The Syme Papers (40 page)
Authors: Benjamin Markovits
Sam had a sweet voice, rich and deep and light withal, as if it
floated
to its own surprise above the ordinary clatter
–
of footsteps
on the floorboards and hurried ‘pardons’ and scrapes and little
squeals and grunts of effort and concentration. I remember one song
in particular, as the bells rang out two o’clock across the river, and
only a handful of souls remained; sitting mostly on the sill of the
bay window or leaning against a wall. He played tirelessly, and
even at that late hour could sing out with a kind of mocking and
melancholy bravado:
In leafy dell or dingle
Where lovers like to mingle
And maids and bachelors single
Walk past them sadly,
There will I roam or rove
For friends the stars above
And if I’m not in love
At least I’m madly.
And I thought, as he turned to us smiling to see if we twigged,
What a talent for happiness he has, for ordinary and wonderful hap
piness, for easy ‘good times’, as the old men say, remembering. And
I thought, as I took Frau Simmons’ soft hand (ever so faintly etched
with the fretwork of age) for a final waltz, Perhaps I am learning
something of
that,
too.
In the morning, of course, we faced a different reckoning: hard
heads and a heap of empty bottles by the fire; and empty purses and
tired hearts. And it was Tom, as usual, who swept the grate, and
cleared the room, and dropped the bottles into the first thaw of the
river. That afternoon – a bleak, black, lingering, miserable hole of an
afternoon, that squeezed us into a corner, and pinched us to mean
spirits and sharp words – a letter arrived from my father, answering
my
…
answering
our
request. I
sat with a thick head before the fire
while the snow dripped off the lintels in the dull thaw; and I read –
with a sudden pang at the sight of my father’s hand that reminded
me how far I had come already, how loath I would be to return –
these words:
My dear son,
Ruth stands over my shoulder and begs me to ‘leave nothing out’,
though I scarcely know what to ‘put in’ our lives are so quiet
here, since you’ve gone. I think she means only that I should ‘tell
him how much we want him’ and then she thinks twice, and
pinches the bridge of her nose and squeezes her eyes (as is her
way, you well know), and says, ‘No, no, he shall miss us and
want us himself then, he shall feel low, et cetera, et cetera. Tell
him’ – she now insists – ‘how well we
get on,
and he shall think
we’ve forgotten him, and come back at once …’ Well, I have put
it all down, and I trust that you shall take her meaning, and
understand – and add my own perplexity of joy at your prospects
and regret at your absence to the pot, as they say.
In fact, however, I must report that your sister does ‘get on’ quite
shamefully these days, waltzing through a round of sparkling balls
that would do honour, I believe, to Vienna, for the Prince has taken
a fancy to what he calls ‘the old way of doing things’ (before
you know who
and
what,
he adds, though I doubt very much that
he
does), and the little parties that used to grace his drawing room
have spilled into the hall and the gardens. A fountain is under con
struction, and heaps of marble lie tumbled in the courtyard, wait
ing it seems for a giant’s hand to set them in place. The pipes, I
believe, are proving to be a great nuisance, and horrible trenches
are being dug and readied for the summer. He wishes, he says, to
‘entertain his people in the grand style’ – and sends strange spies,
high and low, in quite a comical fashion, to discover specimens of
the same suitable for his largesse.
In fact, your old student Hespe with the clever fingers has got
in with him lately, and
holds
his ear, as the saying is (perhaps I
have not got it quite right). Hespe is quite changed since you last
knew him from the slim and sallow youth who made a great show
of being bored and having seen it all before, who wore his ennui
like a rose in his button-hole. Apparently this is no longer the
rage. For one thing, he is becoming quite fat, and dresses in the
most peculiar fashion, which he terms
traditional,
and puffs his
chest out when I mock him, and claims German gear is good
enough for such as him … He is a foolish soul, but I am fond of
him – as, I believe, is your
sister
–
who shrieks now and beats me,
and protests, she did but dance with him twice or thrice the other
night as there wasn’t another gentleman for miles around to be
had for love or money, without they suffered from elephant’s feet
or fearsome beards that stank of their dinners or – but you can
imagine the rest, beginning perhaps with her cherry-coloured
striped dress, which cost me four marks and three shillings per
yard – though she did, I confess, look lovely, a proper little
Gretchen.
No, no, the rage, as I was beginning to say (which has crept
upon us in quite surprising fashion for a rage) is now for every
thing
old
and everything
German
and everything to do with the
people.
Of course, it will not surprise you the number of lies that
are told in the service of our good old-fashioned – commonsensical
– plain as daylight –
history.
To give you a notion of this, I need
only say that Hespe himself sets up now for a
historian,
as the
noblest title a man may claim, and, what is more, a
Romantic
his
torian – to distinguish himself from the other charlatans. In this
cause, he has constructed an elaborate and wonderful genealogy
for our Prince, complete with heralds and ancient demesnes, to
prove his ancestral right to govern his (I blush to repeat his word)
children
in a manner compliant with their traditions. (We used
to pride ourselves on our
philosophers,
but even they have
become
historians,
in these times.) The Prince, bless him, has
begun to give himself airs – according to which, I must learn to
navigate carefully, if we are to reach a free port at last.
The truth, of course, is that we have no history – only
histories,
which grow narrower and pettier the closer we look.
Since the battle of Leipzig, I feel, we have lost our way – for the
simple reason that it is possible to
defend
as a people what cannot
be maintained
as a people.
