‘By no means.’
He gazed upwards soulfully. ‘It’s so sad. I can never make the truth sound convincing. Of course, I look so shifty. I should stick to lying, shouldn’t I?’
‘Where was it you saw Pashik before?’
‘Ah, I have your interest. If only I can keep it until the knock-out drops that I slipped into your drink begin to work, all will be well.’
Involuntarily I looked down at my glass.
He grinned. ‘You’re really very tiresome, aren’t you, Foster dear? If I didn’t want badly to know what makes you worth killing, I wouldn’t say another word.’
‘It’s late. I’m very tired. And-’
‘And it’s always so upsetting to be shot at,’ he said quickly. ‘How inconsiderate of me not to remember that!’
‘I wasn’t apologizing.’
‘Of course you weren’t. You were just hoping that I’d cut the cackle. I do understand. These affectations of mine are such a bore. All right. Let’s talk about Georghi Pashik — why he exists and in whose image he is made. What has he told you about himself?’
‘He was expelled from Italy for writing something Mussolini didn’t agree with. He did his military service in Austria. He admires Myrna Loy. The last item I deduced for myself from a picture in his office.’
‘She must be his spiritual mum, don’t you think? All right, here it is. Technically, a stateless person. Born in the Trentino, of Macedonian Greek parents who were themselves of doubtful national status. He takes Hungarian nationality. Treaty of Trianon muddle. He does his military service in Austria. He goes eventually to Paris and works for Havas as a messenger. Intelligent, ambitious, a worker. He writes odd pieces. He gets on. Eventually they give him a job in the Rome office. He gets important. Then he’s expelled, which is all very difficult because he’s married an Italian girl and the squadristi make it hot for her family. He has a lot of trouble squaring things. After a bit his wife dies and he returns here to the home of his forefathers with very peculiar ideas about the way the world ought to be run.’
‘What sort of ideas?’
‘I’m coming to that. Well, the war breaks out and in 1940 Georghi skips to Cairo. For a time he’s on a newspaper there, then he decides that it’s time to do a little war work and gets taken on as an interpreter by the British. Later on, when the United States Middle East contingent arrives, he is transferred to them. In 1945 he turns up in an American Civil Affairs unit in Germany.’
‘Still as an interpreter?’
‘Still as an interpreter. Only by now he has a bastard sort of uniform and is working in a DP camp near Munich. He worked under an American Major named Macready. I had business there, and that’s where I first saw Georghi and got to know about him.’
‘What was your business?’
‘Intelligence — the British lot.’ He caught a glance I gave him. ‘Oh dear me, no! Not any more. I was just the wartime variety, uniform and everything. I was liaising with an American who was on the same job as me — checking up on the bad boys who’d gone to earth in the DP camps and then digging them out — and it was this man who told me about Georghi. Another drink?’
‘I think I will.’
‘That’s good. There’s another bottle in there if we run short or if Georghi comes home. All right, then. We go back to the time Georghi went over to the Americans in Cairo. Almost the first thing that happened was that he was sent up to a small hill town in the Lebanon with a Lieutenant, a Tech Sergeant, and an enlisted man. The job was to operate a radio station monitoring an intelligence network operating in the Balkans. I believe there was some short-wave oddity that determined their position, but that’s not important. The thing was that our Georghi was stuck out in the wilderness for nearly a year with three Americans who didn’t like it either and talked about home. I don’t know anything about the Sergeant and the enlisted man, but the Lieutenant was a radio engineer named Kromak and he came from Passaic, Jersey. Do you know the Lebanon?’
I shook my head.
‘In the evenings the sky is like wine and the shadows falling across the terraces have purple edges to them. Overhead, vines — grape and other things with big flowers and a wonderful smell. Everything is very still and warm and soft. It’s the kind of atmosphere in which myths are born and the pictures in your mind’s eye seem more real than the chair you’re sitting on. I wax lyrical, you see. However, the point is that Lieutenant Kromak talked about Passaic, New Jersey, and read aloud his wife’s letters while Georghi listened. He heard about Molly’s graduation and Michael’s camp counsellor, about Sue’s new baby and the seeding of the front lawn. He heard about the new refrigerator and the shortage of gasoline, about his friend Pete Staal, the dentist, and the Rotary Anns. He heard about the mouse in the cedar closet and the new screens that had been bought for the porch. And when the weekly letter was exhausted, the reminiscences would begin. “Pete Staal, Pete Staal,” Kromak would say dreamily, “a good dentist and a lovable son-of-a-bitch, but what a crazy guy! I remember the night Kitty and me, the Deckers, and the Staals went to Rossi’s — that’s an Italian restaurant at the far end of Franklin Street — and had ravioli. Ever had ravioli? At Rossi’s they make the best ravioli in the world. Well, we didn’t want to take two cars, so we rode down in mine. A Dodge I had then. Well, right after we’d eaten, Helen said she wanted to go over to the Nutley Field Club. That made Pete mad and he said that if she was going to Nutley he was going to fly down to Wilmington to see his mother. Of course, he knew what Helen really wanted — to see Marie and Dane Schaeffer — I told you about them, remember? Well…” And on he went while Georghi listened and drank it in. Do you know Passaic, New Jersey?’
‘No.’
‘Chemical plants and some light industry and the homes of the people who have to work there. But to Georghi Pashik, looking through the eyes of Lieutenant Kromak, who wanted so much to be back with the wife and kids, it must have represented a paradise of domestic security and gracious living. You know how it is? Lots of quite intelligent Europeans have fantastic notions about the way most Americans live. Sitting on that terrace in a Lebanon hill town, poor, unhappy, exiled Georghi must have been a pushover for the American way of life. Just to put it in terms of food — reason might tell him that the ravioli he’d get in Rossi’s on Franklin Street, Passaic, would not be as good as he’d eaten already in Rome and Florence, but Rossi’s ravioli had become the desirable ones. They had the approval of those legendary figures the Staals, the Deckers, and the Schaeffers, and that was what mattered. He began to understand why the Americans didn’t like the Lebanese they came in contact with. Lebanese standards of sanitation and behaviour are not those of Passaic, New Jersey. Georghi heard local ways that he had accepted or failed even to notice condemned quite angrily. He was troubled and began to question himself. You see what was happening, of course? Along with his dream of Passaic, New Jersey, he was beginning to acquire an American conscience.’
He paused for a moment to swallow another drink and fill my glass.
‘How much are you embroidering this story?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Not much. But the man who told me was an American and he could reproduce that Kromak stuff so you’d think you were really listening to him. I just give you the bits I remember and fill in the rest. The effect’s the same, though. Anyway, after nearly a year of the American Way and Purpose according to Lieutenant Kromak, Georghi was shifted back to Cairo. Americans again, only this time the high priest was a dairy chemist from Minnesota and the dream was in a slightly higher income bracket. Georghi read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Gettysburg Address. After that there was a filling-station proprietor from Oakland, California. He was followed by an insurance man from Hagerstown, Maryland. Then came 1944 and the surrender negotiations between Deltchev and the Anglo-American representatives. There was a British military mission operating with the partisans in Macedonia at that time. They controlled quite a large area and had a landing strip, so it wasn’t too difficult to arrange the meetings. The Anglo-Americans flew in from Foggia. Deltchev travelled overland somehow. They met in a village schoolroom. Georghi was one of the interpreters. It was after the second meeting that Georghi’s little cap went over the windmill.’