Two

Five minutes later. Konrad stands framed in the doorway for a second, before advancing into the room. He’s also seventy-five, slight and pale, though giving no impression of frailty. He’s wearing a very well-cut dark suit. Henrik moves across to shake hands with him. The atmosphere is formal. There’s no sign of the revolver. Konrad breaks the silence, speaking softly.

Konrad I came back.

Henrik I knew you would.

Henrik releases Konrad’s hand and stands for a moment scrutinising him intently.

Konrad You’re right: neither of us is getting any younger.

Henrik No: but for some reason we have both endured.

Konrad Yes.

Henrik Absinthe?

Konrad Thank you.

Henrik moves to a table, where the elements have been prepared: glasses, into which he pours a measure of brownish liquid; silver strainers, on to each of which he places a sugar lump; and a water jug, from which he pours water over the sugar lump into the glass below, where the absinthe turns a vivid jade-green. Over this the conversation proceeds.

Konrad I’m not sure I remember this room.

Henrik No. It used to be two rooms, in fact: my mother’s bedroom and dressing room. I had it converted a long time ago. I always liked the view.

Konrad glances out of the window, towards the setting sun.

Henrik I was born in this room.

Henrik And I have every intention of dying in it.

Konrad Well: not many people can say that.

Konrad indicates the leather chair.

Konrad This chair, on the other hand, I do remember.

He sits in it.

And these others, unless I’m much mistaken.

Henrik brings over his drink and hands it to him.

Not bad after forty-one years.

Henrik And forty-three days. Your health.

He raises his glass and drinks. Konrad follows suit.

Where have you come from?

Henrik Is that where you live now?

Konrad Just outside. I bought a small house when I got back from the tropics.

Henrik Oh? Whereabouts in the tropics?

Konrad Singapore. Before that, up country in the Malay peninsula.

Henrik Very ageing, the tropics are said to be.

Konrad Yes: they’ll knock ten years off your life. They use you up and spit you out. They kill something in you.

Henrik Is that why you went?

Konrad looks at him for a moment, as if surprised that he has gone on to the attack so soon.

Henrik And did you succeed? In killing whatever it was?

Konrad The first year you never stop thinking you’re going to die. After three years, you realise you’re not the same person any more and never will be. Eventually, you’ve no idea what’s going on any more. You lie there, night after night, listening to the rain drumming against the roof: and finally you start to get angry. A lot of people turn either murderous or suicidal.

Henrik Not the English, surely?

Konrad The English bring England with them in their suitcases: their golf courses; their whisky; their reserve; their polite air of superiority; their dinner-jackets, which they climb into every single night out in the swamps. But even they get infected with this rage, sooner or later. That’s why, back in England, anyone who’s spent any length of time in the tropics is suspect. However respectable they may be and however carefully they observe the formalities, there’s always something too rigid about them, like a drunk who enunciates too carefully. They can’t conceal the chaos inside.

Henrik And is there chaos inside you?

Konrad looks at him for a moment, frowning.

Isn’t that what you came here to tell me?

Silence. Eventually, Konrad shakes his head.

Konrad No. I came here because I was in the vicinity. In Vienna. I came because I wanted to see you one last time.

Henrik How long since you were last in Vienna?

Konrad More than forty years. When … I left for Singapore.

Henrik How do you find it?

Konrad Changed. As you’d expect. But I wanted to see it again before I died.

Henrik They say at our age, you live until you get tired of living.

Konrad I am tired of living. But Vienna: for me it was the tuning fork of the universe. The most beautiful thing in my life. If I was talking to someone and they didn’t respond to the word Vienna, I lost interest in them. The stones of Vienna contain everything I ever loved: memories, music; friendship.

Henrik But, as you say, it’s changed.

Henrik At least, here, hardly anything has changed.

Did you ever travel?

Henrik Not unless I had to. I served out my time in the army, you know, just as I’d promised my father I would. Not that there was much satisfaction to be derived. The collapse of the monarchy. The revolution.

Konrad Yes, I heard about all that.

Henrik You may have heard about it: we were obliged to live through it.

Konrad Towards the end of 1917, I was working way up country, deep in the jungle, hundreds of miles away from anywhere. And one day, sharp at noon, four thousand labourers, covered in mud, came out of the swamps and presented me with a whole series of demands. More money. Shorter hours. And so on. I rode down to Singapore, where I discovered there was a revolution going on in Russia. How could they have known? No radio, no telephones. And that’s when I understood that if something’s really important to you, you don’t need a machine to find out about it.

Henrik Is that so?

Konrad I’m sure it is. When did Krisztina die?

Henrik How do you know she’s dead?

Konrad She’s not here, is she? Where else could she be, except in her grave?

