The Unconsoled (28 page)

'We're having lunch here?' I asked.

'Yes. Our little circle, we've gathered here for years now. Everything's very informal.'

We got out and walked towards the café. As we approached I could see bright pieces of cardboard hung from the awning, announcing various special offers.

'Everything's very informal,' Christoff said again, opening the door for me. 'Please make yourself at home.'

The decor inside was very basic. There were large picture windows going all the way round the room. Here and there posters advertising soft drinks or peanuts had been put up with sellotape. Some had become faded in the sunlight and one of them had turned simply into a rectangle of pale blue. Even now, with the sky overcast, there was a harshness to the daylight falling across the room.

There were eight or nine people already present, all seated at the tables near the back. They each had in front of them steaming bowls of what looked to be mashed potato. They had been eating hungrily with long wooden spoons, but now they all stopped and stared at me. One or two began to stand up, but Christoff greeted them cheerily, waving to them to remain seated. Then, turning to me, he said:

'As you can see, lunch has started without us. But given our lateness, I'm sure you'll excuse them. As for the others, well, I'm sure they won't be much longer. In any case, we shouldn't waste any more time. If you'd just step this way, Mr Ryder, I'll introduce you to my good friends here.'

I was about to follow him when we became aware of a heavy bearded man in a striped apron signalling furtively to us from behind the service counter nearby.

'Very well, Gerhard,' Christoff said, turning to the man with a shrug. 'I'll start with you. This is Mr Ryder.'

The bearded man shook my hand saying: 'Your lunch will be ready in no time, sir. You must be very hungry.' Then he muttered something quickly to Christoff, glancing as he did so towards the rear of the café.

Both Christoff and I followed the bearded man's gaze. As though he had been waiting for our attention to turn to him, a man who had been sitting by himself in the far corner now rose to his feet. He was portly and grey-haired, perhaps in his mid-fifties, dressed in a brilliant white jacket and shirt. He started to come towards us, then, stopping near the middle of the room, smiled at Christoff.

'Henri,' he said, and held up his arms in greeting.

Christoff stared coldly at the man, then turned away. 'There's nothing for you here,' he said.

The white-jacketed man seemed not to hear. 'I was just watching you, Henri,' he continued genially, gesturing out of the window. 'Walking across from your car. You're still walking with that stoop. It used to be a sort of affectation, but now it seems to be there for real. There's no need for it, Henri. Things may not be going your way, but there's no need for a stoop.'

Christoff continued to keep his back turned to the man.

'Come on, Henri. This is childish.'

'I've told you,' Christoff said. 'We've nothing to say to each other.'

The white-jacketed man shrugged and took a few more steps towards us.

'Mr Ryder,' he said, 'since Henri is determined not to introduce us, I'll introduce myself. I'm Dr Lubanski. As you know, Henri and I were very close once. But now, you see, he doesn't even talk to me.'

'You're not welcome here.' Christoff was still not looking at the man. 'Nobody wants you here.'

'You see, Mr Ryder? Henri's always had this childish side to him. So silly. Myself, I long ago came to terms with the fact that our paths have diverged. Once we used to sit and talk for hours.

Didn't we, Henri? Dissecting some work or other, arguing it through from every angle over our beers at the Schoppenhaus. I still think back fondly to those days at the Schoppenhaus. Sometimes I even wish I'd never had the good sense to disagree. That we could sit down again tonight, spend more hours arguing and discussing music, about how you'd prepare this or that piece. I live alone, Mr Ryder. As you can imagine' - he laughed lightly -'things can get a little lonely at times. And then I start remembering how it was in those days. I think to myself, how good it would be, just to sit down with Henri again and talk over some score he's preparing. There was a time he wouldn't do anything without first consulting me about it. Wasn't that so, Henri? Come on, let's not be childish. Let's at least be civil.'

'Why today of all days?' Christoff shouted suddenly. 'No one wants you here! They're all still very angry at you! Look! Look for yourself!'

Dr Lubanski, ignoring this outburst, embarked on some other reminiscence concerning himself and Christoff. The point of the story quickly eluded me and I found my gaze wandering past him to those watching nervously from the tables at the back.

None of them appeared to be over forty years of age. Three were women and one of them in particular, I noticed, was looking at me with a peculiar intensity. She was in her early thirties, dressed in long black clothes and wearing spectacles with small, thick lenses. I would have studied the others more closely, but just at this point I remembered again what a busy day still lay before me, and how imperative it was that I remained firm with my present hosts if I were not to be detained here beyond the allotted time.

