by Francis King
Of course the elderly man had his brusque, matter-of-fact explanation. He was a man who always did.
For some reason – probably the sort of blockage that constantly occurred with Egyptian plumbing – the water from the shower that Tony had taken before dinner had been regurgitated up the waste pipe. Or perhaps one of the floor staff had decided to take a shower while Tony was at dinner.
And the photograph? Well, it was not impossible that that same member of the floor staff had been a friend or even a relative of Abdul and so, having known of the affair, had decided to leave that image of the dead man on Tony’s pillow. Why not? It was just the sort of sentimental gesture one might expect from an Egyptian.
And the blood? Oh, it could be that the person who had left the photograph had not, after all, been a member of the staff. Perhaps, instead, it was the ‘cousin’ who had driven them in the mini-bus. In that case, he might have climbed into the room as Abdul had climbed into it and had then somehow cut his hand while doing so. Wasn’t that a possibility?
But obstinately Tony kept shaking his head. ‘ No, no,’ he said. Then loudly and decisively: ‘No!’
Back in Brighton, Tony showed the photograph to the Algerian lover of a friend of his. Could he translate the inscription?
The Algerian peered down, then looked up. ‘Oum Khaltoum,’ he said. He went on to explain that the words were from a song made popular by the most famous of Arab singers of her time.
‘What do they say?’
The Algerian pursed his lips and frowned. Then he ventured: ‘Death conquers life. But love conquers death.’
Tony gave a little gasp and raised a hand to his eyes, as though to shield them from a sudden glare.
The Algerian again peered down at the photograph. ‘ There’s something else here. The writing is bad. An uneducated man must have written it. Yes.’ He himself was an educated man, a radiologist. He peered again. ‘With my love. Forever. And signed,’ he added ‘Signed ‘‘Abdul’’.’ He looked up, laughed. ‘ Who is this Abdul? A boy-friend?’
At first Tony kept the photograph on his bedside table, in a frame specially bought for it. Then, when he looked at it – which he did less and less – he noticed that it was beginning to fade. The sun must be causing that, he decided, and placed the photograph in a Florentine tooled leather box in which he kept such things as studs, cuff links, collar-stiffeners and safety pins. On the rare occasions that he had recourse to the box he realised with a mingling of dismay and bewilderment that the fading was continuing.
Seven months later, having just returned from what he was later to describe as an ‘utterly blissful’ holiday in Thailand, Tony was dressing to go to Glyndebourne with a party of friends. He opened the Florentine leather box to get out a pair of cuff links and studs for the old-fashioned dress shirt that he now so rarely wore. To his amazement he then found that the surface of the snapshot had become little more than a blank, milky expanse. How could that have happened? As with the dog on that horrible night in Luxor: Now you see it, now you don’t.
Oh, probably the man who had printed the snapshot had used some primitive process, he hastily told himself, that resulted in rapid fading.
But then – the thought suddenly came to him – why had both the bloodstain and Abdul’s scrawl also vanished?
His lips trembled. The hands holding the snapshot began to shake uncontrollably. He rarely now thought of Abdul. When he did so, it was without any of the old anguish of recollection and frustrated longing. Abdul was now one with Mark. Nothing lasted. Nothing. That was the hellish thing about life. And love.
With a single convulsive movement he tore the snapshot into two and then, in mounting frenzy, into innumerable tiny scraps.
Dreams
I t is the break and ache of day. Yesterday I awoke to those words. They were a fragment of some monument that all through the night I had been struggling to build. The words were no longer only in my mind but now also on my lips. I whispered them. It is the break and ache of day. But of the complex construct of which all through my sleeping hours they had been merely a tiny part, I now remembered nothing.
It is in words, not images, that I now almost invariably dream. All my life I have been, above all, a wordsmith. When so many other, less important, of my attributes have vanished or are vanishing, that still remains. In consequence, I am becoming more and more like that old man, a famous jeweller, who was my neighbour in Japan some forty years ago. He could not remember his wife’s or children’s names or, often, even his own. He could not remember how to knot a tie or fasten his shoelaces or pour a glass of iced tea or find his way to the primitive privy in a wooden shed at the bottom of his narrow, overgrown garden. But each day he sat at his work-bench in a contented abstraction not merely from the world but also from an eighty-three years accumulation of memories, now inaccessible to him, while he still fashioned, with all his old consummate artistry, some broach, bracelet or necklace. Fascinated and admiring, I used to watch him. Occasionally, he would look up and across at me and give me a vague, happy smile.
