Clara (10 page)

In order to lend her support she came along on what would turn out to be the last of these trips. It was to a Lipizzaner feeder farm for the Spanish Riding School in a distant province. To get there they loaded the Norton onto trains and off-loaded it for connections. It was late afternoon on a day in November when they finally continued by road. The sidecar was still bolted to the frame of the motorcycle, but as usual she rode on the pillion seat with her hands in the pockets of his leather coat, holding him like this with her hands not quite meeting under the coat in front, and two fingers poking through a tear in the seam of the right pocket lining. She rode pressing the side of her face against his back, her leather helmet buckled under her chin. She wore brown lace-up boots, a lined jacket he’d bought for her at a motoring supply shop in Vienna, and she wore her dark-brown tweed outfit with the skirt tucked up under her knees so as not to get it caught in spokes or chain.

There was no snow yet, but the sky was grey everywhere and trees were bare and black. To the south once
in a while they could see clouds like vast sails and shipwrecks sliding down mountainsides to the valley floor. Winter lightning trembled high above them where the peaks might be.

To talk to each other they would shout, and he would half turn his head to hear. When he shouted she could feel his voice in her hands flat on his chest at the same time as the wind tore the words from his mouth and whipped them over his shoulder.

Under her, somewhere on the black machine something metallic had begun to rattle and slap.

“What’s that,” she shouted. “That noise?”

“Chain needs tightening.”

“Tightening?”

“The wheel gets moved back,” he shouted. “There are frame spacers both sides of the rear axle. I’ll get around to it.”

She sat and burrowed her face into his coat again. She could smell the leather, old as the thing was.

This ride, so far down their common path already. She and Albert, now. So different from the early days in Vienna, the laughter, the excitement, the faith come what may.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the icy wind. Moments later they were nearly run off the road by a lumber truck that came fast around a bend and veered sideways when the driver saw them. The rear of the truck and the harsh breath of exhaust and wheelspin barely missed them and the Norton skidded and died.
She could just free her hands from his pockets when he climbed off and stomped over to where the truck had slowed and the driver was now grinding the gears in his hurry to get away.

Albert stood looking after him. He raised a fist, comical on this dark and winding road, a man in goggles and helmet cursing after a truck long gone.

“Albert!” she said. “Let’s go! Let’s find a place for the night. Get some food and rest. Come.”

She felt a stab of pity for him then, for the first time. Or perhaps it was not actual pity but sorrow, empathy for a loved one who is trying so very hard. Helpless and hopeless he seemed to her at that moment, a man at a wholly unexpected lowpoint in his life.

“Albert.” She walked there and reached for his arm. “Come. Let’s go.”

They spent that night in an inn where they cleaned up and ate dinner in a low-ceilinged room with wooden beams and wooden tables and a large green tile stove with iron rails for wet clothing above.

Out the window of their room they could see the white lines of paddock fences, and they saw the dark shapes of horses as they moved and drew together near the open stable gate. At some point that night she felt him leave the bed, and he sat on the bedside and put on his shoes. She pretended to be asleep, but she saw him put his coat over his pyjama shoulders and walk on tiptoes out of the room.

She heard him outside then, and she swung her legs out of the bed and stepped to the window. There he was ducking between paddock rails and then he stood, and the horses with slow steps and heads hanging came to him through the grass in the cold moonlit night, and steam rose from his mouth as he spoke to them and stroked their long necks. She watched as he bent down and tapped the foreleg of one, and it raised that leg and he bent to examine the underhoof and with his fingernail he pried out something, perhaps a small stone. He slipped it into his pocket out of the way.

In the morning after breakfast they drove the remaining twenty kilometres to the estate. It lay in the flat November light like a Kafkaesque castle, it seemed to her; elevated, walled, and self-important in this countryside, tile roofs and copper turrets, the enormous wooden gate shuttered.

“Monarchists!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Very condescending. They think they’re God’s gift to the horse world. But I have to try.”

He stopped the motorcycle at the gate, knocked, and someone slid open the spy window. They saw a rolling eye and a nose.

Albert explained and a voice said, “All right. It’s almost opening time anyway.” There was the clacking of wooden drawbeams and the carriage gate swung open. He drove the Norton into the inner yard as wide as a marketplace and cobbled most of it in blocks of cedar as in the Middle Ages to save the horses’ hooves. Administration buildings
and stables surrounded the yard, all timbered structures painted ochre and forest green, the old imperial colours. Bare trees stood tall, and under them men in boots and linen stable jackets were walking horses, some snow white, others, the younger ones, no longer in their foal black but ash grey. Albert shut off the engine and asked a man leading a young horse in a rope halter for the manager.

“The Rittmeister,” the man corrected him.

“If you say so. Where is he?”

The horse handler pointed at a group of men across the yard. “There,” he said. “In the uniform.”

That man was looking their way now. He waved his arms and shouted, “That’s far enough on that motor-machine.” He turned his back on the men with him and came crossing the yard.

He had on the two-cornered hat worn sideways in the old imperial fashion meant to make an officer’s head look more impressive and also to protect his ears and neck from sabre cuts. He wore dark-blue breeches with leather seat and inner thighs, and a tight uniform tunic with gold buttons. The hat from corner to corner was nearly as wide as his shoulders. His riding boots gleamed, and they made hardly a sound on the wooden cobble blocks. With each step he slapped a braided quirt against his right leg.

“What?” he shouted. “Who are you?”

