by Martin Suter
He waited impatiently for Véronique. When she finally arrived, with a black plastic bag bearing one single, neon-green Thai letter, he took his leave again. He wasn’t sure when or if he would be back that afternoon, he informed her. Then he joined the happy pedestrians on the street. As the happiest of them all, perhaps.
It was Thursday lunch club today, but he had an appointment beforehand. Kando, Claudio’s girlfriend, had called and asked to meet him at eleven thirty in Südflügel, a trendy bar close to Agustoni’s. It was a surprise, she said. Weynfeldt assumed it was a surprise relating to Working Title: Hemingway’s Suitcase.
He still had time till half past eleven and decided to walk the long way. He raced through the town like a man in love. Everything seemed so familiar and yet so new. As if he were showing the city to an outsider, seeing it through their eyes.
As usual Weynfeldt arrived too early for the rendezvous, but when he entered Südflügel, he saw Kando immediately, sitting at a secluded table. She waved him over, and when he got there, he saw there was another glass on it. A Campari, Claudio’s aperitif. She greeted him with the auspicious smile of a mother shortly before the Christmas presents are opened. “Claudio had to visit the bathroom; he’s terribly excited,” she whispered conspiratorially.
Adrian did something he hadn’t done for years: he ordered a Pernod. It suited the day and his mood.
Soon after that Claudio returned. Weynfeldt shook his hand, still damp from washing, they sat down, and there was an expectant pause. Mommy Kando couldn’t wait for her little boy to recite his verse to the guest.
It clearly felt like this to Claudio too. Sullenly, he said to her, “You’re acting as if it’s a miracle. In fact it’s just a very normal stage in the evolution of a film.” Then he said casually to Weynfeldt, “I’ve brought you the script.”
Claudio Hausmann reached to one side and revealed a small, black leather folder. Inside this was a spiral-bound booklet with a transparent cover which read: (Working Title) Hemingway’s Suitcase—A Feature Film by Claudio Hausmann.
Adrian took it from him like a fragile treasure, stood up formally, and shook hands with Claudio, now red-faced with pride. “Congratulations!”
He sat down again. Weynfeldt’s leafed through the document respectfully, with his clean, manicured hands. He had no idea about scripts and was surprised to see that a feature film of over a hundred minutes took up so few pages.
Claudio looked at Adrian’s face in anticipation. But Kando seemed to have read his mind. “Claudio doesn’t believe you should determine the dialogue in advance,” she explained. “He develops it on set with the actors. That makes it much more authentic.”
And beneath the title of each scene there was indeed a short description of the events, the names of the characters appearing and a brief outline of the dialogue. For instance: “Dialogue Ernest/Headly/Lost Property Clerk, Montreux Station—dispute over filling out the form for lost property. Ernest gets very angry, Headley tries to mediate, Clerk remains stubborn. No solution to the conflict.”
“I’ve always worked like this,” Claudio confirmed. “I don’t like to tie up the actors in a dialogue corset. It inhibits them, and you notice it later on the screen.”
Adrian agreed. He had always thought that the skill of acting lay precisely in the ability to deliver something prescribed as if it were spontaneous. But today Claudio could say anything he wanted; he would still have agreed with him. He would have agreed on other days too, but perhaps not so cheerfully.
“I see a big film here,” Claudio declared. “International coproductions. Swiss executive control, but international. With sexy locations like Lake Geneva and Paris, it’ll be easy to free up some Swiss-French cash. And with one of America’s greatest authors, some Hollydollars too. What do you think about Brad Pitt as the young Hemingway? I don’t mean as a name necessarily, but as a type? Kando is thinking more Matt Damon.”
Weynfeldt found both eminently suitable, but wished to read the script first before making a firm decision.
They talked for a while about casting and setting, the commercial importance of staying under two hundred minutes—Claudio’s initial estimate had come to two hundred and twenty—and the idea of a multilingual film—everyone speaking their own language, with subtitles in the other languages. Suddenly Kando said, “You know Talberger, don’t you?”
“Gabriel Talberger?” Weynfeldt knew him slightly. They had overlapped at a boarding school in eastern Switzerland. Adrian had only spent a year there before his mother removed him following some disciplinary measure she considered excessive, as had happened with various other such institutions. Talberger had become one of the most important film producers in the country. But so far Weynfeldt had managed to be vague enough about this acquaintance that he hadn’t had to make use of it for Hausmann’s benefit. Today however, he was in such high spirits he said, “We were together at Rittergut, although he was a year above me.”
“Claudio has sent him the script. But experience shows it’s better when a personal acquaintance puts a word in too. Would you do that for him?”
Weynfeldt looked at Claudio. He was sitting there as if Adrian had the power in this second to decide whether he would flourish or flounder. Claudio tried to make the decision easier for Adrian, and explained, “You just have to say, This guy I know has written a script. Check it out.”
Weynfeldt assured him he would gladly do just that. And at that moment he meant every word.
