Golden Boy. Paula Astridge
alone and studying in his room.
It was an addiction, perplexing in the extreme, which disturbed Wolters in many ways. Why even now he was listening to and analysing the very inflection in Albert’s voice as he spoke and joked with the other students in the room.
‘Which is damned annoying!’ Wolters thought with contempt. Firstly, because he found himself doing it, and secondly because all those other people in the room, those parasites who were so unimportant in the scheme of things, were monopolising Albert’s time. He only wished he could get rid of them for good, so that he, and only he, could get closer to Albert on a full-time basis, to somehow inveigle his way into his friend’s life and make himself an integral part of it forever.
But Wolters had an uphill battle ahead of him if he were to get beyond Albert’s cool detachment. That implacable ‘look but don’t touch’ quality that gave Albert the capacity to cut off at will and without warning. Albert kept the very essence of himself (his soul, Wolters guessed) apart and selfishly denied anyone access to it. Particularly those whose love for him threatened to expose his vulnerability and demand that he return the emotion in kind. Once a relationship reached point ‘X’ Albert found it easier to slam the door. So determined was he to keep others at an arm’s length that one could almost see his extended arm and upturned hand saying: ‘Stop! From here on in you run up against a brick wall that bars entry.’
It was a frustrating impediment for a passionate man like Wolters who so desperately wanted ‘in’. However, he was undeterred and hadn’t the slightest intention of giving up. In his heart of hearts he suspected that he would make it his life’s work.
It never occurred to Wolters to explore the possibility that what he construed as mere hero-worship had started to creep over the line. But why would it when he knew himself to be a healthy, heterosexual man and had just married the girl of his dreams? The honeymoon, however, was over and for Wolters it was back to business. The business of Albert and of pinning him down for good, because, as far as he was concerned, Albert was the best. The very best. A man born under a lucky star who could not put a foot wrong … although, he had just done that very thing.
Picking his way through the throng of students sitting on his lounge room floor, Albert suddenly tripped and came close to falling flat on his face, which he would have done had that multitude of helpful hands not reached up in unison to stop him. Forsaking their spaghetti-wound forks in favour of their friend with such selfless efficiency that it cruelled Wolter’s pitch. Wolters had instinctively leapt from his chair to go to Albert’s rescue the very instant he saw him stumble.
It seemed as though Albert did not need him and perhaps never would. At least not now when his mind was on other things, most of which revolved around the fact that he was still in rebellion against his parents. This time, he was doing it at post-graduate level and with considerable style, or more correctly with a complete lack of it. For the last few years he had been going all out to dissociate himself from them and what they represented by portraying himself as the laziest man alive, with his devil-may-care attitude and deliberate, slovenly manner of dressing.
In fact, one may have said that Albert was a man who worked very hard at his appearance to maintain its studied sloppiness. His trousers, as far back as Wolters could remember, had never seen a crease, whereas his shirts had seen nothing else but. Shirts that forever hung out of his pants, because he made a point of never tucking them in, while on the rare occasions he was forced to wear a tie, he made sure that it always sat askew in a careless knot an inch or two shy of his throat. He capped the dishevelled image with his crop of short, dark hair that rarely saw the stroke of a brush and had completely lost sight of a dignified parting.
All in all, it was a very impressive display of university-style dissidence and commendably Trotsky of him. In this he took great pride, enjoying every minute of the freedom it afforded him before the demands of society and adulthood set in and insisted that he fall back on old habits. Those habits that would have him revert to form and become the clean cut, impeccably groomed man-about-town he was brought up to be.
In the meantime he had made his point to friends and family and most particularly to his disdainful parents who, through sheer frustration, finally chose to withdraw themselves politely from his scene for the meantime. Depriving him of their reaction was the best way, they believed, to get it out of his system once and for all.
‘God, it feels good to hold the winning hand!’ Albert thought when his parents finally backed down and accepted him for what he was pretending to be.
But winning streak or not he hadn’t managed to impress everyone, which came as a real shock and a bitter disappointment.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I didn’t get in!’ Albert spluttered as he threw the letter of rejection down on the kitchen table and slumped despondently back in his chair.
Margret put down the teapot and picked up the letter. She didn’t take long to scan it. A ‘no’ was a ‘no’, and had been said in one sentence.
‘Well, never mind. It’s not the end of the world. Something better will come up for you.’
Unlike her husband, whose temperament tended towards self-absorption and dejection, Margret was never one to be defeated and her resilient, matter-of-fact manner was just what he needed.
‘But not to get selected by Professor Polzig means that I’m second rate.’
‘Oh for Heaven’s sake, Albert, there are 40 students in your class. He only takes on three of them for personal tuition. The other 37 of you can’t all be duds. Be sensible now. You admire Rudy’s work, don’t you? Well he didn’t get in either. What are you worried about?’
Nothing, as it turned out, because the very next day both he and Wolters were accepted by a much better man and mentor who was to set the standard for Albert’s life. Polzig and his exclusive three seemed unimportant when the equally eminent Professor Heinrich Tessenow saw fit not to limit himself and his teaching to three, but to take on 20 aspiring young architects, Albert and Rudy among them. He was an exceptional man who had modelled his methods and motives on the teachings of Plato and had a devoted following of clever young men.
Quiet and unassuming, Professor Tessenow never lectured from the podium. Not wanting to distance himself from his students, he chose instead to sit at a small table with them all clustered around him, his gentle voice demanding that they huddle close. Some of them had to stand on chairs and lean over the heads of others to hear his whispered words of wisdom.
‘Simplicity’ was one of these words and Tessenow used it often. He was intent on drumming it into his students’ psyche without mercy. ‘Clean cut pure simplicity.’
Tessenow’s was an architectural concept which had Albert’s threefold approval. Firstly, because it appealed to the rather pretentious, Spartan side of his nature. Secondly, because it was in complete contrast to the flamboyant, fussy lines of his father’s work. And thirdly, because it was easier to draw!
Now that laziness was playing such a prominent part in the equation, Albert had resigned himself to the fact that he would never make a halfway decent draftsman. It was a lucky thing then that he had enough money to pay another student, more adept in the field, to do his basic drafting for him. To some people’s way of thinking that was cheating and would have been quite unacceptable had Tessenow not seen in Albert other more exceptional qualities that made up for it. Enough qualities to have him overlook Albert’s lack of promise with his pencil to offer him the plum posting as his graduate assistant.
‘Well, that’s set you up for life,’ Wolters said as he took a sip of his beer. Neither the beer nor Albert’s success over his own left a bitter taste in his mouth. It never crossed Wolters’ mind to be jealous. Where his friend was concerned, it was just par for the course. Albert was a winner and would always be that one step ahead of him.
Whether Albert agreed or even recognised this magnanimity of Wolters’ remained a mystery. Their talk rarely turned to the subject of Rudy and his wants. It revolved, instead, around Albert’s which always seemed more important. Right now, they