Men like him who had been through the fire swore that it would never happen again. They read Mao Tse-tung on guerrilla warfare and went to Algeria and fought the same kind of war against the same faceless enemy, fighting fire with fire, only to find, at the end, a greater humiliation than ever. Legrande had come down on the side of the O.A.S. and had fled to the Congo from yet another defeat.
I wondered sometimes what he lived for and sitting in the small cafe in the candlelight, he looked old and used up as if he had done everything there was to do.
He swallowed the brandy he had ordered and called for another. ‘What’s wrong between you and the colonel, Stacey?’
‘You tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘He’s changed-just in this last six months he’s changed. God knows why, but some-thing’s eating him, that’s for sure.’
‘I can’t help you,’ I said. ‘I’m as much in the dark as you are. Maybe Piet can tell you. They seem thick enough.’
He was surprised. ‘That’s been going on for years now, ever since the Kasai. I thought you knew.’
I smiled. ‘I only believed in story-book heroes until recently. How long has he been drinking?’
‘It came with the general change and he goes at it privately, too. I don’t like that. Do you think he’s up to this thing?’
‘We won’t know that till it happens.’ I finished my brandy and got up. ‘Must go now, Jules. Can you get back all right?’
He nodded and looked up at me, a strange expres-sion on his face. ‘Maybe he’s like me, Stacey, maybe he’s just survived too long. Sometimes I feel I’ve no right to be here at all, can you understand that? If you think that way for long enough, you lose all sense of reality.’
His words haunted me as I went out to the Fiat and drove away.
The Bechstein sounded as good as ever as I waited for my grandfather to appear. I tried a little Debussy and the first of the three short movements of Ravel’s Sonatina. After that I got ambitious, sorted out some music and worked my way through Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E flat minor. Lovely, ice-cold stuff that still sounded marvellous, even if my technique had dulled a little over the years.
When I finished, there was still no sign of him. I went looking and was surprised to find him sitting on the terrace with a bottle and a couple of glasses in front of him.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been listening from here. It sounded fine.’
‘At a distance.’
He smiled and filled a glass for me. It was Marsala and very good. Not one of my favourites, but I couldn’t have said so had my life depended on it be-cause suddenly, and for no apparent reason, there was an intimacy between us. Something very real, some-thing I didn’t want to lose.
‘How did you get on in the mountains?’ he asked me.
‘Didn’t Marco give you a report? Hasn’t he returned yet?’
He managed an expression of vague bewilderment which didn’t impress me in the slightest. ‘Marco has been in Palermo all day as he is every Friday. It’s the biggest day of the week for us. Receipts to check, the bank to see. You know how it is in business?’
I smiled. ‘All right, we’ll play the game your way. I saw Cerda who told me where he thinks Serafmo may be found. Catching him there is another matter with a shepherd whistling from every crag, but it could be done.’
‘Is it permitted to ask how?’
I told him and he frowned slightly. ‘You’ve done this sort of thing before?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m quite the commando.’
‘But to jump into darkness in country like that sounds a more than usually dangerous practice.’
‘Possibly, but it can be done.’
‘Why, Stacey? Why do you want to do this thing? Why do you live this way?’
‘There’s always the money.’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve been into that-not good enough. No, when I look at you I see myself forty years ago. Mafioso branded clean to the bone.’