A Long Blue Monday Page 2

  That’s what I remember. And not only the sound of the birds, not only the tape recorder – a Revox, the best recorder available at the time. Listening to the birdsong was probably only a diversionary tactic anyway. There, close by, lay Claudia, slim on the couch, the Revox on a stool between her and me.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve had to listen to that at least ten times since last autumn,’ she said, ‘whenever we had visitors to dinner.’ Heels and calves in silky nylon on the rough warp of the couch cover, chin propped up in her palms. ‘He pieced it together from dozens of tapes,’ she said. ‘No wonder he’s so crazy about it and wants to play it to everyone. And he tells everyone what microphones he used, he reveals all the tricks it takes to make such good separate recordings out of a medley of warblings.’

  She seemed to be distancing herself, yet she also seemed pleased that I showed an interest in the technology. All that warbling and trilling played to a music-loving audience between the dessert and the house concert. What did Carrel, the engineer, want to prove? That it was purely out of the kindness of his heart that he recorded all the other things with his machine – all those duets, trios and quartets? That, as far as his wife’s musical activities here in this house were concerned, all that interested him was the perfection of the recordings?

  What could I know? I might have heard one or two things, a remark by Bede, a question from Elizabeth. But wasn’t making fun of your parents from time to time just part of it all? Bede did it, Elizabeth did it, therefore Claudia could do it too.

  She’d played me those bird songs the spring before that summer. Very early spring, it was still almost winter, the end of February perhaps, or early March, nineteen fifty-nine. About the same time the year before I still didn’t know Claudia, I only knew Corinne, her schoolfriend. Corinne Weibel used to sit diagonally in front of me in the sixth year of primary school in Oberdorf, before she went on to the Gymnasium down in town. And later on, when I was also at the Kantonsschule I occasionally bumped into her. Not that we ever talked for long, we just said hello.

  Shortly before the summer holidays, during my second year at training college, in a break, a girl came across the lawn from the side wing and made straight for me. ‘Corinne told me that in Oberdorf you used to act in plays, at school and elsewhere too,’ she said. ‘We could do with an extra man. If you’d like to join us.’

  That was Claudia, I’d seen her a couple of times together with Corinne. Although the Gymnasium and the training college were in the same building we hardly knew each other, and I’d never have thought that Gymnasium pupils rehearsing a play in their spare time might ask a training college student to join them.

  Bede’s father, a doctor in the town, had recently bought a tumbledown farmhouse. The house stood in a clearing in the wood above Rüttenen. And it was there – in Papa’s dacha, as Bede called it – in the first week of the holidays, that the rehearsals were to take place. There was even talk of a real performance. The school hall would be available. That had already been settled.

  The tape recorder, the revolving spools, the birdsong. Why did that particular scene remain in my memory? Claudia on the couch, I in the armchair, and between us, on the stool, the Revox recorder.

  Claudia playing me her father’s recordings and making derisive comments about them must have seemed like a sign, the hint of a promise that it might turn into a real love affair after all.

  For me, of course, it had long been a love affair. It had been that right from the beginning, ever since the rehearsals the previous summer, since that week in the forest clearing with Corinne and Claudia, Bede and the others.

  How long it is since I last thought about it! Not that I’d forgotten, no, but it was so far away, had receded further and further away, it had hardly ever had anything to do with the present, with Erica, my studies, the two children, with my work and all those things. You got over all that nonsense ages ago, I’d probably have thought, if I’d ever thought about it. But I never did think about it. I was busy with everything else, always busy with more important things.

  And now? What about now? Why have I started to think about it, forty years on – more than forty years on? What makes those distant things so near again? Am I pursuing them or are they pursuing me? I catch myself paying attention when something from those times happens to cross my mind. And then I pursue the matter in my head, even try to recall everything I can remember about what it was like in the house by the stream. And what it was like in that other house, the Carrels’ house, on the Aare.

