The Gustav Sonata (25 page)

‘The thing that's so beautiful about it,' Anton went on, ‘is that, when I play for Hirsch, I'll just be in a small recording studio – not marooned out there on a vast stage – and so I should easily be able to conquer my nerves. It'll be quite different from a concert platform, and yet, once the recordings are made, millions of people may hear them. Imagine that, Gustav! I'll be playing for millions.'

‘Extraordinary …' Gustav said again, seeming to find no other word but this.

‘And it falls so well,' said Anton. ‘He wants me to go to Geneva next week, when the Christmas holidays start. He made a joke about my age and said, “I think we should not delay,
n'est-ce pas
? We must get you out into the world, before it's too late.”'

‘Next week?' Gustav mumbled.

‘Yes!'

‘But next week is Christmas. You and Armin and Adriana are going to come to the hotel for the meal –'

‘Fuck Christmas. Fuck the meal. Come on, Gustav. I thought you'd be happy for me. Why aren't you happy?'

‘I am happy. It's only –'

‘Only what? You don't seem to be happy. Remember that day at the rink when I told you I couldn't go on with my public performances, and you were so supportive to me? Well, now it's all turning around and I need your support again, when things are working for me at last. I thought I could count on you.'

‘You can count on me. I think it's a wonderful thing, Anton. It's taken me by surprise, that's all.'

‘Surprises are good. They happen so seldom.'

‘Of course they're good. And I guess this is a new beginning to your life.'

‘That's right,' said Anton. ‘It is. And I tell you, my friend, I
need
a new beginning. I know you're happy in Matzlingen, with the hotel and everything, but me … I've known for a long time that I'm slowly dying here. If all goes well, I'll be able to give up my job at Sankt Johann and never come back to Matzlingen again.'

The champagne now tasted acid in Gustav's mouth and he put his glass aside. He felt such an intolerable pain in his heart that he knew he had to try by any means, however cruel or inappropriate, to soothe it. He got up and went to the window and looked out at the clouded moon over the roofs of the town that he'd never left. Without turning towards Anton, he said, ‘You mention that day at the rink. You'll remember, then, that I offered to be the one to tell Adriana about your decision not to go on with the competitions? And I did go, as you know. And Adriana began to cry. And then I kissed her. I've never told you this. I kissed your mother on the mouth with a passionate kiss.'

There was a long silence in the room, then Gustav turned and saw Anton staring at him. Gustav wanted him to feel shock and hatred, as much as he himself felt devoured by the news of the arrival of Hans Hirsch. But he saw no hatred in Anton's face and after a moment, Anton took another sip of his champagne and said, ‘It happens all the time. Don't think you're special. My mother is a very seductive woman.'

THE NEW YEAR
began.

In Davos and the other ski resorts, the grand establishments were crowded, but the Hotel Perle was almost empty. In January, Matzlingen seemed a sad place. The roads were bad, with snow falling upon ice and frosting over, and another layer of snow falling upon that. The tram service had been brought to a temporary halt by the frozen tracks, and Gustav thought about his father, spending arctic nights at the tram depot, longing to be with Lottie Erdman, then running, running to her door and dying in Grünewaldstrasse, dying from his faulty heart just moments before he was able to take Lottie in his arms. He imagined the passers-by crowding round the steps where Erich had fallen, and then retreating in horror, calling out, ‘The man is dead.'

Anton was in Geneva. He told Gustav in a letter that Hans Hirsch had rented an apartment for him, with a grand piano. Every morning, a colleague of Hirsch's, a talented accompanist, came round to the flat and Anton rehearsed two Beethoven sonatas with him,
26
and
29
. The following Monday, he was going to attempt the first of the recordings, Sonata
26
, ‘Les Adieux'. He told Gustav in the letter that, to his horror and shame, he felt some of his old anxiety returning.

Gustav knew this sonata very well by now. The piece was divided into three movements: ‘Das Lebewohl' (‘The Goodbye' or ‘Les Adieux'), ‘Abwesenheit' (‘Absence') and ‘Das Wiedersehen' (‘Return'). He always found himself moved by the slow, middle movement, ‘Absence', but, in the light of how sombre and almost deathly this was, the final movement, whipped up to an overemphatic liveliness, felt wrong to him – as though it belonged in a different piece of music.

