The Magician

by Colm Toibin

  Thomas thought it was time to go back to his study.

  * * *

  His mother left Munich and settled in a village to the southwest called Polling. The Schweighardts, whom Josef Löhr had known before his marriage, owned a farm on the outskirts of the village and lived in one of the buildings of an old Benedictine monastery. Max and Katharina Schweighardt offered rooms to paying guests in the summer. Katharina had warmed to Julia and Viktor when they came to see her, agreeing to rent them a house on the grounds of the monastery that they could use all year, promising to introduce Julia to any notables who lived nearby, telling her that the air in Polling and the calm social atmosphere would suit her temperament and that of her son better than Munich.

  The village was undisturbed; most southbound trains did not even stop at the station. When Thomas came to visit for the first time, he was taken aside by Katharina.

  “I am not sure,” she said, “that I understand what you do. I know Herr Löhr and Lula. And I met Carla once, and she is an actress. But I am uncertain about you and your older brother. Are you both writers? Is that how you both make your living?”

  “That is correct.”

  Katharina smiled in satisfaction.

  “The idea of two brothers who are writers is new to me. Often, in the summer, we have painters to stay, but I wonder if they are fully engaged with the serious things in life.”

  She stopped for a moment.

  “I don’t mean money or ways of earning a living. I mean the dark side of life, its hardships and troubles. Writers understand this, I think, and understanding is perhaps the most important thing in life. It must be a remarkable family to produce two writers.”

  She had spoken of the dark side of life as if its presence were as normal as the seasons or the hours of the day.

  For her modest house in the grounds, his mother brought her best furniture and rugs from Munich, and some pieces taken from Lübeck. Thomas stood in wonder as he saw them in their new resting places; they were like phantoms, signs that the old world had not forgotten them.

  In a short time, his mother made herself at home in Polling. She prepared her own lunch, but was happy to be served in the evening by Katharina or by her daughter, just as Viktor was content to spend time in the fields with Max Schweighardt and his son.

  Soon Julia began to entertain in the house. She behaved as in the old days in Lübeck, and treated the most ordinary people as though they belonged to some exotic world. If someone came by bicycle, she demanded to be allowed to inspect the bicycle and marveled at its usefulness. Known in Polling as Frau Senator, she started to flourish in the village.

  * * *

  The birth of Thomas’s second child, Klaus, was followed two and a half years later by the arrival of Golo. As the two eldest children grew noisier and more demanding, and as Golo developed a habit of screaming at the top of his voice, Thomas found the journeys to Polling to see his mother soothing and relaxing.

  But it was the building itself and the sheds and barns, the fruit trees, the pens for animals, the beehives, the whole sense of an undisturbed husbandry that interested him most and made him wish that he knew Bavaria better so that he could, at some point in the future, set a novel in one of its villages.

  He liked taking a walk through the grounds and then along the empty upstairs corridors of the old monastery. This became part of his routine. There was one room upstairs that must really have been a monk’s cell, he thought. It had a small window looking over the elm tree, whose wavering branches made shadows on the distempered walls. Thomas liked to close the door of this room and enjoy the silence and the changing light, savoring the idea that this had once been a place of prayer and meditation, of self-abnegation, a refuge from the world for a single soul. Downstairs, there was a large room known as the Abbot’s Room where he liked to sit and read.

  He would have lunch with his mother and discuss affairs of the day with her, including her worry about Carla, who was getting fewer roles as an actress, or parts that did not rise to her considerable ambition.

  “She is not an actress,” Julia said, “never has been, never will be. But try telling her that! When Lula told her bluntly that she could not act, she stopped speaking to her sister. Heinrich, of course, encourages her, but she depends too much on his support. I think she should get a husband and live a normal domestic life, but she only meets actors, and an actor would hardly do.”

  Thomas remembered seeing Carla in some minor comedy in a small theater in Düsseldorf. On the stage, she was a tragic heroine, even in scenes where her lines were meant to be funny. At supper after the play, he saw that his sister could not settle. She kept asking him what he thought of her performance. When she had had a few drinks, she reminded him of their mother.

  Carla barely referred to his own wife and children. When he spoke of them, she quickly changed the subject. Later, when the topic of marriage came up, she said that Lula was most unhappy in her marriage, despite her lovely daughters. Can you imagine, she asked, being married to Josef Löhr, sleeping with him every night? Thomas had to reply that he could not. They both laughed.

  * * *

  Heinrich wrote to inform him that Carla had a fiancé. His name was Arthur Gibo. He was an industrialist from Mülhausen. He had nothing to do with the theater, and wanted Carla to forsake her career and devote herself to raising a family. Carla, in turn, liked the idea that Mülhausen was French-speaking and had told her mother that she looked forward to having children who would speak French.

  “What happened to her famous bohemianism?” Thomas asked.

  “She will be thirty in a year,” his mother said.

  “Has Arthur seen her on the stage?”

  “I was so relieved at her news,” his mother said, “that I asked her no questions and I have instructed Lula to ask none either. But I do understand that the Gibo family would rather Arthur marry someone without experience of the stage.”

