The Emperor Waltz (70 page)
Authors: Philip Hensher
Christian left the room. There were things in his wife’s conversation that made him shudder: the expression ‘that reminds me’ strangely enough, and the use of the word ‘Baby’ as if it were somebody’s name. He remembered Frau Steuer: had she caught the usage from Adele, or had Adele picked it up from Frau Steuer or from somebody like her? He knew that Baby, when it arrived, would be exactly like Adele, neat and disapproving, and would gaze at him with contempt. She had measured him up, and had concluded that she was marrying the son of a rich Berlin lawyer, and had found only after the wedding that she was marrying a master in a school. The poor little nameless thing, too, had not asked to be born to such a pair. If only he had some money, but the pair of them had none, and Elsa had only the money from the Bauhaus. If he had money, he would be able to rent a flat in which he could get away from his wife.
‘We thought it would be patriotic, as well as interesting,’ Frau Steuer’s voice came from the salon. ‘A trip around this beautiful country of ours! And Franz has been to so little of it, I discover.’
‘Things are so much better in Germany, now!’ Adele’s voice could be heard saying. ‘I know not everyone agrees but, still, it is almost pleasant to hear from Christian’s brother in London that troubles are visiting somewhere else, for a change. Now in Germany …’
Christian knocked gently at the door of Elsa’s room, and pushed. Behind it there was a pile of clothes of some sort, and it opened slowly, reluctantly. She was lying on the bed, with one shoe kicked off.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, without raising her head. ‘What is it? Are they going out?’
‘Didn’t they mention it?’ Christian said. ‘Frau Steuer is inviting us all to dinner at the Hotel Gansevoort. I bought some pigs’ liver, but it is hardly enough for five. I wish they had warned us they were coming.’
‘I had such a beautiful day,’ Elsa said. ‘Here is Frau Steuer! I don’t know why she wants to marry Papa. I would not.’
‘Hush,’ Christian said, closing the door behind him. ‘Why was your day beautiful?’
‘I finished my teapot,’ Elsa said. ‘My beautiful silver teapot. They would not let me have silver for it at first, but then they did! The Master of the metals looked at it, and he said I should not have used silver, but I did, and there it is.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In my cupboard, in the workshop,’ Elsa said, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her hands behind her head. ‘I am never going to let it go. It is just worth too much to me. It is the best thing I ever made.’
‘I think they will want to go before too much longer,’ Christian said. On the bedside table was Elsa’s bag, a set of keys and a stub of pencil, much sharpened. There was also an empty orange-and-blue cup with the remains of coffee in it. He looked with concern and interest at Elsa’s long brown skirt, full of stains; he wondered what she had to change into for the Hotel Gansevoort.
Today was a very good day. On the bed, neatly made by Adele, propped against the bolster, lay an unopened letter. Elsa must have brought it up. It was from Dolphus, from London. Dolphus was a good correspondent; but still sometimes weeks went by without a letter from him, then five or six at once. He hesitated for a moment, then opened it, using his finger as a paper knife. He sat down on the edge of the bed, nudging the empty cradle out of the way, and began to read.
63 Tregunter Road
Dear Christian,
As you can see, I have as threatened moved lodgings! My previous lodgings grew too inconvenient for me. So I packed up my bags and moved to a boarding house here, in Tregunter Road, which is in Fulham. The district has known better times, but it is very convenient for my studies. If I am feeling energetic and the weather is not too bad, I can walk to the university in forty minutes or so. There are not so very many German students at the university, and now that my English is better than it was a year ago, I am the target of much curiosity and many enquiries, some of them quite funny. I know that people are interested to hear what is happening in Germany, and anxious to put the past behind us.
That is not to say that there are not recent difficulties! A fellow student here, called Anthony, confided in me that his mother had to put down their dog, a
Dackel
, ten years ago when it was thought to be too German. I have heard, too, that the King here decided to change his surname, as it sounded too German, but I have not met anyone who knows what the surname of the King was before it was changed.
