The Emperor Waltz Read online

  Dolphus made a general sort of noise.

  ‘Are you travelling alone?’ the man said. ‘You are young to be travelling alone.’

  ‘I am seventeen,’ Dolphus said. ‘My brother has just begun to study in Weimar, and I am going to visit him. I have never been to Weimar, and I am greatly looking forward to it.’

  ‘A beautiful city,’ the man said. ‘The girls there are said to be beautiful. Are you excited about that possibility, too?’

  ‘Sir,’ Dolphus said.

  There was a moment’s awkward silence before the man seemed to relax, and smile encouragingly, as if to say that Dolphus’s comment was of no importance, that he would overlook the little social blunder. ‘Are you –’ he seemed to brighten, not just in his eyes, but in his skin and his moustache, too ‘– are you close to your brother, in general?’

  The man had struck Dolphus as elderly at first, because of his white moustache and his pure white hair. There was, too, his lack of any idea of what someone Dolphus’s age would think of going to a city to see beautiful women; it had suggested to Dolphus that the man’s own youth had been over many years before. Now, however, he realized that the man was only in early middle age, perhaps thirty-two or -three. He was fresh and pink in his skin. His hair had bleached prematurely, and bleached totally. Such things were known, since the war.

  ‘My brother is a beautiful artist,’ Dolphus said. ‘I am so proud of him.’

  ‘An artistic family,’ the man said, and before Dolphus could deny this, he had half raised himself to his feet and had slipped across the compartment. His movement was fluid, even graceful, rather than the stiff way his moustache suggested he would move; he moved like the young man he had so recently been. So like a movement of fainting had his movement been, Dolphus almost believed that he had been taken ill in some way. He seemed not in control of the movements that would make him slip himself next to Dolphus with a fearful and yet warm and sincere smile. ‘How lovely, to be in an artistic family, my dear,’ the man said. Dolphus looked down; a gloved hand, a surprisingly large and square hand, had been placed on his knee.

  Dolphus got up rapidly, pushing the man away from him. ‘Get off me,’ he said briskly, for once knowing exactly the right words to say. ‘Get out,’ he said, and then, with a sense of acting rightly and decently, he drew back his fist and hit the man hard in the face. The man looked humbly astonished; he raised his hand to his nose, and his hair hung in a cowlick above his eyes, dislodged by the blow. ‘I really am most terribly sorry,’ the man started to say, but blood was running from his nose into his white moustache. He reached for the white handkerchief in his jacket pocket, and dabbed ineffectually.

  ‘You’d better get that seen to,’ Dolphus said efficiently. He felt himself shaking now; but he had taken control of the situation. He had heard of such things occurring in railway compartments, and had rejected approaches of this nature in other settings on two or three occasions. Never before had he hit someone, however full of filth and dirt their minds had shown themselves to be. It was a medical failing, he knew, which could be cured, but for the rest of it ordinary decent citizens had the right to defend themselves. He had heard, too, that such tastes had spread in the conditions that the war had been fought in, and this man was the right age to have gone through it. ‘There is a tap for drinking water at the end of the carriage. I’m sure you can clear yourself up with that and your handkerchief. Good day to you, sir.’

  ‘I made a terrible mistake,’ the man said, departing swiftly. He cast a look of fear and supplication at Dolphus. ‘I hope you will forget all about it.’

  Dolphus was trembling as the door shut, and waited, his hands clenched on his knees in protection. The man did not return after leaving the compartment, however. In time, Dolphus’s attention turned to the country outside. The train had slowed. Thuringia, in its picturebook way, must be unfolding: forests, and what might be woodcutters’ cottages, just by the line; rolling hills, with dense layers of trees and crested with castles. Outside, the snow continued to fall, and there was nothing to see but a dense whirl of white in grey, grey in black. Dolphus closed his eyes. He hoped that the train would reach the next station, at the very least.

  12.

  All at once, there was a banging on the window. Dolphus opened his eyes. There was a bustle of passengers and luggage in the corridor along the train, and outside, up against the glass, was a human face, wrapped in black scarves and grinning. Behind, the snowing world was lit with gas-lamps. The face belonged, he realized in a second, to his brother Christian. ‘Get up! Come on down!’ Christian was shouting. ‘This is Weimar. Were you asleep?’ Dolphus jumped up, pulling on his coat and mufflers, his hat and gloves, trying to pull down his case from the luggage rack, all at the same time.

