Sophie and the Sibyl (15 page)

Sophie von Hahn shook off her dancing shoes, propped her feet up on a footstool, shoved her father’s papers aside and gobbled her ice cream. Max marvelled at her wolfish voracity. He nibbled a biscuit, careful not to drip crumbs and ice on to his shirtfront. He could not keep pace.

‘You’ll dance with me when we go downstairs again, won’t you, Max? Like we used to? Especially the last galop. I kept that free with you in mind. I don’t much care for the quadrille. Somebody always muffs it up.’

Max gazed at her smile, utterly disarmed.

‘I’ll help you escape from Miss Gibbons. An awful lot of the English ladies read volumes I can’t pick up, they’re so heavy. But Miss Gibbons is the only scientist. Did you know that she’s visited Mrs. Lewes? At her house in London, which is called the Priory. I suppose she’s the abbot. Have you ever been there?’

Her tone became obscurely accusing. Max confessed that he had never set foot in the Priory.

‘Miss Gibbons says that they have a beautiful secluded mansion and that the garden is filled with roses. All sorts of famous and not so famous people go to see her, and not just gentlemen. I think I might go with Father –’

Max shrugged impatiently.

‘We’ve already discussed this, Sophie.’

The necklace, gleaming at her throat, seemed to wink at him, the dark-eyed stones malevolent as watching toads. Sophie changed the subject.

‘Did you admire my horses? And did I do right to buy them? They came when I called them this evening. I think they know my voice already, but I was carrying a bucket of oats and molasses and they could smell that.’

Max examined his fear of this unpredictable and dangerous beauty. All the women, whose skirts he lifted and whose bodies were landscapes marked by many men’s hands, were paid to serve him. This girl expected to rule. He discovered in alarm that his reverence for her innocence actually concealed his terror at her virginity. Like the Sibyl, she would be told no lies. Now she was looking straight at him, green-eyed, merry and radiant, waiting for an answer. Max spoke from the heart.

‘I thought your horses were beautiful. And I thought you were too when you watched them galloping away. Your eyes were full of tears.’

Sophie leaped to her feet, knocking over her empty ice-cream bowl, which rolled under the armchair, seized both his hands and kissed him on the lips, a huge resounding smack of pure, boisterous affection.

‘You darling! You do understand me. You think I did right.’

At that moment the salon door flew open and there stood the Count, resplendent in his campaign medals, his lace cravat rakishly askew.

‘Sophie!’ His daughter leaned over his publisher, her curls falling into his face, as if she had been riding astride his knees. She bounced upright, uncompromised, pink-cheeked and smiling. Max shrivelled to the length of an earthworm. He sat transfixed among the cushions, electrocuted by Sophie’s kiss.

‘What’s this that I’ve been hearing downstairs? The hotel is full of it. Is it true that you were in the Spielsaal, gambling, all yesterday afternoon, in public, unchaperoned, winning indecent amounts of money, all of which you’ve used to buy horses? Speak, child. Now. Explain yourself.’

‘It’s all true, Father. But I didn’t spend it all. I won enough to pay for their transport home myself.’

Thus spoke Sophie, unrepentant.

‘You monstrous little baggage! How do you think that makes me look? Like a man who can’t afford to give his daughter all the horses she wants.’

‘But I wanted them to be mine, Father. Paid for with my own money.’

The Count marched round the rug in a circle, mopping his forehead. Max tried to make himself invisible, slithered out of the armchair, and took up a position in the shadow of the French windows. He was still holding his goblet containing the remains of melted ice, but could find nowhere convenient to abandon the thing.

‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Father. I didn’t mean to do that, and indeed, I never thought of it. Please forgive me.’

She looked up at the Count, expecting absolution. The Count had started worrying about greater matters.

‘I can’t settle your inheritance until you’re married. You can use your own money then.’ He suddenly remembered Max, slapped him on the shoulder and collapsed on one of the sofas.

