Tony Hanbury’s attempt to erase the Savignyplatz period from existence by filling a suitcase with some clothes, lugging it down four flights of stairs and dashing to the railway station, turned out to be a dismal failure. The experiment in homemaking had branded him, and like all brandings it would be with him forever. As for the impact of his act on Sabine, he never fully realized the extent of the devastation.
She comes home from a university lecture with a shopping bag of things for dinner. Inside the front door she yells, Hallo, ich bin’s! I’m home! and is surprised there is no answer. The flat is orderly. She notices first that both pairs of his shoes are gone, then that the leather jacket isn’t hanging where it ought to. Only in the bedroom, tidy as always, where she discovers the closet is half-empty, does shock begin to hit. She rushes into the living room. Everything normal. Breathing hard she bursts into the kitchen and finds a note: I have to go back. I have no choice. Please, please forgive me. The rent is paid. The stereo is yours. Sabine reads it twice. Her heart ruptures. Whimpering she sinks to the floor.
Throughout the night and into the morning, her face streaked with tears, she feels despair. She searches for reasons, tries to find the grounds that tell her none of this is so. The sun coming up brings hatred. With a hammer she hacks at the stereo. The turntable is quickly smashed; the amplifier and speakers withstand repeated blows, but eventually they break too.
On the train and plane, Hanbury mostly stares out windows. He has difficulty ordering his thoughts. Were he a cynic, he’d be convincing himself Savignyplatz was one of life’s pleasant interludes. But he is not a cynic. Were he a romantic, sensitive to others, he’d be detesting himself. But he’s not a romantic either. Throughout the trip, he experiences something else – incertitude. Did he do the right thing? Could he have done it better? He isn’t sure. He knows if he had stayed to talk it through, Sabine would have convinced him not to leave. That would have caused a huge mistake – of the kind he saw up close when he was being raised. But had he been told as he travelled that his stereo was being savagely dismembered, he wouldn’t have known what to say. And if someone had whispered that Sabine was also breaking up into pieces, ones not easily reassembled, an empty look would have settled on his face. He had no inkling then, nor in the years that followed, that the Savignyplatz experiment, even after Werner Schwartz had come onto the scene, would continue to be Sabine’s deep abomination.
What did Tony Hanbury do during that time, while Sabine hated?
After scampering back across the Atlantic he spent time looking for a job, wrote an exam, attended an interview and accepted an offer from the Service. The Service, Hanbury considered, had a reassuring feel – of being a permanent hideaway. And it provided insurance against risks such as befell him in Berlin. After all, should things ever get sticky, as on Savignyplatz, an assignment to some distant place would never be far off. His first Service job was in the library – the Abbey – a quiet realm, not greatly different from what he thought such medieval hideaways might have been. In fact, what monks did and what he had to do was roughly comparable. Whereas they spent months hand-copying manuscripts, Hanbury took the overnight cables from the four corners of the world to retool them into a few tight paragraphs. This product served the high priest. Each morning, summaries of the world’s great events had to be ready for him on his desk. For almost a year the novitiate laboured from two in the morning until just after the high priest’s working day began, with the benefit of going home when everyone else was jostling to get in. His new stereo was a step down from the one in Berlin, the bedsit was less comfortable than the apartment he shared with Sabine, and Bronson Avenue didn’t hold a candle to Savignyplatz as a place for observing interesting people, but in his monkish existence Hanbury was not unhappy. He had spare time, which he devoted to listening to music.
As Anthony Hanbury was being rewarded for his Abbey diligence – by being assigned as vice-consul to San Francisco – Sabine Müller was turning a new page too.
“You’re quiet,” were the first words Werner directed at Sabine, but she ignored him. They were walking down a hallway after a history seminar. She suddenly took a side door which opened to the street. “Until next week,” he called after her. Sabine didn’t say much in the seminars, whereas Werner Schwartz spoke up all the time. Outside the classroom she was glacial. He tried various topics, but Sabine would depart quickly, wordlessly. He became an expert at watching her walk away. Delicate hair, fragile shoulders, a hint of a dancing movement in the hips. This didn’t change until Schwartz had an off-day, when he didn’t dominate the seminar discussion.
“Got the ‘flu?” Sabine asked at the end of a session that had dragged.
“I’m not too interested in the 1848 revolution,” Schwartz admitted.
“Well, Bismarck’s next week. Maybe he’ll make you feel better.”
“He makes all of us feel better.” Schwartz answered, watching Sabine waltz off.
