Snowleg

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  “You realise,” he said deliberately, “that if I’m going to make a full examination of your throat, I will have to charge a fee.”

  “What kind of fee?”

  “Do you mind very much if I kiss you?”

  She absorbed his words and smiled. Nor did she pull away.

  “Thank you,” his voice very quiet. “I very much needed to do that.” Able to take in her features for the first time. The height of her cheeks. The green slightly oriental eyes. The dark hair.

  Abruptly, she recoiled.

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid I may have an infectious condition.”

  He pulled the lamp close. “Let’s see,” and tilted the flickering shade towards her.

  Again she parted her lips.

  He stared down. “I’d say you have beautiful white teeth and rather a long tongue.”

  “No, no – my vocal cords?”

  “To be honest, I can’t see in this light.”

  “Come on. Try,” with a smile of encouragement.

  “I need proper instruments. Maybe if I had a mirror.”

  “I’ll ask that lady.”

  A bag was unfastened and out came a tortoiseshell comb inlaid with a mirror. They moved to another table, where he rested back her head against his hand. “Have you had any pain, bleeding, hoarseness of voice?” trying to sound professional.

  “No, no, no.”

  “Open really wide,” depressing her tongue with the swizzle-stick and positioning the comb against his forehead until the mirror reflected the light into her throat. Her breath smelled of vodka and he was aware of breathing it in. He wanted to kiss her again. He had never wanted to kiss anyone so much.

  “All right, what’s the answer?”

  Beyond the trachea the light fell on a pale pink tissue of skin in the shape of a miniature spade. “I’m bound to say I see a perfectly healthy, in fact a rather beautiful, epiglottis.”

  “What! Are you sure? Be honest.”

  “I swear. It’s not much of a line anyway.”

  “No, really. Is there any sign of something?”

  He had her total attention. “Like what?”

  “Is this the worst epiglottis you’ve seen in a woman of my age?”

  “What sort of rubbish is that?”

  She laughed in a rueful way. “It’s a long story. Let’s just say not everyone finds my vocal cords healthy.” But her voice trembled. Her eyes were filling up. She swallowed her vodka. Once again he had the impression that she was whipping herself up for something she didn’t want to do. “Look, I’ve got to go.”

  “Excuse me,” said the old lady. Come to retrieve her comb. She snatched it and left hurriedly as if she didn’t want to be involved.

  Snowleg gathered her coat. “Good luck tonight.”

  “Wait. Maybe you’d like to come and see us?”

  “No, I hate theatre.”

  He laughed. “So do I.”

  At the door she turned. “Look, we’ll meet again. Come to my brother’s party tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “What time does your play end?”

  “About eight-thirty.”

  “I’ll meet you at the corner of the square at nine. By the fountain.”

  She was out of the door already when he noticed.

  “Snowleg!” running into the mall.

  She took back the stolen book, thanking him. But her manner had changed. In the wine bar she had seemed moody and distracted. Now her face was determined and set in the way of someone who had reached an unexpected decision. She walked off down the Mädler-Passage and he watched her pause at one of the statues and touch the buckle on its bronze foot in the way that Rosalind used to touch the marble feet of saints for luck.

  A few minutes after 7.30 p.m., crippled and hunched and dressed in the garb of a very old man, Sepp inched on stage before a full house at the Rudolph Theatre. Suddenly, his face contorted as if he had seen a beautiful woman. He made a sound like the tap of a heel on a pavement and became erect and young again, building himself up to his full size.

  He watched the invisible woman walk by. Shuffled after her in little steps. Panting. Making Japanese-sounding utterances. Until, step by step, he shrank back into the same old person with his face strained into a mask of puffed eyebrows and sealed lips.

  The piece, called Circle of Life, imitated the strict atmosphere of Kabuki theatre, but the music and sounds were composed by Teo. The aim, as in all twenty short pieces performed that night by Pantomimosa, was to be simple and ironic. There was no language, no political message.

