Kraven Images (19 page)

He had long since abandoned hope that life could be simple. But why must it be daily twisted and knotted by the well-meaning interference of the feeble-minded? If he hoped to straighten out this particular stupidity, he would himself have to go to the History Department. Yes, he would have
to
make the trek across campus and confront Mrs Grieben with the irrefutable evidence of her idiocy. It was fortunate indeed that he had caught her error in time. England in April? Not while the warm sunshine, the palm trees, the luxurious pool at the Bel-Air beckoned.

There was a knock at the door. Kraven, upset and not yet thinking clearly, called out, ‘Come in.’ The door opened. A grinning Feibelman stood there. ‘Yoo-hoo, it’s me.’

Kraven had almost convinced himself that he alone had discovered in Gryllus the proof that Merlin was a Jew. But there still remained a small and dwindling area in his mind that acknowledged Feibelman’s primacy. The old man deserved a hearing. ‘As you see, I’m quite busy, Mr Feibelman. But I can spare you a couple of minutes. What is it?’

‘What I wanted to tell you this morning, Perfessor, was you wouldn’t see me any more this week.’ Feibelman advanced into the room and sat himself upon the chaise longue. ‘But after what you said in class, looks like I’m gonna see you after all, in Westwood yet. How about that?’

Kraven’s stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Have I got a son-in-law! You wouldn’t believe. A big person in Boston, a doctor, a specialist, ear, nose and throat, my daughter Sharon’s his wife. And he has a patient. Who should he be? Perfessor Terence Hill, the Harvard man, Mr Middle Ages, I don’t have to tell you.’

Kraven began to drown beneath Feibelman’s grin. In his stomach there burned a poisonous mineral. ‘Go on.’

‘A long story short, Morris happens to mention to Perfessor Hill my theory. Poor feller, he’s got inflammation of the inner ear, which, you can imagine, is painful. No problem, don’t worry, Morris knows right away what to do. What happens? This weekend Morris arranges on the telephone a three-way conversation, me, the perfessor, and Morris and
Sharon
.’ Feibelman frowned. ‘I don’t want you should take offence. In scholarship there’s room for many opinions. But in Harvard it’s possible Merlin is a Jew. So Perfessor Hill suggests maybe I should fly out to the conference. When it’s his turn to speak, he’s gonna give me a few minutes of his time. In particular, he says, he wants Perfessor Dillinger to hear what I have to say. So what you think? Not bad for an old man.’

Kraven, pale and in a cold sweat, feared he would puke.

‘Sharon, meanwhile, is calling all over LA, making sure I get kosher meals. If I tell her my own perfessor’s gonna be there, don’t worry, she’s gonna look out for you too. Listen, kosher food’s not so bad. Anyway, I thought you should know.’

Kraven swallowed bile. ‘Congratulations, Mr Feibelman.’

Feibelman got up. ‘By the way, naturally I’m interested, what you gonna talk about? That I don’t wanna miss.’

‘Mustn’t tip my hand,’ said Kraven. ‘Wait and see.’

‘Looks like you got yourself another customer,’ said Feibelman at the door. ‘Hiya, kid.’

The voluptuous Giulietta Corombona stood waiting.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Corombona,’ said Kraven in a modulated tone, ‘but I meant what I said. No conferences until I return.’

She grinned warmly at him and sashayed to the chaise longue. She was, thought Kraven, a casting director’s dream of Carmen, dark, damp, seductive, impudent, confident of her power. He sighed and closed the door. He would save more time by listening to her than by attempting to get rid of her.

‘Be brief, Miss Corombona.’

‘I’m kinda worried about my grade inna course.’

‘That’s scarcely surprising. In your place, so would I be.’

‘I’d do anything to get an A, know what I mean? Anything.’ She winked.

‘An A is perhaps rather out of your reach at this point, my dear. What is it so far, two Fs and a D? But it would help if you started to read the plays, perhaps contributed your mite to class discussion.’

Giulietta ran her hand slowly up her leg, taking with her enough of her skirt to reveal a wealth of thigh. ‘No, I mean you just like tell me what you want, Vietnamese massage, round the world, leather and whips, nursery romp…’ She parted her legs slightly, winked once more, and inflated another pink sphere. ‘Shit, I know education’s important. Last term I made the fucking Dean’s List. All you gotta do, you tell me how you like it.’

‘I think, Miss Corombona, you had better leave.’

