The Ballet of Dr Caligari

by Reggie Oliver

  I stopped on the landing in front of their door which, before I could knock, was opened by Maddalena. She had aged since I last saw her, she had become gaunt and haggard, and her clothes were near to rags.

  ‘You!’ she said. ‘Mr Painter. You have money?’

  I nodded and she let me in. As I took in the scene I began to feel ashamed at my pretensions to poverty, for this was abject, on a totally different scale to my own. The room was virtually bare but for a few rickety sticks of furniture. Maddalena’s two daughters sat silent and hollow-eyed at a table. They were gnawing on pieces of bread cut from a quartern loaf which they eyed jealously. There was a window half covered with a piece of sacking and, leaning against one wall was what looked like a canvas shrouded in a sheet.

  Maddalena followed my glance scornfully. ‘So, you come for that?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You care nothing that it make him dying?’ She pointed to a corner of the room around which a rough screen of blankets had been erected. The next moment she had torn down the blankets to reveal a squalid pallet on which lay the barely living body of Franco Torrigiano. I knew him—just—from the lank, bronze curls, now silvered, that clung to his forehead. He was the colour of a bleached bone and his once magnificent frame was almost skeletal. The eyes, deeply sunk, stared vacantly at the ceiling, and his hands fumbled convulsively with the threadbare blanket that covered him.

  ‘Why Maestro Hallward not come?’ Maddalena asked. ‘Why he send you, Mr Nothing Painter?’

  ‘Don’t you know? Hallward has gone. Vanished. He cannot be found.’

  Maddalena laughed harshly: ‘So! The painting kill him too! Bene!’

  ‘What are you talking about? What nonsense is this?’

  ‘You think nonsense! I show you! I show you what nonsense!’ She darted over to the other side of the room and with a flourish that would have done justice to a fairground barker tore away the sheet to reveal Love and Death.

  I was struck dumb. The figure of Death now dominated the entire painting, obliterating the landscape with the tattered grey folds of its shroud. Only a few golden splinters of the setting sun could be seen through the mouldering cerements of Death which now loomed over Love and seemed about to engulf him. The thing’s head was still half shadowed by a cowl—mercifully!—but what could be seen was fixed into a mirthless rictus of triumph. Love still maintained the same pose as before, but the expression on his face had subtly changed. The look of agonised resignation had been replaced by one of blank despair. Eloi! Eloi! Lama Sabachthani!

  ‘You see?’ said Maddalena, almost exultantly. ‘It has taken his body and his soul! It is cursed!’ Suddenly she picked up a knife from the table and hurled herself at it. Before I could restrain her she had carved a great ragged rent across the canvas. She was lifting the knife to strike again when a great howl of agony came from the bed in the corner. At once she dropped the knife and ran to her husband. Her two daughters looked on steadily, silently with clear, haunted eyes.

  Maddalena cradled her husband in her arms muttering soothing noises, then she looked up at me fiercely.

  ‘Go! Take it. And be damned to Hell with you!’

  While she continued to minister to her sick husband I put as much money as I could spare on the table and took the canvas. Then I left that wretched place of misery and wandered the wet streets with Love and Death until I found a cab which conveyed both of us to Sir Joseph Behrens’ house in Upper Brook Street. Sir Joseph was in the country, but his butler Lane who knew of me and my commission, received the painting for him.

  Two days later a rather grimy envelope was dropped through my letter box. Inside it was a cleaner envelope with my name and address written on it in Basil’s familiar Italic hand. This envelope had been opened, doubtless to extract the bank notes it had once contained: a conjecture, but I knew Latimer of old. The letter within was intact.

  My dear Martin,

  If you receive this letter it will mean that I have not succeeded in my endeavour in Paris and have gone beyond all assistance. It would take too long to recount all the incidents that have brought me to this, but I must, with some reluctance, give you my conclusions.

