The Doubleman

by Christopher Koch

  I gestured at the one easy chair, with its stained pink cover. When my visitor sat down on it she gave it dignity, sitting erect and expectant like someone about to impart some piquant scandal — or perhaps to hear it. Her high-arched brows were darker than her hair, and gave her a look of pleasant surprise.

  I’ve been waiting for you, I said; but I didn’t say it aloud.

  She glanced behind me; then she said: ‘I know this may seem strange — but would you mind shutting your doors?’

  I stared at her in amazement; but I did as she asked without comment, returning to sit opposite her on the hard dining-room chair beside my work-table.

  ‘I live next door,’ she said. ‘You’re the radio actor, aren’t you? Bela often talks about you. I thought you wouldn’t mind helping me.’

  ‘How can I do that?’

  ‘Just by allowing me to sit here for a moment.’

  Now the arched brows seemed serious; she cleared her throat with a hint of tension, and briefly licked her lips. ‘There’s a man coming down here in a few moments I want to avoid: a friend of Bela’s. He said he’d call on me, and he knows I’m in the house. I’d just like to hide here until he gives up. Can I do that? Does it annoy you?’

  Immediately following this question, a rapping sounded from outside as though on cue, clearly audible through my doors. She put a finger on her lips like a schoolgirl.

  ‘He’s knocking on my door,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll soon go away.’ Her eyes held mine in silence; we waited, staring at each other, and the rapping sounded again, louder this time.

  ‘He’s not a very nice fellow,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a Pole.’ The smile assumed I knew all about Poles.

  Footsteps receded on the arcade, and she looked up again, continuing to listen carefully until the sound had gone. Then she spoke in a normal tone. ‘That was very kind of you. I don’t usually burst into men’s rooms.’

  She stood up, and I did the same. ‘I’m glad you did,’ I said. ‘It was time we met.’

  When she was gone, a few minutes later, I sat still for a long time, listening to the silence and the wild altercations of the gulls. She had taken her immigrant intrigue away with her, and I had a sense of anti-climax: a baffled, formless excitement that wasn’t helped by knowing that she was still nearby, just through the wall.

  6

  Beaumont House was a foreign country, like many others around the Cross. The district had become a ghetto for the wave of post-war immigrants from Europe.

  The refugees from World War Two had begun to outnumber the native-born, in this part of Sydney; they had gravitated here as though by instinct, and the old Australia’s stenches of beer and prawns had been replaced — not just by the foreign tang of garlic, but by the tragic aroma of memory. Lost Europe and lost dignities were preserved here, in the Cross; heart-numbing relics were hoarded in the tops of wardrobes, and under rooming-house beds.

  The newcomers ran many of the quarter’s restaurants and delicatessens; or else, like Bela Beaumont, they managed rooming-houses. For a time that can never be repeated, the Cross became exiled Europe in microcosm, and the air of Darlinghurst Road and Macleay Street was murmurous with re-run Continental intrigues and Continental betrayals: those passionately preserved hopes and causes that even the crassest Australian could see were broken and devalued for ever by the War; baggage that should have been left behind. The native-born eyed these people with mingled condescension and suspicion; the pain the Displaced had emerged from, the pain they carried in them always, meaning nothing. Australians could make little of them, this tribe from Eastern and Central Europe, in the first two decades of their coming: women with formal, old-fashioned dresses and strangely braided hair; shabby men with fanatical, pale blue eyes, in the jackets of old suits teamed with sad, neat sports trousers, carrying executive briefcases in which there were probably bombs, or books that no one would want to read. The native-born dubbed them Reffos, or Balts; and in the coffee lounges, the Reffos confirmed all suspicions by endlessly reviewing their broken lives, railing against the Machiavellian leaders who had sold them out, so that now they found themselves here, in this flat, huge country of flat, emotionless people who knew no other language but English, at the end of the world. Sometimes a Balt or some other refugee would go mad, succumbing to the wartime blackness he had carried to the southern hemisphere in his brain; would shout and rave, standing alone in the street of meaningless sun, his pale eyes coldly crazy, his flood of foreign words proof of his insanity. Then the police paddy wagon would come from Darlinghurst, and the big Sydney cops in their dark blue caps would haul him away, their disgusted faces saying: A Reffo. What else can you expect? They would look inside his briefcase, when they got him to the station up at Darlo; they would finger his foreign books.

