Remember Me (20 page)

One day they went to Berg, and drove beyond the
schloss
to a small farm. It was immaculately tidy, like the toy village of Marie Antoinette.

They went there for lunch, and though the King did not tell him why, he could tell that the visit was
important
. It had the feel of trying out for a new part. He met the King’s master of the horse, his wife and children. The time passed easily, and yet there was some kind of
constraint
he did not comprehend. The King kept watching the master of the horse, whose name was Richard Hornig. Kainz felt instantly that Hornig did not like him. Hornig
watched him closely. Yet as the afternoon went on he could feel that hostility slowly melt and change into something softer and more equivocal. Hornig watched the King with disturbed, faintly indulgent, faintly
apprehensive
eyes. And as they left, Hornig seemed to wish to speak, but then to think better of it.

The King seemed happy and relieved. Together they drove back to Linderhof. Ludwig half spoke; half hummed, half sang as they drove along. It was as though some obstacle had been removed. Kainz
wondered
what sort of test he had passed. It was very like the theatre. There, too, one never knew exactly why one had been chosen or rejected for a role. Merit seemed to have nothing to do with it.

His visit drew to a close.

He was sorry it was over, yet no doubt it was just as well. He had grossly overtaxed his throat and it was sore. The King deluged him with gifts. It was strange. The last day the King had seemed both embarrassed and sad, almost as though he were frightened. Almost as though he were saying a final good-bye. Kainz was
apprehensive
. He did not want it to be good-bye. On the other hand he could not walk around the woods spouting poetry forever, either. He found it good to be back to the theatre.

Once back in Munich, and he wrote to the King. The gossip at the theatre was worse than he had expected, and he did not like the amused glances that now followed him. They were the worse to bear in so far as they were incorrect. The matter was more complex than his fellow actors could be expected to understand. He shrugged his shoulders. He was used to envy, and it was less dangerous if it was also tinctured with contempt. It did not matter. He had a patron now.

He waited to hear what the King would write in reply.

The King wrote nothing. Kainz became alarmed. He had taken a step up. He could not now take one down. Then, at last, there was a letter. Its tone surprised him. It mentioned that occasion on which the King had taken his arm, and it was furious. Kainz did not quite see why the King should be furious, but he wrote to apologize anyway, though he did not know for what. He could not afford to lose everything now, just as everything was within his grasp.

There was no reply to his apology. He went on with rehearsals of
Richard
II.
His position had become far from enviable.

Then the King wrote proposing a visit to Spain, in the form of a pilgrimage to the home of Caldéron. Kainz was relieved. Yet only when it occurred to him that the visit would fall through, did he accept the proposal, for he was to open in
Richard
II
very soon. He could not leave the theatre and his career. He had some anxious moments, Yet if consent would please the King, he did not mind. It was pleasant to please the King. There was something innocent and touching there that evoked affection, even if it could not receive it. As he wrote the formal, flatteringly adulatory phrases which Court etiquette demanded, he realized that he meant them. Pity and affection are almost interchangeable. When he visualized the King now, it was not as a man with a beard, but as a little boy. It was most odd.

Richard
II
was the best role he had had to date. It was to be the cornerstone of his career. He could not give that up, and he would not, but he was sorry about the projected pilgrimage. It would have been enjoyable.

Another message arrived from the King. He quite
understood about the performance. Wagner had been so. But the play would only run for a week. Kainz was to be ready to go to Switzerland on June the 27th.

Kainz hesitated. Something held him back. But for the sake of his career, it was imperative that he should obey, so he obeyed. This time the leave of absence from the theatre could be arranged quietly with the manager, and no one need know where he was. He began to
perceive
that it was not altogether an agreeable thing to be a royal favourite. At the same time he felt anticipation. After all, in its own way it was all rather grand. He
supposed
he would have to be Didier again. It was a role he had already left behind him, but he would always remember it. It had given him his start.

H
e was wrong. The part assigned to him was Tell.

