Come Dance With Me

by Russell Hoban

  ‘Maybe she’s more receptive after midnight,’ I said. We went into the galleries and saw paintings by Klimt and Knopfler and Schiele. The one that really got to me was Schiele’s Death and the Maiden. I can still see it when I close my eyes. The maiden is a big sturdy girl who looks well past her maidenhood, she might even be pregnant. She’s sprawling into Death’s arms, her eyes are open and she seems to be thinking, ‘What the hell, why not?’ Death’s right hand is clutching her left shoulder and his left hand is pressing her head against his chest. Maybe he’s kissing her hair. I think he is.

  ‘Come away from there,’ said Adam. ‘Don’t let him catch your eye.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll come after me today,’ I said. ‘The girl in the picture is ready for him but I’m not.’

  ‘He’s the one who decides who’s ready,’ said Adam. When we were outside in the twilight he sang me the Schubert song ‘Death and the Maiden’, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’. ‘Pass by, ah! pass by, go, wild boneman!’ says the girl. ‘I am still young, go, dear, and do not touch me.’ His natural voice was a baritone but he sang the girl’s words in such a way that it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She was so young, so scared, so desperate to live! Death was nothing to the stone sphinxes but they seemed to be paying close attention in the twilight.

  ‘Das Mädchen isn’t ready to go,’ said Adam, but der Tod has heard all that before and he means to have his way with her. ‘Give me your hand, you fair and tender creature,’ he says. ‘I am a friend and come not to punish. Be of good courage! I am not wild, you will be sleeping gently in my arms.’ He sang the Death part in a very low voice, very measured — it was like the tolling of a bell made of shadows.

  It was getting colder as the sky grew dark and the lights below us made me feel colder still as we walked down the Lower Belvedere. We went on to Zu den Drei Hacken in the Stephansdom Quarter for Wiener schnitzel and beer and Marillenschnaps, then we walked to the borrowed flat where Adam was staying. I looked up at the sky and found the Plough and the North Star; as long as I can do that I feel at home wherever I am.

  I like being in strangers’ places. The furniture was old and brown and highly varnished, there were a lot of books, there was a framed photograph of Louise Brooks as Lulu, there was a lamp with a red shade on the bedside table and through the windows I could see the spires of the cathedral. I was excited and nervous — I was afraid that at any moment the scene would freeze like a photograph and be taken away from me. I wanted us to be naked and safe in each other’s arms.

  Adam lit a stick of sandalwood incense and stuck it in the top of a miniature skull, then he put on a Django Reinhardt LP. ‘Nuages’ was one of the tracks and we drifted with it and had more Marillenschnaps. The red-shaded lamp made a pinky glow while we took our clothes off. Adam was lean and muscular with a sharp hawk-like face, he looked as if he was made for climbing mountains and maybe falling off them. His nakedness made my heart go out to him. The music was actually saying things that words couldn’t although I did say, ‘Am I better than a sphinx?’ and Adam said, ‘You’re better than anything.’ People speak of ‘making love’ when they talk about the sexual act. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. This time I thought it was. When we finally rolled apart and lay there catching our breath he said, ‘Trees are dangerous, you know.’

  I said, ‘Actually, I haven’t had any trouble with them so far.’

  ‘You’ve heard of the Erlkonig, the Erlking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘His name means Alderking but he hangs out in birches also. He goes where he wants.’

  ‘So what about him? What’s his thing?’

  ‘He and his daughters, they make people dead.’

  ‘Right. I’m not around alders or birches very much but I’ll be careful. Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘My grandfather was photographing birches on the Teufelsmoor, the Devil’s Moor near Worpswede one Christmas. He was found dead among those trees.’

  ‘What killed him?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’ll sing you a song.’ He climbed out of bed naked, picked up a guitar, and sang ‘Herr Oluf’ and translated it for me. ‘Nobody is safe anywhere, really,’ he said.

  ‘I feel safe being unsafe with you,’ I said. ‘Come back to bed.’ He did and we made love some more and fell asleep and I dreamt that Death stepped out of the Egon Schiele painting and made a pass at me.

