I said nothing. I had put this together with the words I’d seen on the brass plaque. Verovkin, Sciences de l’Orient ancien.
‘You’re a doctor, too?’
‘Of sorts. A haematologist.’
‘Yes, you said. So you won’t buy any of this I’m telling you. But don’t worry. It’s your mind that’s closed. That’s all.’
I started to feel a little nettled by these remarks, especially because she was right. It sounded like a load of hokum to me.
Yet I didn’t want her to go. I tried to think of something that might keep her interested in me.
But she was already standing.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. I better go. And you have to go back to your conference. And then home to Cambridge, I guess?’
‘Cambridge awaits me,’ I confirmed, solemnly. ‘After the weekend. And you, you have to go back to your studies. To Saint Eulalia, I suppose?’
She stopped putting her coat on when I said that.
It was a lucky guess, something I’d plucked out of the air that I’d once heard Hunter talk about. I knew no more about it than the name and that it was the story of an early Christian martyr.
‘Isn’t that the sort of thing you’re studying, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia? That kind of thing?’
‘Oh, so you’re not as uneducated as you make yourself out to be?’
‘I’ve read a book or two,’ I said, feigning modesty, apparently quite well. I decided to confess. ‘Something my friend Hunter spoke to me about.’
She suddenly looked more interested.
‘In Cambridge . . . ?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘What’s your friend’s surname?’
‘Wilson. Why?’
‘You know Hunter Wilson?’ she said, in genuine surprise. ‘The Hunter Wilson?’
‘I don’t know about “the”, but he’s one of my best friends. Why?’
‘Because he’s the greatest living Dante scholar, that’s why.’
That surprised me in turn, but I knew I had an advantage to play and I didn’t want to let it show. I knew Hunter had a passing interest in Dante, had written a book or two on him, outside of his work in the Faculty of English. Almost as a hobby.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He writes on Dante. Why do you ask?’
‘Yes, well, I ask because my PhD is on a particular motif in Dante.’
She looked thoughtful for a while.
‘Anyway, I have to do some reading before bed. I’d better go . . .’
She hesitated, and I stood, smiling.
‘Listen, Charles. Maybe you’d like to meet for a drink over the weekend? Yes? It would be nice to chat some more.’
I smiled, and told her that would be lovely, and though I already knew she only wanted to see what she could find out about Hunter, I didn’t care. We arranged to meet the following day, Friday, outside the museum in Saint-Germain. She had an English lesson to give first.
‘You’re more interesting than you look,’ she said, her teasing nature returning, and I didn’t mind at all, because I could see it was good-natured. ‘Are all Englishmen like you?’
I laughed.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘More or less.’
She left, and I sat down again, watching her go.
‘More,’ I quietly said to myself, ‘or less.’
I emptied my glass.
Chapter 9
The weather on that Friday started no more kindly than the day before, and up at Saint-Germain the wind sliced through the town, and me.
As soon as the conference had finished for the day, I’d headed for Saint-Lazare again, ignoring the invitations to dinner from various delegates. I doubted their sincerity anyway, wondering if I would be the slaughtered calf at some dinner party to further my humiliation, and I didn’t relish the thought of dragging my way through an evening of more of that. Lucien came up to me and tried to persuade me to join him, but I had decided not to be taken in. Just because he was smiling then didn’t mean I was going to be welcomed back into the fold after my disastrous paper.
Instead, I went up to Saint-Germain early, well ahead of the time Marian and I were supposed to meet. There were things I wanted to look at.
It was already growing dark as I got to the park, a long, long piece of old estate land that stretched away from the chateau, along the ridge overlooking the river and the city, before spreading out ‘inland’ and becoming the Forêt de Saint-Germain.
I recognised the first stretch of manicured parkland as an old riding gallops, and set off that way. The only road was far behind me now, away to my left. From time to time a motor car trundled along it, sending long shadows of tree trunks raking across the park like dark fingers. Otherwise, I was alone.
My hunch was right: at the far end of the ride stood a small chateau. Dusk had come and gone and the lights of the building twinkled warmly, a gentle orange spilling from each one across the wet grass towards me, where I stood at the tall black railings. Even in the dusk I could see that though the chateau was old, it had been refurbished very recently, and I knew it was almost certainly the margrave’s.
Knowing that in the growing darkness I could not be seen from the house, even if someone were to look straight at me, I stood and let my gaze wander over the small but grand building. I don’t know what, if anything, I expected to see, but I considered the story Marian had told me.
Anton Verovkin.
An Estonian margrave, to boot. His life in exile presumably began as a small boy on the outbreak of the Revolution – maybe the troubles in 1905, maybe 1917. I knew nothing about Estonia, and that was a problem. There was nothing I could find fault with in her account of her patron’s life, but that was perhaps simply because I was ignorant. I didn’t even know if Verovkin was an Estonian name. It sounded more Russian to me, but almost the only thing I did know about Estonia and all the countries in that region was that they had been fought over and owned by many different rulers in their time, Swedish, German, Russian, and so the names of nobility might therefore descend from almost anywhere, and might have been altered half a dozen times as battles were fought and lost and allegiances changed.
