The Gustav Sonata (26 page)

He went out and the door of the blue room closed with a click-click which reminded him of the sound which came from a cinema projector when an old movie was at its end. In the corridor, he met Studer, holding a bunch of anemones. The two men stopped to talk for a moment and then Studer went on his way towards Emilie. Gustav did not see his mother again until she was in her coffin, where, on her lipsticked mouth, he fancied he could glimpse the ghost of a smile.

It was very late now, near dawn. Gustav wanted the crying to come, the tears that would purge him, but his eyes remained dry.

LATE ON MONDAY
night, Anton called Gustav from Hirsch's penthouse, where he and Hirsch were drinking champagne. Anton seemed to be yelling into the receiver, as though he were on some military campaign with a field telephone held to his ear.

‘Ask me how it went!' shouted Anton. ‘Ask me!'

‘Yes,' said Gustav, ‘I'm asking you.'

‘Brilliantly well is the answer. Brilliantly well! Everybody's tremendously excited.'

Gustav said nothing. He thought how wearisome it was that human excitation so often expressed itself in a deluge of clichés.

Anton went on. ‘The thing is, Gustav, I didn't get nervous. I felt a kind of euphoria about making the recording. I was high, but not anxious at all. None of that sickness thing. I must have had an angel watching over me!'

‘That's wonderful, Anton,' Gustav forced himself to say. ‘It's everything I hoped for.'

‘And now,' said Anton, ‘Hans and I are making plans – in between gulps of this amazing Dom Perignon we're drinking! One recording isn't enough. Hans wants to waste no time. I'm staying here to work with our accompanist on three more Beethoven sonatas. Then we can release a cassette and a CD on the CavalliSound label.'

Gustav was on the point of asking ‘Who is Hans?' His mind had swooped back to Davos and the sanatorium game and the boy with the tambourine. But then he remembered that Hirsch's name was also Hans.

‘I think the Sankt Johann Academy will be understanding, won't they, Gustav?' Anton asked.

‘Understanding about what?'

‘About my not coming back. Don't you think? They know it's my one chance. They'll have to hire a new music teacher for the January term.'

‘You mean you're not coming back at all?'

‘Not yet, anyway. Maybe never. Who knows what will happen once the CD is released. There may be offers of one kind or another. But for now I have to stay here in Geneva, for as long as the work takes. You could go and see the school for me, couldn't you?'

‘Why me?' said Gustav.

‘Because you're a diplomat. Look how everybody jumps for you at the hotel. You have the power to make people do things. D'you remember how, on my first morning at kindergarten you ordered me to stop crying?'

‘Of course I remember. But this is different.'

‘Why's it different?'

‘Because it's something I don't want to do.'

‘All right. But you'll do it anyway. You always do things for other people. I'm counting on you.'

When the call ended, Gustav lay down on his bed. The silence outside his window reminded him that he was in Mittelland, that quiet place in the middle of his country, where nothing much happened, from which the mountains kept their distance. But now, he thought, I'm in my own Mittelland in my life and everything is roaring at me and asking me to change the way I think about things, and this is going to kill me.

The next day, after a scant few hours of sleep, he set out for the Sankt Johann Academy, to talk to the headmaster about Anton. But when he came to within sight of the school, he knew that he was unable to perform this mission. He didn't even want to
think
about Anton, let alone make pleas on his behalf for his desertion of a job he had done for fifteen years.

He changed direction and walked towards Grünewaldstrasse. He suspected that Lottie's company would be consoling to him and that, in talking about Erich, the roaring in his head might be stilled.

Lottie was lying on her sofa, near an electric fire, reading a short story by Guy de Maupassant, in German. She said, ‘I don't know whether the actual story is good or bad, but the German translation strikes me as shit.'

This made Gustav smile. He sat down opposite Lottie. He wished that Lottie would offer him a
millefeuille
, something creamy and outrageous in which he could find comfort.

Lottie looked over her spectacles at his anxious face and said, ‘So what's the matter, Gustav? You look like a sad, grey donkey today.'

