The Squire Quartet

Dear Tom,

For reasons you know well, I can bear no more of the talk round the conference table. Let me get away just in the morning. You must come with me and pay. We can take a No 9 bus to the little town called Nontreale. It is a cheap fare but you know our government keeps us poor as saints – which we otherwise are not – when we are out of our country. Besides, you are rich.

Tell nobody our plan. I must not tell my ‘comrade’ Kchevov. We will play truant, and talk like men, and view Nontreale cathedral to educate you and make me thirsty.

The bus leaves at 9.05 in the morning. Meet me just outside the hotel at ten minutes to nine tomorrow and I will take you to the bus stop. Nobody shall know where we go, so please be safe and flush this sheet in your toilet bowl (we Russians have a passionate admiration for secrets, you know that). I trust you.

Yours

Vasili Rugorsky

Squire laughed. He laid the letter by his bed, switched off the light, and in a moment was sound asleep, worries forgotten.

The No 9 bus was crowded, but they managed to sit together. Rugorsky’s mood was somewhat withdrawn. He had missed his breakfast in order to get away from the hotel without questioning.

‘I am a man who likes much to eat. But more I like to see foreign countries. When shall I again be allowed outside the sacred frontiers of my own country? It is naturally cosy in there, because it is so well guarded. But I feel a necessity to store up some images of Sicily, other than that room of mirrors and electronic equipment in which we sit.’

He lapsed into silence. Both men sat staring out of the windows as the bus wound through the suburbs of Ermalpa with many a stop, a pachyderm surrounded by flocks of Fiats.

On the outskirts of town, the buildings became drab and decrepit. Squire was reminded of the older parts of Cairo. Coppersmiths and saddlers and vulcanizers worked in tiny open-fronted shops beneath the room in which they and their families lived. The bus had transported its passengers from a twentieth-century city to some outlying byway of history. People, animals, and scruffy fowls were everywhere. Piles of refuse filled yards and gardens, spilling into the street. Here and there an elderly tree defied its destiny by sending forth bright blossom, carmine on purple.

Squire made an idle remark about the filth.

‘No, you see, you are a man of the world,’ said Rugorsky, looking at him askance in his teasing way. ‘But your world is limited. Here it is no real filth. It is merely untidy. That’s all. Merely a little untidy.’

He sank into silence again.

Outside the city, the bus turned onto a good dusty road and began forging steadily west. The way wound upwards, yielding increasingly fine views of the Mediterranean. At every broken-walled village en route, the bus stopped, and women and goats ceased their activities to stare at it.

Half-an-hour later, they arrived in Nontreale. The bus nosed along narrow streets hardly wider than the vehicle, entered the main square, and stopped with a protracted sigh. All the passengers climbed out.

The air was cooler than it had been in Ermalpa. Squire and Rugorsky stood together while the latter wiped his brow thoroughly with a brown handkerchief.

Nontreale held two points of historical and aesthetic interest, a ruinous castle and a cathedral. The cathedral filled one side of the small square. As they stood looking across at it, the crowd generated by the arrival of the bus slowly disappeared. Most of the people appeared to be locals; it was early as yet for tourists. In front of the cathedral, shopkeepers were setting up stalls loaded with bright tourist goods.

Rugorsky nodded and grunted. ‘Byzantium. A common heritage of East and West, you see. It looks promising, Tom. Perhaps we shall enjoy it more for having an ice cream first.’

‘There’s a bar over there. Would you prefer a drink?’

‘I don’t wish for a bad reputation. Let us proceed first to an ice cream.’

They sat down at open-air tables to one side of the square, and the sun shone on them. Rugorsky asked, ‘You don’t mind to pay for me?’

‘I’m pleased to do so.’

‘It does not make you feel too superior to me?’

Squire laughed. ‘You are not the sort of man one easily feels superior to, Vasili.’

‘That’s good – but be careful. I am aware of the terrible sinful power of money. Well aware. Money is very corrupting.’

‘So people say. The lack of it corrupts, too.’

They ordered cassati from the waiter.

Rugorsky reopened the subject. ‘You perhaps assume that as a good socialist I naturally preach about the evils of money. But that is not all my meaning. You see, I also feel on the personal level, and not just as a theory, that money corrupts. It has corrupted me. I am a corrupt man, Tom. Very corrupt, unfortunately. It’s not my wish.’