‘Well, Max, I’ve been looking into the question of Sophie’s inheritance and it’s damnably complicated if she marries a commoner. Her grandfather never thought she would, but he was a very old-fashioned gentleman. Not at all modern in his views. And it seems that the only way to fulfil her grandfather’s wishes and ensure that she keeps her title, name and privilege is to appeal to the Kaiser himself. Or the König, whichever title he prefers. He uses both, you know. But I’ve got wonderful news. His first secretary will be down at the Schloss tomorrow to meet with the Architect, and I’ve been granted an interview. I’ve set the whole thing in motion! I’ll have to swallow my politics of course, but that’s a minor sacrifice, if it will make you young people rich and happy.’

Max felt himself vanishing into a long dim space, with horses, their heads suspended over doors, neighing on either side.

‘Max, my boy, you’d better marry this girl at once and take her off my hands. As you can see I’ve lost all but the most nominal control.’

Sophie cut in:

‘But, Father, he hasn’t asked me yet.’

And she grinned broadly at Max.

END OF CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

visits the Museum.

But Max didn’t propose that night, or the next day either. He told himself that he needed camellias or a conservatory with glowing oranges, and the lady, modest, flattered, glancing downwards, and then raising her eyes to his in grateful adoration. He simply could not imagine proposing marriage to the bracing girl who bounded through the mêlée on the dance floor, lost a lace flounce in the final galop, while swinging round in his arms, and didn’t care, then stood clapping her hands at the last blast of the tuba, hot with sheer youth and dancing joy. But who could grasp the spirit of Sophie von Hahn? She soared and slithered away, laughing, teasing, shimmering with haste. Would she ever stand still long enough to listen to a marriage proposal? How could he declare his love if the lady seemed likely to laugh at him? And did he really love her?

The jury, still locked in conclave, had reached no decision.

Therefore, Wolfgang’s latest letter, recalling him to Berlin, arrived like a reprieve. His brother wrote informing him that Mr. and Mrs. Lewes, wearied by the persistent English claiming their acquaintance, rather than the exhausting water treatment, had decided to decamp in the direction of Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, where flatterers, milords, and autograph seekers seemed unlikely to pursue them. The contracts, now settled and drawn up, awaited signature. Mr. Lewes has been invited to attend a joint meeting of the
Goethe-Gesellschaft
and the Society for the Promotion of Scientific Knowledge, where he is to take part in a lecture and discussion on the subject of Goethe as a man of science. You know how antiquated these societies are, Max. Ladies cannot become members and are therefore not admitted. But don’t worry; there have been plenty of protests. I would therefore be most grateful if you would conduct Mrs. Lewes on a tour of the new collections. Your affectionate brother etc., etc.

In the years immediately following the founding of the Kaiserreich, Berlin boiled and churned with the fever of building works. The Franco-Prussian War brought the National Gallery project to a standstill. But now the work had recommenced; huge holes in the earth regurgitated workers, and armies of stonemasons swarmed over great white blocks, left lingering in piles on the roadways. Max picked his way through the boom of hammers and chisels, skirting the grimy mounds of discarded rubble. The creation of the Museumsinsel, well under way, produced tornadoes of dust, which, in dry weather, coated the queue of passengers waiting for the omnibus. Those perched on the upstairs seats remained at risk from gusts of fine grit. The Bavarian workhorses, who pulled the omnibus, stood patiently, like man and wife, their coats speckled with stone dust and wood shavings. Armed with his umbrella Max fought his way to the Museum steps, where he picked out the Sibyl, resplendent in a new astrakhan jacket, with a muff to match. Lewes, pale and jittery, danced about, looking in all directions. Max hurried to meet them.

Midweek, but the Museum still sucked in dozens of hurrying visitors. Max heard English voices and shuddered. He led the Sibyl into the sculpture gallery, determined to save her from her own celebrity, and guided her down the long cool march of colonnades. The alcove spaces stretched away before them, peopled by white statues, many larger than life-size, an occupying army, all colour drained from their veins. Some figures bowed, bending their heads and hands down towards the visitors; some, arrogant and detached, ignored the upturned, wondering faces. Marble satyrs grimaced and snarled, clutching their enormous phalluses; fleeing women flung their faces to the heavens, gazing upwards at falcons and descending gods. Olympians hurled javelins, or crouched over the discus. A belligerent Hercules brandished his club; Diana, a Roman copy of a Greek original, mastered her hounds. The Sibyl said little at first, her gloved hand rested lightly on his arm. She seemed preoccupied and distressed by Lewes’s rapid departure.

