As I found over the next busy, happy days, our Literature and Power congress was far from being the first major literary event to occur on the Isola Barolo. From the Age of Antiquity on, the guidebooks told me, Barolo had always been associated with the satisfaction of life’s most gratifying act, which, according to writers, is writing. Vergil, exiled here, had written an eclogue or two and pronounced the place the home of humanism. Pliny, spotting that Barolo lay midpoint in a five-armed lake, had felicitously called it the fecund crotch of the world. Dante had found it purgative; Boccaccio had a tale or two to tell about it. In the Age of Romanticism travellers from the chill north – Madame de Staël, Goethe, and Byron and Shelley, the terrible travelling twins – had come, swum in the lake, fallen in love with its romantic beauties, and written verse on the subject, none of it very good.
Our congress group was not by a long way the first to settle here, though earlier visitors would not have enjoyed the modern delights we had. Villas had graced the spot for centuries, but this one was nineteenth century, raised by the Kings of Savoy, aka ‘Gatekeepers to the Alps’, in their heyday. When that heyday became a low day, it declined with the family. By Mussolini’s Thirties it was neglected, in the postwar disorder it turned into a ruin. That would have been that but for Mrs Valeria Magno, California socialite, heiress to several fortunes in cosmetics, oil, and weaponry. Following the old rule of American dynasties, she had married an Italian count, who inherited the villa. He died, she remarried, divorced, remarried, in the familiar Californian ritual. But she never forgot Barolo. She came back and back, restored it, made it splendid. She flew in designers from here, art historians from there; she repurchased or replaced its fine furniture, rehung its paintings, summoned back the gardeners, brought it back to life.
What for, though? She had many houses and a California beach life to think about. But in those days before the politically correct, American heiresses still did courses in Western literature. She remembered Vergil and Pliny and Byron and Lawrence, and decided to make it, again, a place of writing and humanism. Barolo would become a great study and congress centre, where the world’s great scholars and authors could come to work. To promote the highest levels of creation, no expense was spared. The halls were filled with Cellini statues, Canaletto paintings, Gobelin tapestries, on a scale to mortify a Medici. In the rooms of the villa the walls gleamed with mirrors, the furniture with gold leaf. Even the four-poster beds had six posts. The modern scholar, coming on a Guggenheim or a McArthur ‘Genius’ grant, got everything: power showers and jacuzzis, electronic typewriters and computer interfaces, fax facilities to keep inspiration in close contact with the office or home. Mrs Magno loved famous men around her, the geniuses of the age. No wonder Criminale became one of her prize specimens.
So when the press couldn’t find him, politicians lost track of him, this is where he was. Where could be better? The house-rule was that everyone should be able to work without interruption. Critics were bumrushed from the door, pressmen flushed out of the shrubbery. Telephone calls were blocked at the exchange, visitors kept on the far side of high walls and electric fences. Nowhere could have done more to nourish thought and art. When the great scholars and writers woke in the morning, a lake lay in view of every window, framed by cypresses, backed by lush green hills. White doves flitted in the trees, white-sailed yachts sailed through the vista, fishermen plied their ancient trade in ancient waters. The scholars had small studios in the grounds – a classical belvedere, a romantic gazebo, each with a computer terminal. Fragrant perfumes blew from the gardens, distant churchbells on the hillsides tolled out the hours of the hard-thinking day. Sixteen invisible gardeners worked like set-designers to ensure the grounds were perfect for each new dawn. Above the gardens, where the island came to its craggy peak, were wild woods. But here too nature had been turned to culture – every tree shaped, every cave refined, to form pleasing grottoes where scholars could retire to meditate or, in the softer moments even scholars have, engage in drip-threatened dalliance with some fellow meditator.
So the great scholars came, for one month, two. In perfect Paradise, they produced. They produced avant-garde novels, speculative, disjunctive poems in projective verse, atonal musical compositions, studies of the defeat of the bourgeoisie, the end of humanism, the death of narrative, the disappearance of the self. Then, after a good morning of postmodern literary labour or hard deconstructive thought, they gathered for drinks on the terrace or, if wet, in the indoor bar, before taking a lunch of rare pastas served by the most civil of servants. Afterwards, if tennis or boating did not beckon, they went back to the chaotic delights of their speculations, until it was time, again, for evening drinks, followed by a rare dinner, where the wit flowed as free as the select Italian wine, and the wine as the wit, and another day of contemporary authorship and scholarship came towards its close. Even then, Barolo’s work was not yet done. In the Magno queendom it was as important to refine the night as the day. After dinner, as Italian darkness fell, the hills would resound with the sound of music, as some small chamber orchestra came by to play, or one of the American atonal composers offered his newest work. The guests down at the Gran Hotel Barolo, usually transient tourists who had tripped in by the hydrofoil for a day or two, would stop entranced over the tortellini to listen. Often you could see them peering in at the security gates of the villa, staring in a homage to pure wisdom and beauty, until the uniformed guards moved them on.
But perfection has one problem, as Ildiko and I found the first night, when our lovemaking was interrupted by Mrs Magno’s mechanical arrival. No matter how well protected, perfection is never eternally safe. Even here in Paradise the scholars and writers suffered constant annoyance. There were the attempted intrusions of the tourists, occasional curiosity from the press. There was the endless irritating mechanical whine from Italian motorscooters on the autostrada across the lake; even from time to time a tempestuous Alpine storm, which could bring down trees, sink small boats, and send the paperwork and thought of days flying across the studio. But these interruptions were as nothing compared with the one for which the villa and the Magno Foundation was itself responsible: the coming of the great international conferences which the villa was also famous for hosting – like the congress on Literature and Power that had brought Ildiko and myself into their perfect domain.
At these times, Barolo showed its other face. The place where Pliny thought and Byron swam changed from perfect peace to world-shattering tumult. World leaders poured in: heads of state holding some mini-summit, foreign ministers of the European Community meeting in off-the-record session, negotiators trying to halt some tribal war, American peace missions dreaming of uniting Palestinians and Israelis, disarmament buffs trying to stop the spread of chemical weapons. With them came security teams and hangdog retinues. The place grew hellish with the sound of clattering photocopiers, chattering interpreters, motor-bike couriers who came flying up to the villa with news of the collapse of some government or country, the clickety-clacking of helicopters, especially when Mrs Magno chose, as she often did, to revisit her paradisial domain. Meals were ruined with toasts, after-dinner speeches, and endless announcements – especially if the conference organizer happened to be Professor Massimo Monza, Mrs Magno’s favoured consultant. Then the resident scholars would retire, hurt, to their rooms. The newcomers would see them just occasionally, wandering like monks observing vows of silence and solitude, praying that this too would pass, like all the false glories of the world, and Barolo would return to the state of pristine perfection for which it was always intended.
*
But visiting conferees, too, expected their own share of Paradise. And over the days that followed Criminale’s edgy, difficult speech, we began demanding ours. Carefully steered by Monza, the conference began to acquire what, wiser and older now, I see is a familiar congress sensation – the strange feeling that no other world exists, this is the one human reality, that problems left behind were never real problems anyway, that every convenience, pleasure and delight is yours by absolute right. Then conference personalities begin to emerge, conference friendships – more than friendships – begin to develop, conference hostilities begin to grow: in our case, between French and Italians, Indians and British, novelists and poets, postmoderns and feminists, critics and creators, writers and politicians, and, of course, visiting conferees and the regular scholars.