  When I got back to the Inter-Continental next morning I was told that Sid was dead. He’d jumped off the tenth-storey balcony some time during the night. He’d stuck a note to the balcony railing: ‘I’m catching a ride with Anubis.’ I hadn’t had any kind of premonition or whatever it is that I sometimes get. The last time I saw him he didn’t look like a photograph. Maybe I should have felt guilty about going off with Adam but I didn’t.

  We still had the gig to do. Jimmy Wicks and I took over the songs that Sid would have done. When I saw Adam that evening I felt that I’d made a choice but I didn’t want to push it. If he’d asked me to drop everything and go away with him I’d have done it. I gave him my address and telephone number in London. ‘Give me yours,’ I said, ‘so we can stay in touch.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said. ‘My wife is very jealous.’

  ‘Your wife,’ I said.

  ‘She doesn’t mind what I do when I’m touring,’ he said, ‘but she doesn’t like it when I get phone calls at home.’ I looked at him and yes, he was like a photograph.

  I was thinking about that when Elias brought me back to the present. ‘Can you sing “Herr Oluf” in German?’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘just the first verse:’

  Herr Oluf reitet spat und weit

  zu bieten auf seine Hochzeitleut.

  Herr Oluf rides late and far

  to invite guests to his wedding.

  Da tanzten die Elfen auf grunem Sand,

  Erlkonigs Tochter reicht ihm die Hand.

  There dance the elves on a green bank,

  the Erlking’s daughter reaches out her hand to him.

  Wilkommen, Herr Oluf, komm tanze mit mir,

  zwei goldene sporen schenke ich dir.

  Welcome, Herr Oluf, come dance with me,

  two golden spurs I give you.

  Elias answered for Herr Oluf:

  Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,

  denn morgen ist mein Hochzeittag.”

  I may not dance, I don’t want to dance,

  tomorrow is my wedding day.

  ‘Your voice …’ he said.

  ‘My voice what?’

  ‘It’s like my mother’s. I could see the alders and the birches, I could hear the hoof-beats splashing through the swamp.’

  I didn’t say anything. Hearing that song come out of me had been strange. And the dead man his mother had found among the trees had undoubtedly been Adam’s grandfather.

  ‘I’m thinking about how we met,’ said Elias. ‘How is it that you’re a patron of the Royal Academy?’

  ‘Goth rock isn’t a for ever thing, Elias, and the people who do it don’t always stay the same year after year. Sometimes they change.’

  ‘Maybe their luck changes too.’

  ‘Why’d you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know, the words just came out of my mouth.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘I have a rehearsal to get to.’

  ‘Can I come along?’

  I looked at him. Sixty-two but a little like a schoolboy asking for a date. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘The sooner we get through it, the sooner we get through it.’

  ‘Through what, the rehearsal?’

  ‘Not that — this.’

  ‘And what would you say this is?’

  ‘A mistake, probably. Let’s go.’

  4

  Anneliese Newman

  22 January 2003. So. Now I have ninety-two years, that is how it is. The years lie one on top of another like a wob
bly stack of plates. All of these plates have on them life-pictures and thought-pictures amd on the topmost plate I sit. When the stack topples, down I come and I am dead. The plates are all shattered, the pictures scattered in little sharp-edged pieces. Where will those little pieces go when I am dead? Maybe to people who are not dead; they will find pictures and bits of pictures in their heads and they won’t know what they mean, any more than I do with some of the little pieces in my head. Look, here is the moon, here are mountains, here is the sea, here are two sphinxes.

  Why did I like to sing ‘Herr Oluf’ to my son? I think much about the Erlking’s daughter, how she appears not always the same, is not always to be recognised. I thought he might hear not in the words but in my voice that the Erlking’s daughter is what pulls you away from where you thought to go. From where it seemed you were meant to go. And maybe you want to go with her, maybe she brings you not to Death but to something new. Maybe if Herr Oluf had gone with her he would not have ridden home dead. Sometimes I talk nonsense, this comes of living too much alone.

