He claimed to have been a Communist since the thirties, when he was still in his teens. No one knew then what Stalin was really doing. Easy now to regard them all as naive fools, duped by propaganda. How could we make such a mistake nowdays, now that cable TV shows us the world as it really is?
After his death I carried on in academic research for another five years, unable to make the decision to quit – I could think of nothing else to do. My escape to Italy was as much an escape from his memory as from anything else – I can admit this now. Even in death, his figure haunts me. It was the only way I could free myself from the destiny which had been charted for me – a life of futile struggle and disappointment.
My colleague in Milan said he would try and get me a lecturing job, but I had had enough of it. I found myself a flat in Cremona – cheaper than Milan, and quieter – and I offered private tuition in English. It gave me such a wonderful sense of freedom, teaching something which was as easy and natural to me as breathing. I had had enough of struggling.
I told Eleonora none of this, when I first met her on a train twenty years ago, while I was returning from a short visit to Naples and Pompeii. As far as she was concerned I was a refugee scientist, and hence fascinating. Our affair began during the second English lesson. Then I would take the train every weekend to Milan to be with her – I could have seen her more often, but this was the only time she chose to spare me. During the week, I’m sure she would forget all about me. I suspected she might have another man, and this only added to her appeal. If she were cheating me with someone else, then by the same token, she was cheating him with me – which made me feel quite honoured. My own loyalty, on the other hand, was total. Loyalty not only to her, but to my conviction that what I was doing was ‘for the best’.
I was taking the train to see her. It was some weeks after we first met – I was still reading the same book by Alfredo Galli which had stimulated our first conversation. I’m such a slow reader, and so easily distracted – and usually during my weekend journeys I would only inch forward a page or two. I was sitting alone in the compartment, when a girl came and sat opposite me.
The scene reminded me at once of my first encounter with Eleonora – yet this girl was very different. She was small and almost boyish, with short black hair, and eye-lashes which curled and caught the light. I watched her over the top of my book, between reading the same page again and again. Eventually I felt my lack of page turning might be rather obvious, so I noisily flicked forward – by now totally lost with the story I was supposed to be reading.
Eventually we began a conversation, and in the course of our brief journey together, I feel that I came to know her better than I would understand Eleonora even after eighteen years of marriage. And yet I never learned her name! In all our talk, we never bothered to introduce ourselves. She told me about her life, and how she was having a troubled relationship with a boy – and I told her about Eleonora, and my father, and all the other things I have told you here, as well as lots more besides. The little train compartment became like a confessional – I was so glad that no-one came to disturb us! You can spend a life-time trying to communicate with someone you love, but then one day you meet a stranger and for a brief moment you feel the unique experience of your soul connecting with that of another person. We reached our destination, we got off the train, and I never saw her again.
I had no wish to form a liaison with this woman – pretty and charming as she was. I had Eleonora – I was happy with her. And my loyalty was absolute. I already knew, from the way I had betrayed the memory of my father, how bitter the taste of disloyalty could be.
But if I had not had Eleonora, then I would have fallen in love with that unknown woman there and then. So sweet, and warm – how could I have resisted? If, some weeks earlier, I had caught my intended train, then there would have been no Eleonora. And then I might now be in the arms of that charming girl whose name (how I regret it!) I never even learned, though I knew so much else about her.
But I didn’t find it difficult to put her out of my mind. Easy to be callous with one’s emotions at the time – only to suffer the consequences later on. What was it, that brought the memory of that girl back into my mind after a gap of ten years?
You see – another decade has slipped away in a single line! Eleonora and I were married. I would come home each evening from my job at the English school in Milan, and I would find her, in our flat in Cremona, sitting with her feet up, immersed in a book. Those awful slippers! They were purple and fluffy. I tried to find sexier ones for her, but soon realized that there is no such thing as a sexy pair of slippers.
We made love one night – I see our bodies, as if from above. I try to visualize it. She asked me what I was thinking. I said ‘nothing’, and went to the bathroom. What was it, while I was standing naked on the cold floor, that made me think of that other girl I had met long ago? And those two people, meeting on a train. Giovanna, I would call her; and he was Duncan. In my mind I could see her again, sitting opposite me – the mysterious girl whose name I never learned. And yet her face had lain hidden in my memory for ten years! I couldn’t even be sure that it was the same face which I now saw – perhaps the memory had undergone some hidden process of alteration during the intervening years.
When I went back to bed, I told my wife nothing of the strange vision I had experienced – and still I said nothing, during the following weeks and months, when the vision returned, again and again – a story now; a novel, which one day I would write, if only I could overcome my guilt in imagining this lost girl while I lay with my wife. How could I be so cruel and heartless as to let my mind stray into such thoughts? Even, years later, as my wife lay – as she lay in hospital. Plumbed with rubber tubes, and grey-faced as stone. An idea sent to torture me – that instead of standing there in despair, I might be happy and contented in the arms of the other woman, surrounded by our many children, with a peaceful old age to look forward to. How can anyone be so mean and selfish as I was then, to think such a thing? If only thoughts were not such untameable creatures.
