have cost five or six thousand euros was leaning against the wall. I’d come to know a few things about bikes since I gave up smoking four years ago. Every time I felt a craving for nicotine that I could hardly withstand I got on my bike and fought the just-half-a-cigarette devil by riding uphill and downhill between Bad Soden and Bad Nauheim, whatever the time of day or night.
Perhaps the racing bike came from financially better times. Or it was one of the things that were meant to give Edgar Hasselbaink the idea that Frankfurt could be fun, and the family scrimped and saved to afford it. Or Valerie de Chavannes, a credit to her financial wizard of a father, had put on a performance for me aiming, just on principle, to lower costs in any situation, however inappropriate.
Just before I reached the hefty, iron-clad front door, aforbidding sight from both outside and inside, the housekeeper came up the cellar steps with a basket of laundry under her arm.
She stopped in surprise. ‘You’re still here?’
‘Yes. Thanks for the tea. Next time I’d like to try your fish soup, on the reverse principle …’
She gave me a puzzled look.
‘Just one question: how long have you been working for the de Chavannes family?’
She didn’t like my asking, and if I was not much mistaken she didn’t like me either.
‘Over twenty years. Why?’
‘Only wondering, sheer curiosity. Goodbye, then. Have a nice day.’
She murmured something that I couldn’t make out. Was she going to report my visit to Georges and Bernadette de Chavannes?
There was another of them here today …
When the door latched behind me, I stood in the front garden for a moment breathing in the clear autumn air. Apart from an elderly couple slowly approaching down the pavement, Zeppelinallee was deserted. Not a car driving along, no noisy children, no clinking of crockery, no lawn mowers. You heard the sounds of the city very quietly, as if from far away, although you were almost in its centre.
Both the man and the woman wore Hunter green felt hats, the woman had a fur round her neck, the man carried a walking stick with a gleaming golden knob shaped like an animal’s head. The
click-clack
of the walking stick sounded through the silence of the diplomatic quarter.
Let’s try it, I thought, and waved to the couple, smiling. ‘Good morning!’
As they went on they looked at me as if I were a talking tree or something, and as if talking trees and indeed anything like them were extremely crude.
I took my bicycle, pushed it out of the front garden androde away in the direction of the Bockenheimer Landstrasse. As I passed the elderly couple I called out, ‘You poorly educated pigs!’ And once again they looked, without moving a muscle. A talking tree on a bicycle – what on earth is the world coming to?
I pushed down on the pedals, with the mild October sun in my face, convinced that I had an easy, pleasant job ahead of me. At least, so long as I kept my distance from my client. Valerie de Chavannes was an attractive woman, no denying it, and if I was not much mistaken she wouldn’t turn down a little comforting if it was offered in the right way. But there were plenty of attractive women around. I was living with one of them. And anyway, Valerie de Chavannes’s I-only-ever-think-of-one-thing look struck me as coinciding exactly with the range of possible feelings about her – and who wanted the hell bit at my age? I was in my early fifties, I did my work, I paid my bills, I had made my way. I’d managed to stop smoking, all I drank were two or three beers in the evening or my share of a couple of bottles of wine with friends, and Deborah and I were planning our future. This morning I had stepped out of my front door generally pleased with life, and I had mounted my bike with an apple in my hand. Not quite heaven, maybe, but not so far from it.
And then I went and did it all the same. I held the fingertips that had just touched Valerie de
Perhaps the racing bike came from financially better times. Or it was one of the things that were meant to give Edgar Hasselbaink the idea that Frankfurt could be fun, and the family scrimped and saved to afford it. Or Valerie de Chavannes, a credit to her financial wizard of a father, had put on a performance for me aiming, just on principle, to lower costs in any situation, however inappropriate.
Just before I reached the hefty, iron-clad front door, aforbidding sight from both outside and inside, the housekeeper came up the cellar steps with a basket of laundry under her arm.
She stopped in surprise. ‘You’re still here?’
‘Yes. Thanks for the tea. Next time I’d like to try your fish soup, on the reverse principle …’
She gave me a puzzled look.
‘Just one question: how long have you been working for the de Chavannes family?’
She didn’t like my asking, and if I was not much mistaken she didn’t like me either.
‘Over twenty years. Why?’
‘Only wondering, sheer curiosity. Goodbye, then. Have a nice day.’
She murmured something that I couldn’t make out. Was she going to report my visit to Georges and Bernadette de Chavannes?
There was another of them here today …
When the door latched behind me, I stood in the front garden for a moment breathing in the clear autumn air. Apart from an elderly couple slowly approaching down the pavement, Zeppelinallee was deserted. Not a car driving along, no noisy children, no clinking of crockery, no lawn mowers. You heard the sounds of the city very quietly, as if from far away, although you were almost in its centre.
Both the man and the woman wore Hunter green felt hats, the woman had a fur round her neck, the man carried a walking stick with a gleaming golden knob shaped like an animal’s head. The
click-clack
of the walking stick sounded through the silence of the diplomatic quarter.
Let’s try it, I thought, and waved to the couple, smiling. ‘Good morning!’
As they went on they looked at me as if I were a talking tree or something, and as if talking trees and indeed anything like them were extremely crude.
I took my bicycle, pushed it out of the front garden androde away in the direction of the Bockenheimer Landstrasse. As I passed the elderly couple I called out, ‘You poorly educated pigs!’ And once again they looked, without moving a muscle. A talking tree on a bicycle – what on earth is the world coming to?
I pushed down on the pedals, with the mild October sun in my face, convinced that I had an easy, pleasant job ahead of me. At least, so long as I kept my distance from my client. Valerie de Chavannes was an attractive woman, no denying it, and if I was not much mistaken she wouldn’t turn down a little comforting if it was offered in the right way. But there were plenty of attractive women around. I was living with one of them. And anyway, Valerie de Chavannes’s I-only-ever-think-of-one-thing look struck me as coinciding exactly with the range of possible feelings about her – and who wanted the hell bit at my age? I was in my early fifties, I did my work, I paid my bills, I had made my way. I’d managed to stop smoking, all I drank were two or three beers in the evening or my share of a couple of bottles of wine with friends, and Deborah and I were planning our future. This morning I had stepped out of my front door generally pleased with life, and I had mounted my bike with an apple in my hand. Not quite heaven, maybe, but not so far from it.
And then I went and did it all the same. I held the fingertips that had just touched Valerie de
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