I felt something touch my arm, and I shrugged it off without turning my head. It took so much effort to control my body.
‘Max,’ someone said, and I turned slowly, my eyes leading the way. Uta stood in front of me. I instinctively looked around for a means of escape, but I was held fast in the press of bodies. I closed my eyes, as though this would make me disappear. The touch on my arm came again, together with a nervous laugh.
‘Maxelein.’
I shuddered at her use of the endearment but I peeled my eyes slowly open. She stood there smiling at me. Her hair was arranged in a complicated fashion and glistened as though it had been doused in some kind of oil.
‘Aren’t you a regular Sleeping Beauty?’ She laughed. I wondered for a moment what she was talking about, then I remembered her many visits to me when I was ill. I shuddered at the thought of her entering my room and seeing me there in my bed, with crumpled sheets and dented pillows in the intimate pose of sleep, feigned or not.
‘Or maybe we two are Beauty and the Beast?’ Again she gave that laugh, like two sharp hoots of a bird.
Had she actually said that? I wasn’t sure. Conversations hummed in the air all around me, punctuated by loud laughter, making it difficult to hear her. She was speaking in a deliberately low tone—contrived, I knew, to entice me to lean closer to her. She continued to speak but the thread of her voice was suddenly like a foreign language and I could only catch a few fragments of what she said. Her fat mouth moved in a way that was both repellent and hypnotic. There was a small patch of transparent hair below her lower lip that bristled as her lips undulated to form words, and I could not keep my eyes from constantly straying to that place.
She edged closer to me and I shuffled slowly backwards to maintain the distance between us, but I had not gone far before I felt the warm resistance of another back pressing against my own. I put my good foot out in front of my body as a barrier and stood behind it, poised like a grotesque dancer.
The perfume she wore had begun to seep out into the stagnant air around her, and I breathed through my mouth to minimise its effect on me, but even so I could still taste it at the back of my throat.
I thought longingly of my soft bed, waiting for me. I thought of Anja, lying in her own bed, her cheeks flushed perhaps with fever, her hair damp, sticking in strands to her smooth skin. The party suddenly appeared to me to be the most inhospitable corner of the earth. Uta was still edging closer and now I had my head tilted up to try to snatch at the unperfumed air above my head.
The knot of people around us suddenly loosened and I could not wait a moment longer. I held up my hand almost in her face to halt her flow of words. Her voice stopped and her face was stunned. She stared at the open palm of my hand as intently as though there were something written on it.
‘Excuse me, I must …’ I gestured vaguely to the other side of the room.
Her face was confused and she controlled it with effort. She managed a creaky smile. ‘Oh! I wouldn’t dream of holding you up! You must have important business here; all of these literature types.’ She dismissed them with a flick of her wrist.
Her voice trailed away as I left her behind, and the space between us became filled with the bodies of others. It was only then that I remembered Gustav. I saw that he was standing close by, talking with Theodor. Gustav was saying something to Theodor, his hands animated as he explained something. I could not see Theodor’s face, but I could see him nodding his head, listening.
When I got closer I realised that they were discussing a recent production of Janáček’s Ihre Stieftochter and were deep in conversation. Gustav’s knowledge on the subject took me aback, and then immediately I felt snobbish for assuming that a soldier would be ignorant of opera. Besides, I did not even know whether the man was a soldier. They hardly paused in their conversation to acknowledge me. Far from being bothered by this, I felt relieved that the two were getting on so well. I looked around the room for Franz, but I could not see him. It appeared that my luck had held. The thought that I might have pulled off my plan that evening was intoxicating. I felt a greater sense of achievement than any I had felt with the completion of my creative works. I must have been standing there with a foolish expression on my face, for first Gustav and then Theodor gave me an odd look.
‘So, Max,’ said Theodor, ‘I have been wanting to ask you: how was it that you two first met?’
‘At a Schopenhauer lecture,’ I said, without thinking. Then it occurred to me, too late, that the question might have been a test. Theodor was nodding slowly, his face inscrutable, but for a brief moment I thought I saw something flash across his lips and eyes; the ghost of a smirk, a certain fixity of gaze, which chilled me. I rapidly changed the subject, trying to distract Theodor by bringing up the Schopenhauer book, which was by now far behind schedule.
‘You must be mightily sick of Schopenhauer,’ he said, and I laughed nervously.
‘Franz’ and I left the party soon after that, and after we were a few streets away I stopped to pay Gustav the rest of his fee. He thanked me politely.
‘By the way, Theodor asked me to come to his office tomorrow morning,’ he said.
So still I had not escaped. It seemed that this charade would stretch on indefinitely.
‘Can you make it?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps. It will cost you a hundred and eighty crowns.’
__________________
* This paragraph has been crossed out.
12.
GUSTAV LEFT AND I WALKED HOME. IT WAS STILL RAINING AND I made my way very slowly, supporting myself with one hand against the buildings and railings. I felt very tired. My thoughts kept returning to Anja. I imagined her lying weak and fevered in her bed, and I wished I could be with her.
