Superheroes
A series of interconnected short stories from my 2018 collection "Degrees of Separation"
Superheroes
(March 2011)
The sound from the city entered the room through the open balcony windows accompanied by the quiet conversation of Françoise and Gerd who, having gone outside to smoke, were sitting on small wrought iron chairs and, in the absence of a table - the balcony being far too small - balancing their cigarette packets on their knees. The music sounded less exuberant now. Several hours had passed since the musicians had started their torch-lit parade through the city. The lightening of the sky seemed to accompany a reduction in verve.
She had been generally amazed; first at the spectacle, and second that she was there to witness it. Being in Basel had never been part of their itinerary; that she was there for Fasnacht was simply luck. When Claire had decided to stay in Zurich rather than continue on to Amsterdam for their final stop as planned, Georgia and Alice had been faced with a decision: honour Amsterdam or go straight home. Georgia, who had become exhausted with the sheer intensity of their trip, had favoured the latter, but Alice had been inclined towards the Dutch capital. It was, she argued, an adventure; better not to end it with a whimper. In the end they agreed to travel home by train - and to go via Basel. It was a compromise of sorts. Alice had argued that they had seen surprisingly little of trains and nothing of Switzerland, and Georgia knew that an unplanned diversion along the way appealed to her sense of the unrehearsed.
She had no idea where Alice was now. Presumably in a crowd somewhere, or in a bar, or having one last ‘fling’ as she liked to describe her more casual acquaintances.
“You are here for Fasnacht?” the woman at the slightly shabby hotel had asked as she handed over the keys to the last available twin room and explained how to get into town using the trams.
“Fas-what?” Alice had replied.
It was only later, as they sat in a bar near the Barfüsserplatz that Christoph and Maxime had explained the Basel carnival to them. By then - it had been just after 3 a.m. - the city was filling up considerably. The bars were packed. They had met the two men when sharing a table in a hotel bar near the station around midnight. Soon, Maxime had said, all the city lights would be switched off and people would start marching; drummers and piccolo players with crowds of people, many in costumes, carrying elaborately decorated lanterns.
“It used to be a religious festival,” he explained, already having to shout loudly to be heard, “hundreds of years ago. But now we just celebrate it as a carnival. It’s Basel’s party time.”
Georgia had been unable to establish why it started in the middle of the night, and the fact that it carried on for a number of days was daunting. They were only going to be there for one night - which meant they would probably spend much of the journey back to Paris and then London asleep! At least their train out of Basel was a late one.
Alice had gone off with Maxime at some point a little after they had left the bar to watch the parade. “There are thousands here. People always are getting separated,” Christoph had warned, and had insisted that she and Alice had both the address of their hotel and his own address and phone number. Later he had said to Georgia “Maxime is a good man. Your friend is safe.”
She had liked Christoph instantly. Although older than her by a few years (she guessed ten or so) he had the kind of face and physique that would probably look the same at forty as it had at twenty. He was quiet, not in a shy or fearful way, but rather from self-confidence, as if he had nothing to prove to himself nor anyone else. There was no need for flamboyance or exaggerated showiness. He dressed well, casually, and was well-groomed - all in a relaxed fashion. He had splendid hands with immaculate fingernails. Even though she was still only twenty-three, Georgia had come to believe you could tell a lot about a man from his hands.
He had taken hers briefly as they had darted across a road between two groups of marching revellers. It was a hand that felt solid and confident, and gave her a sense of safety and security. She would have happily continued to hold it once they had crossed the road, but he had let hers drop. She felt surprisingly disappointed.
They had watched the players for a little while, a one point eating waffles and crepes from a street stall. Georgia’s phone had vibrated in her pocket. It was a message from Alice. “Am fine. C u back at hotel abt 8.” She had leant towards Christoph to show him, and he had smiled as if to say “See?”.
“Coffee at my place?” he had proposed to Françoise and Gerd who they had collected along the way, and, by smiling at her, she assumed she was also invited. She had tried to take his hand again. “It’s complicated,” he had said as he squeezed it and then let it fall again, his smile both a little apologetic and a little rueful.
She had wondered what ‘complicated’ meant though she didn’t doubt it was the mot juste. His English was exceptional, which seemed to be the norm with all the people she had met there. Françoise, who was French and from just over the border in Colmar had perhaps the weakest English, but made up for it with her fantastic accent. Gerd’s was strong and precise, infused with the occasional Germanic word order. Both he and Christoph were from Basel, though you wouldn’t have known that listening to them; Christoph’s accent seemed to defy location.
