescu and turned to Vit¬torin with a beaming smile.

"He genuinely doesn't know who wrote the piece. He doesn't know a thing, but it's important to show him occasionally that I'm not to be trifled with. It was the Morrison girl, I've worked it out. She played this trick on Lupescu because he's not renewing her contract. Heaven knows what the fellow from the newspaper sees in her, the ugly bitch. He didn't do it for free, that's obvious."

"I don't find her particularly likeable," Vit¬torin broke in, "but you can't call her ugly."

Lucette threw him a pitying glance over her shoulder.

"I never knew your taste in women was so vulgar," she said.
"Mon pauvre gargon,
she's got arms like a coolie and a complexion like raspberry juice. If you fancy getting together with her, you need only say. Every man deserves the woman of his choice."

She went to the window and looked down into the street. Suddenly she gave a low cry.

"What's the matter?" asked Vit¬torin.

"Nothing," she said quickly. "A mosquito bit me, that's all. There's a storm brewing, the sky's gone all dark. We'd better close the shutters - no, don't bother, I'll do it myself."

Lucette had seen her former lover down below - seen and recognized him even though he hadn't looked in her direction. His build, his sports cap, his pearl-grey gloves and the way he swung his cane - all these were unmistakable. Her hands trembled as she closed the shutters. She'd known he was in the city, but she hadn't seen him till now. She still belonged to him in spirit, but common sense forbade her to live with a man who had treated her badly, robbed her, deceived her, and spent her money on other women. He was there, prowling around the hotel, watching and waiting for an opportunity to accost her. Feeling a trifle frightened - frightened of herself as well as him - she sought refuge with Vit¬torin. She stole up to him as softly as a cat, stroked his hair and rested her head on his shoulder.

"Do you still remember the little cafe in Batum?" she asked. "It was nice, wasn't it, our first meeting? For you it may be only a dim and distant memory, but I often think of it. I saw you, and I knew at once how things were with you, and that you didn't have two kopecks to rub together, but I didn't care. I thought you were a Russian officer. I don't know what appealed to me about you - perhaps it was the uniform, or perhaps . . .
'Comme tes yeux sont grands
. . .' Remember? You were humming the tune to yourself, and I knew it was the start of something. I was the one that spoke first,
mon petit,
in case you'd forgotten. I'm not sorry I did, are you? Well, are you?"

Without a word, he drew her close and put his arms around her. She shut her eyes.

"You really must lock the door when we ..." she said softly. "You never remember,
mon petit.
I always have to remind you."

At one a.m., when the last customers had gone and the waiters were noisily stacking the tables and chairs, Vit¬torin had an interview with the owner of the Café Élysee. It took place in the dressing-room where Fred Musty, the resident comic, was removing his makeup with the aid of vaseline. After a long argument to which Musty contributed certain financial demands of his own, Vit¬torin obtained an advance of fifteen francs instead of the twenty he'd asked for.

With the money in his pocket he set off along Pera's main thoroughfare, then turned off down the small, unlit side street that led to the naval hospital. Outside a single-storeyed building he paused and rang the bell.

Although the Entente Commission had ordained that all places of public entertainment in Pera, Fondoukli, Top Hane and Galata should close at one a.m., there were one or two clandestine establishments where customers could while away the night behind locked doors. The bar-keeper who admitted Vit¬torin made his living out of a clientele that turned up after one a.m.

There they were again around the table, the same peculiar types with whom Vit¬torin had played cards all last night. Jewel smugglers, perhaps, or cocaine dealers, or deserters from some ship - who could tell?

The little man with the wrinkled face and the massive watch chain was known as Coco. The broad-shouldered one who had just bellowed for a rum-and-kümmel went by the name of Buster. The bank was held by Weasel, a scrawny fellow with a sallow face and a squashed nose. The fair-haired man whom Vit¬torin had seen outside the hotel was also there. Goldilocks seemed to favour a more refined life-style than the roughnecks around him: he was drinking Greek champagne and smoking a Cercle du Bosphore. The cramped room reeked of liquor, violet pomade, musk, and "Maryland" tobacco. Little notice was taken of Vit¬torin's arrival. Play was already in progress.

Vit¬torin punted cautiously to begin with. A player with only fifteen francs in his pocket had to husband his resources. He only took the whole of the bank for the first few coups. If he lost, he passed next time. If the banker twice in a row drew the card known as
"le brutal",
because it beat all the rest, Vit¬torin declined to stake on the principle that luck of that order was unassailable. By three a.m. he had doubled his capital. A quarter of an hour later he was down to his last three francs. At four he was within a whisker of the sum that would have enabled him to retire from the game. By four forty-five he had lost everything.

"God, it's hot in here," said the man nicknamed Buster. "Like an engine-room, it is. Let's make ourselves comfortable. If we open the window the landlord will have the police breathing down his neck."

He removed his jacket and played on in his shirtsleeves. Weasel, who followed suit, revealed that his right forearm was adorned with an elaborate tattoo comprising a crescent moon, a clenched fist, a creature resembling a hare, and a girl's head. Coco threw down his cards, pointed to the eight of hearts, and
cried triumphantly, "
Oh
là là!
Just in the nick of time,
monsieur
le timide!"

He had won the coup. Weasel pushed two crumpled notes across the table. "You wait," he muttered with grim determination.

The fair-haired man turned to Vit¬torin.

"Aren't you punting any more?"

Vit¬torin shook his head. "I'm out of cash," he said. He meant to sound off-hand, but his voice clearly betrayed how embarrassed he was and how eager to play on. "If the bank would advance me fifteen francs ..."

"Very sorry," said Coco, who held the bank, "I don't accept coups on credit."

The fair-haired man lit another cigarette.

"Please allow me to help you out," he said. "Here are twenty francs."

Vit¬torin stared at him in surprise. "Thanks anyway," he said, "but I may lose. If I do, I'm not sure I'll be able to pay you back right away." The twenty-franc note was already in his hand.

"You won't lose," the fair-haired man said firmly. "Why not hock your jacket?"

"My jacket?" said Vit¬torin. "Is that meant to be a joke?"

"No, I'm quite serious. We all do it when we're going through a bad patch. It brings you luck, see? Sometimes there's a sort of jinx on me. I lose and go on losing for hours. Then I hock my jacket and my luck changes."

"What the hell!" Vit¬torin exclaimed. "All right, I'll try it. Here, take the thing."

Goldilocks smiled as he took Vit¬torin's jacket and put it on the chair beside him. Play continued.

They stopped playing at half-past five in the morning. Milk and vegetable carts could be heard in the street, and daylight was creeping through the chinks and knotholes in the shutters.

Vit¬torin had thirty francs - not enough for a steerage ticket, and nothing else mattered. He wanted to settle his debt, but the fair-haired man wasn't there. Vit¬torin had been too intent on the game to notice his disappearance an hour earlier.