The Exiles Return (26 page)

They were both great walkers and immediately after their meal of boiled beef and dumplings they crossed the bridge over the clear-running stream and set out on the footpath that climbed the hill and unrolled across the green and gleaming landscape. The steady rhythm of their steps united them in an understanding deeper than words could convey. So they walked in silence on the hard-trodden earth, between grassy verges thick with wild flowers, clover and buttercups, little wild scabious and scarlet pimpernel and dozens of others, glancing right and left over the gently billowing fields of barley or rye. The path led to a crest of dark woodland, the earth grew softer and damper underfoot, the air was cooler and scented with resin and mushrooms. Adler, who had been walking behind Nina while the path was narrow, moved to be next to her. She stopped and turned to him, drawing a deep breath. There was love in her eyes. He saw it and embraced her. ‘My beloved, my dearest.’ The sun, filtering down between the branches, dappled them, throwing a crazy pattern of light and shade onto Nina’s upturned face, picking out the silvery strands in Adler’s close thatch of black hair as he bent to kiss her. There was such silence in the forest that the tiny hum of an insect whirring its wings in a shaft of light was clearly discernible, and the murmur of exchanged endearments was more felt than heard.

The wood was a large one and spread itself out. Soon the path began to rise and to weave in long loops up the steep incline: the effort of the climb relieved them of the need to speak. But at the summit – the wide landscape spread out below them, the river winding like a silver ribbon in the valley, and the little town with its market square and its onion-shaped belfry half-encircled in one of its bends – they embraced again in a surge of joy. A tall plain wooden cross was planted on the highest point, unadorned except for a wreath of half-faded flowers at its foot, and two steps below that was a wooden bench, grey and grooved from the rain and sun. There they sat very close to each other and looked out on the landscape.

Although they had met at work almost daily for more than a year they knew practically nothing about each other. Their personalities were defined by the image they showed to the world, by the exercise of the functions they fulfilled. He was a repatriated émigré, too old for the secondary role he had to content himself to play, ill at ease with the younger staff and definitely antagonistic to the Director, whom she also loathed. But he seemed determined to suppress his animosity, though it cost him a great effort, as his only alternative, if it came to an open clash, would be to resign. She would have liked to know what prevented him from doing so. In fact she had, from the first, greatly desired to penetrate the mask, to discover what lay behind the furrowed brow, the deep-set eyes, the full but compressed lips under the black moustache. When he arrived she had been fascinated by him. His presence in the laboratory, though he rarely spoke to her and then only with the polite detachment of a technical relationship, had introduced a personal interest into her workaday world. As she looked at him now, sitting on the rustic bench beside her, looking sideways furtively when he seemed absorbed in the lovely landscape below, seeing him in an open-necked shirt under a worn tweed jacket, she could hardly believe he was the same man as the one she only knew in a dark suit or white coat. And she was actually touching him, leaning against the side of the ‘Professor’ or the ‘émigré’, labels that could now be discarded. There was so much for him to tell her about himself, so much she must try and understand, and learn about herself, through knowing him – things she had thought she would never know.

He was not looking at her, he was looking into the distance; and the light and shade and sinuous lines of this God-created, man-cultivated, man-cared-for country melted with the love from his eyes into his heart. Without turning he put his arm round Nina’s shoulders and drew her closer. She was not a laboratory assistant, she was not even a girl with a stocky figure – she was a woman of infinite tenderness, of perfect comfort and fulfilment, she was his heart-come-home, the incarnation of love.

The room they slept in at the Golden Ox was large, clean and very bare. The sun shone in through the slatted shutters, and the milk cans and vegetable carts clattering over the cobblestones woke them early the next morning. The bed – brand new, the landlord’s wife had assured them – was more in the nature of a tabletop, and the overstuffed eiderdown slithered right and left and almost to the floor at the slightest movement underneath it.

