In the Shape of a Boar Read online

  ‘This is a great honour, Monsieur Memel,’ said Faucher while technicians busied themselves about Sol. ‘Slava here told you that Madame Lackner has been delayed? Entirely our fault. We should have allowed more time. But you are here and, speaking personally, that is the most important thing. For you to break your silence here,’ he gestured about the hangar-like studio. ‘It is important for us.’

  Faucher talked on, easily and fluently. Sol realised that he was being set at his ease. He pushed away the unbidden thought that this was all wrong, that Ruth was not here, that he had no clear idea of anything he wished to say because he had already said too much to another flatterer of his vanity long ago, that he should walk out of this pool of light, this studio. The agreements worked out with Slava would be worth nothing as soon as his face appeared on all those millions of screens. For what was to stop Faucher asking anything he wished?

  Then he saw that the technician threading the microphone leads had a battered volume of his work stuffed into the pocket of his jacket and then that, instead of staring at the real god of this controlled world of artificial light and dark, Faucher's acolytes now were discreetly watching himself.

  He was described as ‘reclusive’ in articles about him and his work. It was untrue. A burst of sound from an invisible monitor broke his chain of thought. Somebody called for the lights to be dimmed. The familiar music started up. Little red lights winked on and off in the darkness surrounding the circle of yellowish light which held them both in place, he and Maximilian Faucher. Someone said, ‘Five seconds’. It was too late.

  ‘Eberhardt’. ‘Professor Jakob Feuerstein’. One mention of either, walk out. Damn you, Ruth.

  The dim light brightened in an accelerated electric dawn. Faucher turned to a point somewhere to Sol's left and began to speak.

  ‘The worst wounds are self-inflicted. What did humanity become between the years 1939 and 1945? I have spoken with many of the greatest artists of our age, here, on this programme, and whether mentioned or unmentioned that has been the question lying behind many of those encounters. What did we do? How could it happen? Tonight I have as my guest the man many believe to be the true custodian of our uncertainty. And of an answer too, buried – perhaps – in the dense imagery and complex argument of his most famous, or most notorious work. In 1951 a poem entitled Die Keilerjagd, or La Chasse au Sanglier, appeared from an obscure publishing house in Vienna. It had been written in extraordinary circumstances by an unknown poet named Solomon Memel. Based partly on the myth of the hunt for the boar of Kalydon, partly on events which befell him during the war . . . . ‘

  Parsing Faucher was a simple business, Sol thought to himself as the interview unfolded between them. Faucher used ‘perhaps’ to test the ground upon which he was about to venture. Meeting resistance, he would retreat to ‘Can we agree . . . ?’ Outright contradiction elicited ‘these are difficult matters’, and a change of subject. They danced together, more or less in step.

  ‘For many people, Die Keilerjagd expresses the tension between what must be done, what should be done and what can be done in face of the fact of evil,’ said Faucher to Sol. ‘Ordinary people quote snatches of your poem, perhaps without even knowing where they come from. French schoolchildren study it, learn from it. Children in many other countries too.’ Faucher let the train of thought peter out. ‘Evil inhabits the boar. He is the principal of violence, of licence. Those who hunt him also hunt that. They want it, would you say?’

  Faucher shaped his questions with his hands before releasing them. He nodded during Sol's responses; the cloth of his suit rucked about his wrists as he brought his fingers together in unconscious mock-prayer. The lights shone down on the two men, who cast no shadows as they mimed and talked. Words fluttered and fell around them.

  ‘The themes of your poetry are universal because they draw on the events of a representative life, which is to say your own life. Representative, I mean, for the mid-twentieth century: loss, then flight, then resistance, then revenge. Your work has been applauded, discredited and restored in a strangely parallel career . . . ‘

  Outside the circle defined by the harsh lights there was only darkness. Sol heard a scuffle of movement and glanced about vainly for the cause. Faucher's next question concerned the final section of the poem. Reichmann's old criticism would be trotted out and he would reply that poetry did not flow transparently through a life. Sometimes the work replaced it.

