She nodded and bent over her case to get her toilet-bag. “I know. I telephoned the moment we got in.”
“I could have saved a few dinars on the call then. What now?” This was me, asking her what to do. I made a note to watch that. I didn’t want to become dominated.
“Most tourists in this country make all their travelling and hotel reservations through an agency ... Atlas, or Putnik. And they keep open late. I’ll go into the town and see what I can find out just as soon as I have changed.”
“When you’re changed,” I said, “you’re having dinner with me – on the terrace. La Vadarci can wait until tomorrow morning.”
“But won’t that—”
“It’s an order,” I said. I smiled and drank to her over the glass. I was back in the saddle again.
We had dinner on a high terrace overlooking the sea. Away to our right were the lights of Dubrovnik. It was warm, and there were trails of phosphorescence in the water. Most of the other guests in the hotel seemed to be Germans who all apparently knew one another and looked brown, beefy and self-assured. Professor Vadarci had had something to say about that in Stigmata.
I was not sure what we ate, but we drank a wine called Grk, and that was how it tasted. Vérité appeared, looking wonderful. I wondered how the hell her husband could ever have done it to her. There were a few moments when she began to crowd Katerina from my mind, but I held them back firmly. Somewhere at the back of me a three-piece orchestra was playing, and the Germans, to get a tighter cargo stow for more food, now and again got up and danced.
I said, “How the hell do you travel a dress like that without getting it creased? Everything in my case comes out looking like a dog’s bed.”
She almost smiled, but not quite, but I could see she was relaxing.
We went through the usual plays. Yes, she’d been in Dubrovnik before. Herr Malacod travelled a lot. The island across the channel from us was called Lokrum. No, she did not speak the language. Yes, she always drank water with her wine. I tried her a little deeper when we got to the sweet – something called struklji, a preparation of nuts and plums stuffed into balls of cheese and then boiled, so Fodor told me later. I was not surprised that she tucked into it, because I’d met a lot of slim girls with the appetites of horses and nothing to show for it. No, she had no idea why Herr Malacod was so interested in Madame Vadarci. No, she knew nothing about Madame Vadarci. Or Professor Vadarci? No – it took a little longer coming, I thought – she knew of no Professor Vadarci.
She finished the last stuffed cheese ball and I stood up.
I said, “Hocete li da igrate?”
She looked at me and one eyebrow went up in a delicious curve.
“It could sound,” I said, “as though I’m asking you if you’ve got indigestion. Actually Fodor tells me it means – Will you dance with me?”
It was then she really smiled and I thought to myself that the guy who’d made that smile a rare occurrence deserved three shots in him. I went round and took her chair and she looked up at me and said, “I shall be sorry I gave you that book.”
“You’re not going to be sorry about anything,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure what I meant by that, but it didn’t matter because by then she was in my arms and we were moving away from the table. She could dance. Not what Dino would have called a “ball of fire” maybe, but she was certainly no cardboard cut-out.
The next morning we took a taxi down to Dubrovnik. By then she was back to normal, efficient and cool, and I knew that I wasn’t going to get more than one or two smiles a day. She left me to make the round of the tourist agencies, promising to meet me in the main harbour café of the town in two hours.
I am not a one for sightseeing. Just give me a beach with a lot of brown legs to look at and you can keep the baroque façades. I never want to flog around city walls or crick my neck in cathedrals. There was a time when I used to think I did, but after about fifteen minutes I would find myself thinking of ice-cold beer, and bikinis. Now, I know better than to try.
Right at the top end of the town, at a cigarette-end’s flick from the Onofrio Fountain (fifteenth century, designed by the Neapolitan Onofrio de la Cava: Fodor) I found an oyster bar, just a cool cave opening on to the street, bead curtains, two tables, and Adriatic oysters at four shillings a dozen. I had two dozen to begin with, and a half a bottle of a dry white wine called Vugava which left Grk standing. I sat near the door, enjoying myself and, after a while, a tubby little number came in and took the chair next to me and, with a wink, helped himself to one of my oysters. I waited for him to say it and he did.
“They’re good, no, Mother Jambo?”
“If this is going to be a long session,” I said, “I shall have to order more.”
“Allow me.” He called for another dozen, and then went on, “They grow on dead trees, waterlogged, sunk at the bottom. That’s because the sea bed is no good. People don’t know it, but they’re better than Portuguese or Whitstables. Small but all flavour. Rotten travellers, though. Having a good time?”
I nodded. He was not English, though he spoke it well, but all in a sing-song, up and down. He was about forty, dressed in a faded blue shirt and canvas trousers, sandals, no socks,
