Lanceheim (15 page)

“Answer the question,” Father said quietly.

“Maximilian told me the story about the miller—”

“Answer me!”

But I couldn't. My father was very conservative about some things, and marriage was one of them. In his mind, adultery was a crime equivalent to poaching, and Father was a forest guard. Living with a female that you hadn't married, you were being unfaithful to Magnus and to the church. To live with three different females that you hadn't married was, well, worse.

“Father, let me tell the story. The miller—”

“Enough!” exclaimed Father.

He had still not sat down at the table, and I sensed that he would prefer not to sit down this evening.

“Have we not brought you up to respect Magnus?” asked Father, and his voice was so loud that it would certainly reach up to the second floor. “Don't we deserve some decent behavior from our only child?”

“Maximilian says that—”

“Enough! The Maximilian you worship is Eva's son, and Eva never has…been thinking straight. Don't come here and throw that cub's words in my face! Why don't you get yourself a wife?”

“Father,” I pleaded, “will you let me tell you the story of the miller? Once upon a time there was a miller who had three daughters. The first was—”

“Are you defying me?” asked Father, and his face was dark, ominous.

“No, Father,” I answered quietly. “But I—”

“Do you enjoy hurting your mother?”

“No, Father, I…”

Yes, every reader with even slight experience of life understands how the rest of that conversation continued. I will spare you, and only declare that I left there without having told the story of the miller, without having conveyed the idea of the goodness inherent in lavishing love upon the females in my life, and without having improved my relationship with my parents to any noticeable degree.

 

It was after one
of our Seminars on Faith, Hope, and Love that I finally dared asked the question. Adam Chaffinch had lingered behind to look over our financial situation together with me. It was something we did on a monthly basis, nothing remarkable and seldom surprising. Maximilian and I lived a withdrawn, planned existence. We were sitting in the living room on Leyergasse, the young deacon and I, exhausted after hours of conversation, but also fired up by the discussion that had just concluded. We lit no candles; outside the windows the sky was colored red by the sun returning home. Maximilian sometimes suffered from migraines, and that was the case on this particular afternoon. He was lying down in his room, sleeping. A year and a half had passed since the angels had wept from the ceiling in Kerkeling's church.

“Do you ever think about that?” I asked. “About that day, with Rothman in the church?”

“Ever?” asked Adam. “I think about it every day.”

“You do?”

I was astonished. To me, Adam Chaffinch was an immovable rock. I did not know about his youthful doubt and hesitation. He did not know that his stern seriousness concealed his doubt.

“It was then,” Adam continued in the same tone of voice, “that I finally gained my faith.”

“Then?” I exclaimed, perhaps a trifle insensitively.

“It was then,” he nodded, seemingly to himself. “Up until that day, that hour, I had hesitated. But then I knew. It was so simple, just as simple as those tears that fell upon us. My doubt was my faith, not the opposite of it.”

This paradoxical assertion reminded me of something that Maximilian himself might have said, and I decided not to go into the matter further; this seldom served any purpose. Instead I took the opportunity—as Adam Chaffinch was obviously in a confiding mood—to ask the question that I had harbored for several years, but never dared to utter.

“But is he the Messiah?” I said. “Maximilian? Is he the Savior that is talked about in the Proclamations? Is he? Because I…I believe that he is….”

Adam Chaffinch looked at me for a long time before he answered. There was something searching, but also something appreciative in his gaze.

“That is what only you can decide,” he replied.

 

“He does not want
you to be here right now,” said Duck Johnson.

I was standing out in the stairwell, aimless, looking down at the worn brown leather shoes that I had once bought because of their amusing spike pattern.

“He asked me to ask you to come back the day after tomorrow,” said Duck.

I shook my head. I should have protested, argued, perhaps even yelled something. But I did nothing. How I despised my weak muteness at the moment.

“But,” I finally forced out, “but…Maximilian and I have always—”

“Besides,” Duck pointed out, “it will be too cramped. We were just talking about it. The apartment is simply not built for more than two animals.”

