reading

Prologue — Locarno, 1925

The path seemed a lot shorter than Phil Manning recalled.

He turned to look down at the lake sprawling quietly to his left, trying to summon the feelings it once inspired in him. Then, after walking on for a few minutes, he glimpsed the first buildings above him on the slope.

So many years had passed since his last sight of the place — and suddenly the hill appeared in front of him with casual complacence. It was inevitable, of course, but it struck him as unreal, simply emerging from nothing like that behind a fork in the path.

He stopped, tilted his straw boater, and contemplated the panorama. Lago Maggiore shimmered in the afternoon sun. It wore the same unreal blue as the sky, where a bird of prey was circling. The weather was far too warm for the season. This was, after all, October. He mopped his brow with a fine linen handkerchief and focused for a moment on its neatly ironed folds. They suddenly reminded him of the maid who had packed his suitcase just two days ago, before it was dispatched from London straight to his hotel in Locarno.

He stood awhile, trying to piece together the view in the summer of 1902. The last time he stood here, the hill had been barren, without vegetation, little more than a heap of boulders. Almost a quarter of a century later, the plant life was rampant. Trees hemmed the path, their crowns touching.

A narrow, stony track led up the slope through the vines. The terraces were built like hanging gardens, and where the vineyard ended, a grove of chestnuts began. Further up came the heather, framed by yellow gorse and pale green juniper. Silver birches were growing, small and slender. And then he caught sight of the hotel.

In Locarno, he had been told the land had been bought a few years back by a band of adventurers from Berlin, and that they actually hoped to launch a serious trade up here. Of the three partners, two had left again, which suggested that their venture had failed. There was some speculation that the place would soon be on the market again, but for this season, the hotel and the assorted chalets clustered around it were apparently well occupied.

The conference had brought extra business to the area. All those heads of government and ministers of foreign affairs were a sensation.

Even Mussolini had come.

“Filippo?” said a voice from the blue.

Phil looked ahead. He hadn’t noticed the man sitting on a nearby bench, thoughtfully angled to capture the view at its best. The stranger stood and came toward him.

“Dio mio, non è possibile! Filippo!”

“Bernardo?”

But the man was already embracing him.

“Filippo!” he shouted joyfully again, once he had released his grip. “My God, my God…”

Phil looked down at the Italian with surprise and a little embarrassment. The man was at least a head shorter than him. Had he aged as much as this fellow? No, it was the austere garments and the beard that made Bernardo look like an old man. If Phil’s memory served him right, they had been the same age when their paths crossed here.

“The newspapers are quite right. This conference is a miracle!” exclaimed Bernardo cheerfully. “It is bringing back the Europe we lost. Dio mio, Filippo, what a surprise! Where have you been all this time? What brings you here? How long are you staying?”

Phil was slowly recovering from the shock. He took Bernardo by the arm and gestured toward the bench awaiting them in the afternoon sun. “I’m only here for a few days,” he answered in Italian. “And you? Still here? I thought nobody lived here but ghosts.”

Bernardo’s eyes shone. On closer inspection, he did not seem so old after all. His skin was healthily tanned. He looked incredibly fit.

“Ghosts, yes.” He laughed, prodding Phil amiably in the ribs. “Filippo, you have no idea how delighted I am. And you look so well. A fine gentleman, if ever there was one. Don’t tell me you have gone into politics!”

“No. Whatever makes you think that? I work for the British, that’s true. But I am not one of the circle.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” said Bernardo. “But those eyes, those eyes. They melted the heart of the wonderful contessa, didn’t they? Madonna, che bellezza! How is she?”

Phil did not know what to say. Every word Bernardo spoke sent ripples down his spine. He wanted him to stop, and yet how tantalizing to hear this voice from a realm of shadows! The contessa! He shook his head.

“Non lo so,” he answered. “I have no idea.”

“But you went away together, didn’t you?”

“That’s true, but you know how these things are. You go your separate ways. You lose touch.”

“What a shame. I am sorry to hear that.”

They were silent for a while and gazed down at the lake. The Brissago Islands lay before them like two splashes of green in the water. What an incomparable panorama! That, at least, had not changed.

“And you?” Phil inquired after a while. “Did you ever marry Lotte?”

