Читать книгу TheodoraLand - Malcolm James Thomson - Страница 5

TUESDAY 29 MAY 2012

The funeral was more interesting than I had anticipated. This was partly due to the fact that I used public transport instead of my skateboard. I had misread the tram timetable and arrived at the Nordfriedhof cemetery more than a half hour too early. Seated on the low wall surrounding a nineteenth century grave, in the shade of Gabriel’s huge outstretched wings, I smoked a spliff in funereal tranquillity. And so it was that later…

A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

(Procol Harum, it had been my Dad’s all-time favourite song!) And so it was that later I was super-alert to the sudden atmosphere of contempt, hurt and undisguised hostility when Vera and Agnes at last met.

Neither, Herr Lessinger had admitted to me, should know of the other’s existence. Philanderer he might have been, but the old man had never revealed the surnames of his lady-friends. Both were somewhere in their mid to late sixties, well-situated widows, their sexual appetites almost undiminished, each convinced that the aged bookseller was hers alone. I recall Vera described as insatiable although Agnes was praised as the more inventive.

Such frank, revelatory and intimate conversations with Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger had been few and far between. They often coincided with the days when I wore a dress or a skirt instead of my customary ultra-skinny jeans to work. The late unlamented and officious Elsa Brundt (as the Bookshop’s moral guardian) spoke to Herr Lessinger quite often of a suspicion she harboured. According to her, from time to time I wore a dress or skirt without the requisite underwear. The old man protested earnestly that such unseemly temerity from young Frau Lange was quite unthinkable.

Sure.

When the mourners assembled for the non-denominational service I confirmed that I was both the youngest person present and the best dressed. Vera, Agnes and others of advanced years had in their wardrobes ensembles which they wore with increasing frequency for funerals. My black knitted cotton dress from Comme des Garçons was more often worn for clubbing nights, bloused over a belt to be very short indeed. But unbelted it fell almost to my knees. My hat was a black straw trilby. I had bought three, the other two chrome yellow and cherry red respectively, for twenty euro at a market in Ibiza. My black flat-heeled ankle boots (I also owned them in neon green and silver) were more or less okay, I thought. Yes, I have the habit of buying in threes and I alternate between gleeful bargain hunting and self-indulgent extravagance. Anyway, in the chapel at least I was not on the receiving end of the kind of tight-lipped frowns which had been Elsa Brundt’s specialty.

It took me a moment to identify the man whose glance (no, repeated furtive glances during the pastor’s anodyne eulogy) could be deemed interested. Or at least curious.

Rudiger Reiß is in his late thirties, looks fit and has an upright posture. He’s taller than me and I am quite tall. I had seen the man in charge of all the Munich branches of Manduvel just once, at the beginning of the year. He had announced then in glib management-speak to the assembled staff that the branch on Trinity Place was to be abandoned by the concern. His timing, we had all agreed, sucked. It had been the Monday following the weekend which had been lengthened by the Epiphany holiday on the Friday. On the twelfth day of Christmas he had probably rehearsed.

Twelve drummers drumming.

Drumming us out of our jobs. Then as now Reiß had worn a smart black suit and looked a bit like the aloof duty manager of an expensive hotel. And on Saturday he had turned up, too. I had seen him in earnest discussion with someone from the gasworks emergency crew.

“You seem to be the only one here today from the Bookshop,” Reiß said, next to me in the graveyard. We laid flowers on the spot where in due course the ashes of Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger would be interred. I mumbled something about the others nursing their wounds. I wondered if he noticed that my floral tribute was one of the largest. In fact it had been ordered by my Aunt Ursel and the card was in her name as well as mine.

If we are being precise Ursel Lange is, in fact, my very elderly great-aunt. She is strict but very generous. The latter quality explains how it is that I can live much more comfortably than if I had to make do with the pittance paid to a trainee Buchhandelskauffrau. Aunt Ursel sets great store by qualifications. Her expectation is that my framed certificate will go on the wall of the small but still profitable bookshop, Brunnenbach Bücher, in the middle of the little Swiss town of Weinfelden. This is an enterprise which has been in our family’s hands for almost a century. I am supposed to take it over eventually.

“But for his illness, he would have been there to the very end, I suppose.”

I nodded. He would have been in the Bookshop where he could well have died. I reckoned that Elsa Brundt had speedily installed herself in the cubby-hole which passed for Herr Lessinger’s office in the chaos of the antiquarian section which had born the worst of the explosion.

Rudiger Reiß looked more worried than sad.

“You don’t plan to stay with us at Manduvel, Frau Lange?”

I chattered on about Weinfelden and Aunt Ursel and Brunnenbach Bücher (feigning enthusiasm for the promised legacy) as we processed down the paths of the Nordfriedhof. We made for the street where on the opposite side there was an Italian pizzeria. It was supposed to be quite a lively place in the evenings but during the hours when burials took place it was happy to welcome thirsty people dressed in black. Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger had with typical attention to detail arranged for a sum of money to be deposited with the manager. It was enough in fact to ensure the alcoholic stupefaction of the few following Vera who strode ahead, possibly much in need of a schnapps. Agnes marched with similar energy about ten metres behind her erstwhile rival. Then came Rudiger and I and a handful of others.

He still looked worried.

“Are you in trouble with the gasworks people? Negligence resulting in death? Proceedings of some kind?”

“You are very direct, Frau Lange!”

“Call me Thea. Herr Lessinger used my full name, Theodora. You may not, however, call me Dora. And, yes, I am very direct.”

