Low Sunday

Herr Schade was on the door.

It was Sunday, and Herr Schade did Sundays, and had done them for six years, and he was standing in the hall at eight in the morning in his dark coat with his hands clasped in front of him, large and grey and quiet, beside a row of suitcases that had been brought down in the night and stood along the wall under the stairs in order of size, as though waiting to be inspected.

Castellanos was standing on the other side of the hall.

He had been standing there, Alexander gathered, for some time. He was in his own coat, the one from the airport on the first day, with his hands clasped in front of him in exactly the same way, and the two of them, the large grey German and the compact dark American, were standing on opposite sides of the hall of his mother’s house, three metres apart, not speaking, both looking at the same place on the ceiling, where the plaster rose round the light fitting had a chip out of one of its leaves.

Alexander stopped on the bottom stair.

Neither of them looked at him. Neither of them looked at each other. They looked at the chip in the ceiling rose with the same expression of mild, professional attention, as though it had been put there for them, and they had been asked to report on it, and were in no hurry.

He went past them into the breakfast room without a word. He thought that it was the most peaceful thing he had seen all week.

---

The mothers were laughing.

He heard it from the door. It was not loud, and it was not long, but it was laughing, both of them, at the end of the table, over the newspaper, in English, about something in it that he did not catch and did not try to, and when he came in his mother looked up and saw him and went on laughing for a moment, and then stopped, and said, “Good morning, darling,” in the voice she had used when he was small and had come down to breakfast in his dressing gown, and went back to her half of the paper.

His aunt did not look up at all. She passed his mother the other half without being asked.

It had been a fortnight. He had counted it in the dome on Friday night after the others had gone down: the week before Easter, when the Ambassador’s car had been in the forecourt at Berlin on a day with no reason for it, and his mother had been kind at breakfast in a way he did not trust; and then this week, the whole of it, the two of them reading one newspaper in two halves and passing the halves across without looking, carefully, the way you pass a full cup. It was over now. He did not know when it had stopped. He thought perhaps on the path, by the reeds, yesterday morning. He thought perhaps in the launch, when his mother had said a thing in the voice to Kessler about what the garden was for. He did not ask.

Theo was eating the last of the dark rolls.

“I want it recorded,” Theo said, to the table, with his mouth full, as Alexander sat down. “Undefeated in the German Empire. I want it written down somewhere official.”

“Nobody’s official,” said Lukas.

“He is,” said Theo, and pointed at Frederick with the roll.

Frederick, at the end of the table beside his mother, took the green exercise book out from beside his plate, where it always was now, and opened it, and uncapped a fountain pen, a dark green one with a gold band, and wrote, slowly, in the small upright hand, and turned the book round so that Theo could see it.

Alexander looked at the pen.

He looked at his mother. His mother was reading the newspaper. Her face did nothing at all. But she had turned the page, and she had not read the page she had turned, and he knew, because he knew her, that she had seen the pen as well.

“There,” said Frederick. “It’s recorded. 8 April. Theo undefeated in the German Empire. F. It’s the first thing in the book that isn’t about a Crown.”

“Good,” said Theo, and ate the roll.

---

Lukas had a parcel.

He brought it out after breakfast, in the hall, among the suitcases, with Herr Schade and Castellanos still looking at the ceiling rose: a flat parcel in brown paper, tied with string, the size of a large book, and he gave it to Theo with both hands, the way Theo had been given the box on the crest.

“For your mother,” said Lukas. “Don’t open it on the plane.”

Theo turned it over.

“What is it?”

“It’s hers,” said Lukas. “She gave it to me. At the door, on the Eleventh, when we were going. I’d dried with it, and she took it off me at the door and folded it in four and gave it back, and said, You dried right. Keep it. So I kept it.” He was looking at the parcel, not at Theo. “My mother washed it. I ironed it. I’ve never ironed anything. It took an hour. And there’s one of ours inside it, folded up, from the café. It’s got Sanssouci on it. It’s very ugly. My mother says your mother will understand.”

