Red Heaven

by Nicolas Rothwell

  ‘And that’s the real reason why you still choose to live the way you do, on the border between the two worlds? It was always a mystery to me.’

  ‘Of course that’s why—but it’s exhausting, it’s a constant balancing act. You can go from film to film and place to place: everyone you deal with is suspicious of you—suspicious even as they use you for their own ends. At least Naumov and the comrades understand the situation. Since Prague, I’ve been convenient for them, I’ve been an intermediary they can call in at will. But that landscape’s changing. They don’t need me as much as they used to once; and I certainly don’t need them anymore—there are French producers I’ve found who want to work with us, Italians as well.’

  ‘Fortunate!’ said Professor Leo: ‘Because I don’t think Nietzsche’s a figure who’d appeal to your Kremlin friends. If I’m not mistaken, when I was a young student he was marked down as a proto-fascist. I can’t believe there’s been a rehabilitation since.’

  ‘You might be surprised,’ said Serghiana: ‘I’ve had indications. You’re forgetting something—or someone. It’s a Russian story—through and through. Lou Salomé was Russian, born in Petersburg—and she was a woman of radical ideas as well.’

  ‘That’s very clever!’

  ‘It’s nothing but the truth—remember what she represented for Nietzsche—what he called her—die interessante Russin.’

  ‘Your precursor!’

  ‘What a thought!’

  Serghiana shook her head, then gave me a quick, cryptic look. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve invited another interesting woman to come and join us at the breakfast table: an old friend of yours, my child: Josette—and her new husband. They’re staying here. You’ll get a surprise when you meet him. They’ll be down soon, I’m sure.’

  ‘But I’ve already met her husband,’ I said: ‘Don’t you remember—he was with us on the last long holiday we spent together—and I saw him a year ago as well, after they got married.’

  ‘I know all about your escapades last year,’ said Serghiana: ‘I’m not talking about Daru. I mean her new husband.’

  She turned to Professor Leo and dropped her voice to a discreet whisper: ‘She’s extraordinary, that woman. If things go on the way they are she’ll end up sleeping her way into the Élysée!’

  She was about to say more, but at that moment a tall, grey-haired stranger drew towards our table.

  ‘Madame Serghiana!’

  She glanced up, and frowned.

  The stranger grasped her hand, held it in his and sat down beside her, staring fervently into her eyes. ‘I came to greet you. I had to. To share my grief! I’m Fridolin—remember? The publisher—from Graz.’

  Serghiana looked at him, and hesitated.

  ‘My grief about poor Teddie, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said then: ‘Such a loss!’

  ‘A tragedy,’ he went on. ‘It seems like yesterday we were all sitting together. There—at the end of the terrace, where the garden looks out over nature—that was his table, with the view across the valley and the lakes and the deep, dark blue of the sky. Do you remember—how he used to stare up at the peaks, as if he could annex them; how he would paint word pictures of each one in turn!’

  ‘You must miss him very much,’ said Serghiana.

  ‘I used to meet him here—early in the summer season, every year without fail. He was an inspiration to me. Although it’s not as if he’s lost altogether—such a treasure house of words remains behind him—but that can never substitute for the living presence. Words in print are dry, they’re skeletons of the moving, breathing thought: we delude ourselves if we believe we preserve the spirits of our friends in what they leave behind for us on the page.’

  ‘A sad reflection,’ said Serghiana.

  ‘But you know how he was! It’s nothing but the truth. I think all the time of how we used to take our walks together, and the talk that swept us up would last for hours; sometimes until the sun was down behind the mountains, and evening was falling, and we’d have to hurry to find our way back to the hotel. How wonderful they were, those days. He told me all about his childhood, and his memories of Amorbach. And I told him he gave me too much of his precious time, he was too kind to me: I joked with him: I said he must be one of the thirty kind angels sent down to the world.’

  ‘Thirty-six,’ said Serghiana sternly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There were thirty-six of them, not thirty: it’s a legend in the Talmud. And they weren’t angels. They’re the hidden figures of humility, sent to save mankind from hell. I don’t think Teddie was quite that kind of person. He was clever, though: brilliant, even, in his particular and labyrinthine way.’