  “I’m not a writer,” Sepp had told Peter on the train to Leipzig, comparing himself with the dissatisfied author. “I see my job as doing as little as possible. That way, I hope people will feel.”

  Sepp declared himself unhappy with certain aspects of their opening performance and insisted on their presence at the theatre next morning. Peter practised and practised until he had got things more or less shipshape. It was 1 p.m. by the time Sepp announced that he was prepared to release them.

  On stage, Peter overheard Marcus talking in a low tone to Teo about some students with spray-cans who had been marched away from the Moritzbastei. He switched off the stage-light. A moment later Marcus stepped into the cubicle. “By the way, Peter, I had a word with Teo. I know you’re looking under every stone, but for Christ’s sake take care.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I gather you saw a good-looking girl yesterday. You do realise that most of these girls are festival whores? It’s no good going about droopy-eyed. Be careful.”

  “This is different.”

  Marcus snorted. “They all say that. Wake up, Peter. Just out of interest, did you say to that girl that your father is East German? Did you or didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How simple can you get! You might as well wander stark naked into the nearest police station.”

  “Why would I be of interest?”

  “Why would you be of interest! An Englishman with an East German father . . . Just think about it, Peter. And meanwhile please be careful. Please be aware of how stupid you’ve already been.”

  The severity of this admonition startled Peter and when he left the theatre he looked up and down the street. He prided himself on his sharp eyes that could spot a secretive hobby nesting in the depths of a conifer. Confident that no-one was following, he kept walking.

  The day was overcast and still. Scarves of thick cumulus lay suspended over the tramlines. He had planned to explore more of Leipzig, but his meeting with Snowleg had wound him up into a feverish state. He felt within a whisker of learning his father’s name and whereabouts. At the same time, he caught himself looking out for a second face until his father’s abstract features, which he had never been all that clear about, were supplanted by the fresh image of Snowleg. He saw her in the window of the Teehaus in Thomaskirchhof; in the curved back of the nymph mourning Friedrich Schiller, in the white berets and string shopping bags, the posters for jazz, the orange-fringed umbrellas.

  For the rest of the afternoon Peter existed in a state of anticipation, an emotion he had always wanted to feel suddenly within his reach. By the time he returned to the theatre for Pantomimosa’s second performance his nervousness had dissolved. This wasn’t a dangerously foreign country. Any more so than Wiltshire.

  They met at the fountain at 9 p.m. He sat on the edge of the basin and watched her walk towards him across the flagstones. Level against his vision the eyes of her necklace winking at him. Breasts up-tilted under a soft wool cardigan and the contour of underwear through her jeans.

  “Hello,” she smiled.

  “Hello.”

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  She zipped up her black parka jacket and raised her head to the sky. “It’s going to snow.”

  He entwined his arm around her neck. He could smell her hair. Her clean sk
in. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Just like your epiglottis.”

  She rested her chin on his shoulder, letting his remark cool. “I’m not beautiful.”

  He took her arm and they crossed the square to the tram stop. In the queue she asked about the pantomime. “Did they enjoy it?”

  “It’s hard to know. The director forbids applause.”

  “Did you know that Faust began as a pantomime?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “In Leipzig,” she said in a neutral voice, “we see Faust as a forerunner of the socialist mind.”

  Not until they were aboard the tram did he remember. “By the way, this party for your brother. What’s he celebrating?”

  She was silent. Then: “He’s going away.”

  “Where to?”

  Her forehead creased. She chewed the inside of one cheek and pursed her lips. “The West.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE PARTY WAS HELD in a church hall in a dreary part of town where the tramway ended. Parked outside the hall, a white-shuttered Trabi with a white ribbon on the aerial. She untied the ribbon and wrapped it around her hand.

  “My brother’s,” slipping it into the string bag that she carried over her shoulder.

  She walked in her springy stride towards the door and knocked. Coming down the cul-de-sac towards them some young people recognised Snowleg. Soon she was surrounded by five or six, all shouting: “Analyse me, analyse me! Tell me why I hate my mother.”