Theo looked at the parcel for a long moment.

“She’ll frame it,” he said. “The ugly one. She’ll put it on the wall by the cooker, next to the one from Green Bay, and tell everybody who comes in that the Emperor’s Page ironed it.”

“I’m the Emperor’s Page and Gefährte. It’s both. The Page is the paper one; the Gefährte is the one that matters.”

“She won’t know that,” said Theo. “She’ll say Page. I’ll let her.” He put the parcel under his arm, flat, carefully, and held it there. “Thanks, Lukas.”

“It’s going back the other way,” said Lukas. “That’s all. Things should go back the other way sometimes. Otherwise they’re just presents.”

Alexander, at the foot of the stairs, thought that it was the second thing Lukas had said that morning, and that Lukas knew it, and that Lukas had decided that a tea towel did not count.

---

They went to the airport at eleven.

He went with them. Nobody had suggested it and nobody had suggested that he should not. He went in the second car with Frederick and Theo and Kessler, and Lukas came, in the third, with his mother’s ugly opinion of Sanssouci in a parcel on Theo’s knee in the car in front, and the two Queens went in the first, together, which they had not done all week.

The airport was the airport. It was large and grey and full of people with suitcases who did not know who anybody was, and the protection on both sides took them through a door at the side that nobody else was taken through, and along a corridor, and into a room with chairs and a window on to the apron, where a great many people in uniform were doing things to aeroplanes with great seriousness, and where there was nothing to do for forty minutes but stand.

Theo stood at the window with the parcel and looked at the aeroplanes. Lukas stood beside him. After a while Alexander saw Lukas say something, very low, without turning his head, and Theo say something back, and then Theo laughed, once, at the window, and Lukas did not, and both of them went on looking at the aeroplanes.

His mother and his aunt sat on two of the chairs, side by side, and talked, in English, about asparagus.

Frederick stood by the door with his hands behind his back.

Alexander went and stood beside him. They did not say anything. There was nothing to say that had not been said on the lake, and nothing to say about the lake, and they both knew it, and they stood side by side by the door, with their hands behind their backs, exactly alike, looking at the room, and at the window, and at the aeroplanes, for perhaps ten minutes, and it was the easiest ten minutes of the week.

---

At a quarter to twelve a man in a uniform came to the door and said something to Castellanos, and Castellanos nodded, and it was time.

The two Queens stood up.

His mother held out both her hands to his aunt, as she had to Frederick on the step a week before, and his aunt took them, and they stood for a moment holding hands like two women at a station in a film, and then his mother said, in English, “Next time, Solliden,” and his aunt said, “Next time, Solliden,” and let go.

Then his aunt turned to him.

She looked at him for a moment, the way she had looked at him in the orangery on Tuesday evening, as though she were reading the first page of something and deciding whether to turn over.

“Alexander,” she said.

“Aunt Christina.”

“Write to him,” she said. “About anything.” And then, very quickly, so that he hardly saw it happen, she put one gloved hand flat against his cheek, and took it away, and went to the door, where Castellanos was holding it.

At the door she stopped and said something to Frederick in Swedish.

Alexander did not understand it. He did not speak Swedish. He heard it as a short run of soft words, low, not a question, and he saw Frederick’s face as he heard it, and saw Frederick nod, once, and say “Ja,” and that was all he would ever know of it, and he found that he did not need to know any more.

His aunt went through, alone, to the first of the two aeroplanes, because of the rule that nobody had changed.

Theo went to the door with his parcel. He stopped beside Lukas, and looked at him, and said, “The knees,” and Lukas said, “The back of the head,” and Theo said, “See you on the Eleventh,” and Lukas said, “If I’m let,” and Theo said, “You’ll be let,” and went through, with the parcel held flat against his chest with both arms, the way he had held the box.

That left the two of them.

Frederick turned round from the door. He looked at Alexander for a moment. Then he took his right hand from behind his back and held it out, formally, the way you hold out a hand at the end of a state visit, to a head of state you have just met, with the cameras on you.