‘We are now at that age, Max, when every parting, even for a few hours, seems to foreshadow the moment that must come,’ here she braced herself slightly, ‘that moment when we must part at last. If you knew how I dread that fearful day; were I to be left –’

She sighed and turned her face towards the windows; the skin, shrivelled and carved into lines of pain, moved him to pity. He pressed her hand gently, and as if only then becoming aware of his presence, she raised her great head towards him and her countenance transformed before his eyes into an oval of benevolent gentleness. Max hastened to reassure her.

‘But he seemed, I mean, when we parted from Mr. Lewes just now, and he was bolting away across the square, he seemed more than well. He was animated, no, really excited at the prospect of vindicating Goethe’s
Metamorphosis of Plants
in such exalted and distinguished company. He has completely recovered from that brief bout of bronchitis in Homburg.’

‘Indeed, he has. And we have been walking out by the Spree with such pleasure. We have settled into our old apartment and are really quite comfortable. I should push aside my anxieties – or use them to nourish that fine tenderness which unites me to Mr. Lewes. I think of him with such gratitude, Max, for whatever success I have had is due entirely to him. Without him I would have been quite unable to work. He has defended me against all comers.’

Max carefully rearranged his expression. He did not like to think of Lewes as indispensable.

The Sibyl gazed at the goddess Athena, whose nose, smashed flat, gave her the fierce appearance of a warrior who has just lost a battle. Her helmet, however, remained intact. The Sibyl’s yearning for her absent husband appeared to ebb as she turned from the Athena towards Kresilas’s famous statue of the wounded Amazon. The bare-breasted maiden leaned against a marble column, her white feet disturbingly naked in the daylight of the gallery. Two artists, perched on stools beneath the windows, their backs against the hall walls, concentrated hard on the muscled bodies of the athletes. Is this where I first saw Meyrick? Max faced a disconcerting row of tiny penises and tense buttocks. Surely women seldom gazed at naked men, or at least not quite so intently as did the Sibyl, who, unembarrassed, approached the gorgeous Antinous and smiled. The statue of the Emperor Hadrian’s boy lover stood tall, heraldic, potent, fixed in a magnificent gesture, which usually represented Apollo.

‘Ah, the beloved boy,’ said the Sibyl, walking round the statue, her eyes at the level of the genitals. ‘It is extraordinary, is it not, how Hadrian’s cult of his lost love spread throughout the Empire? Antinous had cities named for him, temples built, an entire religious sensibility thrived upon Hadrian’s grief. Antinous surpassed his destiny as just one more lost boy, and became a Hermes of the Underworld. He never grew old.’

Max stared at the statue’s proud nakedness, the reared arm cresting the world. The blank eyes interrogated posterity. Max decided that the beloved boy looked arrogant and sulky, and had he lived would surely have developed an enormous double chin. The signs were there. This glossy Antinous will run to fat. Max decided to pay attention to his diet and the amount of port wine he consumed at dinner. But the Sibyl had begun to moralise. He stood to attention. Duty called. His function, on that October morning, was to incline his head devotedly, and keep his views to himself.

‘Hadrian lost that classical poise, so typical of wise rulers in the ancient world. He fell victim to quacks and charlatans, and sank into credulous absorption, giving ear to any cult which proclaimed eternal life. He could not accept that his beloved boy had chosen to leave him and that they would never embrace one another again. For Antinous was found drowned in strange, indeed inexplicable circumstances. Some say he gave his life for Hadrian, a bizarre, primitive sacrifice on the banks of the Nile. At that time Egypt bristled with mystery and resurrection cults, including that of Isis and Osiris.’

The Sibyl, clearly used to addressing a rapt audience, usually consisting of one spellbound individual, and clearly possessed of a pedagogical streak, treated Max as if he were in urgent need of instruction. Max dared to question the Sibyl’s patronising dismissal of all Egyptian spiritual quests.