Without allowing myself to notice, I favoured the route that took me close to Anja’s house and soon I found that I was standing outside it. I looked up at the shrouded windows. I could hear, or imagined I could hear, the faint sound of piano music and singing and laughter. I stood for a long time with my hand on the wall of the house opposite. The music became overlaid with the percussive ringing of the raindrops falling onto the taut fabric of my umbrella and the hard surfaces of the street. Another faint sound became audible, of sharp footsteps echoing on stone.
At the sound of these I instinctively hurried to the street door and knocked, not wishing to be discovered loitering there, staring up at the house. In the interval before the door was opened I stood there wondering whether I should run away; it was far too late to call on Anja, particularly if she was ill. But the concierge opened the door and I went through to Anja’s apartment. As I toiled up the stairs, leaning heavily on the bannister, I imagined Anja’s face smiling at me and I recalled the light touch of her fingers in mine, and the staircase seemed so immensely long that I thought I would never reach the top. The maid opened the door of the Železný apartment and I asked breathlessly for Anja, but the maid shook her head and told me that I could not see her, that she was asleep. As she was telling me this, her eyes left my face and she gave a start of surprise. I heard a sound behind me. I turned and there was Anja, out of breath herself and soaked with rain, coming up the stairs.
She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at us, wide-eyed, the fingertips of one hand lightly touching the bannister, frozen like an animal surprised by a predator. She very quickly smoothed over her look with a smile and stepped towards me, thrusting forward her damp and cold hand for me to take. I could see the beat of her heart pulsing the arteries in her throat, and I felt the undulating motion of her audible breath running through her body. Raindrops slid down the strands of her hair like glass beads down a string and dropped onto the floor around her.
‘I thought you were ill,’ I said, watching her face closely from under lowered lids.
‘Oh, yes. Well, I was. But then I felt better and then I thought …’ Her voice trailed off. She seemed ill at ease and kept wiping her hands one against the other. ‘How was the party?
’ she asked.
‘It was fine,’ I said. Both of us were stiff with lies, like bad actors. ‘But where were you just now?’
‘Yes! Well, I was with Aunt Ilse.’ This was clearly a lie. ‘I was going to stay there for the night, but then I thought, well, it’s better to come home. But now, look! I am soaked through.’ She gave a little uncertain laugh.
Something had shifted between us. She seemed to speak to me from a great distance, as though I were standing on a pier and she on board a ship about to sail, leaning over the ship’s side. I didn’t know what to say to bring her closer.
We remained on the landing and she didn’t invite me in. She politely asked me about the party, who had been there, what people had said about the book, and I told her some invented generalities. The words that came out of my mouth were like heavy bricks that fell between us and formed a barricade.
She began to talk about Franz’s book and only then did she forget herself and break through the reserve that she had been wearing like armour. How I hated Franz at that moment for having the ability to light her eyes, to animate her fingers when I could not.
Franz. In a perverse flash of jealousy it came to me that the reason for her breathless disarray was that she had just returned from an assignation with Franz. After all, where had he been? I knew that the thought was pure paranoia, but at the same time it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
‘And how is your Aunt Ilse?’
She looked blank for a moment and then told me that her aunt was very well. The life left her again. I felt suddenly very tired. So it was true.
‘She has recovered from the flu?’ I could not escape from my trap of deadened words.
‘Oh yes. Fighting fit.’
‘The maid thought you were asleep.’
‘Did she? Oh, Marie doesn’t know if it’s day or night.’
It occurred to me that I also had no idea how late it was. The house was very quiet.
‘Well, I’m sorry to keep you waiting out here in your wet things,’ I said. I wished I had never come here.
‘Yes, I suppose I should change. Well, goodnight then. I’m glad you enjoyed the party.’
‘Goodnight,’ I said. We shook hands again, and she closed the door before I had even reached the stairs.
13.
HOW QUICKLY ONE’S LUCK CAN CHANGE. BUT THEN I HAVE NEVER been a very lucky man. Of what Schopenhauer calls the three great powers of the world, luck is that in which I am most deficient. Sagacity, though, I have in abundance: that is particularly clear now, looking back on these events of which I tell. Strength I never lacked, despite my weakened appearance; in fact it is precisely my weak exterior that is the source of my power. But at that time I suffered from want of luck. I was like the captain of the ship that is constantly blown off course. I could see the landmass towards which I was bound, but how the winds of ill fortune pushed at me. I worked hard at the rudder, adjusting my course again and again, but even as I did this, fresh squalls fell upon my vessel and threatened to engulf me.
Barely did I have time to register the blow dealt by Anja’s strange behaviour before I had Theodor’s meeting with Gustav to navigate. And that next meeting was to be the beginning of the one of the more violent storms of that period.
The morning after the party I waited for Gustav until our agreed time, but he failed to show, so after waiting too long and making myself late I made my way to the Goldblatt office in the hope that Gustav had gone directly there. The one mercy I could think of was that at least on this occasion I had no anxiety of the real Franz making an appearance.