Good Lord, he thought as soon as the words passed his lips. Lotte Hattmer! He would never have believed that he would ever mention that name again.

Bernardo’s smile vanished in an instant. Then he said sorrowfully, “No, Filippo. Didn’t you know? Lotte died a long time ago.”

Phil said nothing and felt awkward. Bernardo added, “She killed herself.”

Now that is a shame, Phil thought. The mayor’s beautiful daughter.

“In the end, all she had was her parents’ money. I dropped by sometimes to see how she was, but she was beyond help.”

“In what sense?”

“She went mad.”

“Mad? In those days surely everyone here was mad. So were we, don’t you think?”

“It depends on your point of view. Perhaps. But Lotte was too delicate for that kind of madness. Besides, she took it badly when the community broke up. She lived all on her own in that hut, sieving ash. Sometimes in my head I can still hear her shouting, ‘My God, it still isn’t fine enough.’ At some point, she took poison. I wasn’t here when it happened. They say she took something that usually kills in seconds, but in her case it took two-and-a-half days.”

“Dreadful,” murmured Phil.

Bernardo’s body slumped as he told the tale, but then he sat up straight again and said, “Filippo, how long are you staying? You simply must visit us. Come to our home in Cannobio…”

“I don’t think that will be very easy,” Phil said.

“No! Please don’t argue. Besides, I have something for you.”

Phil considered. “You see that boat down there?”

Bernardo followed his gaze. A small steamer had appeared on the horizon.

“The heads of state are on that ship. In a few hours, they will return to shore in Ascona. I have to get back. I just had a rare afternoon off. Tonight I have a meeting, and tomorrow the conference resumes. I’m afraid I won’t have time.”

“But you simply must visit us,” the Italian insisted. “I have some documents she left behind,” he said. “I was supposed to keep them or send them on to you, but I didn’t have an address.”

“Documents? From Lotte?”

“No. Not from Lotte. From the contessa. She left them here last time she passed through. Ida kept them for years. Then when she and Henri left, Ida gave them to me. She said the contessa would certainly come back one day. Or else you. Anyway, she didn’t want to take the documents to Spain, so I kept them safe.”

“Spain?” Phil’s reply was flat.

“Yes. Henri and Ida went to Spain after the war, and from there to Brazil. They founded another colony.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “When did you say the contessa was here?”

The contessa! How strange it sounded. He had never called her that.

“February 1903,” replied Bernardo. “But she didn’t stay long. Ida spoke to her, and a few days later, she was gone.”

Phil reached inside his jacket, took out a packet of cigarettes, and held it out to Bernardo, who waved them away. Phil pulled a cigarette from the box, lit up, and inhaled thoughtfully. Documents from her? In 1903? Whatever they contained had been wasting away here for twenty-two years. He wondered whether it would be worth his while to look at them. Why look back? The life they had led had been foolish and naïve, even dangerous, frighteningly reckless. They had danced in that meadow there, naked and intoxicated with silly ideas.

But one glance at Bernardo’s gentle face softened his heart. Why not?

“How will I find your house in Cannobio?”

Three days later, he boarded a little passenger steamer bound for Cannobio via Ronco. It was teeming with peasants and tourists. The horn resounded long and clear and the vessel cast off. Phil made himself comfortable on the front deck. The smell of the water, the gentle rocking of the boat, the snippets of Italian conversation, and the picturesque backdrop of mountains soon worked their magic. To the south, the lake seemed to have no shore at all, as if the world ended there.

Bernardo was waiting for him at the dock. They strolled along the promenade, and then turned into crooked alleyways. Typically for these shores, the climb started almost at once. And with every step, the view was more glorious. Bernardo talked of the old days. Already the Monte Verità colony had become a legend, and for a few months, Phil had played a part, although he had not walked barefoot from Munich to Ticino like its vegetarian founders. Hardly surprising they had caused such a sensation when they turned up here, the men in shorts and the women without corsets.

By now they had reached the ridge and struck south. Here and there a house nestled against the sharp incline. Bernardo’s house, too, was tucked into the precipitous rock. From the path, all they saw was its roof. Narrow steps of crooked slate led steeply down to a little plot of land sliced from the hillside.

