In a Deep Blue Hour, page 4
Did you know there were over six hundred types of pasta worldwide? Tom asks me.
He starts listing them: spaghetti, cannelloni, pappardelle, fusilli, orecchiette. He counts them on his fingers like a kid. Rice noodles, glass noodles, udon noodles. That was about it for him.
If you get to thirty, I’ll buy you an ice cream.
I look up the weather in Moscow, in New York, in LA, in Buenos Aires, in Ouagadougou, even though I’ve not got the foggiest idea where that is.
A couple of Swedes—no, it was a Swede and a Franco-German—made a film together about people diving off a ten-meter board for the first time. Why didn’t we think of that. They just show the board. And the people jumping off it. Or not. I’ll send you the link.
The weather in Kuala Lumpur, in Tokyo, in Sydney. The weather at the South Pole. The daytime temperature sometimes touches minus fifty-eight centigrade. At night, it’s always under minus sixty. Chance of precipitation: zero. Sunshine: zero.
Tom says he’s going out to get some footage of the village, atmospherics, the market, the school, old people, youngsters, a cat in the rain.
Birds, I call out after him. Get some shots of birds. Wechsler loves birds.
* * *
—
Those swedes. I found an interview with them. Entirely forgettable names, especially the one that’s not a Swede at all, he’s French or Belgian. Axel, who’s the bona fide Swede, says: I’d had enough of forcing reality into certain shapes, I was looking for a form where the image is sufficient. He says: I have no interest in making another film in which I end up telling lies about life. Protagonist, antagonist, conflict, story, moral. Everything follows that scheme.
Is that what we’re doing then? Protagonist: Wechsler. Antagonist: The mystery woman? Or time passing? And the conflict? Death? The story? The moral? Is that the solution: Showing people jumping off a ten-meter board? Or not jumping?
But I can understand those Swedes, or that Swede and his Belgian chum. I know that feeling. There are too many stories everywhere, and all structured the same: plot point one, plot point two, resolution. Every damned car advertisement tells a story now. Paradise: the place without stories.
Emails, emails, emails, one from the producer, one from Sascha, the sound woman. The landlord. Now what does he want? Shock ventilation? What’s that supposed to be. Sometimes I just don’t have the strength to answer all the emails. But the fewer I answer, the more they get to be, and I end up without the strength to answer a single one of them. Does the fewer exist in an intensified form? The even fewer? But counting up varieties of pasta. I’m not there yet.
* * *
—
Finding the woman turns out to be dead easy. She is living in the village, is married, as I thought, but has kept her maiden name. She has followed her father into the ministry.
I couldn’t bear to be cooped up in the hotel anymore, besides, the rain had let up, and Tom was still going around doing atmosphere. So I went out on the street and just walked up to strangers, especially older ones who I thought might remember the minister. And I turned out to have been right.
Of course, Minister Imbach. And one old woman, really ancient, with a walker and all that jazz, told me she reckoned his daughter was now the village pastor. I tried asking her about Wechsler as well, and she thought she knew the name, but had never read anything of his. Ooh no, she says, laughing, as though I’d asked her if she’d ever dived off a ten-meter board. I knew his parents though, she says. Nice people, quiet. His father was a high school teacher. As I already knew.
Home page of the Evangelical Community. Bible verse of the month: You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes. Haggai 1:6. Cheery news, isn’t it.
As children, we had to learn the books of the Bible in sequence, there was some kind of mnemonic chant, Moses, Joshua and Judges, Ruth and two of Daniel. But Haggai? Where’s that—in the Apocrypha somewhere?
Here we are. Contact. Ministry. Three ministers work for the local Evangelical Community. One man and two women. And there she is, Judith Imbach, with picture. What they called a handsome woman, in Wechsler’s age. Graying hair, a straight-cut fringe, blue eyes, warm smile. Even her mobile number.
It’s five o’clock already, but it’s worth a try, ministers are on call all day. A calm, friendly-sounding voice picks up. I say what it’s about. A film about Richard Wechsler. A positive silence. Or maybe negative would be more accurate. Silence can be something neutral, but this silence had something drawing or sucking about it, as though it could absorb and engulf words. A kind of vacuum of expectancy.
* * *
—
She agrees to meet me, today, right now. I’ve explained we’re only in the village for a short while. All right, then. Do you want to come by my office? On Kirchgasse. Figures, doesn’t it.
Five minutes later, I’m there. I talked about religion with Wechsler on that evening in the café. Extraordinary, the ground you can cover in the space of one or two hours. It was mostly him talking, admittedly, and me listening. But it wasn’t the usual old-white-man prattle, explaining the world to us clueless females. I had the sense he was thinking aloud, and I was happy to hear him do it. That was the division of roles: he was explaining himself, I was recording. After all, it’s me making a film about him, not the other way around.
