I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
You needn’t be, Harry. It’s just that, if we do have a little bit of a future left, all we’ve got is ourselves. I’ve got you and you’ve got me, even if you can’t stand Russians. And there you were with Susannah – with a past that has no future but is destroying my little bit of a future. And it hurt a lot. It was like dying before one’s death. Can you understand that?
Yes, I said, holding her tight with Susannah’s face in my mind’s eye.
Are you sleepy?
No, I said. Why?
I want to tell you something. It’s just a corny novel I read as a child. An English historical romance of the nineteenth century. We had a lot of those books at home, and at fourteen or fifteen I devoured them all, just as all the children in our family had probably done for a couple of generations before me. But this book was different. It was dark, very dark – extravagantly so. It was the story of King Harold. I’ve been thinking about it the whole time tonight. Do you know it?
No, I said, so she told me the story of King Harold, who fell at the battle of Hastings. Edith Swan-Neck, who was his mistress, found him lying among the dead on the battlefield. Before the battle began Harold had sworn a false oath, and he died without being able to expiate that mortal sin. Edith disappeared from that day forward. No member of her family ever heard of her again. Years went by, and everyone forgot her. She had simply vanished from the memory of man.
On the other side of the English Channel, in a rocky, wooded wilderness, stood a convent noted for its strict observance of monastic rules. One of its long-standing inmates was a nun who had taken a vow of eternal silence. Her fellow nuns admired her greatly. She knew no rest by day or night. Whether early in the morning or in the stillness at noon, her figure could be seen kneeling in front of the crucifix in the convent chapel. Whenever anyone stood in need of help or consolation, she was always the first to appear. Not a soul in the neighbourhood died but the tall, pale-faced nun would first bend over the deathbed and brush the dying man or woman’s forehead with her bloodless lips, which her vow of silence had sealed for ever … Are you still listening, Harry?
No one knew who this nun was or where she came from. Twenty years earlier she had appeared outside the convent gate, wrapped in a black cloak. After a long conversation with the abbess, she had remained in the convent ever since. The abbess of those days was long dead, but the pale-faced nun still walked the cloisters like a ghost. No one now living in the convent had ever heard her voice. The younger nuns and the poor of the entire district bowed to her as if she were a saint, and mothers brought their sick children to her in the hope that her touch would cure them. Many people believed that she had been a great sinner in her youth, and was atoning for her past.
Then, after many years, the hour of her own death drew near. All the nuns in the convent, young and old, gathered around her deathbed.
A priest entered the dying woman’s cell. Having released her from her vow of eternal silence, he urged her to reveal who she was and what sin or crime was weighing on her conscience.
She sat up with an effort. It was as if her bloodless lips had been paralysed by her long silence. They twitched for some minutes, soundlessly and spasmodically. Then, at long last, she managed to speak. The voice she had not used for twenty years sounded muffled and unnatural … Are you still listening, Harry? Are you still listening?
I am Edith, she said with difficulty. I was mistress to the ill-fated King Harold.
The other nuns crossed themselves on hearing the king’s name, but the priest said: My daughter, in your lifetime you loved a great sinner. King Harold was anathematized by our Holy Mother, the Catholic Church, and can never be forgiven. He will burn in hellfire for ever. But God sees your humility and accepts your penance and your tears. Depart in peace. Another, immortal bridegroom awaits you in paradise.
A sudden flush suffused the dying woman’s hollow cheeks, and her sunken eyes flashed fire.
I want no paradise without Harold! she cried. The nuns looked appalled. If Harold is denied forgiveness, God need not summon me to him!
Rigid with consternation, the nuns heard Edith call upon the Almighty: Your son’s sufferings endured for a few hours only, yet for their sake you relieved mankind of its burden of sin. I have been dying a slow, agonizing death every hour of every day for twenty long years. You have seen my sufferings. If they count for anything, have mercy on Harold. Give me a sign before I die: when we say the Lord’s Prayer, cause the candle before the image of Jesus to ignite itself. Then I shall know that Harold is forgiven.
The priest intoned the Paternoster, solemnly and clearly enunciating each word. The nuns recited the prayer in a whisper. Every one of them was filled with compassion for Edith.
Edith lay there, her body already writhing in its death throes. Only her eyes, which were fixed on the cross, retained a spark of life.
Still the candle remained unlit.
The priest came to the end of the prayer. Amen, he said sadly.
The miracle had not occurred. Harold had found no forgiveness. A plaintive curse issued from Edith’s lips. Then she died.
* * *
I felt quite numb with horror for several days, said Sonia. I was fifteen, Harry, and overwhelmed with despair.
Yet another indication of what a merciless, implacable religion it is, I told myself. Obsessed with power – abominable! But it has already lost the battle. It won’t survive for much longer.
I don’t want to start a political argument, Harry, I’m simply telling you how desperate I felt, just the way I did tonight. There was no future any more, only despair at the absence of compassion, at the fact that the world is a cold and pitiless place. There’s a feeling many Russians have: People hate me, so I’m a Russian. And then, when I was fifteen, it was: God hates us, so we’re human beings.
And all that in the home of a general, I said. I mean, fancy a book like that in the home of a Soviet general.
