‘Thank God . . .’ I said.
‘Will she do it?’ asked the Princess, still a little out of breath.
‘What did she say?’ asked Billie. Now she was slightly more involved; no longer politely sympathetic as she had been in the afternoon. Billie the trooper . . . I reported. Then all three of us danced.
‘Terrific!’ said Lydia. ‘When will her letter arrive? Today’s Tuesday. Wednesday . . . Thursday . . . In three days?’ We all three shouted with happiness. I felt how sweet it is to do good, revenge paid back with interest, and love your neighbour as the hammer loves the anvil. ‘Can I drive the young ladies to the pasture?’
We went to eat.
‘Billie!’ I said, ‘if old Geheimrat Goethe could see you! Watering your wine! “Where did you pick up that revolting habit!” he said to the poet Grillparzer, when he saw him doing that. Or did he say it to someone else? But say it he did.’
‘I hardly drink at all,’ said Billie, and her voice sounded like a silver ring falling into a tumbler.
‘More than Margot?’ asked the Princess.
‘Margot,’ said Billie and laughed. ‘I asked her once what she thought she would do if she ever got drunk. Because she never has yet. She said, I imagine being drunk would be like this – I’d lie under the table, with my hat on crooked, and I’d keep going miaow!’
We drank to that with a light red wine; Billie swallowed bravely, the Princess looked at me, tasted it and said, ‘I don’t really like red wine. But if the late Monsieur Bordeaux ever got to hear of it . . .’ We talked about Zurich again and about the little creature, and Billie became animated, probably from watching us drinking. The Princess looked at her from the corner of her eye, well pleased.
I stifled a yawn. ‘Are you sending everyone to bed, then?’ asked the Princess.
‘No, I’ll write a letter to the woman first. You go on with your crossword!’ They did. I wrote.
What was the matter with the typewriter tonight! Sometimes it has its little moods and the levers get caught up, the keys don’t work, the ribbon sticks and I feel like thumping it with my first . . .
‘Ha-hey!’ called the Princess from next door. She was familiar with these developments, and I wrote on more quietly and a little ashamed of myself. There, it was done. Perhaps the letter was overweight . . . Haven’t we got any scales?
‘I’ll take it to the post now!’
It was raining. I enjoy walking in a cool rain like that . . . How does the saying go? There’s no such thing as bad weather, there are only good clothes. Well, there is such a thing as bad weather; there is unsuccessful weather, empty weather, and sometimes no weather at all. The rain moistened my lips; I tasted it and took a deep breath: there’s nothing to it, holidays, Sweden, the Princess and Billie – but it’s one of the moments you’ll remember later, and say to yourself: yes, you were happy then. I was, and I was grateful for it.
Back again.
‘Well, did you solve it?’ No, they were still working at it, and a bitter quarrel had just erupted between them. ‘The father of church history’ . . . they must have done something silly, because for this one clue they still had eight syllables left, among them e-di-son, who, although he had done much else in his life, and had transformed his time, surely hadn’t fathered church history . . .
‘Do that one later!’ I said.
‘When later?’ asked Billie. ‘We’re sleeping later.’
‘Billie’s sleeping with me tonight anyway,’ said the Princess. ‘You can sleep next door in the ladies’ boudoir.’
‘Hurray!’ the two shouted.
‘Do you mind very much?’ asked Billie.
‘But . . .!’
She ran off to fetch her things, all those little bits and pieces every woman needs to keep her happy.
‘She likes you, my son,’ said the Princess. ‘I know her. Isn’t she a really nice person?’ The Princess began to move things around and to arrange Billie’s room. There was great excitement.
‘What shall we do with the flowers?’
‘Put them on the dressing-table!’
It wasn’t an old Bordeaux – but it was a heavy Bordeaux. The little room was dimly lit from next door, it was so warm and secret, and we cuddled each other.
‘Already?’ I asked. The ladies wanted to go to sleep.
‘But leave the door open when you’re in bed – so I can hear what you’re saying!’ I went and undressed for bed. Then I knocked.
‘Will you . . .!’ said the Princess’ voice. ‘Disturbing honorable ladies at their toilette! Voyeur! Lothario! Bluebeard! What a race of idiots!’
