Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  “What, no solitaire?” asked Farrell suddenly from across the room, turning his head toward her.

  “For the moment I have something better to do,” she told him absently. “Lulash has loaned me a book on Albania, much prized by him in spite of its being published in 1919. What is particularly interesting is that it has a very good map of the country. He really should have remembered it was there and removed it.”

  Farrell’s mouth dropped open. “Good God,” he gasped, “you can’t possibly be thinking of escape!”

  She thought it tactless to mention the alternative. Instead she said calmly, “But why not? You don’t think I want to spend my sunset years in Albania, do you? The winters are extremely cold, the book says so, as cold as the summers are hot If I only apply myself there must be a way to get us out, preferably before General Perdido returns.”

  “Us?” echoed Farrell in astonishment. “You said ‘us’?”

  Mrs. Pollifax looked up from her map in surprise. “You can’t possibly think I’d leave you behind!”

  Farrell shook his head. “My dear Duchess, it must have escaped your notice that for most of today I’ve been off my rocker with fever. I also have a broken right leg and a bullet in my right arm.”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded indifferently. “Yes, I’d noticed. But I’ve asked for permission to cut the bullet out of your arm, and if you can bear another operation—I know it won’t be pleasant—then your temperature ought to go down, and that will leave only the healing leg.”

  “That’s right—only a broken leg,” rasped Farrell.

  Mrs. Pollifax returned impatiently to her book. “It isn’t clear to me yet, but I’m hoping it will come. The simplest way would be lowering you over the cliff, but we would need at least a hundred feet of rope for that. We ought to have a gun, too, and some sort of clothes for disguise, and food, and I suppose to be really efficient we ought to have a compass, although if the stars are out—”

  She found that Farrell was regarding her as if she had gone mad. He said with sarcasm, “A rope, a gun, a disguise, food and a compass—anything else? How about ordering a limousine?”

  “I don’t think you’re being at all receptive,” she told him stiffly.

  It was their first quarrel. He said scornfully, “I think you’ve gone off your rocker, too, Duchess, but if it gives you something to keep your mind occupied—well, have lots and lots of fun. And now if you’ll forgive me I’ll go back to sleep, which is the best escape I can think of. You know—‘sleep that knits the raveled sleeve of care’ and all that?”

  “Coward,” said Mrs. Pollifax with a sniff, and then was sorry for the word as soon as it left her lips. But it was too late; Farrell’s eyes were closed and a kind of gentle snore was issuing from his half-open mouth. Mrs. Pollifax, watching him, wondered if he knew how becoming a beard would be to the shape of his face. A few more days, she mused, and he would have a very striking one, and then with a start she went back to Albania: Land of Primitive Beauty.

  The boiling water, a penknife and a towel arrived at dusk, brought in by Major Vassovic, who looked disapproving and then somewhat distraught as he added that he had been ordered to remain behind to help with the operation. In a gruff, nervous voice he addressed the walrus-moustached man who now shared their cell. “His name is Adhem Nexdhet,” he told Mrs. Pollifax. “I have asked him to hold the candle for you, Lulash is not on duty tonight.”

  “For me,” thought Mrs. Pollifax, “he means hold the candle for me,” and her knees suddenly felt very wobbly. She put down the pack of playing cards and stood up, trying to recall the dozens of splinters and the broken glass she had extracted from small knees and fingers in her lifetime, but finding little comfort in the thought. She remembered only one bit of advice given her by a doctor: never bleed for the patient, let him do the bleeding, you just get the job done.

  Mrs. Pollifax took the knife from Major Vassovic, saw to its sterilization, glanced just once at Farrell, whose eyes were open, and proceeded to go about getting the job done. She mentally granted to Farrell his own right to dignity, assuming he could manage his own hell just as she must somehow manage hers. Quickly and ruthlessly, knowing that speed was kinder than gentleness, she probed the rotting flesh for the bullet. When the knife met its hard resistance she thanked heaven that it was not embedded in a muscle and with one swift, cruel turning of the knife she lifted the pellet to the surface and heard it drop to the stone floor. Not knowing how else to complete the job she poured the hot water over the infected skin, and this at last brought from Farrell a yelp of pain.