He supposed he felt this because absences – such as the one he suffered when Emilie was in hospital and he was all alone in the apartment at the age of ten – did not very often end in high-spirited joy; they ended in reproach:
they had to be forgiven.

Enduring Anton's absence, which Gustav saw as a kind of rehearsal for an absence which would be permanent and final, he knew that all he could do was wait. He supervised the clearing of snow and ice from the hotel steps. He made certain that the fire in the lounge was banked up for the few guests who were in residence. He saw that these tasks were the mundane tasks of a servant and he thought that, for all his ridiculous pride in the Hotel Perle, this was what he was: a slave to other people's comforts and desires. But this, it seemed, was the life he'd chosen.

It was now Sunday evening. The next day, at ten in the morning, Anton would arrive at the CavalliSound Studios to make his recording of ‘Les Adieux'. Gustav was certain that his friend wouldn't sleep at all that night. Gustav's resolution, then, was not to sleep either, but to keep some kind of distant vigil over Anton. Yet he knew that his thinking about this was shamefully divided. On the one hand, he was going to keep his vigil so that Anton's anxiety might be lessened and he would get some rest; on the other hand, his vigil was malevolent, willing him to fail.

To keep himself awake though this darkest of nights, Gustav decided to replay in his mind an episode in his life that he didn't often visit: the slow death of his mother. Thinking about it always caused him a storm of helpless crying, yet he would often emerge from this feeling purged and free.

Gustav had been forty-three when his mother became seriously ill.

A year or so before this, she'd taken a lover – the man who had been the manager of the Matzlingen Cheese Co-operative and who had apparently always nurtured romantic feelings for his ‘sweet Em'.

Emilie didn't try to conceal the relationship, but boasted about it to Gustav. She said, ‘I expect you thought, in my sixties, no man would look at me again, didn't you?'

Gustav had replied that he didn't have thoughts like these, one way or the other, but told his mother that if this man was making her happy, then he would be happy for her, too.

His name was Martin Studer. Emilie began bringing him occasionally to the hotel for Sunday lunch and Gustav would join them at the table. Studer was about seventy years old. His head and neck jutted forwards from his shoulders, like a vulture's head and neck. Sometimes, these seemed to be withdrawn and his neck would disappear into his shirt collar, and Gustav would wait for the moment when they would be projected outwards again. He was both fascinated and repulsed by this phenomenon. Studer had big, glittering eyes and long, claw-fingered hands, with which he now and then caressed Emilie's cheek.

But there was one thing which Gustav had appreciated about him: he admired the hotel. He would point out to Emilie the crispness of the white tablecloths, the fresh flowers on the tables, the good service given by the waiters, and of course Lunardi's cuisine. At first, when he mentioned these things, Emilie said, ‘Oh, all the details you point out have very little to do with Gustav.'

Gustav refused to rise to this, but Studer reminded Emilie that ultimate responsibility for excellence, in any hotel, lies with the manager or owner.

And, in time, after she'd gobbled up a significant number of Lunardi's Sunday Specialities, Emilie was able to bring herself to say, ‘At least you've kept standards high, Gustav. Not like in your schoolwork, eh?'

Then, one Sunday, Emilie was unable to eat. She sat at the table without talking, but nodding her head back and forth, as people much older than she was were inclined to do, as though their last task on earth was to agree with everything they have seen and heard in the world.

Gustav suggested to Studer that he took her home. He always remembered how Studer reached out one claw hand and began to stroke Emilie's hair. The poor man had only just finished his roast chicken and was no doubt looking forward to Lunardi's chocolate torte or his peach parfait, but he took a last sip of red wine, then got up obediently and helped Emilie to her feet.

‘Come, Em,' he said tenderly. ‘You're tired. We'll get you into bed.'

Gustav went with them as far as the front door. Suddenly, he saw his mother break away from Studer and stagger a few paces, to vomit into a flower bed. He started to go to her, but Studer held him back. ‘I will take care of her,' he said. ‘I'm sorry about the flowers. I expect you can hose them down. Your mother will be well again soon.'

