The Society of Others

by William Nicholson

  “The mystery,” he says, snuffling into an old handkerchief. “The mystery.”

  “Right.”

  I don’t feel I should ask too many questions any more.

  He turns and looks at me, blinking a little, smiling a little, but mainly just looking. I think I should say something but can’t think what so I let him look, and after a while I find I’m looking back. This is quite an odd sensation because I’ve been looking back all along but now I’m seeing into him, and what I’m seeing is this deep well of kindness. This stranger really wants me to be happy. He wants to protect me from danger and soothe my fears and heal my pain. He really does. Naturally this makes me feel this wave of gratitude, which he sees rolling towards him, and he in turn is grateful. So altogether we have ourselves a little love-fest.

  He doesn’t look so much like a gnome any more. It’s funny about people’s faces. If you look at them for long enough they stop being beautiful or ugly and become just themselves. Then you see they couldn’t be any other way because that person’s life has formed his face, and if you love him you love his face the way it is. Cello has blotchy wrinkly skin and a bulging nose and grizzly eyebrows hiding little piggy eyes and no hair on top to speak of except the tufts coming out of his ears and nostrils, but what a lovely man he is, what a dear man. I’m so touched by his passionate generosity. My good wise loving Cello. I thank you for the ride. I thank you for showing me your God. Forgive me for being so earth-bound.

  SIXTEEN

  We reach the town in late afternoon, a little after darkness has fallen. As we pass through the streets, I feel again that I’ve been here before. As we enter the town centre, the feeling passes. It’s an attractive old square, but unknown to me. Cello parks the car outside the steps to the church. There are people everywhere, and lights shining in all the cafés and shops and houses. Many passers-by carry musical instruments in cases. On the walls there are posters advertising musical performances, as I can tell from the names of the composers: Monteverdi, Haydn, Richard Strauss. The cafés are crowded, and the sounds of chattering voices and accordion music come spilling out into the square. There are policemen standing about, and some of them look at me, but they show no special interest in me.

  Cello pats his round stomach and beams.

  “The festival begins!”

  To my astonishment I catch sight of Eckhard and Ilona sitting at a café table.

  “I know those people!”

  “Excellent! You must join them, and refresh yourself after our journey. I will meet you later.”

  An irrational panic seizes me.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not far. I have some calls to make.” He smiles to reassure me, and pats my arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll meet again. I promise you.”

  “But where will we meet?”

  “At the concert this evening. At the castle.”

  I have no idea when this concert is taking place, or where the castle is. How can he leave me like this? Doesn’t he know he’s my only guide in this alien land?

  “I don’t know the way to the castle.”

  “Your friends will be going there. Everyone will be going there. Join them. All will be well.”

  His words sound in my ears like a mocking echo of my night delusions. But he is determined to go, so we embrace and part. I watch the little priest go toddling off down a side street until he’s out of sight. Then I go into the café. As I do so, I pass close by one of the policemen, and it seems to me that he follows me with his eyes. To check my paranoia, I tell myself his marriage is in trouble and he’s sleeping with his wife’s sister. He must be able to read my thoughts, because he blushes and looks away.

  Eckhard is as surprised to see me as I am to see him. He jumps up with a cry of joy.

  “You’re safe! Thank God!”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him. “You should be on your honeymoon.”

  “Oh,” says Eckhard, waving away my question. “Everyone comes for the festival. But you—you are not hurt? They let you go?”

  I offer a short version of my experiences, leaving out the part about Marker’s list, and my agreement to speak at the secret meeting. This leaves just the general notion that the authorities expect me, as a foreigner from a country with some similar experiences, to speak out against terrorism.

  Eckhard is genuinely relieved.

  “When they took you away—!” He rolls his eyes.

  His friends find a chair for me, carrying it over the heads of the crowd of drinkers. They share their bread with me, and press a glass of wine into my hand.

  “So. They know you are here.”

  “No. I lost them.”

  “That is not so easy.”

  “Not so easy. But I did it. I was given a lift here by a priest.”

  I turn to look out of the window at the crowded night square. Cello’s car is no longer in front of the church.

  “He’s going to help me leave the country. I’m to meet him at the concert this evening.”

  “At the castle?”

  “Yes.”

  Eckhard passes on what I’ve said to his companions. They talk about me with animation. Then Eckhard turns back to me. “This priest. What is his name?”

  “I don’t know his name. I met him in the cathedral. He plays the cello in a string quartet.”

  “You have a ticket to the concert?”

  “No.”

  “You must have a ticket. Without a ticket, you cannot go. But all the tickets have been sold, many weeks ago.”

  My face falls. Why didn’t the priest tell me this? Eckhard is in consultation with his friends.

  “Don’t worry. Stay with us. We will get you in.”

  I feel cheated by Cello. Why arrange to meet me at a concert for which no tickets are available? I start to ask myself if there’s any point in waiting to see the little priest again. Why not seek Eckhard’s help here and now?

  “I don’t have to go to the concert,” I say. “Are we far from the border?”

  “Not so far. Maybe one hour’s walk.”

  “If you or one of your friends could direct me, I could go now.”