Bismarck promoted the thaw, and by the time the French had been decisively defeated in 1871, when the Prussian King was crowned Kaiser and Berlin became Hauptstadt des Deutschens Reiches, Sabine had accepted an invitation to have lunch. She next met his friends. Werner Schwartz, she learned, was part of an intricate web of connections. He was planning a university career and, given the people he associated with, plus his intellect, she didn’t doubt he’d be successful. The more she saw of him the more she entered into a dialogue – entirely with herself – about points in his favour: a Berliner, smart, decisive, orderly and punctual, an apartment full of antique furniture, many fine old books. Ballast, that’s what he had. Everywhere she looked she saw ballast.
Points in favour continued to accumulate, so Sabine moved in with Werner. The apartment she now shared was different from Savignyplatz. It was full of all kinds of things.
In July ‘69, while moving to San Francisco, the new vice-consul stopped in Indian Head. The soil scientist was away in the fields advising farmers. His mother sat on the front porch talking to herself, mostly in French. She had shrunk since he last saw her. For several days he tried to catch what she was saying, but it was hopeless. To escape, Hanbury spent evenings with Keystone, who showed a lively interest in his plans. After three days Hanbury stole out of Indian Head early in the morning, walking up to the Trans-Canada to catch a Greyhound bus. No one was up except Keystone. “Stay in touch, son,” Keystone said across his front gate. “Send us a postcard.”
Few places, the consul was sure, could equal San Francisco. Who wouldn’t want to serve there? The office closed punctually at five, when he became free to roam. Haight-Ashbury, Chinatown, the Wharf. On the weekends, he went across the Bay to Berkeley. Sitting on sidewalks, lying around in parks, observing the scene unfolding, it was inevitable, given the times, that Hanbury would run into a flower child. Her name was Shirley; she was from Ohio. Shirley’s hair went down below her hips. Jeans fitted so tight that everything above the waist seemed voluptuously squeezed out. Her top had fringes on the sleeves and underneath, judging from the trembling, there was nothing but Shirley. She hung out around Berkeley, she explained to Hanbury, because the atmosphere was right. In Berkeley you had to be blind not to see that the establishment was disintegrating. The revolution is on. It can’t be stopped. She talked to Hanbury about pigs too. Pigs are everywhere. Half of them wear blue uniforms; the other half dress in blue suits. Shirley loved going to demonstrations against the Vietnam War and held other views. I’d burn my bra, but I ain’t got one any more.
The mention of revolution made Hanbury think of Günther Rauch. He borrowed some of his Marx and described certain other of Rauch’s theories to Shirley, such as the absurdity of the notion that land (which is permanent) can be owned by people (whose lives are transient). Shirley threw her hair around when she heard this and kept saying,Wow! Wow! That blows my mind! That’s pure truth! The third time they got together, a Sunday afternoon, reclining on a Berkeley lawn with an acid-rock band splintering the air a stone’s throw away, Shirley began asking personal questions. When she learned he was Canadian, she looked bewildered. Is that some place in Scotland? She also insisted, with a name like Tony, he must be a hairdresser. When he described his work, Shirley’s eyes transformed into empty vessels. The vice-consul reassured her. He said in his job he had to help people. “And it’s bread, Shirley,” he argued. “Like everybody else, I gotta eat.” The confession stirred her. I like relating to you. She became personal about herself, saying she spent the days practising a new way of seeing. She explained that the cafeteria in the distance (behind the rock band) wasn’t exactly there. Because of Einstein, space was known to be curved, meaning the cafeteria was actually a little over. Everyone, she insisted, should get used to seeing straight lines as curved lines, but the establishment and the pigs prevented it. Even now, right across America, kids were being screwed up in the schools. Do you realize eighty-five percent of school kids own a ruler? She then revealed another intimate thought. It isn’t hormones, it’s the stars that make love happen.
They smoked a joint. That over with, abandoning herself to deep exhilaration, Shirley took control. Come with me. Nearby stood a thicket of large rhododendrons. On hands and knees she crawled in like a toddler at play, the vice-consul following. It was peaceful underneath nature’s canopy. The acid rock was muted. Diffuse light filtered in. The waxy leaves afforded the privacy of a tent. With one smooth, practised movement, Shirley slipped her top off, mesmerizing Hanbury with the beauty of her breasts. Shirley took his reflection as a faltering, as an expression of male responsibility. It’s OK. I’m on the pill. Her tight jeans came off quick, panties joining a scanty heap of clothing. The vice-consul now joined in. He was quickly naked too, following which some of the techniques acquired on Savignyplatz came back. He felt he was putting in a credible performance. Afterwards, Shirley wanted to know something. Where did you learn to fuck like that? Hanbury didn’t want to get into a discussion on Berlin, so he said, “Picked it up on the prairies. You’re pretty mobile yourself.” Underneath the rhododendrons, this compliment led to a lengthy enumeration of Shirley’s lovers.
