The Deadly Space Between (16 page)

She banged the programme down on her knees. I was slightly irritated.

‘OK, Iso, so you’ve just proved that nobody goes to operas for the plausibility of the plots.’

‘Well, yeah. I’ve seen operas on television and we watched that film of
La Traviata
. But I’ve never gone because Luce prefers the theatre.’ She stretched out her long green legs. ‘She says that the music is destabilizing, whereas you’re safe inside the spoken word, however disturbing.’

‘But lots of Shakespeare gets turned into opera.’

‘Yes, it does. Shakespeare’s characters are larger than life anyway. Think of Othello and Lady Macbeth. They’re already down there at the footlights, belting out their solos. All you’ve got to do is set the words to something thunderous.’

She picked up the discarded information pack.

‘Look at this guy’s costume. He’s the Holy Hermit. Like one of the crusties. Weird.’

The one-minute bell rang. Roehm came back into the box. The house was full of muted rustles, whispers and coughs. We looked up from the programme. Roehm’s eyes gleamed slightly as he gazed upon the two of us together. Then he bent down and kissed us both, one after another.

‘I’m glad you came,’ said Roehm. ‘I hope that you enjoy the opera.’

You was plural; we were you. He sat down and the chair shuddered. We were inordinately pleased with ourselves. We were the chosen, the elect, engulfed by his sinister gentleness. We belonged to Roehm.

The house lights dimmed and the conductor appeared in the pit to warm and expectant applause. The performance began.

Iso said afterwards that it was a bit like watching a Western in which all the characters were labelled, and the bad guy, in this case Kaspar, wears a black hat. The Holy Hermit turned up dressed like Jesus with long hair and sandals in a tatty white shift. Just so that we get the message. He’s got religious authority. Right? Agathe wore the immaculate white of chastity and innocence, the crown of crucifixion roses, which guarantees that she’ll get up again, satisfactorily resurrected, when the shooting stops. It was ridiculous, preposterous. Yet we watched, enthralled. We were impatient with the interval, anxious for the tale to continue, to be endlessly retold. We already knew the story, yet we could not bear to be separated from the telling and the retelling. The music was the key. It acted upon us in precisely the ways Luce had identified and so thoroughly mistrusted. It was compelling, mysterious, seductive. We ceased to think, to judge. And we were more powerfully entranced by one figure than by any other character.

‘
Ihr seid begeistert, meine Kinder
,’ said Roehm, laughing at our naive complicity with the traditional characters of fairy tales. We had eyes only for Samiel.

The Demon Huntsman was clad in Lincoln green. He was huge, bigger than Roehm. He wore a floor-length cape of dark, swirling green, green hunting boots and falconer’s gauntlets of terrifying amplitude, as if his hands were larger than his arms. A dark patch covered one eye, the other eye glowed cyborg red. Traces of a decomposing skeletal frame were visible through the ravaged green of his costume. He swept silently across the darkened rim of the stage at crucial moments in the action and his voice when he spoke was magnified to a hollow echo.

The Wolf’s Glen scene made use of computer-generated images on the backdrop. We saw and heard the satanic hounds loosed in the forest. The creatures flung themselves towards the audience down an elongated tunnel of green shadows. We heard the Demon Huntsman’s voice, urging them on, and the call of his horn. I realized with a shiver of fear that they were not dogs, they were wolves.

But this was the truly uncanny, distinctive element in his arresting power; Samiel is a speaking role. The voice, freed from music, challenged the terms of the opera. It set him apart, gave him an eerie horror, which made him unforgettable. Samiel represented power, pure power, summoned and unleashed.

We were thrilled to the core by his threat that he must have someone’s soul at dawn, delivered against a rising thunderclap from the drums and cymbals: ‘
Morgen, Eroder Du!
’

‘He’s got the most erotic presence I’ve ever seen,’ whispered Iso. I realized that she wanted to draw the character at once, before any of the details faded.

‘I think he’s wearing built-up shoes,’ said Roehm.

