‘We leave them to rebirth.’ Her rather hoarse accent made this sound obscene, and I chuckled, mightily relieved. Shadowed by damp, oblong leaves in the moonless night, she was imprecise, her earlier luminosity only an unreliable memory. The traitor, she had gone. I was deserted. But no. Already she was back, with our coats, and we were soon scuttling over the North Bridge towards the lemonish, floodlit City Hall. Traffic, brisk diners-out, chatting groups, revoked all twinges of Mon Plaisir. In our laughter, hers was humorously malicious, matching what I judged her: opinionated, resolute, with experiences as varied as my own, possibly similar.
Trams passed, flashy as liners. We were striding into the glitter of Djurgården, aiming at whatever she had already decided, to be accepted without protest.
‘Anna’s probably a dear.’ Her husky tone expressed doubt, as she might at a drawing bold but displeasing.
Above hoots and shrills from receding steamers, we flung each other sentences, mostly in French. Many small words she mispronounced or overstressed, so that her feelings, her intentions, were elusive. Like the impact of the darkness of her hair and eyes. Black can contain blue.
Anna, she considered, like many of life’s choicest gifts, was best avoided. Her swinging gait, determined chin, suggested that much else should also be avoided. This pleased me, I felt myself in the hush before curtain-rise, but, at the Hotel Luxor, she left me as abruptly as she had Anna’s apartment. ‘I have …’ she spoke as if settling an argument, ‘an invisible limp,’ clearly convinced that this explained all. I was ready to wait, prepared for a contest of challenging pitfalls, enthralling rebuffs, possibly, just possibly, a marvellous curtain line.
Nadja, student of mythology, was happy with instances of sacred kingship, sacrificial rites, mazes, water-horses, mysterious deaths, chroniclers’ euphemisms, tree-worship, widow-burning – Anna, she reflected, would have been gravely at risk – a Northern Trinity: High, Just as High, Third. ‘When I can positively unravel Third, I can complete a paragraph.’ She saw ancient swastikas of stylized suns, found drawings of a Swedish Isis, tales of Jesus dying in India of Mexican self-sacrificial gods.
She herself was protean: the dark hair could suddenly show golds; once she appeared in a grey wig; she would laugh, then go tearful at what I thought commonplace. Tiny wrinkles, now visible, now not, gave me confidence I never felt with the very young.
We dined at the Vasa, Gilded Elk, Top Gaudy, Richard Widmark. She had the self-preserving resilience of a hard-tested survivor, sometimes disappearing without warning, then, a few days later, seating herself opposite me as if we had parted that morning. Such waywardness gave us space to manoeuvre, though, more clock-bound, I had much nervous perplexity. A chance might have been missed, a crucial move overlooked. A dazzle of alternatives. A difficult moment could be arrested by a glance, stifled by a pause, inflamed by a chuckle unexpected, irreverent, explained by a silence. Chance meetings at parties enhanced our drama, with dialogue to mislead others and sometimes ourselves, while within bland deceits, social subterfuges our eyes, mouths, hands contained hints and jokes almost, but not quite, fully intimate. A tiny gesture could be retreat, rally, truce. Silences could be relaxed, almost sensual. The long Swedish winter passed in a shower of light, though already, her researches concluding, she was desiring the South.
We were not callow two-centers wanting our hotel half-hour, but experienced, expecting no-wonders; we proceeded unhurriedly, reaching a further stage when she invited me to dine, not in a restaurant but in her small flat, severely functional, hung not with paintings but diagrams, mostly tree-shaped, each branch a different colour, the variations and parallels stemming from a central ritual, custom, belief.
She moved unfussily, presenting salmon, salads, filling tall goblets which, candle-lit, glowed like green flame, reflected deep in the glass table. Afterwards, a wide mat between our chairs, we watched a Swedish movie in which the father of a boy raped then drowned, very eloquently and unconvincingly pleaded for mature understanding of the killer.
Nadja’s reserve, natural or acquired, broke harness. ‘Horse shit.’ She was near to tears, not weak but wrathful, the film concluding with a commercial for tinned reindeer. ‘Tell me, Erich. When you were little … did you often cry? You cannot have done so since.’
This might be rebuke. I explained that, while I seldom wept outright, my eyes had moistened at a dead badger, at a maid’s dismissal. Other incidents I did not declare: the Herr General’s promised arrival postponed; Danton, at the end, brooding on fields and rivers; Robespierre, shattered and bleeding, on a table. ‘Much later, cinemas taught me to weep.’
