Sophie and the Sibyl (17 page)

‘I think that the sword has often been noticed, and then ignored. We tend to ignore the unaccountable. Look at this Madonna’s expression. What do you see? I see surprise, incredulity and disgust. The mother of Jesus of Nazareth would almost certainly have been illiterate. Yet now that we women have been allowed to learn how to read we are perpetually disturbed in that precious, silent meditation, rarely by angels, but sometimes by men.’

She gleamed wickedly at Max, who reddened, remembering his intrusion at Homburg when the Sibyl sat reading Lucian.

‘Forgive me, I would never intentionally intrude –’

‘Don’t apologise! I only said that for the pleasure of seeing you blush again. You radiate such an endearing modest glow.’

Max inclined his head to hers, flattered and trapped.

‘Shall we look in on the Byzantine sculptures? A second-century sarcophagus has been added to the collection. I didn’t see it in the spring, but Mrs. Harleth tells me that the frieze is in perfect condition.’

As they left the Museum at the appointed hour the Sibyl thanked him graciously.

‘We shall spend the rest of our time in Germany visiting Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, but I hope that we might see you there before we return to England. We have an affinity with what the world calls dull places and always prosper best in them.’

She declared herself too tired to walk to the Dorotheenstraße, and so he hailed a cab. As he took her gloved hand to help her up the step she reached into her pocket and handed him a small note, with an air of conspiracy.

‘I have received a letter from the Countess Sophie von Hahn. As you are mentioned therein I think it perfectly correct to put the matter in your hands. You will give her an answer for me, Max. I would have been quite unable to avoid making mention of a certain necklace or moralising on the evils of the Spielsaal.’

Max took the note. Ripples of alarm shivered down his arms and back. What had Sophie dared to say to Mrs. Lewes? The Sibyl, sharp as an owl on the hunt, noticed his discomfiture at once. The mischievous smile, which she delivered at the last, finally revealed her monstrous teeth, and abruptly transformed her from the Grandmother into the Wolf. Max, abandoned on the busy pavement, watched her cab rattle away down the wide streets. Then he swallowed hard and opened the letter Sophie von Hahn had written to Mrs. Lewes.

END OF CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

builds to an Unfortunate Climax, leaving Our Hero in a Desperate State of Mind.

Sophie wrote in German on headed notepaper filched from the Grand Continental. The letter, clearly dashed off in haste, for the handwriting flowed over the edges of the line and dipped downwards, had been composed on the very night of the Architect’s Ball, five days earlier.

Sehr geehrte Frau Lewes,

I hardly dare to write these words as my heart is overflowing. Indeed, you must receive so many letters of admiration and gratitude from your readers that I must content myself with adding to the pile. But I cannot bear to know that you are so close to me here in Homburg and that I am forbidden to see you. What pleasure and delight you have already given me. When I read your words I imagine myself in your company, and throughout all the hours I pass, turning your pages, I feel that you are speaking to me, and only to me, as if we were alone, together in one room. And I have listened, all attention, to your wisdom and forgiving tenderness. You see into all hearts and read our human souls. Forgive me if I speak only of myself. I cannot know who you really are, and yet I feel that I do. I long to have the strength always to do what is right, and yet I cannot always discern what this would be in my particular circumstances. I have always found the loving judgement that I seek in your words. And that is why I appeal to you now.

I am promised in marriage to Max Duncker, the younger son of your publisher here in Germany. Yet I cannot tell whether this would be right, for me or for him. Could I ever love him as a husband? And does he have the power to make me happy? For I do not even know if I want to be married at all. I have never travelled or lived my life, just for me, made my own choices, tested myself against the world. Would I be content with the duties of a wife? Or with a life tied to a household and children? I cannot imagine myself as a mother, because I want more, more than ordinary women of my rank and station appear to do. I want to visit other countries, study their histories and peoples, just as Max has done. Perhaps I could be an explorer or a scientist, for this would be the fulfilment of a dream, especially if I could visit Egypt, India, Africa – or ride beside herds of bison on the plains of the American West. You see, I have longings and dreams. Surely women have a right to want more than they are offered or permitted to desire? The right to lead extraordinary lives that have some purpose and meaning? Just as Dorothea yearned for some great cause to which she could dedicate her days? To be part of that greater kingdom of human endeavour? To live as you have done?

I pray that you will not think this letter impertinent and I beg you to grant me an interview, however brief. If I have overstepped the mark, then the only atonement I can make is to resolve that whatever words of advice or warning you may give me shall not be lost. I will treasure them for ever. For I believe in you, my dearest Frau Lewes, I love your novels with all my heart and I love you too.

I remain, sehr geehrte Frau Lewes, your affectionate and obedient servant

Sophie, Countess von Hahn

Standing there in the street with all the crowds in flux around him, the first idea that erupted in Max’s brain was to tear the letter into tiny pieces, scatter them in the gutter, ride like the Devil to the Count’s country Jagdschloss, where the family remained, still settled in their summer residence, and spank the feckless Countess till she screamed. Or was she with her father, still in Homburg, arranging transportation for the miraculous and dearly purchased steeds? Max stared at her handwriting, furious that he was not the recipient of this unguarded torrent of confidence, admiration and love. She should be writing passionate letters to him, and to no one but him. What unmitigated madness could have entered the girl’s head and induced her to write to the Sibyl in this fashion? And what insolence possessed her to describe herself as ‘promised in marriage’? Surely nothing so certain had ever been agreed? And then to suggest that she might not be satisfied with him as a husband! Max bit his lip in fury. He feared that he might awake one morning and discover himself married to the boisterous Countess, without any action on his part. Would he be pleased at this prospect? Or outraged? He simply did not know. One thing loomed in his mind, with utter clarity. Any attempt on Sophie’s part to approach the Sibyl must be stopped. Their paths must never cross. Max, not at that moment sufficiently self-aware to understand his own motives, did not realise what he feared. The Sibyl, with her great washed eyes and noble ageing countenance, knew too much about him. He feared that freemasonry of the sex, which resulted in confessions of a most intimate nature. He shuddered lest the Sibyl should describe him in terms of hesitation and weakness. She possessed the means to tarnish that self-portrait he had so carefully polished, and therefore to betray him. Was Sophie’s outburst of self-revelatory ardour handed over as a warning? And if so, who presented the threat? Sophie or the Sibyl?

