William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

Senhora Boscán cleared her throat and blinked. “There is no message.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That is what he asked me to say: ‘There is no message.’ ”

“Ah.” I managed to disguise my smile by offering Senhora Boscán a cup of coffee. She accepted.

“We will all miss him,” she said. “Such a good quiet man.”

From an obituary of Agostinho da Silva Boscán:

… Boscán was born in 1888 in Durban, South Africa, where his father was Portuguese consul. He was the youngest of four children, the three elder being sisters. It was in South Africa that he received a British education and where he learned to speak English. Boscán’s father died when he was seventeen, and the family returned to Lisbon, where Boscán was to reside for the rest of his life. He worked primarily as a commercial translator and office manager for various industrial concerns, but mainly in the cork business. In 1916 he published a small collection of poems, Insensivel , written in English. The one Portuguese critic who noticed them, and who wrote a short review, described them as “a sad waste.” Boscán was active for a while in Lisbon literary circles and would occasionally publish poems, translations and articles in the magazine Sombra . The death of his closest friend, Xavier Quevedo, who committed suicide in Paris in 1924, provoked a marked and sudden change in his personality, which became increasingly melancholic and irrational from then on. He never married. His life can only be described as uneventful.

IAM STANDING on the corner of Westwood and Wilshire, just down from the Mobil gas station, waiting. There is a coolish breeze just managing to blow from somewhere, and I am glad of it. Nine o’clock in the morning and it’s going to be another hot one, for sure. For the third or fourth time I needlessly go over and inspect the concrete foundation, noting again that the power lines have been properly installed and that the extra bolts I have requested are duly there. Where is everybody? I look at my watch, light another cigarette and begin to grow vaguely worried: have I picked the wrong day? Has my accent confused Mr. Koenig (he is always asking me to repeat myself)?…

A bright curtain — blues and ochres — boils and billows from an apartment window across the street. It sets a forgotten corner of my mind working — who had drapes like that, once? Who owned a skirt that was similar, or perhaps a tie?

A claxon honks down Wilshire and I look up to see Spencer driving the crane, pulling slowly across two lanes of traffic and coming to a halt at the curb.

He swings down from the cab and takes off his cap. His hair is getting longer, losing that army crop.

“Sorry I’m late, Miss Velk, the depot was, you know, crazy, impossible.”

“Doesn’t matter, it’s not here anyway.”

“Yeah, right.” Spencer moves over and crouches down at the concrete plinth, checking the power-line connection, touching and jiggling the bolts and their brackets. He goes around the back of the crane and sets out the wooden MEN AT WORK signs, then reaches into his pocket and hands me a crumpled sheet of flimsy.

“The permit,” he explains. “We got till noon.”

“Even on a Sunday?”

“Even on a Sunday. Even in Los Angeles.” He shrugs. “Even in 1945. Don’t worry, Miss Velk. We got plenty of time.”

I turn away, a little exasperated. “As long as it gets here,” I say with futile determination, as if I had the power to threaten. The drape streams out of the window suddenly, like a banner, and catches the sun. Then I remember: like the wall hanging Utta had done. The one that Tobias bought.

Spencer asks me if he should go phone the factory but I say give them an extra half hour. I am remembering another Sunday morning, sunny like this one but not as hot, and half the world away, and I can see myself walking up Grillparzerstrasse, taking the shortcut from the station, my suitcase heavy in my hand, and hoping, wondering, now that I have managed to catch the dawn train from Sorau, if Tobias will be able to find some time to see me alone that afternoon …

Gudrun Velk walked slowly up Grillparzerstrasse, enjoying the sun, her body canted over to counterbalance the weight of her suitcase. She was wearing …(What was I wearing?) She was wearing baggy cotton trousers with the elasticated cuffs at the ankles, a sky blue blouse and an embroidered felt jacket with a motif of jousters and strutting chargers. Her fair hair was down and she wore no makeup; she was thinking about Tobias, and whether they might see each other that day, and whether they might make love. Thinking about Utta, if she would be up by now. Thinking about the two thick skeins of still-damp blue wool in her suitcase, wool that she had dyed herself late the night before at the mill in Sorau and that she felt sure would finish her rug perfectly and, most importantly, in a manner that would please Paul.

Paul came to the weaving workshop often. Small, with dull olive skin and large eyes below a high forehead, eyes seemingly brimming with unshed tears. He quietly moved from loom to loom and the weavers would slip out of their seats to let him have an unobstructed view. Gudrun had started her big knotted rug, and he stood in front of it for some minutes, silently contemplating the first squares and circles. She waited; sometimes he looked, said nothing and moved on. Now, though, he said: “I like the shapes but the yellow is wrong, it needs more lemon, especially set beside that peach color.” He shrugged, adding, “In my opinion.” That was when she started to go to his classes on color theory and unpicked the work she had done and began again. She told him: “I’m weaving my rug based on your chromatic principles.” He was pleased, she thought. He said politely that in that case he would follow its progress with particular interest.

He was not happy at the Institute, she knew; since Meyer had taken over the mood had changed, was turning against Paul and the other painters. Meyer was against them, she had been told, he felt they smacked of Weimar, the bad old days. Tobias was the same: “Bogus-advertising-theatricalism,” he would state. “We should’ve left all that behind.” What the painters did was “decorative,” need one say more? So Paul was gratified to find someone who responded to his theories instead of mocking them, and in any case the mood in the weaving workshops was different, what with all the young women. There was a joke in the Institute that the women revered him, called him “the dear Lord.” He did enjoy the time he spent there, he told Gudrun later, of all the workshops it was the weavers he would miss most, he said, if the day came for him to leave — all the girls, all the bright young women.

Spencer leans against the pole that holds the power lines. The sleeve of his check shirt falls back to reveal more of his burned arm. It looks pink and new and oddly, finely ridged, like bark or like the skin you get on hot milk as it cools. He taps a rhythm on the creosoted pole with his thumb and the two remaining fingers on his left hand. I know the burn goes the length of his arm and then some more, but the hand has taken the full brunt. He turns and sees me staring.

“How’s the arm?” I say.

“I’ve got another graft next week. We’re getting there, slow but sure.”

“What about this heat? Does it make it worse?”

“It doesn’t help, but … I’d rather be here than Okinawa,” he says. “Damn right.”

“Of course,” I say, “of course.”

“Yeah.” He exhales and seems on the point of saying something — he is talking more about the war, these days, about his injury — when his eye is caught. He straightens.