A Greater Music (4 page)

“I'm sorry?” I asked. I hadn't quite caught the name. “Who are you talking about?”

“André Rieu, the violinist. He has his own orchestra. He's Dutch.”

“I've never heard of him.”

The violinist was clearly putting a lot of effort into his facial expression and body language; no matter what he was playing, that happy smile never left his face. While he played he moved elegantly about the stage, making sure to hold the violin at a graceful angle. His long curly hair was pulled back with a stylish purple hair-tie, and each of his on-stage gestures were carefully calculated for a specific effect, like those of a gifted actor. Agnes gestured toward a shelf of books.

“I've got an André Rieu album—photos, you know.”

“Oh?” I tried to sound polite rather than genuinely enthusiastic in case she suggested I have a look through the album, which I'd spotted next to a large, thick volume entitled
Princess Diana: Her Glory and Myth.
But then my gaze landed on something else, on the same shelf as the books: a black and white photograph in a small, finely carved wooden frame. It was a waist-up photograph of a young woman; it appeared to be quite an old picture, and the woman to be around fifteen. She was wearing a dark dress, probably black, and her blonde hair was tied back; it gave the impression of having been taken to mark a special occasion. A handful of pale-cultured roses were clutched to her chest, and her lips were curved into a smile that was both delicate and sharp, matching the contours of her face. The girl was standing in front of what looked like the door to a building. Her face looked pale and drawn for one so young. Overall, the impression was of a strange combination of cunning and freshness, of time flowing past in water. There
was no question about it—this was Agnes, a long time ago. All the same I asked Joachim:

“Is this a photo of Agnes?”

“How would I know?” he responded brusquely, without even glancing at the photograph.

After the meal, when Agnes had finished the dishes and came to join the rest of us in the living room, I pointed out the photograph on the shelf and asked if it was a photo of her.

“Yes, that's right. It's a photo of the old days.”

“Agnes, you were really pretty.”

“There's no need to lie,” Joachim said, without looking at me.

“It's not a lie, it's true. How old were you?”

“I was thirteen. 1963. The day of my First Communion. That's an important day in the Protestant church, you know.”

“So that's why you were wearing those fancy clothes? The black dress?”

“That's why I wore the black dress, yes. And the roses were a gift.”

“Were they white?”

“Hmm, no, they weren't white. I can't remember all that well. Were they yellow, maybe? Just a minute.”

She disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a big cardboard box. Joachim tossed aside the magazine he'd been reading with an expression of annoyance, and Peter stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, keeping his eyes on the television. From the box, Agnes produced a headband that looked as though it hadn't been worn for years. “The very same,” she said, indicating the one in the photograph. The box also contained a thick, black album, the photos glued to its thin white pages. They were all scenes from weddings. On the first page was a young Agnes, dressed in a pale two-piece and wearing cat-eye glasses. The man standing at her
side was a little shorter than her, had clear, pale skin, and hair styled into the same shape as a sailor's cap. Agnes explained that this was in the government office, right after the wedding ceremony. “That was my first wedding,” she added, reaching out to take the glass of spirits Bjorn was offering her. Compared to the previous photograph, this Agnes had cheeks that could almost be called plump. It wasn't just her cheeks—her shoulders too, in fact her whole body was filled out nicely. She and the other women, who I guessed were her sisters, all had bouffant hairstyles and glasses of the same distinct shape, and were wearing two-pieces cut to the same pattern. I recognized the style, having seen similar things in photos of my mother when she was young. It was the style adopted by Jacqueline Kennedy when she was the wife of the American president. It was all very evocative of a certain distinct period, which I suppose must have been one of those historical moments where young women the world over got married in similar clothes. The wedding reception had been attended by Agnes's sisters, their husbands, and her older brothers, the men all in suits. They were young, every one of them, and incomparably beautiful; there was even something brave in their youth and their beauty. They were like flowers daring to bloom amid the ruins of a city devastated by war. Moreover, this was a city that seemed to have been a humble place of woods, lakes, and simple, unembellished houses. These women had nothing to obscure the bright freshness of their youth; no makeup, no accessories, not even any coquetry. The square in the city center was truly vast, and the wide, straight road looked as though it might well stretch all the way to distant Poland. On this road, flanked by a seemingly endless forest, people from all walks of life stood holding hands and smiling brightly. It was as if I could hear their laughter and their song.

“I
was seventeen then. He became ill, afterward, and died.”

“Do your siblings still live around here?”

“I'm not sure. We haven't seen each other for, oh, decades, now.”