The building was tiny, not much bigger than a garden summerhouse. Outside the front door, facing the lake, a small patch of land had been fenced off. Bernardo’s wife opened the door for them. She was dressed in much the same way as her husband, in wide pantaloons and a handwoven shirt. Under a leather band, her long almost white hair was drawn back into a ponytail. Her features were regular and pleasant. She must have been a fine woman in her prime.

She invited him in and they were soon seated on the floor around a low table in the little parlor, drinking tea and discussing Henri Oedenkoven’s vegetarian colony and what had become of the nudist residents of Monte Verità. Phil learned that Bernardo and Antonella had left before the Great War broke out. They had been drawn by the philosophy of an Austrian theosophist, although the gentleman concerned had now turned his back on theosophy to launch an innovative movement in education. In many respects, the principles were the same. Phil listened with some amusement and a little nostalgia, but a sense of detachment took over. How long ago was all this? How meaningless it now seemed. As if there was anything natural about being human! Antonella’s handmade garments and the meager furniture, constructed from roots and branches, depressed him. Everything here was bent and twisted, like nature itself.

Bernardo asked what Phil had been doing all these years. Antonella kept asking about the contessa. Bernardo must have talked about her a great deal. But Phil did not want to discuss her. How was he to explain? The flight. The long journey. And then the separation, unplanned. He could not delve into all that now, nor did he wish to. He managed to steer the conversation onto a different tack.

“Anyway, I went back to England,” he said, cutting the story short. “When the war began, they needed people who knew German. So I joined the Foreign Office and then military intelligence. It sounds exciting, but it’s just a euphemism for a boring desk job. Luckily, I was too old to serve in the field.”

“And the contessa didn’t go with you?” persisted Antonella, evidently hoping for a satisfactory end to whatever love story Bernardo had spun.

Phil said nothing, just shook his head slightly. Bernardo looked at Antonella reproachfully. “Don’t be so tactless. You can see Filippo doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Antonella blushed. There was an awkward silence, broken only when Bernardo asked a different question.

“So you live in London now?”

“That’s right.”

They had dinner, and soon it was time to set off, as Phil had insisted on catching the last boat. He certainly had no intention of spending the night here, exposed to Antonella’s probing. A vague discomfort had crept inside him. The past was threatening to assert its grip. As they walked back down to Cannobio, he left Bernardo no opportunity of mentioning the old days again. Instead, he painted a vivid picture of the new prospects for Europe. In the last few days, the bright name of Locarno had been inscribed in the historical annals. Nobody, a year ago, could have conceived what the core states of Europe had agreed last night in the town hall. The guaranteed border along the Rhine, the withdrawal of French troops, the tricky matter of Article 16 in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Phil sensed that the Italian could not entirely follow, but he listened attentively, and that was enough. Only when they reached the promenade in Cannobio did Bernardo interrupt him.

“This place is very special, eh, Filippo?”

From Bernardo’s sideways glances, he knew the Italian suspected what lay behind the political outpouring. Phil stopped and put his hands in his pockets.

“Yes, Bernardo,” he said after a pause. He looked out at the lake. “It is so beautiful. Almost impossibly beautiful, don’t you think?”

“Antonella was terribly tactless.” The Italian was apologetic. “I am to blame. I told her so much about you…both of you. Her imagination ran away with her. I apologize. I’m afraid I turned you into a romantic legend.”

A romantic legend? Phil smiled. But before he could respond, Bernardo took a package from his pocket and held it out toward him.

“Here,” he said. “Please take it.”

Phil fondled the package: a bundle tied with string, hardly more than a newspaper folded several times over.

“When are you going home?” Bernardo asked, evidently keen to change the subject.

Phil hesitated, then put away his bundle. “Tomorrow,” he answered. “Tomorrow night.”

They embraced briefly. Phil watched Bernardo walk away until he crossed the market square and turned up a side alley. The steamer was waiting by the shore. But Phil was rooted to the spot. He felt the package under his fingers. He breathed deeply, took a few paces along the promenade, and sat on a stone bench. No, he couldn’t leave now. He would spend the night here. He knew he had to read her letters, but not in that confounded place where it had all happened.

