The Light of Evening (22 page)

A dwarf impeccably dressed in black suit with white tuxedo carried a piano accordion onto the stage, placed it on a stool, and bowed. Then, clad in lame, the singer followed, picking up the accordion, with dapples of mountain daisies painted on the black lacquered panels, opening it slowly, the red pleating coming apart, prefiguring the thrills that were to follow.

“You’re the business … you can have my knickers to twist any old time,” June said, blowing him a series of affected kisses and her husband remarked on the bad breed in her coming out after a few gins.

The first song was clearly about love, he the swain, distraught, pleading with a girl who was not there, crushed by the fact of her rebuffing him, pacing, almost weeping, his sentiments wasted upon an empty world. Love love love.
Liebe liebe liebe.
Then came a selection of Gypsy songs and the singer with his soft and velvety eyes drinking them in, the old waiter placing down the coffee cups and big snifters of brandy, tears in his eyes, either from exhaustion or because the Gypsy songs revived stray memories in him.

For the finale he had chosen a song that he reckoned they would all know and charmingly suggested that they would join in:

Ae fond kiss and then we sever …

Had we never loved so kindly

Had we never loved so blindly

Never met or never parted

We had ne’er been broken-hearted.

Afterward he moved among them so amiably, agreed to pose for a photograph with several of the ladies, flirtatious to one or another, young or old it did not matter, June begging to know the words of his first song and he writing it carefully on the dinner menu: “Mir
17 da hut noch traum.
At seventeen you have sweet dreams.” How lovely. How tender. How true. And what was his name. “Konrad.” Konrad! they exclaimed, touching the accordion, squeezing and tweaking the keys as if they were tweaking and squeezing him. “It’s good, it’s great, it’s the Continent, it’s Konrad,” Dudley said, scoffing at them.

After he had done with the courtesies the singer withdrew to a corner of the room where he and the dwarf sat having their supper, deep in mirthful conversation, the old waiter plying them with dishes and pitchers of wine.

Two nights later Eleanora was sitting on a bench in the forecourt, next to the few marigolds that had livened somewhat in the night dew, when he appeared. Moments before there had been consternation on the mountain, the sheep bells, erstwhile so light and intermittent in that crystalline silence, suddenly began to clang and clatter, a united bout of warning rings, as obviously danger stalked up there and the herd ran in confusion.

Konrad came from the side of the building, his attire not nearly so theatrical as on that first night. There had been no sign of him since, as for the two subsequent evenings a lady sang German lieder while the dwarf turned the pages of the sheet music, the applause not nearly so robust as it had been for him.

He seemed surprised to see her, then remembered, ah yes, was she not the lady with the green necklace and the shawl.

“I can’t sleep,” she said, as if sitting there was a crime.

“It can happen in the mountains … the
fuhn
upsets visitors … they feel
betruben,”
he said, smiling.

“Betruben
—
what is it?”

“I tell you … if you come tomorrow to have tea with me in my loge … up in the tower.” I can t.

“
Du bist
so nice,” he said snapping off one of the marigolds to give to her and thence from a tangled stack of bicycles he pulled one out and cycled off with a nonchalance.

She sat and studiously plucked the petals, the yes, the no, enquiring if she should or should not go to his loge on the morrow.

The shutters were drawn and he had been lying down as she saw, since the white cotton coverlet was obviously flung back as he jumped up to answer the door.

“Since two hour I am dreaming of this,” he said and drew her in, at the same time turning the key in the door.

“I can’t stay long,” she said, breathless. There had been four flights of stairs
—
she had not dared take the lift in case of being seen
—
and then a rickety spiral stairs that led to the tower. In the dusk of that room she met the rush of his kisses, the sweet blast of his muffled words, his hand on the breast that housed her wildly beating heart, and as she was hoisted up she heard one court shoe then a second fall with a tell-tale thud on the wooden floor.

“I love the womans … I love the womans,” he kept saying, the words lewd and lovely as spoken from his lips.

As he removed her cardigan the shivering got the better of her and he kissed her passionately along the nape of her neck, thinking it would calm her down, except that it didn’t. He liked the fact that she was so nervous. Then he crossed to the bed and, like a puppet master, drew a white muslin curtain all around it for them to be enfolded in a bower of secrecy.

She wanted nothing more than to follow him there, yet something stopped her. Without her cardigan she felt naked and asked if they could talk. If they could talk.

He sat her on the wicker chair, he, crouched at her feet, looking at her, musing again and again what color her eyes were, her ever-changing eyes, as he bit on the smooth round disks of her green glass necklace and asked why the word
daydream.

“Because it’s in the day,” she whispered back.

“So I daydream and I nightdream of you,” he answered and she knew, or rather she guessed, that he would have said it before and yet there was in him such a sincerity and she hesitated at what she would have to tell him. They could be lovers, but not there and not then, up the mountain perhaps in one of the shepherd’s huts, or in some other city or resort where he would be singing and where she would arrange to meet him. He shook his head, uncomprehendingly, frowned, puckered, asking why not then, why not there, why not now? She remonstrated with him and saw that his eyes, which she had thought to be brown, were a dark gentian, like the gentian flower.

“I love the womans … I love the womans,” he kept saying.

“Konrad”
—
and she blurted it out
—
“Konrad, could I come away with you … can I live with you?”

He looked stunned, looked as if he had not heard correctly, then covered it up with a beautiful smile as he crossed to fetch a packet of cigarettes from the dressing table and lit one for her, without asking if she smoked.

