The Deadly Space Between

by Patricia Duncker

  The man dropped his hand and flicked the ash on his cigarette into her brass umbrella stand.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  I felt like a justified spy. It was the same slow, firm voice that I had heard on the tape. I tried to take him in at once. I couldn’t. There was too much of him there. He had already occupied too much of me. I gaze into this man’s hooded eyes. His gaze is steady, pale and grey. He has the eyes of a wolf. The curtain has gone up on the action. The play can begin.

  But what was my role? My lines? Who was waiting in the wings, following the text, ready to prompt me now? I stood tongue-tied, gazing at the Minotaur, who returned my stare in the shadow of the dim staircase, unhurried, amused. I perceived the compliment, and blushed. He thinks I’m like her. He thinks that I too am beautiful. I drew myself up straighter. I know who you are. I have seen you before. But this is the first time that you see me. This man does not care. I watch the great hand rising, the cigarette gently clenched. This is how a man looks at a girl he owns, her face, her thighs, her throat. His gaze is slow, obscene.

  But the moment passed. My mother is talking. She is bored, wants to go out. She is utterly unworried by our first charged glares at one another.

  ‘We’re going out, sweetheart. Do you mind? There’s still some chicken from last night in the fridge. Just heat it up. Nothing but yoghurt for pudding.’

  She is grappling with her coat. He doesn’t help her.

  ‘I haven’t even introduced you. This is Roehm. We’ve known each other since God knows when. How did you find out that he was a scientist? Did I tell you? I don’t think I did tell you. Can you answer the phone? Your aunt might be back. She left a message yesterday. I rang from work but she was out and Liberty had no idea. If she does ring tell her that tomorrow is fine . . .’

  She is combing her hair. She is the Lorelei, her siren power bobbed. She is diminished beside this man.

  ‘You’d like to go, wouldn’t you? It won’t interfere with your homework. You’ve got bags of time over the weekend and anyway you don’t go out enough. Sometimes I wonder what on earth you do up there.’

  She flashed her smile of intimate complicity at my reflection in the mirror, littered with shadows.

  ‘Luce is off to New York in November and won’t be back until a bit before Christmas. Did I tell you? She’s got a new contract. It’s wonderful news . . .’

  Now she is leaning up the stairs to kiss me. I bend down towards her. The huge man she has called Roehm stands absolutely still, sinister, unhurried. I feel compromised and angered by his size, his gaze. It is as if he absorbs all the light around him. Sweat gathers in my armpits, my fingers are chilly. In the empty spaces of the darkening house the central heating clicks on, the gas thuds alight. In this man’s presence nothing seems natural between my mother and myself.

  I formulated a curious sentence in my mind, each word carved and precise. This man is my mother’s lover. And then there it was, engraved on the murky wallpaper behind his dense black presence, at once so enthralling and so monstrous. This man is my mother’s lover. I tried to make sense of the triangle we formed in the hallway. There she stands, combing her hair and watching me, not herself, in the mirror. Roehm stands before the sentence I have written on the wall. The sentence remains, fixed, accusatory, but without concrete meaning and suddenly repeating itself without end. This man, this man.

  ‘Turned to stone, have you?’

  Here is her warm breath on my cheek, loving, chiding, relaxed. This is no big deal for her. They are going out. I have to eat the chicken, answer the phone. I have no lines to speak. But I have to walk about the stage.

  Then Roehm speaks, transforming the temperature of the air around him.

  ‘I’m sorry that you aren’t coming with us tonight. I’ll ring you next week.’

  My mother is watching him, smiling. It is as if he is making an improper assignation in public, disregarding her. She doesn’t see it that way. She is nodding, grinning. Her lover is making an effort. He has acknowledged her son. But she is surprised. It’s too soon. She wouldn’t have suggested this. Nevertheless, she is determined to be pleased. Roehm nods, offhand. She bounds out in front of him. The porch door crunches shut and I am left sitting on the bottom step of the stairs in the dingy light from the last bulb left that still works.