The bright sunshine and the hard bed induced them to get up early. Washing arrangements were primitive, consisting of an earthenware jug of cold water and a basin on top of the chest of drawers. But the landlord told them that if the tourist trade picked up he had plans for installing running water and building a bathroom: he was definitely going to be up to date soon.

Adler scrambled into his clothes first and went down to the kitchen in search of hot water and a looking glass before which to shave, leaving Nina alone to dress at her leisure. She was in a state of euphoria that she could not understand, for the experience she had been through had been disturbing and not exactly pleasant. Kuno had been very nervous, and had begged her, with gentle caresses, to forgive him – she didn’t really know what for; but he seemed to want reassurance, which she gave him in the only way she could, by saying again and again that she loved him. But now, as she dressed, she felt carried on a wave of elation, of release from a condition which, at her age, she had felt to be humiliating and even ridiculous. ‘I always knew I had no vocation for virginity,’ she told herself ironically, ‘and yet I disliked lighthearted relationships: fastidious – and far from beautiful – what a burden these qualities have been!’ No wonder she had wings on her feet now that the burden had fallen away.

They had not done any sightseeing the previous afternoon. Now they were eager to discover the art and architecture of the district. Nina knew the country well, Adler did not, but first of all she would attend Mass in a little church she wanted him to visit – an enchanting church she called it, however surprising this epithet sounded when applied to a church. But how to get there? Although only a few miles distant, it was too far to reach on foot in time for the service. But with the assistance of the landlord they managed to borrow a couple of bicycles; these partly solved their problem, although only partly since the many slopes meant there was a lot of dismounting and pushing to do; it made them think that on future excursions they would each acquire a light motorcycle or motorised bicycle to carry them painlessly up the steepest hills.

They managed to reach their destination just as the service was beginning, and while Nina knelt and rose and genuflected in the ritual she knew so well, Adler sat in a remote corner of the church in quiet contemplation. The church was indeed an enchantment, with a unique gracefulness which they would discover in detail when Mass was over. If Mary and Her Child have many times been depicted in a bower of roses, this church
was
Her bower: of delicate proportions, flooded with light, and decorated on walls and capitals and arches with garlands of tiny roses and blue ribbons and two curved and sculpted balconies facing each other across the Altar like opera boxes.

When the officiating priest had retired to the vestry, Nina rose from her knees and came towards Adler, her face alight with joy. She put her arm through his and together they walked round the church. ‘I particularly wanted to come here today because I am so happy,’ she said. ‘Now we’ll go out and look at the churchyard. It’s as lovely as the church itself.’ It certainly was today, with daffodils, peonies and early roses growing amongst the long, untended grass nearly smothering the grey stone crosses and slabs of the graves. As they bent to decipher the inscriptions, they noticed that there were many children among them, two, four, five year olds and babies of as many months. It must, over the years, have been a favourite place to bring the little ones to their premature rest, as if the bereaved and sorrowing mothers found some consolation in laying them close to this smiling, flower-bedecked church in which, as they had seen, even the Stations of the Cross had been depicted in sorrow rather than in agony.

Adler found it very strange, utterly beyond all his life’s experience, neither his thoughts nor his emotions being attuned to understanding it. Yet he could not dismiss what he saw as a simply aesthetic phenomenon, something just seen, taken note of and passed over. He knew it had been more than that. It was as if a door had opened in his mind, not widely, not through the pressure of a strong gust of wind, but just a little way, to let a slight and gentle current of air, a mere draught, pass through the crack. He only knew that there
was
a door because it had opened. He had not known there was one before.