As Dr Lubanski came to a pause, I touched Christoff's arm, saying quietly: 'I wonder if the others will be much longer.'

'Well…' Christoff glanced around the room. Then he said: 'It seems this might be all for today.'

I had the impression he was hoping to be contradicted. When no one said anything he turned back to me with a short laugh.

'A small gathering,' he said, 'but nevertheless we have… we have the best minds of the town here, I assure you. Now Mr Ryder, please.'

He began to introduce his friends to me. Each smiled nervously and uttered a greeting as his or her name was called. All the while, I was aware of Dr Lubanski walking away slowly towards the back of the room, never taking his gaze off the proceedings. Then, as Christoff was coming to the end of his introductions, Dr Lubanski let out a loud laugh, causing the former to break off and throw a look of cold fury towards him. Dr Lubanski, who by this time had seated himself again at his table in the corner, gave another laugh and said:

'Well, Henri, whatever else you've lost over the years, you've not lost your nerve. You're going to repeat the whole Offenbach saga to Mr Ryder? To Mr
Ryder
?' He shook his head.

Christoff went on staring at his former friend. Some devastating retort seemed about to leave his lips, but then at the last moment he turned away without speaking.

'Throw me out if you like,' Dr Lubanski said, starting on his mashed potato again. 'But it's beginning to look as though' - he waved his spoon around the room - 'as though not everyone here is finding my presence so irksome. We could put it to a vote perhaps. I'd gladly leave if I'm genuinely not wanted. What about a show of hands?'

'If you insist on staying, I don't care in the least,' Christoff said. 'It makes no difference. I have my facts. I have them here.' He raised a blue folder he had produced from somewhere and tapped it. 'I'm quite sure of my ground. You can do what you want.'

Dr Lubanski turned to the others with a shrug that seemed to say: 'What can you possibly do with someone like this?' The young woman with the thick spectacles immediately looked away, but her companions seemed mostly confused, one or two of them even smiling back shyly.

'Mr Ryder,' Christoff said, 'please sit down and make yourself comfortable. As soon as Gerhard returns, he will serve you lunch. Now' - he clapped his hands together and his voice assumed the tones of someone addressing a large hall - 'ladies and gentlemen. I must first of all thank Mr Ryder, on behalf of each of us present today, for agreeing to come and debate with us in the midst of what must surely be a very busy few days…'

'You've certainly got nerve,' Dr Lubanski called from the back.

'Not intimidated by me, not even by Mr Ryder. Quite a nerve, Henri.'

'I'm not intimidated,' Christoff retorted, 'because I have the facts! Facts are facts! I have it here! The evidence! Yes, even Mr Ryder. Yes, sir' - he turned to me - 'even a man of your reputation. Even you are obliged to defer to
facts
!'

'Well, this will be worth witnessing,' Dr Lubanski said to the others. 'A provincial cellist lecturing Mr Ryder. Fine, let's hear it, let's hear it.'

For a second or two, Christoff hesitated. Then with some resolve he opened his folder saying: 'If I may start with a single case, which I think leads us to the heart of the controversy concerning ringed harmonies.'

For the next few minutes, Christoff outlined the background to the case of a certain local business family, leafing through his folder, reading out the occasional quotation or statistic. He seemed to present his case competently enough, but there was something about his tone - his unnecessarily slow delivery, the way he explained things twice and three times - that quickly got on my nerves. Indeed, it occurred to me Dr Lubanski had a point. There
was
something preposterous about this failed local musician presuming to lecture me.

'Now
that
you call a fact?' Dr Lubanski suddenly broke in as Christoff was reading from the minutes of a civic committee meeting. 'Ha! Henri's "facts" are always interesting, aren't they?'

'Let him have his say! Let Henri present his case to Mr Ryder!'

The young man who had spoken up had a pudgy face and a short leather jacket. Christoff smiled at him approvingly. Dr Lubanski raised his hands, saying: 'All right, all right.'

'Let him have his say!' the pudgy-faced young man said again. 'Then we'll see. We'll see what Mr Ryder makes of it all. Then we'll find out once and for all.'

It seemed to take Christoff a good few seconds to absorb the implication of these last words. At first he remained frozen, the folder held aloft in his arms. Then he looked around at the faces surrounding him as though for the first time. All about the room there were searching gazes directed at him. For a moment Christoff appeared badly shaken. Looking away he muttered, almost to himself:

'These are indeed facts. I've gathered evidence here. Any one of you can see it, peruse it.' He peered into his folder. 'I'm just summarising the evidence for brevity. That's all.' Then with an effort he seemed to regain his poise. 'Mr Ryder,' he said, 'if you will bear with me a moment. I believe things will be much clearer very shortly.'

