Featured Writer: Malcolm Dixon

Adagio For Twilight

Cradling herself in the warm blanket, she shivered a little in the chill morning air. Outside, through the large, wide, slightly open window, could be seen the still sinister-seeming German countryside. A shimmering silver mist moved upland through the valley, almost as though it were a living thing. The tiny Witten tram, just visible on the rise of the far hills, began its cold, dawn journey. She drew up her knees more tightly beneath her chin.

There was a noise behind, and the young man came from the bathroom.

Without turning, she said:"I've been looking in the mist for your so-called wind-enchanted shapes."

He kissed her on the neck, lightly.

He laughed again."But you have three children!.."

"Not that! This!.. ..this!O, you know what I mean!"

She turned at last, smiling good-naturedly. He saw once more the fallen, withered breasts that had at first so shocked him.

With gentle intent he reached out a caress.

Abruptly she rose."I do have to get ready now if I'm to make the Cologne bus at seven."

As though with her distraction now suddenly complete, she searched around for her towel. Her naked body seemed strange still to him - strange that she should be naked at all before him, plodding flatfooted in an obscure German apartment; and, even more strange, that this body should in some way bear a connection to the object of his intensely romantic desire. He lay down, pulling the covers and blanket back over himself. Not much warmth had lingered in the too small bed.

She had her towel.She began tying back her hair."I do have to get ready now, you know that... If I'm late I'll have to ride all the way on the bus with that old lady - you know that one I was telling you about from my class, who's attached herself to me, you know, as an American - Frau Hinkel or Henkel, that one, remember, I told you? Not that I mind, but I never know whether to use Du or Sie with someone so much older - you can't be sure what's right..."

She stopped everything."O you look so sweet lying there..."She tilted her head gently to one side, regarding him.A look tragic and mournful came onto her face.

She knelt at the bedside, briefly.

"I do love you, you know, very much?"

He nodded. She accepted his acknowledgement as though it were a very grave, very difficult, very heavy responsibility to bear.

She went distractedly into the bathroom.

He considered his position. Nearby on the coffee-table lay his return plane ticket which, with some effort, he reached for and now fingered through casually - although nothing would prove any different since his last inspection, or indeed the one before that. There would be a difficult scene at the airport, he felt. But what could he do? What could he do about any of it? The sound of the shower dripped wearily to a finish. He let the ticket drop back on to the table. Nothing could be done.

The ritual sounds of her morning's preparations continued from the bathroom. When the toilet flushed, which he knew to be the last in the sequence, he took up his book and became instantly absorbed. If they could just avoid a scene this one morning that might show.....What exactly? Something? Anything? Not that any of it was her fault or his, he told himself. Just the impossible situation they'd somehow let themselves engineer. In silence now she moved about the small room, dressing. Without looking away from his book, he was aware - at some level - of every movement she made, as though mentally checking a list of the things she did before she left. Dimly, vaguely, he felt the sad irony of such a strained silence between them, who had talked so much.

When he judged her nearly ready, he put down his book and lay quietly. She wore the elaborate German neck-scarf he so disliked. Her hair, brushed one last time to counteract the curling effect of the shower, reminded him still of some pre-Raphaelite heroine, though grown older, more sad, more careworn than any in a painting. An Ophelia who survived the drowning. Or a Beatrice who - or, more likely, he thought, not without bitterness, the figure in Hunt's Awakening Conscience, which had so ruined their day at the Tate.

Still brushing her hair, she said:"Do something for me, will you?Check my mailbox while you're out.Would you do that for me?I'm expecting, you know, a letter.."

She took her coat from the hallway."Would you do that for me?"

"Sure, " he said at last.

"What were you reading, more Shelley? Will you read some tonight? I need to hear some more Shelley from you, huh?"

He nodded. She knelt once more by the bedside.

"Meet me tonight, in the square, like we said."

She mussed his hair, then rose. He watched her sweep around the corner, heard the door-lock open, the door close and lock once more from outside. Sure, he thought. Sure, why shouldn't I? I'll fetch you your husband's mail.