  When Thomas saw Carla in Polling, he thought she looked older. He was irritated at her constant questions about Heinrich and when he might come to visit. He knew as little of Heinrich’s intentions as she did. When he told her that Katia was pregnant with their fourth child, she gave him her petulant look.

  “Surely, that is enough,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m sure Katia is happy,” she said. “She is lucky. Of all of us, you are the most constant.”

  He asked her what she meant.

  “I know,” she went on, “you imagine Heinrich is more dependable than you, but he isn’t. Or you think Lula is more stable than you, but she isn’t. And me? I want two things and they are direct opposites. I want fame on the stage, all the travel and excitement. And I want a family and all the quietness. And I cannot have both. You, on the other hand, only want what you have. You are alone among us in that.”

  He had never heard Carla speak like this, drop her signature nonchalance for something more grave and earnest. He wondered if this was caused by her newfound destiny as a married woman.

  Over lunch, his mother spoke with enthusiasm about the plans for Carla’s marriage.

  “I know Polling is not fashionable and it might be a journey for the Gibos, but they should be informed that the bride’s mother longs for the wedding to be here at the lovely church in the village, with the reception in the Abbot’s Room. I cannot think of a more pleasant place for a wedding. And the little Löhrs and little Erika can be the bridesmaids or the flower girls.”

  Thomas watched Carla cringe.

  “And I will have no mercy on Heinrich if he does not come. He was almost a father to you, poor Carla, when the senator died. All your tiny problems and secrets were shared with him. I never knew what you were thinking. Do you remember you kept a skull on your dressing table? What a thing for a girl to have! Only Heinrich understood. We should all write to Heinrich and tell him that we expect him on the day.”

  * * *

  That summer, after Monika was born, Thomas, Katia and
the children moved for the season to the house they had built at Bad Tölz on the Isar, a popular place for citizens of Munich to go for the summer. He liked the swiftly changing sky that cast different kinds of light into the house; the young children enjoyed having friends with whom they could roam under the careful eye of a governess.

  One day in high summer he and Katia had had guests for lunch and for a few hours the garden had been filled with the noise of children. The adults had eaten on the terrace, drinking some white wine that he had been saving. When the guests left, the maid took the three eldest children down to the water while Katia went to look after Monika, who was less than two months old.

  Thomas was thinking he might have a nap when the telephone rang. It was the pastor at Polling.

  “I have to prepare you for bad news.”

  “Has something happened to my mother?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “Do you have someone with you in the house?”

  “Can you tell me what the news is?”

  “Your sister is dead.”

  “Which sister?”

  “The actress.”

  “Where did she die?”

  “Here in Polling. Now. This afternoon.”

  “How did she die?”

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Did she have an accident?”

  “No.”

  “Is my mother there?”

  “She is not in any condition to speak.”

  “Will you tell her that I will come as soon as I can?”

  After Thomas put the telephone down, he went to the kitchen. He remembered that one of the bottles of wine had only been half-finished and should be recorked. He put the cork back in with deliberation. Then he had a drink of water and stood staring at objects in the kitchen as though one of them might offer him a clue about how he should feel.

  He wondered if he could simply leave a note for Katia to say that he had gone to Polling to see his mother. But that would not be enough. He would need to write that his sister was dead, but he could hardly put those words in a note. And then he realized that Katia was upstairs in the house.

  She convinced him to wait until the morning before driving to Polling.

  It was before noon when he arrived. He found his mother in the Schweighardts’ high-ceilinged living room. She was being consoled by Katharina.

  “The body has been taken away,” she said. “They asked if we wanted to see her again before they closed the coffin, but I said we did not. There are blotches all over her face.”

  “Why blotches?” he asked.

  “Cyanide,” his mother replied. “She took cyanide. She had it with her.”

  In the hours that followed, Thomas discovered what had transpired. His sister had been having an affair with a doctor who would travel to where she was performing and stay in the same hotel. This man was married and told his wife he was seeing patients who had moved to other cities. He suffered, Carla had told her mother, from intense and unreasonable jealousy. On learning that Carla was engaged, he demanded that she continue to have relations with him. He threatened to write to Arthur Gibo and his family when she refused, informing them that she was not a woman worthy to enter into a state of matrimony with a respectable man. Carla gave in to him, but, having taken full advantage of her, the doctor wrote to her betrothed and his family anyway.

  Carla sent a letter to Heinrich in Italy asking him to intervene, to let the Gibos know that the doctor’s letter was a pack of lies.

  But before Heinrich could do anything, Arthur followed Carla to Polling, where she had fled. Somewhere in the gardens, confronted by him, she told him the truth. On his knees, he begged her never to see the doctor again, or so he told her mother days later. And she agreed. Once he had departed, Carla hurried past her mother and went to her room. A few seconds later, her mother could hear her crying out and then the sound of gargling as Carla sought to cool the burning in her throat. Her mother tried the door but it was locked.