Why did Max set such store by the world’s eyes? He was twenty-three years old and had, as yet, done nothing of any magnitude, apart from running up enormous debts. His knowledge and his reading, random rather than profound, would not pass muster among the members of various learned societies he sought to join. His studies in antiquity were best described as rudimentary. He cast no shadow; like Peter Schlemihl, he was a man without substance. But not a man without ambition. He desired a name in the world and he wanted to be remembered. He imagined himself honoured with memorials for doing great things, so great that they were not yet even conceived, let alone executed. His mind resembled a bell jar, with all the oxygen sucked out.

The Duncker establishment in the Jägerstraße stood four storeys tall. The servants amounted to one butler, who managed everyone, including the two brothers, one cook, one kitchen maid, one scullery boy, two housemaids and a groom. Most of the household observed Max, storming into the house, abandoning his coat on the chest in the hall, and locking himself in his father’s library, where a fire was always laid, even in summer, to prevent damp invading the books. With whom had he quarrelled: the Countess or his brother? His present studies, with photographs of the proposed site in Anatolia, reproached him with their neglect. A dead fly lay on the distinguished essays by Professor Marek. He flicked it into the flames, then flung himself into his father’s chair and reread Sophie’s letter.

Distance, familiar surroundings, time to consider alternatives, all these things encourage calm judgement, informed by reflection. But not in this case. Max became steadily ever more furious. The Countess von Hahn had deliberately, knowingly, cunningly disobeyed him. The fact that the young lady’s behaviour should not yet concern him to this degree simply never occurred to Max. Her business was his business, of course it was. He rummaged among Wolfgang’s papers scattered across his father’s desk and fell upon the corrected proofs of the first translation of
Middlemarch
. The unfortunate Chapter 29 began thus: ‘One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea – but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage?’ Max read no further. Had he done so he would have been confronted by the awful consequences of neglected scholarship, and the eternally unfinished key to all mythologies. Instead, he felt justified in his rage, his personal point of view for ever vindicated. And confirmed by the Sibyl herself. Yes, there was another way of reading Sophie’s letter and recent events in Homburg. The Countess von Hahn had insulted his integrity and challenged his sense of self-worth. Moreover she had revealed her personal ambitions to a complete, if influential, stranger, and those ambitions were in direct conflict with her duties as his wife. He snatched up a sheet of Wolfgang’s writing paper and scrawled a savagely brief and formal note to the Count von Hahn, in which he requested the Count’s permission to seek a private interview with his eldest daughter at her earliest convenience.

This note, instantly dispatched to their Berlin residence at Wilhelmplatz, where the family was every day expected, then travelled another sixteen miles to the Jagdschloss on the lake, and passed at once from the hands of the Count into those of his wife, who was digging in bulbs with the gardener. She pulled off her gloves and beamed at her husband. A private interview! Well, my dear, it’s not like our Max to be so formal. And so soon after the visit to Homburg, where they were every day in one another’s company. Practically tied to each other with ribbons! She danced the last set with him, and I caught them wolfing ice cream together upstairs. His brother will arrange a handsome settlement of course. The Dunckers own a good deal of property, from the mother’s side. I haven’t settled the business of Sophie’s title and inheritance, but I’ve had a good deal of encouragement from the Kaiser’s personal secretary, and I’ve been called to court as usual, never mind the Memoirs. Well, what do you think? Shall I write and ask him to come out here? Or will the end of the week in Berlin seem soon enough? The old couple linked arms and gazed at their gardens, remembering that wonderful moment, decades ago, when the Countess’s own father, God rest his soul, the dear man, had totted up the figures, studied the young Count with suspicion, and then given his consent.

Sophie, Countess von Hahn,

will be delighted to grant a private interview to

Maximilian Reinhardt August Duncker.

She will be at home on Friday morning at ten o’clock,

Wilhelmplatz 2, Berlin.

In the course of three days Max developed a tremor in his left cheek. Sophie, radically undecided on the wisest course of action, and helplessly watching the post, lest the Sibyl should choose to break her sinister silence, ordered a new dress in pale blue silk. A precaution, just in case the result of the interview required new clothes. She spent hours talking to her horses. The creatures replied in kind; they lifted their heads and snorted at the sound of her voice, or the clatter of her boots crossing the yard. Her younger sisters teased her mercilessly and made up silly rhymes, which they chanted in chorus.

Sophie and Max

Went off to Saxe

In heavy weather.

They looked the same

When back they came

Huddled together.

The songs ended in stifled shrieks and raucous giggles. The household buzzed with expectation. Her mother wondered if eight months might seem too indecently short an engagement and if her husband could find out exactly when Professor Marek intended to spirit the archaeological ingénue away to parts of the world where the food makes you sick.

Max said nothing whatever to his brother.

On Friday morning Max appeared in the hallway dressed for battle: dark as an undertaker, starched white cuffs and collar, black waistcoat, long coat, top hat. He stood before the mirror, obscurely convinced that he would emerge by midday, master of the field.

‘Where on earth are you going?’ Wolfgang looked up from the scientific journal that he was reading with a magnifying glass, and stared.