I watched her walk away and so did Elias. But he was also watching me. ‘What?’ he said.
‘They must hire these girls for their legs. She’s got no right to be so young and beautiful.’
‘Shit happens. You’re not young but you’re beautiful.’
‘Do me a favour, don’t insult me with crap compliments, OK?’
‘It wasn’t crap — you don’t know how you look to me but OK, no more compliments. What does your saucer say?’
‘ “Sweet are the uses of adversity, / ”’ I read ‘“Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in its head.’”
‘Tell me about your adversity,’ he said.
‘Not on the first date. How old are you, Elias?’
‘Wait a minute, I don’t know what to do on dates.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s not a date but how old are you?’
‘Sixty-two. What about you?’
‘Fifty-four. You haven’t asked my name.’
‘You’re Christabel Alderton. I knew the name but I’d never seen you. Some friends told me who you were. You’re famous.’
‘More than some, less than others. What do you do?’
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘What kind?’
‘Diabetes consultant at St Eustace.’
‘You don’t act like a doctor.’
‘That’s because I haven’t got your folder in front of me.’
‘Good — you’d find it a dead boring read.’
‘I doubt that. When I first saw you at the Royal Academy I was curious about you but I wouldn’t have taken you for a rocker.’
‘Why not? Mick Jagger’s older than I am.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of your age — it’s just that you look more like the Erlking’s daughter. Which you said you were, if you recall. Are you married?’
‘Was. You?’
‘No.’
‘Gay?’
‘Melancholy, actually. Have you got any children?’
‘No. You were going to tell me about your mother and “Herr Oluf”.’
‘My mother used to sing some of the Loewe ballads and accompany herself on the accordion. She was, is, from Worpswede which is on the Weser. There’s a place called the Teufelsmoor near the town, the Devil’s Moor. That’s where she imagined Herr Oluf riding late at night through the birches and alders and boggy places. She acted the song out and she made me see it all, the trees and the elves and the Erlking’s daughter. When she sang it she used different voices for the Erlking’s daughter and Herr Oluf. One Christmas Day she found a dead man in the Teufelsmoor.’
‘Was it Herr Oluf?’
‘No, just somebody’s house guest.’
‘Did you like hearing your mother tell you about that dead man?’
‘Yes. No one knew how he died, and mysterious deaths are always interesting.’
‘You said your mother was, then you said she is. Is she was or is she is?’
‘I don’t know. She left us when I was eleven and I haven’t heard from her since.’
‘Left you for …?’
‘A tenor in a Pittsburgh opera company. I saw him once when he came to the house. He was a little puffed-up man who looked as if he could be depended on to be undependable. I couldn’t imagine what my mother saw in him but she packed a bag, left a note and that was it.’
‘What did the note say?’
‘It said, “This is a wrong move but I must make it. Do not forgive me. That would be too much.’”
‘Singers.’
‘Singers what?’
‘I don’t know’ I was thinking about Adam Freund who’d sung me ‘Herr Oluf’ in Vienna, a guy whose lean and slightly crazy looks of course attracted me. Freund means friend and he was very friendly. He was singer and guitarist with Sayings of Confucius, our support band. We chatted a little and our pheromones got entangled and I said OK when he offered to show me the Belvedere and its paintings. I was sleeping with our lead guitarist at the time, Sid Horstmann, and he was more than a little pissed off but I wasn’t too bothered about it. After rehearsal at the Metropol Adam walked me through various streets commenting on the architecture and all the caryatids holding up shops, banks, office buildings and blocks of flats. ‘These stone women, they never quit,’ he said. ‘They’re all big and strong and they’re more reliable for holding up buildings than men are.’
My feet were beginning to hurt by the time we got to Prinz-Eugen-Strasse and started up the long hill to the palaces and gardens. In front of the Upper Belvedere there are two stone sphinxes overlooking the gardens and the Lower Belvedere. They’re larger than people-size, they have wings, very serious dignified faces and very raunchy haunches. It was a cold March day but there were a lot of people about and some of them stared at Adam when he climbed up behind one of the sphinxes and pretended to be humping her. I tried to look as if I wasn’t with him. ‘These sphinxes turn me on,’ he said as he tried to move her tail out of the way, ‘but they don’t know how to let themselves go.’
‘Maybe she’s more receptive after midnight,’ I said. We went into the galleries and saw paintings by Klimt and Knopfler and Schiele. The one that really got to me was Schiele’s Death and the Maiden. I can still see it when I close my eyes. The maiden is a big sturdy girl who looks well past her maidenhood, she might even be pregnant. She’s sprawling into Death’s arms, her eyes are open and she seems to be thinking, ‘What the hell, why not?’ Death’s right hand is clutching her left shoulder and his left hand is pressing her head against his chest. Maybe he’s kissing her hair. I think he is.
‘Come away from there,’ said Adam. ‘Don’t let him catch your eye.’
‘I don’t think he’ll come after me today,’ I said. ‘The girl in the picture is ready for him but I’m not.’
‘He’s the one who decides who’s ready,’ said Adam. When we were outside in the twilight he sang me the Schubert song ‘Death and the Maiden’, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’. ‘Pass by, ah! pass by, go, wild boneman!’ says the girl. ‘I am still young, go, dear, and do not touch me.’ His natural voice was a baritone but he sang the girl’s words in such a way that it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She was so young, so scared, so desperate to live! Death was nothing to the stone sphinxes but they seemed to be paying close attention in the twilight.
‘Das Mädchen isn’t ready to go,’ said Adam, but der Tod has heard all that before and he means to have his way with her. ‘Give me your hand, you fair and tender creature,’ he says. ‘I am a friend and come not to punish. Be of good courage! I am not wild, you will be sleeping gently in my arms.’ He sang the Death part in a very low voice, very measured — it was like the tolling of a bell made of shadows.
It was getting colder as the sky grew dark and the lights below us made me feel colder still as we walked down the Lower Belvedere. We went on to Zu den Drei Hacken in the Stephansdom Quarter for Wiener schnitzel and beer and Marillenschnaps, then we walked to the borrowed flat where Adam was staying. I looked up at the sky and found the Plough and the North Star; as long as I can do that I feel at home wherever I am.
I like being in strangers’ places. The furniture was old and brown and highly varnished, there were a lot of books, there was a framed photograph of Louise Brooks as Lulu, there was a lamp with a red shade on the bedside table and through the windows I could see the spires of the cathedral. I was excited and nervous — I was afraid that at any moment the scene would freeze like a photograph and be taken away from me. I wanted us to be naked and safe in each other’s arms.