Christoff carried on with his argument, a slight tension in his voice, but otherwise in much the same manner as before. As he talked on, I remembered how the previous night I had given up precious hours of sleep in order to carry out further my investigations of the local conditions. How, despite my great tiredness, I had sat in the cinema, talking through the issues with the town's leading citizens. Christoff's repeated assumptions about my ignorance - even now, he was embarking on a long digression to explain a point completely obvious to me - were steadily bringing me to the point of exasperation.

I was not, it seemed, alone in my impatience. A number of others in the room were shifting uncomfortably. I noticed the young woman with the thick spectacles glaring from Christoff's face to mine, and several times she looked to be on the verge of interrupting. But in the end it was a man with closely cropped hair sitting somewhere behind me who broke in.

'Just one moment, one moment. Before we go further, let's just get one thing settled. Once and for all.'

Dr Lubanski's laugh again came from the back of the café. 'Claude and his pigmented triad! You still haven't resolved that?'

'Claude,' Christoff said, 'this is hardly the time…'

'No! Now that Mr Ryder's here, I want it settled.'

'Claude, this isn't the time to raise that again. I'm presenting an argument to show…'

'Perhaps it's trivial. But let's get it settled. Mr Ryder, Mr Ryder, is it truly the case that pigmented triads have intrinsic emotional values regardless of context? Do you believe that?'

I sensed the focus of the room fixing upon me. Christoff gave me a swift look, something like a plea mingled with fear. But in view of the earnestness of the enquiry - to say nothing of Christoff's presumptuous behaviour up to this point -I saw no reason not to reply in the frankest terms. I thus said:

'A pigmented triad has no intrinsic emotional properties. In fact, its emotional colour can change significantly not only according to context, but according to volume. This is my personal opinion.'

No one spoke, but the impact of my statement was discernible. One by one, hard gazes turned towards Christoff - who meanwhile was pretending to be engrossed in his folder. Then the man called Claude said quietly:

'I knew it. I always knew it.'

'But he convinced you you were wrong,' Dr Lubanski said. 'He bullied you into believing you were wrong.'

'What has this to do with anything?' Christoff cried. 'Claude, look, you've taken us on a complete tangent. And Mr Ryder has so little time. We must return to the Offenbach case.'

But Claude seemed to be lost in thought. Eventually he turned and looked towards Dr Lubanski, who nodded and smiled back gravely.

'Mr Ryder has very little time,' Christoff said again. 'So if you'd all allow me, I'll try and summarise my argument.'

Christoff began to go through what he considered the key points concerning the tragedy of the Offenbach family. He was affecting an air of nonchalance, though by now it was clear to everyone he was badly upset. In any case, around this point, I ceased to attend to him, his remark concerning my lack of time having caused me suddenly to remember Boris sitting waiting for me in that little café.

A considerable period, I realised, had elapsed since I had left him there. A picture came into my mind of the little boy, shortly after my departure, sitting in his corner with his drink and cheesecake, still full of anticipation about the trip before him. I could see him gazing cheerfully towards the other customers out in the sunny courtyard, now and then looking beyond them to the traffic in the street, thinking how before long he too would be out there travelling. He would recall once more the old apartment, the cupboard in the corner of the living room where, he had become increasingly certain, he had left the box containing Number Nine. Then as the minutes went by, the doubts that had always been lurking somewhere, doubts he had so far kept well buried, would begin creeping to the surface. But for a while yet, Boris would succeed in keeping up his spirits. I had simply been detained unexpectedly. Or perhaps I had gone somewhere to buy a picnic to take on the trip. In any case, there was still plenty remaining of the day. Then the waitress, the plump Scandinavian girl, would ask if he wanted anything further, betraying as she did so a note of concern which Boris would not fail to detect. And he would make a renewed show of being unworried, perhaps ordering with bravado another glass of milk shake. But the minutes would tick on. Boris would notice, outside in the courtyard, customers who had sat down long after his arrival closing their newspapers, getting up and leaving. He would see the sky clouding over, the day moving into the afternoon. He would think again of the old apartment he had so loved, the cupboard in the living room, Number Nine, and slowly, as he picked away at the remains of his cheesecake, he would begin to resign himself to the idea that yet again he would be let down, that we would not set off on the journey after all.