The Exiles Return (20 page)

Seventeen

(The first page of this chapter is missing from the original typescript.)

The hall of Kanakis’s house, paved in squares of black and white marble, panelled in white and rising from the ground through the floor above to a ceiling of opaque glass panes, contained a semi-circular staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade leading to a little balcony of a similar design above the central door in the hall opposite the main entrance. The hall was the only part of the house to be brightly lit by candles in gilt sconces round the walls. The other rooms, the long central one with its three French windows giving onto the tiny garden (but now closely curtained) and the two others to the right and left of it, were all dim and subdued, though each in a different way. The larger room on the right had a polished parquet floor, chairs along two sides, and an American record player at the back, a long, smooth, discreet cabinet made of some exotic wood, elegant and unobtrusive, equipped with every technical perfection to diffuse dance music, sentimental songs, syncopated or lilting rhythms.

The lighting came from above, hidden behind cornices, and the room was filled with a diffused, hazy glow, cool and caressing as if at the bottom of the sea. This impression was reinforced by the trailing green plants which hung or climbed about the room, gently swaying in scarcely noticeable draughts. The smaller room on the left was the lightest; it contained a buffet and a bar. But in the central room Kanakis had achieved the extraordinary feat of marrying the delicate elegance of the eighteenth century with modern comfort. Silk panels and exquisite stucco mouldings, inlaid cabinets and bronze sconces, but no delicate chairs or volatile tables, only a deep blue Savonnerie carpet on the floor, couches and cushions in groups half-hidden behind screens, a scattering of pink-shaded lamps, and in one corner a large low table surrounded by three semi-circular sofas where Kanakis himself liked to sit with his closest friends.

Surprise and delight were the successive emotions which awaited the guests to Theophil Kanakis’s ‘little palace’. He had not found it difficult to collect first a small, then a widening, circle of friends to fill his rooms. Bimbo Grein had brought the younger set. Artists, actors and men of letters soon found means of being introduced. It all began by special invitation, and then became a weekly institution throughout the winters of the early 1950s when, after the terrors of persecution, the barbarities of occupation and all the privations of the period, luxuries were still rare and lavish hospitality the greatest luxury of all. As a result Kanakis, with the help of Bimbo and one or two of his older friends, had to be very careful to select and limit the number of people admitted to his Thursday evenings, to avoid both overcrowding of the limited space and too obvious discrepancies of tastes and affinities among the guests.

Although the range of social background and age was wide and varied, it was Kanakis himself who insisted on maintaining the accent on youth. He enjoyed the company of the generation younger than himself in whose eyes he could see the reflection of his prestige, of his secure maturity, and of his personality enhanced by the mysterious aura of his wealth. This aura surrounded him in almost the same manner as, in olden days, ‘a dignity surrounded the king’: a magnetic and indefinable use of power to confer benefits, to dispense comforts and enjoyments, warmth and light to anyone within reach of his influence. Kanakis was perfectly aware of the source and power of this influence. It enabled him to indulge in an emotion of which he approved in himself and enjoyed as one of his own virtues, the emotion of benevolence. He enjoyed smiling at his young friends and making them feel happy. Their enjoyment of his beautiful house was a necessary and complementary ingredient of his own possessions; their pleasure in his lavish hospitality added the final touch of polish and delight to his consciousness of providing it.

In this there was nothing ignoble, for he had no vanity wanting to be gratified, no self-importance for which he desired flattery. What he sought was the purely aesthetic, and in a sense moral, pleasure of indulging his taste and his sensuous predilections and to do so without giving offence. At the same time, he had the judgment and sufficient command of his feelings to avoid being exploited. He would not invest financially in any scheme or person or idea because, as he invariably told applicants, he was not interested in financial returns. He would make no loans, as he wished to avoid both gratitude and ingratitude as the most insidious poison to personal relations, and he had no ambition to ‘cut a figure’ either in politics, in industry or even in the cultural life of the country to which he had temporarily returned; although he took a lively, if completely detached and, as he would say, impartial, interest in all these aspects of its progress.