_{*  *  *}

As we walked down the streets of Covent Garden towards our dinner and champagne, jubilant and elated, I asked why
Der Freischütz
had been regarded as the essence of the German soul. Roehm nodded grimly.

‘It’s a version of the Faust myth. Don’t you see? Sell your soul to the Devil, but the Lord will intervene through the love of a good woman and you will be granted salvation at the last.’

‘No, I don’t see.’ I wanted to argue back. ‘Why should the Germans be obsessed with Faust as a national myth?’

But we had arrived at the restaurant.

Roehm had already ordered our dinner so that we didn’t have to wait. We fell upon our rare steaming beef and rich sauce, laced with port and fresh mushrooms. We were slavering unrepentant carnivores. We practically licked our plates. Roehm ate little. He waited until we had finished before he began smoking again. I watched how Iso sat before him, illuminated from within, like an Advent candle, whenever he looked upon her. She was the handmaid of the Lord, ready and submissive to his will. I was jealous and irritated.

While we were chomping chocolate I returned to the satanic pact which had been the subject of the opera.

‘Why’s the Faust myth so special for Germany?’

Roehm’s pale eyes settled on my face. He didn’t answer my question directly.

‘The ultimate salvation of Faust is essential to the myth, because it redeems the fact that he is damned for his desire, the desire to suspend time and enter paradise. “
Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen / Verweile doch, Du bist so schön . . .
” ’

‘What’s that mean?’ demanded Iso.

‘Have you forgotten all your German?’ asked Roehm gently. Then he translated the words for her, changing the meaning with his glance.

‘Will I say to the passing moment, stay with me, you are so beautiful . . .’ Iso spread herself out like a peacock.

‘You’ve always maintained that you don’t know any German!’ My tone was aggressive and accusing. Roehm turned back to me and dismantled my anger with his full attention.

‘Are we to be damned for our desires? For wanting more than the world can ever offer us? For being curious? Longing for knowledge? Or for wanting back the time to relive our lost lives? Faust spends his youth trying to achieve wisdom through study, through books. He never lives, drinks, travels to other lands; he never makes love. What Mephistopheles gives him is his youth and the chance to live again. And think of poor Max. His desire for Agathe is so strong that he will risk his soul to possess her. This is the original sin, not ambition, not curiosity, but desire. It is the sin of Satan, Eve, Faust, the desire for more than our allotted portion. For more life, more love, more time.

‘We are willing to be damned for our desires.

‘And who is to judge us?

‘Desire is what draws us beyond ourselves and our safe, dull lives. Our desires make us greater than we really are.’

‘Yes, but –’ He still hadn’t answered my question.

‘Listen, Toby,’ Roehm cut me off, ‘Germany’s folk tales were terrifying. Do you remember Grimm? Which you must have read when you were a child?’

‘He had the cheerful versions,’ put in Iso, snatching the last chocolate.

‘Then,’ said Roehm strangely, ‘you cheated your son and you withheld the most important part of the truth. In the Grimms’ original version of
Rotkäppchen
, Red Riding Hood, the little girl and the grandmother are eaten by the Wolf. There is no handsome huntsman, no salvation, no redemption. We like the Faust myth because Faust is punished, as is Max, but eventually he is saved. Our desires may be dangerous, but forgiveness and salvation are at hand. This is comforting, but it is not the truth.’

Iso guzzled down the last of the wine.

‘So the truth is that we are swallowed up and damned for all eternity?’

Roehm said nothing.

‘Well,’ said Iso, and I knew that she was dreaming of the erotic green cadaver of the Demon Huntsman, ‘there must be worse fates.’