He did not answer at first, he did not know how, but gradually he found himself able to tell her his brief history, his voice soft and considerate and strangely sad. Home was north of Vienna, a small industrial town that was foggy in wintertime. His wife and daughter lived there and yes, they would much prefer to be traveling with him, but it was something hotel managers did not encourage. His wife resented his traveling, resented the fact that he sang for other ladies, and his daughter, Lena, his little Lena, sulked when he returned home after a long absence, went to the window box where his wife had made a small garden and threw pieces of clay and small stones at him, in punishment.

“Your little Lena,” she said.

“My little Lena,” he answered.

“I also have children,” she said, as if to lend respectability to her recklessness at having come up and then his arms came around her, whispering, the whispering that was a presage to the goodbyes. “It could be that we will meet again,” he said, but she knew it was merely a courtesy.

“I have been unfaithful in my heart … and that is what counts … and that is what counts,” she kept telling herself as she went down the stairs, exhilarated, emboldened enough to tell her husband how she was no longer subordinate, except and to her utter astonishment he was not there, he had fled, there was not trace nor tiding of him, he had taken his belongings and all that remained was the voucher for her return ticket, tossed on her pillow.

He had gone. It was as if he knew, it was as if he had guessed her transgression and had gone determinedly to collect the children from her mother’s house, five days before he was due.

Her mother’s letter was post restante where she had asked it to be sent. She read it under a streetlamp, beams of rainbowed fog slanting down on the merciless, turbulent words
—

At long last the waited breach has come and it seems like years waiting for it. I must admit it is a terrible blow and I am asking God to help me through it. I am over seventy but wish I were ninety and not much longer for this world. I guessed it was coming and I know it is probably better to live apart when living together proved impossible. I will accept it if you promise me two things, that as you read this, you will kneel down wherever you happen to be and swear that you will never take an alcoholic drink again and never ever have anything to do with any man in body or soul. You are young and

temptation will often come your way. Promise me. You owe it to God, to me, and to your children and I know that for my asking you will do as I wish. You chose your own marriage and we made the best of it so do not go on blaming us for your misfortune, as I believe you secretly do. It seems you are quoted as saying that all writers are queer and exempt from the normal mores. They are not, nor should they be. You conquer writing rather than letting it conquer you. It is no good living in the escapism that has been your wont. Look for the faith that you have lost, that you have thrown away. Go back to it. Religion and a belief in the hereafter is what counts and without that life is a sad place. I will write to you faithfully as I always have done, even though I am heartbroken but perhaps my life won’t be long. I am seventy-four and wish I was ninety-four. For the rest of my life, long or short, I will be praying for you and yours and asking God to be always beside you, guiding and counseling you. I am very very sad, you will never know how much, but then we are not born for happiness.

*      *      *

The children were in his house now, captives, and she allowed to speak to them on the telephone each evening at a given time, their voices thin, pinched, the conversations stilted, she telling them that she would call again the next evening at the same time, as if by then something might be resolved and one or other of them ringing off, miffed, and close to breaking.

Part V

Dickie Bird

the dickie bird spins, without warbling, on his long thin pole in the hospital garden, round and round, sulfur yellow, the two white propellers turning to a gauze transparency in the gusts of wind. Waiting for the wind the way Dilly is waiting. Her daughter. Her tests. Full of forebodings. The hours weighing upon her.

The dickie bird is called Busby. Busby talks to her in his rattle, in his semi-rattle, a gabble. She talks back: “Sister Consolata says we’ll get the broom out and sweep the tumor away, but can we, can we, Busby?” and she waits as he does another dizzy circuit.

“I am not a good candidate for death,” she says and thinks that Eleanora will answer her phone at last. All her hopes are pinned on Eleanora coming.

Glancing up, she sees the consultant striding down the corridor, the squeak of his rubber-soled shoes so pronounced, a nurse escorting and kowtowing to him.

“Doctor L’Estrange to see you,” the nurse says.

Stiff mannered, his gold-rimmed spectacles down below the bridge of his nose, in his white coat, fastidious, she asks herself why he has come on a Sunday morning and at such an ungodly hour. She remembers him so clearly from that very first consultation, remembers the waiting in his office, his leather chair behind the desk, a burgundy leather scored with buttons, the leather crinkled as it ran out from the buttonholes, an imposing chair, the chair of jurisdiction, and the wan handshake when he saw her out.

He stands above the bed, wooden-backed and wooden-faced, a small speck of dried blood on his chin where he has cut himself shaving and she looks up at him, her expression woebegone, asking without the words, “Is it bad news you’re bringing me?”

“It’s not bad news,” he tells her and goes on to describe it as merely a hiccup, saying that the aspiration from her tummy will have to be repeated, and that the registrar has been instructed to do it the very next day. She asks why. All he will say is that there has been a query from the laboratory.

“You mean they lost it?” she says, nettled.

“No, they haven’t lost it … the diagnosis is inconclusive … that’s all.”

“Well, if it’s not bad news, it’s certainly not good news,” she says, the umbrage rising in her, asking why hers should be inconclusive, out of the dozens sent.

“We have to be clear about matters … otherwise we can’t proceed.”

“I feel like walking out of here,” she says, her eyes blazing.

“That would not be a good idea,” he says, then consults the chart to read her temperature and her blood pressure and presently he is gone, his right thumb describing a circle in the air, as if that was his way of diagnosing, a departure so abrupt that he has failed to hear the woman halfway down the ward yell out: “Doctor, when is Easter this year?”

Once alone she pulls it from her soap bag, the two-page article that she filched from a magazine in Dr. Fogarty’s waiting room, long before he twigged that there was something other than shingles that ailed her. She reads, as she read then, of ovarian cancer, the silent killer, claiming the lives of women, the symptoms almost undetectable, often similar to common, mild, or benign conditions. Nature besting her. And her daughter not come.