I wasn't sure how many times Agnes had been married, but in any case I was certain that the short man with the sailor-style hair, whom Agnes had married at seventeen, wasn't Joachim and Peter's father. Later, when simple curiosity prompted me to ask Joachim how many times his mother had been married, he picked a train magazine up off the sofa and tossed it swiftly over the side, snapping “thirty-three times.” In the photographs of her first wedding, Agnes had been like a budding flower, swelling with fresh, ripe fullness. She no longer resembled the girl who, at thirteen, had posed for her First Communion photograph with a shy, wavering smile. Similarly, the image of Agnes at her first wedding, in a dress and thick-framed glasses, held no premonition as to what the future would hold—of the alcoholic who can't get to sleep unless she's had a drink at the local pub; of being constantly unemployed and with no hope of this changing, searching for neighborhoods where the rent is cheap; of the loneliness of the matchmaking party at the singles' club every weekend, desperate to find a man worth living with.

The night had grown late when Joachim and I got up to leave. We walked to the church, which may well have displayed surpassing architectural beauty, but as there was no source of light anywhere in the immediate vicinity I wasn't able to confirm this. Before we went in, Joachim asked if I had any money to put in the collection plate. Some loose change, I told him, but he said that wouldn't do; with it being Christmas, it had be a note of some kind. He opened his wallet and pulled out his last five-euro bill. The notice board listed the organ music that was to be used during
the service. The church was packed with people, most of them elderly, although there were also plenty of families with children, including one young couple carrying a tiny baby in a small wicker basket. The organist had already started playing, the notes echoing loudly throughout the vaulted, stone-ceilinged space. At the entrance to the church was a model reproduction of the Bethlehem manger, fronted by countless glowing candles that made the scene bright and warm. In between the organ pieces were hymns for the congregation to sing, though I wouldn't have called it singing because they all seemed to be mumbling the words. As soon as Joachim entered the church and slid into the back pew he closed his eyes and rested his chin on his chest; he didn't answer when I spoke to him, and I guessed he must have fallen asleep. His blue backpack slid off and came to rest under the seat, between his legs. Someone behind me handed me a songbook, so I turned and thanked them. After the last notes from the organ had faded away, a man—presumably the priest—spoke into the microphone; I couldn't tell what he was saying over the screeching feedback. As soon as the congregation resumed their singing, Joachim's eyes snapped open. So he hadn't been asleep after all. And he hadn't been crying. Whatever he'd been doing, he'd been perfectly alert and listening to everything.

“Let's head off now, we've seen enough.” He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder.

“You want to leave right now, while everyone's singing?”

“Yes, right now.”

Entirely indifferent to the stares he was eliciting, Joachim stood up and headed quickly toward the exit. Emerging into the freezing night air, he opened his wallet with a triumphant flourish and drew out the same five-euro bill again. “I got to see the service, and I didn't even have to put this in the plate! If we'd waited until that
song was over they would have sent the plate around and there'd have been no getting out of it then. That's what that guy up there said, with the microphone.”

The snow had melted a little during the day but was now blanketing the road again. “We've made a mess of the climate,” Joachim said as we stood waiting at the tram stop. “Don't you think? Think about this crazy snow every day, and the floods in the south. I mean, this is colder than the winter I spent working in Finland.” Joachim put his backpack back on and wound his scarf tightly around his neck. Before starting college, he said, he'd spent a brief period working as a welder in Finland. “Even if the tram doesn't come because of the snow, we can always just jog home, you know. In fact, last autumn when there was a subway strike I walked more than three hours from Alexanderplatz to home. And this was after working all day, from 8
A.M.
to 6
P.M.
God, that was awful. It was a Thursday, and on Fridays I had to go to school, so you can imagine. To make matters worse, I had an exam that Friday, ha-ha-ha! Compared with back then, this snow is actually pretty light. If we walk home quickly we'll be able to get back within an hour. And you had enough to eat, right? How come you didn't have more of the meat? You need a full stomach to keep you warm if we're going to make our way home through a blizzard like this. You can stuff yourself with potatoes and cabbage and whatnot till your stomach explodes, but that won't do anything for you. Agnes gets 150 euros for me every month—150 euros, think about it. For that amount I could have hot soup and coffee every day for lunch at the college cafeteria, for a whole month! And she refused to hand it over. Money from the government that she only gets as maintenance for me. And now she says she won't give it to me—right after telling me I should come over to eat with them every weekend! But don't you think it's ridiculous, people who've done nothing but
argue over money for a whole year, getting together just because it's Christmas, and putting on this charade of a solemn, harmonious family dinner? Well, we got a good meal out of it, anyway, and that means it's okay if we walk, right? I know the weather's rough, but do you think you can walk home all the same? The route's easy enough, we just need to keep following the tramline in the same direction. There's nothing to it. Ah, my family is a disgrace. I mean, seriously.” Joachim babbled on, snickering to himself, but while he was still in full flow the yellow light of the approaching tram pierced the snowstorm. We were in luck. That night there was a sharp drop in temperature, so the entrances to the subway stations were left open for the homeless to take shelter there. According to Joachim, we would have had a truly terrible time if we'd had to walk. When I asked him later if he'd seriously been considering walking back, he said he'd just been babbling thoughtlessly, with no clear idea of the words that were coming out of his mouth, just to keep his lips from freezing.