But where was my eau de cologne? It was in there – that wasn’t on either! Not for a gentleman. I gave another knock. Rustling.
‘Yes?’ I went in.
They were lying in bed. Billie was in mine: in loud pyjamas, with hundreds of flowers blossoming on them, she looked like the favorite wife of a Maharajah . . . she was smiling coolly at her crossword. She was almost beautiful. ‘What do you want?’ asked the Princess.
‘My eau . . .’
‘We used it all up!’ she said. ‘Now don’t cry – I’ll buy you some more tomorrow!’
I growled. ‘Did you finish your crossword?’
‘If we need you, we’ll call you . . . You can come and say good night to us!’ I went over to them, and politely wished them both a good night, with two low bows.
‘Billie, what a lovely perfume!’ She said nothing; I knew what it was. The perfume was ‘working’ on her skin – it was not only the perfume, it was her. And she had chosen well for herself. The Princess got a kiss from me, a very slightly regretful kiss. Then I went. The door stayed open.
‘Semi-precious stone,’ I heard Billie saying. ‘Semi-precious stone . . . Let’s see: sapphire . . . no. Ruby . . . no. Opal . . . no. Lydia!’
‘Topaz!’ I called out from my room.
‘Yes – topaz! What a clever boy you are!’ said the Princess.
‘No, no, don’t you write it in – let me –’ They were squabbling, the bedding rustled, paper scrunched . . . ‘Eeek –!’ Billie squealed. Something tore.
‘Silly noodle!’ said the Princess. ‘Right – now we’ll copy it out again on this bit of paper . . . Oh-oh, something’s wrong! We crossed out some wrong syllables . . .’
‘Doctor Parchment solves puzzles without the aid of a pencil!’ I called out. They weren’t even listening. They were probably hard at work. Pause.
I heard the Princess, ‘Puff . . . Did you ever see anything like it? What’s Puff?’
‘Breath!’ said Billie and I at the same time. It was like a secret understanding between us. They rustled some more.
‘That’s completely wrong! The essence of all sensory perception – sensory perception . . .’ Now they were obviously at their wits’ ends, because they had both gone very quiet. I couldn’t hear anything.
‘I don’t know . . .’ said the Princess. ‘It’s bound to be a misprint!’
‘You don’t get misprints in crossword puzzles!’ I called.
‘You keep out of it, clever-dick!’
‘Let me . . .’
‘Give it here . . .’
‘Do you have any idea?’
Both together: ‘We don’t know.’
‘You need some adult assistance,’ I said. ‘Let me have a crack at it.’ And I got up and went in.
I took a chair and sat down near the Princess. For an instant, the chair had hesitated in my hand; it had wanted to go to Billie’s side.
‘Right – let’s see then!’ I read it, dropped the paper, picked it up again, started again on a fresh piece of paper. They were looking at me mockingly. ‘Well?’
‘It’s not that easy!’
‘He can’t do it either!’ said Billie.
‘Let’s have a go at the red wine first!’ I said, and I did.
‘That’s very nice,’ said the Princess. ‘Wine-stains are every housewife’s favorite, particularly on sheets. What a pig!�
�� She was talking about me!
‘You can wash them out,’ I grumbled. ‘Salt-stains are removed by pouring red wine over them,’ proclaimed the Princess. They both lay on their tummies and pored over their newspaper. They got nowhere. Billie had swept her hair back off her forehead and looked like a baby. Like a picture of Billie as a baby. What a round face she had.
‘Ant . . . Antlers!’ shouted Billie. ‘Antlers for Hunting-trophies! There, we hadn’t got that one before! But where does Chrys-chrys . . .’
‘Me too!’ Now I was half-lying on the bed with the Princess, concentrating hard on the pencil-scribbles.
‘Chrysoprase!’ I said suddenly. ‘Chrysoprase! Give it to me!’ There was an admiring silence from the two of them, and I basked in my cultivated vocabulary. We listened. A gust of wind rattled the window-panes, and the rain drummed in the night outside.
‘It’s cold . . .’ I said.
‘Come in with me!’ said the Princess.