Yet there was always Bazlo Criminale, who proved to be the one reconciling figure. He was resident scholar and conference visitor. He was writer and politician, critic and creator. He was with us, but more than us; he was almost the spirit of the place itself. If his opening speech had at first disappointed, it had the desired effect of setting us disputing about the coming crises of the Nineties. On this everyone had a prophecy and an opinion, but they always checked it with Criminale. If East fell out with West, South with North, Marx with Freud, he understood both angles, and had a suggestion or a solution. He expressed internationality, he was the spirit of contemporaneity. He was of his time, he was also eternal. And he never seemed mean, hostile, parti pris. His presence, even when it was his absence, always somehow blessed the occasion. If he was the grand authority, he was also kindness itself. He was benign to everyone, he seemed to listen to anybody. Whatever you said to him, he responded. ‘Good, that is good, that is interesting,’ he would say reflectively, ‘But now let me put this point back to you. Let us suppose . . .’
I soon saw that I could never have a better opportunity than here to read, see, and study the nature of Bazlo Criminale, and I began to map his daily life and follow him. The congress day started early, especially if you were Criminale. He always rose close to dawn, like a monk called by matins, and worked for an hour or so in the lighted window of his suite in the villa. Then, if the weather permitted (and at the start of the congress it did), he went out and wandered the landscape, of which Barolo had no shortage, evidently sorting his mind. The grounds were vast: a maze of plant-lined walks and rocky climbs, each finally leading to a shrine, a formal glade, a trysting place, a chapel, a belvedere or pier with a view. In the early morning they were his. In one of these spots you could generally find him, posed to perfection: Criminale in a dappled glade, Criminale in a prospect of flowers, Criminale gazing on a mountain view, Criminale beside a statue of Jove, Criminale by a balustrade, Criminale thinking.
As I’ve told you, I’m not myself a morning person. Nor, as it turned out, was Ildiko, who in any case seemed, rather oddly, to have no great desire to intrude on Criminale now she had caught up with him. As she explained to me, she wanted to wait for the right moment to approach him on the small publishing matter that bothered her. But, while she turned irritably over in the great emperor bed, and dived back into sleep again, I made a point of rising early, just as the great man himself did. I may have been in Paradise, and Ildiko made it more paradisial; there was no doubt of that. But I also had a job to do. I also took to walking, or sometimes jogging, in the grounds in the early morning; often, of course, I saw Criminale. From time to time we would exchange a passing word or two, as one congress visitor to another. But he hardly noticed me; he was plainly abstracted. Meanwhile I observed him. In fact with each passing day of the congress I felt I was coming just a little closer towards understanding the Great Thinker of the Age of Glasnost.
Breakfast at Barolo was a movable feast, but I made a point of taking it at the same time as Bazlo Criminale. It was a meal no less perfect than the others; the coffee was ideally brewed, the breakfast rolls were marvels of bakery. Each crackled like twigs, and split open to reveal, inside, an airblown, conch-like spiral of nothingness, a grotto-like core as ornate as those on the hillside above. ‘Once more quite a perfect morning,’ he would say, coming in, sitting down, his square features suggesting without vanity that he had already done as much thinking since sun-up as the rest of us would manage in a year. The other members of the congress, emerging from their various residences within the villa or around the estate, would sit down near him, as if he were a natural magnet: Martin Amis, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Susan Sontag and the others would gather round in unaccustomed silence as he began to talk. Then, after a while, Sepulchra would come sailing in. ‘Coffee, dearling?’ she would say, and Criminale would turn for a moment and watch her pour the hot milk, until, with the lift of one of his fine, gold-ringed fingers, he would give her the signal to stop.
Meanwhile, as the group around him grew bigger, Criminale would begin to chase some complicated or curious line of thought. I sat a little way off, at times even jotting down the odd note in my notebook. I began to see a pattern or two. For instance, Criminale would often mention Lukacs, as if that relationship was obsessive. ‘We know of course he was man of many contradictions,’ he would say, ‘He had the mind of a Hegel, the historical sense of a Napoleon . . .’ ‘Dearling, that man would not have given one backside glance if all of his friends were shot,’ Sepulchra would interrupt, ‘Eggs two?’ ‘Yes, two,’ Criminale would say, ‘He sacrificed individuals to thought, yes. But he also considered it better to live under the very worst of communism than under the best of capitalism. Let us ask: Why?’ ‘Dearling, because they gave him good job and nice apartment,’ Sepulchra would say, ‘Do you need clean spoon?’ ‘Because he truly believed in the progress of history, the great work of the philosophical idea, and he wanted to be there at history’s making,’ said Criminale. ‘He sold his soul,’ Sepulchra said, ‘Now dearling, please, talk less, eat your eggs two.’ And Criminale would smile, look round, and say to the others, ‘Now you know why God or maybe history gave men wives. So that, whenever they wished to interpret an important thing, there would always be a dialectic opposite there to correct it.’ ‘Eat, or you will die,’ Sepulchra would say, ‘Then you will blame me.’
After breakfast, carrying a cup of coffee, Criminale would always retire to the lounge. I wouldn’t be far behind, keeping my observer’s distance; he was the great man, I the nonentity. Here he would go round the room and gather up all the papers that lay there: Oggi, La Repubblica, Le Monde, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times. News, the world of big events, seemed a world away from Barolo, and the papers were often a day old at least by the time they arrived. It made no difference; Criminale would sit down and impatiently gut them for world news like some tough old journalist, keeping up an audible commentary. All things seemed to interest him. ‘I see the Russians claim there is an international plot to destabilize their economy,’ he would say, ‘We know that. It is called Marxism.’ Or, ‘Another piece about the enigma of Islam. Why is Islam always thought such an enigma? After all, they chador their women, but we all know very well what is underneath, I think.’ Or, ‘They are asking again who killed Kennedy. We know who killed Kennedy. Why do we all love these theories of conspiracy? What is wrong with the end of our nose?’
I watched: the thinker was dealing with the world. Next he would turn to the book reviews. He seemed especially fond of the bestseller lists (‘Hip and Thigh Diet doing well again,’ he would say, ‘Why is it only fatties who read?’), perhaps because he was quite frequently on them, though he showed no great vanity about the many mentions of his own name. Afterwards it would be the financial pages, which he read like some old man in a café, running his fine fat finger down lists of share prices, checking on bids and takeovers, frauds and scandals. ‘Insider trader put inside,’ he would say, ‘Isn’t it coals to Newcastle? What else? Drugs money laundered, offshore accounts seized, bankers jailed, junk bonds worthless, of course, or they wouldn’t be junk. What a wonderful world, money. All the sins of the world are there. How lucky we have philosophy.’ ‘You can say this of money because you have some,’ Sepulchra would observe, sitting in the chair beside him, combing her hair and reading some glossy magazine. ‘Marxist,’ Criminale would say. ‘Same of you,’ Sepulchra would say.