A few days later, Shirley, her interest piqued in a vice-consul who was both slightly timid and very worldly, knocked on his door. The apartment was spartan and she liked that. She also fell in love with the stereo. The record collection, on the other hand, failed the inspection. You have weird tastes. You listen to this stuff? Shirley declared she’d fix the problem. Tony needed exposure to the best music there was. To help the cause, she moved in. Sort of. Her presence in the apartment was off and on. It was determined by galactic signals that only she could read. We’re both free to come and go, she ruled. Also, neither asks who else the other’s fucking. OK?
At the office, a new consul general, an intellectual with a close-cropped beard, picked the vice-consul’s brain on the local scene and was impressed by what Hanbury knew about the anti-war movement in the universities. He wanted the vice-consul to accompany him on calls to keep notes. He also instructed his young assistant to attend political events. Hanbury was suddenly busy, day and night and often on the weekends. This caused things to switch around in the apartment. Shirley was there more than Hanbury, often waiting for him to come home. I hung around ‘cause I thought you might like a piece of tail, she’d say, making it sound as if she were offering him some leftovers from dinner. She smoked a lot of hash alone, which made her moody.
One day, a federal cabinet minister came to San Francisco to give a speech. The vice-consul was responsible for logistics, from the VIP arrival at the airport through to a night out on the town. It went well. Cars arrived on time. Doors opened when they should. There was an audience for the speech. A couple of journalists asked a few questions about a crisis in Quebec. What’s going on in Canada, they wanted to know, and what the hell is all this about a War Measures Act? The minister loved the attention. He invited the consul general and the vice-consul to join him for dinner in a restaurant of their choice. “Up to you, Tony,” the consul general said. “You know Frisco.” Hanbury proposed a restaurant in Chinatown.
When Hanbury arrived home to change, Shirley was sulking. Y ou’re always out. Stay home. Smoke some dope. Have a fuck. Listen to the Grateful Dead. When Hanbury was quietly leaving for dinner, she was sprawled on a large, bean-filled leather bag before the stereo, not a stitch on. It hurt her to see Tony go out dressed in a clean, freshly-pressed blue suit. She shouted after him,You’re a fucking pig.
The dinner was a great success since the minister had a sharp eye for girls and the restaurant was full of them, mostly office girls on holiday from places like Boise, Idaho, Sioux City, Iowa, and Pierre, South Dakota. The minister winked and nodded and ordered waiters to serve the girls wine. The consul general smiled benevolently. The vice-consul also thought it was fun. After dessert, the minister, beginning to look greedy, said, “Time boys. Time.” He shifted a knowing gaze towards the consul general, who redirected it to Hanbury. Both men looked questioningly at him. After a pause, something dawned. Hanbury caught a waiter’s eye. “The bill please,” he said, “and a taxi.”
“You sure?” the minister said incredulously. “No problem with timing?”
“No problem, Sir,” the vice-consul replied.
“He knows his way around, Minister,” the consul general added.
“Well I’ll be dammed. That’s incredible,” said the minister. “All previously arranged, eh? OK. I get it.”
The taxi arrived before the bill. The consul general and the minister went out. Hanbury lingered to arrange payment. Some girls two tables over smiled freely. He sent them a graceful nod, then hurried out. His dinner companions were nowhere to be seen. “Two men leave in a taxi?” he asked the doorman.
“Yassuh. Daddaway.”
“They say anything.”
“Nope. Wanna taxi?”
“I’m OK,” he said to the doorman. There was nothing to do but go home. He thought of Shirley, doped up, spread out on the floor, and took a slow route on foot. Shirley was where he had left her, now snoring. He threw a blanket over her. A few hours later when he left for work, she still hadn’t stirred.
“Don’t bother with the minister and the airport,” the consul general said severely the moment Hanbury got into the office. “He just called. Said he’ll find his own way. Sounded angry. Said he’ll complain. What happened?”
Without much sleep, a haggard Hanbury needed time to decipher. “What happened?” he said. “What do you mean what happened? Nothing happened. You were with the minister. I paid the bill. When I went outside, you were gone. I went home. Do you know how many bottles of wine he sent into that restaurant? Twelve. Not plonk either. It busted my credit limit. Did he leave some money with you?”