  But what took place in the cave? And what does it mean? They all wanted to know that.

  ‘A distinguished German critic diagnosed a “fatal ambiguity” in the poem's concluding verses, which led to some heated discussion as I recall.’

  Sol knew where Faucher was trying to lead him. The ‘distinguished German critic’ had retracted the charge but Sol did not mention that. He talked about the core of irreducible doubt which resided within even the most careful recollection. Memories were violent from the inside out. People made them up because they had to. He tried to say this simply.

  ‘These are difficult matters,’ said Faucher for the second time. ‘You have consented to the making of a film. But a film cannot be ambiguous in the ways available to a poem. One must decide to show or not. Many commentators here in Paris were surprised that you agreed to such an adaptation and by a director known for her, shall we say, uncompromising working methods? Your poem ends in darkness – a Stygian darkness, if I may – where the explanatory gestures of the poem's beginning are absent or indecipherable. But how can one film such a darkness?’

  These were the questions intended for Ruth, Sol realised. Her film would be a kind of sequel or postscript to the poem, so far as he understood it. It would be set in an unemphasised present day and would continue the emotional narrative of the hunters and their quarry as if they had survived. The mysteries of his poem would be over long before the film's opening frame. Kept safe. He had known Ruth since childhood, he told Faucher, who pretended surprise then talked about hindsight, the ironies of history. The presenter asked a long and intricately qualified question which Sol answered to half-intended comic effect with a simple ‘yes’. There was some gossip about the young actress who was to play the Atalanta-Thyella figure. Their time was almost up.

  ‘I would like to end by invoking the moment of this work's conception, the moment when a young man crawled forward into the darkness to meet his adversary. At the same time, a young poet brought to mind the first line of what would later prove his greatest work. And, in the distant past, an uninitiated hunter waited outside the cave in which his quarry waited for him. And yet these were, in a sense, all the same person, in the same moment, and all facing the same enemy.’

  All different, Sol thought. I am not the man I was. How could he be the shivering youth of then? Let it go . . . He spoke of how the body registered events in different ways from the mind, and the memory in other ways again. Faucher nodded wisely, thanked him for his thoughts, and it was over.

  Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

  ‘ . . . when I will be looking at the work of Great Britain's foremost painter in advance of his first complete retrospective, opening next week at the Grand Palais here in Paris. Once again, Solomon Memel, thank you. And goodnight.’

  The lights came up and the little theatre dissolved. The cameras were being pulled back, the assistants moving in. Sol leaned back and closed his eyes. The click-clack of a woman's heels brought his head up. The technician was standing over him, holding out his book. His second collection. Autograph. Over the young man's shoulder he saw a tall woman with long copper-red hair emerge from among the studio's shifting bodies. She walked forward, smiling at him through her fatigue.

  ‘Solomon,’ she said.

  ‘Ruth,’ he replied, rising to embrace her. ‘You're here.’

  ***

  On a hot afternoon in the summer of 1938, a young woman waded in a broad and shallow river. She had knotted the thin cloth of her dress above her knees and picked her way forward, peering
down into the clear water ahead of her, leaving a trail of wakes which curled in the current then disappeared within its motions before each step. The river flowed over a sandy bed studded with smooth pebbles. Mid-stream, long tongues of bright red river-weed wavered beneath the surface. The young woman was making for these. She was watched by two young men.

  Lying on the bank, Sol saw the young woman stoop to pull up a thick cable of the weed, whose colour darkened and seemed to concentrate when she raised her trophy into the sunlight. She disentangled the strands, shaking the water from them. Droplets fell back into the river and disappeared. She draped the fronds about her neck and turned to him, twenty or thirty metres away. He waved as she ran her fingers through her hair, which was long and red, drawing it out between her fingers. Then she turned downstream and shouted to Jakob, who was paddling in the shallows by the far bank.

