The Unconsoled (67 page)

I heard Boris say something, but although Sophie had left the door open, I could not make out his words.

'I'm sorry,' I heard Sophie say in reply. 'I didn't mean to.'

Boris said something else I could not catch.

'No, no, it's all right,' Sophie said gently. 'You've been wonderful.' Then after a pause, she said: 'I've got to go and speak with your grandfather now. I've got to go.'

Boris said something again.

'Yes, all right,' Sophie said. 'I'll ask him to come in and wait with you.'

The little boy now began to say something quite lengthy.

'No, he won't,' Sophie interrupted after a while. 'He'll be nice to you. No, I promise. He will. I'll ask him to come in. But I've got to go and speak to Grandfather now. Before the doctor arrives.'

Sophie came out of the room and closed the door. Then, coming close to me, she said very quietly:

'Please go in and wait with him. He's upset. I've got to go and speak to Papa.' Then, before I could move, she had placed a hand on my arm, saying: 'Please be warm to him again. Like you used to be. He so misses it.'

'I'm sorry, I don't know what you're referring to. If he's upset, it's because you…'

'Please,' Sophie said. 'Perhaps it's my fault it's all been happening, but please let it stop now. Please go in and sit with him.'

'Of course I'll sit with him,' I said coldly. 'Why wouldn't I? You'd better go in to your father. He probably heard all of that just now.'

I entered the room in which Boris had ensconced himself and was surprised to find it did not resemble any of the other dressing rooms I had seen in the corridor. In fact, it was much more like a classroom, with its neat rows of small desks and chairs and, at the front, a large blackboard. The place was large and dimly lit with heavy shadows everywhere. Boris was sitting at a desk near the back and glanced up briefly as I came in. I said nothing to him and began looking around.

There was an intense scrawl on the blackboard and I wondered vaguely if Boris had done it. Then, as I continued to move around the empty desks, gazing at the charts and maps pinned up on the walls, the little boy gave a heavy sigh. I glanced at him and saw that he had placed his black bag on his lap and was struggling to remove something from it. Eventually he brought out a large book and put it down on the desk in front of him.

I turned away and continued moving around the room. When I next glanced at him, he was leafing through the pages with an admiring expression, and I realised he was once again looking at the handiwork manual. Feeling not a little irritated, I turned to look at a poster warning against the dangers of solvent abuse. Then Boris said behind me:

'I really like this book. It shows you everything.'

He had tried to say this as though to himself, but I had drifted quite far from where he was sitting and so he had been obliged to raise his voice quite unnaturally. I decided not to respond and continued to wander around the room.

After a while Boris sighed heavily once more.

'Mother gets so upset sometimes,' he said.

Again, there was no sense of his having addressed me properly, and so I did not respond. Besides, when I eventually turned to him, he was pretending to be absorbed in his book. I wandered over to the other corner of the room and found pinned on the wall a large sheet marked 'Lost Property'. There was a long list of entries in every kind of handwriting, a column each for the date, the article lost and the owner's name. For some reason, I found this sheet diverting and went on studying it for a little while. The entries near the top appeared to have been written in earnest - a lost pen, a lost chess piece, a lost wallet. Then, from about halfway down, the entries grew facetious. Someone was claiming to have lost 'three million US dollars'. Another entry was that of 'Genghis Khan' who had lost 'the Asian Continent'.

'I really like this book,' Boris said behind me. 'It shows you everything.'

Suddenly my patience snapped and I went quickly over to him and slammed my hand down on the desktop.

'Look, why do you keep reading this thing?' I demanded. 'What did your mother tell you about it? She told you it was a marvellous present, I suppose. Well, it wasn't. Is that what she told you? That it's a splendid present? That I chose it for you with great care? Look at it! Look at it!' -I attempted to tug the book out from under his grasp, but he clung to it, putting his arms down over it - 'It's just a useless old manual someone wanted to throw away. Do you think a book like this, something like this, can teach you about anything?'

