Part II

Chapter 1

While the ship was tugged out into the yellow tidal rush and the untidy skyscrapers and the castellated customs house jerked away, as though they rather than the ship were at the end of the rope, I thought of that distant day’s depression and of how wrong my fears had proved. It was eight on a July morning and the sea-birds wailed like the cats in Latimer Road and the clouds were heavy with coming rain. There was one break of sunlight over La Plata which gave the dull river a single silver streak, but the brightest spot in the sombre scape of water and shore was the flames from gas pipes flapping against the black sky. There were four days ahead of me, up the Plata, the Parana and the Paraguay, before I joined my aunt, and I left the Argentine winter for my overheated cabin and began to hang up my clothes and arrange my books and papers into a semblance of home.

More than half a year passed after my encounter with the detectives before I received any news of my aunt. I had become convinced of her death by that time, and once in a dream I was badly frightened by a creature crawling across the floor towards me with broken legs which swung like a snake’s tail. It was going to pull me down within reach of its teeth, and I was paralysed with terror like a bird before a snake. When I woke I remembered Mr. Visconti, though I believe it is a cobra and not a viper which is supposed to paralyse birds.

During that empty time I received one more letter from Miss Keene. She wrote in her own hand, for a clumsy servant had broken the keyboard of her typewriter. “I was just going to write,” she said, “how stupid and clumsy these blacks are, and then I remembered how you and my father had discussed racialism one night at dinner and I felt as though I were betraying our old house in Southwood and the companionship of those days. Sometimes I fear that I am going to be quite assimilated. In Koffiefontein the Prime Minister no longer seems the monster we thought him at home: indeed he’s criticized here sometimes as an old-fashioned liberal. I find myself when I meet a tourist from England explaining apartheid so convincingly. I don’t want to be assimilated, and yet if I am to make my life here…” The broken sentence sounded like an appeal which she was too shy to make clear. There followed the gossip of the farm: a dinner party to neighbours who lived more than a hundred miles away, and then one paragraph which I found a little disturbing: “I have met a Mr. Hughes, a land surveyor, and he wants to marry me (please don’t laugh at me). He is a kind man in his late fifties, a widower with a teen-age daughter whom I like well enough. I don’t know what to do. It would be the final assimilation, wouldn’t it? I’ve always had a silly dream of one day coming back to Southwood and finding the old house empty (how I miss that dark rhododendron walk) and beginning my life all over again. I am afraid of talking to anyone here about Mr. Hughes – they would all be too encouraging. I wish you were not so far away, for I know you would counsel me wisely.”

Was I wrong to read an appeal in that last sentence, a desperate appeal in spite of its calm wording, an appeal for some decisive telegram “come back to Southwood and marry me”? Who knows whether I might not have sent one in my loneliness if a letter had not arrived which drove poor Miss Keene right out of my mind?

It was from my aunt, written on stiff aristocratic notepaper bearing simply a scarlet rose and the name Lancaster with no address, like the title of a noble family. Only when I read a little way into the letter did I realize that Lancaster was the name of an hotel. My aunt made no appeal; she simply issued a command, and there was no explanation of her long silence. “I have decided,” she wrote, “not to return to Europe and I am giving up my apartment over the Crown and Anchor at the end of the next quarter. I would be glad if you would pack what clothes there may be there and dispose of all the furniture. On second thoughts, however, keep the photograph of Freetown harbour for me as a memento of dear Wordsworth and bring it with you.” (She had not even told me where to come at that point of the letter or asked me if it were possible.) “Preserve it in its frame, which has great sentimental value because it was given me by Mr. V. I enclose a cheque on my account at the Credit Suisse, Berne, which will be sufficient for a first-class ticket to Buenos Aires. Come as soon as you can, for I get no younger. I do not suffer from gout like an old friend whom I met the other day on a packet boat, but I feel nonetheless a certain stiffness in the joints. I want very much to have with me a member of my family whom I can trust in this rather bizarre country, not the less bizarre for having a shop called Harrods round the corner from the hotel, though it is less well stocked, I fear, than in the Brompton Road.”

I telegraphed to Miss Keene, JOINING MY AUNT IN BUENOS AIRES SHORTLY. WILL WRITE, and set about selling the furniture. The Venetian glass, I am afraid, went for a song. When all was sold at Harrods’ auction rooms (I had some dispute with the landlord of the Crown and Anchor over the sofa on the landing) I received enough for my return ticket and fifty pounds in travellers’ cheques, so I did not cash my aunt’s draft on the Swiss bank and I paid the little that was over into my own account, for I thought it better for her to have no assets in England if she planned not to return.

