Now he sleeps on the roof. He claims that it is because he likes the hard surface, for sleeping. The truth is that the proximity of those who knew and loved the old version of himself is almost unbearable.
Upon one tawdry wall hangs a portrait of himself that his mother had commissioned a few months before he left for the front. In this portrait of himself: hatted, straight-backed, faintly moustached (the days before he could grow facial hair in earnest) is represented an image that he could no more return to than if he had lost both of his legs. They have kept it there to taunt him, to torture him. He reminds himself how much better he is now; how much stronger, how necessary were the things he has done: all things that he thought he knew for certain when he was inside the camp. But it is more difficult than it was before. Most of all when he sees the way his sister looks at him, as though she suspects the thing that is fundamentally changed about him. As though she fears him.
Well, she has a secret too. He has noticed that she is gone from the house for hours at a time, often returning only when it is growing dark. She cannot have been at the school for all this time, he has realised, or delivering linens at the bazaar. There is something else that is occupying her time, though no mention of it is made.
So he follows her. Across the channel of the Bosphorus on the ferry – concealed in the crowd, head lowered, so that she will not spot him: though those around him do, moving a little further away from him as if he carries a disease. Even if he had not taken such precautions he does not think she would notice him: she appears lost to her own thoughts, her eyes trained upon the approaching bank.
There is only one place where she could be going – and yet this makes no sense. He has seen the enemy there, with his own eyes. But he watches, and follows, and hides and waits. And there he witnesses her betrayal.
The Traveller
In Italy the colours of buildings have changed subtly: now there is burnt sienna, orange-red, shutters painted deep green. Even the gloomiest suburbs have a certain romance to them for the foreigner; because they are different and strange in subtle ways.
At the next table sit the couple I glimpsed on the platform in Paris; she of the pale pink coat. Undiscouraged by the terrible main course they have ordered the equally awful pudding: a cream and sponge confection in glass saucers. They feed this to each other from the spoon, seemingly with no awareness of its lack of culinary merit. Their gaze slides, rarely, to the scene beyond the windows – but nowhere else. Nothing seems to dim their excitement for this journey, for each other; it is like watching children – a voluptuous delight. I do not resent them, though the sight gives me an ache. It does not come to all, what they have. For some of us it beckons, but remains forever out of reach: an impossible promise.
As we approach Milan the sky is palest gold, the trees intricate black cut-outs against it. I have always thought that Milan has much more in common with the cities of Austria and Switzerland than it does with those of the south of the country. It is a sober, cooler place; it rains often. Bisected by fast roads and the rattle of trams; seamed with money. The passengers who embark are almost exclusively well-dressed. The women are fur-clad, exquisitely shod. But perhaps the men are chicer still: they wear their suits with a panache that is out of the reach of any Englishman and pastel-coloured scarves of softest wool. But I remember a time when it seemed that an Italian man wore one thing only: a uniform of khaki green serge, just like any Englishman.
Venice, at dusk. For such a jewel of history and art the station is a surprisingly tawdry place. It has begun to rain, and I can see small clusters of umbrella-hawkers touting their wares. This is where the honeymoon couple disembark. He carries the three cases, elegant monogrammed affairs. There is something almost old-fashioned about them, especially beside the lank-haired, paisley-clad twenty-year-olds who can be only a decade younger.
They are just before me. I watch as they are swallowed by the crowd and feel a strange sorrow at the loss of them, never to be seen again.
I have booked a hotel here for the night to break the journey, and Venice is roughly the midpoint, if one takes into account the ferry from London. I am ready for a respite. My body aches as though I have travelled the entire distance on foot.
It is raining when I exit the station, raining as I leave my hotel – where my room is not quite ready for me – and make my way along the edges of the smaller canals toward St Mark’s Square. People hurry by beneath umbrellas; their faces wear this weather as a personal affront. The canals are swollen, precarious. Everything seems made of water; the city looks like a painting in which the colours are beginning to run.
As I look up at the famous basilica a shift occurs. The many fluted domes and
