The Connoisseur

Chapter 34 - Fugue

They stood together in silence.  At some point, they sat down on the edge of the ruined building and stared out over the abyssal landscape.  They held one another.  It was minutes before either spoke.

“Do you...”

Sophia’s voice lodged in her throat.  She had only whispered, but the sound seemed deafeningly loud.  It was as if a great gathering of ghosts had turned towards her and chided her for speaking.

“It’s alright,” said Alexander, holding her closer.

As his arm tightened around her and she laid her head on his shoulder, Sophia felt helpless.  It wasn’t her who needed to be told that everything was alright.  It was him.  This desolation in front of her was his own past.  Yet here she was, the poor damsel, in need of comforting, which he would stoically provide.

She coughed, raised herself quickly away from him, and tried to recall the part she was supposed to play.  He didn’t react to her movement.  He was rigid.

“Tell me about it,” she said, rubbing his shoulder, and trying to be strong.  “Only what you want to say.”

He didn’t say anything.  Sophia sighed and looked back at that landscape.  It was terrifying; not in a heart-stopping, adrenaline-fuelled way, like the approach of wild thunder or the hacking of a bloody knife, but in a silent, dead manner.  A whispering apocalypse; cold fear, not hot.

“I was...”

Alexander’s voice was caught, just as hers had been.  She looked at him pleadingly.  He collected himself, raised his head once more to the landscape, and began.

“I would have been twenty-four this year, had I not travelled,” he said.  “Or maybe I would have been killed.  That seems likely.  Not many men got to walk out of this place, and none as I have.”

He lapsed again into silence.  Sophia tried to encourage him, wordlessly.  She couldn’t speak.

“I was born in Magdeburg in 1895,” said Alexander.

“Magdeburg?” said Sophia.  “That’s...you’re German?”

“Yes.”

Sophia paused.  “You don’t sound it.”

“My mother was English.  We used to travel to see her family.  Both countries are my home.  Or neither.”  He looked at her.  “If you have some image of me as a dashing Tommy in mind, forget it.  I fought for Germany.  At least I was ordered to fight for Germany.”  He looked away again.

“Christ, Alex, I hadn’t thought of you fighting for anyone.” 

Her hand moved from his shoulder to his cheek.  He responded to her touch; they looked at one another.  She delved into his eyes.

“You’re so young,” she said.  “You’re too young for this place.  You should be an old man.  Covered in ribbons and medals, marching past memorials.  You’re too young.  God, this can’t have been what, ten years ago for you?”

His lip trembled, but then the muscles of his face tensed and he looked away.  Sophia wondered what to do, and then did the only thing she could do.  She carried on holding him.

“My father was a lawyer,” said Alexander, some time later.  “Old Prussian stock.  Goodness knows what led him to my mother.  She was a flighty thing, that’s what he called her.  They met in London.”

“What were their names?” said Sophia.

Alexander looked down, and toyed with some loose splinters of wood on the floor.  “Maximilian and Edith.”