The surveyors shouted one to the other some harsh-sounding, guttural German exchange abruptly in the woods, and he stopped in his tracks on the path, glimpsing over his shoulder the sudden movement of orange jackets through the thinning branches. Another call ahead, then a flash from the theodolite. He set off again along the path. The extension of the Bochum-Querenberg tramline that he'd heard about from the kindly Berber waiter at the Unicenter Cafe. Well, not that he'd see it. Whether or not he took the job in Chester next week, he planned never to set foot in Germany again. And then what? The path ahead forked in two, leading alternatively through the Rosengarten or more directly straight through the woods into the Unicenter Campus. Though he'd made this decision practically every day these past two months, this morning he hesitated. Another shout behind from the surveyors. He took the latter path, thinking of the last time Jo and himself had visited the Rosengarten that Sunday afternoon, only to be unceremoniously evicted by the tannoy. And besides, he had to check her mail at the posthilfsstelle.

Gloom foreshadowed his thoughts as, turning through the overreaching trees, the path narrowed and dipped into a hollow. How far it all was now from those brief days in Cornwall and London last summer. Even now, as the path rose, he could see the slender breast of lake where they'd sat all one night on the far bank, like they had in Portreath, high along the Cornish coast, under a blanket and their romantic thin sliver of moon. He stepped carefully through the quagmire gripping underfoot, then stopped once more, regarding the scene. All the time of his Ph.D. in the States he'd hardly known her. They'd met at a party shortly before he was due to leave the country, and, hearing she was soon traveling to Europe on a scholarship, he'd offered, innocently enough he felt, to show her around London. And yet, how innocent were his intentions really, even then? He glanced down at his shoes, now thickly circled with mud despite his efforts. Overhead, the sky had clouded suddenly from the west - her day at Cologne might be spoiled by bad weather. Heavily he took himself along the muddy path towards the Unicenter.

The Rhur-Universitat campus, through which each day he wore this now familiar pathway, rose steadily through several levels of usually deserted squares and fountains, connected by stairwells, walkways, bridges, until at last when he emerged on the small plateau at the top, the view extended far beyond the dark forest and green rolling hills. Some wispy patches of mist still lingered in the valley. Almost every day these past two months there had been a fog. His gaze led back to the Unicenter, and he started once more in that direction. The plateau, which narrowed as he crossed it, with its obscure columns and three thick steps on either side, struck him as the setting for a miniature Nuremberg rally, a scaled-down Triumph of the Will, posted ironically, he saw this morning, with notices for another auslander event at the Haus Kemade a week on Sunday. German xenophobia!How shocked they had been still to find for sale at the local flohmarthalle old items marked 'Juden'! But when they had cycled out to Kemade for the last 'Festival of Cultures', what had they done? Argued about themselves as usual. Their so-called grand destructive passion! And, as usual he'd let himself be manipulated into conceding his - the library loomed darkly before him - ...No, for so many reasons he would be glad to leave Germany in two days time.

But what had she expected, had they expected! That they would live happily ever after? He wandered semi-automatically into the cool dim quiet of the library foyer, unsure if he really wanted to read anything this morning, particularly anything Romantic. The lockers were mostly free so early in the day, and he hung up his fine new German overcoat, the overcoat she'd bought him for less than forty marks at the flohmarthalle back in October when it became clear that his stay would be more than a few days. No, no one had thought even that far ahead. He passed before the security desk. The library seemed to him a haven of familiarity in this strange land.A spiral staircase took him up to the next floor where stacks filled by familiar volumes, journals - even his own article on the Sublime if he chose to look for it - waited as though for his sole attention. Few students ventured into this obscure corner. Maybe if his mind cleared, he could do some work.

He took down the anthology of poetry and prose from the shelf where he'd left it the previous night. His eyes ran briefly over the some of the titles of the books he'd read since late September - Hartman's Wordsworth, his old professor's Coleridge tome, poor Tom Weiskel's great book... A phrase from Hartman had stayed with him. Reason and the heart. He made his way through the stacks towards the bright window-desks. Reason cannot renovate the heart. How true was that? Jo might know. What name could he give to their experience together? Love, passion, madness? Certainly - he found his usual seat, overlooking the Unicenter courtyard. Certainly, there had been a great connection between them once, but now?... He began randomly flicking through the anthology, wishing vaguely that the coming two days were already passed.

Reason cannot renovate the heart. The phrase played through his mind like a motif from one of the poems before him. His fingers lighted on a page that he had marked only yesterday. The world was too much with them! Always the constraints imposed by their real lives encircled them, enclosed upon them. He would go to Chester; she back to her family in the States. Her death-in-life. He understood the reason for all her sudden coldnesses towards him. They had laid waste their powers together. The theme of the poem echoed in their lives. The loss, how ironically indeed, of a sense of the Sublime...

