Doctor Criminale (29 page)

‘Well, even so, every assistance was offered,’ said Codicil, rather hastily, ‘Witness coffee and cakes at a first-rank Viennese café, for which incidentally I coughed up the
tab. For two days I sacrificed to him the services of my invaluable servant Gerstenbacker, to make sure his every want and whim was satisfied.’ ‘Aren’t you good?’ said Mrs Magno. ‘However, from the start I was uneasy,’ Codicil went
on, ‘I could not accept the project was, well, correct.’ ‘Not kosher?’ asked Mrs Magno. ‘It stank a little somewhere, to speak frankly,’ said Codicil,
‘Happily I have friends worldwide. I called a good old mate colleague in London who asked some enquiries. Within hours the whole pathetic deception was exposed. This was not some great TV
company, as the lout had said. It was a front only, run by women and children. It made programmes for speculation, like some street-corner tout. It kept a postal address in a bad part of Soho, the
most degenerate part of London. Perhaps you know it, though I hope not.’ ‘Only by reputation, honey, I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘So you mean the whole thing is some
kind of scam?’ ‘I fear so,’ said Codicil, ‘And worse was to come.’

‘Do you mind if I say something?’ I asked. ‘You’ll get your turn, honey,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘I want to hear what the professor knows.’ ‘I discovered
this smut-hound had hired some professional seductress to corrupt my young assistant, a youth of blameless virtue, and force him to speak calumnies about me. Well, naturally in the interests of
justice and decency I attempted to stop this television adventure. I forbade it, even with the British Ambassador. All this was made totally clear. Now I come to Barolo; by the way, I am so sorry
to be late, but a professor in my shoes has many demanding duties, examining students and so on . . .’ ‘Don’t worry, we weren’t expecting you,’ said Mrs Magno.
‘I come, and find that by some new imposture he has settled his backside here and is working with impunity on this forbidden business.’ ‘Can I ask a question?’ I said,
‘I’d just like to know why Professor Codicil thinks he has the authority to try to ban a serious television programme.’

‘Just a minute, kid,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘Massimo, how did this guy get here?’ ‘I fear an unfortunate error was committeda,’ said Monza, looking at me furiously,
‘I received a cable from Budapesta, from our visita here, saying he wished to write about the congressa in an importanta London newspapa. Now we find that papa does not even exista.’
‘The paper doesn’t exista?’ said Mrs Magno, turning to me, ‘Oh, honey, looks like you’re really in the shit. So what
are
you doing here?’ Before I could
reply, Monza interrupted. ‘In my opiniona,’ he said, ‘he is exploiting the famed wonders of Barolo to take a holiday with his foreign mistressa.’ ‘I don’t
believe it, a bimbo in the story too,’ said Mrs Magno, looking at me with growing interest, ‘Okay, shall we let him talk?’ ‘Personally I would boot him away from here
without a further word,’ said Codicil, ‘In the modern world there is far too much of this contempt for our privacies, I think.’

‘Okay, prof, just let me handle it,’ said Mrs Magno, looking me over, ‘Is it true you lied your way into here?’ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I admit my paper
folded. It went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago. I still thought I could publish an article.’ ‘And the TV?’ ‘The television project is perfectly real. It’s a serious
arts programme in the British television series “Great Thinkers of the Age of Glasnost”,’ I said. ‘Love the title,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘And I thought
Brideshead
was terrific, by the way. But why lie to get here?’ ‘It seemed the best way to get close to Doctor Criminale,’ I said. ‘You see!’ cried Codicil.
‘What I’d like to know is why Professor Codicil is so opposed to this programme,’ I said, ‘Doctor Criminale is our leading philosopher. Why shouldn’t television make a
good serious programme about him?’ ‘What do you say to that, prof?’ asked Mrs Magno, turning to Codicil. ‘I think the answer stands plainly before you,’ said Codicil,
‘This tout and doorstep-hopper you see there, a hack posing under the guise of gentleman, do you think he would make such a good programme? Has Bazlo given his permission for this programme?
I think that is the first courtesy, no?’ ‘Well, has he?’ asked Mrs Magno.