  That man I ran away with, that tenor. Schlange, Schinken, Schwenk. Peter Schwenk. Maybe now he is dead, not everyone lives so long as I. Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, he was Belmonte in the Susquehanna Opera production and he promised me I should one day be Constanze but I never rose above ‘Turkish woman’. Not a good man, really, not a nice man but I left my husband and my children and went with him. Now I am here in this place that stinks of old women and I have little pieces of pictures in my head, yes? What is the world but little pieces of pictures and who can see a whole one?

  5

  Elias Newman

  22 January 2003. The whole time we were in the taxi we didn’t talk much, and when we did it was only to point out this or that or comment on what we were passing. I still wanted to know about her reaction to The Cyclops but I never found a way to ask, because even as little as I knew Christabel I sensed that a wrong word could bring the shutters down.

  From time to time I’ve tried my hand at poetry. Some years ago I published a little collection with Obelisk. Litanies and Laments was the title, and the name I used was Rodney Spoor. I think they printed fifty copies, of which eight or nine were sold and the rest remaindered. Fortunately I hadn’t quit my day job. I have a reason for mentioning this which will shortly be apparent.

  The strangeness of being with Christabel Alderton was brought home to me geographically in our expedition to the rehearsal studio in Bermondsey. In all the years I’d lived in London I’d never ventured into that part of it but I was heartened to see that the taxi did not fall off the edge of the world. There were glimpses of Waterloo Station and the London Eye, a few brief accelerations, many standstills and one or two U-turns. Signs indicated London Bridge but in time we achieved Jamaica Road and turned off into St James Road. Clements Road appeared and open gates, beyond which stood a tall directory of what was on offer at the Tower Bridge Business Complex.

  ‘We want Building D,’ said Christabel to our driver. We were then drawn into an anonymity of large brick warehouse-looking buildings with giant yellow letters distinguishing one from another. London as I knew it seemed far away.

  ‘Doesn’t seem very musical around here,’ I said.

  ‘Atmosphere is for tourists,’ said Christabel. ‘This is where the real thing gets put together. You’ve heard of Duran Duran?’

  ‘I’ve seen the name. Are they the real thing?’

  ‘They rehearse here. George Michael?’

  ‘Didn’t he die?’

  ‘That was Freddie Mercury.’

  ‘Right. George Michael is the one who was had up for cottaging, yes?’

  ‘Yes. He rehearses here too.’

  ‘What does he rehearse?’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg.’

  ‘Not on the first date.’

  ‘This isn’t a date, remember?’ We were now at Building D. ‘Waterloo Sunset Studios are in here.’

  We were admitted by a pretty young woman called Claire who was wearing a beige jumper and black silky-looking trousers. As she led the way to the lift I was thinking that Mobile Mortuary might be more of a class act than I’d assumed.

  ‘I’m reading your mind,’ said Christabel.

  ‘Musical thoughts,’ I said.

  ‘Ben’s booked you into the new South Studio,’ said Claire as she slid the heavy metal door shut.

  ‘Who’s Ben?’ I asked Christabel.

  ‘Ben Saltzman. He’s our production manager. He makes everything happen. He books our flights and we fly to wherever it says on the tickets. Or a bus pulls up and we jump in. All we have to do is make music or whatever it is that we do when we get there.’

  ‘I wish a bus would pull up for me to jump into. Or a plane.’

  ‘And what would you do when you got to wherever it was going?’

  ‘I’d work that out when I got there.’

  The freight lift smelled of old iron and machine oil and I expected the South Studio to smell of old flooring and radiators that knocked as they got too hot. With fluorescent lighting that buzzed and flickered. But when we came out of the lift everything we saw was new and bright. We passed several studios, from one of which issued a volume of noise that I could feel from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. ‘What in the world is that?’ I said.

  ‘Unholy Din,’ said Claire.

  ‘I noticed, but what band is it?’

  ‘Unholy Din is the name of the band,’ said Christabel.

  The South Studio was full of clear grey winter daylight. The new grey carpet and the dark-blue fabric walls had no smell at all, only an air of waiting for things to happen. There were black oblongs as big as doors suspended from the high ceiling. Other black shapes like giant frogs crouched on the floor. ‘What are those?’ I asked Christabel.

  ‘The overhead things are sound deflectors — they focus it and keep it from bouncing all over the place.’