  ‘The only true genius I’ve ever known,’ said the publisher then, in a fervent voice: ‘The only one. And what those students did to him! I’m sure it brought about his end.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Serghiana: ‘A dramatic exit. I wonder what Mann would have thought. Although “Der Tod in Visp” doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?’

  ‘No—and how quickly we all pass into history.’

  ‘Or oblivion,’ said Serghiana.

  ‘He was very fond of you. I can tell you that now.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How could you know that?’

  Serghiana glanced round at us, a look of slight vexation coming into her face.

  ‘How could I not? Il me faisait la cour—constamment!’

  ‘It was a passion,’ the stranger said. ‘He spoke of it to me for hours. I think he liked the idea of a red romance!’

  ‘Doubtless thinking of Benjamin and Asja Lācis!’ said Serghiana, in an acid voice: ‘But you can’t borrow someone else’s life. It’s a mistake often made by people who read too much.’

  She tapped me on the knee. ‘Child, don’t drift off. Pay attention—we’re talking about a great philosopher.’

  ‘Can you read too much?’ I asked.

  ‘History’s made by people who don’t read—and studied by those who read all day.’

  ‘You’re speaking of Adorno, aren’t you?’ exclaimed Professor Leo at that point: ‘How wonderful! He spent his summers here in the Engadine? He was like contraband for us—when I was—you know—over there.’

  He gestured with one hand in the direction of the border and the ranges to the east, past Samedan. There was a pause in the flow of conversation. In perfunctory fashion Serghiana introduced the two men.

  ‘Just think,’ she said to Professor Leo: ‘Had you left two years earlier you could have spent hours talking with Adorno in person—exploring your shared interest in the pangs of unrequited love! Although his conversation tended towards the monologue.’

  ‘In truth music was his greatest and most enduring passion,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Indeed so,’ said Serghiana: ‘Every evening he would serenade me on the grand piano in the winter salon at the back of the hotel. His own compositions—all in minor key. One was a sound portrait of the landscape—very funereal. He told me the bare high slopes of the mountains reminded him of industrial slagheaps and mines, and showed nature’s true face: bleak and empty—sad. And it is a sad valley. Look at the people who find themselves drawn here. Sad fates for them all: Anne Frank, Annemarie Schwarzenbach—Nietzsche, and now poor Teddie too. But he’ll become an institution in the end. The graven, frozen, captured image of originality. What he most feared—and always longed for, despite himself.’

  ‘You judge him harshly,’ said the stranger.

  ‘He was a harsh judge as well. And in the end, utterly a bourgeois, no matter how fervent his denunciations of the bourgeoisie.’

  ‘What is a bourgeois, exactly, Great-Aunt Serghiana?’ I asked her.

  She laughed, and looked at me, and touched my hand. ‘Something we all fear turning into—like Kafka’s insect. The class who will inherit the earth—indeed they already have. Look, here are two, coming down from the bridal suite to join us!’

  I shifted in
my chair, and followed the direction of her eyes, and saw Josette gliding through the hotel foyer, a man with hawklike features at her side. She scanned the terrace, saw our table, and waved and beckoned. I turned to Serghiana.

  ‘Go on,’ she commanded. ‘Don’t be unfriendly! Go across and say hello to them. Josette’s been looking forward to seeing you.’

  I did so. Josette shook my hand in solemn, formal style. ‘Our paths cross again,’ she said: ‘Under changed circumstances. I want you to meet my husband: Henri Malzahn—a name you’ve heard before.’

  Then she bent down, as if to give me a kiss on the forehead: ‘Be tactful,’ she whispered. ‘Say nothing.’

  The pair of them walked the full length of the terrace, Malzahn making little signs of acknowledgement as they passed by various tables, then, still in perfect tandem, they both swung round and retraced their steps to where Serghiana was waiting and watching.

  ‘Come, Henri,’ she said: ‘Come and sit by me.’

