The Gustav Sonata Read online

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I think we are all agreed that this was a very nice performance from our third competitor of the morning, Anton Zwebbel. Please show your appreciation with another round of applause.’

  Later, when the winning places were announced and it was revealed that Anton had come last in the group of five, all he could say to Gustav was: ‘The man got my surname wrong. He couldn’t stand to say the “onion” word. If I’d had a different name, I might have won.’

  Magic Mountain

  Davos, 1952

  WHEN EMILIE PERLE was told that Gustav had been invited to go with the Zwiebels to Davos for a two-week holiday, she said, ‘I don’t think so, Gustav. You fell behind again with your work while I was ill. I think you’d better spend the summer studying. I will get in touch with Herr Hodler and hope he can give you some of his precious time.’

  Gustav went to his room. He was ten years old now. He’d learned that arguing with Emilie only strengthened her resolve.

  He stared at his map of Mittelland, faded where the sun had touched it, so that swathes of the green pastures appeared barren. He was looking for Davos, but all the while knowing that he wouldn’t find it. Davos wasn’t in Mittelland. It was far to the east, in the mountains, in a place where the sky was so blue, it could damage your eyes.

  If he’d thought that Emilie would understand, he would have said to her, Anton needs me to be with him in Davos. I can invent games we can play that will take his thoughts away from the stupid piano competition. If he’s alone with his parents, he’ll keep returning to it in his mind.

  But he knew that Emilie was indifferent to Anton. She would probably have preferred it if the Zwiebels moved back to Bern and were never seen in Matzlingen again.

  In the evening, when Emilie called him for supper, he could see that she had been crying. She’d made a cheese pie. When she and Gustav were seated at the kitchen shelf and she’d served up the pie, she said, ‘I was looking at my photographs of Davos again this afternoon. I was looking at how beautiful it is in the summertime. It makes me weep to see it. And I thought that it would be unkind of me to prevent you from going there.’

  ‘You mean, I can go with the Zwiebels?’

  Gustav waited. But Emilie didn’t reply. She just kept eating the pie. It was as though the word ‘yes’ was buried in her throat, deep beneath the mouthful of pie. At last, she said, ‘Davos really has a climate all of its own. The valley is sheltered from the north. When the north wind blows, you barely feel it. You’ll see.’

  The chalet the Zwiebels had rented stood at the top of a lush meadow, facing south, high above the village of Davos itself. At its back was the treeline, scenting the air with pine. At the base of the meadow was a small dwelling, inhabited by an elderly man who came to be known simply as ‘Monsieur’, because he spoke Swiss-German with a French accent. Monsieur kept a herd of skittish goats and a few chickens, whose will it was to range up the meadow each day, moving slowly, like a search party, with a careful, dainty step, looking for worms and blown seeds.

  The chalet was old, with a steep shingled roof weighted down with stones and walls of pitch-blackened pine. The windows were small and decorated with yellow shutters. On a wooden veranda, a mossy drinking trough had been filled with scarlet geraniums. When the Zwiebels and Gustav arrived and saw the scarlet flowers basking in the sun and heard the breeze gently sighing in the pines, they all stood very still.

  ‘Magic,’ said Adriana.

  The place was large. The boys each had a room to themselves. In the salon was a monumental oak table and two commodious sofas covered in rough-weave woollen cloth. On the wooden floor, in front of a wide fireplace, was a sheepskin rug and a box full of ancient toys. When Armin saw this, he said, ‘How thoughtful of the owners – baby playthings for the children!’ Everybody laughed. But Gustav wasn’t ashamed to believe that the toy box would contain objects that could inform the games he and Anton would play. He knew that, at ten, they were both considered too old for children’s toys, but his own life had been so devoid of them that they had remained alluring in his mind.

  They unpacked the car. Adriana commented that Gustav’s suitcase was very light. He said, ‘I told Mutti that I might need bathing trunks, for the swimming pool, but she forgot to buy any.’ And Adriana laughed. Then she sat down on Gustav’s bed and said, ‘I think we’re going to have a lovely time here. Don’t you? The air is so wonderful. We can buy you bathing trunks. And Anton is going to put the piano competition behind him.’