Henrik She’s buried in the grounds. Not far from the greenhouses. She chose the spot herself.

Konrad How long ago did she die?

Henrik Eight years after you left.

Konrad She was only thirty.

Henrik That’s right.

Konrad What did she die of?

Henrik Some quite rare blood condition. I’ve forgotten the name.

Konrad So: way back in 1907. Were you still in the army?

Henrik Oh, yes; I served all the way through the war.

Konrad What was that like?

Henrik Horrifying. Especially that last winter, up there in the north.

Konrad I often felt I should have come home and rejoined the regiment.

Henrik Many of us felt the same way.

Konrad The thing was, by that time, I was already a British subject. You can’t keep changing your nationality every ten years.

Henrik No. In my opinion, you can’t change your nationality under any circumstances. We swore an oath to the Emperor, or the King, as my father always insisted on calling him.

Konrad The world we swore to uphold doesn’t exist any more.

Henrik It does to me.

Konrad No: there was a world worth living and dying for, but it’s vanished now, gone. What’s replaced it means nothing to me at all.

Henrik Well, to me it’s still alive.

Konrad That’s because you’re still a soldier.

It’s starting to grow dark; and Henrik rises to his feet, puts his glass down, turns on a couple of switches to generate some discreet background lighting and also lights an oil lamp, which stands on his desk. Then, as the conversation continues, he replenishes their glasses.

Henrik We kept expecting you to come back. Everybody liked you, you know, in spite of your eccentricities.

Konrad Eccentricities?

Henrik Yes, your worship of music, your artistic nature. We knew it must be hard for you, being a soldier. So your disappearance came as no surprise to us. Even so, we all thought you would be back. Or at least drop us a line. I certainly did, anyway. So did Krisztina.

But no doubt, with your busy life, you soon forgot us.

Konrad No. You never forget the important things. That’s to say, I hardly remember anything about the regiment. But you never forget the essentials.

Henrik Vienna, you mean; this house.

Konrad That’s right. The last time I was in this house, for example, Krisztina was alive. Sitting in that chair there.

Henrik It was a warm evening, but she was wearing her Indian shawl.

Konrad You remember every detail.

Konrad Of course, the details are crucial. They bind everything together. That’s what I would dwell on, this detail or that, when I lay in bed listening to that rain drumming against the roof like a machine gun; or when I was with one of those women, with their beautiful, smooth skin and their supple bodies and their enormous, shining eyes; or when I was playing the piano.

Henrik Did you sometimes play the Polonaise-Fantaisie?

Konrad No, I never played Chopin in the tropics. Too painful.

Henrik You remember that evening you played the Polonaise-Fantaisie with my mother?

Henrik looks up at his mother’s portrait.

Henrik Of course, she was always wanting to turn Chopin into some kind of honorary Frenchman, but you explained to us how Polish he was; and finally admitted he was related to your mother.

Konrad So he was.

Henrik Later on, when we were alone, my father said to me that you would never make a soldier.

Henrik Yes; I was shocked. He said you were a different breed. He didn’t mean it unkindly. When you were ten and he first met you in Vienna and shook your hand and said if you were a friend of mine you would always be a friend of his, he made a lifelong commitment to you, which he would never have betrayed. He seldom gave his hand and when he did it was without reservation. Nevertheless, that evening you played the Polonaise-Fantaisie with my mother, he understood you were a different breed. Of course, for that matter, so was my mother.

Konrad In what way?

Henrik She came from Paris, from a world of gossip and music and embassy balls; and here she was on the far side of the Hungarian plain, in a castle so remote and so quiet you can hear the snow falling. I remember the look of utter bewilderment on her face as she sat in the window watching my father setting off after wolves with his hunting knife. They loved each other; but there was something insurmountable between them.

Konrad You told me a story about her bursting into tears in front of the King.

Henrik The King came to stay once; they put him in the yellow bedroom. They gave a ball for him, and it was while he was dancing with my mother: he said something or she said something and all of a sudden she was weeping and the King kissed her hand and brought her back to my father.

Konrad What was said?

Henrik I don’t know: she always refused to explain, even to my father.

I’m glad you came back. Who else could I ever speak to about such matters?

Silence. He takes a thoughtful sip of his drink.

We don’t have very much longer to live.

Konrad Possibly; but what makes you so sure?

Henrik The fact that you’ve come back. And you know it as well as I do. All this time you’ve been thinking about it. And now you’ve come back, because you had no choice; and I’ve been waiting for you, because I had no choice either. We both knew we would meet again and that then life would be all over.

Konrad looks as if he’s about to protest; then he thinks better of it.

You see, the kind of secret which stands between us has an enormous power; it’s like a butcher’s knife slicing through the fabric of life, while at the same time giving it a kind of strength and consistency. And it keeps us alive, it provides us with an inescapable purpose.

