“You play beautifully.”
“Thank you. We are only amateurs, of course. We rehearse for the music festival.”
“The music festival. Right.”
I find myself wondering where the music festival is to be held. Is it for example anywhere near a border crossing?
“You must come.”
Cello nods at me, his eyes lingering on me in a curious gaze. He wears a black polo-neck jumper, which makes his bald head look as if it’s floating in space without a body.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the time.”
“The festival begins tomorrow. But perhaps you are leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes.” I realise I don’t sound at all sure of my own plans. “I hope to leave tomorrow.”
They’re all looking at me now, and I get the feeling they know there’s something suspicious about me. Then they turn to packing up their instruments and music stands and ask me no more questions. The door of their curiosity opened for a few moments, and has now closed. I have maybe three more minutes before they blow out the candles and leave. The difficulty I face is that I can’t ask them to help me without revealing my illegal status. How do I know they won’t hand me over to the authorities? Why should they take even the smallest risk for my sake? And yet there is something about the little cello player that gives me reason to trust him. He has friendly eyes.
“If I run into difficulties over my travel arrangements,” I say, choosing my words with care, “then maybe I won’t be leaving for a few more days.”
General de Gaulle pulls a face, and speaks in a croaky voice edged with bitterness.
“For you, no difficulties. You show passport, you go where you like. London, Paris, New York.”
“First I must cross the border.”
This is as close as I dare come to the truth of my situation. They do not pick up the hint.
“I have seventy years,” grumbles General de Gaulle, “and I never cross border. Never one time. When I am young man, I dream of Paris. But this is not God’s will.”
He gives me a severe look. He thinks I’m ungrateful.
“Enjoy the rest of your journey,” says the little cello player.
Click-click. They close their instrument cases, and with parting bobs of the head they file off into the shadows. I make no more attempt to detain them. I hear the outer door clunk as they close it behind them. They have left the four candles burning, presumably for my benefit. What exactly do they expect me to do, alone in a foreign church at night? Pray?
I look round me, uncertain what happens next. Carved stone arches rise up on either side, joining high above to form a greater arch, beneath which stands the altar of the lady chapel. Behind the altar, framed in gilded wood, there is a painting of the Virgin and Child. The Virgin is sitting on a red seat with a high back and a red canopy over the top, and the Child is standing on her lap, looking sulky. The Virgin herself is rather ordinary, though she has a nice face, a little like Ilona’s. I think of Eckhard saying, “Sometimes when I watch her I can see how beautiful she will be when she is old.” This makes me feel lonely.
I take up one of the candles, and shielding its flame with the other hand, I explore the church. It’s bigger than I realised. The door through which I entered and the music-makers exited is at the back of the building. Now, venturing up a side aisle and past the high altar, I see the nave stretching before me, column after column, far beyond the reach of my candle’s light. So much darkness is scary. I retreat to the lady chapel.
The four chairs still stand in their circle, mocking me with my loss of company. The candles burn. I try to guess how long before they burn out. An hour more, or maybe two. I can’t return to the Hotel Bristol, where my shadows will be waiting for me. Nor would it be useful to wander the streets at night. So it seems I am going to spend the hours of darkness in a church.
I move all four candles onto the altar so that they throw their light on the painting. I’m feeling lonely, and the Virgin and her Child are the only friends in sight. Actually there turn out to be two other figures, one on each side of the throne, one male and one female, saints or martyrs judging from their glum upward-rolling eyes. But I don’t bother with them. I’m getting to know the girl.
She has her head a little on one side, and she’s looking down and away, like she’s occupied with some thoughts of her own. She’s got on this simple pinky-orange dress and a blue hood and cloak and red sandals on her feet. She looks so young, fifteen maybe, and here she is with this great beefy Child standing on her lap. She’s holding him upright, or almost holding him, letting him think he’s standing all by himself, which is what mothers do and their sons never know it. So much giving for so little return.
The thing is she’s not showing him off, this Child who’s supposed to be God and is going to pull off the major trick of all time, which is coming back from the dead. There’s none of that crown-and-glory stuff. She’s got a halo but it’s so minimalist I don’t even see it for a while: just this thin trace of gold. It’s true she’s on this red canopied seat but you get the feeling someone said, Sit there, and so she sat there, but it’s not hers. She’s just an ordinary girl. Too young to have a baby really. Still a child herself, but now a mother. It happens.
I think of Hanna and her baby boy Manfred. Then I think of my own mother. In this thought I’m the sulky child on her lap, and it’s my mother who’s leaning her head on one side and looking far away. Is it me that makes her so grave? She holds me but she lets me think I stand alone. She loves me and she lets me go.
Oh my mother.
I never thanked you for holding me in your arms. I never knew that you were always there. I only knew that when I needed you, you never failed me. Did your life stop for me, or did it go on but in some changed way? Love me always but don’t love me too much. I can’t bear it. I can’t repay. Please understand I’m not cruel and without heart, but I will leave you.
