‘Stars above!’ she said: ‘Who’d have thought that out of my two faithful companions here this summer it would be you, dear Egon, who would prove to be the more amusing, the more blessed with insight and the more profound!’
Leo returned. He was beaming. ‘Good news,’ he said: ‘Ady’s coming! I can’t wait to see her. She arrives tomorrow.’
‘That showgirl!’ exclaimed Serghiana: ‘Already! It’s not what we agreed! She’s coming to claim him. To exult. And so our little idyll comes to its close. How convenient that I’m booked to leave today.’
‘You’re leaving the hotel?’ I said.
‘I’m leaving the country, my child. It has to be. I have work. Don’t worry—we’ve made arrangements.’
‘But you didn’t say.’
‘Aren’t you and Ady friends?’ Leo asked her: ‘You must move in the same circles. Don’t you have a great deal in common with each other?’
Serghiana glared at him. ‘In common! With her—a Carpathian peasant—a dancer from the Viennese stage—a failed actress—a fraud in the world of culture. What could I have in common with someone like her? What? I’d like to know, Leo!’
‘Madame Serghiana,’ he said: ‘One of the most engaging things about you is the intensity of your dislikes. But even so I’d have thought at least you would have an admiration for her new husband—or husband-to-be. After all, he’s a brilliant man.’
‘A brilliant man embarking on his tenth marriage!’ snapped Serghiana. ‘Doubtless destined to a long duration, like all the previous ones. Who knows how she ensnared him? Although I can guess, of course—he’s always been a satyr. All conductors are!’
‘What’s a satyr?’ I asked.
‘Even in the nineteen-sixties,’ she said, ‘it’s something bad.’
‘Are you talking about Ady Palafay?’ said Egon from his corner of the table.
‘You know her?’ said Serghiana, indignantly.
‘I do—and you must know her too,’ he said to me. ‘She’s a friend of your mother’s: your mother always calls her Adela, and of course soon she won’t be Palafay anymore—she’ll have another name.’
‘Do you know her?’ said Serghiana, giving me a furious stare.
‘You shouldn’t be so hard in your judgement of her,’ said Egon: ‘She comes from a different world to us.’
‘And what world is that?’
‘The world of pleasure and amusement.’
‘Yes, and of course you’re such a devotee of wit and hedonism, aren’t you—the committed joker, the secret humourist in the swamp of gloom.’
She wheeled around to look at me. ‘And you,’ she said: ‘You carefully kept quiet! Is Egon right? You know her?’
‘Aunt Adela? I’ve known her since I was little.’
‘And you like her?’
‘I love her—it’s wonderful spending time with her.’
Serghiana gave me a radiant smile. ‘Aunt Adela—and you love her! You love her! It’s too perfect. Everything falls into place. She can look after you now—and pay for you, and drag you around Europe with her like a lapdog, along with all her dresses and her monogrammed luggage and her chauffeur. I’ll leave you to her devices—and to these gentlemen!’
And she tossed her hair back, gathered up her coat, turned, strode off without a backward glance and disappeared into the lobby of the hotel.
III
Corviglia
A YEAR HAD passed, and more. I was at a school I disliked in the Engadine. In the afternoons I used to sit alone for hours in the gardens that overlooked the valley: I could see the narrow river far away, the roofs of the village, the tall, thin church spire, the silent streets and shuttered houses. There was the school courtyard, immediately beneath me, and the senior classroom building with its tower and the clock that never told the right time, there were the neat pastures full of grazing cattle, there was the narrow road that led towards the national park and the Austrian border in the west. I could just make out a small vehicle coming from the direction of Samedan, at speed. Its windscreen gleamed as it caught the sun. It was a sports car, steel grey. I watched as it drew nearer, then turned, and began the climb up to the village. It swung round a farmer’s cart and straight up the no-entry street, and vanished from view. I could still hear it, screeching round the corners, accelerating up the alleys—then suddenly I saw it again, close by, turning into the school’s main driveway: it braked sharply and came shuddering to a stop. A handful of older students standing in the main quadrangle stared in curiosity: by the standards of the Lyceum Alpinum, this arrival was already an event. I looked on as the driver’s door opened. A man of slight stature in a dark suit jumped out, smoothed his long, greying hair and rushed round to the passenger’s side. He made a little bow, and offered his hand in formal fashion, but the woman who emerged from the car waved him off, then paused for a moment and rearranged the scarf at her neck. There was something familiar about this figure. I looked more closely: not young, not old, foreign in manner, extreme in elegance. She glanced round, screwed her face up in an expression of distaste, reached down into the car, extracted a pair of sunglasses and put them on.
