The Emperor Waltz - Philip Hensher

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Felix could hardly bear the prospect of it.

      ‘I am so happy to have you here,’ Frau Scherbatsky said to Christian, as he was going upstairs. Her face was warm and beaming; underneath her blonde helmet of hair, she shone. ‘It is so good to have a young person in the house again. I do hope you will be happy here.’

      ‘I think I shall be, Frau Scherbatsky,’ Christian said. ‘I am very comfortable in my room – I feel very grateful.’

      ‘Oh, I am so pleased,’ Frau Scherbatsky said. In the drawing room, the men were discussing affairs of state; a conversation that had been an energetic exchange of views was turning into a manly argument. ‘You mustn’t –’ she said, lowering her voice and placing her hand on the forearm of Christian’s Norfolk jacket ‘– you mustn’t mind Herr Wolff too much. I know he seems very serious and angry about things.’

      ‘He seems …’ Christian thought. He prided himself on finding the right word, when it was required. ‘He seems very – decided.’

      ‘Very decided,’ Frau Scherbatsky said. ‘Yes, indeed. He is. But, please, I do hope you will find some patience with him. It has been so hard for so many people of our generation. You must have seen it in Berlin, but I know that young people can find it difficult to understand, to be patient. You see, Herr Vogt, it has been so difficult to realize what, all this time, has been working to destroy our lives. We were so naïve, all of us, and we only understood now that it is only other Germans whom we can really trust. You see, Herr Vogt,’ she went on confidingly, ‘we let the Jews go on living among us. We had no idea. They destroyed us, and humiliated us, and are now destroying our money. And Herr Wolff understands this. Does he not have a right to be angry? I would just ask you, please, Herr Vogt, you are an understanding, a kind person, I can see, just to be patient and to listen to Herr Wolff, even when he grows – how can I put it? – loud.’

      Christian bowed; he had not expected Frau Scherbatsky to say any of this. The voices in the drawing room were, indeed, growing loud. He flushed, and turned, and with brisk steps went upstairs. There were Jews living underneath his father in Charlottenburg; every day his father greeted Frau Rosenthal with a raise of his hat and a smile; Arnold Rosenthal, the elder of the two boys, had been three years older than Christian, had served bravely in the war, had returned unscathed. He was not working against anyone. He had fought for the Kaiser. Christian bowed at the turn of the stairs again, as Frau Scherbatsky beamed, her eyes following him upstairs sentimentally, as she perhaps thought of one of her dead sons. Tomorrow, Christian thought, he would take steps to find somewhere else to live. The arrangements were that he would live here for three months. However, he would move tomorrow. He said this to himself, but he already knew he would not, not because he disagreed with something his landlady had said. He already despised himself for his own cowardice. He already knew that that was the easiest path for the mind to take.

      On Monday Christian went to the Bauhaus for the first time. In the evening he came home. He went upstairs in Frau Scherbatsky’s house, leaving his hat on the pale oak hatstand in the hall, greeting Herr Neddermeyer shortly. In his room, he took out the laid writing paper and his pen, sitting at the desk. He filled the pen with ink. He began to write. ‘Dearest Dolphus,’ he wrote. ‘I must write to you. Today, at 9.15, in the city of Weimar, I saw a girl whose name is Adele Winteregger. My life begins.’

BOOK 2

      There was an unusual group of people approaching the lounge from the other side of the glass wall and the door that opened into it. The waiting area by the gate was full, and had been for some time. The largely Sicilian crowd had been fanning themselves – the air-conditioning at the airport in Catania was proving inadequate, even in early June. They had been getting up to remonstrate with the employees of the airline company about the lack of information, the heat, the delay of the aircraft. Voices had been raised; hands had gestured; fury had been apparently entered upon before the Sicilian storm of complaint quickly blew itself out and the complainer went back to his seat with every air of contentment. The men above a certain age were in blue shirts and pale brown trousers; the women, some of whom were even in widows’ black, fanned themselves. The sexes sat apart. Now an unexpected and interesting group of people was approaching from the other side of the glass wall, and the attention of the lounge was drawn to it.

      At the centre there was a tall, blond, distinguished-looking man with a large nose and a large-boned face. There was something donkey-like about his features and their big teeth; he looked Scandinavian, perhaps Danish. He wore a neatly pressed white short-sleeved shirt with a dark blue tie and a pair of crisp blue trousers; and his neat turn-out was a surprise, because he was blind. In one hand he held a white cane, folded up and, for the moment, unused. About him were six men. They were Sicilians, perhaps employees of the airport; dark, serious-looking and short. Two held him by either arm, guiding him briskly; another held a piece of cabin baggage, evidently the passenger’s; another, the youngest, walked behind him, giving him an occasional push, perhaps to show what he could do, given the chance. The two remaining walked in front of the blind man; the more distinguished, who seemed to be in charge of the whole operation, was talking to him as they went, the other occupied himself by walking alongside the chief as if ready to take notes. But that was not this last one’s only occupation. He held, it could be seen, the passenger’s passport and his boarding card.

      The lounge watched, fascinated. The group came to the other side of the glass wall of the lounge. The blind man was handed his cabin luggage and, by the chief’s right-hand man, the passport and boarding card. His hand was shaken by all six men. They looked for guidance to the chief, who briskly shook down his jacket as if he had passed through detritus, and walked away. The lounge watched the blind man as he waved the folded-up white stick, and it went in a moment into its full length. He had been left by the group on the other side of the glass wall, about four metres from the open glass door. The blind Scandinavian waved in the direction of the wall, but it was solid. He waved to one side, then to the other. Like a blond insect, he went to his left, to his right, not finding the opening, patiently feeling, then less patiently, then tapping with rich fury, his head turning round and calling to people who were no longer there. The lounge watched with sincere interest. They had wanted to know what would happen if a blind man were deposited before a glass wall and told to find his way to the one door through it. Perhaps the guiding party had wondered this too – but, no, they had not waited to watch the consequences.

      Duncan watched, too, but with less open amusement. His book, a novel by Andrew Holleran that he had read before, rested in his lap. He thought in a moment he would get up and ask the woman at the desk at the entrance to help the blind passenger through. At the moment she was sitting on her swivel stool, smoking, not paying any attention to that passenger or any other. Duncan was used to Sicilians and their cruelty, the way that dogs would be kicked and chained. In restaurants, he had seen parents pinching the noses of their small children when they refused good food, tipping their heads back forcibly and ladling the milk pudding down their little throats and over their faces. He had watched a carabiniero, a lucky pick-up, sit naked at his kitchen table at the little borrowed flat off the via Merulana, take a breakfast knife to the torso of a wasp that was absorbedly feeding on the edge of a dish of plum jam, and sever the wasp in two. He no longer felt the need to intervene when the savagery or inattention of Sicilians resulted in anyone being hurt. The only time he had intervened, after eight months on the island, was when two Sicilians new to each other started discussing, in his company, the tragedy of Sicily and its national character. That he couldn’t bear: it ruined an evening like a solitary drunkard in company. So he watched the battering of the blind Scandinavian on the other side of the glass wall with mild interest, like everyone else. In time he would discover where the door was.

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