Undue Influence by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online

the book, said goodnight to Muriel, and went home. In the course of the evening I glanced through it, beguiled by some of the names (‘Victoire’, ‘Lisette’). I would ask him to lend it to me, I decided. Just for a few days. That way I could deliver it to him all over again.
    I have no interest in the German Romantics, or indeed in any other kind of romantic, with or without a literary status, but the stories seemed limpid, accessible, but at the same timeremote in time, rather like the man who had been looking for them. I did not go so far as to read Jenny Treibel so as to seem more knowledgeable than I really was; such stratagems were not in my nature. I really do not know what I had in mind at that stage. Sometimes an attractive appearance is enough, so that one is inclined to endow the person who possesses such an appearance with other gifts, grace, intelligence, some sort of accomplishment. And this tall fair stranger had seemed so incongruous in our dusty basement, as if he were visiting from another world where everyone was well dressed. The wincing nervousness seemed out of character but it was easy for me to excuse it. It was the reason for this that I was determined to examine. The man had either suffered some sort of psychic injury that had left him otherwise intact or he was under great strain. There may have been, probably was, illness somewhere in the background, and with this I could sympathize all too readily, as my experience had taught me to. I had frequently felt shame at my own resistance to my father’s tragedy, but I believe my instinct was correct. It is sometimes necessary to keep one’s distance from misfortune, however harsh this may seem to others.
    The man in the shop seemed more affected by this dilemma (if it existed) than I had ever been; he was far gone, if not in suffering, then no doubt in awareness. I should have liked to discuss this matter with someone, or even to have put the man on his guard. Your sympathy is quite adequate, I should have said; do not allow it to become excessive. Vulnerability is commendable; masochism is not. There was no possibility of my ever saying this. But I believe that my desire to say it was present even on that first day. I felt both pity and impatience, as if enormous efforts would be needed to impose the realities of life once more before it proved too late. In this I may have beenprescient. Spotless heroes (I did not doubt that he would be spotless) often owe their survival to agencies more worldly than themselves. It was something to think about, something to remind me of the fairy stories I had read so obsessively as a child. I put it no higher than that.

Four

    It was not his sister who was the invalid. It was his wife. This I learned the following evening when I delivered the book. ‘Martin? Who is it, darling?’ came a voice from another part of the flat.
    ‘Would you excuse me a minute,’ he said. ‘My wife …’
    I was left standing in the middle of a room which was the complete antithesis of our plain-living high-thinking rooms at home. This room was an unironic tribute to the nineteenth century. Looped curtains of dark blue chenille obscured most of the light from the two tall windows that looked out over Weymouth Street. The floor was covered by a large red and blue carpet which someone other than myself could no doubt have identified and dated. On a marble chimneypiece stood a gilt clock under a glass dome and two glass candelabra dripping with glass lustres. In the middle of the room stood a round walnut table on a single pedestal; a smaller version of this was placed between the windows. Two enormous wing chairs, covered in blue and green damask, further obscured the light. These chairs, it seemed to me, were not designed to be occupied. My parents’ chairs at home were upholstered in a vague orange and brown tapestry; they had high backs and wooden arms and were functional and austere. Surrounded by this opulence, which I was