The Sins of the Father Read online

  Rudi said, “You must develop a sensitivity to voices, but it is inconceivable that you could have remembered mine. I once addressed a question to you, after a lecture, at the University. You couldn’t possibly have remembered that.”

  “Of course not,” Eli said. “What I heard, doubtless, was the echo of another time.”

  “Just that,” Rudi said. “We are rich in memories, or cursed by them. But now, with the prospect of this marriage between these two dear children, we are about to construct happier ones, the final allegro of the symphony.”

  He paused again. Eli heard talk in the background. Rudi’s voice returned.

  “I am so sorry, I am required urgently. I was so pleased to meet you yesterday and your gracious wife, and of course charming daughter. To our next meeting…”

  Eli restored the telephone to its rest, lit a cheroot. His hands were trembling. He called out to the cat, which, with a loud miaow, leaped on to his knees. He sat there, stroking, puffing, perplexed.

  He hesitated. Everything told him he should consult Nell, but he could not bring himself to do so. It had always been his habit to take decisions without advice. He disdained reliance on another’s judgement – it didn’t accord with the picture he held of his own being that he should act other than by himself. “I act, therefore it is.” That was it; he had always held to that view of reality. A man’s first duty is to his own nerve, and nerve, in this sense, implied first of all the act of judgement. Very well, that was clear. It was the only way he had ever been able to continue to be himself.

  “All good things,” he said to himself, “approach their goal crookedly. Like cats” – he stroked Biba – “they arch their backs, they purr inwardly over their approaching happiness; all good things laugh.”

  He had no evidence. But he had always proceeded without evidence. It was what had marked out his genius from those of his colleagues who had pursued a more careful path. He had struck out, blindly – and been proved right. Yes, right, he said to himself, even when the world judged me wrong. And by the standards of a certain world, he would be wrong again now. The more wrong, the more right. “Cast out false gods,” he said to Biba. He had always loved cats. They lived for themselves, taking what they needed, and, because they acted in accord with their natures, what they needed was good and did not disgust them. He too knew what he needed now. It was not revenge. It might not even be justice, for he distrusted justice as practised. What then? He laughed again. The words had been supplied for him: the working-out of the symphony, the right shape, something beyond and above justice. He picked up the telephone again.

  His second call got him the name and number he required. He placed a call to Tel Aviv, made his contact, spoke for ten minutes, was redirected to Vienna. “There is no proof,” he said, “only my own certainty. No doubt you receive many such calls. The world is full of aggrieved lunatics. I understand that. I merely give you my information, throw a stone into the pond. Over to you.”

  Where, he thought, will the ripples end? These idiot Nazis worshipped Nietzsche, whom they could not read. Didn’t they know the last meaningful words he wrote before the cloud of madness enveloped him? They were in a letter “to friend Overbeck and his wife”: “Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope that I am somebody who pays his debts – for example, to you. I am just having all the anti-Semites shot.” He signed it, “Dionysus”, that figure who stands for “the older, still rich and even overflowing Hellenic instinct, the will to life…”

  Yes, he thought, even a blind unsexed economist can retain that, whereas those who so misread the only philosopher who understood the interplay of emotion and reality, substituted for it the will to death. And there is no contradiction, despite appearances, when I say triumphantly, “I am having all the anti-Semites shot…” The will to life accepts the need, the probability of death.

  He laughed again: “Biba,” he said, “cats are the only true Nietzscheans. Perhaps I too am a cat, or an honorary one.”

