Snowleg (31 page)

His mother had written, enclosing an appeal from the St Cross Development Programme. She always wrote to him at the Klinik, perhaps in the hope that he would treat what she had to say more seriously. She was worried about Rosalind. “I think it would be brotherly if you invited her out again. She's getting into a frightful rut and unless I'm much mistaken, Tristram Leadley has developed an unhealthy interest in her. Could you put her up in Berlin for a bit?” A PS from Rodney, which his mother would have been hopping mad to see, added: “Unless you would rather have Camilla? PPS A rather startling dividend has arrived from Silkleigh, so we'd pay for R's fare.” He had included a photograph, a view from the ridge down to the house. Taken last summer.

At 11 a.m., Peter looked at the gift that his mother had presented to him on his sixteenth birthday (and which he had had repaired at tremendous expense in Bond Street). He changed his trainers for a pair of black shoes, put on his suit and tie and made his way to the chapel at the Lion's Manor.

Sister Corinna sat in the front row. She had spent much of the past two days distraught, trying to contact Frau Weschke's granddaughter. According to neighbours, Frau Metzel's children, who might know where she was, had gone to stay with their father. In the end, there was nothing Sister Corinna could do. Frau Weschke's cremation had, according to her explicit instructions, taken place yesterday. Today, likewise, was to be the simplest possible funeral service. The family were not to be put to any bother.

Everyone Frau Weschke had insulted was assembled in the chapel. A dozen nurses and old people sang two hymns in weak, rattling voices. The only outsider was the kindergarten teacher.

“Milo will be upset,” she said afterwards.

“I don't know why she had this service,” interrupted Uli, gripping the pew in front for support. He wore dark lenses and the collar of his nightshirt poked up outside his dressing gown. “God is a fairy tale, that's what she told me.”

Nadine looked round, gave Peter a wide-eyed look. He knew this look. It said: “Call me.”

Not until after the service did Peter learn that contact had been established with the granddaughter. The previous evening Frau Metzel had telephoned from London where she was organising an exhibition.

“She went all quiet when I told her Frau Weschke had died.” Sister Corinna was on her knees, packing the old lady's belongings into a white cake-box that she had picked up from the bakery. “The poor dear was dreadfully flustered. She's an artist and her exhibition opens tonight, you see. And I had the impression it was taking place in some village hall, not The White Chapel in London!”

“The Whitechapel?” Peter's ears pricked up. He squatted down to help. “By the way, you never told me what she was like.”

“Just your type. Tall, blonde . . . booby.”

“I didn't mean that . . .!”

“With glasses. Possibly bi-focals.”

“Corinna! Stop it. I meant, is she a chip off the old block?”

“Anyway, I'm pleased she rang,” said Sister Corinna, ignoring him. “Frau Weschke made me promise to take the ashes to her and to take this letter with them. Well, actually she asked you to deliver it, but I told her that was out of the question. You said you would never go to Leipzig.” She pointed with her finger at the envelope on the dresser. In a wavy line across the width of it, Frau Weschke's handwriting like a bird-track read “Marla Metzel”. Also on the dresser was the small board painted with beak marks. Peter stood up and handed it to her, then the books underneath: Dreiser, Dumas and a copy of
Gone with the Wind
.

He pulled open both drawers. The empty wine bottles rattled with Frau Weschke's inside-out laugh. Less than a week after arriving at the nursing home she had inveigled the kindergarten teacher, a teetotaller, into acting as her chief supplier. Usually, she made do with a Bulgarian white, Goldener Herbst, but her favourite was Saale-Unstrut, a rather dry white wine from Saxony.

One bottle of Saale-Unstrut remained. Peter put it in the cake-box, recognising with a twinge the page from the
Leipziger Volkszeitung
with the photograph of the Schreber garden. Sister Corinna had used the newspaper to wrap something. “What's that?”

“Her ashes. They came half an hour ago,” and tucked the Karlovy Vary mug into a sleeve of the muskrat coat. “Everything? What about that?”

