At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Sylvie pleaded, ‘And for you and for me. So we can go.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to go,’ Amy said. ‘He likes being here with Granny. You don’t know, you haven’t ever seen them! He’s always messing around with her silver and stuff and those pictures she has like that stupid Picasso that’s supposed to be such a big deal.’

  ‘It is a big deal, Amy,’ Sylvie said. ‘And one day it’ll all belong to Theo and to you and to me.’

  ‘But I keep telling you! You can wait till you’re a hundred thousand years old and she still won’t be dead, she’ll be swimming in her swimsuit from Bendel’s and it’s you who’ll be old and die. You’ll die and leave me,’ Amy ended very differently from how she had begun.

  And in response Sylvie too changed: ‘I’ll never leave you,’ she said, utterly confident, scornful of any such idea.

  Next day, while Pauline was sitting idle in her idle office, she was surprised by a visit from Sylvie. Sylvie was in a long buttercup-yellow dress and a straw hat with a buttercup-yellow ribbon. Involuntarily, Pauline rose in her chair, and then found herself blushing: she didn’t know if it was in embarrassment or from the tide of warmth that surged out of her heart and suffused her.

  But Sylvie at once said, ‘Why did you give her ham to eat? And telling her it was tomato.’

  Although this was an accusation, Sylvie spoke as usual in a mild voice; and Pauline lowered her own rather harsh one to ask, also mildly, ‘Does it matter so very much?’

  ‘It’s a principle, Pauline.’ Sylvie looked around her: ‘It’s different in here.’

  It was different. The pretty striped armchairs appeared to be dusty; a bulb had gone out on one of the Chinese vase table lamps, leaving it to the other one to light up the rather dim interior.

  ‘Is it?’ Pauline looked around abstractedly. ‘No, it’s just the same . . . Whose principle is this? Is it Amy’s?’

  ‘In a way . . . When she was born, she was – I can’t tell you – so shiny white, it was like you could look through her, like she was an angel. We said, we must give her nothing but angel food – it was a joke really, but we were eating very simple food ourselves, so my milk I was giving her came out as pure and white as she was . . . I don’t know what she eats at school; what the other girls give her. Children always want to do the same as everyone else. If only we could get her away.’

  ‘She wants to go, more than anything.’ Pauline leaned across her desk: ‘But do you want to?’

  ‘Of course. That’s what we’re saving for, putting everything away . . . That reminds me.’ She was embarrassed; so was Pauline: it was past the beginning of the month and she had not yet paid Sylvie. ‘I’m sorry to ask you,’ Sylvie said, acutely apologetic, ‘but it’s important for us.’

  ‘No, I’m glad you did because I was going to mention it myself . . . I was going to ask you if you would mind very much waiting maybe till the middle of the month, or when I get paid for something I’m putting through now.’

  Sylvie tried the switch of the table lamp; but the bulb really was dead, and moreover when she withdrew her hand, it was dusty. ‘Don’t you think, Pauline, you should – maybe – you know – a little bit, so it would look nice for clients who come in.’

  ‘What clients?’ This escaped Pauline, with bitterness, before she could stop herself.

  ‘Why, Pauline, you’ve got hundreds of clients! And you just said there’s a big deal coming through in the middle of the month – not that I care about getting paid, if you can’t you can’t, I mean, I would be happy to wait—’

  ‘But Theo wouldn’t?’

  Sylvie leaned back in her chair with a sigh. It was so difficult to explain, but she tried. ‘There’s two things. One is that Theo is really quite businesslike, he doesn’t look it but it’s the sort of family he comes from and that’s how they’ve made a lot of money. It’s sort of in his genes.’

  ‘And the other thing?’

  ‘The other thing is Amy and I. He’s doing it for us, saving and so on. So he can take us away. Well! Aren’t you sick and tired of us, even though you are a saint, you must be counting the days till we move out.’

  ‘And will he take you where Amy wants to go?’

  Sylvie smiled her sad smile, as at something too desirable to be possible.

  ‘Because if he doesn’t, I will.’

  Pauline hadn’t thought she was going to say this – she hadn’t thought of it at all – but now suddenly it was there: a possibility, something she could do, something not fantastic but within her reach. Too excited to stay still, she got up: ‘Let’s go home,’ she said. It was Sylvie who protested it was only the middle of the afternoon, that a client might come: Pauline turned off the one remaining lamp and then shut the office door behind them and padlocked it.

