William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

THE ASYLUM AT CRACOW

Georg’s cell was very cold, and dark, the only illumination coming from an oil lamp in the corridor. Georg needed a shave but otherwise he looked much the same as he had on my two previous encounters with him. He was wearing a curious oatmeal canvas uniform, the jacket secured with strings instead of buttons. With his big head and thin eyes he looked strangely Chinese. There was one other patient in his cell with him, a major in the cavalry who was suffering from delirium tremens. This man remained hunched on a truckle bed in the corner of the room, sobbing quietly to himself while Georg and I spoke. He did not recognize me. I merely introduced myself as a friend of Ficker’s.

“Ficker asked me to visit you,” I said. “How are you?”

“Well, I’m …” He stopped and gestured at the major. “I used to think I was a heavy drinker.” He smiled. “Actually, he’s being quite good now.” Georg rubbed his short hair with both hands.

“I heard about what happened,” I said. “It must have been terrible.”

He looked at me intently, and then seemed to think for a while.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, yes, yes. All that sort of thing.”

“I completely understand.”

He shrugged uselessly. Certain things can only be shown, not stated.

He smiled. “You don’t have any cigars on you, by any chance? They haven’t brought me my kit. One longs for a decent cigar.”

“Let me get some for you.”

“I smoke trabucos — the ones with the straw holder.”

“They’re very strong, I believe. I don’t smoke, but I heard they can burn your throat.”

“It’s a small price to pay.”

We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the major’s snufflings.

“It’s very cold here,” Georg began slowly, “and very dark, and if they got rid of the major the conditions would be perfect.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Actually, I have several boxes of trabucos in my kit,” he went on. “If you could get a message to my orderly, perhaps he could bring me a couple.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and would you ask him to bring me my green leather case.”

“Green leather case.”

“Yes,” he paused. “That is essential …” He rubbed his face, as if his features were tired of being eternally composed. “I think with a good cigar I could even tolerate the major.”

I found Georg’s orderly in the Medical Corps’ billet in a small village on the outskirts of Cracow. The city was clearly visible across the flat cropped meadows where a few piebald ponies grazed: a low attenuated silhouette punctuated by a few domes and spires and the odd factory chimney. In the indistinct grainy light of the late afternoon the bulk of the Marienkirche had the look of a vast warehouse. I passed on Georg’s instructions: two boxes of trabuco cigars and his green leather case.

“How is the lieutenant?” the orderly asked.

“He’s very well,” I said. “Considering … Very well indeed.”

Georg died that night from a heart seizure brought on by a massive intravenous injection of cocaine. According to his orderly, who was the last person to speak to him, he was “in a state of acute distress” and must have misjudged the dose.

Tagebuch: 10 November. Sawichost.

… The simplest way to describe the book of moral philosophy that I am writing is that it concerns what can and cannot be said. In fact it will be only half a book. The most interesting half will be the one that I cannot write. That half will be the most eloquent.

TEA AT NEUWALDEGG

It is springtime. After a shower of rain we take tea on the terrace of the big house at Neuwaldegg. Me, my mother, my sisters Helen and Hermine — and Paul. I am on leave; Paul has just been returned from captivity as part of an exchange of wounded prisoners. He sits with his right sleeve neatly pinned up, awkwardly squeezing lemon into his tea with his left hand. I think of Georg and I look at Paul. His hair is graying, his clothes are immaculate.

Quite suddenly he announces that he is going to continue with his career as a concert pianist and teach himself to play with the left hand only. He proposes to commission pieces for the left hand from Richard Strauss and Ravel. There is silence, and then I say, “Bravo, Paul. Bravo.” And, spontaneously, we all clap for him.

The modest sound of our applause carries out over the huge garden. A faint breeze shifts the new spring foliage of the chestnut trees, glistening after the rain, and the gardener, who has just planted a bed of geraniums, looks up from his work for a moment, smiles bemusedly at us, clambers to his feet and bows.

Hôtel de la Louisiane .

Me for good talk, wet evenings, intimacy, vins rouges en carafe , reading, relative solitude, street worship … shop gazing, alley sloping, café crawling … I am for the intricacy of Europe, the discreet and many-folded strata of the Old World, the past, the North, the world of ideas. I am for the Hôtel de la Louisiane.

CYRIL CONNOLLY,

Journal , 1928–1937

Thursday, 26 July 1928

PARIS. Boat train from London strangely quiet. I had a whole compartment to myself. Fine drizzle at the Gare du Nord. After breakfast I spent two hours trying to telephone Louise in London. I finally got through and a man’s voice answered. “Who’s calling?” he said, very abruptly. “Tell Louise it’s Logan Mountstewart,” I said, equally brusquely. Longish silence. Then the man said Louise was in Hampshire. I kept telling him that Louise was never in Hampshire during the week. Eventually I realized it was Robbie. He refused to admit it so I called him every foul name I could think of and hung up.

Lonely bitter evening, drank too much. A protracted street prowl through the Marais. The thought of Louise with Robbie made me want to vomit. Robbie: faux bonhomme and fascist shit.

Friday

More rain. I cabled Douglas and Sylvia in Bayonne and told them I was driving down. I then hired the biggest car I could find in Paris, a vast American thing called a Packard, a great beast of a vehicle, with huge bulbous headlamps. I set off after lunch in a thunderstorm, resolved to drive through the night. The south, the south, at last. That’s where I will find my peace. Intense disgust at the banality of my English life. How I detest London and all my friends. Except Sholto, perhaps. And Hermione. And Sophie.

Saturday

Crossed the Loire and everything changed. Blue skies, a mineral flinty sun hammering down. Beau ciel, vrai ciel, regarde moi qui change . Opened every window in the Packard and drove in a warm buffeting breeze.

Lunch in Angoulême. Ham and Moselle. I had a sudden urge to take Douglas and Sylvia some sweet Monbazillac as a present. Drove on to Libourne and then up the river to Saint-Foy. I turned off the main road, trying to remember the little château we had visited before, in ’26, near a place called Pomport.

I must have missed a sign because I found myself in a part of the countryside I did not recognize, in a narrow valley with dark woods at its rim. Blond wind-combed wheat fields stirred silently on either side, the road no longer metaled. And that was when the clanking started in the Packard’s engine.

I stopped and raised the bonnet. A hot oily smell, a wisp of something. Smoke? Steam? I stood there in the gathered, broiling heat of the afternoon wondering what to do.

A goatish farmer in a pony and trap understood my request for a “garage” and directed me up a dusty lane.