“Just look at him,” said Albert under his breath to her. He stepped away from the Norton and began walking toward the Rittmeister. They met some twenty paces away
and words were spoken that she could not make out. Behind them in the yard men stood staring, even the one who had been working with broom and stickpan sweeping up horse buns. As she waited by the motorcycle she smoothed out her skirt, then took off the leather helmet and shook out her hair. She smelled horses. She smelled the harsh aroma of fresh oat feed that a stablehand was shovelling from a circular bin nearby into a feed barrow.

The Rittmeister stood slapping the quirt into his left hand now, and the next she heard they were arguing, shouting. But it had been in the air all morning. It had been in the air since the truck incident last night, this bitterness.

“Even if your rank still existed it would at best be equal to mine,” Albert shouted. “So I won’t have you speak to me in this tone.”

“Rank?” The Rittmeister laughed. “From what I understand you no longer have a rank.” He looked over his shoulder at his men. “Get on with your work,” he yelled at them. “Don’t stand around.”

In turning back he glanced at her. He stared for a moment, then he leaned close to Albert and said something that she could not make out.

Off to the side she saw Albert’s face white and tense. Next he raised his left hand and stood pointing curiously with his index finger and he moved that hand, still pointing. Momentarily perplexed the Rittmeister watched the hand and seconds later he sat on the ground with blood
on his face. Albert stood rubbing the knuckles of his right hand.

The man on the ground touched his nose and mouth, looked in disbelief at the blood on his glove. He rose to one knee, then to his feet. Behind him in the yard every man stood watching but none came forward.

“How dare you?” screamed the Rittmeister. “In front of my men. I will have you for this.” He picked up his two-cornered hat, swept hair from his forehead with forked fingers, and clapped the hat back on, wild-eyed like some crazed Napoleonist.

She tossed the leather helmet into the sidecar and walked quickly up behind Albert.

“You insulted me,” Albert was saying. “In front of your men. You challenged me.” He took a step toward the Rittmeister, who backed away and held on to his hat, and with a wary eye on Albert ducked to pick up his quirt.

“You are quite mad,” he said. He saw his men watching. “I said get on with your work!” He waved his arms. “Everybody! This is none of your affair. You, Emile! Go to the office and call the gendarme.”

Behind Albert, Clara stood tugging on his coat. “We should leave,” she said. “Albert. Now. While the gate’s still open.”

“Stay where you are!” The Rittmeister cleared his voice and spat blood. “You will wait for the police. I am arresting you.”

“Now, Albert. Let’s go.” She tugged harder, and he came
away reluctantly. The Norton started at the first kick and they drove off with the Rittmeister gesturing behind them, screaming nasally at the keeper to close the gate, but by then they were almost upon it, already in second gear and the gatekeeper leapt out of their way.

Minutes later on the road she was first to laugh at it all.

“What?” shouted Albert over his shoulder.

“The whole thing. And that poor Rittmeister, he was so upset. What did he say? Why did you punch him?”

“He was asking for it, and I just suddenly had enough. All these patronizing idiots.”

“But what did he say?”

Albert pretended not to hear and drove on. After a while he shouted, “I may have to look for work somewhere else. Until this blows over.”

“Where?”

“Germany to begin with. Then perhaps France.”

They drove on not saying anything.

“I want to finish my degree. The dissertation,” she shouted over his shoulder then, a round high shoulder that these freighted words travelled across. “At least two more years.”

“They’ll go by quickly. We can visit.”

“Visit.”

The drivechain had begun slapping again, and it was getting worse. Eventually they pulled up behind a stand of trees off the road, in case the police were looking for them. They crouched by the rear wheel and she watched
him work with two spanners moving the axle back along the frame slots and then setting the counter-nuts to secure the bolt. She could smell the hot engine and the sun on the leather seats of the Norton. There was black oil on the chain and the chain ran under a guard from a small sprocketwheel in the engine block to the larger one in the rear axle. He worked with bare hands so as not to get any oil on his gloves.

“Carbon grease,” he said. “Very sticky.”

She watched his fingers. She watched his face from the side, his concentration. She saw the curve of his lips, saw him breathe. She leaned quickly and kissed him on the cheek.

“I’m glad you punched him,” she said. “I couldn’t stand him from the moment he came strutting our way, yelling at us like some overlord. And that little whip and the hat.”

“These people. So very arrogant and stuck in time. I could never work for them anyway. This was a good day, sweetheart. It made things clear.” He wiped his fingers on tufts of grass. “I’ll start in Germany. They know about horses,” he said. “You don’t mind?”

“What? You looking for work elsewhere?”

“I’m thinking of your family.” He shook his head. “Actually, no. I’m thinking of you. Your career. Your future.”

“I know you are. But there’s no question I’ll finish my degree. After that I’d rather we could stay here. But if we can’t, we can’t.”

She sat down on the dry cold patch of grass, gathered her skirt, and cradled her knees in her hands.

“It could be interesting,” she said. “Maybe Heidelberg. Heidelberg would be fantastic. Or Hamburg. Once I have my degree, my career will be quite portable. It’s essentially up here. All of it.” She tapped a finger to her forehead. Professor Roland Emmerich’s words.

TWO DAYS LATER
a gendarme came to the Leonhardt apartment in Vienna to take Albert’s statement as to the assault charges laid by the Rittmeister.

“You broke his nose,” said the gendarme. “He claims you attacked him unprovoked. What was it about?”

Albert shook his head. “Not unprovoked. He insulted me and the woman I was with.”

“How? What did he say?”

“I won’t repeat it. He was being arrogant. It was an unpardonable insult and just one too many.”

The gendarme, an older man in piped grey trousers and a grey tunic, sat studying him. “You should state your reason,” he said in a fatherly way. “In the report. What did he say?”

“I’ll repeat it in court, if it comes to that. If I absolutely have to.”