Sophie and the Sibyl

by Patricia Duncker

  Mr. Fowles never bothers with the daring and courageous women of the mid-nineteenth century who fought for social and sexual reform: Caroline Norton, accused of ‘criminal conversation’ with the Prime Minister, who campaigned for the transformation of the divorce laws, Barbara Bodichon, who founded the English Women’s Review, and visited Marian Lewes and to hell with decorum and appearances, Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote Ruth (1853), championing the virtue and innocence of the young woman seduced. Actually, Gaskell insists so fanatically upon Ruth’s utter innocence that I, for one, have never been able to identify the moment when the wicked Mr. Bellingham makes himself Master of her Person. But possess her he certainly did, because she gives birth to a son, who lives to be proud of his heroic mother. The latter dies in a burst of sanctimonious religiosity. Saved at last!

  The Sibyl saved herself by writing fiction.

  END OF CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  spins the Wheel of Fortune in unexpected ways. The Reader is invited to place her Bets.

  Prostitutes, gorgeous as princesses, rubbed shoulders with the recently rich around the roulette tables, but too many of their Berlin acquaintances, there to enjoy the gambling, had already greeted him. Max decided to play safe. Forbidden to enjoy himself in the Kursaal, and disinclined to float gently in the baths, Max decided to pay for one whole night of bliss in the arms of his farmer’s daughter. She fulfilled all his expectations, and if not as weightless as the Fairy Queen Titania, nevertheless performed an exotic variety of magical tricks, some of which startled her worldly young gentleman into yelps of joy. Sated, washed, brushed and perfumed, he strolled back towards the populated promenades in the early morning, inordinately pleased with the intensity of his night’s bought pleasure. He paused to light his cigarette, not ten paces from the Israelite’s pawn shop, when a familiar young figure swung out into the street before him. Her plaits were tucked into her hat, so that her pale neck shone smooth as a statue above the embroidered collar and the bold green stripes of her walking dress. Max was so close that he saw the light gleaming through the fine blonde hairs at the nape. Her laced boots, black with white trim, hammered away over the cobbles. She kept her eyes down. She wasn’t looking for trouble. But there was no doubt about it; out of the Jew’s den flounced the Countess Sophie von Hahn.

  Max froze, his face boiling with embarrassment and shock. Her receding virginity reproached him for that one night of love, and he stood, denounced, as guilty as any young husband caught in flagrante delicto with the housemaid. What on earth was she doing in Homburg? And did she know he was already here? Max dived into the Aladdin’s cave presided over by a tiny bearded Jew. The shop was darker than he had expected; the pocket watches, bracelets, necklaces and precious stones luminous on black velvet squares beneath locked glass.

  ‘May I be of service to you, sir?’ whispered the Jew. He laid down an elegant necklace of opals and rubies surrounded by diamonds, that he had been examining through an eyeglass, which he now carefully extracted, and set down beside the languorous jewels.

  ‘The young lady who just came in – what did she want?’ Max blurted out his alarm.

  The Jew seemed to shrink a little. All transactions on his premises remained confidential. He murmured apologies. Max loomed over him. Without speaking, the pawnbroker simply lowered his eyes to the necklace and Max grasped the transaction at once. Sophie had borrowed money against the necklace, almost certainly without her father’s knowledge. But where was the Count? Would no one step forward to reprimand this wastrel daughter? What troubles had engulfed her? Blackmail and Vice hovered in the wings, awaiting their chance to drag down his adorable Sophie. Max mounted a metaphorical charger and lowered his lance at the Jew.

  ‘I understand you perfectly, sir,’ he snapped, although nothing had been explained. ‘How much?’

  ‘One thousand thaler.’ The Jew’s voice sank to a barely audible vibration. He glanced nervously into the rooms behind him, hoping for reinforcements if the gentleman before him, clearly a near relation of the lovely young lady, turned nasty. Max shivered slightly. The jewels glowed on the velvet between them. This necklace must belong to the old Countess; surely these jewels formed part of Sophie von Hahn’s dowry and inheritance. One thousand thaler barely touched their value and the Jew knew it. Redeeming the thing then and there drifted into Max’s brain, but without Wolfgang’s authorisation the project was impossible.

