Sophie and the Sibyl (29 page)

‘Max!’ he called out, tramping into the salon, without waiting to be announced. Here stood Sophie, radiant with fresh air, still in her riding habit, smelling of horses and lavender.

‘He’s gone down to the Museum to oversee the loading up of Lucian. Sit down, Wolfgang, and I’ll call for coffee.’ She described the statue as if it were the philosopher himself. ‘After everything we went through to extract him from the Orthodox Christians and then from the Turks, Max doesn’t want a disaster to occur right here in Berlin.’

And indeed, the grainy, veined marble body that was Lucian’s image, almost certainly taken from life, had traversed many bureaucratic and emotional storms since that day in the dark basilica when Sophie had caressed his foot. The small Orthodox community, ferociously attached to the statue of Saint Lucian, the just Man of God, refused to countenance his removal.

‘Lucian was an atheist,’ snapped Professor Marek. ‘Haven’t they read
De natura deorum
?’

‘I don’t think any of them, except perhaps the priest, can actually read,’ said Max, ‘and they venerate the statue. They think it’s holy. Apparently it’s worked many miracles.’

‘So much for our sundered brethren in the East,’ said the Professor briskly. ‘Bribe the Director of Antiquities. And don’t let him know what the statue is really worth. Or he’ll never let it escape his clutches. Not until he thinks he’s got the highest price.’

But the statue’s story could not be resolved through bribes with Reichsmarks. One part of the frieze from the
temenos
had already been uncovered by Monsieur Olivier Rayet and sold to the British Museum in London, unbeknown to anyone until it was triumphantly unveiled. Behold, one of the Furies, almost intact, handsome, deadly, swirling, her vital power unleashed. She formed a central part of the north frieze. Professor Marek had unearthed the rest, with a fatal missing figure in the jigsaw. Passionate archaeological recriminations, conducted through letters, journal articles and newspaper columns, were delivered as righteous salvos in the months that followed. The offer of an exchange came from the British Museum by urgent telegraph. Your statue for our glorious morsel of frieze? Who would get the better deal from this arrangement, Berlin or London?

By the 1870s a minor war of national collections, now well under way, as the new museums of Northern Europe expanded and bulged, exploded into patriotic spasms of pique and envy, usually expressed in fulminating editorials. The Old World pillaged fresh victims from the Mediterranean, Egypt, Asia and the Far East. Beautiful objects, restored, repainted, sometimes fraudulent, set out upon their travels, to end their days, carefully labelled in huge halls with high ceilings. The extraction of the statue from the tiny ruined basilica became ever more urgent.

Professor Marek, always dynamic and inventive, now blossomed with ideas. He hired a gifted Italian sculptor and set him to work with an enormous block of marble. Six months later, as the modern Lucian hove into view, flat on his gigantic back, wedged in straw on the ship’s deck, no one could immediately tell the difference, but the ancient version, blackened, chipped and missing several fingers, suddenly seemed a poor substitute for the gleaming resurrected saint, whose brave arm and completed hands reached out towards the seven ruined columns on the cliff, as if he longed for home. Professor Marek, his expression a perfect mask of piety, attended the incense-laden consecration of Saint Lucian.

Sophie retold the entire story, while pouring coffee and distributing cake to Wolfgang, who had flung his books and papers down upon her carpet. He had grown up in this house. He felt comfortable, at home, and untidy.

‘So! Our philosopher is en route to London? I assume Max will go with him?’ Wolfgang wondered how he could use the statue to entrap the Leweses.

‘And I will too. We’ll come back with the missing Gorgon from the frieze. And of course Max wants to oversee the packing and the transporters. At every stage.’

‘Ah, so you are accompanying the statue party?’ Wolfgang dipped into the gateau, which had a warm taste of ginger. And how could he exploit the beautiful Countess, who had now become something of a photographic celebrity, to extend his advantage over the rapacious English?

‘I’ve never been to London! Mother and Father used to go frequently when we were small and come back with a selection of tutors and governesses.’ Sophie wondered at the English, reputed to be so polite, remote and unknowable, and utterly unlike Miss Arrowpoint as was, who bubbled with warmth and suppressed laughter, when she wasn’t being serious and intense about interpretations of Schubert. Her eye fell upon Wolfgang’s heap of papers, and there, peeping out beneath the mass, lay the first hundred pages of
Daniel Deronda.