She sat up smartly, offended, and began to dig around in her school bag. ‘You know what this is?’ She held in her hand a scrap of Aegean blue. ‘You’re nothing special. Gabe told me about you and Nome Berkowitz yesterday. This is from Gabe’s personal collection. He told me to bring it along. You gotta use it, he said, use it. Now all I gotta do is rip my T-shirt, yell “Rape!” you’ll be outta here so fast you’ll think you slipped on vaginal jelly.’ She put Nimuë’s panties back in her bag. ‘I just bet, one way or another, my grade’s gonna zoom, right?’ She closed her eyes and kissed the air.

A good commander knows when to call retreat. Kraven sighed. ‘Perhaps we can hope for a better grade by the end of the semester. We’ll talk again after my return from Los Angeles.’

‘I’ll be waiting for you.’ She reached for her bag and stood up.

The door closed behind her. Kraven collapsed into his chair.

How had it happened? Only minutes before, he had been en route to Los Angeles, his fingers as good as curling around an icy plastic tumbler, the first drink of his flight.
What
folly, what utter folly! He had paid too little heed to the cryptic warnings of anti-Kraven forces, had believed himself safe from demonic hostility in the New World. Hubris had brought him down. His eyes stung; he flushed; he gulped. What trick, what device, what starting-hole canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?

He picked up his travel voucher, intending to tear it in pieces, this bitterly ironic icon of his lost world, when he experienced a sudden epiphany. Oh, Kraven of little faith! Was it not likely that the Shaper himself had shown his hand in the apparent error of Tamara Grieben? He struck his forehead after the admired manner of Diotima von Hoden. And was not the Shaper’s hand resolved into a finger pointing to London? Likely? No, it was certain.

What a fool he had been! Looked at from his new vantage of understanding, the last few days had presented him with a series of promptings, of urgings, each a little stronger than the last. Kraven was able to see, albeit dimly, a hint of the Great Artificer’s plan. In the deep backward and abysm of time, something was shaping. His destiny called him; he would not shrink. Gallant Kraven would run to meet his future as another into a lover’s arms. Tonight. There must be no hesitation.

Airline voucher in hand, Kraven left his office. Eastward ho!

TO OUTWARD APPEARANCE
at least Aunt Cicely’s house was unchanged from the days when it was her father’s. A wooden gate bisected precisely the tall, well-trimmed hedge that marked off the property from the public pavement. From the gate a crazy-paving path snaked its way towards the arched front door. A robust English lawn on either side of the path led to border flowerbeds and rockeries and again to tall, well-trimmed hedges, these hiding Grandpa Blum’s front garden from the unwanted admiration of neighbours. The house itself was massive, three storeys, not counting the attic floor, and it was built in mock-Tudor style, white stucco over brick, non-functional aged beams between the floors, a plethora of quaint brick chimneys, leaded-light windows.

Kraven stood at the door and rang the bell. Of the rain that had greeted him at Heathrow there was no longer a trace; the sky, a lively blue, was punctuated here and there by friendly puffs of white cloud. He rang the bell again and heard footsteps. The door opened.

‘Hello, Aunt Cicely.’

There was a small shriek. ‘Nicholas! Is it really you? I can’t
believe
it! Come in, come in, do!’

This was his Aunt Cicely all right but a Cicely strangely altered. In the decade since last he had seen her she had shed ten years. She had put on weight; she was almost plump.
And
what had become of the wild mop of grey hair combed before breakfast and then allowed to follow its will? Cicely’s hair was now a rich reddish brown, modishly cut, and softly shaped. She was wearing cosmetics. Instead of the shapeless ‘sensible’ tweeds of yore, she had on a dress of colourful heavy silk.

‘You look absolutely spiffing!’

‘Ah, you rogue,’ she said, clearly delighted, ‘just like your father.’ She hugged him. ‘But what on earth has brought you here like this, so unexpectedly? Oh, no!
Not
my letter? How thoughtless of me! There was nothing urgent, nothing at all. I’m getting on, you know, and so there were things I wanted to talk about.’

Ah, but the letter had been one of the Divine Shaper’s promptings. ‘Not to worry. I’ve plenty of work to do at the British Library. I would have come anyway in the summer. Your letter merely focused my attention. Why wait? I thought. Luckily, a junior colleague was able to cover my lectures.’

‘It’s worked out well for you, then, this American adventure?’

‘Pretty well. We can’t expect total success. You remember Onkel Ferri and his demons?’

‘Indeed I do. A kindly man, if a bit
odd
, like
all
your lot.’

‘Look, I don’t suppose you could put me up for the night? I’ll book into a hotel tomorrow.’

‘No trouble at all. One of the spare bedrooms is all right. A bit damp, I expect, but if it’s only for the night, it’ll do. We can have it airing all day. Mr Fishbane’s in Grandpa’s old room, or you could have that.’