  “I wondered when we’d hear from you,” she told him.

  “They’d never hire you at Mount Sinai, Duchess.” His face glistened with perspiration.

  “Really? And I was planning to apply next week—what a pity.”

  He grinned weakly. “Just can’t keep you from volunteering for things, can we. Have you finished your butchery?”

  “Quite.”

  Farrell nodded and turned his face to the wall, and Mrs. Pollifax realized what he had already endured and must still face, and the resolve to escape hardened in her. She would not, must not, save Farrell only for General Perdido. Even if an escape attempt brought only death it was certainly a cleaner way to die than by whatever means the general was planning. In that moment she realized they were going to have to try it, and with this all her doubts ended; it was no longer a matter of whether but when and how.

  Major Vassovic had disappeared, leaving her the basin of water and several towels. Mrs. Pollifax dipped a towel into the water and began swabbing blood from Farrell’s mattress.

  “You did that well,” said Adhem Nexdhet suddenly. “Without emotion.”

  Mrs. Pollifax stepped back in surprise. “You really do speak English,” she said accusingly.

  He smiled wryly. “But you already knew this, did you not? I am not unaware of the little trick Mr. Farrell played on me. Allow me,” he said, taking the towel from her. “You are not young, you must be tired.”

  Mrs. Pollifax backed to her cot and sat down. “I suppose you’re also in the secret police then!”

  “Yes, I am Colonel Nexdhet of the Sigurimi.”

  Mrs. Pollifax winced. “I see. That makes you the major’s superior then.” She sighed. “It also makes it especially kind of you to help. Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “A good officer knows when to break rules here and there. Major Vassovic is not a good officer, except for his rigid obedience, which is the mark of a follower, not a leader. He is afraid of life.” The colonel wrung out one towel and picked up another, saying over his shoulder, “There is one thing that General Perdido does not know about you, Mrs. Pollifax.”

  Startled, she said, “Oh? What is that?”

  He turned to look at her. “He does not know how well you perform under pressure.”

  There was a long silence. Nexdhet’s words were ambiguous, but the man’s stare made Mrs. Pollifax feel distinctly uneasy. Until now the comic moustache had obscured the fact that his eyes were both penetrating and intelligent. As pleasantly as possible Mrs. Pollifax said, “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “You are more than you appear to be,” he said, smiling.

  “Really?” He was clearly testing her, she decided. “I have no idea how I appear.”

  “It is very interesting to me,” continued Nexdhet. “I underestimated you at first glance. To General Perdido you are an embarrassing mistake. Now I wonder if he may not have underestimated you as well.”

  “What you have underestimated,” retorted Mrs. Pollifax firmly, “is my experience in first aid. However, if it pleases you to think otherwise—”

  The cell door opened. The guard who did not speak English came in to collect the dinner trays and the conversation was mercifully ended. Mrs. Pollifax spread out her playing cards for a last game of solitaire, but whenever she glanced up she was aware of Colonel Nexdhet watching her with a mixture of speculation and amusement.

  CHAPTE
R 14

  The next morning Mrs. Pollifax began to plan in earnest. When Colonel Nexdhet was removed from their cell, presumably for his exercise, she brought from her purse everything that could be used as a bribe or trade, and spread the items across the little table. There were three lipsticks, two of them brand-new and in smart bejeweled gold cases; a tin of Band-Aids, her wallet containing five dollars and thirteen cents; traveler’s checks amounting to fifty dollars (the rest were in her suitcase in Mexico City) and a small memo pad with gold pencil. To these she reluctantly added her Guatemalan jacket, and distributed the small items between the two pockets of the jacket, keeping only the memo pad. On one of its pages she had jotted down the few Albanian words with which the author of Land of Primitive Beauty had salted his book. The words were as follows:

  dunti—hope chest

  shkep—rock

  zee—voice

  rhea—cloud

  gjumë—sleep

  bjer—bring

  pesë—five

  zgarm—fire

  natë—night

  It was meager fare for her purposes, but after an hour spent in arranging and rearranging the words she had selected four of them for the message she wished to write in Albanian. It was a crude affair but it was the best that she could manage, and now she carefully copied out the four words on a fresh sheet of memo paper. Night—Sleep—Bring Voice. To this she added hopefully in English, since everyone else here seemed to speak it, “We are two Americans here, who are you?”

  “What’s up?” asked Farrell from his cot, watching her.

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” said Mrs. Pollifax hastily, and slipped the memo into her pocket. “How are you feeling?”

  “Weak but human at last.”

  She nodded. “Your temperature is almost normal, I felt your forehead while you were asleep.” She stood up as the cell door groaned open and a guard appeared. “I believe it’s time for my walk now,” she told Farrell.

  From his cot he said dryly, “You look like a cat planning to swallow the canary, Duchess. Whatever you’re up to it won’t work, you know. This is Albania.”

  “Yes, Albania, land of primitive beauty,” she told him, and swept from the cell.

  She had no more than closed the door behind her, however, when a familiar voice said, “There you are, Mrs. Pollifax, I have been waiting for you.”

  It was Colonel Nexdhet, the very man she would have preferred to avoid. He wore a pair of binoculars around his neck and carried a book under his arm. “We can walk together,” he said.

  “You are to guard me?” she inquired coldly, and then as they entered the guardroom she said warmly, “Good morning, Major Vassovic, and how is your back today?”

  “Ah, Zoje Pollifax,” said the major, beaming. “It is still sore, yes, but last night I sleep like the baby.”

  “Mrs. Pollifax,” cried Lulash, coming in from outside and holding the door open for her. “You have good walk before the sun climbs high?”

  “Thank you, I hope to,” replied Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Take my sunglasses, please,” insisted Lulash, peeling them from his eyes. He winked. “Remember we are jurors, you and I.”

  “What did that mean?” asked Colonel Nexdhet as they emerged into the brilliant sun.

  “Nothing important,” Mrs. Pollifax assured him airily. She stopped a moment, adjusting to the bright tawny landscape, and then moved on. “There are so many of you here to guard so few of us, it seems such a waste.”

  “We will go in this direction,” said Colonel Nexdhet, gesturing to the east. “No, it is not waste. There are other prisoners in the larger building.”

  “I didn’t know that. How long have you been here, Colonel?”

  “Oh, for several months. I was brought here to be second in command to General Hoong.”

  “You must find it bleak?”

  “At times. I take many walks, I fancy myself as a bird watcher.” He gestured toward the binoculars around his neck. “I enjoy walks.”

  “So I gather,” she said dryly.

  He helped her across a deep cut in the earth, and they began to climb a little, toward the forest.

  “And do you enjoy being a colonel in the Sigurimi?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It is my job.” He looked at her and smiled. “You question everything, and this is good. But you doubt nobody, and this is bad. We are neither of us young, you and I, we are each nearing the end of long lives and so can speak frankly. I observe in you the desire to trust, even here. This is weakness in a human being, a foolish thing, the desire to lean.”

  Mrs. Pollifax followed him among the trees, her face thoughtful. She had already forgotten that he made her uneasy. “No,” she said honestly, “no, I don’t think I agree with you. I don’t lean on people, as you put it. It only comforts me to know that people are there. You don’t find this to be so?”

  He looked at her and again she was aware of the tired wisdom in his eyes. “Then it is because you are a woman.”

  “Perhaps. You mean you trust no one at all?”

  “No one but myself.”