Most of the young set came in couples, the young man or girl bringing the partner with whom they happened to be going out at the time, but as they were all more or less interrelated or had known each other for years, these were also groups of three or four who came together, broke up and reformed, danced or sat out as attractions or curiosity moved them. The dining room, with its table laden with delicacies not seen for years, and the dancing room with its subaqueous lighting, were the greatest centre of attraction in the early evening; but sooner or later the flow was reversed and there was a drift back into the long drawing room, especially towards its far corner where Kanakis himself sat talking. He was a wonderful talker and entertainer and an equally good listener if he had recruited someone else to do the storytelling. To drink he served only wine and no hard liquor, declaring that in a country blessed with the delicate fragrance of the grape it would be a crime to assault the palate with the blunt instruments of gin or whisky, let alone vodka. By this means he also endeavoured to heighten the company’s spirits without allowing them to rise tumultuously or to degenerate and become maudlin. And as he also kept the record player low-pitched, he would repeatedly explain that for obvious reasons he wished to avoid sound or light from penetrating to the outside world and disturbing people sleeping after a day’s work.

Marie-Theres first came to one of these evenings with Hanni and Georg von Corvinus. They found Bimbo acting as a master of ceremonies for Kanakis, a kind of Puck serving Oberon, his king, ministering to his tastes and whims, but far too impudently independent to be subservient to them himself. He brought with him a friend, a distant cousin, a schoolfellow, or just a boy he had met somewhere by chance and whom he presented to Kanakis as suitable to help carry a tray of glasses or a plate of sandwiches. For himself, he always brought a girl, not always the same one, on whom he would on that particular evening lavish the most unremitting attention – in spite of which he seemed to have his eyes and ears alert for everything that went on in the room. He was everywhere, moving with the grace of a cat, smooth as silk, and with the energy of a coiled spring, and Kanakis, however interesting and fascinating he found his companion, always remained conscious of Bimbo’s presence somewhere in the background.

To Marie-Theres, these evenings at Kanakis’s ‘little palace’ revealed a world totally new to her, mysterious, baffling and intensely fascinating. She was lost in a strange country without a map or compass, in which words had unfamiliar meaning and behaviour was unpredictable. To a certain extent she recognised the country of romance for which, in the boredom of her adolescence, she had secretly yearned but had never been able to envisage. On entering the brightly-lit hall, with its golden sconces and shining marble floor, its scent of camellias and orange blossom from the little potted trees, it had seemed like a dream. Kanakis had come out to see who was arriving and had seen her standing there, her violet-blue eyes wide open and that rare childlike smile on her lips as she looked around her in amazed delight.

‘Countess Hanni, will you present me please?’

Hanni, still extricating herself from her coat and scarf, said: ‘Resi, here is our kind host, Herr von Kanakis. You see, I told you what a privilege it was to be invited to his lovely house. Herr von Kanakis, this is Resi Larsen, my cousin from America, a daughter of Mama’s youngest sister, a fellow-citizen of yours. I felt sure you would allow me to bring her even without a special invitation.’

‘Indeed! I am honoured, what an acquisition!’ And opening the door to the long drawing room he called, “Bimbo, my dear fellow, see whom we have here, an Austro-American cousin of Countess Hanni Lensveldt. Is she not exquisite?’

From this moment Resi entered an unknown country. Bimbo rose from the low couch on which he had been sitting half-entwined with a dark-haired girl and dutifully came forward. His first glance told him that this girl was strikingly beautiful and his senses warned him even more immediately that she was not as other girls were. As a result, he bowed with rather ironical ceremony, which made Hanni laugh and say, ‘Well, Bimbo, she is not an Imperial Highness, you know,’ and to Resi, ‘This is Lorenzo Grein, Nina’s brother, we all call him Bimbo. Mind you don’t fall in love with him, though I expect you will. We all do, it’s like catching measles. We get over it and then we’re immune.’

Bimbo took no notice of her. ‘I’ll introduce you to someone who speaks English,’ he said to Resi in English, but before she could answer, Hanni said, ‘No need, my dear, she manages perfectly in our own lingo – spoke it at her mother’s knee.’

