Cleaver

by Tim Parks

  Hermann was saying something to Armin. Cleaver turned and found himself looking straight into the young man’s pale blue eyes. He was an old Nazi, Armin said brutally. Everyone hate him. Hate hate hate. Lifting the trumpet again, he began to play Deutschland Über Alles. Armin! His mother yelled. Hermann was banging the flat of his hand on the table. Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand! he sang. Einigkeit … but as the music reached its crescendo he burst out laughing again. He was out of tune. Don’t you have to take the others back? Cleaver asked. The family. In the cart? Hermann shook his head. Tomorrow. Weather too bad. Bier, he shouted.

  In an instant, then, Cleaver made a conscious decision to enjoy himself. Really a Nazi? he enquired. The evening I am about to spend, he thought, will exactly confirm the portrait of me in my son’s fictional autobiography. Ja, ja! Hermann insisted. I’m going to drink everything I can, Cleaver told himself. Nazi Polizei, very old man, Hermann said. Deutschland über alles.

  Hate, hate, hate. Armin repeated. We hate him and he hate everybody. He tossed down the second whisky. Hate die Engländer, die Franzosen, überhaupt die Walschen. Walschen? Cleaver interrupted. Italian, Hermann laughed. Bad name for Italian. Walsche, Scheiße! So he went to live, high on the mountain. Never see anybody.

  But all the village came to the funeral, Cleaver protested again. Hermann referred the comment to Frau Schleiermacher who was bringing more drinks. She sat down herself now with a glass of wine: Er war ein Mann, she said simply. At the same moment she must have caught a whiff of Armin’s breath. Na, du bisch a bledo Bui! She began to scold. My fault, Cleaver interrupted, I gave it to him.

  The woman stared. Armin translated. But suddenly, Hermann was saying: You want to live high high on the mountain. Right? His eyes were gleaming and his lips pressed tight with suppressed mirth. That’s right, Cleaver said. Rosenkranzhof, Hermann cried. Do Engländer konn afm Rousnkronzhöf bleibn!

  There was a moment’s silence. Cleaver hadn’t understood a word. Armin lifted his trumpet to his lips and blew out one loud note that shrieked upwards and died. Na. Frau Schleiermacher pushed her chair back and stood up. Na, bisch du a bledo!All at once the two adults were arguing back and forth with vehemence. They are lovers, Cleaver thought. He felt no nostalgia. Or they have been. Old lovers. Draining his beer, he turned to Armin: What’s all this about? Hermann, Armin said, thinks of a house where you can live, but my mother says, if you will go there, you are … kaputt.

  Some five hours later, gripping the banister tight, Cleaver pulled himself up the stairs to bed. No amount of drink could sink my father, his elder son had written. Whores, Cleaver told the watching dolls. Above all, no amount of drink could stop my father from holding forth. What is your job? Hermann had asked. They had been playing cards. Seven or eight at the table, all strong loud men. I must have lost quite a lot of money, Cleaver thought. Why do you want to live in the Südtirol? Hermann insisted. Why do you want to go high up? To keep my mouth shut, of course. That was the proper answer. And instead Cleaver had held forth. Just as his son described. He had begun to tell this and that, to explain himself. So you will write a book about us! Hermann shouted, thrusting an arm round the Englishman’s neck. You are famous. You will make a film. Cleaver opened his wallet. He was betting money without having really got his mind round the rules of the game. Gerhard! – Hermann pointed to a fat solid man tugging a red ear – you must write about Gerhard! He has had more women than, than … than me! Hermann translated himself for his friends. Gerhard raised a wry eyebrow. Two or three others were silent, stony. They all wore plaid shirts. They kept their damp hats on.

  Why in God’s name did I try to explain? Cleaver pulled off his shoes and collapsed on the bed. Drink. Quite probably we children were all conceived, his son had written, in a drunken stupor after my father had spent all evening holding forth. About 250 euros, Cleaver thought. I must be careful. And he thought, the only good thing – he took aim with the remote – about holding forth to foreigners, is that they don’t understand you. You could only do so much damage. Journalism, he had explained to Hermann (it was my father’s pet phrase, his elder son had written), substitutes the mysterious disturbance of reality with the digestible fast food of the sound bite. You know? God, I had a lot to drink. Hermann was nodding eagerly, studying his cards. He hadn’t understood a word. So that we can all go on eating and shitting as if we knew what was what. Eating and shitting, Hermann yelled. He downed his beer. And oo, oo, oo! Half standing, he pushed his pelvis out in an unequivocal gesture. C’est la vie! The other men barely glanced. Hermann did not impress them. The man understood nothing, Cleaver reassured himself. He changed channels. Thank God.

