The Sunlight on the Garden (20 page)

The afternoon sun is in his eyes. He hears a far-off shot. He winces as he imagines the rabbit leaping into the air and then crashing down on the hard surface of a field baked dry by day after day of furnace heat. A voice speaks behind him. It is deep and resonant, the accent German. The boy has not heard any approach, since the man is wearing plimsolls. ‘What are you reading?'

The boy swivels his head. He has already seen this squat, muscular man, with the flat, oddly expressionless face and large sunburned hands, the nails savagely bitten, at breakfast that morning. Having entered the long, narrow room, the man then bowed and intoned with an almost comic gravity: ‘
Bonjour, messieurs, bonjour, mesdames
.' Much later, his wife, thin and anxious-looking in a pale-blue cotton dress, her face heavily powdered, slipped through the door. She gave no spoken greeting to the assembled company, merely a bow smaller and far more hesitant than her husband's. He extended a hand to her. She took it with a look of beseeching gratitude. Suddenly the anxious-looking face was irradiated by joy. Later the boy's mother learned from the farmer's wife that the couple were on their honeymoon. They came from Düsseldorf, the farmer's wife said, and both of them were teachers.

The man stoops over the boy. He looks down at the book. ‘Poetry?' The man must have realised that from the way that the lines are laid out on the page. The boy nods. ‘Who is the poet?' There is an odd formality in the way in which the words emerge from under the man's closely clipped moustache.

‘Tennyson,' the boy replies. There is a quaver in his voice. He might be attempting an answer to a difficult question back at school. He feels a mounting excitement, as though a swarm of bees were buzzing inside him. ‘D'you know his work?'

The man shakes his head.' Sorry. Heine. You know Heine?'

‘Not really. No.'

‘He is good. Very good. Genius. You must read.'

‘I don't know any German.'

‘In English. I am sure there is translation.'

The man is bending even lower over the chair. Suddenly the boy is aware of the hand in the man's trouser pocket. He cannot help noticing it, it is so near to his elbow. As though he has realised that the boy has noticed that hand and what the hand is attempting to restrain, the man walks stiffly over to a distant chair and then returns with it. He places it beside the boy's and sits down, crossing one leg high over the other. They begin to talk.

The man asks about the boy and his family. The boy speaks about his father, brilliant, reserved and never ill before his sudden, premature death from a heart-attack, and about his mother, who is half-American and who was briefly on the stage. The man talks about his life as a schoolmaster and his passion for sports. He teaches gymnastics, he explains. He had hoped to be chosen for the German gymnastic team for the 1936 Olympic Games but – he shrugs, his shoulders droop – at the last moment …

‘I'm no good at sports. Hopeless. My brother's in the Rugby fifteen at our school. And he's a terrific shot.'

The man laughs. ‘Yes, yes! Rabbit every dinner!'

Later the man tells the boy that he is on his honeymoon. The boy does not say that he knows this already. The man explains that his wife is sleeping – he jerks his head upwards and sideways – in the room over there. She does not sleep well at night, he says. She needs – how do you say? – her
siesta
. She is a fellow teacher, the daughter of the headmaster of the school. She teaches art. A good artist, mainly watercolour.

Then the man leans forward, hands clasped between his knees, to ask: ‘ What is your name?'

‘Evelyn.'

‘Strange name! I never hear that name.'

‘There was an English diarist. A long time ago. Evelyn. John Evelyn. My father was writing a book about him when I was born.'

‘I am Götz.'

‘Götz.' The boy likes the name. It has a monolithic solidity and strength that suit this stranger.

‘You look German.'

‘Me? German?' The boy is taken aback.

‘Blue eyes. Blue, blue eyes. Like the sea. Like the Atlantic Ocean. And hair so blond.
Blond
! Tentatively he extends a hand. Touches the hair briefly. Touches it again. Ruffles it.

A voice, high and querulous, calls: ‘Götz!' It calls again. Something in German follows.

‘
Meine Frau
. My wife. You will excuse.' He smiles. He puts a hand briefly on the boy's shoulder. Then he again ruffles the boy's hair, this time forcefully, almost aggressively. The boy's scalp tingles under the alien fingers, as though an electric shock were passing through it. ‘Evelyn. Strange name. Good name. I like.' He smiles. Then he strides off to the far end of the balcony and enters the French windows into the room where his wife awaits him.

