Cleaver

by Tim Parks

  This panorama is spectacularly outspread, he muttered, looking around him; far more than any screen, however wide, could ever suggest. These are banal reflections. Life is not a framed thing, Cleaver told himself. Like a book or a TV documentary. The natural world is vast. And yet when the two dates are put together – 1965-1990 – people begin to explain a life away. It looks small. It withers. Eine alte und traurige Geschichte, Frau Stolberg had said. An old, sad story. Your daughter was pregnant, the doctor told him. Cleaver marched across the plateau into the wind. It blows and blows. Perhaps if you know who the father is you might wish to inform him. His eyes searched the slopes. Jürgen is working at a fence, bent down beside a post. It seems strange that there should be fences so high up on the mountainside. Presumably when the snow comes, the cows will have to stay in their barn. Or when people decide to tell your story, to frame you, as his elder son had done to him, then it’s as if the two dates were already there. It’s over. He was obliged to invent my death, Cleaver reflected. He looked around at the huge landscape, the patches of colour and stone, the grey peaks ranged one above the other beyond the plateau. Closer to hand there was a pool of water for the cows, darkly ruffled in the wind. When all was said and done, who cared how it ended?

  Jürgen had seen him approaching, but now kept his head down. Only when Cleaver was within a couple of yards did he realise that there was a sheer drop of some fifty feet immediately beyond the fence. The cows must be protected. Guten Tag, he said. He stood watching. The man grunted a reply. He was using a wrench to tense a wire around a freshly cut pole. Wo ist der Hund? Cleaver asked. The man scratched at the hair above his ear with thick dirty fingers. He was sitting on his haunches, wearing the inevitable blue shirt of the farm worker. Uli ist mit Seffa rausgegangen. He took three nails from his pocket and, holding two between his lips, began to bang the other in with a hammer. All over the world, while I was holding forth on television, men were doing these simple practical jobs. Jürgen was intent, rapid. Amanda’s rose trellis had remained in the realm of fancy. When the nail was almost home, two quick blows bent the head to trap the wire.

  Wollen Sie was trinken? Jürgen asked. He walked over to a bag hanging from the previous fence pole and produced a bottle. A transparent liquid could be seen through smeared glass. Setzen Sie sich. Jürgen stretched out on his back on the coarse grass in a pantomime of hard-earned rest. It’s not his first drink of the day, Cleaver thought.

  Wind, Jürgen shouted, viel Wind. Verstehen Sie? He shook a heavy fist at the sky, laughing. Und wo ist Seffa? Cleaver asked. Luttach, Jürgen replied. He began to explain. Cleaver didn’t understand. The man sat up and started a little mime, as if they were playing charades. He held the reigns of an imaginary horse. Hermann? Jo-jo. His hand moved downwards, as though descending a hill. Mit dem Käse? Verstehen Sie? Den Käse verkaufen. He pushed out an elbow and brought in finger and thumb to hold his nose over pursed lips, as if disgusted. Zweimal in der Woche. The guy’s funny, Cleaver thought. Seffa had gone down to Luttach. Jürgen offered the bottle and he took a swig. It was fierce. Wiping his mouth, he repeated: Okay. Pferd. Käse. Luttach. Geht Seffa für die … Shopping? Mit dem Hund. Jürgen roared with laughter. Auf Deutsch! Sehr gut! He seemed to be imitating Hermann.

  The man took another very long slug from the bottle. He held it high, waving the drink toward a pale cow that was tearing at the ground a few yards away. Willst du trinken, Isabella. Willst du? Sie heißt Isabella. Isabella! Suddenly, Jürgen was yelling: Willst du was trinken, mein Liebchen? Willst du tanzen? With surprising agility the man leapt to his feet and ran towards the beast, legs wide apart like a clown, waving the bottle. Isabella, willst du trinken? When the cow lifted its head, he put the open bottle under the animal’s nose. Trink, trink!

  The cow snorted and backed off. Jürgen returned, grinning, stopping to take another slug. Cleaver wondered why he was so amused by the man’s antics. Perhaps because I haven’t seen anybody for a couple of days. The drink was schnapps, he thought. Jürgen was pressing the bottle into his hands again. The alcohol went straight to his head.

