The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [174]
(Again, in hindsight, at an emotionless remove, things are marvelously clear, but in the instant of occurrence they are covered in layers of fog. And we are so good at denying what is before our eyes, as for example, the vignettes of Mutti and me that Paul had provided on the plane, and which I have, from that moment to this, thought about on a daily basis. So you must not blame me for not coming up with what became so obvious later.)
A barmaid came in at this point, not the sort of barmaid such an inn should have had, a jolly pink blonde in a peasant blouse and a canvas apron, but a thin, dark, dour girl in an olive pantsuit, a Maltese or Corsican perhaps, who took our drink and food orders and departed without any Falstaffian badinage at all. March now said, “I fail to see how Andrew could have got himself mixed up with Russian gangsters. I mean it just boggles the mind.”
“He needed money to finance the validation of the manuscript,” I said, “and if found valid, for locating the manuscript play Bracegirdle mentioned.”
“Excuse me…Bracegirdle?” said March, and the three of us gaped at him in surprise. Crosetti blurted out, “Didn’t Andrew tell you anything about why he came to England last summer?”
“Only that he was doing some research. But he was always on to some research or other. Who is Bracegirdle?”
I gave him the short version, and while I was doing this the barmaid came in with our food and drink. I had ordered a pint of bitter and finished it in time to flag the girl for another. March listened carefully, asking few questions. When I was done, he shook his head ruefully. “Andrew and I have been together more or less continuously for nearly thirty years,” he said, “and we’ve always been reasonably open about what’s going on in our lives—open for dons, I mean, not actual gushing or anything like that—but I must say that I had not the slightest clue about any of this. Andrew could keep things dark, of course, especially after the bloody catastrophe he went through, but still…and this doesn’t answer the original question at all. Why, if he needed funding, did he not come to me?”
“Are you particularly wealthy?” I asked.
“Oh, not at all, but I do have some assets, some property, some inherited things. I suppose at a pinch I could have raised a hundred or so without descending into absolute beggary. Would you say he would have needed much more than that?”
“If you’re talking about a hundred thousand pounds, then no. We have no indication that what he got was more than about twenty thousand dollars from the Russians.”
“Good Lord! Then it makes even less sense. Why didn’t he come to me?”
I said, “Perhaps he was embarrassed because of the scandal,” and mentioned that Mickey Haas had asked the same question. As soon as the name was out I was surprised to see a sour expression appear on March’s refined face.
“Well, of course he wouldn’t have approached Haas,” he said. “Haas hated him.”
“What! How can you say that?” I objected. “They were friends. Mickey was one of the few people in academia who stuck up for him when the fake quarto scandal broke. He gave him a place to work at Columbia when no one else would look at him.”
“I take it Haas is a particular friend of yours,” said March.
“Yes, he is. He’s my oldest friend and one of the most decent and generous people I know. Why did Andrew imagine that Mickey hated him?”
“It had nothing to do with imagination,” snapped March. “Look here, twenty odd years ago, Haas produced a book on Shakespeare’s women, female characters in the plays, that is, the point of which was that thinking about Shakespeare as an original genius simply reinforced the toxic individualism of bourgeois culture. I believe he said that Macbeth was really all about the three witches, and a load of similar twaddle. Andrew was asked to review it for the Times Literary Supplement and gave it the