From then on their meetings are frequent but all too brief. The boy now spends most of his time reading on the balcony. He waits in patience. From time to time Götz appears, usually through the French windows. The chair still remains beside the boy's and Götz first stands briefly by it, leaning forward with a supporting hand on its back, and then sits on it. They have so much to say to each other, but all too often the high, querulous voice interrupts them. It seems to the boy that that cry of ‘Götz, Götz!', usually followed by something in German, becomes increasingly plaintive, even desperate. Götz shrugs on one such occasion, then gives an embarrassed laugh as he puts a hand over the boy's and then hurriedly withdraws it: ‘ Women, women! Difficult!' He laughs as he gets to his feet. Again the woman calls: ‘Götz!
Was machst du
?'

One evening after dinner, as the boy's mother fumbles over a Chopin nocturne on the out-of-tune piano and his brother, perched on the arm of a sagging sofa, flirts with the bosomy, red-cheeked daughter of the house seated on it, the boy gets up, his forefinger keeping his place in the book, and leaves the low-ceilinged room with its smells of omnipresent dust and of dead flowers left for far too long in a vase on a mantelpiece crowded with small objects and photographs in tarnished silver frames. There is a cramped hall outside the room. Beyond are three doors, one to the rooms in the main building, one out on to the balcony of the annexe and one to a lavatory. Götz is waiting in this small hall. The boy's first thought is that he is waiting there for him. Then he realises that, no, he must be waiting for his wife, who is in the lavatory. Götz smiles. He holds out his arms in invitation. The boy hesitates. Suddenly Götz lunges over and grabs him. In frenzied succession he presses his mouth to the side of the boy's neck, to his forehead, to his lips. The boy attempts to jerk away, then yields, at first reluctantly, then with an access of emotion that overpowers him like some huge breaker suddenly soaring skywards and then crashing downwards in a previously tranquil sea. There is a clank followed by the sound of flushing. The man retreats, pushing the boy away from him. The book falls from the boy's hand. He stoops. The German woman emerges. She stares at the boy then at her husband. The boy notices that, though her face is, as always, coated with powder, there are raw, red patches on her bare arms and on one side of her throat.

Götz puts out a hand to the latch of the door that leads out to the balcony. He nods at the boy, then bows slightly as his wife, head lowered, passes out before him. He follows her without a backward glance.

The following day the German couple will leave. It is a long drive back to Düsseldorf. As Götz checks the car, a Mercedes but an old one, probably bought second hand, the boy's brother joins him. He is not interested in the Germans but he is interested in the car. He even helps to pump up a tyre. He then asks if he can have a quick spin. The German asks if he has a licence. He shakes his head. The German smiles and says: ‘Sorry.' The boy wishes his brother would leave Götz alone. The farmer and his wife are angry with the brother because, unknown to them, he took their daughter to a bar in Han-sur-Lesse and brought her back in the early hours. The brother has described the girl as ‘hot stuff' to the boy.

That night, almost at midnight, the boy creeps out of bed and, leaving his snoring brother sprawled across a sheet damp with sweat, tiptoes out on to the balcony. The night is stifling. In any case, he is in such a torment of emotion that he cannot sleep. He leans over the railing of the balcony and breathes in the air. But it does not cool him, even its breath is scorching. From far off a strange creaking sounds reaches him. A bird? An animal? There is something sinister, even frightening about the sound. It is like the creaking of a rocking chair hugely amplified. Behind him he hears another sound. He twists his body round. In the moonlight, wearing only his pyjamas, Götz puts a forefinger to his lips. Then he steps forward and takes the boy's hand in his. ‘Come.'

At the farthest end of the balcony, there is a narrow, spiral staircase. The boy has never noticed it before, much less gone down it. Götz descends, crab-like, from time to time looking back over his shoulder. The boy follows, in unquestioning submission and wonder. Götz must have explored this region in preparation for what is now about to happen. There is a malodorous rubbish tip, surmounted by a broken sofa vomiting horsehair. There is a wheelbarrow without a wheel. There is a stack of old newspapers, blotched with damp and tied with hairy twine. In the extraordinarily bright light from the moon the boy can at once make out all these things. There is a door, with a glinting handle. Götz puts a sunburned hand with bitten nails to the handle and opens the door. He turns his head and smiles. There is an iron bedstead with a stained mattress on it.