He was fascinated by powerful feelings, he said, and where else did you come upon those anymore in the Western world? In love, in illness and death, and in religion. Sometimes in politics, too, but there it was only the preoccupation of madmen, and that wasn’t interesting. Writing required powerful feelings to fuel it, that was what kept a story going.
Any kind of feeling?
Any kind of feeling. It just has to be powerful and uncompromising.
Does he never—like the Swedes—question storytelling itself? I wouldn’t mind asking him that. What kind of book would give you people jumping off a ten-meter board? It would surely be boring.
Not long ago I read a story of Wechsler’s in an anthology he gave us. The piece was a detailed description of a YouTube video. Every word that was spoken, every little gesture, every facial expression. It was an episode of Britain’s Got Talent. Or rather, it was two episodes cut together, two competitors, two versions of the same fairy story: the wallflower who becomes a superstar. One was an unemployed Scots girl, the other was a Welsh mobile-phone salesman. I’ve forgotten their names. As a story, I have to say, it was rather dull.
Then, later, in a different context: he always found religion faintly embarrassing. That for him was its dominant quality. And yet he couldn’t help but be fascinated by sensible people believing in such things as God, creation, reincarnation, miracles. Sensible people, who understood the combustion engine or could do differential calculus, or cultured people who were well-versed in the classics, believing in such things. He couldn’t get his head around it. I wonder if he had Judith the minister in mind?
I didn’t ask him about his faith, nor he about mine. I got the impression God was interesting to him only as an idea, as a kind of variable in his intellectual structure, a character in a story.
God’s existence wouldn’t change a thing, he said. Before you are born, life is nothing, it’s up to you to give it meaning, its value is nothing but the meaning you choose for it. What about another glass of wine?
On my way to see the minister, I see Tom filming a cat. Oh, Tom!
* * *
—
That feeling: as long as we’re talking, she won’t say anything.
She right away suggested we call each other Du, perhaps she thought I was friendly with Wechsler and we were moving in the same circles. But in spite of that, I find her reserved. She wants me to tell her about the film, perhaps she’s playing for time.
The concept of the film. Well, indeed, what is the concept of the film? I could quote from the draft proposal for a subsidy: Our film will show Richard Wechsler in his chosen home of Paris and accompany him back to the village where he grew up as a child. We meet his friends and associates and discuss Richard Wechsler’s works with literature experts. In longer interview segments, the author will tell us about his writing and his life, and allow us to follow the progress of the novel he is writing, from its first inkling to the completed manuscript. But does that really describe the film we’re making? When we asked him questions about his biography, he said: Why do you want to know that? Ask any person on the street, and I bet his life is more interesting than mine. Do you think it’s my life that matters? Do you think anyone’s life matters? But if not that, then what?
What about the new novel? He doesn’t like talking about books he’s working on. Then what’s his process? In one conversation, I think it was the one down by the river, the day we two later ran away from Tom and Sascha, he talked about his way of working. He never planned anything ahead. He had no idea what was going to happen in a book until the moment he got it down. This was critical—only in this way could a living work come about. It had to grow into the world like something organic. It was a wonderful feeling when a story suddenly turned—like life itself.
If Wechsler were to die, I suddenly think, that would be an unexpected turn all right. Suddenly dropped dead in the middle of our shoot. Fallen under a bus on his way to the station, pushed under a Métro, died of a massive heart attack, stabbed in a mugging. I’d better google him when I get back to the hotel. Maybe that’s why he didn’t show up today.
We start off by collecting material about him, and his life, talk to him and people who knew him. Then we see what we’ve got, and try to put it together so it makes sense.
The minister smiles cautiously.
So it makes sense? And what led you to me?
We heard you used to be close. We’re looking for people who knew him when he was a young man, before he became a writer.
We heard you two had an affair. As I don’t say. Not the way to talk to a woman of the cloth. Not really the way you talk to anyone.
If you were prepared to talk with us, I would let the cameraman know, and we could schedule a short interview with you tomorrow, or even tonight.
Only I don’t feel like involving Tom. I want to be alone with her. I like her, I like being in her presence, a quiet, intimate conversation, without the camera’s prying eye. I can understand how Wechsler would have been in love with her. If he was.
I look around. The office isn’t especially winning, like all offices. Contemporary furniture in pale wood, not much mess, she keeps things straight, a boring but astoundingly robust-looking houseplant, a shelf full of neatly labeled files. Her handwriting is generous. At least there are no Bible verses on the walls, I’m allergic to those. No, she has some rather pleasant landscape photos, presumably the work of an ambitious hobby photographer.
Did you do those?
My husband.
Is he a professional photographer, then?
That was me being flattering. If he’d been a professional, they would have been better pictures. The light gives it away. That, and the quality of the prints.
He teaches shop in the high school. And sports.
At the school where Wechsler’s father once taught?
* * *
—
They drew lots for the rooms. There is a brief, awkward moment. All three of the young men are a little in love with her, just as young men are always in love, not really seriously, but still with passion and intensity. Testosterone.
