I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  At the airport a young man with curly brown hair and glasses, just over medium height, was holding a sheet of paper with my name on it. He was shy. (No, he hadn’t been waiting long.) He smiled easily. He said he did the accounts.

  “You have not met Ruth?”

  “No,” I said.

  “How long is she your agent?”

  “Fourteen years.”

  Zurich was busy. In sunny end-of-May weather he drove to the heights above, to a cul-de-sac of large houses. They had signs, Achtung Hund, except in front of the large house where he stopped.

  As he opened the door there were red roses in the hallway, lots of them. And more red roses at the bottom of the wide stairs. The wall opposite the front door was mostly books. But in a space, waist high, a small sink with the head of a brass lion. Water came out of its mouth. There were more roses, as well as books, in the large carpeted rooms that he led me through. Then outside, down a few steps, to a grass lawn. People were standing in clusters talking and eating. A tall attractive woman with straight blond hair was cooking over a barbecue. She talked loudly in Italian. A man in his thirties—regular clean-cut face, black curly hair—was moving around slowly with a hand-held camera, stopping, then moving again.

  The person from the airport came towards me with a lively short woman. She looked very alert, intelligent, and with a sense of fun.

  “What a surprise,” she said. We embraced quickly and kissed. Then we moved apart and looked at one another.

  “This is very moving,” she said quietly.

  I could hear the whirr of the film camera.

  “You must be hungry.”

  She linked arms, led me to the barbecue, and introduced me to Giuli—the tall blond Italian who was her housekeeper. (She would die, unexpectedly, in two years.) There were frankfurters, hamburgers, salad, grapes. I had a couple of frankfurters and walked to the lawn’s edge and to an immediate drop. The churches, the buildings, the houses of Zurich spread out below and in front. Across some water I could see wooded hills. And further away, hardly visible against the skyline, mountains.

  More people kept arriving. I could now hear French and German. It was pleasantly warm. Sparrows flitted around us. Giuli, and others, threw them bits of bread.

  That night cars brought the guests into Zurich. The birthday party was in a Guildhall near the centre. A narrow river was outside. The water looked black. I could see several white swans on it. The guests came from different parts of Western Europe. They were mostly publishers. But I did meet Alfred Andersch. A gentle man with a pleasant face, a nice smile (“Why write novels if you can write short stories”). He would die within a year. And Elias Canetti. A short stocky man with a large face, high forehead, thick black hair brushed back. (He would be awarded the Nobel Prize.)

  There were speeches, toasts, in English. Then the guests went in line to another room where—on a long table with white tablecloths—there were lit candles and all sorts of food. Platters of shrimps . . . asparagus . . . a large cooked salmon . . . roast beef . . . the salads were colourful. I looked ahead to the far end where the cakes were. And saw, on the table, what I thought was one of the white swans from the river. As I came closer I realized it was made of butter.

  Later that night, in the house, seven of us who were staying as guests sat with Ruth in the kitchen. We talked and drank. I was the only male. The women’s ages spread from the late thirties into the seventies. The youngest was the girl from upstairs who rented a room and worked in Zurich. She was waiting for her gentleman friend to phone to let her know when he would be in Zurich. After she spoke to him she came down and joined us. She started to sing, “It’s All Right With Me.” She had a fine voice. We joined in. There were more Cole Porter songs. And Jerome Kern. Then the older ladies sang, very enthusiastically, European Socialist songs. And went on to folk songs, mostly German. (Ruth was born in Hamburg.) The one that made an impression was a slow sad tune about the Black Death.

  Giuli, sitting beside me, said in broken English how her husband, a pilot in the Italian air force, was killed while flying. And how lucky she was to find Ruth. Then, with more wine, she began to talk Italian to everyone and stood up wanting us all to dance. We formed a chorus line, Ruth in the middle. We kicked our legs and sang as we moved around the kitchen. Then, tired, we sat down. This time Ruth was beside me, a little out of breath. While our glasses were being filled again I asked her—what was she thinking when she saw those large bunches of roses all over the house?

  And she said that during the last war she worked as a courier for the Resistance. They sent her to Holland. The Nazis tracked her down. “Things became difficult. I was on a wanted list. I had to stay inside my small room. I couldn’t go out.

  “In the next room there was a man called Karfunkelstein. He told me he was going to commit suicide. I asked him why.

  “One can’t live with a name like Karfunkelstein in these times.”

  “I managed to talk him out of it.

  “Wait,” he said. And left me.

  “When he came back he had his arms full of roses and other flowers.

  “For you,” he said.

  “And gave them to me.

  “My small room was full of flowers. And I couldn’t go out to sell a rose for food.”

  Four and a half years later, early this December, I saw Ruth again. I had been invited to Strasbourg to give a lecture at the university. After the lecture I took a train to Zurich. Outside the station I went into a waiting taxi. I gave the driver the name of the street.

  He replied with the number I wanted.

  “How did you know?”

  “Many people go there.”

  This time no guests or flowers. But the same warm welcome. The young man who met me at the airport was still doing the accounts, still looked shy, and smiled easily. His hair was grey. I met the new housekeeper, Juliette. She came from France. About the same age as Ruth.