But as for joining my aunt in Buenos Aires, my forecast had been too optimistic. There was no one to meet me at the airport, and when I arrived at the Lancaster Hotel I found only my room reserved and a letter. “I am sorry not to be here to greet you,” she wrote, “but I have had to move on urgently to Paraguay, where an old friend of mine is in some distress. I have left you a ticket for the river-boat. For reasons too complicated to explain now I do not wish you to take a plane to Asunción. I cannot give you an address, but I will see that you are met.”

It was a highly unsatisfactory arrangement, but what could I do? I hadn’t sufficient funds to stay in Buenos Aires until I heard from her again, and I felt it impossible to return to England, when I had travelled so far on her money, but I took the precaution of changing her single ticket to Asunción into a return.

I propped the photograph of Freetown harbour in its expensive frame at the back of my dressing-table and supported it with books on either side. I had brought with me, among more ephemeral literature, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, the collected poems of Tennyson and Browning, and at the last minute I had added Rob Roy, perhaps because it contained the only photograph I possessed of my aunt. When I opened the book now the pages naturally divided at the photograph, and I found myself thinking not for the first time that the happy smile, the young breasts, the curve of her body in the old-fashioned bathing costume were like the suggestion of a budding maternity. The memory of Visconti’s son as he took her in his arms on Milan platform hurt me a little, and I looked out of my porthole, to escape my thoughts, into the winter day and saw a tall lean sad grey man gazing back at me. My window gave on to the bows and he turned quickly away to watch the ship’s wake, embarrassed at having been noticed. I finished my unpacking and went down to the bar.

There was the restlessness of departure about the ship.

Lunch, as I learnt, was to be served at the curious hour of eleven-thirty, but until that time the passengers could no more settle than can the passengers on a Channel crossing. They came up and down the stairs, they looked at the bar and inspected the bottles and went away again without ordering a drink. They streamed into the dining-room and out again, they sat down for a moment at a table in the lounge, then rose to look through a porthole at the monotonous river scene which was to be with us for the next four days. I was the only one to take a drink. There was no sherry, so I took a gin and tonic, but the gin was Argentinian, though the name was English, and had a foreign flavour. The low wooded shore of what I took to be Uruguay unrolled in the misty rain which now began to clear the decks. The water of the river was the colour of coffee with too much milk.

An old man who must have been well into his eighties reached a decision and sat down beside me. He asked me a question in Spanish which I couldn’t answer. “No hablo español, señor”, I said, but this scrap of Spanish which I had learnt from a phrase-book he took as an encouragement and at once began to deliver a small lecture, removing from his pocket a large magnifying glass and laying it down between us. I tried to escape by paying my bill, but he grabbed it from my hand and stuck it under his own glass, at the same time ordering the barman to refill mine. I have never been in the habit of taking two drinks before lunch, and I definitely did not like the taste of the gin, but for lack of Spanish I had to submit.

He was making some demand on me, but I could not guess what. The words el favor were repeated several times, and when he saw I didn’t understand, he held out his own hand as a demonstration and began to examine it through the magnifying glass. A voice said, “Can I be of any help?” and turning, I saw the sad lean man who had watched me through my porthole.

I said, “I don’t understand what this gentleman wants.”

“His hobby is reading hands. He says he’s never had the opportunity to read an American’s.”

“Tell him I’m English.”

“He says the same applies. I don’t think he sees much difference. We are both Anglo-Saxon.”

There was nothing I could do but hold out my hand. The old man examined it with extreme care through the magnifying glass. “He asks me to translate, but maybe you’d rather I didn’t. It’s kind of personal, a fortune.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, and I thought of Hatty and her tea-leaves and how she had foreseen my travels in her best Lapsang Souchong.

“He says you have come from a long way off.”

“That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

“But your travels are nearly over.”

“That can hardly be true. I have to go back home.”

“He sees a reunion of someone very close to you. Your wife perhaps.”

“I have no wife.”

“He says it could be your mother.”

“She’s dead. At least…”

“You have had a great deal of money in your care. But no longer.”

“At any rate he’s scored there. I was in a bank.”

“He sees a death – but it’s far away from your heartline and your life-line. It’s not an important death. Perhaps a stranger’s.”

“Do you believe in this nonsense?” I asked the American.