So, while you were out in the tropics, keeping yourself busy, I was here, alone in this forest. And solitude hides as many dangers as the jungle. You lead an entirely ordered existence, you have your house, your title, your rank, and your punctiliously organised way of life. You can’t run amok, like one of your Malays, you have to be disciplined as a monk and push everything back inside, without any of the beliefs that sustain a real monk. The only thing you can do is wait.

Konrad What for?

Henrik The moment you are finally able to discuss all the things that forced you into that solitude with the man responsible. And you prepare yourself for that moment for years, ten years or forty years or forty-one years, whatever it is, the way you might prepare yourself for a duel. Practising every day, using your memories as weapons, until they’re sharper than sabres. And finally the moment arrives. Am I making any sense?

Konrad Yes; I couldn’t agree with you more.

Henrik Good. I mean, if I hadn’t been so sure you would come back one day, I’d have set off myself to find you in your house in London or in the tropics or wherever you might have been. But you’re right, you don’t need a radio or a telephone to know what’s really important: and I knew you’d be back. I waited you out.

Konrad I feel I should say that I was well within my rights to go away. It’s true I didn’t warn you or say goodbye to you, but I knew you’d understand I had no choice. It was the right thing to do.

Henrik You had no choice?

Henrik Well, now we’re getting close to the heart of the matter.

In the ensuing pause, a gust of wind rattles the windows and in the distance a sulphurous bolt of lightning cuts through the darkness. The electricity fails as a rumble of thunder rolls across the night sky. Henrik calmly sets about lighting a second oil lamp.

Henrik I’m afraid the electricity supply is still rather fragile in this part of the world.

Konrad I’m used to it: London is subject to blackout every night.

Henrik Is that so?

Konrad There’s been fighting in the skies all summer; I believe the Luftwaffe’s getting more than it bargained for.

Henrik I don’t suppose this can be the most convenient time to travel across Europe.

Henrik One more indication of how important this meeting must have been to you, wouldn’t you say?

Konrad You may be right.

Henrik I believe I am. Is that enough light?

Henrik resumes his seat, contemplates Konrad for a moment.

Henrik Now: I often think of that day my father shook hands with you in the alley of chestnuts in the courtyard of the Academy. Possibly because, for some reason, I think of it as the last day of our childhood. But also, no doubt, because, for my father, friendship was just as important as honour. And, to tell you the truth, I think it was even more important for me than it was for him. I hope I’m not making you feel uncomfortable.

Konrad Uncomfortable? Not in the least. Please go on.

Henrik Do you think there is such a thing as friendship?

Konrad Well … yes.

Henrik I don’t mean common interests or professional comradeship. I mean that rare, selfless bond that might just be the most powerful relationship in life. I’ve sometimes thought there might be something erotic about it, not in the sense of that, in my view, morbid impulse which drives people to seek some kind of satisfaction with those of their own sex, but a kind of eroticism, if this is possible, which has nothing to do with the body. Plato talks about this: about friendship being the noblest feeling that can exist between human beings. It’s something you find more reliably among animals. It’s a kind of duty. If I’m right, if this is the case, a friend expects nothing in return for his friendship and he entirely accepts all his friend’s faults and weaknesses. Consequently, it should make no difference whether his friend is faithful or faithless. I mean, if your friend betrays you and you decide to take revenge, doesn’t that imply your friendship wasn’t true and genuine in the first place? In other words, we can demand unconditional honour and loyalty from ourselves, but we have no right to expect it in return: and no right to complain if our friend does turn out to be a traitor.

Konrad Are you quite certain this hypothetical friend is in fact a traitor?

Henrik No. That’s why you’re here. That’s what we’re talking about.

Silence. Henrik settles back in his chair.

There is such a thing as establishable fact, in the sense of finding out exactly what happened where, when and in what way. But sometimes what actually happened is not the essential thing; it is the intention behind what’s been done: that’s where the true guilt lies. A man can be a murderer and still be quite irreproachable; obviously, everything depends on the motive. We know you ran away. But what was your motive? All these years I’ve turned it over and over in my mind, weighed up every possible reason: but I’m still no nearer the truth.

Konrad ‘Ran away’ is rather a tendentious expression. I resigned my commission in the regular way, I broke no promises, I left no debts. In what sense did I run away?

