William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Sounds very radical.”

“On the contrary — it’s very commonsensical, once you get to grips with it. Have a read, see what you think.” He looked at Lysander, searchingly. “I hesitate to say this, and I very rarely make this leap, but I have a feeling Parallelism will cure you, Mr Rief, I really do.”

Lysander felt uneasy and strangely unsure of himself on the day of Udo Hoff’s Vernissage . He hadn’t slept well and even as he shaved that morning he felt a little odd and jittery — uncharacteristically nervous about going to the exhibition, about meeting Hettie Bull again. He soaped his brush in his shaving mug and worked the lather into his cheeks, chin and around his jaw, wondering automatically, as he pursed his lips and ran the brush under his nose, whether he ought to grow a moustache. No, came the usual, instant answer. He had tried it before and it didn’t suit him; it made him look dirty, he thought, as if he had forgotten to wipe away a smear of oxtail soup from his upper lip. He had the wrong colour of brown hair for a moustache. You needed stark contrast, he thought, to justify a moustache on a young face — like that chap Munro at the embassy, black and neat, as if he’d stuck it on.

He dressed with care, selecting his navy-blue lightweight suit, black brogues and a stiff-collared white shirt that he wore with a scarlet, polka-dotted, four-in-hand tie. A splash of bold colour to show how artistic he was. His father would not have approved — a natty and particular dresser himself, Halifax Rief always maintained that it should take a good five minutes before anyone noticed your style or the care and thought that lay behind the clothes a man wore. Any form of ostentation was vulgar.

Lysander decided to visit the Kunsthistorisches Hofmuseum on the Burgring. It was a gesture, he knew, and a futile one at that, but he was imagining himself at the gallery for Hoff’s exhibition, the room full of people, all expert and opinionated about art, ancient and modern. What could he say to such intellectuals, art critics, collectors and connoisseurs? He was conscious again of the huge gaps in his knowledge of general culture. He could quote pages of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Sheridan, Ibsen, Shaw — or at least those parts of the playwrights’ work he’d had to con in his career. He had read a lot of nineteenth-century poetry — poetry he loved — but he knew very little of what was perceived to be ‘avant-garde’. He bought newspapers and magazines and kept up with world events and European politics, to a degree, and he realized that, on first impression, he presented a highly plausible rendition of a worldly, informed, educated man — but he knew how flimsy the disguise was whenever he encountered people with real brains. You’re an actor, he rebuked himself, so act intelligent! There’s plenty of time to acquire knowledge, he thought, you’re not remotely a fool, there’s a lot of native brain-power there. It’s not your fault that you were badly educated, moving from school to school. Your adult life has been focussed on your theatrical career — auditions, rehearsals, small roles becoming more significant. Only in the last play he’d been in, The Amorous Ultimatum , could he have been legitimately considered a leading man — or second leading man, at any rate — his name on the poster in the same type-size as Mrs Cicely Brightwell, no less, and no better benchmark to show how far he’d come in only a few years. His father would have been proud of him.

In the museum he wandered through the grand galleries on the first floor, looking at the gloomy, varnished images of saints and madonnas, mythical gods and melancholy crucifixions, stepping close to read the names of the artists on the bottom of the frame and mentally checking them off. Caravaggio, Titian, Bonifazio, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. He knew these names, of course, but he could now say, “Do you know Bordone’s Venus and Adonis ? I was looking at it just today — yes, funnily enough — in the Hofmuseum. Splendid, very affecting.” He began to relax a little. It was just an act, after all, and that was his métier , his talent, his calling.

He wandered on. Now all the painters were Dutch — Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Hobbema, Memling. And what was this? Attack by Robbers by Philip Wouverman. Dark and powerful, the swarthy brigands armed with silver cutlasses and spiky halberds. “Do you know Wouverman’s work? Very striking.” Where were the Germans? Ah, here we are — Cranach, D’Pfenning, Albrecht Dürer…But names were beginning to jumble and distort in his head and he felt a sudden tiredness hit him. Too much art — museum-fatigue. Time for a cigarette and a Kapuziner. He had enough names in his head to sustain any fleeting social chit-chat — it wasn’t as if he was going to be interviewed for a job as a curator, for heaven’s sake.

He found a coffee stall on the Ring and leaned on its counter, smoking a Virginia and sipping his coffee. It really was a splendid boulevard, he thought — nothing remotely like it in London, the Mall was the only contender, but feeble in comparison — the great circular sweep of the roadways girdling the old town, the careful positioning of the huge buildings and palaces, their parks and gardens. Very beautiful. He looked at his wristwatch — he still had an hour or so to kill before he could reasonably make an entrance at the gallery. He wondered what Udo Hoff would be like. Bound to be very pretentious, he imagined, exactly the sort of man who could lure and impress a Hettie Bull.

He sauntered along the Ring towards the steepling tower of the Rathaus. He could hear, as he approached, an amplified voice shouting and he saw, as he drew near, a crowd of some hundreds gathered in the small park in front of the town hall. A wooden stage had been erected, some six feet high, and on it a man was giving a hectoring speech through a megaphone.

Automobiles and motor diligences whizzed by as the day began to lose its heat. The evening rush homeward had begun. Tourists in horse-drawn carriages clip-clopped along the pavement edge like vestiges of another age. Bicycles everywhere, swerving through the traffic. Lysander crossed the boulevard over to the Rathaus, watching the oncoming vehicles carefully, and joined the murmuring crowd.

They were all working men, it seemed, and they had come to this meeting symbolically wearing their work clothes. Carpenters in dungarees with hammers hooked to their belts, masons in leather aprons, motor engineers in their bib-and-brace overalls, chauffeurs in gauntlets and double-breasted overcoats, foresters with long two-handled saws. There was even a group of several dozen miners, black with coal dust, their teeth yellow in their smirched faces, the whites of their eyes stark and disturbing.

Lysander moved closer to them, curious, strangely fascinated by their black faces and hands. He realized this was the first time he had seen real miners close to, as opposed to images of them in magazines and books. They were paying concentrated attention to the speaker, who was barking on about jobs and wages, about immigrant Slav labour that was undercutting the rightful earnings of the Austrian working man. Cheers and clapping broke out as the speech became more incendiary. A man bumped into him and apologized, politely, not to say effusively.

Lysander turned. “It’s quite all right,” he said.

He was a young man, in his early twenties, with a grey felt hat, minus its band, and his long dark hair hung over his collar — his beard was patchy and unbarbered. Oddly, because the weather was fine, he was wearing a short, yellow rubberized cycling-coat. Lysander saw that he was shirtless under the cycling-coat — a vagrant, a madman — the sour smell of poverty came off him.