He stood up again, letting his eyes wander down the promenade until they found what they were looking for: a little hotel, divided from the lake by a lush garden. He strode briskly across the market square and entered the foyer. He took a room on the first floor with a view of the lake, stepped out onto the balcony, sat down in one of the two basket chairs, and opened the package. Hadn’t Bernardo mentioned documents? Clearly he had never actually seen the contents. Phil contemplated the moleskin notebook and the folded sheets of Crown Mill protruding from it. He pulled out the loose sheets and unfolded the first of them. P&O Liners, London, declared the letterhead on the banner above the close-written lines.

Had she written all this during her journey home, in February 1903, en route to Trieste? One at a time, he unfolded the sheets and studied the handwriting, not paying any attention to the meaning of the words. He would do that later. He would read every word she had written. A vague sense of dread still held him back. How closely she had set the letters! Corralled and slanting, they suggested haste and determination. He placed the pages one over the other. They were numbered but undated. But the name of the vessel, printed on the letterhead, was as good as a date to him. They had agreed on the route. Now he knew she had reached Ascona. But then? What had happened to her afterward?

The last sheet was only half-full. The bottom of the page had been torn off. He found the fragment in the notebook, inserted between the front cover and the flyleaf. There was a name on it. Mahendra! His mouth ran dry. The name glared at him. Mahendra! So this half page was for him.

He only got as far as the first paragraph. A horn blared in the distance as the steamer pulled away from the dock. The sun had set and a cool breeze stirred. He shivered, but he could not take his eyes off the paper lying before him on the oval stone table. He opened the notebook and flicked through it. Every page was crammed with writing.

She had used the P&O paper when she ran out of space in the notebook. A poem on the last page caught his attention. And as he read it, he heard her voice:

The world is weeping

As if God had met his doom.

Casting a leaden shadow

Heavy as a tomb.

Come close and keep me warm

In a tender hold.

The life that burned in every heart

Is ashen cold.

Come let us kiss

A deep and long good-bye.

There grows a longing in the world

From which we soon must die.

Phil put the sheets and the notebook back on the table and picked up the note addressed to him. His eyes raced over the first paragraph, then came to rest on a word. He read it, repeated it softly, and registered the shudder it sent down his spine. The ancient force was as strong as ever. He wanted to resist, but realized at once that it would be pointless. Vipassana, he whispered, trying to grasp the feelings the word unleashed within him.

This was the second ghost in a few days. First Bernardo, now this. But why not? What could Europe expect now, if not ghosts? After such a war. He groped in his pockets for cigarettes, but the packet he found was empty. Unhurried, he gathered up the papers, stood up, went inside, and laid them out on the bed. This was going to be a long night. Or was this where the long night would begin to end?

He reached for his coat and left the room, the mysterious word ringing in his head like a prayer.

Vipassana. Vipassana.

Part One — Berlin, 1926

Edgar noticed her at once.

She had the air of a film star. She might be one of the foreign dancers taken on to fill exotic sets for those epic movies they were making in Potsdam these days.

“Pretty girl,” commented Daniel, who was standing next to him and had traced his stare.

Edgar raised an eyebrow. Pretty? No. Ravishing. “Where do you think she’s from?” he asked.

Daniel shrugged, turned toward the bar, and gestured to the waiter for the bill.

“Enough options to choose from,” he said with that typical note of derision. “Depends who the bald chap next to her is.”

Edgar looked out of the corner of his eye at the table where the couple was sitting. The woman had turned to face her companion, who was at least twice her age. He was very well dressed, probably a wealthy foreigner with the kind of currency that bought things.

“I bet he’s a diplomat,” Daniel surmised. “They always have some delicious young thing in tow.”

Edgar could sense that the woman was looking at him again.

Tricky business. Was the bald man her husband? Her lover? Perhaps she wasn’t a woman at all, like a lot of the clients here. After all, the Eldorado was a preferred haunt for the third gender. But the transvestites didn’t normally start parading their charms till midnight.

Daniel put a few coins on the table.

“Off already?” asked Edgar anxiously. “What are you seeing tonight?”

“Something by that Toller fellow. I can pen my damning review afterward at Café Braun. Will you be dropping in?”

Daniel and his damning reviews. Although he was far more gracious than the other critics. At least he always stayed till the end of the show.

