The Night of Wenceslas (22 page)

‘I don’t mind taking it, Nicolas. There is no danger to me. Don’t think about me.’

‘I’m not, Vlasta. There isn’t a formula. It doesn’t exist.’

Ί don’t want you to tell me anything you don’t want to.’

‘Right,’ I said; and was presently aware that the divan was shaking slightly. She was crying again. ‘Ah, Vlasta, what is it?’

She put her head on my shoulders, sobbing quietly but powerfully. I put my arm awkwardly round her.

‘You’re thinking only of me. You say they’ll kill you if they find this thing.’

‘No, no, Vlasta. It isn’t like that. I haven’t got the damned thing.’

‘I love you,
milacek
. I hate myself for not being able to help you more.’

‘You can’t help me any more than you are doing.’

‘I can’t bear to think of you in danger in this terrible country, little merchant. Let me share it with you. Let me take this thing for you.’

I rolled my eyes horribly. There was a degree of obtuseness about this otherwise splendid girl that made all normal communications impossible. I said wearily, ‘Dearest Vlasta, I haven’t got the formula. It isn’t of any importance. I’m telling you the truth.’

She looked at me through tear-stained eyes. ‘You only say this to comfort me,
milacek
. Who else would you have given it to? There was only the old person your nanny, and she is dead. The husband? Would you trust him more than me because he is a man?’

‘No, of course I wouldn’t. I can’t even remember him. Vlasta …’ It was useless, of course, but I made the effort. ‘That formula, Vlasta. It wasn’t the right one. It was something else. I got rid of it. I’ve forgotten it. All I want to do now is get to the Embassy. You’re the only one who can help me do that You can’t do more, Vlasta. Please believe me,
milacek
.’

I had talked myself into a state of some emotion, and now fell to covering her ample, tear-stained face with kisses. I was not sure if she believed me, her mournful eyes indicating only recognition of large areas of nobility in my protestations.

It was now four o’clock and she had to be up at seven. I could finish the letter in the morning. I got back into bed with her.

Between the sheets she was still fearful and massively emotive. I felt suddenly shaken and unsure of myself. There was a lowering keening quality about her murmurous embrace that was unnerving. But it wasn’t that, I thought. Something else; some factor that I hadn’t bargained for. It hung about, cloud-like, on the fringe of consciousness. I tried to identify it; couldn’t. Presently I went off to sleep in her arms, still troubled.

The tall S.N.B, man had got me up against the wardrobe and I couldn’t move. I knew he was going to hit me again. He’d got hold of my chin with one hand, and he was going to smash it with the other. He was looking at me thoughtfully, without malice, and I could hear myself grunting with the effort to shift my head. The sweat was pouring down my face. I was bleeding and sick, and it was going on and on, with the other one, the little one, waiting quietly to go on with his interrogation. But I couldn’t stand any more. I couldn’t stand being hit again. My neck felt stiff and half broken against the wardrobe, but I thought I’ll break it, I don’t care, he mustn’t hit me again, and I wrenched my neck sideways and broke it and got away, swam away, threshed away out of the room and into the blackness of Barrandov.

Her elbow was under my chin. I had somehow kicked away from her in my nightmare. She was sleeping heavily in the perspiring bed, and I lay there for a moment thinking,
Oh God,
still night time. Which night
? the interrogation still going on and on in my mind.
Who did you give it to? You’ll have to tell
us. Now or later, as you please. We know you gave it to someone.
Who is it you trust more than us? Did you give it to the
husband of the old person, your nanny
?

But no, I thought, heart sickly beating, that was Vlasta, not the interrogators; the obtuse girl going on and on about it. Everybody going on and on about the bloody formula. And I didn’t care about the formula. It should be obvious I didn’t care about the formula. Why should I care about it with my life at stake? There was some great mass delusion in this insane country. They all thought alike. Maybe this was how their own nationals would behave. Hanging on at all costs to the formula, the slogan, the message, the chant.

The big uncomplicated creature slept heavily beside me, unknowable, Slav, wanting to get away from the country but part of it, her reactions the same. Wanting to suffer, to have her steadfastness tested; with some new element added, some hand-and-brain
element that thirsted to be trusted as a comrade. Would I not trust her as much as the husband of the old person my nanny, because he was a man?

