The Pearlkillers Page 18

  The second time he went, with Louise and Elsie, he had to get up in the middle of a string quartet and leave. No one took much notice, as it was at the end of a movement. He had had to walk out because he knew that if he didn’t, the tears would begin to run down his face. It was all right for the women: Louise always cried and nobody minded. For a captain, a man of nearly fifty, it wouldn’t have done.

  He leaned against a pillar outside the concert hall and thought that that was what people’s lives should be like – like music, harmonious and unhindered; not full of disruptions, torn and twisted, or – as his had been – so shattered that no matter how well the break mended, he would always be reminded of where the weakness lay.

  He waited till the interval to rejoin the others.

  ‘I thought you liked Schubert,’ Elsie said.

  ‘Very much. I just sometimes find him unbearable.’

  ‘But beautiful,’ Louise insisted.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s the beauty that does it.’

  *

  He read poetry and the newspapers. He sent away for books – history and biography – to put back on the half-empty shelves. He made plans to have a boat built – a small pleasure craft that he could sail through the islands in the summertime and use to take the family on picnics. That would be the late summer, after the buying sprees and the sightseeing. And after that –

  ‘Parties,’ Hannah demanded.

  ‘Dinners and luncheons and dances,’ Astrid said, ‘and treasure hunts and everything.’

  ‘We should be doing all that this summer,’ Lina said, ‘but I suppose we’ll need that time just to paint the place up. It’s been falling to pieces. I hadn’t thought it was so bad.’

  They had two days of still air and brilliant light. He walked around his property in the mornings and at evening. He especially liked to see the last of the sunshine on the house. There had been so many years when house, family, friends, country had been lost to him, that he wasn’t yet easy in their possession. He still didn’t feel that he had them all back. And some things were beyond remedy; there were acquaintances and friends of his who had died in the meantime. For years everything, the whole of his life, had gone. Now it lay before him again, with the sun touching it.

  *

  The brighter flowers came; and the bulbs that had had an early bloom indoors were out in the gardens. Lina and Elsie put on aprons and talked to Ekdahl while Wilhelm carried loads of heavy sacking from one corner of the terrace to the other. From the drawing room windows Anders could see Ekdahl shaking his head. The ladies had set their hearts on a system of sunken pools.

  He found himself more and more often wandering down to the boathouse to have a cup of mid-morning coffee or afternoon tea with Erika. He was a little in love with her, but so many others were too that no one thought anything of it.

  They talked about the book. She would show him her copies of the drawings he’d made, and she’d ask him about his notes: Could he remember at which time of the year the berry appeared on this particular plant, and was it a hard or soft fruit, what size was the seed in the middle of it, was this leaf as prickly as it looked or did it have a smooth texture, was this a stringy stem or would it break cleanly, and, above all, were the colours right? He himself had never thought to ask so many questions, although if he concentrated, he was able to answer most of them.

  They also talked about mesmerism, a subject in which Erika had expressed an interest. ‘It’s a hoax,’ he said. ‘It’s more of a swindle than the woman being sawn in half.’

  ‘But the practice and method aren’t so different from what you can find in primitive societies. The trance state is used by all kinds of religions for achieving enlightenment. Even Christian meditation works on something similar, not to mention the mystic religions of the East. If we could bring it into everyday life, think what a difference it would make to us.’

  ‘Are you talking about hypnotism,’ he asked, ‘or about imagination?’

  ‘I think I’m talking about the development of new systems of thought. When I was studying mathematics, I sometimes used to see the answer to a thing, and that moment – you see, I have no words to express what happens. I can only say that those were the great moments of my life, entirely different from any other kind of thought. They were moments of discovery. I never came up with an important new scientific equation, but I know how it’s done. It’s just that there’s no way of repeating the process at will. It’s impossible to recreate any of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It happens too fast, and nobody understands what the beginning stages are. I suppose you could have bits and pieces of thought lying around in your mind for years before you were struck by the idea that fitted them all together.’

  ‘But mesmerism is something quite different.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. It seems to me that it’s all part of the mechanism.’

  ‘It’s a circus trick. It’s hypnotizing people who are strangers to you, and then – part of the business is pure fraud. Didn’t you ever play those children’s games where one person goes out of the room and comes back, and the other one makes him guess a number?’

  ‘What I remember are the ones where I ended up hiding in a broom cupboard somewhere and kissing a friend in the dark. I spent years kissing other little girls until I realized that I could do it with boys, too.’

  ‘And now you want to mesmerize them.’

  ‘The principle interests me. What’s the trick with the numbers?’

  ‘As you go out the door, you put your hand on the frame and show the number of fingers that correspond to the right figure.’

  ‘Eighty-nine?’

  ‘Five or less, or a combination of the numbers you can get by using both hands. The choice is limited. I expect you could do eighty-nine if you stood there talking for a while before you left.’

  ‘That’s interesting, too,’ she said. ‘The tactic of distracting the eye. Frauds are always limited like that, but you don’t notice it because your attention has been directed to something else.’

  ‘Exactly. Even in everyday life. The attention is attracted to the future, to the past. Romance.’

