Sophie and the Sibyl

by Patricia Duncker

  Wolfgang made Max a full partner in the firm and gave him the historical list to develop, with fresh commissions. The archaeological expedition languished for lack of funds. In a blaze of scholarly generosity the Count volunteered a large gift with the small condition attached, that another photographic book, Images of Ancient Monuments, should form part of the project.

  The formal betrothal and the marriage contract, signed and settled in February, transformed Max into a rich man. He could now dedicate himself to antiquity without even bothering his future wife for a handful of Reichsmarks. The lease on the old Duncker family home, three doors down from the house in the Jägerstraße, fell due for renewal on the 1st of April. Wolfgang undertook the redecoration expenses, vastly amused by the fact that the only parts of the house Sophie desperately wanted to see before they took possession were the stables.

  The winter hardened into long gleaming points of ice, suspended like executioners’ swords, from the eaves of all the buildings. The young couple went skating in the blue days of cold sun, rode out in the Count’s sledge, accepted congratulations from people they hardly knew in their box at the theatre, spent hours talking about nothing in particular. Everyone loves a young couple and a fairy-tale romance: he’s handsome, she’s rich as well as beautiful, and here they come, brimming with affection and wealth, hell-bent on lifelong happiness. Only the witch, uninvited to the feast, harbours her generous malevolence and saves it for the moment where both parties have reached the point of no return.

  Did the Sibyl intend to unsettle Max in his headlong flight towards matrimonial bliss? Who knows? But her timing was perfect. The early days of June 1873, marred by odd blasts of sleet pulverising the tulips, and hailstones, which actually shattered two panes of glass in the conservatory at Wilhelmplatz, filled everyone with fear for the weather on the wedding day. Would it be too cold for the open carriage? Should Sophie set forth on her father’s arm, swathed in shawls? How could they negotiate that pond of mud below the church steps with a wedding train?

  A state of nervous hysteria seized the entourage of the old Countess. But nothing bothered the bride.

  ‘If it rains we’ll just leave off the train,’ she declared, careless, magnificent, ‘and then everyone will be able to see that I am wearing Mama’s wedding dress, layers of French lace with the bodice stitched in real pearls! No one’s worn a wedding dress like that for over twenty years.’

  ‘Thirty years,’ sighed the old Countess.

  ‘Don’t take on so, my dear,’ urged the Count.

  The Countess initiated a confidential tête-à-tête about the wedding night, but Sophie breezily waved her aside.

  ‘That’s all fine, Mama. I’ve read a very modern book in English that has diagrams. I know what little boys are made of. And I dare say that Max has lots of experience. He was, after all, in the army.’

  Her mother scuttled away, dumbfounded, and full of apprehension concerning the nature of the diagrams. She ventured a brisk hunt through Sophie’s rooms for the very modern English book, while her daughter was out riding, but found it not. Some things simply did not turn out according to plan.

  On the evening before his wedding day Max received a brief letter from the Sibyl. He opened it without even noticing that it had been sent from England.

  The Priory

  1st June 1873

  My Dear Max,

  Mr. Lewes and I would like to wish you every happiness on your forthcoming marriage to Sophie, Countess von Hahn. Please do give her our congratulations and best wishes. You are so often in my thoughts, and I think of you with great affection.

  I remain, as ever, your true friend

  Marian Evans Lewes

  And thus the long silence, unbroken since that warm but dangerous night in Stuttgart, finally lifted, and the Sibyl stood before him, her intense presence permeating every corner of his rooms where all his possessions, now being rapidly decanted into crates and boxes, stood sadly naked and displaced, bearing witness. He could hear her voice, low, resonant with insinuation. You are so often in my thoughts.

  Max panicked. He grabbed his hat and coat, fled downstairs and clattered out of the building. Wolfgang, brushing his frock coat in preparation for the morning, and inspecting the lining for moths, heard him go and strode to the window. Yes, there was Max, hurtling down the Jägerstraße, into a grey sheet of drizzle, with the Devil at his heels.