  Eckhard shakes his head. “In the dark you will not find your way. You must go with a guide.”

  “Is there anyone who could guide me?”

  “Yes, of course. But the concert begins soon. After the concert, I think.”

  This concert is turning out to be too much of a big deal for my liking. I mean, here I am with my life in danger, and all they can think of is their musical soirée. The border is so near. Just an hour’s walk away! For all that hour, and no doubt another hour too, I’ll be sitting on a hard chair listening to choral Latin. I begin to feel sorry for myself. I drain my glass of wine in a brooding meaningful sort of way, but nobody notices.

  Outside, the milling people are on the move. There’s a more purposeful look on their faces and a brisker pace to their steps. Many tables in the café are emptying, as the drinkers reach down their coats off the wall-hooks and muffle up for the outside cold.

  Our group also rises.

  “We will go to the castle now,” says Eckhard.

  I take the opportunity in the bustle of coats to return to my fears, speaking low to Eckhard alone.

  “What if you can’t get me into the concert?”

  Eckhard frowns and wipes his misted glasses.

  “One of us will give you his ticket. It is agreed.”

  I’m touched, and a little ashamed of my earlier doubts. After all, helping me brings them no benefit. Rather the opposite.

  So we go out into the square and follow the stream of people making their way on foot to the castle. One of the soprano soloists is a local star, and there’s great excitement at the prospect of hearing her sing.

  “The castle is very old,” Eckhard tells me. “Six hundred years old. The town is here because of the castle. In the days when invaders came from the east, the people of the town took refuge in the castle. It is almo
st a small town in itself.” Then it strikes him that I don’t know the most interesting fact of all. “It was the home of the Vicino family.”

  “Leon Vicino lives here?”

  “Not any more. But he was born here. He spent his childhood here. The castle now belongs to the state. It’s not possible in these days to maintain such a building as a private family home. But of course, for us the connection is a happy one.”

  The road down which we are walking runs beside a river. The river is frozen, and many of the groups making their way to the concert clamber down and proceed on the ice. They run and slide and laugh as if it’s a holiday. I watch a woman in a full red coat spin round and round on the ice, arms outstretched, skirts flying, while all round her the beams of torches sweep the riverbanks, the light tangling in the branches of leafless trees.

  We round a bend in road and river, and the castle is before us. It’s bigger than I had expected. Once more I get a shiver of familiarity. But I know I have never been here before. This is not the kind of place you visit and forget. It is constructed out of a cluster of circular towers, each one topped with battlements and conical pointed roofs. The towers are joined by massive vertical walls, pierced by high narrow windows through which light shines. Among the pointed roofs tall fragile chimneys reach up into the night sky, issuing plumes of smoke.

  The entire structure stands on an island in the broad frozen river. A wooden bridge reaches from the bank along which we are walking, over the ice, to the castle entrance. It’s a narrow walkway with timber hand-rails, carried on tall posts. The stream of concert-goers packs this bridge, moving slowly from the unlit road to the mouth of light that is the castle’s arched doorway. The people who have come over the ice now scrabble back up the banks to rejoin the road. I look at the faces all round me, and everyone seems cheerful and unafraid. I feel like a fraud, because I alone am not eager to hear the Mozart Mass. This is nothing against Mozart, but I have other matters on my mind, such as what I will do if Eckhard and his friends fail to smuggle me past the ticket-checkers.

  As we wait our turn to shuffle onto the narrow bridge I watch those ahead of us. They are all showing their tickets as they pass into the illuminated arch. Suddenly I see a figure I recognise. It’s Petra. The same leather coat, the same unkempt beauty. She’s with a group of men I don’t know, speaking earnestly to one of them, an older man with a thick shock of grey hair. They too all have tickets. They go on into the building.

  Now I’m confused. What is Petra doing at this music festival? I thought she was in hiding? I look round, and sure enough, there are uniformed police standing idly by the roadside, and here and there the black-jacketed men of the interior ministry. The police smile and nod as if to show they’re only here to help on this festive public occasion. The men in black jackets keep back, watching the stream of concert-goers rather in the manner of customs officers at an airport. None of them have noticed Petra and her companions.

  Now we in turn step onto the bridge, and my fears focus on the ticket check ahead. I see Eckhard and Ilona and their friends all taking their tickets out of their pockets and handbags, and holding them ready in their hands. At the point where the tickets are checked, the stream of people coming over the bridge narrows to single file. The official, a man in a black suit, glances briefly at each ticket in turn, and nods the holder through. As we approach, Eckhard arranges us in a new order, which is Ilona, himself, and then me.

  He holds Ilona’s arm. She moves slowly, exaggerating her pregnant condition. I begin to guess at their plan. As they approach the man in the suit, Eckhard speaks aloud to Ilona, clearly urging her to go slowly and to take care. Ilona pats her stomach and smiles at the man as he checks her ticket. Then, as she passes through, she stumbles and falls to her knees. Eckhard gives a cry of alarm and drops down to her side as does the man in the black suit. Together they help her up. Ilona straightens herself up and insists that she’s alright. At the same time, I feel Eckhard’s fist pushing at my hip. I take the concealed ticket he has just received from Ilona under cover of her fall, and he is nodded through. I hold up what is now my ticket, and I follow on behind, without any problem at all. I push the ticket into my pocket, irrationally nervous that it will be looked at too closely, and go with my friends into the entrance hall.

