by Tim Parks
Hopping after him, Cleaver was aware of having every right to feel outraged by a landlord who burst into his house in the night more or less accusing him of philandering with an unconscionably fat daughter. Had they noticed the rosary missing from the door? Especially when he had chosen this house in order to be entirely alone. And now he was being kept awake with accordion music of all things, with sentimental folk tunes. Not to mention the broken stair, the smashed lamp, the ruined sleeping bag. Yet his only consideration was that if Jürgen was so relaxed as to be playing the accordion, there could hardly be any real danger for Seffa. He must know of some friend she has, down in Luttach, Cleaver decided. He was humouring his mother coming here to look for her. Why was the old lady so convinced that the girl had come down to Rosenkranzhof?
Jürgen played with gusto, occasionally stopping to grab a swig from the bottle. It was as if the man had been waiting to have an accordion stuck in his hands. His powerful forearms pulled and pushed. They were tunes you could dance to at village fairs. Jürgen tapped his foot and smiled at Cleaver, at Olga. Raucous, sentimental things. The musician wasn’t embarrassed by them. Yet even this man, Cleaver decided, is hamming it up. He found himself watching Jürgen carefully. The hair was unshaven on his rough neck. The ears were large and wide. You ham a tune up, Cleaver thought, so as not to find yourself overtaken by a storm of emotion, to keep control. The girl’s safe and sound down in Luttach, he decided.
Mein hübsches Mädchen! Jürgen rubbed his stubble against Olga’s face. He pushed the whisky bottle at Cleaver. Trink! Cleaver took a swig. Jürgen launched into another tune, nodding his head extravagantly to the beat. He wants his mother out there to hear it, Cleaver suddenly realised. That’s it. He wants her to know that he is not worried, that it was futile for her to walk down there in the night. Yet it was his wife had died at the ledge.
Warum … Cleaver began. He had to concentrate to find the words now. Jürgen raised a comically bushy eyebrow. This really would make excellent TV. My father, his elder son had written, always invited the wildest people to his talk shows, so he could make fun of the crazy energy that he himself lacked. His charisma was the charisma of someone who always steps back from the brink, while ironically applauding those who take the plunge. Warum ist … Ihre Vater … hier gekommen … in dieses Haus?
Jürgen stopped playing, and placed a rough hand theatrically round one red ear. Cleaver repeated. Why? Why had the old Nazi come here? Jürgen grimaced. Again he made the gesture of rotating a forefinger against a temple and at the same time shaking his head in mock sorrow. Verrückt! Mad.
Hoch, Cleaver pointed upstairs, es gibt ein … he didn’t know the word … Troll, he said. Jürgen was drinking again. Troll, ein kleiner Mann. Mit Pfeife. Cleaver made the gesture of smoking a pipe, of wielding an axe. Jürgen wiped his mouth on his sleeve. The same sleeve that had wiped the photo. He was laughing. Jo, jo. Der Troll! He dropped the accordion heavily and jumped to his feet. In the low light from two glowing logs he hurried upstairs again, leaping across the gap. Cleaver recognised an alcohol-fed energy. Upstairs, he must have tripped over something. It would be darker up there. Der Troll! It must be the same word. There was a heavy bumping and banging. Jürgen reappeared on the stairs holding the thing by its wooden hat. Er ist sehr schön, nicht wahr? Ein schöner Zwerg. Mit Axt!
Jürgen set the creature down by the fire. Können Sie spielen, Engländer? Spielen Sie. He pointed at the accordion. All at once, he seemed very excited. Spielen Sie! The troll too had a bright face in the firelight. A red glow played over the dust and varnish, the painted blade of the axe. The eyes gleamed. Cleaver reached forward and picked up the accordion. He rested it on his knees. His right foot was throbbing. Wie geht’s dir? Jürgen was enquiring of the troll. Mußt du noch viele Bäume zerhacken?
Cleaver began to play. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, he began, a-and never brought to mind. Jo, jo, Jürgen laughed. Das ist gut! He arranged the troll so it was facing into the room, set the bottle down on the mantlepiece, picked up Olga and began to waltz. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, for the sake of auld lang syne. The words didn’t seem as odious to Cleaver now as they had earlier on in the evening. The effect of the whisky, no doubt, and the company. Jürgen had begun to sing. Apparently there were German words. Burns in German! The man did a pirouette with Olga in his arms. The movement was surprisingly graceful. There are tears in my eyes, Cleaver realised. Jürgen! Frau Stolberg snapped. The woman stood in the doorway with her torch pointing at the floor.