  Wolfgang summoned his butler.

  ‘I see that my brother has gone out. Do you know where he’s going?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘He didn’t say?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Wolfgang could dismiss neither his unease, nor his butler.

  ‘Was there anything missing from his luggage or his toilette for tomorrow?’

  ‘Not that I know of, sir.’

  ‘Very odd,’ sighed Wolfgang.

  The butler risked delivering a little further information.

  ‘He had just received a message, sir, which appeared to be the cause of his abrupt departure.’

  ‘Ah. Was it from the young Countess?’

  ‘No, sir. A letter from England.’

  Wolfgang still stood, baffled, gazing at the miserable rain, while Max arrived, damp and shaking, at the great house in Wilhelmplatz. His bride and her seamstress were engaged in a last fitting of the pearl-bodiced wedding gown. Were the sleeves a little too tight? Here, beneath the arms? I will be carrying my bouquet of white roses and my arms will be raised. So.

  Tumult at the door! The bridegroom must not see his lady in her gown before the day itself. For if he does, who knows what misery may result. Sophie! Sophie! She heard him calling in her chamber. Sophie swiftly shed the gown, which she piled on top of her dressmaker, pulled on her robe de chambre, an embroidered housecoat covered in swirling green leaves, and swept into her sitting room, hair loose, buttons undone, feet bare. Max had never seen her in this state of undress before, but hardly noticed her naked throat and the erotic streams of white silk.

  ‘What is it, Max? You sound really alarmed.’

  Suddenly Max felt ridiculous, racing through the rain and wet streets, pursued by a demon he had already beaten back into its cave.

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ he gulped, ‘just to make sure you were still here and hadn’t changed your mind.’

  ‘Changed my mind?’ She laughed, and dragged him close to the fire. ‘Warm yourself up, my love. You’re ice-cold. Of course I haven’t changed my mind.’ Her face, suddenly serious, darkened.

  ‘I’m not the kind of person who loves one minute and not the next. Never doubt me, Max. Never.’

  He drew out the note.

  ‘I received this. From England.’

  Sophie scanned the note. Then moved the lamp so that she could read it carefully.

  ‘She sent this message so that it would reach us before our wedding day,’ murmured Max, calculating distance, dates, post. He left the Sibyl’s motives open to Sophie’s interpretation.

  ‘Ah. Did she indeed?’ murmured Sophie. She raised her eyes to Max’s face, then, carefully and deliberately, she ripped the letter into tiny pieces and flung it into the fire. As each morsel fed the flames the light flared across her cheeks and forehead.

  ‘There. She is nothing but ash. Ash and dust.’ She whirled round to face Max, with a wonderful white smile. ‘Now we can be happy.’

  Ignoring her dressmaker’s shocked expression she snuggled into Max’s damp arms.

  Their wedding day, tearful at first, rainy at dawn, suddenly bloomed into hesitant but hopeful sun. The tulips in the formal gardens righted themselves, the open carriage was ordered, the full train decided upon, the shawls discarded. The Count and his wife, luminous in their finery, medals, satin, trimming and brocade, went out early to gather white roses for the bridal crown. In the lee of the walled garden grew the climbing rose they had planted when their first child was born in 1854. Look at that rose now, nineteen years later! Robust, tenacious, busily strangling the iron
work trellis. That rose, pruned, tended, loved, might well live for hundreds of years. No scent, but thousands of suckers, reaching up, holding fast, loyal to the gardeners, spangled with thorns. Sophie’s rose braced itself for matrimony. Our little girl, married at last, and to her childhood sweetheart. The old couple came indoors, slightly chilled, their eyes moist, their arms overflowing with roses.

  Sophie, anxious in her wedding dress – we let it out last night – why does it still feel too tight – here? – forgot every tiny niggle in her delight at the crown and sprays of white petals, barely opened, tipped with the soft breath of pink. Oh Mama, she embraced her mother, leaving the old Countess breathless from a slightly too ferocious hug.