He was to join the King not in Munich, but at a small railway station close to Berg, where the train would pause long enough to allow the King to board it. As the train began to slow down for the station Kainz felt within himself not exactly affection, but a great tenderness to oblige. In his heart of hearts the interpretive artist, to whom are entrusted the sacred creative thoughts of others, must always feel a little sorry for those who
cannot
express themselves through others. The King was locked up in himself, and Kainz would gladly have let him out, if he could have done so. To tell the truth, he felt rather magniloquent, with a condescension natural to the stage but which had now begun to grow in himself, as he felt his new authority.

With a final snort of steam the train stood like a
waiting
pack animal in the station. It was dusk and there was a thin indifferent rain.

Kainz felt silly pretending to be Didier, for an artist is never interested in what he has done before: he is only interested in what he is going to do next. Once he has breathed life into a part, the life goes out of it for him. Everyone is the same. The inner self is bored by what the outer self may do, and views it with detachment, for
it has thought the action before the action becomes apparent, so it hurries on.

He was not quite easy in his mind with the King, for it was difficult to face him as an equal. If he had been more successful, it would not have been so difficult, but his success was yet to come. He looked out of the window. A line of men approached the train. They were the porters of the safari and comprised cooks, valets, a
hairdresser
, and an equerry. Beyond them a figure stepped out from behind a van. It was tall and weighted oddly at the bottom. Its hat was dripping with rain.
Deliberately
it raised its hand and broke into a smile. Kainz waved in response. It was the King out there. Didier waved, not he.

Soon, very soon, Ludwig bustled into the
compartment
with a shuffle and stoop, the train shook itself, and they were off. Kainz faced him. He had the role down pat by now. He wondered what he would be asked to recite. It turned out to be Byron.

“Off to the Tell country,” said Ludwig genially. Unpacking his memory, Kainz lurched into Childe Harold and scarcely listened. He had no idea what he was in for.

He soon found out.

The King talked enthusiastically like a little boy, his hands on his knees to steady him. The King proposed to cast him for one of his own favourite roles, not so much to see him act in it, as to be able to act it through him.

They slept that night on the train and woke up on a siding at Lucerne. Kainz had never been to Switzerland before. It was certainly invigorating to be so high up, but the country was too tidy, too overinhabited, and he cut himself shaving. Ludwig was impatient, as though he had
an enormous secret to impart. They left the train and went to a steamer. It was draped with blue and white bunting. Ludwig muttered under his breath and went aboard. The lake drew away around them.

Everywhere Kainz must recite. Any role is endurable for three and a half hours, but this one went on forever. Even in moments of contemptuous self-doubt, he could not have thought of a better punishment for his dramatic aspirations.

When Schiller wrote
Wilhelm
Tell
he had never been to Switzerland. Kainz began to realize why. At Brünnen they stepped from the boat. The King wanted to show him the landscape of Schiller. Kainz began to be grateful that the character of Melchthal does not enter the play until the fourth scene of Act I. At least he was not forced to row across the lake in an open boat during a storm, as Tell had done earlier in the play. There are advantages in being cast for a minor role. The King would surely have made him do so, if Melchthal had done that, rather than Tell.

Kainz was not deeply moved by scenery. It was
something
he liked to watch while sitting down. Considering the limitations of the stage, Schiller had chronicled Switzerland alp by alp. But at least on the stage the floor was level. The Alps were not. At Brünnen Kainz climbed the hill and delivered Melchthal’s first speech. All told he did it rather well, he thought, and the pines made a superb backdrop. The King was not satisfied. Several scenes of the play take place at night under the moon. Kainz was exhausted. He was not used to climbing. They went back to the hotel for a brief snack, to wait until the moon rose. The King was in a trance. When the moon appeared, they went out with torches. The night was bitterly cold, but you cannot act in an overcoat. The
torches spluttered against the trees, as they climbed higher and higher. Even that did not satisfy Ludwig. He now wanted to see the scenery that Schiller had not been able to depict in the play. Kainz was drugged for sleep. The equerry came to rouse him at dawn. Kainz stared at him. He thought something must be wrong. He dressed hastily. The equerry told him to put on hunting clothes and cleet shoes. A suit was already laid out for him. Kainz thought perhaps something had happened to the King.