‘Ah, all the better, then I’ll leave her to you and Georg,’ he said, and sloped back to where the dark-haired girl was waving to him with one upraised arm while vigorously defending the cushion against any attempted encroachment with the other. Hanni and Georg Corvinus were greeting friends right and left, and a group round a low table covered with wineglasses beckoned to them to come over. They nodded towards them and looked round at Resi, whose eyes were following Bimbo’s retreating figure in a kind of trance.

‘Would you like to dance?’ asked Kanakis who, unnoticed, had suddenly appeared at her side. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be, but I’m still capable of a few passable steps. And I must show you my aquarium.’ He took her hand, and leading her half a step behind him, he threaded his way past and between the poufs and cushions that littered the floor to the door that stood ajar at the further end of the long room. Opening it, they plunged from the warm, rose-coloured half-light into a deeper, blue-tinted darkness, and the rhythmical beat of dance music, coming from an invisible source, grew louder. Three or four couples were swaying or jerking silently to its syncopated rhythm. Kanakis put his arm round Resi’s waist and proved himself a consummate performer of those prescribed ritualistic contortions. Stranger and stranger. To Marie-Theres, dance music, as she had known it at school or club dances, had always been hot and strident, hammering loudly at the senses. Here it was muted, insinuating, whispering and confidential, secretively exciting. Kanakis saw the perplexity on her face. ‘I can’t have it played more loudly,’ he said apologetically, ‘as I don’t want it to be heard outside. I don’t want anyone to complain; people all around want to sleep. I have tested the volume very carefully myself, standing in the street to listen, and like this not a sound comes through. So I’m afraid it is not as stimulating as it might be.’

‘Oh, I like it like this.’ She had dropped her voice to a whisper, to comply with the ambience, as if she, too, feared that her normal speech might be heard beyond the enclosing walls. ‘I like it like this, and dancing with you. You’re a wonderful dancer, Mr … er…’

‘My name is Theophil,’ he interrupted, ‘much easier. I haven’t danced for years, you have refreshed my taste for it. But now let me get you something to eat and drink and we’ll go to the other room. Unless you would like to dance again. I’ll go and find you a partner.’ But she didn’t want to be left alone and she followed him.

She went to the corner table, where he sat in the seat he had occupied before he got up to dance with her, next to a tall, sinuous woman with hair drawn back sleekly from her forehead and large circular golden earrings like suns, that caught the lamplight and glittered.

‘What was it you were saying?’ he asked, stroking her bare arm with two fingers. ‘Don’t tell me I have missed one of your
boutades
, I couldn’t bear it. You’ll have to repeat it for my benefit if I have.’

‘My dear Kanakis, I’m sure you’ve already heard the story of what the great Crivelli said to Goering when he was presented to her at the big reception in ’42? After she had sung
Tosca
so divinely? “Ah, Reichsmarschall,” she said, “I thought I had finished with murderers for this evening.” I can tell you, all of us who heard it, our hearts missed a beat. But he pretended to take it as a joke, though his face looked like thunder, and he laughed loudly.’

‘And nothing happened to her afterwards?’

‘She fainted. She must have frightened herself to death. But no, nothing happened to her. Her voice and her reputation saved her, I suppose. She is coming to sing at the reopening of the Opera. What an ovation she will get!’

Resi sat in a corner of the sofa opposite, now and again nibbling the sandwich and sipping the wine one of the young men had brought her unasked. Everyone around her was either listening to the sleek-haired woman with the gold earrings (a Burgtheater actress), or talking in low voices. She did not understand anything that was being said. She tried to look over her shoulder to where Bimbo Grein had been sitting, but he was no longer there. Perhaps he had gone into the other room to dance with his partner. Kanakis, too, though paying marked attention to his neighbour, was searching the room under half-closed eyelids. Resi thought these looked like little grey canopies with black fringes and she found herself wondering whether grey was their real colour or whether it was the effect of shadow. Everything seemed to become hazy and insubstantial around her and for a moment she thought she was dreaming and would suddenly wake up in the little white room at home in Eden Rise or at Aunt Fini’s with Hanni in the other bed. And then panic rising, tears overwhelming her, everyone seemed to stand up at the same time, in one concerted movement, tensions relaxed, voices changed their resonance, they were all saying good night and goodbye, shaking hands and discussing prosaically how to get home.