Landscape of Farewell Read Online Free PDF Page B

rain glistened on the iron railings and the headlights of cars passed along the street. ‘You’re young to be a professor,’ I said.
    ‘I’ll be forty-one at Christmas.’
    I was surprised. ‘I thought you were about twenty-seven.’
    ‘I’m immature, I know. Tell me about it!’
    I began at once to see her differently.
    ‘Don’t stare,’ she said. ‘It’s rude.’
    I apologised. She laughed and punched my arm again, a little harder this time. Perhaps she wished to wake me from old age. I had not sat in a bar with a companion for many years. Not since I was a student. Winifred and I had never sat in a bar together. I believed, however, that Winifred would not have objected had she been able to see me drinking with Vita in this bar next to the Kellinghusenstrasse railway station, whose arcades are, at night, a favourite beat for the sad-eyed young women who dedicatetheir tender lives to prostitution. The thought of the young girls, the sight of their sad-eyed countenances, always made me think of our little Katya. Those tragic young women. Lost to life. Where were their mothers and fathers? Why did they not come and take their little girls home? I could not remember if I had told Vita about our daughter.
    ‘Have I told you about Katya?’ I said. My glass, I noticed, was full again. I reached for it and drank the dark red wine—it had the taste of aluminium.
    At my question, she looked around the bar with sudden interest. ‘This place is jumping,’ she said. She looked at me. ‘Katya? She’s your daughter? What a beautiful name for a little girl.’ She said this as if she referred to a girl known only to herself, an imaginary girl who lived somewhere far away.
    ‘Yes. She has changed her name to Katriona and has become English.’
    She waved a hand at me. ‘So don’t tell me, I already know, she’s happily married. To a brain surgeon.’
    ‘She is married to a teacher. They have two children.’
    ‘So let’s go and see your grandchildren.’
    ‘Katya lives in London.’
    ‘Is she happy?’ she asked in a bored voice.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You should call her Katriona. That’s who she wants to be. Me? I’m ready and waiting for the first big black Murri princewho comes along and tries his luck.’ She examined me, a look of faint irritation in her eyes suddenly. ‘You haven’t said a word about yourself all night. You don’t know if your own daughter is happy or not. That’s all I know about you. You should go over there and spend time with your grandchildren. They won’t know their grandad and one day soon they’ll want to know why. Family is family, Max.’
    ‘I think it’s quite late,’ I said. I consulted my watch.
    She looked startled. ‘Hey, don’t you go abandoning me. Jesus, Max! Don’t you even think of it!’
    I was shocked by her fear of being abandoned by me late at night on the streets of Hamburg. ‘Of course I shan’t abandon you. How could you think such a thing? I shall see you to your hotel. This is my city, Vita.’
    She pouted, like a child who has been chastised. Then she brightened, a mischievous look coming into her enormous dark eyes. ‘You’re pissed, Max.’ She laughed. ‘And, hey!’ She pointed a finger at me as if she had achieved an important advantage. ‘I made you miss your appointment! I bet they gave you up for dead hours ago.’
    ‘I had no appointment,’ I said.
    ‘You lied? You bastard!’ She cursed me mildly and with amused surprise, as if she were delighted to discover me capable of such paltry deceit. She sniggered, ‘You didn’t want to be seen walking down the street with a black lady on your arm.’
    ‘That is not true, Vita,’ I said seriously. I was acutely sensitive to the offence of her suggestion, even though she made the charge playfully.
    But she was not listening to me. She cast about her as if she had mislaid something, fidgeting and nervous suddenly, reaching for her coat, searching in her bag then snapping it