Russell Hoban - Come Dance With Me

‘He and his daughters, they make people dead.’

‘Right. I’m not around alders or birches very much but I’ll be careful. Thanks for the tip.’

‘My grandfather was photographing birches on the Teufelsmoor, the Devil’s Moor near Worpswede one Christmas. He was found dead among those trees.’

‘What killed him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’ll sing you a song.’ He climbed out of bed naked, picked up a guitar, and sang ‘Herr Oluf’ and translated it for me. ‘Nobody is safe anywhere, really,’ he said.

‘I feel safe being unsafe with you,’ I said. ‘Come back to bed.’ He did and we made love some more and fell asleep and I dreamt that Death stepped out of the Egon Schiele painting and made a pass at me.

When I got back to the Inter-Continental next morning I was told that Sid was dead. He’d jumped off the tenth-storey balcony some time during the night. He’d stuck a note to the balcony railing: ‘I’m catching a ride with Anubis.’ I hadn’t had any kind of premonition or whatever it is that I sometimes get. The last time I saw him he didn’t look like a photograph. Maybe I should have felt guilty about going off with Adam but I didn’t.

We still had the gig to do. Jimmy Wicks and I took over the songs that Sid would have done. When I saw Adam that evening I felt that I’d made a choice but I didn’t want to push it. If he’d asked me to drop everything and go away with him I’d have done it. I gave him my address and telephone number in London. ‘Give me yours,’ I said, ‘so we can stay in touch.’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said. ‘My wife is very jealous.’

‘Your wife,’ I said.

‘She doesn’t mind what I do when I’m touring,’ he said, ‘but she doesn’t like it when I get phone calls at home.’ I looked at him and yes, he was like a photograph.

I was thinking about that when Elias brought me back to the present. ‘Can you sing “Herr Oluf” in German?’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘just the first verse:’

Herr Oluf reitet spat und weit

zu bieten auf seine Hochzeitleut.

Herr Oluf rides late and far

to invite guests to his wedding.

Da tanzten die Elfen auf grunem Sand,

Erlkonigs Tochter reicht ihm die Hand.

There dance the elves on a green bank,

the Erlking’s daughter reaches out her hand to him.

Wilkommen, Herr Oluf, komm tanze mit mir,

zwei goldene sporen schenke ich dir.

Welcome, Herr Oluf, come dance with me,

two golden spurs I give you.

Elias answered for Herr Oluf:

Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,

denn morgen ist mein Hochzeittag.”

I may not dance, I don’t want to dance,

tomorrow is my wedding day.

‘Your voice …’ he said.

‘My voice what?’

‘It’s like my mother’s. I could see the alders and the birches, I could hear the hoof-beats splashing through the swamp.’

I didn’t say anything. Hearing that song come out of me had been strange. And the dead man his mother had found among the trees had undoubtedly been Adam’s grandfather.

‘I’m thinking about how we met,’ said Elias. ‘How is it that you’re a patron of the Royal Academy?’

‘Goth rock isn’t a for ever thing, Elias, and the people who do it don’t always stay the same year after year. Sometimes they change.’

‘Maybe their luck changes too.’

‘Why’d you say that?’

‘I don’t know, the words just came out of my mouth.’

I looked at my watch. ‘I have a rehearsal to get to.’

‘Can I come along?’

I looked at him. Sixty-two but a little like a schoolboy asking for a date. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘The sooner we get through it, the sooner we get through it.’

‘Through what, the rehearsal?’

‘Not that — this.’

‘And what would you say this is?’

‘A mistake, probably. Let’s go.’

22 January 2003. So. Now I have ninety-two years, that is how it is. The years lie one on top of another like a wobbly stack of plates. All of these plates have on them life-pictures and thought-pictures amd on the topmost plate I sit. When the stack topples, down I come and I am dead. The plates are all shattered, the pictures scattered in little sharp-edged pieces. Where will those little pieces go when I am dead? Maybe to people who are not dead; they will find pictures and bits of pictures in their heads and they won’t know what they mean, any more than I do with some of the little pieces in my head. Look, here is the moon, here are mountains, here is the sea, here are two sphinxes.

Why did I like to sing ‘Herr Oluf’ to my son? I think much about the Erlking’s daughter, how she appears not always the same, is not always to be recognised. I thought he might hear not in the words but in my voice that the Erlking’s daughter is what pulls you away from where you thought to go. From where it seemed you were meant to go. And maybe you want to go with her, maybe she brings you not to Death but to something new. Maybe if Herr Oluf had gone with her he would not have ridden home dead. Sometimes I talk nonsense, this comes of living too much alone.

That man I ran away with, that tenor. Schlange, Schinken, Schwenk. Peter Schwenk. Maybe now he is dead, not everyone lives so long as I. Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, he was Belmonte in the Susquehanna Opera production and he promised me I should one day be Constanze but I never rose above ‘Turkish woman’. Not a good man, really, not a nice man but I left my husband and my children and went with him. Now I am here in this place that stinks of old women and I have little pieces of pictures in my head, yes? What is the world but little pieces of pictures and who can see a whole one?

22 January 2003. The whole time we were in the taxi we didn’t talk much, and when we did it was only to point out this or that or comment on what we were passing. I still wanted to know about her reaction to The Cyclops but I never found a way to ask, because even as little as I knew Christabel I sensed that a wrong word could bring the shutters down.

From time to time I’ve tried my hand at poetry. Some years ago I published a little collection with Obelisk. Litanies and Laments was the title, and the name I used was Rodney Spoor. I think they printed fifty copies, of which eight or nine were sold and the rest remaindered. Fortunately I hadn’t quit my day job. I have a reason for mentioning this which will shortly be apparent.

The strangeness of being with Christabel Alderton was brought home to me geographically in our expedition to the rehearsal studio in Bermondsey. In all the years I’d lived in London I’d never ventured into that part of it but I was heartened to see that the taxi did not fall off the edge of the world. There were glimpses of Waterloo Station and the London Eye, a few brief accelerations, many standstills and one or two U-turns. Signs indicated London Bridge but in time we achieved Jamaica Road and turned off into St James Road. Clements Road appeared and open gates, beyond which stood a tall directory of what was on offer at the Tower Bridge Business Complex.

‘We want Building D,’ said Christabel to our driver. We were then drawn into an anonymity of large brick warehouse-looking buildings with giant yellow letters distinguishing one from another. London as I knew it seemed far away.

‘Doesn’t seem very musical around here,’ I said.

‘Atmosphere is for tourists,’ said Christabel. ‘This is where the real thing gets put together. You’ve heard of Duran Duran?’