‘I don’t see you like that.’

An impatient gesture, made slowly to remove any offence. ‘You do not know me. You see, Tom, I do not wish to argue about how corrupt I am. That a man must decide for himself. The scale in such judgements is merely internal. You agree?’

Squire was silent. Howard Parker-Smith had phoned him from the Consulate earlier in the morning, catching him just before he left his hotel room. Rugorsky certainly had money problems. Squire wondered with some apprehension what exactly Rugorsky was planning to do.

He ate the ice cream slowly. It had a delicious flavour and texture. As they ate, they watched the life of the square. An old woman had brought two donkeys down from the hills, and was tying them to a railing a short distance away, talking to them loudly as she did so. ‘I was speaking with the Italian Morabito last night,’ Rugorsky said. ‘He has been once to your house in England. It is in the country.’

‘Yes. Norfolk. Only six or seven miles from the sea.’

The Russian sighed. ‘Perhaps I may myself come there one day and stay with you, as I have stayed with Lippard-Milne and his wife. They live in Sloane Street, in London.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve been there.’ Squire had caught sight of Howard Parker-Smith. At least he was certain he recognized those well-knit shoulders, clad in an English blazer, and the sleek well-groomed head, before the figure disappeared down a side-alley off the square. He glanced at his watch; it was before ten-thirty. He and Parker-Smith had been talking over the phone less than two hours earlier. What was the man doing here, if not keeping an eye on the two of them? Perhaps he was expecting a sudden move by Rugorsky.

Squire paid the waiter. He and Rugorsky rose, and they strolled across the square to the cathedral, soon entering into its grand shadow.

The main part of the building was twelfth century, with a grandiose porch built on four centuries later in a Gothic style. They stood for a while before moving into the great shell of the interior. Here, all was shadowy, the slanting bars of light from the high windows creating a sense of space and mystery. The shell was full of dusty scents, as if the departed still breathed. Squire stood gazing into that majestic space, seeing it as a convincing rendering of the true reality in which all things had their being, as well as an unwitting representation of that luminous hole in the rear of the skull, the lantern hidden in bone in which alone he believed – and in which, he reflected, he probably believed alone.

Rugorsky was much more interested in the famous mosaics, which he regarded fiercely, striding about in his shirt-sleeves, his arms folded. His white hair streamed as he gazed upwards at saints, both meek and warlike, who floated upwards to the roof in a haze of gold. He moved gradually towards the great commanding figure of Christ Pantocrat, eyes staring, forehead creased in an all-too-just frown, which dominated the apse behind the high altar.

Neither man paid attention to the faithful just leaving the cathedral after mass. A man and his wife still knelt in their places, elbows touching, staring up at the great silver cross, their dark faces seeming to glow with worship; like Christ Pantocrat, both frowned, perhaps aware of the injustice of their lot, against which their lips moved in prayer. Old ladies beyond anger, clad in Mediterranean widows’ black, went away bow-legged to light their sweet-smelling candles before returning to the workaday world outside.

Rugorsky walked back to Squire’s side. ‘A remarkable expression of medieval Italian art. These people had to be on guard against God. The relationship was understood on both sides to be formal. By reputation these mosaics are the equal of Ravenna. Those I have never seen and may never see.’

‘They are splendid,’ Squire murmured, vaguely. The two men walked apart again, Rugorsky to resume his staring at the stones above his head. Squire went and sat in a chair, slowing his breathing, experiencing the extent of the cathedral.

‘Shall we go?’ he asked, when Rugorsky eased his bulk into the next chair.

‘No. Wait, you see. Waiting is important. Keep the minute while you can, in order to remember. It’s a long bus ride. Just be still. That’s important.’

They sat where they were, both men immobile.

Finally, Rugorsky stood up. ‘Now we can leave. Perhaps something has sunk in.’ He tapped his head. ‘You do not have religious feeling?’

‘No, not really. Frankly, I was glad when I got rid of God.’

‘I see. I have not outgrown a religious impulse, despite all examples I see of godlessness all round. I mean, at home. Without God, I can see no meaning in anything.’

‘The meaning lies within us.’

