Old Acquaintance (15 page)

UNNE
had been going off on errands of her own recently but Lotte, who was responsible to her parents, was perturbed when she went to look in the morning and found her already up and gone.

Miss Campendonck would know all about that, of course. Miss Campendonck made a specialty of knowing more than was good for her. But for once Miss Campendonck said nothing.

A promise is a promise, so Lotte rang through to Charlie’s
room. Besides, Saturday is the first day off of the poor; even if we are rich, we can never quite forget that unequal systole diastole of the week. We still expect a joyous lowering of the pressure on Saturdays. We have to rest our heart.

“Wonderful,” said Charlie, though he sounded full of anything but wonder. “Say at eleven o’clock? It’s only an hour’s drive.”

That would do her very well. An hour and a half would be time to get ready, and for some reason she felt like looking her best today. Feeling in the dark, she wished to dazzle.

Charlie turned up on time. “I can’t find him,” he said. “Why don’t we go, anyway?”

They both looked what they were, she saw by her mirror, perfectly groomed, but workhorses just the same. This little outing suddenly appealed to her less. It was too much like the costermonger’s annual treat.

“I suppose we could wait half an hour,” said Charlie.

“No.” Having dressed, she wanted to get on with it. “Let’s go now.” Her mind was bothered by the image of Unne’s unmade bed.

On the way, they passed that spot on the Moselle where they had seen more than was good for them. It looked a placid scene, but the rowboat was gone. Then they headed north, past a pine wood, young pine, with the new growth sticking up from the ends of the branches like turkey claws, severed and boiled. In the Russian fairy tale it is Baba yaga who has the witch’s hut on chicken-claw stilts, which wise children do not enter. And in British Guiana, a folk singer called Cy Grant had once told her,
Bougu
ya
ya
meant a person who looks all right, but he just won’t do.

“
Bougu
ya
ya
,” she said, glad to be away from them all.

Charlie said nothing. But as he sometimes did, in their relations, he gave her a sideways, trusting and personal look before his mask went back on.

Oh dear, she thought. We’re both annoyed. And it is such a nice day, too.

Actually, it was an alternating day. The sun came out and bathed the world in jewels. And then, diamond cut diamond, a cloud came by.

‘It’s Constantine’s City, Trier,” said Charlie. “I prefer the dead to the living, don’t you?”

She could not say she did, but she let him talk. Talking was good for him.

“Who wouldn’t? They have more vitality than we do. They have much better manners. They are even sometimes kind. And besides, they do not mind being known. It is all over with them, you see. It makes no difference. Whereas the living have such a horror of being known. Don’t you agree?”

“Oh, yes, I agree.” It was always best to agree with Charlie, if only because he seldom believed what he was saying. He turned on the radio and got one of her records. They both laughed, and then he changed the station.

Turning right, they faced the bridge over the Moselle. To the north were the ruins of another bridge, bombed during the war. Their bridge had the black precision of something built with a Meccano set. The town lay beyond, with its twin cathedral towers naked in red brick, and its concealed bustle.

Neither one of them wanted to go into Trier really, but they had to go somewhere.

We are going back into Germany, Lotte thought. It is hostile territory. And yet it was just the tail end of the Saar. It had a Frankish feel to it. It would be safe enough.

They crossed the bridge, over the docile river. The day had begun as a picnic. It was turning into a sight-seeing tour. That’s what you do, if you have nothing else to do: you see sights. If you do the Romans first, there is not much in Trier to see, except for the town gate, and that Charlie was saving until lunch.

Charlie wished the day to pass agreeably. Therefore he felt tense. We can do no better than the best we can, and have to screw ourselves up to achieve even that. It is a great shame that our abilities should also be our limitations. He had had the hotel pack a wicker hamper, but the trouble with “delicious continental cuisine” is that it lacks flavor, the wax paper contains too much wax, and the contents of the “choice wine cellar” turn out not to carry from the basement up to the dining room, let alone out into the open country beyond. For a picnic one wants a boiled egg, not a stuffed egg that runs, and the jellied chicken turns out to be mostly mummy gum. What was needed was either a garbage pail or an indiscriminate swan. What was really needed was a length of salami, French bread, and a bottle of Chianti from a local shop. But they were too far north for that. The picnic hamper rocked neglected in the back seat, as though someone had abandoned a baby.

