Sophie and the Sibyl (6 page)

Wolfgang fingered his first editions of her works, which were all still conspicuously displayed on green velvet, in anticipation of her last visit.

‘And Max –’

His brother had risen to go, disguising the guilty sweat on his palms. He stiffened, expecting another onslaught.

‘If I find out that you have so much as touched a card or rested an elbow on the black and red squares in the Kursaal I shall halve your allowance, confine you to the country house, whatever the weather, and write to the Countess von Hahn giving her the honest reasons for my decisions. Is that clear?’

Max went white. The twelve years between the brothers suddenly expanded into thirty, and he faced the balding patriarch his father had once been, stuttering explanations as to what he had done with the eggs. In the Duncker household there was a daily accounting. And it did not do to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.

When Max arrived in the not quite fashionable portion of the street where the Leweses had taken lodgings the couple were not at home. The housekeeper explained that they walked every afternoon in the parks and woods. She then added that the sure signs of their homecoming, clods of mud and leaves, littered her staircase every day. The town streets appeared quite dry, even the horse shit crumbled in the gutters, leaving the crossing sweepers with very little work to do. But the Leweses avoided the crowded promenade, headed off past the bandstand and plucked their way through brambles and woodland to the river. They even visited the outlying villages and returned bearing sprigs of late-flowering briar roses, all thorns and no scent, with which they decorated their rooms above. Max and the ruddy housekeeper inspected her freshly swept wooden staircase like a pair of private detectives, and concluded that Mr. and Mrs. Lewes were still at large. Max wrote his hotel address, the Grand Continental, exceedingly fashionable and littered with English tourists, on the back of his card and placed it carefully in the pottery bowl on a dresser in the hallway. He flicked through the other cards left by Lady Castletown, Mrs. Wingfield, and a folded message from a painter called Hans Meyrick. Could it be the same man he had met in the Neues Museum in Berlin, picked out by Wolfgang as a possible illustrator? He had discovered Meyrick carefully reproducing the statues of classical antiquity in a giant sketchbook; a jolly good fellow, according to his friends, often to be found in Hettie’s Keller, and up for a laugh. Max unfolded the note and attempted to decipher the script, but gave up when the housekeeper peered suspiciously over his shoulder.

‘Tell Mr. and Mrs. Lewes that I will call again tomorrow.’ He strolled away down the steps and mingled with the passing crowds.

September turned out to be a popular month for the English in Homburg. The Casino overflowed in the warm nights; the throng in the Assembly Rooms crowded the dancers. Max paused in a quiet square before the Synagogue and watched the men and women separating at the entrance. He determined to resist the
Kursaal
and its gaming tables, for Wolfgang never delivered empty threats, but he now found himself at a loss, not hungry enough for supper and very bored. The hotel dining room gaped like an abyss, packed with vague acquaintances whose names he could not accurately remember, and aged military types, armed with manuscript memoirs, anxious to be as successfully published and as extensively discussed in the press as the now notorious Count von Hahn. Duncker und Duncker dealt in the very latest celebrities. Max decided that he had pandered long enough to the rich and famous.

He consulted his small guide to the spa, borrowed from his brother. The rudimentary map only showed the main sights: Thermal Baths, Konditorei, Gymnasium, Kursaal, Lawn Tennis, Theatre, Assembly Rooms, Royal Schloss with Gardens and Fountains, Churches (various), Synagogue, Concert Hall, Grand Continental Hotel, Pension (various), Parks, Open-air Bandstand, Freilichtbühne, Belvedere. He passed the street sellers hawking flowers, apples, plums in sugar, and the very first brazier, roasting nuts, that he had seen that autumn, all gathered round the market entrance. Even the smaller hotels bulged with visitors. He heard children playing on the swings, beyond the high brick wall of Frau Heide’s Very Superior Pension. Should I go this way? Or this way? He halted at a crossroads and watched an empty cart lurching slowly over the cobbles and onward beneath the yellowing trees.