  ‘Were you asleep?’ Christian said, as they shook hands, as brothers do, with warmth and relief. ‘The train – they must have turned up the oil heating to full blast, you are so red in the face. It is so strange. I thought it would be an hour late, at least, and here you are, almost exactly on time. The snow had no effect at all on you. Here, let me take that.’

  ‘It was hot in the train,’ Dolphus said. ‘I put my head against the window, once, and it was almost burning with the cold outside. It made me so—’ and here he yawned immensely. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m still sleepy and confused. I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘We can walk,’ Christian said. ‘You don’t mind a walk in the snow, do you? Gloves and hat and scarves and all? And you are in Weimar, by the way. There are no cabs to be had for love or money. Not that I have any money.’

  ‘No, a walk in the snow is nice,’ Dolphus said. ‘It is better if the walk begins after the snow stops falling, but a walk in the snow is nice.’

  ‘Give that to me!’ Christian said, and hauled the bag from Dolphus’s grip. ‘I want you to be my special guest while you are here – I don’t want you to make the smallest effort. You are only here until Tuesday. You should be on holiday, do nothing, raise not the slightest finger.’

  ‘I was intended to be here only until Tuesday,’ Dolphus said, giving up his bag. ‘But this snow looks terrible.’

  On the station platform, like a nightmare of punishment and retribution, the man who had forced himself upon Dolphus was being led from the train by two guards. There was a police officer on the station platform and, sheltering from the snow inside, three or four shabby men, taking an interest. The man had his head bowed; he was expecting some kind of violence, immediate or long drawn-out.

  ‘Wait,’ Christian said, and he set down his brother’s bag. He bent to retie the laces of his boots, which had come undone. Against the snow on the platform, a leaf had fallen; an oak leaf, a fat hand’s print against the solid, stained frozen heap. Dolphus pressed his foot against it. Around, men and women had greeted each other and were leading each other off.

  ‘This is Weimar,’ Dolphus said. ‘I always wanted to know how it was. Do people read poetry here? Are the women of the town notably beautiful?’

  ‘Are the women of the town notably beautiful?’ Christian said. ‘Dolphus, what has happened to you?’

  Dolphus hit his brother gently on the shoulder, laughing. He would explain the joke later, when there was a moment to mention the stranger on the train in a harmless and funny way. ‘Well,’ Christian said, ‘I dare say you will find out about the women of the town very shortly.’ He wound his muffler around his neck. They set off. ‘But Weimar? No, people worry about money, and food, and the cost of living, and perhaps then, a long way later, about art and poetry and things of that sort. There are no grand dukes any more, or none that pay for poetry.’

  ‘And the weather,’ Dolphus said. ‘They are concerned with the weather, I’m sure.’

  ‘It is snowing again,’ Christian said. ‘Are you going to be able to walk? About twenty minutes, I think. It is not so very bad.’

  It was early in the year for snow. It fell in fat globes, swiftly, weightlessly, making the sky a s
mall room full of collapse. The substance filled the air as if in revolution, a device ceaselessly turning. They walked away from the railway station, along a boulevard whose other side could not be seen, muffled against the snow. The fresh fall on the ground was crisp, and underneath the new surface, the snow was already hard-packed and thick. It was not slippery underfoot, but solid. Out of the whirling substance, lit in patches and flurries, figures came, faceless dark bundles with no shape or character. As they went further, the streets narrowed, and a wall was thrown up to one side or another, and occasionally a shop window, bright-lit or shuttered. Sometimes, as they went, Christian made a comment on what they were passing.

  ‘That was Klee,’ he said, when a bundled figure banged against them with the case of a musical instrument. He howled to make himself understood. ‘He is a Master at the Bauhaus.’ But Dolphus could not see how he could be identified. ‘And this is the Marktplatz. We can cross it directly, from this corner to the opposite one.’ A little later: ‘Those were Mazdaznan. Are you cold? You don’t say anything. Is that your teeth chattering? It is so cold!’

