by Tessa de Loo
Whenever the choir performed for the radio, Lotte’s mother urged everyone to be in place in a circle round the Chrystalphone, in an improvised amphitheatre of kitchen chairs. On one Sunday morning Lotte’s voice came into the living-room unexpectedly, separate from the choir, in a Bach cantata. Uncertain of the result she came home – she could not hear her own voice in the studio. There a celebration was in progress: alcohol was on the table. Her mother hugged her, moved, and presented her with a bouquet of flowers that tickled her nostrils. She had a sneezing fit. ‘Mind your voice!’ cried Mies sarcastically; she liked to be the centre of attention herself. Her father was looking feverishly in his record collection for that particular cantata – his way of indicating his appreciation. Lotte fell into an armchair, bewildered, and pensively spooned down a brimming glass of advocaat that Marie had held out to her with a respectful laugh. It gave her a scandalously pleasurable feeling that she was earning success with something that she herself enjoyed to the roots of her hair (the reward was already there in the singing itself). Two days later she received a perfumed letter: ‘Your timbre is unique, it is a rare gift. I will still remember your voice in twenty years, and that is something others would give everything for.’ Catharina Metz recognized the sender as a notoriously severe music critic. Blushing, Lotte packed the letter in the suitcase she had come with from Germany. Along with her mourning dress and Anna’s embroidered handkerchief that had been in one of the pockets, here she kept the sewing case that had drowned with her and a newspaper cutting about Amelita Galli-Curci. Later she moved the letter to a drawer in her dressing-table where a scent of violets still lingered after sixty years.
She had first heard Amelita Galli-Curci in a duet with Caruso. It was a hot afternoon in September; she was walking home through the wood after school with Jet. The water-tower shimmered through the trees when suddenly she stopped. Like a force of nature, a voice was coming from an open window which was so enchanting that Lotte was all ears – a gigantic, immobile ear. Jet pulled impatiently on her sleeve and then walked on, shrugging her shoulders. Lotte wanted to delay as long as possible the banal moment of coming home and discovering that the voice emanated from a groove in an ebony disc. So she stood there with eyes closed until the last sounds had died away between the tree trunks.
The queen of coloratura singing, Galli-Curci, married to a marquis from the foot of the boot of Italy, scored triumphs in the United States immediately after the First World War ‘as a lyric soprano of unusual beauty, pure and crystal clear from low A-flat to high C’, according to Opera World of the day. In the cutting that Lotte kept, there was a photograph of a majestic, dark-haired woman who defied the camera with a raised chin – a Rembrandtesque hat on her head at an angle, a shawl with large flowers and birds draped over her shoulders, and two showy rings on her right hand, which rested militarily on her breast, just above the heart. A Napoleonic stance. Thus inspired, Lotte slipped into the water-tower, ignoring the strict prohibition – long hair or ribbons could get caught in one of the machines. She positioned herself – chin up, hand on chest, directed her gaze upwards and brought about a change of scenery: the metal stairs no longer led to a reservoir filled with sand, gravel and coals, but spiralled endlessly upwards on their own axis, into a firmament full of stars – they might also have been theatre lights. As yet unhampered by excessive self-criticism, she sang ‘Caro Nome’ or ‘Veranno a te’ in her own Italian version as she had managed to learn it from the record. Her voice filled the whole tower from the low A-flat to the high E, ascending the stairs to where the steps became fainter and fainter, in a never-ending Escherian revolving. Her chest expanded. Drunk from the melody and the sound of her own voice, she floated away to another phase in her life – the reservoir arched high above her, a stained-glass window separated the light into coloured fragments, somewhere behind her the sound reverberated through the marble corridors of a labyrinthine building. It was an indefinable feeling that nevertheless half penetrated her consciousness and was immediately forgotten, as soon as she stopped singing.