She nodded, satisfied. ‘As for me, mécontent. I seemed never to stop. My tears could fill the bath. Though I also found it necessary to be tough. Perhaps many murderers are weepers. But, outside cinemas, of course, you appear so often on the verge.’
She had pierced more deeply than perhaps she intended. On the verge. M. Half and Half, Herr Hither and Yon, Mr Neither This Nor That. But, discounting it, she had risen, moving into the bedroom. My nerve trembled, my loins ‘on the verge’, while I fretted, uncertain whether this was her mode of farewell or an invitation to storm her bed. Timing was vital, though the cue was inaudible. Tactlessly, treacherously, a recollection stung me, of dripping with desire for Suzie, on a night of bravado or defeat, penis straining at its moorings.
From within, she was offhand. ‘You can come now.’
Naked, in mild lamplight, against scarlet sheets, she was somehow ritualistic, holding two full glasses, waiting, appreciative but not wholly serious as I rushed at my clothes, fumbling as if in anxiety dream, until at last we could drink, pledging each other before opening arms, not flirtatious but hoping for love.
Her hands scattered over me, my need forced me to spurt prematurely, as it had done years before. She was not angry but laughing. Had not Hephaestus, in similar breach of manners, likewise bespattered Aphrodite’s golden thigh? ‘And, look, Erich … mine is of false gold. Forgive me … sallow!’
Companionable, she fondled me to a wry smile, quiet sigh, then renewal. At morning, she gravely demanded I soon buy her a shoe. ‘One shoe. Difficult. Not impossible.’ Not in allusion to that invisible limp but to the primitive token of fidelity, underlying the Cinderella cycle.
I had grown attentive to women’s bedroom idiosyncrasies. The misleadingly bashful, enticingly demure, the flaunting, businesslike, agitated, exposed by make-believe reluctance, resignation, ways of stripping. Some motioned me to avert my gaze but glowered if I complied. One insisted her peke witnessed the action. Humour could be absurd, incomprehensible, more often absent.
Nadja’s humour was that of understated partnership, sly but affectionate. At the bed, as if unaware of her nakedness, she retained style.
‘Your Nordic smoothness …’ She caressed my flanks as, in an off-moment, she might a cushion. ‘You have kept the lines.’ I felt ennobled.
In lovemaking, she was sturmfreie: coaxing, curious, versatile, quickly discerning my preferences and indicating her own, usually unorthodox, surprising, then rousing me with a small movement, a kiss in an unexpected place. Bed vocabulary – ‘Wait … Please … Don’t … Now’ – familiar but never stale, wedded us. Her depths of excitement had wit.
Little was final. Profounder intimacies were still delayed, beyond words, a nakedness beyond nudity, inaccessible to mere striving, like genius, like grace. A bud slowly unfolding.
We were out of the pram, not fledglings hoping to skate to the Pole or operatic ardents vowing to love for ever, though quarrelling at breakfast. We had both known dangers, had flinched at traffic lights, avoided lifts. A few might remain, though hidden.
I visualized transparent screens between us, successively removed by a confidence, a gift, accident, until almost none remained.
Her serenity, customary though not unfailing, matched her firm bones and mouth; occasional dejection might be symbolized by the never-explained invisible limp. Her reticences might be a
s much policy as instinct, but I knew better than to attempt mauling her to confess secrets best kept secret. My guesses grew not from cross-examination but from movements across her face, sleeping or awake – troubled, reflective, elegiac, sportive – from half-smiles and broken-off sentences. The deep eyes, now over-bright, now melancholy, about to fade into the dim smudges beneath them, could always be overtaken by scholar’s composure or what the English call glee. Talkative in public, at home she was quiet, absorbed in work, interested in music, planning an expedition in local nonsense and whatever passed.
More rarely, she disturbed me without revealing any obvious cause for alarm. As if to someone else, she wondered, ‘Where does it lead?’ then slipped her hand in mine, soft as a mouse. On the beach, after some laughing exchange, she exclaimed, ‘One thing can make me wretched.’ Showing no emotion, only cool, professional evidence, ‘When someone looks at his watch and says it’s time to go. Go where? These farewells. Something, perhaps inevitably. It is always goodbye.’
