Through Streets Broad and Narrow (42 page)

“I thought you said he'd kept the money? Accepted it?”

“He did.”

“How much?”

“All of it.”

“He can't do that.”

“What's to prevent him? Who am I going to protest to? I can't send a letter to the
Irish Times
or write to the Dail saying that I tried to bribe the Nazis to release a Jewboy from Dachau.”

“I don't see why not.”

“I can't,” Groarke said. “For Christ's sake! Where d'you think I've been raising my fees since Cloate ran out on me?'”

“Not Luthmann?”

“Yes.”

“Good god!”

“When I'd run enough with him and couldn't begin to pay it back he said that I could make it good in other ways.”

“How?”

“He suggested I might make use of my English friends and take the odd trip across to Liverpool and send him code postcards when I got wind of convoys. It wouldn't have been difficult.
You
were mentioned.”

“You could get yourself shot.”

“I preferred Grangegorman.”

Two or three people came out of the party. A girl with a glass in her hand was legged up onto the stallion by one of her companions.

“Ride him, ride him, Fiona!”

“Go on Charles, get up behind her!”

“No, no, she's Europa. A white stallion instead of a bull.”

“Europa, good God!” guffawed the man named Charles. “The further off from Kingstown the nearer is to Llanfairpwllgyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantisiliogogogoch.”

“She'll have to mind a Jerry submarine doesn't get her in the Channel.”

“Up Germany!”

“Up neutrality!”

“Help me down. I'm dizzy,” she told Groarke. “You, with the red hair, what's your name? Who's side are you on?”

Groarke ignored her; followed by John he moved away up the mews towards Fitzwilliam Square.

“I thought it was to do with Dymphna,” John said. “Your retreat to Grangegorman, I mean.”

“As my father would say, ‘
La whore a ses raisons!
' Because that would have been your motive it doesn't mean it would have been mine. The Consulate staff have obviously discovered who Eli Greenbloom really is.”

John absorbed this. It was difficult to run over the points of Groarke's defection, the entirely new colour given to so many of his actions in the past eighteen months; it was difficult to do this and simultaneously relate the new conception of him to Greenbloom's brother Eli awaiting release or death in Dachau.

They were walking together now, faster, in the direction of Stephen's Green and the Shelbourne.

John said, “You sold Dymphna, too!”

“Agreed.”

“To Cloate?”

“Yes, yes, if you call it selling.”

“I do.”

The mist was quite thick in Lower Baggott Street, a winter's mist, cold and frost-tinted round the globes of the street lamps and the headlights of the cars. The glowing interiors of trams rounding the corner of the Green were nearly empty, there were few people on the pavements. Under the trees behind the railings two or three couples hurried towards Grafton Street, the cafés and the cinemas.

“Ambition!” John said. “Greenbloom was right again.”

“Yes, ambition, me bhoy! To qualify on the string of my father's carpet slippers, his stinking literary pretensions. Be bitter about it and I'll give you all the reasons. Local boy makes good with help of friends.” Groarke didn't laugh when he said this; he walked faster and John kept pace with him, saying, “
I
couldn't have helped you—not to that extent.”

“I didn't want you to. You amused me when you didn't sicken me.”

They had stopped outside the Shelbourne; John because he had forgotten why he had come there, Groarke presumably because he hadn't finished what he wanted to say.

He said, “You didn't hinder me, not directly, that is, until you waved that damned girl under my nose. I fell for that all right.”

“Why?”

“Money didn't come into it; I didn't think so. One direction in which we started level, or not so level—being Irish too, an advantage to me, if you like. No fees to find, very little social
savoir-faire
, just straightforward boy and girl stuff.” He stopped. “What did you get out of me?”

“Out of you?”

“Oh Christ! What advantages?”

“I'm beginning to wonder.”

Groarke said, “Give me a cigarette before we go in.” He took the packet. “Have one yourself. I'll stand you a drink on your friend Greenbloom's account.”

“We'd better find him first.”

