by Tim Parks
He got out of bed, went over to the window, but found only a ghost of a reflection against the advancing day behind. He can’t see himself. But why care about your appearance once you’ve chosen to live alone? The Trennerhof peasants are hardly a prime-time audience. Cleaver looked out over the gorge. The complex shift of colours, from the bright greys and greens of the upper slopes to the dark pine and shadow deep below, is growing familiar. Will I ever explore it? he wondered. And he wondered if there was a mirror in the room that was locked. Had the old Nazi looked after his appearance, out of an ancient vanity, perhaps, dreaming of some improbable return to society, to the days of the parade ground and the Bozen Polizeiregiment? Had he too suffered from a stiff neck?
Very carefully, Cleaver tried to move his head from side to side. Don’t! To anyone who knew him only in his TV persona, his elder son had written, my father must have seemed entirely natural in his unflagging photogenic suavity; how could the viewers have imagined the effort this heavy eater, drinker and smoker had to make to project that single, reassuring image of himself?
Cleaver couldn’t wear the same clothes he had worn yesterday. The trousers were filthy from crawling back up the path. Not to mention the sweat he had produced chopping up those trees. He opened the dusty cupboard. You have one London suit, plus three changes of the sort of shirts and trousers to be found in shops in Bruneck: chequered flannel and coarse brown denim. I shall have to heat saucepans of water to shave, and to wash my crotch and armpits, and to do the laundry. Unless I just put the same clothes back on and the hell with it. Was that a solution? This journey was supposed to be an exit from all effort, Cleaver reflected, the discovery of oceans of meditative space beyond the stress of family conflict and brilliant career. Now it seems all my creativity will have to go into the merest survival: what to heat the water in, where to string up a washing line. Or could I get used to stinking? He made a heap of his dirty clothes. Did the old Nazi take his laundry to Trennerhof? he wondered. Did he have his meals brought down for him? Still gazing out of the window, Cleaver imagined Seffa plodding down the track with a basket in her arms and Uli at her heels. The girl was fat, but not irretrievably ugly. MIT ESSEN, Frau Schleiermacher had written, 450 euros a month. Why didn’t I accept? Cleaver was sure she had found him attractive. Husband or no husband. Damn, he shouted. Damn and damn. The only reason for your being here is that you live entirely and utterly alone. There must be no backsliding.
Holding his neck rigidly straight, Cleaver put on his last set of clean clothes. That a jacket is filthy hardly matters, he decided. Of course the milk hasn’t been pasteurised, he reflected, tasting his cereal. It was faintly sour. He ate it anyway, contemplating the few objects that lay within his field of vision: the sooty stove, a witch’s broom, his backpack and, moving his eyes but not his neck, the old photograph of the young soldiers in three long uniformed lines: a community, a fighting machine. Then the big man raised one ham. The invention of the atomic clock, his elder son had written, quoting Amanda of course, was superfluous, given the regularity of my father’s bowel movements. Cleaver got to his feet. Big Ben, Mother claimed, could have been set by the flush of the downstairs loo. For my parents not only had to have separate bedrooms, but separate loos too. Their smells must not mix. Do excuse me, Cleaver apologised to Olga, picking up the toilet roll. More separate than this, he thought, you cannot get.
Outside the wind was sweeping across a clear sky. The treetops bowed under the pressure. Perhaps in the end, he reflected, the boy just wanted to bring me down to earth. Why not? It upsets him that people have such a high opinion of me. He is fed up of being son-of. Yet I never claimed to be anything other than a lump of solid flesh, Cleaver remarked, hard on the splash. Did I?
The problem, he decided, if I were to write my own account of it all, which I never will – though he was feeling bullish this morning – the problem would be to explain to the reader this central contradiction: the appetite for a celebrity that you knew was monstrously empty, the untiring vanity, despite the awareness that it was indeed in vain. On the other hand, what is one supposed to do with life? There’s the crux.
Actually, I’d be proud, Cleaver thought, still loitering on the can, gazing across the clearing at Rosenkranzhof, if I’d rushed up to the twenty-second floor to stop a man killing a woman, a young woman at that, and a talented musician in particular. He had to keep one foot propped against the door to stop it banging in the wind. Wasn’t that rather admirable? The place stank. Nor would I have done it just for the publicity. Though it was hard to imagine what self-respecting journalist would not make use of a film crew when there was one right there on the spot.
