The Gustav Sonata (10 page)

‘And he's never seen again?' asked Anton.

‘Yes. That's it.'

‘I'd like to be him,' said Anton. ‘I'd like to disappear into a rain cloud and not have to play Debussy tomorrow.'

But there he was now, walking onto the stage, to applause, like a sudden shower of rain, from the audience. The Zwiebels and Gustav were in the second row of the big auditorium, yet even from this position Anton looked small.

He wore a navy jacket and grey trousers. Instead of moving in a straight line towards the piano, he veered towards the edge of the stage, then stopped and looked around him, with an anxious kind of wonderment. He gave an awkward bow. Gustav didn't think he was meant to do this. The previous two contestants hadn't bowed. Eventually, he turned and made his way to the piano.

It had been hard to wake him in the morning. The pill Adriana had given him had put him into a slumber so deep, he was still reeling from it as they went down to breakfast in the glass dining room. Gustav had heard Herr Zwiebel whisper to Adriana that ‘the pharma was too strong' and Adriana had looked at Anton with a worried frown creasing her smooth forehead.

They'd given him coffee and bread. A bright sun had shone through the glass and onto Anton's pale and sickly face. He rolled tiny pellets of bread in his hand and put them slowly into his mouth, like pills. He looked around him at the other guests. It had seemed to Gustav that he didn't quite know where he was. Gustav buttered his own slice of bread and spread it with apricot jam and gave it to Anton. ‘Eat this,' he said. ‘The jam will wake you up.'

Now, in the Kornhaus, Gustav was hoping that the bread and jam and the breath of air they had all taken in the hotel garden had lifted Anton out of his torpor. When he at last reached the piano stool, and began his usual fussing with the height of it, he appeared less confused. The applause subsided, waiting for the first great chords of ‘La Cathédrale Engloutie' to sound. Anton rubbed his palms on his trousers, to get the sweat away, then he lifted his hands …

In the apartment on Fribourgstrasse, when Anton played the piano, his concentration seemed such that his body and the music he was conjuring from the instrument became one. You forgot the boy, Anton. There was just the gift of the music, bathing you, moment by moment. But here, in the echoing Kornhaus, as the piece began, Gustav could barely
hear
the music. Was Anton's left foot on the soft pedal? Was his touch so light or weak that the keys weren't being fully depressed? Or was it that such a clamour of agitation for his friend had begun in Gustav's own head that all exterior sound was muffled?

Gustav felt himself to be far away – in some other place, both near to and yet oddly distant from the place where he actually was. He wondered if he was going to lose consciousness. He dug his fingernails into his knees. He looked down at the stone floor, remembering that this Kornhaus had once been filled with sacks of grain and farmers' carts and the sound of men bargaining and exchanging silver coins. And this image of time past became so vivid to him that he clung to it and forgot the music, forgot the agony that Anton was going through, and only concentrated on this – on the smell of grain and horse manure and dust and the sound of money.

Then, quite suddenly, the music ended. Gustav raised his head and saw Anton get up from the stool and hold onto the piano and bow again. The organiser of the competition, a large man with a shining bald head, strode onto the stage. He took Anton's hand and raised it, like the referee raises a boxer's hand at the end of a bout.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, ‘I think we are all agreed that this was a very nice performance from our third competitor of the morning, Anton Zwebbel. Please show your appreciation with another round of applause.'

Later, when the winning places were announced and it was revealed that Anton had come last in the group of five, all he could say to Gustav was: ‘The man got my surname wrong. He couldn't stand to say the “onion” word. If I'd had a different name, I might have won.'

WHEN EMILIE PERLE
was told that Gustav had been invited to go with the Zwiebels to Davos for a two-week holiday, she said, ‘I don't think so, Gustav. You fell behind again with your work while I was ill. I think you'd better spend the summer studying. I will get in touch with Herr Hodler and hope he can give you some of his precious time.'

Gustav went to his room. He was ten years old now. He'd learned that arguing with Emilie only strengthened her resolve.

