The Gustav Sonata (21 page)

He had been close to her only once. It was when they went together to Basel. He was sixteen years old.

They travelled there for the funeral of Irma Albrecht, Emilie's mother, whom Gustav had never met. In the train going to Basel, Emilie said, ‘You never met her because she was a horrible woman.'

After the funeral, to which nobody came but them, Emilie told Gustav that they had to stay on, to clear out Irma's old house in the hills and see if they could sell it.

When Gustav saw the house, all broken down, with a lavatory in a tilting hut in the garden, he said he couldn't imagine anybody wanting to buy it.

‘You're wrong,' said Emilie. ‘A developer will buy it. Basel is a growing city. People are eyeing up the surrounding land.'

On their second day, Emilie made a fire in an old brazier where Irma used to burn her garden debris. Gustav helped her to haul all Irma's clothes out of her cupboards and throw them onto the fire. Even her hats were burned. In one of these, Gustav found a pearl hatpin, but when he attempted to take this out of the hat, Emilie snatched it from his hand and threw it into the flames. ‘The pearl isn't real,' she said. ‘The pearl is a lie.'

While all the clothes were burning, Emilie began on the bedding and the rugs, as though she believed that everything Irma had ever used had become contaminated. As Gustav helped her to carry these out, the old pig farmer, who had been Irma's neighbour, appeared, cradling a baby piglet in his arms.

‘I saw the fire,' he said.

‘Yes?' said Emilie. ‘All this is worthless stuff.'

The farmer held up the piglet. ‘I'd like a blanket,' he said. ‘They get cold, the little ones.'

Gustav watched the shadow of a smile cross Emilie's face. He thought that perhaps the idea that her mother's bedding was going to furnish a pigsty enthralled her.

‘By all means,' she said. ‘Take what you want.'

The old man handed the piglet to Gustav and he noted how the texture of its skin looked smooth, but was in fact as rough as sandpaper. The animal squirmed and shivered in his arms, while the farmer began sorting through the blankets. He shook his head in bewilderment.

‘These aren't worthless, gnädige Frau,' he said to Emilie.

‘They are to me,' she said.

‘Fetch a barrow, can I?' he said. ‘Make my bed cosy with these. Give you the piglet in exchange.'

Gustav expected his mother to accept this. One of the few things she was proud of in her disappointed life was her successful cooking of roast pork. But now there was an unfamiliar look of compassion on her thin face. ‘We don't want the piglet,' she said. ‘You fetch your barrow.'

The pig farmer took everything away. The baby piglet scampered back and forth by his side as he collected two barrowloads of rugs and blankets. When they were all gone, Emilie laughed and said, ‘Perhaps he and the pigs bed down together. Nothing would surprise me in this world.'

The fire in the brazier had burned low. On top of the ashes lay some roses, made of thin metal, from one of Irma's hats. Emilie looked at these and announced, ‘That's what she was like. You tried to crush her, but some part of her stayed whole. My life will be better now that she's gone for good – well and truly gone. Perhaps I'll be kinder to everybody, including you, Gustav.'

As dusk was falling, they started on the larder. Emilie said, ‘We can give all the bottles of sauerkraut to the pig farmer, for the swill bucket.'

Irma's sauerkraut was lacto-fermented from cabbages she'd either grown or bought cheap in bulk from the local vegetable market. Emilie and Gustav counted thirty-four bottles of it, labelled and dated. The cabbage inside some of the oldest jars from the
1930
s had turned a deep chestnut brown. They emptied everything out into a tin basin, large enough to bath a baby in. Emilie said, ‘I expect I was bathed in this thing. Rinsed like a cabbage.'

It was dark, now, in the larder, almost night. Gustav felt sick from the smell of the fermentation and was about to suggest that they should stop, when he noticed one last bottle in a corner of the larder shelf.

He picked up the bottle and saw that it was full of banknotes. He stared at the money. Then he carried the jar to the window, where a rising moon provided a sliver of light. He unscrewed the lid and he and Emilie put their hands in, like children's hands into a bran tub, and pulled out rolls of fifty-franc notes, secured with rubber bands. It was difficult to calculate how much money was there, but they knew it was a lot.