  All over the world the satellite networks were piling up the corpses. German and Italian TV showed the same clips of various victims. Somewhere in Asia an excavator was digging a neat rectangular trench. The bell never tolls for the viewer, Cleaver told Olga. He remembered how reassuringly neat the graves had been in the cemetery. Quite the contrary. I came to the Tyrol so as not to write, he had explained to Hermann. So as not to hold forth. Yet I was looking for recognition, he told himself now, for admiration. From a man who understood nothing. He had drunk a great deal. It’s ridiculous. Cleaver felt sick. I was looking for admiration for having given up looking for admiration. At least, he thought, I didn’t accept the offer of cigarettes. I didn’t say I needed a woman.

  Resigned to his perversity, Cleaver turned on the phone. Sure enough, it vibrated, but only once. Perhaps she is wearying. Competing visions of world order, CNN’s anchorman was announcing. He seems very young, Cleaver thought. He squinted. My father would have explained his pet theories to a stone, his elder son had written. They were all defeatist. Remember the good times, Harry, Amanda’s message said. Cleaver turned off the light and shut his eyes. Outside, it occurred to him, an old Nazi is spending his first night in a neat grave. You have achieved nothing.

  IV

  LATER CLEAVER WOULD tell himself he had settled too swiftly on Rosenkranzhof. He had not reflected. But this was true of so many of the major turns his life had taken. Still, if I hadn’t accepted what was so surprisingly offered, Cleaver thought, staring into the flames of his evening fire in the empty house, what would have become of me? What would have become of the young Cleaver, sitting alone in a furnished bedsit, wondering how on earth one conceived a masterpiece, if Amanda had not called: You’re so potent, Harry, she had whispered. Engländer! a voice had shouted. The knocking brought his headache to consciousness. Engländer, you come with me. There is a house for you! Ganz allein.

  It was Hermann’s voice. Without reflecting, he had gone. At fifty-five I am still rash. He had pulled on his clothes and a few minutes later he was sitting on the back of the cart, rattling along the road, then up the steep track. The woods were sodden with yesterday’s rain, the air heavy and damp. Shreds of cloud clung to the branches. Jürgen and Frau Stolberg had gone back on foot yesterday, Hermann mentioned. To milk the cows. Cleaver found himself beside the fat girl, opposite the ancient creature wrapped in her cape and the younger woman who had arrived late at the funeral. Not a word was spoken, though Cleaver had the impression that the town-dressed woman was eager to catch and hold the girl’s dull eyes. There was a pressure there. It is no business of mine, he told himself. He tried to respect their bereavement. The ancient lady kept muttering, rubbing her old hands together. The cart climbed steadily, far beyond the point where Cleaver had stopped and turned back the previous morning. The track became narrow and rutted. The fat Haflinger strained. Hermann talked quietly to the beast, imprecating, encouraging. Its big hams shifted jerkily. The man had a repertoire of intimate little whistles, cheerful clicks of the tongue. He shook the reins. Strange they don’t have a jeep, Cleaver thought. The constant sameness of the pines, the undergrowth, the still air, was oppressive. Or perhaps they did have a vehicle, but had left it at the farm as unsuitable for carrying a coffin. The girl beside him seemed childishly dressed, he realised: her jacket didn’t
fit, the trousers were too tight. She stared at her feet, fleshy knuckles clutching an ear, fingertips squeezing the lobe. A case, Cleaver thought.

  At last the track broke out of the woods at the top of what, looking back now, seemed a deep gorge they had climbed from. At once the sun grew warm, the air was alive, moving freshly across a panorama of forests and ridges and peaks and broad shadowy valleys. Directly ahead of them, a few hundred yards of gently sloping pasture merged into scree and rock where the mountain started to rise almost vertically toward its summit. Cleaver saw half a dozen cows switching their tails beside a pool of water and, perched right on the edge, above the gorge, a farmhouse, with battered outbuildings roofed with corrugated iron sheets held down by heavy stones. Trennerhof. There were chickens pecking by the walls. Beneath the black Gothic lettering painted between two windows a round green sign announced: Forst. Did the place serve beer?

