by Alex Miller
Robert caught a glimpse of a hidden world lying between these two, a chasm that could open at any moment and swallow them, a world that was troubling and dark and threatening and which lay just below the surface of ordinary things. The comedy of Martin’s response to Birte’s panicky appeal to him for help was eclipsed by this sense of a real threat to Birte if she were to fall into the gulf of silence. Talk, it seemed, was a necessary haven for Birte, just as silence was for Martin. They were a pair. Silence was obviously a place behind the lines for Martin, behind the lines of social engagement, a refuge where he felt safe—tell them nothing! While Birte could be safe, it seemed, only so long as silence did not open beneath her and swallow her. They were both vulnerable. Robert saw it in her panic. And perhaps he understood something of the love Lena had for Birte. And something, too, of Lena’s own vulnerability, her own inclination to panic, the terror in her eyes when she was at the mercy of the asthma attack. And he saw how for Lena, the company of these friends liberated her from the threat of an airless confinement in her own life at home with her mother. He saw all this in the instant when Birte turned to Martin and pleaded with him to re-join the broken ends of her thought. She might have cried out, Save me!
It was after midnight when Lena and Robert got up to leave. They had returned by then from the dining room at the rear of the house to the front room for coffee. As they were going out the door into the hall, Martin turned back into the room and took down Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus from the shelves and handed the book to Robert.
‘You might find this interesting,’ he said. ‘I should like to know what you think of Mann’s Faustus. Perhaps you can call on me when you’ve read it.’
Robert took the book from Martin’s hand and thanked him. He knew it was not only the gift of a book, but was an invitation to friendship and an expression of trust. Martin smiled with quiet pleasure.
Birte glanced at the book and made an irritated noise. ‘You’re giving him Thomas Mann to read?’ She looked at Robert. ‘You should know that Mann accused Martin and other German intellectuals of failing to resist Hitler. And Mann did it from the safety of America, while Martin and his comrades remained in Germany and were hunted down and tortured and murdered by those people. Mann knew nothing of the heroic resistance of people like Martin! Nothing!’ She turned to Martin. ‘Robert can’t read a book like that without knowing something about its author.’
Martin sounded angry when he said, ‘That’s far too simple, Birte!’ He was clearly annoyed with Birte for spoiling the simplicity of the moment. ‘Mann was a sceptic,’ he said. There was a fierceness in him that they’d had no hint of during the evening. As he raised his voice his German accent became more pronounced. ‘Why do you have to talk about that now?’
Birte looked crestfallen. Clearly Martin could be a match for her when aroused. She reached for Lena’s arm and drew the younger woman to her side. ‘So,’ she said, ‘are we going to have a row just as Lena and Robert are leaving us?’
Martin glared at her. Robert thought he was going to say something more, but he let it go. Birte might have scratched a sharp object across Martin’s skin. The pain in his angry outburst had seemed to frighten her.
18
Robert was already imagining returning to the house after he had read the book and sitting in the front room talking about Thomas Mann and great literature with Martin. The gift of the book reassured him that Martin expected something good and decent from him, something intelligent and worth his while. Robert wanted to begin reading the book at once.
Lena unlocked her mother’s car and stood by the door, waiting for him. The Renault’s duco gleaming under a fine silvering of dew. Robert stood on the passenger side of the car opposite her, examining the dust jacket of the book under the streetlight. Thomas Mann in white letters across the top against a blue background. Doctor Faustus in green lettering underneath the author’s name. At the bottom a suggestive subtitle: The life of the German composer ADRIAN LEVERKÜHN as told by a friend. A dark portrait of a stern-looking man gazed out from within the blue background of the cover, a likeness masked by the bold lettering of the title and the author’s name, staring at the viewer, as if he could be reached only with a great effort, the round black eyes demanding. So was this figure ‘the friend’ of the subtitle or the author himself? Robert turned the book over and looked at the back cover. Under the heading The works of Thomas Mann there was a list of his published books. Robert counted them. Fourteen titles. He ran his fingers over the name of the publisher, Secker & Warburg. The magic of the book in his hands. The promise of it. Everything it meant to him. Mann had evidently been a grand, serious writer of vast accomplishment. And Martin was confident he, Robert, would understand him. With this book in his hands, and the promise of friendship with Martin, Robert’s ambition to be a writer had acquired a new seriousness. As he stood there under the streetlight gazing at the book, he conceived an obligation to live up to Martin’s expectations. The challenge was far greater than he had imagined. And far more worthwhile. It would not be reached easily. The glaring portrait of Thomas Mann, half concealed within the cover of his book, made that clear.