  2

  Bede – Rehearsals in Lee Forest

  In the eyes of Claudia, Conrad or Elizabeth I might – to their amazement – have been Bede’s friend. Wide-eyed listener, faithful little dog in front of the loudspeaker was probably more like it. And in return, I’d occasionally assist him at the Aare wall, help him disgorge unwholesome quantities of beer as rapidly as possible. I had experience with drunkards, Bede would never be a drunkard.

  To say that we were friends would have been an exaggeration. We both knew Claudia, that’s all. Later on, if we chanced to meet, the same question en passant, either from him or from me, from me more often than from him: ‘Heard anything from Claudia?’ A regretful shrug. Talk about old friends, as there was nothing else to be said.

  The glade in Lee Forest above Rüttenen. Two well-watered meadows, and a house with a low-hanging hip roof, the front facing the sun and the meadows, in the rear, a peak roof projecting above the hayloft door; the garden surrounded by a thick growth of gooseberry and currant bushes; an empty chicken pen with a coarse-meshed wire fence; plum, apple and cherry trees along the track that emerges from the wood at the lower end of the glade and, after making a broad right-hand curve at the height of the loft entry, leads back to the wood and on up the mountain.

  The second week in July. In the afternoon, the coolest place was on the tiled stove. In the greenish half-light behind half-closed shutters, five voices were rehearsing a conspiracy. Bede’s voice dry and resolute, Conrad’s halting voice reading out orders, Elizabeth’s soft soprano voice, Corinne’s whispered prompts, and Claudia’s voice, surprisingly rough, coming from such a narrow face. He who makes bombs must hate, must know no pity. He who is moved by higher purposes to command must be just, insensitive, cold. He who is to throw the bomb has to anticipate his fear – from the paralysing anxiety to the trembling – so that when it comes to throwing the bomb the fright will be behind him, overcome. Albert Camus, The Just Assassins.

  During our breaks, Bede lectured us on the historical background: the situation of the peasants, the situation of the petty bourgeoisie, of the middle, lower and higher grade civil servants, of the aristocracy, the situation of the secret cells, Siberian cabbage soup, the relationship between power and absolute poverty, straight and roundabout roads to revolution; Lenin had continually changed his plans, Krupskaya her purple stockings.

  In the morning we learned Camus’ texts by heart, separating off into the house, the barn or the orchard. Toward eleven, two people took their turn at cooking. ‘Eating is at the foundation of everything,’ said Bede. ‘I supply the kitchen and the water. Others can do the cooking.’

  After two days I knew my lines by heart and began to show the others how to act. I stood around, gesticulated, held my head stiffly, the way they stood around, gesticulated, held their heads: perhaps it could be done differently, it was only a suggestion. Someone who’s ruminating sits in his chair like this, stares out in front of him like this, or like this; and someone who’s trying to control his rage grips the edge of the table like this, if there’s a table there; a man who’s afraid but doesn’t want to talk about it will beat about the bush, and it’ll sound like this. I managed the demonstration-imitation with a minimum of words. All Bede had to do was say yes.

  They accepted my help. Wasn’t I the one who’d already had the experience of acting in several plays? Just the person they needed.

  And what else could I be used for?

  I’d always envied schoolmates who could entertain others, who had the ability to speak spontaneously about anything and everything. I could hardly ever think of anything suitable offhand. I could only speak more or less smoothly when I’d prepared what I was going to say in advance.

  It had begun with the poems under the Christmas tree, and had continued at school. For a long time I could only attract attention by reciting poetry – in a loud clear voice that no one would have expected from the normally silent pupil. On top of that I attracted attention because I was capable of memorising entire pages of our primer and never got stuck when I was standing up by my desk or even in front of the class. Where others stuttered, stumbled or droned, I took the time to draw breath: it was nice for me to be able to speak too for once.

