The Magician

by Colm Toibin

  He took it that the friend was somehow unsuitable. He believed also that, unless Katia were afraid to share the news about Bruno Walter with him, she had taken Erika at her word. She was seeing friends. For a second, he had a vision of Bruno Walter, fresh from a concert, removing his trousers and folding them over a chair in some deluxe downtown Los Angeles hotel room while Erika watched him, smoking. He remembered Davidson telling him that he could not work for Walter, as the conductor could not stop boasting about his own greatness. No house would be good enough for such a man, Davidson had said.

  On Saturday, when he called her, Elisabeth told him that Klaus did indeed have an unsuitable lover installed in a hotel and that both Klaus and the lover represented a considerable expense, both needing a constant supply of morphine and other drugs.

  When Thomas mentioned his vision of Bruno Walter and Erika, Elisabeth told him that, in fact, they enjoyed their trysts in the Walters’ own house in Beverly Hills. Elisabeth presumed that her mother knew even more details, but, since Elisabeth had made the error of sounding too interested, she had not disclosed them.

  “Katia knows about Erika and Walter?”

  “Nothing escapes my mother.”

  “Does she know about Klaus and the drugs?”

  “It was she who told me.”

  * * *

  In these early months of the war, Thomas actually looked forward to phone calls from Agnes Meyer. She, in turn, seemed to relish having news for him, although often she called merely to inform him that she knew something before it had been printed in the newspapers. When news came that Japanese people on the west coast were to be removed from their homes, she called to say that she had hinted to him when they met in New York that this would happen.

  “But there are many things I cannot say,” she added.

  “Is there any discussion about taking action against Germans in America?”

  “It has been quelled,” she replied.

  * * *

  One morning, as he was working in his study, Klaus came to see him. Over the previous week he had appeared increasingly disheveled. His face was thinner and his teeth were stained. He had a way of moving that was edgy and uneasy. He began by admiring his father’s study.

  “This is all I ever wanted,” he said. “A study like this.”

  Thomas wondered if he were being mocked. Should any other of his children speak to him like this, their words would be sardonic, to say the least. But perhaps not Klaus. He was the earnest one.

  “I think you enjoy your freedom,” Thomas said.

  “I take that as a rebuke,” Klaus replied.

  “You are much admired as a writer. If there is ever a new Germany, you will be needed there.”

  “I mean to join the U.S. Army,” Klaus said. “At the moment, there are some obstacles to my being accepted. Life has not been simple in New York. There are many spies and rumormongers.”

  “I’m not sure life is simple in the army either.”

  “I’m serious about it,” Klaus said. “My mother does not believe me. Erika does not believe me. But I will come here the next time in an army uniform.”

  “Are you asking me to help you?”

  “I am asking you to believe me.”

  “I can imagine what the obstacles are.”

  “They are going to need men like me.”

  Thomas was tempted to ask him if he meant drug addicts and homosexuals and men who ask their mothers for money, but he saw that Klaus was on the verge of tears. He thought he should say something supportive.

  “I would be proud and happy to see you in a U.S. Army uniform. I cannot think of anything that would make me happier. This is our country now.”

  He looked at Klaus as a father in a movie might.

  “Do you believe I can do it?” Klaus asked.

  “Join?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you would have to make significant adjustments in your life. But I cannot see any reason…”

  Thomas hesitated as Klaus watched him closely. He noticed how pale his son was.

  “As I say, significant adjustments,” Thomas said, looking directly at Klaus.

  “You, too, have been listening to all the gossip,” Klaus said.

  “You live as you want to live,” Thomas replied.

  “As you do, in your grand new house.”

  “Indeed. A house in which you are welcome at any time.”

  “I have nowhere to go once I leave here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “My mother has said that she cannot continue paying for me.”

  “I will speak to her. Is that what you came to see me for?”

  “I came here to ask you to believe me.”

  “It is inconceivable that the army would accept you in your current state.”

  “What is my current state?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I promise that the next time I see you I will be in uniform.”

  “The army will make no allowances for you, but I do not want to argue about that. It should be clear enough.”

  “So, I take it I am being dismissed,” Klaus said.

  Thomas did not reply. Klaus stood up and brusquely left the room.

  * * *

  Once Klaus had returned to New York and Erika had gone to England, Michael and Gret came to stay, bringing Frido and their new baby, a boy, with them. Michael would spend his stay in Pacific Palisades practicing with three other musicians who were planning to form a quartet.

  There was more raw charm in Frido, Thomas saw, than even the photographs had suggested. As soon as the boy saw new people, he brightened and smiled.

  Frido gazed at his grandfather, intrigued first by his glasses, then by the intense interest with which Thomas was gazing at him in return, doing tricks with his hands, trying to make Frido laugh.

  Seeing that Michael and Golo had gone for a walk in the garden, Thomas followed them. They heard him coming behind them and both looked around suspiciously. They stopped, but neither of them smiled.

  “Golo was explaining that Heinrich is in a most dreadful situation,” Michael said.

  “In what way?”

