‘They gave me their word..
‘The car turned over too many times.’
‘They said it would be just a warning.’
‘It is still a warning. Go in and tell h-him that Raul is dead.’
The hiss of the tape went on a moment; a door closed.
‘Do you still say you know nothing of Raul?’ Segura asked. Wormold looked at Beatrice. She made a slight negative motion of her head. Wormold said, ‘I give you my word of honour, Segura, that I didn’t even know he existed until tonight.’
Segura moved a piece. ‘Your word of honour?’
‘My word of honour.’
‘You are Milly’s father. I have to accept it. But stay away from naked women and the professor’s wife. Good night, Mr Wormold.’ ‘Good night.’
They had reached the door when Segura spoke again. ‘And our game of checkers, Mr Wormold. We won’t forget that.’
The old Hillman was waiting in the street. Wormold said, ‘I’ll leave you with Milly.’
‘Aren’t you going home?’
‘It’s too late to sleep now.’
‘Where are you going? Can’t I come with you?’
‘I want you to stay with Milly in case of accidents. Did you see that photograph?’
‘Yes.’
They didn’t speak again before Lamparilla. Then Beatrice said, ‘I wish you hadn’t given your word of honour. You needn’t have gone as far as that.’ ‘No?’
‘Oh, it was professional of you, I can see that. I’m sorry. It’s stupid of me. But you are more professional than I ever believed you were.’ He opened the street-door for her and watched her move away among the vacuum cleaners like a mourner in a cemetery.
At the door of Dr Hasselbacher’s apartment house he rang the bell of a stranger on the second floor whose light was on. There was a buzz and the door unlatched. The lift stood ready and he took it up to Dr Hasselbacher’s flat. Dr Hasselbacher too had apparently not found sleep. A light shone under the crack of the door. Was he alone or was he in conference with the taped voice? He was beginning to learn the caution and tricks of his unreal trade. There was a tall window on the landing which led to a purposeless balcony too narrow for use. From this balcony he could see a light in the doctor’s flat and it was only a long stride from one balcony to another. He took it without looking at the ground below. The curtains were not quite drawn. He peered between.
Dr Hasselbacher sat facing him wearing an old pickeihaube helmet, a breastplate, boots, white gloves, what could only be the ancient uniform of a Uhian. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be asleep. He was wearing a sword, and he looked like an extra in a film-studio. Wormold tapped on the window. Dr Hasselbacher opened his eyes and stared straight at him. ‘Hasselbacher.’
The doctor gave a small movement that might have been panic. He tried to whip off his helmet, but the chinstrap prevented him.
‘It’s me, Wormold.’
The doctor came reluctantly forward to the window. His breeches were far too tight. They had been made for a younger man.
‘What are you doing there, Mr Wormold?’
‘What are you doing there, Hasselbacher?’
The doctor opened the window and let Wormold in. He found that he was in the doctor’s bedroom. A big wardrobe stood open and two white suits hung there like the last teeth in an old mouth. Hasselbacher began to take off his gloves. ‘Have you been to a fancy-dress dance, Hasselbacher?’ Dr Hasselbacher said in a shamed voice, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ He began piece by piece to rid himself of his paraphernalia first the gloves, then the helmet, the breastplate, in which Wormold and the furnishings of the room were reflected and distorted like figures in a hail of mirrors. ‘Why did you come back? Why didn’t you ring the bell?’
‘I want to know who Raul is.’
‘You know already.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
Dr Hasselbacher sat down and pulled at his boots.
‘Are you an admirer of Charles Lamb, Dr Hasselbacher?’ ‘Milly lent it me. Don’t you remember how she talked of it…?’ He sat forlornly in the bulging breeches. Wormold saw that they had been unstitched along a seam to allow room for the contemporary Hasselbacher. Yes, he remembered now the evening at the Tropicana.
‘I suppose,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘this uniform seems to you to need an explanation.’
‘Other things need one more.’
‘I was a Uhian officer -oh, forty-five years ago.’
‘I remember a photograph of you in the other room. You were not dressed like that. You looked more -practical.’
‘That was after the war started. Look over there by my dressing-table
1913, the June manoeuvres, the Kaiser was inspecting us.’ The old brown photograph with the photographer’s indented seal in the corner showed the long ranks of the cavalry, swords drawn, and a little Imperial figure with a withered arm on a white horse riding by. ‘It was all so peaceful,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘in those days.’
‘Peaceful?’
‘Until the war came.’
‘But I thought you were a doctor.’
‘I became one later. When the war was over. After I’d killed a man. You kill a man -that is so easy,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘it needs no skill. You can be certain of what you’ve done, you can judge death, but to save a man -that takes more than six years of training, and in the end you can never be quite sure that it was you who saved him. Germs are killed by other germs. People just survive. There is not one patient whom I know for certain that I saved, but the man I killed I know him. He was Russian and he was very thin. I scraped the bone when I pushed the steel in. It set my teeth on edge. There was nothing but marshes around, and they called it Tannenberg. I hate war, Mr Wormold.’ ‘Then why do you dress up like a soldier?’
‘I was not dressed up in this way when I killed a man. This was peaceful. I love this.’ He touched the breastplate beside him on the bed. ‘But there we had the mud of the marches on us.’ He said, ‘Do you never have a desire, Mr Wormold, to go back to peace? Oh no, I forget, you’re young, you’ve never known it. This was the last peace for any of us. The trousers don’t fit any more.’ ‘What made you tonight want to dress up like this, Hasselbacher?’ ‘A man’s death.’ ‘Raul?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Did you know him?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Tell me about him.’ ‘I don’t want to talk.’
‘It would be better to talk.’
‘We were both responsible for his death, you and I,’ Hasselbacher ‘said. ‘I don’t know who trapped you into it or how, but if I had refused to help them they would have had me deported. What could I do out of Cuba now? I told you I had lost papers.’
‘What papers?’
‘Never mind that. Don’t we all have something in the past to worry about? I know why they broke up my flat now. Because I was a friend of yours. Please go away, Mr Wormold. Who knows what they might expect me to do if they knew you were here?’
‘Who are they?’
‘You know that better than I do, Mr Wormold. They don’t introduce themselves.’ Something moved rapidly in the next room. ‘Only a mouse, Mr Wormold. I keep a little cheese for it at night.’
‘So Milly lent you Lamb’s Tales.’
‘I’m glad you have changed your code,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘Perhaps now they will leave me alone. I can’t help them any longer. One begins with acrostics and crosswords and mathematical puzzles and then, before you know, you are employed…. Nowadays we have to be careful even of our hobbies.’ ‘But Raul -he didn’t even exist. You advised me to lie and I lied. They were nothing but inventions, Hasselbacher.’
‘And Cifuentes? Are you telling me he didn’t exist either?’
‘He was different. I invented Raul.’
‘Then you invented him too well, Mr Wormold. There’s a whole file on him now.’
‘He was no more real than a character in a novel.’