But wait, wait, I thought, heart still sickly beating. Who said anything about this old person my nanny? Who the hell so much as mentioned this old person?

I thought back frenziedly over each and every conversation with the girl. No nannies. No occasion when nannies might have arisen. With sudden sinking recognition, I realized what had troubled me before I went off to sleep.

This girl knew something about me that I had never told her.

I thought, Oh, God, no. Something gravely wrong here; and in the same moment saw a whole series of other wrong things. This spacious bungalow just for her father and herself in a town where space was at a premium. The telephone call at one o’clock in the morning. Her insistence on the bloody formula.

I sat wildly up in the bed. In an instant she was wide awake beside me. She had not moved. The quality of her breathing had merely changed. I saw now that it must have been like this the other time. I felt my teeth begin to chatter. I put one foot out of bed.

‘What is it,
milacek
?’

‘Toilet.’

‘You know where the light is.’

I knew where the light was. I went in, trembling, but didn’t switch it on, imagining the police camped out there. A hell of a lot of things had come flashing to mind. Her tears; the old Slav keening quality that had come into her voice. She had become fond of me in her way, I thought, but it wouldn’t stop her doing whatever she had to do. I had walked right into it.

I sat nervelessly on the lavatory seat, shivering in the draught from the open window, and wondered what the hell to do now. It was growing light outside. I had taken off my watch and left it on the bedside table. Five, six o’clock? She’d be getting up soon. No prospect of escape this time. The instant she was out they’d be in to nab me. That mysterious telephone call… checking up that all was well. And all had been well;
milacek
installed and ready to perform and spill the beans. But what beans? What had I been expected to spill to the girl that they couldn’t knock out of me in half an hour?

I held my head in my hands and racked my weary brain.

‘Are you all right,
milacek
?’

I came off the lavatory seat as if it had caught fire.

‘Quite all right.’

I washed my hands and went back in the room. She had the bedside light on and was sitting up moodily rubbing her breasts in the draught from the open door.

‘You’re so restless,
milacek
. You’re worrying still.’

‘Just a bit.’

‘Was it anything else you wanted to tell me?’

‘No,’ I said, getting into bed; but in the same moment saw that indeed there was.

The formula! The unspeakable, unmentionable, thrice-cursed formula! That was it. They genuinely didn’t know what had happened to it. There had been a fatal gap in the reconnaissance system when I had dashed from the hotel. There was just a possibility – it could be no more than a possibility – that I had hidden it somewhere, passed it on to someone. They could knock me about and find out. But I had proved slippery enough already. Here was an easier way. One night with the insatiable giantess, with the illusion of safety, and I would tell her everything.

The tireless creature had thrown her arms round me again and was nibbling my cheek. ‘
Milacek
, why are you so worried? You don’t trust me enough.’

‘I do, Vlasta, I do,’ I said, and sighed. ‘It’s just that – I’m beginning to doubt if the Embassy will believe that letter. They’ll think it a trick.’

‘What else is there?’

‘Just one thing … I daren’t ask you to do it.’

‘Nicolas, Nicolas. I’ve told you a thousand times, I’ll do anything.’

I paused, heart beating in a sick sort of way. I thought she must feel it thumping there under her supercharged superstructure.
‘It’s that formula, Vlasta, I didn’t destroy it. It’s a lot more important than I am. And it could just save me. That’s something they would have to believe. If only you could take it with the letter.’

‘
Milacek
, I’ve been pleading with you to let me take it.’

‘You don’t understand, Vlasta. I haven’t got it. I told you the truth about that at least. It’s hidden.’

She was silent. I wondered if I’d ladled it on a bit too thick. She said after a moment, ‘You want me to go and get it?’

‘No, Vlasta. There are other people involved. You wouldn’t get it. I would have to get it myself and meet you in town. And that’s why I daren’t ask you to do it. If I’m spotted, it would be the end for you, too.’

Again she was silent. She released me, blinking thoughtfully. She said slowly, ‘Is this the truth, Nicolas? Is this all that’s worrying you?’

‘It’s enough.’

