The Safety Net (4 page)

He could, after all, have gloated when he sometimes sat in church, looking at the unchanged neo-Gothic confessional; gloated over the fact that they, Nuppertz’s successors—well, if not all, at least a great many of them—had been caught in the sex trap that for centuries they had been setting for others. Where did they confess that “with others,” not to mention that “alone”? Where indeed, and how, and with what penances?
What was going on in their well-kept, spacious homes, in those fashionably furnished rooms which Rolf so bitingly and so mercilessly took to pieces? With their women and housekeepers and distant cousins and God knows what, and never a thought of explaining why matters were so arranged that male virility, joy, desire, and even lust were at their peak when you couldn’t—weren’t allowed to—didn’t have enough money to—get married, and were driven to whores or “loose women,” of which Gerlind was one, and forced to that joyless “alone” that he had never liked. Where, then, were the “others,” if a Gerlind didn’t happen along, a stroke of luck, of happiness—why on earth didn’t they make saints of the Gerlinds? Again and again, ever since he had entered the confessional after the last time with Gerlind, still that sense of gloating (although much restrained) when he invited himself for coffee at Kohlschröder’s—that mixture of triumph, disgust, and sorrow as it became increasingly obvious that Kohlschröder was shacked up with this Gerta, his housekeeper, with all that that entailed both physically and psychically. It was common knowledge, wasn’t it, never denied, it was plain to see, not merely to be sensed, when he brushed her dyed red hair with his hand in passing, or when she poured him his coffee, the way their hands met when she gave him a light—there was more intimacy and naturalness in that than if they had been caught in bed together; an understanding in look and gesture, a familiarity that was as embarrassing as it was touching, the buxom, blooming forty-year-old in the denim skirt and floppy blouse, which she allowed to reveal quite a bit—nothing was left of the magic of romantic love, it was all more indecent, whorelike. It never ceased to be a shock to him. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been open, if they hadn’t kept on inveighing against the moral turpitude of others and defending their lousy celibacy, and thundering about the immorality of youth and the world—Kohlschröder, anyway. This carefully cultivated disintegration, this tastefully, stylishly guarded chaos, pained him, and damn it, what did they do not to have children, surely they
had to do something which they forbade others to do? Damn it, who confessed what to whom, and who absolved whom from what? After all, he had never, not for a second, intended to become a priest, had never taken any vow of chastity and never lusted after another man’s wife; not even Edith had been married. This carefully cultivated decay, this chaos, in the very shadow of the church, but with all that there was one thing she was good at, making coffee, Gerta was, a person it was a real pleasure to look at, gentle, with a pleasant voice, dyed red hair—yet there was something bawdy about her that he resented precisely because she wasn’t living in a bawdy house. Sometimes he dropped in anyway, uninvited, and he no longer felt any desire to gloat, all that was left was sorrow and disgust; after all, at one time something had been there that meant a lot to many people—to Sabine and Käthe a great deal, even to him, even today, much more than could be dreamed of by those who were so gracefully skimming along a course on which they had allowed millions, if not billions, to lose their footing “alone or with others.” Chaos on all sides, disintegration behind carefully rouged, stylish façades.

He couldn’t discuss that with Käthe. She was naïve and credulous in a way that he had no wish to destroy. And anyway there was nothing to be proved. Herbert always just laughed, for him the Church was no subject for discussion, whereas for Rolf it was. Rolf was fully aware that it had molded him, one way or another, as well as Katharina and Sabine—he was more worried about her than about Käthe in this respect, how often he had wished for a lover for Sabine, a nice, uncomplicated fellow, even, if need be, a member of the Riding Club. He was pretty sure that she hadn’t found happiness with Erwin Fischer, or “with others” for that matter. He would never have mentioned this, never been able to prove it or discuss it with anyone, and yet: Sabine had deserved someone who really loved her, not that snooty bastard whom, when he was alone with Käthe, he called “that human repellent.”