Outside he found a corps of sleepy guides and
Ludwig
, fresh-faced and eager. The King scarcely spoke to him. Instead he turned, gave a curt nod to the guides, and the party was off. Kainz had had no time for
breakfast
.

In Scene 2, Act II of
Wilhelm
Tell,
Melchthal speaks to Stauffacher. He has just been to see his father, whose eyes had been put out at the order of the Austrian tyrant. The spectacle so enraged him that he left the old man and crossed the mountains to join the rebels at Uri.

It is one of the great setpieces of the play, and describes in minute detail Melchthal’s journey, which Schiller had been unable to show on the stage. The King was waiting. It was to be shown now.

Kainz looked at the mountains and gasped.

“Yes, it will be magnificent‚’ said Ludwig, and glanced at Kainz, who was shivering in leather shorts. They clambered into a carriage, the guides following them in
another. It was cold and misty. The sun had risen, but gusts of steam rose from the fields. They drove rapidly. Kainz was seriously distressed.

The King did not speak again. He seemed to be in some kind of suspense. He wanted Kainz to recite. To Kainz, it was as though the King did not think he was there unless he recited. He was sleepy and his throat was sore. Driving towards the mountains, the carriages breasted a rise of ground.

“Engelberg,” breathed the King. The town was pleasant and small. Kainz wondered what they would do there. It sat in a flat green meadow, the site of a huge convent. They whirled past the convent walls in a shatter of dust. The carriages did not stop and Kainz was
hungry
. He knew it would be useless to explain that he was not accustomed to the altitude. He had to go on talking. The carriages bumped down a dirt road to the end of the valley, into timid woods. The woods thinned. The mountains rose abrupt and blue on every side. The
carriages
stopped. Ludwig did not stir. The guides got down to the ground, joking among themselves, while they glanced at Kainz.

“Now you will climb,” said Ludwig. He sighed. “I wish I could go with you.”

Kainz stared at him with disbelief. He was helpless and penniless in a strange country, and if he refused,
Ludwig
was quite capable of leaving him there alone.
Something
in the King’s eyes told him he would not refuse. It was a lost look and distrait, but it had command in it. He turned to face the rock.

The guides were waiting for him. He went to join them. Once he looked back. Ludwig still sat in the
carriage
, gazing up at the peaks ahead. His face was baffled, yet victorious, as though he had somehow defeated them
and was surprised that victory had brought no change in him or them.

They toiled wearily upward for half the morning. Far below lay the valley of the Engelberg. Kainz’s legs were already dead below the knee. The guides were not
talkative
. They were constrained, almost as though the King were there, leaping ahead of them, with that ponderous agility of his that could be so surprising.

Higher they climbed. The sun was merciless. Every once in a while Kainz straggled too much and turned round, as though to see the view, but actually to rest. The guides spoke some kind of dialect he could not follow. If he asked them to turn back, they would merely shrug. They were stolid men who had received their orders and looked forward to receiving their pay. They would not allow him to turn back.

Higher still they went. The snow glare was
unbearable
. The sun was a burn in the sky. At last they reached a tarn so elevated that part of its surface was still rimed with ice, even in July. The rocks were naked. There were no plants. The mountains danced in the air. In that desolation something stirred. Kainz sat down on a rock.

His heart pounded and his temples hurt. The height made him giddy. When he opened his eyes it seemed to him that Ludwig stood there, just beyond the edges of the eyes, staring at him, bitterly disappointed and
somewhat
frightened. It seemed to him that the King said: “It is not much farther.”

“I can’t make it.”

