Life Embitters (33 page)

At around twelve the usual customers of the café began to drift in: complacent, generally red-cheeked and fat merchants and civil servants. The Provincial Government building was on the Grande Place. After drinking glasses of deliciously bitter, golden brown beer, they sat down at a table. The café was also a restaurant. Marta suggested we have lunch there too and the professor was highly gratified. After five or six ports it was sensible not to move him very far. So we only had to change tables. The establishment was filled with a mixture of smoke and the smell of butter – a smell our ascetic stomachs find difficult to cope with at first, but in the end it helps to give a certain consistency to the human presence. That atmosphere seemed to enhance Marta. In that greasy atmosphere, her entire body and every feature mellowed; her red hat took on a lively, subtler quality.

It was an interesting lunch. The professor told us about some aspects of his curriculum, particularly those related to his initiation into literature. As a very young man he wrote a book of verse,
Conjectures on Idleness
, that English critics compared to Thomson’s
The Castle of Indolence
.

“You wrote it in German, obviously …” said Marta, giving me one her broadest smiles.

“Yes. It was published in Tubingen, the university I was around at the
time. However, though written in German, the book is an attack on the virtues that are popularly attributed to the German people. It is an apology of vagrancy and the right to do nothing, and that says it all, I think … Subsequently, I published a paper against scientific positivism, brimming with allusions to the classification of zoological species that is characteristic of the German world. This dense tome was replete with sarcasm. Issued by the publishers of
Simplicissimus
, my
Discourse on Human Grandeur
finally appeared in Munich with the subtitle of
Great Men as Seen by a Humble Taxpayer
. The first book opened almost every door to allow me to enter Athenaeums and Academies. The other two shut them. I had to surrender. I had to do so quickly. I would have been frozen out. My entry, my accursed entry into scholarship, dated from that initial failure, and I vegetated there for many a year, more than thirty on the trot.”

Professor Busch ate the oysters, delicious. By the end of the roast beef, he began to fall apart. The desserts continued the process. At coffee time he began to ramble. Marta reached coffee time completely relaxed. She’d not said a word during lunch. She spent the whole time observing him. It was like watching a young, strong cat eyeing up an exhausted old rat.

“So why don’t we resume the conversation we began this morning?” asked the doctor raising a glass of kirsch to his lips.

“Which conversation do you mean?” asked the young lady half-reflectively, half-astonished.

“I was saying this morning that I desperately need a collaborator. I also said I had some very important issues to deal with.”

“In effect, we did talk vaguely about all that,” said Marta, underlining her lack of interest.

“Well, after this pleasant day I’ve spent with you, mademoiselle,” said the professor visibly trying to pull himself around, “I think that you would be the right person. I have noticed how you and I share almost the same
views on many topics. This is important, because, given the nature of the enterprise, it is necessary – how should I put this? – to achieve a collaboration that is intellectual in a way …”

“Oh, no, monsieur!” said Marta, backtracking in a wonderfully natural manner. “Professor, you and I do indeed share almost the same views on many topics. We tend to think in parallel, but I don’t consider myself fit to help you. To be frank, I think I would be an obstacle, an unpleasant diversion.”

“I can understand your modesty, but I cannot accept what you say. You have all the requirements for the work I am offering you. In the first place, you are a free agent, you have complete freedom of movement – you’d probably have to take a few trips, maybe a trip to England, something you could do without the slightest problem. Secondly, you are well educated, and speak the same language that I speak. There are things in life that can only be brought to a conclusion with individuals with a similar training and background. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to labor the point that it is vital for me to be able to converse with someone …”

“Please don’t go on, you’re so kind, but please be so good as to …”

“It’s true, mademoiselle, completely true, it’s vital for me, given the endeavors I am pursuing, to be in conversation with someone who completely embraces my vision of life.”

“Don’t persist, professor … I’m very grateful for your offer, but I cannot accept …”

Marta had changed tack. She was backtracking on the only thing that interested the old man and, at the same time, was unleashing all her powers of personal appeal that were considerable, especially after a good lunch.

“Mademoiselle, I do understand,” pleaded the professor, “I’ve been flippant in our conversation and repeatedly indiscreet. I’ve told you how I like
the ladies and have given you to believe that I think you are an angel. Perhaps in this matter I’ve taken the change in my life to ridiculous extremes …”

Marta couldn’t contain herself and started to chuckle.

“The professor is most serious about what he is saying!” I interjected wanting to blot out the rude noises Marta was making.

“Yes, absolutely. I’m speaking with utmost seriousness and would like to finish saying what’s on my mind, because I consider it to be indispensible. If I was at all indiscreet when detailing my – might we say? – my deepest longings, I’d ask you not to give my words more weight than they deserve. They are something strictly private and should in no way affect our collaboration on a specific project. At the end of the day, the only thing of any value is this collaboration I’m proposing …”

Marta didn’t reply. She opened her purse – at the time people still carried purses – took out a small mirror and slowly put her face opposite it. Her casual manner disturbed the professor. I was astonished by Marta’s aplomb, coolness, and guile.

“Mademoiselle, won’t you give me an answer?” Dr Busch asked timidly.

“I’m shocked by how stubborn one can be about something so absurd …” said the young lady, putting her lips to the professor’s ear.

“But it isn’t in the least absurd …” the professor whined dejectedly.

“Oh, yes, it is …”

“Oh, no, it isn’t …”

“Oh, yes, it most certainly is …” retorted Marta, laughing in his face.

“I tell you … it isn’t …” said Busch like a stubborn little boy.

I stood up. The exchange was entering its last phase and I thought it best to leave them a free range so everything could settle into place. I used the excuse that I had to go to the
poste restante
and said goodbye. My impression was that Marta was grateful, because, as I left, she gave me an adorable smile – a lovely smile, with half-closed eyes full of malice and glistening teeth.

