The Club

by Takis Würger

  “It’s the best university in the world.”

  “But it all sounds completely insane.”

  “You’ll be given a new name so no one finds out who you really are, or that we’re related.”

  I smiled. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t stop. “What’s all this about?”

  “It’s about a crime, Hans. I need your help, because I have to solve a crime.”

  I said nothing for a while. “A crime,” I murmured eventually.

  “At the Pitt Club,” said my aunt.

  “What about the police?”

  “They can’t help us.”

  “Alex, sorry, but is this all some kind of joke that I don’t understand?”

  She looked serious. “I hardly ever joke.”

  I looked outside, where one of the tourists had quickly pulled up her top and was letting herself be photographed bare breasted in front of the apple tree. Her breasts were pointy.

  I stammered, “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course.”

  At that moment the whole world seemed to be upside down. Alex held out her hand. This time I was glad we didn’t have to hug.

  I walked swiftly out of the room. In the court I asked a porter why people were taking photos of themselves in front of the tree. The porter, who was wearing a bowler hat, said tourists were always getting it wrong: they thought this was the tree Isaac Newton was sitting under when the apple fell on his head. The real tree, or rather a scion of it, was outside Trinity College, just up the road.

  I walked around town for a while, having a look before I headed to the station. I wandered through college courts and contemplated the oriel windows, the stately libraries, the ancient stone walls. Alex had explained to me on my first visit how this place worked: there were autonomous colleges in which the students lived, and all the colleges together constituted the university. It sounded complicated.

  Every single pebble seemed more important than everything I had ever thought or touched in my life. Some colleges looked like little castles and the porters in front of them like guards. King’s College had a chapel the size of a cathedral; behind it, a white cow grazed in a meadow. Daffodils were growing in the court of Gonville & Caius, and I listened to a tour guide who was saying that ramps had been put on all the steps so Stephen Hawking could move around freely. Outside the gate of Trinity College a porter in a purple-lined cape was standing guard. When I tried to go through the gate into the inner courtyard he stood in my way and said something I didn’t quite catch. The lawns all had little signs reminding you that you were not allowed to walk on them.

  It was getting dark, a light fog lay over the city, and there was a smell of Sunday roast. I decided to take a last look at St. John’s, where lots of students seemed to be streaming towards a specific place. Earlier they had all looked different; now almost all of them were wearing a black gown over their suit, shirt, dress, or jersey, which made them seem much older and much more important. They looked a bit like wizards. They were a community. I followed them as they entered St. John’s College Chapel, which was large and imposing with colorful windows and a vaulted ceiling. The choir began to sing, a high, foreign-sounding anthem. I saw the students whispering in each other’s ears, saw how happy they looked. Nobody was alone.

  When I landed in Munich I checked my e-mails and found a message from Alex. It consisted of just one sentence, with no salutation or greeting: The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. —Pablo Picasso I didn’t reply.

  Alex

  Papers belonged in files and on shelves; the laptop went in a drawer. The desk had to be left empty. Order was essential.

  Hans would do it. He had grown up; he’d become a good-looking young man. He would do it, though he didn’t know it yet. I’d seen him as a child, standing in the boxing gym trying to muster his strength, just as he was trying to muster his courage today. He would come.

  At home I drank a glass of whisky and smoked three cigarettes in my little front garden where I grew flowers and a few herbs for the kitchen. The roses needed pruning. I double-locked the front door and went to a room that had nothing in it but my bed.

  It had been difficult to find a company that made blinds that kept out every chink of light. I’d had a specialist brought over from Dublin. I closed the bedroom door and lowered the blinds. This is how dark it must be in hell, I thought, exhaling slowly.

  Lying in bed, I thought of Charlotte and wondered whether there was any such thing as coincidence. As always, I loosened a strap that was looped around the right side of the bed, put my wrist inside and pulled the loop tight so that the hand couldn’t get at my neck in the night.

  Hans

  I spent the months leading up to my final exams in the library and studied so hard that I often succeeded in forgetting about Alex. Sometimes I would think about the black gowns and the life I could have if I went to Cambridge. I took my school-leaving exams, specializing in Physics and Math. At the graduation service I sat in the back row next to Father Gerald. Alex hadn’t come. I’d written her a letter telling her the date. I hadn’t responded to her offer.

  At the service, one pupil sang Wagner’s Song to the Evening Star and then a song by the pop singer Herbert Grönemeyer. The principal was sitting in front of me and I saw him make a note on his pad reminding him to tell the choirmaster that music like that had no place in church. In his speech he quoted the Gospel according to St Mark and talked about Lothar König, a Jesuit priest and former Johannes Theological College pupil who had fought in the resistance against the Nazis. The principal said Father König should be an example to us; he had been active in the anti-Nazi underground right up to the end of the war. Personal initiative and humanitarian thinking were the values Johannes Theological College stood for.

  In the school library was a book that described the lives of all the school’s well-known graduates. I’d read the chapter about Lothar König when we were snowed in one winter. König had planned to blow the back of Hitler’s head off with a sniper rifle at a party conference in Berlin, but he was betrayed, and had to spend the rest of the war hiding in a coal cellar.