‘Yes, that's about it: a sad, grey donkey …'

‘Tell me what's happened, donkey.'

Gustav took a breath. He wanted to say, The person I love most in the world is about to leave me forever, but he knew these words were impossible to utter. Instead he said, ‘I got a letter this week from Police Headquarters. You know I'd gone there to try to find out more about my father's dismissal and how it came about. But they say they can't discuss the case.'

‘Why not? All the information must be there, on file.'

‘It may be there, but they tell me it's classified.'

‘
Classified
? Don't you just
hate
official jargon? I think they won't tell you what happened to Erich because they're ashamed.'

‘Ashamed?'

‘They know that what Erich did was moral and brave, not criminal. He never should have been left to suffer in that tram depot job. He should have been reinstated in his old job, but they didn't do it. Everybody was afraid – afraid of the German High Command and what Hitler might do to Switzerland. They let him die.'

‘What I still don't understand, Lottie: somebody in Matzlingen must have reported what my father had done to the Justice Ministry in Bern. How would they have known otherwise? But who was it?'

Lottie closed her eyes. After a moment, she said, ‘Perhaps the people in Bern accused the Israelitische Flüchtlingshilfe of falsifying the dates and it was they who said, “No, it wasn't us, it was Assistant Police Chief Perle.” But maybe you should let it rest, Gustav. I think it can never be known for sure.'

‘Everything – in the end – can be known, Lottie.'

‘Most things. But perhaps not this. You must let it go.'

Gustav looked searchingly at Lottie. To escape his gaze, she'd picked up the Maupassant stories again and begun flicking through the pages, as if searching for her place in the book.

Abruptly, Gustav asked, ‘Was it your husband?'

Lottie sighed. She set the book aside once more and said, ‘Roger was an honourable man, Gustav. It was your father and I who betrayed him, not the other way around.'

‘But if he knew my father was your lover?'

‘He wasn't my lover then, in
1939
. It began later, when your mother left.'

‘And your husband's job was never under threat?'

‘Everything was under threat. This was a perilous moment for Switzerland. Your generation has no idea …'

‘We have an idea. But the Germans
didn't
invade. There must have been deals made, at every level.'

‘Perhaps there were deals. Perhaps there were betrayals? But what is a betrayal anyway, Gustav? Are you sure you know?'

‘No. I'm sure I don't know.'

‘Well then?'

Gustav stood up. He knew that the conversation about Erich was over, for the time being, at least. Lottie would say nothing more. He went to Lottie's window, half shrouded by her heavy drapes, and looked down at the cold street, where snow was delicately falling. Then he turned and said, ‘Right now, I feel as if I've been betrayed by my friend, Anton, but perhaps there's a sense in which I'm really the betrayer. Anton never asked me to feel the way I do.'

Lottie stared at Gustav. ‘Wait a minute,' she said, ‘slow down. I think we need a drink here. Wine or whisky? Or schnapps?'

‘I don't mind.'

‘Come on, Gustav. One
always
minds. Which would you like?'

‘White wine. German wine, if you have it.'

Gustav watched Lottie get up and walk slowly towards her kitchen. He saw how her big thighs rubbed together as she moved and how she favoured her right leg. And he wished these things were not so. He wanted Lottie Erdman to be as she'd been for his father, with her golden hair and her eyes the colour of a delft jar.

When she came back with the white wine, she sat down and waited for Gustav to begin to talk about Anton. He sipped the wine, which tasted sweetly of apples and of elderflowers, and he thought that this was how he was going to live life from now on, savouring small pleasures and not looking beyond them for happiness that was more complete.

‘So, tell me …' said Lottie, after a while.

But he found, now, that he didn't want to talk about Anton. He wished he hadn't spoken his name.

He looked at his watch. ‘I must go,' he said. ‘I have an appointment with the headmaster of the Sankt Johann Academy.'