  Only a few of the Displaced were truly Balts; they came in fact from every nation in Europe where the century’s two great tyrannies had squatted. But my neighbour, the young woman in the room next door, was a true Balt, I found: a native of what was now the Soviet province of Estonia, whose name was Katrin Vilde.

  I began to plan ways to further our acquaintance; I lurked on the arcade in the evenings, hoping to intercept her. But for the next two days, I met with no success; there was never a sound from the adjoining room, and I began to wonder if she’d moved out.

  On the third morning, when Bela Beaumont brought my tea and toast, he lingered in the doorway to talk, and I sensed that he had a purpose. Bela had a masterful way of asking cheeky personal questions — helped, I felt, by his upright position at the doorway, spruce and shaved, while I reclined slothfully in my bed on the floor. This morning he somehow extracted the information from me that I had a chance of joining ABS Drama — and then became exclamatory, while I sipped my tea.

  ‘But this is wonderful! You have a big future in front of you, Commander, this is obvious! To be an actor is one thing — but a producer in an important organisation like ABS, that is another! You are a very fortunate young man.’

  I protested that I hadn’t got the position yet, but he brushed this aside. ‘You will get it. And now it is time you had more social life. You are too much alone. I should like to introduce you to the Vilde family. You have already met Katrin, I believe.’ He gave me a special glance, lifting his chin and narrowing his eyes. ‘Did you know I also have her grandfather and brother living upstairs? Very sad,’ he said briskly. ‘The boy is crippled. The old man is very good with him. Tonight at eight we all meet in his apartment for a few drinks. These are cultivated people — people you will like. You will come?’ Before I could answer, he became cheerfully imperious. ‘Of course you will come. That is settled. Ta-ta.’

  He was gone.

  ‘You know why I have taken the name of Beaumont?’

  Perched on a small, straight chair, Bela Beaumont paused for effect, a square of cheese upheld like a little flag in his left hand, a glass in his right. His white shirt gleamed; his grey trousers were knife-edged; he wore a tie. ‘Because bloody Australians cannot pronounce my real name,’ he said. ‘So when I bought this house, I thought: good; an elegant Anglo-Saxon name, very snooty. My house and I will share it.’ He led the laughter, loud and confident, in the flat he let to Mr Vilde, on the first floor at the front.

  Mr Vilde proved to be the old, Russian-looking man with the thick white hair and moustache whom I’d seen carrying the crippled boy in the mornings. We three were the only men here, and there were two women: Katrin Vilde and Bela Beaumont’s wife Maria. All of these people sat with very straight backs, and all plainly wore their best clothes, as though these few drinks were an occasion. Was I the occasion? I couldn’t quite believe it; but they began to make it plain that this was so, and I felt I should have worn a tie myself, instead of an open-necked sports shirt.

  ‘We wanted to have you up long ago, and get to know you,’ Katrin said. ‘But we didn’t know whether you’d want to come. I’m afraid this flat is very small and crowded — I hope you don’t mind.’<
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  I protested, telling her insincerely that the place was charming; but to call Mr Vilde’s living quarters a flat was to put a strain on the term: it was another of Bela’s makeshifts. I gathered that Katrin spent a good deal of her time here, only using the room next to mine to sleep in. There was no bathroom, but a tiny kitchen was built into a porch off this living-and-dining-room. Through the open door of the one cupboard-like bedroom, I could see Katrin’s brother Jaan, who was paraplegic, propped up on pillows in a double bed. Presumably he slept there with his grandfather. His long, intelligent face had the pallor of chronic illness, with dark circles under the eyes; pale brown hair fell on his forehead.

  There could be little doubt that the Vildes were poor, yet it didn’t seem like poverty. We were drinking imported vermouth from expensive glasses; they kept up appearances in a way that was more impressive than affluence, and that made me half admiring, half uneasy. The room was fanatically neat, clean and foreign; we might have been in Eastern Europe, an illusion completed by the nineteenth-century moulding around the ceiling and the unfamiliar black bread that went with the cheese and pickled cucumber. There were smells of sour things like sauerkraut, and over all was the faint mustiness that always hovers about old people. Mr Vilde and his granddaughter had set up lost Estonia here: tablecloths woven in traditional geometric patterns; framed Estonian woodcuts on the walls. There were a few chairs, an aged sofa and a cheap round dining-room table, all carefully crowded together; an old kitchen dresser served as a china cabinet. An upright piano stood in one corner, polished like a mirror, with a runner on the top in the same Estonian pattern.