Now the consul general had to let things sink in. When the picture was in focus, he sighed, closed his eyes and shook his head. “Tony,” he murmured, “where have you been? Why do you think he was sending wine to all the girls? He wanted them. Some of them. My guess is three or four were game. They were ready to go.”
“Where?”
“Where do you think?” the consul general said with exasperation. “I left him waiting for you in the hotel bar. He expected you to bring the girls along. I relied on you to fix it.”
“No one said anything about that. I understood he was tired. I wondered why you didn’t wait.”
The consul general turned and disappeared. Two days later Hanbury was summoned. “He’s complained,” the consul general said. “Fairly vicious. Claims unacceptable protocol lapses. I explained your side to Investitures. They’re inclined to side with you, but they’ve already assured the minister heads will roll. You can’t stay as if nothing happened. You’re being reassigned. That’s it. Nothing more to say. Life in the Service. Let me have the restaurant bill. I’ll launder it through hospitality.”
Within days Hanbury learned he was on his way to Washington, demoted to doing passports. No more ministers to be entrusted into his care. Before leaving, he paid three months rent and confronted a sluggish Shirley. “Nothing I can do about it,” he said. “Part of the job.” Shirley took it fairly well. I’ve thought about you a lot. I feel sorry for you. You’re not in touch with your feelings. I thought I could change you, get you to relate. But you’re sick. You need treatment. The stereo was bequeathed to Shirley, plus all the home furnishings she ever wanted. Hanbury took with him his clothes and weird records.
While Hanbury escaped from Shirley, Sabine was cementing things with Werner. During the days they went their different ways, but they connected in the evenings. Sometimes Schwartz came home late. “Na endlich!” she would say fretfully. At last! She was relieved, yet couldn’t hide an undertone of anger. Although Schwartz liked Sabine’s fussing if he was late, he didn’t understand it and said so once or twice. Sabine wanted to tell him about Savignyplatz, but the right occasion, the right moment never came. The specifics were fading in any case. Lingering were occasional outbreaks of terror which she didn’t want to admit having.
Schwartz acquired a teaching position at the University, in History. Sabine took a job at Geissler’s. Schwartz used his connections to acquire a bigger apartment on Fasanenstrasse. More of his family furniture came out of storage. Historical portraits of his forbears graced the walls. A large front room became the library. There was a salon, a dining room, spare rooms for guests. They hosted parties. Sabine developed the art of asking his friends interesting questions. That, together with her moody eyes and a habit of not rushing guests, made her an admired hostess. Everyone wanted a few minutes with Sabine.
Everything was beginning to work out. Even marrying Werner Schwartz was working out. In her blissful rush, Sabine paid no attention to remarks by Martina that Schwartz’s friends were all of a type – strong-willed, clean-shaven and focussed excessively on success. She once summed them up. “They have a self-confidence that has no basis.” Then she became blunt. “Speaking frankly, your husband and his friends strut about like perfect Germans, even though its been proven that we are not an especially remarkable race.” Sabine thought Martina was wrong. Her husband didn’t strut. He was moving up with a kind of gliding motion, with tranquillity and ease.
Hanbury, after San Francisco, was not moving up. He got shunted sideways. Bunkered down doing passports, he avoided further mishaps. The new stereo he acquired was the finest to date. After Washington came some years in Ottawa, this time living on a quiet street in the Glebe. The landlady insisted on peace and Hanbury used earphones if he wanted volume. Chopin, Liszt, Schumann: fine music for a withdrawn world. At work he dispensed, as Service jargon had it,beneficences. He was a member of an underrated sect helping Canadians abroad who have fallen on hard times. Canucks jailed for smuggling alcohol into Saudi Arabia, or smiling at veiled eyes in Tehran, or observing military convoys with too much interest in Ghadafi’s Tripoli – the burden of solving all such personal disasters throughout North Africa and the Middle East sat on his shoulders. Problems from all over came his way. A flood of problems. Some days he thought he was getting to know every worried parent between Belle Isle Landing in Newfoundland and Clayoquot Sound in British Columbia.
His mother’s funeral in Indian Head was an interlude. At the burial, the soil scientist seemed unmoved, mumbling it was better this way. Hanbury had an evening with Keystone, who told stories about the awesome power of the latest diesel locomotives.
