Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Yes, to Haffner, who admired the war books, the manuals on strategy, Napoleon was not so much the emperor of Europe, but more an expert on an empire's inevitable decline and fall.

Many years ago, on the French Riviera, when he was there for the jazz festival at Juan-les-Pins, Haffner had seen a waistcoat of Napoleon's, worn in exile on St Helena: it had charmed Haffner with its miniature size. Everything he loved in Napoleon was embodied in this waistcoat: he understood the littleness of things. Napoleon: the man who, at the Battle of Borodino, stayed in and issued orders from his tent. Yes, that man knew about the tactics of withdrawal: just as Bradman, another of Haffner's imaginary mentors, when faced with batting on a disintegrating wet pitch at Melbourne, in 1937, sent in his batting order entirely reversed, so that by the time Bradman went in at number seven the pitch had dried out, and he made a double century and won the match. That was the action of a true genius of victory: a man who was an expert in the mechanics of timing, a connoisseur of retreat.

With these reflections, Haffner returned to the hoped-for safety of his room, where he discovered a chambermaid, in an abattoir of her own devising: surrounded by the intestines of the Hoover cabling; the wet towels on the floor, like tripe.

And so Haffner, homeless, retreated further: he turned round and walked away, searching for somewhere to sleep.

Haffner went out on to the veranda. Finally alone, Haffner lay in a lounger and looked at the mountains. He saw nothing which might interest him. Should he go so far as to say that he was exhausted? Yes, Haffner was exhausted. The sun was softening. And Haffner only wanted rest. For what a night it had been! What a morning! In the distance, the dogs in the village were yelping. He willed them to be quiet. Just as he had often willed Livia's pets to be silent: the moody schnauzer, the bulimic borzoi.

A tree was leafing through itself, anxiously.

Into a doze went Haffner. He drifted and looped as if through a dream of an endless sky. In his sleep he could rest and then fall, fall further, rest and then fall. His doze was a dream of diving.

Peace for Haffner! Let him rest!

While Haffner falls asleep in the midst of the afternoon, maybe I should let him be — reclining in my invisible deckchair, my imaginary lounger.

Haffner's sense of time was often subject to odd absences. Now that he was older, his time spans had lengthened. Benji, for instance, felt grand when he thought in terms of months. Haffner was used to thinking in decades: the decades seemed more accurate to the nature of the facts. They were the more useful unit of measurement. But here, in the mountains, these problems with time involved new proportions entirely. At moments, and this was one of them, he could not tell how long he had been in this spa town, in this hotel. Everything up here had become timeless. The usual coordinates were lost.

At what point had Haffner been innocent? Haffner, who could still remember with more vividness than he experienced many other things how on his eighteenth birthday, during the Scarborough Cricket Festival in 1938, Papa had invited the greatest opening batsman in England, Herbert Sutcliffe — a Yorkshireman, and a professional — to dine with his wife in the Grand Hotel. He was the first professional ever to be invited to dine, during the Cricket Festival, at the Grand Hotel. Before Papa's invitation, it had been strictly reserved for the amateurs. But Papa could not be denied. For Papa believed in cricket more than he believed in class. So into the dining room of the Grand Hotel walked Papa, followed by his wife and son, behind whom came Herbert Sutcliffe, with his wife, Emmy. Haffner danced the Lambeth Walk with Emmy. And around nine months later Sutcliffe phoned up to ask Solomon Haffner if he remembered that evening in the Grand Hotel, and Emmy and the champagne?

— Well today, said Herbert Sutcliffe, Emmy presented me with a son. And Sutcliffe started to laugh.

This was how Haffner's soul functioned — through these anecdotes which everyone else had forgotten, which no one else had noticed: like the ballet of electrified shrugs and ripples given off by the fringe of a beach umbrella, on a terrace, at midday, while everyone lies there sunbathing, with their eyes closed against the light.

There were two methods for the historian to record the history of Haffner. The obvious way was to follow the chronology: the annals of Haffner. But then there was the more philosophic way, which happened to coincide with the way Haffner really thought about it: with events overlapping, grouping themselves into themes. In his privacy, suspended in the fluid of his memories, Haffner approached the philosophical himself: a medium of total objectivity.

So it was only right, perhaps, that he should perform his finale up here, in the mountains, where everything seemed turned upside down: in the endless light of midsummer. Up here, as Haffner would have read if he had begun the novel beside his bed — but he had not, because he cared too much about the lives of the Caesars — life is only serious down below. Up here, all the being ill, all the dying and recuperating, all the endless and serious work at the spa was just weightless: life was just another way of wasting time.

He was not who he was! Not an aged patriarch. No, Haffner was so much younger than he looked — and he looked younger than he was. With Morton, as they sat and steamed, he used to turn the conversation to the women: at what point, he asked Morton, did he think they would lose their right to try it on with the women? At what point did Morton think the lust would leave the body of Raphael Haffner? Morton only looked at him, with an infinite amused pity in his eyes. He pointed out that one thing he loved Haffner for, indeed he would go so far as to say it was definitely what he loved him for, was that Haffner always thought there was so much more to Haffner than anyone else ever thought. He had the arrogance of potential. He was a romantic, said Morton.

It didn't seem so unreasonable. What was down was up, and what was up was down: so that Haffner, who boyishly soared above the hills in his usual dream of flight — the sky turned underwater, with dolphins in the trees — was really this aged Haffner, in a lounger, as the sun declined and the clouds bunched and pooled together, while Zinka — the dream of Haffner's youth — approached his horizontal form, accompanied by Niko.

Haffner was never left alone by the world for long.

Zinka nudged him, then nudged him again, until he spluttered himself awake. With depression, he realised that he was still so very tired. With elation, he realised he was looking at Zinka.

And then, to Haffner's startled gaze, Zinka said to him, with a grin, that this man of hers was refusing to chaperone her that night. It was always like this with him — impossible. Haffner nodded, slowly. He tried to understand his role in the conversation; but he could not.

So, said Zinka: he knew what he could do. Haffner smiled, benignly. Think about it, bonza. Haffner tried. He still could not.

He could ask her to dinner himself, said Zinka. Haffner looked at Niko. His face betrayed no expression. He shrugged. Haffner looked at Zinka. Was it dinner time? he asked her, wonderingly. She tenderly smiled.

Was this a dream? thought Haffner. He could not tell. Carefully, Haffner considered his options. His adagio was over. This seemed obvious. There would never be a period, he worried, when adagio would exist again. His options seemed limited to one.

Prestissimo, Haffner said yes.

The maitre d' ushered Haffner to his table, where Haffner's bottle of wine from the night before was settled in a shallow silver salver, the cork stuffed in at a jaunty angle. Swiftly, declining to express his inner smile, his inner shock at seeing Haffner so publicly tend to Zinka, he then gathered an extra chair.