  A woman appeared at the door. “What’s up? What’s up?”

  “It’s her. She’s going to be a psychiatrist.”

  “Shhh,” said the woman. “There’s a baby in the next room.”

  One of the group, a flat-chested girl in high boots, burst out laughing.

  “You’ve come to the wrong door.” The woman indicated another door and shivered. “That’s the one you want.”

  It opened to the girl’s touch. They followed the group along a corridor that smelled of mouse droppings and into a large hall with exposed roofbeams and lamps with metal shades hanging from them. Snowleg’s eyes scouted the room. Corollas of tea-coloured light from a rotating sconce. On stage a jazz band playing Over the Rainbow. Fifty or sixty people, but she couldn’t see her brother.

  “They’re all here for him?” asked Peter.

  “No, no. It’s a peace party organised by the church. He’s just turning up to say goodbye.”

  He went to fetch her a glass of red wine. Waiting in line at the long table, he grew aware of a tension in the room. He felt people looking at him. The puritan faces apprehensive that he might report back on them next day. At the same time their eyes betrayed a daring.

  She was talking to the short, bearded man he had seen outside the Thomaskirche.

  “There’ll just be five of us,” he was saying. “Bruno, Marta – and maybe Father Konrad and Katharina.”

  “Where?”

  “My place.”

  “I need to think about it.”

  “It’s your chance to say goodbye. As well as happy birthday to me.” He nudged her. “Thirty-three – in case you’ve forgotten.”

  She introduced them. “This is Stefan.”

  Between two long yellow fingers Stefan held a hand-rolled cigarette. He put it in his mouth before shaking Peter’s hand.

  “I saw you yesterday,” said Peter. “At the Thomaskirche.”

  “He used to be in the choir,” she said, distracted.

  “Are you her brother?”

  “I’m an old friend of the family,” Stefan said meaningfully. He had clever brown eyes and a kindly face and would have been good-looking had he been thinner.

  “What about tonight?” Snowleg wanted to know. “Did you tell him you’d invited me?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a pity, Stefan.”

  “Look, go and see him. It’ll be fine. He’s over there with Father Konrad.” He took a long pull at his cigarette. Gazed lovingly at Snowleg. “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”

  “Yes, it’s a shock.”

  “How is she?”

  “The doctor says she’ll be in hospital for months.”

  He patted one of his pockets. “Hey, I’ve got the plug she wanted.”

  “For what?”

  “The cassette recorder. You going to be there tomorrow?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “It’s only that I wouldn’t mind coming by to put it in.”

  “Well, I’ll try to be there.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “For the last time, Stefan, I promise.”

  He played an air guitar. “Have to go.”

  She gave him a quick kiss and he raised his hand to Peter and turned and walked into the crowd.

  “Who was that?”

  “He’s a friend of –”

  She had seen him. Sitting on a high stool at the table. Long hands spread one above the other on an upturned billiard cue.

  “Come and meet Bruno,” she said.

  Beneath the balding head her brother had the large solemn eyes of a child. They were turned on a young woman with short-cropped orange hair and nibbled fingernails who tossed her eyes to the ceiling. “Ninety per cent don’t think further than their nose. That’s the honest truth. They don’t have the capacity –” She caught sight of Snowleg, her voice dying out.

  The man swivelled on his chair and stared before putting on a smile. He was tall and thin like a mosquito. “Little sister!”

  “Bruno.”

  He stood. Crisp crumbs falling from his shirt. “Let me look at you.” After a quick embrace, he stepped back. “Should have recognised the necklace. Hey, Renate. This is my sister.”

  Renate stared at Snowleg glassily. “Hi, sugar.”

  Bruno rapped the seat of an empty stool. Snowleg sat down, and he lifted his billiard cue and waved it at a heavy-lipped woman arranging bottles on a tray. “Lara, darling! Over here! A drink for my sister. Who has spurned me like a rabid dog. How long is it? Two years could it be? Bloody time goes so quick, doesn’t it.”