Hanbury’s stay in Beneficences was a long one. He was a quiet, credible solver of other people’s problems. Low key, the Beneficences priest recorded. Does the job. Could go places if he showed more zip. Investitures sent him to Cairo, then, as second secretary, consular.
In Cairo he developed a taste for Arabic music. At first he thought it sounded like wailing from a madhouse, but it grew on him. Most evenings in his penthouse flat on an upper middle class street overlooking the Nile, dressed in an Egyptian gown, incense burning, chewing bitter leaves, Hanbury had private concerts which began with a half-hour of Arabian lament, then came back to European music. In those days his taste ran towards Stravinsky, even Schoenberg. The Rite of Spring, listened to after a couple of hours of chewing, made him jerk and twitch. He loved his time in Cairo. Only one event interrupted the routine. Eileen from Toronto was spending February there, after January in Istanbul, and prior to March in Greece. Her passport was stolen in the Suk, she said. She swore an oath before the second secretary that she was who she said she was, after which she and Tony compared Egyptian experiences. They went out a couple of times and decided to make a trip together, a few days up to Luxor. She summed up the experience in a postcard from Athens two weeks later. Thank you for showing me Elysium!
After Cairo came Caracas and another interruption, this one more serious. Hanbury slid into an affair with Anne-Marie, cultural officer at the French Embassy. At first, innocently, they lunched once a week, then he saw her in the evenings and finally spent the nights in her bed. After a few months, Anne-Marie suggested a vacation on Martinique. Hanbury did a mental calculation (a quarter of a year before his next assignment) and said sure. They passed two weeks on the island as a carefree couple. The holiday was a real success. When Hanbury’s time in Caracas was up, the last night with Anne-Marie was subdued. C’était bien, she summed up. Hanbury replied,C’était comme Elysium. Anne-Marie agreed. Oui, c’était comme ça. Tu as raison. Hanbury departed for Kuala Lumpur. A few weeks later Anne-Marie was reassigned to Pretoria. Their correspondence petered out.
In Berlin, Sabine bore a son. His name posed a problem because her husband wanted his mother’s family, Prussian nobility, to be reflected in the given names. He proposed Philip Pöllnitz Schwartz, arguing that his maternal grandfather, Philip von Pöllnitz, a renowned Junker, deserved to be honoured. For balance, he suggested that Sabine’s father could be in there somewhere too. As in Philip Pöllnitz Albert Schwartz. Sabine, still in an immediate post-natal state, was horrified. “Nicholas,” she said. “I’ve always known if I had a son, he would be Nicholas.”
“There’s no Nicholas in either of our families.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s a beautiful name.”
Schwartz sternly insisted family precedent mattered. When Sabine began to cry, he said they would talk about it further.
Sabine continued to insist on Nicholas and opposed using a family name as a given name. First they agreed Albert would be the second name. Sabine, holding firmly to Nicholas, offered Nicholas Albert Philip Schwartz. In her husband’s opinion that was putting his grandfather too far back. An understanding was reached that Philip would be first choice for an eventual second son. “Or Phillipa,” said Sabine. “I wouldn’t object to Phillipa if it’s a girl.” “We’ll see when the time comes,” Schwartz said, sounding reasonable, but irked that his son would carry the name of a Russian czar.
In Kuala Lumpur Hanbury became first secretary with new responsibilities, politically and socially. No more doling out beneficences to snotty kids. In Kuala Lumpur he would be doing political work – administering the sacraments – full time. He sent off Notes Verbales, visited influential Malaysians in their offices where he slipped them delicately phrased Aides-Mémoires. He enjoyed going with the high commissioner to tête-à-têtes with leading politicians. His status brought with it a house in a large garden full of tropical trees. Birds in the trees squabbled like playground children while insects hummed primordially. Some weekend afternoons Hanbury was so entertained by nature in his garden that he forgot to activate the stereo.
One lazy Sunday afternoon, having been served iced tea by the Malay cook and listening to a delightful interplay of shrill cicadas and shrieking protests from tropical birds, Hanbury had an insight; nothing spectacular, merely a recognition of some existing facts. Passing through his field of vision, in an area roughly midway between the terrace and the luxurious red and purple bougainvillea hedge, was a parade of loving smiles from women he had known. They seemed so real that the bodies to which the smiles belonged could materialize at any moment. Reflecting on this spectacle of love, Hanbury realised how lucky he had been. The smiles could be grouped into two camps: Sabine and Shirley who had moved in, and Eileen and Anne-Marie who had not. It was no coincidence that parting with the latter two had generally been more amiable.