He saw that the guides were staring at him.
Reluctantly
he rose to his feet. He, too, was frightened. He gasped for air. He thought he would die. The guides clumped uncertainly and looked at him over their shoulders.

The King seemed far ahead of them now. Perhaps it was imagination. The height was vertiginous and the guides often stumbled. Kainz closed his eyes and prayed, but prayers did not help. There was nothing to pray to. The brandy the guides had forced into him made him sick at his stomach. Over him the sky tilted and teetered, as the guides led the way.

Far ahead he seemed to hear a shout. His eyesight seemed to shimmer as much as the landscape did. The guides had stopped. They stood on a grassy knole, across which ran a rough path. They must be very high indeed. The air was unreal and illusionistic. It seemed as though the King were behind him now, struggling to get into his mind. He knew the King must never get into his mind. He staggered and the guides caught him.

Ludwig was standing a little way away from him, looking across the ravine. The guides nodded. The ravine was perhaps thirty feet deep, rough rock, and on the other side, across a narrow patch of ice-coated rock, stood the crests and ridges of a miniature vestigial glacier, locked in the snow but swirling up to the rocks and peaks beyond. He could tell that the King was very angry. He wanted him over by the glacier.

Kainz gasped and put his hand over his eyes. He was trapped between the guides and the King, and he was furious. He scrambled into the ravine, driving himself forward. He tore his hands on the rocks, but managed to stumble and slip over the ice-filled patch. There was something there he had to see. The King drove him to see it.

He was not going to be beaten at this game, whatever it was. The best way to get even with the King was to give him what he wanted, but Kainz was mortally afraid. His heart was ready to burst and his legs were no longer
any part of him. The whole expedition was unbelievable.

The King was already well ahead of him and stood by the glacier, waiting. Kainz was so angry that he derived strength from his rage. He passed the ice rime and stood on solid rock. Then he looked down. He saw traces of a path. It was Melchthal’s path, but that could not be true, for Schiller only imagined that trip. It had never taken place. Or had it? He was horrified.

He looked around him dimly and saw the face of the King, outlined against the ice, waiting for him to speak. He tried to do so. The glare was unspeakable on his eyes and no words would come. The King stared at him, wide-eyed. What was Ludwig trying to do to him, or to do with him? If he could not speak he would die. Was that what the King wanted? He opened his mouth again, but nothing came out. He knew Melchthal’s speech by heart and could not remember a word of it. Something came out of space and shoved him to his knees. He pitched forward on his face. He knew nothing more until he opened his eyes and felt himself being placed in an empty carriage. It started off at once. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again he knew instantly that they had descended. There was something different about the sky that told him so. Lying on his back against the horsehair of the carriage, he felt disoriented and
unreal
. He wondered not where they were going, but why they had stopped. He heard voices. The door opened and a giant got in beside him. His eyes were hard with snowglare. He could neither blink them nor change their expression. He merely looked.

He saw Ludwig. Ludwig looked concerned, yet eager. “Sit up,” said the King. He pulled Kainz up on the seat and then banged the door closed behind him
disapprovingly
. Someone else clearly should have done that. The
carriage went on again. Far ahead of them glimmered the waters of Lake Lucerne.

Kainz sat like a rag doll. He knew he should pull
himself
together, but he could not make the effort. Ludwig bent over him intently.

“What was it like?” he demanded. His lips were parted over small, sharp white teeth.

“Horrible.”

The King drew back. What had seemed an amiable expression vanished. He stared straight ahead at the horses. Kainz lost consciousness again. Dimly he could feel his body being bumped about.

Once more the carriage stopped and roused him. “Where are we going?” he asked. The King did not answer. Two grooms heaved him up by his armpits and walked him towards the little steamer. He shook them off and went up the gangplank. The steamer pulled away from shore almost as soon as he was aboard. The lake was quiet. The boat crossed it as a fly icing. Even so there was a cool breeze. Kainz shivered, but he could feel himself recovering. He got up and went in search of the King.