The Pages (19 page)

A slender black-haired woman who only occasionally smiled. She gave me the flick.

The narrowness of my way of thinking had undoubtedly infected my behaviour. It had always carried the danger of rejection. Otherwise, no matter how carefully I examine my feelings, I do not get very far. I can never understand myself, not completely. Show me somebody who does. (And what does this mean?)

—
By the time I crossed the border and entered Germany my thoughts had returned to where they should have been in the first place. Journeys by train tend to direct me towards extra-thinking. I've noticed this before. In England I became addicted to train travel – something to do with being a passenger through time, where the fleeting present can be seen instantly becoming the past, while the future goes on, perpetually out of reach? Some of my best thinking was done on trains going up and down the British Isles, just as my best note-taking took place in railway hotels, on railway platforms, and in the cafeterias.

I shared a table in the dining car with a completely bald picture-framer and his smaller friend who made violins, both from Mittenwald. Already seated was a man missing an arm, who said nothing. When I gesticulated to help him cut his frankfurt into pieces he got up and moved away. I assumed he'd lost an arm in the war. The two old friends from Mittenwald laughed their heads off. ‘Anybody who has a cough has tuberculosis,' one nodded to the other. Fair enough.

The German fields, as they were called, possess a many-layered heaviness, like an ordered bog, and in the hamlets and towns the German churches strive to rise above them, using geometry, decoration, music.

It was the picture-framer, I believe, who said that everything in the world ended up, in one way or another, being framed – ‘contained' was his term. A face being the obvious, everyday example. It is framed by hair. And the human body. It is contained by clothing chosen to emphasise or subdue certain features. Things at one remove from the truth, such as oil paintings of fields, or of apples and grapes on a table, are given assistance by a frame which increases the illusion. This was said in heavy, pidgin-English. Here the violin-maker quoted from somebody, ‘there's no such thing as an ugly bridge', though since we were at that moment not crossing a river I assumed it had to do with violins. Odd how I remember the young woman, English, I found myself sitting alongside under a tree in Hyde Park, who had a violin case and proceeded to eat a vegetarian salad. Unusual eyes – set wide apart. She was on her way to a violin class. As we sat with our backs against the tree I imagined – without meaning to – her standing upright, practising Bartok or something difficult, naked. In an unaffected way she told me her father had been a mushroom farmer. She loved mushrooms. Every day, she said, she cooked and ate mushrooms.

We bump into a stranger, and soon forget about them; while others – there is no logic – we find ourselves remembering.

The two craftsmen from Mittenwald shared a serene manner. As we talked they kept glancing at the passing landscape framed by the large window, accustomed to their land, while taking note of it.

When they left the train at Heidelberg they bowed after a fashion and didn't wave from the platform. No, I didn't get their names.

Alone in the dining car I wrote to Rosie, describing them, and in a burst of irritation claimed I would never have met such interesting types, let alone their conversation, if I hadn't been on a train in southern Germany. And in a further burst of what I can only think was a convoluted form of homesickness asked if there was a single violin-maker in the city of Sydney.

I went further, ‘Have you thought about making a visit? If not, why not?'

Instead of returning home I was suggesting Rosie drop everything and join me in Germany.

I wrote again.

I followed with a postcard, ‘I'd like you to be here now.' I emphasised, ‘If you see what I mean.'

To Lindsey I explained I was on my way home, at least heading in the right direction. First, I had to finish a bit of research (‘the special atmospherics'). I gave a description of the middle-aged German women having lunch in restaurants who have this habit of wearing hats as they wield their knife and fork, huntsmen-looking hats, often with a tall feather. It looked as if it was about to snow. And, because my brother would read it, I listed the crops I had managed to identify in passing.