_{*  *  *}

When I came down to breakfast on Sunday morning Roehm was no longer in the house and the panzer had gone. Iso was still fast asleep. But on the easel in the kitchen was her largest sketch pad and there, reproduced in all his uncanny glory, was the figure of Samiel, staring back at me as I filled the kettle. His cape swept the floor, and with a meticulous attention to detail she had drawn the giant hollowed chest and the ghostly ribcage of his living corpse. His face was slightly turned away, only one eye met mine, but the huge dome of his tremendous head loomed perfectly to scale. On the top corner of the page, neatly darkened with cross-hatching, were the barrels of a hunting gun pointing directly out of the picture at the level of the viewer’s chest. I put on the coffee machine and sat down at an angle to the image. But she had been too clever for me. Wherever I sat I saw the single eye of the demon, following me around the room, and the barrels of the gun swivelling steadily, taking aim.

_{*  *  *}

It was now quite dark by four thirty. I met her at the college lodge, under the illusion that we were going Christmas shopping. Instead she drove straight to the park. The park was locked. Iso stopped just beyond the gates and leaped out.

‘What’re you doing?’ She rummaged in the back of the Renault and a damp wind ruffled my ears.

‘Getting the Christmas tree. We want a big one and we can’t afford it. Have you noticed the prices? I’ve had my eye on this one for over a month.’

She rushed towards me, waving an axe. I got the message and set about scaling the fence. The arrowheads on the railings were rusty and dangerous. I crouched on the top, uncertain of the drop.

‘Can’t we just ask Luce for some dosh?’

‘I’m not asking Luce for anything any more, Toby. And our Christmas tree is going to be as big as hers ever is.’

She passed the axe over the fence. I felt the edge. It was cold and clean and sharp.

‘How’d you sharpen the axe?’ I had last seen her weapon lying abandoned in the woodpile. The handle was loose and the blade covered in rust.

‘Did it in the metalwork department at college.’

‘Anybody see you doing it?’

‘The boys sharpened it for me, nutter. Here, hold tight. They won’t get me for forestry. I told them I was going to decapitate my lover.’

I watched her slither over the rails, supple as an athlete, swinging her legs easily into the void, leaping well clear of the pruned stumps on the rose bushes. The park was an eerie orange in the half night. We were more circumspect than we had been on the street. There were occasional raids on the park to clear out the tramps, gays and drug addicts, who sometimes coalesced into an informal community round the summerhouse and the fountain. We slipped between the shadows, whispering, pausing, looking out for the parks police, running quietly down the bare paths. Offstage I heard the passing roar of the cars turning down the slip roads towards the motorway. There was a statue of Edith Cavell, sombre in bronze, her nurse’s uniform draped around her, gazing boldly out into a better future for women. We hid behind her skirts, waiting for the all-clear. In winter the parks police only did two or three rounds a night. The furtive homosexuals were, at this season, outnumbered by the pushers and their clients. Between seven and ten was usually a safe time.

Iso’s tree was a crucial element in the formal garden. Little box hedges framed its silver elegance and the neatly dug beds formed a curlicue around its base, like a formal swirl, completing a signature on a legal document. Another ornamental pine around the same size balanced the pattern on the far side of the garden. I saw all this in the faded glare of orange and black.

‘Iso! You’re going to wreck the garden.’

‘Nonsense. We’ll take the other tree next year. Then it’ll be symmetrical.’

She applied the axe to the base of the slender pine, slicing downwards towards the root. The tree’s wound gaped open, releasing a faint, sappy smell of resin. The thing shuddered with each violent cut and the crash of the axe seemed to bellow around the park. I begged her to stop. I was convinced that we would be caught. ‘You can’t cut down trees quietly,’ she snapped back. She pulled off her anorak. It was hot work. I watched her oval face, white and concentrated, as she aimed the axe. The tree wavered, then suddenly began to list.

‘Catch it,’ Iso hissed. I pounded into the flowerbed, leaving huge footprints.

‘You can see where I’ve been.’

‘Then burn your shoes later if you’re afraid of being caught.’

The tree keeled over, scratching my face and arms. My knees gave way. We battled across the abandoned lawns with the dead tree swishing a long trail through the dew behind us. She climbed over first and pretended to be waiting by the car as a couple walked past. When she signalled that it was safe to approach I heaved the tree upright against the railings. We were now clearly visible in the lights of every car that passed. My hands and face were damp with soft rain.