The Valley of Unknowing

by Sington, Philip

  ‘The father or the son?’

  ‘The son. It was the reason he took up writing. Apparently he was always talking about you.’

  How little fathers knew about their sons, I thought. How little they understood. If Wolfgang Richter had talked about me at all, it would have been the way Lenin used to talk about the Tsar, with a view to his overthrowing him, and the sooner the better.

  ‘But I didn’t know him,’ I said. ‘We were virtually strangers.’

  ‘Herr Richter just asked. Still, I got the impression it would mean a lot to him, and his wife. Maybe it would be a kind of validation for them.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Their son was an artist. They want to think he’ll be remembered.’

  For Two on a Bicycle? It didn’t seem all that likely. As artistic legacies went, it was decidedly slim; another tragic case of promise unfulfilled. Except, of course, there was his unpublished novel . . .

  ‘I still don’t understand how my name came up,’ I said.

  ‘They knew where you’re published. I expect Wolfgang told them. Look, it doesn’t matter. I just thought if you didn’t have anything better to do. It’s this Wednesday at the Tolkewitz Crematorium. Two o’clock.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow? That’s a little quick, isn’t it?’

  ‘The authorities at the hospital arranged it,’ Schilling said. ‘Apparently they don’t want to take any chances with this bug.’

  It was a cold, grey afternoon. I took a tram to the Johannis Cemetery, then walked up the long avenue towards the crematorium, the east wind cutting through my frayed old suit, so that my bones soon felt as cold and numb as those of the permanent residents. Monumental in soot-streaked granite, the Tolkewitz Crematorium was one of the few buildings in the city that the Royal Air Force could have firebombed into oblivion with my blessing. Of late imperial design, it hovered in its likeness between a massive pressure cooker and the entrance to a Wagnerian Valhalla. This was to be Wolfgang Richter’s final destination, as if, with his last breath, the part-creator of Two on a Bicycle had become a devotee of tragic opera and wished to be borne away like a dying hero in the arms of a Valkyrie.

  The Richter party – I counted twelve of them – stood at the bottom of the steps, waiting for their turn to go in. Either side of the avenue mourners from earlier funerals wandered about, singly and in pairs, among the trees and the graves. Some placed flowers, some held quiet conversations with the headstones, some even took photographs. One of them, to my surprise, pointed his lens at me – an opportunistic fan, I told myself. The presence of these strangers was unwelcome to me, though I was little better than a stranger myself. It made the occasion too public and too routine – one more funeral in an endless succession of funerals. Like the architecture, it prohibited intimacy.

  Schilling was already there, dressed in his new raincoat, which, new or otherwise, wasn’t warm enough for the prevailing conditions. He came over at once, shook my hand and led me towards a late-middle-aged couple standing arm-in-arm on the bottom step.

  I had expected Richter’s parents to be elegant, even in their grief. I imagined urbanity and sophistication, or at least a touch of the bohemian. Nothing of the kind was in evidence. Frau Richter was a fat woman with a disastrous home perm that reminded me of a wet poodle. She was dressed in a pale blue trouser suit, over which she wore a black anorak. Herr Richter, older by some years, gave off an air of awkwardness and timidity, accentuated by a double-breasted jacket that was too small for him. Short and bald, with red, elfin ears, he was afflicted with a stammer, which he had learned to control with telltale breaks in his speech – breaks that I at first took to be the effect of trauma. Had Wolfgang really sprung from the union of these two people? Or was he a graft, an orphan, adopted in childhood the way my great-uncle had adopted me – the main difference being that my great-uncle had only lasted a few years before dying of a brain tumour?

  I briefly surveyed the rest of the company, searching for the cultured and stylish mourners who I had imagined would be there: the Berlin literati, the film-makers from the Babelsberg studio, the host of beautiful women (now all in black, veiled) that Wolfgang Richter always seemed to have at his command. But I saw only old people and pimply youths in sports clothes. It was possible that the Berlin crowd hadn’t yet learned of the tragedy, I reminded myself. It wasn’t necessarily the case that they thought it was too far to come.

