So far, I only have my baptism certificate, my mother’s baptism certificate and my parents’ marriage certificate. I haven’t been able to obtain my father’s baptism certificate. I have written without success to Pernambuco – the state where my father was born, far from Rio. They weren’t even able to tell me the church where my late father was baptized.
Can I not send a monthly stipend to support the child? Now that he is going to turn seven, I renew my suggestion and ask that you be so kind as to convey it to Miss Ernst. I would be eternally grateful if you could do this for me. If Sergio Ernst could come here, it would give me great pleasure to provide him with a good education. If this isn’t possible, then who should I
Please find enclosed, my mother’s and my birth certificates and my parents’ marriage certificate.
Rio de Janeiro,
Dear Sir,
Since your last letter, I have searched a number of times
My efforts, however, have yielded no results. I have received no replies to the letters in which I requested
15
‘Alu?’
‘Michelle? Pardon, Madame Beauregard?’
She doesn’t answer me or hang up; she seems to have left the phone off the hook. Cutlery clinking on plates, bread being cut with a serrated knife, someone banging a clogged salt shaker against the table; I hear the dinner sounds of a family with nothing to talk about, except for the cat, who won’t stop meowing. I stuff the letters in my pocket when I see Mother come down the stairs with the priest, kiss his hand, open the door for him, and head back up to Father, while I continue to hang on the phone waiting for Christian. I wonder about Mother’s feelings towards Sergio Ernst, who, as far as she knew, lived with an adoptive family from an early age. She doubtless always remembered the little German in her prayers, asking that he grow up healthy, not have a complex about not being a real son, and never come to claim his part of the Hollanders’ meagre inheritance. Had Mother become aware of the boy’s perilous situation, however, she’d have had it in her to adopt him herself and would have urged Father to go and rescue him from Berlin in the middle of the war. And faced with this young Neapolitan bride who held him in such high esteem, it was understandable that Father would neglect to tell her of his failure in a far more modest mission here in Brazil. Just now I hear a piano chord, followed by Christian’s quick footsteps up the stairs. I hang up the phone, reread the letters, read them from back to front, and wonder if Father, still single, dissatisfied with the results of his queries, didn’t personally undertake to trace his forefathers in Pernambuco. And, after much hunting through civil registers and parish records on sugar plantations in ruins, per-haps he actually did unearth the genealogical data he was lacking. But, in that case, for one reason or another, he felt that sending what he’d found to Berlin would be counterproductive. I’d like to talk over these particulars with Christian, who is usually up-front with his opinions on any subject. And on top of that he is the son of a Jew, much as he’d rather not admit it, just as I could be the great-grandson of slaves, or a rabbi from Amsterdam. Perhaps Christian would know what might have become of a child of dubious extraction, at the mercy of Nazi officials. Would he have been forgotten in a depot? Would he have been judged according to the kind of hair he had? Would he have been condemned by the shape of his nose? Could a bored bureaucrat, erring on the side of caution, have signed the fatal warrant? I try Christian again but the line is always busy, and it is already after ten when Mother retires to the study, where Father is snoring rhythmically. I decide to go to the Beauregards’ house, which I find more sombre than ever, backlit by the moon. I push open the gate and make my way down the side of the building. There is a light on in the bedroom at the back and before I know it I have unwittingly signalled Christian with Zorro’s old whistle. He doesn’t whistle back, he probably doesn’t know how, but he opens the window, unperturbed by my impromptu visit to his moonlit garden at that hour.
