East Into Upper East (47 page)

Although at first they enjoyed their time together without Netta, they encountered difficulties. There was now no one to arrange appointments except Max himself—Lilo had tried, but she had several times given rival scholars identical hours and tended to get not only the days but the weeks mixed up. She also didn't like the telephone and Mrs. Lipchik would answer, but she never understood what anyone was saying and that made her laugh so much that she had to put down the receiver (Lilo laughed with her). So then Max had to attend to phone calls himself, which disturbed him terribly in his work; several times he simply let it ring, but that disturbed him even more and he sat with his head between his hands. Also it was he now who had to deal with practical matters, which was very difficult for him, for though he was meticulous, he was very timid and would panic at anything with an official stamp on it like an income tax notice. In fact, these sort of communications had such a shattering effect on him that, like Netta had done, Lilo hid them from him, if she happened to see them; but unlike Netta, she did not deal with them and only stuffed them into a drawer and forgot about them till threatening notices arrived. Then they would search for them, and if they found them—occasionally they didn't—Max would blame Lilo for hiding them, and they would be angry with each other and miserable.

Once Lilo was so hurt and annoyed by Max—this was when my parents were home again—that she left the flat and came to us. She
had often told us, as a joke, how she had several times run away from Max during their first years of marriage, packing up a suitcase and going straight back to her father's house. When she came to us, it was also with a suitcase; she didn't say anything and my parents didn't ask her any questions. It must have been the same when she had gone home to
her
parents—it would probably have been as useless then as it was now to expect any explanations or accusations from her. Unlike Netta, who had gone around complaining about Max to everyone who knew him and even to those who didn't, Lilo's pride expressed itself in silence. Stubborn and upright, completely oblivious of us tiptoeing tactfully around her, she sat on a chair in our house; but as the afternoon wore on, she moved her chair nearer to the window and looked out into the street, her elbow propped on the sill, her cheek on her hand. That was the way she must have waited in her parents' house—waited for the garden gate to open and Max to come up the path to take her home; without giving him time to ring the bell, she had jumped up and opened the door for him herself and said, “Let's go,” not bothering about her suitcase, which her father's chauffeur had to bring after her. In the same way, my mother had to take her suitcase back to the Hampstead flat—because the moment Lilo saw Max from the window, she jumped up and went straight out to meet him: leaving us to gaze after the two of them walking down the street together, two elderly people with their arms around each other. They appeared to be an odd couple for romantic attachment—he like a banker in his fur-collared overcoat and Homburg hat, and she with her long loose grey hair, a gypsy or a poetess.

After that, my mother hired a part-time secretary to take care of his business affairs and professional obligations, ignoring his protests that he couldn't afford to pay a salary. The secretary was efficient and soon everything was as it had been with Netta: but when I say everything, I mean only the practical side because in other ways there was something—even I felt it—amiss, or missing. Of course this was Netta, her absence from their lives she had shared for so long. At that time, it never occurred to me that Max was anything but this disagreeable old man who disturbed my pleasant time with my grandmother; and even if I had been old enough to know him better, how could I have understood his need for Netta any more than did my parents, who thought it would be solved by someone else taking care of his practical problems. Emotionally he
seemed—he was—completely fulfilled by Lilo, as was evident not only to his family but also to people who knew him simply through his work. Nevertheless—and this is being written about today—there was another element in that work, a hidden current coursing beneath the cool stream of his lyrical love. However, no one mentioned a second muse until Netta published his letters to her, after his death and Lilo's, which was less than a year later. In her introduction, Netta spilled every bean there was, giving time and place for all their secret meetings, all the hotel rooms in all the cities where they had met and the scenes they had had there—the tears they spilled, but also how she had always managed to make him laugh. In her account, their time together was fundamentally joyous and beautiful; and in his work too it was beautiful but also full of interior struggle and guilt, painful, often renounced yet inescapable, cut down only to grow again, a cancer of dark passion.

Lilo too must have missed Netta during the years of her absence. I accompanied her several times on visits she made to Netta in the St. John's Wood flat—I went under protest, for it was much more interesting for me in the Hampstead flat, and familiar, with the comfortable furniture and all the amusing objects Lilo picked up at street fairs. At Netta's, there was always the danger of hurting myself on some sharp edge of her metal furniture; and I did not care for Netta's only picture—the café scene of herself and friends, who did not look like people at all but like geometrical masks. Worst of all was Netta herself—at home I was fond of her, she was always bringing me presents, and when I said anything that amused her, she shouted: “Did you hear that? What a child, my God!” But here all she did was talk to Lilo, in a torrent of words, all of them complaints. When I plucked at Lilo's sleeve to ask to go home, Netta pleaded, “One moment, darling, only one more little minute, my angel,” and not wanting to interrupt herself by kissing me, she kissed the air instead, with several absent-minded smacks of her pursed lips, and went right on talking. Although everything she said was directed against Max—how he had availed himself of her youth and strength only to throw her away like an orange he had sucked dry—Lilo did not protest or try to interrupt; the most she said was, “No no,” which made Netta shout louder, “Yes, an orange!” When at last I persuaded Lilo to go home, she got up reluctantly, lingering as if she wanted to say something more than only “No no.” But she never managed to say much,
and then only as we were leaving and Netta was kissing not the air but really me, kneeling down to do so and making me wet with her lips and with tears too, hot tears—Lilo, looking down at us, would say sadly, “It was so nice when you were there.”

