‘Just nearby,’ said Ahmed who was once Hubert, with another of his small bows, ‘there finds itself the Vick-ham.’ Then, because, involuntarily, I grinned, he said, ‘You are laughing at my English. I am for much of my life now speaking Arabic.’
Hubert who is now Ahmed seats himself beside me in the window seat of the Wykeham and orders us coffee and toast. Then he tells his story. He and his brother had both become increasingly alienated from their parents’ burgherish complacency, and had each chosen ways of life in reaction to it. Norbert had become a journalist and had followed a party of Turkish migrant workers to Ankara, where he was briefly and happily married to a local woman before he was killed by a goods lorry with faulty brakes, while riding his brand new motorcycle.
Hubert, who attended Norbert’s funeral, had been charmed by Norbert’s widow and by her welcoming extended family, which he’d found so different from his own. Having previously visited Israel half-way through his legal studies at university – a visit he had made as part of a progressive German’s exercise in exorcism – it now came home to him what he had read, once, in a novel by Amos Oz: ‘We,’ says the Israeli-born anti-hero to his Polish Zionist father, ‘we are the Cossacks now.’
Hubert had returned to his studies, after which he had gravitated towards the Arab community in West Jerusalem, where, like his brother Norbert, he had married a local woman; an older woman, a widow, with one young son called Mohamet. He is a lawyer now, who works on human rights abuses, and has become involved in the peace process. His wife Jamila is a paediatric doctor and a family friend of Hannan Ashrawi.
Having drained my coffee, I asked him a silly question, but I was feeling light-headed for the first time in quite a while. I was beginning to feel almost skittish. ‘So was it you who played the accordion,’ I said, ‘or were you the trumpet player?’
Ahmed who was once Hubert responded by tinkling with laughter. ‘I play always the horn,’ he said. ‘Excuse me. This instrument, Miss Dent. This is not a trumpet. This is such a Jägerhorn. This is a Jagd-horn. So. I am the hornplayer.’
‘Oh gosh,’ I said, feeling rather strange. ‘So you are “the hornplayer”. I see. Do you know, my sister, just before she died, wrote an essay for her school German. She’d called it Twenty Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling Hornplayer.’
‘Ach so,’ said Ahmed who was once Hubert, displaying a ready interest. ‘This is doch from Wilhelm Müller, the poet. Sieben und siebzig Gedichte aus dem hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten. Schubert is also, of course, using these poems, Miss Dent.’ Then we were quiet for a moment. ‘Hubert – der Heilige – is of hunting – the – er—’ Hubert said.
‘Patron saint?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Hubert said. ‘The patron saint. So I, not Norbert, must play the hunting horn.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Saint Hubert,’ he said, ‘is hunting always on the Holy Days, when he is seeing, once, such a cross – a crucifix – between the horns of the deer. The same thing exactly is happening also to Saint Eustace, but he is seeing this vision many centuries earlier; this strange sight of the crucifix so in the animal’s head. In this religion to which Norbert, and I also, are once belonging, the men are becoming often saints for hunting, so, on the Holy Days, and the women more often for being forced, so most unwilling und ganz nackt into the bordello. Then the suitor is cutting off usually the nipples, or the fingernails and he is then throwing the lady into such a huge pot—’
‘A cauldron?’ I said.
‘A cauldron,’ said Ahmed who was once Hubert. ‘Right into such a cauldron of boiling water.’ The torturer, Hubert went on to observe, was invariably a male person affected with lust for the poor young martyr whose hair, breasts, etcetera, had happened to turn him on.
Then, after a pause, he said, ‘I played always so loud the horn under your window, Miss Dent, because my father is often entering your room.’
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘While you sleep,’ he said. What Ahmed told me confirmed what I had sensed rather too vaguely at the time – namely that his parents were quite seriously not-nice people. What I had not given any credit for, was that poor old Hubert and Norbert had all that time been struggling saboteurs where I, ungenerously, had read them as collaborators. Thus, had I made any serious effort to learn their language and to engage with them, I might have had a better time.
‘Well, thank you,’ I said. ‘Look. I’m really so sorry about your brother.’
‘I am having here a letter,’ said Ahmed who was once Hubert. ‘It is for you. Is this not strange? And now, I think, you must go.’
