Irène stopped reading. She was sitting at the desk in my hotel room, my typescript in front of her. She was leaning forward slightly, resting on her elbows, and one could imagine, from the convexities and concavities of her dress bodice, that her breasts were just touching the desk top, that the underhang of her breasts was just grazing the desk top.
‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘It sounds better when you read it. Your accent makes it sound more intelligent.’
‘I’m thinking of Brazil,’ she said. ‘I really think I should go to Brazil next.’
I poured some more whisky into her glass and added some ice cubes. My throat felt thick; I could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, to say. She put my typescript down and picked up the leather-framed photograph of my wife and children, my travelling photograph.
‘What are your daughters called?’
‘Millie. And Lucy. Lucy and Millie.’
‘How old are they?’
‘Six and four. Millie’s the oldest.’
She stood up, her eyes distant, and strolled round from behind the desk, coming over towards me to collect her drink.
‘It’s wonderful that, no?’ she said. ‘To take something so obscure and make it so memorable.’
‘What? Oh, you mean Brahms, the “Variations”.’
‘But we all do that, I suppose, don’t we? In our own lives, in our own way. Or at least sometimes we try. We should try, when we have that chance, to do what Brahms did.’
‘Yes. It’s not so easy. I suppose we –’
‘– Or maybe I should go to Mexique. What do you think, Brazil or Mexique?’
I took a few steps away from her, I had to, just at that moment.’You know,’ I said, ‘there’s no way that village was in Switzerland. That village was not in Switzerland, that St Julien. That was France, definitely.’
She laughed. ‘Shall we have a row?’ she said. ‘How can you be so sure? Prove it.’
The man locked the girl in the room and she did not even look round at the sound of the key turning in the lock. When the man returned and opened the door again, the girl had gone. I can’t remember if we saw her leave. I can’t remember how the girl got out of the room.
It is almost three o’clock, overcast, with low, packed, mousegrey clouds, but no light rain falls as I walk up the steepish street from the lower town to the upper, although now all trace of a division has been erased by almost eighty years of building and development. I pass a dry-cleaner, a newsagent, a grocery store, a flower shop, an estate agent and an empty patisserie with a ‘For Sale’ sign slipped between the Venetian blind and the dusty window pane.
The church still stands some little way apart, islanded by a wide grass bank and a gravel path and the cemetery wall is high enough to obscure all but the tallest of tombs. I walk around the foot of the cemetery and pause a while in the lee of the wall looking up at the solid stone farmhouse on the hill’s crest and to the left, beside it, a splendid old stone barn. Now there is a single-track, metalled road that winds up between back gardens on one side and a field cropped short by sleek, beige cows. I think of John Culpepper and his friend Bob Quentin sheltering here by the cemetery. In their place I would have made for the farm and those thick stone walls too.
EXTERIOR. STREET. DAY.
The sunlight was bright. The glare was over-bright, fuzzing outlines as if the exposure was wrong. It was difficult to make out the features of buildings in the street. The man stood there, in sunglasses, smoking. He stopped a passerby and asked him a question. It was impossible to hear what was being said because of the noise of the score and of the snare drum’s insistency. The man’s face looking up and down the street. The man walking towards his car. People passing turned and stared: it was clear that they knew this man was an actor (I remember thinking that, I remember noticing their expressions); they were bemused to see a film being made in their small town.
‘You know, I’ve had a disturbing thought: he wasn’t really your grandfather,’ Irène said, moving to the door.
‘No. But we always called him Grandfather Culpepper. I always thought of him as a kind of grandfather. My grandmother always talked about him, how he died in the war, a week before it ended. That’s how I know about this St Julien place, where he died. I’ve seen a photo. I recognized it.’
‘Your grandmother married again –’
‘In 1927. Had another child – my mother.’
She thought, pushing out her bottom lip. ‘I tell you what, I’ll bring you your breakfast.’
She leant forward and kissed me again, but quickly, on the lips. I reached for her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. I have to go now.’
‘Black coffee and croissants. For two. What was your disturbing thought?’
‘Oh yes. Do you realize something?’ She was standing in the doorway, leaning back in the doorway, her body canted backward, pleased with herself. I could taste her lipstick in my mouth. ‘If your grandfather Culpepper hadn’t gotten himself killed at St Julien – you wouldn’t be here. Goodnight.’