‘Mr Fishbane?’

‘How silly of me! You don’t know, how could you?’ For a moment she giggled, her hands held girlishly over her mouth, her eyelids lowered. ‘I have a boarder now, what a
lark
, eh? An elderly gentleman, by your standards, I suppose.
We
hit it off the moment we met, you know how such things sometimes go. And so you see, I’ve got a boarder.’ She lowered her eyes modestly. ‘He’s not
actually
a boarder, of course. No, he’s my friend, is Mr Fishbane, my special friend. It’s made
such
a difference.’

‘Well, perhaps it’s too inconvenient….’

‘Nonsense, won’t hear of it, not to worry. Besides, you’re here because of my letter – with Mr Fishbane’s connivance, as you’ve probably already guessed. But come along, you simply
must
meet him. You’ll like him, I know. Well, anybody would.’ She took her nephew by the hand and led him to the back of the house, through the scullery and into the kitchen.

In a rocking chair before the fire sat Mr Fishbane, old and diminutive, eating from a bowl of porridge that he held hugged to his chest, his head bent, the tip of his beaked nose almost in the milk. He wore a black waistcoat, unbuttoned, over a striped shirt whose detachable collar was elsewhere. A tartan shawl draped over his shoulders and tartan slippers depending wanly from his toes proclaimed him at once a Campbell and a McTavish. As they entered the kitchen, he looked up from his bowl: a thin sharp face from which red-rimmed eyes glittered oddly, as if covered in translucent webbing.

‘Percy, you’ll
never
guess! Look who it is. My nephew Nicholas, come to pay us a visit. Our letter certainly did the trick, didn’t it?’

‘Hiya, kiddo!’

‘Mr Fishbane lived in America for many years.’

‘Lewissohn Stadium, Third Avenue El, Ebbets Field,’ said Mr Fishbane. ‘Know New York like the back of me hand.’

‘Sit down, Nicholas, over there, at the table. Did you have a good flight? You must be exhausted. I’ll get you something to eat.’

‘Don’t trouble, I’m not in the least hungry.’

‘Rustle him up some toast.
And
a pot a tea.’ To still all protest, Fishbane held one hand with the flat of the palm towards Kraven. ‘No trouble, none at all.’ With his other hand he offered his empty bowl vaguely in the direction of Aunt Cicely, who took it from him, smiling proudly, and carried it off into the scullery. He had not once taken his glittery eyes off Kraven. ‘Okey-dokey, so you’re fresh in from the good old Hew Hess of Hay, right, mac?’

‘Aunt Cicely’s letter suggested urgency…’

‘Course, they did put down the Atlantic Cable a few years ago, or I miss my guess. A tootle on the blower would’ve done, would’ve done nicely.’ Fishbane removed a cigarette from its hiding place behind his ear and placed it between his lips, from which it hung limply and soon wetly.

‘Besides, I have the odd item to check at the British Library…’

‘I suppose you know the famous Karl Marx chair? You haven’t actually sat in it, have you?’

‘There
is
no Karl Marx chair, in point of fact. It’s something of a myth.’

‘Ah, yes, well,’ sneered Fishbane. ‘Something to keep the proletariat quiet, no doubt.’ He grinned in the manner of a debater who has scored a most telling point. ‘Ever been to Highgate Cemetery? It’s not far from here, worth a visit. He’s buried there, y’know – unless that turns out to be a myth too.’

Into the kitchen came Aunt Cicely, bearing tea and toast. Fishbane placed his gnarled claws on the arms of the rocking chair and shot himself energetically to his feet. Once on these he exercised his elbows for a moment, strutted like a bantam rooster to the table, and hopped on to a chair opposite Kraven, to whom he said courteously, ‘Everything jake, bub?’

‘Oh, quite.’

Thus assured, Fishbane bent over his toast and began to gobble.

‘I’ll leave the two of you to a nice chat,’ said Aunt Cicely. ‘Nicko’s room needs airing, Percy. I’m putting him in the one next to yours.’

Fishbane, busily chewing, waved his knife at her, as who should say, by all means, not to worry on my account.

They ate in silence, or, if not in silence, then without words.

Kraven looked out of the window. It was beginning to cloud up again. Low black clouds against a background of higher grey were racing in rapidly from the west. The leaves on the trees had begun to stir in anticipation of a weather change. And yet the sun still shone from the faultless blue that filled the rest of the sky. Rain or no rain, he would have to go out. He felt himself to be an intruder in the established domestic arrangements of others.