  ‘Romance?’

  ‘The girls were talking about the book the other day. I asked them what sorts of books they liked to read, and they said: a book that was really romantic.’

  ‘That just means slushy bits about undying affection and proposals in the conservatory. And his manly chin and sensitive blue eyes.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘The sacrifice of a good woman, winning out against villainy – that kind of thing. Minute details about what they’re all wearing and eating. I’ve seen the books they read. But I used to be almost as bad. There aren’t many exciting stories for girls, so I was always poring over the books for boys. You probably grew up reading the same ones – I can’t imagine they’d have changed much. They’re a different brand of romance: heroism, danger, fighting and rescuing, capturing the lost princess, and so on. St George and the dragon in various disguises.’

  ‘I suppose it’s a kind of mythology we retain all our lives.’

  ‘But pure thought would be different.’

  ‘Pure thought would have no story attached.’

  ‘It’s the way by which we discover new ideas.’

  ‘Don’t the new ones grow out of the old ones?’

  ‘Sometimes’, she told him, ‘it looks as if there’s no connection – that new ideas come like new genetic forms, in a jump away from everything that went before.’

  ‘If it’s so different, where does it come from?’

  ‘That’s one of the questions I like: where do ideas come from?’

  ‘Oh, from people. That wasn’t what I meant. Maybe it’s better to ask what it is that draws the ideas out of them.’ He kneaded his right hand with the left one.

  ‘You can get something for that,’ she said. ‘A piece of india rubber to do exercises with. It helps to distribute the tensions.’<
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  ‘I thought it was improving, but it’s still no better.’

  ‘They really work.’

  ‘It’s from the writing,’ he said; ‘keeping it in a fixed position for too long.’

  ‘The book is nearly ready to be shown.’

  ‘Not for a while yet.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘If you let me have your copy in two days, I’d like to take it into town.’

  *

  The buds were still small on the trees, but the sun came out strongly. It didn’t stay for long, though it promised the real spring. Everyone’s spirits rose. The house was happy.

  Erika came back from town to say that two magazines were interested in the book: one, a popular publication, the other a scientific journal.

  ‘The scientific one,’ he said.

  ‘I thought we might try both.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘The scientists aren’t so interested in the text.’ ‘That’s all right. It’s the pictures that are important.’ ‘And they don’t have much space. I’ll see what I can do.’ She spoke to friends of hers and managed to divide the book and to share the sections between the two journals. The popular one was to come out first; the editors wanted a short, biographical introduction and photographs.

  ‘Nothing about the expedition,’ he said. ‘Just the plants.’

  ‘But of course they’re anxious to know all about the fever-ridden struggle, and so forth.’

  ‘Melodrama,’ he said shortly. ‘It was an expedition that failed. I want to forget it. Let them see the botanical drawings. They’re as interesting as any Treasure of the Kings. You did a beautiful job with them.’ He flexed his hand again. He was getting stabbing pains over the back of it, across the knuckles.

  ‘I’ll bring you one of those things from town,’ she told him.

  *

  He listened to Ekdahl talk about the necessity of finding a really good tree man to go over the estate. And he wrote down the names and addresses of the people Ekdahl recommended. He spent a whole day looking through cupboards and spare rooms with Ingrid and Elsie. Elsie tried to convince him that the dining room trim should be blue and not the green Lina wanted.

  He sent for samples of writing paper, letterheads, damask, lace and carpeting; he wrote away for information about restoring the foxed engravings in the upstairs hallway.

  The scientific journal sent its proofs, which were in colour and very handsome. His notes were printed at the side or beneath the pictures, his introduction had been kept to a minimum. Contrary to what Erika had been told, nearly all the drawings and paintings had been accepted and publication was brought forward. Several people, she suspected, had failed to hand in other articles on time, so there had suddenly been a whole issue to fill.

  It came out within the week. He signed his free copies and distributed them among the family. Everyone was immensely proud of him, although at the special lunch, which was organized by Lina, he rose to his feet and gave a gallant testimonial in praise of Erika’s work. She took his thanks without embarrassment and said something in her speech of acceptance that confounded him; she spoke of the perpetual need for a fresh discovery of the world; and of the importance of observation. Observation, she said, was discovery. The ability to look at familiar things in a new way was just as significant as the discovery of new things to look at for the first time.

  She blew him a kiss and sat down, and the table became so intoxicated with talk, drink, merriment and its own good opinion of itself, that everyone ended up singing till half-way through the afternoon and all of them had to take long naps afterwards.

  The next morning saw the arrival of the other offprint, the one from the popular magazine. As soon as Anders turned the first page, he thought that the fear he had sensed hanging over him for so long must have been a misinterpreted foreknowledge of that moment. He stood up, rushed from the terrace doors without an overcoat and ran to the boathouse. He yanked at the latch and burst in.

  Erika rose from behind her worktable, saying, ‘What’s happened?’

  He handed her the opened package.

  ‘The new proofs? They seem to have cut down most of the pictures, don’t they?’

  ‘Read it,’ he said.

