The Gustav Sonata (11 page)

‘Hospital,' said Anton.

‘Sanatorium,' corrected Gustav. ‘Where people came to recover from tuberculosis. Or to die.'

‘Maybe they all died,' said Anton. ‘That's why it was abandoned.'

They walked slowly along the light-filled room. They began to notice other things: rusty oxygen cylinders clamped to the walls, coils of rubber tubing, oxygen masks, buckets, kidney bowls, stained mattresses, a nurse's trolley still set out with brown glass bottles, a stethoscope lying in the rubble.

Anton picked up the stethoscope, dusted it against his Aertex shirt, and hung it round his neck.

‘Doctor,' he said. ‘You're my nurse, Gustav. Fetch the trolley.'

‘We haven't got any patients,' said Gustav.

‘Yes, we have. Can't you see them?'

‘No.'

‘On the beds. We're going to bring them alive again.'

So that was how it began, the game of choosing who, among the sufferers of Sankt Alban, lived or died. They gave the patients names: Hans, Margaret, Frau Merligen, Frau Bünden, Herr Mollis, Herr Weiss …

Hans and Margaret were children. Doctor Zwiebel and Nurse Perle were going to have to work especially hard to bring them back to the world. They found the best mattresses for them, those least eaten away by mould. They searched the rest of the building for things that might comfort them: pillows and torn blankets, chamber pots and hot-water bottles.

‘And,' said Anton, ‘we can bring them toys from the box in the chalet.'

‘Yes,' said Gustav, ‘except …'

‘Except what?'

‘Won't your parents think this is odd? They might not want us to play here.'

‘We won't tell them,' said Anton.

‘Where will they think we are?'

‘Just “exploring”. On holidays, when she doesn't want me around, my mother's always saying “Why don't you go
exploring
, Anton?” We'll tell them we're building a camp in the forest. And anyway, they'll be fucking.'

‘What's fucking?'

‘It's what they like to do on holiday. They go to bed and take their clothes off and kiss and scream things out. It's called fucking.'

Gustav thought about this. He said, ‘I don't think my mother's ever done that. She just goes to bed and reads magazines.'

They forgot about time. To get back to the chalet for lunch, when they heard a midday bell chiming in the village, they had to go racing through the sunlit rooms, down the steps and back onto the steep path. Not stopping, now, to collect strawberries, they ran fast under the canopy of sighing trees, down and down towards the slender pines, until they emerged behind the house and saw Monsieur in the meadow, scattering grain for the hens.

They found Armin and Adriana, sipping wine on the terrace, beside the trough of geraniums. On the table was a dish of meats and pickles and cheese.

‘You're out of breath,' said Adriana, as Anton and Gustav sat down. ‘Where have you been?'

‘Exploring,' they both said together.

‘Exploring where?' said Armin.

‘In the forest,' said Anton. ‘We're making a camp.'

‘A camp?' said Adriana, frowning. ‘What kind of
camp
?'

‘Just a den. It's not finished yet.'

‘Can your father and I come and see it?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘It's not finished. And anyway, it's ours.'

‘Good for you,' said Armin with a smile. ‘Now have some meat.'

‘That time. That Sankt Alban time …' they would say, later in their lives. ‘That was a thing we've never forgotten.' And sometimes, they would add, ‘We've never forgotten it, because we thought we really had power over life and death.'

On the first day, they made sure that Frau Merligen, Frau Bünden, Herr Mollis and Herr Weiss were comfortable, while they took the pulses of Hans and Margaret and gave oxygen to Hans, who was dying faster than the others. They found some old bamboo and wickerwork recliners and pushed the sick children out onto the veranda, where the sun was strong and where there was shelter from the wind. From the chalet box, they'd brought a rag doll for Margaret and a tambourine for Hans. They told Hans to rattle the tambourine if he felt that death was coming near.

‘What shall we do if Hans dies?' asked Gustav.

Anton thought for a moment, then said, ‘That outhouse with the chimney – it's probably where they burned dead people. We'll put him in there.'

‘I don't want him to die,' said Gustav.

‘No. I don't either. I tell you what. Shall I be him? You can have the stethoscope and I'll lie on the recliner. If I feel I'm dying, I'll bang the tambourine and you have to come and give me resuscitation.'