We had not married. Clerk’s signature, mayoral sanction, ecclesiastical benisons, guaranteeing little, would tilt the stable and harmonious into the bureaucratic. She laughed that zodiacal discrepancies discouraged such performance.
Growing together, we agreed on a code word, Stendhal, to be uttered if a dispute lost good humour, echoing the silver cock deposited on the dinner table by Herr Max. Stendhal had listed diverse states of love – oriental tyranny, absolute autocracy, disguised oligarchy, constitutional monarchy, revolution – to none of which we aspired.
‘Maybe, Erich, we are a republic, a collection of cantons, autonomous but cohering.’ Looking seaward, tidy Stockholm behind us, she said, ‘Winter’s going. I need South. So, I hope, do you.’
4
‘I respect rules’
Dick Haylock, white-haired, white-flannelled, in dark blue college blazer, his restless face always seeming in mid-munch, told us yet again. ‘We’re a case in point. We folded our tents to leave behind unpoliced streets, horrible music, mass-kissification, and, lest we forget, the Treasury. We dumped ourselves in this blessed place, by no means perfect. But …’ he tried on the word with stately emphasis, ‘our loyalty to Her Majesty has never faltered.’ It had Agincourt ring, almost a strut, as if we had argued. ‘She deserves her dues. Very tasteworthy, as a Cambridge man might say.’
We were having drinks on the patio of Mon Repos with its dwarf palms and tubs of blue and salmon-pink geraniums, the slack Union Flag giving his claim hangdog support. He always disappointed us by not rising to salute it, remembering a king-emperor, at this hour of the Sundowner, the Peg, the Stiff One. Nadja he usually addressed as ‘Dear Lady’, failing to amuse, though refraining from kissing her hand.
With us were Daisy Haylock and Ray Phelps, another subject of the Queen, in dull grey resembling some movie character so obviously villainous that he cannot be, only the film buff unsurprised that he really is. One side of his mouth was twisted into a permanent grin, the other always rigid, so that the effect was of humour and bitterness ceaselessly jammed together. His vocabulary, though limited, could surprise, now he now said, ‘FDR never understood me.’ His glance conveyed that Nadja and I likewise failed. ‘I like to say that the more you know the better off you are. I’ve a son in the RAF. Or is it the Navy, what’s left of it? Doesn’t matter, we’ll all meet in Samarkand.’ He nodded for Dick to refill his glass, then turned to the Duty Manager, his private term for Daisy, adding, ‘Upright as a lupin.’
We had worse acquaintances than Ray, though not many. Daisy’s glass was also empty, Dick feigning not to notice. She had just mentioned his love of literature, and I thought of the books in what he called his den: Gentleman Jim, The Amateur Gentleman, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She herself preferred chocolate boxes, ribboned, heraldic, golden, depicting ruined castles, ancient villages, lordly gardens and, inevitably, birds.
‘In the last war …’ Dick’s monologue was so well worn that we could prompt him, Nadja sometimes doing so. ‘The Armed Forces of the Crown recommended me elsewhere. I’m still forbidden to disclose where. You’d have seen me in mufti but I could tell you …’ Instead he retreated to parliamentary imprecision. ‘I have declared, in another place …’ His face, browned but desiccated, looked away, reference to the war always inducing a brief awkwardness, because of me, whom he rated as barely forgivable German. At our first meeting he scrutinized me as though taking a risk. ‘There were some tolerable Germans, though on the wrong side.’ With Nadja he was actually more wary, treating her, she said, as if she were his very competent secretary about to give him notice. With me, he was now more at ease, speaking, when we were alone together, in washroom or the den, as though we were fellow seducers with extravagant pasts. ‘Soho ladies who lit your breeches. With them we knew where the wind blew.’
Not quite sober, he was rheumily nostalgic, ignoring Ray’s attempt to intervene. ‘Dear old Richmond! The Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill!’ His attempt to whistle petered out, and he resumed, ‘Glorious Goodwood! Better times. Lord’s, the Club, people going in and out. Ministers asking you not to pass things on. Wightman Cup girls, Indian judges, Trevor Howard. I had very strong feelings, but …’ his sudden glumness made him more sympathetic, ‘I didn’t always know what they were.’
Daisy, probably despairing of more drink, lowered her head. I felt she knew only too well the nature of Dick’s feelings. No herb-grace o’Sunday.