On the floor beneath the dresser was the shoe-bag. He took out the sketch of Leipzig zoo. “The cleaner must have tidied it away. Why don't you have it?”

“Oh, Peter,” shaking her head. “If I hadn't noticed, it would have stayed right there.”

“Please, I'd like you to keep it.”

She poked around inside the bag and retrieved her green bow. Four days she had worn her hair down – had he noticed? She flicked back her head, twisted up the thick chestnut hair into a formal knot. “I tell you what, I'll put it on that wall.”

Peter held down the flaps of the box while she taped them together and in her efficient way wrote out Frau Metzel's address with a felt marker. “There's just one thing won't fit,” and she nodded at the end of the bed.

He unhooked the cane. The black lacquer had flaked off in chunks, leaving a mottled look. The silver horse-head was tarnished, but fitted comfortably into his palm. He waved it at Sister Corinna in the way that he used to brandish his grandfather's walking stick at Rosalind, and there shot through him – even as he raised the ferrule – the old, jubilant sensation that he wielded not an old lady's cane, but an ancestral sword. “Couldn't we send it with a tag on?”

“The post office won't insure it. Not unless it's properly wrapped.”

He looked at her uncomprehendingly. He had no patience for this sort of thing. “Leave it to me. I'll take it to the post office.”

“I promise you, you need to wrap it first – and they won't have a box for that size.”

“For God's sake, woman, of course they will!” Before she could argue, he had seized the envelope from the dresser, tucked the cake-box under his arm and gathered up the cane. “I do love you every second of your blessed existence and you've been more than your usual brick-like wonder with dear Frau Weschke, but sometimes . . .”

A moment later the door slammed and she thought for the umpteenth time: This kind of impulsive behaviour really must annoy Milo's mother. And yet Peter's behaviour this afternoon was bizarre even by his standards. Before, whenever a patient died, his habit was to melt away and allow Sister Corinna to do his difficult work for him, like a child held at a railway-carriage window to say goodbye. He had never responded in this way to a patient's death.

Peter drove with Milo to the post office in Gartenstraße where the queue snaked as far as the stationery shelves. He selected two sheets of brown paper and a spool of tape and started to wrap the walking stick as the line hobbled forward. People in the queue watched with frank amusement as he struggled to copy Frau Metzel's address onto the crumpled paper. He had nearly achieved the wrapping of the silver handle when he reached the counter. “I want to insure this.”

“No,” said the woman. “Not unless it's in a box.”

“Where do I get a box?” he asked, irritated.

“Go out, turn left and when you reach Wallstraße there's a store on the right, Krüger's.”

He was marching Milo through the door when she summoned him back to pay for the paper and tape.

“I need a box,” he told the man in the store.

“Well, you've come to the right place!” On his doughy face the hint of a moustache. “What kind of box? We've got boxes for books, boxes for clothes, boxes for china. We've even got wardrobe boxes.”

“I want a box for this.”

The man cast an estimating glance at Frau Weschke's cane and drew a long breath. “Not sure about a box for that.”

Peter declined his eventual recommendation of a wardrobe box. “Look, it's just a walking stick.”

“What you need is a speciality box,” said the man. “A place that sells canes, maybe they can give you a box.”

“Can you recommend somewhere?”

“No.”

“Who might know?”

“Look in the business pages.”

“Have you a phone book?”

The man laid a directory on the counter. “Excuse me, sir, but could you be quick, please,” and went to attend another customer.

Peter telephoned an address in Theodor-Körner-Straße and with mounting annoyance listened to the phone ring. Milo had all this while kept silent, but his expression said: This is a lot of trouble to go to, Dad, for a walking stick.

“And the size of the cane?” asked an elderly male voice with a sniffle.

“What is it – about a metre?”

But the old man insisted on knowing a precise dimension.

“Look, I don't have a ruler.”

“Then it's better you bring it in,” giving an address at the other end of town.