She straightened, showed me the palms of her hands, shoulders shrugging, eyebrows raised, smiling – the girl who had won the prize with the last question of the quiz show.
‘Black coffee and croissants,’ she said. ‘For two.’
How was I to know I would never see her again?
The duty manager looked at me patiently, and not at all intolerantly, as if his training had prepared him for all manner of bizarre requests, far more bizarre than mine.
‘We do have a waiter named Jay,’ he said, ‘who works in our coffee shop. Jay Duveen. But he’s been on vacation for four days. We have no member of staff with the name Irène. Not on our computer, anyway.’
He pronounced her name ‘Eye-rain’.
He smiled, his smile was not unkind. ‘If you could remember her last name, sir, it would be invaluable.’
Invaluable. It would be invaluable. Indeed.
‘She’s Swiss,’ I said. ‘Mid–late thirties, tallish, blonde. I imagine a friend of this Jay.’
‘There are over five hundred employees in this hotel, sir. And I can’t begin to tell you how many dozens of temporary staff we hire on a day by –’
‘You’ve been most helpful.’
The gap between the gable end of the farmhouse and the corner of the barn is wider than Bob Quentin had remembered. I pace it out – sixteen yards. The farmer and his son stand respectfully some way off watching this strange, middle-aged American investigate a banal angle of their farmyard. ‘Come on, Bob, let’s go, let’s go, Bob,’ John Culpepper had said. I step out from the gable end of the farmhouse and pace out eight steps, stand equidistant between the farmhouse and the big stone barn. Beneath my feet is longish grass, muddied, trampled somewhat. Below me is the cemetery and beyond that the ugly semi-industrial outskirts of St Julien, the garages, the discount stores, the agricultural depots. The railway line is there and the slow-moving Meuse. I suppose, near as dammit, I am standing on the spot where John Culpepper died.
The afternoon light up here by the farmhouse is pewtery and cold, and a tarnished silver gleam comes off a loop in the river as the sky clears for an instant. I say goodbye to the farmer and his son (‘Mon grandpère, ah, était tué ici, en, ah, mille neuf cent dix-huit‘) and I walk down through the dew-heavy meadow towards the church. When I’m about two hundred yards from the church I pause and look back at the farmhouse and the barn and the gap of refulgent white sky between them. ‘Over there, Bob, that’s for us, buddy.’
Turning again, I see a small figure coming round the cemetery wall. A woman, wearing a dress – or a sweater and skirt – of the palest blue, striding out with a long, confident stride, setting off up the hill towards me. A blonde woman with loose shoulderlength hair. She waves and calls, and I think she calls my name, but I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure of anything any more because she looks familiar. Coming towards me thro
ugh the dew-laden grass of the meadow on this cool grey afternoon is a vision, a vision of Irène.
‘On leaving St Julien take G.C. 38. The road is interesting but in bad repair, and care must be taken for the next few kms. The view is impressive. Hill 238, across the valley, is literally ploughed up by the shell fire, while not a single tree is left (see photo, p. 18). After crossing the bridge over the Aisne and entering the town, the house on the left, no. 8, should be noticed. This is the old post house where Louis XVI was recognized during his flight in 1791. When the royal carriage stopped near this post house in broad daylight the postmaster thought he recognized the king. His fellow citizens mocked him, accusing him of seeing visions. The postmaster, convinced he was right, followed the carriage all the way to Varennes, where he caught it up, confirmed his suspicions and had the royal family arrested.
Several comfortable and reasonably priced hotels are to be found in the rue Chanzy.’
Fantasia on a Favourite Waltz
Clara Billroth handed the baby to Frau Schäfer and the child went gladly to the old woman, its cries diminishing to gurgles and whimpers. ‘Say goodbye to your mama,’ Frau Schäfer said uselessly, as she did each evening, taking the baby’s wrist between finger and thumb and making the tiny fingers parody a farewell wave. ‘Say “Goodbye Mama”. Say it, Ullrich.’ ‘Please don’t call him Ullrich,’ Clara said, ‘I don’t like the name.’ ‘You’ve got to give him a name soon,’ Frau Schäfer said, hurt, ‘the child’s nearly four months old. It’s not correct. It’s not Christian.’ ‘Oh, all right, I’ll try and think of one,’ Clara said and turned away, pulling her shawl around her as she went down the stairs, feeling the cold wind rush up from the tenement door to meet her. April, she thought: it still might as well be winter.