They just can’t believe I’ve disappeared, Cleaver told Olga a few minutes later, replacing the loo roll. That’s the truth of the matter. To feel quite sure that he existed, his elder son had written, my father had to see his face on the small screen more or less daily. Not to be on TV would be like not finding himself in the mirror. Well, now I have no mirror, Cleaver announced. He didn’t bother shaving. A good session on the john is quite sufficient to remind me I exist, he laughed. They will have to come and get us, he told Olga. They’ll have to catch us in flagrante delicto, my charming little poppet! Unless, it suddenly occurred to him – again there was the disturbing sense of a truth simply forcing itself into his mind – unless my unconscious calculation has always been that nothing, in the long run, is more likely to turn a man into a myth, celebrity into legend, than his sudden, complete and permanent disappearance.
Stiff neck or no, Cleaver was determined to see, in daylight, the path that had all but been the death of him the night before. He walked briskly across the clearing. Is it possible that these trousers already feel a little looser than when I tried them on in Bruneck? No. He brushed aside a cobweb strung across the path and almost at once came across the source of the smell that had so disgusted him. An animal had been trapped in a snare. A serpent of wire dangled in the bottom of a narrow gully. What animal? It wasn’t a hare or a fox. A marmot, perhaps. He had seen photos at the Tourist Info Centre. The furry creature was half eaten and Cleaver could see where his hand, last night, must have squashed into its intestines.
He hurried on. The old Nazi set traps, he realised. Here and there other animals would be rotting uneaten. He snared animals and skinned them and ate them, presumably. Should I study the traps? If you live in a certain place, does that mean you’re obliged to live in a certain way? The woods were full of sound today with the wind pressuring everything to the limit. It was bracing. Scrambling quickly downhill, Cleaver was surprised to notice that the path he had struggled to stay on in the dark had once been a serious track, a continuation, no doubt, of the one that led up to Trennerhof. Just that it wasn’t used; the steps and occasional paving were overgrown. At the steepest point there was even the remains of an iron railing on the rock wall. People invested time here, Cleaver thought.
Then he stepped out onto the ledge. The unimpeded wind almost blew him over. The drop was awesome. The gorge opened out and fell away, far, far below to the thread of the Ahrn as it passed, glinting, through some tiny village. Cleaver noticed that the ground beneath his feet had been carefully laid out with stone flags. There was nothing casual here. The gallows was a tall triangular scaffolding with a large, rusty winch wheel. This place must be some kind of loading platform.
Then Cleaver saw a girl’s face. To his left, where the ledge narrowed to just a couple of feet, an oval wooden plaque had been riveted onto the rock wall. Sealed under a square of transparent plastic was a photograph. A plastic rose, fastened to the plaque with a piece of wire, was vibrating in the wind.
Edging closer, nervously aware of the terrific drop below, Cleaver couldn’t understand if it was his eyes that wouldn’t focus or the small photo that was blurred. It’s an ID snap. Ulrike Stolberg. The girl was blonde, straight-nosed. He could just make out two dates. 20.4.1965 – 21.6.1990. Then all at once he felt extremely anxious; there was a powerf
ul gust of emotion. I am going to fall. She must have died here, he muttered. The first rock you would hit was at least two-hundred feet below. Cleaver was weeping as he stumbled away up the path. Only when he was almost back at Rosenkranzhof did it feel safe to stop and take a breath. 1990. He stood with his back to a tree. How often he had cursed that year.
Crossing the clearing again, Cleaver decided he would pick up the milk can and go straight to Trennerhof to get it filled. Who was Ulrike Stolberg? But in that case he should take the plate they had given him as well, with the cheese. He had left it on the table. A sharp pain reminded him of his stiff neck. And first I must get rid of the cheese. You can hardly take back what was given to you. Cleaver stared at the gritty grey lump under the plastic wrap. It looked like something dead. He felt disorientated, rushed, though nobody is expecting me. His chest is beating. He knows he will have to go back to that ledge and that photo. Oh the stupid cheese! But he needed to eat. He grabbed the Schwarzbrot from the cupboard.
