by warmth or comfort, but enhanced by the chilly grime. They secured a table with hard benches fixed on either side, and Mickey parroted their order to the waiter, who went away smirking.
“He knows we’re English,” said Herbert.
“Yes, I can see that must be incredibly amusing.”
“Oh, don’t take it personally. They’re very hospitable people, you know, they like foreigners, especially the English. Waiters get a bit of harmless fun out of spotting the accents, that’s all.”
“I suppose. So why are you on edge? Anything special?”
“Nothing you can’t work out for yourself.”
“Wolf’s legacy.”
“Yes . . . I don’t quite know what to expect. I’ve been trying to remember . . . Ah, more beer. Have you got forty Schillings?”
“Somewhere.”
“Don’t forget the tip.”
“Must I?”
“Oh yes, always.”
Mickey paid up with the best grace he could muster, and the waiter bowed from the neck as he filed the money in an excessively subdivided wallet. Mickey took a long pull at his beer. Like everything else in this city, the glass was a mild but disconcerting distortion of its English counterpart. Daily life here could make you sea-sick, like wearing strong lenses for the first time.
“You were saying.”
“Was I? Oh, well it’s just that I can’t remember anything that will give us a clue. I got a few odd things in the post, months after I got back to England. It’s certainly not the whole estate, you see, that was all taken care of at the time. Fifty years . . . It must be letters, I suppose. Stuff about people who are all dead, memoirs perhaps. I just don’t know.”
Mickey took a breath, and said;
“So what do you remember?”
His father sat back suddenly, and stared at the ceiling for what seemed to be a very long time.
“The cold,” he said.
“The cold?”
“It was absolutely freezing all the time I was here. It gets like that, you know. Something to do with being in the middle of a continent. I know it was boiling when I was here in ’45. I know it was, but I don’t remember . . . But I do remember the cold. That stayed with me, for some reason. You know, years afterwards I used to wake up, sometimes, shivering like hell, convinced that I was back here, freezing to death, and start grabbing blankets like a madman. It happened in Malaya, once. Everyone thought I’d got malaria, but I was just cold, chilled to the bone, in the middle of all that. Crazy.”
“Amazing what the mind can do, isn’t it?”
“Yes, remarkable. Gives me the creeps, actually.”
“And you know, even in Malaya, if you hadn’t woken up and thawed out in front of the fire or whatever, you might have died of exposure.”
“What a happy thought. Well, it certainly wasn’t an illusion. I mean all the chaps were sweating like pigs, standing around squeezing my hands as though I was the risen Christ. They couldn’t believe there was nothing wrong with me. But I just bolted a mug of boiling tea, and then I was all right again. I really needed that tea. Still, you’re right, of course. The mind can do some very peculiar things.”
“Elspeth would have sent you to an analyst.”
“Don’t be too hard on Elspeth . . . Gosh, you know what? I’m not used to this stuff. I think I’m getting a bit squiffy. Disgraceful at my age.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No, I want some more beer. My round. Herr Ober!”
Mickey felt his spirits sink. Two pints, or half-litres of the smooth, gassy beer was feeling like just enough. He wanted to go to bed. The headache had come back, and his legs felt as though they had been standing in cold mud all afternoon. Now, instead of losing himself in sleep and the soft warmth of his wife, he must sit in this unfriendly place and watch his father get drunk, and hope that secrets would emerge from the talk to make it worthwhile.
But there was another option. He sat forward, resolutely drained his glass, and told his body to find second or third wind.
“Do you think they’d have Scotch here?” he said.
“Yes, I expect so. Probably costs the earth. Never mind.”
The drinks arrived quickly, and Mickey knocked back the Scotch in one and lit a cigarette. The effect was immediate. Whisky was the magic ingredient in the evening’s formula. Gin, Mosel, claret, brandy, beer, now whisky and more beer. The die was cast.
“You know you could have cheated on that bet,” he said. “I wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“Don’t you know even that much German?”
Mickey sat back, and considered.
“I’ll tell you how much German I know,” he said. “I can order beer, and coffee. I can say yes, no, and thank you. That’s it.”
“Not please?”
“Oh yes. And I can say ‘the daughters of the Rhine are lamenting the loss of their gold.’ That’s pretty useful.”
“Oh, vital. I would never have got through the war without that. Gosh, Wagner. There was a bloke who knew a bit about the passage of time.”
“He knew a lot about taking up other people’s time.”
“True, yes. But I mean all those layers of legend and history, ancient figures bound by an even more ancient past. Remarkable. And Parsifal. Eternal life from the sacrament, and Amfortas with that wound that won’t heal. What a mind. They’re doing Parsifal here, you know, for Easter. We might be able to find some returns somewhere.”
“I can’t see Elspeth sitting through four hours of Wagner. She’s not really a fan. Actually I’m not all that keen myself, just now. Wagner was such a miserable bugger. I want something mindless. Bit of Mozart. . .”
“Oh, blasphemy!”
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