the corona around an eclipse, within a dappled band of blue and green, within an outline of grey as distinct as a pencil mark, and then beyond that an expanse of moist white that did not betray even the faintest red vein but sheltered at its inner corner a perfect tear duct like a tiny pink sapphire. They were eyes that should have belonged to the frightened young of some rare Javanese loris.
Loeser could hardly believe that a beauty this intense had ever existed under all those layers of puppy fat – or not so much puppy fat, he recalled, as pony fat. He could hardly believe that lesson after lesson had seemed so tedious, that he had once felt positively unlucky to have been hired to teach this particular schoolgirl and not one of those schoolgirls one sometimes saw on the tram who had so much more . . . well, one shouldn’t dwell on that. He could hardly believe that he had been so ungrateful when right in front of him, hanging tightly on his every word, had been this revelation, his pupil in pupa. And he could hardly believe that his blinkered pursuit of modish girls like Marlene Schibelsky who knew how to dress and paint their face and cut their hair had just been rendered so utterly absurd.
He had never wanted to fuck anything so much in his life.
‘Herr Loeser,’ she said. ‘Do you remember me?’
He composed himself. ‘Adele Hitler! I certainly do. You’re looking . . . very well.’
‘Thank you. And I see you’ve smartened up. Do you know a lot of people here?’
‘Too many.’
‘Is it true Brecht is going to come?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I’d love to meet him.’
‘You’d be disappointed. You’d see right through the man.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because of that exquisite critical eye that I remember so well from all our hours of Schiller.’ He remembered no such thing. ‘Unless those jealous Swiss matrons have quite gouged it out.’
Adele smiled. ‘Do you still teach, Herr Loeser?’
‘You can call me Egon now. And, no, I don’t teach any more. I’m in the theatre.’
‘Oh, I’m thrilled, I always thought you might become a playwright! I’ve been so desperate to meet some writers. You’re my first. Are you even bolder than Brecht?’
There was almost no component of his self-respect that Loeser wasn’t occasionally willing to leave at the pawnbrokers, but he did have one rule: he wouldn’t falsify himself to please. No one was worth that. The world could take him as he was. So although it would have been very easy to skate along with Adele’s assumption, he had no choice but to correct her. ‘I’m not a writer, actually. I’m a set designer.’
‘You mean a sort of carpenter?’
Loeser was about to explain that his work was fundamental to the conception of Lavicini , but then he heard something click behind his head. He looked round. There was Rackenham with his Leica. Another interruption, but this was all right: it would be good if Adele thought he was ringed with cosmopolitan associates.
‘Oh, you didn’t give me a chance to pose,’ said Adele, fussing belatedly at her fringe.
‘I don’t think it would be possible to take an unflattering photo of you, my dear,’ said Rackenham.
‘Certainly not with that particular camera,’ said Loeser evenly.
‘Why don’t you introduce me, Egon?’
‘Fraulein Hitler, this is Herr Rackenham. He’s a very distinguished young novelist.’
‘A real writer! What’s your book called?’
‘My latest is Steep Air ,’ said Rackenham.
‘Oh, I haven’t heard of that. I’m sorry to say I don’t read much English fiction.’
‘Don’t be sorry. You’re very wise. English fiction is dead. It’s disloyal of me to say, because I went to university with so many of its brightest hopes, but it is dead.’
‘Then who am I to read?’
‘The Americans. A critic friend of mine says that deciding between English fiction and American fiction is like deciding between dinner with a corpse and cocktails
Elle Christensen, K Webster