Parallel Stories: A Novel (134 page)

When they left behind them the last houses on the reserved, elegant Hüttenweg, they were greeted by the mellow summer smell that spreads all across the Mark-Brandenburg Plain with its open sky, wide meadows, low and dense forests, and shallow waters overgrown with cane and sedge.

Countess Imola found, speaking frankly, that Baroness Karla’s toilette was ridiculous, though she had nothing serious against the outfit per se. But she wouldn’t have worn that kind of shoe or carried that sort of handbag, though she appreciated the workmanship and the exceptional quality of the leather. Karla’s high-buttoned dress was of white synthetic silk striped horizontally in light blue, with a round collar; over the dress and made of the same material was a cape, striped vertically with lighter and darker blue, that fastened over the chest with a longish narrow tongue fitted with only five buttons. A sophisticated optical illusion and the buttoning arrangement well emphasized Karla’s breasts, which she had first seen when she was a little girl and would have given a great deal to see again and touch with her fingers. The illusion came from letting the cape fall so that it not only concealed Karla’s too-wide hips but elongated her waist.

The Auenberg girls must have been very proud of their waistlines, which they had inherited from their mother, and they did everything to make their clothes follow this advantageous physical trait. As if in great secrecy, and despite everything, they were building their fragile fate on their dangerous maternal inheritance.

Imola appreciated the fact that this clever little trick with the buttons gave Baroness Karla a fashionable silhouette; a tailor’s clever work, she had to admit; nevertheless, she looked like a dried-out country schoolmarm in it. Only her handbag and the almost mundane shoes testified to her social standing; well, all right, so did her wonderfully fine silk stockings. The shoes and handbag were made of the relatively smooth, not so knobby skin hanging like dewlaps from the lower jaws of alligators; this is the animal’s most vulnerable spot if it takes up a fighting stance when attacked by its mates.

Germans have no sense of how to make an appearance, of how to shine, no doubt about it, she thought, with no small satisfaction.

As for Baroness Karla’s own silent opinion, it was that while her eyes could not get enough of the rich sight of Countess Imola’s toilette, she thought her Hungarian friend was once again somewhat overdressed—not by much, but still.

Hungarians seem to lack moderation or a sense of austerity, she said to herself contentedly, which in us northerners comes strongly and naturally, and so she doesn’t notice how embarrassingly conspicuous she is here, in an essentially rural environment.

Like a bird of paradise, like a peacock.

She was cross with Imola for her tendency to exaggerate, but also proud and enthusiastic, almost like an adolescent girl, because Imola showed with her behavior that she was allowing herself the kind of rebellion that Karla had never permitted herself, notwithstanding her unrestrained inner life and secret adventures. Following the examples of women moving in the highest social circles, Imola wore classically designed clothes and carried accessories made of the finest materials. Severe, comfortable, medium-brown goatskin shoes with fairly stable heels on her narrow feet, a somber, rather dull handbag of the same goatskin along with the finest kid gloves, filigreed at the wrist. These items established the basis of her appearance, giving it weight and seriousness. In truth she was beyond the point of being either under- or overdressed, and Baroness Thum, who lived far from the high life, was mistaken on this score. Imola used airy, light, pale pastel colors to make as graceful and playful an impression as possible, and at the same time she deflected attention from her physical attributes, her bodily irregularities, not with conventional sartorial ideas but with extravagant ones.

To represent one’s family and social class continuously, a person should not display anything that makes her appearance exceptional or peculiar.

Her way of dressing found meaning in the absence of characterization, as it were, and in persistent individuality.

It was all right that she lived at a different level, thought the baroness, rather crossly, but sometimes she ought to tone down her style a bit. But here again the baroness was mistaken. As a lover would be who in the throes of passion demands that the beloved be ever more flawless at every moment, more perfect than perfect.

What intemperance.

Countess Imola, in contrast to Baroness Karla, could not do without at least one expensive piece of jewelry; in summer she saw to it that there would never be more than one.

With magical lightness and no less extravagance, she had pinned on the severely cut English lapel of her peach silk suit a brooch decorated with a real pearl. The pearl was exceptionally large, of a color somewhere between white and gray and including—in certain lights even reflecting—all the hues of the rainbow; it was set on a severe-looking platinum rosette. It came from Le Maître’s Paris workshop. She had a matching platinum ring, also decorated with a similarly expensive pearl, which the gloves concealed, but anyway she did not consider the ring as jewelry.

The baroness could not work at her table in the dissecting room or in the laboratory with all sorts of jewelry on. But she used this argument only as an excuse. In reality, it was physical stinginess that kept her from wearing jewelry.

The Boîte Rouge was the only place where she readily revealed and displayed her splendid anonymity to strangers.

Nothing else, ever.

She was extremely ungenerous with herself.

When she spoke in German, Countess Auenberg thought in German, yet things that might be considered improper occurred to her in Hungarian.

I’d rather marry my dear Mihály quickly, she now thought to herself as she sized up Karla and excused herself. Whatever happens. In the depth of her soul, she feared she might dry up as this other woman had. If she does not act soon. Even if I go crazy because he so resembles those other men. And she laughed in her anticipated great happiness because, regardless of how much she feared Mihály’s brutality and however much she doubted herself, the promise of their future stormy physical encounters proved stronger in her.

An eager and unsuspecting Karla took over part of this feeling along with the laughter or, rather, she received a portion of it, not undeservedly, and laughed along with Imola.

Even though Imola was by this time laughing at the thought that she’d never let herself become such a scientific nun.

