The Valley of Unknowing

by Sington, Philip

  Suddenly Schilling seemed to be avoiding my eye.

  ‘You aren’t planning to publish, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Without his glasses, the heavy frames and heavy lenses, Schilling’s face looked unnaturally naked. ‘I’d planned to. I wanted to.’

  ‘It’s too risky.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I told him what I had planned to tell him before Richter’s death: that it would have been wise to make changes obscuring the political message of the story, ideally by setting it in the West. Even so, I knew my advice was now academic, because the only person who could have made those changes was Richter himself. Schilling knew this as well as I did.

  ‘Do you think he would have agreed to a rewrite?’ I asked.

  Schilling sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. He’d have found a way through. As it is, the book’s a masterpiece of camouflage. Everything’s between the lines. It doesn’t tell you what to think.’

  ‘The best books never do.’

  We were calling it Richter’s book, but it was not a book in the physical sense and by now we both knew it was never going to be. It was only ever going to be a manuscript, written by one man and read by two more. Too small to be called a literary circle, ours was a literary triangle.

  ‘Of course,’ Schilling said with a fleeting smile, ‘if there was one writer besides Wolfgang I’d trust with the job it would be you.’

  I was flattered by this remark, but I didn’t want to get Schilling’s hopes up. ‘What would be the point, Michael? It wouldn’t be Richter’s book any more. You’d only be taking it away from him.’

  Schilling brought his fist down on the desk. ‘But it should be published. It deserves to be published!’

  He looked at me, appealing for support, for courage.

  ‘Michael,’ I said gently, ‘Richter deserves to be published. But Richter is dead. Publication won’t help him now. His book’s good, yes, very good. But it isn’t alive. It’s not going to be hurt if you don’t put it into print. You, on the other hand . . .’

  Schilling nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. I had given him the absolution he needed. It remained to be seen if he took advantage of it.

  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I need to ask you a favour. Do you have any toothpaste? I’ve a date later and I don’t want to stink.’

  Before Schilling could answer, the telephone rang.

  ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘I tried to get some the other day, but there’s this . . .’

  ‘Contamination scare. Yes, I know.’

  I got to my feet, determined to continue my search without delay.

  ‘Try salt,’ Schilling said, picking up the receiver.

  ‘Salt?’

  ‘Table salt. It’s the next best thing. If all else fails.’

  13

  Three hours later, with coarse Halle salt still stinging my excoriated gums, I sat down in a recital room at the college of music. Four young musicians were to be assessed; a cellist, two violinists and Theresa. The audience, twenty-five people at most, was comprised of fellow students, except for a handful of much older people, whom I took to be members of the faculty. Three of these sat behind a table at the front, equipped with pencils and paper. Waiting for Theresa to appear, I had a strong sensation of being an outsider in this studious little world, a gatecrasher at a private rite of passage. Though I had attended concerts at the college before, it was not until I saw her smile at me – a brief, secretive smile, executed in the midst of tuning up – that I felt I had any business being there.

  I wouldn’t have admitted it, but my outlook had changed since our first flirtatious encounter at the Cultural Association: my ambitions had become inflated, my exposure (to borrow the language of capital) had deepened. Theresa herself had very little to do with it. Rather, it was the obstacles that stood in my way – the sheer difficulty of finding her; the absence of any obvious entrée into her social circle – these were what had raised the stakes, even as I struggled to overcome them. And then there was Wolfgang Richter, who (so I thought) had stolen Theresa from under my nose, as if to make a point. He had been the biggest obstacle of all. This is another way of saying that, in the two months since we met, Theresa had acquired the veneer of the unattainable, which few men can resist. No wonder, then, that desire had given way to what in romantic novels is called longing. Such mutations are subtle, but dangerous. Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.

  That night Theresa was accompanied on the piano by a young woman with short dark hair and a round face. I recognised her from the Kulturpalast concert. It was she who had told me, in a less than friendly tone, of Theresa’s imminent departure for the holidays. At first, watching them play was like witnessing a conversation between two halves of the same spirit, between two voices in the same mind – the mind of the composer, I supposed, divided between keyboard and strings: a kind of intimacy like no other. But then, in the third movement, the strains began to appear. A frown of concentration formed itself on Theresa’s face and never left it. In the faster passages she began to scuff the notes, producing dissonances that were clearly not intended. In the last movement she seemed to lose the tempo altogether, racing ahead of the piano part as if keen to get the performance over and done with as quickly as possible. Listening to her was quite nerve-racking. The possibility of complete collapse seemed real. I forgot my stinging gums, the lingering taste of chloride on my tongue. I even forgot why I was there, so afraid was I that she would fail.

  The piece concluded. The audience of students clapped appreciatively (I with a sense of relief); then most of them headed into the dressing room, with me on their heels. The performers wanted to know how they had done; the audience, in a spirit of solidarity, was anxious to assure them that they had done very well. Theresa greeted me with a peck on the cheek. She seemed happy that the whole thing was over. I tried to think of something to say about her performance, something that a critic might say, but nothing unpretentious came to mind.