Lena said, ‘Are you coming?’
He opened the book and read the first couple of lines: I wish to state quite definitely that it is by no means out of any wish to bring my own personality into the foreground…
Lena stepped around to his side of the car and caught him by the arm. ‘Are we going?’
He closed the book and met her angry gaze and he said, ‘I can’t wait to read it.’
‘Are you coming with me, or not?’
He said, ‘Well, actually, I might walk back to the boarding house. It’s just up Alma Road here. It’ll only take me ten minutes.’ He would have the whole night to himself. He could read undisturbed.
He might have slapped her.
‘What are you saying? You can’t abandon me! You’ve got to come home with me! Mum expects you to bring me home.’ She clutched his arm. ‘I’m not going home without you, if that’s what you think. You must think I’m bloody stupid.’
He said, ‘Hey, hey. Settle down. It’s no big deal. We’ll see each other tomorrow after you finish work. Anyway, I need to pick up a clean shirt.’
‘That’s fucking crap! You’re a rotten liar.’ She didn’t let go of his arm, but steadied herself, focusing her suspicions. ‘If I thought you were going to meet up with that woman—Wendy, or whatever her stupid name was—I’d kill you.’ She was coldly serious. ‘You really must think I’m an idiot.’
‘Well now you are being bloody stupid,’ he said. ‘I haven’t given her a thought for ages.’ This wasn’t true. He often thought of Wendy.
Lena made up her mind. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. ‘Get in the car!’
As she drove at speed up Alma Road he was half dreading they’d find Wendy waiting for him when they got to the boarding house, one of those weirdly unlikely coincidences when people’s lives collide with a shock and their direction is changed forever. Lena drove straight down the driveway and around to the back of the house, kicking up the gravel. He thought she was going to take out the back fence. The little Renault’s wheels locked up and they slid to a crunching stop, his foot braced against an imaginary brake pedal. She got out and slammed her door. They walked back along the path between the dark laurels. Neither spoke.
They went in and up the stairs. He unlocked the door to his room and stepped aside to let Lena go in ahead of him. He closed the door quietly. She stood in the room looking around. ‘You’re lucky she’s not here,’ she said. She went over to the desk and riffled through his papers. Then she went across to the wardrobe and stood looking in at his clothes.
He was waiting by the door, watching her. She opened one of the small drawers in the wardrobe and lifted out the only thing in the drawer: the paisley scarf his mother had given him the day he left home for Australia. She held the square of scarf up by a corner, as if it offended her to touch it.
She turned and faced him. ‘So, what’s this?’ She was certain she’d found something.
He said, ‘What does it look like?’
‘Why have I never seen it before?’
‘It’s been in that drawer since the day I arrived here.’
‘Is it hers? Did she give it to you?’
He went across and set Martin’s book on his desk. He adjusted it so that it sat exactly in the centre of the desk in front of his chair, ready to be opened and read the moment he was alone. He turned to Lena. ‘My mother gave it to me the day I left home.’
She looked at the scarf again. ‘So why have I never seen it?’
‘Because I’ve never worn it. Can you imagine me wearing it?’ He watched her struggling with her jealousy and distrust, her need to expose his infidelity, her need to do something with her anger, to find something to attack.