If anyone at the Thursday lunch club had paid him any more attention than normal, they might have noticed that Adrian Weynfeldt wasn’t making much effort to join in with the conversation. He even failed to notice once that the wine bottle at the other end of the table was empty, and when he stood up to greet Karin Winter, he forgot to do up the top button on his jacket.
But he did not receive any more attention than on any other Thursday. And so it did not go down in the history of Thursdays as the day on which Weynfeldt was a changed man, but as the Thursday when Strasser didn’t show up.
“Do you know what four ounces of Kobe meat cost?” Frau Hauser looked as if she had been waiting all day to ask Adrian this question.
“A lot of money, I should think.”
“Forty-three francs!” She looked at him in triumph. “For some beef!”
“It comes from Wagyu cattle. They grow very slowly.”
“They’ll be eaten quickly enough.”
“The animals get a daily massage and beer to drink.”
“For that kind of money they could drink champagne.”
Adrian was forced to laugh.
“Your mother would never have allowed so much money to be spent on a slice of beef.”
“The amount of caviar my mother went through cost more money than some people earn their entire lives.”
“Caviar! We’re talking about cows!”
Frau Hauser had laid the table in the dining room. Weynfeldt’s grandfather had had the room redesigned in 1905. On one of the long walls were two windows to the street, opposite them two doors, one opening into the corridor, the other to the kitchen and office. There was a fireplace on both end walls, each the mirror image of the other, clad with green and white marble in a geometric Jugendstil design set into the paneling, which took up the quadratic pattern with light and dark woods, and continued it throughout the room.
A table with twenty-four matching chairs in the same style had previously stood in the center of the room. Like many other pieces of the original furnishings, this was now in storage. Weynfeldt had replaced it with two classics of 1950s design: Ulrich P. Wieser’s minimalist pull-out table with solid walnut boards and black-lacquered steel supports. And beech chairs by Willy Guhl, black-painted with rattan seats and backs.
The space between the doors was filled entirely by a sideboard of untreated ash, also delineated by a black painted framework. Two additional one-off pieces by Swiss designers stood between the windows.
The walls held nothing
but fruit and culinary still lives by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Swiss artists.
Frau Hauser had laid the table splendidly, decorating it with tulips. And there were vases overflowing with tulips on the mantelpieces and sideboards. Adrian had not revealed who he was expecting for dinner, but judging by the way she had prepared the room, she seemed to know it was a woman.
And the way she had received him—giving him a playful telling off—was a sign that she assumed he was having a lady visitor, and was pleased. He was certain his mother had confided to Frau Hauser her suspicion that he was gay. A suspicion he had maliciously failed to dispel. His mother’s hope that Adrian would not be the last Weynfeldt lived on in Frau Hauser.
He got changed for dinner. A dying custom, regrettably. If he had lived in the world of his much-loved Somerset Maugham, he would have been one of those unmarried governors on a far-flung island who put on a tuxedo each evening for his solitary supper.
Weynfeldt wasn’t about to don a tuxedo, instead choosing a classic-cut, dark-green, worsted cashmere, summer suit, with a pair of shiny black Derbys his Hungarian shoemaker from Vienna had made him with soft aniline calfskin.
Shortly before half past seven he started to assume Lorena wouldn’t turn up. Soon after half past he started persuading himself he didn’t care. At quarter to she rang the bell.
She was wearing the stolen Prada with the round neckline and the narrow slit extending below the ribs, and black platform shoes with cross-straps over the ankles—were platforms back in? She had a black silk scarf wound tightly around her head to make her hair fall behind her ears and over her shoulders. Her ears stood out a little, which he found touching, he wasn’t sure why.
Lorena greeted him with three kisses, as if they were meeting at a cocktail party. She smelled of an expensive, slightly matronly perfume, and a peppermint she had probably been sucking to hide the smell of a drink.
This was the fifth time they had met, and each time she had seemed different. Lascivious and disenchanted the first time, in La Rivière. Bitter and world-weary the next morning. Urbane and devious after the shoplifting attempt. Desperate and disheveled yesterday at the door. And now? Upbeat? Determined? Affected?
“I’d like to introduce you to my housekeeper in a second; actually, what is your full name?” He had worked this question out while he was changing. It would help him find her again, if she withheld her address or telephone number again this time.
“Lorena is enough. My family name is ghastly.”
He led her into the dining room, and when she saw the preparations she broke into raptures, which were interrupted by the appearance of Frau Hauser.
“Lorena, can I introduce you to Frau Hauser. Frau Hauser: Lorena.”
Frau Hauser shook her hand, as if she had taken the decision to like Adrian’s guest a long time before.
Lorena praised the table decorations and flower arrangements. “And I told Adrian he shouldn’t go to any trouble.”
Frau Hauser smiled. “Think nothing of it. It’ll just be something simple.”
She excused herself and Adrian opened the champagne sitting in the silver ice bucket.
“Louis Roederer Cristal is my favorite champagne. Do you know why? The bubbles are so tiny. The smaller the bubbles, the more of them can fit in your mouth. And the main thing with champagne is the bubbles.”
They toasted and took a sip. Lorena closed her eyes. “I bet a bottle like this has more bubbles than ten bottles of cheap champagne.”
