An Artist and a Magician by Hugh Fleetwood

Author:Hugh Fleetwood [Hugh Fleetwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571304769
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2013-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

That was true, he told himself next morning, but it wasn’t true that he’d never be shocked again. Because after an almost sleepless night, which he had spent tossing in his bed, stroking and whispering to Philip, and thinking of what Jim had said about Rome being a magic city which he had invented—and he was right there, it was a magic city; a city of glorious appearance, of stunning façade; a city of glittering beauty, where most of even the poorest boys and girls, the most politically aware and the entirely uncommitted, masked the reality of their situation by dressing, always, in the latest fashion, whatever it was; a city where, indeed, fashion, appearance, facade were reality—he was woken at seven-thirty by the phone; and when he asked sleepily, crossly, who was calling, he was told to come immediately to the central police station.

Oh why, he asked.

He would be told when he arrived.

Had something happened?

Yes indeed.

What?

He’d be told when he arrived.

But was it something that concerned him?

Possibly. Or rather, yes. How quickly could he get there?

Immediately, Wilbur muttered, and putting the phone down, got out of bed.

*

But when he got to the police station half an hour later, he wasn’t told at once what had happened. First of all he was shown into a grey painted office and sat down on a wooden chair and asked if he wanted a coffee.

Then, with the coffee in his hand, he was asked, in English, what he had done yesterday.

‘I’m afraid I must ask you what all this is about,’ Wilbur protested, ‘before I answer your questions.’

Yes of course, the grey haired man in a grey business suit, who was sitting on the other side of a paper-covered table, and obviously enjoyed keeping people in suspense, said; and then repeated his question. What had Wilbur done yesterday?

Rome was a magic city; a dream city, where all—or most—that seemed, was. Rome was a nightmare city. And he had invented it. This was his nightmare he was in, Wilbur told himself, and only he had the power to wake himself from it; to wake up into the day. Except his power had deserted him, and he couldn’t wake up. The nightmare was the day. He said he would like to speak to someone from the American Embassy.

‘Yes of course,’ the businessman/policeman said, ‘though it’s really not necessary. All we would like to know is—what did you do yesterday?’

‘I got up at eight and went onto my terrace.’

He would try, at least, to be facetious.

But not even that worked. He was listened to with the most perfect courtesy.

‘Then I went into my kitchen, had a coffee, and fed Philip, my cat. Then I took a bath, and went into my study and worked on a novel for two hours. Then I did some translating, of a film script. Then I prepared lunch, and ate it.’

‘Alone?’

‘No, with my secretary, and with a most charming girl whose father was the Bulgarian ambassador to the Holy See before the last war.

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