‘Mrs. Lewes! Her new book!’ Sophie pounced.

‘Just the first instalment. I’m reading Book II at home. It’s unlike any of her earlier books. You’ll need a dictionary to get through it. But you’ll enjoy reading about some of our close acquaintances. Klesmer and Miss Arrowpoint are in there. Named, too. I suppose she has their permission. Klesmer comes out of it as a bit of a hero. He gives the heroine what for when she puffs herself up as a singer. Here you are.’ And so Wolfgang handed over the poisoned chalice, amused at Sophie’s unfeigned curiosity and delight.

When he had gone Sophie oversaw the kitchens, placed her orders for dinner, retreated to her rooms upstairs, pulled off her boots and dismissed the maid. Then, still wearing her unbuttoned riding jacket and wide skirts, she sat down to read.

Was she beautiful or not beautiful? And what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or evil genius dominant in those beams?

Sophie read on, appalled, for the opening episode of the young woman gambling rose up before her in insolent accusation; there she was, her irresponsible recklessness, the pawning of the necklace, the young man who stalks her steps, the September day, the long tables, the scene of dull, gas-poisoned absorption, that afternoon, now nearly four years past, reworked, remade, becoming more vivid with every sentence. But the Sibyl’s heroine, foolish, reprehensible, lost again and again and again. Sophie sat, scarlet and trembling, awash with shame and rage. As she reached the end of the second chapter, hardly noticing the transformation into fiction, she actually read the message as she had originally received the handwritten note, with her own name inserted over that of the Sibyl’s ambiguous heroine.

A stranger who has found the Countess von Hahn’s necklace returns it to her with the hope that she will not again risk the loss of it.

Sophie read not one word more. She hurled the slender volume away into a corner of her warm room and sat staring into the fire, her palms damp and shaking. She felt utterly naked and exposed, her young heart ripped open. Max! What did Max know? For one terrifying moment she believed that Max had sanctioned the book, to teach her a lesson. But she jettisoned this strange idea at once. Max loved her more than his own soul, of that she was quite certain. And so far as he was concerned everything she did was wonderful just because she did it. But why then was this evil witch so jealous of her happiness? She remembered the message Mrs. Lewes had sent upon their wedding day and how it had disturbed her beloved Max. What strange power did the writer have to intimidate and unsettle people she hardly knew? And why did she fling Sophie’s youthful folly back in her face, and in so public a fashion, with an image distorted and broken? Why had she redrawn the scene so that the lovely gambler wagered all, and lost?

She wanted me to lose, to lose my money, my necklace and my husband. She cannot bear it that another woman should have beauty, youth, wealth and still be loved. She wants to punish me.

And perhaps, in thinking this, Sophie stumbled upon a truth that remained entombed in the writer’s unconscious mind. The Sibyl’s heroines are young women with everything to learn and everything to lose. Dorothea, short-sighted, obtuse, deluded and idealistic, learns who her husband really is the hard way, by marrying him. And finds herself chained to an old man, who is very far from being a ‘great soul’; he is fraudulent, mean-spirited and vindictive. Gwendolen Harleth, vain, self-satisfied, egotistical, naïve and confident, is almost destroyed by her husband, the monstrous Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, and by the plot of
Daniel Deronda
. Most authors use the plot to punish their characters. Thomas Hardy is famous for doing just that. But who is that woman in the Sibyl’s novel, the woman who lurks on the edge of the tale? Who is the discarded mistress, demanding justice for herself and for her bastard children? Remember that the Sibyl never married George Henry Lewes. This woman’s fate might have been hers. Some malevolent ill-wishers hoped that it would be. Here stands Lydia Glasher, baying for blood. Would Grandcourt ever have married her? Who knows? Her curse upon the heroine comes good:
You will have your punishment. I desire it with all my soul.

