by William Boyd
The next day, as they were packing their valises for the return to Vienna, he saw Hettie preparing her Coca solution. A precaution, she said, Hoff might still be in a bad mood – he was a very angry man.
* * *
My darling Lysander,
It won’t work. I’m going to ignore your letter. Don’t think of me, think of yourself. Find your health and your good, kind nature again and come home to your girl. I love you, my Darling One, and if I can’t stand by you in your hour of trouble and distress then what kind of a wife would I make you? No, no, a thousand times no! We are meant to be with each other and while I applaud your sweetness and unselfishness in offering to let me ‘renounce my vows’ I will not hear of such a thing again. Take your time, my love, all the time you need – three months more, six months, a year. I will be waiting for you. Everyone tells me that Vienna has the best doctors in the world so I’m sure you are absolutely in the right place to find the right answers. I’m going to tear up your letter and burn it right now (London is beastly cold, I have a fire lit at breakfast). It never happened, you never wrote it, I never read it, my love for you is as constant and sure as the ‘Rock of Gibraltar’ (you know what I mean).
All my fondest love, my darling,
Your own, Blanche.
* * *
The Café Sorgenfrei became their post office. It was a small, dark, rather grimy bohemian place in a little street near the Hoher Markt. Hoff had been banned from the café when he was an art student and had vowed never to set foot in it again, Hettie said, so it was perfect. She would leave messages for Lysander behind the bar – places and times they could meet, when she thought it was safe for him to come to the barn. Lysander communicated with her in the same way. Sometimes he left a message saying simply, ‘I have to see you,’ and gave the name of a shabby hotel near the railway station or overlooking the Danube canal and let her know he had booked a room a couple of days hence, hoping that she could find a way of being there. Invariably, she did and Lysander began to worry that Hoff would grow suspicious of these comings and goings. No, she said, he only ever thinks of one person – himself. As long as he wasn’t inconvenienced by any of her absences he remained entirely indifferent as to what she was doing or her whereabouts.
* * *
The girl of my dreams do you know her?
She smiles ’neath the diamonds of dew
When morning breaks over the moon-mists
And the stars fade away in the blue.
Sometimes in the sunshine I see her,
And hear her low song in the breeze,
Then in her wide eyes glimpse the wonder
The smile from the blue of the seas.
She’s always my beautiful girl
Bewitchingly lovely and true
Perhaps if I name her you’ll know her:
She answers to ‘Love’ – and she’s You.
* * *
Lysander evolved a plan of self-improvement to fill in the days that intervened between his meetings with Hettie. He couldn’t just moon away the hours in cafés writing love poetry so he set himself a diligent programme of self-education. He increased the German lessons with Herr Barth and also began conversation classes in French – his French was at a reasonable standard – with a retired schoolteacher, one Herr Fuchs, who lived a few blocks further up Mariahilfer Strasse.
He made daily visits to Vienna’s many museums, attended the opera and concerts, went to exhibitions in art galleries and wandered the city with his guidebook, going into every church of note that was recommended. From time to time he would take a day trip out of town to tramp the pathways of the Wienerwald or stride along mountain tracks heading for distant peaks, map in one hand, a stout ash walking stick in the other.
Wolfram eventually quit the pension – to Frau K’s evident pleasure – rejoining his regiment for extensive manoeuvres in Galicia. It was something of an emotional farewell, but he and Lysander resolved to stay in touch however their respective lives might separate them. Wolfram vowed to come by on his next leave – ‘We’ll go to Spittelberg, get drunk and find ourselves two lively young girls.’ The lodger who replaced him was a middle-aged engineer called Josef Plischke. Taciturn, upright and faintly pompous he was the perfect companion for Frau K at her dinners. Lysander changed his pension rates to breakfast only, pleading poverty rather than terminal boredom. He had to budget, alas, he told Frau K, and it was true – his funds were diminishing. His affair with Hettie was costing him money – he paid for everything as she was entirely dependent on Hoff for money. Hoff, Lysander learned, was a surprisingly wealthy man, enriched by an inheritance from his late parents as well as by the increasingly high prices his paintings were fetching.
Lysander sent a telegram to his mother and asked if she could wire him another £20.
* * *
Winter arrived with full force in December – heavy frosts and snow flurries – and the stove in the old barn, for all its redoubtable size, proved an inadequate source of warmth. When he stayed there, Lysander would haul the mattress off the bed and drag it through to the main room, laying it in front of the stove, twin doors open so the flames could be seen.
Hettie found a book of pornographic Japanese prints in Hoff’s library and brought them to the barn so they could experiment. She took his penis in her mouth. He tried and failed to sodomize her. They had a go at emulating the contorted positions illustrated, studying the pages as if they were architects inspecting a blueprint.
‘Your leg is meant to be over my shoulder not under my armpit.’
‘I’ll break my leg if I put it there.’
‘Are you inside me? I can’t feel you.’
‘I’m about three inches away. I can’t reach, it’s impossible.’
She still chose to undress him, loving the moment, she said, when she could tug down his trousers and drawers and his ‘boy’ would sway free.