  ‘Yes, I have put a lot of work into this place. Put me anywhere and I will survive,’ Bela Beaumont was saying. ‘Property is the answer. No investment can touch property. Bricks and mortar! That you can touch, and know it will stay.’

  Chewing, he squinted appreciatively at the high Victorian ceiling with its central rosette, while old Mr Vilde, dressed despite the heat in a heavy grey suit of I940s vintage, watched his landlord gravely through the blue-tinted glasses that brought to mind an old-fashioned anarchist. He was lean, dignified and imposing, but he’d scarcely spoken at all: perhaps he had little English.

  ‘Listen to how Bela boasts,’ Maria Beaumont apologised, and smiled at me for indulgence. Her black Hungarian hair gleamed as though lacquered; she was plump and tightly corseted inside a close-fitting knitted dress.

  ‘All right, I boast,’ Bela said, his fast voice rising. ‘But where would you be without your boaster, Maria? We have survived.’ He pointed at me accusingly. ‘For this young Australian here, survival has never been a problem.’

  The old man spoke for the first time, his deep voice quiet and slow. ‘We must not be sure of that. He is an actor. They do not survive so easily.’ He smiled at me, and raised his glass.

  Bela raised his own glass in a toast. ‘Ah, but soon he will be a big producer of drama in ABS radio! Your lame leg will not matter then, Commander.’

  I felt myself grow stiff, but I continued to look bland.

  ‘Oh Bela,’ Maria said. ‘You must not be so personal.’

  He waved his hand. ‘Richard doesn’t mind, Maria. He and I are friends — and the world is his oyster. It wasn’t so for us. Eh?’ He pointed to old Vilde and looked at me sternly, raising his voice. ‘This man was a university teacher in Estonia — a mathematician. Now he has lost his country and his career; the Soviets seized Estonia, and his son was shot by them. So there are worse things than a bad leg, am I right?’

  Vilde spoke softly. ‘I still have my granddaughter and the boy. And for this I thank God.’

  I had grown uncomfortable at Bela’s insensitivity. Exercising his privilege as landlord, he seemed to be treating the old Estonian and his family as exhibits. Vilde sipped his vermouth quietly and said no more; but Katrin, holding her glass with both hands, now cleared her throat with a small, feminine sound of warning. She still wore her hair in a bun, exposing a long, white neck which I found remarkably beautiful.

  ‘I’m sure Richard doesn’t want to hear about our troubles, Bela.’ Her tone was low and calm, but it nevertheless made Bela look cautious.

  ‘But I really am interested,’ I told her.

  ‘It isn’t very cheerful,’ she said to me. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

  Her face abstracted, almost blank, she picked briefly at a nail, then stopped: plainly a nervous habit. I had thought her about my own age when I first met her; now, covertly studying her, I decided she was older, perhaps twenty-eight. Her skin was flawless and unlined, but I sensed a greater maturity than my own: it was in her dignified manner, her careful control, and certain small, shutter-like changes in her eyes, manifesting many levels of concealment. She awed me a little, and I tried to be critical: her face was too broad by Anglo-Saxon standards; her Cupid’s bow lips a little too full. But these things were in fact at the very heart of the attraction she had for me, and in trying to disapprove of them, I merely played a game, postponing assent. The short-sleeved, grey linen dress she wore tonight, buttoning to the throat, made her seem somewhat prim. I doubted that she was prim, but there was something closed about her.

  ‘Katrin is a wonderful artist,’ Bela was saying to me, seeking to mollify. ‘A singer. In any other country, this girl would be a star! But here she must work as a hotel receptionist by day, and sing in the migrant clubs at night. This is a problem, Richard. She can only sing to Russians, Estonians, Germans — Australians don’t want to hear her material.’ He stood up and crossed to the Vildes’ piano, throwing it open with a masterful gesture. ‘Please, Katrin — Richard must hear you sing!’