Later, they counted out more than fourteen thousand francs. ‘Well,' said Emilie, ‘I could probably buy a whole tea shop in Basel with this, but I won't! I'm going to put it into a savings account and half of it can be for you.'

Gustav used his share of the money to put himself through catering school in Burgdorf. And he often thought, later on, that without the fifty-franc notes hoarded by his grandmother in a sauerkraut jar, and without the money got from the sale of her crumbling house, he would never have had the life he wanted and been able to establish the Hotel Perle. He came to wish that he'd retained some souvenir of Irma Albrecht, but he had nothing, not even a metal flower from a Sunday hat.

SOME DREAMS ENDURE
.

Anton Zwiebel said of his own dream of becoming a concert pianist that the word
endurance
was ironically appropriate to it, because it entailed so much suffering.

After the first piano competition in Bern, at which he'd come last in his group of five finalists, Anton had subjected himself to eight or nine further competitions, where once again he'd done well enough in the heats to reach the final and then faltered when he had to play on a grand stage. He had never once been declared the winner, nor even the runner-up.

Adriana took Anton to the doctor, to try to find a cure for what she said were just ‘nerves'. He was prescribed calming drugs of different kinds and differing strengths, but none helped him to conquer his terror on the concert platform. He still played badly when it came to the moment of needing to play well.

He sometimes raged about being ‘tested' in this way. It was Gustav who had to listen to his anger. Anton said, ‘It has to be you, Gustav. I can't let my parents see me behaving like a wild dog. I've already let them down enough. They paid tons of money for lessons with Herr Edelstein and yet more for competition entry fees, and they expect results. Whereas you –'

‘You're right,' said Gustav. ‘I don't care if you win or not. All I mind about is that not winning makes you unhappy.'

One day, when Gustav and Anton were both eighteen and went to the ice rink after school, Anton said that he didn't want to skate, he wanted to talk. So they sat in the rink café, drinking beer, while the skaters kept gliding and turning and jumping and falling at their backs, and Anton said, ‘I can't go on with this dream of fame. It's killing me.'

They talked for a long time, getting drunk on beer. Anton said that he'd never abandon music, it was too important a part of his life, but that he had to give up competing. ‘I just want to play the piano, because playing the piano is a beautiful thing to do,' he said. ‘I played Beethoven's “Moonlight” Sonata over and over the other evening, when my parents were out at some dinner. And I know this is a schmaltzy piece, but each time I played it, it moved me more and more and I played it better and better, until I was crying and playing at the same time. The keyboard was soaked, but I didn't care. I felt I was transfigured, or something. And that's when I thought,
this
is what I want – to be moved by my own playing, but not have to be on a stage and move a thousand other people. I know you'll understand.'

Gustav looked at Anton's face, bright pink from the cold of the ice and from the emotion welling up inside him. He reached out and put the back of his hand against Anton's cheek.

‘Of course I understand,' he said. ‘I'm glad you've decided this. I was beginning to be afraid for you.'

‘Were you? But there's one other thing facing me, Gustav. How am I going to tell my parents? Especially my mother. How am I going to tell her that all her hopes for me are going to be crushed?'

Gustav turned and looked out at the skaters and he thought how the ice rink had always been a place of laughter and joy, and the laughter he could remember best was Adriana's.

‘I'll tell her for you,' he said. ‘If you want me to. I can explain it.'

‘Isn't that asking too much of you?' said Anton.

‘No.'

‘She might accept it better, coming from you. She knows you always see into the heart of things.'

‘Perhaps …'

‘But she may get upset, Gustav. If she does, just put your arms round her.'

Gustav went to Fribourgstrasse on an early-summer afternoon, when Armin was at his office. Sunlight filled the room. Adriana was pruning her geraniums. He asked her for a drink of water.

He sat down with Adriana on one of the chintzy sofas and she took his hand in hers. ‘You know I'm always delighted to see you, Gustav,' she said, ‘but something tells me that you're bringing me bad news. Am I right?'

‘Yes,' said Gustav. ‘And I hate to be doing this to you and to Armin, but Anton's counting on me.'