I didn’t even know what a margrave was. Was that higher or lower than a count? I had no idea, royalty not being something I had ever taken much interest in.
I stared at the chateau.
There was a little movement inside, and one or two curtains were drawn.
I shivered. There was nothing to be found here, and I turned back to the town, walking briskly to try and get warm again.
I had an hour before I was due to meet Marian, and as I came back past the Musée, I saw it was still open.
I headed inside, to warm up as much as anything else, and wandered around the museum, remembering my last visit there: the American soldiers amused by the Major and me, and little Monsieur Dronne.
Lost in reverie, I realised I’d wandered into a room of Palaeolithic artefacts. A museum guide stood a couple of feet away; a middle-aged woman looking tired and bored, flexing her ankles uncomfortably from time to time.
‘Monsieur Dronne travaille toujours ici?’ I asked, and had to ask again because my accent was so poor.
The guide looked vaguely puzzled.
‘Je ne vois pas qui c’est,’ she said.
So he’d retired, or maybe he had died. It was only seven years, but it was very possible.
An impulse entered me. I wanted to find those little figures I had seen with the Major that day.
‘Madame, s’il vous plaît, la Venus de Bastennes, où est-elle?’
The guide looked at me strangely then. I had obviously said something that changed the way she thought about me, and she seemed even more puzzled than before.
‘Non, monsieur. Elle a été perdue. Pendant la guerre. Pendant la guerre, nous avons perdu beaucoup de choses. Trop de choses.’
I opened my mouth to argue with her, trying to scrape the correct French together to tell her that I’d seen it, that
I’d seen the Venus of Bastennes with my own eyes, and had held it, and other pieces, in my own hands, but then I thought that maybe it was best not to tell her. Who knew what had happened in the last days of the war?
Maybe old M Dronne had retired and now had a private collection of his own, kept in secret in his little apartment somewhere. Or maybe it had just been stolen one day.
I left, thanking her for her trouble, and as I ambled on through the museum, I realised something else; that what was wrong with the Venus was what was wrong with the margrave.
The end of the war, the end of any war, was the perfect place to hide, to change yourself, to become something and someone else. There are far too many other things to worry about, as an occupied land is restored and repaired, to question the validity of every story you’re told. And after all, Paris in 1944, I knew, must have been full of many stories stranger than the one about the Estonian count suddenly rebuilding a tiny ruined chateau at the edge of a park.
He might well be the Margrave Verovkin, once of Estonia. Or then again he might be anyone else at all with a knowledge of Russian and a large amount of money.
Chapter 10
I met Marian in the brasserie where I’d first seen her with Verovkin. I caught sight of her as she crossed from the other side of the square, by the steps of the grand church opposite the museum, and watched her come towards the restaurant, walking slowly through the steady rain despite the fact that she didn’t have an umbrella.
She seemed tired and cold when she arrived, so I ordered cognac again, which she drank quickly.
She smiled.
‘What are we eating?’
‘You’re the local, you tell me,’ I answered and watched her as she perused the menu. She looked just as lovely as before; still, I thought, not beautiful, but her face was fascinating to me. As she read, drops of rainwater formed on the end of a ringlet by her forehead and, having become too swollen, dripped on to the table. She noticed and drew her fingertip through the water in slow circles. The drops of water clung to themselves, rising from the dark red lacquer of the varnished tabletop. It was, somehow, incredibly erotic, and I had to pull my eyes away for fear I might embarrass myself.
‘Bouillabaisse,’ she said firmly, and I ordered that and some red wine.
‘How’re the English lessons coming along?’ I asked. It was the most innocuous way I could think of to get her to talk about Verovkin. I wondered again whether I should tell her my suspicions about him, warn her that she was in danger, but the time wasn’t right. Even to me it sounded fantastical and I needed to wait until I knew for sure. If I let her talk she might tell me something that would confirm it for me, one way or another. So I let it lurk in the back of my mind, unsaid.
‘Well,’ she answered. ‘Very well. It’s good for me to learn how to teach. It will make my writing better too, I think.’
‘Yes, that could be true,’ I said. ‘So, what’s his first language? Russian? Estonian? German maybe, if he grew up in Austria and Switzerland?’
‘He speaks lots of languages. I’ve never heard him speak any of them really, apart from French, of course, though occasionally he says something to me in Russian. Just little pleasantries I suppose. I don’t know if he speaks Estonian, he left when he was a boy and the nobility spoke Russian or French, didn’t they? His vowel sounds are hard to place. Maybe that’s the German mixture in there . . . I’m no linguist.’
‘Yet you speak excellent French.’
‘So would you if you lived here for a couple of years.’
I conceded that point.
‘How is your conference?’ she asked politely.
I thought about it. It struck me that something had changed. I had seen this conference as an exciting opportunity, as the start of my career proper, as a chance to make my mark. Instead, it had been a failure for me personally, and even more disturbing than that, I realised I didn’t even care. Something had changed. The coincidence of seeing Verovkin had pushed all thoughts of my work aside, and now I found myself thinking mostly about one person.
