The Ring (7 page)

Very clever. The belt slipped slowly bade into the loops on his trousers, Your papers?

She pointed. Over there. In two strides he had reached the brown alligator handbag with the gold clip. He almost tore it open, fumbled for a moment and found the wallet concealed inside, Roughly, he pulled out her driver's license and identity cards and threw them to the floor, He almost snarled as he did it, and then menacingly he walked back toward her. It hadn't worked. He didn't give a damn who she was, Kassandra stood bracing herself for what would coma next.

He stood looking down at her for an endless moment and then slapped her hard again across the face. Whore! Filthy whore! If I were your husband, I would kill you. And one day, for something like this, you will die, like that bastard Jew. You are filth. Filth. You're a disgrace to your race, your country. Filthy bitch! And then, without another word, he turned and left her, his boots clattering down the stairs as he went, until at last she heard the front door slam. It was over ' over' '. With every inch of her body trembling, she fell to her knees on the floor, a double trickle of blood still running from her breasts, her face bruised, her eyes filled with tears, as she lay down on the floor and sobbed.

It seemed hours that she lay there sobbing, keening for the last instant when she had seen Dolff, and terrified of what would come next. And then suddenly it occurred to her what might happen. They might come back, to destroy his house. Frantically then, glancing hurriedly around her, she pulled on her clothes. Standing for a last moment in the bedroom where she and Dolff had given birth to their dreams, she gazed, sobbing, at the spot where she had last seen him, and then without thinking she reached out a hand to the clothes he had worn only a few hours before. Discarded on the floor before their hungry lovemaking, still smelling of the special spice and lemon scent he wore, she felt them for a moment and ran them through her fingers, pressing his shirt to her face with a sob. And then she ran from the room and down the stairs. It was at the bottom landing that she saw it, the pool of blood where he had lain, and the trail it made where they must have dragged him, unconscious, from his own house. She fled the building and ran frantically toward her car, parked only slightly farther down the street.

She was never quite sure how she had gotten back to Grunewald, but she had driven home, still sobbing, clutching the wheel. She had crawled out of the car, unlocked the gate, driven on to their doorway, and let herself in with her key. Silently, and with tears still streaming from her eyes she had run up the stairs to her bedroom, slammed the door, and looked around her. She was back, she was home it was the pink bedroom she had seen so often the pink ' the pink ' it was all she could see as it spun around her and she sank at last, unconscious, to the floor.

When Kassandra came to, she was lying on her bed, a cold compress pressed across her head. The room was dark and there was a strange buzzing. She realized in a moment that the sound she heard was in her own head. Somewhere in the distance there was Walmar, staring down at her and applying something damp and heavy to her face. In time she felt her blouse stripped off, and she was aware of a terrible stinging, and then of something warm draped across her naked breasts. It seemed a long time before she could see him clearly, and then at last the buzzing stopped and he sat down quietly in a chair beside her bed. He said nothing, he only sat there as she lay staring at the ceiling, unwilling and unable to speak. He asked her nothing. He only changed the compresses from time to time. The room stayed dark for hours, and when now and then there came a knock at the door, it was Walmar who sent them away. She looked at him gratefully and then drifted off to sleep. It was midnight when she woke again; a dim light burned in the distance in her boudoir, and keeping his silent vigil, he was still there.

At last he couldn't hold back any longer, and he could see from her eyes that she was conscious and no longer in shock, and he had to know what had happened, for her sake and his own. Kassandra, you have to talk now. You have to tell me. What happened?

I disgraced you. , Her voice was the merest whisper, and he shook his head and took her hand.

Don't be silly. And then after another moment, Darling, tell me. You must tell me. I have to know. Anna had come to him screaming that something terrible had happened to Frau von Gotthard and she was lying near death on her bedroom floor. In terror, he had run to find her, not near death, but beaten and in shock. And then he had known. Kassandra?

He was ' going to kill me ' to rape me ' ' I told him ' who I was. Walmar felt a chill of fear run through him.

Who was it?

Them ' they took him ' , And then she whispered horribly. They took Dolff ' they beat him ' they ' he was ' bleeding ' and then they dragged him ' ' down the stairs' . She sat up in bed and retched, emptily, onto the bed, as Walmar sat by helplessly, holding out a monogrammed pink towel. When it was over, she stared blankly at her husband. And one of them stayed behind ' for me' I told him ' I told him ' ' She looked at Walmar pathetically. They thought I was a Jew.