I am cruel and without heart.
They will crucify me and I will die but I won’t rise again, that’s only a story, and your heart will be broken. That’s no way to go. Let’s change the plot, you and me, tonight in the candlelight in the church. You’ve done enough loving. You get up off your red seat and put me down on the ground and walk away. I’ll manage just fine. And in a little while when I don’t need you any more I’ll start loving you, and that way when you die I’m the one with the broken heart. Let that be my repayment.
Such strange thoughts. My mother holding my hand as we wait for the lights to stop the stream of taxis so we can cross the street, on the pigeon-pocked pavements of Trafalgar Square. The firm tug that says cross now. She seems so powerful, so in control. Red sandals on her feet. No, that’s the Madonna above the altar.
When I come home I will kiss your feet and ask your forgiveness.
And the Child! He has his right hand raised like he’s giving someone an order but his left hand is keeping hold of just the one finger of his young mother’s hovering protective hand. He thinks he’s God. I wonder if he hates me. Looking at his face, I don’t think so. He too is looking far away, a little saddened to think of what’s to come, but I’m no part of his thoughts. I’m the one doing the thinking.
The candles are burning down faster than I expected. Or maybe more time’s gone by than I realise. I’m going to have to sleep here. The various alcohols I’ve ingested are coming to the end of their journey through my metabolism and I don’t feel at all great any more. I shuffle about with a candle and find there are little tight-stuffed cushions in the pews, so I round up a herd of them and corral them between the base of the altar steps and the altar rail. I’m making my bed in the holy bit where visitors aren’t supposed to go. I don’t care. Gods are mortal, humans immortal, living their death, dying their life.
I stand the candles at the four corners exactly as if I’m in my coffin and lie down and don’t care one way or the other if I wake up dead.
Some time in the middle of the night I have a mysti
cal experience. My eyes open but the candles have gone out and there’s no light at all. I don’t know where I am but I don’t feel afraid. In fact I feel immense. I feel as if I extend in all directions without limit and contain all things. A giant calmness possesses me, and I hear a voice which I know to be my own voice saying:
All is well! All is well!
It seems so obvious to me that whatever happens is for the best, and could not be otherwise. Like water that flows downhill, it’s in its nature, it requires no effort, wherever it goes is right: so with the universe, so with history, so with my life, which are all the same thing. Whatever comes to pass is the right and only eventuality, and could not be otherwise.
When I wake again, I feel cold and hungry. I recall my night thoughts clearly but can’t recreate the simple sublime conviction that sustained them. All is very far from well. I am in fact in deep shit. I stand up. My bones ache.
Grey light is creeping about the church. Little by little, as I see more, I take in the full scale of the building. This must be the cathedral, formerly starring in the view from my hotel window. The nave is about a mile long, and blue-grey as if carved in ice. The high gothic windows have lost any stained glass they may once have had and are glazed with opaque milky glass held in place with iron bars. Through this screen the daylight pours a soft white wash across the flagged floor.
I greet my friend the Virgin. She’s still averting her eyes from mine but I understand. Then I hear a distant door open and someone comes in. He passes between the arches, from white light to shadow to white light, a man in a black soutane, a short man, a priest carrying a basket. He’s evidently coming to me.
He raises one hand in friendly greeting and I realise that the priest is the cello player from the string quartet. Now that he wears a dog collar and a black robe he no longer resembles a garden gnome. He looks like a priest. Somehow it’s normal for a priest to be short and squat and ugly. That’s why priests can’t be heroes in movies. Put a movie star in a priest costume and you know right off something’s wrong. They just look too good.
He has brought the basket for me. It’s my breakfast.
“How did you know I’d still be here?”
“Ah. Who can say?” He sits down in a pew to get his breath back. He’s not fit, this one. “A feeling?”
“I didn’t know you were a priest.”
“Why should you? When I play music, I am not a priest. I am a musician.”
The basket contains a flask of hot coffee, a bread roll, soft cheese. And beneath these, washed and pressed and folded, my own clothes. My jeans and check shirt, my fleece, my socks. This is spooky.
“Where do these come from?”
“They were found in the street. They are yours?”
“Yes, but—”
I don’t know how to begin to express the spookiness of what is happening to me. Cello seems to think it’s all in the normal course of things.
“These are not clothes that can be bought here.” He fingers the labels. “These are a foreigner’s clothes. So when I heard they had been found, I thought of you.”
“Am I the only foreigner in the city?”
“I believe so. Yes.”
How can this be possible? Even at the height of the Cold War cities like Moscow and Leningrad had foreigners on visits. Or maybe they didn’t. What do I know?
As I drink my coffee and eat my bread I ponder my situation and conclude that I have little left to risk. I like this priest. I’m grateful to him. He knows I’m in some sort of trouble. So I decide to trust him.
I begin with the question I swore I wouldn’t ask.
“Where am I?”
“Where are you? You’re in the cathedral church.”
“No. I mean, what city? What country?”
He stares at me.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“How is that possible?”