  Sol lay back and closed his eyes. The river flowed beside him, almost silent. The air was still and he might have slept. But three distant shrieks launched themselves into the air and struggled down the valley, thinning in the late afternoon heat. An image of the young woman swathed in red with her dress bunched about her thighs was banished by an ungainly bird which lurched up before his mind's eye, stubby winged and bristling with organ pipes from which spouted shrill columns of steam, toot, t-t-toot, to-oot. He raised his head, eyes blinking against the sunlight which glared off the river.

  The afternoon train from Lemberg had sounded its whistle, as it did when it neared the village of Sadagora further up the valley. From there it would set off along tracks which curved in grudging imitation of the river's meanders, nearing the water and veering away, before finally crossing the bridge just outside the town's main station. The station lay at the foot of the hill and from there the trolley-car which met the Lemberg train departed promptly to climb the steep incline to the town's centre. The train whistle was the signal for their departure. Sol propped himself on his elbows and shouted across the water.

  ‘Jakob! Ruth! Come on!’

  The whistle sounded again, as though emphasising his words. Jakob waded slowly across from the far bank, a pensive crane. Ruth unwound her ragged scarf and threw it into the water, which carried it away.

  The town's main station was a twenty minute walk away, along a dusty road which followed the river on the opposite side to the railway. They walked in silence. The route was over-familiar and there was nothing which had not been remarked a hundred times: stands of beech trees, farm outbuildings, the river, the railway track beyond it, the flat fields which stretched away far into the distance to the east.

  They heard the slowing chug of the Lemberg train. The station's glass-domed roof came into view. The locomotive billowed smoke and sounded its whistle again, its brakes squealing just before the bridge. They hurried forward and saw the trolley-car's familiar red and white livery beside the goods shed. The driver was walking down the side of the vehicle, fanning himself with his cap. He climbed into the cab and, a few moments later, they heard the gears clank and saw the trolley-car jolt forward. The motion galvanised them into action.

  ‘Come on!’

  Ruth threw her arms apart, Sol and Jakob caught her by the hands and they broke into a run. The trolley-car's tracks joined the road a few metres ahead. The young men pulled her between them, dividing to either side of the tracks as the car trundled up the incline then turned into the road. They held Ruth in the vehicle's path as they all sped forward. The trolley-car rumbled behind them, gathering speed.

  ‘No-oo!’ Ruth shrieked, mock-exhaustion sending her into a stumbling run. The car sounded its bell. She tried to pull away: from Sol, then from Jakob, but neither would yield. The trolley-car clanked and squealed, drawing nearer. Ruth's face creased in lavish terror, or pleasure. She felt the weight of the car thundering and shuddering. Her heels pounded the stones. How could they let her go? She briefly drew ahead of them, her hands still gripped tight and her skirts flying up above her knees. The conductor shouted from the trolley-car's platform and the bell sounded again, louder now. This time the clangour went on and on.

  Jakob released her. Ruth sprang out of the tracks, spinning about and winding her arms around Sol. The tram rumbled past at a disappointing rate, its brakes squealing as it came to a halt in front of the railway station. Jakob rolled his eyes at the other two and trotted after it. Ruth panted and laughed, still held in Sol's arms. She disentangled herself and followed.

  The Lemberg train had deposited a small crowd of passengers, who awaited the trolley-car's arrival. They rose from the benches outside the station and shuffled forward, manoeuvring their boxes, parcels and cases inside. Sol, Ruth and Jakob dawdled until the last of these were aboard, then swung themselves up onto the rear platform, where the conductor shook his head at them in disapproval, red-faced under his cap. He was the father of their classmate Gustl Ritter. Jakob spread his hands in apology and all three squeezed into the rearmost seat. Gustl's father rang the bell and they set off.

  Their legs stuck to the slats of the bench through their clothes. Ruth clasped her hands and flexed her arms, then yawned and leaned back her head. Her eyes closed. The summer had deepened the red of her hair and raised a crop of freckles around her eyes. Sol and Jakob exchanged glances across her.

