The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll Read Free Book Online Page A

beer. Best, Tibo. Just one of those, Mrs. Stopak, and send it in a plain envelope, not the city stationery, and nothing on file, thanks. Oh and you’d better mark it as personal. Thanks, that’s all for now.”

    Agathe stood up to leave and Tibo watched her go, waiting for the very last sight of her before he sat down again at his desk. Agathe’s typewriter began to click and whirr in the room next door and Tibo listened, imagining.

    At ten o’clock, the bells of the cathedral rang out over the square again. Tibo checked his watch and got ready to leave for court.

    The three letters were already waiting in a folder on Agathe’s desk. She held it up to him as he passed. “For signing, Mayor Krovic.”

    Tibo tapped his pockets, found his pen and signed two of the letters. He wrote something quickly over the last envelope, folded it roughly and placed it inside his wallet. “That’s a very nice dress,” he said. “You’re looking very nice today. Well, as usual, that is. Very nice.”

    “Thank you,” said Agathe, modestly.

    “Very. Nice.” Tibo was beginning to stumble. “The colour. Nice. And that …” He gestured vaguely at the piping Agathe had taken so long to stitch into place. “It’s very …” Tibo hated himself then. He could stand in front of the entire council and talk about anything, argue about anything, persuade anybody about anything, order anything but, in front of this woman, he was left mumbling “nice.” Still, with Agathe, even “nice” seemed to please her. It did please her. Good Tibo Krovic was the only man in Dot who ever said “nice” to her. “Nice,” he said again. “Right. Court.”

    Tibo put his pen back in his pocket and walked out of the office, past Anker Skolvig and his heroic hand gestures and back into the square.

    The court of Dot is not its most inspiring civic building and Tibo’s dread of the place grew deeper the closer that he got to it. The city fathers who built it skimped on the job. They chose a cheap, dung-coloured sandstone and the rain had soaked into itand bubbled it and winter frosts had sliced whole sheets of rotten stone off it.

    Now my image carved over the door was indistinct and runny—almost bloated—as if I had been dragged from the Ampersand like a week-old suicide.

    Outside, at the entrance, the court’s “customers” gathered every day in dirty clumps, smoking, swearing, squabbling. The pavement there was dotted with foul blobs of spit and gum and cigarette stubs. Tibo despised these people. He hated them for making him their mayor. He wanted to be mayor of honest, hardworking people who swept their doorsteps and washed their children before tucking them into clean white sheets. But he had to be mayor of these people too. He was also the mayor of scum. Whether they bothered to vote or not, they were his. He had to protect them—from themselves and from each other—and he would give his life for them. He knew it—just like Anker Skolvig—but he didn’t expect them to be glad of it or grateful or paint his picture in heroic poses or even say thanks. Tibo set his mouth into a stern flat line and walked firmly past them. Nobody spoke to him. One or two glared at him. Somebody spat but it landed on the filthy pavement and not on him.

    Inside the courthouse it was just as bad—everything painted in shades of municipal sludge, bile yellow over baby-turd brown or dead-cat green, the smell of the bleach bucket mingled with the grease and old cigarettes of the crowd and, always, inevitably, one lamp, someplace, broken or missing.

    Tibo looked into the courtroom. The place was deserted except for Barni Knorrsen from the Evening Dottian , sitting in the press box, reading a paper. The court would be quiet until the business started. Nobody liked to have to abandon their smoking and spitting until they really had to.

    “Hello, Barni,” said Tibo.

    “Good morning, Mayor Krovic. Any excitement for us today?”

    “I’m afraid