I made a trip to the bank as well, where I was given a stack of forms to complete. But there was one vital condition – Good News had to secure a place at college first. And I knew that eventually she would achieve her aim.
It’s good to sit in Good News’ shop. It’s the cosiest place in town. Mothers with children meet up here, and old ladies on their way to lunch at the pensioners’ canteen. The car park security guard and frozen saleswomen from the vegetable market come here. Everyone is given something hot to drink. One could say that Good News runs a cafe here.
Today I was to wait for her to lock up this sanctuary, and then we’d be off to the Czech Republic with Dizzy to visit the bookshop that sells Blake. Good News was folding some bandanas. She never said much, and if she did speak, she did it quietly, so you had to listen to her very carefully. The last few customers were still browsing the clothes rails in search of a bargain. I stretched out on a chair and closed my eyes blissfully.
‘Have you heard about the foxes that have been seen out on the Plateau, near where you live? Fluffy, white foxes.’
I froze. Near where I live? I opened my eyes and saw the Gentleman with the Poodle.
‘Apparently that rich fellow with the funny name released some from his farm,’ he said, standing in front of me with several pairs of trousers slung over his arm. His Poodle was looking at me, a doggy smile on its face – it clearly recognised me.
‘Innerd?’ I asked.
‘That’s the one,’ confirmed the man, and then addressed Good News. ‘Would you please find me some trousers with an eightycentimetre waist?’ Then at once he went back to his story. ‘They can’t locate the man. He’s gone missing. Vanished without trace. Like a needle in a haystack,’ the old gentleman went on. ‘He’s probably run away with his lover to a warmer country. And as he was rich, he’ll find it easy to hide. Apparently he was mixed up in some sort of racket.’
A young man with a shaved head who’d been asking about Nike or Puma track suits and was now rummaging among the clothes rails responded. ‘It wasn’t a racket, it was the mafia,’ he said, hardly opening his mouth at all. ‘They were importing furs illegally from Russia, using his farm as a cover. He hadn’t settled up with the Russian mafia, so he got scared and did a runner.’
I found this topic alarming. I was starting to feel afraid.
‘Is your Poodle a Dog or a Bitch?’ I politely asked the old gentleman, in a desperate attempt to divert the conversation onto less sinister tracks.
‘My Maxy? He’s a boy of course. Still a bachelor,’ he said, laughing. But he was clearly more interested in the local gossip, because he turned to the skinhead and continued: ‘He was very wealthy. He had a hotel on the main road out of Kłodzko. A delicatessen. A fox farm. A slaughterhouse and meat-processing plant. A stud farm. But how much more there was in his wife’s name!’
‘Here’s a size eighty for you,’ I said, handing him a pretty good pair of grey trousers.
He examined them carefully and put on his glasses to read the laundry label.
‘Oh yes, I like these, I’ll take them. You know what, I like things that are trim, nice and close-fitting. They emphasise the figure.’
‘Well, sir, how different people can be. I always buy everything too big. It gives me freedom,’ I said.
Dizzy had received some encouraging news. The local weekly, the Kłodzko Gazette, had offered to publish his translations of Blake in its poetry corner. He was excited and intimidated all at once. We drove along the almost deserted highway towards the border.
‘First I’d like to translate his Letters, and only then go back to the poetry. But if they’re asking for poetry…My God, what can I give them? What shall we give them first?’
To tell the truth, I couldn’t concentrate on Blake any more. I saw that we were passing the shabby buildings at the border crossing and entering the Czech Republic. The road here was better and Dizzy’s car stopped rattling.
‘Dizzy, is it true about those foxes?’ Good News asked him from the back seat. ‘That they escaped from Innerd’s farm and are going about the forest?’
Dizzy confirmed that it was. ‘It happened a few days ago. At first the Police thought he’d sold all the animals to someone before disappearing. But it looks as if he let them go. Strange, isn’t it?’
‘Are they searching for him?’ I asked.
Dizzy replied that no one had reported him missing, so there was no reason to look for him. His wife hadn’t come forward, nor had his children. Maybe he’d given himself a holiday. His wife claimed it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Once he’d vanished for a week, and then called from the Dominican Republic. Until the banks were after him there was no reason for alarm.
‘A man’s free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks,’ Dizzy sermonised with contagious certainty. I think he’d make a superb press spokesman for the Police.
Dizzy also said the Police were trying to establish the source of the money that the Commandant had under his trouser belt. It was a bribe. By now they were sure he’d been on his way back from a meeting with Innerd. It takes the Police a long time to establish things that seem obvious.
‘And there’s another thing,’ he said finally. ‘The weapon that must have been used to kill the Commandant had traces of animal blood on it.’
We called at the bookshop at the last moment, just as it was about to close. When silver-haired Honza handed him the two books he had ordered, I saw a blush appear on Dizzy’s cheeks. Beaming with joy, he looked at us, then raised his arms, as if to give Honza a hug. They were old editions from the 1970s, properly annotated. Like gold dust. We all went home in a state of elation, and no one mentioned the sinister incidents again.
Dizzy lent me the Selected Letters for a few days, and as soon as I got home, I lit the stove, made myself some strong tea and started to read.
One passage particularly appealed to me, so I translated it quickly for myself on a paper bag.
‘I believe my Constitution to be a good one,’ wrote Blake, ‘but it has many Peculiarities that no one but myself can know. When I was young, many places always laid me up the day after, & sometimes two or three days, with precisely the same Complaint & the same torment of the Stomach. Sir Francis Bacon would say, it is want of Discipline in Mountainous Places. Sir Francis Bacon is a Liar. No discipline will turn one Man into another, even in the least particle, & such discipline I call Presumption & Folly.’
I found this captivating. I read and read, unable to stop. And perhaps it was just as the Author would have wished – everything that I read pervaded my dreams – and all Night I saw visions.
IX
THE LARGEST IN THE SMALLEST
A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing.
Spring starts in May and is unwittingly heralded by the Dentist, who brings his ancient drilling equipment and his equally antique dental chair outside. He dusts it off with a few flicks of a cloth, one, two, three, and it’s free of cobwebs and hay – both pieces of equipment spent the winter in the barn, and were only brought out from time to time when an urgent need arose. The Dentist didn’t really work in winter; it’s impossible to do anything here in winter, people lose interest in their health, and besides, it’s dark and his sight is poor. He needs the bright light of May or June to shine straight into the mouths of his patients, recruited from among the forest workers and moustachioed men who spend all day standing about on the little bridge in the village, and as a result are known locally as the Bridge Brigade.