This distillation of experience remained at work far back in his mind, nearly in the region of the subconscious. It was still there when he met Birgit, a descendent of the blondest of all the Vikings.
The high commissioner liked to send his political first secretary to represent him at social events. In a crackling voice he gave the young man wise advice. “Make sure you receive more than you give,” he warned. “Listen much, talk little.” Hanbury was doing so at a dull drinks party given by the chargé d’affaires from Sweden when Birgit breezed in late. Hanbury was fondling a glass of cold aquavit in the presence of his Norwegian opposite and two visiting academics from Stockholm. The Scandinavians believed the world was on the verge of unspeakable horrors, and heatedly discussed which of the many was the worst. Hanbury was about to stroll to another corner of the room when Birgit, who knew the Norwegian, sidled up. She was a conversation stopper. Global horrors were forgotten. Two drooling academics wanted to know what she was doing in Kuala Lumpur. Were it not for the divine blondness of her hair, the playful eyes of fading blue and lovely well-formed lips, Hanbury would have moved along, but he was as hypnotized as the others. Birgit was saying she was in charge of a project, funded by a Scandinavian Trust, to study the role of women in South East Asian society. The Scandinavian men around her replied they found that interesting. They said they were fascinated by the subject.
The background music at the party changed from syrupy Hollywood film scores to something symphonic. Hanbury’s ears pricked up. “Sibelius,” he said with child-like excitement. “Violin Concerto, third movement.”
“Not at all!” objected one of the academics disdainfully. “Tchaikovsky, surely.”
“I think it’s Grieg,” said the Norwegian.
“This is fun,” Birgit said, directing her diamond-glittering eyes at Hanbury.
The host was asked to referee. He read off the back of the cassette. Hanbury had it right.
“Are you American?” she asked.
“Saskatchewan,” he said.
“Canada,” the Norwegian explained.
“Located between the Atlantic and the Pacific,” confirmed Hanbury. “Good Sibelius country. We keep hoping one day someone like him will come along.”
“Fatuous nonsense,” said an academic.
But Birgit enjoyed it. Later in the evening she sought Hanbury out, her smile undiminished. “Are you a music expert?”
“Actually not.”
“Where did you pick it up?”
“A place called Indian Head. And you? You’re from Stockholm?”
“Further north. Kiruna. Above the Arctic Circle.”
“So we’re practically neighbours.”
Birgit said she loved music and could play the flute. “I sort of play the flute,” she added carefully. Hanbury let on that he sort of knew his way around on the piano. They compared notes on musical training before talking about places they knew in Malaysia. The party was ending. Hanbury, who had the high commissioner’s car and driver, offered Birgit a lift, but she had her own car. “I was going to offer you one,” she said.
“Perhaps next time,” he suggested.
Outside in the tropical night, Hanbury waved to Birgit as the chauffeur opened his door. She waved back, her eyes such perfect reflectors of light that it seemed two space-age beams of blue lit up the driveway.
Some days later she phoned and talked about an institute outside the city which promoted women’s cooperatives. An afternoon of international cultural events was being arranged. Birgit had agreed to play something on the flute. She asked if Hanbury could accompany her on the piano. “I haven’t played for a long time,” he cautioned. “It must be over twenty years. My fingers might creak.” Birgit said that generally would be the standard. Hanbury imagined Birgit’s lips breathing life into a silver instrument. The vision was compelling. “Don’t expect much,” he warned. “Not from me either,” she laughed.
Birgit did the driving. The piano at the women’s institute was an upright, a badly out-of-tune affair. Hanbury had never played on anything like it. Also, time had stiffened his fingers. But it came, the old feeling came. The effortlessness returned. Chords came back and he spun them out, hands floating over the keys, steadily more quickly and smoothly, back and forth, hypnotically, like surf breaking on a beach.
“Jesus,” Birgit swore.
“It’s got a very heavy motion,” he complained about the piano, then banged out the first few bars of a Chopin étude. “Dancing with a windmill would be lighter.”
“I’m not unpacking my flute,” Birgit said. “You do the whole show.” But she relented, and they practised a bit. She sent delicate streams of air into a gleaming instrument. The combination of the silver flute, the light blue in two concentrating eyes, the unbelievable blondness of her hair and the rustling of a light silk dress was better, Hanbury thought, than anything chronicled in the Norse myths. She was close too. Had he reached sideways, he could have touched her knee.