  And next day she did not reopen it. She had too much to do. She had spent the previous evening elaborating her idea, explaining it to Amy, talking it over with her and Sylvie. Amy was wild with enthusiasm, and between them they swept Sylvie along. Pauline conclusively proved to them that it was something that could be achieved within a short time. All Pauline had to do was dissolve her savings and her pension fund; and she could sell her apartment, or rent it out furnished, and maybe she could sell her business too, to some big company, and if she couldn’t, she would just lock up and go away; at least she would be saving the overdue rent on it, and the landlords could do what they liked. She became light-headed, she was so busy proving to them that Theo was not the only one who was practical.

  First thing in the morning, she started phoning around the airlines, to get a price on fares; from there on they could work out the rest of their budget. Amy wanted to stay home from school to help her – anyway, she argued, what was the use of continuing with school now? Pauline helped Sylvie persuade her to leave; though afterwards she wished she were back again because, without Amy there to prop her up, Sylvie began to falter. She kept biting her underlip and saying, ‘Are you sure it’s all right, Pauline, that you want to do this?’ until Pauline, in between her telephone calls, replied, ‘I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.’ And truly it seemed to her that she had shaken off the burden of her past and her personality – and was ready to step out unencumbered into a new world of freedom and light.

  However, this mood vanished when Theo appeared in the afternoon. It was left to Pauline to tell him of their plan while Sylvie sat by, biting her lip. When Pauline had finished, Theo laughed; and then Sylvie laughed too, though glancing nervously at Pauline.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it a hoot,’ Pauline said to him. ‘You’ve kept them hanging with your promises for years together, and when I come in, it’s all done within hours. Here are the figures: an economy couple ticket for Sylvie and me, and half-fare for Amy because she’s under twelve.’ She held out the yellow pad on which she had been scribbling all morning.

  Theo peered at it, as if he were near-sighted, which he was not. He said, ‘Yes, you’ve got it all worked out.’ He looked up and at Sylvie: ‘Pauline’s got it all worked out, for you and Amy and herself . . . I’d like to come, I really would,’ he said to Pauline. ‘But I do have obligations here – unfortunately one can’t just pack up and leave and turn his back on everything. Sylvie understands that.’ He put his arm around Sylvie’s shoulders and looked apologetically at Pauline.

  Again it struck Pauline how alike they looked, like twins, a boy and a girl – though from another planet, a different one from Pauline’s. But she spoke up courageously, as if there were hope of communication: ‘Does Amy understand? You’ve been promising her since the day she was born, almost.’

  Theo said, ‘If you promise a child Santa Claus, you’re not exactly obliged to deliver him on Christmas Day.’

  ‘So that’s all it is: Santa Claus.’ Pauline looked towards Sylvie, not hopefully, not really expecting help.

  Sylvie spoke gently to her, as if she felt sorry for her and wanted to explain things: ‘Without Theo, it’s on
ly a hut on a hillside, and anyway it’s probably fallen down by now.’

  ‘We can always find another hut,’ Pauline said.

  ‘But why should you? When you’ve got this nice apartment—’ Theo looked around, the way he always did, with that set smile that told Pauline what he really thought of her modest little interior. ‘Two bedrooms, and everything so cosy and tasteful, not to speak of your office—’

  ‘Pauline doesn’t want to keep her office,’ Sylvie told him. ‘She says she owes the rent and is not making any money.’

  ‘Oh?’ Theo said.

  ‘She says she can’t pay me anything this month,’ Sylvie said.

  ‘Of course I can!’ Pauline had jumped up. ‘And next month I’ll be able to give you more, there’s some big deals coming up.’ She waved Sylvie away impatiently before she could even speak. ‘You don’t think I would ever give up my office, turn my back on it, just pack up and leave? That’s not the way I was brought up.’ She was going to say more, but Theo put up his hand in warning. They all three listened to the key turn in the lock of the front door – it was Amy, delivered by her car pool, letting herself in.