‘What a place,’ she said loudly, in an accented voice: ‘These archways, these colonnades and blank windows. It’s like a cross between a monastery and an asylum. Let’s not waste time here. Quick—go and find him, go.’
She turned while speaking, and I realised I was staring down at my aunt Adela—my honorary aunt Adela Palafay, whom I had been very fond of years before, when she first spent time in our company. She had seemed quite fascinating then to my eyes, with her golden hair, her voice redolent of far-distant, mythic regions, and the bright clothes she wore that gave her the look of a bird of paradise at rest. I smiled at the sight of her. I was on the point of calling out, but one of the teachers from the senior school had spotted her, and came up.
‘Young man,’ she said, and extended a hand in his direction as if she expected him to kneel before her: ‘Fetch me the headmaster—right away.’
The teacher scuttled off. I made a slight movement. She wheeled round and saw me gazing down. At once she broke into a radiant smile and waved to me. ‘My treasure,’ she called out: ‘My soul! I knew you’d be waiting for me; I knew you wouldn’t have forgotten me. Don’t just stand there staring—come down, I’ve longed for you, I’ve missed you, I’ve so much to tell you.’
She turned to the grey-haired driver, who had remained with her. ‘Hurry, Muscatine, go and meet your new friend. Try to be civil to him.’
The man in the dark suit came clipping up the stairs towards me. At that moment across the courtyard the main door to the tower building opened and the headmaster, pursued by his deputy and several members of the teaching staff, strode out, beaming, both arms stretched before him in greeting. Ady put her hand to her chin, and tilted her head in her most feline fashion. She stretched out her hand once more: the headmaster bent, and kissed it reverentially.
‘An honour,’ he said: ‘And a surprise!’
‘Bring me my boy,’ she said, her voice stern.
But the dark-suited man was upon me, panting as he came up to the garden balcony. He spoke my name, pronouncing it between his teeth as if he was tasting it.
‘That’s you, isn’t it? Why are you hiding up here?’
‘I’m not hiding,’ I said: ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Muscatine,’ he answered, frowning as he spoke the syllables.
‘And what do you do?’ I asked him: ‘Are you a chauffeur?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said, and gave me a look of undisguised hostility: ‘I’m the Maestro’s accompanist.’
‘The Maestro?’
‘Novogrodsky, Madame Ady’s husband.’
‘Novo-grodsky?’
‘Yes—don’t you know who he is? Don’t you know anything about musical culture?’
‘Lots,’ I said: ‘They teach us Beethoven, and Mozart, and Haydn, and we have singing lessons, too.’
&nb
sp; ‘Beethoven—Mozart,’ said Muscatine, and raised his eyebrows: ‘Is that all? You might as well be studying mediaeval plainsong!’
He had long hands with manicured fingers—he flicked them dismissively, with the air of a man used to passing judgement on great swathes of European civilisation and finding them deficient.
‘Novo’s a more modern figure,’ he went on: ‘Much more modern. He has a contemporary philosophy, he reaches out to concert audiences. He’s a conductor for these times.’
‘And you travel with him? You accompany him?’
‘I’m a musical accompanist,’ he said: ‘Not some kind of travelling companion. When the Maestro rehearses his scores, it’s with me, always: it can only be with me. We spend our days together; I even collaborate with him when he composes. That’s the way it is.’
Ady called to us from below. ‘Come down,’ she cried: ‘The headmaster’s been telling me interesting things!’
