Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

He apologised, and went outside. Twenty minutes later he apologised to her again, in the rest room, illuminated by low lighting, and inventively perfumed candles — tuberose, lily, pomegranate. They decided to go for a walk. They made for the peak of the mountain. Light shimmered on her hair. She was uninterested in Haffner's ability to name the varieties of Alpine star, the daisies and the grasses — names he had culled from a colour-coded children's botany book, the white flowers in one section, the pink in another, bought in a fit of nostalgia for Haffner's earnest youth when buying chocolate in a tabac. She wanted to talk about love. She wanted to talk about her marriage, which entailed discussion of Haffner's marriage. It involved so many sacrifices, did he not think? The conversation so absorbed them that soon she was back in the hotel with Haffner, sitting on his bed. This did not surprise Haffner. Nor was it surprising that, as she lit a final cigarette, then stubbed it out, Haffner discovered that, without realising, as he kissed her, he had gone too far. He had overstepped, or overreached.

Yes, because nothing in this world occurs without a backstory: and what is higher always derives from what is lower and every victory contains its own defeat.

That day, Frau Tummel's feelings had been a little depleted. She had been demoralised by a fractious meeting with her husband's doctor in the morning; and then by an unhappy phone call from her mother at lunchtime. The massage had been suggested by her husband — it would, he said, cheer her up. The casual flirting with Haffner was an improvised addition of her own. But nothing, thought Frau Tummel now, as she stubbed out her final cigarette, was improvised. Nothing was casual. Everything was fate.

Like Haffner, she saw signs everywhere.

She turned round, and Haffner kissed her. And Frau Tummel kissed him back — for he was the magical combination of clever and kind. He understood her. But at this point, her body overtook her.

Frau Tummel was fifty-five. Her periods, as she used to tell her girlfriends, in a spirit of European openness, were becoming more and more erratic. Her cycle was unpredictable. The night before, after an absence of three months, a period had begun. And so she did not want to have sex with Haffner. She did not even want to undress. He must not touch her. Gently, Frau Tummel tried to explain her feelings to Haffner.

She didn't want to say, she said. He should not make her say.

And Haffner did not mind, he told her, gently. For he knew why — the constant coyness of unfaithful wives. So Haffner continued to kiss her. Through his trousers, hesitantly she touched the nub of his penis, blunted by his briefs.

Born with a different kind of soul to Haffner, Frau Tummel's husband was repelled by her periods. Quickly they had developed an unspoken rule that they would never have sex at these times; nor would he even touch her. Frau Tummel was therefore amazed when Haffner was so undisgusted. Such elegance! Such delicacy! It even tempted her, for a moment, to relinquish her scruples. But no, she thought, gathering herself, she really shouldn't.

Perhaps if she had slept with Haffner, she might not have been so moved. But she did not. So Frau Tummel could nurture her feelings, invulnerable to complication. On returning to her husband, she could wonder why it was she was so impatient with desire.

Haffner didn't know how seriously Frau Tummel took her moment with Haffner. He thought this was what she did. He thought she had done this before. She would go so far, and then back off.

Frau Tummel, however, had never been unfaithful. She was not trained at it. The guilt of it confused and overtook her, the next morning, as she woke up beside her husband, cutely rumpled in a mess of pillow and pyjama.

The guilt of it confused and overtook her — Frau Tummel! who was fifty-five! but at fifty-five you can still, after all, be inexperienced — that this feeling she felt for Haffner must be love.

She didn't know that love was always the beginning of Haffner's downfall. She didn't know that this was what Haffner was gloomily concluding, as he observed Frau Tummel's weeping form, sipping a gin and tonic he had invented from the minibar.

Mainly, the love belonged to other people. Once, it had been Haffner's.

When he was courting her, in the summer of 1939, Haffner used to take Livia dancing in metroland, the green and pleasant suburbs of north London. Since Haffner was a little perturbed by this girl who had the glamour of a foreign accent, Italianate, a flutter, he tried to impress her with the gorgeousness of his dancing, for at that time Haffner — so Haffner said — had the finest pair of feet in north London. And in Highgate once they sat down after a dance, and looked at each other, while Haffner worried about the visibility of his erection, mummified in his underwear. They had been dancing a foxtrot. He crossed his legs, making sure that Livia could not see or know about it. But she knew. And it intrigued her. She sat there, and she wondered if Haffner would do anything so bold as try to kiss her. They had been courting for some time now. She had just turned eighteen. And she wondered if she would be interested if Haffner did indeed do something. Yes, she thought, she would. But it needed Haffner first. While Haffner, who was shy despite his fleet feet, his slick blond hair, decided that he could do nothing without her visible approval. And so Haffner and Livia sat together and neither touched nor talked.

Two weeks later, at a dance hall in Hendon, they argued about this.

She was sorry, concluded Livia, but it didn't happen and if it didn't happen then it couldn't happen. Haffner asked if this had to be true. Yes, said Livia, it did. And she left Haffner outside, and went back in on the arm of another man. There was a small wart on the right-hand side of his neck, like a piece of gravel. So Haffner had nowhere to go. He walked away from home, towards the river, for an hour, into the dismal city. He reached the Gray's Inn Road, then High Holborn, where the family law firm was, the family law firm which he was destined never to enter, and then wandered back, finding himself in Clerkenwell. This, he discovered, was a mistake. All the Italian shops made him even more nostalgic for his Livia. He passed Chiappa & Sons, the organ makers on Eyre Street Hill; the working men's club — the Mazzini Garibaldi — where her brother, Cesare, would later sit and play morra: teased for his elegant accent, his neat small hands. In the cab shelter opposite Hatton Garden, by the Italian church, Haffner sat at a table beside an initial pool of gravy which he mopped up with the folded triangle of a napkin. He looked out the window. Up on Leather Lane, a jumper was caught in a tree. It settled, sodden, between a collection of branches. And as he gazed at this wrecked jumper, improbably in the branches of this silver birch, Haffner realised that it wasn't a kiss he wanted: it wasn't even the body of Livia. He wanted her for ever. He wanted to marry her. And so he concocted an imaginary conversation between an imaginary Haffner and an imaginary Livia, as he looked at the way the foggy rain made the occasional lamp outside a sieved and shimmering haze, a delicate gold.

These thoughts returned to Haffner, sentimental, in the Alpine rain, observing the different gold of a Central European desk light.

He knew this was all very wrong, said Frau Tummel.

— Oh I don't know, said Haffner, airily.

She had decided that she really must cheer up. She must not be so down. She must not show him this face of hers.

What he did to her, what he made her feel: was wrong, said Frau Tummel. He was a bad man, she said — tapping him on the nose: a disgruntled, startled puppy. He was a bad man.