  Eckhard turns to me with a smile.

  “Well,” he says, “I told you we would get you in.”

  “You were brilliant.” I’m impressed. “Ilona is alright?”

  “Of course. Just our little game.”

  All round us now there is a great crush of people, filling the air with bright chatter. For many, this is a reunion of old friends, and from all sides there come cries of greeting, outreached hands, sudden embraces. So we push on, into the Great Hall, where the concert is to take place.

  It’s an enormous room, bounded by high stone walls that rise the full height of two floors, with a handsome carved-wood gallery running round all four sides. The stone-flagged floor is filled with row upon row of cheap stacking chairs. Good-humoured scuffles are taking place as the concert-goers hurry to secure themselves and their friends the better seats. The chairs face right to left, and at the left end of the hall a tiered platform has been built out of scaffolding and planks, to hold the orchestra and the choir. Most of the orchestra are in place, tuning up. The members of the choir are scattered about, greeting their friends. A clumsy-looking scaffolding tower stands before the platform, a temporary pulpit for the conductor to command his musical forces.

  We are among the last to enter. We take seats at the back, not far from the door. Eckhard is waving and calling to people he knows, so I stand by my chair and look over the crowd of faces, trying to locate the priest. Because I’m at the back, most of the people are facing away from me and it’s impossible to make out individual faces, so after a while I stop looking and let my eyes drift. I realise I’m in a strange state. I’m alert, as if braced for danger, but for the next hour at least I have nothing more to fear than unfamiliar music.

  My thoughts float free with my gaze. I wonder how I’ll find Cello in this great crowd, and whether it matters very much if I don’t. Eckhard has told me he and his friends can help me just as well as the priest. Should I ask them to take me to the border tonight, in the dark, or should we wait for morning? What will I do once I’m across the border? Truth to tell, I hardly care. All I want is to be out of this nightmare country. The rest of my journey home, though fuzzy in imagined detail, seems to me to be only a matter of endurance.

  This was Leon Vicino’s childhood home. Hard to imagine the child running about this Great Hall, with its heavy wooden gallery frowning down on the echoing stone space. No doubt there are smaller rooms elsewhere in the castle where he curled up in a window seat and gazed out over the river and dreamed his dreams.

  As I think this, my wandering eyes find a small doorway half concealed by a curtain, and in the moment that I discover it I see a figure pushing past the curtain, out of sight. Only a glimpse, but I’m quite sure it is the little priest. I jump up from my seat and push down the row of people and hurry along the side aisle to the doorway. So many others are still moving about that no one remarks on my going.

  The curtained doorway leads to a flight of stone spiral stairs. I climb the stairs and come out in the gallery above. No one else is there, but a further door, leading off the gallery, stands open. I go through it into a corridor lit by a fluorescent light. Here there are many doors, all closed. At the far end, in the chill glow, I see the banisters of a staircase, and I hear the click-click-click of descending footsteps.

  “Wait!” I call out.

  I run along the corridor and down the stairs. At the bottom there is a dark lobby, and another half-open door, through which falls a softer warmer light. I enter, and find myself in a small ornate chapel. A three-tiered rack of votive candles beside the altar has been recently filled with new candles, and all are lit. There, kneeling in the front pew, is my friend the priest, his head
bowed in prayer.

  I come to a standstill, in embarrassed silence. He can’t have failed to hear me enter. Also he can’t be so very deep in prayer, given that he was only just ahead of me coming here.

  When at last he raises his head and turns to look at me I’m shocked to see the expression on his face. It’s a look of anguish.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, humbled. “Would you like me to go?”

  “No, no.” His voice seems to come from far away. He’s struggling to return from whatever dread has seized him, to the recollection of who I am and what I want. “You’re here. That’s good.”

  “My friends can take care of me. If you’d prefer.”

  “No, no,” he says. “It’s all arranged.”

  I’m not at all sure what this means. But now he’s getting up, and his former friendly manner is returning.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I saw you leave the Great Hall. I followed you.”

  “But I’ve been in this chapel for an hour or more,” he says, frowning.

  “No. That’s impossible. I saw you come in just a few minutes

  ago.”

  He shrugs, and turns, and taking my arm, walks with me back out of the chapel.

  “The concert will be starting. We must get back.”

  “I’m not here for the concert,” I say. “I’m here for you.”

  “For me? No, no. I’m of no importance. But Mozart’s great Mass, that is something wonderful!”

  Why is everyone so besotted by this concert? He walks me up the stairs, moving more slowly than I remember him doing.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “No, not pain. Nothing to be concerned about.”

  “Where are we to meet after the concert?”

  At least I’ve taken that much on board: the concert comes first.

  “You will find me. It’s all arranged.”

  Again, he speaks as if this is the most marginal of concerns. So it may be for him. For me it’s more along the lines of being the only thing I can think about. I don’t like to sound self-obsessed, but this is my survival at stake.