  ‘Who was it on the piano?’ I asked finally.

  ‘My accompanist?’

  ‘She was very good. The two of you were like . . . well, a perfect duo.’

  ‘Did you hear the Vivace? It was like a bloody horserace. My fault, unfortunately.’ She tapped someone on the shoulder. ‘Claudia, did you hear that? We’re a perfect duo, apparently.’

  The pianist turned, a smile still on her lips. She saw me, recognised me. The smile vanished.

  ‘Bruno, may I present Claudia Witt. Claudia, Bruno Krug, the writer.’

  ‘We’ve met,’ she said. ‘Kind of.’

  Fortunately I didn’t have to explain the where and when; the sound of my name caused heads to turn all around the room. Among the student body, it turned out, The Orphans of Neustadt was still a favourite and I was soon fielding questions from several quarters. Theresa looked on, smiling but saying nothing. I performed for her as best I could, asking questions as well as answering them (questions designed to reflect my innate inquisitiveness and uniqueness of perspective), peppering my comments with as many humorous asides as possible. The students seemed delighted, all except the boyish Claudia, who stood staring at Theresa and fiddling with a cheap ring on her middle finger.

  ‘So what are you working on now?’ someone asked. ‘Another novel?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Well, I don’t like to . . .’

  ‘Another one of the Factory Gate Fables?’

  Theresa’s brow momentarily furrowed. It was a reflex, over in a split second, but it told me something. Another one of my Factory Gate Fables? I would clearly have to do better than that.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, this is something on a grander scale. Something more like The Orphans of Neustadt, at least in tone.’

  This was what everyone w
anted to hear. The student body couldn’t wait to get its hands on my new book.

  ‘I heard you’d given up writing altogether,’ one of the violinists said. ‘So much for rumours.’

  And everyone agreed that the rumours of my creative eclipse (rumours of which I had been hitherto unaware) were laughable and absurd – and quite possibly the work of rivals, jealous of my popularity and fearful of my inexhaustible talent.

  Theresa and I left together for a café opposite the Volkspark. It was getting dark.

  ‘I like your friends,’ I said as we set off.

  ‘I know what they’re going to say,’ she said. ‘They’re going to say I’ve got a thing about writers.’

  I hoped her friends were right.

  ‘Well, they seemed like a nice crowd.’

  I didn’t want her to know how out of place I’d felt among them: complicated, compromised, with so much more behind me and so much less ahead.

  ‘They are nice, I think.’

  ‘You only think?’

  ‘I don’t really know them all that well, except Claudia. They keep themselves apart a bit, you know, because I’m . . .’

  ‘A Westerner?’

  ‘I don’t blame them. It’s difficult, isn’t it?’ She looked over her shoulder at a solitary van parked by the kerb. Behind the wheel a tiny orange ball flared in the darkness, betraying the presence of a driver. ‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

  A gathering wind shook rainwater from the trees.

  ‘They wouldn’t get into trouble,’ I said. ‘Where do you think you are? I expect they’re jealous of you, that’s all.’

  Theresa shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. For one thing, most of them play much better than I do. Not just technically: they play with real passion. Music means so much to them. They give themselves to it completely. I can’t do that.’

  ‘Your playing seemed passionate to me.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s passionate music. You just have to get the notes right.’

  I wondered if this was the reason she didn’t play the violin: her passion deficiency would become too obvious. If so, there was something almost tragic about her predicament: to be committed to the life of an artist, only to find you lack the sensibilities an artist needs. I felt an urge to hold her. It was love she needed: reckless and raw.

  ‘Have you always felt this way?’

  She hugged her viola case against her chest. ‘I always suspected it. The trouble was, people kept telling me I was the genuine article, when I was still learning. I could play all the notes, you see. But I knew it didn’t mean anything. It was like tap-dancing on strings.’

  Her fingernails rapped against the case. I was reminded instantly of a typewriter – and then of typing the Factory Gate Fables.

  ‘Just give it time,’ I said. ‘You’re young.’

  ‘Not much younger than you were when you wrote The Orphans of Neustadt.’ She smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter, really. Playing the right notes is all that’s required of the viola, nine times out of ten. That’s enough of a headache, as you may have noticed.’

  I didn’t believe her, as it happened, but at that moment a particularly strong gust of wind barrelled down the street, giving me an excuse to offer her my arm. After a moment’s hesitation she took it.

  We drank our coffee the Russian way. That is to say we had vodka before it and vodka afterwards. I could tell Theresa was not a seasoned drinker from the way she screwed up her face as each gulp went down. But that didn’t stop her. Once the first shot was warming her insides, she was happy to accept the refills. As the hour wore on, I detected a touch of recklessness, an affected decadence, in the way she sat, leaning on one elbow, the glass dangling from her fingertips. I attributed this to the after-effects of nervous tension. Her performance had been an important event, as well as an exhausting one. It also occurred to me that perhaps she wanted to seem more worldly and despoiled than she felt, because that made her a more suitable companion for me.

