The Gustav Sonata

by Rose Tremain

  Gustav walked towards the bench and Anton turned and saw him. At once, Anton got up and stretched wide his arms, and when Gustav reached him, he clutched him in a tight embrace. ‘Help me,’ he whispered, ‘help me. You’re the only one who can.’

  Gustav sat down on the bench with Anton and Adriana. Nobody spoke. Part of Gustav’s attention kept returning to the old woman and the strutting crows. The goose was now standing apart.

  After a moment, Adriana got up. She told Anton that she was going to leave him with Gustav and come back tomorrow. Anton replied that he hoped he wouldn’t be at the hospital tomorrow. Adriana looked at him with sadness. Then she kissed his head, where a patch of hair had been torn out, and walked away.

  Anton pulled his mother’s shawl more closely round his body. Gustav asked him if he was cold.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I know the winter’s coming, but I don’t feel the cold of the air. I only feel the storms inside me.’

  Gustav stared at Anton’s arms, scarred red where he’d slashed them. He imagined, for one terrible second, that all the wounds had been made by skate blades.

  ‘You don’t have to look at me,’ Anton said. ‘I know I look like a freak. But you have to help me. If you don’t help me, I’m lost.’

  Gustav waited. He took Anton’s hand and held it in his and stroked it, like he used to stroke Lottie’s hand when she talked about suicide.

  Anton’s eyes closed for a moment, as though the stroking soothed him. Then he said, ‘Listen, Gustav. Are you listening? I have to go to Davos. You have to get me there. I can’t be in Geneva and I can’t go back to Matzlingen. You’ve got to get me to the sanatorium in the woods. What was its name?’

  ‘Sankt Alban.’

  ‘That’s it: Sankt Alban. We left a tambourine on one of the beds. I need to go there now.’

  Gustav waited, in case Anton had more to say, then he answered, ‘I’m sure you can go to Davos, Anton. Provided we can find a hospital there which will take you …’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not a hospital. I need to go back to the Sankt Alban Sanatorium. I need to find the tambourine.’

  ‘I don’t think those things will be there any more, Anton, neither the tambourine nor the sanatorium.’

  ‘Why not? We healed the dying there. Don’t you remember? We laid the beds on the balcony. And the sunlight was strong and white. It will all be there.’

  ‘It was a ruined place, Anton. Even then, it was a shell. It was only us who made it come alive.’

  ‘So we’ll make it come alive again. I need to wipe out time, you see. I need to get back to the place where I can start everything afresh. At first, I couldn’t think where I could go. My world has shrunk so much. I can’t stand to be anywhere. But then I remembered Davos and Sankt Alban. So you fix it up, Gustav. Right? And you have to come with me. I need you to answer when I bang the tambourine.’

  Gustav waited a moment, then he said, ‘I’ll do my best to fix it up, Anton. But I have to know what I’m fixing in you first. You have to tell me what’s happened to you.’

  Anton shook his head. ‘This is what everybody asks,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you? What’s happened? But I don’t want to talk about it. I refuse to answer that question. I just want to arrive at Sankt Alban and begin everything again. I’m depending on you, Gustav – only on you, out of everybody in the whole world! But if you can’t fix it for me, tell me now and you can fuck off out of this place, whatever it is, and never see me alive again!’

  ‘This place is a hospital, Anton,’ said Gustav calmly. ‘A very good hospital. If you stay here, you’ll get well.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’ll kill myself. I thought you were my friend, Gustav. I thought you’d be on my side.’

  ‘I am on your side. Goodness knows, Anton, I’ve been on your side for over fifty years! Can’t you recognise that, by now?’

  ‘Fifty years? Have we lived that long?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are we old?’

  ‘Almost. We’re getting that way.’

  ‘That was probably why Hans betrayed me. I got too old.’

  ‘Hans Hirsch betrayed you?’

  ‘People make promises. But they’re never kept. Everybody in the world betrays us – and then we betray ourselves. We cut our flesh … But if I can get to Davos, with you, and think myself back in time, when things were ordinary and safe, then I might have some hope of life.’

  This phrase, hope of life, Gustav seemed to hear from a great distance, as though it came echoing through the sky. And he thought, Would my own existence have been happier, if I’d never known Anton Zwiebel? And he felt, at this moment, that it would have been.

