The Breaking Point (15 page)

The aroma of evil is a deadly thing. It penetrates, and stifles, and somehow challenges at the same time. I was afraid. Most definitely I was afraid, but determined to give battle, to prove that I was the stronger. I relaxed in my chair, and, inhaling the last breath of my cigar before laying it in the ash-tray, puffed the smoke full in his face. An extraordinary thing happened. I don’t know whether the final inhalation turned me giddy, but for an instant my head swam, and the smoke made rings before my eyes, and I saw his hideous, grinning face subside into what seemed to be a trough of sea and foam. I could even feel the spray.When I had recovered from the attack of coughing brought on by my cigar the air cleared: the man in the white mackintosh had disappeared, and I found that I had knocked over and smashed my half-bottle of Evian water. It was Ganymede himself who picked up the broken pieces, it was Ganymede who wiped the table with his cloth, it was Ganymede who suggested, without my ordering it, a fresh half-bottle.

‘The
signore
has not cut himself ?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘The
signore
will have another curaçao. There may be some pieces of glass in this. There will be no extra charge.’

He spoke with authority, with quiet confidence, this child of fifteen who had the grace of a prince, and then, with exquisite hauteur, he turned to the swarthy youth who was his companion-at-arms, and handed him my debris with a flow of Italian. Then he brought me the second half-bottle of Evian, and the second glass of curaçao.

‘
Un sedativo
,’ he said, and smiled.

He was not cocky. He was not familiar. He knew, because he had always known, that my hands were trembling and my heart was beating, and I wanted to be calm, to be still.

‘
Piove
,’ he said, lifting his face and holding up his hand, and indeed it was beginning to rain, suddenly, for no reason, out of a star-studded sky. But a black straggling cloud like a gigantic hand blotted out the stars as he spoke, and down came the rain on to the piazza. Umbrellas went up like mushrooms, and those without them spread across the piazza and away home like beetles to their lair.

Desolation was instant.The tables were bare, the chairs upturned against them. The piano was covered with a tarpaulin, the music-stands were folded, the lights inside the café became dim. Everyone melted away. It was as though there had never been an orchestra, never been an audience of clapping people. The whole thing was a dream.

I was not dreaming, though. I had come out, like a fool, without my umbrella. I waited under the colonnade beside the now deserted café, with the rain from a nearby spout spattering the ground in front of me. I could hardly believe it possible that five minutes ago all had been gay and crowded, and now this wintered gloom.

I turned up the collar of my coat, trying to make up my mind whether to venture forth across the streaming piazza, and then I heard a quick brisk footstep leave the café and trot away under the colonnade. It was Ganymede, his small upright figure still clad in his white mess jacket, his large umbrella held above him like a pennant.

My way was to the left, towards the church. He was walking to the right. In a moment or two he might turn away altogether, and disappear. It was a moment of decision.You will say I made the wrong one. I turned to the right, I followed him.

It was a strange and mad pursuit. I had never done such a thing in my life before. I could not help myself. He trotted ahead, his footsteps loud and clear, along the tortuous narrow passages winding in and out beside silent, dark canals, and there was no other sound at all except his footsteps and the rain, and he never once looked back to see who followed him. Once or twice I slipped: he must have heard me. On, on he went, over bridges, into the shadows, his umbrella bobbing up and down above his head, and a glimpse of his white mess jacket showing now and then as he lifted the umbrella higher. And the rain still sluiced from the roofs of the silent houses, down to the cobbles and the pavings below, down to the Styx-like canals.

Then I missed him. He had turned a corner sharply. I began to run. I ran into a narrow passage, where the tall houses almost touched their neighbours opposite, and he was standing in front of a great door with an iron grille before it, pulling a bell.The door opened, he folded his umbrella and went inside.The door clanged behind him. He must have heard me running, he must have seen me brought up short when I turned the corner into the passage. I stood for a moment staring at the iron grille above the heavy oak door. I looked at my watch: it wanted five minutes to midnight. The folly of my pursuit struck me in all its force. Nothing had been achieved but to get very wet, to have caught a chill in all probability, and to have lost my way.