  And here she comes down the aisle on her father’s arm, stepping out ahead of the music, her own spring beauty challenging that gorgeous shower of roses. As the minister opened his book and smirked down upon their fresh faces, the bride’s expression changed slightly, her joyous glow sank just a little into discomfort. Do you, Maximilian Reinhardt August, take Sophie Anna Elizabeth Constanza to be your lawful wedded wife? Sophie handed the bouquet to her little sister Lotte, who crouched at her side, shifting from foot to foot, still clutching the train, and then rubbed her bare neck beneath the veil with sinister energy. There was no doubt about it; the bride had begun to scratch beneath her own ears.

  ‘Sophie, what’s the matter?’ muttered Max, as the minister urged God to bless the rings.

  ‘I’m covered in greenfly,’ hissed the bride, ‘the church has warmed them up, and they’re pouring off the roses.’

  Rome, city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar! Sophie rubbed her eyes, bent down, tightened the laces on her boots, and braced herself for an afternoon in the Vatican Galleries. For she was beholding Rome, where the arrow of their wedding journey finally attained its target. They occupied an enormous suite at the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Sophie reduced their entourage to two. Karl to deal with the luggage, tips, hotels, carriages, customs officials, alterations in the tickets and the train timetables, and the seamstress, Margareta, to deal with Sophie’s travelling costumes, hatboxes, jewellery case, numerous sets of shoes, scarves, silk and lace petticoats, evening gowns, morning gowns, riding jackets, stockings, slippers, and ladies’ unmentionables.

  But how had they travelled and what terrible obstacles had they overcome? Sophie’s boisterous and practical good sense served them well on their wedding voyage to Italy. Max expected everything to be perfect. Sophie dealt with matters arising when it wasn’t. They travelled by train from Berlin to Paris, leaving the old house in Jägerstraße invaded by decorators, and managed by Wolfgang. Then after a suitable passage of time spent goggling at famous art works in the Louvre, they settled in to study the antiquities. Sophie’s skill with languages suddenly became a traveller’s asset in her marriage trousseau. She spoke and read three tongues perfectly. Her French poured forth as fluent as her native German, and apart from a faint accent, which her family described as charming, her English, bolstered up by a parade of governesses, did more than pass muster. She chirruped away at Miss Arrowpoint over the wedding breakfast, idiomatic, faultless. Now she got them all better rooms with gorgeous views and their stamped documents returned – immediately, Countess, yes, of course – with bows and compliments.

  And what of those first days of marriage? Were they blissful treasured hours, or an embarrassing, unfortunate couple of weeks, best forgotten in later years? Well, neither description suits the case. Remember that Sophie and Max have known each other all their lives. He teased her when she was first learning to walk, delighted whenever she fell over. She bit him on the shoulder when he held her too tightly. She ate his share of cream gateau, that slice he had saved, specially saved, to celebrate his first birthday meal at the adults’ table. He found himself facing a slicked empty plate, barren even of crumbs. And then he had chased her into the fountains. No, Max Duncker and Sophie, Countess von Hahn, her name, title and inheritance intact, according to her grandfather’s wishes, by special dispensation from the Kaiser himself, no, this young couple squabbled their way into a happy marriage. They conducted a decorous sequence of disputes about almost everything. And both of them enjoyed every minute. That wedding night, which should have been assisted by modern English diagrams, collapsed in affectionate, exhausted slumber. And the first serious bedroom wrangle took place when Sophie announced:

  ‘Max. Listen to me. This is important. I don’t want any children for at least two years. And I have all these devices and techniques to stop it happening. Look!’

  Max didn’t object to devices and techniques, some not unfamiliar, if they presented no impediment to his desires, but he did object to Sophie knowing about them. She decided this was unreasonable.

  ‘You don’t risk your life in childbirth. I do.’

  He felt overtaken and rejected. She thought this was an excessive burst of egotism.