‘Of course, madame,’ Muscatine called back, cringing, and glanced at me again.
‘That shriek,’ he said in a low voice: ‘That woman!’
‘You don’t like her?’
‘Don’t presume—and don’t make trouble. Be quiet, be tactful!’
‘Why?’
‘Because all the people round Novo these days are like piranhas. She especially. You’re related to her, aren’t you?’
‘In a kind of way. Does that mean you don’t like me either?’
‘Not yet. You have to earn being liked. Let’s reserve judgement on each other. Come on!’
With that, he gave me a prod. We went down the steps together.
‘Madame,’ he murmured in deferential fashion, and made another little bow.
‘Headmaster Grafhorn’s been entertaining me,’ she said: ‘What a charming man he is! Such courtesy!’
‘You’re too kind, Madame Palafay,’ said the headmaster: ‘But it’s Ganzhorn, actually.’
‘What’s Ganzhorn?’
‘My name.’
‘Your name’s a detail, mister headmaster,’ said Muscatine in a sharp voice: ‘But madame’s is something quite different: it’s Novogrodsky now. Don’t you think you should take care to know the correct titles of your benefactors?’
‘As in?’ asked the headmaster, clearly overwhelmed by what he had just heard.
‘As in,’ said Muscatine, grimly.
‘How wonderful! All my regrets—I cover myself in apologies.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ady, with a magnanimous wave: ‘I don’t mind keeping the names of my different husbands. I like it—it keeps one’s memories of them vivid. Like a sediment of men. If you place them in the right order their surnames make a good anapaestic cascade—it goes with my accent, very well. You should pronounce it my way: Ady de Znajm Novogrodsky Palafay. See how it flows off the tongue!’
‘Admirable,’ said the headmaster.
At which point she made a sign to me—I was hanging back on the fringes of this exchange—reached out, drew me to her, bent down and kissed me on the cheek, once, twice, three times in the most dramatic fashion.
‘My delight,’ she said: ‘At last I see you. How long? A year? Too long! But what are you doing in boarding school anyway?’
‘It was you who sent him here, in fact, madame—you and Egon Keleti,’ said Muscatine.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said: ‘There’s some vague truth to that, but really it was all more complicated.’
She turned back to me. ‘And do you like it here, my prince?’
‘He’s a dreamer,’ said Ganzhorn. ‘He’s always off somewhere else in his thoughts; he’s scarcely with us here at all.’
‘I hate it here,’ I said.
Ganzhorn laughed, and glared at me.
‘An unbroken spirit, Madame Novogrodsky,’ he said: ‘As you can see! Give us time. We’ll make a proper Western European of him. It takes a while for a child to change cultures. New languages, new friends, a new way of life. It’s something difficult we’re asking of him.’
She took a step away from me, and towards him. ‘Difficult? You don’t mean it! There’s nothing easier in the world than changing cultures. I do it myself six times every day. Do you at least educate him properly?’
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘we pride ourselves on offering a moral framework. That’s our goal, just as much as an education.’
‘A moral framework: interesting! Not that the details of one’s schooling really make much difference in the long run, do they, Mr Ganzhorn, if we’re being honest with each other. I paid no attention in the classroom: I know whatever I need to know. I can make conversation on any subject, I speak every European language that matters, and some that don’t as well.’
‘And they all sound the same,’ said Muscatine in a low voice.
‘Rein in your hostility, accompanist,’ she said: ‘You think you’re indispensable. You don’t know yet who I am! What I’m saying’s true. It’s background that’s important; it’s the milieu a child’s exposed to. Not learning, not information. Wouldn’t you agree with me, headmaster?’
Ganzhorn gave a prudent smile, and interlaced his fingers. ‘Indeed. You touch on our great advantage in what you say.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Tradition, a grounding in the framework of tradition. We have the children of many titled heads among our students here.’