‘All right. I'll stay with Frau Bünden for a while. She's not looking good. Then you bang the tambourine and I'll come.'

Gustav decided that Frau Bünden resembled Frau Teller, who kept the flower stall on Unter der Egg. She was too young to die. He sat on her bed and told her to think about all the flowers she was going to return to: roses and lilies, tulips, daffodils, edelweiss and blue gentians. He said, ‘You're safe in Davos now, Frau Bünden. It's the best place in Switzerland for you. What you have to do is
concentrate
on getting well. Don't think about the TB, right? Think about flowers.'

Frau Bünden said, ‘I'm very weak, Nurse Perle. My lungs are full of blood.'

‘I know they are. I'm not Nurse Perle now, by the way, I'm Doctor Perle. Doctor Zwiebel and I are going to save you. You just have to believe us. All right? This is Davos.'

Then he heard the rattle of the tambourine and said, ‘Forgive me a moment, Frau Bünden, I have to go and look after Hans. I've got to make sure Hans doesn't die.'

Gustav adjusted the stethoscope round his neck and went out onto the veranda. Hans was lying very still, with his eyes closed. The sun shone on his dark hair and on his soft limbs, curled on the recliner. Doctor Perle knelt down beside him and stroked his arm. ‘Hans,' he said, ‘are you dying?'

‘Can't you see I'm dying?' said Hans. ‘Put your lips on my lips and revive me, Nurse Perle …'

‘I'm not Nurse Perle, I'm Doctor Perle now,' said Gustav, ‘and I'm not putting my lips on your lips.'

‘You have to,' said Hans, ‘or I'm gone. You'll have to burn my body in the outhouse …'

‘I'm not doing that lip thing.'

‘Gustav,' said Anton, sitting up suddenly, ‘don't be a baby. This is how you revive someone. You put your mouth on their mouth. We learned it in school. Don't you remember? So, go on.'

Hans lay down again. He began to moan.

‘Hush,' said Doctor Perle. ‘I'm going to revive you now. Here.'

Anton turned his face towards Gustav. Slowly and reluctantly, Gustav brought his mouth to Anton's and lightly touched his lips. He felt Anton lift his arm and put it round his neck and bring his head nearer, so that the two mouths were now pressed hard against each other and Gustav could feel Anton's face, burning hot against his own. He'd thought he would pull away at once, but he stayed there. He liked the feel of Anton gathering his head in his arm. He closed his eyes. He felt that no moment of his life had been as strangely beautiful as this one.

Then he pulled away. ‘Are you all right, Hans?' he whispered. ‘Are you going to live?'

‘Yes,' murmured Hans. ‘Thanks to you. I'm going to live, thanks to you.'

Sankt Alban took over their minds.

The time they spent with Adriana and Armin – going for walks, swimming at the pool, taking the cable car higher up the mountain towards the Schatzalp, shopping for souvenirs, collecting eggs for Monsieur, lying in the sun, eating meals on the chalet terrace – all these things, enjoyable as they were, became infected with ordinariness. At every moment, they longed to be back at the sanatorium, back in the beautiful pretend world of the dying.

One day, they decided that Frau Bünden had died. They carried her, wrapped in a torn rug, on a wicker recliner, to the outhouse. Its door was hanging on one hinge and they pushed this and went in. They put Frau Bünden down. The space in which they found themselves was black with coal dust. At the far end of it was a metal door, and when they opened this, they saw that it was the door to an enormous oven, still choked with ash.

‘I told you,' said Anton. ‘This is where they burned the dead. I suppose they had to burn everything, to stop the infection spreading.'

‘Are we going to put Frau Bünden in there?'

‘Yes,' said Anton. ‘And burn her.'

‘We haven't got any matches.'

‘We can bring some from the chalet.'

They came back the following day with matches and newspaper. They fetched logs from an old, rotting woodpile. Before they put Frau Bünden into the oven, Anton said, ‘Wait, Gustav. You know there's going to be smoke from the chimney if we make a fire? Then, Monsieur or somebody might come and send us away.'

‘We can't leave her to rot,' said Gustav.

They stared at the recliner not knowing what they should do. After a few moments, Anton said, ‘Listen! Hans is rattling his tambourine. He needs us. We'll burn Frau Bünden some other time.'