  ‘They went through hell and lived like gods. The hungry tentacles of the jungle surrounded them on all sides, its menacing dangers lurking behind every tree – rather lurid style they’ve got.’

  ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘Weary with toil, maddened by fevers, they were forced to eat their precious specimens – that’s inspired. Sounds almost indecent.’

  ‘They can’t print it. I’ll – it’s got to be stopped. And the relatives of the ones who died – think of them coming across this trash.’

  ‘Of course. Lusty men in exotic landscapes, from the taverns of Rio to remote tribes, where native women – yes, I see. I had no idea it was going to be this bad. They seem to be pushing it for all it’s worth. I guess this was another case of having to fill the issue. Well, don’t worry about it, Anders. I’ll make sure it doesn’t get through.’

  ‘I mean it, Erika. It’s very, very important. It isn’t simply the sensationalistic style. I couldn’t have my name associated with a publication that put out anything like this, ever.’

  ‘Right. It may actually have changed hands since I talked to the boys at the desk. One can never tell with magazines. One good thing, anyway – they’re always in financial trouble, so they don’t pay up for months. You never signed anything – in fact, all the business was done through me, so you can withdraw and threaten to take legal action. Just leave it with me.’

  She was surprised to see how upset he was. It took her a long while to calm him down. At first she tried reading out more of the article, which amused her greatly, but it infuriated him. He couldn’t bear to hear life described in that way, he told her. ‘The others –’ he said. ‘The others –’

  ‘Have some tea,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll go up to town this morning. I can go with Louise.’

  She didn’t come back till late in the evening and she had all the original papers with her, plus a signed statement by someone to the effect that nothing, not even his own version as first presented, would ever be used. And in addition, she assured him that she’d gone into the works and stood there while the men broke up the formes. ‘Just in case there was another mix-up,’ she said.

  ‘One of those moments when they suddenly need to fill the empty spaces?’

  ‘That’s right. So, your worries are over. A successful day for both of us, me and Louise. Or maybe you didn’t know.’

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘If I tell you, you have to promise not to say anything to Lina before I give you permission.’

  He promised, and was told that Louise had fallen under the spell of a viola player in one of the musical groups that played for her ladies’ music appreciation classes. The man’s name was Oscar Kellner and Anders remembered hearing him play. He wasn’t bad, although not a particularly interesting player, either, and certainly not good enough to be a soloist: a shabby, respectable widower, so Erika said, with two adolescent daughters each as plain as a post.

  It wasn’t long before Louise made the announcement herself. ‘We plan to marry,’ she said, ‘at the end of the summer, or perhaps the beginning of October.’

  He expressed his delight at her good fortune. Lina was the one who was horrified. ‘You’ll think differently about it soon,’ he told her. ‘I’ve had nearly a week to get used to the idea. Erika made me swear not to let the secret out.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking so hard and so long about the girls: about sending them off to dances in their ballgowns, scheming to put them on the right lists, finding suitable young men, getting them married. I’ve been looking even farther ahead than that. It’s been a long time now since there were small children in the house.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘And here it’s Louise who goes and springs this
on us, with someone so entirely unsuitable. It’s ridiculous. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘When I think of Ib –’

  ‘Don’t think of him. Remember what you told me about waiting and being faithful. She waited ten years. Ib is gone. You have to see things now as if we’d all lived through a war: everything has changed, all our fortunes were altered and reversed, our lives turned upside-down. But we’ve survived. Think of it that way. Let Louise find whatever happiness she can.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. It’s just that it’s such a step down.’

  ‘Happiness is always a step up,’ he said. ‘And it’s something for her to do with her life.’

  ‘That’s a dreadful definition of marriage.’

  ‘Why? If that’s what it amounts to? No worse than any other definition. And no worse than any other occupation.’

  ‘One always hopes for at least a glimpse of the deeper values, and for love. Now, honestly, who could love a poor, faded creature like that?’

  ‘Louise, evidently.’

  ‘I used to think, before she got engaged to Ib, that she was a little in love with you.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve always been very fond of Louise,’ he said. And he had felt guilty about her ever since his return. He had felt worse about her wasted years than about his wife’s. The guilt added to his hopes for her happiness and made him glad that she had discovered someone, even if the man she’d come up with appeared to be a rather uninteresting find.

  A wedding, and before that an engagement, meant new clothes. The planned journey to Paris was therefore preceded by many trips into town, where the women of the household chose materials, were measured, fitted, and had to go back for more appointments at the dressmaker’s. Sometimes they travelled in a group, sometimes in twos and threes. One day Anders took his two daughters out together; they had coffee, went for a walk in the park, looked in at the museum, had a long lunch and saw a silly comedy at the theatre. The fittings took barely any time at all, the lunch was long and giggly. He saw to it that the girls had a good supply of champagne, and they were all in hysterics by the end of the meal. He thought how charming they were, and how lucky the men would be who married them. What fun it would be, he thought, to be in love with girls like that: as pretty as butterflies and apparently as carefree, but actually so soft-hearted that their eyes filled with tears when they thought about motherless children or mistreated animals, or the lot of the poor – though not the poor right there in town, who were dirty, insolent, foul-mouthed and workshy.