One day she said to him as they lay in bed in their shabby hotel overlooking the Danube canal, ‘Why don’t you kiss my breasts? Every man I’ve known likes to do that.’
Lysander thought: all the better to keep anorgasmia at bay – but said, ‘I don’t know why I don’t . . . Maybe it seems a bit infantile to me.’
‘Nothing wrong with being infantile. Come here.’
She sat up in bed and, at her beckoning, he nuzzled up to her. She cupped her breast and carefully offered the nipple – pert between two fingers – to his mouth.
‘See? It’s nice. I like it anyway.’
* * *
Hettie insisted that he come to the New Year party at Hoff’s studio. Lysander was very reluctant at first but Hettie encouraged him.
‘It’s even less suspicious if you come, don’t you see? He doesn’t suspect a thing. You have to come – I want to kiss you at midnight.’
So Lysander duly went and felt out of place at this loud gathering of artists, patrons and gallery owners. He hugged the corners of the large studio, content to keep his eyes on Hettie as she patrolled the room in her Balinese pantaloons and chequerboard jacket and her tinkling shoes. Udo Hoff didn’t seem to know who he was – several times their eyes met, Hoff’s blankly taking in another stranger in his house.
Immediately after midnight Hettie led him down a dark passageway bulky with hung coats, scarves and hats and kissed him, her tongue deep in his mouth, his hands on her breasts. Seconds later the light went on and Hoff appeared, evidently quite drunk. Hettie was searching the coats.
‘Ah there you are, mein Liebling, Mr Rief is going – he wanted to say hello and goodbye.’
‘It’s easier to find a coat when you’ve got the light on.’
‘Mr Rief couldn’t find the switch.’
Lysander and Hoff shook hands, Hoff now gazing at him intently, though a little unfocussed.
‘Thank you for a wonderful party,’ Lysander said.
‘You’re the Englishman, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. That’s me.’
‘A happy new year t
o you. How is your cure going?’
‘I’m pretty well cured – I should say. Yes, I think that’s fair comment.’
Hoff congratulated him and then demanded Hettie help him find more champagne, he said. When his back was turned, Hettie blew Lysander a kiss and left with Hoff. Five minutes later Lysander managed to find his coat and hat and he wandered outside, still trembling from the narrow escape. A love affair wasn’t an arc, as he’d heard it described, it was a far more variable line on a graph – undulating or jagged. It wasn’t smooth, however much pleasure one was deriving from it, day by day. He headed down the drive. Snow was falling, big soft flakes, the road to the station whitening in front of his eyes, unsmirched by wheel tracks, the world going quiet and muffled as a few final, distant bells continued to ring in 1914.
* * *
‘I think you’re right,’ Bensimon said. ‘We’ve done everything – been very thorough. We might as well admit it and call it a day.’
‘I can’t thank you enough, doctor. I’ve learned so much.’
‘You’re absolutely convinced the problem has completely gone.’
Lysander paused – sometimes he wondered if Bensimon had any inkling that he and Hettie Bull were lovers. How could he tell him that Hettie had proved that his problem had gone, dozens and dozens of times? She was still Bensimon’s patient, of course.
‘Let’s say recent experience – recent experiences – have convinced me all is functioning normally.’
Bensimon smiled – man to man – letting his inscrutable professional mask slip for a moment.
‘I’m glad Vienna provided other compensations,’ he said, dryly, walking him to the door. ‘I’m going to write up your case if you don’t mind – anorgasmia cures are worth documenting – and present it as a paper at our next conference, maybe publish it in some learned journal.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be thoroughly disguised by an initial or a pseudonym. Only you and I will know who’s being discussed.’
‘I’d like to read it,’ Lysander said. ‘I’ll give you my address – my family home, I can always be reached there.’
They shook hands and Lysander thanked him again. He liked Dr Bensimon, he had told him his most intimate secrets and he felt he could trust the man absolutely – and yet he had to acknowledge that he didn’t really know him at all.
He settled his final account with the stern secretary, earning a wan smile as they shook hands in farewell, and he took his now familiar stroll from the consulting rooms on Wasagasse along the Franzenring. This is the last time, he realized, a little saddened but at the same time pleased that his essential purpose in coming to Vienna had been so thoroughly achieved. What was it Wolfram had said? A ‘river of sex’ flowing underneath the city. That had been his salvation – along with Dr Bensimon’s Parallelism. He was well, life should be simpler, the way ahead obvious yet, since coming here, everything was a hundred times more complex. He had Hettie in Vienna and Blanche in London and absolutely no idea what he should do.
He walked past the big café – Café Landtmann – and realized that in all these months of passing it he’d never once gone in and so retraced his steps. It was roomy and plain, a little faded and grander than the cafés he chose to frequent – a place to come in the summer, he thought, and sit outside on the pavement. He took a seat in a booth with a good view of the traffic whizzing by on the Ring, lit a cigarette, ordered a coffee and a brandy and opened his notebook. Autobiographical Investigations by Lysander Rief. He flicked through the pages, full of notes, descriptions of dreams, a few sketches, drafts of poems – it was another legacy of his stay in Vienna. Bensimon had urged him to continue writing in it as part of his therapy. ‘It may seem a bit banal and inconsequential,’ Bensimon had said, ‘but you’ll come back to it once a few months have gone by and be fascinated.’