You were right to tell them who you are. You'd be dead by now if you hadn't. They may not kill him, but they would probably have killed you. , He knew that more likely the reverse was true, but he had to lie, for her sake.

What will they do to him?

He took her in his arms then and she sobbed for almost an hour. When it was over, she lay there, spent and broken, and he laid her back quietly on her pillows and turned off the light. You must sleep now. I'll be here with you all night. And he was, but when she woke up in the morning, he had at long last gone to rest. For him it had been a night of anguish, watching the pale face writhe and contort in her nightmares beneath the ugly bruises that had darkened it. Whoever the man was who had slapped her, he had spared not an ounce of his strength when he did. And as he watched her, hour by hour, Walmar came to hate them in a way he never had before. This was the Third Reich. Was this what they had to look forward to in the coming years? Was one meant to count one's blessings that one was not a Jew? Walmar would be damned if he'd see his beloved country turn into a nation of thugs and marauders, beating women, raping the innocent, censuring artists for their heritage. What had happened to their world that this was the price his beloved Kassandra had to pay? He was outraged, and in his own way he also mourned for Dolff.

When he left her to bathe and have a cup of coffee, he glanced at the newspaper with dread. He knew just how they would do it, and he fully expected to find a notice that some accident had befallen Dolff. That's how they had done things like that before. But this time there was no small, unimportant news item. Or rather, it was so small that he didn't notice it on a back page.

When Walmar returned to Kassandra's bedside two hours later, she lay silent and awake, her gaze empty as she stared at the ceiling. She had heard Walmar come into her bedroom, but she didn't turn eyes to him.

Are you feeling any better? But she only stared at the ceiling in answer, and now and then she closed her eyes. Can I get you anything? This time she shook her head., It might make you feel a little better to take a nice warm bath. But for a long time she just lay there, staring at the ceiling and then finally the wall, and then as though the effort was almost too much for her, she dragged her eyes to his.

What if they come to kill you and the children? It was all she had thought of since woke up.

Don't be ridiculous, they won't But now she knew differently. They were capable of anything. They dragged people from their beds and killed them, or at the very least took them away. Kassandra ' darling ' we are all safe. But even Walmar knew he was lying. No one was safe anymore. One day it wouldn't be just the Jews.

It's not true, they'll kill you. Because I told them who I was. They'll come here ' they'll '

They won't. He forced her to look at him again, They won't. Be reasonable. I'm a banker. They need me. They're not going to hurt me, or my family. Didn't they let you go yesterday when you told them who you were? She nodded mutely, but they both knew that she would never feel safe again.

I disgraced you. It was her only refrain.

Stop it! Now it's over. It was a nightmare. An ugly, horrible nightmare, but it's over. Now you must wake up! But to what? Dolff gone? The same nightmare all over again? There would only be emptiness, and added to that, pain, and a horror that she knew she would never forget. All she wanted to do was sleep. Forever. A deep black sleep from which she would never have to wake. I have to go to the office for two hours, for the Belgian meeting, and then I'll be back and I'll stay with you all day. Will you be all right? She nodded. He bent low next to her and kissed the long, delicate fingers of her left hand, I love you, Kassandra. And everything will be all right again. He left orders with Anna to bring her a light breakfast, leave it on a tray next to her bed, and then go. And whatever she saw was not to be discussed with the other servants.

Anna nodded sagely and delivered the breakfast half an hour later to Kassandra's side. It was the breakfast tray Kassandra used every morning, of white wicker, covered with a white lace cloth. A single bud vase held a long red rose, and the breakfast service had been her grandmother's favorite Limoges. But Kassandra said nothing when the tray appeared. It was only after Anna left the room that Kassandra took an interest, seeing the morning paper tucked into the side basket of the tray. She had to see it, had to maybe some small item would appear. Some few words that would tell her something of Dolff's fate. Painfully, she struggled up to one elbow and unfurled the paper on the bed. She read every line, every page, every story, and unlike Walmar, her eyes found the story on the back page. It said only that Dolff Sterne, novelist, had had an accident in his Bugatti and was dead. As she read it, she cried out, and then suddenly the room was filled with silence.

