Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Cesare used to come up with Livia from Charlton, in south London, where they were boarding, at the home of a paint salesman from Trieste. Haffner used to sit with him on Wimbledon Common.

He was about twenty; Cesare was about eighteen. Cesare delighted in deckchairs. And patiently Haffner explained the rules of cricket. Cesare was slightly deaf in one ear — after an accident when he was a child. He didn't mind, however, because in Cesare's opinion it added lustre to him. His deafness was distinguished. He listened to Haffner with one hand cocked, like the flower of an ear trumpet. A hollyhock, thought Haffner. Patiently, he convinced Cesare that just because the two batsmen were at opposite ends of the wicket, this didn't mean that they were on different sides. Cesare could not understand this. He tried, but he could not.

Haffner loved him, but had never quite got him. Never, in his entire life, did Cesare lose his comical Italian accent. His hair was white by the time he was twenty; but his eyebrows for ever were black. And Haffner never asked him if this was due to nature or nurture. Yes, Cesare would sit there, reading War and Peace , while Haffner watched the cricket. This must have been 1940, thought Haffner. When the BBC was supporting the Russian cause with its radio version of Tolstoy's novel. Haffner must have been on leave, or about to ship out. He would test Cesare on the characters' names from the bookmark — on which was printed each family, and a guide to pronunciation.

And then, as always, they discussed the politics of Europe. To Cesare, this was natural. So natural that from that point on it had marked his life, thought Haffner, these discussions of European politics: the endless problems Cesare found with any kind of state. Problems to which Haffner was oblivious. He had the arguments with anarchists, with Socialists, with social democrats and liberal democrats. He had talked them through with Fascists and with Communists. Cesare himself had preferred a modified form of Communism. Haffner, the Englishman, had demurred. He wouldn't be swayed by Cesare's assertion that Haffner, like Cesare, was a Jew, not an Englishman; that as a Jew he really should be more mindful of the rights of minority peoples.

Cesare was European; and Haffner was not.

Haffner did care about the rights of minorities. His way of displaying this was simply less exhibitionist than others — or so Haffner told himself. In 1938, for instance, at the Scarborough Cricket Festival, a week or so before Chamberlain set off for Munich, he had remonstrated with his father, who had offered the opinion that a Nazi Britain might have its advantages — less obsessed with money, less nouveau riche — unconvinced as he was that Hitler really meant to do away with every Jew. First, Raphael had reminded him, Hitler really did want to do away with every Jew; and secondly — he continued — what was so wrong with the plutocrats? Who had a problem with the City of London? He wasn't bothered by the vulgar, Haffner. He didn't see why Papa should so look down on people.

But then, sanity had never been Papa's hallmark. In the Great War, he had joined up in the Rangers. He served in the Dorsetshire Regiment, a machine-gunner. He served throughout the battle of Passchendaele, until he was wounded.

— Anything is better than war, said Papa. Anything.

And although Haffner thought he was the opposite of Papa, I am not so sure. No, like Papa, Haffner never took the Europeans seriously. Like Papa, he never quite understood their rages.

— My theory of course is that Cohen is not a real Jew, Haffner once said to me, talking about Goldfaden's friend, a Canadian Marxist Jewish academic: the son of immigrant pioneers. He's too Jewish to be true. My theory is, continued Haffner, that at a certain point in, say, the 1950s, he realised that his career could flourish if he were Jewish — not true now, of course, not true now — and that he therefore took on the persona of a Marxist Jewish intellectual.

— In reality, he concluded, his ancestry is Polish. Working-class anti-Semitic Polish. He denies this, of course. But then, finished Haffner, pouring himself another drink, smiling at me, ignoring my empty proffered glass, he would.

Haffner was silent. He kissed Frau Tummel, gently, on the cheek.

— I have an idea, said Frau Tummel. We will swim. Yes? We will have eine kleine dip. You have a wife. I have a husband. We must forget them both. For an hour.

But Haffner, he was realising, could forget nothing. Haffner was still ancient. He was wondering if Trajan had come here. Was this the land of Dacia, or Dalmatia? Pannonia? The Romans had conquered everywhere; their triumph was total. So presumably the legionaries had ended up in these mountains too — blistered, their groins chafed, their cracked nipples greased with duck fat to protect them against the coarse fabric of their shirts — and then afterwards, on their return to Rome, they had set up that column with its curving wrap-around frieze, like a stick of candy — or like the lighthouse on Cape Hatteras in the Outer Banks, where Haffner had spent a weekend with Livia, where they had seen the dolphins shimmying after each other, their sheen dappled and mottled in the water. Yes, that column which Haffner had seen when he was twenty-four and remembered nothing about the Romans except the fact that an orator called Cicero made many speeches — speeches, Livia told him, which had been delivered in that sad and empty brick building on the edge of the Forum. It hadn't moved Haffner then. It seemed to move Haffner now.

He had understood Livia, and Livia had understood him. She had borne with fractious grace the obvious signs of infidelity; the crazy signs of infidelity — like the moment when she saw a woman driving down the high street in Hendon, in Haffner's car. A car, he told her that evening, he had donated to the garage because it was out of order. How could he control what the garage had done with it next (folding his napkin, finding his pipe, leaving the room, aggrieved)? Yes, she understood the dictators. Livia — the most naturally elegant woman he ever knew: who once played tennis naked, he suddenly remembered, in the rain, after two gimlets and three martinis, at some friend's house in the Cotswolds. Oh he was stricken!

— Raphael! said Frau Tummel. Are you listening?

And yes yes, said Haffner, in another world entirely — where a rejuvenated version of Haffner issued giggling directions from the passenger seat, as Livia drove them back to London, tipsy and still naked except for a towel across her waist, the seat belt tight between her freezing breasts.

The lake in this town was not the kind which Haffner admired: it had no follies — no ruined grottos, no temples to Venus. Its spirit was civic, not aristocratic. Politics possessed it, not pleasure. It lay in front of the hotel; on the edge of the park. In the distance, made fuzzy to Haffner — bereft, as ever, of his glasses — were the twin peaks of the mountains, and their thinner silhouettes, the twin peaks of the factory chimneys. And all the cement apartment blocks: the random codes of their illuminated windows like the punched cardboard sheets for street organs.

Beside this lake, as the dawn freshened, Frau Tummel began to undress. Haffner looked around, nervously. They were sheltered, here, by two clustering beech trees. They did not reassure him very much. He looked at Frau Tummel, who was bending over, folding her nightgown. The tuft of hair between her legs was visible then invisible as she leaned further forward, arranging her bathrobe on top of the nightgown: a neat arrangement of squares.

An echo in Haffner's mind, Zinka bent over to extract her stocking from the bed's scalloped valance.