From the moment the door of Theodor’s office building was opened I felt that I was being punished. There was a hostility in the room that had been absorbed into the stale air and the angular furniture that crowded the small space. I was aware of a series of darting glances shared between the office staff. No one looked me in the eye or answered me directly when I asked whether Franz was in a meeting with Theodor. I was made to wait a long time, ignored, in a dusty chair in the corner.
When I published my first novel and had come to this office for the first time my experience had been very different. I had been greeted with enthusiasm by the staff. They had left their desks and crowded around me, heaping such praise upon me that I felt quite ashamed. I was attended to and given the best chair, and tea, and was endlessly fussed over. Every time after this that I had come here had been like visiting the house of a friendly relative. I had always felt, naïvely, that this treatment of me represented a genuine affection, particularly on Theodor’s part. To me, he had become almost like an older brother or a trusted friend, but now I saw that this was false, and that for him the relationship had only ever been a transactional one. It occurred to me as I sat there in the uncomfortable chair to which I had been demoted that now Franz was the one who would be getting the special treatment.
I had not really thought through what I would say, or what reason I would give for being there at the office at that time. I remembered the look I had seen steal over Theodor’s face the night before when he had asked me how I had met Franz. I would have to be careful not to arouse his suspicions. The only excuse I could hit upon for my unexpected appearance was to beg for more time on Schopenhauer, which would be a useful thing in any case, if it were granted.
Theodor called me into his office. Gustav was not there.
‘It seems your friend has great difficulty keeping appointments without you. Perhaps he should employ you as his personal assistant.’
We sat staring at one another for a while. I tried to sit up very straight but could not look him in the eye for long. My gaze dropped to the surface of his desk, which was littered with papers; clipped-together manuscripts, notebooks and loose pages lay in piles, presumably in a kind of order known only to Theodor. My eye was caught by a bundle of loose sheets of paper covered in handwriting, of which only a small corner was visible. The sight of the blue ink of the handwriting caused my heart to jolt when I recognised it as my own. I realised it was the story that had been the product of my fainting fit some months before.
‘What can I do for you?’ asked Theodor.
I tried not to stare too much at the pages as I explained the difficulties that I was having with Schopenhauer, but only half of my attention was on my words.
The blue handwriting loomed in my mind and I cringed at the thought of Theodor, or anyone for that matter, reading those private lines that had come directly from my locked-away secret self. I could not understand how the pages could have come into Theodor’s possession and I tried to remember the last time I had seen them. My gaze darted again and again to the blue lines, but now I was no longer certain if it was, in fact, my own writing. I wondered whether I should ask Theodor if I could read it, but I did not dare. What excuse could I possibly give for such a request? And what would I say if it was indeed my own story that lay there? I could surely make no claim upon it.
I had this whole time been continuing my rambling explanation of my difficulties and I came out with my request for more time; another month.
There was a silence. I sat hunched over, now staring openly at the handwritten corner of the pages.
‘I see your attention has been riveted by Franz’s newest story,’ Theodor said, and his voice was hollow with irony. His hand burrowed among the papers and he pulled out the handwritten bundle.
‘I too was struck by it. It is vital. Compelling. Brutally honest. Honesty: this is the substance of real art.’
I nodded stupidly. My hand reached out timidly for the papers he held. Narrowing my eyes I tried to discern the writing. It looked from this closer distance identical to my own, I was sure of it.
‘May I …?’ My voice came out in a squeak that was ignored.
‘You see, Max,’ Theodor said, sounding tired, ‘you may be well known now, but the reading public is fickle. They will so very quickly forget you. The mileage of a book is only so long, and you must never forget that there are young writers, new
writers, writers like Franz, coming up at every moment. It is imperative, if you want to survive, that you keep on producing work. If you want to survive.’
My eyes were still fixed on the papers. I thought that I could pick out a few phrases there on the page that seemed familiar. I wrestled with a fresh wave of shame at the recollection of the story’s content. Perhaps it was better that it had been attributed to Franz. But how could Theodor have got hold of the thing?
‘But of course,’ Theodor went on, and his voice had now softened, ‘I am eternally indebted to you for introducing me to Franz.’ He put the pages back underneath the pile of papers on his desk, appearing to be lost in thought for a moment. I had shrunk into the chair. If it really was my story that he held, there was absolutely nothing that could be done about it. I glanced up at Theodor’s face and saw that he was giving me a long, appraising look.
‘Well, I am prepared to give you the time you ask for, but only if you will do something for me,’ Theodor said.
Now he looked sly. I waited for him to go on.
‘There appears to be an emerging interest in travelogues.’
I had no plans to travel anywhere. I am not a man who romanticises travelling; not through any closed-mindedness or lack of imagination, but because it causes me such considerable bodily suffering. Being confined in too-small chairs, uncomfortable beds and jolting carriages are the chief memories that remain to me of most of the journeys on which I have embarked.
The thought also crept into my mind that writing a travelogue was beneath me. I was not some Baedeker hack,* touring the cities of Europe and rating it in stars. But I could see that I was in no position to refuse him. I feigned some enthusiastic sounds and repeated, ‘Travelogues,’ in a satisfied tone that I hoped was believable.
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