The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online Page A

asked me if I wanted to make him ill again.’
    ‘How could you make him ill again?’
    ‘By breaking the metronome; I told you. So, anyway, get your Mutti to buy you another train.’
    But Emilie had no money.
    More and more, in the late evenings, she drank her aniseed drinks and fretted over her sums on the edges of the
Matzlingerzeitung
. Late one night, she told Gustav that rumours had begun circulating that the cheese co-operative was failing, that demand for Emmental had fallen now that the French were once again making so many different varieties of cheese, and that it was only a question of time before the Matzlingen Co-operative would close. ‘And then,’ said Emilie, ‘what are we going to do?’
    Gustav went and fetched the work he’d been doing with Max Hodler – pages of nicely formed letters, paragraphs of careful writing, drawings of swords and helmets and flowers and of girls setting their dresses alight with matchfire – and put this down in front of Emilie, covering up her mathematical scribbles on the newspaper.
    She stared down, wide-eyed. She put on her spectacles.
    ‘Is this your work?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Gustav, ‘of course it’s my work.’
    ‘Well. It’s not bad.’
    Gustav let his mother take in the pictures of the girls setting themselves on fire, but before she could say anything about them, Gustav said, ‘You can save money now, Mutti. Because I don’t need Herr Hodler any more. My work is better.’
    Emilie took a long swig of her aniseed drink. She fumbled for a cigarette and lit it with shaking hands. Gustav wanted to put his arms round her and lay his head on her shoulder, but he knew she didn’t want this; all she wanted was her drink and her cigarette.
    ‘We’ll have to see,’ she said. ‘Some of this is still a bit messy. We’ll have to hear what the headmaster says.’
    Herr Hodler stayed until the spring came. By then, Gustav had learned most of the stories in
Struwwelpeter
by heart and could terrify Anton by reciting them.
    Weh! Jetzt geht es klipp und klapp
    mit der Scher die Daumen ab,
    mit der grossen scharfen Scher!
    Hei! Da schreit der Konrad sehr.
    He had a sketchy idea of how his country had come into being. He could make ‘sensible’ drawings of churches with roofs like witches’ hats and of the bear of Bern, symbol of the great city Anton still talked about.
    And it was possible to say that Gustav had become fond of Max Hodler. It was possible to say that the single swear word,
scheisse
, had opened the door to a friendship. When the moment came for Max Hodler to leave, Gustav felt sad to be parted from him.
    ‘I’ll see you from time to time in school,’ said Max.
    ‘Yes,’ said Gustav.
    ‘You must keep working hard.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Make your mother proud of you.’
    ‘Yes.’
    As a leaving present to Max Hodler, Gustav had made a copy of the map of Mittelland in his room. He’d coloured the land green and the rivers blue. Here and there, on the green ground, wandered a few animals, which might have been ibex or which might have been grey sheep. Bern was a black circle, with its brown bear keeping watch. By Matzlingen was the circular cheese with the slice cut out of it. Near this, Gustav had written
Herr Max Hodler lives here.
    What Gustav didn’t know was that Emilie Perle hadn’t paid Max Hodler his tuition fees since February. He didn’t know, either, that Max had – just once – gone to ask for them, but that Emilie had been repelled by his rabbit eyes, damp and pleading, and had sent him away with nothing. By the time he left, the fees had still not been paid. All Max had from Emilie was a scribbled IOU. The tutor felt this to be unfair. He had worked hard with Gustav and was proud of the results. But Emilie Perle was too overwhelmed by her own troubles to give this any consideration.
    The cheese co-operative remained open, but had cut back its production by 40 per cent and put all its workers on half-pay. Now, Emilie