Out of This World

by Graham Swift

  Küfergasse, achtundzwanzig. I still remember the names of the streets. Burgstrasse, Tetzelgasse, Küfergasse. An archway, two flights of stairs. The room with the yellowed wallpaper and the paler rectangles left by removed pictures (the Führer? Frames for firewood?), where we told each other the story of our lives.

  Tobacco. They were all in tobacco. Save the only one who was left now, Uncle Spiro, the scholar, who years ago had packed his bags and gone to study in Athens and, later, England. When she was twelve years old her mother and father had died, vainly trying to beat out the flames that were consuming their tobacco warehouse. Then her two brothers were killed in the early months of the war, and she had passed into the care of her uncle, by now a professional academic and a widower. To avoid starvation, or worse, he had abandoned his apartment in Salonika and they had gone to live during the occupation in his summer house on the island of Thassos.

  I said (but this was like a made-up story, a hastily improvised bedtime story, to stop her tears): There was this son who didn’t get on with his father. And this old house in leafy Surrey, with a gravel drive and lawns and an orchard. And wasn’t it funny, but I had had an uncle once who was a scholar too. Of Greek. But he had never (so far as I knew) gone to bed with a Greek woman.

  (He had never, so far as I knew, gone to bed with any woman.)

  She said, drying her eyes: Was it true that in England everyone took tea at precisely four o’clock? And ate cucumber sandwiches?

  The lights from the traffic in Tetzelgasse used to flicker across the ceiling. I still see it. A small sliver appearing in one corner, then quickening, widening. The exact pattern of those cracks in the ceiling.

  But had he really sworn never to see me again? And what did he do, to have this big house?

  Not so big, I said. I said: He made something. I didn’t want to tell her. I said: Guess. It was like tobacco. It went up in smoke too.

  I was a photographer, there to capture on film the face of evil. She was a translator, there to translate and transcribe the evidence of killings, atrocities, burnings, little white Greek villages razed to the ground.

  To be happy in Nuremberg. To smile in Nuremberg. To get up and get dressed and go out into the Nuremberg night like a young couple from the country, snatching a few stolen days in some pleasure-loving city.

  The photo, not the photographer? Only the picture counts? Does it matter, when the photographer lifts the camera to capture the face of evil, if a voice is chuckling inside him: ‘I am happy, I am in love’?

  We were married by an army chaplain on October 14th, 1946, two weeks after the Tribunal passed sentence. She wrote to her uncle. He would give his blessing, no question. (A real Englishman!) After that, she was always ‘going’ to see him – when the fighting was over in Greece, when he was settled again in Salonika, when Sophie was a bit older.

  I wired to my paper – impudently, since I had only been employed by them for six months – to request a week’s ‘matrimonial leave’. We had little money, but I used my press credentials to ‘borrow’ a car and a spare jerrycan of petrol, and we drove, through Ulm and round Lake Constance, to Switzerland, feeling as we explained ourselves to the guards at the border, like escapees. To neutral Switzerland, where the white peaks under fresh autumn snow really did seem like the icing on some gigantic, never-to-be-eaten cake, and the wooden chalets nestling on the slopes really did seem like life-size musical boxes that had dropped from the sky. And Herr and Frau Hebinger, stolid proprietors of the Pension Hirsch near Lucerne, who gave the impression that they truly didn’t know, cut off behind that veil of mountains, what had been going on in the world, and who believed that Anna, the first Greek in their guest-book, must be, in these northern climes, continually cold, became almost fond, almost paternal, their dour faces cracked, when I explained that the last thing, the very last thing my new wife was, was cold.

  To dance in Nuremberg! The ‘Arkadien’ (who gave it that name?) in Lorenzerstrasse. A pianist, a drummer, a guitarist, a trombonist. And the people getting up to recover their lost bodies on the little dance floor. I should have photographed those faces in the ‘Arkadien’, veiled in smoke and uncertainty. The faces that said, Is it all right now, will it ever be all right, to lead lives of our own?

  I should have photographed that couple – and called it for ever afterwards (the blasphemy!) ‘Nuremberg, 1946’. That ecstatic couple, glimpsed (so how could I have photographed them?) in the gilt-framed mirror – miracle of preservation – above the bar.