  Malzahn raised her hand to his lips obediently. ‘Madame Serghiana,’ he replied, ‘I can think of nothing I would like more.’

  The three of them then began speaking at once, swiftly, in animated fashion, jumping between subjects, finishing each other’s sentences, paying no attention to the others at the table.

  Lipsett leaned across to me. ‘Do you know these two?’ he asked: ‘She’s magnificent! They’ve been spending a great deal of time with Semyonova in the last few days.’

  ‘He’s a kind of minister,’ I said: ‘I think—a deputy one.’

  ‘Don’t whisper, my child,’ said Serghiana: ‘Is all this too boring for you: politics, culture, the future of Europe East and West? This is the way we manage things: it might seem as if we’re talking about nothing, but really there’s serious business going on. Isn’t that so, Henri? And I should let you know how our groundwork’s progressing: we’ve found the lead—an actor from Limoges, of all places, can you imagine? He’s the philosopher incarnate—commanding, frail, neurotic.’

  At this, Malzahn inclined his head, and made an appreciative noise.

  ‘We’ll have to dub him, but in every other way he’s perfect—and we have our strong heroine, a Russian, from Mosfilm: German-speaking, born in Saratov.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me any of that,’ said Lipsett.

  ‘If you’d learn to read between the lines of the paperwork you handle, or listen to the words being spoken all around you, Corey,’ she said, ‘you’d already know—but you do at least know the investment picture. All resolved: European interests. Your support at the outset was everything to us, Henri.’

  ‘It was nothing, Madame Serghiana.’

  ‘On the contrary. French prestige counts for a great deal.’

  ‘It’s a cultural fund,’ said Malzahn: ‘It’s supposed to fund culture. And I was pleased to hear of their decision.’

  ‘We appreciate their trust,’ said Serghiana.

  ‘And we trust in your art!’ he said, and interlaced the fingers of his hands, and smiled majestically.

  Waiters came and poured fresh coffee; the talk continued, it broke into currents round the table, there was that sense of different tides of words and repeated phrases flowing in and out. I pushed back my chair to leave.

  ‘Child,’ said Serghiana: ‘Hurrying off already?’

  ‘Serghiana,’ said Josette, ‘let him go: let him have a break from all this grown-up talk. Life will put its chains on him soon enough.’

  ‘But don’t you know what I’m trying to do with him, my dear—make him a master of the chains, so he doesn’t have to wear them.’

  ‘For me, Serghiana—let him go—he’s only just arrived. I’ll take him outdoors, and give him a quick tour of the gardens and the grounds.’

  She got up, took me by the hand and led me away through the lobby and out.

  ‘I can walk without a guiding hand,’ I said.

  ‘So cold,’ she said then: ‘What makes you like that? What makes you look so disapproving? I’d like to talk to you—properly.’

  ‘Why? Do I matter? Am I someone?’

  ‘Of course you are—I need to talk to you. Aren’t you my little companion—my special friend?’

  ‘You mean talk here—now?’

  ‘No—I have to go back to M.’

  ‘M for minister?’

  ‘M for Monsieur—M for Malzahn—M for man. Come and find me later—this afternoon. I’ll be down in the pool—down there below.’

  ‘Is there a swimming pool here?’ I said, looking round at the sloping lawn and fir trees that surrounded us.

  ‘It’s indoors—on the lower level. Newly built. It’s an engineering wonder—that’s what everyone says, anyway. Maybe a change of scene will lift your spirits.’

  And she turned on her heel and strode back in.

  *

  Afternoon came; its hours dragged. Serghiana and her location hunters held a meeting in one of the salons; Lipsett sat in on it. I left him there, and scouted round, then made my way down to the lower level. It was sleek and new: soft lighting, marble, glass partitions, mysterious corridors. I found the sauna, and a spa and a little reception desk, unattended—and beyond it a long, low chamber, slightly humid, dimly lit—the pool. Josette was there, alone, lying on a daybed beside the windows at its far end. She lifted herself up on one elbow and looked across.

  ‘Come over,’ she said. ‘You managed to escape Serghiana’s clutches!’

