The Good Mayor (8 page)

And, under that, in smaller letters, next to a stock portrait of Tibo looking grim, there was a second deck:

and then, in tiny letters:

with Tibo’s letter knitted into something like a story underneath.

Agathe put a cup of coffee on the desk beside the paper, two ginger biscuits in the saucer. He thanked her. “Stopak—he’s a paperhanger, isn’t he?”

“That’s right,” she said. “He has his own shop. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Was he busy today?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. He left the house very early—before I got up. Why, do you need some work done?”

“No, I don’t think so. But I have got some work to do. Better get on.”

Agathe tapped the folded newspaper with a scarlet fingernail as she turned to leave. “They misspelled bordello,” she said. “Of all the words to get wrong! After you went to such trouble too.” And the door shut behind her with a sigh of perfume.

As soon as she was gone, Tibo got up from his desk and opened the door again. He sat for a moment, sipping his coffee and admiring the view across the fountains, towards the cathedral before he started work. Agathe had prepared a neat heap of letters for him to sign. There was another stack in a red leather folder, which he knew he would have to read, and the contract for building the new police station in the northern section and that business about the school he had promised he would look into for the grandmother with the red umbrella. But, for now, Tibo sipped his coffee and watched the pigeons circling the cathedral, settling back to their roosts after their hourly alarums and excursions.

A breeze came in at the window. Tibo watched it approaching, stirring the elms on the avenue by the Ampersand, misting the fountains in the square, moving the fine curtains of his office, ruffling the papers on his desk and then on, invisibly, into Agathe’s room. He knew it must have touched her, brushed her lips, filled her mouth—she must have breathed it and she must have taken it for granted.

“Mrs. Stopak,” he called, “what’s that perfume you’re wearing?”

“Why on earth would you want to know that, Mayor Krovic?”

“It’s nothing. Sorry. Forget I asked.” Tibo opened the red leather folder and began to read.

“It’s ‘Tahiti,’” she said.

And Tibo said the word over and over to himself as he worked. “Tahiti, Tahiti, Tahiti.” It mingled with the clatter of Agathe’s typewriter and the sound of the fountains and the rumble of the trams as Tibo worked until it was too dark to see.

If he had asked it, Agathe would have sat all night to help but
he did not ask and she cleared her desk and locked it a little after five. She could feel cold despair settling in her chest like a river pebble and rattling off each rib to land in the pit of her stomach where it lay. There was no point in going home but no point in staying away. As Agathe turned the key in the desk, she found herself saying, “Home is where they have to let you in.” Granny had said that as a comfort—the reassuring promise that she would never be turned away. Now it seemed like the threat of a prison sentence and she said again, “What’s the bloedig point?”

It was a long walk home. Not like last night, not a happy stroll to a happy place but a long and dusty tramp through hot streets at the end of a tiring day. She did not hurry. Her feet hurt, a stinging burning pain with every step that felt as if the skin on her soles was ready to part from the bones.

When she reached the delicatessen at the corner of Aleksander Street, Mrs. Oktar was out on the pavement, sweeping between the open crates of fruit that stood on display and brushing street dust off the piles of apples. She stopped to wave. Agathe waved back.

The black kitten that had wheedled round Agathe’s ankles the night before was peering out from under a crate of oranges. “Is he yours?” she asked.

“No,” said Mrs. Oktar. “There are always cats hanging round here. They breed. They spend all day lying out in the sunshine in the back yards and all night making kittens. It’s not a bad life—and I wouldn’t mind trying it myself—but I’ve got bills to pay and no smoked salmon to waste on the likes of him.”

Agathe reached under the orange box and lifted the kitten up to her face, brushing his fur with a whisper of breath. “I like him,” she said. “I’ll take him home with me. He just needs some love.”

“Like the rest of us,” said Mrs. Oktar, “but also some milk and some flea powder and some smoked salmon.” Mrs. Oktar was a wonderful saleswoman, a remarkable saleswoman but, like the rest of us, a victim of circumstance. And, although she ran a very fine delicatessen, it was, nonetheless, a delicatessen and, like every other delicatessen in Dot, it did not stock flea powder. “The milk I
can do and we’ve got the smoked salmon but we haven’t any flea powder. If I was you, I’d leave the cat until tomorrow. He’s not going anywhere.”

“I like him,” said Agathe. “He’s coming home with me. Just sell me the other stuff. I’ll get the flea powder in town tomorrow.”