  Gustav said nothing for a moment, looking at the brightly coloured curtains at his window and the blue, empty sky beyond, then he said, ‘Perhaps Anton shouldn’t go in for any more competitions?’

  ‘You may be right. Anton’s father is more or less of that opinion. But music will always be important to Anton. It’s the thing he cares most about.’

  ‘Competitions make him sick.’

  ‘Yes. They seem to. But if you want a future as a concert pianist, you have to enter them. I’m not sure what we should decide.’

  Gustav looked up at Adriana, dressed that day in a white linen blouse and narrow grey slacks, worn with white canvas shoes. He said, ‘At least you and Herr Zwiebel are thinking about it. My mother never thinks about my future.’

  ‘I expect she does, Gustav.’

  ‘My father might have wanted me to go into the police.’

  ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mutti says he was a hero. I don’t think I could be a hero.’

  ‘I’m sure you could. Or perhaps you wouldn’t need to be.’

  To get to Davos village, instead of taking the car, they walked down the meadow to the lane which ran by Monsieur’s house, beside which stood a rusting harrow, a deserted dog kennel and an untidy heap of firewood. Monsieur came out and touched his hat to them and asked if they wanted fresh eggs. The goats, each with a bell tied round its soft neck, clustered at the fence of their compound, regarding the strangers. ‘Or,’ said Monsieur, ‘if you want a good dinner one night, invite friends, I can kill a goat. Cheaper for you than buying lamb from the butcher, and far more tasty.’

  Armin Zwiebel thanked Monsieur. Adriana said they would buy eggs on their way back.

  ‘Or,’ said Monsieur, ‘your boys can go looking for them in the meadow. They lay all over the place. Would they like to do that?’

  ‘I’m sure they would,’ said Adriana.

  ‘Or,’ said Monsieur again, ‘would they like to come hunting with me? There are wild boar up there in the forest. Then, we could all have a feast!’

  Anton turned round from petting the goats. ‘I don’t want to kill anything,’ he said. ‘And boar are pigs, aren’t they? We can’t eat that.’

  They followed the lane down to the village, which seemed half asleep in the sun of midday. A group of luggage porters lounged in the shade, beside their huge St Bernard dogs which pulled the luggage carts for those visitors arriving by train. Shutters were closed on the shopfronts, but several cafés were open. Gustav wondered if he would recognise the hotel where Emilie and Erich had once stayed – where the balconies were decked with flowers and where the waiters were ‘correctly attired’.

  Anton announced that he was thirsty, so Armin looked at his watch and said, ‘Well, why don’t we choose a café and have lunch? What d’you think, Gustav? Are you hungry?’

  ‘Gustav’s always hungry,’ said Anton.

  Adriana selected a quiet place called the Café Caspar, with a wide, gravelled terrace shaded by a wisteria, just past its flowering. The sunlight fell in brindled patterns on the white tablecloths and the polished glassware. Armin ordered grilled chicken and rösti for them all, and a carafe of German wine for him and Adriana. She lit a cigarette, stretched her arms wide and announced that she was ‘in paradise’. Gustav and Anton drank lemonade and played jacks on a corner of the table, while waiting for the food to arrive. Inevitably, the jacks jumped about and fell into the dusty gravel.

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p; ‘Try to sit still, boys,’ said Armin.

  ‘We’re on holiday,’ said Anton. ‘Can’t we do what we like?’

  ‘Within reason,’ said Armin.

  Later in their lives, they asked themselves, was it ‘within reason’, the game they chose to play in Davos? They knew it was strange. But in the strangeness of it lay its fascination and its beauty.

  It was on the second day that they found the stone path leading up through the pine trees into darker forest. The path was wide but overgrown. Wild strawberries were growing at its edge: tiny points of red, like beads of blood among the bandages of green leaves. Gustav and Anton stopped to gather a few of these and eat them. The texture was rough, but the taste was sweet.

  They knew the path was leading somewhere. There were narrow ruts in the stone surface, as if, long ago, carts and carriages had passed this way. Overhead, the firs crowded out the light and they felt the air become colder. A wind got up and began sighing in the trees.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ asked Anton. ‘Shall we go back?’

  ‘No,’ said Gustav.