“No, we'll drink first. The stuff's flowing in that flat but so far we've neither of us had anything.”

They went up to the reception desk and Groarke asked if Mr. Graeme had returned.

The receptionist referred to her message pad. “Mr. Graeme telephoned a few minutes ago to say that he had been delayed. He thought you might call.”

“Anything else?”

“He said he would be joining Miss Caroline Smythe's party a little later and that you were not to leave her address before he arrived.”

They went through into the smaller of the two lounges and then Groarke said, “He's left me the key to his rooms. We'll have a quick drink up there and go back to the flat.”

They ordered their drinks from one of the waiters and took them up in the lift. When they got into Greenbloom's sitting-room they sat down on a sofa and Groarke got hold of Eli's photograph. He laid it down on his knees and stood his drink on it as though it were a tray.

John said, “I think you've been the biggest cod of the lot. You were the first Irishman I met over here. Very charming, full of good intentions, a generous confidant. I admired you, I thought I liked you.”

“That's right.”

“You certainly did your best to make me single-minded. I think that of all the Dubliners, even Theresa's circle, Dymphna's and
Palgrave's, you were the only one I really trusted after the first few months.”

“Interesting,” Groarke said. “I took you right in, then?”

“Completely. Until that night in the Mungo Park. I suppose that was a touch of the real situation?”

“That was the breath of it.”

“You're an envious devil.”

“A poor and envious devil,” Groarke said. “It takes a poor man to know envy and even then he's to have a richer one beside him.”

“Well, it's been a very expensive lesson,” John said. “In a way, if I'd met you, known you first, I needn't have troubled to come to Ireland.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that you are Ireland, the same the English have been running their heads into for the past fifteen hundred years or so.”

“No,” said Groarke. “You under-simplify. I'm not like Ireland, I'm like life. I know a silly bastard who lapsed from Catholicism because a Jesuit father struck him when he was at school. What a reason! As if sooner or later we're not all slapped on the cheek by a Jesuit.” He held up the photograph of Eli Greenbloom. “Here's a Jew in Dachau. Now he's a Catholic and he's still in Dachau. So are hundreds of Protestants, Socialists and Communists; men, in fact. The only difference is that this one thought he was going to get out.”

They finished their drinks and John said, “Well that's that. Now that I do know you, I don't particularly dislike you.”

“A lot of negatives.”

“I don't particularly like you, either.”

“You're advancing,” Groarke said. “We'd better get after Greenbloom. This man here in the photograph has my sympathy for some reason. I can't get the bastard out of my mind.”

When they got back to Caroline's party they found that Luthmann had taken it over completely.

They were singing German songs:
The Horst Wessel, Urians Reis um die Welt
, and the Wehrmacht song
Wir Fähren gegen Englandt
.

Luthmann had one arm round Caroline and another round Jan
Benjamin. He was sweating attractively, had taken off his jacket and was swaying them both to Palgrave's piano rhythm. In his shirt front he had pinned small replicas of the three flags behind the bar, the Irish flag given pride of place in the middle.

There was a certain amount of sex going on up the staircase and probably a good deal more upstairs. Couples sitting on the floor with their backs to the mirrors had that self-cherishing look of the love-makers, some sitting close and quiescent, talking pearly things to one another, only their hands and arms suddenly clenching and writhing at intervals. John saw that their mouths were startling; he had one of his thoughts that physical love goes always to the lips and remembered suddenly Greenbloom's triptych and the tone in which he had said, “
Eating!
” when he was describing “
La Débâcle
.” I suppose I looked the same when I was with Dymphna, just as arrogant; as though she should marvel at each breath I took.

When Luthmann waved to them and came forward in his white silk shirt with so much muscle under it and sweat stains in the armpits, by some association John resented the grip of his hand, though previously he remembered that it had felt pleasant. The hand seemed so clean and strong, sewn with short golden hairs—very Aryan. Luthmann continued to hold his hand.

