“Yes.”
“Good, then I will smoke one.”
I gave him a match and waited. His eyes wandered for a moment or two round the room, then they returned to me. He adjusted the monocle carefully, as if to see me better. Then, to my surprise, he began to speak in tolerably accurate English.
“I expect, Mr. Marlow, you are wondering who I am and why I have come here to visit you.”
I murmured something about it being, in any case, a pleasure. He smiled. I found myself hoping that he would not consider it necessary to do so a third time. It was a grimace rather than a smile. Now that I knew him to be a General it was easier to sum him up. He would look better in uniform. The limp? Probably a war wound. And yet there was a quality of effeminacy about the way he spoke, the way he moved his hands, that lent a touch of the grotesque to the rest of him. Then I noticed with a shock that the patches of colour just below his cheekbones were rouge. I could see, too, on the jaw line just below his ear the edge of a heavy and clumsily applied maquillage. Almost at the same moment as I made the discovery he turned slightly in his chair. In the ordinary way I should have seen nothing in the movement but a desire for greater comfort; now I knew that he was avoiding the light.
In answer to my polite disclaimer he shrugged.
“How odd it is, Mr. Marlow. We on the Continent spend half our lives in the belief that all Englishmen are boors. And yet, in truth, how much more polite and sympathetic they are.” He coughed gently. “But I must not take up too much of your time. I come, so to speak, in a spirit of friendliness and to give myself the pleasure of meeting you.” He paused. “I was a friend, a great friend, of Mr. Ferning.”
I said “Oh” rather foolishly and then expressed my sympathy.
He inclined his head. “His death was a great tragedy for me. Poor man. Italian drivers are abominable.” It was said smoothly, easily and entirely without conviction. Fortunately, the arrival of the waiter made it unnecessary for me to reply to this. I ordered the drinks and lit a cigarette.
“I am afraid,” I said, “that I never had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Ferning.”
For some reason, he chose to misinterpret the statement.
“And neither did I, Mr. Marlow. He was my dear friend, it is true, but I did not know him.” He gestured with his cigarette. “It is, I think, impossible to know any man. His thoughts, his own secret emotions, the way his mind works upon the things he sees-those things are the man. All that the outsider sees is the shell, the mask-you understand? Only sometimes do we see a man and then”-his eyes flickered towards the ceiling-“it is through the eyes of an artist.”
“There is probably a lot in what you say,” I pursued stolidly; “I meant, however, that I had never even met Ferning.”
“How unfortunate! How very unfortunate. I think you would have liked him, Mr. Marlow. You would, I think, have had sympathies in common. A man-how do you say? — sensible.”
“You mean sensitive?”
“Ah, yes, that is the word. A man, you understand, above the trivialities, the squalor of a petty existence-a man, Mr. Marlow, with a philosophy.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, Mr. Marlow. Ferning believed, as I believe, that in such a world as this, one should consider only how to secure the maximum of comfort with the minimum of exertion. But, of course, that was not all. He was, I used to tell him, a Platonist malgre lui. Yes he had his ideals, but he kept them in the proper place for such things-in the background of the mind, together with one’s dreams of Utopia.”
I was getting tired of this.
“And you, General? Are you too interested in machine tools?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I? Oh yes, Mr. Marlow. I am certainly interested in machine tools. But then”- something very nearly approaching a simper animated him-“but then, I am interested in everything. Have you yet walked through the Giardini Pubblici? No? When you do so you will see the attendants wandering round like the spirits of the damned, aimless and without emotion, collecting the small scraps of waste-paper on long, thin spikes. You understand me? You see my point? Nothing is too special, too esoteric for my tastes. Not even machine tools.”
“Then that was how you met Ferning?”
The General fluttered a deprecatory hand. “Oh dear, no, no. We were introduced by a friend-now, alas, also dead-and we discovered a mutual interest in the ballet. Do you care for the ballet, Mr. Marlow?”
“I am extremely fond of it.”
“So?” He looked surprised. “I am very glad to hear it, very glad. Between you and me, Mr. Marlow, I have often wondered whether perhaps poor Ferning’s interest in the ballet was not conditioned more by the personal charms of the ballerinas than by the impersonal tragedy of the dance.”
The drinks arrived, a fact for which I was heartily thankful.
He sniffed at his cognac and I saw his lips twist into an expression of wry distaste. I knew that the Parigi brandy was bad, but the grimace annoyed me. He put the drink down carefully on a side table.
“Personally,” he said, “I find this city unbearable except for the opera and ballet. They are the only reasons for which I come. It must be lonely here without any friends, Mr. Marlow.”
“I have been too busy so far to think about it.”
“Yes, of course. Have you been to Milan before?”
I shook my head.
“Ah, then you will have the brief pleasure of discovering a new city. Personally I prefer Belgrade. But, then, I am a Yugo-Slav.”
“I have never been to Belgrade.”
“A pleasure in store for you.” He paused. Then: “I wonder if you would care to join my wife and I in our box to-morrow night. They are reviving Les Biches, and I am always grateful for Lac des Cygnes. We might all three have a little supper together afterwards.”
I found the prospect of spending an evening in the company of General Vagas singularly distasteful.
“That would be delightful. Unfortunately, I expect to be working to-morrow night.”
“The day after?”
“I have to go to Genoa on business.” This, it afterwards turned out, was perfectly true.
“Then let us make it next Wednesday.”
To have refused again would have been rude. I accepted with as good a grace as possible. Soon after, he got up to go. There was a copy of a Milan evening paper lying on the table. Splashed right across the front page was a violent anti-British article. He glanced at it and then looked at me.
“Are you a patriot, Mr. Marlow?”
“In Milan, I am on business,” I said firmly.
He nodded as though I had said something profound. “One should not,” he said slowly, “allow one’s patriotism to interfere with business. Patriotism is for the caffe. One should leave it behind with one’s tip to the waiter.”
There was a barely perceptible sneer in his voice. For some reason I felt myself reddening.
“I don’t think I quite understand you, General.”
There was a slight change in his manner. His effeminacy seemed suddenly less pronounced.
“Surely,” he said, “you are selling certain machinery to the Italian Government? That is what I understood from my friend Ferning.”
I nodded. He gazed at my tie.
“So. That would seem to raise a question in the mind.” He raised his eyes. “But, of course, I appreciate the delicacy of these affairs. Business is business and so logical. It has no frontiers. Supply and demand, credit and debit. I have myself no head for business. It is a ritual which I find bewildering.”
He had lapsed into Italian again. We moved towards the door and I picked up his coat to help him on with it. We both bent forward simultaneously to pick up the hat and stick; but he was still settling his overcoat on his shoulders and I forestalled him. The stick was fairly heavy and as I handed it to him my fingers slid over a minute break in the malacca. He took the stick from me with a slight bow.
“On Wednesday then, Signore.”