  ‘She’s having talks,’ I said.

  Josette laughed. ‘And you’re wandering around a hotel alone, as usual.’

  I looked around. ‘It’s very quiet here,’ I said.

  ‘A strange quiet! It’s like a stage-set: you have the feeling something’s about to happen, any moment, but nothing ever does: the light reflects in the water, the power supply hums, and the men and women upstairs pretend to enjoy themselves.’

  There was a pair of large black-winged silhouettes on the plate glass of the windows looking out across the valley. I pointed to them. ‘What are those?’

  ‘They’re hawks, of course—hawk images—to stop the birds outside from flying into the glass and killing themselves. A symbol of death to prevent death: like mutually assured destruction.’

  I looked back at her.

  ‘You know what that is. I’m not going to explain. It’s all around us—I think you know that concept very well.’

  She stared at me in a diagnostic way for a second or two. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said: ‘It’s natural. How much one changes in a year at your age! But there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know—a slight defiance, maybe. I’m not exactly sure yet. I’ll tell you when I’ve worked it out. Aren’t you at least happy to be summoned back here—to your favourite part of the world? Don’t you like the mountains anymore? Didn’t you once tell me they were your promised land? You said it was a secret you’d only ever tell me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘And I kept your secret, faithfully. Nobody else knows. Nobody else realises that the forests and the peaks are your temple, your private paradise. Who would you share it with? Who would you allow in? Serghiana? Ady Novogrodsky? Me?’

  ‘It’s not a real question,’ I said.

  ‘But if it was?’

  ‘It’s wrecked anyway,’ I said: ‘You can see that.’

  ‘You mean it’s not the way it used to be. Isn’t that the whole point of paradises? Otherwise there wouldn’t be any reason to dream of them. It’s a famous commonplace: a paradise wouldn’t be a paradise if it wasn’t already impossible. But it’s too early for you to have ideas like that. Everything’s still to come for you; you shouldn’t be thinking as if your life’s already been lived and you’re looking back at a remembered world that’s gone.’

  ‘It’s just that everything’s changed from before—it all feels unfamiliar—wrong.’

  ‘And do I seem unfamiliar—aren’t I the same?’

  ‘You
seem changed too,’ I said.

  ‘Well! You can tell there have been some developments in my life—but I’m still the same person—the same Josette.’

  She reached towards me, and made a sign to me to take her hand. I stayed still.

  ‘Honestly—you’re impossible. Many people would love to be in your place right now, sitting in an alpine resort, alone with a young woman who cares for you, and wants the best for you—but here you are, quiet and sullen, as if you’ve just been handed a death sentence by some dark and dreadful court.’

  ‘What happened to Daru?’ I said.

  ‘Is that it? Are you actually worried about him? I can’t believe it! He never liked you. Surely you knew that? All through those weeks when I was looking after you, you were just an irritant to him.’

  ‘It wasn’t hard to tell.’

  ‘Don’t fret on his behalf. He’s got what he always wanted. I was good for him. He’s been sent to South-East Asia, to the embassy in South Vietnam. He was brought up there, you know, he speaks the language perfectly—in a sense that’s where he belongs.’

  ‘But you told me you didn’t like…’ I stopped.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Your new husband. I heard you say it—in front of Daru. I remember.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know you remember things. What would you expect me to say, when I was together with someone else? You’ll understand, in time. One moves through stages in life; feelings grow cooler; the logic of the world comes in. Are you disappointed by what I’m telling you—about myself?’

  ‘I thought you were different,’ I said: ‘Different from the others, all around us. I believed you.’

  ‘You believed in me, that’s what you mean. It’s not the same thing at all. Don’t get hung up on my arrangements: they don’t have anything to do with you, or how I think of you. I can still see you, you know, just the way you were the day I met you, when I was travelling with Daru on our first holiday: that day the Prague Spring died—and Serghiana made me take you upstairs to get you away from all the adults talking politics, and she thought I’d be glad to escape as well.’

  ‘She was ordering you about then,’ I said: ‘And here she is, treating you like a queen.’