The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories Read Free Page A

woken out of a tangle of dreams.
    I went to the window and looked out. The street was deserted; no voices were to be heard, but there was something unnatural about what I saw. It was the light. There seemed to be a glow where there should not have been. I looked further out of the window and smelt something acrid on the night air. I could just see one of the windows of the theatre brightly lit from the inside by a yellow flickering light. Slowly my waking mind gathered these impressions together and formed a conclusion. The Grand Theatre was on fire.
    I ran down three flights of stairs and had just got to the pay phone in the hall when I heard the ring of fire engine bells sweeping down the road to the theatre. Howard was inside the building and I knew where he was. The next moment I was running down the road towards the fire.
    The hours that followed are a confused memory. I have no idea what I did most of the time but I know that it was seven o’clock and the sun was well up when someone drove me back to my digs from the hospital and I was still wearing pyjamas and dressing gown. It all seems more of a dream to me as I remember it, because, as in a dream, I was helpless and inappropriately dressed.
    I remember the black acrid smoke billowing out of a first floor dressing room window, the steam and spray of the hoses. I remember shouting in a fireman’s ear for what seemed like minutes, trying to make him understand that there was someone in the building, the long agonising moments before Howard’s unconscious body was dragged out, the ride to the hospital, attempts to resuscitate him and their failure. Even now it is only my reason which can place these events in their true sequence.
    When the dawn came the theatre was a blackened smoking shell and Howard was dead. His presence in the theatre that night caused infinite trouble. The insurance company refused to pay up because, they argued, he was there illegally, and his presence may have caused the fire. The Tudno Bay Council who owned the theatre sued the management of our theatre company, and the management contemplated suing us. As it happened no-one paid up because the cause of the fire was never definitively established. All that was certain was that it had not begun in Howard’s dressing room. He had died of suffocation from the smoke fumes.
    A few days after the fire the company dispersed. Jane and I alone stayed on to go to Howard’s funeral. It was a deeply melancholy affair because, apart from an elderly aunt who had travelled over from Liverpool, Howard appeared to have no close relatives and Jane and I were the only friends present. The only other person to attend the cremation was one of the firemen. After the service he came over to speak to me. It was clear that something was on his mind. After some moments of inconsequential talk, I asked if he was the one who had carried Howard out of the burning building.
    ‘No,’ said the fireman, ‘I was there, but that was Dafydd. He can’t be here. Off sick. Funny thing, you know. Dafydd’s a good man, a strong man: not much upsets him, but that fire did. It was something he saw when he was getting your man out. There was a lot of smoke, as you know, and the things in his room were all smoke-damaged. You know what I mean? When everything gets covered with this thin layer of soot. You can never get the smell out of things when they’ve been smoke-damaged. Terrible. But Dafydd could see that there was one thing in that room that was not smoke-damaged at all, and he couldn’t find no explanation, see. It upset him no end, and I for one don’t blame him. It’s all very odd, you see.’
    When I asked him what item it was that had escaped the smoke damage I had already guessed, but I wanted to be wrong.
    ‘It was this painting. Portrait it was. Good piece of art, I’d say. A young man, kind of smiling. Handsome face, not nice though. Forensics have it and they can’t explain no smoke-damage either. Another