The cultural afternoon unfolded with élan. Canada’s political first secretary was a hit with the ladies. Twice they insisted that he play something solo. “You were the only one with talent,” Birgit said afterwards when they speeded back to Kuala Lumpur. Hanbury noticed she liked driving fast. “Maybe,” he replied, “but my talent is lopsided. You’re an all-rounder. I don’t even know how to drive.” A laughing Birgit took the next roundabout even faster. “Dinner?” he inquired, but she had something on. Birgit then suggested he come to her place for dinner next weekend.
It wasn’t what he had imagined. Birgit’s small flat was full of people. The Norwegian was there. So was the Swedish chargé with a wife who wore her hair in braids. Several smiling Indian and Malay women with whom Birgit worked had brought their hungry husbands. All evening long a World Bank economist, a loud man of little humour, declared disgruntlement with Malaysia’s oligarchy. Birgit, in a deep-blue, floor-length gown with thin shoulder straps, was a perfect hostess. She kept her guests in drinks and repeatedly led them to the buffet.
“I still owe you a dinner,” he said upon leaving.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“I’ll call you.”
Hanbury thought of having her for dinner at his villa, on the terrace, surrounded by night sounds. But he decided otherwise. They went to the Hilton. A Filipino band was featured. In between courses they danced. He jerked his arms and, from a kind of crouching position, swayed his upper body. Birgit on the other hand possessed an infinite reservoir of slinky movements. She was as happy and excited as a girl on a first date.
They were seen together regularly the following weeks – all over Kuala Lumpur – in restaurants and discotheques and in the brand new shopping centres. They were also together where they could not be seen, in Birgit’s small flat. Birgit was persistently platonic and Hanbury was very patient. Eventually he asked a question he had been formulating for weeks. He managed to deliver it casually, in the same way Anne-Marie had suggested Martinique. “Why don’t we fly to Singapore?” he said. “Spend a weekend. Have a look around.”
Birgit stopped smiling, saying she couldn’t. She should have told him earlier. She had a husband. “And for all I know you’ve got a wife somewhere,” she added.
“I’m married to my career,” he quipped, making light of the situation.
More news followed. Birgit’s husband, Olaf, was coming for a holiday. Hanbury said that was wonderful. He was sure she was looking forward to it.
In his villa that night, Hanbury’s mood was strangely leavened. He attributed this to the music of Bach. Upon departing Birgit’s flat, he had decided to listen to Bach.
Two months later Hanbury was spending a Sunday afternoon on his terrace listening to Russian composers. He had placed the speakers outside where they competed with Malaysia’s jungle chatter. Unexpectedly, Birgit appeared. “I came by to see how you’re doing,” she said. The blue of her eyes lacked lustre. Hanbury hurried inside to turn down the volume and arrange tea. She poured her heart out. Olaf’s stay had not been a success. He had been pessimistic about their future should Birgit remain abroad. “His mother is behind it,” she said. “She’s a dominating woman. She demands that he visit her every day.” Olaf’s mother, it turned out, had criticised Birgit from the beginning and continued to find fault with her after the wedding about such things as the irregularity with which she did the laundry. “It’s like a prison in Stockholm. I can’t stand the thought of going back. My work here isn’t finished either.” Hanbury agreed it was a difficult situation. After tea they had a gin and tonic.
“You have a nice house,” Birgit said.
“I always thought your place was better. It looks lived in.”
Birgit said she was glad he liked it and invited him for dinner the next night.
Dinner for two. Simple. Quiet. As they stood up to clear the table – Hanbury subsequently replayed the scene in his mind a hundred times – Birgit made an elegant half-turn towards him, light blue eyes transfixing his. She took the plates out of his hands. Her lower lip began quivering. They embraced. Birgit nestled against Hanbury’s shoulder; he clasped the small of her back. Then began the slow descent of a zipper. In the stillness it sounded like a long subdued note coming off the A string of a violin. Hanbury would never forget the sound of helping Birgit shed her dress.
In the course of the next weeks a love routine became established. One evening on Birgit’s bed, both of them wet from exertion in uncooled, moisture-burdened air, she asked why they were always in her flat. His villa was much nicer. It wouldn’t bother her to wake up there and have breakfast on his terrace. “The atmosphere is artificial,” Hanbury replied. “The furniture is awful. You have so many lovely Asian crafts on the walls. My place is pretty bare.” She offered to help him improve the decoration, but he argued it was pointless. “No sooner does the stuff hang than I’m reassigned and it has to come down.” A slight movement of air passed over their bodies. Hanbury was on his back; Birgit hovered over him on an elbow, one breast resting against his chest. An edge entered her voice. She said that in some respects he was a cold person. Sometimes she thought he was holding back. It frustrated her.