A walnut piano of obscure East European make was acquired so that she could accompany herself. The money for it and the lessons was scraped together by her mother, to her father’s bloodthirsty delight: now it was his turn to make a row about irresponsible expenditure. He readily over-indulged himself in the idolatry of such famous figures as Marx and Stalin, Beethoven and Caruso, but he could not imagine that something exceptional, for which sacrifices had to be made, could be developing within reach in his own surroundings, where the trivialities made him bad tempered increasingly often.
The piano brought a tuner to the house every three months. He was long and thin with a gypsy’s bird-of-prey nose. His black curly hair was shaved on the sides but stuck up on top so that from a distance he looked as though he had a beret on his head. He always wore the same close-fitting black suit that elicited all kinds of speculations. Was it a wedding outfit from before the war, the dress coat of an undertaker, a morning coat with the tails cut off, or a theatrical costume worn by the devil or death? Below his tight trousers he wore modern American shoes which he kept in impeccable condition. He was a man of contrasts. The leanness of his body was compensated for by the visible dimensions of his genitalia, which, because of the shortage of space, he gave air in his right trouser leg, or on another occasion in his left. The whispering modesty of his voice was cancelled out by the honky-tonk sounds he elicited from the piano. The sisters fled to the kitchen, united in their aversion to his thing, but also amazed that his face remained so neutral in the presence of that which made itself so evident below his belt. They were commissioned to take him coffee, but no one dared. They clung to each other, giggling. Eventually Lotte took the cup in – he was her tuner. He accepted it with a smile, unaware of the consternation he was arousing with his controversial body. After his visit the cup was washed up with extra soap.
He was also a serviceable amateur photographer. Lotte’s mother persuaded him to take a family portrait on the occasion of Eefje’s birth. She had invited him on a Sunday afternoon in May; above the white garden bench that was selected to be the central ornament, a swallow’s nest hung beneath the roof gable – the parental couple were doing overtime flying back and forth. Nervous activity prevailed before the photographer’s arrival; up to the last moment dresses were being adjusted and straightened. Lotte’s father refused to put on another suit. He was not planning to pose, he said; only the Tsar and Tsarina had themselves commemorated en famille. ‘What have I got to do with that man?’ he added scornfully. ‘You don’t have to do anything with that man,’ said his wife, ‘he’s coming here to take photographs, I shall offer him a cup of coffee convivially and you will present a cigar.’ But he was in the mood for sabotage, enjoying the power tossed into his lap by the occasion.
He was nowhere to be found when the photographer arrived lugging a heavy telescopic camera and stand. Irresistible in a dress with poppies on a cream background, Lotte’s mother steered him into the garden. Her offspring trickled outside while he was positioning himself and his equipment where she indicated, directly opposite the bench. Mies, who worked in a milliner’s business, wore a cognac-coloured suit with an inverted bird’s nest of raffia on her head. Marie wanted to establish for posterity that she was the ugly duckling of the family; she had on a high-necked grey dress and refused to remove her glasses for the photograph. Jet and Lotte walked about stiffly, like fallen angels, in white organdie dresses with flounces and ruches. Koen, still a baby when Lotte had fallen through the ice, refused to wear long trousers to hide the grazes on his knees.
At the photographer’s request, their mother, with the newborn in her arms, seated herself in the middle of the bench and, in the interests of the composition, she was flanked by the organdie dresses. The others stood behind, a climbing rose pricking them in the back. ‘Lovely …’ he murmured, studying the tableau vivant in his lens, ‘er … isn’t sir to be part of it?’ ‘Sir is in a bad mood,’
said Lotte’s mother, ‘so we don’t want him in the photograph.’ ‘Could there be a little smile perhaps?’ They did their best to forget the big spoilsport and troublemaker and stared straight at the camera; the young swallows piped, a light breeze wafted the scent of lilacs, the photographer bent behind his magic box – the whole situation could have been agreeable if that lacuna had not existed there in the middle behind the bench, a missing figure who let his hands rest on their mother’s shoulders. The photographer implored them to laugh. Forced attempts – only Mies smiled attractively, like a film star, eyeing the lens with a sensuous expression; Koen was scratching open the scabs on his knees.