Yes, it was subversive literature. Our system wasn’t much better than this God. It was just as merciless and implacable. And now it’s as if there’s a curse on my country, not only on me. Look at our history. Glorious Petersburg, and what came of that? The October Revolution, and what came of that? The Great Patriotic War, and what came of that? Our hopes have always been dashed. We defeated the Germans who wanted to enslave us. We and the Americans won that war together. And what are we now? First the Evil Empire and now the land of eternal inefficiency. Your country – not you, Harry, not you – committed the worst crime in human history, and how are you faring today? You with your big cars and long holidays and fat incomes and weight problems! Even your pigeons are fat because you feed them all the time. As for the swans on the Isar, they can’t even take off, they’re so well-fed. You’ve got everything. All we’ve got is swans that can still fly. Is that fair? Not you, Harry. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about my country, which is once more choking on its own incompetence and self-pity and despair. We’re choking on failure, even though we’re such experts at it.
I held her tight.
I know it sounds as corny as that novel, she said, but I want no paradise without Harold. I can’t put it any other way. Even though we aren’t in love, I want no paradise without you, Harry.
Paradise doesn’t exist, I said. That’s a bad thing, I suppose, but neither does that merciless God of yours exist. Don’t be scared.
So where is paradise, Harry? Tell me – tell me where it is.
It’s here. It could be here. It’s just that we won’t get there together.
* * *
We must have fallen asleep at some stage. I thought of Tess as I was drifting off. Or did I dream of her? It was the day she died. We were in her bedroom, Ellen and I. Darkness had already fallen. December. December 1968. Jessie was born four months later.
Bring me a glass of wine. Please.
You aren’t supposed to drink any wine.
Epileptics aren’t supposed
to, I know. But I always have.
I brought her a glass of water.
She pushed it away. I said wine, Harry.
I brought her some from the kitchen. She was too weak to drink it, but she sniffed the glass.
Thanks.
Ellen wiped her face with a damp flannel.
Tess looked at me. There was laughter in the distant depths of her eyes. Once could scarcely see it. It was only a tiny laugh.
A grand baby you’re going to have, the two of you.
All at once she gripped my hand. Hold me tight, Harry.
She looked at Ellen, and Ellen held her tight too.
I’ve got to go. And I want to. But hold me tight.
I rested my cheek against hers. Her fingers were enlaced in my hair. You always had such lovely smooth skin as a child, she whispered, and now you’re all stubbly. You might at least have shaved beforehand.
We laughed, all three of us. Some time later I glanced at the ceiling, then back at Ellen and Tess, and something left the room. Just a brief glance at the ceiling, and then we both looked at Tess, Ellen and I, and something left the room.
* * *
Jessie was born four months later. While she was sleeping peacefully in bed beside Ellen and I was sitting on a chair beside them, there it was again. A brief moment, and something came into the room – something I already knew.
Ellen said later: One goes and another comes. What a strange family.
* * *
Sonia and I didn’t wake the next morning until two Mexican chambermaids opened the door to do our room. For an instant I thought they’d come to avenge the young Mexican I’d beaten up the night before. I thought they might be planning to suffocate us in our sleep, but they gave us an understanding, apologetic smile. It was just after eleven. When we moved out of the hotel half an hour later we left a hundred-dollar tip on the bed. Far too much, really. Too likely to attract attention, but I felt a hundred was right. It was a glorious, cloudless day in San Francisco.
Wednesday
Sonia wanted to take the ferry to Sausalito and look at some houses. I’m thinking of the future, Harry. I’m dreaming of a future of some kind. It’s only a game, something to pass the time. Maybe we’ll find a little house over there that isn’t too expensive.
We went to the ferry port by streetcar. Sonia planned to go to Sausalito on her own, and I had already arranged to meet Susannah at Enrico’s.
Susannah came there straight from the old folks’ home, where she always starts work at six in the morning. She was looking exhausted, but she smiled when she saw me.
Ah, Fritz, she said when the waiter had brought the wine. It isn’t easy to watch old people deteriorate and lose their wits, but sometimes it’s like a miracle. When a life is ending and the truth becomes visible once more – visible for the first time, maybe – it’s like a miracle sometimes. One of our old men has five pianos in his room. Five pianos and a bed, that’s all. There’s nothing else in the room. And I always have to play two-handed with him when I’m there. Bach and Mozart. I don’t know what that means, not yet, but I’m definitely going to find out. We sometimes have wild Bach and Mozart parties. Above his bed is a little old hippy poster with a poem on it. I know the poem by heart. It goes like this:
In a room that knows your death
A closet freezes like a postage stamp.
A coat, a dress is hanging there.
Susannah looked at me. It’s horrible, Fritz. Some demented hippy poet probably nailed it to a tree sometime in the sixties. How would it go in German?
I said: In einem Zimmer, das deinen Tod kennt
Friert ein Schrank fast wie eine Briefmarke.
Ein Mantel, ein Kleid hängt in dem Schrank.
