Remember Me by David Stacton Read Free Book Online Page B

to say. The box was supposed to be of gold and tortoise shell, but the tortoise shell was celluloid and the ormulu was pinchbeck. He opened it and it was empty. It had no use. He put it down.
    Wagner sat like an actress between engagements, bloated and waiting for someone. It was not for him, of that Ludwig was sure. He knew that as soon as he came in. This was Tannhäuser before him, not Lohengrin, but Tannhäuser in the body of a dwarf. Ludwig shut his eyes.
    Wagner looked perplexed. Perhaps the King felt unwell ? He had clearly decided to be obliging. He asked if Ludwig would be back that evening. His eyes were watery and furtive. There would be caviar and iced champagne. He might just as well have rubbed his hands together with glee. It was the food of the upper classes. In this life some of us partake of one Host, and some of another.
    Ludwig winced. The vulgarity of it was appalling. At any moment Wagner might belch. Did he really believe that the pinnacle even of worldly recognition was merely to eat Strassbourg paté every day for lunch? He wandered round the room uneasily, aware of the man sitting there, but the Great Friend was gone. Only the Master remained , and the Master was a lie. Only his works were true. Ludwig wanted to cry, but he would not be seen in tears by anyone. He rushed out of the house. It was a moment of disillusion. Even back in the security of his own apartments in the Residenz, the parquet stretched around him like an ominous desert.
    He could not bear the solitude. He fled to the theatre, which connected with the palace by a short passage. In the theatre the world was real, and he must somehow banish the thought of that grubby, wet-fingered little manwith his lolling head, or else he would lose even Lohengrin . We can forgive the gods everything but their incarnations .
    It was Lohengrin he worshipped, not Wagner. Somewhere he must find a Lohengrin. For Lohengrin was a creature of the mountains. His home was in the snows and cloistered woods of Monsalvasch. He descended to flatland only to save the innocent. But in the opera Lohengrin there were no mountains. There was only the estuary of a dying town. The air Ludwig breathed had to be thin air. The fustian atmosphere of the house in the Briennerstrasse was mortal to him.
    Once in the theatre and he felt safer. There was a performance that night of Wilhelm Tell by Schiller. The audience was sparse. He crept into the empty vestibule alone, after the curtain had gone up, and let himself quietly into the darkness of the royal box. From below him came the distant echoes of superhuman voices, roaring out the pathos of great poetry. He sat down with relief.
    After the sleepy pears of the Briennerstrasse, to taste the pure passion of Schiller was to bite on a sharp apple, and to feel the mouth refreshed. Nobility of character conquered the tyranny of the self high in Switzerland. Salvation was over the border, in Uri. The young hero scrambled up a cardboard alp to save his people. The actor’s name was Rohde. Ludwig watched him with attention. The young man had a certain address. Some of Wagner’s best works had been written in Switzerland. Perhaps love might lie there. He must go to Switzerland, perhaps with this same Rohde, and find out.
    With the right companion, high on the exaltation of an alp, perhaps freedom would at last be possible. For since without love we live in chains, with love freedommight be conceivable. Only on such peaks lay the holiness of mankind.
    Below him the curtain rang down. He would make the trip incognito. Rohde was not only handsome, but his speeches had a cold metallic fire, like the hooves of horses waiting on cobbles on a frosty morning.
    When it had seemed there was none, he felt a way opening before him once again. He left before the final curtain and went to his rooms. If the greatness of Wagner resided only in his works, then his body would not accomplish Ludwig’s release, nor would his friendship. He must find