Later, rearranging his bedding, Cleaver recalled what seemed to him one of the most perceptive remarks his son had made in his generally unforgivable book: When my parents played together, they played at having arguments, he had written. There had been an element of rehearsal, Cleaver thought, in the way Frau Stolberg and Jürgen had shouted at each other this evening, the son clowning with the troll, the mother making her eyes intense and cold. In any event, neither had addressed another word to Cleaver.
We played at arguing, he remembered, climbing into bed, because it was the thing we knew how to do best. We knew all the steps. Sometimes, his elder son had written – and this was towards the end of the first section of the book – they would shout such horrible things at each other that we would cry, then Mother would burst out laughing and explain that they were only playing, they didn’t really hate each other, while my father picked us up and hugged and kissed us. Clearly at some point Jürgen had said something terrible about Frau Stolberg and the old Nazi. He said it facetiously to the troll, as if expecting a reply. Cleaver had listened, like a child who can’t really understand what the adults are talking about. Scheiße! Jürgen said. Frau Stolberg refused to shed her fiery coldness. Cleaver had been listening for the name Ulrike. Or Tochter. Instead, Frau Stolberg kept saying, Seffa. Perhaps she was insisting they leave at once. They had to find the girl. And Jürgen was resisting. But it was a fake resistance. He would give way just as soon as he had thoroughly annoyed her with his clowning. My parents made each other who they were – like the classic theatrical double act, you couldn’t imagine one without the other – then whenever there was an audience they played those parts quite consciously, hamming and rehearsing their arguments for fun. That was a perceptive remark, Cleaver decided. Though it hadn’t always been clear to him when he and Amanda had been playing and when they were in earnest. You grew so used to irony, to an illusion of control. Then events overwhelmed you.
After his visitors had gone Cleaver poked his nose out of the door before bolting it for the night. The temperature has plunged, he thought. The sky was intensely clear, pulsing with starlight. There was the sharp cracking sound of something contracting, freezing. This business with my foot is serious, he thought, limping up the stairs. To get over the gap, he had to make a big effort heaving himself up on the handrails. Do I miss those fake arguments? Cleaver wondered, stretching the sleeping bag over the bed again. Burnt patch or no, he needed it. When we played like that, it was as if we accepted destiny, ourselves, and laughed at it too. There were no real arguments after Angela died, Cleaver remembered. But nor did they play at quarrelling any more. Climbing into bed with his socks on, he fervently hoped that the Stolbergs would find Seffa at home when they got back to Trennerhof.
XII
WAKING EARLY, CLEAVER found his ankle had swelled enormously. When he tried to put weight on the foot, the pain almost made him pass out. He had to sit on the bed again. The nausea was slow to clear. It might be unwise, he heard a voice say, to find yourself too far from essential services? Who had said that? It was hard to dress, hard to pass his ankle through his trouser leg, almost impossible to get a boot on. He found the rosary between the sheets and slipped it into a pocket. And this was the very day he had meant to walk down to Luttach to see Hermann about bringing up supplies. As it was, it took an age just to negotiate the stairs.
Cleaver steadied himself against the mantlepiece. How much do we have to eat? he asked Olga. That old eagle
hasn’t caught anything I suppose? A rat perhaps? A marmot? My breathing seems rather louder than usual, he thought. He coughed. The troll was still watching the place where Jürgen had danced. Hangover? Cleaver enquired. There was something odd about this morning. Hopping round the kitchen, he found two packets of spaghetti, biscuits, some apples, a couple of tins. Good for a day or three. But almost at once he changed his mind. You have your famous Norwegian walking poles, don’t you? He spoke out loud. Get moving. Go to Trennerhof. This foot needs seeing to. Otherwise you’ll be a cripple for the rest of your life. No sooner, his elder son had written, did my father have the ghost of an ailment than he was convinced he was on his way to being a ghost.