  Max turned on his heel, threw open the door, with not one further word to the Jew, and bounded away down the street. He flung himself into the awakening watery sunshine of the little town and pounded after the woman he intended to honour with his own hand and his brother’s money. So far as Max was concerned Sophie von Hahn already counted as his wife, and never mind the fact that he hadn’t actually asked her. But she had vanished into air, as decisively as the fairies, dissolving at daybreak. He rang the bell of Frau Heide’s Very Superior Pension, but the sleepy maid informed him that they didn’t have rich people like the Count von Hahn staying there, and why didn’t he try the Grand Continental Hotel? Out of breath and temper, edgy and flustered, Max stormed the reception desk, only to be informed that the Graf von Hahn and his daughter had indeed arrived the day before, had left several messages for him, including a pressing invitation to dine with them on the previous evening, but had not yet emerged from their suite to greet the day. You little minx, Max fretted and bristled. Not dressed yet? Not gone out? He was quite prepared to hunt her down himself and give her a wigging. Had she got herself into debt? Surely the Count gave her a generous allowance? Was she supporting some indigent relative? The indigent and the undeserving remained indistinguishable in Max’s imagination. Or maybe she had become too deeply involved in good works of a religious nature?

  Standing there, undecided, in the great foyer of the Continental, beside the palms in giant Oriental vats, Max poured out his apologies to the Count von Hahn on the back of his visiting card, which he left with the porter to be sent up with their breakfast. Then he marched out into the gardens to read his letters just arrived from Berlin: one from Wolfgang and the other from Professor Marek, inviting him to attend a series of lectures in preparation for the Anatolian expedition in the spring. Wolfgang outlined a counter-proposal for Max to negotiate with Lewes, which gave their house both Continental reprint rights and the translation copyright on the Sibyl’s next masterpiece, whenever she might choose to create said work, certain to be even more excellent and extraordinary than the present magnificent and amazing magnum opus. Max abandoned his brother’s hyperbole. Yet more negotiations with the inflexible hairy husband! Max almost mowed down an elderly English lady, her companion and their little dog, parading round the fountain. His self-satisfied mood of sexual accomplishment dissipated before a row of irritating obstacles.

  And so it was that Max, disgruntled and anxious, presented himself at Obere Promenade 14, equipped for battle with the publisher’s counter-proposals. But the scene which greeted him in the comfortable first-floor apartments suggested a peculiar and alarming scientific experiment. Lewes, he assumed that it was Lewes, sat at the table, still wearing his robe de chambre, an ample towel draped over his head, so that his voice, hoarse and stifled, emerged faintly through the folds. A sinister balsamic mixture filled the room with odours of menthol and verbena. A brown bottle containing the tincture stood beside the jug of boiling water, which the Sibyl poured carefully into the basin before her husband, causing the vapours to surge upwards, like mist evaporating from the valley bottoms. She nodded earnestly at Max.

  ‘Pull the towel right over the basin, dearest, and breathe deeply, so that you get the full benefit.’

  Lewes bent forwards, as if intending to be sick.

  ‘I am sorry, my dear fellow,’ groaned the voice, hoarse and indistinct. He echoed like a reluctant spirit guide, discovered beneath linen drapes at the climax of a seance. ‘You have caught me at a low ebb.’

  Max attempted to excuse himself and backed towar
ds the door, but both the Sibyl and the muffled Lewes insisted that he should settle and be seated.

  ‘It’s only a chesty sore throat,’ gasped the voice, ‘and Polly’s wonderful inhalation may put a stop to it. I don’t want her to succumb to this as well.’

  The closed rooms, stuffy and airless, with the fire banked up and blazing, produced a dreadful claustrophobic fug, smelling equally of illness and cloves. The Sibyl gazed at Max, the marvellous grey-blue eyes filled with beseeching tenderness and anxiety.

  ‘George wondered if you would be so kind as to escort me round the park. He is sure to be better tomorrow and is convinced that my headache will reappear if we sit here with the windows closed.’