Just as Ariosto rarely had me over to his place, Christian has always been secretive about his room, which no one is allowed to enter: not his mother, the air hostess, or anyone else. It is, as one would expect, stuffy, and smells of his body and nicotine, but the scene isn’t very different from what I imagined: a mess of books, even in the corners of the bed with its twisted sheets. After showing me a red Soviet football team jersey with CCCP emblazoned across it in white letters, he retrieves a volume of poetry by Пýшкин, that is, Pushkin, from the floor and makes me sit beside him on the bed, determined, once again, to initiate me in the Russian language. But I came here with the intention of discussing Sergio Ernst with him, and I can’t be out too long, given the state Father’s in. And when I tell him about my dying father, I choke. I seem to sense that it won’t be long until, when she hears my footsteps in the front hallway, Mother will lean over the banister and tell me to come upstairs quickly: Subito! Subito! She’ll open her bottle-green eyes wide, slightly cross-eyed in a way I’ve never seen before, and burst into tears: He’s dead! Tuo papà is dead! She’ll cry as she breaks the news to me, perhaps more than if she were receiving it, and will start to pat my face like a blind woman. Then I’ll hug her to my chest in silence and kiss her head over and over. She’ll be distracted for a few moments as I rock her gently, only to start sobbing again as her own voice breaks: Tuo papà, figliolo! È finito! In the study, Dr Zuzarte and an obese gentleman will give me their condolences and go back to chatting with their backs to Father. I’ll leaf through some books, consider turning the revolving bookcase, try not to face Father in the lounge chair looking almost exactly as he did until just a little while ago, with his eyes shut, as they have been so often lately. But it will be the glasses missing from his forehead, the book from his lap, and the right hand poised as if holding a cigarette, but without the cigarette, that will, at a glance, make me feel like I’m looking at a simulacrum, at a touched-up funerary statue of my father. Apart from that he’ll be in his usual beige pyjamas, and his face will have the greyish colour of the dead that, day after day, he was already beginning to acquire in life. I will stand there a while in a daze, one pace away from that deceased father of mine, whose cheeks and hair Mother will still be stroking. When she goes downstairs to fetch water and coffee, I will want to kiss him as I have never allowed myself to do, but the contact with his cold forehead will repulse me. And as I back away I’ll bump into the fat man, an undertaker who will have just received the death certificate from the doctor so he can get the paperwork moving at the notary’s office early the next morning. And who will take the opportunity to show me the different coffins in his catalogue: Colonial: Cr$ 1300.00, Prestige: Cr$ 1500.00, Chancellor: Cr$ 1750.00 … If it weren’t for Mother I’d go outside for a breath of fresh air, or have a drink at the Riviera, or find a cinema with a midnight showing, or strike up a conversation with a passer-by: Do you know where Avenida Paulista is? Are you headed that way? Thanks, you see my dad died. Then perhaps I’d let it all out in a sob, as I barely manage to contain my tears now on Christian’s bed while translating my father’s letters for him. And when I stumble over the incomplete sentences, I understand that here Father stopped writing so as not to cry himself, out of anger, out of humiliation. When I finish reading Christian is staring at the floor, shaking his head, and I am prepared to hear a harsh appraisal of the situation. Glad tidings aren’t Christian’s strong point, and, indeed, he believes that the chances of the boy having escaped misfortune are remote, especially if he looked anything like me. He goes on to argue that, were the boy alive, he’d have discovered his father’s identity by now and, with the help of the Brazilian embassy, could have located the renowned scholar Sergio de Hollander without any difficulty. One can only conclude that Sergio Ernst isn’t interested in this reunion, whether because he is now a bitter man, resentful of his father, or because he has become a prosperous man, disdainful of Third World relatives. Whatever the reason, Christian bets I won’t have the time or the head for these stories of a German brother, now th
at Father’s library will be mine. I’ll be too busy contemplating it, and will even be so presumptuous as to think I can read and absorb all of his books, which Mother will bring me before I even ask for them. Speaking of which, I should do all I can to take good care of Mother, because in the case of couples as deeply intertwined as my parents, according to Christian, widowhood tends to be brief. He offers to reorganize my books for me when Mother eventually passes away, a bizarre pastime for one who grew up in a house devoid of bookshelves. After work at the Alliance Française, he will always be available to keep me company in the study or at a bistro of my choice. And, as soon as he moves into a bachelor’s pad, I’ll be able to visit him at all hours without any awkwardness, pretexts, ruses; no more girlfriends-for-hire or phony publishers. I look at my watch, make as if I am about to leave, but Christian holds my arm and tells me that he’s been thinking about quitting the Alliance as there is a high demand for private lessons. He could even send some students my way and, if I agreed, he could get us a licence to run a language course out of my house. We’d still have evenings and nights to