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TEN MINUTES OF SOLITUDE
‘IN ENGLAND, SPRING is rising: should it be ever rising thus, and coming alive within the human soul?’ So, impeccably attired as a gentleman, might I scribble with a golden Parker pen upon my snow-white cuff on a melancholy March evening at the Athenaeum Club …
Or rather, I might if I were one of those dusty relics whose entire existence devolves into ritually serving out their allotted time in deep, green leather chairs, sipping weak, sepia tea dutifully delivered by albine waiters, or wafting desultorily through the newspapers.
It is, of course, extremely flattering to be admitted to the Athenaeum’s hallowed inner sanctum. Yet I confess I am a poor connoisseur of its ancient and time-honoured privileges, being rather better acquainted with much more modest old curiosity shops. I rarely wear bow-ties, and my sole pair of golden cufflinks bears only the singular coat of arms of the Tatars – not exactly buoyant currency in today’s bonfire of the vanities!
To be honest, I was never destined for such a serene and regulated life, and I have not yet quite reached that pinched age when I do actually need to scrawl liverish notes upon my sleeves.
Indeed, I still retain some fleeting memories, amid a host of which sits that delicious riposte of Oscar Wilde, the supreme Irish arbiter of fashionable wit: ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’
I also maintain that to thoroughly inhabit a gentleman’s being, rather than simply resemble a gentleman, one must actually be born wearing a Saville Row suit and bow-tie, and then take up residence in them in infancy. Otherwise, the entire thing is an utter masquerade. And despite the natural obligation to dissemble, I know I don’t look at my best in masks, which are apt to slip – even though I also know the hardest thing in life is to be what you are, regardless of the consequences.
Just between us – beneath this sneaking yen to not merely appear like a true gentleman but actually be one – I admit an even deeper longing to be a man of noble qualities, in contradiction to the advice of Confucius, who observed that, ‘the genuinely noble man is not worried when his merits go unnoticed; he is far more concerned with his own imperfections’.
Ironic, then, that this narrative, the invisible creation of which has brought its author so many pangs of conscience, should unconsciously and uncharacteristically commence with starched cuffs and vague sartorial musings!
What then took me on this diversion, and almost led me astray? Perhaps it was that absurd and theatrical procession along the Staroluzhski embankment in Karlovy Vary, when, past the common folk watching from the pavement cafés, there paraded grandly towards the Mill Colonnade such a gaudy, peacock array of young and not so young aristocrats – the elite of the Old World.
Observers marvelled at them and instantly diagnosed their blue blood from their haute-couture garments – those green velvet tail-coats and black tuxedos, those ballgowns in all shades of red from Bermudan dawn to Sinai sundown; the flowing silk mantles and luxurious capes; the ladies’ shimmering elbow gloves and lustrous beaded purses; all polished off by extravagantly costly shoes and exquisite canes.
That evening, I tell you truly, the Fifth Congress of the European nobility was holding a Vampire Festival! And it all culminated spectacularly, late that night, with fireworks brilliantly streaking the darkness above the Castle Tower – followed by a drunken braying in the streets beneath our wrought-iron curlicued fourth-floor balcony – that very balcony from which everyday I gazed out across the way on that old-fashioned but charmingly refurbished house Zum Pomeranzenbaum, its eaves intriguingly adorned with a colourful oval emblem depicting a green orange tree hung with plump sunset fruits.
The following day, the host gathered once more to celebrate: those barons and baronesses, counts and countesses, marquises and crown princes, and a plethora of other pinnacles of the peerage – all those Waldsteins and Thuns, Likhovskys and Esterhazys, from whose resplendent ancestors Mozart and Beethoven had to beg their daily bread.
This time, however, they went the other way, upstream against the Tepla River towards the grand and newly renovated empire-style spa. Yet the sheer perfection of their garments, which demanded such an exacting performance from them, and such undivided attention, especially from the ladies, awoke in those who witnessed the procession a train of thought that led ineluctably to an appraisal of their own earthly fortunes.
Indeed, it was a tableaux of a life unknown to most people, a startling invasion courtesy of the lacquered pages of the spa’s photo-chronicles, an effusion that projected itself like a rainbow upon the curious vision of those ordinary leisure-seekers enjoying coffee with cream at the gold and marble tables of the Elephant, those holidaymakers who everyday pass, without special thoughtfulness, without the inquisitiveness that entices a child, the houses of the erstwhile Carlsbad where Beethoven and Batyushkov, Gogol and Goethe (yes, the great Goethe) domiciled as they took the waters – houses like the elegant pastel green and gold Mozart Hotel once called The Three Scarlet Roses and now slightly rundown; the mud-hued house dubbed The White Rabbit pedimentally and suitably adorned with twin rabbits in relief; and the pearly-yellow mansion known as The Three Moors which squats upon the old Market Place not far from the Plague Column and is decked out with bizarre bas-reliefs of three thick-lipped negros, not to mention the Daliesque plastic mouldings of orange trees, vines and bushes that should be utterly tasteless, and yet are beguilingly entertaining and beautiful in that authentic way that excites the fancy of a child.
If you give this inner desire for authenticity even the slightest freedom, then even here, amongst all the paying trippers from Minusinsk and from Liechtenstein and from Monaco, amongst all the gaudy mirages of life that command the attention of the promenading crowds just as from the heights the lofty Imperial Hotel reigns over the lower hotels of this spa, you may suddenly see – for a moment, for a second – reality, fresh and green as spring upon the mountain; the original, as if touched by Allah’s answer to the heart’s most fervent prayer; and the actual, like a genuine memory. The truth of life the enlightened soul longs to experience.
Maybe there will come a vision – and not just a vision, but sounds and smells and even tangible sensations – in which time and its conventionalities have no meaning: a vision in which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps in 1812, perhaps in 1820 (it is not yet clear), is walking before you, attired in a long grey frock-coat and snow-white linen shirt and neck scarf, taking his usual path by the darkly transparent Tepla, as gentle airs whisper and waft the scents of the blossoming bird-cherry trees from high in the mountains above.
He walks, then takes a draught of Carlsbad’s restorative waters and strides away on a constitutional stroll amidst the ashes, beeches, limes and sycamores beyond the town where they cleave to the mountain slopes near the Post Yard. Every now and then, he meets on the way himself a little younger and even youthful, from 1786 and 1791, and believes this is an ordinary and matter-of-fact occurrence – as it should be, and entirely typical for an elevated spirit thinking about something deeply and intimately personal …
…And here I am, I can see, still holding on to his proletarian youth, not to say his vulgar haste, provoked by a greed for things that seem most important in the moment, running far ahead of the field lines of the limited time and space of my narrative in divergent spirals – and for this I should whip myself on the hand with a cane, like a grey-haired teacher (which no doubt is how I look to some people) – whip myself, a smug student who hasn’t even got the basic grammar, yet is already presuming to subvert the rules of the game and overturn the true canons of composition.