At that moment Beethoven’s Ninth began through the open window, booming and massive. The volume was turned up as far as the loudspeakers could manage. The photographer held his temples in his hands and shut his eyes pathetically. I cannot concentrate like this, he gestured. For the first time Lotte experienced a piercing, sweet-poisonous emotion that she could not yet define as hate. She looked over the photographer’s head to the tops of the conifers that were moving gently in the breeze and wished furiously that her thoughts had the power to kill. ‘Laugh!’ cried their mother, prodding and pinching them, ‘laugh chaps!’ She showed her radiant smile, all teeth bared (didn’t she want to tear him to pieces?). Her eyes joined in too, she was beside herself with pleasure. ‘We’ve got one more child,’ she shouted above the Scherzo, ‘a big, stubborn child, in there.’ She gestured towards the window with her head, laughing sideways. A cloud passed in front of the sun, the photographer raised his long black arm to the sky and pushed it away. He held his breath and pushed the shutter in.
Lotte’s father did not always opt out. He put up fierce resistance when she was sent to a Christian school because the state schools were not accepting any more pupils. He looked at his wife with utter disgust as though she had enrolled Lotte at an institution for the mentally handicapped. ‘You’ll see,’ she said laconically, ‘that in her case religious stuff will go in one ear and out the other.’ She was proved right, though not in the way she meant.
The Bible had the appeal of the forbidden. Just as some girls sneaked into a bioscope with painted lips to watch an adult film breathlessly, Lotte was secretly thrilled by the Bible, which certainly also carried the ‘over eighteen’ label, with all that death and killing, adultery and fornication it poured over the innocent reader. What tame reading matter her father’s favourite book was in comparison. Diligently she studied the stories of blood and miracles. Attempts to exchange ideas with her classmates ran straight into a wall of indifference. They had absolutely no thoughts about it; they were brought up on religion like a daily dose of cod liver oil. Similarly with the minister’s daughter, with whom she shared her bench, the Bible was not a subject for contemplation but a duty, a soporific aspect of Sundays – weekly imprisonment in the gloomy confirmation classroom next door to the church. Their blind, uninterested acceptance of it as a ragbag of stories, presented as ‘what actually happened’, shocked her. With her outstanding marks in biblical history, she was the only one taking religion seriously!
The director of the school, a man with a face etched from ice by a razor-sharp pen, spied at the pane in the door as the pupils ended their lessons with a prayer, and saw that one of them was looking out of the window waiting resignedly for the ritual to end. He hurried into the classroom and with pursed lips said to the religious instruction teacher: ‘She must stay behind.’ A bony finger was pointed at her. The chosen one or the doomed? The class emptied. ‘You were not praying,’ declared the director. ‘No sir.’ ‘How is it that you do not pray?’ ‘Sir, I never pray.’ ‘You never pray?’ The narrow top lip was raised in an involuntary biting movement. ‘No.’ ‘And what about at home?’ ‘They don’t pray there either.’ ‘Then do you never go to church?’ ‘No, I never go to church.’ The religious instruction teacher stroked his apostolic beard in amazement. ‘But how did you end up at this school then?’ ‘There was no place anywhere else. My mother enrolled me. She wasn’t asked whether I was a Christian.’ The director stared at her with a suspicious frown, as though she were withholding from him the principal point at issue. It was clear that she was guilty of something, though he could not decide what it was. ‘But you get the highest marks in the class in religious instruction,’ exclaimed her teacher. ‘I am hearing it all for the first time,’ said Lotte; ‘I have been listening very carefully.’ ‘And what do you make of it?’ he asked, suddenly curious. ‘I assume you have perceived that it is all profound truth,’ said the director, supporting him. Lotte swallowed. She cast him a nervous glance – if she told him the truth that had been burning on the tip of her tongue all these months, he would expel her from the school immediately. ‘Devil’s children!’ echoed a voice from an immense distance. ‘Devil’s children!’ An apparition she vaguely recognized urged her on. Something black, something flapping about, the mournful tapping of a stick … It was no more than a diffuse feeling. ‘No,’ she said, suddenly seizing courage. ‘Why not?’ asked the director sharply. She looked over his bony shoulder to the outside, where shining black branches moved to and fro against a dark grey sky. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘According to the story of creation, God is almighty and He is love. Then how is it possible that He has let the devil loose among the people … if He can do everything?’ ‘That is … a mystery of faith,’ stammered her teacher. What a bromide! She looked from one to the other, overcome with contempt and pity at their boundless naïvety. ‘Adam and Eve lived in Paradise and ate from that forbidden fruit …’ She sighed. ‘I think of it as Snow White.’ The teacher took his glasses from his nose, fished a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket with thumb and forefinger and began to clean them thoroughly. The director’s pronounced Adam’s apple went up and down, he emitted a dry, cynical laugh. ‘You cannot prove these things,’ he announced, ‘you must simply believe them.’ Lotte scratched the back of her head. Her skull itched all over, she understood that it would be impolite, at this moment, to scratch vigorously all over with the nails of both hands. ‘At one time you believed in Santa Claus,’ she mumbled, ‘but then one day no more.’ Oh dear, she was on cracking ice, she had already gone too far. All she could do was walk boldly onwards, continuously shifting her weight. The director looked at her as though he wanted to tear her heathen’s tongue out of her mouth. ‘She doesn’t understand at all,’ sounded the deep voice of the religious instruction teacher, which gave a warm, bronzy dimension to the Bible stories. He put his glasses on and looked laconically at the director, who let his hands drop, the right one clenched into a fist; it was pointed at Lotte with the index finger sticking out like the barrel of a pistol. ‘You are obliged to obey the rules of this school. Think it over. from now on you will pray with the others as normal.’ He turned his high, crooked back on her with its drooping shoulders. Stooped beneath three centuries of Calvinism, he walked out of the classroom with something sharp in his step, as though he had got right on his side with this command.
‘And …’ Anna asked, her arm linked in Lotte’s, ‘did you pray with them from then on?’
They had left the café, whose interior harmonized perfectly with the period that was haunting them, and were walking step by step through the snow. It had already grown dark again. Nineteenth-century facades rose up on either side – balconies, towers, bays, œils-de-bœuf, dormer windows. In the shop window of a neighbourhood stationer’s, between calendars, desk diaries and dip pens, was a book in which the Russian President set out his vision for the future; a dog was cautiously lifting its paws as it embarked on an untrodden piece of snow; the trees of the Athenée Royale stood motionless in their spot; the Christmas decorations were still twinkling in a greengrocer’s.
‘Of course not,’ Lotte said, out of breath. The street was continuing to mount, and the alcohol too; it made her dizzy. They rested on the railway bridge. A red signal burned in the distance in the snow, a white spire stood out sharply in the dark sky.
‘The director took every opportunity to thwart me. One day …’ she giggled, ‘I was wearing a dress with a V-neck. He stopped me in the corridor. “Now then, you must ask your mother for another dress you can wear. This one really is too naked.”’ A wave of Ratafia de Pommes ascended; she swallowed and began to laugh again. ‘One time I rode to school on my father’s bicycle. I got off in the playground and put it in the bicycle rack. As I turned round I almost bumped right into the director. “Don’t do that ever again,” he cried, “here, in public, in full view of everyone, getting off a man’s bicycle! Shame on you!” I looked at him baffled. What did he mean, I asked myself, why does it bother him?’
Their laughter sounded drily over the cotton wool snow. They plodded onwards. When they reached Lotte’s hotel, Anna invited herself for dinner. Presently they were seated opposite each other beneath a salmon pink ceiling with white ornamental borders and crystal chandeliers. At the next table was a young woman who was taking a postnatal rehabilitation treatment at the Thermal Institute. They agreed they would be better off ordering a carafe of water than a carafe of wine. For hors-d’œuvre they had crudités with Ardennes ham and strips of smoked pork; they cut the fat off the ham and left the smoked pork. The mother of the new-born folded her hands and closed her eyes before picking up her knife and fork.
