The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown (16 page)

‘One believes what one is brought up to believe,’ Bernardo answered. ‘There is no way out.’

‘There is, Mitrani. There is.’

‘When I pass your priest, he does not see me.’

‘Why should he? But English priests are different.’

‘What have the English got to do with it?’ Bernardo asked, alarmed.

‘There is a Mission to the Jews, so that they may go to heaven like the rest of us. But in my opinion that is not certain. Salvation is only through the Orthodox Church.’

‘Not the catholics, too?’

‘They worship images and are doomed in the next world.’

‘Then they’d better stick together in this one like the Jews.’

‘The Mission knows that, Mitrani, and sees that converts are looked after.’

‘Who told you?’

‘My sister is the concierge.’

He gave Bernardo the address of the Mission to the Jews, across the River Dâmbovitsa in a district of old-fashioned Romanians, tactfully secluded from the business quarter.

Bernardo at once appreciated the possibilities. If he allowed himself to be converted, it would reinforce his identity, always assuming he could remain in the shadows and not a public pet of priests. It seemed probable that he could. The mission was one of the kindly eccentricities of the Church of England and of no interest to the Orthodox.

He cautiously reconnoitred the place, was received by the sister with obvious distaste and directed up to the flat of the Rev. Jacob Polack. He expected some muscular and belligerent Christian, but found instead a neat little figure with a white pointed beard, himself a converted Jew and earnest as a hen sparrow gathering scraps for her nest. There was something odd and endearing about his Anglican dog collar above a dark grey suit. The Semitic features would have better fitted the robes and whiskers of an Orthodox papa, but could never have given such an air of sincere humility.

The missioner was pleased to be asked for instruction by a Sephardic Jew. He said that they were normally too proud of their history; perhaps if he had spoken Spanish, not Yiddish, he might have had more success. His own background was the Lithuanian pale and Manchester. Seeing that Bernardo’s Romanian was faulty, he asked if he had any English. No, none at all. They settled for French which Polack spoke fluently with a strong German accent.

Bernardo attended four times a week, pretending to be eager and in fact hurrying to get it over before he was caught out. Polack was shocked by his ignorance of Jewish religion and assumed it was the fault of Morocco and his parents. Bernardo, as a former pupil of Jesuits, was also shocked. His new teacher stuck closely to his evangelical brief, regarding as irrelevant the logic and mysticism of this most complex of religions. At home in the attic, as a distraction from Susana’s bed shaking like a honeymoon hotel with varying standards of skill and enthusiasm, he wondered what kind of traitor he was—at any rate no worse than the odd dozen of Polack’s other converts whom he strongly suspected of changing their beliefs for material advantages. He decided that Rabbi Kaplan would have doubtfully forgiven him, even smiled perhaps. That was a comfort.

He was duly re-baptised in the presence of a small congregation consisting of some hand-picked converts and ageless Englishwomen—governesses, secretaries and still unmodified wives of Romanians—triumphantly dabbing pale eyes with lace-trimmed handkerchiefs. His godfathers were Polack himself and a clerk at the Legation who had fortunately been busy behind his desk at the time of Bernardo’s visit. And now conclusively and officially he became David Mitrani. Rabbi Kaplan’s dubious identity card was surrendered to the Prefectura which—in these gratifying circumstances—did not question it and issued a new one stating that he was Christian and Romanian citizen by birth.

He had hoped to keep his conversion secret in the quarter,
but that was impossible. The cop, seeing himself as an Instrument of Divinity, proclaimed his success. Nobody else approved, the Jews being disgusted and the Christians resentful that an outcast had managed to get into the club by the back door. Susana did not care what he chose to call himself, but saw right through him as a ponce. He had despised her, she said, and all that stuff about not being her lover because he was her African cousin was as false as he was. She turned him out in a passion of tears and fury; he was temporarily put up in a bare and tiny hostel kept by the Mission for similar family troubles.