I was still trying to pull it out from under him, but Boris, leaning right over the desk, was now protecting the book with his body. All the while he maintained an unnerving silence. I tugged again, determined to take the thing off him once and for all.

'Listen, this is a useless present. Utterly useless. No thought, no affection, nothing went into it. An afterthought, it's got it written over every page. But you think it's something marvellous I gave you! Give it to me, give it to me!'

Perhaps the fear that the manual would be torn apart caused Boris suddenly to raise his arms, and I found myself holding the book up by one cover. He still did not utter a sound, and I felt somewhat foolish about my outburst. I glanced at the book, hanging from my hand, then threw it towards the far corner of the room. It hit a desk and landed somewhere in the shadows. I immediately felt calmer and took a deep breath. When I next looked at him, Boris was sitting up rigidly, staring towards the part of the room where the manual had landed. He then got to his feet and hurried to retrieve it. He had not got half-way, however, when Sophie's voice called urgently from the corridor:

'Boris, come here a moment. Just a moment.'

Boris hesitated, looking once more over to where the manual had landed, then went out of the room.

'Boris,' I could hear Sophie saying outside, 'go and ask Grandfather how he's feeling now. And ask him if he wants any adjustments on the coat. The buttons at the bottom may be wrong. It might flap in the wind, if he stands up on the bridge a lot. Go and ask him, but don't stay and talk for a long time. Just ask him then come straight out.'

By the time I came back into the corridor, the little boy had already disappeared into Gustav's dressing room, and the scene that greeted me was a familiar one: Sophie standing tensely on the spot, her eyes on the door; the porters, a little way behind, looking on with their worried expressions. There was, however, a forlorn look in Sophie's face I had not noticed before and I suddenly felt a rush of tenderness towards her. I went up to her and placed my arm around her shoulders.

'This is a difficult time for us all,' I said gently. 'A very difficult time.'

I began to draw her closer to me, but she suddenly shook me off and went on staring at the doorway. Startled by this rebuttal, I said to her angrily:

'Look, we've all got to support each other at times like this.'

Sophie did not respond, and then Boris came out of the dressing room again.

'Grandfather says the coat's just what he wanted and he likes it even more because Mother gave it to him.'

Sophie made an exasperated noise. 'But does he want me to adjust it? Why doesn't he tell me? The doctor will be here soon.'

'He says… he says he loves the coat. He loves it very much.'

'Ask him about the lower buttons. If he's going to keep standing up on the bridge in the wind, it will have to do up properly.'

Boris considered this for a second, then nodded and went back into the dressing room.

'Look,' I said to Sophie, 'you don't seem to realise how much pressure I'm under just now. Do you realise I'm due on stage very shortly? I'll have to answer complex questions about the future of this community. There's going to be an electronic Scoreboard. Do you realise what this means? It's all very well you worrying about these buttons and so on. Do you realise the pressure I'm under just now?'

Sophie turned to me with a distressed look and seemed about to say something, but just then Boris appeared again. This time he looked very seriously into his mother's face but said nothing.

'Well, what did he say?' Sophie asked.

'He says he loves the coat very much. He says it reminds him of a coat Mother had when Mother was little. Something about the colour. He says it used to have a picture of a bear on it. The coat Mother used to have.'

'Do I need to adjust it?! Why won't he give me a straight answer? The doctor will be here soon!'

'You don't seem to understand,' I said interrupting. 'There are people out there depending on me. There's going to be an electronic Scoreboard, everything. They want me to come to the edge of the stage after each answer. That's a lot of pressure. You don't seem to…'

I stopped, becoming aware that Gustav was calling out something. Boris immediately turned and went back into the dressing room, and for what felt a long time Sophie and I stood there together waiting for him to come back. When he finally did so, the little boy looked at neither of us but, striding past, stopped in front of the porters.

'Gentlemen, please.' He made an ushering motion. 'Grandfather would like you all to go in. He wants you all to be with him now.

Boris began to lead the way and, after a slight hesitation, the porters followed keenly. They filed past us, some of them mumbling an awkward word or two to Sophie.

