They went up to the first floor.
'You'll have to wait a while for Peter,' she said. 'He's with an inspector from the centre. They're always nosing about. They'd love to find something wrong. Or at least to find something missing from the inventory. But they won't catch him out like that.'
'How will they catch him out?'
'They won't,' she said, and for a moment she looked almost annoyed. 'Peter respects the rules and only does
what's permitted. But as you well know, there are areas where almost everything is permitted.' Perhaps she suddenly regretted saying this because she added quickly: 'Even so, they won't leave him alone. Just last month they came to get him twice. They say they're from Criminal Investigations, but it's always the same people, the ones who are trying to drive us out of here.' As if trying to change the subject, she stopped in front of a door. 'Wait, let me show you something.' She unlocked the door, and he looked into a room containing several pieces of baroque furniture wrapped in sheets of translucent plastic. A fresco on one wall was disfigured by a layer of mould, and the parquet flooring was buckling in several places.
'They're trying to blame this on him too,' she said. 'At the end of the summer, a gale lifted off a piece of the roof, and we've been trying ever since to find someone to repair the hole. Peter covered it with tar-paper, but every time it rains the water gets in. It's a pity you're not a roofer. But maybe you can take a couple of pictures, and we'll send them to the ministry. Or you could make a film.'
'I doubt that they'd approve it.'
'I forgot, you have to have everything approved.'
'I can take some snapshots for you.'
He sat down in a chair facing the mouldy wall. The fresco depicted the birth of Venus. The goddess reminded him of the woman standing beside him, with long, golden hair tumbling down to her waist: he saw an infinite tenderness in both their faces. A big brown blotch was creeping down the wall, coming closer and closer to the goddess, threatening to swallow up her features.
A child was crying somewhere in the house. Alice had become distracted.
'Go and feed the children. Just ignore me.'
'You can come along.'
'I'll stay here. I'd like to take a good look at this mouldy fresco.'
He was alone. He could hear quiet music coming through the wall. The dogs were barking outside. What was he doing here? Why had he come?
Because he didn't have a home of his own.
He went from home to home, from castle to castle, like a wandering minstrel. Except that the minstrel had a lute and a song to offer. He had nothing.
What could a wandering photographer offer?
To take a picture.
A picture of what?
A picture of everything that could be captured on film: a hand, legs, clouds, snakes, banners, mouldy goddesses, presidents, faces, truncheons, naked bodies, flowers, hypodermic needles, fences, volcanic explosions.
What was a picture?
A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.
What if he were just to leave quietly? After all, he had dropped in uninvited and he knew he didn't belong here. But where did he belong?
On a pile of old pictures.
He was lying to himself. He hadn't come because he was looking for a home. He'd come because he was looking for an alibi. One day he would be able to say: I was never ashamed of my friends. That is, if there was anyone to say that to. If anyone would listen. But he was still lying to himself. He was here because he needed, every so often, to see Alice.
Venus was looking at him tenderly. Her long blonde hair was waving in the wind, and flowers were drifting down around her. Suddenly he heard a stifled sob. He jumped. 'What's going on?'
Silence.
'Were you crying?'
Silence. A sob.
'Why are you crying?'
'You said everything would be different when children came.'
'Is that why you're crying?'
'But darling, what if they don't come?'
'We won't think about that now.'
'They won't come. I wanted to tell you anyway. You have to know. We would be alone.'
'What are you talking about?'
'If they came, it would be a miracle.'
'Are you sure about this?'
'I know it.'
'I didn't mean what I said about children. I never imagined I would have children. I used to imagine a lot of things, like being an Indian chief, but never that I would be a father.'
'You're only saying that.'
'I say it because I mean it.'
'But one day it will really get to you.'
'I don't know what will happen one day. Why should we think about it?'
Two months later Albina announced to him that she was pregnant.
Alice came to get him. She had changed into a dress of Indian cashmere, obviously for him. Perhaps she wasn't happy with Peter. Perhaps she hadn't been happy with him for a long time. Or she was bored with their quasi-exile. Something had happened between them, something that you don't even confide to a friend. But what kind of friend was he anyway? Chocolate bars for the children and the occasional visit couldn't hide the fact that he'd sailed away to another continent.
'They've left,' she announced, referring to a group of inspectors, whom he hadn't seen and didn't care about.
'That dress looks good on you,' he said. 'You're more and more beautiful all the time.'
'Thank you for saying so, but I know it's not true.'
Then he sat with her and Peter, his fellow escapee, his former partner in crime, in a small room in the castle. They drank red wine, and he tried to pretend that he felt a kind of closeness, a common bond with his friend, whom fate, or rather circumstances, had hounded all the way to this remote castle with mouldy walls and a leaky roof. Yet he felt neither closeness nor a common bond, just an uncertain sense of guilt, shame and envy. He needed to justify himself to Peter and even more to Alice. He told them about his problems in the department, where everyone was just waiting to pounce on everyone else's mistakes in the
hope of gaining promotion; about the director of programming who flaunted her authority by forbidding women to wear short skirts; about the chief producer who knew that if he blocked a good piece of work, nothing would happen to him, but if he failed to block something that might upset a minister, or an under-secretary's wife, he could lose his job and so, just to be sure, approved nothing but ineffective and tedious mediocrities. Pavel's film on a psychiatric hospital had been banned because it might have been interpreted as an allusion to the country that ruled over them, where they sent their political opponents to such places. They even tried to block his film on carved nativity scenes because they said it endorsed religious sentiment. The film had taken almost a month to shoot, and the commentary was written by an officially recognized poet. Fortunately for the film, the official poet was very put out by the ban and complained. The censor then ordered him to tidy up the script. Instead of 'Jesus' he was to say 'the little child', and instead of 'the Virgin Mary' he was to say 'the mother of the child'.
He didn't mention his ineffective and tedious film about the president, which they had just finished editing.
He noticed that Peter was restlessly drumming his fingers on the table-top. 'I can see what a bore it must be to argue with the censors,' Peter said. 'But what I don't understand is why you hang on.'
Yes, faced with Peter, he had no defence, and should never have mentioned his problems. At the same time Peter's self-righteous superiority, which was possible only because he had found a way to exist on the margins of society, irritated Pavel. 'I got myself into it. Yes, I could have tried working in some castle and waiting for things to change. But I was afraid I'd forget how to hold a camera.'