Death And The Maiden

19

It was a mild evening. Liebermann’s footsteps echoed loudly as he marched down the narrow, deserted street. The prospect ahead opened up as he entered a cobbled square overshadowed by the austere facade of the Franciscan church. A full moon, shining with fierce brilliance, bathed the grey stones in pure, argent light. On the gable, pale saints and miniature obelisks were sharply defined against a black sky. In front of the church, surmounting a pedestal, was an imposing statue of Moses, his staff held loosely in his hand. Whenever Liebermann passed beneath the statue’s judgemental glare, he always thought of his father. The young doctor kept his eyes fixed on the patriarch as he crossed the square. Perhaps it was for this reason that he only dimly registered the approach of another pedestrian.

‘Max’.

The voice was female: a diminutive young woman with dark eyes, delicate features, and full lips. She was wearing a long coat with a fur collar and a Cossack-style hat.

‘Clara.’

Time stopped.

Clara Weiss, the woman who he had once been engaged to marry.

They stood, transfixed. Liebermann became aware of his heartbeat sounding loudly in his ears.

‘How are you?’ asked Clara awkwardly.

Liebermann had never had the opportunity to say goodbye or explain himself. After informing Clara’s father of his decision to break off the engagement, Liebermann had been forbidden to see her. He later learned that she had been sent to a sanatorium.

‘How am I?’ He found himself unable to answer. He swallowed and said, ‘Never mind how I am. How are you?’

Clara raised a gloved hand and tilted it from side to side: so-so.

Liebermann had not expected such a response. He knew that Clara was being courted by a cavalry lieutenant and the couple were rumoured to be happy. He had seen them together once, getting into a carriage outside the Imperial. The emotion he had felt took him by surprise. Their intimacy had been painful to watch.

‘Life goes on,’ she said finally, a wry smile twisting her lips.

Another hiatus: each tensile second extending the moment.

‘What are you doing here?’ Liebermann gestured around the empty square. ‘Walking the streets on your own.’

‘I’ve been to see my Aunt Trudi. I was looking for a cab.’

‘It’s very quiet.’

‘Yes, I was heading for the Graben.’

‘There’s sure to be a cab there.’

‘Yes, outside the Peterskirche.’ Clara shrugged and seemed about to say goodbye, but instead added, ‘I saw your sister Hannah last week. She was at a charity function at the Mandls’. How she’s changed and in such a short time. A real young lady, and so very pretty now.’

‘I should try to see her more. She’s a sweet girl.’

‘I suppose you’re still always busy with your patients.’

‘Things haven’t changed much in that respect.’

Liebermann felt obliged to make a reciprocal inquiry about Rachel, Clara’s younger sister, and the exchanges that followed were less stilted; however, the strain of keeping their history at bay was impossible to conceal. They both sensed it, like the pressure of a vast body of water sitting behind a dam. The tiniest breach in their defences would be enough to release forces too powerful to manage with artificial civilities.

Liebermann tilted his head: clopping hooves and the rumble of wheels. The reflection of two carriage lamps appeared in a shop window.

‘Look. I think it’s a cab.’

Gallantly, he stepped off the pavement and was about to raise his hand when Clara called out, ‘No, Max!’ He turned back to see her looking at him intensely. ‘This is ridiculous. I think we need to talk, don’t you? Properly, I mean.’ She gestured across the square at a tiny cafe.

Liebermann stepped back onto the pavement.

‘Are you sure?’

Clara assented with a curt nod.

The coffee house was illuminated by a thin distribution of candles that fought valiantly against a pressing darkness. All the tables were unoccupied, creating an atmosphere of ghostly dereliction. Clara and Liebermann instinctively chose places at the back. A gaunt waiter wearing squeaky shoes emerged from behind the counter and welcomed them with a melancholy smile. Liebermann ordered a schwarzer for himself and a melange for Clara.

‘Well, Max …’ said Clara. She did not know where to begin. Liebermann removed a silver cigarette case from his coat pocket and opened it up. ‘I’d like one too, please,’ Clara added.

They sat smoking until the waiter returned with their coffees.

In due course, Liebermann asked softly, ‘What did your father tell you?’

‘That you wanted to end it.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No. He said some other things … but really, what else was there to say?’

‘I wanted to tell you myself. I wanted to explain why. But your father was insistent that I never see you again.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘Did you get my letter?’ Clara appeared surprised, puzzled. ‘No? I didn’t think so.’ Liebermann drew on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. The Egyptian tobacco was pungent. He noticed a slight tremor in his hand. ‘When I asked you to marry me, I meant it. You know that, don’t you? But I came to have doubts about my own sincerity, the authenticity of my affection. I didn’t want to deceive you. And I have hoped, ever since, that one day you would see that I tried to act in good faith. To have married you, without truly loving you, would have been a betrayal of your trust.’

‘There wasn’t anybody else?’ asked Clara bluntly.

‘No,’ said Liebermann.

The denial sounded curiously hollow.

‘Then what made you change your mind?’

Liebermann shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ Clara raised her eyebrows and Liebermann recognised that he owed her more. A minute appeasing gesture served as an apology. ‘We were incompatible. We talked a great deal, but I’m not sure that we were ever very good at listening to each other.’

Clara placed the cigarette between her lips. Its end burned, illuminating her face in the darkness. She looked different: more mature, more composed than the ebullient girlish socialite whom Liebermann remembered.

‘When my father told me, I …’ Her voice caught. ‘I really didn’t want to go on living. I saw no purpose without you.’

Liebermann found her admission almost unbearable. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘And I was so angry with you,’ Clara continued. ‘But you were right, of course.’

‘What?’