  Since my earliest years I have been in pursuit of one thing and one thing only: Beauty. It was the lodestar of my life and all things were subordinate to it. Not that I did not value what Keats has sublimely called ‘the holiness of the heart’s affections’, but I believed that ‘all these things would be added unto me’ if only I truly and purely pursued my ideal. Twice I believed I had found that fulfilment; twice I was betrayed. I now know that beauty is only a mask, and that the corruption it covers is the reality. I know that Love does not endure, that it is threatened and ultimately conquered by Death; I know that if we pursue Beauty, we pursue not a noble ideal but a phantom that leads us ultimately to the Gates of Hell. That is why if you receive this letter it means I have decided that the canvas entitled Love and Death is to be destroyed and that you must do this thing for me. I once told you that I was unlucky in my masterpieces. This was far from being an exaggeration. I have been destroyed by my masterpieces; worse still, I have destroyed others by them and this must stop.

  My aim in Paris will have been one last attempt to create a work of pure beauty that has no taint of corruption in it. Your receipt of this letter is proof that I have not succeeded.

  I have no claim over you except that of friendship and these few notes for your pains. You have not been my only or my dearest friend, but you have been the only one who has never betrayed me; do not do so now.

  Yours with affection,

  Basil

  That day in the post I also received a cheque from Sir Joseph for thirty guineas, as full and final payment for my work in finding Love and Death. To me at that moment it might as well have been thirty pieces of silver. I had returned his work of art, but tainted and mutilated. I had no further answers to offer, only a deeper and more impenetrable mystery. Unwittingly I had also betrayed my friend Basil Hallward.

  Some weeks later, at his request, I paid a call on Sir Joseph Behrens. I was shown into his drawing room and, to my relief and surprise, he greeted me warmly. He was standing by the window which was open and looked down upon the garden. A light summer wind that was stirring among the trees brought into the room the heavy scent of lilac, and the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

  ‘My dear Martin,’ said Sir Joseph, ‘I am most grateful for your efforts on my behalf. I have had the canvas restored, but I will not have it on show. I have placed it in an attic room and covered it with the Burne-Jones tapestry I no longer like, depicting The Expulsion from Paradise. The room will be locked, but I may sometimes visit it. Love and Death is too great to be destroyed and too terrible to be displayed.’ Sir Joseph stared out of the window for a moment, lost in thought, then he said: ‘You and I, Martin, must be content with our own mediocrity. It is what keeps us alive.’

  The silence that followed oppressed us both.

  ‘But surely,’ I said at last, ‘Love is stronger than Death?’

  ‘We must believe so, Martin, even when it appears to be untrue.’

  PORSON’S PIECE

  I can’t remember exactly when I first had the idea for Last Thoughts but it rapidly became an obsession with me. Originally it was going to be called Philosophical Conclusions, though, when I submitted the proposal to the Commissioning Editor of Radio Documentaries, she said that sounded too ponderous and academic. Reluctantly I have to agree, but at the time I thought it was symptomatic of the BBC’s relentless urge to ‘dumb down’. Naturally, I did not use that expression to her. Even to mention such a phrase as ‘dumbing down’ at the BBC is to invite the accusation of ‘elitism’: another anathema of the Corporation, volubly opposed, yet covertly practised.

  The ‘concept’, to use our jargon, was for a series of half hour programs in which prominent but now retired academic philosophers, nearing the end of their earthly existence, were asked to give their final
verdicts on Life, Death, God, whatever, and to say whether in old age their views had been modified or matured. One of the reasons my proposal had found favour was that I had already sounded out two very distinguished philosophers, Dame Felicity Regan and Professor Garstang and obtained their provisional agreement to feature on the program. There was, however, one person whom I really wanted to include, but who proved more elusive: Sir Bernard Wilkes.

  When I had been at Oxford thirty years before, ‘Bernie’ Wilkes was the man. He was head of the leading school of ‘Rational Positivist’ philosophy which held sway then, and, for all I know, still does. He was a brilliant lecturer and tutor, and, though he did have a reputation as a womaniser, that was something that was less frowned upon then than it is now. In those days affairs, even with students young enough to be your daughter, were condoned, provided that one did not persist in unwanted advances and maintained discretion. Sir Bernard kept to both these unwritten rules—I was going to say ‘religiously’, but that, given his radical opposition to all things theological, would be inappropriate.