  Your mother and father, Sophie. Anna and me, dancing in Nuremberg.

  Sophie

  Dear Paul, dear Tim. You were there at the time, at the very scene. But you never saw, you never knew a thing. When I lay in that hospital all those terrible hours, that thought suddenly occurred to me and I clung to it for safety. You were there but so perfectly ignorant. I was like a black cloak around you; you were like a little warm light.

  And that was the first time I felt that you actually existed, that this wasn’t just some condition of mine: ‘being pregnant’. (Except that I was ignorant too, wasn’t I? Because I never imagined – twins!) And when Joe came and sat by my bed that afternoon and I said to him, It’s all right – I mean, that’s all right, I haven’t miscarried or anything – I knew in a flash (ha! – a flash!) that my whole allegiance had changed. He held my hand and looked at me intently, but he didn’t know where I was. I was in another room. He was like a man who’d opened the wrong door and seen something terrible. But it was okay because you could step out quickly. Quick! Shut the door! Quick! Now he was back, or so he thought, where he belonged. If you just kept to your place the world would fall back together again. But I was still inside that room. I always would be. The only thing was, you would be there with me. And that wishful, wilful innocence of his, it wasn’t a patch on yours, which was the real, pure thing.

  You see, my darlings, the way it’s been? Oh yes, I guessed that from early on he knew that I needed you more than I needed him. Saw that; made that sacrifice, and never raised a begrudging murmur. Not that he doesn’t need you too. Maybe you’ve already figured out how those evening fool-arounds in the backyard aren’t just for pure fun. He’s saying: Let me have my turn. Maybe you’ve even worked out – or one day you will – that almost without knowing it, he’s starting to put in bigger claims. You’ll be grown-up soon, after all, real young lads. Using the one damn fact – you’re his own sex! – that works to his advantage. So what’s the harm anyway in kids playing with toy guns?

  Maybe he’s got it taped. Just wait. They’ll react, shake off their clinging mother and turn out to be Daddy’s boys through and through. And it’ll be all my own dumb fault.

  Except that I know he doesn’t think that far, or that sharp. He’s made the concession. For my sake. Give her time. Bow to circumstances; accept it. Ten years of allowances. I could weep for him sometimes. Though I stopped loving him long ago. That’s the honest truth, my darlings. I think I stopped loving him that time he came and held my hand in the hospital. I think I stopped loving anyone then. Except you.

  But I know that he still loves me. As much as he ever did. Loves me so much that he’d never guess, never imagine – How to smash someone’s world, my pets. He looks at me sometimes like a guilty character in a comedy, peering wistfully at a character in a tragedy. Still calls me ‘Goddess’. But don’t get ideas, Joe, there’s nothing noble or sublime about me. And I’d stick to comedy if I were you. It’s more fun. He looks at me as if he’s actually glad, like some willing penitent, to have this chance, this ten-year-long chance, to express his love by looking after me, by being truly considerate towards me.

  It’s just that he doesn’t fuck me any more. Or he fucks me gently, reverently, as if he’s fucking some fragile, precious china doll. As if he’s had this notion that I had this nasty shock which changed me back into an innocent little kid. Not a lady you can fuck.

  But I’m not a little kid.

  (Am I, Doctor K?)


  The facts of life, my darlings. Your parents fuck. They don’t fuck. Your Mummy fucks around. Your Dad is good about things. Because he’s good, she fucks. Gets fucked. Is all fucked-up.

  Once upon a time, my angels, there used to be this ritual when parents would take their children aside and tell them the facts of life. But nowadays it doesn’t happen so much. It’s not so necessary, because in this well-informed and hyper-communicative world, the facts of life float freely in the air (what do you hear when you walk down the street? – fuckfuckfuck). They just seep in.

  I never went through this ritual. Because my mother – And my father – And I think Grandad gave up on the facts of life when he gave up his right arm. I learnt the facts of life from schoolfriends, and from guesswork. And then again from Joe. But even then I never learnt them properly.