Tapping the ash from her cigarette she added, ‘We wouldn’t have made each other happy.’

Liebermann looked at her quizzically — he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. The conversation that followed was disjointed, interrupted by lengthy lacunae but strangely eloquent. Through the magnifying lens of their mutual discomfort, small signs and hesitations became the principal means of expression. Language ceded its authority to the subtle advocacy of the body — the poetry of sighs and gauche smiles. The process was akin to psychotherapy, both of them struggling towards some indefinable end-point. Their lives had been interrupted and the conversation they were having promised to restore continuity.

‘I know what you want to hear’ said Clara. ‘That I forgive you. Well, there it is — I do.’

Liebermann felt tears in his eyes. He looked away and smeared the moisture down his cheek with a crooked knuckle. The folly of trying to disguise his feelings struck home and he turned towards Clara again, revealing the full extent of his gratitude.

‘Thank you.’

For several minutes it seemed that there was nothing left to say. Something unfinished, incomplete, had at last been resolved. Liebermann felt slightly intoxicated.

‘I hear that you have found …’ He was not sure how he should refer to the cavalry officer and opted for the neutrality of ‘Someone.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘My eldest sister, Leah.’

‘How news travels.’

‘People talk — as you well know.’

It was a pointed remark: Clara was an incorrigible gossip. She took it in good part and prefaced her response with an exaggerated comic pout, reminding Liebermann again how much she had changed. Self-parody was a novel development.

‘A cavalry officer.’

‘And you’re happy?’

Clara shrugged. The casual movement was accompanied by a particular look, a play of features once entirely absent from Clara’s expressive repertoire. It suggested cynicism, world-weariness, an unwillingness to take such a question seriously any more.

‘Well,’ said Liebermann. ‘I hope you are happy.’

‘I’m not sure we are.’

‘Then why do you stay together?’

Through the haze of cigarette smoke Clara’s eyes supplied her reason. Observing Liebermann’s surprise she said, ‘Max, you and I, we were so preoccupied with propriety, protecting my honour. If you hadn’t been so disposed to respect tradition, convention, we too might have found a reason to carry on — even in the absence of happiness.’

When Liebermann returned to his apartment he played through Brosius’s Three Fantasy Pieces. He then went to his bedroom where he allowed himself to fall backwards onto the mattress. Staring at the ceiling, he thought about Clara. Her forgiveness had been redemptive, but her candid confession had left him feeling vaguely unsettled. He imagined his former fiancee visiting shabby hotels, the kind where rooms could be reserved by the hour, surrendering herself to dissolute afternoon pleasures and the instructive ministrations of the young cavalry officer, his shiny boots discarded next to hers on the floor. A vivid tableau flooded Liebermann’s mind, churning up unwieldy, complicated emotions.

What if I hadn’t behaved honourably? What if I had insisted that we become more intimate, prior to marriage?

Clara had not been opposed to the idea. Indeed, she had offered herself, fully, but he had refused, not wishing to take advantage.

Why?

Was it the insidious influence exerted by the religion of their parents, the tacit demand that the rituals of courtship should be respected? Values passed down through generations, God speaking through the mouths of rabbis and fathers. Liebermann had renounced empty dogma, but he understood only too well that the prohibitions of faith had a habit of finding a home in the depths of the unconscious. He remembered the statue of Moses scowling.

If they had pre-empted the ceremony, stealing connubial entitlements before the appointed hour, would they now, as Clara supposed, be husband and wife? Liebermann had seen in her eyes the easy confidence of a natural sybarite, a propensity that it had not been his privilege to discover and encourage. Such delights might have compensated amply for the sterility of their conversations. After all, what defined marriage if not the physical and procreative union at its core? Amity and happiness were incidental, dispensable.

She had asked him if there had been anybody else. Her father had posed the same question. On both occasions, Liebermann had answered no — and in a sense this was true. He had not begun an affair, only a friendship.

Amelia Lydgate, from their very first encounter, had fascinated him. Whereas Clara had wanted to talk about social events and famous people, Amelia had spoken with impressive fluency about science, speculative fiction and diseases of the blood. And although it shamed him, Liebermann had to admit that he had always found the Englishwoman desirable, even when she had been a patient in his care: the shadowy curves of her slight body beneath a diaphanous hospital gown, the russet cascade of her untied hair — and such eyes — sky reflected in mercury — glacial, metallic, forensic intelligence.

Had he intended to begin a relationship with Amelia Lydgate? Or had she simply made him realise that Clara was, at that time at any rate, too superficial a person to be his lifelong companion? The latter, he hoped. But even if he was being disingenuous with himself and his intentions had always been suspect, those same intentions had never — could never — proceed towards consummation.

In addition to the peculiarity of the Englishwoman’s manner, her frosty reserve, there was also her past to contend with. Liebermann had treated her for hysterical symptoms that had arisen from a sexual trauma: unwelcome advances from a person she had trusted, a guardian. How could he, Liebermann, make romantic overtures? To do so would be to put her at risk. And this had always been at the back of his mind: replication of the conditions that had caused her illness might easily precipitate a relapse.

Since ending with Clara, he had lived, for the most part, an unsatisfactory, unfulfilling bachelor’s existence …

Liebermann got up and left the bedroom. He crossed the hallway and, passing through open double doors, fixed his gaze on the piano. Standing by the Bosendorfer, he let his right hand caress the keys. He picked out one of Brosius’s themes. Without the left-hand accompaniment the melody sounded stark and simple. In its exposed state, lifted clear of a dense harmonic context, he saw a feature of its construction that had previously escaped his notice. It filled him with a sense of wonder. The composer, dead for so many years, was speaking to him.