The Exiles Return (28 page)

His turn came, at least on the surface, sooner than he expected. Collalbo returned with Hertha in his wake. ‘Now, I think,’ Bimbo said when they had finished eating, ‘we have had enough of this duty-inspired official party. We have done what was expected of us and we may go. It really is rather boring. We will go and inspect this new cabaret which has just opened, Heaven and Hell, it sounds promising. You, my dear Resi, will want to dance a little longer, I leave you in safe hands. Herr Anreither will look after you and take you home. So, good night, my beautiful partner.’ And he rose to go. But Resi rose likewise.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no, no. This evening I am with you. I am coming with you, we are staying together – to the end – my partner,’ she added after a slight pause with a tremor in her voice. She had put her arm through Bimbo’s and was holding him fast. It was not possible for him to shake her off without blatant discourtesy. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘if that is what you want. So you, Hans, come along with Hertha,’ and inclining his head towards Lucas, who had also risen from his chair, ‘Sorry, Anreither, you see how it is. It is not my decision. Auf Wiedersehen.’ And the four of them left the ballroom.

Resi drank a good deal more wine in Heaven and Hell. There was semi-darkness and much laughter, which she did not understand, at the comic songs. She danced again with Bimbo, very close in the confined space, and when they were not dancing she held his hand. She would not let him go. She would not give him up to Hertha, tonight he was
her
partner and she would stay with him to the end. She went with him to his flat, and when he took her home in the grey dawn of morning it seemed as if she were walking in her sleep.

Twenty-five

Kanakis himself opened the door to his visitor. ‘Come in, my dear boy, come in.’ Bimbo came in, went straight to the chair opposite Kanakis’s desk and sat down, knees apart, letting his hands hang down between his knees.

‘Theophil!’

Kanakis went round the table and sat in his desk chair opposite Bimbo. He put his left hand in his jacket pocket and drew out a string of large topaz-coloured beads, letting the cold smooth globules slip one by one between his fingers. It was not a rosary and he attached no number or meaning to any individual bead, but their sliding motion through his hands helped to give him calm and countenance. He had learned the habit from his father, who himself may have picked it up from an oriental friend. Kanakis said nothing.

‘Theophil!’

‘Yes, my sweet, that is indeed my name.’

‘Theophil, I have come to ask you – I mean, I am forced to ask you, because I need, I desperately need – your help.’

Kanakis still said nothing. He half-closed his eyes and without anything that could be called a smile, an expression as of bliss surfaced upon his face.

Bimbo gave an involuntary shudder.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Like what? My dear boy, I am just looking at you. I always enjoy looking at you and at the moment I’m enjoying it quite particularly. I’ve never seen you quite like this before. This is a new Bimbo, a different Bimbo. I must take it all in, impress it on my mind, so that I shall always be able to remember it. Your eyes are cast down. I can see your lovely long lashes. And your mouth, your mouth has not got its usual rather insolent curl at the corners, but has a slight, ever so slight droop, not enough to disfigure, just enough to be appealing. Also your shoulders –’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Theophil, stop it! Stop dissecting me! I can’t bear it! I need help, help only you can give me. Money! A lot of money. Not for any silly investment which you have always refused, and I don’t blame you, nor to pay off debts. I don’t run up debts. I need money to save my life from ruin, for saving it from being wrecked. And I need it at once. You won’t be pouring it down the drain. I shall be able to pay it back, and I will. You know one day I shall make a rich marriage, probably one day soon. You won’t lose anything. Only I can’t afford to wreck my chances now. I’ll explain.’

‘You don’t have to. I know what’s in the offing. Next winter, when the Opera is reopened with a great Ball, a group of American heiresses will be arriving in the care of two highly respectable, blue-rinsed, exquisitely-groomed elderly matrons, and you and several of your friends will be on the entertainment committee, to dance with them, to escort them, to give them what is called “a good time”. All your friends are good-looking, titled young men. But what more dazzling looks, what more alluring title than yours, my sweet prince? You’ll only have to make your choice. The fattest dowry will be yours for the asking. Let’s only hope that it’s not the fattest girl who’s attached to it. But you won’t mind, will you?’