She walked briskly down Jägerstrasse towards St Pauli, a little late, her shoes pinching her feet, making her shorten her pace, making her favour the right foot over the left. The left was sore. Annaliese said that your feet were never exactly the same size, you should have a different shoe made for each foot. Annaliese and her nonsense. In what world would that be, Clara wondered? How rich would you have to be to have a different –
She saw the boy leaning against the gas lamp, holding on to it with both hands as if it were a mast and he were on the pitching deck of a ship in a stormy sea. As she drew nearer she watched him press his forehead to the cool moisture-beaded metal. The wind off the harbour was full of threatening rain and the gas lamps wore their mistdrop halos like shimmering crowns in the gathering dark. The boy, she saw, was about fourteen or fifteen with long hair – reddish blond – folded on his collar. His eyes were shut and he seemed to be speaking silently to himself. ‘Hey,’ Clara said, watchfully, ‘are you all right?’ He opened his eyes and turned to her. He was a stocky young fellow with good features, blue eyes, the thick honey-blond hair drawn off his forehead in a wave. ‘Thank you,’ the boy said, blinking his pale-lashed blue eyes at her. He had a distinct Hamburg accent. ‘Migraine,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the headache I have. But I’ll be fine. I just have to wait until it’s passed. You are kind to stop, but I’ll be fine.’ Clara peered at him: his eyes were shadowed with the effort of talking. Sometimes she had these headaches herself, especially after little Katherina had died and then when she was pregnant with the baby boy, whatever she would call him – with ‘Ullrich’. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘But don’t let the police see you. They’ll think you’re drunk.’ The stocky boy laughed politely and Clara went on her footsore way.
Clara arranged the front of her dress so that her bosom bulged freely over the bodice. The men liked that, it always worked. She tugged the front lower, arching her back, contemplating her reflection in the glass, turning left and right. She looked pretty tonight, she thought: the cold wind off the Elbe had brought colour to her face. She dipped her finger in the pot of rouge and added a little more to each cheek and a dab on her lips. She wanted to make a good impression on her first night; Herr Knipe would be pleased with her. She was early, too, none of the other girls were there and when she came through the bar the glasses were being polished and the dance floor swept. It appeared a prosperous place, this Lokal, not like the last one, there were even sheets on the bed. Herr Knipe seemed more generous too – keep half, my dear, he had said, and the more you work, the happier I am.
In the bar the pianist had arrived and was sitting on the little raised dais, playing notes again and again as if he were tuning the piano. She walked towards him to introduce herself – it was important to befriend the musicians, then they would play your favourite melodies. The pianist heard her footsteps crossing the dance floor and turned. ‘Hey,’ Clara said, surprised. ‘Migraine-boy. What’re you doing here?’ He smiled. ‘I work here,’ he said. ‘How’s the head?’ Clara asked. He had the clearest blue eyes, all shadow gone from them now. ‘Bearable.’ He was trying not to look at her bosom, she saw. ‘What’s your name?’ she said. He was too young to be working here, fourten or fifteen only, she thought.’ ‘Ah, Hannes,’ he said. ‘Hannes… Kreisler.’ ‘I’m Clara, Clara Billroth. Do you know any waltzes?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said the boy Hannes, ‘I know any number of waltzes.’ ‘Do you know this one?’ Clara sang a few notes. ‘It’s my favourite.’ Hannes frowned: ‘You are not a very good singer, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Is it like this?’ He turned to the piano and with his right hand picked out the tune. ‘Yes,’ Clara said, singing along, and then she saw him bring his left hand up to the piano and suddenly the dance hall was filled with the waltz, her waltz, her favourite waltz. She was amazed, as she always was, how they could take a simple tune, a few notes, and within seconds they were playing away – with both hands, no sheet music – as if they had known the waltz all their lives. Clara swayed to and fro to the rhythms. ‘You’re quite good, young Kreisler, my lad. Oh my God, look, there’s Herr Knipe. I’d better go.’
