Absolute Friends by John le Carré Read Free Book Online Page B

he's related to the Mallory who took part in assault on Everest he's prime human material. Ask him and report back. Mundy."
    Mr. Mallory is not, alas, prime human material, or not of the sort the Major has in mind. His real name, he regrets, is Dr. Hugo Mandelbaum, he comes from Leipzig and has no taste for heights. "But don't tell this to the boys, please, Mr. Mundy. With such a name as Mandelbaum, they have too much fun." And he laughs and nods his white head with the resignation of one who has been the object of quite a bit of fun already.
    The cello is not a success. At first, Dr. Mandelbaum is concerned only with bow action. Unlike the Anglican missionary in Murree he treats Mundy's fingers as if they were live electric wires, gingerly attaching them to their points before leaping back to safety at the other side of the room. But by the end of their fifth session, his expression has changed from one of technical concern to simple grief for a fellow human being. Perched on his piano stool, he clasps his hands together and leans over them.
    "Mr. Mundy, music is not your refuge," he pronounces at last, with great solemnity. "Maybe later, when you have experienced the emotions that music describes, it will become a refuge for you. But we cannot be sure. So maybe better for now you take refuge in _language.__ To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge. You allow me to read you a little poem by Goethe? Sometimes Goethe is very pure. When he was young like you, he was pure. When he was old like me, he became pure again. So I tell you once in German a most beautiful little poem, then I tell you what it means. And next time we meet, you will learn this little poem. So."
    So Dr. Mandelbaum recites the loveliest and shortest poem in the German language, then provides his translation: _Over all the mountains is peace... but wait, soon you too will be at rest.__ And the cello goes back into Dr. Mandelbaum's cupboard where he keeps his shabby suit. And Mundy, who has learned to hate the cello and is not used to tears, weeps and weeps at the shame of seeing it go, while Dr. Mandelbaum sits on the far side of the room at the lace-curtained window, staring into a book of spiky Gothic lettering.
    Nonetheless the miracle happens. By the end of a couple of terms Dr. Mandelbaum has acquired a star pupil and Mundy has found his refuge. Goethe, Heine, Schiller, Eichendorff and Mörike are his secret familiars. He reads them furtively in scripture prep, and takes them to bed to read again by flashlight under the sheets.
    "So, Mr. Mundy," Dr. Mandelbaum declares proudly over a chocolate cake he has bought to celebrate Mundy's success in a public examination. "Today we are both refugees. For as long as mankind is in chains, maybe all good people in the world are also refugees." It is only when he speaks German, as now, that he allows himself to lament the enslavement of the world's downtrodden classes. "We cannot live in a bubble, Mr. Mundy. Comfortable ignorance is not a solution. In German student societies that I was not permitted to join, they made a toast: 'Better to be a salamander, and live in the fire.'"
    After which he will read him a passage from Lessing's _Nathan der Weise__ while Mundy listens respectfully, nodding to the cadence of the beautiful voice as if it were the dream-music that he will one day understand.
    "Now tell me once about _India,__" Dr. Mandelbaum will say, and in turn closes his eyes to Ayah's plain tales from the hills.
    Periodically, seized with a desire to exercise his parental duty, the Major will descend unannounced on the school and, supported by a cherrywood walking stick, inspect the lines and roar. If Mundy is playing rugby, he will roar at him to break the blighters' legs; if cricket, to swipe the buggers over the pavilion. His visits end abruptly