Dusk had settled on the little town as Max coasted carefully into the darker eddies, where carriages passed infrequently and gentlemen walking alone were honoured and anticipated. Even in the rural suburbs, remote from the main baths, the streets gleamed clean, the dust damped down and recently swept. Max began to doubt his informant’s directions. He lit a match and consulted a handwritten address: Königgasse 8. Be assured of a royal welcome! Yes, here it is – the knocker on the door is a snarling lion, beautifully polished, and shining in the gloaming. Courage, comrades, joy awaits us! Max felt an erection rising against the buttons of his slightly-too-tight trousers.

The opening door revealed a huge expectant smile, and the warm smell of a female body, recently perfumed, gusted into his face. She barricaded the doorway, large, big-breasted, her teeth even and clean. Her arse blotted out the light. He brushed against her as he entered.

‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle.’ Max set the tone and bowed low.

She giggled.

‘Come in, sir, come in.’

The first rendezvous of the evening, but the fizzing Sekt was a little too warm and the rooms, in heavy patterned red silk, close and airless. The
Hausmutter
accepted his cluster of coins with a cordial nod and waddled away into her private chamber to count them. The overflowing bosom that had welcomed him into the bower of bliss oozed against his shoulder. She smelt of musk.

‘My sister would like to dance for you. Shall I call her in?’

I’ll have to pay off the dancer too, Max calculated, wondering what he would say if Wolfgang forced him to account for every last thaler.

‘Perhaps we could get to know each other better first?’ he suggested, chivalric even in a situation where the imminent transaction was utterly clear, the price already named and paid.

But the maiden presented little information beyond the fact that she had grown up in the country, loved her mother’s farm and sent money home every week. Her mother believed that she was still in service at one of the big houses in Homburg; unfortunately she was obliged to quit her favourable situation, when her figure, seen to advantage while she was bending over a grate, attracted her master’s unwelcome attentions. She explained the regrettable incident with great good cheer, from which Max deduced that she earned more as a prostitute than she had done as a housemaid, and had better working conditions.

The lady looked anxiously at the clock under its glass dome on the dresser and Max suspected that the second engagement might even now be approaching. The tariff rose alarmingly after the first hour. He gulped down his draught of warm bubbles and followed her into a dark closet. The bed was covered in russet shawls, the blinds drawn, the shutters closed. The air felt thrice breathed. He stumbled over a row of little boots. The girl’s white thighs gleamed in the obscurity as she raised her skirts. Max gently lowered them again, patting her cheek. He decided not to take the risk of venturing into unknown canyons and gorges, only to find that many nations had already planted their flags. Instead, he settled himself on her mattress and deliberately undid the buttons of his trousers. She tucked her breasts between his thighs as she knelt before him. The bed shuddered a little as she began to suck and push, kneading his stomach like a hungry cat. But they lurched off together, rocking in rhythm, a brave little ship leaving harbour and catching the first wind.

Max felt the wonderful moment of approaching darkness as the lady’s lips sucked his penis into a priapic arch. The delightful explosion ended in salvage, as the maiden expertly fielded every drop upon her handkerchief. Through his muttered groans Max heard her praising his Tremendous Engine, its magnitude and voracity; flattering practised phrases, which, nevertheless, were pleasing to hear. He kissed her forehead, and bending to undo the ribbons on her bodice, released both breasts into the fetid air. They swayed before him, gigantic and comfortable. Lying back upon the russet shawls he sucked both nipples into pyramids, resisting the temptation to forage further beneath her skirts and incur more substantial expense. He had spent all he could afford for one evening. But he felt neither guilt nor regret. During his unsteady progress in darkness, back along the unfamiliar streets, Max felt well disposed towards all mankind and a little in love with his farmer’s daughter, whom he determined to visit again, as soon as his business with the Sibyl and her dancing whiskered husband should be concluded.

But on the following morning, when he presented himself on their doorstep, he encountered Mr. and Mrs. Lewes dressed and ready to go out. Mrs. Lewes dipped her head and he found himself bowing to an enormous green bonnet trimmed with a deep red frill. The green shawl draped over her shoulders slipped a little and was immediately rescued and straightened by Lewes, who began gabbling cheerfully.

‘Ah Max! We’re on our way to your hotel to winkle you out. D’you know Meyrick? The painter? He’s offered to conduct us round his studio. Wants to paint Polly of course, but we’ll look at what he does first before we agree to anything.’