get serious about our literary projects. He is counting on me to cast a critical eye over his poetry, because I already proved that I am a sensitive soul when I gave him Rimbaud’s little book. In exchange, he would encourage me to apply myself, for example, to a coming-of-age novel in which I deal with my troubled childhood, my family conflicts, my romantic impasses. Christian’s lisping monologue in my ear begins to bother me: a jumble of words in which he alternates between Portuguese and French at random. And when, with his hand on my knee, he says that I mustn’t leave out my teenage anxieties, my conflicted sexuality, my attraction to other boys, I stand up somewhat abruptly. I worry for a moment that I may have offended him over nothing, but he reacts naturally: Off already? He starts leafing through his Pushkin and without looking up tells me to leave quietly so I don’t wake his parents. It isn’t necessary, because halfway down the stairs I see lights on and hear meows and an old man grumbling. And it’s almost endearing to see Heinz Borgart squatting in his underwear in the kitchen, pouring a little milk from his glass into the cat’s dish. In any other situation perhaps I wouldn’t have had the audacity to speak to him: Maestro Beauregard? The cat’s fur stands on end, as Beauregard straightens up and interrogates me with a harsh accent: What are you doing here? Did you come in the window? I apologize to him and admit that I’ve been impertinent. In my eagerness to speak to you I even appealed to your wife, but Madame Beauregard made it clear that you were not to be disturbed. Nevertheless, as a last resort I came to see your son tonight as I thought he might be able to tell me if Mozart’s ‘Türkischer Marsch’ performed by Heinz Borgart is available on record. But I was wasting my time with Christian; he’s never even heard of Schubert’s ‘Tripelkonzert’, which you recorded for the Haydn Society. After drinking his milk the pianist looks calmer, visibly impressed with my pronunciation of the German names. I tell him I’ve followed his career for years, ever since I read allusions to his talent in an old letter sent to my father by Anne Ernst. You must remember Anne Ernst, sir; she’s this Fräulein here with the baby in her arms in 1931. I hand the photograph to Heinz Borgart, who almost crushes the cat when he sits on the stool: Ugly child … sturdy woman … 1931 … but, oh! Yes, the unwed mother and her cry-baby. If I’m not mistaken I took this picture myself. Well, I say, the baby is my half-brother on my father’s side. So your father’s that famous singer, then? According to Heinz Borgart, it was Mrs Schmidt, or was her name Schneider? Anyhow, it was the building janitor who told him that his neighbour had got pregnant to and been abandoned by a tango singer. Or was it the film-score composer, that Jew who fled to Hollywood? Perhaps memory is also lost in translation, because once I ask him to be so kind as to speak to me in his native tongue, his story flows freely: I told the janitor, Frau Schumacher, that although I felt for my neighbour, night hours should apply to all residents. I was proud of my new apartment on Fasanenstrasse, on the top floor with a living room big enough for my Bechstein grand; I don’t know if you follow. I was just peeved that I had to close the piano at 10 p.m., when no one bothered to shut the child up with a bottle, a dummy, a wad of cotton wool, something. But the baby slept all day and was up all night because music was the only thing that soothed him; at least, that was what Miss Ernst told me in the inner courtyard of the building, right here where I took this picture one summer afternoon. Mother and son lived in a ground-floor room in the second block, and my rehearsals reverberated in the courtyard as if it were an amphitheatre. From 10 p.m. onwards, when everything went quiet, she’d try to get him to sleep by singing Brahms’ ‘Lullaby’, but the baby was discerning: one wrong note was all it took to set him off. I took pity on her and every so often would have them over to my apartment, where, with the piano muted, I would finger the last few keys, imitating a music box, until he fell asleep. And I’d start playing again every time he woke up, because without realizing it, Fräulein would raise her voice every time she started telling me about the baby’s father. I can still hear her laughter as she remembered how she had fallen for him in the cafeteria of UFA, the German film company, but didn’t your father ever tell you this story? When she heard the waitress say the gentleman’s name, Miss Ernst understood that he was Friedrich Holländer, who had composed the music for the film The Blue Angel, which was being shot at the studio at that time. He, in turn, was flirting with her from a distance, mistaking her for the Austrian dancer Lily Ernst, who was perhaps acting alongside Marlene Dietrich in the cabaret scene of the same film. And after so much gazing at each other, they were already, in her words, irremediably in love by the time they were introduced: she, a typist on call for UFA’s screenwriters; he, a poorly paid foreign correspondent for a South American newspaper who, for a few extra Deutsche Marks, wrote subtitles for German films in his own language. Fräulein bragged that after less than a year in Berlin her boyfriend had a perfect command of our vocabulary, being the voracious reader that he was. As a result of such intense reading, even his colloquial German was literary. Before articulating his beautiful sentences, he would transcribe and copy them out neatly in his mind, just as he would visualize on a mental screen the words she spoke to him