Once they moved outside the cathedral, Rugorsky appeared nervous again. He used the sticky brown handkerchief to mop his brow, and looked pale.

‘Are you feeling well, Vasili? You surely won’t be in trouble just because you took a morning away from the conference? A lot of the other delegates have been taking, or plan to take, days off. Herman told me he was going down to a beach for a swim.’

He stood gazing back at the stonework rising above them. ‘It’s Friday, yes. I forget which day it is. In just three days, you see, I must return to Russia. To be frank, I don’t much relish the prospect. Tomorrow night, the conference is finished.’ He shot Squire one of his telling glances as they strolled across the square, from shadow into sunlight. ‘Do you ever experience the feeling that you have come to a dead halt in your life? Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

Rugorsky ran a hand through his white hair. He stood still, gazing about him as he spoke.

‘Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You see, I am a man with a weight upon his mind. It would be impossible for me to explain everything, and without explaining everything, then I can’t explain anything.’ He was silent. He clutched his shirt sleeves, looking up at the cathedral for a while.

He laughed shortly. ‘You see, I tell you nothing what I mean. Even so, I tell to you more than I tell to anyone I know in Russia. It must be the mark of a generous man, don’t you think? I don’t know what to do.’

Squire said, ‘That feeling of a dead end. Perhaps it’s characteristic of the age of fifty. One does run into difficulties then.’

‘Of course. Circumstances accumulate at the age of fifty; possibilities are fewer than they once were … It’s really a beautiful cathedral, mainly because it can still be used for the purposes for which it was designed many centuries ago, in confidence. There would be worse fates for a man than to have one room to live in across the square there – and watch the cathedral and see the people – wicked people no doubt, be sure of that – going in and out all the time.’

He regarded with longing the crumbling buildings across the square, where children played in doorways, and a woman languorously arranged a garment on a balcony railing. At that moment, another grey bus lumbered up from the plain in a cloud of exhaust fumes, and expired with a sigh under the central palm trees.

‘Are you having trouble with Kchevov?’

‘It’s a mistake to throw out God.’ He patted his white forelock into place, turning as he did so to scrutinize Squire. ‘I speak as a member of a country or nation, so to say, which has experience in that area. It’s a mistake to throw out God.’

‘Difficult, painful – not necessarily mistaken. Maybe the evolution of the human race demands it … Although God is in many ways the greatest human idea so far.’

Perhaps Rugorsky did not care for the remark. Turning to walk on, he said, flatly, ‘Georgi Kchevov can make trouble for me. I don’t wish him to know more than he must do. Did you destroy the note I put under your door last night?’

Squire patted a pocket of the jacket he was carrying over his arm. ‘I must admit I didn’t. I’ve got it here with me.’

Another heavy silence. Then Rugorsky said, ‘Now we must look at the Castle.’

They walked past the tourist stalls. Out of habit, Squire stopped and bought some postcards. He would send a card to Teresa, damn her, and to Deirdre, and possibly one to Willie and Madge in their new home. Rugorsky stood solidly by his shoulder, breathing hard, bored by the transaction. Squire also bought some little toy Sicilian carts for souvenirs, and tucked them in his jacket pocket.

Surrounding the cathedral was a maze of mean streets, through which Rugorsky led confidently. The alleyways were full of people, some selling vegetables, sentimental religious baubles, or toys. Sunshine blazed through an archway; they went towards it, emerging in a small square behind the cathedral. Ahead was the Castle of Nontreale.

The great stone walls of the Castle, tufted with fern here and there, were fringed by white Fiats, nestling together round the ramparts like fleas round a cat’s ear. The Castle had withstood many attacks throughout the ages, before eventually succumbing to the internal combustion engine. Although it lay more or less in ruins, and the lizards flickering over its hot stonework were its chief occupants, its two great towers remained intact, looking towards the distant sea.

The towers faced northwards, the direction from which all invaders had come. Nontreale was poised on the brink of a great basalt core of rock which loomed above the plain as it had done ever since prehistoric times. Its Castle stood on the very edge of the precipice, with the road far below, then – below the labouring road – plain, studded with vines and villas, across which the shadow of the eminence was flung.