The moment he released the wrap, the room was filled with the same pungent smell that had afflicted him up at Trennerhof. It was like some self-inflating device, rushing all over the house. Acrid cheese. All the same, Cleaver spread a knife-full of the stuff onto his black bread. He was standing by the table. It crumbled into clots of grey and green. The door was rattling in the wind. Why am I eating? You’re not hungry. He pushed the food into his mouth. He was in such a hurry now to get up to Trennerhof. His neck ached as he chewed. Who was Ulrike Stolberg? Then taste and smell fused sharply together and shot up inside his nose. It was so odd to recognise something you knew – yes, it is cheese – yet utterly different and more powerful than any cheese he had eaten before. He clamped his teeth. It smells like bad sex! Know what I mean Olga? Cleaver burst out laughing. What an incorrigible old roué you are! Simultaneously, he was aware that the sight of that memorial plaque, the reminder of that awful year, had cut him to the quick. I am helpless, he muttered. I never got over it.
He stood by the table munching his bread, jaws aching from this rapid eating. It’s as if someone were rattling the door to get in, he thought, to get in to Rosenkranzhof. Cleaver’s hand is shaking. He can feel the draught on his neck. My poor neck. My father always insisted, his elder son had written – in the last section of the book this was – that hand-held microphones were ugly, they gave an impression of improvisation and incompetence. He wanted to be miked up, he said, always, at all costs. But the truth was that his hand shook like a leaf in the wind. Christ, what a crap analogy! Cleaver shouted. My father didn’t want people to see how unsteady he was. What’s the point of being Mr Suave if your hand shakes? It’s not hip. So that I often wondered, his son had written, what guilty tension lay behind this tremor. To the quick, Cleaver repeated. Could the boy really not see what had happened? The shaking had nothing to do with it. My hand shook as a teenager, it shook in the cradle most likely. He bit into the cheese again. A sort of vapour rose to his eyes. Did it never occur to him that all that disillusionment, that acid deconstruction of my own achievements, began in the autumn of 1990? Instead, Under His Shadow pushed it back across my whole life. As if I’d been born a nihilist. As if the twins’ adolescence was poisoned by something that actually only began when Angela’s life ended so abruptly.
Cleaver forced down the food and went to the door. Moving away from routine, it seemed, meant constantly reliving the most intense crises of your life. Mr Cleaver, the doctor took him to one side after the autopsy, there is something you should know about your daughter. Please, no, Cleaver protested. He took hold of the rattling handle. Perhaps one listened to the stock market report every day, he thought, precisely not to hear such voices. The Hang Seng instead of hanging yourself. No, you should wash the plate before going, he decided, or wipe it off at least. The young woman must have died falling from the ledge, he thought. Three months before Angela almost to the day. She was fooling with the winch perhaps. There must have been some kind of system for bringing things up or sending them down to and from the mountain, from Rosenkranzhof. It was strange. Cleaver walked fast up the track. And it was strange too this feeling at once of decision and compulsion: go to Trennerhof. Why? But words are so arrogant the way they divide the world up, and above all the mind. She jumped, Cleaver told himself, she jumped.
Wer war Ulrike Stolberg? he asked. There was no one in the dairy room. The wind slammed the door when he let it go. Under the eaves all those ridiculous trophies that the Tyrolese insist on hanging on their walls were banging and clattering: an ancient scythe, a wooden plough-yoke, a cart-wheel, crude little carvings of goblins and clowns. He went to the front of the house, to the room where he had signed the contract. Harry Cleaver. I signed with the name my wife gave me. Paps was always Angela’s way. Can I go to the concert, Paps? Come on! I’ll go anyway, you know. Oh, let me!
Cleaver’s eyes were smarting in the wind. It ballooned in his jacket. Crossing the plateau, where the track came out of the gorge, he had had to bend his back into it. The cheese was still sharp in his mouth. It had stung his palate. This is the flavour of the place, he thought. The peaks all around were tremendously sharp and motionless beneath the fierce pull of the sky, the scudding clouds. Cleaver opened the main door and walked through the porch to the big kitchen parlour. Hello! It smelt of fire and soup again. He had to fight to shut out the elements. Hello, he called. The dusty old radios, the great stove and big stone table seemed to be from a different time, even more remote than the crucifix. Ist jemand da? He has the milk can and plate in his hand. Frau Stolberg?