Now you will want to know what it is like in my boarding house! I was welcomed in by a strange lady, who is either the manager or the owner of the house. The first thing she wanted to impress on me was that I must not permit ladies of any sort to visit me in my bedroom. They may come and sit in the
drawing room
, as she called it, and sit and talk politely beneath the stuffed black parrot that sits on the cottage piano. There is always a bunch of carnations, too, at the tea table. I have not told her that these remind me of funerals.
Of course I was introduced to the house by another student! (I am answering the questions in your letter, though you have perhaps forgotten some of them.) You will be surprised and shocked to discover that I am such friends with an Indian student, whose name is Rahul. He is here to study engineering, and says that he hopes to transform his country when it gains independence from the British Empire. I was surprised, truly, to make friends with a person of his background, but we have become firm friends and talk for many hours about the independence of his nation, and with the leaders of the struggle in Calcutta. He has told strangers that he is the younger son of a maharajah, though he is in fact only the son of a lawyer, like you and me. He lives in a very tidy and clean way in the room opposite mine, on the second floor of the house in Tregunter Road, above the gentleman with the phonograph who is a permanent part of every English lodging house. He is a vegetarian – not for religious reasons, he informs me, but simply because his digestion is poor. I should perhaps say, too, that I am friends with an American Negro called Charles, also a student of engineering! He tells me very interesting things about the struggles in America for equal rights, and the different attitudes that exist in different places. I am almost proud, I may tell you, that I am often to be seen eating my dinner in the refectory in the company of an Indian and a Negro – as proud as other people might be if they were seen dining with a duke.
The letter stopped halfway down a page, and resumed on a new sheet in Dolphus’s smooth, conventional hand.
The troubles of last year have passed by, it seems. There is no general strike this year. I must tell you of an exciting evening Rahul, Charles and I, along with other English fellows, spent routing objectionable political persons in Whitechapel. I have changed sheets of paper to write this anecdote, so that you can if you choose not show it to Adele! I know that she would not understand and, as you say, it creates difficulties between you if she knows what I am ‘up to’, as the English say. It was a Sunday afternoon, only ten days ago …
Christian read on, absorbedly. The German voices in the other room continued. He was in London with his brother Dolphus. When he had finished, it occurred to him that Elsa’s silver teapot must be worth some money. She would give it to him if she knew what was needed in the house.
The Masters’ Houses were in a grove of birch, set back deeply from the path and the road. There were seven of them. In the last lived Klee.
The house was white, and square-angled, and with a large dark window at its centre. It shone in the sunlight. There was no garden but a communal lawn that surrounded all the houses, and inside there was the sort of colour that Klee liked. Some of the other Masters had left the inside white, and others had painted it brilliant primary colours. But Klee liked the colours of earth and sand and mud as a background to his thoughts, with samovar and dark furniture. You could not fill these interiors with furniture. But you could give them warmth. In their house was a gym instructress, Lily and Felix, two cats and rooms of brown, undergrowth-colour, mustard, October and sand.
Today Klee had got up early and had gone to his studio. The light was beautiful, direct but filtered through the trees outside. In this warm cocoon, your thoughts were neutral, and the life of dreams continued seamlessly onto paper or canvas or wood or glass. He was in his studio because later today he would have to travel by train to Munich. He wanted the day to contain some work. Now he saw two beasts, one facing the other. Where were they? Was it in some forest, in the undergrowth, where the trees gave way to a glade? One was making so much noise! The other was like him. But the shouting beast would not know how important the occupation was! It would look childish and unimportant to them, and it would shout louder – Grow Up! Grow Up! Look At Everything That Is Wrong! Klee thought of drawing the beast on the oil-transfer stone directly and then printing it. But then he saw that the beast would be made up of lines that were too knotted and intricate. He needed to draw it on the paper, and he did so. Afterwards it could go through the oil-transfer process. There were only three lines: they went over and under each other. Then Klee took a deep breath. He got up. He walked to the window and let his spirit rise against the howling beast he had let into his studio. ‘Here you are,’ he said, under his breath, to the beast playing, its limbs writhing and twisted like a ball of wool. He hadn’t known that the beast had gone until it came back. He came back, and drew it quickly. The two beasts had nothing to do with each other. They were in the same picture, unconnected. Klee knew what the title of the picture was, but he would not write it just yet.