Once the last of them had gone in, I peered into the room but still could not see Gustav on account of the porters crowded just inside the doorway. There came the sound of three or four voices talking at once, and I was about to move closer when Sophie suddenly brushed past me and entered the room. There was a lot of movement and the voices stopped.

I strode up to the doorway. The porters having formed a gangway to let Sophie through, I now had a clear view of Gustav lying on his mattress. The brown overcoat was draped over the upper part of his body on top of the grey blanket I remembered from earlier. He had no pillow and clearly lacked the strength to raise his head, but he was looking up at his daughter with a gentle smile around his eyes.

Sophie had stopped two or three paces from where Gustav was lying. Her back was turned to me, so I could not see her expression, but she appeared to be staring down at him. Then, after several moments of silence, Sophie said:

'Do you remember that day you came to school? When you came with my swimming kit? I'd left it at home and I was so upset all through the morning, wondering what I was going to do, and then you came with the blue sportsbag, the one with the string strap, came right into the classroom. Do you remember, Papa?'

'This coat will keep me warm now,' Gustav said. 'It's what I've been needing.'

'You only had half an hour off, so you'd run all the way from the hotel. You came into the classroom, holding the blue sportsbag.'

'I was always very proud of you.'

'I'd been so worried all morning. Wondering what I was going to do.'

"This is a very good coat. Look at this collar. And it's real leather all along here.'

'Excuse me,' a voice said close to me and I turned to find a young man with spectacles and a doctor's bag trying to squeeze past. Close behind him was another porter I recognised from the Hungarian Café. The two of them went into the room, and the young doctor, hurrying to Gustav, knelt down beside him and began to look him over.

Sophie silently stared at the doctor. Then, as though acknowledging it was now someone else's turn to receive her father's attention, she took a few steps back. Boris walked over to her and for a moment they were standing almost touching, but Sophie seemed not to notice the little boy and went on staring at the doctor's hunched-over back.

It was just at this point I suddenly remembered again the many things needing to be done before my performance, and it occurred to me that, with the doctor having arrived, this was as good a moment as any for me to slip away. I moved quietly back out into the corridor and was about to set off in search of Hoffman when I heard a movement behind me and felt my arm being grasped roughly.

'Where do you think you're going?' Sophie asked in an angry whisper.

'I'm sorry, but you clearly don't understand. I've got a lot to do now. There's going to be an electronic Scoreboard, everything. There's an awful lot depending on me.' I said this, all the time trying to free my arm from her grip.

'But Boris. He needs you here. We both need you here.'

'Look, you obviously have no idea! My parents, don't you see? My parents will be arriving at any moment! There's a thousand things I have to do! You've no idea, you've clearly no idea at all!' I finally wrenched myself free. 'Look, I'll come back,' I called in a conciliatory tone over my shoulder as I hurried away. 'I'll come back as soon as I can.'

34

I was still making my way rapidly along the corridor when I became aware of several figures standing in a line against the wall. Glancing towards them, I saw they were all wearing kitchen overalls and, as far as I could make out, were each waiting their turn to climb into a small black cupboard. Growing curious, I slowed my pace, then eventually turned and walked towards them.

The cupboard, I could now see, was tall and narrow like a broom closet and fixed to the wall a half-metre or so off the ground. A short series of steps led up to it, and from the demeanour of those in the queue I supposed the cupboard contained a urinal or perhaps a drinking fountain. But as I came closer I saw that the man currently at the top of the steps was bent right forward with his rear protruding, to all appearances rummaging busily through the cupboard's contents. Those in the queue, meanwhile, were gesticulating and calling up impatiently for him to finish his turn. Then, as the man came out of the cupboard and was looking cautiously behind him for the top step, someone in the queue let out an exclamation and pointed in my direction. All heads turned to me and the next moment the queue had dissolved as everyone hurried to make way for me. The man who had been in the cupboard came down the steps as quickly as he could, then, bowing to me, made an ushering motion up to the cupboard.