Lastly Criminale would turn to the advertisement pages, which for some reason seemed to give him the greatest delight. ‘Sale at Bloomingdales,’ he would suddenly announce, ‘Sepulchra, look, a big deal on bras I think would very much interest you.’ Sepulchra, in the chair beside him, would look up and say, ‘I have enough of those thing to last at least two lifetime.’ ‘Not like these,’ he would say, ‘Ah, special offer on garden recliners.’ ‘No garden,’ Sepulchra would say. ‘Ninety-nine cents off tin of peas,’ he would say, ‘Life of Michael Dukakis reduced. Ah, shopping, shopping, shopping.’ ‘You seem very interested in shopping,’ I risked saying once, looking up from some article on the growing Gulf crisis that I was reading. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘At the theoretical level only.’ ‘He never buys a thing,’ said Sepulchra. ‘You see, now sexual eroticism is exhausted, this is the one eroticism we have left.’ ‘You think sexual eroticism is exhausted?’ I asked. ‘Naturally,’ said Criminale, turning over the pages, ‘Women are upping their ante, isn’t that what you say, and in any case we know so much about the body now it has nothing else left to give. But shopping, now that is different.’
‘How is it different?’ I asked. ‘I read the other day a book, Postmodernism, Consumer Culture, and Global Disorder, described as an account of the joys and sorrows of the contemporary consumer in an age of world crisis. Half the people of the world starve or fight each other. Meanwhile where is the new life conducted? In the shopping mall. On the one hand, crisis and death, on the other the joys of the meat counter, the sorrows of the pants department. When we reach a certain point of wealth, everyone asks, where do I find myself? The answer? Hanging on a peg in the clothes store, newest fashion, designer label, for you reduced by thirty per cent. Why is there trouble in Russia? Because they have not yet invented the store.’ ‘Never mind the thing to put inside it,’ said Sepulchra, reaching in her jangling handbag for some powder compact or other. ‘They have not even discovered money,’ said Criminale, ‘They still barter goods for goods. That is why they want to become American. They too like to be born to shop.’
I felt somewhat baffled. At times like this Criminale and Sepulchra looked not like great philosopher and mate, but like some semi-geriatric couple, two fond old-timers on a holiday cruise. They bickered, spatted and then agreed, in what seemed almost a mockery of connubial bliss. For a trendy world thinker, a man endlessly snapped with one arm round some chic topless model or world leader, this seemed extremely odd. I remembered my treatment, thirty sparkling pages that everyone believed in and nobody had read. In this, the erotic adventures and mysterious loves of Bazlo Criminale appeared crucially. Nothing in all I had read and thought prepared me for anything like Sepulchra, who, sitting there jangling, would suddenly begin tapping at her watch: ‘Dearling, time for congress,’ she would say. ‘Oh, really, time for congress?’ Criminale would say, infinitely mild, ‘So do I go today, or do I don’t?’ ‘Of course you go, my dearling,’ Sepulchra would say, heaving him up, ‘People have come right across world to hear you.’ ‘I don’t think so, it is free tickets they like,’ Criminale would say, ‘Very well, very well, I know my duty. You always teach me my duty. See you, little sexpot. I just go up to the room a minute.’ The only odd thing was that, after all this fuss, when we all began gathering in the upstairs conference room, Criminale would always prove absent.
We would go in, sit down. Five-channel interpretation headsets waited for us in wooden boxes as we entered. On the wide tables, small national flags, nameplates, notepads and pencils, bottles of mineral water and colas, stood ready. So did a panoply of video recorders, overhead projectors and other technological facilities; no modern conference can function without them, and there was nothing of which Barolo was short. The day’s business was about to begin. The writers would gather on one side of the room, chatting together with that spirit of mutual suspicion which is so often their stock-in-trade, and makes the idea of an international republic of letters such an absurd notion. The politicians would gather on the other – ministers of culture, financial advisers, representatives of international cultural commissions, all embracing each other across vast political frontiers with such a warmth of diplomatic civility that it made the very idea of modern war and conflict seem ever more absurd. If we want world peace, the great mistake we make is letting our leaders back into their own countries. The smart thing would be to keep them at conferences, permanently abroad.
Now Monza would enter, clapping his hands at the top of the table, and we would be off once more into his world of announcaments. Then he would extol the virtues of dialoga – it was for dialoga we had come, our dialoga was now going very well – and introduce, and then constantly interrupt, the various speakers lined up for our pleasure. We sat in our headsets, which hummed with multilinguality; imported translators sat in glass boxes and rendered the proceedings pan-European. The papers started, first one by a writer, then one by a politician. Monza would listen birdlike, check them all with his stopwatch (‘One more minuta!’), as if this were some Olympic event in speed paper-giving, then halt the flow and demand that we all immediately engage in our ‘great common dialoga’.
But wait a minute: where was the man I had come for? Had he disappeared yet again? I would glance anxiously out of the windows, and there he’d be – sitting outside huddled in some gazebo, his great ship Sepulchra beside him. What was he doing? Dictating; he was talking rapidly, she was taking it down in a notebook. If anyone approached – a gardener, a butler with coffee – she would stand up, like some farmer’s wife, and flap at them, as if shooing away geese. Criminale would keep talking on; you would see her scrabbling again for her notebook, then writing furiously. Maybe that said what this marriage was all about: prophet and amanuensis, master and slave. Then I noticed I was not the only one in the conference room looking up from some statement about the welfare of humankind, the protection of the eco-system and the excessive importance of literary prizes to glance out of the window. Yes, Criminale was absent, but also almost present, ever reassuring.
And sure enough, when we broke for drinks before lunch, Criminale would be there – concerned, interested, benign and thoughtful. Now he was a far more public self, the international thinker. ‘Certainly I intended to be present,’ he would say, as we gathered on the chill of the terrace, ‘However a few thoughts of great urgence occurred to me suddenly. But you had I expect a very good morning. It was an excellent dialogue? Now tell me everything. I do not wish to miss a word of it.’ So he’d pass right round the gathering, speaking to everyone, sharing every interest, picking each brain. ‘You know the architectonics of pure sound are infinite, did we know it,’ you could hear him saying to some music specialist, ‘They take us into conceptions we cannot imagine, better than any spaceship. By the way, I like this suit.’ Or, ‘You are a minister of culture, oh really? I do believe the fact that there are so many ministers here, leaving so little room for writers, is proof positive of the seriousness with which literature is nowadays taken. It raises my heart, really.’
As Criminale did his priestly work, Sepulchra would go scurrying round after him. ‘Dearling, you will be very tired,’ she would say. ‘Not at all, please, please,’ he would answer, ‘Don’t you see, I am in the most stimulating company possible, how could I possibly be tired?’ ‘Up late,’ said Sepulchra, ‘Working too hard.’ ‘Don’t fuss, Sepulchra, but by the way, better to take those notes you made and lock them in our suitcase,’ he would say, ‘You know the old saying: thought is free, but even wise men are thieves.’ This was somehow insulting, but it offended no one, just as his absences offended no one. Criminale had permission; he lived by edgy irony. So the delegates would crowd round, reporting like happy children on the deeds they had so bravely performed in the congress sessions. And on anything, everything, they discussed Criminale had an opinion, a judgement. Constantly he summed matters up with some aphorism so wise it completely excused his absence. It was somehow generally acknowledged that what it took duller minds three hours to deliberate, Criminale, Mr Thought, could sort out and settle in a matter of seconds.
*
‘Ah, what a minda!’ cried Monza on the first day, grasping my arm through his, as we stood there holding pre-lunch drinks on the cold terrace, ‘A minda like quicksilver!’ ‘Yes, he’s impressive,’ I said, ‘It’s a pity we didn’t have him to talk in this morning’s session when Tatyana Tulipova . . .’ ‘But you know such a man is too busy,’ said Monza. ‘Is he?’ I asked. ‘Of coursa!’ cried Monza, ‘He has publishing affairsa! Financial affairsa! Political affairsa! Everyone asksa for him!’ Suddenly there was a stir, as blue-coated servants rushed outside and began meticulously tidying the terrace. A moment later, Mrs Valeria Magno swept grandly through the doorway, and appeared amongst us on the terrace. The chatter stopped, and we all turned to look. The great padrona had arrived.