Ever since she had seen Karla in the lake, she has been following her involuntarily; because of her, she studied biology as a private student at the university in Prague. Now she will stop following her. She will be happy and she will bloom. She too had attended Professor Nussbaum’s anatomy lectures and his lab sessions about dissection, which were hard to take but necessary since she did not want to know less than Karla did. It’s been sheer madness what I’ve been ready to do because of her. Still, she could not decide to enroll as a regular student, take exams, and go from degree to degree as other students did. Before Prague, she had never attended public schools. She would have felt it profoundly improper to have to account for her knowledge to men, to complete strangers, or to have them put questions to her. What’s all this unbridled laughter, the baroness asked, while laughing herself, trying to navigate to a plane somewhere between goodwill and suspicion, as if she knew that in linking up with the younger woman’s thoughts she was in fact laughing at herself, finding her own fate unworthy and frivolous.

So many foolish things pop into one’s mind, it’s nothing, really, not worth talking about. I don’t want to bother you with it.

I see.

Goodness, I did not mean to offend you.

But this time you really did, said the baroness, both pleasure and pain sounding in her voice, for she had sensed that Imola’s laughter had been at her expense, and now she had to exploit this alibi to the full by acting offended.

But she could not have known that the younger woman was in the process of parting with her for good.

And at that moment they laughed again on each other’s account, skittishly and happily, like two immature schoolgirls.

They put their arms around each other’s waist as they walked. Their hip bones bumped a number of times before their steps found a harmonious rhythm. They took care with their arms not to rumple their clothes. Soon they reached Ihne Street and proceeded in the shade of not yet too tall or too ramified plane trees.

There was no time left for the baroness to show the countess the world-famous scientific compound’s professional or special buildings, the great lecture hall, the large dining hall, and the halls designed for social gatherings, but they passed by Harnack House, with its guest apartments maintained in a charming rustic style. Here, as if in passing, Baroness Karla remarked that Margarethe von Bellardi managed the institute with great expertise and elegance; she had been her classmate at Prague and for years has been her most trusted confidante even though at the university they hadn’t even noticed each other.

Should there be a chance for it, she would introduce her to Imola.

She said most trusted confidante in order to hurt Imola.

They reached the building, with its dignified and modest exterior; its narrow wings were articulated by tall windows.

To make things simple we’ll now simply march through the institute, though that means I won’t be able to show you my rooms or the laboratories.

We don’t want to be late.

You’re right, not for any reason.

Along with their words their movements became light and airy, almost breezy, as they hurried noisily through the revolving doors.

The doorman’s booth was wide open.

They met no one in the well-lit vestibule.

The back section of the building, more spacious than promised by the facade, seemed with its big windows to spill into the garden. Their laughter, their hasty words, and their strong steps echoed loudly in the empty corridors. Baroness Thum moved with ease; with the vivacity of her movements she was also trying to demonstrate how much she felt at home. In the capacious stairwell, permeated with the smell of formaldehyde, she stopped for a moment to indicate with a gloved hand that they’d be leaving the building through the rear exit, that her office was upstairs and her great collection downstairs.

About this great genetic collection, kept in wax-sealed glass vessels of sometimes enormous dimensions, inside strictly locked closets, she had meant to talk in great detail to the countess, even the evening before, when she’d just arrived in Berlin. So that when, on a calm afternoon of a day in the future, she moved the sliding doors and showed her the contents of the closets, the countess would be prepared. Part of the collection consisted of material for her special research: dissected eyeballs and preserved eyeball segments, always one eyeball and then various segments of its mate. Most of the items in the collection showed hereditary organic anomalies and abnormalities, classified according to different human races, and every display model was human-size. But she did not have a chance to make a detailed report because of Imola’s indifference and lack of interest, for which she was unprepared. Nothing interests her but her fiancé. And it just so happened that only days before Imola’s arrival, Karla had successfully completed a project containing seminal scientific discoveries that would put a significant tool in the hands of physicians involved in defining racial affinity. Karla was not interested in anything outside her own work, and she couldn’t share her incredible joy with the silly goose.

I have been probing the secrets of Creation, and she prattles about her trousseau.

In reaction to the insulting lack of interest, she quickly decided not to show Imola the collection, which colleagues from all over the globe came to admire.

Demonstrating abnormalities and anomalies was no easy task; organs, limbs, and other body parts, occasionally entire human heads or trunks and lower bodies, had to be dissected and displayed according to size in the different glass vessels, and in such a way that physicians arriving for extension courses in genetics would focus their attention not on the mutilations but on the subject of the scientific demonstration.

Now they were already out in the institute’s garden, richly planted with flowers; it was separated by a single, severely clipped hedgerow from the splendid rose garden attached to the director’s villa, where the roses were in their second bloom of the season.

Countess Auenberg thought it quite embarrassing to be using a rear entrance, no doubt to surprise the family with their arrival.

Indeed, an unsuspecting and relaxed Schuer was leaning against the railing of the upstairs terrace with an open book in his hand; he was explaining something to his whimpering son. And the lady of the house, with her garden gloves and clippers, was still gathering flowers for the festive table.

The institute’s doorman followed her with a pretty little basket, telling her something she seemed very interested in.

The two guests had arrived a few minutes sooner than expected.

And after they got everything nicely sorted out and were in the salon Baroness Erika introduced to the countess the twelve-year-old Siegfried, the ten-year-old Sieglinde, and the six-year-old Ortrud, they all hurried into the dining room to sort and then tastefully arrange the flowers in small vases and bowls; since the countess took a very active part in this, Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein found an opportunity to take her boss aside and tell him about the person of her young lady friend. He had to know that he would be chatting not with any old Hungarian countess, there should be no misunderstanding or mistake of any kind in this matter. She was a guest of the state, received at the highest echelons, and within a few months she would be a queen.

Without further ado they sat down at the table.

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