Klaus by Allan Massie Read Free Book Online

wrote, “remembered an evening in a Brasserie near the Gare de l’Est – Brasserie de Strasbourg? It was his first visit to Paris since the war, and he knew himself to be more alone than he had ever been in that city which was now haunted by ghosts. There was a woman he had loved in 1938 and urged to accompany him to America. But she had refused. “Europe’s too interesting,” she said, and laughed. In his memory there was mockery, self mockery, in that laugh. Why hadn’t she come with him? She was Jewish, a refugee from Vienna. He feared then what awaited her, though not precisely, for who, even in the weeks around Munich, had envisioned the death camps? He had made enquiries since, and learned nothing. She had made no mark in Paris, where she had lived in a tiny room on the top floor of a cheap hotel with a notice saying that cooking in rooms was forbidden. Perhaps nobody in the city now remembered her, except himself. Hers was only one of millions of lives obliterated, and when he had opened his own door to Death, it would be as if she had never lived. The waiter brought him his choucroute and a bottle of Sylvaner, said the perfunctory, “bon appétit, m’sieur”. Julian poured himself a glass of wine, and found he had no desire for food. A family of six people at the table across the way broke out, all, simultaneously, in laughter, catching his attention. It was held longer by the boy at the end of the table nearest him. Aware of his gaze, the boy glanced across and smiled. He had brown eyes and long lashes, a soft unformed face, stocky build, like a footballer, Julian thought. Then the boy looked away, allowing Julian to take note of an exquisite profile. He was perhaps seventeen. His right leg trembled. Then his mother leaned forward and presented him with a morsel from her plate, held out on a fork. A spoilt child, the darling of the family, Julian said to himself. Later, when the party rose to go, they all embraced the boy…”
    Klaus laid his pen aside. It was no good, dead as mutton. Did he believe in Julian’s Jewish girl? As for the boy and his family, that was real enough, a memory drawn from his own last visit to Paris and a meal in the same Alsatian brasserie. And, as they left, the boy had turned to Klaus again and smiled, as if saying, “Yes, I know I’ve made an impression on you, and perhaps if things were different, who knows? But now we’re going home en famille and we’ll never see each other again.” It was ridiculous and the memory was one he couldn’t plausibly give to Julian, not with that suggestion of desire… And of course he himself had only imagined the boy’s thoughts, which might have been quite different, as, for instance, “I know what you want, you sad old pervert…”

VIII
    He wouldn’t drug tonight. He could do without. It was ten days since he had left the clinic where he had endured what he called ‘a clear-out’ and he had only flirted with H since then. No need tonight. Three fingers of whisky and a couple of Luminal would see him through. Good, better… but best? Best was far away.
    Best was in the past, when they were young and the drugs were no more than naughtiness, to give them a lift. They had all played with them, Gustaf too, despite his inherent timidity, fear that he might surrender something of himself. They called heroin “H” or “tuna”, the fish that swims in the body. Erika had turned away from it. She was always the strong one. One of her letters from a long time back ran through his memory. “Don’t take anymore – if you promise, I’ll give it up too. It’s unhealthy! It’s expensive – and you can’t afford it! It’s dangerous, a killer – don’t you realise that, my love? I embrace you from across mountains. We are too far apart from each other.”
    That letter gave him courage, or at least resolution. He would take a cure. He went to see Dr Katzenstein in Zurich, who frowned as he prodded him, and sighed, as if to say