Käthe had planned to be back from Sabine’s around six. It
was only just four-thirty; the cars were all gone, goodbyes all said. There would have been time simply to walk to the village. But that wasn’t possible anymore, he could no longer just walk off like that, not even at his own risk. Bleibl had put it well in the overt sarcasm of his congratulatory address: “Now you will belong even less to yourself, and even less to your family.” And supposing he took a chance—surely they wouldn’t actually restrain him, or would they? He couldn’t saddle the tireless young guards with that; although it would have been his fault, they would have to take the blame, they would bear the responsibility, swallow the disgrace. Moreover, he had promised Holzpuke faithfully not to indulge in escapades or tolerate any on Käthe’s part, in fact to inform him if Käthe had any in mind. There had been a few occasions when she had succeeded in going beyond the park, through the strip of forest, and walking to Hetzigrath, and from there going by taxi, unescorted, into town. She had soon been tracked down—there were only her two old friends, whose addresses were known, of course, and only the two cafés, Getzloser’s and Kaint’s, or Zwirner’s shoe store or Holdkamp’s and Breslitzer’s dress shops, or the four churches she loved—she had soon been picked up, once even in the taxi on her way into town (by this time Holzpuke presumably had a system going with all the taxi companies), but still it was annoying, a nuisance, a waste of effort, and by now she had acknowledged herself to be “converted” and had “come to terms with Tolmshoven Prison.”

He did not doubt for a moment that all the measures, no matter how crazy and extreme they might seem, were justified. He wanted to be cooperative, indeed had to be; as it was, he sometimes worried about the mental stamina of the men, and his mind was not entirely set at ease by Holzpuke’s assurance that they were under the constant psychological observation of an outstanding specialist, a certain Dr. Kiernter. He knew only too well that there were many things he had never told his doctor, never told Grebnitzer. He had never yet mentioned the deadly boredom in the vast offices of his “little paper.” And
to walk into the village
with
an escort, he wouldn’t want to do that. What would young Hendler think, for instance, if he went into the village church and sat down, then looked in on the priest? Everyone—certainly Holzpuke—knew that the priest was carrying on with Gerta and that, since Veronica had recently had the eccentric idea of phoning Käthe there—of all places—he had been drawn, perhaps unwittingly, into the entire safety net. The possible thoughts of the security guards killed all spontaneity in him. Holzpuke had introduced them to him: Hendler, Zurmack, Lühler, “a good team, a magnificently balanced group, which has proved its excellence in protecting your daughter, your son-in-law, and your granddaughter.” Needless to say, he had contacted Sabine by phone, although he knew the line must be bugged, and she had nothing but praise for all three, especially for that young Hendler, whom she described as “a very serious, considerate, and courteous person.”

His mind was always turning to Sabine, who was now more and more often asking for Käthe, calling her up, inviting her over, or coming over herself. Probably due to that idiot Fischer, who couldn’t resist letting the weekly illustrateds in on his erotic and sexual escapades.

It wasn’t only the security measures that deterred him from simply walking to the village: it was also his legs, which no longer behaved as well as they used to, and he couldn’t have said which deterred him more: his legs or that inescapable surveillance. His cheerfulness, that new sense of relief after the disappearance of his fear, had not yet communicated itself to his legs, they remained heavy, stiff, cold down to his feet. On Käthe’s arm he might have managed, alone he couldn’t risk suddenly giving way, perhaps having to support himself on that young Hendler, whose vigilance would thus be impaired, nor did he want to ask Blurtmehl to accompany him. What would Blurtmehl, what would any of them think, if he suddenly stopped outside the Pütz house or the Kelz house? Whatever they thought or imagined, it would stifle his memory, and he would never recapture the two girls’ faces; or if he sat down in
the empty church, staring at the confessional, the neo-Gothic windows, thinking in sorrow and disgust of what he had never yet been able to come to terms with: that disgusting drivel of Nuppertz’s that had stifled all, all poetry, all beauty, even the sad enjoyment of the “alone.” The very idea of what they might think killed his memory, killed the memory of those two girls—once so nice, so sensible—of the blustering, indiscreet Nuppertz, of the “with others.” Probably it was better not to return to the places of memory. It wasn’t the men, the guards, but what they might think that pursued him, thoughts they probably never even had.

