Notorious (15 page)

Czeslaw stood at the window in Dante’s room. The shadow of the tower made it seem like night already.

‘Even in the bright sun of the farmyard,’ said Dante, ‘there is the smear of blood on the hay stalk, the dog jumpy on the chain. Smoke from a shotgun. Shouts on the wind. Agonies.’

The firelight was low in the room, wavering over the tapestry on the wall and the rug on the floor. The smoke rose in black veins to the rafters. Dante sat, his chin on his stick, staring into the fire.

‘Villages do not change much,’ he said. ‘The people look around and say everything in their village is the same: the drunkard is still drunk, the woman who secretly hated her children still secretly hates her children. The priest – ’

‘ – is still saintly,’ said Czeslaw.

Dante grimaced. He bent over the tray and poured two glasses of wine. The liquid was black, the light from the fire slicked the surface with orange.

‘You should leave early tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll sit up with you tonight.’ He took a sip and closed his eyes. ‘That is all I can do.’

Czeslaw drank and put the glass down, held his head in his hands. He said, ‘I can’t confess to my past sins because I have forsaken my past life. I have no memory of it. I have given away my father’s money to pay for his sin.’

Dante waited.

Czeslaw picked up the bag. ‘I stole this from the man who stole it.’

He untied the gold string and smoothed back the leather. An oblong shape lay there, wrapped in ivory silk.

Inside was a book, the pages bound into a cover of black leather. Czeslaw used his fingernail to open the cover, turn the pages. The paper was nearly diaphanous, covered in bold sprawls of inked writing.

‘Wax weave pressing,’ said Dante. ‘It looks almost new.’

Czeslaw turned the pages. The language was French: diary writings, scraps of poetry, sketches of landscape: the desert, mountains rising out of a flat plain under a crescent moon.

Dante read, ‘
We are made so that nothing contents us
.’ He said, ‘You stole this because it has value?’

‘Its value is obligation. I am the son of the man who stole it.’

Dante thought. ‘The writer values it?’

Czeslaw hesitated. ‘The writer is – was – a traveller. I have his family’s address in France. I will give them the book and a photograph I found of my father. Then – it is God’s will. Once I have returned the book, I will go to Rome.’

‘For absolution,’ said Dante.

‘To enter the seminary, yes.’

‘To pay for someone else’s crimes?’

‘Yes.’ Czeslaw clasped Dante’s hands. ‘The minute I saw you, I knew it was a sign that I was on the right path.’

Dante said, ‘There is a terrible irony here, that you were sent to me.’

Czeslaw dreamed he was in the barn again. He saw the grey pelt hanging over the hay scattered on the stone floor. The chain creaked as it turned. Turning and turning and –

He woke to a drawn-out note of rage, the echo of it deepening and narrowing in his ears. Man or beast?

He was no longer in Dante’s room but lying on a straw mattress beneath a vaulted ceiling. Moonlight fell through the small windows, enough to see the stone walls and floor in blacks and whites. Stalks jabbed into him; there were no sheets, no pillows. He wore a rough cotton shirt and trousers, not his. His feet were bare. They had taken his clothes and he was naked underneath. They would have seen the cuts on his back when they stripped him.

He sat up, awkwardly. His hands were bound. A thin piece of wire wound tightly around them, the ends twisted together. He slid off the bed, his legs heavy.

He went around the room: small windows in three walls, a thick door on black metal hinges in the fourth. The door handle was an iron wolf’s head. He tried to turn it. Locked. He banged on it, shouting, the sound rushing into his ears like treetops being torn up for spite by the black wind.

No reply.

He walked around the room again, slowly, feeling in front of him with his feet, his clasped hands. Nothing but the bed and a heavy sideboard in dark unpolished wood. He kneeled on the cold floor and pulled at the hanging metal strips which made the handles. The sideboard doors didn’t move. His fingers probed the small dark shadow beneath the right handle. A keyhole.

He went to the nearest window, unlatched it, hooked the window back on its metal arm. The frame was cold beneath his hands. He looked across the church’s flat roof to the village.

He was in the stone tower.

He leaned out. The wind slapped at his cheek; far below, the trees were wrenched back and forth. He stared down the jagged side of the mountain: too high to jump.