  Although Emilie Perle had schooled him well in how to love without being loved in return, he could now see how this state of lovelessness had made him obsessive in his quest for superficial order and control. He looked over at the old woman who had succeeded in separating the crows from the goose, and he wondered if he didn’t, after all, resemble her in a mortifying way, wanting everything to be part of some category or other and never letting things be how they truly yearn to be. He saw that the goose was now sitting on its own on a concrete pathway, pecking at its own feathers.

  Gustav stayed with Anton until the light began to fade and a nurse came out and called Anton inside. She led him away and he went obediently, without saying goodbye to Gustav or turning round as he disappeared from sight.

  The following day, Adriana and Gustav went to see the director of the Marburg Hospital. When Gustav told him about Anton’s expressed desire to go to Davos, the director said, ‘Well, it’s almost certainly delusionary. He’s much better off here.’

  Adriana said, ‘I’m sorry, Herr Director, but why shouldn’t Anton be moved to Davos, if that’s his wish?’

  The director gave Adriana one of those condescending smiles which, Gustav had often noted, seemed to be the speciality of people high up in the medical profession, and said, ‘Davos was once a place renowned for its management of tuberculosis, as you probably know. But today, it’s a winter sports resort. And the near association of illness is suicidal to tourism. So as far as I know, there are no suitable clinics in Davos to treat Anton’s condition. I can enquire, but I’m not hopeful. The Marburg can help him, but you must understand that he’s on a long road. We hope he will recover, but this will take time.’

  ‘You hope,’ said Adriana. ‘You mean you’re not certain he’ll recover?’

  ‘No. In cases like this one can never be certain. We do our best. But we’re not helped by the fact that there seems to be nothing that Anton wants to do. He refuses all group therapy, becoming abusive if he’s forced to participate in this. We’ve asked him to tell us how he’d like to pass the time, but –’

  ‘Music,’ said Adriana at once. ‘He’s a wonderful musician. I’m surprised you haven’t heard his name.’

  ‘Sorry, no,’ said the director. ‘What instrument does he play?’

  ‘Piano. He’s made recordings for the CavalliSound label. Beethoven sonatas.’

  ‘Oh yes? Good for him. But of course we couldn’t have him playing the piano here. It would be far too disruptive for the other patients.’

  The next day, Gustav went to see Anton in his small room. He was lying on his bed, tugging at his hair. ‘Shall I start packing, Gustav?’ he asked at once. ‘Have you arranged the travel to Davos?’

  ‘No,’ said Gustav. ‘Davos has changed, Anton. It’s a ski resort now. There’s no clinic there which could look after you.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to a clinic,’ said Anton, reaching out and clutching Gustav’s arm. ‘I told you. I want to go to Sankt Alban. I don’t need shrinks and all that shit. You could look after me. All I need is that mountainside and a bed on a balcony and a view of what is to come.’

  ‘What do you mean, “a view of what is to come”?’

  ‘There is a road, Gustav. You know there is. Just this one road we have to take. We have to become the people we a
lways should have been.’

  Gustav stared down at Anton – his thin face, his bright and hectic eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Gustav said.

  ‘Yes, you do. You knew what we should have been, but I was the one who resisted. Except that one time, at Sankt Alban, when I was the dying boy and you saved my life with a kiss. Now, you have to save it again.’

  Allegro Vivace

  Davos, 2002

  THE MONEY GUSTAV got for the sale of the Hotel Perle was substantial – far more than he’d ever thought it could be worth. It was bought by a Swiss hotel chain, as a profitable ‘boutique diversification’, and all the staff were retained, all except Lunardi, who refused point-blank the offer made by the new management.

  ‘No way, boss,’ Lunardi told Gustav. ‘I’m not working for any fucking chain! Especially not if they’re calling this a stupid “boutique”. What kind of nonsense is that? I’ll take my luck in one of the grand hotels in Bern or Zurich. Make some proper money at last, eh?’

  But when Lunardi and Gustav parted, they both wept.

  ‘Not like you, boss, to cry,’ said the now elderly chef, wiping his eyes with a dishcloth. ‘Me, I’m Italian, so of course I cry. This is a sad day. The end of so many years. But you. This is not so Swiss, my friend, is it? Where’s your famous self-mastery now?’

  Anton and Gustav were now both sixty years old.

