The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      I was understood immediately. They laughed sympathetically with perfect comprehension of the case. But as it happened, nobody had managed to smuggle anything in. There was nothing for it but to wait for the morning. I lay down on a bench, and found myself the prey of increasingly acute irritation.

      The hours passed like the procession of Banquo's heirs before the eyes of Macbeth ; and a voice in me kept saying, " Macbeth hath murdered sleep, Macbeth shall sleep no more ! "

      I had an appallingly disquieting sensation of being tracked down by some invisible foe. I was seized with a perfectly unreasonable irritation against Feccles, as if it were his fault, and not my own, that I was in this mess.

      Strangely enough, you may think, I never gave a thought to Lou. It mattered nothing to me whether she were suffering or not. My own personal physiological sensations occupied the whole of my mind.

      I was taken before the Commissario as soon as he arrived. They seemed to recognise that the case was important.

      Lou was already in the office. The Commissario spoke no English, and no interpreter was immediately available. She looked absolutely wretched.

      There had been no conveniences for toilet, and in the daylight the disguise was a ridiculous travesty.

      Her hair was tousled and dirty; her complexion was sallow, mottled with touches of unwholesome red. Her eyes were bleared and bloodshot. Dark purple rims were round them.

      I was extremely angry with her for her unprepossessing appearance. It then occurred to me for the first time that perhaps I myself was not looking like the Prince of Wales on Derby Day.

      The commissary was a short, bull-necked individual, evidently sprung from the ranks of the people. He possessed a correspondingly exaggerated sense of his official importance.

      He spoke almost without courtesy, and appeared to resent our incapacity to understand his language.

      As for myself, the fighting spirit had gone out of me completely. All I could do was to give our names in the tone of voice of a schoolboy who has been summoned by the head master, and to appeal for the "Consule, Inglese."

      The commissary's clerk seemed excited when he heard who we were, and spoke to his superior in a rapid undertone. We were asked to write our names.

      I thought this was getting out of it rather nicely. I felt sure that the " Sir " would do the trick, and the " V-C., K.B.E." could hardly fail to impress.

      I'm not a bit of a snob ; but I really was glad for once to be of some sort of importance.

      The clerk ran out of the room with the paper. He came back in a moment, beaming all over, and called the attention of the commissary to one of the morning newspapers, running his finger along the lines with suppressed excitement.

      My spirits rose. Evidently some social paragraph had identified us.

      The commissary changed his manner at once. His new tone was not exactly sympathetic and friendly, but I put that down to the man's plebeian origin.

      He said something about " Consule," and had us conducted to an outer room. The clerk indicated that we were to wait there-no doubt, for the arrival of the consul.

      It was not more than half an hour; but it seemed an eternity. Lou and I had nothing to say to each other. What we felt was a blind ache to get away from these wretched people, to get back to the Caligula ; to have a bath and a meal; and above all, to ease our nerves with a good stiff dose of heroin and a few hearty sniffs of cocaine.

      Chapter X.

       The Bubble Bursts

       Table of Contents

      We felt that our troubles were over when a tall bronzed Englishman in flannels and a Panama sauntered into the room.

      We sprang instinctively to our feet, but he took no notice beyond looking at us out of the tail of his eye, and twisting his mouth into a curious little compromise between a smile and a query.

      The clerk bowed him at once into an inner room. We waited and waited. I couldn't understand at all what they could have been talking about in there for so long.

      But at last the soldier at the door beckoned us in. The vice-consul was sitting on a sofa in the background. With his head on one side, he shot a keen fixed glance out of his languid eyes, and bit his thumbnail persistently, as if in a state of extreme nervous perplexity.

      I was swept by a feeling of complete humiliation. It was a transitory feverish flush ; and it left me more exhausted than ever.

      The commissario swung his chair around to our saviour, and said something which evidently meant, "Please open fire."

      " I'm the vice-consul here," he said. " I understand that you claim to be Sir Peter and Lady Pendragon."

      " That's who we are," I replied, with a pitiful attempt at jauntiness.

      " You'll excuse me, I'm sure," he said, " if I say that-to the eyes of the average Italian official-you don't precisely look the part. Have you your passports?"

      The mere presence of an English gentleman had a good effect in pulling me together.

      I said, with more confidence than before, that our courier had arranged to take us to see some of the shows in Naples that the ordinary tourist knows nothing about, and in order to avoid any possible annoyance, he had advised us to adopt this disguise

       -and so on for the rest of the story.

      The vice-consul smiled-indulgently, as I thought. " I admit we have some experience," he said slowly, " of young people like yourselves getting into various kinds of trouble. One can't expect every one to know all the tricks ; and besides, if I understand correctly, you're on your honeymoon."

      I admitted the fact with a somewhat embarrassed smile. It occurred to me that honeymoon couples were traditionally objects of not unkindly ridicule from people in a less blessed condition.

      "Quite so," replied the vice-consul. " I'm not a married man myself ; but no doubt it is very delightful. How do you like it in Norway?"

      " Norway ? " I said, completely flabbergasted.

      " Yes," he said. " How do you like Norway; the climate, the lax, the people, the fiords, the glaciers ?

      There was some huge mistake somewhere.

      "Norway ? " I said, with a rising inflection.

      I was on the brink of hysteria.

      "I've never been to the place in my life. And if it's anything like Naples, I don't want to go ! "

      This is a rather more serious matter than you seem to suppose," returned the consul, " If you're not in Norway, where are you ? "

      "Why, I'm here, confound it," I retorted with another weak flush of anger.

      " Since when, may I ask ? " he replied.

      Well, СКАЧАТЬ