Rogue Male (24 page)
I buried that company director’s passport and my own, with which I have probably finished for ever. I shaved off my moustache, stained my face and body, and dyed my hair. Then I slept till dawn, my face in the short grass by the water’s edge, my body drawing strength from that warm and ancient earth.
In the morning I strolled to the upper town, where I had not been the night before, and completed my change of identity. I bought a thoroughly Latin suit, spats, and some beastly pointed shoes, posting my other clothes in a parcel addressed to the Public Assistance Committee, Rangoon. I trust there is such a committee. I went to a barber, who duly doused me with eau-de-cologne and brushed my luscious black hair straight back from my forehead. When this was over, my resemblance to the photograph on Quive-Smith’s Latin passport was a lot closer than my resemblance to the company director.
The regular packet was leaving that day for Marseilles. I got a French visa on my passport (my fatherland is as awkward as all other American countries—I can travel nowhere without a visa) and bought a ticket in my new name. Since I had no baggage, it was easy to bluff my way on to the ship without passing the control. Thus there was no record for inquisitive eyes that this courteous and scented gentleman had either entered or left Tangier, and no means of connecting him with Quive-Smith. I think they will be looking for their vanished agent between Atlas and the Niger.
EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER WHICH
ACCOMPANIED THIS MANUSCRIPT
My Dear Saul
,
I write this from a pleasant inn where I am accustoming myself to a new avatar. I must not, of course, give you any clue to it; nor would the trail of the gentleman I describe as Latin—even assuming it could be followed—lead to where or what I am
.
I want these papers published. If necessary, have them brushed up by some competent hack and marketed under his name. You won’t, of course, mention mine, nor the name of the country to which I went from Poland and to which I am about to return. Let the public take its choice!
My reason for publishing is twofold. First, I have committed two murders, and the facts must be placed on record in case the police ever got hold of the wrong man. Second, if I am caught, there can never again be any possible question of the complicity of H.M. Government. Every statement of mine can, at need, be checked, amplified, and documented. The three parts of the journal (two written accidentally and the last deliberately) form an absolute answer to any accusation from any quarter that I have involved my own nation
.
Forgive me for never telling you of my engagement nor of the happy weeks we lived in Dorset. I first met her in Spain a couple of years ago. We hadn’t reached the point of an announcement in
The Times,
and we didn’t give a damn about it anyway
.
The ethics of revenge? The same as the ethics of war, old boy! Unless you are a conscientious objector, you cannot condemn me. Unsporting? Not at all. It is one of the two or three most difficult shots in the world
.
I begin to see where I went wrong the first time. It was a mistake to make use of my skill over the sort of country I understood. One should always hunt an animal in its natural habitat; and the natural habitat of man is—in these days—a town. Chimney-pots should be the cover, and the method, snapshots at two hundred yards. My plans are far advanced. I shall not get away alive, but I shall not miss; and that is really all that matters to me any longer
.
modemport's original commercial release April 02 2011
This is a New York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Cover image: Georg Baselitz,
Canalettos Hund
; © Georg Baselitz; photograph by Jochan Littkeman, Berlin; cover design: Katy Homans
Copyright © 1939 by Geoffrey Household
Introduction copyright © 2007 by Victoria Nelson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Household, Geoffrey, 1900–
Rogue Male / by Geoffrey Household; introduction by Victoria Nelson.
p. cm.—(New York Review books classics)
1. Hunters—Fiction. 2. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6015.O7885R68 2007
823'.912—dc22
2007029491
eISBN 978-1-59017-47-5
v1.0
For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit
www.nyrb.com
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