He took the stairs rather than the elevator in order to avoid yet another encounter with the faces of possible stragglers: Pottsieker and Herbtholer, and all those others he hadn’t been able to get away from during the four days of isolation: Bleibl, who might still be in the building; friends, enemies, waiters. Always that tension in the elevator; forced smile, awkwardness with cigar or cigarette ash (Kulgreve never remembered to have ashtrays installed in the elevator—he would have to mention that to Amplanger, who would see that it was done), and those brief ironic remarks about Tolmshoven, manor house and meeting place that they called his “castle of nostalgia”; some of them couldn’t resist dubbing him “Friedrich von Tolm zu Tolm,” whereas he was plain Fritz Tolm and happened to have been born in the village named after the manor and the local aristocracy. Yet everyone, including Bleibl, had been forced to admit that the purchase of the manor had turned out to be ideal. The remodeling and modernization had been worthwhile, even financially; two airports within thirty minutes’ drive, another within forty, and, in an emergency, landing permission could even be obtained from the British military airfield only twenty minutes away. It had been an excellent idea to get away from the hotels rented by the day or the week. After vain attempts to persuade the Association to make the purchase, he had eventually bought it himself, from Holger Count Tolm, the last of the name, who for many years now had
been disporting himself with women and gambling somewhere in southern Spain, trying without success to be accepted by the international playboy set: the very image of an embarrassing type of decay which, in its unashamedness, was still more to his liking than the decay of the clergy behind carefully preserved façades. In Holger’s case, not even hair and teeth had held out. He had even become a bit lachrymose, dotty—Holger, with whom he could never be angry, much less resent, ever since his childhood, his youth, when Holger had covered up for his love affair with Gerlind, provided alibis, helped arrange trysts; Holger, driven by the war into an unsuccessful career in the air force and to drink, whose sole talent was that of golden boy of the officers’ mess, their
maâitre de plaisir
, hanging around staff headquarters, arranging dinners, obtaining caviar, champagne, and women, eventually making it to the rank of major and ending up wobblier in the knees than he would care to admit to himself. Even if Holger was becoming tiresome, that youthful credit would never be exhausted, in spite of his gradually becoming a genuine embarrassment, totally debauched as he described himself, by this time hardly respected by any of the cliques. Tolm, while creeping up the stairs, was still thinking of the nice boy with whom he used to cycle to Cologne, ostensibly to visit museums and churches or to buy additions to his electric railway, or simply “for no particular reason,” while Gerlind was waiting for him somewhere—usually in the Moselstrasse apartment—laughing and, as one would say today, “topless.”

He couldn’t help smiling now: it was true that he had paid too much for Tolmshoven, for Holger’s sake and also for Gerlind’s, who had turned up out of the blue: to his surprise quite sedate, already in her early sixties, married to a commoner, a lawyer by the name of Fottger who was on the staff of the Foreign Office; plumpish too, Gerlind, smiling, even blushing—something she never used to do—and saying: “We can really use the money, seeing that our children have to go to university while we traipse around the world, and I’m so glad you’re getting the place—and sometimes, you know, I feel
I should have held on to you, should have tried—it was lovely with you, you were such a child.” Fortunately he didn’t try any tricks, which wouldn’t have done her much good in any case—no hand touching, no sighing, no eyelid fluttering, nothing—when they had gone on from the conveyancing office to Café Getzloser, where Fottger, who was apparently a Social Democrat, defended Germany’s
Ostpolitik
. She had never been actually pretty: attractive, yes—pretty, never, and her flighty ways had obviously long since left her. He was also thinking of the old countess, who had always gone out of her way to help him. She had stubbornly insisted that he study for a degree, and she had been exceptionally charming to Käthe.

Now he was back at Tolmshoven as lord of the manor and had offered it to the Association as a permanent conference site. Telex, telephones, elevator, an excellent, hundred-percent reliable staff; sauna, the popular, spacious card room, where they could play poker or stronger stuff if they felt like it; and, on balance, Kulgreve had been a good choice (though he never remembered ashtrays for the elevator), alert, keen, discreet. A deciding though unforeseen factor was that Tolmshoven had turned out to be ideal for security purposes: the wide moat, the easily scanned French garden (let them call it his “seventeenth-hand Versailles”! Let them laugh at him as they sat there in their ostentatious villas weighed down with copper and slate!). Easy to survey and easy to guard, all the way to the edge of the forest. Even as an investment the manor had proved worthwhile; with its up-to-date kitchen and other facilities it could easily be sold as a luxury hotel, if, if—and here he had been thinking of the children, who had never liked Tolmshoven, had been thinking of the grandchildren—if … if it hadn’t been for Kortschede’s grim prognosis that frustrated all his plans, all his speculations; the manor might even be said to have considerable art-historical and museum value, an original structure from the twelfth century, additions and alterations from almost every subsequent century, an architectural anthology if you like—and nothing would remain, nothing, nothing.…
Already the coal mines were coming closer, the power stations making their own weather on the horizon. “Leveling and digging,” Bleibl called it, and quiet old Kortschede had confirmed it. “They’ve already decided what can’t yet have been decided. You’ll see, they’re all in cahoots—the union and the Association, state and Church”—he always gave an odd little giggle when he mentioned the Church, as if he were speaking about a comical, rather selfish old maid in some old ladies’ home—“it’s all decided, Fritz, and it’ll happen in your lifetime—not a thing will remain, not one stone upon another—just don’t be too surprised; nothing is more dangerous than when unions and the Association are in agreement. Energy. Jobs.”