A narrow and crumbling path, fringed with wild flowers at which butterflies sipped before fluttering away into the abyss, led round the base of the northern wall and the two towers. ‘Let’s go that way,’ Rugorsky said, pointing.

‘It’s only a goat track,’ Squire said.

‘We get a good view. Come on.’ He gripped Squire’s arm and led him forward.

It seemed to Squire that they would have enjoyed a better view from the top of one of the towers, but he followed the Russian. It felt cold as they entered the shadow of the fortress.

The chill entered Squire. As they moved forward with their right hands steadying themselves against the rough wall, he found himself dwelling uneasily on Howard Parker-Smith’s early morning call. Parker-Smith had more information concerning Vasili Rugorsky. Rugorsky was in trouble back in Leningrad.

‘He’s been embezzling public funds,’ Parker-Smith said. ‘All these Russians involve themselves in graft as they rise in the hierarchy – it’s a disease. The authorities probably allowed him a visa to Sicily so that they could turn everything over while he’s away. I guess there’s not a shred of paper left in his office by now. They’ll bag him when he gets home again.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Same way Rugorsky now knows it,’ Parker-Smith said. ‘A friendly colleague of his at Leningrad University got the word to him yesterday via the grapevine. We tapped the grapevine.’

‘What happens next?’

‘Depends. The friendly colleague may stand to gain if Rugorsky does a bunk. His friendly message may not be so friendly. Keep your eye on Rugorsky. One thing’s for sure – he’s in a spot. We must see which way the cat will jump.’ He rang off.

The path became narrower. Rugorsky went forward more slowly. A little roll of fat at the back of his neck glistened, and the ends of his white hair were dark with sweat. Far below them, a bus laboured up the road they had come, the sound of its engine frail in the still air. Below the road were tiny trees, shrubs, fields, roofs, stretching all the way to the distant sea, where a peninsula of rock pointed its finger towards Italy.

Squire thought, ‘All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’

Rugorsky turned round, steadying himself against the wall of the Castle. His eyes were narrowed; he was a man in the grip of a strong emotion. He reached forward and grasped Squire’s arm.

‘You were in Yugoslavia in 1948…’

Immediately, a blaze of images was released in Squire’s mind. Once again Slatko died on the floor of an Istran farmhouse, even as he himself plunged into the precipice. Rugorsky was sent in belated vengeance for that ancient killing; by killing Squire he would acquire enough virtue to cancel out the embezzlement charges awaiting him in the USSR. Sometimes the figure falling was not he, but Rugorsky, or some more mythical figure, falling into a plumbless gulf.

He slipped and regained his balance, leaning with his back against the ancient stonework. The alarming images faded. He and Rugorsky stared at each other, ringed by wall and blue sky.

‘Come,’ Rugorsky said. ‘We’re safe here.’

‘Safe …?’

‘No person in the world can hear what we speak. As I wrote in my letter, we talk together like men.’ He shuffled nearer.

‘Keep your distance, Vasili. You were going to push me off the cliff. What’s this you say about Yugoslavia?’

‘So in your heart you really believe we are all murderers and criminals after all? You think I’d be so naughty? It’s not so. Maybe I can convince you of it, you see. For you and I have met once before. More than once. Twice. When we first spoke at the conference, I reminded you that we had met previously, with Leslie Lippard-Milne and his pretty wife, in front of Richard Hamilton’s picture at the Tate Gallery, yes? You had forgotten the occasion, because you are slightly an egotist, I believe, and so do not easily recollect other people. It’s just a slight punishment. But – I knew I had set eyes on you previously.’ He paused, adding with distinct emotion, ‘Many many years ago, Thomas, when you and I were young men, and much more inclined to push people off cliffs than we are now – then I saw you. I had a good look at you. It was in a region of Yugoslavia called Istra.’

Hearing the thickness of his own voice, Squire asked, ‘What were you doing in Istra?’

With a gleam of his self-mocking humour, Rugorsky said, ‘What do Russians do anywhere abroad except foment trouble? My government had something against me, and so I was sent abroad to work on their behalf. I was being punished for writing a silly satirical poem about our beloved late leader, Comrade Stalin.’

‘“Winter Celebration”.’