  It had crossed my mind, I must admit, that Theresa Aden might be among the legions of beautiful women in attendance. But that was not my reason for being there. At the universities, the new term had not yet begun. I thought she would still be at home in Austria, oblivious to what had happened. Besides, if we were ever to renew our acquaintance, I wanted it to be as far away from Wolfgang Richter as possible. I had no wish to be connected with Richter in her eyes. It was bad enough that Richter was connected to her in mine.

  But then I saw her. She was walking up the path towards us, her hands in the pockets of her overcoat. I hadn’t recognised her at first; her blonde hair was shorter and mostly hidden beneath a black beret. She looked pale, her eyes puffy. She came and stood at the edge of the crowd, but no one came forward to greet her. I had never expected to see her look so vulnerable and alone.

  ‘Frau Richter, Herr Richter,’ Schilling was saying, ‘allow me to introduce Bruno Krug.’

  Herr Richter grasped my hand with both of his. ‘So good of you to . . . come, Herr Krug. So good of you to m-make the journey.’

  Ten minutes on the tram; that was the journey (and ten minutes back). But then the poor man wasn’t to know that. Nor would it have been kind, in the circumstances, to enlighten him.

  ‘Wolfgang would have been so proud,’ Frau Krug said and, without warning, she hugged me, her teary face brushing against my cheek, her hand flapping against the back of my neck like a freshly landed fish.

  I had prepared my condolences in advance. The potential for saying the wrong thing is never greater than when dealing with the recently bereaved. But faced with the reality of grief, my carefully balanced words deserted me.

  ‘He . . . he was a . . . a great talent,’ I stammered. ‘He showed such . . . such extraordinary . . .’

  ‘Promise?’ Schilling suggested.

  A troublesome picture leapt into my mind: Herr Zoch, perched on the edge of my sofa, his notebook and ballpoint at the ready. It’s the promising ones you have to keep an eye on.

  ‘No, not that,’ I said. The Richters looked crestfallen. ‘Vision. Wolfgang was a visionary.’

  At this Frau Richter felt free to hug me again. ‘It would have been his birthday next week,’ she said, as if that somehow cemented the tragedy of the occasion, ‘his twenty-eighth birthday.’

  I moved away as swiftly and tactfully as I could, but not so far that I couldn’t form a clear impression of what happened next. Theresa had made her way towards the Richters. I don’t know if she knew them already, or if she had to introduce herself, but when I looked back again, she was standing before them, her hands clasped together in front of her, talking. I suppose she was offering her condolences. But then, without warning Frau Richter turned away, grabbing her husband’s arm. She was angry. Then she thought of something to say. She leaned towards Theresa so as not to be overheard. I could tell from the fix of her gaze and the mean set of her lips that her words were not friendly. Then she and her husband took off smartly up the steps, leaving Theresa standing at the bottom, looking stunned.

  Before I could go to her, the doors of the crematorium opened and we were all ushered inside.

  Close to the cemetery gates was an old world Konditorei that did good business holding funeral wakes. I had spent many uncomfortable hours in one or other of its function rooms, which were decked out with faux-velvet wallpaper and artificial flowers that no one ever dusted. Nonetheless, given the short notice, the Richters had been lucky to get themselves a slot there, because it was not unknown (so I was told) for relatives to ma
ke a booking even while their loved one still breathed. The nearest alternative venue was a good distance away.

  The Richter party, swollen by now to maybe sixteen, were trailing back down the avenue at a respectful pace. I left Schilling and dropped back until I was walking beside Theresa. I wondered if she would recognise me, so long was it since our one and only conversation.

  ‘It’s nice to see you again, Herr Krug,’ she said, with a smile that was fleeting, but just warm enough to seem sincere.

  ‘Bruno, please.’

  ‘I’d no idea you actually knew Wolfgang.’

  ‘I didn’t really. I knew his work.’

  ‘His scriptwriting?’