  Every year before Christmas, a play was performed. In class three, I was the spokesman for the shepherds. The following year, I raged as Herod. The year after that, they gave me the role of the narrator: as a grandfather, I held in my left hand a long-stemmed pipe at which I took mighty puffs whenever the others had their turn to speak; a dozen grandchildren, seated around me in a semicircle, listened to the sacred story – from the census via the search for an inn in Bethlehem to the flight into Egypt; simultaneously, everything I recounted was acted out behind a tautly stretched screen so that in front of the screen in the classroom it appeared as a shadow play.

  No, Bede had no reason to be embarrassed. Acting was the only way I could make myself useful here in the Lee Forest glade. It would never have occurred to me to put myself forward. Nevertheless, in the end he must have got tired of doing nothing but supply commentaries. Although they’d been planned and were set for the last week of the holidays, no
further rehearsals took place. Nor later on either. Some attempts were made, but there was always someone who couldn’t come.

  Bede’s role as a stage director remained a short interlude. He soon went back to walking around with a Nietzsche or Freud paperback in his hand, supplying whoever came his way with his little phrases. ‘I read so as not to think for myself.’ – ‘People who make good resolutions are purposely making themselves discontented.’ – ‘The nibbling worm shows the apple is ripe.’ – ‘Every woman is a cul-de-sac. If you’re running a race with a woman, take something for cramps.’

  He only ever proffered very few such remarks, but he always seemed to have a large supply in stock. He particularly liked dropping them when they were out of place, and he delivered them with such conviction that you could have thought he was being serious.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I had a first-class upbringing. Be a good boy, come on now, get on with it! Oh yes, very nice, you’re a good boy! When I sat down on the potty there was sure to be someone beside me to help – the au-pair, Mama, or even Papa himself. As a gut doctor he must have been aware of the importance of his only son’s first products. And so you gave them what you could, hard work is never enjoyable, but if the spectators show their approval by continually patting your little cheeks, you can’t avoid giving them something in return. What little Bede once learned, Bede never forgets. And now, make a little sentence out of it, come on, a complete one. There you are! Single words, a yes or a no, that’s not enough for them. It always has to be something solid, complete, well-rounded. I took it to heart. I can’t do anything else. And now if they don’t like it they’ve only themselves to blame.’

  During the following two weeks of the summer holidays I worked as a labourer on a building site, for Fröhlicher & Co. But whilst picking and shoveling and pushing wheelbarrows, I remained in the Lee Forest glade, still sitting there on the refreshingly cool tiled stove, still in St Petersburg in an attic room with conspirators. Bede was still striding around in the dim living room. Down in the ravine at the foot of the cliff he read out quotations from his paperback. He prodded between the rocks for Jura vipers. He pointed up to the buzzard that was circling in the air above the pine trees. And then, Conrad’s escape from the heat into the fountain trough. Elizabeth suggested a trip to the swimming pool; but we made do with footbaths in the stream and showers under the garden hose. A farmer from Rüttenen came to mow the meadows. Cherries direct from the tree, and redcurrant desserts in abundance.

  ‘When the Lord distributed mouths and there was a great rush I called out “here, here” at least a dozen times.’ Bede liked admitting things like that. He bombarded the girls with compliments, occasionally with well-aimed jibes. No one seemed to hold it against him. Claudia, Elizabeth and he were classmates, they’d known each other for a long time. Conrad and he were in the same students’ society, Corinne had been friends with Claudia ever since the Weibels had moved from Oberdorf to the town.

  My stagefright only left me during the rehearsals. Whilst the others needed advice on how to act on stage, it was before and after rehearsals that I could have done with advice.

  3

  The House on the Aare River

  In the telephone directory there was only one Carrel, so it had to be Claudia’s father. He was an electrical engineer, but I knew that already. He was married to a von Matt and they lived in Römerstrasse. The von Matts were clearly an old-established family in the town: according to the directory there was a judge of that name, and also a law company, and a doctor and a businessman.