The Rev. Jacob Polack in spite of his humility was no fool when it came to disposing of his converts. He had his lines out in many unexpected quarters, chiefly shops, where the energy of the Jew was most welcome provided he was Christian. The exact nature of Mitrani’s former employment had never been specified. Certainly he had been earning a living in a regrettable district, but a man does what he must. Both the cop and the priest of St. Spiridon—who now felt able to say good-morning—bore witness to his comparative honesty and good influence. On the strength of his languages and his experience—as Polack delicately put it—of certain social evils, Bernardo was offered the job of night porter at the Hotel Principesa. It was a hotel for cabaret artistes and—which Polack had not perhaps realised—of stern respectability. Gentlemen, unless themselves in the profession, were not admitted.

Mr. Brown described his new employment as one step up in the entertainment industry. But no monkey business at all. Any enterprising night porter at the Ritz would have far more chance of making a bit of money by keeping his mouth shut. Still, it was useful experience, he said, and not without its lighter side.

The artistes left the hotel about ten at night and back they came at four in the morning. What they did in the afternoon was nobody’s business but they couldn’t do it at the Principesa. Bernardo gathered from their squirts of conversation that most of them were neither more nor less respectable than a bunch of honest seamstresses saving up for an eventual husband and only unfaithful to that rather shadowy figure of the future when a customer became so infatuated that he might possibly be it.

And he could become infatuated. They were a handsome lot on the top near-eastern circuit, passing from one Balkan capital to another, then on to Istanbul, Beirut and Alexandria and back on the same route to Budapest. That was the exchange station where the scouts were, the centre of a figure of eight. If a girl were really irresistible in person or performance she might be engaged for the western circuit—Vienna, Brussels, Paris, Madrid and other productive spots where the champagne was not white wine injected with carbonic acid
gas and most of the customers would be wearing dinner jackets and stiff shirts.

While in Bucarest many of these deliciously second-rate cuties stayed at the Principesa. They were of all nations, from Hungarians with the proud bearing and panache of the race to Russian refugees of exquisite manners and melancholy whom one longed to comfort. A most expensive process. So far as the floor show went, they were none of them remarkable; they sang or danced appealingly but the limit of originality was an English hornpipe or a Dutch clog dance, both appearing reasonably exotic along the lower reaches of the Danube.

Male guests in the hotel were few: generally husbands or dancing partners. Occasionally there would be a well-paid entertainer from the western circuit engaged to pull in new customers who normally preferred a bird in hand to a bird at a cabaret table. The Romanian public did not think much of acrobats and comics but appreciated conjurers. The invisible transfer of property from one person’s pocket to another appealed to them.

Perseus, Prince of the Rosicrucians, had taken a room at the Principesa for the three weeks of his engagement. Bernardo met him while washing down the men’s lavatories—a tiled and dignified ensemble when first installed but still suffering from the playful habits of German soldiery billeted in the hotel. The girls’ establishment next door had not helped. In spite of notices they were inclined to get rid of unnecessary objects, shut their eyes and pull the plug. It was this problem of disposal which now occupied Bernardo. With a bucket and mop at his side he was manfully driving a plunger down into the unknown viscera of the hotel where male and female elements were united. He had two hours of the night ahead of him in which to clear the system before the little dears returned. Failing a charge of dynamite he doubted if that would be enough.

Perseus, a dark and romantic figure in a Chinese dressing
gown, hesitated at the outer door across which Bernardo had built a dam of sacking.

‘I think that I had better borrow your boots,’ he said in excellent French.

‘For a personage as distinguished as monsieur,’ Bernardo answered, ‘I hesitate ...’

‘Well, what would you advise me to do?’

‘May I suggest a hotel of more modern comfort?’

‘It is my first visit. I was told this was the right place for a performer. One’s needs would be appreciated.’

Bernardo could well understand that the Prince of the Rosicrucians, his doves, his goldfish and the secrets of his trunks might be out of place in the first-class hotel which he could easily have afforded. He was at the top of his profession: an amazing fellow, able to stop and talk at any table, remove a watch or cigarette case undetected and then accuse some innocent member of the public on the other side of the cabaret which he had never visited of having it on his person. He was equally good at arousing gasps of disbelief and yells of laughter.