‘You are properly informed in our literature. My poem circulated in samizdat. When the authorities caught up with it, they were not amused. They are never amused. So after some training I was sent to Belgrade, where I became – I suppose you would say a gundog for a very important KGB high official who had the codename Slatko. The word is Serbian for “sweetness”. You remember that name, I am sure.’

‘I remember,’ Squire said. ‘Slatko …’

‘You see, it was important to our Comrade Leader that all socialist countries should appear in agreement before the outside world. Just to have this one little country, Yugoslavia, disagreeing was bad for his sleep every night. Yugoslavia must be crushed. Therefore this evil man Slatko was sent in, with orders direct from Stalin. It was easy to send him in secretly, and many others like him.’

‘And you?’

‘Slatko was not sweet. He had many murders to his credit. He had especially the ambition to kill Tito, so he proceeded very cautiously. But he was also a drunken sot and, one spring morning in Istra, when he had hit the bottle and his actions were slow … well, Thomas, you drove up at the place where he was hiding, and by good fortune you managed to shoot him. It was the luck of the beginner, as we say.’

Squire imitated the Russian in giving his face a mop. ‘That’s thirty years ago.’

‘Do we ever forget such moments of our youth? Time’s nothing.’

He gestured out towards the sea. ‘Here we are, almost in a similar situation, you might say. Here I stand, speaking with the man who assassinated the evil Slatko. I am proud.’

He sat down on the narrow path, gazing across the panorama before them.

‘I wanted to speak these things to you, because I doubt that we will ever meet again. All my possibilities are closing.’

After a moment’s hesitation, Squire came and sat beside him, his shoes pointing out over the drop.

‘Where were you that day? You were at the farmhouse?’

‘Before dawn on that day, I had driven an old German truck containing crates of British machine-guns from the coast. I was resting in the sun. Writing another poem, to be exact. When I saw your car approach the farmhouse, I jumped over a wall at the back to hide. So did two others with me. There were explosions of grenades and shooting for some while. I kept my head down.

‘When I dared to peep up, there I saw you standing by an upper window of the house, only a few metres above me. I studied your English face. I could have shot you easily. Instead, I sneaked away, keeping behind the wall. There was a little car we had stolen, a Fiat. I ran to that and drove off in it. As a matter of fact, I believe you unkindly threw a grenade after me, but I kept going. What I felt then I’ll never forget.’

‘Nor I.’

‘Well, it’s impossible to forget. I was so scared, but also glad, because that cruel ogre was finished. At great danger to my life, I made my way back to my native country, aided by Soviet contacts I knew in Belgrade. What foolish loyalty to Stalin and my country! When I reported back, I was rewarded by ten years in the Gulag. That term was miraculously reduced after Stalin’s death.’

He sighed heavily.

‘Now you are in trouble again,’ Squire said.

Rugorsky smiled. ‘But I don’t do anything so serious as pushing my friends from cliffs.’

‘The world’s a dangerous place.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that. I brought you here because I wished to speak of those distant times in Yugoslavia. I longed to tell you of the extraordinary bond between us over many years, across the East–West struggle. To be frank, I thought if I told you that you would remember me in future times.’

‘I expect I shall.’

‘When we met before the Hamilton picture in the Tate Gallery, I had to work through my memory for many hours before I recalled you. This charming English critic was Slatko’s executioner. He had shot the evil man who had been chilled by the breath of Stalin. Then I believed in the miraculous.’

‘Of course you checked up on me through the KGB.’

‘I don’t deny. You also checked up on me – you know I am in trouble again now. That’s how the world situation is – we must check up on each other. We didn’t make that situation, you and I.’

‘The charges in Leningrad – they’re serious?’

The Russian pulled a stalk of grass and bit it. ‘All things are serious, you see. Unfortunately, such is the state of morals that we all get involved with some form of graft as we progress upwards. There is no other way. Perhaps you will remember the case of Madame Furtseva, Minister of Culture and the late Khrushchev’s lady-friend. I knew her slightly – she was disgraced for such things. But that’s another tale … When I arrive at Moscow, I shall probably be tried, sentenced, and returned to the camps. My poor wife … I will never survive. I’m old, my kidney is weak. It will not be like living in a civilized English prison. Even if I could survive – even if the miracle happens and I am cleared at my trial – but that is not how they conduct trials in Moscow – I shall never again see the pleasant places of the West.’