‘You don’t mind, do you, Billie?’ Billie didn’t. I lay very still beside the Princess.
‘Character from Shakespeare’s Tempest . . .’ Gradually Lydia’s warmth reached me. Something softly ran down my back. Billie was smoking and looking at the ceiling. I put my hand over – she took it and stroked me gently. Her ring flashed dimly. We were lying together like young animals – comfortably together, happy to be together: me in the middle, sheltered. Billie started to snarl.
‘Why are you snarling?’ asked Lydia.
‘Just snarling,’ said Billie. Character from Shakespeare’s Tempest . . . Was it the word? The word tempest? When bees hear other bees buzzing angrily, they become angry themselves. Was it the word tempest? It started up in my shoulder-blades. I stretched very slightly, and the Princess looked at me. ‘What’s the matter?’ No one spoke. Billie clicked my fingernails. We had dropped the newspaper. It was completely quiet.
‘Give Billie a kiss!’ said the Princess half-aloud. My diaphragm lifted – is that the seat of the soul? I propped myself up and kissed Billie. First of all, she just let me, then it was as though she was drinking me. Long, long . . . Then I kissed the Princess. That was like coming home from foreign lands.
Tempest.
It began as a light breeze – we were ‘beside ourselves’, because each of us was part of the others. It was a game, childish curiosity, delight at another’s embrace . . . There were two of me, mirror images; three pairs of eyes saw. They flicked open the fan of womankind. And Billie was a different Billie. I was amazed.
Her features, her always slightly alien features, relaxed; her eyes were moist, tension disappeared and she reached out. Her pyjamas blossomed brightly. Nothing was planned, everything seemed natural – as though it was meant to be like that. And then we lost ourselves.
It was as though someone had been standing for a long time on the starting line with his bobsleigh, and suddenly the sleigh was released – it flew down towards the valley! We surrendered to the power which weighs man down and exalts him, to his lowest point and to his highest . . . My mind was empty. Pleasure heightened pleasure, then the dream became clearer, and I sank into them, and they into me – we fled from the world’s loneliness to each other. There was a grain of wickedness about it, a dash of irony, no romantic languishing, a lot of will, some experience and a great deal of innocence. We whispered; we spoke first about each other, then about what we were doing, then there were no more words. Not for a moment did the force that drove us to one another diminish. Not even for an instant did a crack appear. A strong sense of sweetness filled us, and now we were conscious, fully and completely conscious. I have forgotten a lot of things about this episode – but one is still with me today: that we loved each other most of all with our eyes.
‘Turn the light off!’ said Lydia. The lights went out, first the big chandelier on the ceiling, then the little bedside lamp.
We lay quite still. There was a faint glimmer at the window. Billie’s heart was pounding, she breathed heavily, at my side the Princess didn’t move. A scent rose up from the women’s hair, and mixed with another, subtler one, perhaps the flowers or the perfume. Gently Billie’s hand released mine.
‘Go,’ said the Princess almost inaudibly.
Then I stood next door in Billie’s room, staring in front of me. Cock-a-doodle-doo – it went inside me, but soon stopped, and a strong feeling of tenderness wafted back towards them. I lay down.
Were they talking? I couldn’t hear them. I got up again and crawled under the shower. A sweet tiredness came over me – and an almost irresistible urge to go to them and put roses . . . but where can you get hold of roses at night . . . what folly. Someone was at the door.
‘You can say good night!’ said the Princess. I went in.
Billie looked at me with a smile; it was a clean smile. The Princess lay beside her, so quiet. I went up to each of them, and kissed them both softly on the lips. ‘Good night . . .’ and ‘Good night . . .’ The trees rustled loudly outside. For a second I stopped by the bed.
‘How did all that come about so suddenly?’ asked the Princess quietly.
Chapter Five
That was some throw! said Hans –
and he threw his wife out of the window
1
It was a day such as you usually get only at the end of summer: bright, heavy and windless. We lay on the shore by the lake.
A few yards away, a boat was bobbing around, our bathing-boat – the water gurgled quietly against the wood, up and down, up and down . . . If you put your hand in the water, you felt a tiny shock of cold, then you took it out again, and the droplets dried in the air. I sucked on a blade of grass. The Princess had her eyes closed.