“Yours,” said Frederick, “with every formality.”

Alexander took the hand.

“Yours,” he said, “with every formality.”

They shook hands, once, properly, up and down, like two very old men at the end of a treaty. Neither of them laughed. It was the nearest thing to laughing either of them could do in a departure lounge with Kessler watching, and they both knew it, and Frederick’s mouth moved at one corner, and so did his, and was still.

Then Frederick let go and went through the door.

---

Castellanos did not follow him at once.

He was standing at the door, holding it, with his eyes on the ceiling of the departure lounge, which was low and white and tiled and had nothing on it worth looking at, and he was looking at it anyway, out of loyalty to the profession. Frederick’s footsteps went away down the corridor beyond the door. Castellanos stayed where he was.

Then he lowered his eyes from the ceiling, and looked at Alexander, directly, for the first time in nine days.

“For what it’s worth, sir,” said Castellanos, “I didn’t hear Thursday. I’m very good at not hearing.”

And went through the door, and let it close behind him, quite gently, and was gone.

Alexander stood in the departure lounge and looked at the door.

Behind him Lukas said nothing at all, for once, for a long time. Then he said, “That was his first one.”

“His first what?”

“Line. All week. That was the first thing he’s said to you. I counted.” Lukas came and stood beside him. “He’s been saving it as well.”

---

He went back to Berlin that evening, because it was Sunday, and school began again in the morning, and the Emperor lived in Berlin on school nights.

Kessler drove. Lukas had gone home from the airport to Potsdam, to his mother’s café, with his hat in his pocket. The car went up the motorway in the dusk with the lights of the city coming up ahead, and Alexander sat in the back and looked at them, and thought about nothing, and failed, and thought about the lake.

The palace was quiet. It was always quiet on Sunday nights. He went up to his room, and shut the door, and sat down at the desk, and opened the drawer.

The box was where it always was, in the second drawer: his father’s walnut pen box, long and shallow, with the four grooves in the baize. He took it out and put it on the desk and opened the lid.

The letters were in it. All of them, in order: Frederick’s, one after another, from the timetable letter of the first of November, the whole of the winter, to the last, Homework, nearly four weeks old. They were tied round with the dark blue ribbon from the coronation programme.

The knot was underneath.

He had tied it underneath on the twenty-seventh of March, when he found it on top. He had untied it, and looked at it, and tied it again underneath, his way, and put the box back, and said nothing to anybody, and gone to school. It had been underneath ever since. Nobody had touched it. He knew, because he had looked every night he had been in Berlin.

He untied it now.

He did not take the letters out. He did not read them. He sat at the desk with the ribbon loose in his hands and looked at the stack of envelopes, the thin American envelopes with the Embassy’s mark, and thought about his mother sitting where he was sitting, in the week of the Bundesrat, with this ribbon in her hands, reading. Reading all of them, one after another, the whole of the winter, not for the advice and not for Hanover and not for the vote, but for the place where her son laughed. And finding it. And tying the ribbon again with her own hands, with the knot on top, where he would see it the moment he lifted the lid, because she had wanted him to know; and he knew that now, and had not let himself know it on the twenty-seventh of March.

He tied it again.

He tied it underneath, his way, the way he always had. He did not check whether anybody would be able to tell. He did not check whether it was neat. He tied it, and put the lid on the box, and put the box back in the second drawer, and shut the drawer.

At eleven the guard went past his door, and paused, and went on.

He did not go to bed at once. He sat at the desk for a while longer, in the quiet, with the lamp on, and took a clean sheet of paper out of the other drawer, and the pen, and wrote at the top of it, in the square hand, Dear Frederick, with a comma, and looked at it.

He did not write any more that night. There was nothing he needed to say yet that the lake had not said, and the terms said he could write about anything, and anything could wait until he had something to write it about. He left the sheet on the desk, with the two words on it and the comma, under the lamp, where he would see it in the morning, and turned off the lamp, and went to bed, and slept, for the first time since Wednesday, all night.