  After the service I hugged Father Gerald, picked up my suitcase and left the school on foot. My fellow pupils drove past me in their cars as I walked down the winding road to the village. It felt as if the muscles in my throat were relaxing; they’d been seized up for so long I’d started to think it was normal. At last the tears came. I didn’t wipe them away; I didn’t care that my fellow pupils saw me crying and honked their horns.

  Her car came up the road. She was driving a rental car, a little one, and I couldn’t have cared less about that because she was here to pick me up; she was late, yes, but an hour’s not important when you’ve been waiting for three years.

  Alex was wearing a black leather jacket and a silk scarf. She stopped beside me on the country road and opened the passenger door.

  “Congratulations, dear Hans,” she said.

  “You came,” I said.

  We drove along the country road. I didn’t know what to say. I was enjoying the companionable silence, and jumped when Alex spoke.

  “Your course starts at the beginning of October.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve arranged it.”

  For a moment I wanted to be angry, but actually I was glad.

  “Why me?” I asked, when I realized she was even better than me at saying nothing.

  “I trust you,” said Alex. After a while she added, “I need you more than you can imagine.”

  I was eighteen years old, and I’d spent the past three years dreaming of an adventure that would save me.

  “All right. I’ll do it,” I said, quietly but clearly.

  Four and a half weeks before my studies began I flew to England with Alex, and on the very first day I regretted coming too early, because there was no one in college apart from the graduate students and a few Pakistani undergraduates who spent the
ir time flying model helicopters across Chapel Court. My room was small, the ceiling was low, the window was drafty, and the fireplace was bricked up.

  Alex only came to visit me in my room once in the weeks before the start of term. She shook my hand and said she knew a woman who would help me, a graduate student, and that I should meet her on the first Thursday of term at six p.m. on the bridge behind Trinity Hall.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “She’ll tell you,” said Alex, and left.

  Later I wrote her an e-mail and asked if she felt like going for a walk. The first few days I’d thought she might show me around town and invite me for a beer, but I realized now that had been a childish hope. I didn’t get an answer.

  The following Thursday I was at the meeting place twenty minutes early. I walked onto a bridge over the Cam that smelled of algae and leaned on the balustrade. It left green marks on my jacket, but that didn’t bother me.

  The woman was wearing a hoodie with cutoff sleeves. I’d seen her from a distance; I could tell she knew who I was and was waiting for me.

  She walked past twice behind me over the bridge. I stared into the water and pretended I hadn’t noticed because I didn’t dare speak to her.

  “Hans?”

  Her voice was gentle. I turned around. She smelled of soap and something else; mints, possibly. She had long eyelashes and blonde hair. I thought her cheeks looked as if they would have dimples when she laughed, but she didn’t laugh.

  She wasn’t at all fat, but she was soft all over; at least that was my impression. I imagined that even her collarbones would feel soft. She had been spared the sharp features often found among the British upper classes.

  “Let’s walk a bit,” she said.

  I felt uncomfortable because I didn’t know who she was. The sun would soon be going down. We walked down side streets hemmed in on both sides by thick college walls. The walls were so high that the streets were always in shade, even during the day. She led the way, along a route that took us past the tourists and back onto the banks of the Cam. Her sleeveless top kept shifting slightly, and I couldn’t help staring at her shoulders from behind. She was muscular, as if she were accustomed to hard manual labour.

  When we got to the fields outside the town and were alone, the woman began to speak. She sounded as if she had learned what she was saying by heart. Her first sentence was “I can help you get into the Pitt Club.” She spoke without stopping, snatching breaths between words. She said a member had to nominate me. This member had to write my name in a book in the entrance hall of the Club, where other members could sign for me. Finally a committee would vote on who was to be admitted. I tried to take an interest in all of this.

  She looked at my trainers, and said it was important that I try to be like members of the Club. And I had to learn how members behaved with women. She would arrange for me to be invited to one of their parties, and—

  I stopped her. “Why do you have these shoulders?”

  She was standing a few paces ahead. She was a bit taller than me. I looked her full in the face for the first time. She wasn’t wearing makeup.

  “What?”

  I stared at the ground and said nothing.

  “What I’ve just told you is more important than my shoulders. Do you understand? The people in this club are criminals,” she said.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “I hope you do.”

  “What have they actually done?” I asked.

  “Alex says I shouldn’t tell you.”

  “How do you know Alex, anyway?”

  “She’s supervising my PhD.”

  “And how do you know about the Club? I thought they were all men?”

  Her mouth softened. She was silent for a moment.

  “You’ve had your three free questions for the month,” she said.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  After a while she said, “That’s Kingston,” and pointed behind me to a black horse on the other side of the meadow.

  “I want to know what I’m doing here,” I said. But the young woman didn’t answer me; she climbed through the planks of the fence around the paddock.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said.