The letter which Hubert placed in my hands had been written by himself. It had been addressed to me via Izzy Tench’s agent in London. He explained to me that he had written it just two days earlier in his Russell Square hotel room – sparked by the fact that, some months prior to his trip to Europe, he and his wife had attended the opening of an exhibition of Izzy’s paintings in Jerusalem. And there, on the wall alongside one of the drawings, he had seen an attribution: ‘Lent by Miss Ellen Dent.’
I kissed him as I rose to go. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘can we swap addresses? Please – Ahmed – if I may – I’d love to see you again.’
Ahmed who was once Hubert pulled out a professional-looking card with writing on it in Roman and Arabic script. I scribbled my address for him on a slightly dog-eared sky-blue Post-It.
‘I stay here just one night,’ he said. ‘This is in St Austin’s College, where I am a guest, since I speak this afternoon in the students’ hall.’
Then I left him to go and meet Mister Conrad – who materialized as one of that particular brand of Englishman who speaks, like a ventriloquist, without ever moving his mouth. Throughout the interview, I fancied that he kept his eyes fixed upon my afflicted right cheek and – to add further to my discomfort, his companion at the interview was a man who seemed just as troubled by my presence as I was by his.
‘This is my colleague,’ said Mister Conrad, once he had introduced himself. ‘Mr Jonathan Goldman, who is our current Writing Fellow. Please take a seat, Miss Dent.’
‘Oh, boy,’ I thought, as the day turned macabre. ‘Think Conrad, Ellen. Think clever. This is the man who saved your dog and probably killed your sister. Think ambivalence here. Think “hypocrite lecteur”.’
But Conrad floated away from me. Mr Kurtz, he dead. The interview was a mess. The Conrad scholar was a turd. The Writing Fellow was edgy and, I thought, confrontational, a prodigiously well-read brainbox who quizzed me and found me wanting. He tied me up in knots over Conrad’s politics and over the eastward spread of the political dimension of German Romanticism. He seemed surprised when I confessed myself without a good reading knowledge, either of German or of Polish.
‘I read French,’ I said stiffly. ‘I’m far more interested in why Conrad didn’t write in French.’
As I said it, something happened to me. It was as though my sister was once again crossing the room. I did not so much see her, as feel a subtle change in the light. I imagined that I saw the room, for one split second, become drained of its yellow. It became just slightly blue – like the change that occurs in a less than perfect colour photocopy – and, in this change, I sensed the passing whiff of laundered cotton. I thought to myself, Liddie was right about all this. This stuff; all this dwelling among footnotes and folios. This is the other Ellen. This is all the stuff that we were running away from when we’d made such joyful burlesque of our schoolwork. This is Hugo Campbell’s cabbage patch. Was hast du gern? Had Lydia given me a moment of truth?
‘Excuse me,’ I said. I spoke quite sharply to Mister Conrad, who actually looked into my eyes at that point, and not into my rash. ‘I think I’d rather be taking a cordon bleu cookery course,’ I said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, without once moving his mouth.
‘I’ve changed my mind about coming here,’ I said.
And the
n I left. I walked out and across the quad and back to the porter’s lodge to ask where I could possibly find Mr Ahmed Hamman, who was currently occupying one of the guest rooms. I hoped that dear Hubert who was now Ahmed would be available for lunch.
What happens next is really most unexpected, but Ellen’s day is, in general, taking on a somewhat floaty air. As she stands at the window watching the porter check out room numbers, a middle-aged man emerges from the Fellows’ pigeon-holes within the porter’s lodge. Though he is old enough to be her father, he is Ellen’s idea of dreamboat. The man is slim and tall with straight black hair that falls, schoolboy-wise, into his beautiful, shadowy blue eyes. The hair is lightly touched with a few becoming strands of silver. He has a fine thin face and he wears a shapeless, ancient jacket made of what looks to Ellen like pool-table cloth. He is evidently a little on the scatty side.
With his arms full of jiffy-bags and assorted envelopes, he tries several of his jacket pockets, searching for some elusive item. Each time he investigates a pocket he draws out miscellaneous articles, some of which fall to the floor: crumpled tissues, halved cinema tickets, herb tea-bags in little sachets, loose change, a single cycle-clip trailing pocket fluff, a small pack of sugar-free chewing-gum and, eventually, a ten pound note creased around a half-dozen furry-looking pills.