  They were high up now. At moments, there were glimpses of Davos village, far below. Then the path opened out and became a plateau and on the plateau was an enormous building.

  It was ruined. Part of its roof was missing and the glass in most of the windows was broken. Along its southerly edge ran a wooden veranda, cracked and faded by the sunlight. At its back, pressed against the forest, was a brick outhouse with a vast chimney stack rearing up into the sky.

  Gustav and Anton stood still and stared. A rusted chain, attached to wooden posts, had been strung across the path – a token attempt, it seemed, to keep people away from a place which had so obviously fallen into dereliction. Gustav listened for the bark of a guard dog, but everything was silent, except for the movement of the trees, like the sound of laboured breathing.

  The boys climbed over the chain. All that remained of the entrance to the building was a stone portico with the words Sankt Alban engraved above the place where the door had been. They passed underneath this into a small, dark space and then through this space into an enormous room, filled with light. In ranks, along the back wall, facing towards the light, were twenty or thirty iron beds.

  ‘Hospital,’ said Anton.

  ‘Sanatorium,’ corrected Gustav. ‘Where people came to recover from tuberculosis. Or to die.’

  ‘Maybe they all died,’ said Anton. ‘That’s why it was abandoned.’

  They walked slowly along the light-filled room. They began to notice other things: rusty oxygen cylinders clamped to the walls, coils of rubber tubing, oxygen masks, buckets, kidney bowls, stained mattresses, a nurse’s trolley still set out with brown glass bottles, a stethoscope lying in the rubble.

  Anton picked up the stethoscope, dusted it against his Aertex shirt, and hung it round his neck.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘You’re my nurse, Gustav. Fetch the trolley.’

  ‘We haven’t got any patients,’ said Gustav.

  ‘Yes, we have. Can’t you see them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘On the beds. We’re going to bring them alive again.’

  So that was how it began, the game of choosing who, among the sufferers of Sankt Alban, lived or died. They gave the patients names: Hans, Margaret, Frau Merligen, Frau Bünden, Herr Mollis, Herr Weiss …

  Hans and Margaret were children. Doctor Zwiebel and Nurse Perle were going to have to work especially hard to bring them back to the world. They found the best mattresses for them, those least eaten away by mould. They searched the rest of the building for things that might comfort them: pillows and torn blankets, chamber pots and hot-water bottles.

  ‘And,’ said Anton, ‘we can bring them toys from the box in the chalet.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gustav, ‘except …’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Won’t your parents think this is odd? They might not want us to play here.’

  ‘We won’t tell them,’ said Anton.

  ‘Where will they think we are?’

  ‘Just “exploring”. On holidays, when she doesn’t want me around, my mother’s always saying “Why don’t you go exploring, Anton?” We’ll tell them we’re building a camp in the forest. And anyway, they’ll be fucking.’

  ‘What’s fucking?’

  ‘It’s what they like to do on holiday. They go to bed and take their clothes off and kiss and scream things out. It’s called fucking.’

  Gustav thought about this. He said, ‘I don’t think my mother’s ever done that. She just goes to bed and reads magazines.’

  They forgot about time. To get back to the chalet for lunch, when they heard a midday bell chiming in the village, they had to go racing through the sunlit rooms, down the steps and back onto the steep path. Not stopping, now, to collect strawberries, they ran fast under the canopy of sighing trees, down and down towards the slender pines, until they emerged behind the house and saw Monsieur in the meadow, scattering grain for the hens.

  They found Armin and Adriana, sipping wine on the terrace, beside the trough of geraniums. On the table was a dish of meats and pickles and cheese.

  ‘You’re out of breath,’ said Adriana, as Anton and Gustav sat down. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Exploring,’ they both said together.

  ‘Exploring where?’ said Armin.

  ‘In the forest,’ said Anton. ‘We’re making a camp.’

  ‘A camp?’ said Adriana, frowning. ‘What kind of camp?’

  ‘Just a den. It’s not finished yet.’

  ‘Can your father and I come and see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not finished. And anyway, it’s ours.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Armin with a smile. ‘Now have some meat.’

  ‘That time. That Sankt Alban time …’ they would say, later in their lives. ‘That was a thing we’ve never forgotten.’ And sometimes, they would add, ‘We’ve never forgotten it, because we thought we really had power over life and death.’