  “He has run out of money. His rent is already two months in arrears, and they are threatening to evict him and Nelly.”

  “And the car has broken down,” Golo added, “and the garage won’t even begin repairs until they are paid.”

  “And Nelly has some medical problems, but can’t afford to go to the doctor.”

  “When I went there yesterday,” Golo continued, “they were both desperate. Heinrich could barely speak.”

  “Does your mother know?”

  “I told her last night.”

  Instantly, Thomas understood why Katia had said nothing. The only solution to Heinrich’s financial problems was a regular stipend, and that would be a large commitment.

  “I will speak to her,” Thomas said.

  “I think it needs a long-term solution,” Golo said.

  “I know what it needs,” Thomas replied.

  He turned to Michael.

  “Gret told me that you and your friends have been rehearsing the Beethoven Opus 132 quartet. I would love if you could play it here as soon as you can. We will invite Heinrich. I know he would like to hear it as well.”

  “It is the most difficult,” Michael said. “We are a new quartet.”

  “I know it is hard. But it has a special meaning for me and your mother.”

  “Spare us the exaggeration. It does not have a special meaning for my mother,” Michael said.

  Thomas immediately regretted having invoked Katia, who had never expressed any opinion on any Beethoven quartet. He would have to reach her before Michael did and ask her to insist that she had a special reverence for Opus 132.

  “Will you see if it can be done?” Thomas asked.

  “The second violinist I am working with does not speak English. He is Romanian.”

  “But he can read music?”
<
br />   Michael glanced at him contemptuously.

  “In a rehearsal for a quartet, there is a great deal of discussion.”

  “Do your best,” Thomas said.

  As Thomas walked away from his two sons, he knew that if he looked back he would see them both staring after him coldly. He wanted to tell Golo, who was now thirty-two, that Elisabeth had declared that after the age of thirty no one had the right to blame their parents for anything. And then he could turn to Michael, who was twenty-two, and tell him that he had eight years left and he should use them wisely.

  When he found Katia, he made her swear that she would say she had strong personal reasons for needing to hear that Beethoven quartet played in her own house, with Michael on the viola.

  * * *

  Heinrich and Nelly came early, as arranged, on the day the quartet was to be played. Thomas had sent his brother a check. He noticed how impeccably dressed they were. While Heinrich was frail and walked slowly, his suit was perfectly pressed and his shoes were shiny. Nelly was wearing a red dress and red shoes with a white cardigan. Her handbag and hat matched the cardigan. No one would have guessed, he thought, how badly they had needed money just a few days earlier.

  The night before at supper when the subject of Nelly came up, Katia had emphasized that, while Nelly was welcome in her house, she would prefer not to be left alone with her.

  “If I discover that my husband and his two sons, not to speak of his daughter, are leaving the wives together in the deluded view that the two Frau Manns must have so much to talk about, then I will release mice in all your bedrooms.”

  “What about me?” asked Gret. “I, too, am a Frau Mann.”

  “You are exempt from criticism,” Katia said. “But I will not be left alone with Nelly. From the moment she sets foot in this house to the moment she leaves, I am depending on all of you to ensure that.”

  While Golo sat at the garden table with Nelly, Thomas and Heinrich strolled around the property. With the check, Thomas had included a friendly note saying that they should discuss Heinrich’s finances as soon as possible. It should be easy, he thought, to do it now. Slowly, however, as Heinrich spoke about a novel whose first chapter he had written, it was as though they were in Munich again, or in Italy as young writers, with Heinrich always confident, ready to assert his greater knowledge of the world and of books. If Thomas were to tell him now that he was planning a novel based on the Faust story, Heinrich would say that this had been done too many times already. If Thomas were to add that his protagonist would be a modern composer, Heinrich would insist that it was impossible to write about music. Thomas remembered that he had not told Heinrich much about Buddenbrooks while he worked on it, too afraid that a single, withering remark might be enough to make him doubt its worth.

  He let Heinrich talk about his novels about Henry IV of France, and how he believed they would make a good film.

  They turned towards the main entrance to the house and Gret appeared with Frido, who focused all his attention on Heinrich.

  “It is marvelous to meet a Mann who does not look suspiciously at one,” Heinrich said.

  Since none of the others was present, Thomas took this as aimed entirely at him. Its tone arose, he supposed, from his having sent his brother a check. It struck him that he was going to be made to suffer even more as he provided for his brother in the future.

  When Gret took Nelly to see the baby, Heinrich suggested that he and Thomas take another stroll around the gardens. This time, Thomas imagined, they could talk about money.

  “I wake every night,” Heinrich said, “and think about Mimi and Goschi. Perhaps Mimi is safe, I can’t find out. She could be singled out because of me. And Goschi too. She is twenty-five, a time when she should be at her happiest. I have abandoned her in a hellhole, as I have abandoned her mother.”

  “Do you have a precise idea what is happening to them?”

  “They are in Prague, and if the Germans have their way, they will be arrested. We walk on manicured lawns under blue skies. We build new houses. We live in a place of plenty. I have left them behind and they call to me in the night. I cannot even begin to share with Nelly how concerned I am.”