And with that he shut the door in my nose. Self-contempt kept me from exposing myself to further ridicule, and I left, crushed. Possibly I could have viewed this as a test; that Duck Johnson was something the inscrutable Magnus had put in my way to tear me out of the secure—and happy—existence I had finally created.

But dismissed from Maximilian's apartment on bark brown Leyergasse, I was not capable of that kind of contemplative distance; Duck Johnson was my rival, and inside I was furious.

 

I myself had moved
to banana yellow Hüxterdamm. At the time of Duck Johnson's appearance in Maximilian's life, the break in my studies at the university had lasted more than six years, and I no longer had any ambition to return. At first I had been enticed by the fundamental idea of the law: to attempt to distinguish good from evil in matters great and small. But with every semester that passed, I realized that this was not about good and evil at all; it was about argumentation techniques and power, patience, and hard work. If I had not had any alternative, I would surely have been interested in such things too, but weighed against the sort of seriousness represented by Maximilian, the decision was simple.

 

I was not living
alone.

During the years that the Seminars on Faith, Hope, and Love were going on, Adam Chaffinch insisted that Maximilian's schooling should nonetheless be finished. Therefore
it was my task to see to it that teachers of academic rank came to the apartment on Leyergasse to help with his studies. One of these teachers, who taught theoretical philosophy and geography, was named Maria C. Terrier, and she seduced me the first time she came to visit. On the way from Maximilian's room and out into the hall—this was a matter of a stretch of less than four meters, bordered by coats to the right and doors to the cleaning closet and bathroom to the left—she succeeded in turning my head and causing my body to quiver with arousal and terror. Her heavy, sweet perfume, mixed with the stench from the bathroom's cracked pipe and the old coats in the hallway, is an olfactory memory that even today causes me to shiver with enjoyment mixed with fear.

Maria C. Terrier moved in with me on Hüxterdamm later that same week. This was the start of a stormy three-year-long marriage. Maria C. was hotter than a gas stove. I do not wish to assert my qualities as a lover and male—practice gives proficiency even to the meek, and I had practiced quite a bit—but this did not go far.

At home Maria C. insisted on walking around in her underwear, extravagant little garments of red, black, and white she purchased in an elegant boutique two flights up on light blue Up Street in Amberville: garters and corsets, push-up brassieres and thongs. She liked to sit on the kitchen table as I had breakfast, leaning back theatrically and asking if there was anything else I was hungry for.

Why did we separate? Maria C. Terrier was notoriously unfaithful to me. I sensed it for a long time, but finally confirmed it. I do not intend to go into any sordid details. Let me simply say that her profound abilities in theoretical philosophy did not help that day. I was not the one who threw her out, I was not the one who petitioned for divorce; she carefully packed her bags and left me on her own accord for one of the many lovers who, befogged by the special sweetness of love, happily took her in.

This was a defeat, and I grieved for Maria C. for several weeks. Without Haddock Krausse and her warmth and empathy, it would have taken time to get over the terrier, but that is another story; perhaps I can come back to it. What I was about to tell was about the day when Duck Johnson showed up.

 

That week, a month
or two after Maria C. had moved out, the Seminars on Faith, Hope, and Love were devoted to the incident of the colors.

Maximilian and I had been out walking when we found ourselves due north of Krönkenhagen, in the middle of Lanceheim's commercial center. On a gray asphalt wall, the backside of one of the many stores—a black ventilation grate was the only decoration on the facade—someone had painted graffiti. A kind of pattern, it might perhaps be called, broad round rings of yellow, green, and orange that together created a feeling of motion, confusion. To be honest, I would not even have noticed it if Maximilian had not stopped, apparently fascinated, and asked me to copy the graffiti in the notebook. I did as he asked, and on the same page wrote down his commentary: “Without lines to stay inside,” he murmured, “color is nothing other than variations of mood.”