  Hermann stopped the horse and set the women down. A dog chased toward them, barking furiously. The fat girl lifted the ancient lady down. Cleaver glimpsed scaly eyes beneath the hood, the jaw working and muttering. The girl seemed mechanical in her movements, abrupt and resigned. Sniffing at everybody’s heels, the dog began to bark again. An old, ugly dog, Cleaver thought, with a greying snout. The town lady carried a small, pale blue suitcase and looked about her with intense interest. Hermann was saying goodbyes, then all at once he set the cart in motion again. Fünfzehn minuten now, he announced.

  As soon as they were alone he began to chatter. Very traditional family, he said. He was shaking his head. You know? You could write about them, Mr Journalist. You could make a film. Here, it is a hundred years ago. One of the last houses without electricity, without a car. Frau Stolberg was his aunt, he explained. He brought up supplies from time to time. It was good exercise for his horses. He used the cart to take tourists for rides in summer, but now they had all gone of course. Right, Cleaver said.

  The track skirted the neck of the gorge for some four hundred yards beyond Trennerhof, then plunged back into the woods on the further side, deteriorating rapidly. After a few minutes, a small rockfall forced Hermann to pull the Haflinger to a halt. We cannot move this now, he decided. Above the path, a high cliff was severely weathered with water trickling from a web of brownish cracks. They walked for a while in steep descent, slim pines and mossy boulders to each side, until, at a turn, there it was: a tiny house built against the sheer rock face and right on the edge of the gorge. Cleaver stood and stared. Hermann laughed. You say you want to be alone! he said.

  Only at the front of the house was there any clearing at all; a few yards of rotting wood chips, sawdust and sparse grass. The building was made up of two low storeys: stone below, timber above. Hanging from two rusty nails on the door was a string of red beads. Cleaver touched them. Curious, he said. The place oozed damp. The door needed a shove to get it open; the planks squealed against the lintel. What are these for? he asked. The beads were shiny. Peering into the dark interior, Hermann hesitated: Ein Rosenkranz, he said.

  Cleaver shook his head. There was a faint gurgle of running water. His guide stepped back and pointed to the faded lettering on the black timber of the upper floor: Rosenkranzhof. This – he touched the beads – ist ein Rosenkranz. The name startled Cleaver. Hoist with the petard of his own determination to be in the limelight, his elder son had written. You know, Englishman, Hermann insisted, Rosenkranz, Heilige Maria, Mutter Gottes. Cleaver wasn’t paying attention. Already he knew he was going to take the place. I am going to live here. Gebet, prayer, Hermann was saying. He seemed glad of the excuse to linger outside. Santa Maria, Madre di Dio. Rosario auf Italienisch. They went in.

  Five-hundred euros if you want meals also, Hermann told him later as they climbed back to the cart. Two hundred if you just want the house. He had discussed the matter with his aunt. Nobody seemed to have any qualms, Cleaver noticed, about renting the place only days after the old man’s death. His belongings were scattered across the floor. The bed was unmade. It seemed he had lived alone there for fifteen years and more. Why? Cleaver asked. He felt shaken, excited. Those dark rooms are to be my home, my remote home. Hermann breathed deeply, holding the reigns. He whistled to his horse. Julia! She was called Julia, the j pronounced as a y. God knows, he said. Perhaps he wanted to be alone. He laughed, like Mr Cleaver!

  Cleaver moved in three days later. For a modest fee, Hermann would take his things up in the cart. When the tourists departed, he said, no one wanted his horses. He ran trekking expeditions through the summer. He winked theatrically, the blond moustache waggled: Lots of divorced German women, city ladies. He made a happy noise in the back of his throat. They want to be girls again. They want nature, youth. He thumped a big fist on his chest beneath a blue work shirt. You should come! That’s getting more and more difficult, Cleaver quipped. Hermann looked blank. Your stomach is no problem, he insisted. I have the horse that can carry an elephant! He roared with laughter. Why, Cleaver wondered, would Amanda have passed on all the intimate information she had to his elder son, if she was then going to encourage him, Cleaver, to take the author to court? The only reason my father gave up philandering, his eldest son had written, was because of a growing impotence, brought on no doubt by his various excesses, not to mention the sheer physical bulk he had accumulated by the time he turned fifty. What had Amanda been thinking of telling the boy crap like that? Cleaver shook his head in wonder as Hermann left him at the door of Unterfurnerhof. I should have asked her to her face. And how could they think of giving a literary prize to someone who wrote growing impotence? What did she mean now by alternating messages with threats and messages with happy memories and messages with her familiar, neurotic concerns about the children, all of whom, Cleaver was convinced, had long been beyond the reach of parental concern? When will I be free, he wondered, from asking myself what Amanda means? It was so tiring.