  Franz and Becky were playing tennis, a doubles match on a covered court at the Polo Club against Luis and his fiancée Gabriella, a dark beauty of seventeen who regarded Becky with a mixture of admiration, envy and disapproval: she herself refused to allow Luis to kiss her, except in greeting, and then only in company. She was almost silent in his presence, but chattered like a sparrow when alone with Becky, who in turn liked her without understanding her, and admired the languorous grace of her tennis. The two pairings were well matched: Franz was steady, Becky adroit at the net, Luis capable of spurts of inexplicable brilliance, Gabriella rich in dreamy passing shots. They had taken to playing once a week, before lunch, when they would drink beer or Coca-Cola and eat hot cheese sandwiches. Becky was the only one of the four whose parents were not members of the Polo Club. She had felt shy there at first, self-conscious before the older members, one of whom she had heard ask what that little Jew girl was doing here. On being told that she was engaged to the son of Señora Rubin de Cevellos, the General’s wife, the questioner had laughed and asked what the world was coming to. “We’ll be having niggers here next,” she added. “I’m surprised we don’t,” her friend said, “considering the American influence and the sort of people admitted now. I always say, ‘Where the Jews lead, the niggers follow.’”

  Becky saw Franz flush, and laid her hand on his arm.

  “It wasn’t worth it,” she said as soon as they were out of hearing, “never worth making a scene about such things.”

  He allowed himself to be persuaded, but felt ashamed a week later when Luis overheard a much milder anti-Semitic remark – one that might almost have been no more than a joke – and demanded – and got – an apology.

  “You can’t let them get away with it,” Luis explained. “I’ve no love for Jews in general myself – making exception of course for friends like Becky, who, as you know, is far too good for you, old chap. But that’s not the point. It’s a matter of honour. Nobody can insult anyone with whom I choose to associate. That’s all there is to it. You lack a proper pride, old boy. I suppose it comes from being German and accustomed to defeat. Remember old Prince Bolkonski in War and Peace deriding Napoleon and asking whom he had ever beaten?”

  “Yes, Luis, you’ve told me often. Only Germans. Everyone …”

  Luis joined in the chorus, “Everyone has always beaten the Germans.”

  “Anyway,” Franz said, “I think I am an Argentinian. I carry an Argentinian passport.”

  They came off the court now, Franz and Becky having taken the third set 8–6. The boys were sweating like colts after a gallop, Becky was flushed, laughing, panting, red-faced indeed, hanging on to Franz’s arm despite disapproving stares. Only Gabriella, showing no more than a touch of dewiness, seemed unaffected by the match.

  “What a game,” Franz laughed.

  “Yes,” Gabriella said, “I enjoyed it.”

  “So, you see,” Franz laughed again, “you see, Luis, this time Prince Bolkonski was wrong.”

  “Not at all, you carry an Argentinian passport, don’t you, and besides, Becky is half-English, only half-German, and that half” – he raised his voice – “Jewish, and no doubt that made all the difference, for you must anyway admit, mon vieux, that it was her interceptions of my returns of your not very formidable service which really settled things. And now, my friends, the human frame – this one anyway – calls out for beer.”

  The boys were drinking their second bottles and they were all (except Gabriella who managed things more dextrously) licking the hot cheese which had escaped the sandwiches, from their fingers, when the steward approached to tell Franz there was a telephone call for him from his mother. He rose, languid as any athlete after effort, and lounged across the room, his sweater thrown around his shoulders, the sleeves dangling free. Becky couldn’t but be aware how many other eyes followed his progress, and hugged the thought. Luis ordered more beer for himself and Franz, and a second bottle for Becky. Gabriella mad
e a little moue.

  “If you get fat, I will not marry you.”

  “Then there will be a scandal, such a scandal.”

  “You would be absolutely right, Gaby,” Becky said. “A fat Luis would be disgusting.”

  “Let me tell you, young lady, that there is no prospect of that, none at all. Gabriella here will be fat before me, which will not of course alter my undying love, we men being more constant, you see.”

  Franz returned, sat down, picked up his beer.

  “Is something wrong?” Becky said.

  For a moment he didn’t answer. She wondered if he hadn’t heard or was pretending not to.

  “No,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “No. I don’t think so. Mamma wanted to know if I could tell her where my father is. Apparently she couldn’t find him at the site number.”