“No, I guess not, but I try to keep an open mind. My name’s O’Toole. James O’Toole.”

“Mine’s Pulling – Henry,” I said. In the background the old man continued his report in Spanish. He seemed not to care whether it was translated or not. He had pulled out a notebook and was writing things down.

“You a Londoner?”

“Yes.”

“I come from Philadelphia. He wants me to tell you that yours is the nine hundred and seventy-second hand he’s studied. Sorry, nine hundred and seventy-fifth.” The old man closed his notebook with an air of satisfaction. Then he shook hands with me and thanked me, paid for the drinks, bowed and departed. The magnifying glass bulged in his pocket like a gun.

“Mind if I join you?” the American asked. He wore an English tweed coat and a pair of old grey flannel trousers: thin and melancholy, he looked as English as I did; there were small lines bitten by care around the eyes and mouth, and like a man who has lost his way, he had a habit of looking this way and that with anxiety. He had nothing in common with the Americans whom I had met in England, noisy and self-confident, with the young unlined faces of children romping and shouting to one another across the nursery floor.

He said, “You going to Asunción too?”

“Yes.”

“There’s nowhere else on this trip worth a visit. Corrientes isn’t too bad – if you don’t spend a night. Formosa – that’s a dump. Only smugglers get off there, though they do talk of the fishing. I guess you’re not a smuggler?”

“No. You seem to know these parts well.”

“Too well,” he said. “You on vacation?”

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“Going to see the Iguazú Falls? Lots of people go there. If you do, better stay on the Brazilian side. Only good hotel.”

“Are they worth a visit?”

“Maybe. If you like that kind of thing. Just a lot of water if you ask me.”

The barman obviously knew the American well, for he had made him a dry Martini without a word said, and he drank it now morosely and without pleasure. “It’s not like Gordon’s,” he said. He took a slow look at me, almost as if he were memorizing my features. “I took you for a business-man, Henry,” he said. “Vacationing all by yourself? Not much fun. Strange country. And you don’t speak the language – not that Spanish is any good outside the city. In the country they all speak Guaraní.”

“Do you?”

“A smattering.” I noticed he asked questions more than he answered them, and when he gave me information it was the kind of information which I could have obtained from any guide-book. “Picturesque ruins,” he said, “old Jesuit settlements. They appeal to you, Henry?”

I felt he wouldn’t be satisfied until I had told him more. What was the harm? I wasn’t carrying a gold brick or a suitcase stuffed with notes. As he said, I was no smuggler. “I am visiting an old relation of mine,” I said and added, “James.” I could see he wanted that too.

“My friends call me Tooley,” he said automatically, and it was quite a while before in my mind the coin fell.

“Are you in business here?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I do research work. Social research. You know the sort of thing, Henry. Cost of living. Malnutrition. Degree of illiteracy. Have a drink.”

“Two is all I can take, Tooley,” I said, and it was only at the repetition of the name that I remembered, remembered Tooley. He pushed his own glass forward for another.

“Do you find things easy in Paraguay? I’ve read in the papers you Americans have a lot of trouble in South America.”

“Not in Paraguay,” he said. “We and the General are like that.” He raised his thumb and forefinger and then transferred them to his refilled glass.

“He’s quite a tough dictator, so they tell me.”

“It’s what the country needs, Henry. A strong hand. Don’t mistake me though. I keep out of politics. Simple research. That’s my line.”

“Have you published anything?”

“Oh,” he replied vaguely, “reports. Technical. They wouldn’t interest you, Henry.”

It was inevitable that when the bell rang we should go into lunch together. We shared the table with two other men. One was a grey-faced man in a blue city suit who was on a diet (the steward, who knew him well, brought him a special dish of boiled vegetables which he looked at carefully before eating, twitching the end of his nose and his upper lip like a rabbit). The other was a fat old priest with rogue eyes who looked rather like Winston Churchill. I was amused to watch O’Toole set about the two of them. Before we had finished our bad liver pâté, he had found that the priest had a parish in a village near Corrientes, on the Argentine side of the border, and before we had eaten our equally bad pasta he had broken a little way into the taciturnity of the man with the nose like a rabbit’s. He was apparently a businessman returning to Formosa. When he mentioned Formosa, O’Toole looked at me and gave a little nod of confirmation: he had placed him.

“Now I’d guess you to be a pharmacist?” he said, leading him on.