The café was quiet, caught in that lull between the bustle of lunch, the great Viennese punctuation mark in the day, and the first arrival of those seeking coffee and cakes in the afternoon. Waiters polished cutlery and folded napkins, others flapped out clean linen tablecloths or leaned on their serving stations, gossiping. From somewhere in the rear came the ceramic clatter of plates being stacked. The maître d’ combed his hair discreetly, using a silver tray propped against the wall as a mirror. Lysander looked around – very few customers – but then his eye was caught by a man a few tables away, wearing a tweed suit and an old-fashioned cravat tie, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. He was in his late fifties, Lysander guessed, and had fine greying hair combed flat against his head; his beard was completely white and trimmed with finical neatness. Lysander put his notebook down and sauntered over.
‘Dr Freud,’ he said. ‘Forgive me for interrupting but I just wanted to shake your hand. I’ve been most successfully treated by one of your ardent disciples, Dr Bensimon.’
Freud looked up, folded his newspaper and rose to his feet. The two men shook hands.
‘Ah, John Bensimon,’ Freud said, ‘my other Englishman. We’ve had our disagreements, but he’s a good man.’
‘Well, whatever they may be I’ve had the most rewarding psychoanalytical sessions with him. I know how much he respects you – he refers to you constantly.’
‘Are you English?’
‘Yes. Well, half. And half Austrian.’
‘Which explains your excellent German.’
‘Thank you.’ Lysander took a polite step backwards ready to take his leave. ‘It’s an honour to shake your hand. I won’t keep you from your newspaper further.’
But Freud seemed not to want to let the conversation end. He stayed him with a little gesture of his cigar.
‘How long have you been seeing Dr Bensimon?’
‘Several months.’
‘And you’ve finished?’
‘I feel – let’s say – as far as I’m concerned my psychosomatic problem is a thing of the past.’
Freud drew on his cigar, thinking. ‘That’s very swift,’ he said, ‘impressive.’
‘It was his theory of Parallelism that finally made all the difference. Remarkable.’
‘Oh “Parallelism”,’ Freud almost scoffed. ‘I’ll make no comment. Good day to you, sir. I wish you well.’
The great man himself, Lysander thought, going back to his seat, pleased he’d had the courage to approach him. Definitely an encounter for the memoirs.
* * *
He hadn’t seen Hettie for four days and he was missing her badly. In fact, he calculated, he hadn’t seen her for a week . . . It was the longest period since the affair began that they had been apart. He scribbled a note to her and decided to go at once to the Café Sorgenfrei. Perhaps there would be something there from her, also. Out in the streets it was cold but not freezing and the new year’s snow was turning to slush, the tyres of the passing automobiles splattering the brown muck on the legs of pedestrians who ventured too close to the roadway.
Watching the passing motor cars carefully, Lysander wondered, not for the first time, if he should learn to drive. Perhaps that could be another part of his Viennese education – then he realized he could hardly afford the price of driving lessons. He had just paid Frau K his next month’s rent in advance and found himself left with only just over a hundred crowns. He’d cancelled his German and French classes until further notice and had telegraphed his mother once again for more money. It made him feel inadequate – why should his mother be subsidizing his love affair with Hettie, he thought. He admitted to himself that he’d been living these last weeks in a self-imposed decision-free limbo, happy to drift in the here-and-now. The problem was – and he had to face it as his money ran out and a return to London beckoned – that he was finding it very hard to imagine a future without Hettie. Was this the beginning? Sexual infatuation shading into love? And yet, during all the weeks of the affair, despite all the endearments and confessions of powerful emotion on both their parts, she had never once spoken of leaving Hoff.
What to do? . . . he pushed his
way through the swing door of the Café Sorgenfrei and elbowed aside the heavy velvet curtain that kept the draughts out. Grey strata of smoke hung in the air and made his eyes smart as he approached the bar to hand over his envelope. There was the young barman in his puce waistcoat – what was his name? – and his preposterous dragoon-guardsman’s whiskers.
‘Good afternoon, Herr Rief,’ he said, taking Lysander’s letter. ‘And we have a little package for you.’ He reached below the bar and drew out a flat parcel tied with string. Lysander felt a small surge of joy. Bless Hettie – they must have been thinking of each other, simultaneously. He ordered a glass of Riesling and took the package over to a table by the window. He opened it carefully to see that it contained a libretto. Andromeda und Perseus eine Oper in vier Akten von Gottlieb Toller. The cover was a colour reproduction of Hoff’s poster – Hettie in all her nakedness . . . He riffled through the pages, imagining a note would fall out and when nothing did he then turned back to the title page to look for an inscription. There it was; ‘For Lysander, with all my love, Andromeda.’ And below that in a series of distinct lines, he read,
There are times when I am wholly confident in the destiny of HB
But there are other times when I find that I am
not completely honest
Superficial
Facing-both-ways
Cowardly.