  Seine Käse ist sehr gut, Cleaver announced. Only now did he realise he had forgotten his stiff neck. Jo-jo. Jürgen lay down again. Unser Käse ist wunderbar. He put three fingertips together and kissed them in mock ecstasy, then suddenly sat up and yelled at the cows: Isabella, danke schön, Gabriella, danke schön, Lucia, danke schön. He started to tear up tufts of grass and to throw them at the animals. Unser Käse ist wunderbar! What does a man do for entertainment in a place like this? Cleaver wondered. Apart from thinking of Italian names for his cows. Und Seffa? he asked. Wie kommt Seffa … zurück?

  Zu Fuß! Jürgen cried. Again he jumped up and waddled a few steps, exaggerating the fat girl’s walk, stamping his feet down flat. Drei Stunden, mit der Einkaufstasche. He added a heavy bag to his mime, spluttered and sighed and burst out laughing.

  Heute morgen … Cleaver tried. He had to make a big mental effort. Heute Morgen, ich habe die Fotografie Ulrike Stolberg gesehen. Jürgen’s smile faded. He stood still in the wind, his jowls suddenly heavy. Wer war sie? Cleaver asked. Who? Jürgen looked away. Ulrike ist vor vielen Jahren gestorben, he said. He tugged at the skin under his neck. Meine Frau, he added. Cleaver shook his head. The man’s wife. Why on earth didn’t I make that connection?

  Ihr Hut, Jürgen announced. Cleaver didn’t understand. The man took off his own small cap and held it out. Hut. He put it on again, pretending it was a cowboy hat, smoothing out an imaginary brim. Ihren Hut haben Sie am Trennerhof gelassen.

  Cleaver understood. He wanted to say he was sorry, but didn’t know how. Seffa ist Ihre Tochter? he asked. Jürgen turned and stared. His eyes were red with wind and alcohol. Natürlich, he said with unexpected emphasis.

  Why do I want to ask these questions? Cleaver wondered, stumbling back down the mountainside. There must be any number of young women who died in 1990. It was after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He stopped a moment. That was November ’89. Walking downhill is hard on the knees. Perhaps because of the schnapps, the light seemed blinding now. One longed to be back in the woods. It would be curious, Cleaver thought, to know exactly why it was that the wind moaned like this on these stony heights. A relaxing sound in comparison to the revving of a chainsaw. Some lugubrious friction between gas and solid, spirit and material. There is no noise line, Cleaver told himself. You will never get beyond it. Glancing up, he noticed a black speck circling slowly over the gorge beyond Trennerhof. He watched: some kind of hawk. Like the eagle on the old Nazi’s wall. It sails on the elements, gracefully waiting for its prey. When the bird makes its kill, there is the pathos of the victim torn apart and consumed; when it fails to kill, there is the pathos of the predator denied, of patient hunger. Film-makers give their lives to capture such things. But what is the point of these morbid thoughts? Cleaver demanded. Was it really worth being alone if one was merely to think these gloomy thoughts? And how is it possible to be so calm, so free of any plan or purpose, and at the same time so terribly agitated, so vulnerable? Angela, he said softly. The hawk was still circling.

  Ich habe mein Hut gelassen, he told Frau Stolberg. He met her in the porch. Her glittering eyes told him he was not welcome. What do I care, Cleaver thought. He was glad he hadn’t shaved. I don’t have to impress anyone. The woman went out of the room and reappeared with the broad-brimmed grey hat. Why didn’t she give it to me earlier?

  Wo ist Seffa? he asked. Und der Hund?

  Frau Stolberg seemed in no hurry to answer. As when he had first seen her at the funeral, he was arrested by a strange fixity in the eyes. My father would never accept, his elder son had written, the idea that a woman might resist his charms, even a woman he had no intention of seducing. What bullshit, Cleaver told himself. There were hundreds of women he had paid no attention to at all, nor expected anything from. He put the crown of the hat in his right hand and bent his bald head to put it on. Seffa ist nicht hier, Frau Stolberg said. Cleaver waited. He was s
ure she had something else to say. Speaking very slowly and clearly, the woman eventually declared: Seffa darf nicht zum Rosenkranzhof gehen. Cleaver stared. Es ist verboten, Frau Stolberg said.