It must be said that for the erstwhile capital of the Roman Empire, Trier had remarkably little to show above ground. When the Empire became Holy, the results had been more nearly enduring, but that they would save for the afternoon. At the moment they stumbled among the nettles of the Termae, which looked like nothing so much as a hill built by moles with a taste for lining their burrows with brick. This sort of thing exists mainly to justify the existence of Fullbright students. No doubt the place had great historic interest, that being the phrase for something old but uninteresting. But it did not amuse.

Lotte twisted her ankle.

“If we have to go to the open country, couldn’t we go somewhere where there are fewer gopher holes?”

“What do you mean gopher, the Emperor Constantine dug that hole. Of course you may be right, even so. Whether
he had shovel teeth remains a moot point. In the statues his mouth is closed.”

“Charlie, sometimes I think you’d try to talk down the common hangman.”

“Well, first one begs for more time, and then one wonders how to pass it,” said Charlie. “When we were young, we were serious. Now we’re comical. It’s our last line of defense.”

“Defense against what?”

“I don’t know. Inevitability. It’s either that or go on a pilgrimage to the horse-knacker’s yard. Though I must say one gets tired of living the same joke, day after day. That’s too much like nagging.”

Lotte sat on her stone and meditated upon the nature of the albatross. “What’s wrong, Charlie,”

He turned to watch, not the view, but a group of German tourists with white legs and explicit shorts. Charlie had nothing against his fellow citizens, but he hated white flesh. Usually, when the short-wearing season was upon him, he was well on his way south. In southern California everybody had been brown, he remembered. It had been almost enough to make him dash to become a citizen. Whatever else you may say about Americans, at least about the Americans Charlie had met, at least they didn’t have white flesh. The Russians do. Like Gide, Charlie had had his own reasons for parting company with the Noble Experiment.

He wanted her help, if she could help.

“I need a Paul,” he said. “I can’t help it. And I get tired of looking around for a new one every year. Even though as soon as I get one, it turns out he isn’t there, so one begins the search again at once. If you see what I mean.”

There was no answer to that. She saw what he meant. “Charlie …”

“What?”

“I’m very fond of you, Charlie.”

He smiled. “That means I’ve begun to bore you. Very well. Let’s go have lunch.”

The Termae were harder to get out of than they had been to get in to. All the path led to was barbed wire.

“Gives you that old concentration camp feeling, doesn’t it?” said Charlie, testing the wires with his hands. “You see that tower over there? That’s lunch.”

When finally they found their way out, the car was so hot to the touch that they had to climb over the doors instead of opening them. The metal trim smelled of new-mown grass.

*

The great black gate of Trier had always been kept up, no doubt because the Christians had had a use for it. Now the Christians were gone, at any rate from their points of vigilance, the antiquarians had taken over. We are very proud of the Porta Negra. It is our trademark. It brings the tourists in.

It was pocked by incessant war. No doubt an expert in ballistics could have reconstructed a history of artillery from its holes. Though removing monastic accretions as impure, the antiquarians had at the same time constructed a monastic cloister to the left of the gate, for use as a Rathaus, exhibition hall, and restaurant. They had lunch there, in the courtyard of what would have been the cloisters had there been any monks. It was undoubtedly the smartest place in the town.

Lunch was not a success, despite a high clear sky, with scudding clouds. Every time the conversation started up, a shadow rippled across the table, like a manta, hunting. The clouds were getting ready to pounce.

“Afterwards I want to see the Residenz,” Charlie said, holding back the silence, like a comedian holding the door against the Abominable Snowman, who may or may not exist but nonetheless, he’s here. “There was an Elector at Trier you know. He took himself seriously. Fortunately he never had enough money to build something really big, so they say it’s
a gem.” He looked at her helplessly. “It has large cast-iron gates.”

She had been somewhere else. “Gates?” she said.

“Of cast iron.”

“Who are all these people anyhow?” She looked around her.