Cleaver pulled on his ski jacket, jammed the felt hat onto the now straggly hair surrounding his bald spot, and hopped to the door. He took his walking sticks. Outside the wind was bitter cold. It was incredible though, now he thought about it, that the Stolbergs hadn’t enquired about his foot. They must have realised he had fallen on the stairs. They are so wrapped up in their own problems, he told himself, it didn’t occur to them to worry about me. But now he turned back. He hadn’t even crossed the clearing before it became obvious he would need scarf and gloves. My fingers are red. What a strange silence, he noticed again. The morning light was intense and steady, but somehow grey too. There’s no water running, he realised. He went to the tap. It was down to a trickle. Why should the Stolbergs worry about you? Didn’t you ask to be alone?
Crossing the clearing again, he saw the air had magically thickened. It’s snowing. His heart started with pleasure. They were big thick flakes, falling soft and steady. The wind had dropped in an instant. He turned to look back at the house. With enchanting swiftness the black roof had frosted. The smoke from the stovepipe curled up among the flakes. Rosenkranzhof. How pretty! The larger landscape has disappeared, Cleaver realised. The peaks have gone. There was just his tiny house, the woods, the gorge and the thickly falling snow.
He turned and climbed, digging his sticks into the uneven ground. He would never have believed snow could settle so fast. He stopped to rest. He had skied in a snowstorm with Giada one day. He remembered the snowflakes melting on her lips. Beneath the trees the ground was still dark in patches, but where the track was exposed it was already a smooth white. Fleetingly, he remembered Caroline a few years back complaining how the snow never settled in the borough of Westminster. I hardly think of the younger kids at all, he muttered. Did I ever throw a snowball with Phillip? He honestly couldn’t recall.
Cleaver hobbled on. There was ice forming on his beard now. He put a glove over his mouth and breathed warm air into it. Keep walking. He bent into the slope. Everywhere the snow fell with wonderful steadiness. He had filmed a gypsy camp in the snow once – that he did remember – with Amanda and Larry. In County Clare. Very picturesque. Amanda and Larry had been obsessed by gypsies. Cleaver stopped. It was a while since he had thought about this. Life gets to be so long. There had been a green caravan with a red chimney. Always on the brink of insolvency, Larry’s little publishing house churned out books about gypsies and by gypsies and Amanda reviewed them glowingly and with passionate indignance. He remembered in particular a memoir by a Hungarian gypsy who had been in Belsen. Cleaver had read a few pages himself. There had been grants from the Arts Council. Under His Shadow had said nothing about the way the author’s mother found justification for her long relationship with Larry in their shared commitment to minority causes. At least I only used to say I had some party or editorial meeting when I stayed out. I never expected anyone to believe me.
Resting on his sticks, Cleaver shook his head. What a figure I must cut, a bearded, limping, long-haired hulk on sticks with a broad-brimmed grey felt hat. He felt good, though, photogenic even. When you’re on the move, he thought, out in the landscape, especially in these extreme conditions, then it’s a pleasure to remember things, however painful; whereas alone in the house the head gets so pressurised, the thoughts implode. At a certain point, he recalled, Larry and Amanda had asked Ken Loach if he would make a documentary about some Irish gypsies. Larry was publishing a book about them. Amanda was very excited. Cleaver had had Loach on a talk show where the director spoke of the plight of a mentally-ill adolescent, the main character in some early film of his, as being emblematic of the individual’s struggle against society. The family in this early film, Loach said – it was part documentary, part fiction – had crushed the girl, refused to recognise her special needs, to the point that she withdrew into mutism, since, even if she spoke, no one listened to her. The family was a dangerous and repressive institution, Loach said. This was the sense of his film: the unequal struggle of vulnerable individual against cruel society. God that was a long time ago, Cleaver reflected.