  He raised his glass and looked at her over the rim and as he drank he moved from foot to foot.

  Snowleg brushed a silver wisp of hair from her brother’s ear and studied him.

  “And this?” Bruno put down his glass. Investigating Peter with a cunning smile.

  “This is Peter. He’s English.”

  He bowed without appearing to bow. “Peter. I’m a bugger for names. Might take a while for it to settle in.”

  “Think of me as Peter the Great,” suggested Peter.

  A young cleric glided up. He had a pony-tail and chewed an apple noisily. He placed a hand on Bruno’s arm. “If I don’t see you again, good luck.”

  Bruno gave a tipsy nod of recognition. “Love you, Konrad. Don’t ever change. Nor your beautiful wife.” He turned back to his sister. Solemn eyes not completely candid. Wide pores on his Roman nose and on his blue-black shirt the initial B. “How did you find out about tonight?”

  “Stefan,” in a flat voice.

  “Stefan. Of course. Of course.” He removed a matchstick from his mouth and sat down. “Listen, I’m glad you’ve made it. I meant to invite you . . . I wanted to write.” And in a voice that he tried to make softer: “There’s just been so much to do. You have no idea. The sheer bureaucracy of it . . .”

  She stared at the floor. “When do you go?”

  “I have to be out of the country by noon Monday.”

  Standing before them, the woman with the tray.

  “Hello, Lara, darling, how you doing? I’m all right. Seriously, sit down a minute, but not for too long. This is my little sister. We go back 23 years.”

  The woman sat on Bruno’s lap. “Hello.”

  “To start with, darling, we need another Bohnerwachs. Large glass. And another one of those. Then you come right back here. That’s the way – ahuh – I like it.” In a strangulated female voice, he added, “Mama, take me away, he sings me disco songs.�
��

  The woman slipped to the floor. “One Bohnerwachs. One red wine.”

  He watched her battle a path to the long table and said in a regretful way, “God makes them faster than I can fuck them.”

  “Oh, Bruno,” said Snowleg. “You couldn’t even invite me to your farewell party.”

  “Hell, one day I’m going to give such a party for you . . . you can’t imagine.”

  The sound of a saxophone throbbed beneath their conversation, mournful and haranguing.

  He took a sip from his glass and levelled his eyes at her. “So?”

  “So?”

  “No, I asked first. Have you got your job – the one you wanted?”

  She lowered her head. Hardly able to bring out the words. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The question didn’t reach him. He put down his glass on the table and raised his hand to his head and started scratching a dry scalp.

  “Petra will be so pleased if you’ve got it.” He looked around. Waved at a minuscule woman. “Petra, Petra, come here,” he gestured impatiently as if ripping paper from a toilet roll. “Come over here.”

  Out on the dance floor the band struck up a faster tune.

  Renate howled with laughter. “It’s oompa-pa.”

  “Count Basie to you,” said Bruno. He winked at Peter. “Renate believes that whoever sleeps with you last has you.”

  A body darted between them – the tiny woman he had waved to. Either she hadn’t seen Snowleg or she had chosen not to. She grabbed his hand. “Come on, Bruno.”

  With exaggerated formality, he balanced his cue against the table. “Excuse me. My wife has invited me to dance.”

  Snowleg seized her empty glass and peered at it for dirt, but really she was looking through it to see him. Her hands were trembling. She turned to Peter, eyes mutinous. “Dance with me.”

  It didn’t become clear to Peter that Snowleg was a good dancer until the music shifted to a rock-and-roll tune. She was light on her feet and unselfconscious and she danced like someone who had decided to enjoy herself. He could never dance like that without feeling acutely self-conscious. He had always imagined that people must just pretend to enjoy this sort of dancing. Now he saw that it might be possible to yield truly to music.

  She withdrew her arm from his back and her hand sought his shoulder and he started to respond and he sensed a number of eyes measuring them as they moved across the floor.