There is no doubt she was an impressive sight. She wore some low, loose, splendid Italian designer creation – I suspected that this purchase was what had kept her late the night before, while we all sat waiting for her arrival at the banquet – and had one of those perfect timeless, transcendental faces that between them surgeons and beauticians have somehow secured in perpetuity. I immediately saw from her manner – the way her eyes slid across me and many others and then turned quickly away – that, like most celebrities, she was looking round for some topshot company. ‘Scusi, the padrona,’ said Monza, leaving me immediately, and rushing over to kiss her hand. Mrs Magno glanced at him, then pushed him aside. She had found what she was looking for. ‘Hey man!’ she cried, throwing her arms wide, ‘How are you, buddy?’
‘Hey there, my dear lady,’ said Bazlo Criminale, the object of this attention, walking over to enjoy an embrace and a round of kisses. ‘You know I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for you, honey,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘So how’s it buzzing? Good congress?’ ‘Believe me, Valeria, quite excellent,’ said Criminale, ‘Our Monza has surpassed himself. Talent is everywhere, wisdom abounds.’ ‘My God,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘Listen, I’m not going to eat a thing unless you sit beside me, okay?’ ‘Okay, of course,’ said Criminale. ‘And how’s Madame Criminale,’ asked Mrs Magno, turning to Sepulchra. ‘So-so,’ said Sepulchra, ‘Maybe I miss lunch. I am putting it on.’ And so when lunch was served a little later, Mrs Magno and Criminale, padrona and protégé, the American cosmopolite and the big gun of culture, sat side by side, their warm chatter, smiles and laughter delighting the entire international gathering. Ildiko had cut morning session, but now she appeared. ‘Oh, aren’t they happy!’ she cried, looking at them, ‘And they even got rid of Sepulchra!’
That afternoon I slipped down to the village to call Lavinia. ‘Darling, I went to the most wonderful marriage last night,’ she said. ‘Who got married?’ I asked. ‘Figaro, of course, marvellous production,’ said Lavinia, ‘What’s happening, Francis, you’ve been suspiciously quiet.’ I told her about the charming atmosphere of Barolo, the connubial bliss of the Criminale ménage. ‘Francis, Francis, connubial bliss is no good at all,’ she said, ‘This is television. May I remind you of your magnificent treatment, I managed to read it the other day: “Criminale is evidently a man of gargantuan appetites and great lust for life, indeed lust for everything. Political contradictions and secrets litter his path.”’ ‘Yes, I know,’ I said uncomfortably, ‘I was younger then.’ ‘Better get after it, Francis,’ said Lavinia, ‘Remember, plot, crisis, difficulty. You’re not on holiday. You’re an investigator. This is all a façade.’ ‘So what do I do?’ I asked. ‘Penetrate it,’ said Lavinia, ‘Search his room. Make something happen.’
But the first few days of the congress passed in the same peaceful way. For the season, the weather was remarkably good. The mornings began clear; then, after lunch, there came as if under contract a sudden sharp downpour of rain. The long, well-lit classical views down the lake would close in, and become enclosed gloomy romantic views. The mists shut out the further mountains, the nearer ones would huddle in closer, the cypresses grew darker, the rocks above us blacker. The rain fell in fecund sheets, sweeping through the grounds, overflowing the drains and watercourses. The green grottoes dripped, the spewing fountains ejaculated uselessly against the downpour. The lake bounced, lightning flashed in a great display of daytime fireworks, perhaps revealing a villa no one had noticed creased into a hillside, or a sudden glimpse of some mountaintop monastery far away. Then the rain stopped, the lake settled, the mountains cleared, the birds resumed. ‘God is a gardener,’ the waiters in their Italian wisdom would explain at dinner in the evening, as the writers and politicians ate pasta and drank wine by candlelight and grew, every day, in every way, closer to each other.
Then each new morning, at least for the first four days, another fine day would show again, shyly, like a maiden. Or shyly the way maidens must once have been, before they all became accountants, heads of hi-tech corporations, or Euro-executives, like the severe Cosima Bruckner. I had not spoken to her again, but each day I saw her there, inspecting me, closely, suspiciously, across the congress room or else the dinner table. She seemed to be watching me, just as much as I was watching Criminale. For, never moving too close, never staying too far away, I was coming ever nearer to Bazlo. And the nearer I got, the more I started suspecting, not him, but my own suspicions, born in Ros’s little house behind Liverpool Street station. They were formed by Codicil’s book, but I now knew it was unreliable, so unreliable it wasn’t even by Codicil at all. Yes, there was a mystery to Criminale, but not the one I’d been looking for.
Maybe, I thought, the real mystery of Criminale was not political deceits, strange loves, celebrity follies. Maybe it was simply the kind of man he was: the odd and inescapable charisma, the strange intellectual power he exerted, the glimpse he gave of offering some answer to the chaotic times we lived in. As I’d confessed to Monza, he was impressive; he impressed others, distinguished figures from around the world, and he even impressed me, sceptical, doubting, oedipal. He was a true writer among the writers, a true politician among the politicians, but he also seemed more than either, and better than both. Even his mixture of presence and absence made perfect sense. He was no conference trendy, but he was also effortlessly the core or magnet of the whole conference community. Everyone gathered round, everyone needed him; if he had not been there, somehow nor would they. He held with rocklike splendour to his own positions, kept his independence plainly on display.
And above all, for someone of his complex political background, he displayed no ideological party line. ‘My theory?’ I heard him say, almost mystified, to someone who asked him, ‘What theory? I am a philosopher against theory. I am not a Karl Marx. For me the problem is not to change the world, it is to understand it. I try to help us understand it.’ From his speech on the first night (the people who attacked it had now come to love it), he showed himself open: anxious, provisional, sceptical, above all ironical. (He had called philosophy ‘a form of irony’, I recalled.) This suited me, a late liberal humanist; I love the stuff. Liking my convictions soft, my faiths put to doubt, my gods upset, my statues parodied, my texts deconstructed, I took to his tone at once. He did the same thing, but for reasons far higher than my own. So the less I grew suspicious, the more I grew interested.
Of course (as you’ll see later), I didn’t really understand him. But like a portrait painter who starts off with a sketch, I was just beginning to get the shape of his head, the line of his style, the outline of his story. Now conferences have an odd way of breeding trust among those whom chance, travel grants and handy APEX flights happen to throw together, as they constantly do these days. Even when lovers betray you (as they also constantly do these days), there never seems anything malign about a fellow conferee. I took advantage of this, of course, always watching at his elbow. I was able to see his strengths: his great courtesy, his intellectual force, his commanding presence. I could see some of his weaknesses: his obvious arrogance, his ironic evasiveness, his cosmic indifference. I saw he was both tolerant and brusque, generous and brutal. Despite what Lavinia said when I called her (‘Life and loves, Francis, life and loves,’ she cried, ‘Plot, crisis, difficulty!’), I started seeing him for what he must have been all the time without my knowing: a person.
