Who Is Martha? (9 page)

What was at stake was nothing less than the project of a lifetime, Levadski said, his last research project, and he needed an invitation from the Research Center for an express visa. As a Ukrainian it wasn’t so easy to get across the border, member of the Academy of Sciences or not.

The male voice asked for Levadski’s passport number and promised he would deal with everything.

After this fruitful conversation he dialed the number of the Academy of Sciences, where he was recognized by voice and put through to the director, something that always used to flatter him and to which he was now indifferent. Levadski explained the matter: he urgently had to get to Vienna. He was ninety-six and didn’t have time to detain himself with paperwork. What he expected from the Academy was for them to call the embassy and speak to the director of the visa department and persuade them that he was a special case. He entreated them to do so. If informed that no exceptions could be made, they were immediately to go on the attack and make use of his membership in the Academy of Sciences and his doctorate and honorary degrees.

Levadski received his visa within two weeks. When he turned the key in the lock, a thin leather suitcase between his legs, it was as if the rumbling in his stomach was calling out to the silence in his apartment. “I am not coming back,” he said to the oval porcelain plaque with the number 107 on his door. With a bad conscience he got into the elevator. He was leaving his home like a wife he never had. He turned his back on his apartment, his apartment that welcomed him on a daily basis, warmed him, embraced him. True, he’d had to cook himself, but the apartment was there for him and surrounded him day and night, in silent selfless love. My God, Levadski thought, what has become of me? A traitor! An egotist! By the time he stepped out of the elevator Levadski couldn’t care less about his egotism.

In the taxi, he inspected the visa in his passport with a magnifying glass. It loomed even larger in size than the one he had been given in 2002. Security precautions, thought Levadski, are getting tighter.

“Traffic jam,” said the taxi driver. Levadski was happy that, as was his habit, he had set off far too early. He was happy about his hat and his walking stick, leaning against his thin leg like a gaunt grayhound. In order not to look out the taxi window, and to avoid becoming unnecessarily melancholy, Levadski opened his wallet. A beautiful credit card beamed at him like an oriental beauty through the slit of her veil. What a kerfuffle over such a small item! Levadski thought. Luckily, it had been sorted quickly. Levadski had only applied for the credit card the previous week. He received it shortly after the courier had arrived with his passport and visa. Let them say what they like about bureaucracy!

“We are on the move,” the taxi driver announced ceremoniously. “An accident with a few fatalities.”

“Wonderful,” Levadski said and started counting the knuckles on his hand with the handle of the drinking stick; he counted them clockwise and counter-clockwise. He continued to count them until they passed the spot of the accident.

At the airport the crowd took no notice of Levadski’s smart outward appearance or his considerable age. For the last time, he thought, and dived into the swathes of people who smelled of sweat, perfume and onions. Half an hour later, Levadski was washed up on the banks of passport and customs control. His drinking stick got through the checkpoint without causing a stir. Levadski followed suit. My God, he thought, sitting on one of the hard metal benches in front of the departure gate, One way, and no coming back! To calm himself he unscrewed his drinking stick, threw his head back and drank the contents of the glass tube: Cognac. Make: 3 Star Odessa Cognac. For the last time, Levadski thought, a native comestible.

“What’s that?” a child who’d appeared out of nowhere asked.

“A drinking stick, my dear boy,” Levadski replied.

“I am not a boy,” the child growled. “Where did you get the stick?”

“In a shop at 5 Victory Avenue. Do you like it?”

“No. But my father does,” said the child and pointed at one of the customs officers standing with his legs spread apart, who, so it seemed to Levadski, was winking at him in a friendly manner with the muzzle of his gun.

VIII

ON
N
OVEMBER
6, 2010, L
EVADSKI LANDED IN
V
IENNA
. It was a Saturday and shortly after four. “Hotel Imperial please,” he said in a cracked voice to the broad, cobra-like back of the taxi driver.

“Oh, Imperial,” said the taxi driver, his leather jacket squeaking. “You know it’s the best hotel in town?”

“I know,” Levadski said and felt his heart pounding at the portals of his brain.

