by Robin Duval
‘You were lucky to get a ticket, then.’
‘Sure. Yeah, I guess so.’
But the beat between the two phrases gave him away. It was clear that he fell into that special category of people for whom a ticket was never going to entail a ten year waiting list.
‘Yeah. I did what I generally do. I wrote a big cheque and, yeah, seats were not a problem.’
‘Ah,’ said Bryn. ‘You’re a sponsor.’
‘Right. And now, to tell you the truth, I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying this baby. Would you believe I booked a restaurant table for nine o’clock this evening, on the assumption I could take at best two Acts. I guess I’m in for the duration now.’
‘Don’t forget to tell the restaurant, will you.’
He gazed at Bryn with an expression of mixed disbelief and bewilderment. Then shrugged his shoulders and made a curious gurgling sound, as if he was clearing gravel out of his throat.
‘So how about your wife, my friend? How much do you really miss her?’
‘A lot!’
What a bizarre question.
‘You reckon she’s OK back there in Utah, all on her own-some?’
‘Well, yes, naturally.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine. While the cat’s away.’
It was Bryn’s turn to look surprised. But the American was watching Agnete. She had gone on ahead and was flicking through some racks of postcards across the road from the festspielhaus.
‘The doll’s certainly a looker,’ he grinned. ‘Goddamn it, I wish I were your age.’
He was about to turn away when he stopped, and fished a card from an inside pocket.
‘Udell Strange,’ he said briefly.
As he strode off into the theatre, a red-faced man in sunglasses and an open-necked white shirt walked out of the shadows and followed him in. Bryn wondered if it could be the same individual he had seen under a parasol earlier, sipping a weissbier.
He looked at the card. It had Strange’s name on one side and a cell phone number on the other. Nothing else. And he had never asked for Bryn’s name. Nor left any arrangement for meeting later. Was he serious; or was this the way the rich and powerful normally behaved? Perhaps all would become clear in the fullness of time.
Meantime, Agnete had disappeared too. He hung around as long as he dared, until well after the little brass band on the balcony had made the last of its three summonses to the audience. Fortunately, he’d given her a ticket. She should be able to make her own way back.
But when he returned to his seat near the rear of the stalls, Agnete was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, after all, the final lap had turned out one too many. The auditorium doors had begun to close and he looked around the audience for the American. There he was, settling down in the small private box slightly left of centre at the back of the theatre. The box normally reserved for the Wagner family and their friends.
Strange acknowledged someone in the darkness and rose to his feet and shook hands with a tall man in flowing robes – one of the rich Arabs Bryn had seen parading earlier. The new arrival eased into a second armchair. A shadowed third person was just discernible, standing behind them but apparently part of the conversation.
And still no sign of Agnete. Bryn settled onto one of the illpadded bench seats that Bayreuth provided for ordinary mortals, grateful for the two inflatable cushions he had brought from London. He flicked through to the English language section of the festival programme which, as with most things Wagnerian, flowed onward at epic length. Thirty or forty double-columned pages at least.
The lights dimmed.
The music for the beginning of the third Act stole in – almost inaudibly – on the lowest strings of the orchestra.
Chapter 2
He had been waiting on the steps for some time.
He’d not anticipated that it would be the last night of this particular production. Or that it was the custom of Bayreuth audiences to celebrate the close of a run with an orgy of curtain calls. Thirty, forty minutes of them. The Bismarck-moustached Munich businessman in the next seat told him he should have been there in the sixties, when Knappertsbusch was conducting. Then the final curtain calls went on for an hour or more.
There were no aisles at Bayreuth. Between his central position and the side doors, thirty celebrants had been on their feet in each direction, frenziedly applauding, blocking any prospect of an early exit. He’d looked back once for the American but the Wagner box was empty. By the time the ovation had peaked, and a few plucky souls (with him squeezing along in their wake) forced their way out of the theatre, it was a sound assumption that Strange was long gone. He did not seem the kind of person who hung around for groundlings.