Peter shouted: “It's easier for me to walk this stick to Leipzig than to mail it!” He banged down the receiver, grabbed the cane and was ushering Milo from the store when a voice raucously demanded that he pay 50 Pfennigs for the telephone call.

It was cascading snow in the street and the traffic had come to a halt. Peter opened the passenger door for his son and suddenly all the things that drove him insane about Germany rose up to torment him, crowned by the prospect of dinner with Nadine.

He stared at the bit of sticky tape dangling, the shred of brown paper, and boiled with so much fury that he wondered for a moment if Frau Weschke's spirit had invaded him. Her smouldering voice continued to address him from inside the cake-box.
I know what you got up to in Leipzig
.

He telephoned Sister Corinna on his mobile. “I've been halfway round this fucking city. It turns out you were right, which is no comfort. I'll deliver the goddamn things myself. If she's not there, I'll find the children or a neighbour. I feel I owe it to the old lady.”

“You are going to Leipzig?” she said.

“Leave this to me. I've always been impatient to see Leipzig again.”

“Peter Hithersay, you tell more lies –”

“You don't have to believe me. Just because for once in my life I'm doing the decent thing. Give me the telephone number.”

“Well, it was her last specific wish. ‘As soon as I'm dead, I want this letter sealed and to go with my ashes to my family.'”

“I'll do it for both of us,” he said heroically. “Come with me, why not?” and for one terrible moment he thought she was going to say yes.

“Anyway, she doesn't live in Leipzig. Milsen's on the Czech border.”

“The number, Corinna.”

“Here it is. But she's not back before the weekend.”

At last Milo spoke. “What are you up to, Dad?”

“You heard. I'm going to Leipzig.”

“Can I hang on to Gus?”

“What would your mother say?”

“You know what she'll say. She'll be stark raving mad.”

“OK, if she's going to be stark raving mad, I'll drop you on the corner.”

Alone in his apartment, Peter poured himself a brandy. He packed a suitcase and made two telephone calls.

“Nadine?” But it was her answerphone. “Listen. You're not going to believe this. Someone's fallen ill. I'm afraid I've got to stand in.”

And to Angelika at the Klinik to say that he would be – unexpectedly, but unavoidably – gone for the next three days.

“I'm taking compassionate leave.”

“Who's died?”

“My grandmother.”

Frau Doktor Ekburg could return the favour, he thought. But he didn't understand himself.

Not until he poured a second brandy did Peter begin to realise the extent to which he was completely unfree of his past. The alcohol that made him sentimental also made glow brighter the light dawning in his feverish head. Perhaps the fact that he couldn't claim to be free told him he was not such a shit after all. Maybe if he could scratch around at the bottom of his soul he would find a Rip Van Winkle of a knight who, if he behaved impeccably for a while, could rescue him with his soul exhibiting not one particle of decay.

The horse was saddled, his foot in the stirrup. Half an hour later he was in Bahnhof Zoo station, waiting for the Leipzig train to leave. Not pausing to examine his impulse, just following it. His instinct not so much that of a 40-year-old doctor with a wealth of commitments as that of a bird responding to the tug of the return flight.

It's all right. None of us are very chivalrous or very brave
.

A very old lady had issued him with what he took to be absolution and he was going with a light heart.

PART VI

Leipzig, March 2002

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

P
ETER LAID HIS
H
ERALD
Tribune
as a deterrent on the seat beside him and watched Berlin recede.

He found it hard to connect the city in which he had spent twelve years with the country the train was now speeding through. The snow, thinner on the ground, had in many places melted altogether, yielding to dark turfless soil. Fields without hedges prostrate between the villages, and houses the colour of bone boiled away.

When he arrived in Berlin, it consoled Peter to discover how few colleagues at the Hilfrich Klinik were curious to visit the former GDR or to renew contact with relatives there. They shared the attitude of Milo's mother, who, in one of her pieces, compared travelling through East Germany to watching television without the colour.