And now I am alone in the world. Still, each day, I take the train from Cremona to Milan to teach in the English school. And still, even now that Eleonora has left me, I am troubled by thoughts of all those other lives which I abandoned and lost – that great tree of possibilities.
I thought it would all be so easy, once I got the first chapter sorted out – and yet I still can’t get it right; that scene on the train. Twice I have tried to bring them together – Duncan and Giovanna – and yet each time I have failed. Perhaps I’m destined to spend the rest of my life rewriting it. The tree of possibilities branches so quickly, that it soon becomes impossible to follow with any degree of completeness, all the many middles and ends which can spring from a single beginning.
But now I shall try once more. It is a story about two people who meet on a train. And it begins with an image; the image of a motor car crashing through a barrier and tumbling down a hill.
27
It sounded no different from pushing an old, empty car down over a hill in order to get rid of it; the speed at which it had approached the bend, and the efforts of the driver to save himself – if he had had time to make any – did nothing to alter the impression that it was only useless junk which was crashing heavily in the darkness through low bushes. And the hillside was being littered with the contents of a suitcase – socks, underwear, trousers – and the contents of a briefcase also, or perhaps a file or folder – papers were being scattered. All of this, they would have to go over carefully afterwards.
Robert Waters spent three weeks in Scotland. It was during his return journey – at the very beginning of that return journey – that his car left the road, and he was killed.
Had you been there to see it, you might have been disappointed by the ordinariness – indeed, the banality of the scene. The white Morris Commonwealth hitting the barrier, the heavy crunching. All quite undramatic – not at all like the fil
ms. Not in slow motion, but still ponderous and heavy, and not a good way to die. And all his things coming out of the door when it flew open, when it was pulled back on itself and crumpled under the body of the car then reappeared as the car turned again, the door flapping like an injury and the suitcase opening on impact. The briefcase opening on impact. Or perhaps a file or a folder.
And when you aren’t looking out of the window of the train you’re reading a story by Alfredo Galli.
A story which begins strangely, obliquely – the sentences emerging from the page as if at an angle. The first paragraphs set the scene; there is a train, passengers on board patiently awaiting the eventual end of their journey – people who are barely described, whose existence is only hinted at. It is left to the reader to imagine them – passengers who are scanning newspapers and magazines, or dealing with their fidgeting children. These details are not explicitly stated (in a short story, one must be ruthless with excess verbal luggage), but it’s not unreasonable to assume that they are there – for are they not always? (especially the fidgeting children). Where has this train come from? It has come from the first sentence of the story, chugging out into existence as if from a dark tunnel. Discarded words fall in its wake like cinders; words already read, comprehended and digested – words which continue to propel it along its path. And sentences tumble onto the tracks, then blow away in the slipstream to be lost forever.
Approaching the bend. Night. Not a trap of gravel and misleading roadsigns, but from somewhere in the darkness, perhaps, the dull pop of a gun, and then the white car hitting the barrier, rolling and turning. Crashing down the hillside. And had you been there, Duncan, had you been able to see it as it really was, instead of continually recreating it in your mind – your father’s white Morris Commonwealth approaching the bend; coming fast towards the bend. An obstacle, perhaps? He brakes; no loss of speed. Brakes harder – nothing at all, and already too late. The car hitting the barrier.
A story about a train. Some pages go by – elegant similes, arcane vocabulary. The author brings two people together – a man and a woman. They sit opposite one another in silence. The story describes their unease – first from his point of view, then from hers; an unease which is mutual, shared – and yet this thing which they share is what also keeps them apart.
Neither speaks. Can a story really be about two people sitting in silence? Already another page and a half has gone by without a word being uttered. There are observations of the carriage, of the view from the window, of their bodily sensations – but no dialogue. You long for some quotation marks (so good for ‘breaking up the flow’); prolonged silences make you uneasy – it doesn’t take much effort to say something mundane about the weather or the state of the train. But these two are settling down for a sustained bout of wordlessness. You’ve had enough of this story for the time being. You close the book and allow yourself to daydream.
The train has already reached the first station. A girl is looking at the empty seat opposite you, and asking if it’s free. The sort of girl with whom you might have an interesting conversation – and yet you stay hidden behind the safety of your book. She pulls out a fat paperback and becomes likewise immersed.
And when you reopen the book, you try to read the story again from the start. Once more, the train is pulling out from the opening lines; once more, words flutter and fall behind it as it speeds along the tracks. You follow again from the beginning; the two people sitting opposite one another – everything is as you expected. You are reassured by repetition. But what is this? Now they are beginning a conversation! You are confused – can your memory really be so poor? Where you remembered the two of them as sitting in silence, now a dialogue is blossoming between them – inverted commas are springing up like flowers in a desert.