Jo, a voice said softly. It is a cracked voice. Cleaver walked round the table to where the ancient lady was hunched by the hearth, her back to the door. The same red beads were wrapped round her knuckles. This face is as near to a corpse as you can get, Cleaver thought. She looked vacantly beyond him, a dribble of saliva at the corner of her mouth. The woman was muttering something. Only one side of the mouth moves. She is asking me who I am, Cleaver decided. The words were indistinguishable. He had never seen a skin so papery, so grey. If you fell against her, your hand would plunge straight to the decaying innards. Ich bin Cleaver, he said. He didn’t know how to say, your tenant. Ich will die Milch nehmen. Von Rosenkranzhof, he said.
The old woman started. Adelheid! she called. It was a croak. She has no strength in her. Adelheid! The old woman is scared, Cleaver thought. Can she see me or not? She seemed to be staring at him, but blindly. On her lap the beads and knuckles were trembling. How could my son not see the obvious, the complete change in me, after Angela’s death? I was more brilliant, more myself, more restless, as if spinning in emptiness. Wer war Ulrike Stolberg? he asked bluntly. It was always a virtuoso performance, after Angela died. The old woman’s head tilted. She is focussing all her faculties on me. Wos welln Sie? She started to speak. She was asking something. But he knew by her state of alertness that she had understood his question well enough. Wer war Ulrike Stolberg? I saw her photo. The woman’s right hand gripped the arm of her chair. She tried to get to her feet.
Herr Cleaver, said a voice.
Cleaver turned. Frau Stolberg appeared behind him. She was angular and strong-boned in a plain brown dress and apron, the same clothes Frau Schleiermacher wore, more or less. What will she think of my evident state of agitation? he wondered. His eyes were brimming. The tall woman reached out a hand for the milk can and plate. Her mouth was set in an expression of determined indifference. Kommen Sie bitte, she said.
As she led him to the dairy to fill his milk can and place another lump of cheese on his plate, Frau Stolberg started speaking to Cleaver in a slow, stern, reproving voice, though what she might actually be saying, he had no idea. She’s perfectly aware I can’t understand, Cleaver thought. But strangely this incomprehension allowed him to understand her better. She is lecturing me, he realised, even if the words may be referring to the weather, or the milk. She is putting me in my place.
He took the brimming can and the plate. Wo ist Jürgen? h
e asked. Was it a kind of joke to give him such a full jug, knowing very well he would never get it down to Rosenkranzhof without a spill? Even if I did have a steady hand. Bei den Kühen, Frau Stolberg was saying. Auf wiedersehen, Herr Cleaver. There was something of Amanda, he thought, in the woman’s determined coldness. Amanda too had glittering eyes.
Having already turned to go, Cleaver said, Heute morgen, ich habe die Fotografie … he didn’t know how to complete the sentence. Gorge and ledge and drop were not words he had studied for German O level forty years ago. Die Fotografie … Ulrike Stolberg ge … gesehen. He hoped that in some way his voice might convey condolence, even shared grief. Frau Stolberg had already turned to the sink at the far end of the room. Das ist eine alte und traurige Geschichte, she said.
Was Ulrike Frau Stolberg’s daughter? Not a hundred yards from Trennerhof, Cleaver put his milk beside a low stone wall that offered shelter from the wind. There is the clanging of a bell somewhere. It must be the cows. He raised his head. She was born in 1965. And Frau Stolberg is seventyish. So she would have been … Why can’t I do this sum? Why do I always find it so difficult to push people’s lives into the past? Thirtysomething. She could well be the mother, then. Ulrike was the daughter. And the town-dressed woman another. You have no right to disturb people’s memories like this, Cleaver told himself. Just because your own have been disturbed. And Seffa? He heard the bell again. Seffa is another generation. The cows were on the far side of the plateau, perhaps a dozen of them, grazing on the lower slopes of the Speikboden. I’ve nothing to do, Cleaver thought. He covered the can with the plate, made sure they were well sheltered from the wind and began to walk.