The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

13

The first thing was to learn her identity. How should I start upon my quest? What data did I possess? In June 1929, Sebastian had dwelt at the Beaumont Hotel at Blauberg, and there he had met her. She was Russian. No other clue was available.

I have Sebastian's aversion for postal phenomena. It seems easier to me to travel a thousand miles than to write the shortest letter, then find an envelope, find the right address, buy the right stamp, post the letter (and rack my brain trying to remember whether I have signed it). Moreover, in the delicate affair I was about to tackle, correspondence was out of the question. In March 1936, after a month's stay in England, I consulted a tourist office and set out for Blauberg.

So here he has passed, I reflected, as I looked at wet fields with long trails of white mist where upright poplar trees dimly floated. A small red-tiled town crouched at the foot of a soft grey mountain. I left my bag in the cloakroom of a forlorn little station where invisible cattle lowed sadly in some shunted truck, and went up a gentle slope towards a cluster of hotels and sanatoriums beyond a damp-smelling park. There were very few people about, it was not 'the height of the season', and I suddenly realized with a pang that I might find the hotel shut.

But it was not; thus far, luck was with me.

The house seemed fairly pleasant with its well kept garden and budding chestnut trees. It looked as if it could not hold more than some fifty people – and this braced me: I wanted my choice restricted. The hotel manager was a grey-haired man with a trimmed beard and velvet black eyes. I proceeded very carefully.

First I said that my late brother, Sebastian Knight, a celebrated English author, had greatly liked his stay and that I was thinking of staying at the hotel myself in the summer. Perhaps I ought to have taken a room, sliding in, ingratiating myself, so to speak, and postponing my special request until a more favourable moment; but somehow I thought that the matter might be settled on the spot. He said yes, he remembered the Englishman who had stayed in 1929 and had wanted a bath every morning.

'He did not make friends readily, did he?' I asked with sham casualness. 'He was always alone?'

'Oh, I think he was here with his father,' said the hotel manager vaguely.

We wrestled for some time disentangling the three or four Englishmen who had happened to have stayed at Hotel Beaumont during the last ten years. I saw that he did not remember Sebastian any too clearly.

'Let me be frank,' I said off-handedly, 'I am trying to find the address of a lady, my brother's friend, who had stayed here at the same time as he.'

The hotel manager lifted his eyebrows slightly, and I had the uneasy feeling that I had committed some blunder.

'Why?' he said. ('Ought I to bribe him?' I thought quickly.)

'Well,' I said, 'I'm ready to pay you for the trouble of finding the information I want.'

'What information?' he asked. (He was a stupid and suspicious old party – may he never read these lines.)

'I was wondering,' I went on patiently, 'whether you would be so very, very kind as to help me to find the address of a lady who stayed here at the same time as Mr Knight, that is in June 1929?'

'What lady?' he asked in the elenctic tones of Lewis Carroll's caterpillar.

'I'm not sure of her name,' I said nervously.

'Then how do you expect me to find her?' he said with a shrug.

'She was Russian,' I said. 'Perhaps you remember a Russian lady – a young lady – and well… good looking?'

'Nous avons eu beaucoup de jolies dames,' he replied getting more and more distant. 'How should I remember?'

'Well,' said I, 'the simplest way would be to have a look at your books and sort out the Russian names for June 1929.'

'There are sure to be several,' he said. 'How will you pick out the one you need, if you do not know it?'

'Give me the names and addresses,' I said desperately, 'and leave the rest to me.'

He sighed deeply and shook his head.

'No,' he said.

'Do you mean to say you don't keep books?' I asked trying to speak quietly.

'Oh, I keep them all right,' he said. 'My business requires great order in these matters. Oh, yes, I have got the names all right….'

He wandered away to the back of the room and produced a large black volume.

'Here,' he said. 'First week of July 1935…. Professor Ott with wife, Colonel Samain….'

'Look here,' I said, 'I'm not interested in July 1935. What I want….' He shut his book and carried it away.

'I only wanted to show you,' he said with his back turned to me – 'to show you [a lock clicked] that I keep my books in good order.'

He came back to his desk and folded a letter that was lying on the blotting-pad.

'Summer 1929,' I pleaded. 'Why don't you want to show me the pages I want?'

