by Yiyun Li
Roland had his revenge, too, against both of them. He outlived them so he could have the last word. Some people live for the last word.
Sidelle did not have her revenge but she never needed it. Weak-minded people mistake people as life, and think they are hurt by this or that person. For Sidelle and for me: Only life hurts us. We don’t take revenge against life.
I’ve outlived them all. But like Sidelle, I don’t live for revenge.
17 JUNE 1943.
En route to New York. Sidelle’s eyes closed elegantly. Sometimes I wonder if she ever thinks of peeking from behind half-closed lids to see what I am writing in my notebook. I always peek.
I used to think, when I was at St. Andrew’s, that I was writing the most auspicious prologue to a prominent life; I had sketched out the chapters leading to success and fame, with romances, intrigues, and suspense sprinkled in. But it feels now as though I have only just reached the first semicolon of my life story; what has been achieved is not enough to fill a full sentence.
It occurred to me that since Malcolm Hobbs, I have not found any friends who can absorb my entire existence. Is friendship formed when young the only true connection? The women, in and out of my life, have never come close to reproducing this unconditional dedication. Those days when Malcolm and I lay in the meadow and read and talked: The birds sang more freely, the shafts of sunlight were more vibrant, our hearts more full of sweet yearning. If I go back to my early diaries I find page after page of such bliss, when one could feed on a single thought like a bee on nectar, when one’s lust for life was kept alive not by one’s flesh but by the very concept of living.
I now feel bad that I neglected to keep in closer touch with him. There is only my laziness to blame. When I get back to London I shall write him right away.
* * *
WE DID VISIT THE courthouse today, but we came to the drama too early. It will take another week for them to settle the jury selection. So we all trooped back like children brought to see a movie that’s opening later. I include myself in this silliness.
But I forgive myself. I have a particular reason for wanting to watch the trial. Russian spies always make a good story. Roland, what would you have made of this? Russian spies in San Francisco again? In 2010? Wouldn’t that be a good novel for you to write?
20 JUNE 1943.
The little household made up of Madame Zembocki and Cousin Cliona has not changed. Thirteen years—can it be true that it’s been so long? They have aged, but like their furniture, they have an aura of near immortality. That arrogant parrot is still present. But there is a greyer feeling than when I was here last.
Madame Z’s clothes may as well be the same outfits she wore when I first met her, but back then they only looked eccentric and dated, while now they are unquestionably shabby. Her hair, still braided and coiled high on her head, looks like hay. She was taciturn when Sidelle and I were invited to luncheon with them. Cousin Cliona did most of the talking. Though never a talkative person herself, she carried the conversation by posing question after question to me. Sidelle looked reserved, not contributing much. I felt as though I was put on a stage in front of three odd women. How to charm even one of them seemed an impossible challenge.
But no, I was placed in front of three judges. None of them seemed interested in delivering a verdict, especially a favourable one.
Cousin Cliona said something about her work, I said to Sidelle when I had dinner with her today. I thought they were well-off. (Cousin Cliona told me that twice a week she travels upstate to teach at a school of liturgical music.)
They are being cautious, Sidelle said. They may be gifted but they’re not so with their money. Besides, she said, there’s no way Lizzie can get her money out of the Soviet Union now.
It took me a moment to realise Sidelle was talking about Madame Z—it’s odd to hear her referred to by a young girl’s name. So she has savings in the Soviet Union?
Her novels sell by the tens of thousands there, if not the millions.
Have you read her novels?
No, Sidelle said. She wrote them in Russian.
Surely someone would have translated them into English by now.
If there are translations, I don’t want to know, she said. Lizzie is one person I’ve learned to avoid with reverence. You see, Lizzie is twelve years older, and before I could read she was already a prodigy. And with a seriousness that even a small child would recognise, she told me that there was no future for me in music. You could try poetry, she said. That’s the closest you can get to music. Just like that, with one stroke of her finger.
I am in awe of people who have the confidence to take something away from another person, but I am more in awe of those who have the confidence to bestow something without the slightest worry of being mistaken.
Her blessing has made only a mediocre poet out of me, Sidelle said. But her real gift to me is common sense. I spent a life’s ration of infatuation on her. After that I was cured once and for all.
When did she stop being a pianist?
When she got married.
Is domestic bliss worth such a sacrifice?
I suppose sometimes a marriage becomes a woman’s ambition, Sidelle said.
But that didn’t stop her from becoming a bestselling author in Russian, I said.
We don’t know if her books have any merit. All I know is she used to be a great musician, and she’s no longer one.
What a strange woman, I said. What I was really thinking was: Sidelle talks about Madame Z as though she were already dead.
There is nothing strange. Lizzie is a single-minded woman. I don’t think people understand that she has succeeded because she lacks the kind of imagination you and I and many others rely on for our sanity.
She has to have imagination to play music or write, no? I said.
The predictable kind of imagination, Sidelle said. It takes more than that for a person to live.