And these things work both ways round: if I was increasingly trusting him, he was beginning to trust me. Even though Ildiko had briefly tried to introduce us on the terrace that first night, I knew he had no idea who I was, where I came from, what (thank goodness) I was doing there. One of nature’s great conference-hoppers, he was much too old a hand to waste his time reading lapel badges or conference biographies, especially of those as fameless as myself. He didn’t know my nationality, never mind my name. What seemed stranger was that, even though Ildiko, his Hungarian publisher, had edited several of his books and knew his apartment, he showed no recognition of her either. But if this surprised me, it seemed, when I mentioned it, natural to her. ‘Why should he recognize me? He lives up there in his mind, you know.’ ‘You’ve worked with him,’ I said. ‘Just a little editor for a big man,’ said Ildiko, ‘And I am not even in my right place. I am much too little a someone to be a someone to someone like him.’
Still, maybe because I was generally not far from his elbow, Criminale began talking to me quite often: over breakfast, over drinks, over lunch, over dinner. And presumably because I was young (in fact, just like at the Booker, I was one of the very youngest there) and willing, he started using me for a few small tasks and duties. If he wanted some newspapers or books picked up down at the small shop in the village of Barolo, or thought some post was waiting down in the small post office (there always was; his post was fantastic), or needed, say, a new silk tie on some sudden whim, he often asked me to slip down there for him – always with the greatest politeness and courtesy. As he explained, he was so busy: there was always this lecture to prepare, this seminar to give, this article to write, this international phone call to await. And of course I was willing. I saw his world-class letters: from governments in the Pacific, corporations in Brazil, banks in Switzerland, newspapers in Russia and America. I began to understand his whims, his indulgences, his expensive tastes.
One afternoon after lunch he asked me to go upstairs to his suite to collect some papers (in fact offprints of the article in which he disputed with Heidegger over irony, which he was distributing as conference favours, pretty much as parents hand out balloons at some children’s party). I went upstairs to his suite, unlocked the door; he had given me his keys. The suite was one of the villa’s best; he was after all a guest of honour, a protégé of the padrona. It was set right over the entrance, with a magnificent view along the central line of the formal gardens and onto the finest angle of the lake. The main room, big and vast, had a Venetian mirror on the wall as big as a window at Harrods. Tapestries hung everywhere, there was much fine furniture, and a gilded writing table with an inkstand – what I think is called an escritoire. This was his Barolo sanctum; once more I was in one of the places where he worked. I looked around.
On the writing table, just as in the study in Budapest, everything was remarkably tidy. There were several pages of scrawled handwriting; this was no doubt his early morning’s work. I glanced round, then glanced it over; it was in English, and seemed to be an article on Philosophy and Chaos Theory, not yet finished, plainly intended for some learned journal. Apart from that there was little else. There were a few opened letters, some of them letters I had collected from the post office the day before; one in Hungarian, another, strikingly scented, in French, another, a long scroll of financial reckonings, headed in German, and plainly from some bank. No doubt if Lavinia had been here she would have sat down and read everything; but I was not Lavinia, and the last thing I wanted to do now was to spoil my happy congress in Paradise. I moved on, saw the door to the adjoining bedroom was open, glanced, without any great curiosity, inside.
I suddenly saw a strange featureless face staring directly at me. Then I realized what it was: a dummy head, with Sepulchra’s great high wig on it. That was how she managed to transform herself so quickly for her dinner appearance in the evening. The wardrobe door hung a little open; inside I saw a wonderful display – a row of Criminale’s excellent silk suits, his equally rich shirts, his splendid silk ties, all doubtless Hermès or Gucci. Otherwise all was neat; luggage and its contents had been carefully put away, either by the punctilious Criminale, the ever-tidying Sepulchra, or the self-effacing Barolo servants, who saw to absolutely everything. Finally there was a study; every Barolo suite had a large and well-fitted study, the ultimate sanctum for the great scholar. Once again, all was neat. A word processor sat on the desk; Lavinia would have switched it on and started to decode. I didn’t. Stacked by the wall were several locked suitcases; Criminale had already explained that this was where he kept his papers. He had handed me the key to one. I tried them all, knowing that if Lavinia was here she would have been out with a penknife and trying all these locks by now. But I was still not Lavinia. I found the right suitcase, took out the papers, locked up the case and the door of the suite as I left, and returned to the pre-lunch chatter below, where Criminale smiled graciously and took the papers from me.
So, day by day, in every way, I felt I was getting closer to Criminale. However, I did find one serious problem on my hands: Ildiko was growing bored. The seminar meetings, which she only attended on and off, did not impress her. ‘Why do they read papers to each other they have printed already?’ she kept asking, ‘They could send those things in the post.’ ‘And if they did, there wouldn’t be a congress,’ I said. ‘But nothing happens,’ she said, ‘Nobody listens to anyone else. The writers don’t like the ministers, the ministers don’t like the writers. Nothing changes, everything is the same. When we all go away from here, nothing will be different.’ ‘I suppose the important thing is the experience itself, people getting together,’ I said. ‘No, I think they have all just come here for a holiday, and they don’t really like to hear these papers at all,’ said Ildiko, ‘Why don’t they admit it?’ ‘Because you can’t get a grant just for taking a holiday.’ Ildiko sat in her armchair and yawned. ‘Well, I don’t have to listen to it,’ she said, ‘I am just a publisher. And I am bored.’
‘All right, you’re a publisher, why don’t you go and get hold of Criminale?’ I asked. ‘Because I haven’t done what I like yet,’ said Ildiko, ‘I was never in the West before, I like to enjoy it. I want you to take me shopping.’ ‘You went shopping in the village,’ I said. ‘That is not shopping,’ said Ildiko, ‘In Cano at the end of the lake there is Next and Benetton. Tomorrow why don’t you take me there?’ ‘Ildiko, there’s only one boat in the morning, another in the evening,’ I said, ‘It means missing a whole day, and I can’t be away from Criminale that long.’ ‘Do you find out anything?’ asked Ildiko, ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘I admit there must be more to him than I’ve seen,’ I said. ‘Well, I am tired of being stuck in one place all the time,’ said Ildiko. ‘You said it was Paradise,’ I reminded her. ‘Yes, and Paradise is dull if you stay too long,’ said Ildiko, ‘Now I want to go out of it. I like to see the West before I go back, yes? Please, forget Criminale Bazlo just for one day.’ ‘I daren’t,’ I said, ‘Supposing he disappears again?’
*
I was crass, of course; but it was my solution to the problem that brought a new stage in the quest for Criminale. Looking for a compromise, what I did was to borrow one of the rowing boats that lay tied up beneath the Old Boathouse, which had not acquired its name for nothing. And the next afternoon, when the now familiar lunchtime storm had exhausted itself, I set out to row Ildiko round the island. The trees dripped with rain, the water churned a little. I steered for the head of the promontory, where the craggy peak above the villa rose to its highest and wildest. There were thickly wooded slopes, and steep rockfalls; it was the part of the Barolo grounds that was hardest to reach. Ildiko sat irritably in the back of the boat, tugging her sweater round her. On the shoreline, there were tiny fragments of beach, no doubt idyllic in the summer, no doubt quite chilly at this time of year. We came round an arm of rocks; and there I caught a sudden new glimpse of Bazlo Criminale.