  She didn’t protest in the usual manner; she got up, smiling at me as though seeking sympathy, and said something to the old man in Estonian, addressing him as ‘Vanaisa’. He shuffled over to the piano to accompany her.

  She began with two Estonian folk songs, while we all sat straight and attentive on our chairs. She had a good soprano voice, very clear and true; at times almost like a boy’s. But the melodies were trite, and since the words were a mystery to me, I was secretly bored.

  Clapping, Bela called: ‘A Russian song, Katrin! Sing us a Russian song!’ After a murmured conference with her grandfather, she sang ‘The Little Bell’.

  The long notes swooped and soared, dwindling off into distance and then swelling again, while Vilde produced deep, crashing chords on the piano, bent forward so that his moustache almost touched the score, peering through his tinted glasses. Then, in this stuffy little flat in the Sydney heat, I saw the land of their longing, where the ringing of the bell on the night-time sleigh carried far across the snow: not the grim Soviet Union that had swallowed their country, but the Russia of legends; a Russia that had perhaps never existed, outside the song. It was a hymn to the lost hemisphere; her spirit went speeding to its mark, the wineglass grew warm in my hand, and I remembered that I’d seen this night before, in the dream of the skates.

  It had been a recurring dream when I was first crippled; I’d forgotten it until now. In it, I found myself at the edge of a vast, frozen lake in the north of Europe, near the Arctic Circle. Pine-skirted, it extended past towns and villages into a night of gem-hard cold, and I sat in powdery snow at the edge, trying to fasten on a pair of bright silver skates. My frozen fingers trembled at the fastenings; my crippled leg bent awkwardly; voices urged me on, but I couldn’t do it. Then there appeared in front of me a tall figure in a belted jacket and heavy trousers, without clear features. He had long, straw-coloured hair and a green muffler wound about his neck. He didn’t speak, but conveyed cheerful encouragement, and he bent on one knee and swiftly adjusted my skates.

  Within seconds, side by side, we were skating the lake. I leaned far forward, arms working in rhythm; I was propelling myself on the marvellous skates, and the figure a little way ahead turned and smiled at me over his shoulder. At this, crouching and thrusting out with a new strength, I found that I could skate with majestic skill. A mag
ic force spun me away; I was crippled no more; I flew across the ice, my legs pumping like the pistons of a powerful machine. I caught up with my companion and passed him, skating off alone into the great night of the North, into a realm of pure speed.

  Far away on my right, little lights were twinkling like fallen stars; breathing black air, I smiled with joy. Were these the lights of Rainbow Bridge? Or just a village at the lake’s edge? I was leaving behind log fires; mugs of coffee; good, spicy food. Was love left behind there too? I skated on and on into the blackness, where the only lights were stars. I was freed into the utmost North, the world’s high rim, beyond all human comforts; freed into the territories of my fate: the outland of fairies, furies, gods.

  Pausing between verses, Katrin Vilde bent to look over old Vilde’s shoulder at the score. The curving white line of the back of her neck was perfect as her far, extended notes had been, and a hollow opened inside me like longing. It would be simple and pleasant to say that I fell in love with her then; that it was then that I resolved to marry her. But nothing is ever that simple. In fact, I was reverting to type, among these refugees: a member of one of the most insecure tribes on earth. I secretly saw them as representative of old, subtle Europe, beyond my scope; I respected and yet mistrusted them, and struggled not to find their tragedies excessive; I thought them possibly calculating, and even wondered if Bela Beaumont might be match-making, and whether they had all frankly discussed me as a possible husband for Katrin. She was perhaps at an age when marriage had become crucial, and I suspected Bela had talked about the high salary an ABS man would get; he was capable of it.

  A little later, Katrin and I walked down to the verandah together, bound for our respective rooms.

  ‘It’s easy to see you home,’ I said.

  ‘Very convenient.’ She grew stiff, and I wondered whether she found my remark gauche. I couldn’t tell whether she liked me or not, yet I sensed that I was important to her in some way. We paused on the dark arcade outside her padlocked doors, and her face grew more striking and exotic than it had been in the light. Her features, which I saw as German mixed with Finnish (knowing nothing of Estonians), were touched by a ghostly Mongolia, the wide-set grey eyes and strong cheekbones fleetingly Oriental.