The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher
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in Erfurt today, I know.’
This seemed to put an end to Neddermeyer’s curiosity about Christian’s life, and while he was busying himself with the tea, Christian went about the room. On the bookshelf was a small porcelain or perhaps enamel model of an exotic vegetable, an aubergine. Christian picked it up, and just as he did so, a wasp came buzzing at him. He raised one hand to flap it away, and somehow tipped the aubergine to one side. The stalk and cap of the aubergine actually formed the lid of what it was, a jar, and as Christian tipped it sideways, it fell to the polished wooden flooring and broke. Neddermeyer looked up from the teapot.
‘Oh dear,’ he said.
Christian was crimson – he looked at Neddermeyer with horror. ‘I didn’t realize—’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize it had a lid. I just turned it to one side.’
‘Well, that is unfortunate,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘Let me see.’ He put the teapot down and came over. Without its stalk and cap, the aubergine hardly looked like an aubergine any longer, just a bulbous purple vase. It, clearly, would not do. ‘That really is unfortunate.’
Neddermeyer was, in fact, rather enjoying this humiliation. ‘Please help me, Herr Neddermeyer,’ Christian said. ‘It can’t be the first thing I do when I arrive in poor Frau Scherbatsky’s house, start smashing her things about.’
‘No,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘Although, you must admit, it is the thing which you have started by doing.’ He picked up the lid from the floor. ‘It is really not as bad as all that. A very clean break. And here is our hostess.’
Frau Scherbatsky came in, smiling. ‘I hope you have not been waiting – the tea must be quite cold. I had to finish a letter to my daughter in Dresden. Now—’
‘Frau Scherbatsky,’ Christian began.
‘A terrible thing has happened,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘I was brushing past the bookcase when my sleeve unfortunately caught your very ugly jar here; it fell; the lid has smashed. But there is good news! It is not so badly broken. It can be mended and riveted very easily.’
‘Oh dear,’ Frau Scherbatsky said. ‘Is it so very ugly? I never really thought of it. I don’t suppose it is even any use in the marketplace – no one would barter anything for it, I am certain. By all means, take it and mend it if it salves your conscience, Herr Neddermeyer.’
Christian, full of silent gratitude for the saving of the situation, tried to engage Neddermeyer’s eye, but he quizzically raised an eyebrow without looking in more than Christian’s general direction. ‘Here is some orange cake,’ he said, sitting down. ‘My favourite.’
The orange cake was dry, perhaps a day or two past its best, and flavoured artificially rather than with peel and juice. Christian took a bite just as Frau Scherbatsky said, ‘You are here to study, Herr Vogt, you were saying?’ He could not for the moment speak: his mouth was full of dry cake and his eyes, at once, began to fill with tears of shame at his vandalism. Instead of going on talking – she had asked only for the benefit of Neddermeyer – Frau Scherbatsky waited with a courteous half-smile as Christian took a great gulp of tea to wash it down. He felt like a brutal animal invited to tea with two clever, immaculate dolls, and to finish off the toy-like impression of beauty of Frau Scherbatsky’s house, he now saw, as he prepared to speak, that the teapot from which she had poured was ingeniously shaped in the form of a cauliflower, and the teacup from which he was about to drink was a circle of cauliflower leaves. He swallowed, shook his head.
‘You are a student of what, Herr Vogt?’ Neddermeyer said.
‘I am about to begin the study of art,’ Christian said.
‘Ah, excellent,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘An art historian. That is excellent. At the university here?’
‘No, Herr Neddermeyer,’ Christian said. ‘I am studying to become an artist.’
‘At my old school, then,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘Is it still in existence? I came here myself to study there, here in Weimar, when I was no more than nineteen, and I have never left. Thirty-eight years ago this autumn. We architecture students had little to do with the fellows on the painting and drawing side. I expect things are just the same now – one half thinks the other flibbertigibbets, and the other thinks them dull, money-grubbing fellows. Artists never change.’
‘You put it so well, Herr Neddermeyer,’ Frau Scherbatsky said. ‘But is the art school that you are thinking of still in existence, Herr Neddermeyer, even?’
‘I am enrolled at the Bauhaus,’ Christian said. ‘It is only just opening now.’
‘The Bauhaus,’ Neddermeyer said. There was a perceptible chilling; he set down his tea and tipped his head back slightly, inspecting Christian over the top of his glasses. ‘The Bauhaus.’
Christian had the distinct impression that Neddermeyer was now about to change his mind about his previous brotherliness and to tell their landlady that, after all, it had been Christian who had smashed the aubergine pot.
‘I know the Bauhaus,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘There is wild talk in the town, both about them and, I must say, by them. When you are as old as I am, you have seen plenty of young men who hope to change the world by shocking their elders. And as time goes on, the shock fades away – the shock and the desire to shock. You hope only to make things as well as your ancestors made them. That may prove difficult enough. The Bauhaus. Well. They wish to make things new, I believe, and turn our lives upside down; to ask us to sit on tetrahedrons, and to live in houses made of glass, like tomatoes. I have seen plenty of wild young men, wanting to change the world by shocking their elders. I may have been one of them myself, once upon a time.’
Christian inspected the cauliflower teapot; the inglenook fireplace; the padded window-seat. He did not object.
‘Young people will not like the same things as old people,’ Frau Scherbatsky said, smiling. ‘You must admit that if no new opinions ever came along we should be living in the houses of Augustus the Strong.’
‘I don’t think anyone wants to shock,’ Christian said. ‘I think we only want to start by making new things. But I haven’t been there yet. I am sure you know more about it than I do.’
Neddermeyer had got up and, holding his leaf-shaped teacup, had gone over to the window, perhaps to hide his emotions. It seemed as if the mention of the Bauhaus struck some chord with him. ‘They seem very little interested in Weimar, where they are,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe they recruited any teaching staff from the town, though, Heaven knows, there are enough talents and experience to power a—’
‘Herr Neddermeyer feels strongly,’ Frau Scherbatsky said confidentially but audibly, leaning her whole body towards Christian from her chair. ‘He was very unfortunately—’
‘And here they come,’ Neddermeyer said, his voice raising gleefully as he looked out of the window. ‘I don’t know whether you have seen your colleagues and masters yet? They come this way every day, around this time, for their exercise. I promise you, I did not ask them to appear to prove any kind of a point.’
In the park, three hundred metres away, a small group of people was approaching. They had shaven heads that shone in the sun like wet pebbles by the lakeside. There were eight or nine of them; their smiles, too, shone in the light. It was their clothing that seemed most extraordinary. An elderly woman in a fur-collared overcoat was just now pausing, thirty metres from them, and watching them with open fascination. They wore floor-length robes in purple, flapping as they moved; home-made and evidently not well fitting. The robes looked very much like the garb of a wizard Christian had seen in a childhood pantomime. The tallest of the group, a man in his late twenties or early thirties, wore also a metal collar, like a pewter platter with the middle excised. The group surged around him; their combined movement was uniform, rippling, wavelike and unnervingly joyous. Christian felt that if he left the house