  The first meeting was over. I found that I was shaking slightly. I began to finger my own emotions, to turn them over and look at the unpatterned side, as if they had been rare carpets. I was angry, insecure, obscurely humiliated. But why? The scene had passed off in a matter of minutes. I had looked into this man’s face. I now knew who he was and I would know him again. But what was it that I felt? With her, it was simple. A peaceful steady torrent of demand. I love, I need, I want. Give, give, give. This man’s sexual presence, obtrusive, peculiar, still lurked in the empty shadow of the stairs.

  I sat looking at jealousy, naming the emotion for the first time. I had been excluded, given second place. This was the meaning of jealousy. I was being given Iago’s job, ‘and I – his Lordship’s ancient’. What will happen to the three of us? Why are there three? I turned the tarot cards over in my mind, seeing, again and again, not my mother whom I had expected to see, but this man’s face. Then I learned something, sudden and peculiar. I was not jealous of the Minotaur’s grasp upon my mother’s body. I was jealous for myself. Why have you chosen her, and not me? I wanted her place.

  Was this jealousy? I could not decipher the unpatterned side of things.

  I turned back to look at Roehm’s promise: I’ll ring you next week. It was Friday night. A desert plain of homework unfurled before me. Two days of waiting and saying nothing. What if he didn’t ring on Monday? I was at school in the mornings, on Monday I would be home by twelve. Next week suddenly became five, possibly even six days of suspended time. I rushed up the stairs and slammed the door. My Stratford poster of The Taming of the Shrew with Katarina pushing a tiny pink Fiat in her muddy wedding dress shivered slightly in its frame.

  My room now appeared before me like an adolescent pit of discarded identities. There were the old pop posters, plastic Star Wars models, even a one-eyed bear lolling in the corner on the bottom shelf. I sat on the bed, pulling my duvet around me, trying to imagine my mother making love to the man she called Roehm. Everything I knew about sex had been gleaned in the boys’ lavatory at school, both from the walls and from the passing inmates. The underground lavatory was the theatre for assiduous masturbation sessions in which I had never taken part out of fear that my prick would not be sufficiently admired to gain admittance to the inner circle. But what I learned in the lower depths was confirmed by one or two very strange sites on the Internet. If all I had seen was true, then I couldn’t make sense of the difference in size between my mother and her lover. He would cover her like a bull. I felt a gust of nausea sweeping up my gullet.

  I threw the duvet aside and sat down in front of my computer. The screen-save goldfish wobbled past, bubbles rising from their stupid mouths.

  Press Return.

  Microsoft Internet Explorer.

  Return to Main Menu.

  Wordsearch. http://www.whoswho.com.

  Enter name.

  How does he spell his name?

  R-H-E-R-M?

  R-E-R-M?

  R-Ö-H-M?

  R-O-E-H-M?

  Enter name.

  Searching.

  In fact I had no idea how his name was written. Oh God, there’s pages of them. It was like searching the jungle in the dark. I decided to look at the ones that sounded convincingly Germanic. I was puzzled by his accent. He spoke perfect English, but was obviously foreign.

  RÖHM, Ernst

  ROHMER, Eric

  ROEHM, Gustave

  Here goes.

  RÖHM, Ernst (1887–1934) Hitler’s SA Chief of Staff in the early 1930s. 1906 Maximilian Grammar School – Abitur. Fought in the First World War. Wounded three times. Promoted to rank of Captain in 1917. General
Staff in 1918. Disillusionment with post-war society, Treaty of Versailles, etc. Spring 1919, Röhm joined the Freikorps Epp. Supporter of right-wing parliamentary and extreme nationalist organizations in Bavaria. German Workers’ Party. First meeting with Hitler, 1920. NSDAP.

  What’s that? Must be the Nazis.

  Autumn 1923, Beer Hall Putsch.

  Why’d they try to take over a beer hall?

  Röhm’s dismissal from the army and a 15-month jail sentence. Release 1st April 1924. Hitler still in prison. Orders Röhm to form the SA, April 1925. He withdraws from the NSDAP and from active politics. Military adviser in Bolivia from 1928 until 1930.

  They’re always finding elderly Nazis in South America.