4)
The New Year's Eve party we ended up going to was hosted by Alfred, Joachim's fireman friend from technical college, at his house near North Berlin Fire Station. Alfred, who sported a neat goatee and owned a gaudy red leather jacket with gold trim, was unvaryingly cheerful, meaning he sometimes came across as quite shallow or flippant. He loved hosting parties and presiding over gatherings of friends, and always made sure to include Joachim even though he could be relied upon to turn up empty-handed, while everyone else would bring wine or cake. Alfred's magnanimity also extended to me; I'd been invited to a number of his parties in the past, and had made frequent promises to attend, which I then broke without exception. Alfred kept on
inviting me all the same. He mistook me for, variously: a current university student; someone from some other Asian country; and Joachim's ex-girlfriend. In fact, every time he met me Alfred could be relied upon to ask how I was in a way that made it clear that he thought I was someone else. However, neither Joachim nor I were particularly bothered by this, so we never felt the need to set him straight. Even though it wasn't snowing on New Year's Eve, I always hated having to venture outside when there could be fireworks going off in my face at any moment. Very occasionally, if Joachim had annoyed me, I would refuse to go. I really couldn't stand parties. But he was obsessed with showing me these so-called “student parties” (the only ones I'd been to had been held by foreigners), the kind where they play classic Oasis and Nirvana rather than crazy techno or American-style “butt dance” or hip-hop, and some of the students are Scandinavian, and they talk to each other in English. This was the kind of party Alfred generally went in for—in fact, he had a cousin who was Scandinavian—and Joachim had been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to prove to me that he himself was perfectly at home at such parties. Unfortunately, though, Alfred hadn't called up any Scandinavian friends this time; apparently they'd all gone back home for Christmas. Nirvana was blasting out of the computer speakers, but the music video kept stopping and the screen freezing, so the same music played on a loop for several hours. Apart from Alfred, the only other person there whom Joachim knew personally was a German literature major; he was very handsome, despite having a somewhat sly smile, but only had eyes for his new girlfriend, whom he'd met a week ago. He brushed Joachim off with an absent-minded greeting, and never left his girlfriend's side. It wasn't just because of his girlfriend, though. Contrary to Joachim's expectation, the guy just didn't show much interest in him. This was all very disappointing for Joachim, who'd politely
hoped to renew their friendship. Wearing a gaudy peach-colored Hawaiian shirt, Alfred introduced Joachim around. They were almost all university students, many of whom had come with their girlfriends. They looked around twenty-two, twenty-three years old. Perhaps because they were young, and because many of them already knew each other, their conversations rattled along, and I could barely understand a word. Occasionally I would make out a “cool,” accompanied by a high-five, “stop it, please,” “this is crazy, yeah?” all with a strong accent. Joachim went into the kitchen and came back with his paper plate loaded up with meat to cook on the electric hob, and cake spread with apricot jam. He explained to me that he didn't recognize many of the other guests because he'd only gone to school with them for a year. One girl, who arrived late and on her own, went around introducing herself to everyone as though she were the host. The majority of the girls wore skin-tight jeans and midriff-flashing T-shirts encrusted with fake gems or gold foil, cheap stuff they'd obviously bought at the discount store. Strangers mingled instantly, their eyes sparkling, starting up conversations even if they seemed to have nothing in common. However, were their companion to disappear, they never stood there hesitating or wandered awkwardly around the room, but straight away attached themselves to another group and launched into conversation. After hearing a few words of my faltering German they immediately realized what a miserable level my conversational skills were at, and would latch on to another, more exciting discussion as soon as the opportunity presented itself. They talked and talked incessantly, as though it would be a suffering akin to being buried alive for them to fall silent for even a moment, or simply for the stream of their words to slow down just a fraction. On and on, about something they'd seen on TV or something that had happened at school, relationships, the war that
might break out in the future, going to study in America, employment, and so on. Fed up with trying and failing to force my way into a conversation, even though these weren't people I particularly wanted to spend time with, I got angry with Joachim. I didn't care if this was an authentic “student party,” I wanted to go home. But at some point, Joachim came up behind me and said “If you pull a face like that, everyone here will think you're stuck up, full of yourself. And once they've decided that about you, that's it. This isn't Asia, alright? No one's going to show any interest in you if you just stand there all silent and moody. Just smile and join in, and if you listen hard enough one of these days you'll end up understanding what they're saying.” He grinned broadly, remembering how things had been three years ago, when I'd had to make a big effort to understand his German. My progress then had all been down to M, but things were different now. I'd long since given up the idea of reaching such a level of fluency. It was simply that I couldn't stand the youths who had come to the party, either as individuals or as representatives of their whole clamorous, demanding society, whose sole virtue is its sociable affability. Smiling and greeting each other, shaking hands and exchanging superficial, perfunctory chatter, while knowing full well that such things are nothing but a waste of one's energies. I was angry with myself for being unable to explain all this to Joachim, to make him understand how I felt. All I could say was “I hate parties.”