“But I see you have your mind on something else,” said Daniel wryly. “The old fellow looks muscular. Watch your step.”

“I have to go as well,” said Edgar, not rising to the bait. “Robert is coming for me.”

“Your cousin? That creep! So you still hang out with him?”

“Family, Daniel. Family. What can I do? Anyway, he isn’t as bad as he likes to pretend. Tough on the outside, soft at heart.”

“A fascist at heart.”

“Oh, that’s just fashionable now. Robert has a hard time of it.”

Daniel’s expression was dark.

“Well, I’d rather not bump into him. I’d better leave. Will I see you tomorrow?”

“A walk by the lake?”

“Perhaps. Give me a ring.”

They embraced briefly. As Daniel was leaving, Edgar seized his opportunity for another glimpse of the unknown beauty. She was quite extraordinary. Even though she was talking to the bald fellow, she was eyeing him again.

Edgar observed the other guests. Clearly he wasn’t the only fellow surreptitiously watching her. But he was the one getting the glances. Not that it meant anything. She had probably decided to focus on him to avoid having to deal with half a dozen men staring at her every time she looked around. She wasn’t so much looking at him as looking through him and past all the others.

Edgar looked at the clock and then at the door. Robert never used to show the slightest interest in him. Things had only changed a few months ago, when Edgar was chatting to him over some boring breakfast at a banker’s villa in Grunewald and recounting his nocturnal jaunts through the sleazier side of Berlin. “Perverse,” Robert had said then, but a few days later, he had asked to be initiated into this decadent universe. They had done the rounds together a few times. That was the plan again tonight. It wasn’t like Robert to be late, since he had a real dislike of others who failed to display punctuality. Slavs and Jews weren’t punctual, he maintained, but Germans were. Edgar never commented on that kind of nonsense.

He wondered what to do with the rest of his evening if Robert didn’t show up. Go home, run a bath, and finish that English detective story? He could already guess the end, but he liked the central character. He would happily accompany him through the last pages, as long as there wasn’t going to be an altar at the end of it. But those English crime writers weren’t usually so dull as to crown an exciting murder case with a tiresome wedding.

“…with absolutely nothing on her back,” someone next to him was saying.

“Stark naked from the back of her neck to the slit in her buttocks.”

“The minister’s wife?”

“Take my word, and then he says, ‘Madam, I wish your husband would display half as much spine as you…’”

Edgar tried to catch the eye of the saucy raconteur, but the man was looking the other way now. His listener was snapping his fingers at the barkeeper. Perhaps he should have gone with Daniel after all. But Robert had been so insistent about this Saturday. The fact that Edgar had wanted to see a play that night made no impression on him.

“What pompous baloney were you hoping to see?” he had asked.

Edgar had not told the truth. Why provoke his cousin by mentioning that new play by an archcommunist? And to be honest, he didn’t really mind missing it. He usually went to please his friend who was obliged to watch countless productions to finance his studies. Luckily, Edgar didn’t need to do that. Quite the opposite. His handsome monthly check from Hamburg could easily have supported Daniel as well. To some extent it did. Edgar regularly invited him to dine at Horcher’s, and he had even given him ten hundredweight of coal as a St. Nicholas gift. He did not mind joining Daniel every other Saturday. But four times a week? No, there was a limit to what a man had to do in the name of friendship. Playwrights these days were a bit unbearable. The material wasn’t credible any longer. Everything revolved around the new republic, as though human history had begun in November 1918. Most productions of the great classics were like the kaiser’s statue in Bonn: mutilated (in his case by occupying troops) and doused in red (by German Communists).

The next time she looked at him, it gave him goose pimples. The fellow was quite interesting, too. His big, broad, clean-shaven skull was borne by a strong neck. He wore an elegant suit, although in Edgar’s view the shade was too pale for the season. It was winter, after all. But then again, they were probably foreigners.

No doubt they had flown into Tempelhof a few hours ago, rested a little at the Hotel Adlon, then decided to taste the Berlin nightlife before an early-morning shoot. Perhaps he was one of the film’s backers, or her producer. Edgar shook his head at his own tabloid fantasies. The man could just as well be a coffee magnate visiting the agricultural trade fair with one of his bean pickers. But the Green Week would not be opening until the twentieth of February, a whole fortnight away, and the woman looked a bit too dainty for picking coffee beans.