  Carrying his milk can and the cheese, Cleaver found it impossible to keep the hat on his head. The wind snatched it away. He put down the can and plate to chase it, losing a big splash of milk in the process. Sehr schön, aber unpraktisch, Frau Schleiermacher had said. I bought this hat to cut a figure for myself in the mountains, Cleaver realised. He crumpled it up and stuck it in his jacket pocket. The hat would give me the look of someone who has made a success of his remote Alpine existence. I imagined the cameras arriving to find the TV personality turned hermit, but with panache.

  All at once Cleaver was beside himself with rage. Violet ties were his favourite, his elder son had written. Worn over a bright lemon shirt. Or vice versa. The bullets that killed him had to pass first through a white dinner jacket. Could it be, Cleaver demanded feverishly, that the girl had misunderstood when he pointed upstairs and said Zimmer? Surely not. I’m old enough to be her grandfather. Just the thought brought Cleaver up sharp. When did that ever bother me? Should I go back to Trennerhof and have it out with Frau Stolberg? Seffa must not come to Rosenkranzhof, she had said. Verboten. It was verboten. He hadn’t told anyone Angela was pregnant. Not even Amanda. He didn’t want to. Yet he had always felt the burden of that secret, the same way, at least in the early days, that he used to feel the burden of an affair. Who was the father? Jürgen seemed friendly enough, Cleaver remembered. Except when I asked that question. Is Seffa your daughter? Natürlich, he had said. Why had he seemed so aggressive, angry almost? They can’t honestly imagine I’m a threat. But since you didn’t want to have contact with anyone, least of all a fat, gormless country girl, what does it matter? Did they have any idea of the kind of women Cleaver had moved among in London?

  Back at Rosenkranzhof, Cleaver placed the milk and cheese in a cool corner away from the stove and immediately set out again. He walked swiftly down to the ledge, picking up an unpleasant cut on the old iron handrail. What was it they used to load and unload here? Without even glancing at the photograph of the dead woman, he sat on the very edge of the stone platform, his legs dangling in the void. 1990. June not October. Was it in 1990 that the old Nazi went to live in Trennerhof? Fifteen years would be just before. Two other pylons were visible far below. Then, quite abruptly, he demanded: Why did Angela’s death affect me so deeply, so permanently? That is the question you have come to the South Tyrol to answer. Perhaps. Sitting on the ledge, the magnitude of empty space beneath made him feel faintly sick. I would not have reacted like that if one of the others had died, he thought. It seemed strange to admit this only now. He had never had the thought before. You do have another daughter, Amanda told him gently. We have another daughter, Harry. Two other sons. Nor would I have felt the same way about Angela if she hadn’t died then, at that moment. That was true too. On the very threshold of womanhood. Your daughter was pregnant, Mr Cleaver. Es ist verboten!

  Oh God! Taking no care for his safety, Cleaver got to his feet and scrambled back up the path. Back and forth, back and forth along these paths. I will go straight to Trennerhof now and demand to know why. What have I done? Why shouldn’t the girl come down to see me? I don’t want to see her anyway. But on reaching the clearing, he stamped straight into Rosenkranzhof, climbed the stairs, crossed the bedroom, lifted his leg and gave a huge kick to the locked door. If they rent me a house, it’s mine, damn it! I can see everything in it. The effort sent a pain shooting up his neck. The wood splintered, but didn’t give. He must not have closed the downstairs door behind him, because the wind suddenly stormed into the house. There were sounds of flapping, clattering, slamming. A herd of animals seemed to be pushing into the kitchen. Cleaver raised his leg and kicked again, so that all his weight crashed against the door right by the handle. It flew open. Cleaver lost his balance and fell forward. At once something was tugging at his heels. Unable to turn his stiff neck, he heard barking. Uli, he called. The dog was at his face, licking his cheek. Ulrike, Cleaver whispered. Feeling stupid, he climbed to his feet to explore the room.

  PART TWO

  IX

  LET ME PUT it to you, Mr President, that you understand freedom only in the negative sense of freedom from chains. Cleaver was woken by the sound of footsteps. Perhaps there had been the proverbial crack of the twig. At once he was alert. There was no point in going to the bedroom window. Across the gorge, the sun was on the further slopes now. It must be after three. I fell asleep debating with the President of the United States. If there was one thing in our house that was strictly forbidden, his elder son had written, it was to wake my father during his afternoon nap. Who can it be? Cleaver felt muddled. Had he actually said that to the President? Someone was definitely walking around outside the house. Genius must repose, Mother would say. I could peek out of the window in the old Nazi’s room, he told himself. That looked out over the clearing. But if Jürgen or Seffa see, they’ll know I broke in there. Someone will have to repair the damage.