“I spent a year in London,” he said as they sat down to drink coffee, Gerd making his way to the balcony to join Françoise who was leaning out over its railing to see if she could see any of the procession. “It was part of my education.”
“But you’ve been back since?” Georgia asked, fairly certain his fluency could not only have been gained through a single visit to the UK and by being resident in Basel, multi-cultural though it was.
“Oh yes,” he laughed, lightly, “many times. I even lived in the north for a couple of years. I hope to go back.”
“What do you do?”
“I am very lucky,” he said, waiving his arm around to indicate his sitting room, inviting her to take it all in and draw her own conclusions.
She had simply followed them in through the front door and up the steps. Her focus had been on making sure she was welcome and not in the way; she didn’t want to appear the naive, gauche English tourist. Bidden to do so, she looked at the room. It was actually very large and with tall ceilings; the furniture was relatively sparse but clearly of good quality. There were some vases and small sculptures discretely placed among the books on the bookcase which dominated one wall. She wondered how she had missed that. And on the walls, paintings not prints. Involuntarily she felt the fabric of the chair in which she sat; leather, good leather. Money.
He laughed at her.
“My father is a successful businessman. Books, paintings, antiques, things like that are a bit of a hobby for him. I sort of ‘help out’ from time to time.’
“Help out?”
“I have a good eye, I suppose. I’m well-educated, well-read. I can usually see a bargain - or spot something that’s pretending to be what it isn’t. And I have a hunch which is right more often than not.”
“I see,” she said, not really seeing at all.
“My education, for example. Fine Arts at University in Lausanne. I had a year in London. My time in the north of England? Working out of one of our subsidiary offices. Mainly it was about taking the family name into meetings; sometimes finding things. People.” He sipped at his coffee, confident that she wasn’t quite there yet. “Take Gerd.”
“Gerd?”
“Yes.” Simultaneously they looked towards the figures on the balcony. Gerd was stroking Françoise’s hair; they were silent. “Gerd is quite an artist. Sorry,” he corrected himself, “Gerd could be quite an artist. One day. He has talent. My father is sponsoring him for a little while, to give him some space to see if he can ‘find’ himself.”
Georgia remained fixed for a moment on the image Gerd and Françoise were creating. When she turned back, Christoph was looking at her.
“The picture against the far wall? One of Gerd’s. You should take a look at it before you leave.”
It was an innocuous statement, delivered innocently, but its clarity was not lost on her.
“You said ‘a little while’. What does that mean?”
“Gerd?”
She nodded.
“He has probably until the end of the summer. These next three of four months are very crucial. I hope Françoise gives him space too. We want to be able to exhibit him before the end of September, but right now we don’t have enough material - good quality material - to do so. But Gerd knows this.”
“And if he doesn’t deliver what you need?”
“C’est la vie.”
He had delivered his answer in the same relaxed, easy-going, confident manner as he seemed to possess for everything else, yet it struck Georgia how cold and calculating the sentiment was beneath it.
“Isn’t that a little brutal?” She had struggled for the word and settled on ‘brutal’ even though that wasn’t entirely what she meant.
“Not at all,” Christoph’s smile was completely devoid of any malice. “Gerd knows the agreement; it’s perfectly fine. There is no threat or animosity. I like Gerd, very much. I’m sure I will continue to see him after September whatever happens.”
“‘Whatever happens’,” she echoed.
“But this is business. It is nothing personal. Nora Ephron.”
Georgia was stumped.
“Nora?”
“Nora Ephron. Great American writer and director. ‘You’ve Got Mail’. Tom Hanks and…”
“Meg Ryan,” she interjected, keen to show she could be on his wavelength. “Yes. And ‘When Harry met Sally’…”
“And ‘Sleepless in Seattle’. Precisely. You remember the part in ‘Mail’ where Hanks tells Ryan to fight, not realising he is telling her to fight him? ‘It’s business, not personal’; that’s what he says, something like that.”
“And that makes it okay?”
Christoph leant forward in his chair, concern on his face.
“Makes what okay?”
