William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

He made daily visits to Vienna’s many museums, attended the opera and concerts, went to exhibitions in art galleries and wandered the city with his guidebook, going into every church of note that was recommended. From time to time he would take a day trip out of town to tramp the pathways of the Wienerwald or stride along mountain tracks heading for distant peaks, map in one hand, a stout ash walking stick in the other.

Wolfram eventually quit the pension — to Frau K’s evident pleasure — rejoining his regiment for extensive manoeuvres in Galicia. It was something of an emotional farewell, but he and Lysander resolved to stay in touch however their respective lives might separate them. Wolfram vowed to come by on his next leave — “We’ll go to Spittelberg, get drunk and find ourselves two lively young girls.” The lodger who replaced him was a middle-aged engineer called Josef Plischke. Taciturn, upright and faintly pompous he was the perfect companion for Frau K at her dinners. Lysander changed his pension rates to breakfast only, pleading poverty rather than terminal boredom. He had to budget, alas, he told Frau K, and it was true — his funds were diminishing. His affair with Hettie was costing him money — he paid for everything as she was entirely dependent on Hoff for money. Hoff, Lysander learned, was a surprisingly wealthy man, enriched by an inheritance from his late parents as well as by the increasingly high prices his paintings were fetching.

Lysander sent a telegram to his mother and asked if she could wire him another £20.

♦

Winter arrived with full force in December — heavy frosts and snow flurries — and the stove in the old barn, for all its redoubtable size, proved an inadequate source of warmth. When he stayed there, Lysander would haul the mattress off the bed and drag it through to the main room, laying it in front of the stove, twin doors open so the flames could be seen.

Hettie found a book of pornographic Japanese prints in Hoff’s library and brought them to the barn so they could experiment. She took his penis in her mouth. He tried and failed to sodomize her. They had a go at emulating the contorted positions illustrated, studying the pages as if they were architects inspecting a blueprint.

“Your leg is meant to be over my shoulder not under my armpit.”

“I’ll break my leg if I put it there.”

“Are you inside me? I can’t feel you.”

“I’m about three inches away. I can’t reach, it’s impossible.”

She still chose to undress him, loving the moment, she said, when she could tug down his trousers and drawers and his ‘boy’ would sway free.

One day she said to him as they lay in bed in their shabby hotel overlooking the Danube canal, “Why don’t you kiss my breasts? Every man I’ve known likes to do that.”

Lysander thought: all the better to keep anorgasmia at bay — but said, “I don’t know why I don’t…Maybe it seems a bit infantile to me.”

“Nothing wrong with being infantile. Come here.”

She sat up in bed and, at her beckoning, he nuzzled up to her. She cupped her breast and carefully offered the nipple — pert between two fingers — to his mouth.

“See? It’s nice. I like it anyway.”

♦

Hettie insisted that he come to the New Year party at Hoff’s studio. Lysander was very reluctant at first but Hettie encouraged him.

“It’s even less suspicious if you come, don’t you see? He doesn’t suspect a thing. You have to come — I want to kiss you at midnight.”

So Lysander duly went and felt out of place at this loud gathering of artists, patrons and gallery owners. He hugged the corners of the large studio, content to keep his eyes on Hettie as she patrolled the room in her Balinese pantaloons and chequerboard jacket and her tinkling shoes. Udo Hoff didn’t seem to know who he was — several times their eyes met, Hoff’s blankly taking in another stranger in his house.

Immediately after midnight Hettie led him down a dark passageway bulky with hung coats, scarves and hats and kissed him, her tongue deep in his mouth, his hands on her breasts. Seconds later the light went on and Hoff appeared, evidently quite drunk. Hettie was searching the coats.

“Ah there you are, mein Liebling , Mr Rief is going — he wanted to say hello and goodbye.”

“It’s easier to find a coat when you’ve got the light on.”

“Mr Rief couldn’t find the switch.”

Lysander and Hoff shook hands, Hoff now gazing at him intently, though a little unfocussed.

“Thank you for a wonderful party,” Lysander said.

“You’re the Englishman, aren’t you?”

“Yes. That’s me.”

“A happy new year to you. How is your cure going?”

“I’m pretty well cured — I should say. Yes, I think that’s fair comment.”

Hoff congratulated him and then demanded Hettie help him find more champagne, he said. When his back was turned, Hettie blew Lysander a kiss and left with Hoff. Five minutes later Lysander managed to find his coat and hat and he wandered outside, still trembling from the narrow escape. A love affair wasn’t an arc, as he’d heard it described, it was a far more variable line on a graph — undulating or jagged. It wasn’t smooth, however much pleasure one was deriving from it, day by day. He headed down the drive. Snow was falling, big soft flakes, the road to the station whitening in front of his eyes, unsmirched by wheel tracks, the world going quiet and muffled as a few final, distant bells continued to ring in 1914.

♦

“I think you’re right,” Bensimon said. “We’ve done everything — been very thorough. We might as well admit it and call it a day.”

“I can’t thank you enough, doctor. I’ve learned so much.”

“You’re absolutely convinced the problem has completely gone.”

Lysander paused — sometimes he wondered if Bensimon had any inkling that he and Hettie Bull were lovers. How could he tell him that Hettie had proved that his problem had gone, dozens and dozens of times? She was still Bensimon’s patient, of course.

“Let’s say recent experience — recent experiences — have convinced me all is functioning normally.”

Bensimon smiled — man to man — letting his inscrutable professional mask slip for a moment.

“I’m glad Vienna provided other compensations,” he said, dryly, walking him to the door. “I’m going to write up your case if you don’t mind — anorgasmia cures are worth documenting — and present it as a paper at our next conference, maybe publish it in some learned journal.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll be thoroughly disguised by an initial or a pseudonym. Only you and I will know who’s being discussed.”

“I’d like to read it,” Lysander said. “I’ll give you my address — my family home, I can always be reached there.”

They shook hands and Lysander thanked him again. He liked Dr Bensimon, he had told him his most intimate secrets and he felt he could trust the man absolutely — and yet he had to acknowledge that he didn’t really know him at all.

He settled his final account with the stern secretary, earning a wan smile as they shook hands in farewell, and he took his now familiar stroll from the consulting rooms on Wasagasse along the Franzenring. This is the last time, he realized, a little saddened but at the same time pleased that his essential purpose in coming to Vienna had been so thoroughly achieved. What was it Wolfram had said? A ‘river of sex’ flowing underneath the city. That had been his salvation — along with Dr Bensimon’s Parallelism. He was well, life should be simpler, the way ahead obvious yet, since coming here, everything was a hundred times more complex. He had Hettie in Vienna and Blanche in London and absolutely no idea what he should do.