  But the possessive love of good companions, who passed every waking hour either looking at or thinking about each other, always carried the day. Their servants got used to the Master and the Countess racing up and downstairs in search of one another, and shouting out from windows.

  Well then, Sophie’s cleverness at languages is earning her a good deal of respect. But she has never studied Latin or Greek. Max has studied both. And suddenly, in the fading shadows of the Museum in Florence, where they paused on their way south to Rome, surrounded by sarcophagi, Sophie resented the limits placed on her education. She determined to mount an assault against the dead languages covering the tombs.

  ‘What does this say?’ She flashed a gloved hand at the dedication beneath a seated woman on a small box, built for ashes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Max, ‘it’s written in Etruscan.’

  He’s lying, thought Sophie in a rage of ignorant frustration, and stalked off down the dusty aisles, leaving Max amidst the alien tombs of the Etruscans.

  For now here she was in Rome, puzzled and impressed by the unfolding ruins, toppled columns, marble pavements and colossal shattered grandeur, which poked through the tissue of the modern city like dead white ribs. They stood on the steps of the Palazzo Senatorio, gazing at the massive calm of the colossi, strangely streaked and disfigured by the blackening weather. Confronted with something strange, vast and extinct, Sophie realised that the safest path to understanding led through patience, study and the capacity to sit still and listen. But very few young girls, aged not yet nineteen, and recently married, actually possess these skills, that are the gifts of maturity. Those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge, which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, will not easily grasp Sophie’s dilemma. She gazed upon the wreckage of antiquity, baffled. How had a complete world with a language, a religion, wealth and land without boundaries, and an enviable, arrogant identity, simply ceased to exist? Why were these particular fossils declared significant? And what, exactly, had destroyed this empire and then strolled onward through history without so much as a backward glance? Max rejoined his young wife later that night and found her buried in an enticing mixture of Bulwer-Lytton and Gibbon.

  But if the nights were dedicated to The Last Days of Pompeii and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and thus to the earnest acquisition of scientific information concerning the cycles of history, then the days must be given up to viewing the wonders that remain. They wandered beneath the hollow arches of the Colosseum, with giant fennel luxuriant among the crumbling brickwork, and the Baths of Caracalla, amidst whose abandoned halls and tunnels dwelt a sinister mixture of starving cats and importunate beggars.

  She was invited to a special evening viewing of the treasures in the Vatican, but the afternoon turned sultry and airless. Sophie therefore lay down upon her bed after luncheon and immediately fell asleep, volume 2 of Gibbon open upon her breast. Six o’ clock gone before th
e little maid tapped upon her door. The light glowed, grey and ugly behind the still curtains. Sophie rubbed her eyes, bent down, tightened the laces on her boots and braced herself for the Vatican Galleries.

  Enter Professor Kurt Marek. Sophie had never set eyes upon the famous Professor of Archaeology, History, Ancient Languages, Greek Law and Religious Philosophy from its earliest beginnings, Philology, Linguistics and All Kinds of Knowledge. But here he stood before her. As she stepped into the salon he appeared to grow up out of the carpet, dapper, tiny and vivid with quick movements. He bowed, skimmed across the room, kissed her fingers, drew himself up, so that she could appreciate his burgundy waistcoat and emerald tie pin, nodded in acknowledgement of the fact that he was at least a head shorter than she was, stroked his goatee and proclaimed:

  ‘Countess! I am honoured, honoured. I am here to escort you to your husband, who has, I imagine, spent a difficult afternoon in the Galleries. The air outside is intolerably close. I fear we may be in for a thunderstorm. The fiacre awaits us. May I carry your cloak?’

  He whirled her down the stairs.

  ‘Too oppressive, my dear, to wear anything but the lightest of jackets, yet I fear that we shall need our weatherproofs before the night is out. You are wearing boots? Good, good. But that little hat will not protect you. Ah, your cloak has a hood? Well then, we are secured against all eventualities. Drive on.’