—
At a place called Bureten as I walked along a path strewn with leaves I paused. I took a few more steps, then I stood still. It was something the violin-maker had said, a quote or more likely a misquote – people giving a quote invariably get it wrong – which his friend, the bald picture-framer, translated for me, although it was not from any philosopher I knew. He said, ‘Without moving a centimetre, one can know the whole world.' And I recalled then the picture-framer telling me his friend had never stepped foot outside Germany. In fact, he only rarely left his house on the edge of Mittenwald, which doubled as his workshop, mostly to enter a nearby forest to select a spruce or a maple to be cut down for his violins.

The most ordinary and unoriginal ideas can stop us in our tracks.

When a glimmer of clarity comes into view it is like a sliver of diminishing light, and it is essential to stop everything, stay still, be patient, in order to continue ‘seeing' it. Nothing moved in amongst the trees. At that moment I realised there was no reason to be on a path in a forest somewhere in the middle of Germany, and that all of my deliberate and lengthy wanderings had been a waste of time, an indulgence, an example of evasion. ‘The further one goes, the less one knows' I have written in my notebook. I had picked it up from somewhere. Normally I steer clear of the Delphic utterance. It was more a matter of returning home, back to the old homestead (those enormous skies), staying in the one spot, staying put. Without moving a centimetre I would come to regard my own self as a place to travel through, slowly, and, in an interested manner,
examine
, and through myself and myself alone attempt an explanation of the broader world. I'd be better off.

And no longer travelling I also took to mean not studying the works of others. At home on the land I had seen with my own eyes hybrid ewes and calves – misfittings, mismatchings,
mistakes, errors of nature
– animals struggling with five legs or three, pink eyes, and so on. Our father told us of a lamb born in the district with two heads. These aberrations were discussed in front of our mother at the dinner table.

Hybrid creations are not singular; they do not last.

I remained standing on the path, still not moving, until the weather turned nasty.

There and then I should have phoned Rosie saying, ‘Listen, stop! There's no point in coming here. I'm coming home.'

Aside from wanting to see Rosie, and be comforted by her, I had the idea of showing her my progress, how I had changed, I mean how I had improved, how I had become wiser. I realised I shouldn't be there, not in Germany, I had nothing to show for my years away, nothing in me had any substance; Rosie would quickly see this.

But I had already phoned her. ‘I have been waiting to hear your voice,' she said. We spoke for an hour, easy and intimate, and she agreed to come. She was on her way.

—
Rosie stayed with me in Germany less than five weeks.

I met her in Berlin and wore new cords and a heavy brown coat to the knees. The cheap trousers, old shirt and boots were out of the question. I had also shaved.

As Rosie entered the terminal I saw she had on just a thin cardigan. Didn't she know it was winter in Europe? It irritated me – her provincialism. I immediately put my new coat onto her shoulders. After buying some gloves we took a walk in the Tiergarten.

We hadn't seen each other for – I had lost count. Rosie was thirty-two. She still lived in the same apartment on Macleay Street. Why hadn't she married? (Maybe she had.) How would we go on speaking again? Above all – I remembered – back in Sydney her easy acceptance of everything that came towards her. In that sense a modern woman. Over the five or six years her face had become more complex. And larger hips – pensive voluptuous woman. I hired a little car. Taking our time we drove from one place to another, Leipzig, Freiberg and the inevitable hotel over a water-wheel.

Rosie wasn't interested in museums. Cathedrals she had to be dragged into. The castles on the Rhine left her absolutely cold. Instead of tramping the cities she preferred the towns and hamlets, as they are called, and in our overheated rooms she lay on the bed or sofa offering her raised hip, reading, sometimes topless. I noticed her looking at me. I had forgotten how little Rosie spoke. And now in Germany she seemed to speak even less.

I had the feeling Rosie was on the verge of telling me something. She seemed to be measuring my reactions.

She believed we had all the time in the world.

Of the eleven notebooks, nine of them I threw away at Bureten. Before I had second thoughts I chucked the rest.

They say the philosopher must set an example, if only to himself.

I started a new notebook.

Isn't it a matter of putting both hands over the eyes, then after a while removing them?

