The Emperor Waltz (77 page)

‘Maybe I know him, I mean, if you say me who you are waiting for.’

‘Oh, I see. It’s a surprise, really. It’s an old friend called Arthur. I think he lives there. I hope he lives there still. We heard from him five years ago and this was the address.’

‘I think maybe he must be moved – in five years that is often what happens. I do not know anyone who is called that who lives there. What was the name you said, please?’

‘Arthur. He doesn’t move unless he has to, I don’t think. He stays where he is. I thought it was worth a try. But you don’t think he lives there.’

‘No,’ Yusuf said. ‘There is only our friend Philip who lives there. He is English. He has lived there for many years now. Is it perhaps a friend of Philip’s who you are looking for I think?’

‘Perhaps,’ the girl said, reflectively. ‘I only have a number – it was flat number seven.’

‘That is Philip’s flat, I know,’ Yusuf said. ‘It seems strange, but perhaps he can help when he gets home. I can call him if you want it. He is not far from here.’

‘Oh,’ the girl said, and she broke out into a wonderful smile, the smile of a woman of thirty who has been given the gift of great kindness. ‘Oh – would you? Would that be a great trouble to him or to you?’

‘Oh, no,’ Yusuf said. ‘He works very near by. He is a waiter in a café – a big German café, a successful one, not like this one. I can call him and when he is busy then he will tell me over the phone what he knows.’

Yusuf went to the back of the shop and called Philip. When they had spoken for a while, he came back, smiling.

‘You are certainly lucky,’ he said. ‘I asked him if he knew anyone called Arthur, that there is a young lady asking for an Arthur who lives in his flat, and Philip said to me that he will come straight away, and he sounded very excited and pleased. But he asked me what your name was and I did not know what to say.’

The young lady beamed, and began talking very fast in English. It defeated Yusuf, but he went on smiling. He thought of saying, in a joking way, that he hoped his friend Philip was not one of those people who are discovered to have imprisoned a young man in his flat for many years, but he thought it through, and he could not think of how to say ‘imprisoned’ in English, and could not think of another way to say it. So he smiled and nodded, and brought another cup of coffee to the lady, saying the phrase he had learnt, which was ‘On the house.’ And presently there was the form of Philip opening the door and shaking his umbrella and stamping his feet from the snow. He had come so quickly that he was still wearing his black waiter’s apron.

The woman rose to her feet. She seemed to be scanning Philip for some sign of recognition, but was perhaps unsure.

‘It’s a long time since anyone’s called me Arthur,’ he said to Yusuf in German, looking the woman over in quite a friendly way. ‘People used to call me Arthur in London.’

‘Do you know Arthur?’ the woman said to him. She had only caught the name in what Philip had said. ‘I’ve come looking for Arthur. Do you speak English?’

‘I used to be called Arthur,’ Philip said in English to the woman. ‘And you?’

‘I’m Celia,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve come to say hello.’

‘Celia,’ Philip said – Arthur said, rather – but in a warm, recognizing way. ‘Celia. My God. Look at you.’

2.

They crossed the street in the falling snow, Arthur sheltering under Celia’s umbrella, and into the apartment block. They kept casting sidelong glances at each other. Was the other what they remembered? Neither seemed sure. Arthur was stocky and muscular, his head shaved; at the cleavage of his white shirt the edge of a tattoo was apparent on his bulky chest. Celia had been a child before, but was there some essence there that had been preserved? Her colouring was dark, her face neat, her eyes big and her skin smooth and glowing. Mainly, she glowed; her face was so interesting to look at that you might forget to remark how lovely she was.

‘I don’t know how you found me,’ Arthur said, opening his third-floor door with a key he fetched from his trouser pocket. ‘I’m impressed. Excuse the mess.’

The flat was only a little chaotic, and what mess there was came from books, in piles in the hallway, on the worksurface in the kitchen, and on tables, on the dining table, on the sofa, on the floor. There were a few plates and mugs, unwashed, but no more than that. It could have done with a paint; in the hallway, there was a mark about the four-foot mark where Arthur had rested his head to take his shoes off, as he did now.

‘You sent a postcard to Uncle Duncan, five years ago,’ Celia said. She stood with her package, not taking her coat off, or her shoes; it was very cold in the room, almost as if a window were open somewhere in the flat. ‘It had your address on it. My uncle said he hadn’t known where you were until then. You just went away.’