‘Titled heads! I like this school less by the minute. Privilege—I spit on it. Heredity—I spit on it. I want my little prince to belong to the natural elite of the modern world, not some network of old museum pieces. You told me your establishment was democratic, meritocratic: I don’t even remember what adjectives you used. You made it sound like paradise on earth. That’s why I enrolled him with you in the first place when we met and spoke in Vienna. You knew I had to choose at once. I took you at face value. That’s the reason I sent him here. Was I wrong?’
‘Perhaps, Madame Novogrodsky,’ said the headmaster, making a pleading motion with his hands: ‘Perhaps you might care to inspect the music block?’
‘The music block. Why? Do you think you have another maestro in training to show me there?’
‘Please—it would be an inspiration for our students!’
‘Anything for the sake of art,’ she said, sighing theatrically: ‘My treasure, go and get your things.’
Things for what, I wondered, and she swept off.
‘Amazing,’ said Muscatine, standing beside me: ‘They bow down to her like servants, don’t they? Like slaves? And she’s got no real idea about music, no understanding in any depth, I can promise you that!’
‘You seem to bow down to her as well,’ I said.
‘At least I offer a little resistance.’
‘And why do they do that, do you think?’
‘They can smell the money and the fame, of course. The reek of it! It comes off her like a sweat, like some hormonal secretion. Like scent from a gland. People are drawn to her and the Maestro the way flies are drawn to a corpse.’
We spoke on. Soon the others returned.
‘How was the grand tour, madame? Enlightening?’ asked Muscatine in a waspish voice.
‘Don’t be so arch and so contrary,’ she said: ‘It was just what you’d expect, like almost everything in life.’
‘And we discussed certain topics,’ said the headmaster in a satisfied voice, and looked at me: ‘Such as the problem of your absconding.’
‘Absconding?’
‘Running away. Madame Novogrodsky agrees with me that we should take steps to discipline you.’
‘Discipline him?’ she said at once, indignantly: ‘Do you want to crush him, Mr Ganzhorn, is that what you want? Anyone with spirit runs away from school. It’s a good sign, not a bad one. Can’t you let him fly free? Life will discipline him soon enough. There are Ganzhorns everywhere, lying in wait like guerrillas in ambush in the dead of night.’
‘But, madame,’ said the headmaster: ‘You said you agreed with me. You said you’d bac
k me up.’
She laughed. ‘And you believed me? You really thought I’d take your side against the child?’
‘We have to control our students, madame. He misses whole days of lessons, he runs off, we even found him once on a walking trail in the gorge at Celerina. Last term he got as far as Zürich railway station on his own. And it goes beyond him, madame, far beyond. He’s always trying to slip away, and getting other students to lie and cover for him.’
He paused, and gave her a look of entreaty.
‘You look to me like a man of some experience, Mr Ganzhorn,’ she said: ‘Such a noble, handsome face! You’re German, aren’t you?’
‘North German, Madame Novogrodsky.’
‘I hardly thought you came from Bavaria. Now let me tell you something: something you should already know. Children lie constantly—but they don’t lie as much as adults.’
She turned from him, and made a sign to me: ‘My blessing: you come with us. We’re here to take you for a drive, aren’t we, Muscatine? It’s an important day. I’ve got things to talk over with you. Private things. I’m sure you don’t mind my taking him away from you, Mr Ganzhorn, now we’ve cleared the air. I won’t damage his moral framework—at least not too much.’
‘Usually, madame, we like to have some advance notice—for administrative reasons.’
She stared at him. She held the stare. He flinched.
‘But of course, in this case,’ he continued, ‘that’s perfectly in order. We don’t object, as long as you bring him back by nightfall, when the study period starts. We’re happy for you to have him. And dare I ask something in return?’
She cut him off. ‘I know what you want. Muscatine, what’s Novogrodsky’s schedule?’
‘Full, for two years ahead. Completely booked, scarcely a free day for anything.’
‘But I feel sure my poor overworked husband would see the merit in paying a brief inspection visit to Mr Ganzhorn’s music students. So he can meet the concert pianists of the future being educated here, maybe even rehearse with them, play through a piece or two with them. Don’t you think we could possibly persuade him, find a little flicker of generosity in his chilly heart?’
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