  Thomas realized that this too was directed at him; the manicured lawns were the very ones they were walking on, his house was the place of plenty. But he determined that he should ignore his brother’s efforts to make him feel guilty. Instead, he should offer to intensify previous efforts to locate Heinrich’s ex-wife and his daughter and agree to use his influence to have them brought to America. For a second, however, he wanted to tell Heinrich that, in reality, it would be almost impossible to rescue anyone now from Central Europe and get them visas for America. He knew how wrong it was to build up Heinrich’s hopes, but still he could not tell his brother the truth.

  “I have asked and asked again. If I hear anything, I will tell you. And I will keep up the pressure.”

  “Can you ask the president directly?”

  “No,” Thomas said. “That cannot be done.”

  Even though he did not speak, his brother made clear to him that he saw this as a betrayal.

  “Carla and Lula were lucky that they took themselves out of this world,” Heinrich said.

  * * *

  They had supper with Michael’s colleagues, the musicians, all three handsome and young, Thomas doing what he could to disguise his interest in them. They were dressed in the same kind of loose-fitting suit and had matching haircuts, even the Romanian, who spoke French. With Gret on one side of him and the lead violinist on the other, Thomas had to force himself to be sufficiently polite to his daughter-in-law. They discussed Frido and his baby brother for a while, but then he could not think of another topic. He turned to the violinist, who asked him why he had especially wanted Opus 132.

  “For the third movement,” he said. “I like the idea of Neue Kraft fühlend.”

  “Do you feel new strength?”

  “When I think of the book I must write, I do. Or I hope I do.”

  After supper, they moved to the main room, Gret excusing herself to feed the baby, Nelly going back to the dining room to fill her wineglass to the brim.

  “Heinrich warned me that this is going to be long and tedious,” she whispered to Monika, who let out a laugh.

  The four young men were putting their music stands in place. Once seated, they started to tune their instruments, following the Romanian, whose instrument was already tuned. Thomas liked the Romanian, who looked around at the small audience with calm wonder, but it was the two Americans who really held his attention. The cellist had a softer face than the lead violinist, and brown eyes. His delicate beauty would fade in a few years, Thomas thought. The lead violinist was not as obviously handsome, the face was too thin, he was already balding, but his frame was the strongest of the four, his shoulders the broadest.

  When the music began, Thomas was struck by its daring, the quiet release of a sort of anguish, followed by a tone that suggested struggle, with hints that the struggle brought both pain and joy, immense joy. He must, he knew, stop thinking, give up trying to find simple meaning in the music, but instead let it enter his spirit, listen to it as though he might never get another chance.

  It was hard not to look at the players, however, not to study their seriousness and concentration. Thomas watched them taking their cues from the lead violinist. The lead violinist and Michael on the viola seemed to spar, taking energy from each other; the music edged towards resolution and held back for a moment before it soared.

  He glanced over at Katia, who smiled at him. This was the world of her parents, who had hosted many such chamber concerts in their house in Munich. Out of this old world from which they had been forced to flee, Michael had emerged as the one with musical talent. Thomas watched him playing with slow care, showing no emotion as, handsome and self-possessed, he let the viola’s dark sound hit against the sweeter sound of the two violins.

  As the music continued, the lead violinist
and the cellist shed some of their Americanness. The rangy, friendly, masculine openness, apparent earlier, was replaced, he saw, by vulnerability, sensitivity, until they could have been Germans or Hungarians from decades before. Maybe, he thought, it was merely something he imagined, something caused by the force of the four instruments playing together, as they found moments of pure connection with one another, and then went silent or played solo, but Thomas could entertain the idea that ghosts from an earlier time, ghosts who had once walked the streets of the European cities carrying instruments, ghosts on their way to rehearsal, were present here in this new house overlooking the Pacific Ocean in southern California.

  The second movement ended and Thomas vowed that, from now on, he would listen more keenly, stop letting his mind wander into idle speculation. He tried not to notice as Nelly left the room. He remembered this Beethoven quartet as being sad, sometimes mournful. What was surprising now was that, while the undertone was melancholy, the way the instruments stopped and started and then moved into melody made it uplifting. The suffering in the music was buried in every note, but so too was something almost stronger, some sense of an unyielding beauty that after a few minutes rose, as though surprised at its own vigor, into a sound that made him stop thinking, stop trying to find meaning in this, and simply listen, let his spirit absorb what was being played.

  Katia had her eyes closed now, as did Heinrich. Both Golo and Monika were watching the players with intense concentration, Monika sitting forward in her seat. To move from the bombast of the symphonies to the unearthly loneliness of this quartet, he thought, must have been a journey that even Beethoven himself could not easily comprehend. It must have come as though some strange, tentative, shivering knowledge emerged suddenly into clarity.

  Thomas wished he had been able to do this as a writer, find a tone or a context that was beyond himself, that was rooted in what shone and glittered and could be seen, but that hovered above the world of fact, entering into a place where spirit and substance could merge and drift apart and merge again.