The Bellini Card

55

Whenever Palewski closed his eyes he was plunged back into darkness. The sound of that bestial cry would lift him from the pillows, grinding his teeth. He had seen and heard men die. Sometimes they died silently like Ranieri in the snow. Sometimes they raved. But too often he had heard that cry of an animal in fright or pain.

What am I? he asked himself once. He did not think he was a coward. But he had saved himself, certainly. Saved himself for what? For Poland? He sneered at the thought. Was it true that everything he did was purely for the motherland? Then why bother with Bellini and a sultan’s ball at all? Why not take the money and set it to work? Perhaps that was what a braver man would do.

Hours passed, drifting between sleep and wakefulness. He saw the dawn gather at his window; he had forgotten to close the shutters. For some the dawn brings hope, but for Palewski it was as if the sun were spying through the glass on a man who was no longer young, half sick with brandy and sour dreams, primping and petting on tyrants and courtesans.

A man who let another die alone.

A man too frightened to strike a match in the darkness.

Then the sun slipped from his window again and he lay immobile on the pillows, seeing the window through a tangle of black lashes, until he finally noticed Yashim near the foot of his bed.

“I’ve failed,” he murmured, feeling no surprise. Yashim only smiled.

Palewski felt no desire to open his eyes. In his dream he was running across snow, like a hare on the thin crust, and the surface of the snow was pockmarked by the little holes into which his friends had sunk, one by one. He ran hither and thither across the snow, whining and wringing his hands, knowing that if he tried to crack through the crust to save them then he, too, would slide through it like a hot coal.

And when he opened his eyes with a jerk the room was as empty as it had always been, and someone was knocking on the door and calling out, “Signor Brett! Signor Brett! Are you at home?”