  Male students of my acquaintance always expressed envious astonishment at the way he managed to ‘pull’ some of the most glamorous women in Oxford. I was not personally drawn to him in that way, which was just as well because I was not the type of young woman he would be drawn to, but I could understand his attraction.

  In appearance he was not immediately prepossessing, being rather short and having a large nose, but he was full of animation. Someone once described him as ‘a cross between a rodent and a firefly’ which, strangely, does rather sum him up. His brown somewhat prominent eyes, glittered with genial mischief. Most importantly of all, it was quite obvious that he actually liked women, not simply for their sexual possibilities, but for their company. At dinners and drinks parties, he would be talking to them in preference to any man, however distinguished. Once he was a guest at a philosophical dinner at my college, and, during the sherry stage, I happened to find myself talking to him, one to one. For the brief duration of our exchange he somehow managed convey to me that he thought I was the cleverest and most delightful person in the room. Such charm and grace excuses much and is not easily forgotten.

  However, I would not like it to be thought that it was some sort of unfinished emotional business that made me so anxious to seek out Sir Bernard. No. Let me make that quite clear. But Wilkes had, somehow, symbolised for me the freedom and intellectual openness of Oxford during a significant period in my young life.

  Enquiries at his old college yielded the information that Sir Bernard had left Oxford five years ago and his forwarding address either could not or would not be supplied. Surely, I thought, it could not be that hard to track down such a prominent figure? Yet it was. In the end I had help from an unexpected quarter.

  I happened to mention to Dame Felicity Regan that I was looking for him, and though I expected a sympathetic ear, which I received, I did not anticipate any actual assistance. Dame Felicity and Sir Bernard had had many public run-ins over the years, mainly because Dame Felicity is a Roman Catholic and Sir Bernard was of the view that any kind of religious belief was inconsistent with serious philosophical activity. However, it turned out that behind the scenes the two had got on reasonably well, at least in later years.

  ‘When Bernie got married for the third time about ten years ago now,’ Dame Felicity told me over the phone, ‘he was transformed. Alison Kentley, her name was, a graduate D. Phil student he was mentoring, and yonks younger than him, of course, but she suited him and they were very much in love. He stopped his philandering altogether: they were amazingly happy. Alison was a remarkable person in many ways: even brought about a certain rapprochement between me and Bernie. Not what I expected. Then something terrible happened. Alison died very suddenly from a brain aneurysm. She was only thirty five. Bernie was devastated. He felt he’d been offered the top prize in the lottery of life only to have it cruelly and unjustly snatched away from him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man (or woman) so angry. I don’t mean blowing his top, that sort of thing, but just deeply, permanently enraged. Outraged might be the mot juste. And of course the terrible thing was, you see, that there was no-one he could be angry with. He couldn’t be angry with God of course because he didn’t believe in one. There are times when that is the whole point of there being a God: to have someone to be angry with. Not at you understand—that would be foolish—but with.’

  I failed to understand the distinction, but I trusted Dame Felicity to mean something by it. ‘So what happened?’ I asked.

  ‘He couldn’t stand Oxford any longer after that, and he’d been such a sociable bird in his day. He was past the retiring age anyway, so he just withdrew altogether, making it as difficult as possible for anyone to get in touch. He bought a little house in the Cotswolds and has gone to live there, allowing only a few trusted people to know where he is, I being one of them for some reason. Since then he’s made no public appearances, published nothing, never answers the few invitations that manage to reach him. . . . I’m telling you all this because I think it’s time he stopped being a recluse and you might just be the person to bring him back.’ And without any further discussion, she gave me Sir Bernard’s telephone number. That is Dame Felicity for you.

  Sir Bernard was now in his early eighties, but his voice on the telephone was just as I remembered it from lectures thirty years before. And the delivery was the same: faultlessly articulated, but headlong and hurrying towards the end of each sentence, as if he had already worked out what he was going to say in the next and was impatient to get to it.

  He listened without interrupting to my pitch about the program, there was a pause, and he asked me who else was going to be featured. I mentioned Garstang and Dame Felicity.

