Andres Neuman - Traveller of the Century

They crossed a freezing hallway and went down a long corridor that felt as draughty as a bridge. The ceilings were so high they were almost invisible. At the far end, Herr Gottlieb’s magnificent whiskers parted slightly. Come in, come in, he said, puffing on his pipe. Thank you, Bertold, you may go. Welcome to my humble abode, this way, this way, we’ll sit in the drawing room.

When they reached the main drawing room, Hans was able to study the recent course of history in its hotchpotch of styles: the Empire furnishings, the rather provincial insistence on classical motifs, the discreet capitals and pilasters, the pompous symmetry, the proliferation of cubes. Almost every piece of furniture, which Hans took to be made of mahogany, was decorated with excessively ornate gilt-bronze mounts typical of all those countries aspiring to be like the French. Other adornments had been added, mostly in Louis XVIII style, in a vain effort to conceal the fact that time had passed; the more modern furniture showed a different kind of sobriety, a metamorphosis, as though they were insects mutating unimaginably slowly towards rounded forms and paler woods (poplar, Hans suspected, or perhaps ash or cherry wood), as though the battles, treaties, freshly spilt blood and new round of armistices had undermined mahogany’s traditional stronghold, besieging it with inlays of amaranth and ebony, overwhelming it with rosettes, lilies, less weighty, more carefree crowns. While Herr Gottlieb pointed him to a chair opposite a low table, Hans remarked from the infrequent touches of Biedermeier that the owner of the house was not at his most prosperous. There was only the occasional homely touch, such as an overwhelmingly Germanic sideboard or an oval side table devoid of triumphant angles and made of simple young walnut or birch. This house, concluded Hans, has tried to find peace and failed.

As they waited for the tea to arrive they talked of business (Herr Gottlieb spoke, Hans listened), and travel (Hans spoke, Herr Gottlieb listened), of matters as harmless as they were trivial. Herr Gottlieb was an experienced host — he had the gift of allowing his guests to feel at ease while not neglecting them for a single moment. Observing that Hans kept glancing towards the bay windows, he stood up and invited him to admire the view. The windows overlooked a balcony that ran along the whole of the front of the house to the corner of Stag Street. Leaning out to the left, half of the market square and the sentry-like silhouette of the Tower of the Wind were visible. Looked at from the opposite direction, from a tiny window in the tower, the Gottliebs’ balcony was a thin line suspended in mid-air, and Hans’s figure a vague dot on the house front. Suddenly, Hans heard the chink of teacups behind him, then Herr Gottlieb giving orders, and finally his raised voice calling Sophie.

Sophie Gottlieb’s skirts swished in the corridor. The rustling sound made Hans vaguely uneasy. A few seconds later, Sophie’s figure stepped from the dim corridor into the brightness of the drawing room. My child, Herr Gottlieb announced, let me introduce you to Herr Hans, who is visiting our city. My dear Herr Hans, this is my daughter, Sophie. Sophie greeted him, raising an eyebrow. Hans was overwhelmed by a sudden urge to praise her or to run away as fast as he could. Lost for words, he remarked awkwardly: I didn’t think you’d be so young, Fräulein Gottlieb. My dear sir, she replied coolly, surely you’d agree that youth is an accidental virtue. Hans felt terribly foolish and sat down again.

Hans had misjudged the tone, lost the thread of the argument. Sophie’s polite yet ironic response to another of his remarks, the kind of ill-judged quip men make when they are too eager to impress a woman, obliged him to take a different approach. Fortunately, Elsa, Sophie’s maid, came over to serve the tea. Hans, Herr Gottlieb and his daughter began the customary exchange of polite chitchat. Sophie scarcely took part, and yet Hans had the impression that she was the one determining its rhythm. Hans was impressed not only by the perceptiveness of Sophie’s comments, but by the way she spoke — she seemed to be selecting each word carefully and articulating, almost singing her sentences. As he listened to her voice, he swung from tone to meaning, meaning to tone, trying to keep his balance. He tried several times to impress her with one of his observations, but he seemed unable to ruffle the calm aloofness of Sophie Gottlieb, who, in spite of herself, could not help noticing Hans’s long locks, and the way he kept brushing them from his brow as he spoke.