Some people were setting out stalls in the square below. He read through the poem once more, noting the imagery in particular, the unusual meter... His attention wandered back to the scene outside. Later, while he was waiting for Jo, there might be something interesting to pass the time, by the look of things. The commentary on the poem, he wanted to note, offered a point he might usefully make himself, in the right circumstances - then he remembered, too late, his notebook left downstairs in his coat pocket, in the locker... So much for work! He turned some pages half-heartedly, yawning. Nearby, he could hear the austere librarian, slapping books - with some force - back into position on the shelves. A bizarre practice! O, what did any of it matter!

He rose. Within a few minutes he had left the library and was heading in the direction of the square. The day had brightened, so much so that those working on the stalls had now a fine late-autumn morning for their labours. A mixture of local German and auslander activists were evidently organizing another event; he recognized some members of a native South American band that played in the town on Saturdays at this sort of thing. They tried hard, these good people. But, to some extent, how hard they tried was only a measure of all they were up against. He noticed his friend, the waiter at the Unicenter Cafe, making ready his few outdoor tables for the day ahead. A little chilly still to sit outside. Though the square had that pleasantly busy aspect, he noted, looking around; and on such a surprising fine morning after all. Perhaps it would be as nice today in Cologne...

He gathered himself and stepped inside the posthilfsstelle. The old woman who ran the gloomy little shop greeted him coldly, as she had these past months. At first, deceived by Jo's perfect German, her response to them both had been cordial, even friendly, but soon afterwards her manner stiffened. Perhaps it was just the idea of them as a couple. A little too quickly for his own liking he delivered his well-rehearsed sentence of German concerning the collection of Frau Darby's mail today, bitte, if any, and the woman's brisk, perfunctory manner in checking, more than her words, told him there was none. Which was a relief! He scanned briefly the headlines on the foreign language papers. At least he wouldn't have to carry around with him all day a letter from Jo's strange husband! A letter that probably - Patriotically or otherwise the old woman continued to stare at him, and he thanked her politely for her trouble as he turned to go, wondering if the German for 'Adulterer' were inscribed on his back. But how else would it look to an outsider? And -

He halted in the doorway, listening with a sudden sense of translation within himself. From across the square there came the first slow, melancholy strains of the South American folk band. The mournful timbre of their voices was oddly uplifting, if completely out of place! Hardly could they have played in a more incongruous setting! Patiently, he waited out the first song, then moved on through the stalls. What did he care really if the old woman in the shop thought badly of him? Why should he care? He stopped by a stall. Several students had now begun to gather in the square. The stalls would later in the day become a great attraction. Among the simmering, pungent clay pots he noticed the zahlouk, a black aubergine salad spiced heavily with cumin, which they'd both had at their first festival here. Bad omen for a woman, as it turned out. And they both ate with four fingers, not three in accordance with the Prophet. His friend, the Berber waiter, had explained. He looked around for the usual sweets stall, which he spotted over towards the end of the far row, by the cafe. So they were damned from all quarters, even by themselves. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison... Yes, he understood that now. Absolutely. No one could reproach him more than he had himself, really.. But why had they.. despite everything? Horn-shaped snake coils of Moroccan pastry lay before him on the stall. He bought one that neither Jo nor himself had been able to ever resist - Mlhancha, a moon-crescent dipped in honey and almond. Glancing around the square he was struck again by the oddness of it all. Not just the festival. Why should he be here, in his present situation?.. He decided to head back to the Rosengarten, where he could sit in quiet, eat his lunch, and ponder further this strange downturn in his destiny.

The music cut out abruptly as he descended the long row of steps that led down from the Unicenter to street level, as if someone had suddenly turned down the volume on a radio. He took a short cut through one of the buildings which he knew would bring him to a rear entrance of the Rosengarten. The interiors of some of these buildings at the Universitat reminded him strongly of halls he'd known on campus back in the U.S. Occasionally he'd let himself imagine he was really now in Minnesota, and when he emerged from Willey Hall there would be before him the familiar, friendly vista of the Washington Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi. But his happy five years there were all pre-Jo years, and if he ever should now return to his old campus everything would be different, spoiled. Push or pull? He could never remember whether Zeihen translated as 'push' and Drucken 'pull', or vice versa. What remained now from all those tainted memories? And what would remain of their time together here? Nothing tangible. Just the vague sense of loss he carried with him across the empty street into the Rosengarten.