The dry clatter of frogs had begun, slightly less interesting than the talk. Nadja’s restlessness at Mon Repos was, as always, inadequately concealed. I recognized incipient rudeness, until she suddenly sat up very straight. ‘Has anyone met the Swiss? At Villa Florentine?’
‘I think …’ Ray Phelps began, but Dick cut in like an efficient volleyer. ‘Dear Lady, there’s a mistake. They are not Swiss. But Latvians. Less good for business.’
Latvians. At least Alain could cease deploring prevalence of Swiss. Latvians, Vello’s countrymen, possible refugees, heroes of underground Europe. But suspect, even dangerous.
Ray was insisting on free speech. He must have seen my doubts and hastened to agree. ‘Such people usually have something to hide. Still, as the Russians say – or is it the Jews? – don’t worry, it’ll get worse. This Mr Beckett is always telling us, inasmuch as we can understand him. Don’t you think?’
About to signal to Nadja, and rise, I was detained by Dick’s solemnity. ‘We’re safe as houses here. We don’t need a Home Guard. All the same … I’ve been aware of something not quite shipshape. Not urban socialist spite or would-be Maquis. Something more than the usual grumbles. Some … I can’t find a word to put it.’
We waited for him to find a word to put it. He swallowed, grunted, shook his head, then produced it, nodding as if at applause. ‘Method. That’s it. Method.’ More conversationally, he said, ‘I seem to remember Pompeii. Earth tremors, odd quivers on the sea, priests with their omens. Well, occasionally the wild ass talks sense.’
Latvians. Newcomers. Shadows of watchtowers along the Berlin Wall, on frontiers, above camps. The wild ass mouthing sense. I was watching the Villa more attentively, though Nadja only shrugged, then drove away for two nights on rumour of the latest ‘find’: a broken vase, possibly Ligurian, a blackened coin, an empty podium inscribed ‘Freer of Waters’ in dog-Latin. Returning quietly triumphant, she showed me a stone cut with seven lines radiating from an almost obliterated oval, possibly a fish, root of life, emblem of saviours, ‘Lords of the Net’.
Even after so brief an interval, reunions were always festive, and we hurried for a walk on our favourite path, beneath hills, wooded or terracotta, very straight, ending at a bay, resuming, exactly opposite. With assurance, perhaps accuracy, she had earlier explained that the water between was reserved for ghosts, usually undeviating in their movements.
‘Like sha.’
‘Very like sha. And the quicksilver speed of the hunted.’
Yet, after all, she had not wholly overlooked the wild a
ss. Yesterday, in the garden, under languid summer sky, we both felt a windlike motion beneath our feet. Then nothing, but, she considered, a nothing stretched to its limit, and we spontaneously raised glasses to Pompeii, before again – at this moment it seemed appropriate – reminding ourselves of that promised venture to swarthy, outlandish la Terre Gaste. With straight faces we promised each other the call of a bird, hitherto unknown, of an unlikely horn, from descendents, worshippers, of cauldrons and cannibal gods. A place barren, yet of unseen Watchers. In peasant lore it had been scorched by a lightning power, which, Nadja continued, Etruscans and Romans called bibental, a warning against touching such soil, lest it take vengeance.
We agreed that it might be public duty to inveigle the Latvians there, then abandon them to dire, nocturnal presences. ‘You should,’ she then admonished me, ‘feel the shame of unkindness,’ displaying none herself.
We discussed our dreams, she more wholeheartedly than me in crediting Freudian analysis. ‘I would dream, Erich, of tall old ladies, slanting forward over a floor always wet. My doll learnt to talk, but I was always dumb. I used …’ – she gauged my interest, was reassured – ‘I used to imagine that sleep was death, during which I wandered at will. Sometimes between stars, huge, rather sickly, like too many biscuits. Or deep beneath the ground. With luck, life might return in the morning, as, I hope, you can see it did. I would leave shoes in certain positions, to discover whether they had moved in the dark. And …’ she gleamed, with astonishment playful or real, ‘sometimes they had!’
My latest dream was stolid though unpleasant. I am lost in a Forest townlet, unknown yet eerily familiar. Black-and-red triangular roofs, steeple pointing to a cloud like a dark beard, crucifix starkly ominous above dense trees, a tracker hound sniffing behind me. ‘Your illusions in pursuit.’ But our smiles were not in unison. Privately, I connected the hound with Latvians.
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