  Along the road, a low wall surmounted by a white-painted wooden fence as high as your head, dense shrubbery behind. On the garden gate, a ‘No hawkers’ notice; an enamelled eye warned that everything was under the protection of ‘Securitas’. Best to walk past quickly and turn off left down to the river bank. Here there was a fence of rusty wire netting held by iron posts and jutting out about one and a half metres into the river: private, no trespassing. Through the gaps in the bushes the gleam of the manicured lawn, a stretch of gravel path, the gleam of birch trunks. Outside on the riverbank, under the willow thicket and the ash trees, the kinds of weeds that grow in damp places.

  I left my bicycle under the railway bridge. On arriving here on foot I sometimes heard voices coming from the house. We’d enjoyed sunny summer weather every day since the beginning of July and, unless a thunderstorm from the mountain broke out over the town, people stayed outdoors till late at night.

  A two-storey villa with a steeply ridged roof, attic windows on the Aare side. On the town side, at right angles to the building, an extension with a big roof terrace.

  Not much could be made out clearly through the foliage of the bushes and beyond the lawn, the gravel and the rose bushes. A roller shutter squeaked. Wooden sandals clattered. Glasses tinkled. Someone said something, someone else answered, a third voice joined in, a sudden rustle of leaves and I couldn’t make out if the voice was male or female. The wind in the bushes and the trees, the crickets in the grass, the gurgling water: too much background noise, although I had my ears pricked up.

  Nevertheless I stayed by the fence. If I went away I came back again. I remained standing there and I didn’t know why I’d come. Taking every voice for Claudia’s. Stepping behind the willows when headlights up on the road moved through the twilight; Römerstrasse was a road where cars seldom drove by.

  Tired from looking where nothing much could be seen in the dim light, I finally retreated back to the railway bridge. How peacefully the River Aare flowed! How still the reflection of the lights in the water! Across the river the silhouette of the Crooked Tower, the walls of the redoubt.

  Through the town once more and then home. Before that summer, I’d always chosen the shortest way – Amthausplatz, Pflug, Autophon, Weissensteinstrasse – and even on the steep road through Langendorf I never dismounted from my bicycle. Now I was in no hurry, once more I took the roundabout way via the swimming pool, made detours through the Brühl, the Allmend and the Dilitsch quarters, pushed my bike even when the road wasn’t steep at all.

  I arrived at the house by the stream at midnight. I drank water from the tap, searched the fridge for leftovers: cold beans, rice pudding, mashed potatoes. I had to recover my strength for the following morning on the building site.

  The first week of the holidays the rehearsals, then three weeks on the building site. In the last two weeks I occasionally helped out at the Furrers’. Whenever possible I went to the swimming pool.

  My somnambulism was just as bad in the daytime.

  The pool, the rows of cabins, the wooden sunbeds along the wall. The smell of suncream and chlorine. Swirls of dust by the ‘giant stride’: holding on to a chain, children ran barefoot over the gravel, leapt up with a swing of the hips, the chains clanked against the iron pole. Balls flew. People queued at the kiosk. At the horizontal bar boys hung by their knees, swung themselves up, turned somersaults.

  And Bede, sitting cross-legged on the plinth of the diving board. Swallows darted about high up in the air. The wind turned the pages of his book. From time to time a shadow passed over the lawn and the pool.

  ‘Zarathustra excuses splashes from flesh fearless enough to dive. Man, the hairless beast. Born with nothing but nakedness, that he has to cover up for the rest of his days. A chronic liar. As a gaze at your own belly button will confirm.’

  He tapped the book with his fingers: ‘It comes from this man here of course, another of those liars. I can’t do without him: maxims plus reflections. Everything borrowed from him; with regard to women too, obviously. Just look around. It’s amazing to see how assiduously suncream is being applied to what’s not otherwise on display. Grill of the vanities. And at the same time they have us revolving on the spit.’