  Julia ran out of the house in search of the Schweighardts. Max came quickly and when he couldn’t unlock the door, he broke it down. He found Carla lying on a chaise longue with dark spots on her hands and face. She was already dead.

  Thomas wrote to Heinrich, knowing that his mother had already told him that Carla was dead.

  “In my mother’s presence I can remain placid,” he wrote, “but when I am alone I can barely control myself. If only Carla would have come to us, we could have helped her. I have tried to speak to Lula, but she is inconsolable.”

  A few days after Carla’s burial, Thomas brought his mother and Viktor back to Bad Tölz.

  Heinrich did not appear for the funeral. When he did come, he met Thomas in Munich and they traveled together to Polling. Heinrich wanted to spend time in the room where Carla had died.

  They approached her bedroom. Some things had been removed in the immediate aftermath of her death. There was no sign of the glass she had filled with water in order to gargle. No sign either of any clothes or jewelry. The bed had been made. On the bedside table there was a copy of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. Carla must, Thomas thought, have been planning a part in some production of the play. He noticed that her suitcase was in a corner of the room. And when Heinrich opened the wardrobe Carla’s clothes were hanging there.

  It felt as if she could have walked into the room at any moment, ready to ask her two brothers what they were doing.

  “This chaise longue was in Lübeck,” Heinrich said as he ran his hand up and down the faded striped material.

  Thomas had no memory of it.

  “This is where she lay,” Heinrich said as though speaking to himself.

  When he asked Thomas if he had heard Carla cry before she expired, Thomas had to explain that he was not in Polling when she died, he was in Bad Tölz. He thought Heinrich knew that. In fact, he was sure he had told him again that very morning.

  “I know. But did you hear Carla cry?”

  “How could I have heard her cry?”

  “I did. At the precise time she took the cyanide. I was out for a walk. I stopped and looked around. The voice was clear, and it was her voice. She was in terrible pain. She kept calling my name. I waited and listened until she went silent. I knew then that she was dead. I waited for the news. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. You know how much I dislike talk of spirits or the dead. But this happened. Do not doubt me that it happened.”

  He crossed the room and pushed the door closed.

  “Do not doubt that it happened,” he said again and gazed blankly at his brother, standing there silently until Thomas left him and went downstairs.

  Chapter 5 Venice, 1911

  Thomas sat alone in an aisle seat in the middle of the hall in Munich as Gustav Mahler began to take the players in the orchestra through a quiet passage, getting a total silence in the hall and raising his two hands as though he wanted it maintained and controlled. Later, he would tell Thomas, whom he had invited to witness the rehearsal process, that if he could get this silence just before the first note, then he could do anything. But it seldom came. There was always some random noise or the players themselves were not able to hold their breaths for as long as he wanted them to. He did not simply require a hush, he said, he wanted moments when there was nothing at all, a pure void.

  While fully in command at the podium, the composer was almost gentle. What he was looking for, his movements suggested, would not be achieved by large gestures. Instead, it was about raising the music from nothing, having the players become alert to what was there before they started to play. Mahler, as Thomas watched him, appeared to be trying to lower the intensity of the playing, pointing to individual players, indicating that they should do less. And then he stretched out his arms, as if he were pulling the music towards him. He let the musicians know that they were to play as softly as their instruments would let them.

  He had them play the opening bars over and over
, moving his baton to mark the precise instant when they should all begin. He wanted a single, sharp sound.

  This was, Thomas thought, like starting a chapter, then erasing sentences, beginning again, adding words and phrases, taking out others, slowly perfecting it so that, whether it was day or night, whether he was tired or full of energy, there was nothing more that could be done.

  Thomas had been told how superstitious Mahler was, and haunted by death; he did not want to be reminded that this was his Eighth Symphony and it would be followed by his Ninth.

  With this symphony, there was, it struck Thomas, a collision between bombast and subtlety. It was a sign of Mahler’s fame and power that he could summon an orchestra and chorus of this size and scope. There was something mysterious and unresolved in the music, a striving for effect and then a melody that exuded a solitary delicacy, sometimes sad and tentative, displaying a talent that was tactful, at ease.

  At dinner after the performance, Mahler did not appear exhausted. Rumors of his declining health seemed exaggerated. He had a way of slouching in his seat and looking around him uneasily. And then he would sit up as someone new joined the company. His face would become beautifully alive. Everyone would turn to watch him. Thomas could see an erotic charge in him, a strength that was physical more than spiritual. When Alma finally joined them, her lateness having delayed the serving of dinner, Thomas could see that the composer was intrigued by his wife. It must be part of their game, he thought, that Alma ignored her husband, kissing and hugging minor members of Mahler’s entourage, while the great composer kept a seat empty for her, and waited for her as if the whole evening, and indeed the writing of the intricately long symphony, had merely been a preparation for her sitting beside him.

  Not long after that event, Katia learned from Klaus that Mahler really did not have long to live. His heart was weakening. He had been lucky a few times, but the luck could not last. Mahler was working feverishly towards his Ninth Symphony and he might not live to complete it.