Something else surprised Hans as he sipped his tea — Sophie’s hands. Not so much their appearance, although they were unusually long, but her way of touching things, caressing surfaces, probing them with her fingertips. Whatever she touched, whether her teacup, the edge of the table, or a fold in her dress, Sophie’s hands appeared to determine its significance, to interpret every object. Observing her stealthy, darting fingers, Hans thought he understood Sophie’s manner more adequately, and he concluded that her seeming aloofness came from a deep-seated mistrust, a need to examine everything. This reflection offered Hans some relief, and he felt able to embark upon a subtle offensive. Herr Gottlieb continued to be interested in what he had to say, and Hans realised that the best way of communicating with Sophie was through the answers he gave her father. He stopped trying to impress her, made sure she knew he was no longer observing her, and focused instead on showing off his spontaneity and ingenuity as best he could to her father, who moved his whiskers up and down in approval. This different line of attack appeared partially successful, for Sophie gestured to Elsa to draw back the curtains fully. The quality of the light changed, and Hans had the impression that the sun’s last rays were offering him another chance. Sophie stroked her teacup thoughtfully. She slipped her forefinger out of the handle, and placed the cup delicately on its saucer. Then she picked up a fan lying on the table. While he was making Herr Gottlieb laugh, Hans heard Sophie’s fan splay out like a pack of cards shuffling fortunes.

The fan opened, moved to and fro, contracted, snapped shut. One moment it was a-flutter, the next motionless. It made little twirls, revealing then suddenly concealing Sophie’s mouth. Hans was quick to see that regardless of her silence Sophie’s fan was responding to every word he uttered. Trying not to lose the thread of his conversation with Herr Gottlieb, he concentrated on deciphering the movements of her fan out of the corner of his eye. As long as the meanderings and digressions typical of a first visit went on, Sophie flapped her fan disdainfully. Once these opening sallies had finished, Herr Gottlieb sought to steer the conversation onto a terrain that Sophie secretly found tediously masculine — the rather crude exchange of achievements and supposed exploits through which two newly acquainted men become friends. Sophie found herself hoping that Hans, if he was as clever as he seemed to think he was, would swiftly find a way of manoeuvring their talk away from this banal topic. However, her father was determined, and she watched their young guest struggle in vain to find a way of changing the subject without appearing rude. Sophie flipped the fan into her other hand. Alarmed, Hans redoubled his efforts, but only succeeded in strengthening Herr Gottlieb’s belief that they both found the subject equally enthralling. Sophie slowly began retracting her fan. She appeared to have stopped listening and was gazing towards the windows. Hans realised time was running out, and, in a desperate lunge, made an unexpected connection between the matter to which Herr Gottlieb kept stubbornly referring, and something completely unrelated. Herr Gottlieb looked bewildered, as though the ice he was skating on had suddenly disappeared. Hans hastened to assuage his doubts with a torrent of arguments that justified the arbitrary association and finally succeeded in pacifying him, bouncing back and forth between the original and the new theme like a ball gradually losing height, slowly moving further and further away from the original topic until he was ensconced in the new one, which was far more likely to be in tune with Sophie’s interests. The folding stopped; the fan remained half open; Sophie’s head tilted towards the table. The discussions that followed were accompanied by a series of placid undulations from the fan, whose leisurely movement gave the pleasing impression that the conversation was taking the right direction. In a sudden fit of excitement, with a deft thrust Hans invited Sophie to abandon her position as spectator and join in the lively debate he was having with her father. Sophie was not prepared to yield this much terrain, yet the rim of her fan lowered an inch. Emboldened by these minor victories, Hans got carried away and made some impertinent remark — the fan snapped shut, tracing an emphatic ‘no’ in the air. Hans retreated, qualifying his remark with exemplary sophistry to such an extent it seemed he had meant the exact opposite, while not allowing his face to betray the slightest sign of distress. Sophie pressed the ribs of the fan against her lips, faintly mistrustful but plainly interested. This time Hans bided his time, listened patiently to Herr Gottlieb, and chose the precise moment in which to place a few apposite remarks that forced Sophie to raise her fan abruptly in order to conceal a conspiratorial blush. Then the flapping grew faster, and Hans knew the fan was on his side. Savouring a delicious feeling of confidence, Hans allowed himself to venture onto a slippery slope that might have descended into vulgarity (the fan, Sophie’s breathing, even her blinking stopped) had he not performed a swift verbal pirouette, alleviating with a dose of irony a remark which might otherwise have seemed conceited. When Sophie raised a slender, compliant hand to her cheek in order to train a perfectly trained curl, Hans sighed inwardly and felt a sweetness course through his body.