Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Of course this could all be settled amicably, said the manager. He just needed to be aware of the facts. The facts as they had been made known to him by this lady here beside him. But he was sure that, perhaps, there had been a mistake.

— Present the evidence, said Haffner, simply.

Then he selected a new track, and pressed play. Because now he was truly bohemian: which is to say, he was bored.

Frau Tummel looked away, distressed.

— I'm sorry? said the manager.

He would of course have to determine the full facts, said the manager, raising his voice over the beginning big band. But naturally if this were true, he was afraid that naturally the young lady in question would have to be let go by the hotel.

— The evidence! shouted Haffner.

Furious, he turned away to the window, with his arms folded, and considered how he was going to save Zinka. It seemed unlikely. But Haffner wanted to try. For even if the world were a trap for Haffner, he saw no reason why it should be a trap for anyone else. Other people, he thought, could be done with being caught up in the farce of Haffner.

In other words, he no longer wanted to be Mack the Knife. It had always seemed to Haffner to be universal: this song which had begun in London, been rewritten in Berlin, then transatlantically re-rewritten by Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, and finally Ella and Duke. This universal ballad used to seem a statement of the universal facts as Haffner knew them.

But now, Haffner was less sure.

For Macheath was the perfect criminal. With Mack the Knife, anything was possible: on the Thames, a body was found; or there you were, in Soho, and a woman was discovered, raped;

or in the City of London, on a Sunday morning, there on the sidewalk was a body oozing life, and someone was sneaking round the corner.

This was how the song had gone, in Europe. Mack was the emperor of crime: the rewrite of a man like Tiberius, who made his guests drink lavish vats of wine, then tied a cord around their penises, so that their bladders burst. That was the usual story of how humans liked to be animals. But now that Ella sang it, something new occurred. Suddenly, realised Ella, the chorus had disappeared: and so that great singer, with her own bravado, had made up her own words.

Just like 'Begin the Beguine', the song had a way of extending itself. It went the distance. It possessed a final flourish of pure happiness.

For oh Bobby Darin, and Louis Armstrong, they made a record, ooh what a record, of this song, she sang. And now Ella, Ella and her fella, they were making a wreck, a wreck, such a wreck of the same old song. Oh yes yes yes yes they'd sung it, yes yes yes yes they'd swung it, they had swung Mack, they'd swung old Mack in town — for those people there, there, at the jazz festival, they were gonna sing, they were gonna swing, they were gonna add one more chorus.

And the Duke took over, with his big band.

Haffner, at the window, hummed along. And Benjamin, amazed at his grandfather's odd insouciance, amazed that one more time his grandfather was being accused of monstrous fidelity to pursuing love, went out on to the veranda. The prickly hair between Anastasia's legs returned to him, in the memory of his lips, his soft thick hands. It made him happy. While the manager, having been engaged in theatrical conversation, at this point left the hotel lounge with a final severe glance at Haffner: sweeping away in a flounce of Tummels.

It must, thought Haffner, have been Frau Tummel's doing: this catastrophe. And he could see why: always, the wives wanted to reassert their dignity: the sanctity of their marriage. Betraying Zinka was simply Frau Tummel's way of doing this. He couldn't blame her. What else was Haffner doing himself — if not trying to reassert the sanctity of his marriage?

No, Haffner wasn't hurt by Frau Tummel's malice: the melodrama of everyone's feelings. He was really done with all the theatre now. Because this was the point when Ella's scat began: the scat she had learned from Duke — the scat which Haffner admired. Twice she used it to push once more through, into a new repeat of the chorus. And then once more. And then finally again she sang: could they go with one, just one, one more? And oh they had swung it, yes they had swung it, they had swung old Mack, they'd swung old Mack for you. And once again they'd like to know, to let them know they were through.

And as the applause died down a voice said: You're the Lady — a voice which may well have come from the audience but which Haffner had always imagined, for Haffner liked his heroes to be friends, to be the voice of the admiring Duke himself.

Frau Tummel returned in the doorway. She called his name.

But Haffner was done with the romance of others. From the window, he walked across the room. As Frau Tummel motioned to speak, he held out a silencing palm. Instead, Haffner returned to the masterpieces of classical music.

Randomly, he chose a melody from the era of grand opera.

Oh but everyone knows the famous music where the music soars above the circumstances: like the beautiful aria sung by an unfaithful woman who is in love, without knowing it, with an unfaithful man. Or the song which is sung for a girl who is about to die beside her lover, immured in a tomb — music which somehow, as the master said, manages to leave behind the true circumstances of the singing, that two people were being buried alive; they would die together or (what was even worse) one after the other they would die from asphyxiation or hunger. Then the horrendous process of disintegration would set in until only two skeletons would remain, two inanimate objects quite unaffected by the presence or absence of the other. And yet, while all this was true, they continued to sing the most ethereal of melodies.

This is one version of music. It was the version which Frau Tummel believed in. Just as she believed in the eternal power of the feelings. But, for Haffner, music offered no lofty and irrefutable soothing enhancement to life's unadorned and crude ugliness. He did not believe in music's triumphant power of transfiguration.

He stood and stared at Frau Tummel, who stared sadly back. In this final meeting of Haffner and Frau Tummel, a gorgeous melody enveloped them. Unknown to both of them, a woman sang about her sad realisation, that the sincerity of passion is no argument against the corresponding truth of its comic portability. When a new god arrives — sang this woman, in a desert — we surrender.

Everyone moves from God to God.

But then, Haffner already knew this. He could have comforted Frau Tummel without the music. Think about it! Haffner could have said — if he had wanted to care for Frau Tummel in her romantic distress, sad at Haffner's betrayal, the speed of his feelings. Their liaison may have been brief, but it was still longer than many other more celebrated love stories. And the tempo of a love story's demise was no argument against it being a love story. The plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream takes just one night. In that night, so many couples swap over. The plot of Romeo and Juliet takes less than a week. Three days and three nights were all that was needed for a fairy tale. Three days and three nights were all that was needed for a fairy tale. In relative terms, the love of Frau Tummel and Haffner was endless.

And I think that it is possible to add one further comforting thought for Frau Tummel. There is a link, perhaps, between the transience of passion and the irony of the love songs. In the same way that a passion is always so much more fleeting than it believes itself to be, so a passion is always bestowed on an inappropriate object. But just because a passion might be bestowed on an inadequate object doesn't mean that the passion isn't real.