He swallowed his rising panic and examined the wire around his wrists. The ends were separate. If he could part them further . . .

He bent his head and tried to get his teeth between the wire ends. The metal scraped his gums and blood flooded his mouth. But he opened the gap enough to wedge one end under the metal window arm. He twisted his hand and, before it slipped, the gap widened. He bent his head again and jerked his jaw, only stopping to spit out a mouthful of blood. The wires parted further.

His lip and chin were badly cut and he spat out two more mouthfuls of blood before he was able to catch one end and hold it with his thumb and forefinger while he gripped the other with his teeth.

Moving his jaw in careful circles, he slowly unwound the wire. It dropped to the floor and lay on the pale stone like a red ribbon. When he used the shirt to wipe his face, the material stained pink.

It was only then that he realised he hadn’t seen the leather bag.

It couldn’t all be for nothing. The quarrel with his father, this trip.

He went to the door, shouted until the trembling in his throat shook him to his knees. He pressed his face against the wood, the metal hinge cold against his forehead. A line of light crept under his closed eyelids and colder air brushed his mouth.

The wood was warped. There was a gap between the door and the wall, as much as a finger’s width in some places. He saw the stone landing, the first steps, a lit lantern hanging on a bracket in the wall. Below it, on a thin nail driven between two blocks of stone, was a small key on a metal ring.

He stared at it for a long time. It was barely an arm’s length away but only his fingertips fitted through the gap. He looked at the wire gleaming wetly in the moonlight and straightened it, fingers slipping. He measured it against his outstretched arm.

He bent one end into a hook, held the other end firmly, and pushed the wire through the gap.

The thin red line snaked along the wall towards the key.

Somewhere below him, a door banged, voices echoed up the stairs. He stopped, rigid, the wood cutting into his cheekbone, splinters separating his eyelashes. The lantern shuddered in a new eddy of wind. He held his breath but no-one came.

Please God, he thought, be with me.

The hooked end of the wire was almost at the key. But he hadn’t reckoned on the thinness of the metal: it was beginning to bend under its own weight. The further he pushed it, the more it bent. It was nearly at the key but diving down past it.

He stood on tiptoe, moved his fingers up in the gap so the wire was above the key now. But it was curving badly; he doubted if he could get the hook through the metal ring. He tried anyway, jerking wildly. The hook missed the ring completely the first time. He tried again, another miss, but closer. He took a deep breath, willed himself to slow. He brought his arm down and up again quickly, like flicking a whip. The hook rose, caught the edge of the metal ring, kept rising; the key was coming off the nail. He brought his hand down frantically, the hook dropped, the key fell, the hook caught the ring, it held there, swinging in the light, so close. The wire buckled.

The key fell to the ground.

He pulled the wire through the gap, threw himself down and looked under the door. The key lay, trembling in the lantern light. It was much nearer than before. The metal ring was slightly raised. He saw space between it and the uneven stone. If he could hook the wire under it . . .

He folded the wire back and twisted it to make it shorter but thicker. He also bent the other end to make the hook deeper and longer. Then, lying full length, he pushed the wire out, closer and closer to the key. Against the ground, the wire was easier to handle. It went straight towards the key and he felt a thrill of elation.

Yes, he thought. Then told himself, Don’t get over-confident.

The wire was already at the key. He flipped it over so the hook was dragging against the ground and pushed. The sharp point ran up and over the key-ring. He dragged back, sharply, and the hook slid under the ring and caught it.

He willed himself not to rush, moving his hand back a few inches at a time. The key came easily across this piece of stone paving. There was barely half an arm’s length between it and him.

But at the grouting around the next piece of stone, the key’s teeth disappeared into the gap. The key stopped. It was caught. He pulled, sweating now despite the cold. The cuts on his chin had re-opened; red was pooling near the door. He pulled again, felt the resistance. He eased off then tugged, sharply. The key came free.

As he lay down and yanked the key the last few inches, a door slammed. More voices. Someone coming up the stairs.

He pulled the key under the door, ripped it off the hook and threw the wire to one side. The footsteps were closer. He shoved the key into the lock. It disappeared almost up to the ring. Unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes, he turned the key, willing the door to open.