‘I told him I’d gone to Berlin,’ Arthur said, sitting down and putting his stockinged feet up on the sofa. ‘I didn’t just disappear. I’d forgotten that – I sent him a postcard. I don’t know why I did.’

‘It was a good job you did,’ Celia said. ‘The bookshop was closing down. If you’d waited another month, your postcard would have arrived at a branch of Starbucks.’

‘Oh, aye,’ Arthur said, with the noncommittal quality that masks deep emotion. ‘Is it cold in here?’

‘Well, I do find it a little cold,’ Celia said. ‘But that’s just me, I expect.’

‘I expect it’s not,’ Arthur said. He went outside and turned a central-heating dial on. ‘I can make you a cup of coffee, if you’d like,’ he said, coming back in, ‘or tea, even – I’m the only man in Steglitz who knows how to make a good cup of tea.’

‘Yes, foreigners,’ Celia said. ‘They think a cup of warm water, delivered with a teabag in the saucer is good enough.’

‘For you to dunk, hopefully,’ Arthur said.

Celia shot him a grateful, surprised look. ‘You used the word “hopefully” quite correctly there,’ she said. ‘It’s unusual. I must be desensitized.’

‘It’s speaking German all day long that does it,’ Arthur said. ‘I remember you. I remember you very well. You used to come into the shop with your mother, and sit and chat with me. It used to surprise the customers, seeing a seven-year-old girl there, on the till, playing shopkeepers. I know why I sent the postcard. I heard about the shop closing one day when I was in Prinz Eisenherz. That’s the gay bookshop here. They don’t have a seven-year-old girl on the till playing shopkeepers, though, so it’s obviously a bit rubbish.’

‘I was such a very girly little girl, too, I expect,’ Celia said. ‘I think I will have that cup of tea. I’ve never been to Berlin before. I just knew you were here, but I always thought … This is very respectable.’

‘It was so cheap,’ Arthur said. ‘When I came here, the rents were so low. And now I can’t move. I’m used to it here.’

‘The Birkbuschstrasse,’ Celia said. ‘I’ve been practising saying it so that the taxi driver would understand. It’s quite hard to pronounce, I must say.’

I don’t know when the last time I saw you was,’ Arthur said. ‘I went all of a sudden and I never said goodbye to anyone, not even Duncan. Was he cross?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Celia said, following Arthur into the narrow kitchen. ‘I was only twelve. All I can remember is that I asked where you were one day, and my uncle said that you’d moved abroad. I think he might have felt a little let down. Nobody afterwards stayed as long as you did, and there was one girl who started stealing money from the till. Nobody could understand it – twenty pounds down, three or four days a week. There must have been a dozen new Arthurs, but nobody stayed long. And then in the end there was no money to pay anyone, and Ronnie just said—’

‘Ronnie’s still around, then?’

‘Well, yes. Ronnie and my uncle, they moved. I’m supposed to say Uncle Ronnie too, but I’m very sorry to say the habit came too late to stick. They’re living in Rome. Uncle Duncan speaks beautiful Italian nowadays. I don’t know how Ronnie fills his days – I think he plays with his stocks and shares in the morning, goes to haggle with an antiques dealer or to visit a church or a painting and then has a very complicated sort of lunch that he’s ordered from Annunziata. She went with them, she’s very happy.’

‘I don’t remember Annunziata,’ Arthur said. Some sort of chill had come into his manner as he fiddled with kettle and mugs. ‘What’s Duncan doing all day long? Is he happy? He must be sad about the bookshop.’

‘Well, I suppose so,’ Celia said. ‘I think it was more of a relief in the end, what with the thieving lesbians, and the rent rising all the time, and no one buying books at all. He was just glad to be rid of it. He must be sad now, when he thinks about it. But living in that beautiful house, with the man he loves and more money than he knows what to do with – you should see the rent his flat in Notting Hill and Ronnie’s house in Chester Terrace bring in. Mummy manages them. She’s retired now, of course. So it worked out quite well for everyone. They never see anyone, I don’t think – just a few Roman friends. None of them ever reads a book, as far as I could tell.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that would happen,’ Arthur said. ‘Duncan going off into a bubble. I thought he wanted to— Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. If I had the money, I’d never go out. I’d put up a big wall around myself – I’d never leave the house either.’