It was breakfast time. Klee went into the dining room, where Lily and Felix already sat. The gym instructress could be heard noisily washing herself in the upstairs bathroom with the window open; she would have been outside, exercising herself. There were dishes of eggs, and ham, and Swiss cheese, and fruit. Lily poured her husband a cup of tea. In a moment, the maid came in with Klee’s breakfast dish. It was his favourite: it was a plate of plain-grilled rabbit kidneys. He lit upon it with joy; he loved the huge liver of an ox, but he loved also the tiny inner organs of the smaller animals, the heart of a chicken, the brain of a hare; and the sweetest of them all was the kidney of the rabbit, the size of Klee’s smallest fingernail. There were forty of them, and Klee set about them with relish, explaining (as Lily and Felix averted their eyes) what he had made today.
He had no class to teach that morning, and after breakfast he returned to the studio to write the title of his painting underneath it, and to enter it in his catalogue. It was number 174 for the year. He thought about another painting, and began to draw it; this one was just a magic line, and he watched the pen move over the paper, doubling back, crossing over, making a being and only at the end being quite sure of what the line was creating. It was an unhappy boat. He smiled. The space in which the boat floated had been there all the time. And now it was time to take his train to Munich.
The train took Klee from Dessau to Leipzig. On the station platform, students observed him, and said, ‘Klee,’ to each other. The stationmaster saw him and recognized the man with the curious, puzzled, boyish face, not quite like anyone else. The stationmaster did not know who he was, but he raised his flag to an oncoming train, saying, ‘The Chinese Emperor’s on his travels again,’ to himself. That was his name for Klee. Two men, catching the same train, did not see or observe Klee, but he saw them: the way that the one waiting on the platform fished his pocket watch out, not to see the time but to demonstrate from afar that he had been waiting, and the way that the one approaching spread his hands wide in apology. It was like a fishing expedition, with Time as the bait.
The train arrived, and Klee sat in his seat. He always took the same seat if at all possible. It was a good one for thinking in. He did not use the train journey to prepare his classes, or to draw, or to read. He used his train journeys to think. The students who had recognized him went past the compartment and observed him, already settled with his coat and gloves off, his hat placed neatly on the hook in the compartment, and looking out of the window with apparent absorption. A widow entered, and asked the gentleman if she could take a seat; he said yes, and she sat. He seemed a strange but benevolent gentleman to her. She watched the ways his hands moved, stained with paint though he did not seem like anything but a gentleman, moving the fingers like a musician practising in the air.
Presently the train arrived at Leipzig. Klee took down his small suitcase, and the suitcase of the widow. They left the train. There were eighteen minutes to change trains for Munich, and Klee took the opportunity to have a cup of coffee in the station buffet. Here, too, he was observed, by a Leipzig man who had seen an article about him in the newspaper, and a photograph too; the face was unmistakable. The man did not approach him: he thought Klee’s work a disgrace. Klee prided himself on his familiarity with the trains, and arrived everywhere punctually, but not hours before. He left the buffet; he walked through the station; he handed his ticket to the inspector at the gates, and walked down the platform. He was observed by a man sitting in the train. Klee! he thought. Klee! Travelling from Dessau. The man bent all his thoughts on persuading Klee to mount just where he sat, and to take a place opposite him. And after that, they would talk at great length and interestingly, and he would persuade Klee of his work. It was Itten. He had not seen him for several years. Itten asked the universe to unbend, and to instruct Klee to come to him. And Klee, with his broad smooth face under a Homburg, a beautiful grey coat, did what the universe requested. He mounted the train with a jaunty movement, and could be heard approaching along the corridor. But the universe failed, or fell short. Klee could be heard entering the compartment next door, and making a small muttering noise. Itten went next door. He accepted the failure, or near-success, of his request to the universe.