Late at night, Gustav telephoned Anton. He wanted to tell him how courteously the headmaster at Sankt Johann had greeted the news that his principal music teacher had left Matzlingen with no warning. He wanted to say, people in this country behave with restraint, Anton. When they might be angry about something, they choose, instead, to be polite. They may not understand how certain things come about, or why, but they are accepting. They hold themselves together – in ways that you have never quite mastered.

But there was no reply from Anton's phone. Gustav imagined him out in Geneva somewhere, being feted and spoiled by Hans Hirsch. He thought how, all around Anton, would lie the beauty of the city, the marvellous place where he was going to make his home and make his career and come to money and fame. He pictured him walking down a wide boulevard, passing the windows of smart boutiques, his silhouette lit by the yellow lights of huge, whispering cars. And then he pictured himself as others might see him, alone in a hotel which had almost no guests at this time of the year and nothing to break the silence except the clanking of a passing tram and the sound – unheard – that emanated from him, the ceaseless and pointless braying of an old grey donkey in pain.

ANTON ZWIEBEL LEFT
Matzlingen for good in the spring of
1996
.

Gustav arranged a farewell supper for him in the dining room of the Hotel Perle, with Armin and Adriana. Lunardi cooked a sea bass with fennel, followed by a vanilla
crème brûlée
with an apricot coulis. Adriana said, ‘This day was supposed to come years ago, when we were all young.'

Gustav saw at once that Anton was distracted. It was as though he couldn't wait to get back to Geneva, as though all the decades he'd spent in Matzlingen were of such paltry account that he couldn't be bothered to give this dinner his attention. What he wanted to talk about was Hans Hirsch and the ‘fantastic sound engineers' at the Cavalli studios. He said, ‘Every time I walk in there, knowing I'm going to play well, it's like a homecoming.'

Homecoming.

When this word was spoken, Adriana and Armin stared at their son in dismay, but said nothing. Gustav looked away, out of an uncurtained window, at the still-wintery sky holding on to a pearly-green luminescence before it surrendered to the darkness.

Anton left the dinner early. He said he had packing to do. Gustav walked with him to the door of the hotel, then hugged him and said, ‘Don't let me go from your mind, Anton. I'll think of you every day.'

‘No you won't,' he said. ‘You've got the hotel to run and I've got a career to make. Think of me once a month; that's enough.'

Then he walked away, past the flower bed where Mutti had been sick, and out into the night. Gustav stood watching him go, then he returned to Armin and Adriana, who were clinging together, like the occupants of a boat in a storm.

Gustav ordered coffee and brandy. Armin said, ‘That was a very nice dinner, Gustav. But I bet Anton didn't even say thank you.'

Adriana pulled away from her husband and turned to Gustav and said, ‘Do you believe it can happen?'

‘You mean what Anton wants – fame and success?'

‘There's part of me which refuses to believe it. He was disappointed before.'

‘Sometimes things come later in a life. And he can cope very well with recordings. It was only the terror of the concert platform …'

‘All right. But from what I know of the music world, he will eventually have to perform to audiences. Won't he? Careers are only made like this, from recordings
and
performance – not from recordings alone.'

‘He doesn't seem to have thought of that,' said Armin. ‘Has he talked to you about it, Gustav?'

‘No. But I think we shouldn't start worrying, Armin. At the moment, he's happy. We should let him enjoy what's going on now.'

Anton sent Gustav a CD of his first recording: Beethoven's Piano Sonatas No.
24
, No.
25
, No.
26
(‘Les Adieux') and No.
27
. In an accompanying note, he wrote, ‘
Geneva is the most wonderful city in the world. At night, sometimes, I go and stare at the lake and count my lucky stars I was given all this before it's too late
.'

Gustav sat in his apartment, listening to the music. He had no idea whether Anton's playing was exceptional or just ordinary. After a while, he got out his hotel accounts and began to work at these while the music went on and on. Then he took the CD out of the player and laid it aside. He kept working at the accounts, which, in the silence which followed the music, began to absorb him completely. But he felt hot and agitated. The accounts showed all too clearly that over the last year, the revenues had gone down and down. The hotel had begun to fail.