“You’re a silly girl but on your own head be it—and not just your
head
either. A word to the wise, Mrs. Stopak, take it from one who knows—every place you’ve got where you wouldn’t let a man go unless he was Mr. Stopak, that’s where you’ll have those fleas. Tomorrow, when you’re in town getting flea powder for Mr. Cat here, maybe you should think about getting some for yourself.”

With an expert wrist, Mrs. Oktar flicked a brown paper bag full of air and put a carton of milk and a paper parcel of smoked salmon inside. The kitten squirmed deliciously in Agathe’s grip, wrestling against her breast as she shushed it.

“Oh, be still, you bad kitten. Just wait a minute or two.”

“That’s 4.50,” said Mrs. Oktar and she held out her hand. “For that, I’m prepared to throw in another bag for the cat. It wouldn’t kill you to be a little bit hygienic, would it?”

Agathe dropped the kitten into the bag and he looked at her reproachfully from the bottom. His four moppish paws spread out in the corners but he seemed happy enough until she lifted the bag by its handles and swung him into space. Then he rocked unsteadily and stamped about on the uncertain floor of his cage, mewling pitifully. Agathe put her hand flat against the bottom of the paper sack to give him the reassurance of something solid beneath his feet and blew gently into the kitten’s fur to attract his attention. “Shush, shush, shush, don’t be scared, little cat. We’ll soon have you home.” She could feel the heat of his paws even through the thick paper bag and the delicious moving weight of him, hidden and dark and enclosed and unseen against her own flesh, brought back an old memory for her. “Soon have you home. You’re like the rest of us—you just need some love. So come home with me and I’ll look after you.”

For the second night in a row, Agathe climbed the stairs to her flat with a parcel of hope swinging from a string at her finger but,
when she reached the landing, she felt it leaking away out of the bottom of the bag to lie in a puddle at her feet.

The door of the flat was standing ajar. As Agathe went to push it open, she heard voices from inside—men’s voices. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, listening. Stopak—she recognised his snorting laughter—and then that other voice. Agathe bounced the door open and walked in. “Hektor, what a surprise! And I was hoping we’d been burgled.”

Stopak and Hektor were sitting together at the kitchen table, a platoon of empty beer bottles standing to attention between them.

“Aww, don’t be like that,” said Stopak. “It’s just a little celebration. Me and my new partner.” Stopak nodded the neck of the bottle in his fist across the table at Hektor.

“Your new partner? Your new partner!” Agathe was astonished. “All of a sudden the paperhanging business is so vast you need to spread the profits round a bit, is that it? You can’t keep up with demand, is that it? And him! Why him? The things he knows about paperhanging you can count on the fingers of one foot!”

Agathe stamped out of the room and flung herself down on her bed—the only private place in the house, someplace where at least Hektor would never venture.

But he did. She was lying, face down on the pillow, her hair undone and piled in wanton mountains around her, her blouse loose and unbuttoned, still fuming over Stopak’s news, when Hektor came in and spoke. “It’s not like Stopak made out,” he said.

“Hektor, go away.”

“Look, I don’t want to bother you or anything. It’s just so you know—I’m not Stopak’s partner.”

“Hektor, just go away.” Agathe’s voice was half-muffled by the pillow.

“I’ll go, I’ll go. Just don’t be angry with Stopak. He did a good thing. I had a bit of bother and he helped me out. He gave me a job but I’m not his partner and I’m not looking for a share of the profits. Nothing like that. It’s just a job. Stopak’s the boss. I’m just an employee.”

Agathe lifted her face from the pillow. She was red-eyed and
tearful again. These days, Agathe acknowledged to herself that she seemed to be always upset or on the verge of being upset. She pushed her hair back into its clasp, a gesture that made her blouse gape, exposing her sensible undershirt, and she flustered over the buttons and smoothed down her skirt. “Hektor, I don’t care if he’s hired you. I don’t care if he hires Ivan the Terrible. I’m guessing he hired you because Ivan the Terrible got a better offer. Probably Ivan the Terrible would know at least as much about paperhanging as you do but I don’t care! Hektor, just go away.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll go. But there’s somebody else who wants to see you.”

Agathe looked up from her last button expecting Stopak, shamefaced and shuffling. Instead, there was Hektor, holding out two paper bags. “I think he’s hungry.”

She took the bags and said nothing. Hektor waited hopefully for a word and, when it didn’t come, he said, “By the way, we finished the bathroom.” And he backed away and closed the door. After a moment, there was the sound of another bottle opening, the chink of thick brown glass and laughter.