  Nevertheless, he crossed the bedroom boards on bare feet and went through the splintered door. I actually want it to be Seffa, he realised, or Hermann, or even Frau Schleiermacher. That was unlikely. It didn’t occur to him to hurry down the stairs and confront whoever it was. He had to pick his way through the boxes and junk. He hadn’t cleaned the place up. There was a crate of empty bottles. How silly, Cleaver remembered of that evening a month before, to have imagined you might uncover some kind of mystery in here. But the accordion had proved a plus.

  Even before he got to the window, he saw there was a man with a small backpack on his shoulders examining the door to his john across the clearing. A man in his late thirties perhaps. There was something rather solemn and pensive to his manner. He had a sharp nose, spectacles, thin blond hair. Cleaver watched. A hiker by the looks. A man with a lanky frame. What was he doing so far off the beaten track? There are no signposts or red-and-white flashes around Rosenkranzhof. It is not marked on any map.

  The man lifted the latch, opened the door a crack, then closed it sharply, shaking his head. Cleaver grinned. But he ducked aside when the hiker turned round to face the house. As the silence builds up, over two days, three, then a week, then another, you find you don’t want to break it. You don’t want your mental energy dispersed. I was getting close to something important there when I fell asleep, Cleaver remembered. Now he has forgotten. About the nature of freedom. This whole adventure has to do with the possibility of freedom.

  He stood a while with his back against a tall cupboard, trapped by the enquiring eyes of this intruder prowling around his house. I would have been happy to go downstairs and speak to Seffa, if only to reassure myself that they weren’t imagining awful things about me. Why did that matter? He poked his head forward again toward the dusty windowpane. Beschütze, O Maria, dieses Haus, announced a faded flowery embroidery hanging on the wall beside, und alle die da gehen ein und aus.

  The man was aiming a camera. Again Cleaver stepped smartly back. He caught his heel on a large wooden troll and half sat, half fell on the bare planks. The troll cracked against the cupboard. It was crudely carved out of an upturned tree stump, with a pipe between twisted lips and a cap and feather. The eyes were glass. Like Olga’s.

  Cleaver sat quite silent, straining for the sound of the intruder. It was disquieting, the tension developed by this unexpected presence of another human being. Whenever freedom is expressed positively by a group of people – for example, in evangelical Christianity, Mr President – it inevitably becomes coercive. Was that the line he had been trying to develop? You won’t let a woman abort, perhaps. You don’t want gays to have certain rights. The problem was, his elder son had written, that though my father could always fall asleep, any time, any place, the slightest of noises was enough to wake him. You only needed to run down the stairs or to bounce a ball against the garage door and you were being accused
of high treason. You had interrupted the repose on which my father’s elusive masterpiece depended. You were guilty!

  He must be photographing my clothes on the line, Cleaver thought, the chequered shirts and cord trousers. It was a tourist collecting images of the typically Tyrolese: the stoicism of living without utilities at six-thousand feet. He will adjust the frame to make sure he gets in the stones that hold down the wooden roof tiles, and the thread of smoke escaping from the chimney. It had taken Cleaver all morning to wash his few clothes, rubbing the dirty fabrics against each other in tepid water. Amazing how tiring that was. He doubted if they were clean even now. Beschütze must mean Bless, he decided, staring at the dusty embroidery, waiting to hear the man go. Bless this house. Perhaps the town-dressed woman had embroidered this for her father years ago when he moved out of Trennerhof. She loved him despite his battle with her mother. Was Ulrike the daughter, or the daughter-in-law? Cleaver wondered. Perhaps Ulrike had embroidered it. How farcically over the top, though, Cleaver reflected, that section on the afternoon nap had been: the loosened braces on the great paunch, Caroline and Phillip as toddlers taking fright at his snores. A writer sees a chance for caricature and he can’t resist it: the pages write themselves, Disney-fashion. After all, I did the same with my documentaries. The public loves it. Everything slots in. Is that freedom of expression? When I’m sure the man’s gone, Cleaver decided, I’ll go down and walk after him, perhaps, meet him on the path, as if by accident.