  ‘What is Mazdaznan?’ Dolphus said, for something to say. He had nothing to observe but some people, perhaps four or five, who had brushed past him. He had felt, strangely, a texture of silk, like a ballgown without structure, like a loose robe, and then nothing else but a body underneath it. The people must have been insufferably cold. Mazdaznan explained nothing, but then he remembered that the word had come up in one of his brother’s letters somehow. The word, alone, had registered and had come to his mind when he heard it spoken.

  ‘Oh, I forgot,’ Christian said. ‘You don’t know Mazdaznan. I’ll explain when we get home.’ Then he seemed to say, ‘We live such lives of cat and elephant in this wise—’ the snow and the muffler and a horse somewhere nearby, whinnying, it seemed in Dolphus’s ear, all combining to mangle what his brother said. Then there was silence again, and the silent tumult of falling snow.

  Four figures came at them, now in some kind of uniform. Christian took Dolphus’s arm, and they moved sharply to one side. ‘And those were friends of Herr Wolff,’ Christian said. Dolphus had the impression of raw red faces, a military cap, a band on the arm bearing some kind of insignia, a determination of purpose, and a sharp smell of cheap soap and old beer on the breath. He had seen such men before, outside the U-Bahn in Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. He did not know whether ‘friends of Herr Wolff’ was meant literally. He remembered that Wolff was a name of one of his brother’s friends, or of something similar, here in Weimar, that he had been written about in letters. ‘And some more,’ Christian said, bringing his face close to Dolphus’s ear. Three men now, similarly dressed, but moving more slowly; one in an invalid carriage with an oiled hood folded over him, but an amputated leg sticking out, and two behind him, injured permanently in some way Dolphus could not grasp until they were quite by him, and then he saw how their faces were marred and torn, one with an eye a socket. ‘More friends of Herr Wolff. You remember I told you about Wolff. He is the political genius in the house.’

  ‘When am I going to meet Adele?’ Dolphus shouted.

  ‘Adele?’ Christian called back. ‘Adele?’

  ‘Your sweetheart,’ Dolphus said. He had been practising this expression for ten minutes, his mouth moving silently. It seemed to him to contain the right measure of engagement and sympathy and interest. There was a short busy silence between them, as they stepped over a body at full length on the road, perhaps fallen on ice, perhaps a more permanent collapse. Dolphus had the impression of a bottle grasped, a face gripped tight against the snowfall, an end awaited.

  ‘Down there,’ Christian said, indicating with a well-wrapped arm. ‘If you follow that lane down there and take the second right, that leads to the Bauhaus itself. From now on it is my walk home. I can do it in my sleep.’

  ‘Adele,’ Dolphus said, reminding him. The fallen man or woman was still there, disappearing now as he turned to look, disappearing in the bright-lit obscurity of the blizzard.

  ‘You will meet her,’ Christian said. ‘But she goes back to Breitenberg very soon, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after. We will try to meet, but I think it may not be this time. There are so many people for you to meet. I am going to marry her. Did I tell you?’

  Dolphus wondered if he had heard correctly. He found this passing on inexplicable. But his brother’s ways had often been potentially inexplicable to him, obscure as a heavy falling snow. In the past, he remembered his brother taking on a passionate and talkative enthusiasm about drawing in pastels, and him explaining at all times about the ability he now had to capture warmth and flesh; he had talked about it at the dinner table, on the walk home from the Gymnasium, at all times. He had called his brother into his room, and explained, and shown. Then one day he had stopped, all at once. He had stopped talking about it, and Dolphus had thought for a day or two that he had lost interest. But he had not lost interest. He still drew with pastels, perhaps more than ever, and Dolphus came across him in a corner of the kitchen, drawing the scullery-maid with what Dolphus was sure were pastels. Christian had just decided to stop talking about it, or had been told by their father – it was possible – to find another topic of conversation for the sake of all of them. Sometimes, however, he had stopped talking about something of burning interest because of exactly that, a loss of interest. Christian’s fervent enthusiasms and abrupt worldly silences were so hard to interpret; muffled, in the extreme weather, embarrassment could not be interpreted confidently.

  ‘You are going to be married, you and Adele?’ Dolphus said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I asked her to marry me, and in the end she said yes. That is the way things go, you know. This is the old library, the duchess’s old library,’ Christian said, giving a pale blue wall a firm slap with his gloved hand, like an ostler greeting a favourite horse. ‘You will want to come to see that. Every tourist comes to the duchess’s library, like the house of Goethe and the duke’s palace, none of which I have been in, myself. The duke’s palace should be over there. Perhaps you can see the tower. No. Too dark, too much snow falling. And now we cross the road – you are quite all right still? Not too cold? We are going to take a short-cut across the park. Don’t worry. I can do this in my sleep. I’ll tell you everything when we are warmed up and have eaten something. You must be so hungry.’