  ‘Don’t tell her,’ Sylvie whispered. She held out her hand for the yellow pad Pauline was holding and looked around for somewhere to hide it. Theo took it from her and slid it inside the back of Pauline’s sofa. Then all three turned to face the door with that false smile of adults who have promised children something that they have no intention of delivering. Only Pauline had difficulty keeping up her smile: for Amy entered with a radiance of expectation that Pauline, settling for a lesser good, had only just managed to extinguish within herself.

  Two Muses

  Now that my grandfather, Max Nord, is so famous – many years after his death, a whole new generation has taken him up – I suppose every bit of information about him is of interest to his readers. But my view of him is so familiar, so familial that it might be taken as unwelcome domestic gossip. Certainly, I grew up hearing him gossiped about – by my parents, and everyone else who knew about him and his household set-up. At that time no one believed that his fame would last; and it is true that it did not revive to its present pitch till much later – in fact, till everyone had gone: he himself and his two widows, Lilo and Netta, and my parents too, so that I’m the only family member left to reap the fruits of what now turns out to be, after all, his genius.

  Max, Lilo and Netta had come to England as refugees in the thirties. I was born after the war, so I knew nothing of those earlier years in London when they were struggling with a new language and a new anonymity; for it was not only his work that was in eclipse, they themselves were too – their personalities, which could not be placed or recognized in this alien society. At home, in the Germany of the twenties and early thirties, they had each one of them had a brilliant role: Max of course was the young genius, whose early novels had caused a sensation, and Lilo was his prize – the lovely young daughter of a banking family much grander than his own. Netta was dashing, dramatic, chic in short skirts and huge hats. She loved only artists – painters, opera singers – only geniuses, the more famous the better. She never found one more famous than Max, which was maybe why she loved and stayed with him for the rest of their lives. It always seemed to me that it was Netta, much more than his wife Lilo, who fussed over him, adored him, made excuses for him. Lilo sometimes got impatient with him, and I have heard her say to Netta, ‘Why don’t you take him home with you and make everyone happy, most of all me?’ But the moment she had said this, she covered her face and laughed, and Netta also laughed, as at a big joke.

  They always spoke in English to each other; it was a matter of principle with them, although they must have felt much more at home in their native German, its idiom packed with idiosyncratic meaning for them. But they had banished that language, too proud to use it now that they themselves had been banished from its precincts. Lilo had had an English governess as a child so that her accent was more authentic than that of the other two – though not quite: I myself, an English child growing up in England, never thought of my grandmother as anything but foreign. Max’s accent was so impenetrable that it was sometimes impossible to understand what he was saying (always impossible for me, but then I didn’t understand him anyway). Yet, although he did not speak it well, Max’s grasp of the English language must have been profound; he continued to write in German but spent weeks and months with his English translator, wrestling over nuances of meaning.

  Since Max’s work is so well known today, I need not say much about it. This is just as well, for his books are not the slender psychological novels I prefer but huge tomes with the characters embodying and expressing abstract thought. Today they are generally accepted as masterpieces, but during his last years – which are those that I remember – this estimate was confined to a small group of admirers. In his own household it was of course accepted without question – even by my grandmother Lilo, although I now suspect that she was not as devoted a reader of his works as she should have been. In fact, I wonder sometimes if she read them at all, especially the later, most difficult ones. But Lilo was not really a reader. She liked to go for long walks, to make odd purchases at antique stalls and to play tennis. Yet as a girl she had read the classics – mostly German, and Russian in translation – and, with all her desirable suitors, she had chosen to marry a young writer of modest means and background. An only child, she lived – an enchanted princess – in her father’s villa in the salubrious outskirts of the city. Max would bicycle from the less salubrious city centre where he was a lodger in the flat of an army widow. He brought his latest manuscript and they sat under the trees in her father’s garden – in their memories, as transmitted to me, it seems to have been always summer – and he read from his work to her till it got too dark to see. He was so engrossed in his own words that he noticed nothing – it was she who cried, ‘Maxi! A bee!’ She saved him from it with vigorous flaps of the napkin that had come out with the coffee tray. This tray also bore, besides the voluminous, rosebudded coffee pot, an apple or other fruit tart, so that Lilo was constantly on the alert with the same napkin; and in other ways too she was distracted – for instance, by a bird pecking away in the plum tree, or by Max himself and the way his hair curled on the nape of his strong round young neck where it was bent over his manuscript. Sometimes she could not refrain from tickling him there a little bit, and then he looked up and found her smiling at him – and how could he not smile back? Perhaps it didn’t even occur to him that she wasn’t listening; or if it did, it wouldn’t have mattered, because wasn’t she herself the embodiment of everything he was trying to get into words?