There on the grey sand he sat, with a bag beside him, buck naked except for a smart blue yachting-cap. He was not alone. By his side was Miss Belli, equally naked, if not more so. She sat stroking his back and talking with Italian vehemence. Suddenly she rose, ran a little way along the tiny narrow beach, stopped at a large rock, and seemed to pose there, wide-legged, straddled against it. Criminale reached in his bag, brought out a camera, and rose to move towards her. ‘See, Criminale Bazlo!’ said Ildiko, stirring suddenly, ‘What is he doing?’ ‘Sit still,’ I said urgently, in a low voice, as the boat rocked alarmingly. ‘And Blasted Belli!’ cried Ildiko, ‘He is with Blasted Belli!’ ‘Quiet, Ildiko, they haven’t seen us,’ I said, ‘Let’s get round the corner, out of sight.’ I heaved at the oars, rowing on hurriedly. Laughter came bubbling from the shore; Criminale, looking like some coarse and hairy satyr, was up close to naked Miss Belli, a Botticelli Venus, framing her through his camera. We turned a bar of rock that hid us from view; sweating heartily, I let the boat drift.
‘You saw it!’ cried Ildiko. ‘It’s probably all quite innocent,’ I said, ‘Just a little nude photography session.’ ‘And he needs to be naked too?’ asked Ildiko, ‘You are the one who is innocent. Those two are making an affair.’ ‘We don’t know that, do we?’ I said. ‘What do you need to understand something?’ asked Ildiko, ‘Why do you think he talked about the Nobel Prize that way the other night? Bazlo has fallen head over feet in love with Blasted Belli!’ ‘It hardly seems likely,’ I said. ‘Affairs are not likely,’ said Ildiko, ‘How about you and me? He is very attractive man and he cannot keep his hands off women. That is how he left Gertla and ended up with Sepulchra. Remember, he is Hungarian.’ ‘But why Miss Belli?’ I asked. ‘Why Miss Belli?’ cried Ildiko scornfully, ‘Are you so blind you don’t look at her? She is the most attractive girl here. And she is sorry for him, because he is stuck with La Stupenda. She told us this in the car.’
‘But he seems so attached to Sepulchra,’ I said, ‘And you told me he worshipped the ground she trod on.’ ‘You saw her, yes, fat as a horse now,’ said Ildiko, ‘And she is stupid, I’m sorry. Criminale depends on her, but not for everything. Don’t you see how he looks at other women?’ ‘Why doesn’t she keep an eye on him?’ I asked. ‘How do you keep an eye on one like that?’ Ildiko asked me angrily, ‘If he can disappear in the middle of a crowd, get lost in a little village a whole day, of course he can get away from Sepulchra, any time he likes it. She is too fat to follow. Anyway he keeps her all day in the study filing away his notes. And if you were famous and could have any woman, would you pick Sepulchra? No. Take me back, I have had enough.’ I looked at her. She was raging with anger; I was not sure why. I began to row back. ‘Not here, I don’t like such deep water,’ said Ildiko. ‘You don’t want them to see us, do you?’ I asked, ‘We have to stay out from the shore.’ ‘All right then, drown me, drown me, I don’t mind,’ said Ildiko.
I wasn’t sure quite what had happened; what I did know was that something had changed in my quest for Bazlo Criminale. Lavinia, at least, would be pleased; he was not such a bourgeois philosopher after all. That night, as Ildiko sat at dinner in the Lippo Lippi Room, I looked over at the great philosopher. No one could have been more dignified. He sat in centre place on the top table, hairy body cased in the finest clothes. Mrs Valeria Magno sat on one side, splendid in some Californian creation that wonderfully displayed her eternal tan. Sepulchra sat on the other, her vast evening wig stuck a little erratically on her head. Mrs Magno talked to him with great animation; Sepulchra behaved in her familiar, fussy way, occasionally tapping his arm and pointing to unfinished morsels left on his plate. Miss Belli was nowhere in sight, and nor was the equally splendid Miss Uccello; both were no doubt about their administrative and secretarial duties. It seemed hard even to recall, to take seriously, the naked, stocky goatlike figure I had seen that afternoon on the chilly beach.
I made the mistake of saying as much to Ildiko, as I undressed that night in our great suite in the Boathouse. She lay in the bed already, looking pleasing in some flimsy shirt. ‘I’m sure it was just a photography session,’ I said. ‘No, those two are having a nice little affair,’ said Ildiko, again sparky with anger. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Of course,’ said Ildiko, ‘Don’t you see, I know him very well?’ And now I suddenly began to understand her rage. ‘How well?’ I asked. ‘Very well,’ said Ildiko, ‘I hope you don’t think you are the only person who has been in my life?’ ‘You had an affair with him, you were his mistress?’ I asked. ‘Why not, do I ask you about the lovers you have had?’ asked Ildiko, ‘We only met five day ago. I had a lot of life before that.’ ‘When was this?’ I asked. ‘When, it doesn’t matter when,’ said Ildiko. ‘Is that why you wanted to come here, so you could see him again?’ I asked. Ildiko turned over. ‘I am with you, yes, isn’t that enough?’ she said, ‘Now please, stay away from me, over there. I like to go to sleep, it has not been for me a nice day.’
And, her back turned firmly to me, Ildiko dived down into sleep. I did not; listening to the water slapping on the side of the Boathouse, seeing the moon shine in through the curtained window, I felt angry and jealous, as Ildiko obviously did too. But I had to admit that she was quite correct; I had no right to make claims over her past life, any more than she had to make claims on mine. But as my anger calmed, my sense of bewilderment grew. The situation struck me as strange, somehow, and I began asking myself those teasing questions that can always guarantee a sleepless night. Had Ildiko lured me into bringing her here from Budapest just so that she could meet Criminale again? But then why had she spent her time at Barolo largely avoiding him? And why would she have quite willingly shared a room, and then begun an affair, with me, if that was why she’d come?
And if Ildiko’s behaviour now seemed stranger and more devious than I’d thought (remember, I liked Ildiko very much), then Criminale’s seemed even more devious and strange. If these two were old lovers, then why had he shown absolutely no sign of recognizing her? By now I had come to know him well enough to accept that he lived in such a state of philosophical abstraction, dwelt so high in the stratosphere of his own mind, that he could perfectly well come face to face with an old mistress and fail to know just who she was. But suppose it was an agreed deceit – they had both decided to keep the relationship out of sight, perhaps because Sepulchra too was at Barolo. That didn’t fit either, though; Criminale clearly had no difficulty in avoiding the embrace of Sepulchra, as the events of the afternoon had shown. So why, if he and Ildiko had somehow agreed to meet, had he turned his attentions to Miss Belli? I was admittedly parti pris in the matter, but to me Ildiko’s Hungarian complications seemed far more interesting than Belli’s Italian flair. But love and sex operate by inexplicable laws, and are notoriously hard to decode; perhaps the affair had long been over, and it was jealousy itself that had brought Ildiko here. But amid all these confusions, two things seemed clear. One was that Criminale’s lovelife was far more interesting than I had so far supposed; how Lavinia would cheer, even if it dismayed me. And the other was that, if Ildiko had been Criminale’s mistress and was now mine, I was strangely linked to him through the peculiar rules of sexual intimacy in ways I had not even begun to suppose.