  It was cold and foggy. At dusk I could see the lights of Zurich below. Juliette brought in some coffee and for over an hour Ruth and I talked business. She phoned up the Canadian embassy in Bonn and spoke to the cultural attaché about an East German translation. She phoned a radio station in Cologne about a short story that had been broadcast. We went over a contract line by line. Then Ruth said, “I must go and lie down for twenty minutes.”

  She went upstairs. I went into the kitchen and talked to Juliette while she was preparing the food. Juliette told me she used to be a photographer in Paris before the war. Then worked in London. She had a studio in Knightsbridge, and talked nostalgically of the time she lived there. A small radio was on. Someone was playing a guitar. I said I liked Django Reinhardt.

  “I knew him,” Juliette said. “My husband, André, was his best friend for some years.”

  Ruth appeared looking less tired.

  “You didn’t stay twenty minutes,” Juliette said in mock anger.

  Ruth and I finished the rest of our business over a drink. Then it was time for supper. The three of us sat around a small table in the kitchen, in a corner, by the stove. We had red wine. We clinked glasses and drank to our next meeting.

  Juliette passed the salad bowl.

  I asked her about Django Reinhardt.

  “He couldn’t read or write. He was a gypsy,” she said. “Very black hair but good white teeth. You know how he got those two fingers? His wife was in a caravan making artificial flowers when there was a fire. Django ran in and saved her. His hand was burned . . . Oh, he was a bad driver. He had so many accidents . . . the car looked a wreck. One time he came to see us with a new shirt, a tie, and a new suit. He asked my husband what was the proper way to wear it. André showed him. Django stood in front of the mirror, wearing the new clothes, looking at himself, very pleased at the way he looked.” (Juliette acted this out with little movements of her face and hands as she spoke.) “We listene
d to him play . . . he would play for hours . . . If I could have recorded it . . . He only began to make records so he could give them to his friends. But he could be difficult. To get him to the recording studio on time my husband would say: ‘“Django, you are late . . . the machinery is all set up . . . there are people waiting . . . they have their jobs.’” And Django would not go. André tried again. And Django got angry.

  “I need my freedom. If I can’t have my freedom . . . it’s not my life.”

  “Later he bought a Château near Paris. That life didn’t suit him. He was ruined . . . by money . . . by women . . . fame. He couldn’t handle it.”

  Juliette stood up and from the stove brought a small casserole and served the meat and the vegetables.

  “What happened to Karfunkelstein?” I asked Ruth.

  “He probably committed suicide,” she said in a flat voice. “In those days people like him did . . .”

  “On May l0th, 1940,” she went on, “the Germans came into Holland. Next day there was an epidemic of suicides. There weren’t enough coffins. They put them in sacks.

  “I knew this young family. They had two small boys. The man was a teacher. His wife was in love with him. She would go along with whatever he wanted. And he wanted to commit suicide. He kept saying: ‘“Life as it is going to be . . . will not be worth living.’”

  “I knew someone in the American embassy. I arranged for them to see him next morning so they could get out of Holland. But I wanted to make sure they would be there.

  “I went to their house. The man was still saying that life without freedom to live the way he had lived would be impossible . . . when the youngest boy swallowed a small bulb from a flashlight. (At least his mother said that he did.) She was very worried. She asked me: What should she do? How could she get a doctor? After a while the child got better. Because I saw how worried she had been I thought it was all right to leave them for the night. I said I would be back in the morning.

  “When I arrived, the two boys were dead. The man and the wife had sealed all the doors and windows. Turned on the gas. And they had cut their wrists.”

  When we had finished, Juliette began to clear and wash up while Ruth went into the other room to dictate letters into a machine for the secretary next morning. I went up to the room where I would sleep the night—a large bare room in the attic with a low double bed, books all over, and a wide window with a view of Zurich. I looked at the lights and thought of the people who had come to Zurich, from other countries, for different reasons. And how few of them stayed.

  Juliette came to the door and said, “There is a Canadian film on television. Have you heard of it? It is called Mon Oncle Antoine.”

  “It’s the best Canadian film I have seen,” I said.

  “Then we shall all see it,” she said.

  I went down with her.

  Juliette drew the curtains. Ruth put in a hearing aid. “I only do this for television,” she said.

  I looked forward to seeing the film again. I had seen it, about twenty years ago, in St. Ives on television and remembered how moved I had been by it.

  “There is a marvellous shot,” I said while the news was on. “It is winter. On the extreme left of the picture there is a horse and a sleigh with a young boy and his uncle. The horse has stopped. And on the extreme right of the picture is a coffin that has fallen off the sleigh. In between there is this empty field of snow. It is night. The wind is blowing . . . no words are spoken. But that image I have remembered all these years.”

  Mon Oncle Antoine came on. The first surprise—it was in colour. I remembered it in black and white. Then I realized . . . it was because in St. Ives we had then a black and white TV set. There were other disappointments. It might have been because of the German subtitles, or my memory.

  I told them the scene was about to come on.