But this morning it was different. I had dreamed not in words but in images. One of those images remained with me, so vivid that I still saw it in every minute detail even as I felt the battering of the alarm clock and opened my eyes. The image is of a wave-like curve of balcony, constructed of wooden slats, many of which have rotted. It overlooks a cliff-like incline, so that the tops of trees all but brush one’s feet as one looks over it. Its railings are a greenish blue, the paint cracked and peeling. Behind it is the low annexe to the farmhouse, with its identical rooms each with its French windows. The paying guests in the annexe usually keep their curtains drawn even in daytime, since otherwise anyone on the balcony can glance in on them.
With an effort, I banish the image, so seductive and yet potentially so dangerous. Then I fall, rather than clamber, out of bed and, hand to banister to steady myself, creak down to the kitchen to make my wife’s morning tea. Some months ago she moved to the bedroom on the floor below mine to avoid being kept awake by my muttering in my sleep of those innumerable words that all through the night jostle for attention in a fatigued, failing brain craving only for the respite of silence. ‘ How did you sleep?’ She stares up at me, as though a stranger were asking some obtrusive question. ‘Oh, you know how it is.’ Yes, I know how it is, having so often heard how it is. The restless legs. The nag of pain in the back. The mosquito whine of tinnitus in her left ear.
Instead of at once shaving and taking my bath, I return to my bedroom and lie out on the bed. I do not bother to pull the bedclothes over me. I am unaware of the cold. I close my eyes. I entreat the banished memory of my balcony dream to come back to me …
On that balcony a boy of thirteen is sitting on a folding canvas chair. It is afternoon. He can hear, in the distance, his mother tinkling at the upright Pleyel piano in the Ardennes farmhouse. She often complains, even to the Belgian farmer and his wife, that the piano is out of tune. They look bewildered, as though they did not understand her, even though she has spoken in perfectly correct French, albeit with a heavy English accent. Then one or other of them shrugs, smiles and says something like ‘Eh bien, madame …’ They will do nothing about the piano, just as they will do nothing about the dripping tap of her wash-basin or the curtain that, missing a ring, lets in a narrow wedge of light to prod her awake far too early every summer morning of that holiday. The boy’s older brother is out, gun at the ready, with the bearded, taciturn farmer. They will usually return each with at least a brace of rabbits. The boy hates the rabbit casserole that everyone else finds so delicious. He eats a mouthful or two, then pushes it to one side – ‘I’m not really hungry’ he tells his mother in a fretful voice when she enquires why he isn’t eating.
Now, on the balcony, he is halfway through the Collected Works of Tennyson, in a leather-bound copy that belonged to his recently dead father. If his rather were still alive, they would be staying in some elegant hotel and not in this farmhous
e, recommended to them as ‘amazing value’ by one of his mother’s bridge-playing friends. Already he recognises in Tennyson someone who is obsessed with words – their appearance on the page, their subtle gradations of meaning, above all their initial sounds and then the other sounds that resonate on and on from them – even as he himself is already obsessed with words. His brother, seventeen years old and about to become a Sandhurst cadet and eventually to be killed on a Normandy beach, laughs at this passion for Tennyson. He puts on a voice, melodramatic and comically cockney, as he intones: ‘Come into the garden, Maud.’ There is something ludicrous about the name Maud, even the boy can see that.
The afternoon sun is in his eyes. He hears a far-off shot. He winces as he imagines the rabbit leaping into the air and then crashing down on the hard surface of a field baked dry by day after day of furnace heat. A voice speaks behind him. It is deep and resonant, the accent German. The boy has not heard any approach, since the man is wearing plimsolls. ‘What are you reading?’
