Ada, or Ador: A Family Chronicle

Her husband, minus the glass and the canapé, strolled back bringing wonderful news. They were an ‘exquisitely polite group.’ He had recognized at least a dozen Italian words. It was, he understood, a collation of shepherds. They thought, he thought, he was a shepherd too. A canvas from Cardinal Carlo de Medici’s collection, author unknown, may have been at the base of that copy. Excitedly, overexcitedly, the little man said he insisted the servants take viands and wine to his excellent new friends; he got busy himself, seizing an empty bottle and a hamper that contained knitting equipment, an English novel by Quigley and a roll of toilet paper. Marina explained, however, that professional obligations demanded she call up California without delay; and, forgetting his project, he readily consented to drive her home.

Mists have long since hidden the links and loops of consecutive events, but — approximately while that departure took place, or soon after — Van found himself standing on the brink of the brook (which had reflected two pairs of superposed eyes earlier in the afternoon) and chucking pebbles with Percy and Greg at the remnants of an old, rusty, indecipherable signboard on the other side.

‘Okh, nado (I must) passati!’ exclaimed Percy in the Slavic slang he affected, blowing out his cheeks and fumbling frantically at his fly. In all his life, said stolid Greg to Van, he had never seen such an ugly engine, surgically circumcised, terrifically oversized and high-colored, with such a phenomenal cœur de bœuf; nor had either of the fascinated, fastidious boys ever witnessed the like of its sustained, strongly arched, practically everlasting stream. ‘Phoeh!’ uttered the young man with relief, and repacked.

How did the scuffle start? Did all three cross the brook stepping on slimy stones? Did Percy push Greg? Did Van jog Percy? Was there something — a stick? Twisted out of a fist? A wrist gripped and freed?

‘Oho,’ said Percy, ‘you are playful, my lad!’

Greg, one bag of his plus-fours soaked, watched them helplessly — he was fond of both — as they grappled on the brink of the brook.

Percy was three years older, and a score of kilograms heavier than Van, but the latter had handled even burlier brutes with ease. Almost at once the Count’s bursting face was trapped in the crook of Van’s arm. The grunting Count toured the turf in a hunched-up stagger. He freed one scarlet ear, was retrapped, was tripped and collapsed under Van, who instantly put him ‘on his omoplates,’ na lopatki, as King Wing used to say in his carpet jargon. Percy lay panting like a dying gladiator, both shoulder blades pressed to the ground by his tormentor, whose thumbs now started to manipulate horribly that heaving thorax. Percy with a sudden bellow of pain intimated he had had enough. Van requested a more articulate expression of surrender, and got it. Greg, fearing Van had not caught the muttered plea for mercy, repeated it in the third person interpretative. Van released the unfortunate Count, whereupon he sat up, spitting, palpating his throat, rearranging the rumpled shirt around his husky torso and asking Greg in a husky voice to find a missing cufflink.

Van washed his hands in a lower shelf-pool of the brook and recognized, with amused embarrassment, the transparent, tubular thing, not unlike a sea-squirt, that had got caught in its downstream course in a fringe of forget-me-nots, good name, too.

He had started to walk back to the picnic glade when a mountain fell upon him from behind. With one violent heave he swung his attacker over his head. Percy crashed and lay supine for a moment or two. Van, his crab claws on the ready, contemplated him, hoping for a pretext to inflict a certain special device of exotic torture that he had not yet had the opportunity to use in a real fight.

‘You’ve broken my shoulder,’ grumbled Percy, half-rising and rubbing his thick arm. ‘A little more self-control, young devil.’

‘Stand up!’ said Van. ‘Come on, stand up! Would you like more of the same or shall we join the ladies? The ladies? All right. But, if you please, walk in front of me now.’

As he and his captive drew near the glade Van cursed himself for feeling rattled by that unexpected additional round; he was secretly out of breath, his every nerve twanged, he caught himself limping and correcting the limp — while Percy de Prey, in his magically immaculate white trousers and casually ruffled shirt, marched, buoyantly exercising his arms and shoulders, and seemed quite serene and in fact rather cheerful.

Presently Greg overtook them, bringing the cufflink — a little triumph of meticulous detection, and with a trite ‘Attaboy!’ Percy closed his silk cuff, thus completing his insolent restoration.