He stared at his map of Mittelland, faded where the sun had touched it, so that swathes of the green pastures appeared barren. He was looking for Davos, but all the while knowing that he wouldn't find it. Davos wasn't in Mittelland. It was far to the east, in the mountains, in a place where the sky was so blue, it could damage your eyes.

If he'd thought that Emilie would understand, he would have said to her, Anton needs me to be with him in Davos. I can invent games we can play that will take his thoughts away from the stupid piano competition. If he's alone with his parents, he'll keep returning to it in his mind.

But he knew that Emilie was indifferent to Anton. She would probably have preferred it if the Zwiebels moved back to Bern and were never seen in Matzlingen again.

In the evening, when Emilie called him for supper, he could see that she had been crying. She'd made a cheese pie. When she and Gustav were seated at the kitchen shelf and she'd served up the pie, she said, ‘I was looking at my photographs of Davos again this afternoon. I was looking at how beautiful it is in the summertime. It makes me weep to see it. And I thought that it would be unkind of me to prevent you from going there.'

‘You mean, I can go with the Zwiebels?'

Gustav waited. But Emilie didn't reply. She just kept eating the pie. It was as though the word ‘yes' was buried in her throat, deep beneath the mouthful of pie. At last, she said, ‘Davos really has a climate all of its own. The valley is sheltered from the north. When the north wind blows, you barely feel it. You'll see.'

The chalet the Zwiebels had rented stood at the top of a lush meadow, facing south, high above the village of Davos itself. At its back was the treeline, scenting the air with pine. At the base of the meadow was a small dwelling, inhabited by an elderly man who came to be known simply as ‘Monsieur', because he spoke Swiss-German with a French accent. Monsieur kept a herd of skittish goats and a few chickens, whose will it was to range up the meadow each day, moving slowly, like a search party, with a careful, dainty step, looking for worms and blown seeds.

The chalet was old, with a steep shingled roof weighted down with stones and walls of pitch-blackened pine. The windows were small and decorated with yellow shutters. On a wooden veranda, a mossy drinking trough had been filled with scarlet geraniums. When the Zwiebels and Gustav arrived and saw the scarlet flowers basking in the sun and heard the breeze gently sighing in the pines, they all stood very still.

‘Magic,' said Adriana.

The place was large. The boys each had a room to themselves. In the salon was a monumental oak table and two commodious sofas covered in rough-weave woollen cloth. On the wooden floor, in front of a wide fireplace, was a sheepskin rug and a box full of ancient toys. When Armin saw this, he said, ‘How thoughtful of the owners – baby playthings for the children!' Everybody laughed. But Gustav wasn't ashamed to believe that the toy box would contain objects that could inform the games he and Anton would play. He knew that, at ten, they were both considered too old for children's toys, but his own life had been so devoid of them that they had remained alluring in his mind.

They unpacked the car. Adriana commented that Gustav's suitcase was very light. He said, ‘I told Mutti that I might need bathing trunks, for the swimming pool, but she forgot to buy any.' And Adriana laughed. Then she sat down on Gustav's bed and said, ‘I think we're going to have a lovely time here. Don't you? The air is so wonderful. We can buy you bathing trunks. And Anton is going to put the piano competition behind him.'

Gustav said nothing for a moment, looking at the brightly coloured curtains at his window and the blue, empty sky beyond, then he said, ‘Perhaps Anton shouldn't go in for any more competitions?'

‘You may be right. Anton's father is more or less of that opinion. But music will always be important to Anton. It's the thing he cares most about.'

‘Competitions make him sick.'

‘Yes. They seem to. But if you want a future as a concert pianist, you have to enter them. I'm not sure what we should decide.'

Gustav looked up at Adriana, dressed that day in a white linen blouse and narrow grey slacks, worn with white canvas shoes. He said, ‘At least you and Herr Zwiebel are thinking about it. My mother never thinks about my future.'

‘I expect she does, Gustav.'

‘My father might have wanted me to go into the police.'

‘Would you like that?'

‘I don't know. Mutti says he was a hero. I don't think I could be a hero.'

‘I'm sure you could. Or perhaps you wouldn't need to be.'