  She came from a small town near Linz. I asked her why she had chosen to study at the Carl Maria von Weber; why she hadn’t completed her studies at a music school in the West.

  ‘I couldn’t get a place’, she said simply. ‘Too much competition.’

  It was also a question of money. Everything cost less in the East.

  ‘In the West I had to take a job to pay my way,’ she said. ‘Here I can study full time. That makes quite a difference. I’m never short of time to practise.’

  She left it at that. What she’d said made some sense. Students from the non-socialist abroad were rare but not unknown. The dangers of ideological contamination were outweighed by the requirement for hard currency. All the same, I sensed in this brisk explanation a degree of brittleness. Perhaps the vetting procedure had been more rigorous than she implied.

  ‘Your parents didn’t mind?’ I asked. ‘Your being so far away?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m twenty-five next birthday. Besides, my father works for the metal workers’ union. He thinks it’s good for me to see how the other half lives. He thinks I might learn something.’

  This was credible too. Though Western labour unions had a long track record of collusion with the forces of capital, still there was always hope that they would one day rediscover their idealism and take up the cause of revolution. In the meantime their hard currency was as good as anyone else’s.

  An available place, a financial saving, paternal approval: why did I have the impression there was more to it than that?

  ‘So what happens when you’re done here?’ I asked.

  The table where we sat was very small. When we leaned on it, our arms touched. It meant we didn’t have to shout.

  ‘I feel happiest playing chamber music,’ Theresa said, ‘but I’ll have to join an orchestra first. If I can find one that’ll have me. It isn’t going to be easy.’

  I insisted she could have the pick of the orchestras, judging from what I’d just heard, but she scoffed at that.

  ‘If only there were a viola players’ convention somewhere. I could sneak in there and poison their food. Cyanide or something. If half of them dropped dead, then I could take my pick.’

  ‘And what would your pick be?’

  She didn’t answer at once. She seemed suddenly lost in thought. Was it something I’d said – or something she’d said?

  ‘Berlin. I’d like to play for the Berlin Phil. If we’re talking pipedreams.’

  I refilled her glass. Up until that point we hadn’t mentioned Wolfgang Richter, but I knew we’d have to, at least once; if we didn’t he would loom even larger in our thoughts than he did already. His memory was a boil that had to be lanced.

  ‘Was that where you met?’ I asked. ‘In Berlin?’

  ‘Met who?’

  ‘Wolfgang.’

  Theresa acknowledged my perspicacity with a faltering smile. ‘Yes. Standing in front of the Pergamon Altar. I was being a tourist, seeing the sights.’

  ‘And Wolfgang?’

  ‘The same, I suppose. I remember the first thing he said to me. He said, “Take a good look. That’s the last clean thing you’ll see in this country.” I had no idea what he was talking about. But then, when I started travelling around, all the soot . . .’

  ‘The Berlin air is better than most,’ I said. ‘Up there, they keep all the factories at arm’s length. I didn’t know Wolfgang was an environmentalist.’

  Theresa shrugged. ‘Everyone complains about the pollution, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they should. Complaining is certainly how we get things done around here. Although it only counts if it’s in writing – ideally verse. A really good rhyme for lignite and it goes straight to Herr Honecker.’

  Theresa laughed. She was, I sensed, eager to laugh, to stop the exhilaration of her recital giving way to melancholy. An actor I met once told me about the feelings of deflation that follow a public performance, when the hall is empty and the audience gone. He said
it was not unlike the feeling of mourning. And, in Theresa’s case, there was still real mourning to be done as well (for hadn’t I seen her and Richter together? Hadn’t I witnessed their secret embrace?).

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you’re not at all how I thought you’d be.’

  ‘And how was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. You wrote a classic. You’re a local hero – no, a national hero.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘But you don’t talk about it, not unless you’re cornered. And even then you can’t wait to get off the subject. All that beauty, all that achievement: it’s as if it all came from someone else.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. I just feel I’ve exhausted the subject.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  Theresa shook her head, still smiling. ‘Is it true that one of your books has been turned into an opera in North Korea?’

  The volume in question was allegedly the first of the Factory Gate Fables; the source of the rumour an unconfirmed report in an army newsletter, concerning an official visit to Pyongyang by a military delegation. If true, the North Koreans had proceeded without permission and without payment.

  ‘North Korea?’ I said. ‘Now where did you hear that?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘From Wolfgang, I suppose.’

  ‘Probably. He talked about you a lot, you and your books.’

  ‘Did he?’ I tried to sound surprised, then reached for the vodka. ‘Still, that doesn’t mean we have to talk about him.’ I handed her the glass. ‘Or does it?’

  She looked at the vodka for a few seconds, as if trying to make a decision. ‘Maybe not tonight,’ she said and took it. ‘Tonight I don’t want to be sad. Still, I thought it was very sweet of you to go to his funeral. I think it really made a difference, you know, to his parents.’