I turned to go, and a figure stepped out of a doorway opposite the house with the grille and came towards me. It was the man in the white mackintosh and the broad-brimmed trilby hat.

He said, with a bastard American accent, ‘Are you looking for somebody,
signore
?’

I ask you, what would you have done in my position? I was a stranger in Venice, a tourist. The alleyway was deserted. One had read stories of Italians and vendettas, of knives, of stabs in the back. One false move, and this might happen to me.

‘I was taking a walk,’ I replied, ‘but I seem to have missed my way.’

He was standing very close to me, much too close for comfort. ‘Ah! you missa your way,’ he repeated, the American accent blending with music-hall Italian. ‘In Venice, that happens all the time. I see you home.’

The lantern light above his head turned his face yellow under the broad-brimmed hat. He smiled as he spoke, showing teeth full of gold stoppings. The smile was sinister.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I can manage very well.’

I turned and began to walk back to the corner. He fell into step beside me.

‘No trouble,’ he said, ‘no trouble at all-a.’

He kept his hands in the pockets of his white mackintosh, and his shoulder brushed mine as we walked side by side. We moved out of the alleyway into the narrow street by the side-canal. It was dark. Drips of water fell from the roof-gutters into the canal.

‘You like Venice?’ he asked.

‘Very much,’ I answered; and then - foolishly, perhaps - ‘It’s my first visit.’

I felt like a prisoner under escort. The tramp-tramp of our feet echoed in hollow fashion. And there was no one to hear us. The whole of Venice slept. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.

‘Venice very dear,’ he said.‘In the hotels, they robba you always. Where are you staying?’

I hesitated. I did not want to give my address, but if he insisted on coming with me what could I do?

‘The Hotel Byron,’ I said.

He laughed in scorn. ‘They putta twenty per cent on the bill,’ he said. ‘You ask for a cup of coffee, twenty per cent. It’s always the same. They robba the tourist.’

‘My terms are reasonable,’ I said. ‘I can’t complain.’

‘Whatta you pay them?’ he asked.

The cheek of the man staggered me. But the path by the canal was very narrow, and his shoulder still touched mine as we walked. I told him the price of my room at the hotel, and the pension terms. He whistled.

‘They take the skin off your back,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow you senda them to hell. I find you little apartment. Very cheap, very OK.’

I did not want a little apartment. All I wanted was to be rid of the man, and back in the comparative civilization of the Piazza San Marco. ‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘but I’m quite comfortable at the Hotel Byron.’

He edged even closer to me, and I found myself nearer still to the black waters of the canal. ‘In little apartment,’ he said, ‘you do as you like-a. You see your friends. Nobody worry you.’

‘I’m not worried at the Hotel Byron,’ I said.

I began to walk faster, but he kept pace with me, and suddenly he withdrew his right hand from his pocket and my heart missed a beat. I thought he had a knife. But it was to offer me a tattered packet of Lucky Strikes. I shook my head. He lit one for himself.

‘I finda you little apartment,’ he persisted.

We passed over a bridge and plunged into yet another street, silent, ill-lit, and as we walked he told me the names of people for whom he had found apartments.

‘You English?’ he asked. ‘I thought-a so. I found apartment last year for Sir Johnson. You know Sir Johnson? Very nice man, very discreet. I find apartment too for film-star Bertie Poole.You know Bertie Poole? I save him five hundred thousand lire.’

I had never heard of Sir Johnson or Bertie Poole. I became more and more angry, but there was nothing I could do. We crossed a second bridge, and to my relief I recognized the corner near the restaurant where I had dined. The canal here formed, as it were, a bay, and there were gondolas moored side by side.

‘Don’t bother to come any further,’ I said. ‘I know my way now.’

