I began to unpack but was interrupted after a few minutes by a knock on the door. I called out and the door opened.
Katerina came in. She was wearing a loose bathing wrap over her bikini, and she came to my arms like a porpoise surfacing. I fell over backwards on to the bed, holding and kissing her, and there were no words between us for quite a while. It was some time before I realized that one of my hairbrushes was puncturing my shoulder blade through my silk shirt.
Eventually she sat up, held me at arm’s length, shook her head, and said, “Only a few moments I have. She watch me like a hawk.”
I rubbed the back of my hand gently across the brown skin above her navel, and said, “Why don’t we just poison her?”
She giggled and ran the fingers of one hand through my hair and the whole of my scalp tingled with the electric discharge.
“Darling....” She kissed me, too briefly.
“I’ve got to talk to you. Undisturbed. Not for five minutes but for half an hour. What about your room? Tonight?”
“No....” She leant forward and rubbed her lips softly against mine. My bones felt like putty. She took her lips away and went on, “Her room opens into mine, she would hear.”
“Then you come here.”
She shook her head. “When the lights go out this place is like a tomb. You want I should walk around with a candle, to stumble into the wrong room, maybe?”
“I take your point. Where then?”
She thought for a moment, and the three-line frown was a thing of beauty. “She sleep after lunch for two hours. You hire a little boat and meet me round the back of the island tomorrow.”
She stood up and pulled the wrap around her, smiled at me as I nodded, and went to the door. She paused there and said, “This Mademoiselle Latour-Mesmin you are with – she is very chic, no? But I am angry if you sleep with her.”
“She’s Madame,” I corrected. “Maybe I am angry too I don’t sleep with her. But how did you know her name?”
I couldn’t be sure whether she hesitated. That was the trouble with her. You could never be sure. She said, “I read in the register before I come here.” She put her head out of the door, and looked carefully up and down. Then she was gone.
After dinner that evening, Vérité and I sat at one of the tables on the quayside and had coffee and liqueurs. It was very peaceful. It would have been relaxing to have just been on holiday and not to have to wonder every so often what all this was about, and who was fooling who and what for. The great lake was cradled in the bowl of the surrounding hills and with the passing of daylight they had grown a dark, velvety blue against the paler night sky. The air was warm and thick with the resiny smell of pines and arbutus. The coloured lights of the hotel were on, outlining the arches of the colonnade which fronted the dining-rooms. Fish jumped and smacked their flanks against the still water. A few mosquitoes buzzed and carried out sharp forays, and somewhere on the near lake shore an owl put in an occasional note of mournful disagreement. There were the usual crowd of Germans, two or three parties of English people and some Yugoslavs. From the far end of the gravelled strip I could now and then catch the sound of Madame Vadarci’s voice, booming like a bittern ... a dear old biddy, I thought, knitting a blanket for her favourite horse, and carrying a long thonged whip to flay its hide off when it began to act up.
I reached out and held my lighter to Vérité’s cigarette. The soft light of the flame shadowed the beautiful bone structure of her face, and her eyes were bright with the reflection of the lights of the hotel. If one could start from scratch or make logic master of emotion, I thought, it would have been better to fall in love with her type rather than Katerina’s. For the first time I told myself frankly that Katerina, on any score, was an odds-on favourite to turn out a tramp. She was ready to use anyone she could to get whatever it was she wanted. I knew it in my bones. But it didn’t make any difference. You had to follow your instinct.
Vérité said, “I saw her go into your room just after we arrived.”
“Yes. She’s very anxious that I shouldn’t lose touch with her. I’d give a lot to know why.”
“You are in love with her?”
“I don’t know. I’m having a shareholders’ meeting about that tomorrow afternoon. No matter which way the voting goes – I’m a working man. What do you know about her?”
“Nothing – except one thing.”
“Something profound?”
“No, something very ordinary, something women always know about women like her.”
“Which is?”
“That she can only love herself. There is nothing else there.”
“You want to hear something really profound? That’s the kind men fall in love with. It’s a challenge. They won’t believe ... I mean the particular man ... that he hasn’t got the one thing it takes, the lodestone, the magic kiss that melts the frozen heart. The literature of every nation is lousy with the theme. And don’t let’s get one-sided about it. It works the other way. There are men like her and some women who think that they alone have got the magic to change them—”
She got up slowly and walked away, across the gravel, not towards the hotel, but along a small path that led around the island, under cypress trees