  On the first day, they made sure that Frau Merligen, Frau Bünden, Herr Mollis and Herr Weiss were comfortable, while they took the pulses of Hans and Margaret and gave oxygen to Hans, who was dying faster than the others. They found some old bamboo and wickerwork recliners and pushed the sick children out onto the veranda, where the sun was strong and where there was shelter from the wind. From the chalet box, they’d brought a rag doll for Margaret and a tambourine for Hans. They told Hans to rattle the tambourine if he felt that death was coming near.

  ‘What shall we do if Hans dies?’ asked Gustav.

  Anton thought for a moment, then said, ‘That outhouse with the chimney – it’s probably where they burned dead people. We’ll put him in there.’

  ‘I don’t want him to die,’ said Gustav.

  ‘No. I don’t either. I tell you what. Shall I be him? You can have the stethoscope and I’ll lie on the recliner. If I feel I’m dying, I’ll bang the tambourine and you have to come and give me resuscitation.’

  ‘All right. I’ll stay with Frau Bünden for a while. She’s not looking good. Then you bang the tambourine and I’ll come.’

  Gustav decided that Frau Bünden resembled Frau Teller, who kept the flower stall on Unter der Egg. She was too young to die. He sat on her bed and told her to think about all the flowers she was going to return to: roses and lilies, tulips, daffodils, edelweiss and blue gentians. He said, ‘You’re safe in Davos now, Frau Bünden. It’s the best place in Switzerland for you. What you have to do is concentrate on getting well. Don’t think about the TB, right? Think about flowers.’

  Frau Bünden said, ‘I’m very weak, Nurse Perle. My lungs are full of blood.’

  ‘I know they are. I’m not Nurse Perle now, by the way, I’m Doctor Perle. Doctor Zwiebel and I are going to save you. You just have to believe us. All right? This is Davos.’

  Then he heard the rattle of the tambourine and said, ‘Forgive m
e a moment, Frau Bünden, I have to go and look after Hans. I’ve got to make sure Hans doesn’t die.’

  Gustav adjusted the stethoscope round his neck and went out onto the veranda. Hans was lying very still, with his eyes closed. The sun shone on his dark hair and on his soft limbs, curled on the recliner. Doctor Perle knelt down beside him and stroked his arm. ‘Hans,’ he said, ‘are you dying?’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m dying?’ said Hans. ‘Put your lips on my lips and revive me, Nurse Perle …’

  ‘I’m not Nurse Perle, I’m Doctor Perle now,’ said Gustav, ‘and I’m not putting my lips on your lips.’

  ‘You have to,’ said Hans, ‘or I’m gone. You’ll have to burn my body in the outhouse …’

  ‘I’m not doing that lip thing.’

  ‘Gustav,’ said Anton, sitting up suddenly, ‘don’t be a baby. This is how you revive someone. You put your mouth on their mouth. We learned it in school. Don’t you remember? So, go on.’

  Hans lay down again. He began to moan.

  ‘Hush,’ said Doctor Perle. ‘I’m going to revive you now. Here.’

  Anton turned his face towards Gustav. Slowly and reluctantly, Gustav brought his mouth to Anton’s and lightly touched his lips. He felt Anton lift his arm and put it round his neck and bring his head nearer, so that the two mouths were now pressed hard against each other and Gustav could feel Anton’s face, burning hot against his own. He’d thought he would pull away at once, but he stayed there. He liked the feel of Anton gathering his head in his arm. He closed his eyes. He felt that no moment of his life had been as strangely beautiful as this one.

  Then he pulled away. ‘Are you all right, Hans?’ he whispered. ‘Are you going to live?’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Hans. ‘Thanks to you. I’m going to live, thanks to you.’

  Sankt Alban took over their minds.

  The time they spent with Adriana and Armin – going for walks, swimming at the pool, taking the cable car higher up the mountain towards the Schatzalp, shopping for souvenirs, collecting eggs for Monsieur, lying in the sun, eating meals on the chalet terrace – all these things, enjoyable as they were, became infected with ordinariness. At every moment, they longed to be back at the sanatorium, back in the beautiful pretend world of the dying.