Adriana let go of Gustav's hand. ‘Has he got a girl pregnant?' she said. ‘Is that it?'

‘No. Not as far as I know.'

‘Well, then, you'd better tell me what it is.'

Adriana let Gustav speak and didn't interrupt. He tried to explain Anton's feelings
as though he were Anton.
And he found that this wasn't difficult, because he knew these feelings so well. As he talked, he felt his face grow pink with emotion. He almost felt that he might cry.

When he'd finished, Adriana lit a cigarette. She smoked and said nothing for a while. Then, she leaned forwards with her elbows on her knees. She said, ‘I had another child, Gustav. A little girl we called Romola, who died at the age of one. Anton will barely remember her. But Armin and I … of course she's with us in our thoughts all the time. And I suppose that all the hopes we may have had for our two children we've put onto the sole survivor, our beloved Anton. It's in our nature to strive, to want to see our children succeed, and what more wonderful thing could there be in the world than to become a famous pianist? Music is so important in a human life. It finds a space inside us that nothing else touches.'

Gustav was unsure of what he was expected to say. He began thinking about Romola and the day at the rink when he and Anton had cut their arms with skate blades, to mingle their blood and swear their secrecy. He could remember the pain of the cutting and the strange feeling of Anton's blood pooling in a slit in his arm.

After Adriana had smoked some more in silence, she put out her cigarette and said, ‘I've imagined it so many times, Gustav – the moment when Anton would conquer his fear and begin to perform on a world stage. He has the talent to do it. We all know that he does. But now you're telling me that day is never going to come?'

‘Yes. I'm telling you. That day is never going to come.'

‘I can't bear it, Gustav!'

‘I know it's hard. But perhaps you knew what Anton was feeling all along and this is really no surprise to you?'

‘I
didn't
know! Armin had some anxieties about it. I told him he was being pessimistic: I told him Anton would conquer his fears in time. But I was wrong. And I should have seen it. We paid enough for medication. I'm his mother and I've been obtuse. I've pushed too hard and made Anton suffer. And now all our dreams collapse …'

Adriana began to weep. Gustav remembered what Anton had said about putting his arms round her, so he moved closer to her on the sofa and held her and she laid her head on his chest and allowed herself to cry. Gustav stroked her hair and said, ‘You mustn't think Anton blames you in any way. He doesn't. He said to me, “We were all in this folly together.” That was the word he used – folly. And he included me in that. Because he knows … well … he knows how much I love him. I love you all, Adriana. I wish I had a family like yours.'

When he found that this was what he'd said – this thing about love – Gustav couldn't suppress tears of his own. He and Adriana clung together, rocking and crying. The moment was so intense, it created in Gustav a feeling of overwhelming sexual yearning. He lifted Adriana's face and held it close to his and she whispered his name, Gustav … He kissed her mouth. He expected her to pull away from him, but she didn't. She returned the kiss and Gustav's head swam. He thought that he might lose consciousness. He knew that what he was doing was pure, exquisite sin.

He forced himself out of the moment and back into the sunlit room, where the white net curtains moved lazily at an open window. He drew back from Adriana and laid her head gently against the sofa cushions.

‘I'm sorry,' he whispered. ‘That was wrong of me. Will you forgive me? Please forgive me and don't hate me, Adriana. And please don't tell Anton.'

Adriana looked at Gustav tenderly. She wiped away her tears. She stroked his burning face. She said, ‘That was a beautiful kiss, Gustav. And we all love you very much. I hope you know that. Anton and Armin and I, we love you very much.'

That autumn, Gustav went away from Matzlingen, for the only significant time in his life, to begin his catering course at Burgdorf.

Anton Zwiebel became a piano teacher.

During Gustav's first vacation from his college, he went to a pupils' concert at the junior school where Anton worked. He saw not only how hard the young children tried with their music, but also how clearly they loved and worshipped Anton. After the pupils had played, they would rush to Anton's side and open their arms to be hugged by him. Gustav saw him as a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin, with all the enchanted children clustered round him. And he thought, I am one of them; I am enchanted, too. I will follow Anton wherever he leads me – even into a dark cave.