  They lived together in a large, isolated chalet Gustav had bought in the hills near Davos. It was the kind of solid, comfortable house, with some land attached to it, that Gustav realised he had sometimes dreamed of. On the wooded pathway that led up to it, he planted wild strawberries. From this path could be heard the carillons of Davos, ringing out the passing hours.

  The bedroom shared by Gustav and Anton gave out onto a wide, south-facing wooden balcony. On summer mornings, they took their breakfast out there, among tubs of scarlet geraniums. In the winter, they embarked on gentle cross-country ski walks among the silent trees, and watched old movies by the fire. They grew their own vegetables and kept a few goats and chickens. Anton said that the sound of chickens stilled his heart and that working on the vegetable patch made it strong.

  And he was strong, now. Lying in the dark, Anton had eventually told Gustav, bit by bit, about his life in Geneva with Hans Hirsch and how, with Hirsch, he’d always felt judged and scrutinised ‘just like I was judged and scrutinised when I played on the stage of the Kornhaus’. He’d reached for Gustav and gripped his shoulder with great force and said, ‘I can’t lead a life in which this happens to me ever again, Gustav. So please, I beg you, my beloved friend, don’t let me go back there.’

  ‘Why would I?’ Gustav said, pulling Anton close to him with rough urgency. ‘If we had our lives again, I’d barely let you out of my sight.’

  Adriana lived with Gustav and Anton. She was given her own large room and bathroom at the back of the house, facing into the hillside. Gustav worried that this room was dark, but Adriana said, ‘Sometimes it is, but I don’t mind that, Gustav. I don’t mind it at all. You and Anton need the sunshine, you still need all that white light. But I’m happy with the grasses and wild flowers growing outside my window. When you’re old, shadow can be comforting.’

  From Fribourgstrasse, they’d shipped most of Adriana’s furniture, including the grand piano, on which Gustav had heard Anton play ‘Für Elise’ so long ago. When they’d first moved in together, Anton hadn’t wanted to go near it. He said that he didn’t think he’d ever play again, because playing reminded him of so much that had terrorised him in his life.

  The piano fell out of tune and Gustav asked Adriana if they should get rid of it. But she said, ‘No. Not yet. I think if we do, then there will be a big gap in the room and Anton will look at the gap, one day, and remember that something beautiful was once there.’

  One morning in summer, when Gustav woke up, Anton wasn’t in their bed and Gustav could hear music. Anton was playing the piano.

  Gustav crept to the door and listened and he caught a glimpse of Adriana, on the other side of the large room, listening too.

  The piece Anton was playing had begun with some rich, sonorous chords and now leaped into a new motif, played allegro vivace, which immediately brought to Gustav’s mind the image of a fast-running stream, rushing over stones and fallen branches, then slowing very gradually, but still keeping its energy and its momentum, as if it had found a calmer channel and could now flow on, unimpeded, towards the sea.

  Anton seemed unaware that anyone was watching him. His body was held in its accustomed position, leaning out from the keyboard, and on his face Gustav saw an expression of great joy.

  Later, when the three of them were taking their breakfast on the balcony, Adriana said, ‘We must get the piano tuned, Anton. But what was that piece you played this morning? I thought it was lovely.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Anton, ‘it’s just a fragment I composed in Geneva. I composed it in one terrible night, when I understood all the wrong turnings my life had taken and where I wanted to be. It’s unfinished, as you could tell, but I might begin work on it again now. I called it “The Gustav Sonata”’.

  Acknowledgements

  I acknowledge with gratitude the debt I owe to Mitya New’s book, Switzerland Unwrapped: Exposing the Myths (I.B. Tauris, London, 1997) for revealing to me the story of Paul Grueninger, Police Chief of the Canton of St Gallen in 1938, as narrated by his daughter, Ruth Rhoduner. Some details from this story have been used in constructing the invented life of Gustav’s father, Erich Perle.

  I also want to thank the small, heroic band of ‘first readers’, whose comments and suggestions helped me refine the book from first draft to final MS: Vivien Green, Penny Hoare, Clara Farmer, Gaia Banks, Jill Bialosky, Roger Cazalet, Neel Mukherjee, Richard Holmes, and most especially Bill Clegg, whose perspicacious intervention helped to turn a pumpkin into a coach.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  Copyright © Rose Tremain 2016

  Rose Tremain has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Chatto and Windus in 2016

  www.penguin.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781784740030