  ‘And the giant frogs?’

  ‘Monitor wedges. So we can hear what we’re doing.’

  ‘And what about the electrified steamer trunks?’

  ‘Speakers, amps — we’re only using one cabinet each.’

  ‘What’s in the cabinets?’ I said, thinking of drinks.

  ‘Speakers,’ said Christabel.

  ‘If you’re not already famous, you could get famous,’ said the giant frogs, and suddenly I wished I were young, and good with a guitar.

  Looking around at the studio and the equipment I was impressed by the logistics of rock and said so to Christabel.

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘Here’s Ben with a couple of kilos of paperwork.’ She introduced us, then said to Ben, ‘If you’ve got a moment, show Elias some of what you’re doing.’

  Ben was a not very big man who looked as if he might do bare-knuckle fighting in his spare time. He came up to scratch, fixed me with a beady eye, and said, ‘Ever seen a production rider?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t.’

  He led with a wodge of printed pages. ‘See if you can guess what’s in here.’

  ‘Well, it would have to be production details, yes? Transport, catering, scheduling and so forth?’

  ‘Have a look.’ His roundhouse right was a contract between THE ARTISTE [Mobile Mortuary] and THE MANAGEMENT [Maccabee Enterprises]. It started with percentages and payments and other money matters including MARKETING. Then came PRODUCTION RE-QUIREMENTS beginning with STAGE SIZE and SOUND WINGS, STAGE CONSTRUCTION, STAIRS, LOADING RAMPS, POWER REQUIREMENTS FOR LIGHTING, FOR SOUND, moving on to MAIN DRESSING ROOM, TUNE-UP ROOM etc. but soon arriving at HOT COOKED ENGLISH-TYPE BREAKFAST PLUS CEREALS, TOAST &JAMS X 10, progressing through LUNCH X 10 and DINNER X 17 to the dressing rooms and 8 X BOTTLES OF GOOD WINE 4 X RED 4 X WHITE (NOT CHARDONNAY), 12 X BOTTLES OF GOOD BEER, 12 X CANS OF DIET COKE, 12 X LARGE BOTTLES OF STILL WATER, 12 X SMALL BOTTLES OF STILL WATER, 2 X LARGE BOTTLES OF PERRIER WATER, thence onward with 1 X KETTLE AND COFFEE MACHINE, BISCUITS, BANANAS, KIWI FRUIT, STRAWB
ERRIES, ETC., SELECTION OF CHOCOLATE INC. KIT KAT, more drinks I HOUR PRIOR TO SHOW TIME and 30 MINS PRIOR TO SHOW TIME and BAND BUS AFTER SHOW. There was a great deal more of this on the production rider, and while my mind was still boggling and gurgling with it, Ben, who already had me in chancery, delivered a facer with more sheets of paper including the equipment freight list, diagrams of the band setup on stage, input channels and microphone lists, the light rig and theatre lighting, all with recondite nomenclature and endless specifications.

  ‘More to it than you thought?’ said Ben, graciously stepping back.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you keep track of it all.’

  ‘Years of experience,’ he said, and retired to his office.

  In a mentally flattened state I was led carefully over cables and around large objects to be introduced to Christabel’s colleagues: Jimmy Wicks and Howard Dent, guitars; Bert Gresham, bass; Buck Travis, keyboards; Shorty Strong, drums. Jimmy had a grand-fatherly paunch and was mostly bald but with a pony-tail; watching his right elbow and wrist when he checked his guitar I could see that he suffered from repetitive strain injury; Howard was presenting with what I’ve heard described as the Hendrix hunch as well as RSI; Bert had some kind of tic; and from the way Shorty cupped his ear when they were talking I assumed that his hearing was impaired.

  Christabel followed my glance and shrugged. ‘But we’re famous,’ she said.

  When the band were ready to work they went into a huddle. They stayed that way without saying anything for about a minute, then the huddle broke up and the band took up their instruments and produced various levels of feedback. Christabel sat down with me while they noodled around with sundry riffs. ‘Every tour it takes longer for them to get their chops together,’ she said.

  ‘Chops?’