The Spy Quartet. Len Deighton

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      10

      I stayed in Maria’s flat but the next afternoon Maria went back to my rooms to feed Joe. She got back before the storm. She came in blowing on her hands and complaining of the cold.

      ‘Did you change the water and put the cuttlefish bone in?’ I asked.

      ‘Yes,’ she said.

      ‘It’s good for his beak,’ I said.

      ‘I know,’ she said. She stood by the window looking out over the fast-darkening boulevard. ‘It’s primitive,’ she said without turning away from the window. ‘The sky gets dark and the wind begins to lift hats and boxes and finally dustbin lids, and you start to think this is the way the world will end.’

      ‘I think politicians have other plans for ending the world,’ I said.

      ‘The rain is beginning. Huge spots, like rain for giants. Imagine being an ant hit by a …’

      The phone rang. ‘ … raindrop like that.’ Maria finished the sentence hurriedly and picked up the phone.

      She picked it up as though it was a gun that might explode by accident. ‘Yes,’ she said suspiciously. ‘He’s here.’ She listened, nodding, and saying ‘yes’. ‘The walk will do him good,’ she said. ‘We’ll be there in about an hour.’ She pulled an agonized face at me. ‘Yes,’ she said to the phone again. ‘Well you must just whisper to him and then I won’t hear your little secrets, will I?’ There was a little gabble of electronic indignation, then Maria said, ‘We’ll get ready now or we’ll be late,’ and firmly replaced the receiver. ‘Byrd,’ she said. ‘Your countryman Mr Martin Langley Byrd craves a word with you at the Café Blanc.’ The noise of rain was like a vast crowd applauding frantically.

      ‘Byrd,’ I explained, ‘is the man who was with me at the art gallery. The art people think a lot of him.’

      ‘So he was telling me,’ said Maria.

      ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ I said. ‘An ex-naval officer who becomes a bohemian is bound to be a little odd.’

      ‘Jean-Paul likes him,’ said Maria, as though it was the epitome of accolades. I climbed into my newly washed underwear and wrinkled suit. Maria discovered a tiny mauve razor and I shaved millimetre by millimetre and swamped the cuts with cologne. We left Maria’s just as the rain shower ended. The concierge was picking up the potted plants that had been standing on the pavement.

      ‘You are not taking a raincoat?’ she asked Maria.

      ‘No,’ said Maria.

      ‘Perhaps you’ll only be out for a few minutes,’ said the concierge. She pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose and peered at me.

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Maria, and took my arm to walk away.

      ‘It will rain again,’ called the concierge.

      ‘Yes,’ said Maria.

      ‘Heavily,’ called the concierge. She picked up another pot and prodded the earth in it.

      Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves. This rainstorm pounced hastily like an inexperienced lover, and then as suddenly was gone. The leaves drooped wistfully and the air gleamed with green reflections. It’s easy to forgive the summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there’s no malignity in it.

      Byrd and Jean-Paul were already seated at the café. Jean-Paul was as immaculate as a shop-window dummy but Byrd was excited and dishevelled. His hair was awry and his eyebrows almost non-existent, as though he’d been too near a water-heater blow-back. They had chosen a seat near the side screens and Byrd was wagging a finger and talking excitedly. Jean-Paul waved to us and folded his ear with his fingers. Maria laughed. Byrd was wondering if Jean-Paul was making a joke against him, but deciding he wasn’t, continued to speak.

      ‘Simplicity annoys them,’ Byrd said. ‘It’s just a rectangle, one of them complained, as though that was a criterion of art. Success annoys them. Even though I make almost no money out of my painting, that doesn’t prevent the critics who feel my work is bad from treating it like an indecent assault, as though I have deliberately chosen to do bad work in order to be obnoxious. They have no kindness, no compassion, you see, that’s why they call them critics – originally the word meant a captious fool; if they had compassion they would show it.’

      ‘How?’ asked Maria.

      ‘By painting. That’s what a painting is, a statement of love. Art is love, stricture is hate. It’s obvious, СКАЧАТЬ