Life Embitters (32 page)

The next morning I told Marta about my first encounter with my teacher and how surprised I was to find him in the company of two rather dubious English ladies.

“You don’t remember whether one was a Miss Clark?” asked Marta in a most matter-of-fact tone.

“That’s right. How come you know?” I asked, visibly shocked.

“There are no secrets … and I,” she added with a laugh, “am well informed. This lady is known as Miss Clark here, in England she goes by another name. She is German, the widow of an Englishman and naturalized. She lives in Plymouth, doesn’t she?”

“Exactly, in Plymouth … And what’s most odd is that, from what he said, Professor Busch wants to move there as well.”

“This is so amusing … In any case, these things are never really as funny as they seem and I told you that the old professor is a big deal …”

“Bah …! This professor is just a crackpot, like so many others in his line. A kind of would-be wild man, with no appreciable impact …”

“They are the worst, because they are the most ingen—”

“But, mademoiselle, you seem keen on this sort of thing?”

What
I
would like,” replied Marta with a mock-serious expression, “is to own a cottage in this country with small white curtains. I told you days ago. But, as that is impossible, I have to fill my time: I find
renseignements
are interesting. You must see that I wouldn’t have mentioned it if my role were at all important. It’s quite nondescript work … You know! Like something they put on menus in elegant restaurants when describing the salad:
quelques feuilles
. This saves me the bother of having to keep looking for new patrons …”

“You seem to be in extremely good spirits today …”

“Yes, I am happy. You’ve been the bearer of such good news! I don’t think one could ask for more in so short a time.”

I then told her how surprised I’d been by the change in the professor’s life, the way he’d transformed from a peaceful, discreet, self-effacing gentleman into a crazy lunatic. Marta listened with an intense interest I’d never garnered previously. She made no comment, but seemed really intrigued and that gave her quite another demeanor.

We’d agreed to go and see the Memlings – the best in the world – in the Hôpital de Saint Jean, and Marta, though she was all spruced up, felt she needed to add some final touches and went up to her bedroom. She returned half an hour later, looking sophisticated, fascinating and, above all, intriguing. She’d put on a black dress with a silky quality that molded wonderfully to her long, undulating curves. So many young ladies wear dresses that seem to have been made for others that it’s always pleasant to see a proper fit in this respect. A small red hat, imbued with real French impishness, seemed to remove any scrap of northern naïveté her features might have had. She had put on light, imperceptible make-up, the minimum for her face to show
intent. She’d achieved a charming mix of the risqué and the candid – added vivaciousness into the bargain. She seemed quite another person, a radiant young woman.

It was a lovely day. The sun was rather misty and remote, but it was bright. The air was deliciously gentle and cool. Life in Bruges pursued its usual calm, positive activity.

We went as far as Notre-Dame. The entrance to the Hôpital de Saint Jean is through an almost hidden door opposite the church. It so happened, however, that we bumped into Professor Busch in the Rue du Sablon. And that was that. I introduced Marta to him.

“Oh, mademoiselle!” he said, suddenly moistening his lips. “You are so lovely.”

At first, she was visibly surprised by his rather buffoonish appearance – that big head of his was quite scary. Then she glanced at him pleasantly, in an ingenuously flirtatious manner, but – and this was surely what the professor most appreciated – obviously intrigued.

He said he was on his way back from the station where he’d accompanied those ladies, who were planning to take the London ferry from Ostend that afternoon, and had lost his way. I said we were planning to go to the Hôpital to see the Memlings and I asked him to accompany us, but he didn’t seem at all keen on the idea.

“Bah!” he replied, reacting rather histrionically, puffing out his chest and raising his head to the sky, “forget those antiques! When I hear the word ‘hôpital’ I get goose bumps. Why do you want to go to a hospital when you are in the company of such a pleasant young woman? Put these anachronisms behind you. Let’s go for some aperitifs and then have lunch …”

Marta immediately went along with his surprising outburst and filled Dr Busch’s cup of happiness to the brim. So we strolled leisurely to the
Grande Place and entered a café that was completely empty. The waiters were getting the place ready. They watched us walk in not with looks of surprise – because the world is full of fools – but with the irritation the unexpected can often provoke. The professor headed to a back corner of the dining room. Marta sat on the cushioned seat, Busch sat next to her. I took the chair opposite him.