I had the feeling that my straightforwardness came as something of a relief.

“To be quite frank, Thea, it wasn’t a gas accident. It was an incendiary device, a bomb if you like, so positioned that the antiquarian section would be devastated. It is a matter for the police now. The only trouble I am in now arises from my inability to deliver the antiquarian collection to our Austrian associate.”

“For a laughable price!”

“I have heard that Herr Lessinger was of that opinion.”

Then he said something which almost caused me to gasp. Reiß would have noticed were he not concentrating on the fast traffic which makes crossing Ungererstraße a fraught undertaking.

“Three quite intriguing books could have survived, you know. But Lessinger stipulated that they should be placed in his coffin and… I dare say at this very moment … they are being consumed in the crematorium as he is by flames.”

Three books?

“I saw you twice at the clinic. But I had no idea you’d been visiting Louie.”

Agnes looked tearful. She and Vera had taken the window table next to the one where Rudiger and I sat. And, yes, we were eavesdropping.

“He was a very orderly man. Quite adept at scheduling his affairs, it would seem,” said Agnes with a sniff.

Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger. Funny how the given names of some people seem almost superfluous. As for the affectionate diminutive, Louie, I wondered whether the old man was any happier with that than I am when someone calls me Dora. I had briefed Rudiger Reiß (Rudi? Maybe not) about the two ladies while we waited for our beers to arrive. Vera had indeed ordered an Obstler with her coffee. Agnes stayed with mineral water.

“So Herr Lessinger’s life did not consist only of a passion for bibliophile rarities?” Rudiger said, with the faint trace of a smile.

“No. Books and sex. Both were very important. I liked that in him a lot.”

Reiß obviously wondered whether I shared Louie’s priorities but simply nodded.

I suppose it was inevitable that Vera and Agnes would sit together. They seemed to know none of the other mourners. They did, after all, have something in common.

“The books that were to be burned with him… did he mention that?” Vera asked after some hesitation. Agnes nodded.

“I thought it an odd gesture, even for him. And… how pointless. They would have been cremated in Trinity Place on Saturday with all the others! Although the poor man was not to know that, of course.”

“I wonder what their importance was.”

Rudiger Reiß and I took our second beers outside to one of just two tables. The pavement on Ungererstraße, so close to speeding, stinking traffic, is not conducive to dolce far niente.

“You are, I suspect, as curious as I am,” said Rudiger Reiß.

“Does it show?”

“To me, yes. It is my job to know what catches people’s imagination, what intrigues them, what engages their attention. My field is retailing, not books. I always take a book with me when we go on holiday, but mostly I don’t manage to finish it.”

“We?”

“It used to be ‘we’. Not any more. The divorce became final last month.”

“Okay, I am intrigued… by the business with the books, I mean. Your marital status is neither here nor there.”

A decrepit truck from Bulgaria crawled past belching diesel fumes and making so much noise that conversation was for a while impossible. It gave me time to think.

“You can’t know exactly which three books went missing, I guess. The inventory of the antiquarian section was never computerized. Herr Lessinger was in two minds about that. On the one hand he resented your penny-pinching. On the other he was quite proud of his old fashioned card index and hand-written ledger… now presumably reduced to ashes.”

“True. But when it became know that the prognosis for Herr Lessinger was… very unfavourable… then the late Frau Brundt stepped in. She was determined to demonstrate her efficiency. She reported what looked to her like an anomaly. A ‘three volume lot’… no more precise details given… was checked out of the Bookshop in Herr Lessinger’s name. But at a time when he was already immobilized in that place where he died. Odd, wouldn’t you say?”

It was the moment for me to resort to distraction. Removing my trilby meant that my bunched up dirty-blonde hair (perfectly clean, in fact, but the colour is commonly so described) could fall loose onto my shoulders. I took a moment to gather it together at the nape of my neck. Axilla display, the presentation of the naked armpit, is something men tend to notice and Rudiger Reiß was no exception. He cleared his throat and continued.

“My thought was that Lessinger might have taken the books to show to a potential buyer… part of the service, you know… and that maybe a sale was in the offing. Our computers do record sales and acquisitions. Proper bookkeeping makes that imperative.”

“But there was no sign of any mysterious ‘three volume lot’ having found a buyer?”

Now Rudiger Reiß grinned. It made him more attractive. He reminded me of somebody.

“No, none. You know, Lessinger was very good… he became quite clever about selling books on to wealthy collectors before we even had to pay for them. He was often just a middle-man on our behalf in a quick-turnaround transaction, but the practice generated enough revenue to keep the antiquarian section just about viable.”

“Goodness! That goes a bit against my picture of him. Okay, an aging Lothario but also an ardent and serious book lover… at the Bookshop and with his own collection which was limited to incunabula in Latin. Did you know that the world’s largest collection of incunabula is here in Munich? Twenty thousand of them in the Bavarian State library.”

Rudiger Reiß nodded as I explained that incunabula were books not handwritten by scribes but produced in the ‘first infancy of printing’ prior to the year 1500.

“That was Lessinger’s passion,” I concluded. Not one of the three volumes in my stewardship was in Latin or printed prior to the sixteenth century. But of course I did not mention that.

“Ancient books and two merry widows?”

Rudiger gestured to where Vera and Agnes had come out to take the two taxis they had ordered. It looked as if at the last minute they decided to exchange cellphone numbers.

“The beginning of a beautiful friendship?” I suggested.

“Who knows? And… who knows whether there were in truth three precious books in the old gentleman’s coffin?”