She implies a mild rebuke at whatever scepticism I have left unuttered. Despite my glance at the door she refuses to move. As if affected by the lowering, indistinct decay, she is momentarily childlike, uncertain whether to laugh or cry, in need to admit what adults might scorn.
Of her deepest beliefs I am still ignorant and can now only remember her refusal to travel on the ninth of the month, explaining nothing, seemingly instinctive as a bird’s recoil from an inhabited dwelling.
‘There may be something, Erich, which, for want of the more concrete, I can call divine. But inert, unless I contact it. Like music waiting release from the page. Or electricity still to be switched on. Muddle of wires, then Bang! Or else, we speak messages into a silent pool. If we really care, the water stirs.’
She frowns, analytical, on the scent but dissatisfied with data. ‘There’s an Orphic hymn, Erich: For all things Zeus has hidden within him and reveals them again in joyous Light. That flash of light unites Sky and Underworld. Like dancing. In a Gnostic text, Christ is a dancer. In a Vedic tradition, initiates Dance the God.’
I indulge in thoughts of her, masked, feathered, gyrating in a Mayan circle or Left Bank revue. ‘Oh!’ she interrupts, ‘There’s something else…’ but it eludes her, she looks around at the worn pillars, the drabness. ‘People imagined spirits trapped in buildings, in ships, by some curse, sin, mistake, and straining towards us, Merlin trapped in a tree, old people imprisoned in rest homes.’
Her voice tightens, is harsh, between the stone walls. ‘One day was dark as this place, with thunder lurking. Gypsies had vanished, like cattle during drought. Their tents, horses, zithers, pots, their hats, rings, great bracelets, their bears… all gone. They were very foreign; they frightened me but were part of our lives, like Jews. Like seasons and the wind. Strays from history, forgotten empires. From legend.’
Despite the warmth, she shivers, is stricken. ‘That terrible word, Resettlement.’ At last, back in the porch, she recovers. ‘If none of it were true, I would always believe it.’
Renewed by sunlight, we were glad of high air in spaces minutely deranged by heat. Far-off pastures gleamed, blinked under a passing cloud, then went clear as children’s cut-outs, the sea like a blue sash, a lorry fiery on a slice of road. Until reaching the cliffs, we were content to stay silent.
The sun lay on the horizon like a wounded dragon, as the Chinese might say, and must too often have done so. Golden florins were scattered over the wide, liquid mass.
‘I suppose,’ she was slow, musing, ‘we really do have to meet them.’
I looked towards the shuttered Villa Florentine. Had this been occupying her silence? Then I said, ‘We can protect ourselves with your scissors.’
Holding hands, we saw roofs below, now red, now purple, in the thickening sunset. ‘Erich, it could be the test of faith. To jump from this cliff, perfectly confident that we would at once grow wings.’
This I was reluctant to risk, and we were soon at Alain’s, hearing his praise of Americans in Vietnam. ‘We needed such boys in Algeria. During my Resistance days…’ After he resumed duties we drank well, outside, above the darkened but twinkling sea, enjoying the shuffle of waves, coastal lights, occasional glimpses of the movie behind the bar, young Alain leaping to horse, swiping the Cardinal’s Guards, receiving thanks from His Majesty.
‘I was reading, Nadja, of two French dukes, stranded in a wretched inn. Only one bed. But who should claim it?’
‘Why ask? He with the longest pedigree.’
‘Yes. So they disputed. One traced his descent from Philip the Fair, the other to Philip Augustus. Citations of Montmorencys, Condés, Longuevilles, Alençons, were countered like fireworks by Valois, Rohans, Talleyrand-Périgords, then back to Charlemagne, to Pepin le Bref. Solomon was mentioned, Adam invoked…’
‘Such are dukes! And so? But do not tell me. By dawn, unable to agree, they must both have slept on the floor, the bed empty between them.’
Affection kept pace with the wine. Within, regulars were arriving, Alain in foreground, filling glasses, in background, receiving not dukes’ expostulations but insolence from a Palais Royal pastry cook.
That night, rain fell, unpredicted, blowing in from the sea, falling in noisy gushes. Refusing credit, Nadja ascribed it to André of Sudden Tears, local saint, with a flair for responding to popular woes, often clumsily; once, when a village pump cracked, sending a catastrophic flood.
‘Don’t you think it is time…?’
‘Whenever is it not?’
We had for too long shirked decision, the Villa suspended above us, foreboding, as if a wolf might grin at our window. Simply by existing, the Latvians threatened our peace, whether or not they were, in truth, part of the dim, frontierless trade in lives, identities, turncoat deals with nameless surveillance committees, alternative regimes. Once more, I pondered the possibility, scientific or self-induced, of fate.
‘We are,’ Nadja spoke as if to a seminar, ‘about to go. I cannot imagine why you wait around.’
So, in early evening, our nonchalance unconvincing, we sauntered up the white, warm road, expecting the Villa’s gates to be triple locked, safeguarding a midget fortress with mantraps and Cocteau deceptions. Disappointingly, they opened at a touch.
‘You have not been correctly right.’ Stress always dislocated her syntax.
Safely penetrating a garden as if sterilized by some malign sorcerer, we lost bravado, were children risking a dare. The Villa, off-white, pinkish, was stained, flaking, soundless and, with its tight shutters and curtains, as if blind, though eyes must be watching, weapons greased. Birds, leaves, even a cloud, were in suspense, that in which the western hero and villain stare each other down, throwing long, sharp shadows, hands hovering for the final shot.
At the door I stepped aside, eyes averted but with marked graciousness allowing her rights of leadership. She bowed, then imperiously pointed from me to the knocker, and, outstaged, I intended a tentative tap, though producing a bang emphatic as a declamation. This induced from Nadja a chortle, subdued, misplaced, but nothing more. Another attempt, less tempestuous, again unavailing, and, relieved, duty done, we turned to depart, only, wrong-footed, to confront a man who had silently stalked us. Without resemblance to the haystack uitlander, he was middle-aged, stocky, with bleached, untidy wisps of hair, high forehead, a face wide and creased, small pale-blue eyes, one of which, in the Herr General’s term, lazy, not blind but loose, probably focusing incorrectly. In denim and clean cotton shirt, he appeared Baltic in appearance and lack of spontaneous, uproarious welcome, though more enquiring than threatening, and his small smile made foolish our expectations of uncontrolled ferocity.
Nadja, in her ruthless mood, left me to introduce ourselves as neighbours anxious to be, well, neighbourly. It sounded grotesquely, insultingly false. The smile opposite relapsed into suspicion, suggesting he was not hearing but smelling my words, testing them for health precautions, preliminary to an unfavourable verdict, until in harsh, cracked French he jerked an arm, like a traffic cop, and delivered sentence.
‘You may enter.’
Meekly, we followed him into a large, unshuttered, frowsty, all-purpose back room, with stove and sink, overlooking a protective shrubbery. No trace of our former friends, their framed reproductions, cheerful records, colourful cushions. Instead, a Monet was replaced by a dirty mirror from which a fragment of sky accosted us like a warrant. Also, it would reveal anyone approaching the house from behind. Overall, a fortification of books, heavy table and lamps, boxes, plates, bottles, overseen by a big, lumpy woman, fair, straggle-haired, without make-up, muddy brown eyes unmistakably hostile. In coarse green jacket and trousers, she was motionless for a minute, before moving to her man’s side, so that we were facing each other in pairs, as if for a square dance.