  “For me,” Gabriella said, “it is very strange that people should think it right to divorce, and even stranger that divorced couples should think to communicate directly with each other.”

  “For you, my angel,” Luis said, “most things in the modern world are strange. That is why I am marrying you: to learn more about the habits of thought inculcated in an eighteenth-century convent.”

  “You are a liar. You are marrying me because I am beautiful and my family is rich and well connected and your mother approves of the match.”

  “He seems not to have left a number where he can be reached. That is unusual.”

  “Are you sure your mother has got it right?” Becky said.

  “Well, she is sure. She is puzzled.”

  “You have told me yourself that she sometimes gets muddled up on the telephone. That’s all.”

  “Still,” Gabriella said, “I find it strange. If a marriage has gone wrong, then it seems to me the civilised thing is …”

  “Angel, they have unfinished business – Franz here – of course they have to communicate.”

  “All the same,” Franz said, “I don’t understand your attitude.”

  “I just don’t want you to be worried,” Becky said, “when there may be nothing to worry about. That’s all.”

  They went and showered, changed out of their tennis things, returned in cashmere sweaters (Becky’s a present from Franz) to play bridge, for which Luis had a passion. The afternoon drifted away. They sat in the bay window that overlooked the polo lawns. It was the off season, but some stable-boys were exercising the ponies. Two or three times Becky lifted her eyes from the green baize and looked out across the grass to the scrubland beyond and saw horsemen emerge along the winding tracks that led through the heather, broom and birch, planted there long ago by the Englishmen who had founded the Polo Club, and who perhaps shared Nell’s desire to think of the place as a South Atlantic Surrey. The riders would be city people – lawyers, businessmen, even perhaps teachers at the University or some of the private schools – who kept their horses at livery at the Polo Club stables, and rode regularly for exercise or recreation, or to remind themselves of their youth on family estancias, perhaps to pretend to themselves or others that they had had such a youth. But the riders completed for Becky the picture already formed by the dim comfort of the leather-chaired club room, the riffling of cards being shuffled over the green baize, the afternoon tea with Dundee cake which they would order between the first and second rubbers; it was a well-ordered picture composed in accordance with established principles, one that excluded the poverty of the shanty-towns and the uncertainties that simmered under the surface of the country’s life and occasionally erupted into violence that had no aim beyond the satisfaction of some obscure impulse.

  Becky was dummy and crossed over to the window. The declining sun touched the birches with rose. Over to her left the lights of the city were coming on. A boy and a girl rode out of the woods, holding each the other’s hand as the ponies picked their way along the track. Then the path divided round a statue – the life-sized figure of some Hero of the Liberation – and the girl’s hand fell away from the boy’s, their ponies slanted either side of the statue, and then both were lost to her sight beyond the range of the window.

  She turned round. The sunlight lay butter-golden on her lover’s cheek. Then the steward, with a word of apology, pulled a string and the curtains drew together, closing them into the intimacy of the card room, and the world out.

  “I’m sorry,” Franz said, “the contract depended on a finesse…”

  “Your bidding was wrong,” Luis said. “Bridge is a matter of fitting your actions to the information available. Of course it requires flair too, but fundamentally it’s a science.”

  “All the same,” Becky said, “we went down because of Gaby’s inspired bid, and you can’t say that was scientific, Luis.”

  “I do not like counting,” Gabriella said.

  “Absolutely,” Luis said, “Gabriella has flair, I possess the science. That’s why we make an unbeatable team.”

  “Well,” Becky said, “we’re pretty good ourselves.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Franz said. “We went three down. Of course, if the finesse had come off…”

  The next morning, Franz telephoned Becky before she was up.

  “He sounds agitated,” Nell told her.

