'A very distinguished audience,' murmured Stafford Nye to his companion. 'Plenty of money there. A young audience on the whole. You wouldn't think they could afford it.'
'Oh! that can be seen to - it is seen to.'
'A subsidy for the élite of youth? That kind of thing?'
'Yes.'
They walked towards the restaurant on the high side of the hill.
'They give you an hour for the meal. Is that right?'
'Technically an hour. Actually an hour and a quarter.'
'That audience,' said Sir Stafford Nye, 'most of them, nearly all of them, I should say, are real lovers of music,'
'Most of them, yes. It's important, you know.'
'What do you mean - important?'
'That the enthusiasm should be genuine. At both ends of the scale,' she added.
'What did you mean, exactly, by that?'
'Those who practise and organize violence must love violence, must want it, must yearn for it. The seal of ecstasy in every movement, of slashing, hurting, destroying. And the same thing with the music. The ears must appreciate every moment of the harmonies and beauties. There can be no pretending in this game.'
'Can you double the roles - do you mean you can combine violence and a love of music or a love of art?'
'It is not always easy, I think, but yes. There are many who can. It is safer really, if they don't have to combine r?les.'
'It's better to keep it simple, as our fat friend Mr Robinson would say? Let the lovers of music love music, let the violent practitioners love violence. Is that what you mean?'
'I think so.'
'I am enjoying this very much. The two days that we have stayed here, the two nights of music that we have enjoyed. I have not enjoyed all the music because I am not perhaps sufficiently modern in my taste. I find the clothes very interesting.'
'Are you talking of the stage production?'
'No, no, I was talking of the audience, really. You and I, the squares, the old-fashioned. You, Countess, in your society gown, I in my white tie and tails. Not a comfortable getup, it never has been. And then the others, the silks and the velvets, the ruffled shirts of the men, real lace, I noticed, several times - and the plush and the hair and the luxury of avant garde, the luxury of the eighteen-hundreds or you might almost say of the Elizabethan age or of Van Dyck pictures.'
'Yes, you are right.'
'I'm no nearer, though, to what it all means. I haven't learnt anything. I haven't found out anything.'
'You mustn't be impatient. This is a rich show, supported, asked for, demanded perhaps by youth and provided by -'
'By whom?'
'We don't know yet. We shall know.'
'I'm so glad you are sure of it.'
They went into the restaurant and sat down. The food was good though not in any way ornate or luxurious. Once or twice they were spoken to by an acquaintance or a friend. Two people who recognized Sir Stafford Nye expressed pleasure and surprise at seeing him. Renata had a bigger circle of acquaintances since she knew more foreigners - well-dressed women, a man or two, mostly German or Austrian, Stafford Nye thought, one or two Americans. Just a few desultory words. Where people had come from or were going to. Criticism or appreciation of the musical fare. Nobody wasted much time since the interval for eating had not been very long.
They returned to their seats for the two final musical offerings. A Symphonic Poem, 'Disintegration in Joy', by at new young composer, Solukonov, and then the solemn grandeur of the March of the Meistersingers.
They came out again into the night. The car which was at their disposal every day was waiting there to take them back to the small but exclusive hotel in the village street.
Stafford Nye said good-night to Renata. She spoke to him in a lowered voice.
'Four a.m.,' she said. 'Be ready.'
She went straight into her room and shut the door and he went to his.
The faint scrape of fingers on his door came precisely at three minutes to four the next morning. He opened the door and stood ready.
'The car is waiting,' she said. 'Come.'
They lunched at a small mountain inn. The weather was good, the mountains beautiful. Occasionally Stafford Nye wondered what on earth he was doing here. He understood less and less of his travelling companion. She spoke little. He found himself watching her profile. Where was she taking him? What was her real reason? At last, as the sun was almost setting, he said:
'Where are we going? Can I ask?'
'You can ask, yes.'
'But you do not reply?'
'I could reply. I could tell you things, but would they mean anything? It seems to me that if you come to where we are going without my preparing you with explanations (which cannot in the nature of things mean anything), your first impressions will have more force and significance.'
He looked at her again thoughtfully. She was wearing a tweed coat trimmed with fur, smart travelling clothes, foreign in make and cut.
'Mary Ann,' he said thoughtfully.
There was a faint question in it.
'No,' she said, 'not at the moment.'
'Ah. You are still the Countess Zerkowski.'