But Uncle Duncan, it seemed, left the house every day, and was very friendly with the local shopkeepers, the family in the café, the neighbours, such as the security guards and officials who worked downstairs in the
piano nobile
of the great historic palazzo where they lived. He had not put a big wall up around himself; everyone around knew them as the
gentiluomini inglesi
, and everyone loved them. ‘I hate to say it,’ Celia said, ‘but they might love Ronnie a little bit more because his Italian is so bad. He sounds like an Englishman making quacking noises.
Mi scusi, signora, ma com’è il formaggio oggi?
They simply love it.’

‘It sounds a lovely way to spend the rest of your life,’ Arthur said, handing her a cup of tea.

‘Well, he’s writing his memoirs too,’ Celia said, clutching it with white-gloved hands. ‘Or it might be a novel. Nobody knows, really, not even Ronnie.’

‘I see,’ Arthur said. There were the beginnings of an undertone of hostility between the two of them; it was not the meeting that either of them would have wanted. What was it? The waiter looked at the frosted and furred dark woman, and she looked at him. She softened; she smiled.

‘Let’s go through,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought something for you.’

The parcel was heavy, and evidently some books. Arthur opened it, tearing at the brown paper with the end of his teaspoon.

‘The German Customs made me open it when I came in,’ Celia explained. ‘I had to rewrap it afterwards in the hotel. I’m staying at the Adlon.’

‘I was going to say,’ Arthur said, ‘you’re very welcome to stay. You’d need to bring your own sheets and towels, though. But you’ve got a hotel you’re staying in, that’s nice.’

He pulled away the paper, and inside there were ten identical books; they were copies of
The Garden King
. They were old, but only a little faded. Arthur opened the top copy; it was signed on the title page with a confident gesture. He held the book and was young again. He had been there. Stuart Inkerville had come in, thin and exhausted, and had signed them all. It had taken so long. He, Arthur, had stood by him and opened one title page after another and, when Stuart had said, ‘I think I could benefit from a short break,’ had fetched him a cup of tea, a glass of water – what had it been? Whatever Stuart Inkerville had wanted. And then he had said he had no hope of writing anything else, and had gone. The signature on this copy had been in blue ink; it had once been fresh and dark and wet, as Arthur, at only eighteen, had looked as it had dried. He had shut this copy too quickly: the faded blue ink had made a mark on the opposite page, in reverse. He had been so careful about it, too, wanting to do the job properly. He remembered it well, and Duncan, who had a thousand and one things to do, just coming back and looking in a benevolent, encouraging way at his very first author, and it only sinking in slowly what a lot of copies of this book he’d ordered. It had been the slow progress of the signing that had done it. But here it was, and Arthur was glad of it.

‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘I don’t have a copy of it. Well, I do – I have a copy of the new paperback. I bought it when the film came out. I kept saying to people we knew about this book from the start, from the very first day. I said to people I’d met the author. But they didn’t really believe me, I suppose, and I didn’t really know anything about him. I just met him that once, and then he died. The film was—’

‘It was wonderful,’ Celia said. ‘It was a wonderful film. Indescribable. I didn’t think they made films as wonderful as that any more.’

‘But the book,’ Arthur said.

‘Exactly,’ Celia said. ‘Uncle Duncan asked me to find you, and give you ten copies. He said you deserved it. The book in the end – you know, he put all the rest on eBay, and they went for a fortune. It turned out the publisher had only printed three hundred copies in the first instance. Most of the rest were in libraries. It was a sort of treasure trove no one knew about when the film came out. Of course, it’s sold seven million since then, and then the translations, too. He had a sister. She worked for a travel agent, all her life. She’s rich now.’

‘I often wondered – how did he know the book? The director?’

‘I don’t know,’ Celia said. ‘He must have been a customer of the bookshop in the early days. You used to foist it on anyone who showed the slightest interest, my uncle said.’

‘I did.’

‘I bet you miss that, now.’

‘Oh, I still do my fair share of foisting, even in the café. You’d be surprised how many opportunities there are to say to a lingering customer that they might like to try a different Joseph Roth next time. I live on my own, too. That seems to help wi’ foisting.’

‘Ronnie did say that the sister might have felt an obligation to give a donation of the royalties to the bookshop, since you and my uncle did so much to sell them in the first place. But of course the bookshop wasn’t really open any more by then.’