‘Today is the day before yesterday,’ she said. That was how she calculated time, seeing as we were leaving the day after next, then today was the day before yesterday.
‘Where do you suppose she is now?’ I asked. The Princess looked at her watch. ‘She’s between Malmö and Trälleborg now,’ she said, ‘in an hour she’ll be boarding the ferry.’ Then we were silent again. Billie – I thought – Billie . . .
She had gone – quiet, happy, cheerful – and nothing had happened, nothing had happened. I was glad; it had cast no shadow. Thank God. I looked over to the Princess. She must have felt it; she opened her eyes.
‘What’s with Frau Collin? She’s not natural. What sort of egg did she hatch from? The cat must have laid it!’
Frau Collin hadn’t written – and we wanted to leave. We had to leave; our holiday was at an end. Telephone again? After all, in the end . . .
‘Irritating woman,’ I railed to myself. ‘We’ve got to get the kid out of here! Bloody hell . . .’
‘Poppa, you’re an ambassador for your country!’ said the Princess with dignity, as if the Swedish trees could hear us. ‘You should remember your manners!’ I used a word of one syllable. Whereupon the Princess splashed me with some Lake Maelar. I wanted to throw her in the lake. And found myself in it.
I snorted water at her like an elephant, she threw matches at me . . . then it all subsided. I crept back up, and we sat together peacefully once more.
‘But what are we really going to do?’ I asked dripping. ‘Wait? We can’t wait any longer! You have to be back on Tuesday, and they’re lying in wait for me as well. A man has got to start working again some time! I’m just wasting valuable time here with you . . .’
She raised her arm threateningly. I moved away a little.
‘I just thought. But shall we phone? Yes?’
‘Let’s first finish our swim,’ said the Princess. ‘And when we get back to Gripsholm, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Now – hupp!’ We swam.
‘Listen,’ I puffed, ‘she won’t do it, Frau Collin. She’s probably had second thoughts about it – I got the impression she doesn’t really want the little thing at home with her – maybe she has one of those wonderfully regulated lives . . .’ The Princess pinched me in the leg. ‘Or she doesn’t trust us, and thinks we’l
l kidnap her daughter. But she trusted Frau Adriani. Well, you’ll see! Women, really! But I’ll tell you this, if she hasn’t written today, I’ll never do anything for other people’s children again. Not for other people’s! Not for yours! Not for mine! God!’
‘Poppa,’ said the Princess, ‘for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been holding forth about what you’re going to do, and most of the time it turns out completely different. But men are like that. A bit deluded!’
‘I’ll . . .’
‘Yes, you will. Take the future tense away from you, and you won’t have much left.’
‘Woman!’
‘Same to you!’
Harrgh – and the whole lake started to pitch and toss, because we were having a furious sea-battle. We swam back to shore.
On the way back to the castle Lydia said, ‘My boss hasn’t written at all . . . I wonder if they’ve sold him to a bordello in Abbazia?’
‘Do you think there’s any demand . . .’
‘Cheri, have you seen the dachshund anywhere?’
‘Your dachshund bag?’
‘I thought he was under my bed. He barks at night.’ We went inside.
The Princess whistled like a decoy bird. What was it?
The letter had arrived – a fat letter. She tore open the envelope, and I took it away from her. The pages fluttered to the ground. We picked them up and shouted for joy. There was everything we needed.
‘That’s marvellous! And now! What now?’
‘The best thing would be,’ said the Princess, ‘to go straight there and get the girl out of those poisonous clutches. What are we waiting for?’
‘Let’s have lunch first, and then straight afterwards . . . A row is always good for the digestion.’
We were just eating our dessert of stewed cranberries when we heard a din outside the door that indicated something unusual was afoot. We dropped our spoons and listened. Well?
The lady of the castle came in; she looked like a special late edition.
‘There is a child outside,’ she said, and looked at us with a slight trace of suspicion, ‘a little girl – she doesn’t know your names, but she says she wants to go to the lady and gentleman who gave her a doll, and she cries all the time and is so red in her face . . . Do you know the child?’
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