‘Never mind about that now, Theophil. It will be time to think about that when the occasion arises – if it does. And if it does, it would not be the first time that a fortune and a title have been married. It’s a very usual occurrence and nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Nothing at all, my dear boy, nothing at all.’ Kanakis continued to let the beads slip through his fingers. His expression was now positively beatific.

‘Then stop looking at me like that and let me explain why…’

‘Why you need my help. No, don’t move. That look of exasperation is delightful. Your complexion is all aglow. Are you by any chance blushing? Are you embarrassed? Yes, I’ll help you, but you must allow me my little modicum of pleasure too.’ Bimbo’s jaw tightened as he clamped his teeth together.

‘Of course…’

‘Oh, Bimbo, no! What are you insinuating? What do you take me for? As if I would ever take advantage of a friend in need! You should be ashamed of yourself, Bimbo. I am an artist, you should know that. I am just delighting in the contemplation of you under these particular circumstances. So now let me see what I can do for you. You have got yourself into a mess with a girl. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘How very careless of you.’

‘Yes, it was. Such a thing has never happened to me before. I have always been careful. And I ought to have been doubly so in this case, but it was all so unexpected, so unforeseeable for me, so … how shall I put it, so out of character. So now I am threatened with a most terrible scandal which would wreck all my prospects, all my life.’

‘I suppose you are referring to Marie-Theres.’

‘Yes. I can’t marry her, I simply can’t. I’ve told her so.’

‘Because she has no money? Was that the reason you gave her? You didn’t tell her you didn’t love her?’

‘No, I simply said that in my circumstances, with my name, I had to marry money. I was perfectly honest with her. I didn’t say I didn’t love her. I did not want to hurt her more than necessary.’

‘Very noble of you. So perhaps she thinks you do love her, and that the money question is secondary and can be got over in some way. It must be inconceivable to Resi, who has been suffocated with love, or rather with desire, ever since she can remember, because of her beauty – she is too young to know the difference – it must be inconceivable to her that, once she was in love for the first time, that love was not reciprocated.’

‘Then she is a fool. Anyway, I’m not in love with her. I never said I was, and if I were, being in love doesn’t always have to lead to marriage. She thinks it does. I’ve had a hard time disillusioning her.’

‘Do you think she allowed herself to get pregnant in order to force your hand?’

‘No, I don’t. She is too inexperienced. Besides, she isn’t that kind of girl. She isn’t a schemer. And as I told you, it happened so unexpectedly, even for me who ought to have known better, but also for her.’

‘For her, because she is desperately in love with you, poor child. Of course she is, you are a fascinating creature, my Bimbo. At least you are not blaming her for what happened. That is a comfort to me. You do have some sense of values. I have a great respect for Marie-Theres. So what are you going to do?’

‘What can I do, Theophil, what must I do? I can’t marry her and I simply can’t have a scandal. It would wreck my chances with any of those American girls you spoke of, whom my friends and I are going to escort next winter. It’s not as if Resi were just some insignificant local girl – that wouldn’t matter – but she herself is an American and her mother is an Altmannsdorf. In short, she is one of our set. It’s quite impossible.’

‘So what is the solution?’

‘There are only two, and they both need a great deal of money. Either we must get rid of it, which is a criminal offence, and a competent doctor would need a lot of financial persuasion; or Resi would have to disappear for a few months, go and stay in the mountains, with a family, have the baby and leave it with them. That I could arrange more easily, but it would cost even more, and be an even greater risk for me. For she couldn’t do it without her aunts finding out, and they could still ruin me by forcing me into marriage.’

‘What does Marie-Theres say about it? After all, it’s her problem even more than yours.’

‘She can’t make up her mind. She first says one thing and then another. She refuses to see a doctor who would do away with it, either because she’s frightened or because she says it would be murder. And still less will she have it quietly, going away for a while, because she too doesn’t want her aunts to know. At least I’m safe there; she won’t tell them. She cries and says, “I’m so ashamed, so ashamed – and why can’t you marry me, even if you don’t love me, and we can divorce later” – but of course I can’t divorce. I’m a Catholic.’