“You see,” said Busch, with a chuckle, “how annoyed my disciple from Louvaine looks, he is in a bad temper because he couldn’t go to the Hôpital … But I ask you, mademoiselle, what on earth was the point of going to the Hôpital …”

“I agree!” said Marta, staring him in the eye, closer to the professor, flirtatious in a predatory way that was new to me. “Dullards like that kind of thing. Museums give me a stomachache. They’re almost as boring as my lectures at the university.”

I was naturally very upset, but I let it go. The professor was a raging madman. Marta was going for the kill at a spectacular pace.

“By the way, mademoiselle,” said the professor, “apparently you are a student. Santaniol told me that was the case yesterday …”

“Yes, sir, at the University of Lille,” said Marta with remarkable aplomb.

“And in which faculty are you enrolled? I assume you don’t like Pharmacy …”

“I’m enrolled in Arts, specializing in modern languages, English and German, to be precise …”

“Do you have a good grasp of English, mademoiselle?”

Marta looked to me for confirmation.

“The mademoiselle has perfect English,” I said extremely confidently. It wasn’t hard, because I knew it was actually true.

The professor was delighted. He had tilted his hat over the back of his
neck and now and then wet his lips on the glass of port he’d been served, he couldn’t take his eyes off Marta: he looked at her enraptured. He did so quite without ceremony, as he seemed to think he had a right to do so. It is very likely that, as soon as he’d seen how quickly Marta had gone along with his opposition to the visit to the Hôpital, he’d concluded that he was in the company of two people who were incompatible – like so many – and, consequently, on a terrain open to his maneuvers. Later on, when he heard that the young lady knew English, his senile rapture was compounded by an evident interest he didn’t try to conceal.

“Dear friend,” the professor suddenly declared, “this young lady is a dream … Obviously, dreams never become real. But the fact is I could do with a young lady, a young lady with her very qualifications, for some of the business I’m handling at the moment …”

“Is it some scholarly endeavor?” asked Marta, flirting childishly – outrageously.

“No, no, no! My days as a scholar are over. I imagine your friend must have told you what my current thinking is about such activities. No way! I could do with someone to collaborate in other kinds of tasks that are altogether much more exciting.”

“It’s a foregone conclusion, professor … When people talk, they start to understand each other. I was rather under the impression she had no specific work on,” I added, quite idly, just passing the time of day.

Marta gave me a slight nod – in gratitude, I imagine.

“Where do you live, mademoiselle?” asked the professor, getting agitated. “I suppose you must live in Lille …”

“Not at all, sir … I live in Ypres where I give English lessons to the children of a family and conversation classes to some crazy old ladies,” replied Marta with her usual grace.

“So you can easily give those up?”

“Indeed it’s summer and they’ve stopped. In fact, I soon hope to be restarting all that …”

“I could offer you some well-paid work, just a few hours. I’m sure we’d soon agree to terms. I only need to be sure of one thing, that’s quite crucial: your discretion. The work I can offer you involves being completely discreet.”

“Don’t scare me off, professor!” exclaimed Marta with a mixture of fear and candor. “If it’s something so delicate, perhaps I’m no use.”

“Pray understand, mademoiselle …!” said Busch, putting his pale, arthritic hand on Marta’s. “You must understand … I only say that as a preventive measure.”

The second Marta saw the professor’s hand on hers, she gave me a rather startled look; her first inclination was to take hers away, but she didn’t. She must have had second thoughts, and decided that the best thing would be to let things follow their natural course.

Busch, who was downing his third port of the morning, must have noticed Marta’s hesitancy, perhaps he felt her hand stiffen – and thought he was duty bound to apologize.