Nevertheless, Bryn took up a post at the top of the steps where he hoped he’d be obvious to anyone looking out for him. It was the least he could do. But the American was nowhere to be seen. Nor, for that matter, and as regrettably, was Agnete.
He remembered Strange’s calling card and rang the number on his iPhone…
An elderly English couple passed by. The man was elated by the performance and asking his wife what she thought of her first Wagner opera. ‘Oh I suppose it was all right, darling,’ she said languidly. ‘If you like that sort of thing… ’
No reply. The American’s phone had been turned off. It was possible that he had not left the theatre. Or that he might still be talking to his Arab friends in some private room.
Bryn went back indoors and – a little apprehensively – worked his way round to a small, balustraded, internal stairway which he guessed might lead to the Wagner box; and climbed the stone steps.
The stairway ended in a pink sitting room with French doors to the right and vivid nineteenth century paintings of scenes from the great composer’s works on the walls. The room was empty and the two doors opposite the windows were locked. Off to one side was a chamber so small that he took it at first glance to be a cloakroom. But a door at its other end was still ajar, and he slipped through it.
Bingo! The family box. The sanctum where the Wagners had entertained Hitler on all those private visits. It looked like a bunch of students had passed through. A drinks trolley had been overturned, a bottle of champagne was dribbling wine on the fitted carpet, and an armchair lay on its side.
Of Udell Strange, however, there was no sign.
He went back to the pink sitting room and, more or less on a whim but with an odd sense of foreboding, pushed through one of the French doors to the balcony beyond. He recognised at once where he was: he was standing on Hitler’s saluting balcony.
Memories of the 1930s. The familiar photographs of the Bayreuth audience massed below on the terrace – right arms raised towards a distant figure in white tie and tails. Acknowledging his worshippers with a small, effeminate, broken-wristed flap of the hand, like a waiter supporting a cocktail tray.
Bryn stood precisely where he had stood. Looking down on the multitude, the little town twinkling in the distance, Wagner’s massive bust in the woods below. Searching the crowd for faces he might recognise.
He put down his battered orange Harrods carrier bag, stuffed now with the cushions and programme, and took a picture or two. The glitterati lining up for their chauffeured cars. Eveningdressed businessmen chatting together in pools of lamp-light. His seat neighbour from Munich standing alone, tall frame hunched into a mobile phone.
There was a sudden, sharp, throat-clearing noise behind him and he had to stop himself wheeling round in a reflex of guilt.
‘Splendid view isn’t it?’ he murmured nonchalantly.
He turned back towards the new arrival.
A uniformed man in a black peaked cap was standing in the frame of the balcony door. For a second, Bryn would not have been surprised if it had been an officer from the Waffen-SS. He had the look for it. The man was wearing a short, belted leather jacket with immoderately tight trousers, and he had close-cropped Aryan hair the colour of sun-bleached wheat.
The temptation wa
s too great. In these circumstances and that uniform. He took a quick photograph.
‘You are Professor?’ said the man in a thick, stage German accent. ‘Kommen Sie mit mir. Please.’
Bryn followed him down the stairs, past the stone memorial to the first Bayreuth production back in 1876, round the side of the theatre where the red Feuerwehr engines were still parked nose to tail, to a wide, arc-lit alleyway along the rear of the building. The man waved him towards a silver Mercedes, gleaming as if fresh that day from the factory. The car had a personalised Californian licence plate, picked out in small white stars against a blue background which read, quite simply: US PATRIOT. Bryn wondered if the vehicle had been bought in America and transported back to Germany in air freight. It was the kind of thing an excessively rich person might do.
Udell Strange was standing by the Press Bureau door, talking to another tall, fine-looking, north European blonde. She was dressed casually and entirely in black – sweatshirt, floppy gilet, baggy trousers, dark glasses – and sucking on a long, 120mm cigarette. Her only possible concessions to a festival dress code were a huge pair of diamanté hoop ear-rings flashing in the arc lights and long, aggressive, glittery nails.