  “Oh dear.” She perched in her white towelling dressing-gown on the arm of a chair, nestling the telephone between her cheek and a raised left shoulder. She answered in monosyllables, as Nell occupied herself in making coffee and bringing a cup for Becky. Then she went back to the kitchen. Eli was still in bed. She heard Becky say, “I’m sure you are making a fuss over nothing … all right, not nothing … but you said yourself how your mamma gets the wind up … there is probably … no, I’m not taking it lightly, I hate hearing you sound so worried … but just think how it will annoy him if you barge in and there’s nothing wrong … all right then … no, of course I’m not angry, I understand your concern, I just hate to hear you so worked up, when it may not be necessary … yes, of course, I love you … me too …”

  There was silence. Nell came through from the kitchen. Becky was still cradling the telephone. She held it out towards her mother before replacing it on its rest. Nell waited. Becky looked away.

  “It’s strange,” she said. “Franz and his mother think his father has disappeared. I don’t know anything about it. But it seems no one else does either. Franz is going to fly up there this afternoon.”

  Without waiting for a comment from her mother, she fled to her bedroom. There was no need, Nell thought, to mention this to Eli. They had maintained a silence about Rudi since the evening of their lunch together. Since then, however, Nell had found herself thinking of him as Rudi rather than as Franz’s father. There had been something appealing about him, something lost and lonely; she saw his confidence as a shell, his authority as an act of assumption, precariously maintained. He was such an ordinary little man, with such an ordinary insignificant name, Rudi Schmidt, which must belong to thousands of others too, and she had pictured him in his evenings after work sitting in a room without character, or stretched out on his bed, in his work-clothes with only his shoes removed, waiting for night and the next morning when he would have a function again. He had the loneliness of a spoiled priest, she thought, and now, if he had really vanished, there would be no gap, no hole in experience, where he had been. It might be as if he had never lived.

  But Franz was worried, and perhaps pained, and Becky too. With some reason, no doubt. You couldn’t be absolutely indifferent if a German of Rudi’s generation did a midnight flit. They all lived under a perpetual suspicion. The past of the whole people was disturbed by spectres. She picked up the telephone.

  “Ilse,” she said, “it’s Nell.’

  “Oh darling, I don’t know what to say. It’s all so strange…”

  “But it may be nothing.”

  “That’s true. Only…”

  “He may have a girl somewhere.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “Or have had an acciden
t.”

  “Yes, that is possible… Nell, we mustn’t let this, whatever it is, affect the children. They love each other, we must bear that in mind.”

  “She was afraid. I don’t know of what. But she was afraid.”

  Kinsky handed her a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette.

  “Well,” he said, “I expect you are right. You couldn’t be wrong about recognising that, could you? Any more than I could. But, Nell, it may be nothing.”

  “Well, yes, that’s true. Only I don’t believe it. You don’t either, do you?”

  “Have you spoken to Eli of this?”

  “No, not yet. I don’t know why.”

  “You were afraid he would be pleased.”

  “Why should he be? The lunch went off all right. I think he doesn’t dislike Franz, and, whatever else, he adores Becky. He wouldn’t want her to be hurt. Why should I be afraid? But you’re right, Kinsky, all the same. I don’t know why.”

  Franz had a seat just in front of the wing. He looked down at the sea of grass, at the emptiness of this half-made land. Whenever he ventured from the city, even for visits to the estancia owned for a hundred and fifty years by Luis’s family, he experienced a sense of insufficiency. There was a proverb Luis liked to quote: Dios arregla de noche la macana que los Argentinos hacen de dia: “God puts right at night the mess the Argentines make by day.” He quoted it with a laugh, which frightened Franz. Mightn’t it be, he sometimes thought, that God had in reality created Argentina as the ultimate ironic comment on the futility of his creation?

  The pampas rolled below him. A line of Borges came into his head: Sólo faltó una cosa: la vereda de entrente: “Only one thing was lacking: the other side of the street.” What an image of more than Argentinian existence! He ran his finger round inside his collar; the shirt stuck to his back. His mouth felt dry; for a moment he thought he was going to be sick, as the plane lurched in an air pocket. The hills came into view. Becky was to be the other side of his street, but would it be built?