'At the moment I am still the Countess Zerkowski.'
'Are you in your own part of the world?'
'More or less. I grew up as a child in this part of the world. For a good portion of each year we used to come here in the autumn to a Schloss not very many miles from here.'
He smiled and said thoughtfully, 'What a nice word it is. A Schloss. So solid-sounding.'
'Schl?sser are not standing very solidly nowadays. They are mostly disintegrated.'
'This is Hitler's country, isn't it? We're not far, are we, from Berchtesgaden?'
'It lies over there to the northeast.'
'Did your relations, your friends - did they accept Hitler, believe in him? Perhaps I ought not to ask things like that.'
'They disliked him and all he stood for. But they said "Heil Hitler". They acquiesced in what had happened to their country. What else could they do? What else could anybody do at that date?'
'We are going towards the Dolomites, are we not?'
'Does it matter where we are, or which way we are going?'
'Well, this is a voyage of exploration, is it not?'
'Yes, but the exploration is not geographical. We are going to see a personality.'
'You make me feel -' Stafford Nye looked up at the landscape of swelling mountains reaching up to the sky - 'as though we were going to visit the famous Old Man of the Mountain.'
'The Master of the Assassins, you mean, who kept his followers under drugs so that they died for him wholeheartedly, so that they killed, knowing that they themselves would also be killed, but believing, too, that that would transfer them immediately to the Moslem Paradise - beautiful women, hashish and erotic dreams - perfect and unending happiness.'
She paused a minute and then said:
'Spell-binders! I suppose they've always been there throughout the ages. People who make you believe in them so that you are ready to die for them. Not only Assassins. The Christians died also.'
'The holy Martyrs? Lord Altamount?'
'Why do you say Lord Altamount?'
'I saw him that way - suddenly - that evening. Carved in stone - in a thirteenth-century cathedral, perhaps.'
'One of us may have to die. Perhaps more.'
She stopped what he was about to say.
'There is another thing I think of sometimes. A verse in the New Testament - Luke, I think. Christ at the Last Supper saying to his followers: "You are my companions and my friends, yet one of you is a devil." So in all probability one of us is a devil.'
'You think it possible?'
'Almost certain. Someone we trust and know, but who goes to sleep at night, not dreaming of martyrdom but of thirty pieces of silver, and who wakes with the feel of them in the palm of his hand.'
'The love of money?'
'Ambition covers it better. How does one recognize a devil? How would one know? A devil would stand out in a crowd, would be exciting - would advertise himself - would exercise leadership.'
She was silent a moment and then said in a thoughtful voice:
'I had a friend once in the Diplomatic Service who told me how she had said to a German woman how moved she herself had been at the performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau. But the German woman said scornfully: "You do not understand. We Germans have no need of a Jesus Christ! We have our Adolf Hitler here with us. He is greater than any Jesus that ever lived." She was quite a nice ordinary woman. But that is how she felt. Masses of people felt it. Hitler was a spell-binder. He spoke and they listened - and accepted the sadism, the gas chambers, the tortures of the Gestapo.'
She shrugged her shoulders and then said in her normal voice, 'All the same, it's odd that you should have said what you did just now.'
'What was that?'
'About the Old Man of the Mountain. The head of the Assassins.'
'Are you telling me there is an Old Man of the Mountain here?'
'No. Not an Old Man of the Mountain, but there might be an Old Woman of the Mountain.'
'An Old Woman of the Mountain. What's she like?'
'You'll see this evening.'
'What are we doing this evening?'
'Going into society,' said Renata.
'It seems a long time since you've been Mary Ann.'
'You'll have to wait till we're doing some air travel again.'
'I suppose it's very bad for one's morale,' Stafford Nye said thoughtfully, 'living high up in the world.'
'Are you talking socially?'
'No. Geographically. If you live in a castle on a mountain peak overlooking the world below you, well, it makes you despise the ordinary folk, doesn't it? You're the top one, you're the grand one. That's what Hitler felt in Berchtesgaden, that's what many people feel perhaps who climb mountains and look down on their fellow creatures in valleys below.'
'You must be careful tonight,' Renata warned him. 'It's going to be ticklish.'
'Any instructions?'
'You're a disgruntled man. You're one that's against the Establishment, against the conventional world. You're a rebel, but a secret rebel. Can you do it?'