“At least,” Weynfeldt confirmed.
“And what does a bottle cost?”
“No idea.”
“Over two-hundred francs, I’m guessing.”
“I should think so.”
“A fair price for ten times more bubbles.”
Frau Hauser had laid the table so they were sitting in the middle of the long side. She brought the caviar. It was placed in a crystal dish embedded in a silver bowl full of ice; an item Adrian’s mother had used. The cutlery was also silver, but the parts which touched the caviar were mother of pearl.
Frau Hauser served the classic accompaniments: diced egg yolk and egg white, diced onions, lemon, as well as buckwheat blini, potatoes and sour cream.
Lorena was as blasé as a Russian countess tucking into the caviar, but restrained herself when it came to the side dishes.
When Frau Hauser brought the grilled Kobe steaks Lorena laughed. “You didn’t have to take it so literally.”
With a sideways glance at his housekeeper, he said, “It made Frau Hauser’s job easier. The more expensive the ingredients, the simpler the preparation.”
They stuck with champagne. With dessert too, where Frau Hauser took the opportunity to demonstrate that she was not afraid of complex preparation: five different kinds of confectionary. Having placed it on the table, she took her leave for the night.
Lorena was animated now. Her freckles weren’t standing out as conspicuously as they had when she arrived—the false spring this February had given her a few more. Adrian had already opened a second bottle, and there wasn’t more than a glass left in that either.
Throughout the meal she quizzed him about his work. And he described it to her, with growing enthusiasm; his work was probably the one thing which really interested him.
He learned virtually nothing about her.
Adrian went to the kitchen and returned with a fresh bottle of champagne. While he wrestled with the cork, she asked, “Will you show me the apartment?”
“I already did.”
“At the time I wasn’t very … alert.”
Each holding a champagne glass, they wandered through the silent rooms, Weynfeldt’s commentary on the pictures and furniture echoing like a museum guide’s monologue. Aside from the occasional “Wow” or “Super” Lorena said little.
Until: “What’s in here?”
“Nothing. It was my mother’s room.”
“And it’s taboo?”
“Not at all.”
“But it’s locked.”
Adrian took the key from behind the painting, opened the door and turned on the light.
“Wow. Very different.”
“Pretty much how she had it herself.”
“You left it like that? That’s so sweet.”
He was silent. No one had found it sweet before.
“But a bit uncanny too. Like in that old film.”
“Rebecca.”
“Is that her?” She pointed to the portrait.
“Yes. She was seventy.”
“Her eyes follow you.”
“True.”
Lorena gazed at the picture as she walked around the room. “I wouldn’t be able to handle that,” she decided.
He surprised himself with his answer. “Sometimes I’m not sure I can handle it.”
In his study she said, “Wow! The same painting twice.”
“Felix Vallotton. 1900.”
“Who was the woman?”
“His wife, some say.”
“Mighty fine ass.”
Adrian smiled. She was the first person who had said—in his presence—what everyone thought when they saw the picture.
“Nice, anyway. Is it worth much?”
“The original, sure.”
“So these are copies?”
“Only one of them.”
“And the other is the original? Which one? Wait! Don’t say anything.” She went up to the paintings, studied them, compared them and chose the left hand. “This one!”
“Almost.”
“The other one?”
“Congratulations.”
“And how can you tell?”
“From the signature, for instance.” Adrian explained the question of the second period.
“You can only tell from the signature? Not the painting itself?”
“From the painting too, sure.”
“Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything.” She went from one to the other and back again, several times. F
inally she turned to him and sighed. “I give up.”
Adrian explained the differences, the elasticity of the paint, the primer, the wax varnish.
Lorena listened with increasing astonishment. “But to the eye it’s the same picture.”
“To the eye, maybe.”
“I thought that’s what visual art was about—the eye. Did you notice immediately?”
“Not straight off. But on closer examination, yes.” She looked at him skeptically. He changed the subject: “Another few thousand bubbles?”
She followed him with her empty glass to the dining room, where he filled it. “And why have you got the original as well as a copy?”
Adrian was getting carried away and became indiscreet. “Someone needs the money, but can’t bear to sell the original. He wanted me to put the copy up for auction.”
“And?”
Adrian didn’t understand.
“And? Are you going to do it?”
“Of course not.”
“I thought so.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re so straight.”
“Not agreeing to participate in fraud is not being too straight.”
“It’s not fraud. You didn’t even notice yourself.”
“Not straight away.”
“Wait a moment.” Lorena left the room. He heard her footsteps disappearing down the corridor then returning again. She had fetched her handbag, and opened it now, took her tiny makeup bag out, and from this an eyeliner pencil, which she took the lid off. She walked to the original and Adrian realized what she was doing, although her hand was hidden by her body.
She stepped aside, like a painter admiring her work, put the lid back on the pencil and said, “Voilà. Now they’re identical.”
Weynfeldt shook his head. “One of them is forged.”
“Now they are both forged,” she replied.
Weynfeldt laughed. She wasn’t completely off the mark.