'Well,' he said, 'the thing is not done. Firstly, because I don't want a person who is a complete stranger to me to bother people who were and will be my clients. Secondly, because I cannot understand why you should be so eager to find a woman whom you do not want to name. And thirdly – I do not want to get into any kind of trouble. I have enough troubles as it is. In the hotel round the corner a Swiss couple committed suicide in 1929,' he added rather irrelevantly.

'Is that your last word?' I asked.

He nodded and looked at his watch. I turned on my heel and slammed the door after me – at least, I tried to slam it – it was one of those confounded pneumatic doors which resist.

Slowly, I went back to the station. The park. Perhaps Sebastian recalled that particular stone bench under that cedar tree at the time he was dying. The outline of that mountain yonder may have been the paraph of a certain unforgettable evening. The whole place seemed to me a huge refuse heap where I knew a dark jewel had been lost. My failure was absurd, horrible, excruciating. The leaden sluggishness of dream-endeavour. Hopeless gropings among dissolving things. Why was the past so rebellious?

'And what shall I do now?' The stream of the biography on which I longed so to start, was, at one of its last bends, enshrouded in pale mist; like the valley I was contemplating. Could I leave it thus and write the book all the same? A book with a blind spot. An unfinished picture – uncoloured limbs of the martyr with the arrows in his side.

I had the feeling that I was lost, that I had nowhere to go. I had pondered long enough the means to find Sebastian's last love to know that there was practically no other way of finding her name. Her name! I felt I should recognize it at once if I got at those greasy black folios. Ought I to give it , up and turn to the collection of a few other minor details concerning Sebastian which I still needed and which I knew where to obtain?

It was in this bewildered state of mind that I got into the slow local train which was to take me back to Strasbourg. Then I would go on to Switzerland perhaps…. But no, I could not get over the tingling pain of my failure; though I tried hard enough to bury myself in an English paper I had with me: I was in training, so to speak, reading only English in view of the work I was about to begin…. But could one begin something so incomplete in one's mind?

I was alone in my compartment (as one usually is in a f second-class carriage on that sort of train), but then, at the next station, a little man with bushy eyebrows got in, greeted me continentally, in thick guttural French, and sat down opposite. The train ran on, right into the sunset. All of a sudden, I noticed that the passenger opposite was beaming at me.

'Marrvellous weather,' he said and took off his bowler hat disclosing a pink bald head. 'You are English?' he asked nodding and smiling.

'Well, yes, for the moment,' I answered.

'I see, saw, you read English djornal,' he said pointing with his finger – then hurriedly taking off his fawn glove and pointing again (perhaps he had been told that it was rude to point with a gloved index). I murmured something and looked away: I do not like chatting in a train, and at the moment I was particularly disinclined to do so. He followed my gaze. The low sun had set aflame the numerous windows of a large building which turned slowly, demonstrating one huge chimney, then another, as the train clattered by.

'Dat,' said the little man, 'is "Flambaum and Roth", great fabric, factory. Paper.'

There was a little pause. Then he scratched his big shiny nose and leaned towards me.

'I have been,' he said, 'London, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle.' He looked at the thumb which had been left uncounted.

'Yes,' he said. 'De toy-business. Before de war. And .I was playing a little football,' he added, perhaps because he noticed that I glanced at a rough field with two goals dejectedly standing at the ends – one of the two had lost its crossbar.

He winked; his small moustache bristled.

'Once, you know,' he said and was convulsed with silent laughter, 'once, you know, I fling, flung de ball from "out" direct into goal.'

'Oh,' I said wearily, 'and did you score?'

'De wind scored. Dat was a robinsonnada!'

'A what?'

'A robinsonnada – a marrvellous trick. Yes…. Are you voyaging farr?' he inquired in a coaxing super-polite voice.

'Well,' I said, 'this train does not go farther than Strasbourg, does it?'

'No; I mean, meant in generahl. You are a traveller?'

I said yes.

'In what?' he asked, cocking his head.

'Oh, in the past I suppose,' I replied.

He nodded as if he had understood. Then, leaning again towards me, he touched me on the knee and said: 'Now I sell ledder – you know – ledder balls, for odders to play. Old! No force! Also hound-muzzles and lings like dat.'

Again he tapped my knee lightly, 'But earlier,' he said, 'last year, four last years, I was in de police – no, no, not once, not quite…. Plain-clotheses. Understand me?'

I looked at him with sudden interest.

'Let me see,' I said, 'this gives me an idea….'