Four men – forty marks, twenty for her, a fair start. A fat sailor, then his little friend. Then some dances. Then a salesman from Altona who proudly showed her a daguerrotype of his wife – she hated it when they did that. Then a dark, muscly fellow – Norwegian or Swedish – who smelt of fish. Clara sniffed at her shoulder, worried that it had rubbed off on her. He had heaved and heaved, the Norseman, took his time. None of her tricks seemed to work. Took his own sweet time.
She finished her beer, pulled the sheets back up and tucked them in. She was unhooking her shawl when there was a knock at her door. It was Hannes. ‘Hey, little Kreisler. Thank you for playing my waltz.’ ‘It’s quite pretty, your waltz,’ Hannes said. ‘I like the tune.’ ‘Want some beer?’ Clara said. ‘No, I must go,’ Hannes said. ‘I came to say goodbye.’ ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Clara said; she noticed he was looking at her breasts again. ‘No, no, I’m going away,’ he said. ‘To convalesce. I’m not very well.’ He smiled at her wearily, ‘I can’t take any more of these migraines. I think my head will explode.’ Clara shrugged, ‘Well, I hope they get someone as good as you on the piano.’ They walked down the stairs to the rear entrance together. ‘That was real class tonight, Hannes, my boy. You’re a talent, you know.’ Hannes chuckled politely, the sort of polite chuckle, Clara thought, that told her he knew full well just how talented he was. They paused at the door, Clara tying her shawl in a knot, pulling it over her head. ‘So, hello and goodbye, Hannes Kreisler.’ Then she kissed him, as a sort of goodbye present, really, and because he had been nice to her, one of her full kisses, with her tongue deep in his mouth, to give him something to remember her by, and she let him fumble and squeeze for a while at her breasts before she pushed him away with a laugh, clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘That’s enough for you, my young fellow, I’m off to my bed.’
It was funny how everything could change in a year, Clara thought, as she wandered through Alster Arcade looking at the fine stores. She liked to do this before she went down to St Pauli for her evening’s work. ’47 had been, well, not too bad, but ’48?… My God, not so good.
If only Herr Knipe hadn’t died. If only Frau Schäfer hadn’t gone to live with her son in Hildesheim, if only the baby had been healthier, not so many doctors needed. Money. All she thought about was money. And everywhere there was revolution, they said, and all she could think about was money. She looked at her reflection in the plate glass window of Vogts & Co. She should put a bit more weight back on: the gentlemen didn’t like skinny girls these days. She sighed and went to stand in a patch of sunlight ‘to warm my tired old bones,’ she told herself, with a chuckle, ‘for a moment or two’.
There was a big piano store across the street, the pianos in the window lustrous and glossy, their lids up, the grained wood agleam with wax polish. The early summer warmth meant that the double doors of the shop were thrown open and she could hear over the noise of the cabs and the horse trams the demonstrator inside playing away at a waltz. Dum dee dee, dum dee dee… Good God in Heaven, she thought, that’s my waltz.
It was little Hannes Kreisler all right, Clara saw, though not so little any more, the back was broader, the jaw squarer, the hair longer, if anything, playing away on the small stage in the centre of the great emporium, but he wasn’t calling himself Hannes Kreisler, these days. The fancy copperplate on the placard that advertised the demonstrator’s name (and his address for piano lessons) read ‘Karl Wurth’.
Clara strolled into the shop, grateful that it was busy, thinking that with a bit of luck no one would tell her to leave for a while. A small crowd stood in a semicircle around ‘Karl Wurth’, listening to him play. It was her waltz, that was true, but it was different also, the tune was freer: it kept changing, changing pace and rhythm and then coming back to the original notes. She edged closer, watching Hannes play, seeing that he was reading music, there were sheets propped in front of him, concentrating, staring at the notes. The music grew faster and then finished in a kind of a gallop and a series of shuddering chords, not like a waltz at all. He slowly took his hands away from the keyboard. There was applause and Hannes looked round with his fleeting smile and gave a small dipping bow before he stood up and stepped away from the piano, taking his sheet music and removing the placard with his new name.