“Bloedig stupid men,” said Agathe. She poured the kitten out on the bed. “You are the only man I like,” she said. “I don’t like Hektor because he’s bad. He might be pretty but he’s bad so we don’t like him, do we, little cat? And I don’t like Stopak because he doesn’t like me. So there! No, we don’t like Hektor at all.” Agathe looked at the bedroom door, safely closed, and let her fingers rest on the buttons of her blouse again, remembering that they had been open, wondering what Hektor might have seen. “Here,” she said suddenly, “it’s dinner time.” She opened the milk carton and dipped her fingers, offering them to the little cat who lapped away enthusiastically with a rough pink tongue that tugged against her skin. “Try some of this!” She tore off a strip of smoked salmon and the cat lunged at it like a tiger. Agathe laughed. “I’ll have to go to the circus for a whip and a chair, you bad cat. But don’t go building your hopes up. We don’t dine on smoked salmon every night in Schloss Stopak. This is just to welcome you. Tomorrow it’s cat scraps from the fishmonger for you.”

She fed the cat for a little longer and then, because smoked salmon is salty and it made him thirsty, she gave him more milk drizzled from the tips of her fingers.

A door banged in the kitchen and Hektor said something about “No more bloedig beer!” and then something about “The Three Crowns” and a chair scraped and the front door banged and the flat was quiet.

Agathe picked the kitten up and lay back on the bed with it nestled on her breast. It purred with the clunky purr of a coffee grinder as she scratched round its ears. It purred, she scratched. She scratched, it purred. Slowly and quietly they fell asleep together and Agathe would have lain there until morning if she had not been roused by the sound of the kitten relieving himself daintily against her curtains and doing back-heeled kicks across the carpet.

Agathe leapt up from the bed in a shower of greaseproof paper and salmon scraps. “No! Bad cat!” she yelled, and the kitten dived for cover under the bed. Agathe had no idea what to do about cat pee on the curtains. Granny would have known. She would have had some handy remedy—vinegar or turnip peelings and baking soda, something like that. But Agathe knew enough not to leave the stuff to dry in. She rushed to the kitchen and came back with a kettle of cold water which she poured on to the stain. “Let it soak,” she thought. “It can’t do any harm.” And then, glancing out the window, she saw that evening had come on. She looked at her watch. Almost half past nine. Mamma Cesare! She put on her shoes and ran.

The street was empty and silent. The Oktars had shut up shop. There was nobody about and the sound of Agathe’s heels came clipping back at her from the locked doors and closed windows on the opposite side of the road. As she hurried to the corner of Aleksander Street, she heard the distant banshee screech of the approaching tram, the clang of its iron bell. She imagined meteor trails of sparks spurting from the wheels on the big bend that leads to the bridge and she hurried on but, by the time she reached the junction, the tram was already waddling away from the stop and over Green Bridge.

Agathe walked slowly into the cast-iron shelter and sat down.
The next tram was due in ten minutes. She sat on the bench and did her coat up properly, straightened her stockings, buttoned her gloves. She flipped open her compact and looked in the mirror, sighed angrily, unbuttoned one glove again and pulled it off with her teeth, moistened a finger with spit and rubbed a disobedient eyebrow into place. She checked the mirror again. That would do—a bit more respectable. She held the glove in one hand and counted out coins from her coat pocket with the other. Enough to get to Castle Street. Sometimes ten minutes is a long time.

Agathe leaned back on the bench and looked down the road, a little fearfully, towards The Three Crowns. No sign of anybody coming and, when they were eventually thrown out, the last tram would have gone. Nobody coming out. She stood up and walked to the door of the shelter, holding on to a cast-iron pillar as she looked the other way up the street, across the bridge and towards my cathedral on its hill. The late evening sun was blazing from its domes and pinnacles and the cathedral was swirling a cloud of pigeons around its head like a matador’s cloak. Agathe felt suddenly envious of those pigeons. Maybe they had no freshly painted bathroom but pigeons weren’t too fussy about that sort of thing in her experience, and they had a place to sleep where they were welcome, where they would be warmly greeted, a place of tremulous, dancing, burbling physical contact, a place to raise their young, a place where, if they failed to arrive one evening after an accident with a hawk or a dustcart in the street, they might be missed if only for that night. She sighed. “What have I got? A kitten who pees up the curtains!” She felt lonely and ridiculous. She should be sneaking out of the house to meet a wealthy lover who would take her dancing and feed her steak and murmur hot-gasped nonsense in her ear before … before … Before what?