"What
a marvellous performance," she began, "You're so clever."
He had been concerned
about Snowleg when he sat down, but the praise of this smartly dressed
woman much older than himself overtook him. She asked about
his plans after university and whether he intended to go on working
with actors, and when he told her that he was hoping to specialise
in paediatrics she confessed that she too despised the theatre and
how wonderful that he was going to be a paediatrician because people
who helped children, in her experience, led the most rewarding lives.
He let her words flow over him, allowing himself to be impressed
by her house in the wine-growing region of Bavaria, a library he
was welcome to visit any time, a river - did he like fishing? -
and even their official residence in Hannoverstrasse where she and
her husband - "that's right, the lugubrious gentleman at the
end" - entertained visitors to East Berlin.
The waiters had started
to clear away soup plates and the white-haired lady was talking
about her husband's last post, in Africa, when he became aware of
a scuffle behind him.
He turned in his chair.
In the corner, by the door, the doorman struggled with a young woman.
Snowleg. He felt a contraction in his gut.
Everyone stared.
In the bright chandelier light, her leather skirt looked cheap,
her make-up garish, her top like a fake Japanese blouse. Peter
saw the shadow of her necklace through the silver satin and he shrank
back in his seat, clenching against the lipstick, the clothes, the
new effect. In that moment, everything changed.
"Oh, dear me, how
very awkward," murmured the Permanent Representative's wife.
It was apparent to her and to everyone in the room: this was
a girl of the Leipzig streets.
Gripped from behind by
the doorman, Snowleg looked up. Her frightened eyes located
Peter and she pointed.
"That's him."
The doorman, still holding
her arm, thrust her forward and thirty faces - intrigued, shocked,
amused - exchanged rapid glances. Together the couple walked
towards the table as the guests sawed at their pork with their Potsdam
cutlery and cast their eyes at the tablecloth, the wineglasses,
the peculiar flowers on the curtain, the carpet.
The doorman moved her
step by step down the length of the table until she stood opposite
Peter. "Sir, this young lady says you invited her to
dinner. Is she with you?"
His tone outside had been
trenchant, but now he asked his question in a more reticent voice.
Almost, in fact, as though he hoped that Peter would say "Yes."
Peter heard the rustling
quiet of the room. The people faded away and Snowleg looked
directly at him, her large eyes imploring. Now she would be
vindicated. Now he would rise to his feet. Now he would
take one of the inlaid chairs from the wall behind and say: "Yes,
I invited her. How wonderful to see you. Please, sit
down."
She waited for the answering
gleam, but he stared back at her with a terrified glaze in his eye.
"No."
A single syllable and
yet as soon as he uttered it he had a terrible clairvoyance that
he had become someone else.
Snowleg received the news
with a look he would never forget. And then all expression
fled from her face and disappeared, leaving her eyes dead, as if
they had fallen into a hole.
"Thank you, sir,"
said the doorman in a quiet, disappointed voice.
She stood for a moment,
cradling her silence, and he was reminded of Sepp on stage at the
end of the mime. It was the silence of someone betrayed and
as the doorman began to pull her away it resonated in the room.
He regretted his answer
immediately, with horrible detachment, he was released into seeing
her beauty again. Something in the line of her back seemed
straighter than before and the word 'dignity' came to his mind and
stayed there. What tortured him was that he could see himself
getting up and running after her and it was a surprise to discover
that he was still sitting there as though immersed in water.
He couldn't feel himself, nor the air on his skin. He was
seeing Snowleg as he saw her at the beginning, in church, at varying
levels of depth.
"I think there must be some mistake,
some mistake..." He broke through the surface and the
woman's hand on his was not hers, but that of the Permanent Representative's
wife.
"Don't worry yourself.
In Africa, we always had these people."
Around him everyone started talking
at once, but nothing was the same. His lips felt seared.
The air was misshapen, unbreathable. He had flunked.
And you can't do that if you're a perfect, gentle English/German
knight. You simply can't. Someone at the table winked
at him, another gave him a ruthless look. Teo leaned over
and patted his shoulder and said something, but all he could hear
was the shouting in his blood, the receding gallop of hoofs, of
the visored figure he had once dreamed of being, in clinking armour,
who tilted through a forest clearing to pluck maidens from the scaly
clutch of dragons. He scraped back his chair and made to rise,
but remained anchored to the spot."
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