  I didn’t like it that she was treating me like a child. And I didn’t like the idea of going into the meadow, but I followed her because I didn’t want to look like the coward I was. The horse pawed at the ground with its hooves. I stopped a few meters away.

  “If you show that you’re afraid, she’ll bite,” she said, and slapped the mare on the flank. The horse flattened its ears and walked towards me. I stood still while it snuffed my hair and hands. Then I walked backward towards the fence.

  “You’re afraid, laddie, much too afraid,” the woman called.

  We walked side by side along the river, accompanied by the smell of wood smoke: people used pine logs to heat the houseboats moored nose to tail along the banks of the Cam. Back in town we could see the tower of our college chapel; it was taller than everything else.

  “You’ll need to be braver than you were this evening.”

  I didn’t answer. It surprised me that she spoke of bravery. She looked as if she were always about to burst into tears, yet at the same time there was something so determined about her. It’s always hard to read the faces of people you’ve only just met, but I could tell that this woman was afraid. After all, I knew about fear.

  “I guess I ought to thank you for helping me,” I said.

  We both nodded.

  “Thank you,” I said. I shook her hand and said I wanted to walk a bit longer. I turned and headed back the way we’d come. After a few meters I called, “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Don’t get lost on your walk, laddie,” she replied.

  I could feel her watching me for a while as I walked away.

  When I got to the paddock I climbed through the fence. The horse came towards me and in a single movement I sprang onto its back. I sat there and took a few breaths; I could feel its heart beating, half as fast as mine. For a moment I was worried that I might have forgotten how to ride, because I hadn’t sat on a horse’s back since my mother died. I rode for a while, after which I no longer knew whether to be worried or grateful that I had come to this place. I slid off the animal’s back.

  My feet left prints in the grass, and the dew soaked my trainers. Walking home, I thought about the fact that I still didn’t know her name.

  Charlotte

  I could feel the effect of the two whisky sodas I’d had in the pub. I sat on a bench in the college garden, taking deep breaths of night air to sober up.

  After we’d said goodbye I’d followed this boy, Hans. He’d come from Alex, which meant he wasn’t a danger; and he really wasn’t more than a boy, nineteen at most. I crept along behind him in the dark; I felt a bit foolish, but I wanted to know what he was doing out on his own in the fields. So I stood behind a tree near the paddock and watched him leap onto Kingston’s back. He’ll fall off, I thought. Kingston never lets anyone ride her except me. When I saw him gallop, it was the first time I thought things might turn out all right in the end. A moment later the thought was gone.

  Hans

  A month after the start of the academic year I walked through the front door of the Pitt Club and hoped no one there would find out who I was or why I’d come. I’d read online that Prince Charles was alleged to have said he’d learned more in a night at the Pitt Club than in three years at Trinity College. I had no interest in Prince Charles.

  On that first visit to the Club I tried to impress every little thing upon my memory. The faces, the burn marks in the carpet, the gnu skull on the wall. Huge white lilies stood in vases in corners. An invitation had materialized in my pigeonhole at the start of the week. I thought about the blonde woman who had said she would help me. Perhaps she would be there too. She was strange, but I hoped she would come. This was the first party I’d been to in my life; it felt wrong that I wasn�
��t here voluntarily, and had only been invited because an unknown, nameless woman had arranged it. It had taken me six attempts to tie my bow tie.

  Behind me a young man with round shoulders and a handsome face was gently nudging me towards the bar. This was Billy, a mechanical engineering student with shaggy hair and an incipient paunch; he was drunk and smelled of sweat, and generally looked rather unkempt. I’d met him three weeks ago at the boxing gym, and had nodded at him during one of the initial training sessions. He’d been waiting for me afterwards by the bike stands.

  “Hi, I’m Billy.”

  “Hi.”

  We cycled part of the way back together without speaking. I was happy to have someone to ride with.

  A few days later I received an e-mail from Billy, asking if I’d like to do a bit of extra training to toughen up. We met twice: on the first occasion we swam in the cold waters of the Cam, and on the second we went running in the woods, where Billy rolled about in the mud and said he was becoming one with nature. Afterwards he pulled a thermos out of his rucksack with his filthy hands and we drank milky tea. I noticed him watching me out of the corner of his eye. Billy talked for a while about the smell of wet earth, then said he always felt so lonely among the boxers. I stood beside him and said nothing. I’d never spoken about how lonely I felt. Billy raised his plastic teacup to me. I offered him my hand; a bit formal, perhaps, but it felt right. The mud was sticky between our palms, and I think we both felt better together instead of alone.

  The Pitt Club bar was so clean it shone. A bald waiter placed two glasses of a pink liquid we hadn’t ordered on the counter. “Pitt Juice,” said Billy, and knocked it back. I took a swig; the liquid tasted of vodka and lemonade. Billy leaned his back against the counter and stared at three very loud men for several minutes without speaking. The men all had the wiry, powerful bodies of trained boxers and wore light blue blazers with a red lion embroidered on the breast pocket. Without looking at me, Billy remarked that this was the blue blazer you got when you won a match against Oxford.