in turn. And when she told him she was expecting his child, he spent a long time staring at her with his short-sighted eyes. It wasn’t until the next day that he told her he was thrilled with the news, brought her a bouquet of violets and took her for a drink at a Biergarten. Whenever he dropped her home late at night, he was reprimanded by Frau Schumacher for singing his country’s little ditties in a loud voice. And the only reason he didn’t invite Fräulein home to sleep with him any more was because his room in the boarding house was filling up with books at the same rate at which her belly was swelling. But in order to be of greater assistance, when autumn came he began to spend every night with Anne, which also allowed him to save on heating. His long johns were all he had left from the previous winter, as he’d sold his woollen jumpers to settle a debt at a bookshop. And, in late October, while he was tossing up between a second-hand overcoat and a first-edition Zarathustra, the newspaper that had sent him to Germany recalled him to his country, which was being rocked by yet another revolution. As the first snow fell, Fräulein accompanied him on a truck to the port of Hamburg to help him dispatch a pile of trunks. And she knew she would never see him again when he climbed the stairs pulling two large suitcases behind him and, forgetting to wave, disappeared onto the gangway of the ship where she, eight or so months pregnant, obviously couldn’t embark. All in all, Borgart concluded, if it’s news of the people in this photograph you’re after, I haven’t much more to offer you. After telling me her love story, Miss Ernst became taciturn during her visits and would often fall asleep on my sofa curled up with her son. And when I told her I was going away to teach at the Cologne conservatoire, she said with a vibrato in her voice: It’s always the way, it’s always the way. I thought her eyes were watering because of the baby who wouldn’t sleep, whom I left
a music box as a gift. I was sure the little one had a strong vocation for music and even promised to give him piano lessons when I returned to Berlin. And in my second year I resigned from the conservatoire, for, much as I love Wagner, I wasn’t allowed to introduce my students to composers such as Mendelssohn or Mahler, who were banned by the new regime. But I had already decided to move to Paris to be with Michelle, whom I’d met at an amateur theatre festival in Cologne and who was preparing to audition for the Comédie-Française. I went to say goodbye to my mother in Berlin and, while I was there, stopped by the building on Fasanenstrasse to collect my mail and spoil Miss Ernst with an eau de cologne. But Frau Schumacher didn’t work there any more and the new janitor didn’t know Fräulein and her son. And you must excuse me now because I’m tired and should get back to bed. Take your photograph, have a good night, and the next time you want to get together with my son, please do it in a hotel or any old dive, just as long as it’s far from here, if you follow me. Oh, and the ‘Tripelkonzert’ you referred to must be Schubert’s ‘Drei Klavierstücke’. And, yes, my congratulations to your father, because Anne was a very interesting woman. Watch your step, the lamppost is not working. Psst. Inside, Piaf.
Life is but a long loss of those whom we love, said Victor Hugo. And with the words of the immortal Frenchman, I mourn, in the name of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the illustrious scholar who now leaves us, Sergio de Hollander. An assistant of the speaker leads a round of applause that doesn’t gain traction because those present can’t let go of the umbrellas that are barely shielding them from the storm. I calculate at least a hundred heads under a sea of black umbrellas, like a long, vaulted Gothic ceiling, not far beneath the ceiling of leaden clouds. Amidst that crowd of shadows it seems to me that I can see Stefan Zweig, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald without Zelda; I even glimpse an Oscar Wilde in a velvet jacket further back. But in reality not even Father’s writer friends are in attendance. The few who are still alive live in Rio and planes don’t take off in weather like this. I presume that these are old admirers of his writing, in addition to retired librarians, former bookbinders, ex-museum archivists and conservators, people in dark clothing who, after the eulogy, take turns at the graveside to pay their respects to Mother. I get one or two nods. Leaning on Vicar Bonnet, Mother doesn’t really seem to notice them. She has been somewhat groggy since the wake, when I made her take one of Father’s diazepams. A large crowd is still around us when people step aside for an individual with his hands free, his bodyguards’ umbrellas competing with one another. It is a chief of staff bringing the state governor’s condolences to Sergio de Hollander’s widow. And behind this senior official appears a soaking-wet Eleonora Fortunato in an already-transparent white T-shirt with her son’s face superimposed over a pair of braless, still-perky breasts: Your Excellence, please send my regards to your wife, Analu. I will indeed, thank you, thank you. If Analu doesn’t remember Eleonora Fortunato, we were introduced at the Petite Galerie by Ulrich Reichel, her German lover. After a heavy silence a woman speaks: But how rude! Rude? I’ll tell you what’s rude. It’s this government not even releasing Assunta’s son for his father’s funeral. The chief of staff beats a retreat with his entourage, then the other umbrellas turn one after another like gears and disperse down the cemetery paths.
My German Brother Page 12