‘Shit,’ says the Dreamboat. By now he has some of his letters between his teeth.
Ellen is enchanted. She has not seen such a beautiful man in all her life. She moves forward instinctively to play big sister to the Dreamboat.
‘May I hold your post?’ she says. ‘That way you’ll have your hands free.’
When the Dreamboat smiles at her, Ellen goes weak at the knees. He has the sweetest dimples that play around his mouth.
‘Thank you,’ he says, sounding shy. ‘You’re very kind.’ And he unloads the mountain of jiffy-bags into her arms. She notices, at a brief glance, that the letters are all addressed to R. J. Goldman, Dr Roger Goldman, Professor R. J. Goldman, Roger Goldman, Richardson Professor of Mathematics, etcetera. R. J. Goldman is the name inscribed in Stella’s much read copy of Heart of Darkness, but this fact, for the moment, passes her by. Calm down, Ellen, she tells herself. He’ll be married. Anyone can see that this man is married. He is quite evidently harassed by too much domesticity. He’ll have a wife and five young children. Else why are his clothes in such a mess?
Nonetheless, she is grateful that Dr R. J. Goldman has emerged from the porter’s lodge to confront the unafflicted left side of her face. Viewed from the left, she knows that she is handsome.
‘Hah!’ says the Dreamboat triumphantly, and he holds up two small car keys, which are, of course, unattached and calculated to mingle easily with the loose change in his pockets. ‘Thank you.’ Then, as she hands him back his post, he catches the merest glimpse of her right cheek and his reaction is unusual.
Clutching his envelopes to his chest with his left hand, he reaches out his right to her face and takes hold of her chin. He turns her afflicted cheek towards him and stares at it hard and long, while Ellen suffers the scrutiny in a state of mortification.
‘I have a doctor,’ says the Dreamboat at last, ‘who could treat that condition really well. But I’m afraid he practises in Basingstoke. Still, you ought to give him a try.’
‘I have a lotion,’ Ellen says, backing off. ‘I get it from my GP. It’s really—’
‘Poison pedlars,’ says the Dreamboat with contempt – the Dreamboat, who is Sally’s ex-husband, diet freak and violator of bedroom carpets and Kilner jars – ‘this doctor is special. I have an appointment with him myself at two o’clock. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to him now and I strongly advise you to come with me.’ As Ellen gawps, he continues. ‘My car is just across the street. It’s in the college car-park,’ he says.
At this point they are interrupted by Mr Jonathan Goldman, who has sprinted across the quad. ‘Excuse me,’ he says to Ellen. He sounds puffed. ‘Hi, Roger, excuse me. Look, I, er . . . things were getting pretty gruesome in there. Forgive me. This is the original bad hair day for me. No excuse, I know. Plus the old bugger is no sort of human being when measured on the Richter scale, I concede. But, from my observation, I would say he’s a better supervisor than most and he really does know his stuff. Both of us think that you’re great, Miss Dent. He wants you. He really does. So, in short, please come back.’
‘Fuck off, will you, Jonathan,’ says the Richardson Professor of Mathematics, somewhat to Ellen’s surprise. ‘The point is that I’m in a hurry. We are in a hurry. I and Miss erm . . .’
‘Dent,’ says Jonathan smugly. ‘Look. You don’t even bloody know her name, for Christ’s sake, and you’re helping her to chuck away her future.’
‘Ellen,’ says Ellen quickly to the Dreamboat. ‘My name is Ellen, and I’d really like to come with you.’ Ellen, in her wildest dreams, has never imagined that her facial affliction would give her this kind of entrée.
Jonathan looks from one to the other. Then he laughs. ‘I see,’ he says. ‘I’ve barged into some kind of cute meet here. My apologies. Well, never mind about coming back, Miss Dent. Just tell me, what do I tell him? Will you be his graduate student? Is the answer yes or no?’
‘You can tell him yes,’ Ellen says. Then she says, ‘And thank you.’ It occurs to her that she’d be insane to be turning down this opportunity for more sustained proximity to Dr R. J. Goldman, dreamboat and proselytizer for alternative medical causes; a man divinely menaced by padded envelopes and wayward car keys; a man with an evident zeal for her flesh, albeit for the most eccentric of reasons. ‘Tell him definitely yes,’ she says. ‘But tell him I really have to go now.’