The chauffeur opened one of the car’s rear doors and invited Bryn towards it with a cool, almost distracted gesture, as if his mind were on something else. As he climbed in, Bryn felt the man’s assisting hand on his back, held in place for just a fraction longer than necessary.
Something the American had said amused his statuesque friend and she broke into a deep smoker’s cackle. They were well settled in each other’s company, so Bryn passed the time admiring the car’s white leather and walnut interior, and checking emails on his iPhone. One was from his wife Marion, briefly promising ‘a much longer letter very soon’. He sent her back a similarly economical reply, and – for her amusement – attached two or three of the pictures he had taken.
Meantime, Strange was exchanging cheek kisses with the blonde. She strode back into the theatre, tossing her long yellow hair behind her, and the American settled into the front passenger seat of the car.
‘Katharina Wagner,’ he said. ‘I should have called you over. You’d know her, I guess.’
If only. The composer’s great grand-daughter and hereditary director of the festival. If he’d not been concentrating so hard on getting out of the theatre he might have recognised her from the curtain calls and joined in the conversation. A once in a lifetime opportunity. Missed.
The Mercedes accelerated out of the alleyway and turned left – not right, as he’d expected. Right would have taken them towards the exclusive establishments north of town favoured by the higher-class festspiel clientele. But maybe Strange intended instead to patronise the restaurant of the Goldener Anker, the most expensive hotel in Bayreuth…
Wrong again. They swept down Siegfried-Wagner-Allee, past three or four side streets named after celebrated German writers, and past the railway station. A wind was beginning to whip up and the car’s wipers switched to double-speed to clear away the clouds of tiny brown lime blossom seeds scudding through the air. They drew up outside the Nibelungenlied restaurant, a busy establishment on the main street.
Bryn had eaten at the place before. It was popular partly because it was cheap, but mainly because members of the festival cast and crew often congregated there after a show. He wondered if Strange knew this and hoped to do some star-spotting of his own. Or was anticipating the company of Katharina Wagner or some guest of similar luminosity.
A waiter in a long white apron was standing at the door, expecting them. He exchanged remarks with Strange, too quietly for Bryn to hear distinctly, though he thought for a moment they might be speaking in German. Then the waiter led the way through to a table at the far end of the restaurant, threading past a noisy crowd of German diners, some elderly Americans from the Wagner Society of New York cheerfully slumming it, a quartet of silent businessmen – one of them his tall, moustached, seat neighbour – nursing pottery steins at a side table, and a solitary Japanese taking photographs of his food.
Bryn hovered awhile, not quite sure where to sit, and Strange settled down on a banquette against the wall, so that Bryn had no choice but to take a chair facing him, with his back to the restaurant. Waiters cleared away the spare place settings.
There were only the two of them.
‘I hope you don’t mind the music,’ said Strange.
At least that’s what Bryn assumed he said. There was a folk dance band on the tannoy – he supposed it was traditional Franconian music but it was all Bavarian to him – extremely loud and getting louder.
‘It’s very difficult to hear you,’ he bawled.
‘We may have to lean together a tad. You don’t mind shouting, do ya?’ said the American amiably, adjusting his earpiece.
‘Mr Strange – ’
‘It’s OK, I got ya now,’ he said, making no effort to raise his own voice. ‘And call me Udell.’
‘Udell. I don’t think you know my name.’
‘Do I not?’
‘It’s Bryn. Bryn Williams.’
‘Doctor Bryn Williams. Right?’
‘That’s right… ’
‘Very good. Glad we got that sorted.’
It was not to be one of Bryn’s happiest suppers. Strange had no evident difficulty with the acoustic, perhaps as a consequence of the technology at his disposal. But Bryn had to strain to hear the American, and the effort exhausted him and began to give him a headache.
They ate wurst and pfifferling and drank bacon-flavoured rauchbier. Bryn had half-hoped his host would be offered more ambitious fare – though he did have the impression the service was more attentive and rapid than on his previous visit.
‘The guys told me this joint would be schmuck-free,’ mumbled Strange through a mouthful of the mushroom. ‘It does not appear to be so.’