To get to Davos village, instead of taking the car, they walked down the meadow to the lane which ran by Monsieur's house, beside which stood a rusting harrow, a deserted dog kennel and an untidy heap of firewood. Monsieur came out and touched his hat to them and asked if they wanted fresh eggs. The goats, each with a bell tied round its soft neck, clustered at the fence of their compound, regarding the strangers. ‘Or,' said Monsieur, ‘if you want a good dinner one night, invite friends, I can kill a goat. Cheaper for you than buying lamb from the butcher, and far more tasty.'

Armin Zwiebel thanked Monsieur. Adriana said they would buy eggs on their way back.

‘Or,' said Monsieur, ‘your boys can go looking for them in the meadow. They lay all over the place. Would they like to do that?'

‘I'm sure they would,' said Adriana.

‘
Or
,'
said Monsieur again, ‘would they like to come hunting with me? There are wild boar up there in the forest. Then, we could all have a feast!'

Anton turned round from petting the goats. ‘I don't want to kill anything,' he said. ‘And boar are pigs, aren't they? We can't eat that.'

They followed the lane down to the village, which seemed half asleep in the sun of midday. A group of luggage porters lounged in the shade, beside their huge St Bernard dogs which pulled the luggage carts for those visitors arriving by train. Shutters were closed on the shopfronts, but several cafés were open. Gustav wondered if he would recognise the hotel where Emilie and Erich had once stayed – where the balconies were decked with flowers and where the waiters were ‘correctly attired'.

Anton announced that he was thirsty, so Armin looked at his watch and said, ‘Well, why don't we choose a café and have lunch? What d'you think, Gustav? Are you hungry?'

‘Gustav's always hungry,' said Anton.

Adriana selected a quiet place called the Café Caspar, with a wide, gravelled terrace shaded by a wisteria, just past its flowering. The sunlight fell in brindled patterns on the white tablecloths and the polished glassware. Armin ordered grilled chicken and rösti for them all, and a carafe of German wine for him and Adriana. She lit a cigarette, stretched her arms wide and announced that she was ‘in paradise'. Gustav and Anton drank lemonade and played jacks on a corner of the table, while waiting for the food to arrive. Inevitably, the jacks jumped about and fell into the dusty gravel.

‘Try to sit still, boys,' said Armin.

‘We're on holiday,' said Anton. ‘Can't we do what we like?'

‘Within reason,' said Armin.

Later in their lives, they asked themselves, was it ‘within reason', the game they chose to play in Davos? They knew it was strange. But in the strangeness of it lay its fascination and its beauty.

It was on the second day that they found the stone path leading up through the pine trees into darker forest. The path was wide but overgrown. Wild strawberries were growing at its edge: tiny points of red, like beads of blood among the bandages of green leaves. Gustav and Anton stopped to gather a few of these and eat them. The texture was rough, but the taste was sweet.

They knew the path was leading somewhere. There were narrow ruts in the stone surface, as if, long ago, carts and carriages had passed this way. Overhead, the firs crowded out the light and they felt the air become colder. A wind got up and began sighing in the trees.

‘Are you frightened?' asked Anton. ‘Shall we go back?'

‘No,' said Gustav.

They were high up now. At moments, there were glimpses of Davos village, far below. Then the path opened out and became a plateau and on the plateau was an enormous building.

It was ruined. Part of its roof was missing and the glass in most of the windows was broken. Along its southerly edge ran a wooden veranda, cracked and faded by the sunlight. At its back, pressed against the forest, was a brick outhouse with a vast chimney stack rearing up into the sky.

Gustav and Anton stood still and stared. A rusted chain, attached to wooden posts, had been strung across the path – a token attempt, it seemed, to keep people away from a place which had so obviously fallen into dereliction. Gustav listened for the bark of a guard dog, but everything was silent, except for the movement of the trees, like the sound of laboured breathing.

The boys climbed over the chain. All that remained of the entrance to the building was a stone portico with the words
Sankt Alban
engraved above the place where the door had been. They passed underneath this into a small, dark space and then through this space into an enormous room, filled with light. In ranks, along the back wall, facing towards the light, were twenty or thirty iron beds.