The older women in the Sibyl’s books are startling creations: unfettered, unleashed, seeking their prey and hungry for vengeance. Had Sophie von Hahn possessed all the elements in the story she would have seen this, and proudly taken their part. A fierce passion for justice and a curiously English understanding of fair play reigned in Sophie’s heart. There is a great deal of unmapped country within us, which would have to be taken into account, as an explanation of our gusts and storms. Sophie shared many things with the Sibyl; both women blazed with the desire for knowledge, a desire that reduced milder forms of curiosity to mere politeness. Both women grasped their lives, fortified by an unyielding common will, convinced that what they did and said mattered and echoed beyond their small circles and concerns.

Some say the Sibyl was fragile, insecure, lacking in confidence and self-esteem. But do frail and timid women decide to be atheists, challenge their fathers, refuse to go to church, educate themselves to an astonishingly high degree, run off to London, live abroad on their own, fling themselves at married men, beguile women too, and clearly enjoy doing so, edit distinguished literary journals, learn Hebrew, write fiction that will live for ever as long as we remember how to read, become rich and famous, and think for themselves?

Ah, that’s the key, the power of independent judgement. Sophie and the Sibyl tested everybody else’s judgement against their own. Both women believed in their inalienable right to discriminate and decide, and both were inclined to accept their own opinions. Both women loved getting their own way. Never give up! Neither woman had any intention of ever doing so. A crisp modernity defined their approach: no shame, no guilt, no fear, no hesitation. And no quarter.

Well, what happened next?

Sophie’s warm sitting room, filled with mementoes of equestrian achievements, with large double windows overlooking the bare gardens, not yet quite risen from their winter grave, led into the bedroom she shared with Max, who had his own dressing room beyond. She prowled once round the bedroom, searching for a handkerchief and weighing her fears and suspicions. Then she poured clear, cold water into her washing basin and scrubbed her burning face. Outside, dusk settled over the smoke rising from thousands of freshly built fires. Wary as a cat, Sophie approached the first instalment of
Daniel Deronda
, which lay in a fluttered heap behind an armchair, smoothed the pages and slid it carefully into one of her leather travelling cases. She had not decided what to do, but knew the book constituted undeniable, published evidence. As she set off down the staircase she heard Max crashing through the door, bellowing at the servants.

‘Has the Countess come home?’

He saw her descending towards him and pounded up to the first landing in a climactic sequence of bangs and creaks.

‘Sophie! The statue is all packed and ready for the train. It’s locked in the depot with two men on guard. Dearest! Whatever is the matter? You’ve been crying.’

And this immediate recognition of any glint of pain or trouble in her open face and red-rimmed green eyes reassured her completely. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me. And he has nothing to do with this vicious treacherous book. Max embraced his wife, suddenly riddled with unease.

‘It’s all right.’ Sophie told the truth, if not the whole truth. ‘I’ve been reading a novel. And I was so affected by the story that it made me cry.’

Husband and wife mounted the stairs, their arms around one another. Sophie stood on safe ground. Max never read novels, or at least she had never seen him do so.

Two days later Max, Sophie, Professor Marek and a little court of acolytes set out for London, their trophy safe in straw, guarded in the goods van. Wolfgang saw them off at the Hauptbahnhof, then went home to write a torrent of calculated adulation to the Sibyl. He composed the letter in his odd stilted English. Max, he had to admit, could write a more fluent, graceful hand, but was not so adept at flattery, and Wolfgang counted on Lewes reading the letter first.

My dearest Madam Lewes,

Your extraordinary new book has become the event of the month for me. I had not thought that the elegance and sophistication of
Middlemarch
could be surpassed, but I am at present devoured by curiosity to see what will become of the unfortunate little Jewess and our noble hero, Deronda. Pray take pity on your most passionate German admirer here in Berlin and allow me to request the forthcoming proofs from Mr. John Blackwood. Our translator, the one you have approved, is already at work, but of course, not a word will reach the public until he has received the benefit of your astute linguistic advice and you have given your imprimatur. This novel is magnificent, dear madam, the opening scenes masterly, your little minx Gwendolen as captivating as she is dangerous. What will be her fate and how will the two meeting streams of this great work be bound together? As you see, I think of little else.