He said, ‘You can have it. It would look smart tucked in around the collar of your coat.’ Even though she’d found no evidence that Wendy had been in his room, no treasured memento of past occasions with his lover, nothing at all to justify her suspicions, he saw that Lena wasn’t going to give up being angry with him. She needed her anger and was determined to justify it. She held the scarf up, then she let it drop onto the end of his disordered bed, its silken folds opening and almost floating before lying still. He thought of a wounded bird that makes a last feeble attempt to fly.
She walked over to the desk and stood looking down at Mann’s novel. She opened the book in the middle and read a couple of lines aloud in a half-mocking voice. ‘“Vale,” he said, “and may God be with you, Leverkühn.—The parting blessing comes from my heart.”’ She closed the book and went over and looked out the window. ‘You won’t like it,’ she said. ‘You won’t understand it.’
‘Have you read it?’
She was wearing a black dress with a string of pearls and a short grey jacket. She looked very smart and sexy and middle class and out of place in the shabby room. Her anger made her beautiful and sad and elusive. That strange unsettling feeling she gave him sometimes, a feeling of being alone while in her presence.
‘You’ll find Mann heavy going,’ she said.
He didn’t say anything. He was determined not to respond.
She said, ‘I’m going home.’ She didn’t move or turn around.
They’d made love that morning at the Red Bluff house while her mother was at church. All day they had been close and calm with each other. Watching her standing there at the window now he was aware of the fragility of their relationship. The mystery of her interior life, undisclosed to him. Was he just as much a mystery to her? He lit a cigarette and went over to the wardrobe and reached into the bottom and pulled out a bottle of beer. He called over to her, ‘You want a beer?’
She turned around and looked at him. He thought how sad and beautiful and lonely she looked in that moment of turning away from gazing into the night garden.
He held up the bottle. ‘Come and have a drink.’
‘Do you really never see her?’
‘Never,’ he said. He opened the bottle and took a long swig of the warm beer then held the bottle out to her at arm’s length. He might have added truthfully that he would have liked to see Wendy again. Without trust, it was obvious there could be nothing good and calm between him and Lena. Other things: a form of madness, anger, lust and anger. Dangerous stuff. He didn’t want that.
She came over and sat beside him on the edge of the bed. ‘I don’t know what to think of you sometimes,’ she said.
He handed her the bottle. She took a long drink and gave a belch then handed it back to him. ‘It’s easy for you,’ she said. ‘You know what you want.’
He was astonished to hear this from her. ‘Easy for me?’ he said. ‘And you? You’ve already got everything you want.’
She considered him for a long moment. ‘So what do I want? I don’t know what I want. I only know what is expected of me. No one expects anything of you. You’ve got your ambition and you’ve got your freedom. No one cares what you do. You do whatever you like and you know what it is you want to do with your life. You’ve found a cause for yourself. That’s what I want. Something I can dream about, the way you dream about writing your books.’
It was true. He did know what he wanted. He wanted to get a decent education and to become a novelist. It might not be easy, but that’s what he wanted. He hadn’t seen it her way at all. The question of how he was to understand people troubled him. He was afraid he might not have enough empathy or insight into the lives of others to ever be a good novelist.
She said, ‘I envy anybody who knows what they want from life.’ She was silent a while. ‘The day John brought you round to meet me I saw it at once.’
‘You saw what?’
‘I saw that you were free.’ She took the bottle from him and drank. She grimaced and handed it back. ‘I shouldn’t have come here tonight. I should have let you go when you said you wanted to. I’ve never stayed out all night before, except with the girls, when it’s been arranged. Do you believe that? And I’m spoiling the night for you. I don’t know why I have to be so awful.’
He put his arms around her and held her. She relaxed against him.
‘You’re not being awful. You’re right. It is easy for me. I do know what I want.’
After a while she said, ‘Can I stay the night in your bed? Will you hold me?’