Maybe for the first time, I actually questioned whether being a doctor was what I wanted to do. Or whether it was just something I had found myself doing.
‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘There were some very interesting discussions today on the differential diagnoses between acute lymphatic and acute myelogenous forms of the disease.’
I stopped.
‘Really?’ she said. Her eyes were holding mine, shining. Her hair dripped again and she shook her head to flick off the water.
‘Yes, really,’ I said, laughing. Then, ‘No, not really, not at all.’
Our wine arrived and our food not long after that and as we ate, Marian began to grow more lively again, more animated.
‘Just the thing for a damp day outside.’
I agreed, and saw her come to life before me, waving her hands around as she spoke, talking about the places she’d seen in Europe, the places she wanted to go next.
‘And Paris,’ she said. ‘There’s still so much to see here. God, I love this town.’
‘Where do you come from?’ I asked. ‘Where’s home?’
She darkened slightly at the memory of her family.
‘New York. The Hamptons.’
And though I knew little of American geography, I knew that meant that when she’d said her parents had money, they had serious money.
‘It’s my sister I miss the most,’ she said, suddenly, bluntly.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think of painful things.’
‘That’s OK. I’d fought too much with my parents to stay. It had to happen. They were never going to understand that the world has changed, that it’s not the one they grew up in. Even Amagansett. I just miss my sister.’
‘Do you write to her?’
Marian nodded.
‘But I don’t often hear back. It’s possible they’re hiding my letters.’
‘They’d do that? I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and suddenly looked so miserable I wanted to put my hand out to touch her. I didn’t.
I poured her some more wine.
‘So, what do you want to know about Hunter?’ I asked, smiling.
She laughed. ‘Was it that obvious?’
I nodded.
‘So, you know, I’ve been thinking. Easter is coming and I have some time off. I’ve never been to England, well, apart from the stopover at London airport . . .’
She trailed off, for once seeming unconfident, and I decided to help her out.
‘Would you like to meet Hunter?’
She almost exploded with joy.
‘Oh yes, yes, I would, very much. Do you think he’d mind? Do you think you could arrange it?’
I held up my hand.
‘It would be a pleasure. I’ll call him as soon as I get back. And, you know, Hunter is also a very good host. We’ll dine well.’
So it was settled that Marian would visit. I would find her a room in Caius if I could, or Hunter might be able to swing something at Sidney.
After a while, she began to grow tired again, though we spoke for a little while more, about her studies and the doctorate. It seemed Marian felt she’d get her PhD effortlessly if she just once met the great, as she called him, Hunter Wilson.
It amused me to see someone I thought of as just a good friend idolised in this way, and I asked Marian if she would be able to speak in his presence.
‘You try and shut me up,’ was her reply.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you haven’t really told me anything about this research of yours. Just that it’s something to do with Dante.’
‘Blood,’ she said.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘It’s about blood, how blood is used in The Divine Comedy. What it means.’
‘What it means?’
She nodded, but I wasn’t really listening to her reply, because two other thoughts had hurried into my mind.
The first was
this: blood. Of course it would be blood.
And the second made clear something that had been nagging at me ever since Marian had sat down with me that evening. That she looked paler than the day I had met her. Much, much paler.
Chapter 11
Almost as soon as I boarded my flight home, a few bald thoughts hit me, the main one being this: what on earth was I doing?
I’d flown to Paris with dreams of a glittering career in medicine; I’d come home feeling decidedly jaded about academia, and having invited the friend of a man I suspected to be a murderer to visit me, but the trouble was that I wasn’t sure about anything. It was true that I had begun to doubt what I had seen in Saint-Germain, both on my present trip, and even in 1944. If that sounds odd, believe only that I have often pondered the nature of memory; the way in which we can distort our memories over time, so that as the years pass something is exaggerated, added to, subtracted from, or otherwise twisted to the point where it no longer has much basis in reality. Sometimes, perhaps, these changes are not significant, but at other times a whole memory can be effectively destroyed, reduced to nothing – or created from nothing.
And as time passes, the mind can play various tricks. I once had a memory, for example, of something that I was sure had happened in my childhood: of falling from an apple tree and my father catching me. Years later, my mother told me it was a dream I’d reported having at the age of six; that it had never actually happened. Yet I still remember telling it to my friend Donald when we were undergrads as though it were the historical truth, because somehow in my mind it had become just that.
I wondered if I had done something like that with my encounter in the hole in the ground, but then there had been the blood, the blood on the ground when I went back for a second look. I could still smell it if I closed my eyes, and sense its warmth.
Still, it was too late by then. Marian had my phone number and we had arranged a tentative date for her arrival. To meet the great Hunter Wilson.
Hunter himself guffawed at that when I phoned him the evening I got back, but said he’d be delighted to help if he could, and at the very least he had a recipe for pork belly that he was keen to try out on me.