He stopped. Though the roses had all long since died, he recognized fondly several places in the garden where Jo and himself had sat together through some late summer's afternoon when the rosebushes had seemed in an almost impossibly full, wild bloom. He lingered, looking at everything for the last time. Presently, his path took him past the unusual trees and exotically-labeled wildflowers Jo had tried to teach him the common names for on these afternoon excursions, though in the end they'd found none of the campion, valerian or thrift of their trip to Cornwall, which they'd so romantically eulogised later in their letters. There had been a special connection between them then, he knew - this romantic intensity! Heightened no doubt by her unavailability. But her declaration by telephone from the airport - and the poems and letters that followed - had swamped his imagination and his heart. This! Their passion gave them a sense at times, he felt almost, of the 'burthen of the mystery' - found in each other. And yet when they became lovers, seized each other most fully, they had destroyed themselves. He found the secluded spot where he had intended to sit - a bench set off from the path, between bushes and trees. How often now did she turn away from him bitterly? Her commitment to her family was understandable, necessary, but at what price to herself! Her silent half, the husband whose name she used to forget, held her tight in a passionless, dead marriage. Their vows before the church, irrespective of the consequences. The situation struck him as tragic in its implications. A woman like Jo...

But her intensity had its dangers, too. Was that really a hint for a suicide pact just the other night? He wiped his fingers clean, took out his notebook from his inside pocket and began to flick through the pages. The notebook, besides his commentary on the Romantics, held innumerable marginalia: observations on Germany, people, places they'd seen together, each other, in both their hands. What did it all come down to in the end? Their great connection, he thought perhaps mistakenly, would leave no trace. In a few days he would ride the slow, overnight bus north through England, watched over at every turn in the road, whichever way he looked, by the inviting new moon. He took up his pen. Across the margin of the page he wrote, elegantly, concisely, in seventeen syllables, a poem.

Sipping a pils at the Unicenter Cafe, as twilight descended on the square, he flicked once more through his notebook - but this time without any purpose in mind, merely to fill in some minutes while he waited for Jo. Most of the stallholders had packed up already for the day. Another waiter, not his friend who was probably working the later shift, had set lamps on all the tables. Despite the growing chill, the scene possessed the cosy end-of-day atmosphere that he enjoyed more at this time of year than at any other. He sipped his cold pils mit gerne, much as did the smiling Bavarian faces on the table coasters.

Across the darkening square he picked out Jo's face coming towards him. She was not smiling.

He took down his feet from her chair and tried to catch the attention of the waiter. Jo came up. She was carrying several full-looking bags. She made no move to sit down.

"So, how was it?" He caught the waiter's eye. "Cologne, I mean. How was it? Jo? Hey, there! - Hello?.."

"Cologne was fine. I'm pretty mad with you. What you said this morning - about my experience in these things, in affairs... ..Me and this whole sort of thing, you know?"

He looked at her. The waiter stood dumbly at the table.

"I don't want a beer, but you have another if you want one."

"Der rechnung, bitte," he said to the waiter. " - No, what are you talking about? Won't you sit down?.. You realize I have no idea what you're talking about? Sit down for a second, won't you?"

She sat reluctantly, keeping her eyes fixed on the table. She saw the open notebook.

"Listen, you can make a scene, that doesn't bother me. But I really have no idea what this is all about. Jo? Joan!..

Looking up, she said: "O, Kev..."

Before they left the cafe that evening, a by now familiar fog had fallen once more. A deceptively light mist drifted through the square, which at first seemed only to add to the romantic evening atmosphere. A hazy late-autumn half-moon shone down; the table-lamps glowed pleasantly about them: the couple felt themselves reunited yet again in the mildly intoxicating misty twilight.

But, later, when they finally left the cafe and started on the road home, a fog thick as chloroform came over their senses.

What to do? The path through the woods was passable usually only on the clearest of evenings, the road a much longer route, winding back as though forever towards the residences.

They went on, uncertainly.

A short way along the road, past the first somehow sinisterly folkish cottage, the young man noticed two indistinct figures detach themselves from the fog. They moved parallel to the couple, perhaps twenty yards off the road, as they made their way up the hill. He continued to watch them without wishing to alarm Jo. But the fog swirled; whether they were people or what exactly he couldn't be sure - for they vanished, ghost-like, into the misty German woods.

Malcolm Dixon is originally from Liverpool. His fiction has appeared in the Newport Review, Wind Magazine, the Briar Cliff Review, Literary New York and Cranky. In 2003 he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He now lives north of Canterbury, on the Kent coast.

Email: Malcolm Dixon

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