David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Today was the day appointed for me to dine at the van d. V.s—five evenly spaced daughters plus Mater and Pater. Needed a new set of strings for the ‘cello, and it does Ayrs no harm to see how helpless he is without me, so I put on my brave face and hoped the v.d.V.s employ a chef commensurate to a factory owner’s income. So at eleven o’clock the van de Velde car—a silver Mercedes-Benz, thank you very much—arrived at Zedelghem, and their driver, a perspiring snowman with no neck and no French, drove E. and me back to Bruges. In the past we would have ridden in stony silence, but found myself telling E. a little about my Cambridge days. E. warned me that the eldest van de Velde, Marie-Louise, had decided to marry an Englishman at any cost, so I should have to guard my chastity with the utmost care.

How do you like that?

At the van de Veldes’ town house, the girls were arranged on the stairway to greet me in ascending order of age—half-expected ’em to burst into song, and stone the crows, Sixsmith, that’s what they did. “Greensleeves,” in English. Syrupy as humbugs. Then Mme. v.d.V. pinched my cheek as if I were a homecoming runaway and said, owlishly, “How do you do-ooo?” Was ushered into “the salon”—a nursery—and seated on “the question chair,” a toy box. The v.d.V. daughters, a hydra of heads named Marie-Louise, Stephanie, Zenobe, Alphonsine, and I forget the last, ranged from nine years of age to said Marie-Louise, one year Eva’s senior. All girls possess a thoroughly unjustified self-confidence. A v. long sofa sagged beneath this family of porkers. The maid brought lemonade while Mme. began the questions. “Eva tells us your family are v. well connected in Cambridge, Mr. Frobisher?” Glanced Eva-wards; she pulled a mock-fascinated face. Hid my smile and admitted my family are in the Domesday Book and that Pater is an eminent churchman. All attempts to turn the topic away from my eligibility were yorkered, and after a quarter of an hour the bug-eyed Marie-Louise had sensed her mater’s approval and settled I would be her Prince Charming. She asked this: “Mr. Frobisher, are you well acquainted with Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street?” Well, thought I, the day might not be a complete wreck. A girl with a taste for irony must conceal some depths. But Marie-Louise was serious! A congenital dunce. No, I replied, I didn’t know Mr. Holmes personally, but he and David Copperfield could be seen playing billiards at my club every Wednesday. Luncheon was served on fine Dresden crocks in a dining room with a large reproduction of The Last Supper over floral wallpaper. Food a disappointment. Dry trout, greens steamed to a sludge, gâteau simply vulgar; thought I was back dining in London. The girls tittered glissando at my trivial missteps in French—yet their frightful English rasps on one’s ear unbearably. Mme. v.d.V., who also summered in Switzerland, gave laborious accounts of how Marie-Louise had been eulogized in Berne as “the Flower of the Alps” by Countess Slãck-Jawski or the Duchess of Sümdümpstädt. Couldn’t even force out a civil “Comme c’est charmant!” M. v.d.V. arrived from his office. Asked a hundred questions on cricket to amuse his daughters with this quaint English ritual of “Ins that are Out” and “Outs that are In.” A pi-jawed ass of kingly proportions, so busy planning his next boorish interruption that he never listens properly. Pays himself unveiled compliments, beginning “Call me old-fashioned but …” or “Some consider me a snob but …” Eva sent me a wry look. It said, “And to think you honestly thought this oaf was a threat to my reputation!”

After luncheon, the sun came out, and Mme. v.d.V. announced we would all go for a walk to show the honored visitor the sights of Bruges. Tried to say I’d already impinged on their hospitality enough, but wasn’t to get away so lightly. The Great Patriarch excused himself—had a pile of chits to sign as high as the Matterhorn. May he die in an avalanche. After the maids had hatted and gloved the girls, the carriage was summoned and I was carted around one church after another. As dear old Kilvert notes, nothing is more tiresome than being told what to admire, and having things pointed at with a stick. Can scarcely recall the name of a single sight. By the itinerary’s finale, the great clock tower, my jaw was hurting from all the yawns I’d suppressed. Mme. van de Velde gave the pinnacle one squint and announced that she would let us young things scramble up there by ourselves and wait in the patisserie across the piazza. Marie-Louise, who outweighs her mother, remarked that it wouldn’t be ladylike to allow Maman to wait alone. Brainbox couldn’t go because of her asthma, and if Brainbox wasn’t going etc. & etc., until in the end only Eva and I bought tickets to go up. I paid, to show I wasn’t blaming her personally for the hideous waste of a day. Went first. The stairway was an evernarrower spiral. A rope ran at hand height through iron rings set into the wall. Feet had to feel their own way. Only source of light was occasional narrow windows. Only sounds were our feet and E.’s feminine breathing, reminding me of my nocturnes with her mother. The van de Veldes are six never-ending, ill-tuned harpsichord allegretti , and my ears rang with gratitude to be free of ’em. Had forgotten to count the steps, I thought aloud. My voice sounded locked in a closet of blankets. Eva gave me a lazy “Oui …”

Emerged into an airy chamber housing the cartwheel-size cogs of the clock mechanism. Ropes and cables disappeared into the ceiling. A dogsbody snoozed in his deck chair. He was supposed to inspect our tickets—on the Continent one must forever be producing a ticket—but we slipped by him up a final flight of wooden stairs to the viewing belvedere. Tricolor Bruges spread out, far below: roof-tile orange; masonry gray; canal brown. Horses, automobiles, cyclists, a crocodile of choirboys, witch-hat roofs, washing on lines across side streets. Looked for Ostend, found it. Sunlit strip of North Sea turned Polynesian ultramarine. Seagulls wheeled in currents, I got giddy following ’em and thought of Ewing’s mollyhawk. Eva declared she had spotted the van de Veldes. Assumed this was a comment on their ampleness but looked where she said and, sure enough, six little blobs in pastels around a café table. E. folded her ticket into a paper dart and flung it over the parapet. Wind carried it off until the sun burned it up. What would she do if Dogsbody woke and demanded her ticket? “I’ll cry and say the horrible English boy stole it.” So I folded my ticket into a paper dart, too, told E. she had no evidence, and launched it. Instead of soaring high, my dart fell out of sight in a moment. E.’s character depends on which angle you’re looking from, a quality of superior opals. “You know, I can’t remember seeing Papa so content and alive as he is now,” she said.

The awful v.d.V.s had created a camaraderie. Asked her straight what had happened in Switzerland. Had she fallen in love, worked in an orphanage, had a mystical encounter in a snowy grotto?

She began to say something several times. In the end, she said (blushing!), “I was missing a certain young man I met this June.”

You’re surprised? Imagine my feelings! Yet I was every inch the gentleman you know me for. Instead of flirting back, I said, “And your first impression of this young man? Was it not wholly negative?”

“Partly negative.” I observed her beads of perspiration from the climb, her lips, and the fine, fine hairs on her upper lip.

“He’s a tall, dark, handsome, musical foreigner?”

She snorted. “He is … tall, yes; dark, quite; handsome, not so much as he thinks, but let us say he can catch the eye; musical, prodigiously; a foreigner, to his core. Remarkable that you know so much about him! Are you spying on him too, as he passes through Minnewater Park?” I had to laugh. So did she. “Robert, I sense …” She gazed at me shyly. “You’re experienced. May I call you Robert, by the way?”