Uncle Rudolf. Paul Bailey

might have been a prince, to look at him.

      What I remember – what I cannot fail to remember in the light of what I was to learn – of that first telephone conversation with my uncle is that he did not tell me the truth. It was part of his deceitful plan to save me for as long as possible from griefs I was too young to bear. He sounded buoyant as he told me he had been in the company of a beautiful woman. Paris was the place for beautiful women.

      He brought me back a souvenir. It was a model of the Eiffel Tower, from the top of which, thirteen years later, he and I would survey the city he had arrived in thirty years earlier with the intention of becoming the finest lyric tenor in the world.

      My pen is darting across these pages, yet I fear he will elude me, the last and most substantial of my three dear ghosts. ‘My pen’; ‘these pages’ – how quaint I must seem, how moribund, in this age of spectacularly advanced technology. But the pen and pages are appropriate since I am writing of the Rudolf Peterson his public would not have understood, or even applauded, in those vanished years of his immense fame. The music he sang deals only fleetingly with sorrow, but sorrow was of my uncle’s essence, and it encompassed more than his own fierce melancholy, as I came to understand. To begin with, I noticed that sorrow only in glimpses. I would enter a room – in London, or in Sussex – and he would be unaware of my silent presence. He was often staring ahead of him, contemplating something painful, I guessed, to judge by the look of blankness on his normally lively features. Then, seeing me, he would lose the discontented expression in an instant and start chatting to his beloved nephew of everyday concerns, such as the surprise dish he had asked Annie to prepare for supper. With Andrew to entertain and interest, it seemed, there was no call for sadness.

      The voice you can hear today on the Golden Age label gives just a hint of what he was about. It is bright and confident, as befits a reckless vagabond; a prince who believes he is a simple gypsy fiddler; a champagne-guzzling gambler who plays roulette with no thought of a ruinous tomorrow. These were the kind of improbable men Uncle Rudolf impersonated, giving them – for as long as he could bear to – angelic expression. But the angel wanted to sing of other matters; of other, more serious, concerns, and he had already left it too late to do so by the time I arrived in his life.

      —You are my mascot, my lucky charm, my uncle said as I watched his face in the dressing-room mirror being transformed into that of Zoltan Kassák, the brigand with whom the Crown Princess Zelda falls at first hopelessly, and then triumphantly, in love. Zoltan has a duelling scar on his left cheek, which Uncle Rudolf created each night with a strip of blood-red plasticine stuck on with theatrical glue.

      —It mustn’t look too livid, he told me as he dabbed it with powder. Zelda has to find it irresistible.

      As Zoltan, my uncle wore immensely baggy trousers that billowed above his leather boots. His brigand’s clothes also included an embroidered shirt and a cap from which protruded an eagle’s feather. The sword and dagger hanging from his belt proclaimed him to be a man who would fight his enemies to the death, should it be necessary. I can remember, now, watching from the side of the stage as he roused his fellow brigands into action with the song ‘What fear we of the foe?’ and marvelling that I was there, on that summer evening, to bring him luck. I stood, entranced, throughout the first performance of Magyar Maytime, though I was confused by the story, and still am, if I think about it. In the last scene, Zoltan is discovered to have noble blood, and this means that Zelda, who is forbidden to marry a commoner, can become his bride. My uncle loathed the coy badinage – ‘You are my lovely, my wonderful Zelly’; ‘You are my handsome Zolly, who is so brave and strong’ – that preceded the duet in which they declare eternal love for one another. His leading lady was equally embarrassed at having to call him Zolly, and sometimes he substituted ‘smelly’ or ‘belly’ or ‘jelly’, and she ‘folly’ or ‘dolly’ or ‘Molly’, and then they would giggle, and the angry conductor in the pit would be forced to wait for them to stop before raising his baton.

      —It is a silly life I lead, Andrew. Yours will be more sensible I hope. And happier.

      My mother was with me briefly today – speaking the only words she knew – in those moments between sleeping and waking. She said what was true, that she had never left me, although we had been parted.

      —No parting, Andrei, was more terrible than ours. Her ghost’s voice was as light and soft as the voice that had soothed and comforted and teased me in my earliest years. She told me that her God was the same kind and merciful God she had taught me to believe in but whom I have since abandoned, and then the voice was gone, and the blurred vision of her young face, and I was on the verge of talking to her when I realized that I was awake and alone and shivering in the warmth of the afternoon.

      —I have a confession to make, Andrew. Your father and I were rivals for your mother’s affections. Irina preferred Roman. If she had chosen me, I would not be enjoying my nephew’s company. On balance, I suppose I should be glad she threw me over.

      —Were you in love with Mama, Uncle?

      —Very much. She was so serious and shy. She wasn’t – as they say here – forward.

      I knew by then, though I had been given no reason why, that I would not, could not, see her again. I was fifteen by now, and the war with Germany was almost over. My uncle looked older, with white hairs on his temples he made no attempt to disguise. He was in a melancholy mood, a mood to which I was already happily accustomed.

      —I try not to dwell on the past, Andrew. It’s over, I remind myself. What’s done cannot be undone. The present is all that matters. Remember that, if you can. As for me these days, I tend to forget it. Irina decided wisely when she picked Roman. I offered them money, my Vienna money, to get out of that beastly country – our beastly country, Andrew – but they refused to accept it. I should have gone to Botoşani and bullied them into leaving.

      I asked him why.

      I was trapped in his fierce brown stare for a moment.

      —Oh, it was no place for good people. He added, mysteriously: But you are my future, Andrew. That’s why. Whatever happens, I shall always be at your side when you need me. Yes, you are my future, for the time being.

      Perhaps he had considered telling me the real reason why on that April day in 1945, and had then – in the course of staring at me – persuaded himself that a boy of fifteen was too raw for such knowledge. Perhaps.

      He suggested that we take a walk in the fields. There was no danger any more from German planes. The lord of the manor, as he mockingly described himself, would inspect the estate with his heir apparent.

      We ate an omelette that evening, cooked with the fresh eggs his hens had laid.

      —What luxury. What a simple luxury, said my – smiling uncle. We are very fortunate.

      I was to receive the real reason why, the real answer to my question, when I was eighteen.

      —You are mature for your age, Andrew. I will pour you a large brandy before I say what I have to say. I certainly need one.

      What he told me on the tenth of August, 1948, caused me to shiver today.

      I remember that I needed a second large brandy after I had read my father’s last letter to my uncle, written in the old words I no longer spoke.

      The words that are ashes in my mouth when I catch myself speaking them now.

      —We shall have an English Christmas, not an Orthodox one. Santa Claus will come down the chimney with your presents. He’s like Saint Nicholas only different, as they say here. You must sleep tight, my dear, because Santa doesn’t want you to see him being kind. Do you promise me you won’t try to look at him?

      —I promise, Uncle.

      It was December 1937, and I was still in England, on holiday. We were at Uncle Rudolf’s Elizabethan house in the Sussex countryside, with his devoted entourage – Annie, Teddy and Charlie – whom he now instructed me not to call his servants.

      —They are my friends, Andrew darling. They