It was barely midday. ‘Shall we do some more sightseeing?’ Nina asked. ‘We could find a place to eat, and then go and see the monastery’s library; you know, the church is one of the most elaborate Baroque buildings in the country – quite different from the one we saw this morning.’ She said this without any thought of introducing Adler to a religious experience, or, for that matter, seeking one for herself. She had been to hear Mass in the morning and had thus performed her devotions for the day, as was her practice every Sunday; he, of course, not being a Catholic, had been able, meanwhile, to enjoy a unique and delightful church interior, and had certainly not been bored during the service; so she had hoped, and so he had assured her. Now they were going to look at one of the most grandiose examples of Baroque architecture, one that she knew well but would be new to him. It might seem strange that this should be so, for though, as a native of his country, he was familiar with the style as an intrinsic element of his surroundings, he had not once purposely entered one of its Baroque churches. He had not been interested in architecture, and still less would he have thought of seeking a religious experience. Brought up in the shadow of the great Gothic cathedral of St Stephen, born a Jew and grown up an agnostic, he would have said, if he had given it any thought at all, that Gothic was the natural style for a church. Nor did he expect any experience other than curiosity, and perhaps aesthetic enjoyment, in entering this one.

Now he saw wealth and splendour beyond imagination: gold-garlanded marble columns, sculptured ornaments gleaming with gold, flights of rosy cupids in fleecy clouds ascending into azure skies, statues and paintings in many colours, while diamond-clear windows, so angled as to be themselves invisible, threw daylight onto the blaze of gold on the High Altar. Adler was overwhelmed. There was nothing he could say – nothing he could think. To accept or to reject seemed equally impossible. Had he been alone, he might have turned back to the door by which he had come in and gone away. But there, in the centre of the aisle, was the small, humble figure of Nina, looking up and around with a look of such beatific concentration on her face that he stood riveted to his place. Then she came and took his hand and with a sweeping gesture of her other hand, encompassing all they saw, said, in Latin: ‘To the greater glory of God.’

Afterwards they sat drinking wine in the little, low, panelled guest room attached to the monastery’s cellars, where visitors could sample the vintages stored below. They talked, but more to themselves than to each other, commenting on the art of Baroque, on the role of the Church, and the involvement of one with the other; they talked about history, the Counter-Reformation, the reaction against the reaction of Protestantism; it was a dialogue, but not a discussion, for what each one said was not an answer to what the other was saying or thinking, though it would not have been said if the other had not been present. They were both trying to put into words problems of the mind which they wanted to clarify, if they could, but which they might have ignored if they had continued their life alone.

They both spoke from very different experiences and backgrounds and, as it happened, with an oblique reference in their minds to conversations they had had, not so very long ago, with very different people. Adler the agnostic, the liberal thinker, who had never given a serious thought to ‘Faith’, was remembering his encounter with Dr Krieger, who had taunted him with harbouring preconceived dogmas about right and wrong, about being infected with a Christian ethic which warped his judgment as a man of science. Dr Krieger was loathsome, but perhaps, in this, he was right: he, Adler, did accept values which could be called Christian.

Meanwhile, Nina was remembering another conversation she had had and was trying to balance – though was not at present able to reconcile – the certitude of her faith with the admonishments of her Father Confessor. She had not gone to confession, for she was not contrite and did not accept his strictures. But she knew that, more devoutly than ever, she was obeying the first and great commandment of her Faith: to love God with all her heart, with all her mind, with all her soul and with all her strength, and she did so love Him. And so, although Kuno Adler had not given a thought to God, let alone to loving Him, since, as a small boy, he had been taught to repeat in Hebrew these very same opening words of the ‘Hear oh Israel’, so did he.

When, after many years of togetherness, they came to reflect on how all this had begun, they told each other that it was on a late afternoon in May, in that humble inn, drinking wine and eating rough country bread with it, that had consecrated their lives into an indissoluble union.

Twenty-four

Prince Lorenzo Grein, Bimbo to his friends, was not
nice.
He was not nice in the sense of what Marie-Theres called ‘nice’, not nice as Budd was nice when she talked about him to Hanni on the shore of the lake – dear Budd, who wrote to her every week and whose letters lay, most of them unopened, though she did read one now and again, at the back of her drawer. Being nice meant to be pleasant company, to be at her service, to be undemanding and, above all, not to touch her, because she did not like being ‘pawed’. And over here in Austria, Lucas Anreither was, though to a lesser degree,
nice.