“But where have you been, you two gentlemen, one of Ireland and one of England? Can it be that you have offended against neutrality?”

He drew John over to the annexe where Palgrave, sleepy-faced with wine and delight, was swaying as once he had swayed in the empty ballrom at Ffynchfort.

Caroline and Benjamin followed. She laughed something into John's ear but he only caught her vermouthy breath.

Luthmann, all Christian names now, said, “Isn't that so, Palgrave? These stiff-necked Englishmen do not realize that when we say neutrality we mean—”

“Neutrality,” said Palgrave with a sidelong smile as he played a thick chord.

“Neutrality!” repeated Luthmann. “It is real. The Irish are not playing at it. It is not a game. They really are, in their green island, a neutral people. If they hear of a German U-boat in difficulties,
or a British merchantman, they would give it just three days in their ports. If they learn of a German convoy—but what have I said?” He laughed, he squeezed John's hand. “What a thing! There
are
no German convoys. In the Baltic there are; but here—no! What a foolish mistake. Come, Palgrave, we will have the song of the English, ‘Rule Britannia'!”

To get his hand out of Luthmann's, John said to Groarke, “A cigarette please, Mike.”

Luthmann produced a German lighter from his trouser pocket. It looked like a real submarine, very compact, with a little conning tower which flicked open to reveal the flame. Its owner was very gay, and successfully so. He turned round to the piano again and this time put his arm round Caroline. She tried to dance out of it and he said, “But no, my good Caroline,” and held her very firmly.

It was at this moment that a very small thing happened. To show that he was not offended by what Luthmann had said, so that the Nazi would not sense his newly completed detestation of him, John replaced the lighter in his hip pocket which was bulging with something already in it, bulging over Luthmann's very healthy buttock.

His hand was gripped instantly. Luthmann's face was there in front of him, but he had sprung round so swiftly that John had not even noticed the movement. All he saw at first was the angry sweat on the forehead; sweat that had seemed mild now become the sweat of a man working very hard and with intense concentration. Then he saw the blue eyes, the many wrinkles in which they were set suddenly appertinent to a more habitual expression than laughter: that of calculation. Luthmann very nearly spoke in German at that moment, but changed it just in time to: “Goddammit! What do you do with your hand?”

“Your lighter.”

“Ah, my lighter. I see. You were replacing it.” He released John's hand and all the facial muscles conjured back the previous expression as he withdrew the lighter and a small wallet from his hip pocket. He went through this swiftly.

“My press card. Invaluable. A foolish place to keep it, perhaps,
but then it is hot in here. Even some of the ladies are disrobing, my dear Caroline!”

John asked him, “Did you think I was after your money?”

“Money? I keep no money on me. Now let us all drink together and then have some more songs.”

“What a disappointment,” John said, “I thought you might have about a hundred pounds on you.”

“What is this? A hundred pounds, I hear you say?”

Groarke said, “He's drunk, Christian. John, get me out of here a moment,
now
, will you?”

“Why, what's the matter?”

“Where's the bathroom? I've been feeling nauseated the whole evening.”

“In a moment, Mike.”

“No, now. Show me, blast you!”

Reluctantly, still feeling that clean grip on his wrist, John led him towards the staircase. Groarke was grey with fury. He only managed to say, “I warn you—”

But as they reached the foot of the stairs, Luthmann's voice from just behind them asked, “Why should I have a hundred pounds?” And this time he caught Groarke by the arm. “You can wait one moment, please.”

Caroline had come up. “Whatever is going on? For Heaven's sake, if someone wants to be sick let him be sick in the sink, it's much nearer than the bathroom.”

John said, “Isn't a hundred pounds the value of a Jew? Thirty pieces of silver?”

“What are you talking about, John?” Caroline demanded.

“Please, Caroline, this is important.”

“Then come into the kitchen,” she said, holding open the door. “Mrs. Mahoney's gone home, she's coming back to do the washing up in the morning. So for God's sake let Michael be ill in here before he ruins the stairs carpet.”