“It shouldn’t,” Hanbury soothed. “What we have is fine. It couldn’t be better.”
“It could.”
“Birgit, let’s be realistic. In a few months you’re going back to Stockholm. I’ll be reassigned. Let’s enjoy the present.”
“I don’t want to go back to Stockholm. I think I would be happier living like you – moving around, having new experiences.”
“It looks better than it is. Let’s enjoy what we have.” Birgit thought about this, then rolled onto her back. Later, Hanbury got up, dressed, kissed her and took a taxi home.
The following evening they were invited as a couple to a dinner party. “Sorry about last night,” Birgit said casually as she drove. “I didn’t mean the things I said. I got my period this morning.”
After the party she drove him to his villa, declining the offer of a nightcap. In the weeks that followed, although outwardly the affair continued, they both knew its inner mechanics were deteriorating. Birgit departed before her time in Kuala Lumpur was up. She didn’t say whether she planned to re-enter Olaf’s prison, or was determined to make a fresh start.
Hanbury missed Birgit. Until Olaf’s visit she was a good friend, and afterwards a keen lover. On the other hand, he was convinced someone like Birgit would not be happy living an empty, zig-zag life like his. True, she had expressed anxiety about facing years of tedium with Olaf, but for someone like Birgit a life spent on the move would be at best a temporary solution. Eventually she’d realize she was on the run. She’d want to stop. At the end of the day, for her, someone like Olaf was better. Hanbury was convinced of it. It was a good thing she hadn’t moved in with him.
He spent the remaining time in Kuala Lumpur listening to Mozart’s music. With a warm glow he marvelled at its regenerative power.
As Hanbury retreated extravagantly into fresh self-containment, Sabine was determined to acquire a modest reduction in her working week. She wanted to quit Geissler’s bookstore before Nicholas was born, but her husband talked her out of it. Keep your options open, he counselled. So she proposed a one-year arrangement to Geissler, involving the wife of another professor to replace her. He grudgingly agreed.
Schwartz had a reason to urge his wife to stay connected to Geissler’s. Rare books fascinated him. Shortly after Sabine went to work at Geissler’s, she brought him a copy of an unknown, privately published diary kept by a functionary in Bohemia from 1934 to 1938. It described how the Nazis came in and took over. Schwartz was excited. Where did it come from? Out of the cellar, Sabine replied. Geissler brought it up in a basket with other books. What else was in the cellar? No one knew, she said. The door was permanently locked. Schwartz appeared at the bookstore the next day. His wife showed him around and introduced him to Geissler, whose eyes darted back and forth – from the professor, to the books, to Sabine – before he shuffled off. He assumed his customary observation post by the front door. Schwartz followed. “I’m a professor,” he said. “I would like to see your stock. It could be of interest to me.”
“Stock?” an alarmed Geissler said.
“Stored books. Books not on display.”
“Leave my store,” Geissler ordered. “Don’t come back.” Swaying awkwardly, as if a fugitive, he made his way to the back, hiding in the darkness until the front door jangled shut.
Schwartz gave detailed instructed to his wife on how to spot more volumes like the one from Bohemia. Periodically she came up with one. “What else is in that cellar?” the professor would mutter.
From Malaysia, Hanbury returned to Ottawa. Investitures assured him he had earned respect in Kuala Lumpur. They would respond in kind. “Know Irving Heywood? Ever heard of him?” the clerk asked. Hanbury raised and lowered his shoulders and shook his head. “Ah. See. You’ve been in the wilderness too long. Heywood’s a rising star. The Disarmament Priory is hot. Your next stop. His understudy.”
Disarmament was a bewildering terrain. Hanbury acquired the habit of slouching at his desk, rubbing fatigued eyes with his fingertips, combing hands through his hair while he pondered solutions to bureaucratic battles. The sounds of the daily ordeal were of the telephone ringing non-stop and Heywood’s voice trumpeting. Some days it seemed he was standing before the walls of Jericho.
“No corner of the Service is as vital for the future of democracy as the Priory,” Heywood confided to Hanbury at the beginning of their five-year partnership. Heywood described the main currents of thinking in disarmament theory since the Korean War. Hanbury listened, but his thoughts wandered back to the sounds and smells of Malaysia.
The Priory drained its members. It sucked them dry. Husbands were too tired for their wives; mothers became estranged from their children. Late at night, in an apartment overlooking the Ottawa canal, Hanbury listened to Gregorian chants. He could cope with nothing else.