The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown by Geoffrey Household Page B

believable.
    ‘This Perico—he has no chance at all. He is sure to be arrested.’
    ‘He won’t talk.’
    ‘That may be. But they can trace all his movements. And what questions will they ask you then?’
    ‘Nepamuk?’
    ‘He doesn’t count. You will hear no more of him if you do not mention him. But to the police you are bound to appear a Russian or a Hungarian agent. What did Count Kalmody intend to do with you?’
    ‘I don’t know. Keep me till it all blew over, I suppose.’
    ‘It will not blow over easily. Much depends on that cliff. If it was as terrible as you describe, no one will believe you climbed it. So in Spain there must be a warrant out for your arrest. Even Kalmody will now be thinking you only told half the truth.’
    ‘Can you help me?’
    ‘No, for the sake of my family. All I know of you is that I was asked to change your money and did so.’
    ‘Well, what’s your advice?’
    ‘You cannot be more than an hour or two ahead of the police. Go to your consul at once, but try to find out how much he knows without giving anything away. It’s a pity that you do not speak Romanian. If you did, you could disappear until, as you say, it all blows over.’
    ‘The trouble is I’m too innocent for anything like that.’
    ‘Don Bernardo, you have lost your virginity and now you will learn only too quickly. Go with God! If you remain at liberty in Bucarest and need a job, go to my cousin Mitrani, a banker in the Strada Lipscani. I cannot give you a note to him in case you are searched, but I will tell him about you. With your languages he could use you.’
    Bernardo returned to his hotel, lunched and paid his surprisingly small bill. He was indeed learning quickly. His old self would have confidently taken the night train to Bucarest with a sense of relief; his new self realised that it was on the run and unlikely to reach Bucarest openly. He took a long and careful look at the countryside. As seen from his bedroom window as well as from Toledano’s garden it was bare and poor with little cover for a fugitive. He could not simply stroll out of the village for a walk; his lonely figure would be far too conspicuous.
    When the policeman dropped into the hotel, partly for a free drink, partly to keep an eye on his customer, Bernardo—using gestures and experimental scraps from Latin languages—asked if there were any news of his baggage and passport. No, there was not, but he had already telephoned to Czernowitz without waiting for filthy Jews who could never be trusted. That clinched it. Perico would by now be picked up for questioning in the frontier town itself or caught behaving suspiciously on his way to the banks of the Dniester. The description of the pair of them as men wearing boots andbreeches who spoke no Romanian was conclusive.
    Waiting till night was a crazy risk. He was certain to be detained—courteously if Perico had invented a credible story, forcibly if he had not. He must get clear by the next afternoon train and hope to disappear somewhere along the line. And it would be wise to look a little smarter. He bought shaving kit and a hairbrush and cleaned himself up.
    Bernardo was escorted to the station, shook a number of hands and settled down in a second-class compartment. There was only one other passenger who smiled at him with irrepressible admiration as if he had been a startlingly pretty girl. Bernardo said good-afternoon in Romanian—he had got that far—and the coldest possible voice. Life in this complicated east end of Europe was already difficult enough.
    His companion was immediately talkative in sound international French. He was a classic Mediterranean type with a triangular, dark face, gleaming teeth, four of them gold, and an anxious, lost-dog friendliness.
    ‘One sees that you are not going very far, monsieur. For my part I regret it.’
    Bernardo made noises of politeness. He realised exactly what women meant when they complained of being undressed by a