‘I know what,' suggested Gustav. ‘Let's burn all the dead ones on our last day. We can light the fire and then just run back to the chalet.'

‘How many dead ones are there going to be?' asked Anton.

‘We haven't decided,' said Gustav.

They went out onto the veranda, glad to breathe in the scent of the firs and feel the sunlight on their faces. They stood looking down at the village far below and Gustav thought with dismay of the scant time remaining in Davos, and of his miserable return to the apartment on Unter der Egg. On an impulse – not knowing that he was going to do this – he turned to Anton and said, ‘I don't want to go home. Something bad happens there.'

‘What happens?'

‘It's a secret, right? I've never told anyone and you must never tell a single other soul.'

‘I won't. Don't look so panicked, Gustav.'

‘All right.
Swear
you won't tell?'

‘I swear.'

‘OK, it's this, then. There's a man in our block, Ludwig, who tries to make me touch him.'

‘Tries to make you touch him?'

‘Yes. Touch his penis. I hate him. It makes me feel disgusting.'

Anton looked hard at Gustav. ‘Did you do it?' he asked. ‘Did you touch his dick?'

‘No. I never would. I wish he was dead.'

‘All right,' said Anton. ‘Let's kill him. What's his name? Ludwig? We'll give him TB and let him die and then burn him.'

‘Promise you won't tell, Anton?'

‘Of course I won't. I've sworn, haven't I? But Ludwig's got to die.'

They selected another recliner. They put a badly stained mattress onto it and threw down a torn piece of grey fabric, which might once have been part of a curtain.

‘There you are,' said Anton. ‘Ludwig.'

Anton put the stethoscope in his ears and bent down towards Ludwig, to listen to the murmur of his lungs. ‘Ah,' he said, after a while, ‘I'm sorry to tell you, Ludwig, there is no improvement. Doctor Perle, is there any of Ludwig's special medicine left?'

‘No,' said Doctor Perle. ‘None. I can order more from Geneva, but I'm afraid it will arrive too late.'

‘Did you hear that, Ludwig?' said Doctor Zwiebel. ‘What we suggest is that you prepare yourself for death.'

At this moment, the sun went in. The rag covering Ludwig became a dark shadow, seemingly without form.

Gustav shivered. ‘If we're going to kill Ludwig,' he said, ‘I think Hans should be saved.'

On their last day, they lit the fire in the oven. They tried to put Frau Bünden into the oven, lying dead on her bamboo recliner, but the recliner wouldn't fit through the oven door, so they took her off the bed, wrapped in her rug, and threw her in. The wool rug seemed greedy for the flame and hissed and crackled like a firework.

Then Anton took an axe they'd found near the woodpile and began to break up the recliner.

‘Why are you doing that?' asked Gustav.

‘You'll see. It's clever. The bamboo stalks will look like human bones, then we'll have proper bodies to burn.'

It was hard work. They took it in turns to heft the axe. Then they arranged the bamboo pieces, still joined here and there to the wickerwork threads, into skeletal patterns. They looked strangely real, with their sad sinews of wicker hanging off them, representing all that remained of their emaciated flesh.

‘They're good,' said Gustav. ‘Very good, Anton. Except they've got no heads.'

It was at this moment that they heard, still some distance away, the sound of a fire engine's siren.

‘
Scheisse!
' said Anton. ‘They'll find us and cart us off to prison. Never mind about the heads. Let's call this one Ludwig and put him in, and then we'll run.'

They took up the bamboo skeleton and hurled it in, piece by piece.

‘Die, Ludwig!' cried Anton.

‘Die, Ludwig!' repeated Gustav.

The siren sound was very near now. Anton and Gustav ran out of the Sanatorium of Sankt Alban and down the forest path, then catapulted themselves into the undergrowth of the woods and hid there, waiting for the fire engine to pass. They clung together, afraid, yet filled with exaltation. They could hear each other's hearts beating.

It was only after a while that Gustav remembered Hans, still lying on the veranda. ‘What about Hans?' he whispered.

‘We can't go back,' said Anton. ‘We have to pretend Hans just walked out of there.'

‘Without his tambourine?'

‘Yes.'

Gustav was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘We didn't say goodbye to him, Anton. And I know I'm going to think about the tambourine. Aren't you? I'm just going to imagine it being there for evermore.'