  I hesitated. With Michael Schilling barely out of earshot, I didn’t want to get into the whole business of the Richter novel.

  ‘That’s right, Two on a Bicycle is one of my favourite films.’ Theresa looked puzzled. I chuckled by way of supporting evidence. ‘That scene where the chickens get on the roof . . .’

  ‘I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Good because . . . Because you still have that pleasure ahead of you. We could even . . .’

  I just managed to stop myself from proposing we make it a date: she and I, watching her dead lover’s film – if indeed they had been lovers. I wanted quite badly to ask, but, again, the circumstances were not propitious.

  We walked on a few paces in silence. The mourner I had seen earlier, taking photographs among the graves, was still in evidence. He had been outside the crematorium a few moments earlier; now he was just beyond the trees on the other side of the avenue, his camera round his neck, his hands buried inside the pockets of a sheepskin coat. His gaze met mine, then suddenly he became very interested in a stone angel praying at the foot of a yew. A moment later he had disappeared.

  The head of the party was nearing the road. As she reached the kerb, Frau Richter looked back at us. Seeing Theresa, her mouth pinched and her nostrils flared, as if by now she had expected to find this particular mourner gone.

  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing . . .’ I said. ‘Frau Richter . . .’

  Theresa looked down at her shoes. ‘She thinks it’s my fault. That’s what she said.’

  ‘She couldn’t mean . . .’

  ‘If I hadn’t got my claws into him, Wolfgang would still be alive.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. You heard how he died. It was meningitis.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘The poor woman’s still in shock,’ I said, glad of the opportunity to offer support. ‘When something like this happens – something so unexpected, so senseless – people often feel the need to blame someone, however irrational that is. It has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Mothers have a way of knowing these things, don’t they? An instinct? Maybe if he’d never met me, everything would have been different. Maybe Wolfgang would have stayed in Berlin. And none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Now you’re the one being irrational.’

  Theresa looked at me. I felt sure she was going to tell me something, to confide in me. But then she changed her mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Forget what I said. It’s not your problem.’

  ‘So you and Wolfgang, you were close?’ I was certain that with a little more probing she would tell me the whole story.

  She sniffed and got busy pulling on a pair of hairy woollen gloves. ‘I only met him a few weeks ago.’

  ‘But still you came today. It looks like a lot of people didn’t.’

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye.’ She dug her hands into her pockets. ‘It all happened so suddenly.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It did.’

  We stopped opposite the Konditorei. The Richters had already gone inside. A smell of baking pastry sweetened the chill air.

  ‘I’ll leave you here,’ Theresa said.

  ‘You aren’t coming in?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then I won’t either. I’ll make my excuses and . . .’

  She put her hand on my arm. ‘No. You must stay. They’d be disappointed. It means something to them that you’re here.’

  Theresa was right. It would have been too selfish to disappear at that stage of the proceedings.

  ‘I tell you what, though,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a mandatory performance in a few days. At the college; the Blochmannstrasse building. Part of my exams. Why don’t you come along, if you can?’

  ‘What are you playing?’ I asked, as if that made any kind of difference.

  ‘Brahms. The F minor sonata.’

  She pulled a comical grimace, as if the prospect terrified her. I said I would be there, almost forgetting to ask for the exact time and place.

  12

  The night before Theresa’s recital I did not sleep well. I woke often, impressions of unhappy dreams effervescing in my mind. In the last of these, I was on the set of a Wolfgang Richter film. This time he was in the director’s chair – except that the chair was temporarily unoccupied. I stood waiting for him to return, while all around me technicians hurried about, trailing cables or adjusting lights. This being a dream, it goes without saying that I did not know my lines. I was not sure I had any lines, or if I had any business being there at all. I stood frozen in place, afraid to stray in case I was needed, but equally afraid to remain. I was sure to be humiliated when the director returned: either thrown off the set, or bawled out for not knowing my part. Even the part itself, I was vaguely aware, involved the humiliation of my character, who was about to be caught red-handed in some act of depravity. Meanwhile, somewhere beyond the glare of the lights, Theresa sat watching. Thematically similar visions, increasingly tortured and harsh, lay in my future; but for the present the notion of Richter as auteur of my life’s drama was confined to the nebulous realm of dreams.

