The Gustav Sonata (6 page)

Drawing was something else Max Hodler was gifted at. He drew – very fast, with swift, bold pen-strokes – a picture for Gustav of three men standing in a field of flowers, wearing robes and carrying swords. He explained that these men, from the forest cantons of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden had lived a long, long time ago at the end of the thirteenth century. It was they who were the true founders of Switzerland. They had defied their powerful Habsburg masters to swear an allegiance and, from this allegiance, the country slowly came into being. Every year, on August
1
st, this historic moment, in what was known as the Rütli Meadow, was remembered as Swiss National Day.

He told Gustav that not many people ‘in the wider world' had any knowledge about the history of Switzerland. ‘This,' he said, ‘is because Switzerland is just an
idea
to them – clocks and chalets and banks and mountains. But we – you and I, Gustav – who are part of it, know that we are not just an idea. And we also know about neutrality,
about the concept of the coconut
, so we must learn our history and be proud of it.'

He wanted Gustav to try to copy his drawing, or even one small part of it, like a sword or a flower, but Gustav broke in to tell him about the posies of gentians Emilie arranged round the photograph of Erich Perle on Swiss National Day and how Emilie said that he had been a hero.

Max put down the fine pen he had used for his drawing and turned to Gustav.

‘Tell me about that,' he said. ‘Who was your father?'

‘He was a policeman. Assistant Police Chief at Matzlingen Police Headquarters. He died when I was very little.'

‘How did he die?'

‘I don't know exactly. Mutti says it was the Jews.'

Silence fell in the small kitchen. Max Hodler shook his head and sighed, then got down from his chair. ‘I'm going out for a short breath of air,' he said. ‘See if you can copy something from the Rütli Meadow drawing, Gustav. Anything you like. A face. A hand. The stones among the grass. Don't hurry. Just work slowly and carefully.'

It was winter again, just past the new year,
1950
. Gustav had been working with Max Hodler every Sunday for three months.

Alone in his cold room, Gustav missed his train. He'd given names to the painted people and used to whisper to them as they journeyed up and down the windowsill. The thought that he'd crushed them and killed them made him feel ashamed.

When he told Anton about this, Anton said, ‘Sometimes, you have to break things. I broke a metronome. I was trying to play a Chopin waltz and it kept going wrong, so I broke the stupid metronome. My father hit me on the bottom with his belt. He asked me if I wanted to make him ill again.'

‘How could you make him ill again?'

‘By breaking the metronome; I told you. So, anyway, get your Mutti to buy you another train.'

But Emilie had no money.

More and more, in the late evenings, she drank her aniseed drinks and fretted over her sums on the edges of the
Matzlingerzeitung
. Late one night, she told Gustav that rumours had begun circulating that the cheese co-operative was failing, that demand for Emmental had fallen now that the French were once again making so many different varieties of cheese, and that it was only a question of time before the Matzlingen Co-operative would close. ‘And then,' said Emilie, ‘what are we going to do?'

Gustav went and fetched the work he'd been doing with Max Hodler – pages of nicely formed letters, paragraphs of careful writing, drawings of swords and helmets and flowers and of girls setting their dresses alight with matchfire – and put this down in front of Emilie, covering up her mathematical scribbles on the newspaper.

She stared down, wide-eyed. She put on her spectacles.

‘Is this your work?' she asked.

‘Yes,' said Gustav, ‘of course it's my work.'

‘Well. It's not bad.'

Gustav let his mother take in the pictures of the girls setting themselves on fire, but before she could say anything about them, Gustav said, ‘You can save money now, Mutti. Because I don't need Herr Hodler any more. My work is better.'

Emilie took a long swig of her aniseed drink. She fumbled for a cigarette and lit it with shaking hands. Gustav wanted to put his arms round her and lay his head on her shoulder, but he knew she didn't want this; all she wanted was her drink and her cigarette.

‘We'll have to see,' she said. ‘Some of this is still a bit messy. We'll have to hear what the headmaster says.'

Herr Hodler stayed until the spring came. By then, Gustav had learned most of the stories in
Struwwelpeter
by heart and could terrify Anton by reciting them.