  After they were married, they lived in a house – it was her father’s wedding present to them – not far from the one where she had grown up; it too had a garden, with fruit trees, bees and flowers, where Lilo spent a lot of time while he was in his study, writing (it was taken for granted) masterpieces. As the years went by, Lilo became more and more of a home bird – not that she was particularly domestic, she never was, not at all, but that she loved being there, in her own home where she was happy with her husband and child (my mother). During the summer months, and sometimes at Easter, the three of them went to the same big comfortable old hotel in the mountains where she had vacationed with her parents. During the rest of the year Max travelled by himself, to European conferences or to see his foreign publishers; he also had business in the city at least once a week and would go there no longer by bicycle but in his new Mercedes sports car. And it was here, in their home city, which was also hers, that he encountered Netta – or she encountered him, for there is no doubt that, however their affair developed, it was she who first hunted him down: her last, her biggest lion.

  She saw him in a restaurant – one of those big plush bright crowded expensive places she went to frequently with her artistic circle of friends, and he only very occasionally, and usually only with his publisher. He was with his publisher that time too,
the two of them dining together. They were both dressed elegantly but also very correctly, so that it would have been difficult to distinguish between publisher and author, if it had not been for Max’s looks, which were noble, handsome. ‘Oh my God! Isn’t that Max Nord? Catch me, quick, I’m fainting—’ and Netta collapsed into the lap of the nearest friend (an art critic). Soon she and Max were introduced and soon they were lovers – that never took long with her, at that time; but for him it may have been his first adulterous affair and he suffered terribly and made her suffer terribly. He would only meet her when he travelled to other cities, preferably foreign ones, so that they were always in hotel rooms – he checked in first, and when his business was concluded, he allowed her to join him. She wrote him frenzied, burning letters, which have since been published, by herself— ‘ . . . Don’t you know that I sit here and wait and die again and again, longing for a sign from you, my most beloved, my most wonderful terrible lover, oh you of the arched eyebrows and the— I kiss you a thousand times there and there and there . . . ’ Years passed and the situation did not change for them: he would still only see her in other cities, stolen luxurious nights in luxurious hotel rooms; and she, who had always lived by love, now felt she was perishing by it. She had divorced her husband (her second), and though she still had many men friends, she no longer took them as her lovers; later there were rumours that she had sometimes turned to women friends, her tears and confession to them melting into acts of love. Her looks, always brilliant, became more so – her hats more enormous, her eyebrows plucked to the finest line; she wore fur stoles and cascades of jewels, she glistened in silk designer gowns slit up one side to show a length of splendid leg.

  It has never been clear when Lilo first found out about the affair. There was always something vague about Lilo – also something secret, so that she may have known about it long before they realized she did. But whatever upheaval there may have been in their inner lives became vastly overwhelmed by what was happening in the streets, the cities, the countries around them. They, and everyone they knew, were preparing to leave; life had become a matter of visas and wherever possible secret foreign bank accounts. Even when he went abroad, to conferences where he was honoured, Max had only to lean out of his hotel window – Netta was there beside him – to witness marching, slogans, street fights, trucks packed with soldiers. Everyone emigrated where and when they could; farewells were mostly dispensed with – no one really expected to meet again, or if they did, it would be in countries so strange and foreign that they themselves would be as strangers to each other. Max, accepting asylum in England for himself and his family, left at what was almost the last moment. Only a week later his books were among those that were burned, an event that must have seared him even more than his parting from Netta. He was by nature a fatalist – he never thought he could actually do anything in the face of opposition, and indeed he couldn’t – so he did not let himself hold out any hope of meeting Netta again. But she was the opposite: she knew she had her hand on the tiller of fate. She told him, ‘I’ll be there soon.’ And so she was – she and even some of her furniture; all were installed in a flat in St John’s Wood, within walking distance of where Max lived with his family in another flat, up a hill, in Hampstead.