Later.
I ran into Cousin Cliona when I returned from the travel agency. Dressed in a tweed suit and skirt, she looked far less shabby than at the luncheon. She said that she was on the way back from teaching.
Do you like teaching music? I asked, walking with her toward her place.
I enjoy music, she said, but I’m afraid I’m not a good teacher.
I said I was sure she’s more than qualified. But it’s an awful amount of travelling, I said. Couldn’t you teach at home?
Cousin Cliona stopped abruptly. I wondered if the thought of private lessons had never occurred to her. Oh no, she said in terror. We can’t possibly have that.
Why? I asked.
We don’t want any music in the house, she said.
What an odd statement to make about a household shared by two musicians.
I would have loved to have a longer conversation with Cousin Cliona alone, away from the scrutinizing eyes of Sidelle and the disinterested eyes of Madame Z. I want to understand her, so willingly letting herself be subjugated by an eccentric.
I wonder if every woman I have met holds a key to my future. No, not every woman. There is that Isobel Cunningham at the Canada House. Pretty, but that is about it. The women holding my future hostage are those who could easily treat me as a nonentity. Even the kindhearted Cousin Cliona will forget me the moment I leave.
* * *
WHEN ROLAND REREAD ALL these years of diaries before passing them to Peter Wilson, could he still remember every single woman in his life? Of course not. Then why was he so afraid of being forgotten, when he himself invested so little in remembering others?
He was certainly not alone in that. Most people want to be rich but don’t mind others being poor. They like good food but don’t mind others staying hungry. Iola, I hope you get to learn this as early as possible. Most things people give you are those
they can afford to lose. It’s fine accepting them, but treat them like the Halloween candies and the cheap goody bags from birthday parties.
And in return, give only what you can afford to lose. My remembering Roland, as you must always know, is in that category.
21 JUNE 1943.
At Sidelle’s request I joined her at a lunch meeting with a Mrs. Mildred Falk.
Mrs. Falk is not a pleasant-looking woman. Perhaps it is her eyebrows—thick, too masculine for my taste. Or her mouth, shapeless, full of contempt. The moment we sat down she started talking bluntly, explaining that she was part of an effort to cultivate a civilised Europe during wartime. She had tried to establish contact with Madame Zembocki, she said, as they would like to publish and perform her song cycles in Germany. Madame Zembocki, whom Mrs. Falk called a true European treasure, would appeal to many listeners.
I don’t think she’s a serious composer, Sidelle said.
That is for the composer herself to say, no?
I’m afraid I can’t be of much help to you.
And you yourself, Mrs. Falk said, we’ve admired your poetry. We can publish your poems in the most beautiful German translation. I personally can guarantee that.
I admired Sidelle’s coolness, as though Mrs. Falk had merely queried the possible sale of a piece of furniture. Whoever this ugly woman is, however she has managed to travel to America, I am sure she has learned about Mr. Ogden’s death. Can one approach a woman whose husband one has just murdered and propose lovemaking? But that is what men do all the time. Is it not what, in the end, all dramas and all wars are about?
I interrupted. I may have missed it, but what did you say you and your husband do, Mrs. Falk?
We work in the cultural sphere.
That threatening vagueness: I imagined a globe into which they hurled all the artists and musicians and writers.
I don’t see how my poetry is worth being read by anyone, Sidelle said. I would feel great pity for the person forced to translate it.
You’re too harsh a judge of your own work, Mrs. Falk said.
Besides, my poetry is about trifles, Sidelle said.
Not every artist has the courage to admit that, Mrs. Falk said. Don’t you think for that reason your poetry, like Madame Zembocki’s music, deserves to be discovered and relished?
Sidelle smiled. Discretion, she said, is the better part of valour. Do you not agree, Mrs. Falk?
The waiter came for our orders. A natural pause, after which Mrs. Falk and Sidelle talked about common acquaintances and ski trips and plays that they had attended. I have never thought about the virtue of a woman’s hysteria, but listening to them, one wonders if there is a point to war. Yes, so much will be annihilated, but at least one does not have to witness such iciness.
Later I asked Sidelle how she came to know Mrs. Falk.
Mr. Falk did some business with Harry’s uncle, she said.
But who are these impertinent people?
You think they’re impertinent? Mrs. Falk’s father is German but her mother is English. England is to her as it is to me. Or even you. You and I may not be its most loyal subjects, but we have chosen a side. Mrs. Falk has, too.
So one has to always make a gamble one way or another.
We don’t know the future, Roland. She might win this hand.
The thought that we could be on the losing side of this war had never occurred to me. Surely she should know she’s on the wrong side, I said.
What’s the difference between a winning side and a right side? Sidelle asked.
I must have looked appalled. She smiled and said, Rest assured. I still have a few principles.