'Yes,' he said, 'if you want help, good ledder, cigaretteйtui, straps, advice, boxing-gloves….'

'Fifth and perhaps first,' I said.

He took his bowler which lay on the seat near him, put it on carefully (his Adam's apple rolling up and down), and then, with a shiny smile, briskly took it off to me.

'My name is Silbermann,' he said, and stretched out his hand. I shook it and named myself too.

'But dat is not English,' he cried slapping his knee. 'Dat is Russian! Gavrit parussky? I know also some odder words… Wait! Yes! Cookolkah – de little doll.'

He was silent for a minute. I rolled in my head the idea he had given me. Should I try to consult a private detective' agency? Would this little man be of any use himself?

'Rebah!' he cried. 'Der's anodder. Fish, so? and…. Yes. Braht, millee braht – dear brodder.'

'I was thinking,' I said, 'that perhaps, if I told you of the bad fix I am in….'

'But dat is all,' he said with a sigh. 'I speak [again the fingers were counted] Lithuanian, German, English, French [and again the thumb remained]. Forgotten Russian. Once! Quite!'

'Could you perhaps….' I began.

'Anyfing,' he said. 'Ledder-belts, purses, notice-books, suggestions.'

'Suggestions,' I said. 'You see, I am trying to trace a person… a Russian lady whom I never have met, and whose name I do not know. All I know is that she lived for a certain stretch of time at a certain hotel at Blauberg.'

'Ah, good place,' said Mr Silbermann, 'very good' – and he screwed down the ends of his lips in grave approbation. 'Good water, walks, caseeno. What you want me to do?'

'Well,' I said, 'I should first like to know what can be done in such cases.'

'Better leave her alone,' said Mr Silbermann, promptly.

Then he thrust his head forward and his bushy eyebrows moved.

'Forget her,' he said. 'Fling her out of your head. It is dangerous and ewsyless.' He flicked something off my trouser knee, nodded and sat back again.

'Never mind that,' I said. 'The question is how, not why.'

'Every how has its why,' said Mr Silbermann. 'You find, found her build, her I picture, and now want to find herself yourself? Dat is not love. Ppah! Surface!'

'Oh, no,' I cried, 'it is not like that. I haven't the vaguest idea what she is like. But, you see, my dead brother loved her, and I want to hear her talk about him. It's really quite simple.'

'Sad!' said Mr Silbermann and shook his head.

'I want to write a book about him,' I continued, 'and every detail of his life interests me.'

'What was he ill?' Mr Silbermann asked huskily.

'Heart,' I replied.

'Harrt – dat's bad. Too many warnings, too many… general… general….'

'Dress rehearsals of death. That's right.'

'Yes. And how old?'

'Thirty-six. He wrote books, under his mother's name. Knight. Sebastian Knight.'

'Write it here,' said Mr Silbermann handing me an extraordinarily nice new notebook enclosing a delightful silver pencil, With a trk-trk-trk sound, he neatly removed the page, put it into his pocket and handed me the book again.

'You like it, no?' he said with an anxious smile. 'Permit me a little present.'

'Really,' I said, 'that's very kind….'

'Nofing, nofing,' he said, waving his hand. 'Now, what you want?'

'I want,' I replied, 'to get a complete list of all the people who have stayed in the Hotel Beaumont during June 1929. I also want some particulars of who they are, the women at least. I want their 'addresses. I want to be sure that under a foreign name a Russian woman is not hidden. Then I shall choose the most probable one or ones and….'

'And try to reach dem,' said Mr Silbermann nodding. 'Well! Very well! I had, have all the hotel-gentlemans here [he showed his palm], and it will be simple. Your address, please.'

He produced another notebook, this time a very worn one, with some of the bescribbled pages falling off like autumn-leaves. I added that I should not move from Strasbourg until he called.

'Friday,' he said. 'Six, punctly.'

Then the extraordinary little man sank back in his seat, folded his arms, and closed his eyes, as if clinched business had somehow put a full stop to our conversation. A fly inspected his bald brow, but he did not move. He dozed until Strasbourg. There we parted.

'Look here,' I said as we shook hands. 'You must tell me your fee… I mean, I'm ready to pay you whatever you think suitable…. And perhaps you would like something in advance….'

'You will send me your book,' he said lifting a stumpy finger. 'And pay for possible depences,' he added under his breath. 'Cerrtainly!'