I got to sleep very late; I woke quite early. The weather had changed: a hard chilly wind and squalls of rain blew across the rough ruffled surface of the lake outside. I now had many questions for Ildiko, but when I tried to wake her she was herself still in a state of squally anger, and refused to come to breakfast. Finally I took an umbrella (a Burberry, of course, for everything at Barolo was the best) from the hall and walked alone up to the villa. Criminale was there at breakfast, as usual, but he seemed lacklustre, and we heard nothing of Lukacs or Hungarian philosophy that particular morning. Sepulchra, unusually, put in no appearance at all. Cosima Bruckner, in her black trousers, stared grimly at me across the table.
With the shift in the weather, the entire mood of the congress seemed to have changed. Ildiko did not appear for the morning session. When Monza appeared, he seemed preoccupied. Opening, of course, with his usual announcaments, he told us that the wind and rain had already discouraged many from taking the conference trip, the boat ride across to the Villa Bellavecchia for the concert that night. Would those who still intended to go, he announced, please go and sign a list during coffee, so that the chef could prepare an earlier dinner and his assistants arrange for a boat of a size that would accommodate the smaller party. He then, unusually, disappeared during the papers that followed – an admirable statement by Martin Amis on ‘From Holocaust to Millennium’, which provoked an equally fine response from Susan Sontag. Meanwhile my own mind was drifting off, as it often does, towards another topic, sex: specifically, to the complex sex life of Bazlo Criminale. I felt at last I had a clue to him, one I wanted to pursue. When the coffee break came, I made my way to the secretariat. Miss Belli was not there; Miss Uccello was. I asked for the list for the Bellavecchia boat trip, and scanned my way down it to see what names had been listed.
I found what I wanted. Bazlo Criminale had signed it, with the simple word ‘Criminale’. Sepulchra was not listed. Just below Criminale’s name was Miss Belli’s. I added my own name to the list, followed by Ildiko’s, and handed it back with a warm smile to Miss Uccello. ‘What a blasted day,’ I said. Then, cutting the second session of the morning, I made my way back through the now wind-blown grounds to the Old Boathouse. I wanted to find Ildiko and tell her what I had done. And I wanted to ask her some more questions. But when I went into our suite, the only sign I could see of her was a note. It had been tucked into the frame of the mirror: ‘Have took boat, gone for shoppings,’ it said, ‘Thank you for dollar.’ I checked the jacket I had left hanging in the wardrobe. Something was missing from the inner pocket: my wallet. I wondered whether I would see it, her, her, it, again.
*
When the music party gathered that night down at the Barolo pier, Ildiko had not returned. The group for Bellavecchia was strangely reduced; perhaps thirty of us stood ready to go on board. No doubt the early meal had deterred some, but the freshening wind and the gusting rain explained what had deterred others. The night weather was tossing the lake into spume-topped waves; the waiting speedboat was rocking very unsteadily beside the pier. I looked around for Bazlo Criminale. And there he was, wearing a smart, neat, admiral-style topcoat, and the blue yachting-cap that had topped off his spectacular nudity the day before. He looked so impressive that it was quite appropriate he should step on board first. He sat down ahead of us all, a bulky mass in one of the double seats at the front of the boat. For a moment, I thought of sitting down beside him, and telling him everything, admitting to the programme we wanted to make. There are times when silence can go on too long.
But then Miss Belli, clad in some splendid red designer sou’wester, and carrying a small suitcase, jumped aboard. She walked through the crowd, found Criminale, flashed her black eyes at him, and took the seat at his side. ‘Blasted rough, eh?’ she said, as I sat down a few rows behind, so that I could see them both. I looked over the side. The black water tossed fitfully, and dark clouds raced across the moonlit mountains at the top end of the lake. Then someone came and sat down, very firmly, on the seat beside me. ‘And now I think we talk properly at last,’ said my new companion. I turned, and saw it was Miss Cosima Bruckner, wearing black eye makeup, dark anorak, and those tight black leather trousers that are associated with high fashion in her German homeland and with street violence and sadism almost everywhere else. ‘Why not?’ I asked, ‘How are you enjoying the congress?’
‘I do not mean making some small-talk,’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I like very much to know what you are doing here,’ said Cosima Bruckner. ‘Thinking, like everyone else,’ I said. ‘This is not a philosophical question,’ said Bruckner, looking round, ‘You have told me you work for a paper which I find does not anymore exist.’ ‘It went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago,’ I said. ‘Then how can you write for it?’ asked Bruckner, ‘You said you were here under cover. What is your real name?’ ‘Francis Jay,’ I said. ‘But that is the name you are using,’ she said. ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Very well, who sent you here, who are your paymasters?’ ‘I’m just a freelance journalist writing an article,’ I said. ‘I do not believe you,’ said Cosima, bending her head very close to mine, ‘Mr Jay, or whoever you are, do you realize that if I went to Monza with what I know, he would at once ejaculate you?’
The boat had cast off now, and was moving away from the pier into the lake water; immediately the spray began to fly. ‘And what do you know?’ I asked. ‘I know you are here at Barolo with a Hungarian agent,’ murmured Cosima Bruckner. ‘Ildiko?’ I asked, ‘She’s not an agent, she’s a publishers’ editor.’ ‘Why is she here?’ asked Bruckner. ‘She likes shops,’ I said. ‘Do not think I am foolish,’ said Bruckner, ‘She works for a state publishing house that has often been used as a spy channel between East and West. We know about this traffic.’ ‘Really? How?’ I asked. ‘Mr Jay, I have checked you both out with Brussels,’ said Bruckner, ‘Not only with Interpol, but other pan-European organizations of a far more clandestine kind.’ Now we had left the lee of the Isola Barolo, the boat was rocking badly. Nervous screams came from the other passengers; most of them left their seats on deck and retreated into the cabin. ‘I think we should both go under cover,’ I said to Bruckner, starting to get up.
‘Sit down, Mr Jay, or whoever you are,’ said Bruckner, seizing my arm in a very tight grip, ‘You do not appear to see the seriousness of your situation. This is an intergovernmental congress with key world figures. Some leading ministers who are seriously threatened in their own countries. Representatives of nations who live their lives under eternal risk. At places like this, terrorists strike.’ ‘Surely you don’t think I’m a terrorist,’ I said. ‘I do not know who you are,’ said Cosima Bruckner, ‘But at least you are a most serious leak of security. Your position is not good. I like very much to know what your mission is here.’ ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘As I said, I’m a journalist, but I’m working for TV on a programme on Bazlo Criminale.’ Cosima Bruckner turned and stared at me intently. ‘You are following Criminale?’ she asked, ‘Can you show me something that proves this is who you are?’ I felt in my pocket for my paper. ‘I could have done,’ I said, ‘Except Ildiko Hazy has gone off shopping with my wallet.’ ‘A very likely story,’ she said. I began to sense something highly operatic about Cosima Bruckner.
Happily we had come under the lee of the further shore by now, and were soon docking at a wooden pier. It attached to the grounds of another lakeside villa, though this one came from a very different world of taste from the Villa Barolo. The Villa Bellavecchia was in the neo-classical style, and the floodlit gardens through which our party now unsteadily passed were filled with Roman statuary, of a sumptuous kind I had never before seen. As you came from the lake, it was the buttocks that assaulted you first: buttocks on an archetypal scale, buttocks whose memory could cheer you in some distant place where misfortune had fallen or the weather was grim. They belonged to Mars and Venus; Mars’s were the larger by a cubic foot or two, but Venus’s the plumper and more comely. When you passed and looked back, you found similar grand ambitions had gone into the frontal aspect: the largest of fig leaves did little to restrain Mars’s sturdy and outgoing nature, nor conceal the vast pelvic fecundity of the goddess of love.