Jonathan surprises her by kissing her lightly on the cheek. ‘Gesundheit, Miss Dent,’ he says. ‘And thank God for that. I’ll tell him. And, forgive me, you may not know this. But I once knew your sister. I helped her with an A level essay.’
‘Yes,’ Ellen says. ‘I know that.’
Jonathan hovers uncomfortably. ‘In case that fact has ever given you cause to wonder—’ he says.
‘It hasn’t,’ Ellen says firmly.
‘Good,’ Jonathan says, ‘because I hereby cross my heart.’
They stand as if suspended for a moment. Then Ellen speaks. ‘There is a guest here in the college who calls himself the hornplayer,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that a bit weird?’
Jonathan blinks. ‘Right,’ he says, catching on, after a second’s delay. ‘I see. As in “posthumous papers”. Oh, Christ, Miss Dent, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you, by the way,’ Ellen says stiffly, ‘for getting back my dog.’ Then she turns to the Dreamboat. ‘Please can we go?’ she says.
In the car-park, Ellen slides into the passenger seat. She minds quite a bit that her right profile is facing the driver, but, short of procuring for the Dreamboat an instant left-hand drive, there is really nothing that she can do about it. She notes that the Dreamboat has a violin case on the back seat of his car, along with a hundred sub-sections of Sunday newspaper and several empty litre bottles of carbonated spring water. Onto this miscellany, he now throws all his bags and envelopes of unopened post.
‘That man was at my interview,’ she says.
‘Jonathan,’ says the Dreamboat. ‘He’s my brother.’
‘He was a pig to me,’ Ellen says. ‘As it happens, I was at university with his daughter.’
‘Stella,’ says the Dreamboat. ‘She’s my niece.’ Then they proceed for several miles in silence.
The Basingstoke doctor has slightly weird hair replacements and he relays evangelical clappy hymns over a tannoy, but he examines her for a full forty-five minutes in a most extraordinary fashion. After that, he puts her on a drip. Then he sends her away with strange infusions and tells her what not to eat. The bill comes to a hundred and sixty-five pounds, plus eighteen pounds sixty for the infusions, but Ellen signs the cheque just as merry as you please.
On the way back, the Richardson Professor lets dr
op that he and his wife have parted some three years earlier, and that he has three grown-up daughters from whom he is estranged. Also, that he lives a bachelor life in two rooms in the college. Then he says, inexplicably, ‘Oh Christ. Is today the twenty-sixth?’
‘That’s right,’ Ellen says. ‘It is.’
In response he says, ‘Oh shit.’ Then they again proceed in silence. Finally, he stops and gets out and makes a phone-call. When he comes back he asks Ellen if she will accompany him, that evening, to the college feast. He’s checked about bringing a guest, he says, and it’s OK, because somebody else’s guest has taken ill and cancelled.
‘The chef is very obliging about special diets,’ he says. But special diets are not uppermost on Ellen’s mind.
‘What on earth will I wear?’ she says. This is not the sort of thing that Ellen usually says, but she’s thinking in panic that her bank account is now minus one hundred and eighty-three pounds sixty, thanks to the Dreamboat’s medicine man and that, in any case, the shops will soon be closed.
‘Come as you are,’ says the Dreamboat unexpectedly. ‘I think you look terrific.’
Then he pulls off the road and stops the car with a jerk and he sits and says nothing. Finally he says, ‘If I were to kiss you, would you call it molestation? What I mean is, may I?’
‘Yes,’ Ellen says. ‘I mean no. That is, no, I wouldn’t call it molestation.’ So he kisses her with a certain clumsy intensity, and at great length, on the mouth. Ellen loves it. She wants it never to stop. Blood rushes to her nipples and to her groin in great, unfamiliar swoops. She starts to make involuntary, infant munching noises as the kiss goes on and on. Finally, when he stops, the Dreamboat sits straight up and does not look at her. He stares straight ahead. Then he dredges up three of the furry-looking pills from his bottom right jacket pocket and he swallows them, dry, in two bird-like gulps. Ellen watches the Adam’s apple lurch in his throat. He leans, almost slumps, on the steering-wheel, still staring straight ahead. Slowly he begins to intone. What he intones is a thing that Ellen recognizes all too well. It is a love poem in which a wandering miller seeks to have his doubts allayed by the brook.
The Travelling Hornplayer Page 24