  When it did—it wasn’t memorable at all.

  Was it because it was in colour? Or had it been cut? I remembered it as lasting much longer. And it was the length of the shot, in black and white, that made it so poignant.

  When the film was over I could see they were disappointed.

  “I remember it differently,” I said. And told them how I had seen it on a black and white TV set.

  “It would have been better in black and white,” Ruth said.

  “There may have been cuts.”

  “It seemed very jumpy,” Juliette said. “You could see it had the possibility of a good movie.”

  That night in the attic, in bed, I heard midnight by the different clocks in Zurich. I didn’t count how many. But there were several. Each one starting a few seconds after another. And thought about Mon Oncle Antoine. How it differed from what I remembered. I saw how I had changed that shot. Just as I had switched the candles from around the man in the coffin at the start. And had them around the boy in the coffin at the end. I had, over the years, changed these things in order to remember them. Is this what time does? Perhaps it was a good film because it could suggest these things.

  And was this what Juliette had done when she told about Django Reinhardt? And Ruth with Karfunkelstein?

  But some things don’t change.

  I remembered my wife having to go into Penzance hospital to drain off some fluid. It was in the last two weeks of her life. She hadn’t been outside for over a year but in that front room where I brought down a bed. And from there she looked out at the granite of Wesley Street and Mr. Veal feeding the birds. Two men carried her out on a canvas and put her in the back of the ambulance.

  When she returned she said, “It’s so beautiful. The sky . . . the clouds . . . the trees . . . the fields . . . the hedges. I was lying on my back and I could see through the windows . . .”

  Early next morning Ruth drove me to the railway station. The streets were quite empty. The sun was not high above the horizon. And here it was snowing. The sun caught the glass of the buildings, the houses, and lit them up. And the snow was falling . . . thick flakes.

  “My aunt in Israel is ninety,” Ruth said. “And drives her car. Isn’t that marvellous?”

  We were going down a turning road, down a slope, then it straightened out. I asked her, “Will you go on living in Zurich?”

  “I don’t know. The only other country would be Holland. I like Holland.”

  After she left I went inside the station and gave all the Swiss change I had to a plump young girl who was selling things from a portable kiosk. In return I had a bar of chocolate, a large green apple, and a yellow pack of five small cigars.

  GWEN JOHN

  Early in January 1984 I flew from Toronto to London. Then a train to Sheffield. My son-in-law, Kevin, met me at the railway station. And from there he drove out of the city onto moorland that led to a valley and to a stone house in Hathersage. Ellen, my eldest daughter, was having their first child. And as her mother was not alive I wanted to be there. The baby was a boy, Hugh. I stayed with them a week. Did the shopping. Helped to prepare the evening meal. (Kevin was in Chesterfield during the day, teaching science.) Took the dog, a whippet named Gemma, out for long walks in the surrounding countryside.

  It was a pleasant village in a valley, hills all around. A few churches. A school. A short busy road. Above it, on the sloping fields, sheep. There was a butcher shop, a bakery, several fruit and vegetable stores, an Italian restaurant, some old pubs with early photographs of local cricket teams, and a good inn. It looked like a village in a children’s book. The postman on his bicycle . . . the farm off the main street with working horses in the stables . . . ducks by a stream that went by a playing field . . . a small library (a room in a house) open some afternoons.

  An Air Force jet appeared low overhead. Then climbed and banked quietly above the hills. I saw coaches and cars arrive with hikers and climbers. And walked in a section, up from the lowest part, where the large houses were, with magnificent
views of the hills. And, closer, the neatly cut bowling green with the delicate bandstand. Ellen told me that Eyam, a nearby village, was isolated in the Middle Ages because of the Black Death. People would not go in but leave food. And on a postcard (in a small newsagent post office) I read that Charlotte Brontë stayed in Hathersage, then used parts of it in Jane Eyre.

  When it was time to leave, Kevin drove me to Chesterfield railway station. Across the moor . . . before the sun was up . . . frost was on the stubble. He went on to his school. I got on the train that arrived from the north and was going to Penzance. I couldn’t see an empty seat. Everyone looked asleep. When I heard a voice say, “You can sit beside me.”

  Bright, alert. She could be in her late twenties. Her black hair all over the place—probably I had woken her up. Her face was pale with dark eyes. And she wore an elegant, dark-purple, woollen suit.

  “You can have the window seat,” she said. “I’m going to get some breakfast.”

  She came back with two fried eggs, toast, and coffee. I saw a small black case by her luggage. Perhaps a flute. After she had eaten, tidied up, we started to talk.

  She had been visiting her parents in the Lake District. I told her I had just flown from Canada and was going to Cornwall.

  The train was moving along. Past small fields. And, in the depressions, water. I remember the American student in the airport bus from Heathrow. In England for the first time, and excited by what he saw. “This is watercolour country,” he said.

  “Have you been to East Germany?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How long were you there?”

  “A year.”

  “I was there two weeks. Where were you?”

  “Halle.”

  “I was in Halle a few hours . . . between trains. What were you doing?”

  “Teaching English.”

  “Did you go to Leipzig?”