The incident became a part of that day's notations. I did as I usually did, and read the incident aloud to Adam the following morning. It was a few weeks, however, before the deacon returned to the matter, and at the first seminar where the incident was discussed—another week or two later—Duck Johnson was present. He must have come recommended by two previous seminar participants, but which two I was never able to find out.

Duck distinguished himself from the first moment. He came dressed in an old-fashioned black suit, white shirt and
dark spotted tie, shiny shoes, and a small hat. No one else was dressed like that. When he sat down on the couch by the window, an odor of mothballs and aftershave spread around him. He made a stiff, somewhat antiquated impression, and smiled courteously at everyone who happened to look at him.

Furtively I noted, however, that the suit was a few sizes too small, the shirt collar was almost laundered to bits, in the middle of the tie someone had failed to remove a grease spot, and when Duck put one leg over the other, I saw that there were holes in the soles of both shoes.

The seminar followed its usual pattern. After the first hour we took a break for coffee, and then Duck Johnson caught sight of me. I was standing in the kitchen, setting out a modest buffet.

“You really have a pleasant voice,” he said.

Surprised and blushing slightly, I raised my eyebrows at the same time as I poured coffee for the guests.

“There aren't many,” Duck continued, “who can read with such feeling, and at the same time preserve completely clear diction.”

He was clever, that I will grant him. Reading aloud from the Book of Similes was a standing feature of the seminars. I had practiced, I had exerted myself, and I was secretly proud of my reading. For that reason Duck's flattery worked.

“Did you think it was interesting?” I asked.

“Very interesting,” Duck replied with genuine warmth. “Maximilian is a fascinating being. And Chaffinch handles the situation masterfully.”

“We are all impressed by Maximilian,” I confirmed proudly, and added, “even if we don't always understand what he says.”

This was an inside joke, a jargon that we maintained in the innermost circle; Maximilian's similes could be interpreted in so many ways that we sometimes jokingly called
the exercises “Seminars on Faith, Hope, and Confusion.”

Duck Johnson was about to comment on this when Adam showed up. The deacon took a cup of coffee and greeted the new guest.

“It's Johnson, isn't it?”

“That's right,” Duck confirmed, extending his wing. “And I not only wish to thank you for allowing me to come, I also wish to take the opportunity to say how deeply impressed I was at your manner of conducting the questions and conversation just now, Deacon. That requires not only the greatest sensitivity and talent, but integrity as well. And it seems to me that you possess all that in abundance.”

Deacon Chaffinch, who like most of us was not unduly accustomed to praise, did not know what he should say. And when Duck realized that he had placed the deacon in a somewhat uncomfortable situation, he added, “Wolf and I were just talking about this, that the bewildering requires its interpreter. And that Maximilian no doubt requires even more clarifying.”

Chaffinch laughed, I laughed too, and Duck laughed with us.

He was quick, I noticed. He had perceived where the limits were, and he had made Chaffinch feel at ease again. And despite the fact that even then I realized that Duck Johnson should not be underestimated, I fell into the trap.

He continued to show up at seminars, and soon he was one of our most visible participants. Always formally dressed, stiff, and with a smile on his beak. Always with a well-aimed compliment and taking care to let the others shine, strongly and clearly, at his own expense.

 

I realize that I
am describing Maximilian as if he were almost otherworldly. This is of course a result of my own priorities. For long periods Maximilian was like any stuffed
animal, but this is hardly interesting to a Recorder. It is not my intention to paint a portrait; it is my cause to reproduce words and actions in a way that allows the observant reader to draw his own conclusions.

Let me now make a small exception.

One of Maximilian's commonplaces was that he loved sweets. This is not something I recall from his early youth, but over the years he had developed a clear weakness for pastries and desserts, chocolate and candy. I will not go so far as to maintain that he gorged on sweets, but if the opportunity was there, he took it. Duck Johnson, the sensitive and attentive guest in our group, took unerring note of this weakness.