The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher
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too, and by opening his window, he had allowed himself to hear more clearly. The student lodger had gone out, and Frau Scherbatsky and Herr Neddermeyer had taken advantage. The phrase he had heard, whatever it was, had been spoken in a strong Leipzig accent. The maid must have known that he would hear the noises she was used to, and understood that he had breached the unspoken conditions of lodging.
Christian became worldly and calm. ‘I say!’ he remarked, in an undertone to the empty room. ‘What beasts! Good for Neddermeyer – I hope I still have it in me when I am as old as that! And the Scherbatsky! Fine woman – and a woman has needs that an architect-lodger can fulfil. A well-known fact.’ He was practising for an anecdote. But who he would tell the anecdote to, he did not know. With a large sigh and a bestial sound, the encounter seemed to come to an end. Christian realized that they were in what must be Neddermeyer’s room, not Frau Scherbatsky’s, which was on the other side, next door to his room. And in the meantime, an awkwardness was arising: he would need to visit the lavatory quite soon, to cross the landing to the shared bathroom. To leave the room now would risk meeting Frau Scherbatsky in dressing gown, négligé or similar intimate apparel, making her dishevelled way back to her room to prepare her appearance for supper. He looked under the bed, but this was a modern house and there was no pot. He waited.
There was the sound of a door being opened, of footsteps, the unsynchronized clatter of footsole against slipper. The sound went past Christian’s door; the door of Frau Scherbatsky’s door was opened and closed. He breathed out. He must keep quiet in his movements. Frau Scherbatsky and Herr Neddermeyer had only permitted themselves this licence because they believed that Christian – and, presumably, still, the tantalizing Herr Wolff – were not in the house.
He opened the door silently and, shoeless, walked across to the bathroom. The modern flush of the lavatory made a noise, and when Christian stepped out of the bathroom, he saw, to his horror, that Herr Neddermeyer’s door was now standing open – it had been opened in the previous minute. ‘Herr Vogt?’ Neddermeyer’s voice called. ‘Is that you? Do come in.’
Christian stood in the door of Neddermeyer’s room, twisting his hands about, one in the other. The room was attractive and immaculate. The bed was made, under a white counterpane. On the walls were views of Roman and other classical ruins; in the bow window stood a substantial octagonal table in mahogany with a central supporting pillar. The table bore a thick pile of papers, weighed down at four corners by a bronze Japanese fisherman, a millefiori paperweight, a grotesquely shaped stone, mounted in silver, and a bust of Brahms in alabaster. On the table, too, were an architect’s drawing tools of pencil and compasses, squares and protractors, in an open walnut case lined with worn black leather. Neddermeyer gestured towards one of the two armchairs in yellow velvet. Unexpectedly, his appearance gave no indication of the rumpus he had just been through: he was groomed and of normal colour, his clothes not suggesting that they had been flung to the floor and picked up some time afterwards. There was nothing of the debauch about him, or about his room.
‘Welcome to my home – my lair, one could say,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘I can offer you some coffee – nothing elaborate, nothing extensive, but I do insist on having coffee-making as a possibility in my room.’
‘That is very kind,’ Christian said.
‘I cannot always be calling on Maria to bring me cups from the kitchen,’ Neddermeyer said, going over and opening a small cupboard and beginning to fiddle with its contents. ‘My one remaining vice. So, Herr Vogt, I saw you venturing out this afternoon with your sketchbook. You found some subjects worthy of your pencil? Good, good. I am sure that the Bauhaus will chase the love of beauty out of you very quickly, and replace it with a love of steel and sharp corners. I saw a soup plate that one of them had made. It was square. The absurdity!’
‘Why so, Herr Neddermeyer?’
‘They had not considered,’ Neddermeyer said, ‘that a square has angles and a circle has none. A maidservant, presenting a soup plate, presents it at the eye level of her master. The master’s attention is drawn to something on his right; he turns sharply. The plate is a square one, however, as designed by the bright fellows at the Bauhaus, and the eye is thrust against a sharp corner of a hard material. The master, who has bought a daring novelty and flatters himself that he has an original eye, has, from now on, exactly that: an original eye. Only one.’ Neddermeyer tittered in a genteel, practised, taut way.
Neddermeyer was talking amiably, swivelling and smiling from his post at the coffee cupboard, and now he turned and brought over the cups of coffee. They were tiny, gold and green, with a small medallion of flowers painted on the side. Despite the smile, Neddermeyer’s voice had been growing tense, and he was not looking, exactly, at Christian as he handed it over. He placed his own on the small table by the other armchair, and removed a spotted red handkerchief from the inside pocket of his Bavarian jacket. He wiped his hands clean.
‘I think Frau Scherbatsky said you are an architect?’ Christian said. The coffee, despite coming from a small cupboard, was delicious, with no taint of chicory or acorn.
‘I was an architect,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘I do not think I will ever build again.’
‘Do you have drawings of your work?’ Christian said. ‘I would so like to see them.’
Neddermeyer did not exactly brighten, but he grew businesslike, as if he had been expecting Christian to say exactly that. Perhaps he had called Christian in for this exact purpose, to show his drawings. Christian reflected that after the pleasures which Neddermeyer and Frau Scherbatsky had indulged in, the ego was never satisfied; it was at that point, the day after his schoolfriends had visited a brothel, that they were most apt to show classmates their best marks, the most flattering comments made on their work by masters, or, at the very least, to treat the fellows at a coffee shop, pulling out their marks with a profligate air. Neddermeyer wanted someone to see what a marvellous fellow he was.
‘I do indeed,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘Perhaps you noticed my drawings over there, on the table. There are some photographs, too, of some projects that came to life. A very civil young man, before the war, came to see me and spent six months visiting what I had designed and built, and wrote a very flattering article about my work in an architectural review. After that article, I had letters from architects in America, even. Of course, that was in 1905. People are not interested now.’
‘Did you always build in Weimar?’
‘Weimar and surroundings,’ Neddermeyer said carelessly, waving his hand at the window as if to suggest that he might have built all of it. ‘I could have gone to America. Interest in my work was very high there, as I said. But as I told my apprentices, my thinking, such as it is, was formed in an age where people climbed to the top floor if that was where they wanted to go. I was too old to change, to think how a tower of thirty floors could be ornamented. A mistake, no doubt. Now. Where were we.’
Neddermeyer stood, and walked over in a vague, uncommitted way to the table, as if hardly engaged.
‘Well, here they are!’ he said. ‘There is no purpose, really, in continuing to work, but the imagination continues to thrive. Sometimes I am playing at the pianoforte and I will be seized with an idea, quite a new idea, for a suspended balcony at the front of a royal palace, or for some rolling bookshelves to simplify storage and display in a library. Now, this is an idea I had for a triumphal arch …’
Neddermeyer’s fantasy work was neatly drawn, exquisitely finished, ornamented and made human with decorative touches of trees and figures. They were a credit to the tools in the open walnut case. He began to turn over the sheets, lovingly, murmuring words of explanation, like an ambassador introducing great dignitaries. Here was an idea he had for a state library; for a permanent circus on the classical model; for an English cottage; for a nobleman’s country house, refined and yet rustic; an idea for the Emperor’s military barracks; a new cathedral for Berlin (‘I was so disappointed, Herr Vogt, with the one His Majesty built, until I did not see why I should not put my own thoughts on paper’); a monument to the dead of the war; a bridge over a country stream and the same bridge, on a larger scale, bearing the traffic of the town; and a royal palace, eighty windows long on its front façade. Christian