Bryn twisted round and followed his eye-line to the Japanese diner, now focussing his top-of-the-range Canon upon a copy of the hand-written menu.
He laughed. Strange was not amused.
‘Oh surely. As long as he’s happy.’
‘That’s not what I came here for,’ said Strange, with some vehemence. ‘The photographer should be removed. Removed,’ he repeated, in case he hadn’t been heard clearly the first time.
He pushed the fungi irritably around his plate.
But he was a good host. He interrogated Bryn – about his work, children, interests – with almost female sensitivity. When Bryn made a comment – for example, about his relief that his wife was enjoying her new life in America – Strange did not move unresponsively to the next question but quizzed him as to why she’d originally not wanted to leave London, and the particular reasons now for her happiness in Utah.
Then, when Bryn – rambling on about his holiday plans with Marion that summer – confessed they intended to visit Yosemite National Park in California for the first time, Strange advised him energetically to avoid it. A Disneyland for picnickers, he growled, lousy with tourists. Not for a bright couple like you. Move northwards. Twenty Lakes Basin, up the Cascades, Lassen Peak, the Lava Beds. No one goes there. Except young guys with boots.
He chuckled.
‘ ’Course you may wonder why the US government preserves them as National Parks at all. That would be a good question.’
He froze into silence. He was looking at Bryn so intently it seemed like he was trying to burrow into his brain. And the moment was held for so long that Bryn even began to worry that Strange might have been taken ill.
But then the American – just as abruptly – took a deep breath and redirected his attention to his meal. He forked a portion up to his mouth.
‘Tell me more ’bout what you think of the great Wagner,’ he said, cheerfully mispronouncing it with a soft English “w” and short “a”. ‘The guy was anti-Jewish, am I right?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Bryn. ‘And no.’
Strange choked over his plate, scattering b
its of mushroom. He lifted the trailing edge of the tablecloth from his lap and wiped his mouth with it.
‘What kind of an answer is that? Was the guy against the Jews or not?’
Once again, Bryn was unsure how to proceed. He held forth as instructively as he could about Wagner’s many inconsistencies – from his well-known anti-Semitic writings to his self-description as a Wandering Jew and pragmatic decision to entrust the first performance of Parsifal – his crowning achievement – to a Jewish conductor. The son of a rabbi.
Strange brooded on all this.
‘Like Nixon and Kissinger,’ he nodded. ‘You’re right. Good boy. Nobody ever said Jews couldn’t be useful.’
Bryn did not know what to say. He had meant to be fair to the great composer – a difficult enough task in itself – but now he felt as if he was being congratulated for taking the nasty side of the argument. Maybe he had misunderstood.
An unrequested second tankard of rauchbier arrived at his right hand.
‘Gee, it’s neat to have a conversation with a real professor,’ said Strange and raised his own tankard in an ambivalent salute. ‘I hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am, sir.’
And then he set off on a monologue of his own.
He talked about a recent visit to London, when a taxi driver had told him the English were so disillusioned with the failure of successive administrations to control immigration that voters were going over to ‘your National Party’ in droves. Could Bryn confirm this to be true? And he’d noticed also that the present government had returned to the traditional English public schools for its leaders; leaving the Jewish faces to (what he called) the Socialist Party.
‘Americans have always looked to the British to set standards’ he said, with a confiding smile.
He’d read a book recently, which he commended. It was a new one on Bryn, notwithstanding that the author – according to Strange – was a world-renowned British history professor.
‘You gotta read it,’ he exclaimed. ‘The Rise of Zion by this man Godwin. It’s a damn fine book and everybody ought to buy it. The guy says Western foreign policy has been captured by Israel. Even our intelligence services – the CIA, your people – they’ve all been co-opted. We’re the Zionist enforcers now. But Godwin says, it’s not too late. It’s up to us – America and the British because we are the natural leaders of the West – to set things in the right direction again. If we don’t, we’re all gonna be dragged down into a goddamn Armageddon. A final conflict triggered by the Israelis. Just like in the Bible.’