But looking back was a mistake. There again was Cosima Bruckner, in her leather trousers, loitering amid the statues right behind me. I sensed her following me still as we entered the villa and found ourselves in a vast salle de réception, filled with more vast statues in Carrera marble. Among them stood a smaller and more human figure; Professor Monza had once again been spirited on ahead of us. ‘Attenzione, bitte!’ he cried, clapping his hands, ‘Pleasa be seateda! The weather gets worsa, and this means the concerta will be shorta!’ In the room gilded chairs with ducal crests had been gracefully arranged in a half-circle around a small raised podium, as at the aristocratic soirées of an age I thought was gone. A few other guests were there; men in excellent grey suits, women with chignons wearing backless and in some cases sideless dresses. But the group from Barolo was evidently the main party, and, thanks to our loss of numbers, we conspicuously failed to make the room seem full.
I watched out for Doctor Criminale, and there he was, taking his seat by Monza right in the middle of the front row. Miss Belli then approached, smiled, said something, and took the seat next to him. They leaned towards each other, possibly sharing a programme or some other small intimacy. I took a seat towards the back, in a position from which I could observe them; this was a relationship I wanted to understand better. Then someone took the seat next to mine; I turned and saw that it was, once again, Cosima Bruckner. ‘I think, Mr Jay, it is time to be quite frank with you,’ she whispered, leaning close to me, ‘Please understand I too am not what I seem.’ ‘Really?’ I asked, ‘So what are you then?’ ‘The face that you see is only my cover,’ said Bruckner, glancing round. ‘You’re not from the European Community?’ I asked. ‘Let us say not from the beef section as I have been maintaining,’ said Bruckner, ‘Ssshhh.’
She pointed to the podium, onto which was filing a small chamber orchestra. Its members, all in white shirts and bow ties, were youthful but stylish, the young men with long hair, the girls with short. After a brief moment, a similarly youthful conductor, in long black tails and wearing long flowing locks, entered, took centre stage, bowed to our warm applause. The orchestra tuned up. ‘A fine acoustic!’ Criminale could be heard saying. Then the conductor stepped forward. ‘Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagione,’ he said, ‘The Four Seasons.’ Here was another composer who had, I seemed to remember, died in poverty in Vienna, and then revived to bring us neo-classical joy. The orchestra, a good one, now set about Vivaldi’s meteorological work with gusto; I leaned back to listen and enjoy.
It was in the middle of Spring that Cosima Bruckner resumed her whispering in my ear. ‘Do you realize that here we are within ten kilometres of the Swiss border?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘And you know Switzerland is the world’s financial paradise?’ I nodded. ‘Also it is not a member of the European Community.’ I smiled sympathetically. ‘That means this border is alive with fraudulent traffic and financial irregularities of every kind.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘You know that ten per cent of the European Community budget disappears in fraudulent transactions?’ I raised my eyebrows even higher. ‘Much of it goes out of Italy and through these passes.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘So perhaps now you understand why I am at Barolo,’ said Cosima Bruckner, sitting back as the movement came to its end.
When Summer started, she was off again. ‘What could be better than an international congress for passing illicit traffic?’ she murmured. ‘These are all famous international scholars and writers,’ I murmured back. ‘Exactly, people from all over the world that no one would suspect,’ whispered Cosima. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I whispered back. I saw the conductor turn and look at us with irritation. ‘Listen, I will trust you,’ hissed Cosima Bruckner, ‘I require your helps.’ ‘I know nothing about these things,’ I hissed back. ‘You would be wise to consider,’ susurrated Cosima Bruckner, ‘Remember, I could have you ejaculated from this congress entirely. You understand?’ ‘What do you want, then?’ I susurrated back. ‘Have you see anything at all suspicious, at Barolo?’ asked Cosima Bruckner, ‘Financial transactions, unexpected contacts?’ ‘Nothing like that,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all that is unusual?’ asked Cosima. The movement came to its sprightly end. I looked again at the front row, wondering how things were with Bazlo Criminale. It was then that I realized that, somewhere during the course of Summer, he and Miss Belli had both disappeared.
Autumn began, and midway through it the heavens opened. A tempestuous downpour clattered violently on the tiles above us, and by the end of the movement rainwater was swilling over the marble floors of the salle de réception and lapping around our feet. When the music ceased, Monza rose and had a few words with the conductor, who then stepped forward. ‘Grazie, thank you very much, The Three Seasons,’ he said. The applause that followed was undeservedly brief, for Monza was up there again, clapping for attention. ‘Now may I ask you to returna to the boata! These storms can sometimes go on all through the nighta, so I think we must returna to Barolo quickly.’ We hurried out of the hall and to the boat through the classical gardens. Rain tumbled down and Mars and Venus dripped and spurted from every cleft, orifice and protuberance. Water filled the gunwales of our waiting speedboat, and we huddled in the cabin. I looked round for Criminale and Miss Belli. There was no sign of them, but no one except myself and Cosima Bruckner seemed to care.
We set sail quickly towards the Isola Barolo. The lake had fallen into a strange calm. To the north, where the Alps rose up, the view was magnificent and terrible. Wild lightning flashes lit the mountaintops, disclosing vast ranges of snow-covered ridges we had never seen before. Rushing clouds skittered over their tops; the trees below the tree-line were dipping under rushing wind and then rising again. Thunder echoed from mountainside to mountainside, with the racket of an enormous military barrage. Then in the lightning flashes we could see that, from the top end of the lake, a ruffle of violent wind was moving along, tearing at the still surface of the water. Only Cosima Bruckner seemed to be without fear; she stood up in the front of the boat and shouted, ‘Storm, go away!’ The rest of us huddled in the cabin as the boatman made the engine surge, and we drove for the Barolo pier.
The storm was striking Barolo now; the trees began to dip and crack, the crag above the village was garishly backlit, the villa itself illuminated in a sudden son et lumière. I thought about Ildiko, hoping hard that she had safely returned from her shopping on the evening boat. It was only by moments that we ourselves outran the windstorm that swept down Lake Cano that night. Even as our boat tied up at the pier, the waves began leaping violently, and the water spumed and boiled. We ran through the pouring rain to the minibuses that had come down to collect us, and by the time we reached the gates of the villa it was clear something had happened to Paradise. Water swept down the drive as if it had turned into a riverbed; the branches of trees were bending, twisting, snapping to the ground.
At the villa, when we had skidded and splashed up the flooded drive, the lights were flickering, the outside shutters banging wildly against the walls. The dark-jacketed servants ran out with umbrellas, which themselves strained and gusted as they hurried us inside. In the lobby the tapestries flapped on the walls, and wind flurried through the corridors, upturning lamps and toppling priceless vases. I went through the downstairs rooms, looking for Ildiko. At last I found her, in the drawing room; it was half-dark, lit by some strange emergency lighting. She sat on a sofa, surrounded by bags of shopping. ‘Whoever invented the umbrella undoubtedly had a mind of genius,’ someone on the sofa opposite was saying to her, ‘To put a moving roof that folds on a stick we can carry without difficulty, this I must call thinking.’ For a moment I thought her companion was Bazlo Criminale. But then I moved closer and realized we had a new visitor, someone who must have come in on the same boat as Ildiko. It was, I saw, Professor Otto Codicil.