So I tell him how I set out on a journey without a destination, and hitched a lift without knowing where I was going, and entered the country without going through the proper procedures. As I talk, he starts to chuckle, and then to laugh. I smile too, because I know his laughter is in delight and admiration at what I’ve done.
“Ah! That’s precious!” he cries. “That’s rich!”
“But now,” I say, coming to the point, “I’m in a mess, and I think I should know.”
“You think you should know?” He eyes me with his screwed-up little eyes, and the laughter subsides. “Well, I’m not so sure about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a fine thing you’re doing. A fine thing. A species of meditation. Why not let it be?”
“But how can I? I’m lost.”
“You’re no more lost than anyone else in this mortal world. Less lost than most, in fact. I could give you the name of a city. The name of a country. But would you then be found? Is it even necessary to be found?”
“It would be a beginning.”
“You think so? Might it not be an ending? Every name a nail. Bang! Bang! In goes the nail, and another living thing is pinned to a wall to die. Do I know your name? No, I don’t. Do you know my name? Not at all. So you and I may be anyone and everyone. We may be whoever we wish. We may be all the different people we are, one by one. Now isn’t that more profit to both of us than a mere name?”
This is all very well but I have things to do. He seems to follow my thoughts.
“You have some difficulties with your travel arrangements, perhaps?”
“The truth is, I need to find a way to get out of the country.”
“Without too many awkward questions being asked.”
“Yes.”
He contemplates me with his head on one side.
“I did rather guess as much.”
“I don’t want to get anyone into any trouble,” I say.
“No, of course not. But I suppose if I were to give you a lift in my car to the music festival, in which you have already expressed an interest, well, I don’t see why anyone should find anything out of the ordinary with that.”
“And the music festival is—?”
“A few hours’ drive west of here. A charming old town. And not far from the border.” His eyes twinkle at me. “So what do you say to an evening of Mozart? The great Mass in C Minor.”
“I’d be very grateful.”
“There, you see! All accomplished, and no names. The mystery endures.”
Speaking purely for myself I’d say I’ve had enough mystery in the past few days to last me for the rest of my life. Right now I’m in the market for the occasional answer. However this gnomish priest has his own game to play, which does not include enlightening me, except after the Socratic method. What is it about me that impels philosophy bums to pick me for their project? All I want to do is get to the border. But I know by the way he twinkles at me that he plans to spend the drive nudging me towards self-knowledge. It must just be one of those things that happens to people when they get old and wise. They can’t stop themselves spraying their wisdom about the place. All you can do is keep nodding and not get too close.
FIFTEEN
Cello drives with a blithe disregard for all other users of the road. Fortunately there are few. Also fortunately his car, an ancient Renault 4, has very little power, and only achieves anything you could call speed on long downhill slopes. As well as Cello and myself we are carrying his instrument, his suitcase, and what seems to be an entire mobile library.
I have reverted to my old clothes, so unexpectedly returned to me. The smart new clothes needed washing, and anyway made me feel like a fraud. Now I am myself again.
I have decided to reveal nothing about my recent experiences to the little priest. The less he knows, the less trouble I will bring down upon him should things go wrong. However he clearly wants to talk about something, so in the interests of keeping the conversation focused on him rather than on me we talk about being a musician and being a priest and befo
re I can apply the brakes we’re onto the existence of God.
I say I can’t see it. I mean, it would be comforting and so forth, but check out the facts.
“Which facts do you have in mind?” he asks me.
Now this isn’t a topic on which I’ve actually prepared an essay, but the surprising thing is I find I’m all full of arguments in support of what I’m saying. What’s more, I turn out to be quite heated on the subject.
“Okay, so what’s this God supposed to have done? Created everything, right? So why? For him to play with? Does he get off on watching us little creatures squirm or what?”
“That is something of a puzzle.”
“I mean, either do us a favour or leave us alone. I never asked to be created. You have to admit there’s something a bit bent in this idea that God creates us bad and then tells us to get good before we’re let into heaven.”
“A bit bent.” He chuckles at that.
“And I haven’t even started on the Christian stuff. Jesus dying for my sins? Puh-lease! It’s a set-up. God rigs the game and then sends Jesus onto the pitch to win it. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it.”
“It’s an odd business. I admit that.”
He swerves to avoid an oncoming truck. As we have been driving, the early-morning cloud has dispersed, and there is actual winter sunlight gleaming on the snow. We are well out of the nameless city now, and crossing a broad flat plain. The clear light, and my own forceful thinking, combine to make me feel powerful. Cello’s gentle concession does not satisfy me. I want opposition or surrender.
“So you’re agreeing with me?”
“Not agreeing, no. I’m listening.”
“I thought this was supposed to be an argument.”
“Not at all. Arguments are for winning and losing. What use is that?”
I’m a little taken aback by this question. I had rather supposed that winning was the point of more or less everything.
“If you win an argument, that proves you’re right.”
“Not at all. It only proves you’re better at arguing.”