The boy swivels his head. He has already seen this squat, muscular man, with the flat, oddly expressionless face and large sunburned hands, the nails savagely bitten, at breakfast that morning. Having entered the long, narrow room, the man then bowed and intoned with an almost comic gravity: ‘Bonjour, messieurs, bonjour, mesdames.’ Much later, his wife, thin and anxious-looking in a pale-blue cotton dress, her face heavily powdered, slipped through the door. She gave no spoken greeting to the assembled company, merely a bow smaller and far more hesitant than her husband’s. He extended a hand to her. She took it with a look of beseeching gratitude. Suddenly the anxious-looking face was irradiated by joy. Later the boy’s mother learned from the farmer’s wife that the couple were on their honeymoon. They came from Düsseldorf, the farmer’s wife said, and both of them were teachers.
The man stoops over the boy. He looks down at the book. ‘Poetry?’ The man must have realised that from the way that the lines are laid out on the page. The boy nods. ‘Who is the poet?’ There is an odd formality in the way in which the words emerge from under the man’s closely clipped moustache.
‘Tennyson,’ the boy replies. There is a quaver in his voice. He might be attempting an answer to a difficult question back at school. He feels a mounting excitement, as though a swarm of bees were buzzing inside him. ‘D’you know his work?’
The man shakes his head.’ Sorry. Heine. You know Heine?’
‘Not really. No.’
‘He is good. Very good. Genius. You must read.’
‘I don’t know any German.’
‘In English. I am sure there is translation.’
The man is bending even lower over the chair. Suddenly the boy is aware of the hand in the man’s trouser pocket. He cannot help noticing it, it is so near to his elbow. As though he has realised that the boy has noticed that hand and what the hand is attempting to restrain, the man walks stiffly over to a distant chair and then returns with it. He places it beside the boy’s and sits down, crossing one leg high over the other. They begin to talk.
The man asks about the boy and his family. The boy speaks about his father, brilliant, reserved and never ill before his sudden, premature death from a heart-attack, and about his mother, who is half-American and who was briefly on the stage. The man talks about his life as a schoolmaster and his passion for sports. He teaches gymnastics, he explains. He had hoped to be chosen for the German gymnastic team for the 1936 Olympic Games but – he shrugs, his shoulders droop – at the last moment …
‘I’m no good at sports. Hopeless. My brother’s in the Rugby fifteen at our school. And he’s a terrific shot.’
The man laughs. ‘Yes, yes! Rabbit every dinner!’
Later the man tells the boy that he is on his honeymoon. The boy does not say that he knows this already. The man explains that his wife is sleeping – he jerks his head upwards and sideways – in the room over there. She does not sleep well at night, he says. She needs – how do you say? – her siesta. She is a fellow teacher, the daughter of the headmaster of the school. She teaches art. A good artist, mainly watercolour.
Then the man leans forward, hands clasped between his knees, to ask: ‘ What is your name?’
‘Evelyn.’
‘Strange name! I never hear that name.’
‘There was an English diarist. A long time ago. Evelyn. John Evelyn. My father was writing a book about him when I was born.’
‘I am Götz.’
‘Götz.’ The boy likes the name. It has a monolithic solidity and strength that suit this stranger.
‘You look German.’
‘Me? German?’ The boy is taken aback.
‘Blue eyes. Blue, blue eyes. Like the sea. Like the Atlantic Ocean. And hair so blond. Blond! Tentatively he extends a hand. Touches the hair briefly. Touches it again. Ruffles it.
A voice, high and querulous, calls: ‘Götz!’ It calls again. Something in German follows.
‘Meine Frau. My wife. You will excuse.’ He smiles. He puts a hand briefly on the boy’s shoulder. Then he again ruffles the boy’s hair, this time forcefully, almost aggressively. The boy’s scalp tingles under the alien fingers, as though an electric shock were passing through it. ‘Evelyn. Strange name. Good name. I like.’ He smiles. Then he strides off to the far end of the balcony and enters the French windows into the room where his wife awaits him.