They spent the evening in the restaurant where the butcher worked on his enormous steak. They all had a little bit too much to drink, even Judith. They’re all twenty, give or take.
There’s only one double bed in the room, more queen than king size. Wechsler gets palpitations when he sees it. Has he slept with a woman before? Maybe. And has Judith slept with a man before? Definitely. She goes into the bathroom first, doesn’t take long, comes out wearing a pair of pajamas. Or maybe a nightgown, but nothing glamorous, she doesn’t need that at her time of life. And it would probably have embarrassed her. Now it’s Wechsler’s turn to use the bathroom. It feels odd, slightly intrusive, picturing him as a young fellow. It’s none of my business. Never mind.
He’s just wearing a T-shirt and undershorts. Judith is already in bed, he lies down beside her, as far from her as he can manage in the narrow bed. She turns off the light. He can’t breathe for excitement. Would he dare take the first step? I doubt it. Suddenly he feels a hand on his arm. She says: Whatever happens, we’ll remain friends.
* * *
—
As long as she’s talking, she won’t say anything. So she talks about her high school days with Wechsler, that he always used to read a lot, that he was the class clown, but that there was something secretive about him too. That she was always a little bit scared of him, because he could get so mad. He would feel so insecure, he could be wounding. Instead of telling me he’s in love with me, he would make fun of my hair or my clothes. And we used to really have terrible hair and awful clothes. She talks about her teachers, tells anecdotes, all interchangeable. Wechsler was right, his life doesn’t tell you much about him. And it’s not especially interesting either. Or if it is, then only for him.
Did he have a girlfriend?
She hesitates. It wasn’t really like that back then, people didn’t pair off. Or very few. We all used to hang around together, I’m sure there were girls who fancied one of the boys, or the boys fancied one of the girls, but there weren’t any steady couples in our group.
I wonder.
You have a beautiful church here. A really unusual church.
The change of subject seems not unwelcome to her.
Would you like me to show you around?
She seems to have all the time in the world. I don’t mind. Tom’s not going anywhere either. When my phone rings, I refuse the call.
I expected her to go on talking, to tell me the history of the church, point out the fin de siècle windows, the unusual color of the pews or the stonework behind the altar, the floral ornamentation, the two angels with their long trumpets. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. But she doesn’t say anything at all.
We step into a side entrance, now we’re in the nave, silently contemplating the altar and pulpit. The special silence of churches, the tenseness of the echo, in spite of the silence. It feels to me as though the building is quietly breathing in and out. Or is it God’s own breathing?
It was just the way it was in his book. She doesn’t say so, but I sense it. That night in Paris they made love, and they did it again and again on the following days, all with the vigor and passion of young people, but then nothing came of it. There are no end of reasons for connections to fail or not even properly to come about. He was an ambitious young man moving to Paris, while she was tied to Switzerland by her course and college. She had someone else, he had someone else. There will have been reasons. And then she married the teacher with the happy snaps, and got pregnant and started a family with him. Did she have children? She accepted her first job, did further career development, took other jobs here and there, and then got this one. She will have thought long and hard about going back to the place where she grew up, and then decided: yes. She moved her family into the rectory where she grew up, or they bought a house or rented one. They went on vacation together, made purchases, experienced good times and not-so-good times. And Wechsler all the time was in Paris, writing his books, one after the other, having relationships, about which he hasn’t told us a thing, and kept on writing about this one woman, the woman he didn’t get. Presumably neither she nor he will tell us any more about it.
So is that the story of our film? A writer repeatedly writing about his garden-variety first love. Is that a reasonable thing? Briefly I ask myself whether Wechsler was using us to find Judith. Could that have been the reason for his no-show: To give us the time to track her down, get in touch with her, on his behalf? But that seems too contrived, he’s not so canny as all that. In fact, he’s not canny at all, in fact he can be quite slow on the uptake.
I take Judith by the hand, don’t ask me why. She seems not to be surprised. She holds me as I hold her. We stand there side by side, hand in hand in silence, for a long time.
* * *
—
Take a decision and stick to it, says the young blond woman. Okay?
A young man with short blond hair, blue bathing trunks, and a chain round his neck with what looks like it might be a dog tag in the military looks down into the water from the high board. He scratches his scalp. The young woman beside him is quite well-built, and she’s wearing swim shorts like his, only red, and a red-and-white-striped tankini top. Her long, fine hair, lighter than his, falls over her right shoulder. She looks doubtfully, then she smiles. The young man has turned to the woman, he points with both hands at the end of the board.
But I’m not going to do a run-up, that’s for sure.
The woman has stepped closer, smiles. She is twisting her fingers.
If I’m jumping, then from here.
Swim over to the ladder and I’ll follow, says the woman, gesturing to him which way he should swim after leaping. She looks at him encouragingly.
Are you really going to jump? he asks, and runs his hand through his hair.