  “Why?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  He shrugged, and helped her over a fallen log. “That is only common sense. Perhaps I have seen too much of life, I don’t know. I am sixty-three, I have perhaps watched too many knives in the back, too many sudden changes of the face. Nothing endures except the idea, the mind. I served Albania under the Turks, I served her under King Zog. We were friends with Mussolini and then Mussolini turned on us and conquered us and I fought in the resistance then, for communism. After the war it was Hoxher who came to power and ruled, with Russia our friend. Now we have quarreled with Russia and it is the Red Chinese who help us.” He shrugged again. “It is the way life is. Nothing endures except the idea. This alone is clear, pure, not soiled by change.”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Yes, you have seen too much of life—the bitter side, at least.”

  “In the Balkans, in Albania, life is bitter,” he said.

  Mrs. Pollifax considered. “Of course by the idea you mean the political idea—communism—but aren’t you wrong to say it never changes? There is this matter of Stalinism—”

  “One adapts,” he said. With a wry smile twisting his preposterous moustache he asked, “Politically you are what?”

  “Republican,” acknowledged Mrs. Pollifax. “Although twice I voted for Adlai Stevenson—such a charming man.”

  He smiled. “Then you, too, adapt.” He touched her arm and directed her to the right. “We have gone far enough,” he said. “We will follow the cliff back. There is a good view here, you will see the valley from a new angle.”

  There was indeed an excellent view, and she was grateful to stop walking for a minute. “Beautiful, is it not?” said Colonel Nexdhet, standing beside her. “And those men below, how small, like ants.”

  “Yes, I just noticed them,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “What on earth are they building down there?”

  “A missile site,” he said without interest. “Seeing Man like this reminds me always of Man’s fragileness, don’t you agree?”

  A missile site, he had said. A missile site? A shock of excitement moved down Mrs. Pollifax’s spine disc by disc. The Chinese were building a missile site in Albania? She forgot her failure in Mexico; if she could bring news of a missile site to Mr. Carstairs then she would not have failed as a spy at all. It was obvious that Colonel Nexdhet would not have mentioned such a thing if he was not absolutely sure that both his secret and Mrs. Pollifax would remain in Albania, but this was only a new goad. Aloud she said disapprovingly, “They would do better to build roads, why do you need a missile site?”

  Colonel Nexdhet gave her his arm. “Shall we start back? The Chinese are very patient, Mrs. Pollifax, they build for the future. They are not taken seriously yet as a major power, but see what they have already accomplished! They have fought and won a small slice of India. They have their finger in a dozen pies in southeast Asia. They are proving e
xtremely successful in infiltrating Latin America—every Communist party there has its Mao-ist wing. They now have trade relations with most of western Europe and with Canada, Australia and Japan. They have exploded a primitive atom bomb. But most of all they are here to help and to protect my country, which you must not forget is a European country. The Chinese have arrived in Europe.”

  “Good heavens,” said Mrs. Pollifax as she absorbed the meaning of all that he said. “It’s really quite shocking.”

  “If you are an American, yes,” he said with a shrug. “As for the Chinese—they look ahead.”

  “Very enterprising of them,” she said weakly, and wondered how to change the subject before she gave away her profound interest. “But I have not seen any of your birds, Colonel Nexdhet.”

  He said gravely. “That is what makes bird-watching so fascinating, Mrs. Pollifax. There are so few of them up here along the cliffs.”

  Presently they came out into the hot sun again, and the stone buildings lay ahead.

  Mrs. Pollifax had left her cell at half-past nine in the morning. It was quarter-past five when she returned, flushed from the sun and a string of small, happy accomplishments. She found Farrell livid.

  “Don’t you ever do this to me again,” he sputtered, sitting up on his cot and glaring at her. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Do what?” she said in astonishment.

  “Go off for a whole day like this. I’ve been nearly out of my mind picturing you in front of a firing squad or being stretched on a rack somewhere being tortured. And now you have the audacity, the unmitigated gall to walk in here looking happy.”

  She walked over and kissed him fondly on the top of his head. “Bless you for worrying. I’m sorry.”