These words seemed to enrage Netta—not there and then but later, when she came to see my parents, as she did after each of Lilo's visits. “Oh yes, so nice, so nice,” she cried, “when I was there to do all their dirty work for them!” My parents tried to soothe her, they spoke eloquently, and after a while Netta sat quiet to listen to them: how much she meant to all of us, and whatever had been difficult in the past was now an indispensable part of the present so that she was missed terribly—“Who misses me terribly?” she asked, eyes dangerously narrowed as though she were ready to leap on the answer and tear it to pieces. They said we all of us missed her, even I, though only a child, and of course most of all—her eyes narrowed more—Lilo and (yes?) Max. At that name, her eyes sprang wide open in all their dark beauty: “Well, if he misses me so much, let him come crawling to me on his hands and knees and
beg
me to come back.”

With all the accusations she made, there was one thing she never mentioned: the money from her salary that she had freely shared with Lilo and Max when they were in difficulties. Nor did she tell anyone that she was now herself running short of money and needed another job to keep going. We none of us knew that she was looking for work—she may even have been searching for some time and finally had to take what she could get: this was as manageress of a continental bakery and café. It wasn't called a café but a coffee-lounge; there were only half a dozen tables, usually occupied by elderly refugees who couldn't do without their afternoon coffee and cake. Nominally, Netta had an assistant, but none of them was reliable—“Bone-lazy,” she called them—so that often she had to be both sales-lady and waitress. She seemed to like it, moving around the place with verve, and always with a personal word for her clientele. It was only a short walk from the Hampstead flat, so Lilo and I often dropped in and stayed for quite a while, with me eating more chocolate eclairs than I was normally allowed. There was usually at least one, and sometimes more, elderly gentlemen who seemed to
be there as much to enjoy Netta's presence as the refreshments she served them. Their eyes followed her as she flew around the coffee-lounge, and the moment she approached their table they were ready with some gallant quip. If one of them tried to hold on to her hand longer than necessary while she was handing him his change, she good-naturedly let him, while giving us a wink. Lilo watched her in true admiration—the way she handled the business and the customers—and when we went home, she described the scene to Mrs. Lipchik, saying, “Netta is so wonderful.” She also praised her to Max, but he didn't like to hear about it at all: “What's wonderful about being a waitress? And just around the corner to us. What an embarrassment.” Lilo reared up as if it were she who had been insulted. “Oh, I didn't know you were so
grand
,” she said and swept out of the room, very grand herself.

One day Max surprised me by inviting me for a walk. “Would you like to, little one?” he said with a smile that was as unnatural as the tone in which he spoke. I looked around at Lilo, but she had to nod several times and even frown at me a bit before I went reluctantly to put on my coat. Max continued to smile in a glassy way, but once out in the street, he forgot about me. He strode along, sunk in thought, with steps too large for me; when he realized I was lagging behind, he stopped to wait for me, but impatiently as though in a hurry to get to where we were going. Netta was at the counter, and when she saw us, she went right on chatting with her customer, her hands busy inserting a dozen pastries into their cardboard box. There was no table vacant, and we had to wait; Max's face had gone very red, but his head was raised loftily and he held me by the hand in an iron grip. Although I was his excuse for being there, when we were seated and Netta came for our order, he turned to me as if he didn't see me, asking: “What do you want?” “I know what
she
wants,” Netta said, “but what do
you
want?” “Netta, Netta,” he implored, his eyes downcast, in shame and pain.

And that was all he said, the entire time we were there: “Netta, Netta.” He didn't address a word to me, and of course I didn't expect him to, he never did, and anyway I was there to eat my chocolate eclairs. He was like the other elderly gentlemen who came there and followed Netta with their eyes. Only with this difference, that she approached our table quite often—as often as she could—and lingered there to do something unnecessary, like
exchanging the position of sugar bowl and milk jug. And we sat on, though there were others waiting for our table and glaring at us, so that Max felt constrained to order more pastry for me. He also tried to order another coffee for himself, but Netta said, “Yes, and the indigestion?” for no one knew better than she what too much coffee did to him. Although totally engrossed in licking up the cream from my pastry, I was aware of the tension emanating from my grandfather. This became unbearable when Netta approached our table; and when she touched or maybe just accidentally brushed against him, he moaned: “Netta, Netta.” Once she flicked at something on his shoulder—“For heaven's sake, doesn't anybody ever take a clothes brush to you?” In stricken silence, he pointed at my plate, which was empty again; I looked up hopefully, but Netta said, “I'm not having this child spoil her stomach, just to please you.” However, she brought each of us a glass of water, and ignoring the waiting customers pointing restively at our table, she still didn't give us our bill.

Over the following period of time—was it weeks, months, or even years?—I often accompanied Max on visits to the coffee-lounge. But although we were now steady companions, he never became anything other for me than the remote, gloomy figure he had always been. Holding me by the hand so that I wouldn't lag behind, he communed only with himself—shaking his head, uttering a half-stifled exclamation; and when we got to Netta's place of work, he concentrated entirely on her, vibrating to each movement as she passed, now close to, now far from, our table. And there was another burden on his spirit, of which I heard him complain to Lilo: “But don't you understand! They're sitting there looking at her as if she were—oh my God in heaven—a—a—” “The child,” warned Lilo. Who was there sitting looking at her? Next time in the coffee-lounge, I followed his burning eyes and saw what he saw: it was only another elderly gentleman like himself, dressed as he was very correctly, with spats for the cold weather. One of them I knew—it was Dr. Erdmund from Dortmund, retired and in the habit of taking his afternoon coffee there. Sometimes he stopped at our table, to pinch my cheek and address a word to Max, very respectfully as was befitting with a famous author. Max never answered or even looked at him, and it was not only his hands but his whole body that seemed to clench up into a fist. And afterward he would mutter to Netta,
darkly, awesomely—except that she was not awed, she tossed her head and moved around on her duties with even greater verve.