That sounds just as horrible, she said. Until three months ago we had another old man at the home. I used to think of you when I was with him, because he came from Germany. From Hamburg. He had around two hundred dolls in his room. He was always making dresses for them, forever undressing the ones that could withstand immersion in water and bathing them in a particular way. Naturally, everyone thought they knew what was going on. They thought the old boy was a paedophile who had flipped and was now doing what he used to do, over and over, but quite openly. He was confessing the sins of a lifetime, washing the children he’d abused and making them new dresses.
In fact the truth was altogether different. There was quite another background to the story of the old man with the two hundred dolls. Both his daughters were killed in an air raid during the war – that terrible raid on Hamburg in 1943. He went mad after that – well, maybe not immediately after that, but anyway, he emigrated to the States and learned English and scraped a living somehow, and eventually he went insane. After that he was just a man who bathed his dolls and made dresses for them, like someone destined to do so for evermore.
Susannah didn’t speak for a long time. Then she said: I stole one of his dolls when he died. After all, he had two hundred of them. No one’s going to miss it. It sits on a chair beside the desk in my study, watching me while I work.
Jessie! For a moment it was as if Susannah had saved Jessie. For one brief, luminous moment. One day, perhaps, I shall be an old man in a home, bathing and dressing my dolls. A crazy old man kept alive by that ritual alone. But it isn’t so crazy, retrieving what you’ve broken. Retrieving it over and over again. Perhaps it’s like that when you’re an old man. You become diminished. Some relive the process that ruined their lives, others do their exercises in front of the TV under instruction from attractive young women in chic leotards. Then they switch channels to the latest market prices. A touch of sexual titillation in the morning, then off to Wall Street. Capital appreciation for their grandchildren’s benefit.
I made a call, said Susannah. To Washington. To see what can be done about you, you and Sonia. How you can be protected. I’m an American courtesan, my dear Fritz, and I’ve got some good connections with the royal court in Washington. We’ll know more in a few days’ time. Maybe we’ll house you in the Pentagon, and when you’re dead they’ll make a Hollywood biopic about you – The Spy Who Loved Me, Part Two. Or I’ll marry you and we’ll adopt Sonia. That’s an idea, isn’t it?
She threw back her head. Her laugh was like a door opening. A flock of blackbirds soared into the sky.
What are you looking at? she asked.
There’s a flock of blackbirds in the sky.
San Francisco isn’t noted for its flocks of blackbirds, she said, but I know what you’re getting at. The laugh was only in her eyes now, there and in the fine lines round her mouth. It was a classically ironical smile. I read the book you sent me, she said. Your debut novel. I heard no more from you after that. I know those blackbirds. I recognized one or two things in your book.
Did it surprise me you’d become a writer? Actually, it didn’t. Although you’re too impetuous to be one. You aren’t the kind that sits on literary eggs and hatches them out. Mind you, there was always going to be something in your life that would prevent you from playing really good basketball, I realized that quite early on. That being so, what else could you have become but a writer? You were made for it. Made for women, I mean. Just as I’m a courtesan, so you’re my, well … my troubadour. But you troubadours don’t perform for us courtesans, only for queens and princesses. Or do you?
Oh, Susannah!
You haven’t asked how I managed to read your book. I didn’t know German, or had you forgotten?
I hadn’t forgotten. Susannah was interested in everything. All things and all languages. She wanted to know and be able to do everything. I had taught her a bit of German, but we hadn’t progressed beyond a few phrases and numerals.
I could still hear her reciting: Eins, zwei, drei … vierundsechzig, fünfundsechzig … neunundneunzig … hundert! hundert Jahre reichen nicht für uns – a hundred years won’t be long enough for us!
My parents mustn’t know I’m learning German, she had told me then.
Now she said
: My mother hated the Germans. All Germans without exception. But my mother was just a stupid Jewish momma who was keen to have children. Sons above all. When she got to hear about you, she seethed with hatred and disgust. But my father was a shrewd man. It wasn’t that he didn’t hate the Germans too; he didn’t give his hatred houseroom. His argument was that everything between us – every row we had – would turn into a German–Jewish conflict. That it would destroy us. There would come a stage when that conflict was all we had left.
You had absolutely no idea that I was Jewish. I had to tell you. You were a total innocent. You found the information interesting but unexciting. Your reaction would have been just as neutral if I’d told you I was Norwegian.
I’ve always been a clever girl, Harry, and I fully understood what my father was getting at. But I didn’t accept it, even if he was right. He was probably right when he said that the best thing that could happen to me in Germany would be inverted philosemitism – that people would drown me in it. Not you, Fritz. You’re probably not entirely free from it yourself – it would be unnatural if you weren’t – but you would even have fallen in love with a Norwegian if she’d been like me.
My father was afraid I might become a kind of Jewish trophy wife. I doubt if it would have happened, but now, after years of experience, I think it’s possible.
The ironical smile had left her eyes and given way to a kind of disquiet. A disquiet that went back a long way. When Ellen was pregnant and it had become clear that our daughter would be called Jessie, I said that, if the baby turned out to be a boy after all, David or Daniel might be nice names. Ellen simply laughed at me. No child of mine is going to have a bogus, philosemitic name like that, she said. I’m not playing that little game.
The Russian Passenger Page 18