‘Not exactly,’ I had to admit, ‘First of all we had to explore whether there really was a programme there.’ ‘You see, a back-shop operation,’ said Codicil.
‘But why don’t we ask him?’ I suggested, ‘I think Bazlo Criminale might be delighted to see his work and his wisdom brought to a much wider audience.’ At this Monza
coughed and straightened his tie uncomfortably. ‘Unfortunately this is a little difficulta,’ he said to Mrs Magno after a moment, ‘I regret that Dottore Criminale has not been seena since the concerta last nighta.’
‘You’re kidding, Massimo,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘You don’t mean you’ve lost him? You’ve
lost
Bazlo Criminale?’ ‘Perhaps not quite
losta,’ said Monza, looking even more uncomfortable, ‘He disappears quite often, and one of my assistants could be looking after him. You remember Miss Belli?’ Mrs Magno laughed.
‘Great, I love it,’ she said, ‘You’ve lost Bazlo
and
the beautiful Belli?’ ‘We are doing everything to finda them,’ said Monza, ‘The policia,
everything.’ ‘I think you’d better get your ass unshackled, Massimo,’ said Mrs Magno, ‘Or you won’t have too much congress left. These people only come for
him.’ ‘Meanwhile may I ask what you intend to do with our arrant doorstep-hopper here?’ demanded Codicil. ‘Oh, him,’ said Mrs Magno, turning to me with with the
managerial decisiveness for which she was famous, ‘You, punk, you’re out, pronto. And just don’t let me see you ever again anywhere near Barolo, okay?’ The butler reappeared
beside me; in the corner Codicil smiled grimly.

The padrona was as good as her word, and, even before the morning session of the congress had started, Ildiko and I were outside the gates of the Villa Barolo. ‘They heard, and were
abasht, and up they sprang’ was how John Milton put it, I remember, when he was telling a somewhat similar tale. Our luggage too had been dumped in a careless and undistinguished pile outside
the well-locked villa gates; we picked it up and walked disconsolately down into the village. This was how we found ourselves, before lunchtime, unpacking in a dusty back room at the Gran Hotel
Barolo, the only hotel on the island open out of season. ‘Why why why?’ I demanded bitterly, as I unloaded my socks and knickers yet again, ‘What’s wrong with making a
programme about Bazlo Criminale?’ ‘Maybe you should have explained to Monza what you were making,’ said Ildiko. ‘You were the one who told me to be a little
Hungarian,’ I said. ‘I hope you do not blame me,’ said Ildiko, ‘Sometimes you can be a bit too much Hungarian.’

‘You realize we’ve been expelled, booted out, no more villa,’ I said, ‘The padrona has forbidden us ever to set foot in it again. And all because of that bastard
Codicil.’ ‘The professor?’ asked Ildiko, ‘He seemed quite a nice man.’ ‘He’s not a nice man,’ I said, ‘That man has decided he wants to destroy
me. My comfort, my programme, my career.’ ‘Why do you think you are so important?’ asked Ildiko. ‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘He’s a professorial elephant and
I’m just a flea. He ought to be not seeing his students in Vienna. So why come all this way just to get us thrown out of Barolo?’ ‘Perhaps he did not come for you at all,’
said Ildiko, ‘By the way, I do not think this is such a nice room as the other.’ ‘Why did he come, then?’ I asked, ‘Did he say anything to you last night?’
‘Last night?’ asked Ildiko, ‘What about last night?’ ‘You were with him last night, chatting him up in the lounge when I came in, remember?’ ‘Oh, when I
came back from the shopping,’ said Ildiko, ‘You want to see my shopping?’ ‘No, not really,’ I said, ‘I want to know all about Codicil.’ ‘No, you do
not?’ said Ildiko, standing there with an expression of deep disappointment, ‘Pig!’ ‘All right, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘Go ahead, show me your
shopping.’

I now realized Ildiko had scarcely taken in our predicament at all; her mind was totally on other things. In fact it had plainly been wildly overstimulated, if not almost unhinged, by the
excitements of her shopping trip in the West the day before, which she began to describe minutely. It seemed that she had not only visited but eternally memorized the name of almost every single
store in the small town at the end of the lake, which must have wondered what had hit it when she landed off the hover-craft with my wallet and went to work. The dollars (the money, of course, that
Lavinia had cabled to me in Budapest to pay for our quest for Criminale) had run out quite early in the day. But by this time she had caught on to the advantages of plastic, which apparently did
very nicely if you simply wrote a reasonable facsimile of my signature on the bottom of the bill at the end of each new purchase. ‘They were so nice,’ she said. ‘You used my
credit card, Ildiko?’ I asked, ‘But I don’t have any credit.’ ‘They said it was all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know what you did was
illegal?’ ‘Well,’ said Ildiko, ‘Maybe a little Hungarian.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘What did you spend? How much did you buy?’ ‘Ah, you want to see all these?’ she asked, opening up an Armani leather suitcase I had never
seen before, and unpacking from it plastic shop bag after plastic shop bag. ‘All that?’ I asked. ‘Look,’ said Ildiko, ‘You know I only bought it all for you.’ I
looked. What Ildiko had bought for me was the following: three dresses in Day-Glo colours; shoes of electric blue; anoraks of outrageous purple; racing drivers’ sunglasses; a baseball cap
saying ‘Cleveland Pitchers’; skin-tight Lycra bicycling pants with startling pink flashes; Stars and Stripes knickers; Union Jack bras; a tee-shirt that said on it ‘Spandau
Ballet’, and another that declared ‘Up Yours, Delors.’ ‘Do you really like them?’ she asked. ‘Frankly?’ I asked. ‘Yes, of course, frankly,’
said Ildiko. ‘Well, frankly, I like your Hungarian miniskirt much better,’ I said.