He had a sudden disturbing thought then of her father and how she must miss him. He forced himself to ignore the thought. He got up and turned off the light. They undressed and with a helpless kind of awkwardness they got into his narrow bed. He pulled the covers up and they turned to each other and embraced. He whispered, ‘Why are you holding your breath?’
‘Do you mind if we don’t make love?’ she said, her voice small, contrite, helpless—the frightened little girl, suddenly, needing the comfort of her father’s arms.
They lay together in the quiet hours of the great house. He was astonished to realise she had gone to sleep almost at once. The faint light from the window cast a soft glow across her cheek, her eyelashes perfectly formed, the impossible smoothness of her skin, the intimate warmth of her voluptuous nakedness against him. She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘I was dreaming,’ she said. She asked, ‘Why did you leave the outback?’
‘I was wrong about what I wanted from life. It was only a boyhood dream. I learned that even the most exotic place soon becomes normal and routine once you’re living in the reality of it.’
‘You got bored?’
‘Sickened by some things. Bored by the routine. The same thing every day.’
‘And did you decide then to become a writer?’
‘I panicked and left. I had no idea what I was going to do. I’d lost my dream. It was a shock. The idea of being a writer came more slowly.’
‘And you’re not afraid you might get sick of being a writer? That it might also just become a daily routine?’
‘I don’t know. It seems like the most difficult thing it would be possible for me to do. I can’t imagine a routine.’
They lay quietly side by side. After a while she whispered, ‘Make love to me.’
Robert woke to the sound of the men from the night shift coming into the room next door, the long night and the clamour of the bottle line in their exhausted voices. His room was filled with the grey light of dawn.
Lena was awake and was watching him.
He said, ‘I was dreaming I was rowing a boat across the biggest of the three Keston Ponds. I used to go fishing there with my dad. We threw our lines in and then did our drawings and watercolours while we waited for a fish to bite. There was supposed to be a giant pike in the pond, the king of the pond terrorising the other fish and eating the frogs. We always searched the weeds for him but I never saw him. In my dream a thickening tangle of water weeds was holding the boat back and I was struggling to move it towards the shore. The oars were far too long and unwieldy and the harder I tried
to move the boat forward the more thickly the weeds clung to it and held it back. I despaired of ever being strong enough to beat the grip of the weeds.’ He turned to her. ‘What do you suppose it means?’
She touched his forehead lightly with her fingertips. Her face was close to his, her eyes dark and shining in the grey light, her full soft lips without a trace of lipstick, her hair sprung into wild ruffles around her head. She didn’t say anything and he closed his eyes again. His throat was dry and he needed to piss. He thought of getting up and going to the bathroom down the passage and getting a drink of water.
She said, ‘What would you do if we found out I was pregnant?’
He opened his eyes.
‘I might be,’ she said. ‘Mightn’t I?’
The idea of a child made him feel doomed. He said cautiously, ‘Do you want a child?’
She didn’t say anything for quite a while. Then she said, ‘I suppose if I was actually pregnant I would want to have the baby. But if I’m not pregnant, I don’t want one.’ She got up on her elbow and looked down at him. ‘Would you desert me?’
He said, ‘I don’t think there’s any chance of that. But I’ve never been tested on that one. So who knows?’
She said, ‘Seriously! Tell me. If I’m pregnant, will you desert me?’
‘Are you pregnant?’
‘Probably not, but you never know.’
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. ‘I’ll stay with you, whatever happens.’
‘Mum said you were the reliable type.’ She laughed. ‘I told her I didn’t want a reliable type, that’s why I went for a cowboy.’
‘This cowboy needs to take a piss,’ he said. He got out of bed and pulled on his trousers and went along the passage to the bathroom. One of the night shift boys was having a shower. He called out a greeting after pissing. Robert went back to his room and took off his trousers and climbed back into the bed.
She snuggled in close against him. ‘I have to go and face Mum.’