William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

MATT FRIEDRICH. Aurélien came to see me before he left, which was gracious of him, I thought, especially for a film director, and he told me what had happened. I commiserated and told him other sorry stories about this town, this place. But he needed no consoling. “I enjoyed my visit,” he said. “No, I did. And I made the film. It was a curious but interesting experience.”

“It’s just a dance,” I think I remember saying to him. “It’s just a dance we have to do.”

He laughed. He found that funny.

END ROLLER

BOB BERGER

is working from home,

where he is writing several screenplays

DELPHINE DRELLE

plays the character “Suzi de la Tour” in NBC’s Till Darkness Falls

KAISER PREVOST

works for the investment bank Harbinger Cohen in New York City

MARIUS NO

is in his first year at l’Ecole Supérieure des Etudes Cinématographiques

BERTRAND HOLBISH

manages the Seattle band “Morbid Anatomy”

NAOMI TASHOURIAN

has written her first novel, Credits Not Contractual

MICHAEL SCOTT GEHN

is chief executive critic and on the editorial board of film/e

KIT VERMEER

is a practicing Sikh and wishes to be known as Khalsa Hari Atmar

LANIER CROSS

is scheduled to star in Lucy Wang’s film Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal

GEORGE MALINVERNO

has opened a third pizzeria in Pacific Palisades

VINCENT BANDINE

has announced Alcazar Films’ eighteen-picture slate for the coming year

BARKER LEAR

lives in San Luis Obispo

MATT FRIEDRICH

has taken his own life

“NATHALIE X AUX ETATS-UNIS”

has been nominated for an Academy Award in the “Best Foreign Film” category

AURÉLIEN NO

is not returning your calls

From my tenth or eleventh year I remember the following incident:

SELBSTMORD

In this city, and at this time, you should understand that suicide was a completely acceptable option, an entirely understandable, rational course of action to take. And I speak as one who knows its temptations intimately: three of my elder brothers took their own lives — Hans, Rudi and Kurt. That left Paul, me and my three older sisters. My sisters, I am sure, were immune to suicide’s powerful contagion. I cannot speak for Paul. As for myself, I can only say that its clean resolution of all my problems — intellectual and emotional — was always most appealing; that open door to oblivion always beckoned to me and, odd though it may seem, suicide — the idea of suicide — lies at the very foundation of all my work in ethics and logic.

THE BENEFACTOR

I came down from the Hochreith, our house in the country, to Vienna especially to meet Herr Ficker. The big white villa in the parks of Neuwaldegg was closed up for the summer. I had one of the gardeners prepare my room and make up a bed, and his wife laid the table on the terrace and helped me cook dinner. We were to have Naturschnitzel with Kochsalat with a cold bottle of Zöbinger. Simple, honest food. I hoped Ficker would notice.

I shaved and dressed and went out onto the terrace to wait for him to arrive. I was wearing a lemon-yellow, soft-collared shirt with no tie and a light tweed jacket that I had bought years before in Manchester. Its fraying cuffs had been repaired, in the English way, with a dun green leather. My hair was clean and still damp, my face was cool, scraped smooth. I drank a glass of sherbet water as I waited for Ficker. The evening light was milky and diffused, as if hung with dust. I could hear the faint noise of motors and carriages on the roads of Neuwaldegg and in the gathering dusk I could make out the figure of the gardener moving about in the allée of pleached limes. A fleeting but palpable peace descended on me and I thought for some minutes of David and our holidays together in Iceland and Norway. I missed him.

Ficker was an earnest young man, taller than me (mind you, I am not particularly tall) with fine thinning hair brushed back off his brow. He wore spectacles with crooked wire frames, as if he had accidentally sat upon them and had hastily straightened them out himself. He was neatly and soberly dressed, wore no hat and was clean-shaven. His lopsided spectacles suggested a spirit of frivolity and facetiousness that, I soon found out, was entirely inaccurate.

I had already explained to him, by letter, about my father’s death, my legacy and how I wished to dispose of a proportion of it. He had agreed to my conditions and promised to respect my demand for total anonymity. We talked, in businesslike fashion, about the details but I could sense, as he expressed his gratitude, strong currents of astonishment and curiosity.

Eventually he had to ask, “But why me? Why my magazine … in particular?”

I shrugged. “It seemed to be exemplary, of its sort. I like its attitude, its, its seriousness. And besides, your writers seem the most needy.”

“Yes … That’s true.” He was none the wiser.

“It’s a family trait. My father was a great benefactor — to musicians mainly. We just like to do it.”

Ficker then produced a list of writers and painters he thought were the most deserving. I glanced through it: very few of the names were familiar to me, and beside each one Ficker had written an appropriate sum of money. Two names, at the top of the list, were to receive by far the largest amounts.

“I know of Rilke, of course,” I said, “and I’m delighted you chose him. But who’s he?” I pointed to the other. “Why should he get so much? What does he do?”

“He’s a poet,” Ficker said. “I think … well, no man on this list will benefit more from your generosity. To be completely frank, I think it might just save his life.”

SCHUBERT

My brother Hans drowned himself in Chesapeake Bay. He was a musical prodigy who gave his first concert in Vienna at the age of nine. I never really knew him. My surviving brother Paul was also musically gifted, a brilliant pianist who was a pupil of Leschetizky and made his debut in 1913. I remember Paul saying to me once that of all musical tastes the love of Schubert required the least explanation. When one thinks of the huge misery of his life and sees in his work no trace of it at all — sees the complete absence in his music of all bitterness.

THE BANK

I had arranged with Ficker that I would be in the Österreichische Nationalbank on Swarzspanierstrasse at three o’clock. I was there early and sat down at a writing desk in a far corner. It was quiet and peaceful: the afternoon rush had yet to begin and the occasional sound of heels on the marble floor as clients crossed from the entrance foyer to the rows of counters was soothing, like the background click of ivory dominoes or the ceramic kiss of billiard balls in the gaming room of my favorite café near the art schools …

Ficker was on time and accompanied by our poet. Ficker caught my eye and I gave a slight nod and then bent my head over the spectral papers on my desk. Ficker went to a teller’s guichet to inquire about the banker’s draft, leaving the poet standing momentarily alone in the middle of the marble floor, gazing around him like a peasant at the high dim vaults of the ceiling and the play of afternoon sunshine on the ornamental brasswork of the chandeliers.

Georg—, as I shall refer to him, was a young man, twenty-seven years old — two years older than me — small and quite sturdily built, and, like many small men, seemed to have been provided with a head designed for a bigger body altogether. His head was crude- and heavy-looking, its proportions exaggerated by his bristly, close-cropped hair. He was clean-shaven. He had a weak mouth, the upper lip overhung the bottom one slightly, and a thick triangular nose. He had low brows and slightly Oriental-looking, almond-shaped eyes. He was what my mother would have called “an ugly customer.”