  Ha! If only the facts of life were like they sound. So essential, so vital, so all-inclusive. As if they were truly all you need to know. But there are other facts of life, besides those much-broadcast ones, my darlings, that your mother has to tell you.

  So are you listening? Are you ready …?

  You were there at the funeral, but you never knew it. Though without you your mother would never have got through that terrible day. Or those terrible weeks and months. You were there when I said goodbye for the last time to your grandfather, though you never saw him. You were inside your mother’s tummy (fact of life number one: all children come from their mother’s tummy). But your mother was inside her tummy with you, imagining a world where you didn’t have to see or know. And if you’re smart and clued-up, the way kids are these days, you’ll say: Sure, we figured all that – but where were we, where did we come from before we were inside your tummy? That’s what your mother is trying to explain.

  You have never seen your grandfather and he has never seen you. Though you have heard me mention from time to time this far-away person, like some character in a story-book, called Harry. But that’s how he always was for me too, a far-away person. Which is strange, because I think now that what he might say, in his own defence, is that he tried to get close to certain things. The things that most people don’t want to get close to. Once upon a time, or so people say, he was a distinguished man, a photographer.

  You have never seen England, though that’s where your mother and father are from. But you have seen enough pictures of it in the brochures Joe brings home from work, which makes it look like some high-class Disneyland. And Joe has said from time to time, One day we will all go to England. And I’ve said, Yes. But not yet.

  You never saw your great-grandfather, though you were there at the graveside when they buried what was left of him. He was a hero, you see. A real hero. His business was in – But that’s another story.

  I haven’t seen Harry since that time I said goodbye to him ten years ago. And he hasn’t seen me. Out of sight, out of – But Doctor Klein (who you’ve never seen either) says that’s the oldest lie in the world. Come here, my darlings. Come close to your mother. He tried to get close to certain things. Certain facts of life. It’s just that he wasn’t much good at closeness. And I wouldn’t have to tell you these things. Why should I ever have to tell you these things? I really meant it, you see: Goodbye for ever. But now he writes me this letter, my angels, and in the letter he says –

  Harry

  She makes me feel – hell, she makes me feel that I’m half my age, that everything is possible. She makes me sing, un-apologetically (Michael and Peter give me tolerant looks) above the noise of the Cessna while we hang like a lark over Wiltshire, waiting for the dormant Bronze Age to emerge with the green flush of spring. She makes me feel that the world is never so black with memories, so grey with age, that it cannot be re-coloured with the magic paint-box of the heart.

  In Switzerland, by the shores of Lake Lucerne (ducks scooting and clucking in the thin sunshine), I told Anna about Dad, spinning this tale of a life-long enemy, an implacable ogre who would bar the door against me should I so much as dare to seek shelter, with my new wife, under his roof again. I should have predicted – I should have learnt by then – that it would be otherwise. That when I summoned up the nerve to break the news and even to propose a visit, I would suddenly become the Prodigal Son, while to Anna he would be the model father-in-law.

  I still see them, walking in the orchard. Him talking, her listening. November leaves on the grass. I had slipped in to fetch Anna’s scarf. But I stood for a while at the window, twisting the scarf in my hands, and twisting something else inside me. I didn’t feel angry, not even wrong-footed. I didn’t feel I should have to protest to Anna: But this is all an act, you wait and see. I didn’t answer the voice that was whispering in my head: You see what he is doing, you see what the old bastard’s doing – he’s going to try to bring you round through her, he’s going to hope that now you will change your mind. (I even thought: And suppose – ? And supposing – ?)

  That afternoon – after suffering all morning the worst anticipations – Anna had given me the first, fleeting glance she had ever given me of distrust. As if she had said: Do we share the same reality, you and I? But then her glance had flickered on, in happy credulity, to take in the weathered brick and old oak of Hyfield. And I didn’t feel a sting (I could bridge that gap of suspicion) at that look of reproach.

  They paused under one of the apple trees. He was extolling, perhaps, like some benign old landowner, the virtues of the English pippin. Be careful, Anna. Just remember what really grows in that orchard. A moment when she laughed – laughter at Hyfield! – and the chime of her laughter, and the clatter of his, reached the house in the damp, melancholy air.