‘Poor Bimbo, what a quandary you’re in. Neither of your two solutions will work. So the only solution is: she must marry. She must have a husband.’

‘Oh, Theophil, could you, can you, find her one? I’d be endlessly grateful, I promise, I really will be.’

‘I don’t much care for gratitude. It taints affection and poisons love.’

‘But you could manage it – with money? If you give her a dowry, between us we could persuade someone to marry her, quickly – that young farmer’s boy, for instance, Anreither, who goes mooning after her all the time – he would marry her if she had money.’

‘I wouldn’t let him. I don’t need to buy her a husband. I am going to marry her myself.’

‘You, Theophil, marry Resi?’

‘That is what I intend to do. Don’t think this is a decision taken on the spur of the moment. I have had it in mind for quite some time, watching this situation develop, wondering whether it would come to a climax. It has. I may say I have done something to provide a favourable climate for it. I have taken the two of you out together, helped to detach you from that girl Hertha you have been going about with, and I can tell you that it was I who insisted to the Ball committee that Resi should be your partner for the opening waltz. Yes, you may well look astonished: how easy you were to manipulate, both of you! But I am delighted it has come to this. Resi is lovely. By the way, I don’t like the name Resi. To me she always has been, and always will be, Marie-Theres.

‘Do you remember the little Meissen shepherdess you had in your hands when we first met in Castello’s shop? I simply adored that little figurine. I have it still, and some others which are almost priceless. Now I shall acquire one which is absolutely unique: a live one. And wait until I have a hand in dressing her. What an ornament she will be in my life. So far she has just been able to cover herself, poor child, apart from that white and gold ball dress. But when she is my wife I shall be able to dress her. All the couturiers of Paris, Florence and Rome will envy me. They will never have had such a mannequin. But she will not be a mannequin, she will be my own – my wife, Bimbo, my wife! People will talk. They will say: Theophil Kanakis has married a young and beautiful wife, not of questionable origin, not of uncertain reputation, but the daughter of an American scientist and of an Austrian princess. It will clothe me with the highest respectability. And to crown it all there will even be a child!’

Bimbo lifted his head and gazed at Kanakis in speechless amazement.

‘My child,’ he murmured.

‘Yes, your child. A son or a daughter? I don’t mind. In any case, it will surely be lovely, being yours and Marie-Theres’s. It will look like her, of course, and I shall be accounted lucky not to have passed on any of my heavy features to my offspring, as your father did to your poor sister; such an admirable girl, but so ill-favoured, while you laid claim to all your mother’s looks.’

At last Bimbo shifted on his chair, shrugged his shoulders, and rose. His problem was solved, but for some reason he could not quite explain to himself he did not feel very comfortable. Of course the relief was immense, and he certainly was not squeamish. He prided himself on being a man of the world, free of prejudices and inhibitions, but now, somehow, he felt degraded, selling his child to Kanakis, as he had sold him porcelain or furniture. And he had been manipulated into this, like a puppet. It was an outrage. ‘May I ask,’ he said in a voice that scarcely rose above a whisper, ‘whether you have already proposed?’

‘No,’ said Kanakis, ‘but I spent a most enjoyable morning yesterday choosing a ring. Would you like to see it? A really beautiful cabochon ruby, like a drop of blood.’ He paused on the comparison.

‘Yes,’ said Bimbo, ‘I didn’t realise until it was too late. She will like the ring.’

‘I hope she will. You see, I don’t expect to be refused, thanks to you.’

Twenty-six

Kanakis was not refused. He called on Marie-Theres’s Aunt Fini, the Baroness Simovic, and asked her permission to see her niece alone. Resi was summoned to the drawing room and the old lady retired discreetly to another room, speculating on what this unexpected visit might mean, as did Resi herself. She looked at Kanakis, when he came forward and took her hand, with the bewildered and slightly harassed expression in her blue eyes she had had ever since she realised the predicament she was in. Kanakis immediately saw her trouble and he did not wish to prolong it.

‘Will you sit down, my dear, while we talk,’ he said, drawing two chairs close to each other, and while she hesitated a moment sat down in one of them himself.