The unbelievable happened.We had turned the corner together, marching as one man, and then, because the narrow path could not hold us two abreast, he dropped a pace behind, and, in doing so, slipped. I heard him gasp, and a second later he was in the canal, the white mackintosh splaying about him like a canopy, the splash of his great body rocking the gondolas. I stared for a moment, too surprised to take action. And then I did a terrible thing. I ran away. I ran into the passage that I knew would lead me finally into the Piazza San Marco, and, when I came to it, walked across it briskly, and so past the Doge’s palace and back to my hotel. I encountered no one. As I said before, the whole of Venice slept. At the Hotel Byron, Prince Hal was yawning behind the desk. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he took me up in the lift. As soon as I entered my room I went straight to the wash-basin and took the small bottle of medicinal brandy with which I invariably travelled. I swallowed the contents at a single draught.

I slept badly and had appalling dreams, which did not surprise me. I saw Poseidon, the god Poseidon, rising from an angry sea, and he shook his trident at me, and the sea became the canal, and then Poseidon himself mounted a bronze horse, the bronze horse of Colleoni, and rode away, with the limp body of Ganymede on the saddle before him.

I swallowed a couple of aspirin with my coffee, and rose late. I don’t know what I expected to see when I went out. Knots of people reading newspapers, or the police - some intimation of what had happened. Instead, it was a bright October day, and the life of Venice continued.

I took a steamer to the Lido and lunched there. I deliberately idled away the day at the Lido in case of trouble. What was worrying me was that, should the man in the white mackintosh have survived his ducking of the night before and bear malice towards me for leaving him to his plight, he might have informed the police - perhaps hinting, even, that I had pushed him in. And the police would be waiting for me at the hotel when I returned.

I gave myself until six o’clock. Then, a little before sunset, I took the steamer back. No cloudbursts tonight. The sky was a gentle gold, and Venice basked in the soft light, painfully beautiful.

I entered the hotel and asked for my key. It was handed to me by the clerk with a cheerful, ‘
Buona sera, signore
,’ together with a letter from my sister. Nobody had inquired for me. I went upstairs and changed, came down again, and had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The dinner was not in the same class as the dinner in the restaurant the two preceding nights, but I did not mind. I was not very hungry. Nor did I fancy my usual cigar. I lit a cigarette instead. I stood for about ten minutes outside the hotel, smoking and watching the lights on the lagoon. The night was balmy. I wondered if the orchestra was playing in the piazza, and if Ganymede was serving drinks. The thought of him worried me. If he was in any way connected with the man in the white mackintosh, he might suffer for what had happened.The dream could have been a warning - I was a great believer in dreams. Poseidon carrying Ganymede astride his horse . . . I began to walk towards the Piazza San Marco. I told myself I would just stand near the church and see if both orchestras were playing.

When I came to the piazza I saw that all was as usual. There were the same crowds, the same rival orchestras, the same repertoires played against each other. I moved slowly across the piazza towards the second orchestra, and I put on my dark glasses as a form of protection. Yes, there he was. There was Ganymede. I spotted his brush of light hair and his white mess jacket almost immediately. He and his swarthy companion were very busy. The crowd around the orchestra was thicker than usual because of the warm night. I scanned the audience, and the shadows behind the colonnade.There was no sign of the man in the white mackintosh. The wisest thing, I knew, was to leave, return to the hotel, go to bed, and read my Chaucer.Yet I lingered. The old woman selling roses was making her rounds. I drew nearer. The orchestra was playing the theme-song from a Chaplin film.Was it
Limelight
? I did not remember. But the song was haunting, and the violinist drew every ounce of sentiment from it. I decided to wait until the end of the song and then return to the hotel.

Someone snapped his fingers to give an order, and Ganymede turned to take it. As he did so he looked over the heads of the seated crowd straight at me. I was wearing the dark glasses, and I had a hat. Yet he knew me. He gave me a radiant smile of welcome, and ignoring the client’s order darted forward, seized a chair, and placed it beside an empty table.

‘No rain tonight,’ he said. ‘Tonight everybody is happy. A curaçao,
signore
?’

How could I refuse him, the smile, the almost pleading gesture? If anything had been wrong, if he had been anxious about the man in the white mackintosh, surely, I thought, there would have been some sort of hint, some warning glance? I sat down. A moment later he was back again with my curaçao.