She had dark skin, jet-black hair, slender arms, and probably a few other delights under that close-cut scarlet blouse. No, these two were certainly not from Berlin. Heads like his were not grown locally. A pale-skinned Othello, decided Edgar. Strong and stylish, with dark eyes that did not exactly kindle confidence. Edgar guessed he must be about fifty, and it would not have surprised him to learn that he had been a successful boxer or wrestler. Although he showed no signs of injury. His face had evidently been places, but it had not suffered with time. He had no scars or broken nose, nor did he resemble a war veteran.

“The Esplanade, at a soirée for the Baltic Red Cross.” Another fragment drifted across from the exchange at his side. “Sons of the royal family always come. But the company has come down in the world. The little countess I danced with was working as a nanny…”

Edgar shifted slightly further away. The intellectual tone of this conversation had taken a dive. Once they started on the royal family, they would soon get around to the crown prince, and then debate the proposed expropriation of the nobility. It was just like a dialogue in a mediocre contemporary play: You could see the puns coming a mile off.

Edgar glanced at the door again, but Robert’s tall figure still failed to materialize. Instead, the bartender tugged at his jacket and leaned across the counter. “Herr von Rabov?”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. It was true he had been coming here for a while, but he didn’t think he knew this particular bartender.

“Yes?”

“Telephone message for you.” The man pushed a note across. Edgar unfolded it and read: “Arriving by motor car. Please wait.”

When he looked up again, she was alone at the table. That look was obviously meant for him, however odd it might seem. She surveyed him calmly, almost too calmly for his taste. Was it an invitation? Under normal circumstances, he would not have hesitated. Under Berlin circumstances, that is, with the easy etiquette he had been enjoying to the full ever since he arrived two years ago. But something held him back. And here was her companion again. Othello, he repeated to himself, without quite knowing why. He had something of Shakespeare’s tragic hero about him. The young woman turned back toward him and they started talking.

Edgar looked at the note in his hand. A motor car! That could mean only one thing: Robert’s father, Arthur von Rabov, member of Parliament, would be with him. Edgar quickly ordered a lemonade and rinsed his mouth.

Robert’s company was enough to make him uneasy, but Arthur von Rabov was the power behind the scenes of the family. If Edgar respected anyone, it was his uncle. Edgar’s father had mentioned that his terribly busy and important relative was hoping to have a chat. But he never expected the old man to drive over to meet him. And at the Eldorado, of all places, surrounded by transvestites! It was one thing to meet up with Robert here, but Arthur von Rabov? Why hadn’t Robert said anything before? Presumably he hadn’t known about it either, or else he would hardly have asked Edgar the other day to introduce him to another “perversity.”

She was just turning her head, and for the first time, he saw her in profile. If she had been on her own, or perhaps with a girlfriend, he would have been over there now chatting her up. Her profile was perfectly gorgeous. When she moved her head sideways like that, her lovely dark skin was tantalizingly taut from her cheek all the way down her throat to her neck. With women like that, you had to get straight to the point. Stratagems were a waste of time. He would merely make a fool of himself, stumbling over his own innuendo. But with that fellow sitting there, there was little he could do. Was there something between them? Now she was smiling at her Othello, gently laying a hand on his arm. Just then the man looked up and his eyes caught Edgar’s. Startled, he turned red. But then who was going to notice in the subdued lighting of this club.

Edgar looked the other way, but he could tell that Othello and the unknown beauty were both watching him. When his flush of uncertainty passed, he looked back toward them — but the table was empty. And then he saw her coming up to him. She had her coat over her arm. Without so much as a glance, she brushed past him on her way to the exit. First her, a creature from an Oriental fairy story. Then her companion. She came so close that Edgar could smell her perfume. But what was that? They were already outside. Edgar stood rooted to the spot. The firm pressure of her hand in his, an almost imperceptible pause, a swift but inconspicuous movement! Was he dreaming? He looked down at his palm. He unfolded the tiny piece of paper she had slipped him and, with a mixture of bewilderment and secret pleasure, read the English words:

“Here. Day after tomorrow. Same time. I will wait for you.”