  Hyfield. Autumn in England. A smoky stillness. A settledness.

  And why didn’t I feel all those things? Why did I stand at that window, unwilling to break the glass of that little vision, the spell of that little scene. Because I could see – it wasn’t an act – that he was captivated.

  A lover’s pride. But more than that.

  They turned to walk slowly back towards the house. (Should I go out now – interrupt? – with the scarf?) The familiar, limp hang of his right arm seemed at that moment to accentuate rather than detract from the life in the rest of his body. What shall I say – he looked young? As if, right then, it wasn’t Anna I loved, so much as him. As if for me too that picture I had drawn for Anna of my father, along with all the grievance and hate that had been etched into it, were an illusion.

  Sophie

  And you see, Doctor K, I don’t want to screw up that letter and throw it away. (Though I’ve hidden it from Joe.) And I don’t want to say: And screw you too, Harry, for an old fornicator. I don’t even feel – do you know what I mean? – cheated. Jilted. The truth is I want it to be wonderful. Wonderful. I want to go. Can you believe that? I want to write back to him and say, Yes, yes, I’m coming. I’m coming, for your wedding. I want to pack a suitcase and bundle the twins into a cab to JFK and tell them on the journey all about that little old country where I was born. I want him, and her, whoever she is (but I hope she’s as lovely as a princess), to be waiting at the airport. I want to throw my arms around him and feel his arms round mine. Harry Dad Father. Your grandchildren. And I want to hug her too and kiss her like a sister, a younger sister, and say, I hope you’ll be happy with him, because I never was. Shit, I know this is pure theatre, I know this is like a bad movie, like the way it isn’t. But what’s the point of life, and what’s the point of goddam movies, if now and then you can’t discover that the way you thought it isn’t, the way you thought it only ever is in movies, really is the way it is?

  Joe

  Well, if you ask me, I know there was never any big thing going for me, no plan, no special assignments. I was what you call an ‘accident’, or an almost-accident. A visitor, that’s all. An extra guest at the party.

  And the truth is I’m happy when other people are happy round me. I’m glad when other people are happy. And there are plenty of people who can’t give that for a
n excuse.

  People say to me, people I know and meet at work, ‘Hey, Joe, you know, you’re an easy-going kind of guy. Always good to be with. What’s the secret?’ And I say any number of things. Like: ‘It’s policy.’ Or: ‘It’s the new after-shave.’ Or: ‘It’s the influence of this fair city of yours, and your fresh American way.’ Or I want to say, But it’s the other way round: I’m looking at someone who’s smiling at me, and the reason why I’m smiling is because smiles are infectious. But the fact is I really don’t have an answer.

  People like to be with me. They like to be with me! And I never knew how to explain it or exploit it. And maybe if I could do either, they wouldn’t like to be with me. Mr Nice. Mr No Threat. Mr No Complications. People like a regular dummy. One of the girls we once had here once said to me: ‘Mr Carmichael, you’re kinda good company – you could take advantage of that.’ Crossing her legs and biting her pen. And I said: ‘But that might spoil all the innocent fun we’re going to have.’ When she left about a year later there was a little packet from her sneaked into my in-tray. A pair of pink panties appliquéd ‘Love from Arlene’, and a message: ‘Now you can’t say you never got them off me. Thanks for the innocent fun.’

  But that was years ago (I put them in my desk drawer: what do you do with a pair of panties especially inscribed to you?), before Sophie got like she wasn’t interested any more. Nowadays, maybe …

  And, come to think of it, it’s been a long time since anyone at the office has said to me, ‘Hey, Joe, you’re fun to be with.’

  A couple of months ago Gary and Jack and Karen made a point of keeping me at Mario’s, the beers coming one after the other. I could see what the plan was. They were thinking: Our Mr C’s actually starting to look a little distant, to lose his smile. They were thinking maybe they could get me to talk, just a little. About Sophie. Maybe they could ask. But before we could get that far, I put down my beer and looked at them all, and just said, ‘You’re good people.’ There was this pause and they lowered their eyes. Then I told a joke about Reagan and zero options. Then we had a fun evening anyway. I called Sophie and got home half drunk. She didn’t mind. I wish she had.