Henrik Perhaps that’s putting it too strongly. But it’s certainly what it looked like from my standpoint. You say you left no debts: well, I’m sure you settled your tailor’s bill and your wine merchant’s – but what about your debt to me? The day you left, it was a Wednesday, I remember, in July, I went, for reasons I’ll explain later, to your apartment. Your orderly was there. I asked him to take me up to your living room and leave me there on my own. I’m afraid I conducted a pretty thorough search: you must forgive my curiosity, but I somehow couldn’t accept the fact that my closest friend, from whom I had been inseparable for twenty-four years, since childhood, had simply bolted. I thought you might be seriously ill; or momentarily deranged; or caught cheating at cards; or any number of disgraceful crimes, which would however have been less disgraceful than what was beginning to seem overwhelmingly likely: that you had committed some dreadful crime against me. A matter of hours after spending the evening with Krisztina and me, here at the castle, as we had spent so many contented evenings over the years, in friendship and mutual trust, you ran away like a thief in the night. I stood there in your room, which I can still see with absolute clarity; I can smell the English tobacco and see the paintings of horses and the red leather armchair and the divan, which was actually more of a French bed, a double bed. The thing was, it was the first and last time I was ever in your apartment, even though you’d been there for three years before you ran away. I’m sorry, I can see you find that expression disturbing.

Konrad Not really: anyway, words are not the issue here, are they?

Henrik Aren’t they? Is that what you think? Words are not the issue? I thought they were. I always thought they were the only issue.

Silence. Konrad looks at Henrik, expressionless.

Anyway, the fact remains, close as we were, that you had never once invited me to your apartment. I always thought it was because you were ashamed of showing it to me because I was a rich man and you were … not. Money was the only thing that had ever come between us. You were never quite able to forgive me for being rich.

Konrad On the contrary, I was always very well aware that you could hardly be blamed for it.

Henrik All the same …

Konrad You remember that summer you came to stay with my parents in Galicia?

Henrik Of course.

Konrad We never discussed it, but I knew you understood then what my mother and father had put themselves through on my account.

Konrad Every time we went out to the Burgtheater and I needed a new pair of gloves, they wouldn’t eat meat for a week. Every time I left your servants the correct tip, he would have to go without his cigars for a month. Somewhere in the back end of Poland they had a farm, which I never saw, belonging to my mother; and everything, my uniform, my exam fees, the costs of the duel I fought with that Bavarian, the bouquet I bought for your mother when she passed through Vienna, everything came from there. Eventually, they were forced to sell it. My mother did the marketing herself every day to make sure the cook didn’t overcharge her. Do you wonder I nearly killed that Bavarian? It wasn’t because I was offended, it was because he was an affront to those two old people in that cramped apartment in that squalid little town. My father adored Vienna, he was born and brought up there, but for the last thirty years of his life, he never set foot in it. No summer holidays, no new clothes, not one stick of new furniture; and all because I was to become the masterpiece they had failed to achieve in their own lives.

Henrik Perhaps in some sort of way it made them happy.

Konrad I don’t know: it certainly weighed me down. I even caught myself wishing them dead sometimes.

Konrad You mustn’t think I envied you going out dancing five times a week, while I stayed in reading and practising the piano and eating scrambled eggs. I may have been jealous about the ballerinas occasionally, but I was quite content to hear about Prince Esterhazy’s wine-tasting parties at second hand.

Henrik You know nothing would have made me happier than to have provided you with an allowance.

Konrad No, but that would have been completely impossible, I know you understood that, even when you saw me counting my socks after they came back from the laundry.

Henrik Yes; although at moments like that it was borne in on me that being rich probably was unforgivable. As I rather think you’ve discovered for yourself by now.

He rises to his feet.

Konrad Oh; no thank you.

Henrik We shall go in to dinner in a moment. I suggest we eat in peace and allow ourselves time to appreciate the wine; and then we can have the conversation you came here to have. Does that seem an acceptable programme?

Konrad Entirely.

Henrik The carriage is waiting, so of course you can leave whenever you like. Or you’re more than welcome to stay the night.

Konrad No, I …

Henrik Well, then, the carriage will take you back to town and tomorrow you can set off back to Vienna or London or Singapore, for all I care. But first I would like you to listen to what I have to say.

Konrad Very well.

Henrik Your apartment, by the way: as I was saying, I always thought the reason you never invited me there was because you were ashamed of how modest it was. But standing there, the day of your disappearance, I saw that it was exquisite, a real work of art. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I remembered you’d once said something about inheriting some little property on the Russian border: and here it was, on the walls, on the floors, translated into crystal and silver and paintings. I realised you were a kind of artist; and how lonely you must have been among us rough soldiers. I was turning all this over in my mind, when I suddenly noticed something: a crystal vase on your piano containing three orchids. Now I knew the only place in this whole region where orchids were grown was in my greenhouses. And I was just pondering the implications of this, when the door opened and Krisztina stepped into the room.

Silence. Finally, Konrad seems shaken. Henrik, by contrast, turns, light on his feet, his manner entirely casual.

Shall we go in to dinner?