“How long are you staying there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can speak our language very well!” This praise coming from the mouth of a pitch-black man made Levadski laugh. “Where are you from?” he asked Levadski with a heavy accent.

“I’m from the East.” Levadski paused. “From Ukraine.” He noticed he was lying. He was lying, even though he was telling the truth. In the political sense Levadski really was from Ukraine, it was written in black and white in his passport, but from a historical perspective he was from two utopias: Austro-Hungary and the Soviet Union. The one and only thing that smacked of a lie was the realization that Levadski had survived two systems of government.

“I know Ukraine,” said the taxi driver, “I studied telecommunications in Germany, my roommate was from Kiev. His name was Petro and he always ate sour pickles in the morning to get his hangover under control. He liked to joke. For example, when I scratched my head, he would say: ‘Don’t scratch – wash!’” Levadski broke into a dirty laugh and immediately apologized. “Yes, Petro was funny …”

“Are you still in touch with him?”

The taxi driver shook his head. His black face had a purple sheen to it in the red of the traffic light. “He’s dead. Froze to death on a park bench in winter.”

“Oh,” said Levadski.

“Yes,” said the taxi driver. “That wouldn’t have happened to him in the Ivory Coast. That’s where I’m from.”

With every new traffic light, Levadski warmed a little more to the taxi driver. He would have liked to examine him by daylight. “What do you think of our language?” the taxi driver asked him.

“Which language?”

“The German language,” the taxi driver laughed. Beautiful. Levadski thought it was a very beautiful language, and romantic. The taxi driver cautiously turned round, his leather jacket scrunching madly. “You know, this is the first time I am hearing someone say that German is a beautiful language. I am pleased, because I think it is too.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” Levadski said. He would have liked to continue talking about the beauty of the German language but didn’t say anything. He remained silent and took pleasure in the rising bubbles of joy, savored the experience of sitting beneath the roof of a car with a special person, a black taxi driver, Ivorian by birth, someone who had studied telecommunications, who had borrowed the German language. Levadski smiled in the darkness of the taxi.

“What do you think of the EU?” the man from the Ivory Coast wanted to know.

“The EU is a blessing. Migratory birds, for example, have always been real Europeans.”

“That’s terrific,” said the taxi driver. “Terrific,” he repeated softly, as if a state secret had just been entrusted to him and he had understood its meaning.

Levadski’s drinking cane exited the taxi like a gentle hoof, followed by a slightly clumsier Levadski. A liveried bellhop disappeared through a side door with his suitcase. “Goodbye!” Levadski waved to the taxi driver. A chain of fireflies lit up the darkness of the car’s interior.

“Take care!” the taxi driver shouted, “Long live the birds!” Smiling, Levadski stepped from the revolving door into the hotel lobby.

“A reservation has been made for me. Levadski is my name. Luka Levadski.”

Shortly after the liveried bellhop deposited Levadski’s suitcase with a dull thud on the luggage rack and took his leave with the intimation of a bow, there was a soft and melodious ringing at the door. Before Levadski could even say “Come in,” a petite chambermaid wearing a white cap, whom Levadski guessed might have been Spanish or Portuguese, entered. She approached Levadski, whose attempt to get up out of the deep rococo armchair remained fruitless. When she noticed his arduous swinging back and forth, she hastened her step in an attempt to prevent Levadski from rising. She opened out her palms like headlights as she came towards him. She had only come to ask whether everything was to his satisfaction. Levadski nodded, perfectly content.

“If you would like the sheets changed, just throw the card on the bed. Card on bed – change. Card not on bed – don’t change,” the chambermaid explained and held up a gray postcard. Levadski watched her throw the card onto the bed twice and pick it up from the bedspread again. While throwing, she raised one eyebrow and then let her hand drop casually. It was really just a single dropping of a card from the hand of a person who was used to being served. When she picked up the card it bowed to her like to someone held in high estimation, a completely flat and square person.

“I have got it,” Levadski said, when the chambermaid wanted to repeat the procedure once more. How long would he be staying, she wanted to know. “I don’t know,” Levadski said, “hopefully long enough.” The chambermaid gave a conspiratorial smile. The Elisabeth Suite was just the right ticket for an old man like himself, in her opinion.