'I can try.'
The scenery had grown wilder. The big car twisted and turned up the roads, passing through mountain villages, sometimes looking down on a bewilderingly distant view where lights shone on a river, where the steeples of churches showed in the distance.
'Where are we going, Mary Ann?'
'To an eagle's nest.'
The road took a final turn. It wound through a forest. Stafford Nye thought he caught glimpses now and again of deer or of animals of some kind. Occasionally, too, there were leather jacketed men with guns. Keepers, he thought. And then they came finally to a view of an enormous Schloss standing on a crag. Some of it, he thought, was partially mined, though most of it had been restored and rebuilt. It was both massive and magnificent, but there was nothing new about it or in the message it held. It was representative of past power - power held through bygone ages.
'This was originally the Grand Duchy of Liechtenstolz. The Schloss was built by the Grand Duke Ludwig in seventeen ninety,' said Renata.
'Who lives there now? The present Grand Duke?'
'No. They're all gone and done with. Swept away.'
'And who lives here now then?'
'Someone who has present-day power,' said Renata.
'Money?'
'Yes. Very much so.'
'Shall we meet Mr Robinson, flown on ahead by air to greet us?'
'The last person you'll meet here will be Mr Robinson, I can assure you.'
'A pity,' said Stafford Nye. 'I like Mr Robinson. He's quite something, isn't he? Who is he really - what nationality is he?'
'I don't think anybody has ever known. Everyone tells one something different. Some people say he's a Turk, some that he's an Armenian, some that he's Dutch, some that he's just plain English. Some say that his mother was a Circassian slave, a Russian grand duchess, an Indian begum, and so on. Nobody knows. One person told me that his mother was a Miss McLellan from Scotland. Ithink that's as likely as anything.'
They had drawn up beneath a large portico. Two menservants in livery came down the steps. Their bows were ostentatious as they welcomed the guests. The luggage was removed; they had a good deal of luggage with them. Stafford Nye had wondered to begin with why he had been told to bring so much, but he was beginning to understand now that from time to time there was need for it. There would, he thought, be need for it this evening. A few questioning remarks and his companion told him that this was so.
They met before dinner, summoned by the sound of a great resounding gong. As he paused in the hall, he waited for her to join him coming down the stairs. She was in full elaborate evening dress tonight, wearing a dark red velvet gown, rubies round her neck, and a ruby-tiara on her head. A manservant stepped forward and conducted them. Flinging open the door, he announced: 'The Gr?fin Zerkowski, Sir Stafford Nye.'
'Here we come, and I hope we look the part,' said Sir Stafford Nye to himself.
He looked down in a satisfied manner at the sapphire and diamond studs in the front of his shirt. A moment later he had drawn his breath in an astonished gasp. Whatever he had expected to see, it had not been this. It was an enormous room, rococo in style, chairs and sofas and hangings of the finest brocades and velvets. On the walls there were pictures that he could not recognize all at once, but where he noted almost immediately - for he was fond of pictures - what was certainly a Cézanne, a Matisse, possibly a Renoir. Pictures of inestimable value.
Sitting on a vast chair, thronelike in its suggestion, was an enormous woman. A whale of a woman, Stafford Nye thought, there really was no other word to describe her. A great, big, cheesy-looking woman, wallowing in fat. Double, treble, almost quadruple chins. She wore a dress of stiff orange satin. On her head was an elaborate crownlike tiara of precious stones. Her hands, which rested on the brocaded arms of her chair, were also enormous. Great, big, fat hands with great, big, fat, shapeless fingers. On each finger, he noticed, was a solitaire ring. And in each ring, he thought, was a genuine solitaire stone. A ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, a pale green stone which he did not know, a chrysoprase, perhaps, a yellow stone which, if not a topaz, was a yellow diamond. She was horrible, he thought. She wallowed in her fat. A great, white, creased slobbering mass of fat was her face. And set in it, rather like currants in a vast currant bun, were two small black eyes. Very shrewd eyes, looking on the world, appraising it, appraising him, not appraising Renata, he thought. Renata she knew. Renata was here by command, by appointment. However you liked to put it. Renata had been told to bring him here. He wondered why. He couldn't really think why, but he was quite sure of it. It was at him she was looking. She was appraising him, summing him up. Was he what she wanted? Was it, yes, he'd rather put it this way, was he what the custom had ordered?