But we have a future, I trust – and,
what is worth a great deal more, a language, all praise to Luther!
who gave us not only freedom of discussion, but also the instru
ment of discussion. We Germans are the strongest and wisest of
nations; our royal races furnish princes for all the thrones of
Europe; our Rothschilds rule all the Bourses of the world; our
learned men are pre-eminent in all the sciences (I puff my chest a
little, and think of you, dear boy); we invented gunpowder and
printing, and hazard a journey even now into
the heart of the earth;
and yet, if one of us fires a pistol he must pay a fine of three
thalers; and if we so much as christen a ship
The Liberty,
the
censor grasps his pencil and strikes out the word in the shipping
times.
I apologize, my son, for going on at such length; only I wished
to answer in part what I believed to be your doubt, regarding the
hopelessness of what you term
Idealism
exercised in the realm of
practical politics, in the affairs of men. You concern yourself with
the permanent and unchanging revolutions of the planet itself,
and I honour you for it. But never believe that
our
– for we are
greater than you suppose, and growing –
doing
and
striving
are
mere idle caprice; that out of the store-house of new ideas we
select one for which to speak and do, strive and suffer, somewhat
as our linguists formerly selected each his classic, to the commentary
of which he devoted his whole life. No; we do not lay hold of
the idea, but the idea lays hold of us, and enslaves us, and lashes
us into the arena that we, like captive gladiators, may battle for it.
We are not the masters, but the slaves, of the word. Perhaps you
begin to understand something of this yourself now, I believe. I
would like to meet this fellow Syme, some day.
Well, Ruth has grown quite tired of me, fretted and sighed over
all this nonsense, and departed at last, to see to our lunch (she is a
good girl, after all, and has acquired an appetite). The rains come
down so heavy today we cannot venture out – the Elbe is vexed
by a thousand drops, and the surface resembles nothing so much
as afield of brown
grass.
(I see it from the window in my
study.) But I have saved the best for last, as they say, a little
nugget to brighten a short afternoon. Whatever its other merits,
this new Romantic spirit has induced a great pride in all things
German, the more fantastical the better; and the Prince (who tells
me, with a wink, that he scarce remembers who you are) has
agreed to support your experiments. (I have managed to persuade
him that Geognosy is, above all, a
Romantic
science; invented by
Germans and now
advanced
by Germans to the honour of
Germans everywhere, most particularly those resident in the
grand principality of Kolwitz-Kreminghausen.) Accordingly, I
enclose a draft for
twice
the sum originally agreed upon; which I
trust will see you some way into … the heart of the matter, as
they say, and bring you out again and home again, soon, soon.
Your loving father,
F.
P.S. I hope, next time you hear from me, to have a more particular
and less
theoretical
account
to offer, of my ideas. There is always
a
quiet
before the … (He presses a
finger to his lips.)
Well, there was something that concerned me in all this, a slight
worm nibbling in the apple; and I confess that I shamed myself yet
again to reach into my father’s pocket just as I strode forth proudly
on my own. Moreover, the tidings of home (of my sister particularly,
and that fool Hespe) awakened in me a strange, recalcitrant melancholy, that baulked at the very thing that fed it, but would not be
satisfied with anything else, and returned again, and again, to these
pages to make itself miserable. I did not reveal our good fortune to
my companions until at length Tom discovered the bank draft for
himself, peering over my shoulder, as I dozed briefly before the fire
with the letter spread across my lap. And yet, it is true, that I was
somewhat mollified by their happiness, then happy altogether, and
then drunk, as we emptied the last of the bottles in my father’s
honour, and cured our thick heads, as they say, with a hair of the
dog that bit us.
‘How did we get along,’ I whispered to Tom that evening, considerably confused in my ideas but holding fast to the main thought,
‘before I came along?’
And he drew himself up at this, and declared with a belch, ‘By my
wits,’ and then lowered his head a little, and confessed, ‘By scrounging
– experiments, lectures, articles and, worst of all,
surveying,’
and
then dipped it still more and admitted, ‘And when nothing else would
do, by selling what we owned – look about you – to see how little is
left.’ It is true: the great house (the fruit, as I discovered, of Sam’s min
ing days) was bare; most of the chambers empty; the windows cracked;
the roof leaking; the floors loose; the fields about it barren and ruined
by rocks. Then Tom pressed both cheeks in his hands, and widened his
eyes and his mouth to ‘O’s, in a ludicrous demonstration of the happy
hopelessness in which we were engaged.
*
By degrees we grew accustomed to our new-found supply of wealth.
Our reports grew more detailed, and I confess that Sam had no small
hand in their composition. I recall in my own defence that I did
occasionally request an audience with the great ‘double-compression
piston’, part object of my mission in the first place. Sam, for once,
would look me in the eyes – an uncomfortable stare, I assure you –
and declare, fondly it seemed, that he had half a mind to ‘revisit’
(this was his word) that wonderful invention, but ‘You must – you
must ask
Tom
(it has become his particular concern) – for its
whereabouts – as he had hired it out – on business, I believe – some
thing of that order – and would know where to find it.’ I sensed
indeed that the question awoke a curious resentment against Tom
(of all people), who, when similarly applied to, knocked a knuckle
against his brow, and protested, he had seen it only the other day,
and considered (he said as much to Sam at the moment) it was time
to ‘dust it off (again his phrase) and put it to some particular use,
now that the spring had returned and the earth was
ripe
again.
Then he would thank me, particularly, for the reminder, and busy
himself about something.