Was it because of his aversion to repressive families that Loach had turned down Amanda and Larry’s proposal for a documentary on gypsies? The controversial director had come across well on the talk show. You do it, Harry, Amanda had asked him. Arms hanging at her sides, she had leaned heavily into his paunch, face upturned to his. Larry has it all set up, she said, script and everything. Amanda was a beautifully slight woman beside Cleaver’s bulk. Unseemly bulk, his elder son had written. Do what, begging your lady’s pardon? Cleaver had asked. She looked up sweetly into his eyes. It was a parody of pleading. Her mouth was small and twisted with irony. Then they both laughed. Our fun and our arguments were always parodies of fun and parodies of arguments. This show has been running as long as The Mousetrap, Mother used to joke; so Cleaver’s son had written. Alas, the original rodent decomposed long ago, my father invariably added. Not even a whiff of the blighter. Did I really say blighter? It didn’t sound very Cleaver. No-Mad proved a milestone in the history of awareness-raising, Under His Shadow had rather generously pronounced of the humdrum gypsy documentary. Awareness-raising is horrible, Cleaver thought. But the boy said nothing of the strangeness of his father’s agreeing to work together with his partner’s lover.
Cleaver leaned on his sticks and swung his good leg forward. Actually, we were quite a happy threesome on that trip, he remembered now. The film conveyed nothing of course of the stench inside the caravans, only their picturesque and poverty-stricken exteriors. Two or three had definitely been repainted for the film. Even the snow seemed to be laid on to make the camp prettier. Cleaver recalled a close-up of tender blades of grass pricking from the ice beside a caravan wheel with a flat tyre. What made me do that for them? he wondered. When it came to the final cut, Larry wouldn’t accept anything that showed how the gypsies treated their children. He felt it would be inappropriate to complicate the public’s response. Cleaver had agreed. He remembered a little girl forced to stand barefoot in the snow. They didn’t show it.
Already there was more than an inch of snow. It was making that nice squeaky sound under his boots. The air was still and icy. The flakes came down so thickly that even a broad-brimmed hat couldn’t keep them out of your collar. Cleaver shivered. He had done the film, perhaps, because he guessed how much it would disturb Larry to witness the well-oiled mechanisms of his and Amanda’s arguments. And of course Amanda would be obliged to compare my efficiency with his dithering. Even the decision to go back to London for a couple of days in the middle of the shoot was done to show them I was in control. Though officially I went for Angela, he remembered.
Suddenly the snow in front of Cleaver exploded. He had been contemplating the steep hairpin where the rockfall had blocked Hermann’s cart that first day. About a third of the way, he told himself. There were icicles hanging from the weathered fractures. Then the snow flew up in his face as Uli came bounding and slithering down the track. Banging into him, the dog barked and tugged at his trouser leg. He’s happy to see me. He wants to go down and sit by my fire. No, we’re going up not down, he told the animal. We have to go to Trennerhof. Uncle Harry’s hurt his leg.
He thrust his sticks in the snow and swung his good leg forward. The dog barked and snapped. Cleaver bent
, picked up a handful of snow and threw it at the creature. Uli yelped. Larry had seemed rather left out when he and Amanda had thrown snowballs at each other. Larry wasn’t a playful guy at all. He had an irritatingly slow, earnest voice. You’re spoiling the girl, breaking the trip just for her, Amanda had complained. You should say no. But she was grateful he was going, of course. She was torn. We were always torn.
The dog tugged at Cleaver’s trousers again and this time he slipped and fell. Back on his feet, brushing himself clean, he hesitated. If anything, the snow appeared to be coming down more heavily. It was getting treacherous. His foot wasn’t hurting so much now. Perhaps it’s an ordinary sprain, Cleaver thought. All at once it seemed stupid to sacrifice his solitude for an ordinary sprain. The first snow always thaws as soon as it’s fallen. In a day or two you’ll be able to walk up to Trennerhof with no problem. You still have food. Whereas if you go now you’ll be taken down to the hospital in Bruneck. You’ll be tempted to turn your phone on, check your e-mail. Amanda will have written. Before you know it you’ll be back in London to see a specialist.
The dog came and thrust her snout in his lap. Ugly thing. He stroked the animal. What a strange moment that had been when he had flown back to London so that his daughter wouldn’t be spending the night alone in the house with a man she hardly knew. But really, perhaps, so as to show Amanda and Larry that he had no problem at all with their spending the night together. Okay, he told Uli, we’ll go down. Once I have the dog in the house, Cleaver reasoned, if I don’t let him out, someone’s bound to come and get him. Quite probably Seffa. If the dog was back, no doubt she was too. Then he could explain about his foot. They would bring him some supplies. He had cash.