‘And I am not talking of to-morrow,
man brave
. This is pressing,’ Perseus added sternly.

His eyes were becoming fixed and desperate. Bernardo realised that in such a situation magic was no help and gratitude would be generous.

‘If monsieur would have the goodness to follow me,’ Bernardo invited, proceeding up the passage in his socks.

There was only one private bathroom in the hotel which would undoubtedly have been allotted to Perseus if it had not been already occupied by Madame Hortense, a French contralto of opulent middle age and magnificent shoulders who had once been described—and had the newspaper cutting to prove it—as the Nightingale of Milan. Her voice was still true but its power had so faded that it could safely be exploded in the limited space of cabaret. She, like Perseus, was not required to sit at tables and so retired early to the
Principesa. It was necessary for her to calm her nerves before going to bed. She had explained this dramatically to Bernardo when sending him out to buy a bottle of brandy.

Bernardo opened Mme. Hortense’s door with his pass key. The inner door to the bedroom was safely shut; the bathroom was half open. Perseus eyed the excellent sanitary equipment with the same expression of delighted relief which he used when a goldfish flung into his empty top-hat appeared a second later floating comfortably in a bowl of water.

‘Our guest sleeps very soundly, monsieur,’ Bernardo said. ‘But may I recommend a certain discretion?’

It was most unlikely that the Prince of the Rosicrucians had any money in the dragon-embroidered pocket of his dressing gown; so Bernardo waited to accompany him back to his room and wish him pleasant dreams. Meanwhile he stayed on guard in the passage, a trusty figure in his black and yellow waistcoat.

Perseus was in no hurry. He might be merely meditating or possibly considering all the magic potentialities of an unwinding toilet roll—though in those days that would have been thought intolerably vulgar. Bernardo was appalled to hear Mme. Hortense open her door, a fierce contralto oath as she bumped into the handle, a rattling at the locked bathroom and what sounded like a heave of the immaculate shoulders.

Pretending to have been attracted by the noise and just arrived, Bernardo enquired through the door if there were anything wrong. Mme. Hortense flung it open. She was attired in a vast and virginal cloud of whiteness as if for a belated first communion.

‘There is some sort of dirty pig in my bathroom!’

She was swaying a little and, Bernardo hoped, incapable of lucid observation. He declared with confidence that the door must be stuck and rattled it cautiously.

‘Fais pas l’idiot!’

‘Madame?’

‘One shits. I heard it.’

‘It is perhaps a chambermaid, Madame. I will report the matter to the Manager. Meanwhile if Madame would be good enough to accompany me ...’

There was only one refuge and that was the Manager’s private bathroom. It was kept locked, but Bernardo knew very well that the key was over the door frame. He had not offered its facilities to Perseus since the Manager was awake and working and might come up from his office any moment.

Madame cheerfully rollicked behind him from side to side of the corridor, entertaining herself with the Soldiers’ Chorus from
Faust
. Bernardo quickly shut the door on her and returned to the Prince of the Rosicrucians to report that the coast was clear. Perseus had decided that for himself. Five minutes later Mme. Hortense, now prettily baby-carolling
Sur le Pont d
’
Avignon
returned to her room. Bernardo locked the managerial bathroom, returned the key to its hiding place and resumed his menial occupation.

When the day porter took over, he went to bed with an untroubled conscience. He had done his duty. There had been a sense of satisfaction when with one tremendous gurgle the waters of Yin and Yang had simultaneously returned beneath the earth. It was the first time he had been of honest service to his fellows since gallantly agreeing to cause no embarrassment to Zita.

He was roused soon after eleven by the Manager, sternly enquiring whether he had been awake all night and what his movements were. It appeared that some petty thief had got into the hotel unless it was an inside job. Bernardo accounted for his time, but was ordered to proceed immediately to the bedroom floor.

The whole corridor was enjoying the excitement. Doors were half open with unmade-up faces, pale yellow from lack of sun, looking out and twittering. A chambermaid was in tears. The Nightingale of Milan was in full voice.