The man had little English, but he understood that. He looked at O’Toole and twitched his nose. I thought he was not going to reply, but out the phrase came with all its international ambiguity, “Import-export.”

The priest for some reason began to speak of flying saucers. They swarmed over Argentina, so it seemed – perhaps if we had clear nights we would observe one from the boat.

“You really believe in them?” I asked, and the old priest in his excitement abandoned his little English altogether.

“He says,” O’Toole explained, “that you must have seen yesterday’s Nación. Twelve cars were stopped coming from Mar del Plata to Buenos Aires on Monday night. When a flying saucer passes overhead a car-engine stops. The reverend father believes they have a divine origin.” He translated almost as rapidly as the other talked. “Recently a couple who were driving to Mar del Plata for the weekend were surrounded by a cloud. The car stopped and when the cloud dispersed they found they were in Mexico near Acapulco.”

“And he believed even that?”

“Sure. They all do. Once a week on the radio at Buenos Aires you can hear a programme all about flying saucers. Who’s seen them that week and where. Our friend here says it may be the explanation of the flying house of Loretto. It was just picked up in Palestine, like those people on the road to Mar del Plata, and dumped down in Italy.”

They served us a tough steak and afterwards oranges. The priest lapsed into silence and ate with a slight frown. Perhaps he felt in the presence of unbelievers. The business-man pushed back his plate of boiled vegetables and excused himself. I asked my neighbour what I had been longing to ask all through the meal: “Are you married, Tooley?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“You’ve got a daughter?”

“Sure. Why? She’s studying in London.”

“She’s in Katmandu,” I said.

“Katmandu! Why, that’s Nepal.”

The lines of anxiety deepened. “That’s a hell of a thing to tell me,” he said. “How do you know?” I told him about the Orient Express, but I left out any references to the young man. I said she was with a group of students, which was true when I last saw her.

He said, “What can I do, Henry? I’ve got my work. I can’t go chasing round the world. Lucinda doesn’t know the worry she gives.”

“Lucinda?”

“Her mother chose the name,” he said with bitterness.

“She calls herself Tooley now, like you.”

“She does? That’s new.”

“She seemed to have a great admiration for you.”

“I let her go to England,” he said. “I thought she’d be safe there. But Katmandu!” He pushed away the orange which he had so carefully sliced. “Where’s she living? I doubt if there’s a good hotel in the place. If there’s a Hilton at least you know where you are. What shall I do, Henry?”

“She’ll be all right,” I said without conviction.

“I could send a cable to the embassy – I suppose there’s an embassy.” He got up abruptly and said, “I’ve got to take a leak.”

I followed him out of the dining-room and down a corridor to the lavatory. There we stood side by side in silence. I noticed his lips moving – perhaps, I thought, he was having an imaginary dialogue with his daughter. We left the lavatory together, and without a word he sat down on a bench on the port side of the deck. It was no longer raining, but it was grey and cold. There was nothing to see but some small trees growing at the edge of the dirty river, an occasional hut, and through the trees an expanse of brown scrub stretching to the horizon without a hill in sight.

“Argentina?” I asked to break the silence.

“It’s all Argentina,” he said, “till we reach the Paraguay river our last day.” He took out a pocket-book and made some notes. They seemed to be figures. When he had finished he said, “Excuse me. It’s a record I keep.”

“Research?”

“Kind of a study I’m making.”

“Your daughter told me you were in the CIA.”

He turned on me his sad and anxious eyes. “She’s a romantic,” he said. “She imagines things.”

“Is the CIA romantic?”

“A kid thinks so. I guess she saw some report of mine marked SECRET. Anything’s secret that goes to a government department. Even malnutrition in Asunción.”

I wasn’t sure which of them I believed.

He asked me with an air of helplessness, “What would you do, Henry?”

I said, “If you were really in the CIA you could probably find out how she was from one of your men there. You must have a man in Katmandu.”

“If I were really in the CIA,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to get them mixed up in my private affairs. Have you any children, Henry?”

“No.”

“You are a lucky man. People talk about the age of reason. There’s no such thing. When you have a child you are condemned to be a father for life. They go away from you. You can’t go away from them.”

“How would I know?”

He brooded awhile, staring out over the scrub which never changed. The boat moved slowly against the strong flow to the sea. He said, “My dad was all against the divorce – for the sake of the child. But there are limits to what a man can take – she began to bring her boyfriends home. She was corrupting Lucinda.”

“She didn’t succeed,” I said.