  The trolley-car's route wound its way gradually up the hill from the station towards the centre of the town. The three of them jostled against each other as the vehicle took the bends. Houses grew up around them, gaining second and third storeys, and the narrowing streets became steeper and steeper until between Uhrmacherstrasse and the Polish church, a stretch known locally as the ‘Hump’, the car slowed almost to a halt, its motor whining, its wheels grinding in their tracks. They passed a horse and cart whose driver had dismounted to lead them up and now waited to recover his breath, one careful hand resting on the brake. Ruth's hair smelt faintly of the river. It seemed impossible that the trolley-car should pull its own weight up such an incline, let alone its passengers too.

  But once past the church the vehicle picked up speed. It stopped outside the local government office, where a group of men dressed in suits and stiffly starched collars got on, then at the corner of Laurinerstrasse. Gustl's father moved back to stand guard on the platform as the seats filled. Sol asked after the man's son and the conductor shook his head in resignation. Gustl had not gained his certificate. They had all taken their final exams six weeks before, in the Gymnasium, whose airless lecture halls now held only chalk dust and heat, a few streets to the east. Ruth smiled and opened her eyes on the pale cream roof of the trolley-car. Butter, she thought, in the cool of a dairy. The car was stifling.

  Suddenly the street widened. The town seemed to fill its lungs and blow the heat out of its body as the tram pulled into Ringplatz, where the sudden recession of the buildings sucked passengers from the car, sending them to mingle and join with those already gathered in the square: men in shirtsleeves, men in dark blue aprons, men in brown or black suits, women carrying baskets or infants. Handcarts loaded with boxes or bottles packed in straw emerged from one or other of the streets, trundled across the sunlit space then disappeared into the shade again. Housewives carried meat parcels tied with fine white string and bulging bags of vegetables. The Rathaus cast a slanted block of shadow over the warm cobbles. The square clock tower extended a further jut. It was seven minutes past four. The town's single traffic light went through its colourful cycle, ignored.

  ‘Coffee,’ said Jakob.

  ‘Cakes,’ said Ruth.

  ‘“Drinking were too much for me!”’ recited Sol ‘“This . . .” something “fills me with sparkling water.”’ He paused. ‘I thought we were going to the park?’

  ‘Afterwards,’ said Jakob, unpeeling himself from the seat. He jumped down from the platform and walked towards the café. Sol and Ruth followed.

  The Schwarze Adler stood directly opposite the Rathaus. Its ornate façade extended across the north side of the square almost to the corner, where a narr
ow street continued the line of shopfronts around a corner towards the old grain market. Each summer the tables of the coffee-house spread as the weather grew warmer until they blocked the entrance to this street almost entirely. Each year, the Prefect would write a letter concerning this problem to Auguste Weisz, the café's proprietor, usually in September. The tables would recede obediently, then disappear altogether; by October it was either too cold or too wet to sit outside in any case. Newspapers from Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Graz, Budapest, Bucharest and Vienna, together with the town's own Morgenblatt, hung from the racks by the entrance, while the café's interior rang with the accents of Romanian, German, Yiddish, Russian and the patois of the villagers who would venture into town once or twice a month and take a drink here as reward for their courage before trudging down through the Hapsburghöhe to rejoin the horses and carts they had left in the charge of their unruly children at the foot of the hill.

  Sol scanned the faces at the tables inside. On some mornings his father did business here but in the afternoon it was rare to find him anywhere other than the timber market. Ruth inspected the cakes and pointed first to an éclair, then changed her mind and chose a pastry smothered in bright yellow cream, topped with a single cherry. Jakob asked for a mélange and was directed by the waiter's succinct nod to take a seat. They trooped outside and found a table at the edge of the Adler's ill-defined enclave, where they sat in a row, legs stretched out in the sunlight. Cake and coffee arrived for Ruth and Jakob. The waiter glanced at Sol, who shook his head.