You’ve made some kind of mistake – you look through the book again. Now you see it. You realize that you have started reading another story in the collection, which only begins in the same manner as the first, but then strikes off in a wholly different direction. What a curious idea!
Night. The pen approaching the paper – firmly now, without hesitation. Letters written with the confidence of inevitable doom.
The new story begins, as before, with a train – who knows where it is heading? There are all the usual shudders and rattles, and the inexplicable sounds of a journey by rail – all of this, the author presents to you in exactly the same manner as before. The various rhythms and cadences of metal against greased metal, of interior fittings come loose, of swinging objects hanging freely from the luggage racks. Sleeves of discarded jackets waving forlornly as if in farewell to loved ones left behind, and baggage straps rocking with the steady metre of clock pendula.
All of this is quite familiar; it is all the same as when you were reading earlier. And you watch once more as the two characters find themselves sitting opposite one another. But now you have reached the point where the story diverges from the other version. Now the two of them have begun a conversation.
The girl is engrossed in her paperback. Perhaps you should say something to her. Far easier, though, to carry on reading your book, and imagine how things might be. She probably doesn’t want to be disturbed from her reading anyway. When she takes a break, perhaps. You could ask her if it’s a good book. Sometimes, while you’re both reading, it feels as if she’s catching a quick look at you whenever she turns a page.
Night. Dismal night. The pen being brought down onto the paper. Onto the final piece of paper.
You felt your knee bump against the girl’s leg, beneath the table. Only a momentary touch. You were going to say sorry, but she hasn’t looked up from her book. You’re finding it hard to maintain your interest in the story; the distractions of the journey are intruding on your concentration. The book is only something to make you look occupied, while you study the face and body of the one who is sitting opposite you. You flick through the pages, and find another tale, about a man who sees a woman on a bus and immediately falls in love with her. The bus is just pulling away from the stop as the man walks past. He sees the girl sitting near the back – she looks up and he feels he must speak to her. He tries to get on the bus before it picks up speed but the doors are already closing and the bus goes away with the beautiful girl looking round over her shoulder. So he remembers the number of the bus and every day for a month he rides this route as often as he can – his job as a cafe waiter permitting – but he never sees her. Then one night who should walk into the cafe where he works but the girl – alone – and she goes and sits in a corner and brings out a little book – like a diary – and she starts writing in it. And he is on his way to take her order when another waiter called Luigi – whom he hates – beats him to it and fetches her a vermouth and chats to her a little before he goes to serve another customer. And although he is desperate to catch her eye she only writes in the little notebook or occasionally stares out into space and he thinks she looks somehow sad ‘like a nightingale which has lost its song’.
Now what’s this? Another woman has come along the passageway of the carriage, and she’s eyeing the second empty seat which is facing you. She sits down – now there are two women for you to look at. The first is foreign looking – small and dark, almost boyish; this second one is less pretty, but she has a cool elegance which interests you. But now that there are two of them, you know that you won’t be able to get anywhere with either. If you start a conversation with one, the other will only be an intruder.
Already you’ve missed your chance, Duncan. If you had spoken to that girl soon enough she would have told you her name was Giovanna – that she’s from Cremona, in Italy (where the violins come from). And when the other woman came along she’d have seen you both talking and sat somewhere else so as not to interrupt, or be disturbed by you. You’d have found out all about this girl – you’d both have got on so well together. You’d have talked all the way to Leeds (or at least, she would). And you’d have offered her a place to stay tonight, since i
t’s a nuisance looking for hotels – she would have agreed readily. Charles and Joanna would be there, but still it would all have worked out for the best in the end – not a good idea for her to sleep on the sofa, since she’d be in their way. A mattress on your bedroom floor instead. And then, and then, and then. But you’ve missed your chance – you could have been so happy together! Now you’ll never know any more about her, what becomes of her. You’ll never know any of it.
And the pen approaching the paper. The downward stroke, then the forlorn upward curve of a D. The swift creation of a word – Dear. Sitting alone, with the paper before him.
You’re hardly paying attention to your book now – you’re too busy watching the girl. You flick back to the strange story about two people on a train.
The two of them have begun a conversation. She tells him that she is a writer, and finds train journeys – with their curious juxtaposition of motion and stasis – particularly conducive to the creative process. He takes this as a hint that she wants to be left to get on with some work.
A pity you won’t be bringing Giovanna home with you. Charles would like her. And it would postpone the problem. How to deal with things now. He’s sitting at the piano – drawing towards the end of the Goldberg Variations. He wonders what you’ll have found in the files. He wonders what you know, and what you only suspect. He tries to decide what he’ll tell you. He’ll probably tell you nothing.
Now the ticket collector’s coming. ‘Ah. You’ve got a pink saver here. It’s blue savers or standard fare today sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to pay the difference.’
But you haven’t got enough to give him. The two women opposite eye you silently, as if you were some kind of criminal. You show him your identity card and he takes the details. Like some kind of criminal. Difficult to read again, now – you feel annoyed and irritated.
Music, in a Foreign Language Page 20