—
It was near to – hardly matters where – within earshot of another river – early afternoon. Rosie was driving. A mass of blackness flowed out from the floor of the forest, and within the branches and leaves too, and the river was black or at least very dark, I'll always remember that. The road was about the same width as the river, and a similar glossy blackness, which gave the appearance of a river drained of water alongside the real river. The clouds and sky itself were dark. It was about to snow. A hare ran across the road. With my rural background I could explain to Rosie the difference between it and the common rabbit.

Rosie and I had settled into an easy intimacy. From the first day in Berlin we slept together. Now as she drove I removed my hand from between her legs and pointed to the restaurant. It had a glassed-in terrace jutting over the river. In the midst of darkness the glaring white of the tablecloths had caught my eye.

Because Rosie was happy, I felt happier – by that I mean, carefree.

The temptation is to think and write vaguely, anything to avoid the difficulty of precision.

Although we were warm enough, I ordered cognacs.

Thought can only exist parallel to nature.

‘I think I shall have,' she put on a
la di da
voice, ‘some river fish.'

When she felt like it Rosie could be funny. Now she had a relaxed bright-eyed look.

Except for an elderly couple further along, the rest of the tables were empty. Light snow began floating down. There we were, in the warm restaurant, looking through the window at it.

‘Have a gander at the waiter's ears, how big they are.'

Rosie turned. The waiter also had small eyes.

‘I'm sure I've seen him in a film somewhere.' She frowned for a second, then shrugged.

As I looked at her, I smiled.

For no apparent reason she said, ‘I feel completely safe here.'

It was another way of expressing contentment.

‘And it might amaze you to know, since you think you know everything, that I'm mad about all this snow. You don't believe me?'

‘The first time I saw you was on the roof in a bikini, covered in suntan oil. It's not a sight I'd forget in a hurry.'

‘Thank you very much.'

It was that sort of conversation.

After the bottle of Moselle we selected pastries. I ordered a cognac, then another. At this point, Rosie who had been talking freely became pensive. The snow continued to fill in the hollows on the other side of the river. When considering the cold regions of the earth I wonder what we are doing there. How we manage to survive. The importance in the harsh environment of the family – ‘the family-unit,' I said aloud.

‘You must admit it's pretty nice here.'

‘Why “must admit”?' she asked.

I'd thrown out the old notebooks with their dodgy propositions and dependence on other thinkers. Because I was beginning anew I felt fresh. I was keen. Rosie was with me. And the snow had transformed the river scene outside into one found on picture postcards.

It was then that I decided to say I was thinking of returning to Australia within weeks, and not taking my eyes off her asked if she would join me on the property.

‘I've only just arrived!'

This was Rosie avoiding commitment by being light-hearted. If I waited she would do a switch into seriousness.

‘What would I do all day? The answer is yes.'

Returning to the car she spoke in a way I had not heard before. ‘I was expecting you to write to me when you left Sydney. I don't know why you didn't. All I knew was that you were in London. Is that a big city, or is that a big city? I didn't know what to do. I had to get in touch, which I did through Lindsey. I introduced myself. I like your sister. Anyway, I received – finally – a card. It had a London policeman on the front.'

She reversed out onto the road.

‘You just seemed to bolt. I couldn't understand, I still don't. It was as if you wanted to forget our situation. Remember how we were? You once told me the word “natural” is not possible. I thought we were natural together.'

The dark road followed the river. I just put my hand between her legs, where I knew it was as dark and alive as the river.

‘I can well understand you wanting to shoot through from the ghastly Mrs What's-her-face – the Kentridge woman. There's a terrible piece of work. But it's not as if I'm a tarantula or anything.'

I remember thinking that a life consists of curiosities satisfied. Also that complexities increase when things are obscured.

Rosie kept talking, ‘You should know. I became pregnant, it was yours. If I'd managed to get you, what would you have done? There's a philosophical question for you! I was left to make the decision alone. I would have made it anyway. But it was sad. It's made me sad. I don't really know why I did it.'