The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [6]
Her ladyship rocked on her chair and fell forward on to the floor without a cry. Johnny-boy, like one used to these happenings, set himself first to arrange her clothes and then to raise her and lead her out of the room.
‘Hi, Johnny-boy!’
This was from Paul, entering the room as Johnny-boy and her ladyship left it. We had heard his shoes crushing the ice and cinders on the basement steps. Paul was short, thickset, almost bald, and wore glasses. He was gentle; his English accent was rich; he was a homosexual. In Lieni’s basement rooms this was his ‘character’. He liked wearing an apron and doing household things. He liked sweeping up dirt, storing it and, before throwing it away, gloating over its quantity. He liked smoothing out tablecloths and bed sheets; he was frequently to be seen ironing. The first thing he did whenever he came to Lieni’s was to express horror at the disorder and to set to sweeping. This was what he did now. He went out to get his broom and apron. Lieni came back with him, carrying another scuttle of coals for a fire that was now scarcely bearable.
‘Poor Johnny-boy,’ Paul said.
‘Tell them, Paulo,’ Lieni said.
Paul made a face.
‘Go on, Paulo. Tell them about one tit this way and –’
The glum Maltese laughed.
‘I wenta one day to see Johnny-boy, you see,’ Paul said, picking up his accent. ‘They was sleeping. Ladyship was naked. That is all.’
‘Rubbish,’ Lieni said. ‘Go on, tell them.’
‘She wazza sleeping, you see. And she wazza naked. And – she hadda one titta thisaway and one titta thataway.’ He wrinkled up his nose and made the requisite face of disgust.
The fire had stupefied most of us. The young alcoholic mechanically passed around cigarettes. The Frenchman sat blank and quite still in the American army tunic he always wore in the boarding-house. Elsa and her husband went in and out of the kitchen. The Countess sat and smiled. I don’t know what Lieni was preparing for us; but she was determined that we should do nothing to spoil our appetites. She had no more stories for us; but whenever she came in, with yet another scuttle of coals, she stopped to make us sing or do dances or play a game. We did as she directed; we became hotter. At the end we were all hugging the damp walls.
The basement bell rang. Lieni ran out to the passage. We heard conversation. A male voice was subdued: we guessed it was her engineer. We waited for her to bring him in. He was shy and had little English, but the occasion was also partly his. We waited. We heard the bedroom door slam; we heard it locked. There were footsteps in the passage; the basement door gently opened and gently closed; and there were footsteps outside climbing up, crushing the cinders and frozen snow like dry leaves. Lieni didn’t return.
Elsa told us what had happened. The engineer had brought his laundry; this was his custom. Once, on Lieni’s birthday, he had left a gift, a piece of jewellery, in the pocket of his white coat; and had said nothing. Now Lieni, seizing the laundry, went through the pockets of the coat. She came upon a letter. It was from the engineer’s home in India; he was married, with children. It might have been a deliberate act of brutality, or bravery; it might have been accidental. The engineer denied nothing; he made no attempt to defend himself or reassure Lieni. When Lieni locked herself in her bedroom, he simply took back his laundry and went away.
That was the end of the party. One by one and two by two the Maltese and the boarders left. Rudolfo went back to his restaurant. Johnny-boy was trying to revive his wife in the kitchen; he was succeeding; she was becoming obstreperous. Elsa and her husband were getting ready to catch their train back to the country. Lieni kept herself locked in her room, out of the chaos of which a few hours before she had arisen, the smart London girl. The Countess sat and looked. Paul, still in his apron, cleaned up and offered food.
I went to a dance at the British Council in Davies Street. I fell into a flirtatious,