  I got up early and went into the bathroom, where I discovered I had run out of toothpaste. Normally this would have been a minor inconvenience, but on this particular day, my date with Theresa only hours away, it had the potential to ruin everything. Intent on averting a halitocean disaster, I left at once for the nearest pharmacy, only to be told that their entire stock of ElkaDent had been withdrawn from sale.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ the assistant whispered. ‘It’s contaminated.’

  ‘With what?’ I asked.

  ‘Mercury,’ she said. ‘An accident at the factory.’

  Accidents at the factory were not widely reported in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, for fear of lowering morale and giving comfort to the enemy, who were known to keep their populations docile with a liberal provision of toiletries, among other things. But the lack of official reporting did not stop the rumours.

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ I said, but the assistant would not oblige.

  ‘It’s all gone back to the warehouse,’ she insisted. ‘We had some Putzi, but that’s all gone too.’

  It was the same story in the middle of town. The contamination scare had been around for a week or more, and the few alternative brands had vanished. Even the Intershop couldn’t help me. Their limited supply of overpriced Colgate had been exhausted within hours.

  Time was running out. I would have to resort to begging, but from whom? The obvious place to start was Ferdinandsplatz, which was a short tram ride away.

  Schilling seemed glad to see me. No sooner had I got up the stairs than he thrust a cup of tea into my hand, apologising for the absence of coffee and solicitously clearing away piles of paper from the sofa.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he said, as if my health were an issue.

  ‘Frankly, a little unwashed. How about you?’

  ‘Fine. Have you arranged for a test?’

  ‘A test?’

  ‘A blood test. You know, what with Wolfgang being . . . Just in case.’

  As far as I was concerned, the only possible source of infection was Richter’s manuscript. How long could a microbe survive on a sheet of pap
er? Perhaps long enough.

  ‘No. What about you?’

  ‘No, not yet. I suppose I should.’

  Schilling looked out across the square. On the hoarding opposite the old slogan had been replaced by a new one:

  DON’T SHIRK! WALK TO WORK!

  Had the previous campaign produced a sudden bicycle shortage, or an intolerable increase in road accidents? In all likelihood we would never be told.

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s contacted you, have they, from the hospital?’ Schilling asked.

  ‘No, they haven’t. You?’

  ‘No.’

  A faint electric drone marked the passing of a tram. Sparks flickered dully on the windowpane. The air felt thick, pressurised, as if held down by an invisible weight.

  ‘Do you have Wolfgang’s manuscript?’ Schilling asked.

  ‘With me? No. It’s still at the apartment.’

  ‘You finished it, then?’

  ‘Yes, I did. It’s a great book, really. I understand your excitement.’

  Schilling’s reflection smiled in the glass. ‘I knew you would.’

  ‘I almost felt now and then . . . that it was something I’d written, or might have written. In a good way. I recognised the voice, the voices. To tell the truth, it was a little spooky at times.’

  I might have put it more harshly had Richter still been alive.

  For a moment Schilling seemed lost in thought.

  ‘Do you know what he said, Bruno? He said he wrote that book because you didn’t, or wouldn’t.’

  ‘Which? Didn’t or wouldn’t?’

  Schilling turned. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  He sat down behind his desk. ‘No, that’s what he said, Bruno: you didn’t or wouldn’t. I suppose he meant . . .’

  ‘Meant what?’

  ‘It was just a chance remark.’

  ‘But what did he mean?’

  Schilling took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt tails. ‘I don’t know. We’ll never know, will we? Not now.’

  The truth of this statement seemed to depress him once again. It came to me that this was how he had spent the whole morning: dwelling on Richter’s untimely demise – Richter, the second great literary discovery of his career, cast into obscurity before he’d even been published. On the other hand a posthumous discovery was still a discovery. Having a recently dead author did no obvious harm to the success of a book.