Ildiko stared at me, dismay in her eyes. ‘You like it better?’ she said, ‘But that is just from Hungary. These are from the West. They are from shopping.’ ‘Ildiko,
you’ll just look like everybody else,’ I said. ‘Don’t you like me to look like everybody else?’ she asked, ‘Beside, when I go back to Budapest I will not look
like everybody else.’ ‘I liked you best the way you were when I first met you,’ I said. ‘If you don’t like my clothes, that means you don’t like me,’ said
Ildiko. Another passage in Henry James came to mind, about clothes and the self. ‘No, it doesn’t. You’ve only just bought them, and anyway your clothes aren’t you,’ I
said, though I was not sure I believed it; Henry James, I recalled, had never seen an ‘Up Yours, Delors’ tee-shirt. ‘They are me, they are my style,’ said Ildiko, ‘I
think you don’t like me any more. You are mad with me. Just because I told you I had a little affair once a long time ago with Criminale Bazlo.’ At once I felt a brute, as I was
supposed to. ‘I’m not mad with you,’ I said, ‘I’ve no right to be. You had your own life to live. I don’t mind what you did with Bazlo Criminale.’

‘Then you do really like me?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, ‘You know I like you, I like you a lot. I like your clothes, I like you even better when you’ve
got no clothes on at all.’ ‘Okay, show me,’ she said. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘No, but wait, first I put on for you this new brazer and these pants.’ She pulled
off her dress, stripped to the buff, and then strapped herself round bosom and crotch with the bright colours of the British and American red, white and blue. ‘What do you think?’ she
asked. ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘For you I am British now.’ ‘Take them off,’ I said. ‘Now?’ ‘Yes,’ I said,
‘Because here we go, here we go, here we go.’ And go we did, there on an ancient, tired Italian bed in the dusty back room of the Gran Hotel Barolo. Ildiko’s shopping bags lay all
around us, spilling with packaged clothes. It was, of course, a pleasing experience, a little spiked with a certain half-anger we felt for each other. But I have to admit to you that even our
lovemaking itself no longer had quite the same paradisial feel as before, that our very nakedness with each other had lost some of its splendour, now that we had been expelled from the Villa
Barolo. ‘They destitute and bare of all their virtue; silent and in face Confounded long they sat,’ says John Milton of very similar circumstances, and I think I know just what he
means.

Only later, when we had taken lunch and were sitting on the hotel terrace over coffee, was I able to bring Ildiko’s mind to the realities of our situation. We sat staring out across the
wintry lake, misted over but calm as a mirror; it had returned to its usual pearly grey, though branches floated in the water, and debris ruffled the surface everywhere. ‘I don’t think
today you are in such a nice mood,’ said Ildiko. ‘No, maybe not,’ I said, ‘That’s because we can’t go back to the villa, we’ve got no money, and
we’ve lost touch with Bazlo Criminale.’ ‘We could take a trip,’ said Ildiko, ‘I brought back some brochure.’ ‘Please, Ildiko,’ I said, ‘This is
work, not a holiday. I have to make a programme about Criminale. And now this bastard Codicil has come along and destroyed everything.’ ‘Why would he like to do that?’ asked
Ildiko. ‘Because he doesn’t want old stories raked over, because he’s afraid I’ll find out something I’m not supposed to know.’ ‘What are you not supposed
to know?’ asked Ildiko. ‘That’s the trouble,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m not supposed to know, and whether I know it already or whether I was about to
find it out. I just know there’s something I mustn’t know. There has to be, to bring Codicil flying down here. Where did you meet him last night? Was he waiting at the villa when you
came back from . . .’

‘Shopping?’ asked Ildiko, ‘No, he was just there.’ ‘Yes, I know but where’s there?’ ‘Well, first, I went shopping,’ said Ildiko, ‘Then
because I had bought so much thing, I had to take taxi.’ ‘A very big taxi, I should imagine,’ I said. ‘I came to the pier for evening hovercraft, they are really very nice,
those boats. And here was this big fat man in green overcoat, and hat with little feather in it, waiting there also.’ ‘So there he was, Professor Codicil,’ I said, ‘Did you
already know him?’ ‘No, of course not,’ said Ildiko, ‘I had never met him before. He said he has never been in Budapest. He asked if I spoke German, I said, yes, I do. Then
he asked if I knew where was the Villa Barolo, where there was a very big congress.’ ‘So nobody met him,’ I said, ‘He just turned up out of the blue.’ ‘Yes, I
think from the blue,’ said Ildiko, ‘I told him I went there too, I could show him the way. I took him on the boat and we came back, just before the storm.’ ‘And on the boat
you talked to him?’ ‘Yes, I am a very polite person,’ said Ildiko.