Max lifted his hat and stood aside, making polite noises of assent, and offering his arm to the Sibyl as she descended the steps like a recently awakened deity. He caught a glimpse of the slight wolfish smile as she peered cautiously up into his face. And so the little party set off through the still uncrowded streets, the dark-suited gentlemen on either side, the Sibyl cruising gently between them. The chilly air smelt of bonfires and dead leaves. Autumn now freshened the wet pavements and the street vendors seemed slower to animate their baskets and carts. The spa dozed in the early day.

Lewes chatted energetically, leaning across to Max, breaking off to greet the odd acquaintance, everyone bowed to the couple as if they were passing royalty, who had mysteriously mislaid their carriage. The Sibyl murmured the odd comment in German, but otherwise concentrated on picking her way over the cobbles as they descended into the old town and the narrow, secluded streets.

‘You must excuse me, Max,’ she whispered, when they arrived at the painter’s door. ‘I am suffering from an appalling attack of neuralgia, which came upon me in the night. But I am anxious to visit Mr. Meyrick. He has been so warmly recommended to us. Ah, we have found him at last.’

Am Mühlweg 17 towered above them, an immense wooden house. Pale, late roses mingled with Michaelmas daisies surrounded a veranda covered in dead leaves. A child eating an apple opened the door and pointed to an endless staircase lit from above by a dusty roof-light. Meyrick himself came bounding down two flights to greet them; Max and Lewes adjusted the speed of their climb to allow for the Sibyl’s toothache.

The painter leaped to and fro like an excited dog, his face encircled with very long ginger curls, but he was freshly shaven and clearly wearing his cleanest shirt. Max recognised him at once as the man working in charcoal before the blank-eyed figures of goddesses and gladiators in the winter halls of the Neues Museum.

‘We met in Berlin,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘I am the brother of Mrs. Lewes’s publisher.’

But Meyrick, clearly desperate to impress the visiting celebrities and secure his commission, merely nodded, bowed and welcomed him into the draughty atelier, then flung himself into captivating the silent Sibyl, whose prophecies and pronouncements remained suspended. The studio smelt of turpentine, mixed paints, linseed oil and burned vegetables. Meyrick clearly lived where he worked. An assortment of cooking pots littered the brick hearth surrounding a small black stove, apparently the only heating in the huge cavernous space. Coals glowed through a round gap in the lid and the hob chuffed gently like a stationary steam engine. Vast northern windows welcomed the autumn light. Unfinished canvases turned their faces to the wall, so that all they could see were the rough sketches and the brown mesh of the reverse sides. Meyrick led them straight to his easel where he had prepared a sofa, covered with a glaring white linen sheet, ready for Mrs. Lewes, who subsided thankfully, her skirts compressing like an expiring bellows.

‘I prefer grand historical subjects,’ declared the painter, ‘but created in the spirit of that stern realism so admired by your English artistic brotherhood. Yet I also treasure that affecting tenderness that I fancy best illustrates my own style. Here is the last in a series of four:
Berenice Weeping in the Ruins of Jerusalem
.’

The painting revealed a beautiful young woman, her rich clothes ripped and torn, her feet bare, her gaze vacant and empty, the lovely breasts partially exposed. All around her lay a great city destroyed; the temple toppled and the roofs aflame. The eerie atmosphere surrounding the abandoned grieving woman gained in intensity from the fact that the city appeared to be entirely uninhabited. No other figure haunted the picture. Jerusalem, in Meyrick’s vision, resembled ancient Rome, rather than an Eastern walled fortress, which, Max suspected, would have been nearer the mark. But the detail was extraordinary, crisp and sharpened like a photograph, each fallen brick and splintered column painted with a meticulous attention to shadow and weight. The city’s calamitous destruction could have been caused by an earthquake, or any other act of God, as the victors were nowhere visible, nor were the bodies of the slain. Berenice herself appeared to be both agent and victim of the absolute ruin that surrounded her. Max thought he recognised the model, but could not be certain. The maiden in the painting was a dark-eyed beauty, representing the Jewish princess, whose tragic story now ended in catastrophe.