  ‘Give Polly a run in the sunshine, won’t you, Max, there’s a splendid chap,’ croaked the scientist, suspended over the fumes. ‘And fight off the English. We’ve already turned away Lady Castletown this morning, and her daughter Mrs. Wingfield, who pours forth confidences to Polly. The English are kind and convivial, but also very wearing. Polly needs a brisk canter à pied and a dose of fresh air, or she’ll buckle under the strain.’ Lewes vanished again beneath the towel and the steam mounted around him as if he were sniffing hell-fire, well in advance of his appointed time. Max assented politely to every suggestion.

  Here she was, the Sibyl, in bonnet and cape, neatly packaged with gloves and shawl, ready to step out through the wilder reaches of the park, beyond the prying eyes of the English guests at the Hessischer Hof, with Max as her guardian knight. The lady set a cracking pace. Max realised, in some alarm, that his charming promenades as a flâneur, through Berlin’s welter of amusements, did not equip him to pound down damp paths beside the Sibyl, who leaped bare roots like a champion racehorse, engaged on winning a steeplechase. They strode purposefully away towards the pine forests, carried on a light wind, beneath the reddening leaves. At first their speed permitted no more than sparse conversation and the occasional observation, but once they reached a safe distance well beyond the morning crowds circling the bandstand and the pavilion, the Sibyl slackened to a steady little trot and accepted his arm with a grateful inclination of her huge white forehead. The disordered bonnet slipped back a little, revealing a thick mane of chestnut streaked with grey. Max immediately felt embarrassed and intimidated by this unlooked-for tête-à-tête. The great trees around them blew leaves of many colours, as varied as Joseph’s coat, across their path. He kept an eye out for brambles snatching at her shawl, and lurking murky puddles, for the path, less frequented here in the outer reaches of the park, roughened and dipped. But the Sibyl knew where she was going. Her gentle pressure on his arm guided him on to woodland trails, unvisited. They startled a hare on the edge of a meadow, which leaped away into the undergrowth, ears flattened. The path now rose upwards and they began to climb. The trees thickened and darkened, the way before them flecked with sunlight.

  ‘I feel so peaceful here,’ remarked the Sibyl, scraping mud from her boot on a dead branch. The earth peeled off in one piece like the shavings from an orange. ‘We never meet anyone.’

  Max bowed, terrified of small talk. He felt sure she had already notched him off as insincere and stupid.

  ‘I came out here to meditate the Finale to Middlemarch.’

  Now he had to say something.

  ‘Your readers will be both grateful and distraught, Madame. For every ending is both a resolution and a parting. Especially for those who have followed you through this long and enthralling year. Your characters have become living people to so many of your readers, who fear for their final destinies.’

  He thought of Sophie’s putative endings, and remembered that she found none satisfactory. Suddenly the end of the story mattered more than anything else. He longed to hand his bride both the pawned necklace and a happy ending. But the Sibyl stepped ahead of him.

  ‘Conclusions are the weak point of most authors, but some of the fault lies in the very nature of a conclusion, which is at best a negation.’

  Max did not understand her. He adopted an exceedingly grave expression, and navigated a wrinkle in the mud with exaggerated care for his pale grey trousers. She drew him after her into the forest. The Sibyl looked up at the whispering trees; sycamore, ash, birch, oak, giving way to an eternal, darkening green. They stood side by side, listening to the soughing pines. Their onward steps made no sound, cushioned by pine needles, and they drew closer together as the path narrowed. Immediately, they both lowered their voices, as if entering a church.

  ‘Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending,’ murmured the Sibyl, her head tilted, as if listening to the rhythm of her own words. ‘Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in after years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept –’

  She stopped and looked directly at him, her great face sombre and worn. Max felt judged.