“Do forgive me,” he said in a tone that was at once smarmy and shy. “That was – how should I put it? – an unconscious professorial tic. If you like, a rather paternal, university gesture … It doesn’t mean your hand isn’t very beautiful. Your hand is long … Long hands aren’t what you call unpleasant …”

“Oh please, don’t worry …” replied the young lady, with a smile that was both an angel’s and a cynic’s. “You are such a lively, admirable man, at your age …”

“How old would you say I am, mademoiselle? Very old, naturally …” snapped the professor, suddenly seeming worried, if not anguished.

“No … But I wouldn’t like to get this wrong. Maybe fifty-five …?”

“Fifty-three … I look older, of course. I’ve led such a stupid, ridiculous, wrong-headed life! Even though it depended on me, I can’t understand how I could be so insane. I’ve spent my whole life filling in filing cards … in reality throwing a shadow over what others wrote perfectly clearly. Believe me it’s sad to feel that one has wasted one’s life in pursuit of vacuous nonsense. I wish I could make up for it, but it’s irreversible, that time has passed …”

“But what’s fifty-five?” the young lady asked, bubbling with optimism.

“Sorry, you’re wrong, mademoiselle. He said fifty-three …” I said to shortcircuit the friction her slip might cause.

“Yes, of course,” she rushed to add. “What is it to be fifty-three if you are so lively?”

“What do you mean, mademoiselle? I imagine that is exactly what I am not.”

“I don’t believe it. Life is all about finding the right fit, about being in the right place at the right time. The people who manage to do that redouble their energy levels. Professor, you should find the right fit, should sort yourself out an agreeable life. You would live long and, above all, would make the most of it.”

“I live the life of a bohemian,” exclaimed the professor in a blend of vanity and sadness. “You could say that I’m not settled. I get little return from my work, because I’m so chaotic. The young lady is right: I need to sort myself out and find the right place to be.”

“Of course you do!” trumpeted Marta. “That’s the way to get a proper return and while you’re about it you could …”

“Say no more, mademoiselle, say no more!” exclaimed the professor enthusiastically. “You have remarkable insight …”

That dialogue was a strange, derisory business. Marta had exerted such extraordinary pressure on the old scholar that he was on the point of collapse.
The fact they had been so close had clearly helped; at a certain age closeness – of the mental variety – can be fatal. The swoon the professor had fallen into was perfectly natural. By the side of his decrepitude, Marta seemed like a goddess – a goddess in the superficial, literary sense of the word, I mean a pleasant, easily approachable young woman, qualities that don’t abound. What was most striking about Marta was her icy coldness. She had lied with such surprising confidence. She had got poor Lazarus to rise with her mere presence, and given him the vague possibility of companionship by mouthing four clichés in support of his crazy way of thinking. But perhaps most curious of all was the astounding rapidity with which the new situation had been created. At times it felt as if things had gone too quickly and assumed an over-favorable light to be drawn to a normal conclusion. But Marta gave no signs of being worried at all, seemed very sure about what she was doing, and looked to be in complete control.

I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing with my own eyes. The previous day I’d registered the transformation in my old teacher. Everything that is level-headed and calm in the cultural sphere and that in scholarship is peaceful, silent, and regular benign activity were embodied, as far as I was concerned, in the figure of the historian of Vives and Erasmus. And, suddenly, that pensive, conscientious man had transmuted into an old troglodyte thirsting for life and new experiences. Conversely, I was in the company of an absolutely changed young lady and, when I thought back to her behavior in Calais, one who came as a complete surprise. In Bruges, Marta had switched from the passive, vegetable, meek being I remembered into a hundred-percent natural feline. Yes, natural is the word: the strangest aspect of all that was precisely the natural way she espoused her latest way of behaving. If I was sure of any thing, as a result of her attitude now, it was that I couldn’t hope to play an important role as an individual in any situation
like that. I’d convinced myself that that young lady’s greatest virtue, what made her so charming, was undoubtedly her meekness. One day I joked with her that the highest praise Chinese literature conferred on a woman is precisely that: meekness. Marta acquiesced immediately and spoke yet again of her dream of owning a cottage in her country with small white curtains, by a canal and overlooking a meadow. And now … I was looking at a complete stranger who displayed traits I could never have imagined.

As my thoughts about all that in fact undermined my confidence in my judgment, I felt rather depressed and at a loss.