She lay there very still for almost an hour, and then resolutely she sat up on the edge of the bed. She was still shaky and very dizzy, but she made it to the bathroom and ran the tub. She stared into the mirror and saw the eyes that Dolff had loved, the had watched him dragged from the room, from his home, from his life and hers.

The bathtub filled very quickly, and she quietly closed the door. It was Walmar who found her there an hour later, her wrists slashed, her life gone, the bathtub filled with her blood.

The dark brown Hispano-Suiza carrying Walmar von Gotthard; his children, Ariana and Gerhard; and Fr+nulein Hedwig rolled solemnly behind the black hearse. It was a gray February morning, and on and on since daybreak there had been mists and rain. The day was as bleak as Walmar and the children, sitting rigid, holding tightly to the hands of their beloved nurse. They had lost their pretty lady. The woman of the golden hair and lavender-blue eyes was gone.

Only Walmar fully understood what had happened. Only he knew how deeply and for how long she had been cleft. Not just between two men, but between two minds, two lives, two life-styles. She had never quite been able to adjust to the rigid rules of the life to which she had been born. Perhaps it had been a mistake to force her into the mold. Maybe he should have been wise enough to leave her to a younger man. But she had been so young, so free, so lovely, and so warm, so entirely what he had always dreamed of having in a wife. And other thoughts nagged at him. Maybe he had been wrong to keep her from the children.

As they rode mercilessly onward, Walmar cast an eye at the nurse to whom his children now belonged.

A rugged, sturdy face, kind eyes, strong hands. She had been the governess to his niece and nephew before this. Fr+nulein Hedwig was a good woman. But Walmar knew that, in part because of her, his wife was gone. She had been a woman without a cause or a reason to live after the tragedy of the day before. The loss of Dolff had been too shocking, the fear of what she had perhaps brought down on Walmar too great to bear. It was perhaps an act of cowardice, or madness, yet Walmar knew full well that it was more. The note she had left beside the bathtub had been written in a trembling hand. Only Good-bye ' I'm sorry ' K. His eyes filled with tears again as he remembered ' auf Wiedersehen, my darling ' goodbye'

The brown Hispano-Suiza halted finally outside the gates of the Grunewald cemetery, its gentle mounds of green bordered by bright flowers, its handsome stones staring solemnly at them beyond the rain that had begun again.

We're leaving Mama here? Gerhard looked shocked, and Ariana only stared. Fr+nulein Hedwig nodded. The gates opened and Walmar signaled the chauffeur to drive on.

The service had been brief and private in the Lutheran church in Grunewald, with only the children and his mother present That evening mention of Kassandra's passing would be printed in the press, attributed to sudden illness, an inexplicable bout of a lethal flu. She had always looked so fragile that it would not be difficult to believe. And the officials who knew would be too intimidated by Walmar to reveal the truth.

The minister from the Lutheran church had followed them to the cemetery in his own bedraggled car. They had been unable to hold the funeral in the Catholic church they normally attended. Her suicide had ruled out that possibility, but the Lutheran minister had been kind. Now he stepped quietly from his automobile, followed by Walmar's mother, the Baroness von Gotthard, emerging from her chauffeured Rolls. The two liveried Von Gotthard chauffeurs stood discreetly by as the casket was lowered from the hearse to the ground. A man from the cemetery was already waiting, his face somber, his umbrella unfurled, as the minister reached into his pocket, taking from it a small Bible that he had marked.

Gerhard was crying softly, clutching tightly to Fr+nulein Hedwig's and his sisters hands, and Ariana looked around her. So many markers, so many names. Such big stones, such large statues, so many hills, and such eerie-looking trees, In spring it would be green and pretty, but now, except for the patches of lawn over the coffins, it all looked so awful and so bleak. She knew as she watched them that she would never forget this day. The night before, she had cried for her mother. She had always been a little frightened by the dazzling beauty, those huge, sad eyes, and the shining hair. Fr+nulein Hedwig had always said not to touch her or they'd put a spot on her dress. It seemed so odd to leave her here now, in that box, out in the rain. It made Ariana sad to think of her, all alone, under one of the smooth green mounds.