Old Acquaintance
Page 17
The auditorium blanked out. That was something she always insisted on. She knew the value of appearing complete out of the dark, and merely standing there, until the applause came.
Somewhere in the darkness a glass chinked and someone dropped a knife. Someone else said shush. It was what she had been waiting for. The garrulous always ask for quiet, and it is then that you must catch their attention, or else you never can.
Her theme song eddied ahead of her, and then Bill broke into a chorus of Did You Ever See a Dream Walking, Well I Did. He had nothing against La Vie en Rose, but he preferred the home product. He gave her a wink as she went by, in the enormous rustle of a gown so vulgar as to be a travesty of itself. They were on again. That’s what counts. She owed a lot to Bill.
He vamped a bass, while she gave them a naughty song, naughty, but nice. It always took a while; for one thing, even now, she was nervous when she began; but after the second number the applause began to roll in, as inevitable as surf along a shore, a thousand feet below her. She got into the swing of the thing. Past a certain age, and to seem young is no problem, for then you remember the gestures so much better, and how it felt. You send them back; you volley them. You even enjoy them a little.
Despite rehearsals, the spotlight wobbled, varied, and caught Charlie up out of the gloom, before it circled back to her. He looked glaringly white, but he was there, and he had time to wave before darkness engulfed him and she had her light back again.
It made her feel a lot better to see him there. Now everything would be all right. Now her world was complete again.
Falling in love again,
Never wanted to.
What am I to do?
I can’t help it.
Yes, it was like that. Because of course one can.
LV
CHARLIE sat alone in the dark, in the Cosmic Opera House. Masks of Tragedy and Comedy come in pairs. He was pleased to see them hanging up again. The last scene painter to work in the Cosmic Opera House was Tiepolo. He was also the last of the mystics, the last of the painters who painted light. Charlie doted on Tiepolo. If we have to suffer, we may just as well dress to the nines and look our best. And come to think of it, Lotte was the only person, male or female, he had ever known who would have been quite at ease in a Tiepolo, who indeed belonged there. She had the Tiepolo touch. She was herself the Comic Muse.
As he sat in the dark, listening to her, the ceiling opened out, as the ceiling always does in a Tiepolo, and he could watch the stars.
He liked it here. He belonged here. He liked all of it.
LVI
SHE remembered a story Charlie had written, which she had read once in a woman’s magazine because she was mildly curious, its being by him, and to pass the time. It wasn’t much of a story, but it had stuck in her head. A Mrs. Elstir, a divorced lady of old family, and of some wealth, goes every year to a ski resort built by her grandfather. She has the lodge at the top of the glen. There she sits every morning on her balcony, watching the skiers and drinking too much coffee. Each year it is one particular, though different, skier she watches. After a while she asks him to the house. They go for runs together. He is always much younger than she is. He tries to take advantage of the situation, so does she, but nothing ever comes of it. Instead, she sends him gifts and never sees him again. The story is told by Samivel, one of her previous young men, who has come out of season, not expecting to see her there. But as she grows older, she stays longer. He sees the whole charade played out again.
Aware of this, she asks him up. She even enjoys seeing him again. “We must meet again next year, Samivel,” she says. “We’ll ski up to Badger Pass. I’ve never been there. Would you like that?”
It is exactly what she said to him when he was an adolescent, that marvelous year he knew her. It is what she says every year. Of course they will never go. It is just a promise she makes to herself, and never keeps, so it may never be broken.
If they come back, like Samivel, she is always a little uncomfortable. The badger is a neat and tidy animal. Whether there really was such a place as Badger Pass, Lotte did not know. But she had kept a firm vision of Mrs. Elstir, bundled up in shabby nutria furs, on her balcony, with her silver coffee set, waiting.
The story had puzzled her at the time. It didn’t puzzle her now.
LVII
THERE was no word from Unne. Nor would there be, she supposed.
She had come to say good-bye.
Charlie was busy putting a seventeenth-century Nepalese Kuan-Yin into its plastic traveling bag. The pictures were already down and in their carrying cases.
“You’ll be going on to Berlin, I expect,” he said. “Enjoy yourself. It’s the only booby trap in the world with a population of over two million.”
She recognized that for what it was, the endless conversation starting up again. She was glad. She’d missed it.
“And you?”
“Go to England for the summer, I think. If it’s sunny, I might even stay all day.”
“You planted that.”
Charlie looked abashed.
“Did it ever occur to you,” he said, “that in the really good Russian novelists, which is to say, Turgenev, and perhaps Sologub, who suffered from brevity, and Tchekov, but Tchekov’s longest efficient reach was the novelette, and Goncharov, there’s nothing wrong with Goncharov, and, of course, Gogol, the books always begin in the same set way:
“‘On a certain morning in March, 18—, a Mr. Y——walked up the steps of No. — C—— Street, in the City of G——’; and instead of being annoyed, you couldn’t feel that the world was more comfortable. You know right where you are.”
“No, it hadn’t, Charlie.”
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about all week,” he said, knowing now he would never write it down. He had told it to her instead. “I don’t know why. I shall miss you, I expect.”
“I’ll miss you, Charlie. We’ll run into each other. We always do.”
“It would be nice to have a definite date.”
“The better Russians never specify a date, Charlie.”
He stared at his carrying cases. “No, I suppose not.”
She was sorry if she had hurt him. She would miss him. She had tried to be gentle. But what else could she say? It did no good to linger. Nothing was possible. If we are to survive in this world, nothing is.
“See me down to the car, then, will you?” It seemed a casual request.
“Of course, Charlie.”
Immediately he looked boyish again, for the first time since her arrival. She understood. That was all that had been bothering him: he hadn’t wanted to be seen leaving alone. That was the one thing he always found it difficult to face. So she had been of some help after all.
“In that case, I’d like to take a nice long bath,” he said. “Can you wait?”
Yes, she could wait.
After he had gone, she looked down at the garden below her. The day was cold, but she did not mind that. She was not taken in by her own griefs, and never had been. Everything would be all right now. The world was wound up again. Fabergé was back in his heaven, or if he wasn’t, he soon would be; the apple trees had the soft odor of freshly laundered linen; and from somewhere offstage came the smell of new-mown grass. It had been such a late spring.
But then, it is true, as we get older, we move farther north. We follow the spring.
Turning away, she heard the water running, and went inside to wait for Charlie.
Penis Rock.
Berlin-Grunewald
April-July 1961
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
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All rights reserved
© David Derek Stacton, 1964
The right of David Derek Stacton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance wi
th Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The lines by Belloc in chapter XXX are reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf
The lines by Brecht, from the Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, quoted in chapter XXXIX are reprinted by permission of the publishers, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
The lines from ‘Falling in Love Again’ by Frederick Hollander and Sammy Lerner are reprinted by permission of the Famous Music Corporation. Copyright 1930 by Famous Music Corporation. Copyright renewed 1958 by Famous Music Corporation
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ISBN 978–0–571–32166–7