We met that evening and she told me what had ensued. As the effects of lunch began to surface, the professor became intolerably insistent. It seems that he mainly pursued the emotional argument, the need for a collaborator-companion, and even shed a few tears – “Tears that weren’t my responsibility,” said the mademoiselle, “because they could equally be the result of the port he’d drunk before lunch.” Given the professor’s unbearable whimpers, Marta had no choice but to accept. It could be said, without of fear of being gainsaid, that at that particular moment in time Marta was Dr Busch’s secretary.

“It was what he was trying to propose …” I told her.

“Of course, but when things become too easy, they can soon pall …”

“That’s a curious observation, but there’s no denying that it’s true enough.”

“When we left the restaurant, we took a taxi to his house. He lives on the Boulevard Leopold, past the circular canal, in a new house, in a flat that could be wonderful if it were tidied up. But the flat is almost empty, except for the things that are indispensable for a man who lives alone and merely goes there to sleep. But there are a huge number of papers, and that’s what I’m most interested in. I could let him keep everything else. What’s really amazing is the way he has decided to trust me. I’m literally shocked by the speed at which things have happened and the peculiar way it’s all come together. I’ve really made the most of your friendship with your old professor from Louvaine … It wouldn’t have been so easy, if I’d just been acting on my own account.”

“Don’t you worry about that! It’s not even worth mentioning … So how do you see things going now, Marta?”

“We start tomorrow. I gave him my word.”

“But this an express train …”

“Absolutely. My first idea was to go back to Calais; I’ve brought so
few things that I believe, in principle, I really should. Now, as things stand, I don’t believe it’s necessary. One has to make the most of one’s opportunities.”

“So you’re staying in Bruges …”

“I’m sorry … but I’m staying … It’s indispensible and inevitable …”

“Do you reckon you’ll be here long?”

“It’s rather risky to make prophesies … but unless there’s an unforeseeable mishap, I imagine it will be a short stay. In any case, I’ll do everything possible to make it as short as possible. Things look extremely good.”

I hadn’t done a thing that day and was tired. I told her I was going to lie down. But Marta said there was bell-ringing festival that night in Bruges and begged me to accompany her.

“Are you missing your old professor?” I asked, jokingly.

“Not likely … This is an opportunity one must grasp. But I don’t think there’s much danger. He’s drunk a lot of alcohol and he must be sleeping it off somewhere.”

After dinner we settled down on the terrace of a small café on the Rue du Sablon. The bells in the belfries rang out – most soothingly the bare bones of melodies of fugues, generally by Bach. Passersby in the street stopped to listen. The people on the terrace smoked and listened contentedly, sipping their beer from time to time. A deep silence fell, broken only by the spasmodic, distant, though jarring whistle of a train. A great calm spread over Bruges, the kind that forms over vast expanses of plain – the static, calm atmosphere that seems to sleep above the earth … But we were unlucky. All of a sudden it started to rain – a languid, drowsy drizzle that creates the permanent silt one finds all over Belgium. People scattered. In the damp air, the ringing bells seemed to deaden and fracture. We returned to our hotel.

I was intending – now the weekend was well and truly over – to go back to London using the usual transport, that is, via Ostend. I said goodbye to Marta.

“I wish you lots of luck …” I said, shaking her hand.

“So why are you going? Stay here …!” she exclaimed in a flirtatious, sorrowful tone that could have been heartfelt – or feigned. “We came to Bruges together and should leave once the task is completed. I promise …”

“What do you promise, mademoiselle?”

“I promise … that we’ll go to see the Memlings in the Hôpital …?”

“You’ve work to do and so have I. I only ask one thing of you. As far as you are concerned, the professor is simply a detail in your professional life; for me, he is a man, despite the crazy twist to his life. I beg you not to go at it too boldly.”

“My God, you’re such a softie!” exclaimed Marta, with a chilling chuckle. “And I thought people from your country were so violent and cold-blooded and that we were drowned in syrupy sentiments!”

“It’s on the late side to talk of such things … We’ll meet up some time, in Calais.”

“If there’s no alternative …”

“No, there is no alternative.”

Eight or nine days later I opened the
Manchester Guardian
, a newspaper I like because of the coverage it gives to events on the continent, and found this report from its correspondent in Brussels.

“Dr Busch escaped by the skin of his teeth,” I said to myself. And the face of Marta, with her impish red hat, came quickly and vividly to mind.

Three weeks after leaving Bruges, when I returned to Calais, autumn was already settling in. It was overcast, rainy and foggy and cold and damp. It was fine in Monsieur Georges’ small restaurant: warmth circulated. It was on a drowsy Sunday afternoon that I saw Marta at the back of the dining room leafing through a magazine. When I greeted her, she fluttered her eyelashes at me in astonishment, as if she’d not seen me for ages.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, forcing a smile, and shaking my hand. “What a surprise! I was only thinking of you a few days ago. I wanted to write to you. You’ll think this odd. I wanted to write and tell you that I followed your advice to the letter.”

“Thanks, Marta, thanks …”

“Don’t think it was as easy as it seemed initially. When I went to the professor’s house, the following morning, I found a man constantly wrestling with the scruples of his conscience. He told me that he had rushed things, had gone a bit too far. He asked after you. He demanded to know what kind
of relationship I had with you … I don’t need to tell you that I called on your friendship in every shape and form. Given that there was a possibility he might escape me, I had no choice but to use the last resort … you know … feminine wiles, as they describe it in novels. The professor’s emotions were my salvation. I imagine it would have been much more difficult if he’d been ten years younger. Mentally, men can rethink things; sensuality, on the other hand, remains inflexible. The professor wanted a different style of life, a more open style, we might say, and that was what betrayed him.”