  September 1930 Reichstag Elections. Hitler recalls Röhm as SA Chief of Staff from 1st January 1931. SA attracts 800,000 members in 2 years. Street terror and propaganda.

  Hitler’s thugs, I suppose. We did all this for GCSE History. Can’t remember the beer hall business. I expect it’s crucial.

  Röhm’s ambition: the SA as a nucleus for a people’s army. Hitler consolidates his power in the state. Röhm’s homosexual circle and their excesses. Click here for detailed information.

  Ah, all this is coming back to me. But Hitler knew all along that Röhm was homosexual. It was only used as an excuse to get rid of him. Anyway, there’s something seriously queer about the Nazis, even our English teacher said so. Does this interest me? Yes, it does rather.

  Scroll down.

  June, 1934. ‘Night of the Long Knives’: Röhm was arrested and, after refusing an invitation to commit suicide, shot dead in Munich’s Stadelheim prison on 1st July 1934 by the SS.

  So much for Röhm. But imagine issuing invitations for suicide. We are having a suicide party tonight. Please wear appropriate clothing and bring your own weapons. Next?

  ROHMER, Eric (1920–) French film director.

  Can’t be right? My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee? Knee? None of this is relevant.

  EARLY CAREER / BIBLIOGRAPHY / ON-LINE INTERVIEWS / SUMMARIES OF HIS FILMS: Delicate interpretation of the novella by Heinrich von Kleist Die Marquise von O. Directed by Eric Rohmer who also wrote the screenplay (1975) Janus Artemis Films du Losange & United Artists Starring Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz, 102 minutes.

  Kleist? Oh yes, we’re doing one of his plays for A-level. I didn’t know he wrote short stories. He’s difficult. Feels very modern. Not nineteenth century at all. Thomas Mann admired his style. That’s a bad sign.

  Aristocratic Marquise von O. finds herself pregnant but retains no memory of ever having been seduced. She is repudiated by her family. Advertises for the father of her child.

  Advertises? That’s as bad as issuing suicide invitations.

  Distraught, handsome army officer arrives. She refuses to speak to him. Her final capitulation. ‘Why did you repulse me as if I were the devil?’ ‘Because when you first came to me, I took you for an angel.’

  This is nothing but Prussians with crazy codes of honour.

  Latest project . . .

  Scroll down.

  ROEHM, Gustave (1755–1786) eighteenth-century Swiss botanist. Alpine explorer. Lost during the first successful ascent of Mont Blanc. Jacques Balmat, mountaineer and crystal-hunter, Michel-Gabriel Paccard, native of Chamonix and the region’s first physician together with Gustave Roehm decided to find a route to the summit of Mont Blanc. On the afternoon of 7th August 1786, they departed from La Prieuré in the valley, bivouacked between two rocks at the top of the Montagne de la Côte and began their attempt on the summit at 4 am the next day. Their progress crossing the glacier was followed by telescope. Dr Paccard lost his hat on top of the Rochers Rouge. They attacked the final slope at 6.12 pm and reached the summit at 6.23. They took some measurements and began the descent at 6.57 pm. Gustave Roehm was lost in one of the crevasses on the Grand Plateau. His body was never recovered. Balmat returned to La Prieuré the following day leading Paccard, who was snowblind, by the hand.

  Roehm’s research on glaciology and his development with his friend Horace-Bénédict de Saussure of such measuring instruments as the hair hygrometer had considerable influence on Alpine exploration in the period.

  FURTHER READING: Roehm, Gustave, Alpine Plants: Their Varieties and Habitats. Abridged and translated by Katherine Holroyd, Cambridge University Press, 1977 (Original Edition, 1782, 2 vols)

  NEXT PAGE Click here to continue.

  It’s not worth it. Nazis, film directors and a man lost in ice. Who is this man she calls Roehm?

  * * *

  I climbed back into bed, fully clothed and alarmingly aroused. Why? The search had yielded nothing. I was no closer to finding out who Roehm was. I lay flat on my stomach until the heat had passed away. I was forced to do the one thing I found difficult. I was forced to wait.