Weh! Jetzt geht es klipp und klapp

mit der Scher die Daumen ab,

mit der grossen scharfen Scher!

Hei! Da schreit der Konrad sehr.

He had a sketchy idea of how his country had come into being. He could make ‘sensible' drawings of churches with roofs like witches' hats and of the bear of Bern, symbol of the great city Anton still talked about.

And it was possible to say that Gustav had become fond of Max Hodler. It was possible to say that the single swear word,
scheisse
, had opened the door to a friendship. When the moment came for Max Hodler to leave, Gustav felt sad to be parted from him.

‘I'll see you from time to time in school,' said Max.

‘Yes,' said Gustav.

‘You must keep working hard.'

‘Yes.'

‘Make your mother proud of you.'

‘Yes.'

As a leaving present to Max Hodler, Gustav had made a copy of the map of Mittelland in his room. He'd coloured the land green and the rivers blue. Here and there, on the green ground, wandered a few animals, which might have been ibex or which might have been grey sheep. Bern was a black circle, with its brown bear keeping watch. By Matzlingen was the circular cheese with the slice cut out of it. Near this, Gustav had written
Herr Max Hodler lives here.

What Gustav didn't know was that Emilie Perle hadn't paid Max Hodler his tuition fees since February. He didn't know, either, that Max had – just once – gone to ask for them, but that Emilie had been repelled by his rabbit eyes, damp and pleading, and had sent him away with nothing. By the time he left, the fees had still not been paid. All Max had from Emilie was a scribbled IOU. The tutor felt this to be unfair. He had worked hard with Gustav and was proud of the results. But Emilie Perle was too overwhelmed by her own troubles to give this any consideration.

The cheese co-operative remained open, but had cut back its production by
40
per cent and put all its workers on half-pay. Now, Emilie worked only three days a week. On the days when she had nothing to do, she walked around Matzlingen looking for new employment.

But light seemed to be arriving once again in Gustav's life. It was the bright, glittery light that had fallen on the Elysian Fields of the ice rink.

By the end of April, he was able to say to Anton, ‘I can come skating on Sundays again.'

‘Oh,' said Anton. ‘Well, it doesn't matter now.'

‘What?' said Gustav.

‘It doesn't matter any more.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Well. We take Rudi Herens skating with us now.'

‘Who's Rudi Herens?'

‘He's a boy in our apartment building. He's a really good skater. He can do double-toe loops.'

‘You mean you don't want me to come?'

‘I do, Gustav. But three boys would be too many for Mother. She said that to me the other day: three would be too many.'

They were in a school passageway when this conversation took place. Gustav left Anton and walked away. He didn't know where he was walking to. It was time for a geography lesson, but it was not towards this that Gustav was going.

When he reached the end of the long passage, he went into the lavatories, a high barn of a room, which always felt cold, even in summer. He opened a cubicle and locked the door. He sat, not on one of the toilets, but on the tiled ground, with his knees drawn up to his chest. He thought about the things Max Hodler had said about coconuts – their hard outer shell protecting the flesh inside. He tried to imagine such a shell growing round him, an impenetrable shield. He examined his soft, white arms.

*
The first English version of
Struwwelpeter
by Heinrich Hoffmann was published in Leipzig in
1848
. This very free translation, by Alexander Platt, has remained the most popular. Here, these lines are rendered as follows:

Snip! Snap! Snip! The scissors go;

And Conrad cries out ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!'

Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast,

That both his thumbs are off at last.

SOMETIME AFTER THIS,
when Adriana Zwiebel came to pick up Anton from school, she saw Gustav on the school steps, playing with some jacks, given to him by Max Hodler. She got out of her car and came, smiling, towards him. She was wearing a summer dress, patterned with coral-coloured tulips. Her hair was loose and shone in the sun.

Gustav gathered up the jacks and ran towards Adriana and she bent down and hugged him. ‘How are you, Gustav?' she asked.

‘All right, thank you, Frau Zwiebel,' said Gustav.