From then on their meetings are frequent but all too brief. The boy now spends most of his time reading on the balcony. He waits in patience. From time to time Götz appears, usually through the French windows. The chair still remains beside the boy’s and Götz first stands briefly by it, leaning forward with a supporting hand on its back, and then sits on it. They have so much to say to each other, but all too often the high, querulous voice interrupts them. It seems to the boy that that cry of ‘Götz, Götz!’, usually followed by something in German, becomes increasingly plaintive, even desperate. Götz shrugs on one such occasion, then gives an embarrassed laugh as he puts a hand over the boy’s and then hurriedly withdraws it: ‘ Women, women! Difficult!’ He laughs as he gets to his feet. Again the woman calls: ‘Götz! Was machst du?’
One evening after dinner, as the boy’s mother fumbles over a Chopin nocturne on the out-of-tune piano and his brother, perched on the arm of a sagging sofa, flirts with the bosomy, red-cheeked daughter of the house seated on it, the boy gets up, his forefinger keeping his place in the book, and leaves the low-ceilinged room with its smells of omnipresent dust and of dead flowers left for far too long in a vase on a mantelpiece crowded with small objects and photographs in tarnished silver frames. There is a cramped hall outside the room. Beyond are three doors, one to the rooms in the main building, one out on to the balcony of the annexe and one to a lavatory. Götz is waiting in this small hall. The boy’s first thought is that he is waiting there for him. Then he realises that, no, he must be waiting for his wife, who is in the lavatory. Götz smiles. He holds out his arms in invitation. The boy hesitates. Suddenly Götz lunges over and grabs him. In frenzied succession he presses his mouth to the side of the boy’s neck, to his forehead, to his lips. The boy attempts to jerk away, then yields, at first reluctantly, then with an access of emotion that overpowers him like some huge breaker suddenly soaring skywards and then crashing downwards in a previously tranquil sea. There is a clank followed by the sound of flushing. The man retreats, pushing the boy away from him. The book falls from the boy’s hand. He stoops. The German woman emerges. She stares at the boy then at her husband. The boy notices that, though her face is, as always, coated with powder, there are raw, red patches on her bare arms and on one side of her throat.
Götz puts out a hand to the latch of the door that leads out to the balcony. He nods at the boy, then bows slightly as his wife, head lowered, passes out before him. He follows her without a backward glance.
The following day the German couple will leave. It is a long drive back to Düsseldorf. As Götz checks the car, a Mercedes but an old one, probably
bought second hand, the boy’s brother joins him. He is not interested in the Germans but he is interested in the car. He even helps to pump up a tyre. He then asks if he can have a quick spin. The German asks if he has a licence. He shakes his head. The German smiles and says: ‘Sorry.’ The boy wishes his brother would leave Götz alone. The farmer and his wife are angry with the brother because, unknown to them, he took their daughter to a bar in Han-sur-Lesse and brought her back in the early hours. The brother has described the girl as ‘hot stuff’ to the boy.
That night, almost at midnight, the boy creeps out of bed and, leaving his snoring brother sprawled across a sheet damp with sweat, tiptoes out on to the balcony. The night is stifling. In any case, he is in such a torment of emotion that he cannot sleep. He leans over the railing of the balcony and breathes in the air. But it does not cool him, even its breath is scorching. From far off a strange creaking sounds reaches him. A bird? An animal? There is something sinister, even frightening about the sound. It is like the creaking of a rocking chair hugely amplified. Behind him he hears another sound. He twists his body round. In the moonlight, wearing only his pyjamas, Götz puts a forefinger to his lips. Then he steps forward and takes the boy’s hand in his. ‘Come.’
At the farthest end of the balcony, there is a narrow, spiral staircase. The boy has never noticed it before, much less gone down it. Götz descends, crab-like, from time to time looking back over his shoulder. The boy follows, in unquestioning submission and wonder. Götz must have explored this region in preparation for what is now about to happen. There is a malodorous rubbish tip, surmounted by a broken sofa vomiting horsehair. There is a wheelbarrow without a wheel. There is a stack of old newspapers, blotched with damp and tied with hairy twine. In the extraordinarily bright light from the moon the boy can at once make out all these things. There is a door, with a glinting handle. Götz puts a sunburned hand with bitten nails to the handle and opens the door. He turns his head and smiles. There is an iron bedstead with a stained mattress on it.