  ‘Hmm.’ He seemed unimpressed. ‘I suppose it was she who gave you this number?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  He then interrogated me closely about my work at the BBC, my marital status (single), my career at Oxford. From this conversation I caught a tiny whisper of the old charm. I did not feel invaded because he seemed genuinely interested in me as a person.

  ‘Well,’ he said at the end of it, ‘you’d better come down and see me. Come for lunch. But don’t bring any of your recording equipment. I haven’t decided to do this thing yet.’ And he then gave me detailed instructions as to how to find his house: evidently news of the Sat-Nav had not reached him. His final words were: ‘You’ll find me rather remote.’

  I could not decide whether a reference to his location, his psychological state, or a humorous allusion to both was intended. I chose not to laugh in case that might offend him and said I was looking forward to seeing him.

  ‘Hmm!’ And he rang off.

  Lovers of irony will I suppose be amused by the fact that Sir Bernard lived in a house called The Old Rectory, in a village which went by the name of Bourton Monachorum, not far from Stow-on-the-Wold. Sir Bernard was a man who paid very little attention to his surroundings, so I am not sure that he was much bothered by the ecclesiastical connections. When I had asked him on the telephone about the name, he said he understood that there had been a Benedictine Priory at Bourton before the Dissolution, hence the ‘Monachorum’. ‘There are some ruins somewhere in the village, I believe,’ he said casually. ‘Haven’t seen them myself.’

  I arrived by car on a May morning, shortly after a rain storm. Everything was young and green and glistening. The village of Bourton stood on a slope of the Cotswold Ridge with the Rectory on the lower edge of it close to the church. It was a fine old seventeenth-century house of Cotswold stone standing in its own grounds, and I wondered if Sir Bernard had chosen it, not simply for its comparative remoteness, but also because its architecture, in miniature, was akin to a typical Oxford college.

  The approach was up a gravel drive between trees which partially obscured the house. Despite the fact that the sun was now out and the trees were in their early summer panoply of fresh y
oung green, the overall effect was slightly lowering. Had you not known you might have guessed at a reclusive occupant.

  The door was opened by a large middle aged woman with a Gloucestershire accent whose ‘come in, we have been expecting you’ contained just a hint of menace.

  ‘Sir Bernard is in the sitting room. I am Mrs Jacks. I come in and do for him most days.’ She appeared to be anxious to establish that theirs was a respectable professional relationship. I nodded to confirm I understood. From somewhere I heard the sound of classical music. It was mid eighteenth century, faintly familiar but I could not quite place it.

  ‘Sir Bernard likes his music,’ said Mrs Jacks, as if she were talking about a teenage son with an addiction to Heavy Metal. She ushered me into the sitting room with the words: ‘She’s arrived, Sir Bernard. Shall I get the lunch on?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mrs Jacks. Thank you so much.’

  A little smile and a nod from the hitherto unsmiling Mrs Jacks was enough to tell me that even she had fallen under his spell. She left the room.

  ‘How nice to meet you again after all these years, Jane.’ I had told him in our telephone conversation of our previous brief encounter. ‘Would you mind awfully turning the music off for me. The far left black button in the thing on the sideboard.’ He pointed and I obeyed. ‘Thank you. Gluck’s Orfeo,’ he added.

  I had already guessed because before I had switched it off I heard the opening bars of “Che farò senza Euridice?”

  Sir Bernard Wilkes was much as I remembered him, though smaller than in my imagination, and of course much lined and with white hair. The liveliness was still apparent, though, and—I don’t think this was merely because of what Dame Felicity had told me—I saw sadness in the eyes. He was sitting in a comfortable bucket swivel armchair of a classic 1960s design. The room was entirely equipped with modernist furnishings which, though attractive and of high quality in themselves, looked curiously out of place in a seventeenth-century oak-panelled parlour. The few pictures were mostly nondescript prints of Oxford, but above the fireplace was a large framed black and white photograph, a head and shoulders portrait of a woman in her thirties. She was laughing, and the effect was immediately captivating. Behind her loomed the out of focus form of the Radcliffe Camera.