‘Good,' said Adriana. ‘But Anton told me about your mother losing some of her hours at the cheese factory. That's most unfortunate.'

‘Yes,' said Gustav.

‘I would like to help.'

Gustav wasn't sure what Adriana Zwiebel expected him to say. It was difficult for him to imagine how she could ‘help' Emilie. Perhaps she didn't know how she could, either, because she abruptly changed the subject and said, ‘How is your tuition going?'

‘It's finished,' said Gustav. ‘I'm better at writing now. And I can draw the men at the Rütli Meadow. Herr Hodler gave me these jacks as a present for my work.'

He held out the jacks, still shiny and new-looking, despite the dust from the schoolyard.

‘Oh,' said Adriana, ‘what fun! They say, in the old bad times, when Switzerland was a poor country, children used to play this game with knuckle bones.'

Anton came running out then and embraced his mother. Gustav watched them cling together. He expected that, now, something might be said about the skating, but the two of them were silent, just sweetly hugging each other. Gustav stared at them. What he wanted was to leave with them and go back to the apartment on Fribourgstrasse and eat cherry tart and listen to Anton's playing. But Anton was now tugging his mother away towards the car.

‘Wait a moment, Anton,' said Adriana. ‘I was saying to Gustav, we must try to find new work for his mother. I'm going to ask around. Would she consider leaving the cheese factory to work full-time elsewhere?'

‘I don't know,' said Gustav.

‘The thing is, I know that part-time jobs are difficult to find. Do you think she might like to work in a flower shop? The place where I buy my geraniums, they told me they would soon be looking for someone …'

A flower shop. The scent of roses. Everything fresh and damp. And no more smell of Emmental on Emilie's clothes. Gustav thought she might be happy at this suggestion. He nodded, on her behalf.

‘Good,' said Adriana. ‘I'll go and see them and ask. Anton will let you know.'

‘Let him know what?' asked Anton, who hadn't been listening, but searching the deep pocket in his mother's dress for sweets and finding only a half-smoked packet of French cigarettes.

‘If there might be a job for Frau Perle in Valeria's flower shop.'

‘Why would she want to work there?' said Anton. ‘I hate going into that shop. It's always cold.'

Adriana smiled. ‘I don't think you know very much about it,' she said. ‘People who work with flowers are usually happy.' Then she took Anton's hand and they walked away.

When Gustav got home, Emilie was cooking a vegetable stew. The small kitchen was scented with leeks. She had told Gustav they couldn't afford meat any more, not even the bratwurst on which he doted.

Gustav went to the kitchen widow and stared out at Unter der Egg. He could see Frau Teller packing up her stall and he thought about what Adriana had said about the vacancy in Valeria's flower shop, but he knew better than to mention it at this moment.

‘I was looking at some photographs today,' Emilie said brightly, ‘of your father and me, when we went on holiday to Davos. Would you like to see them?'

‘Yes,' said Gustav. ‘Was I there?'

He wasn't there. He was in some other
before-life
life.

The first photograph was of a wide balcony with snowy mountains in the background.

‘Our hotel balcony,' said Emilie. ‘Look how spacious it is. It was such a nice establishment. Hotels are wonderful places.'

Then there was a picture of Emilie in a wickerwork chair on the same balcony. The sun was on her face, and her hair looked fresh and clean and she was laughing.

‘You look nice, Mutti,' said Gustav.

‘Do I? Well, that was long ago,
1938
, before the war. Now, here's your father. We thought we were going to have a good life.'

Erich was standing up, framed by the mountains, smoking a pipe. He was wearing a white shirt and his trousers were held up by braces. His face looked dark with sunburn.

The other pictures were mainly what Emilie called ‘views of Davos'. She explained to Gustav that it had once been the most famous place in the world for the curing of tuberculosis, because the air was so good and there were so many hours of healing sunshine. People came from thousands of miles away to Davos, and were cured. Huge sanatoria were built there to accommodate all the people suffering from TB, which was also known as ‘consumption' because the disease eats away the lung tissue. Some still came, because Davos would be forever known as a place of healing.