Free The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

age. So by the time I get to eighteen, I could be performing in huge concerts in Paris and Geneva and New York. You see?’
    ‘Huge concerts?’
    ‘Sure. Even at our age, my mother says, we have to think about what we’re going to do later on in our lives. What are you going to do, Gustav?’
    Gustav turned his face away. Into his mind came the image of himself, on his hands and knees, in the Church of Sankt Johann, searching for pitiful ‘treasure’ under the metal grating. And it was easy to project this forward into the future – as though there
were
no future for him, but only this: a man crawling along, growing older year by year, searching for things which other people had cast aside.
    ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ he said.
    He went to see Herr Hodler after school. Max Hodler was wearing spectacles now and these spectacles shaded his pink-rimmed eyes and made him look older and slightly more handsome than he’d been before. When he was told about Emilie Perle’s pneumonia, he said, ‘Heavens, Gustav. That’s very frightening.’
    He gave Gustav a toffee and popped one into his own mouth. They sat in the book-crammed staffroom, chewing the toffees and saying nothing.
    At last, Max Hodler said, ‘Who is looking after you?’
    ‘I’m all right,’ said Gustav. ‘If you could just lend me a bit of money for the tram fare, then I can go and see Mutti.’
    ‘Certainly,’ said Max. ‘Are you going now? Let me come with you.’
    Gustav shook his head, no. ‘Mutti might not want to see anyone,’ he said, remembering the urine-soaked sheets and the oily sweat on Emilie’s face.
    ‘That’s all right,’ said Max. ‘I can just wait in the corridor.’
    ‘I can go alone,’ said Gustav. ‘It’s the number 13 tram.’
    It was difficult to find where Emilie was in the big hospital. Gustav wandered from ward to ward, staring at all the sick people. He was beginning to feel tired again, and very hungry. When he saw a food trolley being pushed along, he asked the orderly if he could take a piece of bread. Without waiting for an answer, he reached out for the bread, but the orderly slapped his hand and said, ‘Get away from my patients’ rations! What are you doing here, anyway, boy? Are you from the children’s ward?’
    He was sent back, through all the rooms he’d already visited, to a desk staffed by a matron, wearing a starched white hat, like some kind of weird Swiss National Dress.
    ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
    He gave Emilie’s name: Frau Perle – never Emilie to strangers. A young nurse was called by the matron and Gustav followed the nurse, retracing his steps through the crowded wards, past the food trolley, till they reached a dark and silent corridor and the nurse opened the door to a tiny room, lit with a shaded blue lamp.
    Gustav went in. In the blue light, he could hardly make out Emilie’s form on the metal bed. Tubes were attached to her arms, joined up to a bag upside down on a pole. Another tube had been pushed up her nose. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was very loud, like snoring.
    There was a chair by the bed and Gustav sat down on this. He wanted to take hold of Emilie’s hand, but he was afraid to dislodge the tubes, so he sat with his hands in his lap. He said, ‘Mutti, can you hear me?’
    She couldn’t. She was in that place, like a dark and silent lake, where people go when they’re asleep. Now and again, Gustav could hear footsteps going by in the corridor, but nobody came into the room. He sat very still, bathed in the blue light. The blueness of everything made him feel lonely. Heavy on his mind weighed the thought of the sheets in the disinfected bath and the task of dragging them down to the washing machine in the cellar.
    He wondered how many other tasks Mutti performed in the space of a day to ensure that they lived a properly mastered life, where floors were cleaned and mice kept away and pillows were soft and dry. And he