“To treat Gerd as if he were - I don’t know…”
“You ask him,” he suggested. “When he comes back in from whispering love to Françoise, you ask him. See if he thinks he is being taken advantage of, or whether he thinks this is the chance of a lifetime.”
It was immediately apparent to her that she wouldn’t need to; that Gerd would be effusive and grateful for the support he was getting. Christoph was probably his knight in shining armour. There was still something nagging at her, however. She knew that she was about as far away from a business person as it was possible to get and therefore her perspective was more idealistic than anything else, but even if Gerd was grateful, there was something that didn’t ring true for her.
“I don’t think I’ll have to ask him,” she suggested. Christoph shrugged his shoulders a little, smiled, and eased himself back into his chair. “I’m sure he’s very grateful, and that he’ll produce lots of good things for you to sell.”
“But?”
“‘But’?”
“I sense you have a ‘but’ lurking, Georgia. That even though Gerd is happy with the arrangement and I am happy with it, that you have a reservation. Am I right?”
Georgia looked back out onto the balcony. They were smoking again, their conversation resumed.
“Look, I don’t know anything about art, or sculpture, or business…”
“More than you suspect,” he interrupted, “I guarantee that!”
“Perhaps. But I’m not sure they mix. I suppose I grew up believing in things like writing and painting in a different way to everything else. That they were special because people had talents the rest of us lacked. There was never any cross-over into things that might be construed as ‘commercial’.”
“Ah, the Artist as God!” He said it smilingly, but with something of a tone that she could not help but notice. “More coffee, by the way?” She shook her head. “Yes, of course. And if I’m honest, me too. The notions we have of these fantastic people. Rubens, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Picasso! Well maybe not Picasso! Romantic, yes? We placed them up onto these pedestals didn’t we, as if they were gods. We only thought of them as painters, not people; painters who made wonderful images. And writers too. Shakespeare, Hardy, Eliot, Ibsen, Maupassant. They were somehow super-heroes. Yes, I think that is the word: Superheroes! We were never taught to consider them as just people who lived lives the same as we do; had to endure the same boring things, the same drudgery. But they did. Of course they did! Some of them - the lucky ones - may have had patrons who protected them from such trivia. Isn’t that all my father and I are doing here, with Gerd and others?”
Even though she sensed he might be correct in what he was saying and that the parallel he was drawing was probably a perfectly reasonable one, there was still disquiet in her. Not aimed perhaps at Christoph, but at something much larger and wider.
“But you make it sound so cold. So commercial.”
“Because it is. Because it always has been. Gerd doesn’t have to worry about earning money for the moment because we support him. We give him the time to be a Superhero. There is a transactional nature about the arrangement, of course. Is that unfortunate? If you were idealistic, yes. But practically? I think it works perfectly. And there is absolute clarity on both sides.”
She wanted to respond but was unsure how to. Before she could speak, Christoph called out to Gerd.
“Hey Gerd! Our pretty English friend here thinks that we shouldn’t be supporting you. Thinks that we’re some kind of modern-day slavers. Do you want not to have our money?”
“Are you a crazy man?” Gerd said, turning slightly on his chair. “How could I pay for my rent and my cigarettes if you were not there?” His laughter burst into the room and then was shared with the street as he turned back to Françoise.
“I’m sorry for that - but you see my point.” Christoph placed his coffee cup down on the little table that sat between them. He leant forward again, placing a hand on her right arm. “I would love for the world to be as you might wish it to be. I really would. But it isn’t, and it never has been. And you know, the thing that makes me okay with what we do - and how we try to do it - is that we can. As I said, I am lucky. Without that luck, without me meeting Gerd and people like him, without our help and assistance - however you might choose to view it - then where would Gerd be? How much smaller would his chances be of being what he could be?”
She nodded slowly and smiled. It was suddenly wonderful to feel his hand on her arm, and she wanted to know why it was ‘complicated’; she wanted to feel as if she belonged in Basel; wanted Christoph to show her everything Fasnacht and the carnival had to offer. It was not the wealth, or his charm, or taste, or anything material; it was because she suddenly believed in him.
He moved his arm and the moment was gone.
“And now, my beautiful young English tourist, it is getting late - or it is getting early - and we need to get you back to your hotel. Alice will be worried about you.” He stood up. “Let me see if I can find you a friendly taxi to get you safely where you need to be.”
For links on where to buy Degrees of Separation, click here.