“Supporting players,” said Charlie. “You’re on now. Take it again from ‘cast-iron gates.’”

She gave him one of her better smiles. “Is it really worth seeing, Charlie?”

“Anything that’s there is worth seeing, unless you really want to dawdle over that interglacial slush they call mocha ice cream.”

“It isn’t very good, is it?”

“I can only say it is their best,” said Charlie, “and draw a discreet veil over it. Or possibly, since we seem to be short of discreet veils, a paper napkin will do.” He crumpled his napkin over her dish. “Come on. Let’s go.”

They went.

“We are traveling,” he told her. “We are fellow travelers. It’s a one-way route. It must hurt them a lot to bring the empties back for more. Think of the overhead.”

There was a screech, and a hefty yellow shadow veered across them, like a pterodactyl on a string.

“Are you still there?”

Lotte didn’t answer.

“For your information, I would like to inform you that I have just missed a tram. Rather, to be accurate, that the tram has just missed me. It was a yellow tram. I have cheated
them
.”

“Very well, who are them?”

“They,” said Charlie. “If you have looked at newspaper photographs carefully, you will have noted that the spectators at any accident are always the same spectators. They were once in fatal accidents, and they are lonely. Memorize
their faces. Next time you see them, jump out of the car and run like hell. They want you to join them. They were first discovered by Ray Bradbury, a science-fiction writer. What he does when he sees
them
I have no idea. Perhaps he lets his wife drive. The suburbs are nicer, aren’t they? There is a bronze statue of one of the Bishop Electors in the Dom. He is shown as a skeleton, getting out of his coffin, with his miter on. He may have forgotten his skin, but he hasn’t forgotten his miter. It’s in all the guidebooks. I think we will leave it there. Instead we are driving to the perfect country house. Our friend, the Prince Bishop, or the Bishop Elector, or the Cardinal Bishop, or whatever he is, is having something new for tea. The latest importation from the
Abendlandes.
What is it?”

“
Petits-fours.
”

“I think not. Try again.”

“Corsets. Was he fat?”

“Padding merely. He was too lean. No, it is a centerpiece, I think. The Battle of Fontenoy, in ice, superimposed on a model of Alsace Lorraine. Or am I too far to the north? Should it be the Saar? ‘
Lebensraum
,’ shouts the Cardinal Bishop. We did agree he was a Cardinal Bishop, didn’t we?”

“Erroneously, but it will do,” said Lotte. “Unfortunately the melting ice provides a surface, the model accelerates down the table, at a playful push from the Cardinal B., skidding wildly past three proud prelates, the Prince Palatine, and a great-grandson of Axel Oxenstierna, smack into the lap of …”

“Léon Blum,” said Charlie.

“My God, why?”

“I don’t know. I always liked his face. And nobody ever does mention him any more. French politicians go out of date as fast as movie stars. Although, come to think of it, they come back sooner.”

“Is it an international incident?”

“Well, you know what the French are like. We’re there. Put on some lipstick. The Cardinal Bishop can’t stand a woman who doesn’t paint.”

“Haven’t you got that wrong?”

“No, he has.”

Before them loomed two ceremonial gateposts, a string of ornamental fence between high shrubs, and a well-kept look about everything, but no gates. Charlie rather grandly did a
toot-toot-toot
on the horn and swerved the car into what should have been the state drive.

It petered out into weeds.

As for the Residenz, it wasn’t there. It must have gotten bombed in the war. There was just a chicken sprinkle of gravel, dead grasses, some weeds, some stairs going nowhere, nothing else, except the silence.

“It isn’t there,” said Lotte. They had been trying too hard to laugh. She couldn’t help it. She began to cry.

Charlie froze.

“Oh, leave me alone,” said Lotte, “what help are you, anyway?” got out of the car, slammed the door on him, and ran into the ruined garden, narrowly avoiding the cavity which now stood there as the socket of the extracted house.

“Hey, look out,” shouted Charlie.

She swerved into the shrubbery. Her age disappeared when she moved. From the back, she looked like a badly frightened girl. He couldn’t help noticing that the reason she always sauntered in public was that she had a badly balanced run.