  * * *

  I monitored every phone call that came in and went out of the house. This was easy to do. The phone had an illuminated green panel, which gave the last number that had called. But the days came and went. He never rang. Luce was constantly in touch, full of her latest, greatest coup. Her textile designs had been chosen, more or less en masse, by an Anglo-French maison de coûture, Lewis and Gautrin. The deal was through. The entire spring collection would be awash with her colours. The show was being presented, first in Paris, then in London and finally in New York. We were all going to be millionaires. I heard my mother laughing in the hallway, then moving away as she fiddled in the studio, cradling the phone on her shoulder.

  Roehm did not ring. Neither her nor me.

  On Thursday she was late back. I had cooked dinner for both of us and eaten mine. I didn’t get up when she came into the sitting room, where I was sunk into the sofa, eating crisps and watching mindless murders on the television.

  ‘Hello, darling. Mmmmm, gross. Crisps.’ She swallowed a handful and sat down on my right leg.

  ‘Get off. You’re crushing me.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She watched the car chase and the shoot-out. Her right breast hung across my line of vision, cutting off half the screen.

  ‘Move. I can’t see.’

  ‘Aren’t we irritable?’

  She pushed me over and lay down beside me. She smelt of turps and linseed oil, but not of cigarettes. I put my arm around her, longing to touch her breast. I had never touched a woman’s breast. Now that she was with Roehm it was easier to look at her simply as a woman and not as my mother. I did some sums, lying there with her in my arms. I was eighteen. She was thirty-three. It was as if the gap between us had suddenly, dramatically narrowed. She took another handful of crisps and stuffed them into her mouth. I leaned over and kissed her ear.

  ‘My sweet love, am I forgiven for missing supper?’

  I laid my head on her shoulder and watched her right nipple, swollen and rising beneath the wool. Then the phone rang. She rolled onto the floor, scattering crisps, and sauntered into the hall. It was eleven twenty on Thursday night. She came back into the room, her eyes still fixed on the television.

  ‘It’s Roehm. For you.’

  My mouth went dry. She took my place on the sofa and seized the packet of crisps.

  ‘Hello.’

  There was a long pause at the other end as if he had already vanished.

  ‘Hello?’ I said again.

  ‘Would tomorrow suit you?’ The same cool, slow voice, disengaged, indifferent.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Meet me at seven thirty in the Earl of Rochester, Old Compton Street. Your mother knows where that is. She tells me that you like the food in L’Escargot.’

  ‘Yeah. I do. OK.’

  ‘Fine. See you tomorrow, then.’

  Click. Hummmmm. Roehm disappeared. I put the phone back in its cradle and bit my lip. When I looked around the door I saw that she had settled down into the hollow I had left and eaten all the crisps. She scrunched the empty bag, disappointed.

  ‘Have we got any more?’ She looked up, childish, demanding.

 
; ‘I’ll go and see. You haven’t eaten any supper, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  I went off to light the gas, shaking my head free of her image. She didn’t ask what I had arranged with Roehm. I wanted to tell her, to boast. She never gave me an opening.

  * * *

  Old Compton Street was not like any other street in Soho. I realized, with a flash of curiosity and panic, as I looked into the video store, that this was London’s gay ghetto. It was a cold wet night, but the street was illuminated, ready, en fête. All the red bulbs flashed and glared around a bevy of leather men suggestively wielding chains and whips on cover after cover of the lurid, empty boxes. There were one or two videos with images of women, some flaunting buttocks and breasts, others wearing uniforms reminiscent of the Waffen SS. I looked inside. A man bristling with silver jewellery and tattoos smiled at my hesitation.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said, ‘can I help you?’

  I fled down the road, looking for the pub. It was an ordinary Victorian pub with stained glass and tiles. Inside the music was turned down to levels that made conversation possible. All the men behind the bar wore white T-shirts and had shaved heads. Every single face turned towards me when I came in; the polished bar reflected my reddening cheeks. I noticed my school scarf with a twinge of horror. I looked like a boy in one of Gide’s novels, much too young and unwittingly asking for it. There was no sign of Roehm.