“I know this suite,” he said, “You must excuse me for remaining seated.” He would offend her if he were to get up now, the chambermaid said. “As a gentleman I find it much more difficult to remain seated in front of a lady than to get up,” Levadski admitted.

“I don’t understand,” the chambermaid said smiling and blushed.

“I know this room,” Levadski repeated, “I have stayed here once before. As an official speaker at a conference for birds. It is the same room, with the midnight blue silk wallpaper, the magnificent Louis XVI furniture, the crystal chandeliers, mirrored doors and the bathroom with a gilded domed ceiling. It can only be the same room.”

A classic room wouldn’t be the right choice for you, the chambermaid said. Not so big. The bathroom too small. Only a shower. It was only here that he would be able to let off steam. Levadski laughed. “If I could, yes!” The chambermaid shook her head slightly at a loss and made her way towards the door. There was pride in her gait, resolve and character. Levadski liked it. “That’s the way a thresher crosses a field,” he thought, “thrusting her legs like tired whips.”

When the door had closed and the rattling of the keys at the chambermaid’s hips was no longer audible, Levadski rose groaning from his armchair and picked up the gray card from the bed. “With pleasure,” it read, “we will service your room every day. We are happy to change your sheets if you place this gray card on the bed.” Levadski let the card drop as instructed and picked it up again. “A shame to die,” he sighed, “things are only just beginning to get exciting.”

He entered the bathroom, which was about the same size as his apartment on Veteran Street. The State can have the apartment, Levadski thought, I am going to sit in this bath until doomsday, I have no other choice! I won’t for the life of me be able to get out of it by myself! Levadski desperately wanted to take a bath. With a tub like this it would be a sin not to bathe!

May the sun go down, but let me have my bath! He was choked by sadness. His old moldy bath suddenly appeared before him, dumb and unreproachful. It had been an evening like every other, Levadski had returned from his customary constitutional, made himself a fried egg, sat down in his rocking chair, leafed through a paper on
Pedantic Waste Disposal and Its Influence on the Diet of Birds of Prey
, yawned, stood up, shuffled into the bathroom and turned on the bath. Then he changed his mind and pulled the drain plug. A shower would be enough. An evening like any other. But something was not right. On this evening Levadski lost interest in climbing into his bath for the simple reason that he didn’t like it anymore. He didn’t like it anymore because it had grown old, through no fault of its own. It had aged, had been cleaned less and less by its master and had acquired deep scratches. “I haven’t taken a bubble bath for years,” Levadski thought. One thing was certain: if his old bath could see
this
one, it would crack with grief.

“I want to take a bath,” he pleaded into the receiver of the telephone that hung on the wall of the bathroom.

“The gentleman would like to take a bath,” the concierge ascertained, full of sympathy.

“I would like a strong, preferably short-sighted hotel employee,” Levadski added bashfully, “somebody who can pull me out of the bathtub after bathing.”

“I will send someone who wears glasses to your room,” the concierge whispered. Levadski thanked him and hung up.

A sturdy young man with dark rings under his eyes that were visible from a distance and a ridiculous cap on his round head entered the room. The proud name of the hotel and
Vienna
glittered in gold italics on his cap. Like an embarrassed circus bear, hands folded as if in prayer, he headed towards Levadski.

“Butler service, good day,” the young man said when he came to a stop in front of Levadski.

“Do you know what the most beautiful thing about this suite is apart from the bathroom?” Levadski asked, and gave the answer himself. “The ring of the doorbell. What a melody! It is not at all quiet but is nevertheless pleasant.”

The butler, whose cradle, Levadski conjectured, must have stood in a sand-whipped oriental oasis, gave him a big-toothed smile. The name Habib was engraved on the shiny name badge on his chest. Habib looked at Levadski attentively, the way you do when you are unsure of whether people are listening to you with interest or just counting the lines in the face opposite them.

“I wear contact lenses. You wanted somebody shortsighted.”

“I wanted to take a bath,” Levadski said, “but I am no longer able to climb out of the tub on my own. If you would be so kind as to help me out when I am done, and turn a blind eye.” The butler was astonished.