I have always taken pride in not being a principled person. I have cultivated a stance of not abiding by any conventional values. I have been in positions that may sound ignoble or immoral, and because of that I find a kind of nobility and morality in myself. I cannot, however, picture myself in the shoes of Mrs. Falk. Is treason such a paramount sin, like incest? Yet I would not mind defending incest from a philosophical or an aesthetical angle. Could I defend treason similarly?
Had I been a novelist or a composer or a poet, and had Mrs. Falk offered me the same deal, would I have been able to say no?
[In the late 1950s, on a trip to West Germany, I saw a book at my host’s house, a list of names and condensed biographies of those who had worked to undermine the Third Reich from inside and had been executed. Among the names was Mildred Falk (though not Alfred Falk). The discovery stayed with me until a year later, when I happened to mention it to an ex-communist friend (Malcolm Hobbs, who by then had settled down in the countryside). The Falks, Malcolm said, worked for the CPGB. It can’t be, I said, recounting the meeting in New York. Malcolm explained that those she had approached were either the enemies/critics of the Communist Party or, like Madame Z, people who had veered away from the party’s cause.
I do not know how Mildred Falk was arrested, or what happened to her husband. But even today, thinking about their scheme of coercing or seducing some recluse like Madame Z into a notoriety embraced by the Nazis—a scheme carried out in the name of a revolutionary cause—I have no respect for Mrs. Falk’s martyrdom.—RB, 22 May 1990]
* * *
IF YOU WERE PART of the muscle in the leg or some little valve in the heart, how would you know that the brain is scheming to do something harmful? Think of all those cells doing their jobs dutifully and wonderfully for that beautiful young body when Lucy killed herself.
They were like Madame Z, caught or not caught in a scheme, destroyed or not destroyed, all depending on luck.
Oh, luck. The most over-diligent chef ever. You can decline, saying you’re full. Or you can cite a stomach bug. Or pout like a child and refuse to touch the food. Still, the chef brings you course after course. And truth be told, there is no leaving the table until you finish the last bite. And then, as you’ve paid your bill and are finally free to go, oh no, it’s not over yet. Just like what happened when Molly took me to that tasting menu. Before we left, the very nice waiter brought a pretty bag to me. Here’s a pumpkin bread for you, ma’am, baked with our special recipe.
Who among my children will serve that takeout pumpkin bread? It’s not going to be Molly. I know that. Carol? She’s like my sister Margot. There’s no wildness in her. No thorns. No surprises. Tim and Will? No.
Katherine, I must be honest with you. I’m down to the last course now (finally!), and it’s you I’m thinking of when I wonder about what luck is secretly baking for me.
29 AUGUST 1943.
Back to London. Sometimes I wonder how Hitler must feel about occupying everybody’s thoughts in such a demanding way. When we all live like decks of cards being shuffled and reshuffled, all to his whim.
My current state: contentment with writing propaganda. Canada is my mother’s country. America my father’s. England, the mother country for both. It is rare that one can be loyal to all three of them, I told Sidelle today. It takes a war for this to happen.
Disloyalty is our privilege, Sidelle said. Don’t throw it away.
Your privilege, I said. My generation cannot afford that or any luxury.
Every generation must feel the same way, she said. The world always owes the young more than it owes the old.
Not every generation. Look at us. It’s as if we were finally old enough to sit down in a famous restaurant, but even before the hors d’oeuvres arrive a bomb has exploded nearby.
You could return another day, Sidelle said.
One comes back another day and the restaurant is no longer standing, I said.
Patience, Sidelle said. I would recommend that you have patience.
But for how long?
We win the war, or we lose. Either way the future will be clearer then.
There’s no guaran
tee of any future for me even if the war ends tomorrow. And I do need one, I said. I’m still a young man.
And I’m not too old to marry.
I stared at her. My life is not really at the mercy of Hitler’s whims, but a woman’s.
You look as though I’ve insulted you, but all I just did was state a fact, she said.
Do you mean that I should marry you? I asked. I thought how my life would become much easier—I could settle down to write my books. We don’t bore each other. We are neither of us anchored in one place. I remembered the first trip we took together. At one place in Arizona—or was it in New Mexico? somewhere in the desert—a man who served us food at an inn told us that there was little to see around there. Here even the jackrabbits carry their lunches with them, he said. But what is the difference between me and a jackrabbit, when all I have done in these years is carry an infatuation with me. I cannot possibly marry Sidelle. A man cannot just walk in one suit, eat one dish, make a life with one woman.
But you’re right to hesitate, she said.
My heart sank a little.
On the way back, I heard someone call my name—a girl whose face and voice seemed so familiar that for a moment I panicked. I must have known her in an intimate manner, but it turned out I had only met her once in Thayer House, where she worked as a nurse. She is a Canadian brought up on the Continent. Let me call her D.
She said she was in London to say goodbye to a friend leaving for America—a Romanian friend from her school years. It had taken the friend and her family some trouble to get out of Romania, and they had lost all their possessions.
Another card shuffled out of the deck.
I asked D why she was not returning to Canada. Safer there, you know?
Duller too, she said.