  He had flourished and bloomed, grown tall and strong, his father’s favourite son, the Benjamin of the family, that wonderful miracle – a healthy child, after several tragic infant deaths. His sister fled away into the shades, carried off by scarlet fever, and his mother had despaired of ever giving Wolfgang a sibling. But here stood beautiful, joyous Max, with his dark eyes and powerful bounding limbs! He saw himself, galloping fearless on his first pony, speaking both English and French fluently at seven years, rattling along beside his stringy, austere tutor, reciting the names of all the plants, as if the earth belonged to him. He remembered eating too much cake at his tenth birthday party and being violently sick all over his rocking horse; carrying a giant cone of sweets to his master on the first day of school, sitting for his portrait in his cadet’s uniform at fifteen, that painting still hanging in the hall. Had he lived up to the golden promises of those first days? He had not only wasted his brother’s money, he had disappointed Wolfgang by refusing to finish anything. If any project proved difficult or irritating, Max instantly manufactured an excuse to abandon the field of endeavour. He stood surrounded by attempts and beginnings, rather than achievements, all his beauty and charm fraudulent and spoiled. Even Hans Meyrick, with his effeminate curls and effusive desire to impress, had won the prize: he had painted more fairies into one canvas than any other artist.

  The Sibyl sensed his discomfort. Her antennae flickered like a praying mantis registering a disturbance in the air. The luminous grey gaze swept across his face, conciliatory, generous and forgiving. He could hide nothing from her.

  ‘I sometimes feel –’ Max commenced his confession, then ran out of words, as well as feelings. The forest breathed quietly about them; sunlight spattered across the Sibyl’s bonnet and shawl.

  ‘You see, Mrs. Lewes,’ he gathered speed and began to gibber, ‘I am like your Tito Melema. Or at least I am in danger of becoming like him. Romola is your book, that is, the one book that meant most to me, or at least so far –’ Max was not prepared to admit that he had not read one single word of Middlemarch.

  ‘You see, Tito Melema wasn’t an evil man. He simply didn’t like rows, unpleasantness or decisions. I recognise that. He liked everything to be as pleasant and as beautiful as he was himself. And he procrastinated. He did intend to save his father from slavery and to purchase his freedom. Just as soon as he had set himself up properly in Florence, and got a bit of influence. He didn’t mean to forget the man to whom he owed everything. And he really did love Tessa, the little contadina, not because she was undemanding and naïve, but because she believed in him, unquestioning. He just didn’t possess a strong enough character to comprehend Romola’s finer moral sense, or indeed to be worthy of her love –’ Max petered out, sensing that his situation had degenerated into the ridiculous. Here he was in the middle of a forest, describing a fictional character he had recognised as an awful personal warning, to the very woman who once created him. Tito, the laughing Greek, loomed merry and menacing, amidst the sharp shadows of the pines, and Max stood, hesitant, between
this phantom of himself and the traitor’s only begetter.

  ‘I know Tito,’ he blurted out. ‘I know all his weaknesses. I found it appalling that I knew him at once, and so well.’

  The Sibyl smiled slightly, without uncovering her fearful teeth, and offered her arm to Max. They stepped onwards down the forest trail, whose edges now appeared fluid and nebulous among the dead needles.

  ‘I am very moved and honoured that my work should speak to you so clearly, and that you read Tito with so unerring an eye. You are right. He is not a criminal; he simply wishes to follow a path through life that is always littered with adoration and roses. But the moral life, that best part of our own souls, is neither so rosy, nor so simple.’ She paused, looking up at the earth’s breath, which stirred the pine tops. ‘That book is indeed dear to me. I was a young woman when I began, but an old woman by the time it was finished.’

  ‘You were unflinching in your justice.’ Max contemplated Tito’s end, and the grim fate that awaited all those incapable of rising to the awful demands of the moral life. ‘The traitor died by his own adopted father’s hand.’

  The writer nodded, her face sombre.

  ‘But revenge, however just or apparently noble, is persuasive only in fiction, Max.’ She used his Christian name with warmth and intimacy, her hand on his arm pressed him gently onwards. ‘In our human world, revenge leaves nothing but the taste of ashes in its wake. My first source for that part of the intrigue in Romola came from General Pfuhl, nearly eighteen years ago. We met at Fräulein Solmar’s salon in Berlin. He told me of a wealthy nobleman, who was cheated out of all his property by a villainous adopted son. The man killed the thief he had taken to his bosom – killed him on the spot. He was imprisoned, tried and condemned for the murder. It is said that on the eve of his execution he refused to accept a confessor, and cried, “I wish to go to Hell, for he is there, and I want to follow out my revenge.”’