  All the same, the need to make practical arrangements settled his mind for the moment, much as the business of buying plane tickets and consulting train timetables had given him a healthy sense of purpose during the journey out. I shall cook for myself, he had told Hermann, and he filled box after box with groceries. This is a rare achievement, he reflected, for someone who hasn’t bought food for twenty years and more. DESPAR the supermarket was called. Far from abandoning hope, Cleaver felt cheerful. I will brighten the place up, he thought, I will cut down the vegetation that has darkened the windows. I will make Rosenkranzhof my home.

  Frau Schleiermacher observed his comings and goings with scepticism. She went out of the Stube to call for her son. My mother says that you … Armin hesitated, looking for words. Today he wore a thick leather wristband with studs and spikes. These satanic accessories do nothing but set off your innocence, Cleaver wanted to tell him … that you can not live the winter at Rosenkranzhof. You can not. Cleaver had asked Frau Schleiermacher for another couple of cardboard boxes. He was stacking packets of pasta and rice. Anyone can cook pasta. Why not? he asked. On Angela’s slim wrists those studs had looked even more ridiculous.

  Frau Schleiermacher sat at one of the tables in the Stube, chopping vegetables. She was watching him with concern. Cleaver recognised the motherliness, the female shrewdness. But now Armin had to answer his mobile. There was a futuristic trill. Brushing hair from his mouth, the boy walked quickly to the window and began to speak in soft low tones. Cleaver smiled. His girlfriend? he asked the mother. Freundin? Frau Schleiermacher pouted in mock disdain. Then she stood quickly and came across the room. She crouched by the boxes. He could smell her washed hair, sense the movement of her thighs in her skirt. She was picking rapidly through the products he had bought, lifting and replacing. Women’s hands, Cleaver told himself. Her lips were tight. Zucker? she asked. She looked into his eyes. Gibt’s nicht. It was a second. Her face is no longer new to me, he realised. It was changing. Salz? She stood up, touching his arm a moment as she did so. Her calves are still slim, Cleaver noticed. She pressed a fist into her back, shook he
r head. Herr Cleaver, Der Winter ist sehr schwer da oben. Verstehen Sie? Es ist kalt, sehr kalt. Es gibt viel Schnee. Das können Sie sich nicht vorstellen.

  Armin was returning with a smirk. You can not imagine the cold, he translated. Cleaver laughed. With all his stores laid out, he was in a good mood. Tell her I have salt and sugar in another box. And a torch. And a Swiss army knife. And a state-of-the-art sleeping bag. Armin was puzzled. Frau Schleiermacher interrupted. Warum? she demanded. Her concern is making Cleaver feel happier. She thinks you must have some big problem, Armin translated, perhaps rather freely. She thinks there is maybe some better way to … to … The old man lived there, Cleaver said mildly. I need to lose weight. He patted his paunch. Frau Schleiermacher replied with four or five sharp words. Krimineller, she repeated. Er hatte keine Wahl. He was a cri— I understood, Cleaver told the boy. He didn’t know how to reply. Tell her I really have to try this.

  The day before moving out he took a bus down the valley to Bruneck to buy bed linen, blankets, perhaps some thermal underwear, woollen long johns, good gloves, a serious hat. The sleeping bag would be for emergencies. When was the last time Cleaver had travelled on a bus? With Giada perhaps. Giada would have been fun to live with. Among the stone-and-glass facades of the town centre, the Tyrol chic of windows dressed with antlers and embracing marmots, he came across an Internet café. Don’t go in. He bought two heavy blankets and a down quilt jacket and then, overloaded with plastic bags, returned to the Internet café and went in.

  It was an amusement parlour with old men on stools beside slot machines and teenagers intent on war scenarios in fantasy cityscapes. My hands are trembling. He had promised himself he wouldn’t do this. My father, his elder son had written, was one of those people who can no more stay away from his e-mail than he can from drink and cigarettes. And expensive food. After all, someone might have written him a fan letter. And the first thing he typed into any search engine was always his own name.cleaver@cleaver.com, Cleaver typed. The German keyboard was irritating. How do you do the @? The password was PR1YASAR. Just when you are achieving a little peace of mind, he told himself, you go looking for trouble again. He pressed ENTER and waited, one elbow resting on the desktop and a knuckle between his teeth. This is the position Cleaver always assumes, waiting for the mail to come through. Do I want peace of mind or not? he wondered.