She was never well again.

Tumours were found in her stomach and in her lung. She went into the hospital where she'd almost died when Gustav was a boy, and was given the new chemical drugs that were supposed to reduce cancers, but which had to thread their poison through every bodily system, and weakened and distressed the patients to such an extent that Gustav had found himself wishing, at moments, that they had never been discovered and put to trials.

For a while, Emilie's sufferings had abated, and she was allowed to go home to Unter der Egg. Gustav arranged for two of the hotel chambermaids to go into the apartment the day before she came out of hospital and clean it from top to bottom and put a vase of scented roses in her sitting room. Then he collected her from the hospital. She was clutching a small suitcase he recognised from years and years before. And it had been the sight of this old, worn suitcase that had begun, suddenly, to choke him. He couldn't drive out of the hospital car park. He rested his head on the steering wheel, and cried. Beside him, Emilie sat very still, saying nothing, paying him no attention. Then he dried his eyes and apologised and drove on.

Martin Studer was at the apartment. Emilie didn't want to get into bed, but sat in her habitual chair in the parlour, staring at the roses. ‘I don't know how these got here,' she said.

‘I had the hotel staff bring them,' Gustav said.

‘Oh, of course,' said Emilie. ‘I'd forgotten. You don't do anything for yourself any more, do you? You get the “staff” to do it. But that's no way to live, my son. It will all end.'

Emilie's hair, always so scant and thin, had fallen out, so she was wearing a wig. The wig was brown and thick, slightly curled, and didn't resemble her own hair at all, so it felt to Gustav as though Studer and he were sitting there with a stranger – a stranger who now appeared slightly insane. Studer's vulture neck moved in and out of his shirt as he peered, in sadness and perplexity, at his beloved Em. Gustav looked around the room and thought, nothing good ever happened here, not even the time when Anton came to tea and he put on the purple lipstick; it would be best if this building were torn down.

He made tea and Emilie drank some of this and then she got up and walked out of the room. Gustav and Studer heard her farting in the lavatory. They didn't look at each other. The farts kept piping out loudly. After a moment, Studer said, ‘I fell in love with your mother when she was very young and came to work at the Emmental co-operative, but of course I could never declare it then. Now, it seems to me as if I've wasted my whole existence.'

Gustav often asked himself, what held Emilie to her life? She'd been so angry and sorrowful for so long, so impossible to love or even to please, that he'd imagined that, when she saw the end was coming, she might be glad of death's release. But, in her stubborn way, she fought death off. Perhaps it was for Studer's sake? Though he looked like a bird of prey, he was a kind and sympathetic man. One time, when Gustav went round to Unter der Egg and Emilie was clearly in terrible pain, Studer was cradling her in his arms, like a child. Her wig had fallen off, but this didn't trouble him. He was kissing her bald head and singing to her in a tuneless voice.

She went back into the hospital. The last time Gustav visited, she was in a small room, lit by a blue lamp, exactly like the one she'd been in when she'd caught pneumonia and he'd had to bolt his door against Ludwig Krams.

She was sleeping. She looked peaceful. A nurse came in and Gustav said to the nurse, ‘How long has she got?' and the nurse smiled and said, ‘I think she's ready.'

When the nurse had gone, Gustav spoke to Emilie. He addressed her as ‘Mutti'. He didn't know whether she could hear him or not. He said, ‘You may be ready, Mutti, but I'm not. There is something I always thought I could teach you, and that was how to love me. But I never have. Have I?'

He paused here, waiting, or hoping, that Emilie might say something, but she slept on, unmoving. There was more – plenty more – that he could have said, but he knew that the time for saying it was long past.

Gustav lifted her hand and held it in his. The hand was very cold. He told himself to kiss her forehead and not cry, but to master himself and just walk out of the room, knowing he would never see her again, that the rest would be eternal absence, with no ‘Wiedersehen' to come. Walking out of the room would be his only triumph – that he deserted her life before she deserted it herself and left him behind.