  Dolphus, freezing, feeling the weight of the fallen snow on his shoulders and the crown of his cap, just nodded. They stamped their feet on the side of the empty road, and moved off, side by side, into the dark and thick-wooded park. In the silent muffled fury of the falling snow, no birds sang.

  13.

  ‘My dear young men,’ a middle-aged woman cried, coming out from the open door of a sitting room. ‘Stand and shake – stand and shake – there, stay there. No galoshes! Your feet must be soaked through. The electric light has failed, but we hope that it will be merely temporary.’ Dolphus had the impression of a large, warm cigar box of a house. It was dark and flickering; light came from two candelabra on tables in the hallway, more candles from inside the open door, and the high-piled fires in hall and sitting room. The two of them stood and stamped, shaking the snow from their shoulders; they looked like winter buffalo, hunched and white. ‘At least it is warm. You must be Herr Vogt’s brother Adolphus – a great pleasure to have you. Maria will take your bags up to your room. There is a truckle bed prepared for you there, and you will want to get into some dry clothes. Your splendid red socks, Herr Adolphus! Come down and there will be coffee and something warming for you. And, Herr Vogt – a letter, a note was brought for you. Take a candle each, or you will fall over in the dark. I am so sorry for this. The electricity has never failed before.’

  Dolphus and Christian were struggling with gloveless hands to unhook their boots. A maid – presumable Maria – appeared from behind another door and, ignoring protests, took Dolphus’s bag, leading them in their socks up the stairs with a candle. Christian picked the lette
r up with a smooth, rapid gesture. The girl had vivid red hair, tidy under a cap; she turned at each corner with a small superior smile, raising her hand to her smooth hair.

  ‘Frau Scherbatsky is a good sort,’ Christian said, when they were alone. ‘The house is her pride and joy, so don’t be knocking your pipe out against her skirting boards, or using her curtains to clean your boots.’

  ‘She seems a good sort,’ Dolphus said, trying the expression out – it appeared a new one on Christian’s lips. ‘Who is the letter from?’

  ‘Oh, from Adele,’ Christian said. ‘I think one of the other lodgers was there in the dark – it was probably Neddermeyer. He was the architect of the house. He lives here rent-free, I reckon, and he and Scherbatsky are more than landlady and lodger to each other. I don’t think anyone is supposed to know that, though. He is a good sort, a bit of an old woman, but a good sort.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to read the letter from your sweetheart?’ Dolphus said. He proffered his candle in an absurd way.

  Christian took it, placing it on the table. He looked at the letter’s outside.‘Yes, it is from Adele,’ he said. Then he took a kind of decision and tore it open. He held it next to the candle flame, and read it with some attention. ‘You can read it if you like,’ he said, handing it over. ‘There is nothing private in it.’

  Dolphus took it. It was written in an old-fashioned hand, a Gothic script that few people he knew in Berlin still used, and those all middle-aged or older. He saw that the letter had been written first in pencil, painfully, then traced over in ink, with much use of abbreviations and lines over the script to indicate longer words. The paper was thick and flocculent, a piece of paper for drawing on, and Dolphus remembered that Adele’s sister was an artist with Christian at the Bauhaus. The letter was an invitation, formally phrased and directed at both Christian and Dolphus, to come to an address in Weimar to take a cup of coffee the next day at a specified time in the morning. ‘My sister and I’ had sent the invitation. Dolphus thought of handing it back and saying, ‘She seems awfully nice,’ but there was nothing to cause the comment. He wondered if Adele was sixty years old; then he remembered that she came from the country, or from the south, or from something else that explained her formality. On the other side, in thick pencil, scribbled rather than written in the careful old-fashioned hand of the rest of the letter, someone had added, ‘I add my name to my sister’s invitation. E. W.’ Some pressure had been brought here on the writer; its unwillingness was clear in the almost legal precision of the wording. It could be brought up as evidence much later, as proof that she had not always fought against her sister’s young man.