Later Götz says, stooping to tie the cord of the boy's pyjama trousers with frowning attentiveness, as though for a child: ‘It is only when I think of you that I can do it with her. Only then. And then it is still difficult.'

At the time these words seem to the boy a betrayal even more cruel than what has just happened on the bed.

Afterwards I asked for his address. At first he seemed reluctant to give it to me. ‘I have no paper. You have paper?' I shook my head. ‘Can you remember it?' ‘I think so.' He told me the address, then repeated it. ‘Say it,' he said. I said it. ‘Perfect!' He laughed. ‘Oh, Evelyn, I miss you, miss you!' The present tense made the utterance even more poignant. Our separation had already started.

‘I'll write to you. Will you write to me?'

‘Maybe.' Then he laughed: ‘ I make fun! Of course, if you write, I write! Yes, yes!'

‘I'll tell you my address. Can you remember it?'

‘No, no, you write letter first! My memory is bad!'

I stared at him. Then I took a step forward and grabbed his forearm, as though I were drowning and he were my rescuer. He stooped and for a last time put his lips to mine. ‘It is only when I think of you – of you, only you – that I can do these things with her.' At that almost word-for-word repetition of what he had said only a short while before, I felt both triumph and a pang of desolation, but now none of that former guilt.

Because the journey was so long, they left early, at five in the morning. I woke and heard their voices, little more than whispers, as they dragged their luggage – so many and such large pieces! – down to the car. I swung my legs out of the bed and thought that I would go down to help them. Then I lay back on the bed again. If he had been alone, of course I would have gone down. But I did not want to see her or even think of her. When I thought of her, that poor creature with the thin arms and over-powdered face, I at once tried to think of him instead.

Eleven days later, the Germans invaded Poland. I wrote him letter after letter but none ever received an answer. His memory became like one of the snapshots taken by my mother during that Belgian holiday: shrivelling, yellowing, fading.

Two years after the War ended I attended a summer school at the university in Göttingen. There was a student from Girton in our party, beautiful, witty, sexually provocative, fluent in German. I thought that I was in love with her. ‘I want to go to Düsseldorf to see if someone I knew before the War is still alive.' ‘A German?' ‘Yes. A German.' ‘Well, why not?' In normal circumstances such travel would have been impossible. But no circumstances were normal for her and nothing was impossible. With the help of a tided cousin of hers, a colonel in the Control Commission, she fixed our weekend leave of absence from the summer school and the long, frequently interrupted journey across mile on mile of scorched, desolate landscape. She had insisted on coming with me – ‘It'll be fun.'

Largely through her pertinacity and charm we eventually found first the street and then the house – with, next to it, a ruined building that had once been a school. It was in that ruined blinding that Götz and his wife must have taught. The house, their house, was also ruined. In London, where my mother and I had continued to live all through the Blitz, I had often viewed similar houses – their surfaces blackened, their contours broken and jagged, shreds of wall-paper cascading from their walls – with a mixture of dread and awe. I felt that dread and awe, in a far more intense form, now. Perhaps he had died there. I voiced that thought to my companion. ‘ Or somewhere,' she said, indifferent.

It was she who asked at the lodge at the gates of the ruined school. A shawled old woman, her mouth fallen in around the few front teeth that remained to her and her fingers grimy and greasy, answered our ringing of the bell. She squinted at us from under a ragged grey fringe, in what seemed to be both bewilderment and hostility. She did not know what had happened to the inhabitants of the house, she said. That was before her time. People had died, people had moved. She told us all this as though it had no interest for her.

I have just woken from another night of jumbled words, endlessly recurring, that I struggle now first to rescue from oblivion and then to arrange into some kind of sense.
The ladder upside down
. That odd phrase keeps repeating itself, like a bell tolling maddeningly on and on. I sip my coffee. I put a hand over my closed eyes and then press my fingers on to them until sparks shower downwards behind their lids. Yes, I begin to see what that strange phrase must mean. I reached the pinnacle of the ladder in that Belgian farmhouse before I had even started to climb it. The rest of my life became a descent, precarious rung by rung, until – now an old man no longer desired or even desirable – here I sit sipping coffee from a chipped cup in a kitchen that feels cold even though I have yet again turned up the central heating.
In my end is my beginning
. That phrase also now returns, a piece of flotsam on the reluctantly returning tide of memory. Then, as I did in my dream, I amend the sentence:
In my beginning was my end
. The most important thing that ever happened in my life ended when it had hardly begun.