He turned and turned. The key spun wildly, unable to catch the lock. He turned and turned the wolf’s head knob but the door didn’t move.

The key was far too small. He knew it even as the footsteps sounded on the landing outside.

He threw the key behind him and slumped against the door, gasping. Blood was running down his throat, falling on the wolf’s head doorknob as though it were weeping red tears.

Why have You forsaken me? he thought and bowed his head.

The footsteps stopped on the landing. He heard breathing as ragged as his own.

Rosita’s voice came through the gap. ‘Signor Rimbaud.’ She scratched at the door. ‘Arthur.’

‘That’s not my name,’ he said in Polish.

‘Arthur?’

‘You have the book,’ he said in Italian.

‘If I keep it safe for you?’ She pressed her mouth against the gap; her warm breath touched his cheek. Their mouths were less than a hand’s width apart. She said something that sounded like, ‘We could almost kiss from here.’

‘We’ll never kiss,’ he said loudly. ‘I’ll never marry.’

There was a long silence. Her breath stopped. She had turned her head away.

‘I’ll never pass on my father’s blood. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you let me out?’

‘They’ll kill me.’ Her voice faltered into a sigh.

‘Where is the priest?’

‘He won’t come,’ she said. ‘He’s ashamed. He betrayed you.’

He had an image of his father laughing at him, sitting up to his waist in treasure, drinking red liquid from cups made of gold as bright as the sun.

Czeslaw said, ‘It’s all been for nothing.’ He sat down and placed his hand in the red stain on the floor. The mark left there reminded him of the palm leaf on his map.

‘Rome,’ he said. ‘I’ll never see you now.’

‘If you had said you would marry me,’ said Rosita. ‘They wouldn’t have trusted you but they would have let you live. Why couldn’t you just say it? Am I that ugly?’

‘No,’ he said. He rested his head against the door.

‘Couldn’t you have lied?’ she said.

‘That’s what my father said. I’m sorry, Rosita. It was beyond my control. It was God’s will.’

She gave a scornful laugh. ‘Men always say that.’ He heard her slap the door.

‘I didn’t want to be part of a lie anymore,’ he said.

A long pause. She said, ‘I know.’ Her fingers reached through the gap. He stood slowly, like an old man, and touched her fingertips with his own. She pressed back and, with a choked sound, withdrew.

‘Dante didn’t betray you,’ she said. ‘He was drugged too.’

But her voice was already growing fainter. ‘No-one ever gets away.’ Her footsteps receded.

‘Help me!’ he shouted.

He listened. The door slammed. She was gone.

He didn’t know how long he sat. He dozed and kicked out his leg so that it caught the key on the floor. The clinking metal woke him completely.

He looked from the key to the sideboard.

The small key.

He picked it up and squatted next to the sideboard. The moonlight was falling almost directly onto the wooden doors and he found the keyhole easily, slid the key in and turned.

The cupboard opened. He yanked the door back onto its hinges with such anger that he felt the metal buckle. The moonlight fell on the two shelves inside. On the top was his satchel. He ripped it open, but found only his compass.

The maps, the money, the leather bag were gone. And the Frenchman’s diary.

He searched the bottom shelf. At the front were four folded sheets, large ones, made of thick coarse cotton. Stout cotton. He put them to one side, felt around the back of the shelf, in the darkness, and grasped a sack of clothes.

He sorted through the shirts and trousers and skirts and blouses, all different sizes. Good quality: he recognised the Viennese tailor on the label on one silk shirt. On another, he found rust-coloured stains; more stains on a fawn driving coat.

He was turning the Viennese shirt between his hands when he noticed writing on the inside seam. The ink had run but he recognised German:
Mein Liebling
, it read,
Ich bin ein verlassener Mann –

A thread had pulled, the words blurred together in the low light. He shoved the shirt into the sack. He didn’t want to read any more.

He used the compass’s sharp edge to work a hole between the threads. Deliberately thinking of his father, he put all his strength into tearing the material.

When he had twisted and knotted the strips into a long thick rope, he dragged the sideboard over to the window, tied one end of the rope around the wooden legs and threw the other end away into the darkness. He checked the knot and climbed out.