‘It’s nothing at all. Oh, I know the police. And the S.N.B.,’ she said scornfully. ‘I live here, little merchant. Do you think we don’t all of us know what they look like!’

‘Vlasta, it’s dreadful asking you to do this. It’s so terribly dangerous.’

‘
Milacek
, stop worrying now.’

‘But of course,’ I said, just in time as she fell on me again, ‘if I’m followed anywhere, I’ll cancel the plan. I daren’t compromise you or my – my colleagues. I’ll die before I give anything away.’

This improbable statement gave her fractional pause. She shivered suddenly. ‘Forget it now,’ she said in my ear. ‘Don’t worry about anything more,
milacek
,’ and returned to her more fundamental preoccupation.

The milkman shattered the last of the night at ten minutes to seven. I had been lying in a sleepless daze for the past half hour listening to him exclaiming to his horse and turning over in my mind a succession of increasingly lunatic plans.

I felt time-worn rather than tired. An enormous number of
things seemed to have happened to me; a roar of events like water over some crumbling fall. Now, I thought, as the milkman holloahed and yoicked, the water had exposed bedrock, gleaming calcified strata to be identified as the essential particulars of Whistler Nicolas. Here were the layers of fraud and deception; here the unsuspected cat-like qualities of survival. Here too, I thought, as the vast slumbrous thing beside me yawned to life, stamina of an even more unsuspected and, in happier times, more useful order.

I shut my eyes as she woke up.

‘Nicolas. Time to get up, Nicolas.’

She was clear-eyed, relaxed, a little gay even. It hadn’t been a bad night for her, I supposed. She gave me an affectionate buss on the chin and sprang out of bed. I turned out more slowly.

‘It’s late. I forgot I have an early job this morning. I’ll have to make a telephone call,’ she said, when she had washed and dressed.

I had been wondering how she would cope with the change of arrangements, and listened with interest as she went to the phone. ‘
Agnes, I’m afraid I will be late this morning. The
early job will have to be put off. No, no, nothing wrong. I’ll
alter the schedule myself when I come in. There is no need for
you to do anything, Agnes dear, nothing at all
.’

I finished the letter in the kitchen while she ate her breakfast, and watched with some fascination her magnificent jungle appetite.

‘You know what you’ve got to do, Vlasta.’

‘I am to put this in a Glass Board envelope and mark it

“Urgent, Personal, For the Attention of the Ambassador Only”.’

‘In English, remember. You want me to write it out for you?’

‘No, no. I can remember it.’

‘And you meet me where?’

‘At the Slavia at twelve. If you’re not there by ten minutes past, I go away.’

‘And then?’

‘I am to telephone you here from a call box at two o’clock.
If there is no reply I go back to the Slavia again at five. If you are not there I take the letter as it is to the Embassy without the formula.’

‘That’s it,’ I said. A bit of elaboration had seemed worthwhile. I took both of her hands and looked sincerely into her eyes. She looked sincerely back, champing her jaws. ‘I won’t try to thank you, Vlasta. You know how I feel. But for both our sakes, keep exactly to the instructions. If I don’t keep any of the arrangements, it means the police are on to me. Don’t take any chances. Don’t hang about. Go right to the Embassy. It means the formula won’t exist any longer.’

‘You won’t let them take it?’

I shook my head slowly. ‘They’ll never do that, Vlasta. It’s on rice paper. I’ll eat it.’

Her jaws paused fractionally.

She went ten minutes later. I sat on, smoking a cigarette and staring at her empty plate. She had eaten three slices of cold veal, half a loaf of bread, a dish of sour cream and a large bowl of coffee. Even after everything that had happened this feat still had the power to surprise me. Even after everything that was still to happen, it is the thing I remember best about her. That and a certain smell and a bomb-like shadow on a wall in lamplight.

I left the house at half past ten, and realized as I came out into the side street that I had forgotten my watch on the bedside table. I didn’t go back for it. It was hot already with the tangy smell coming up off the road. Men were hosing down the
terasy
, and the sun glinted back hard and white off the wet rock. I felt light-headed and momentous, a convict on parole, far from home and blindingly exposed.

I thought I had four or five hours of relative freedom of movement. Over three cups of coffee and four cigarettes I had considered how to use them. I thought I had better find out first how relative the freedom was.