The Twins (21 page)

The telephone rang on 9 May. ‘For you,’ said Hannelore. Anna picked it up. The soldier was out of breath on the other end of the line: ‘All leave has been cancelled.’ Alarm, quick march. He had climbed over the barracks wall to telephone her. He had to go back immediately. If they found him he would be shot dead,
without
mercy. She was still standing there with the receiver in her hand long after he had put the phone down. There it was again, no longer in the background. It cast its entire shadow over her, settling itself in her diaphragm. Tears slid down her cheeks entirely of their own accord. ‘Jaja,’ said Frau von Garlitz, ‘that’s war, eh?’ The laconic observation made Anna furious. Tears that had been conserved for years now flowed out. She had read enough to know that crying for a soldier who was departing for the front joined her to the company of millions of women throughout the ages. It had been written and sung about over and over again, but even so her grief was the only one, the worst one of all. Again she was
powerless
against the things that were happening; this time it was a powerlessness for two.

His first Feldpost letter came from Bad Godesberg. ‘I am here in a gymnasium, I have a candle, pencil and paper, and I am
writing
to you because I care about you. Please let me hear something.’ So began a correspondence that would last for years. It would
survive
the campaigns in Belgium, France, Russia, up to the last
letter
, which was not written by him. The love really developed on paper, with all the self-denial that was associated with it: … all’s well with me…

‘The French are coming!’ Frau von Garlitz fled to the east with her retinue again. Anna and Hannelore were left behind to take care of the house. The door of the air raid shelter, which had already foresightedly been built in 1934, would not close any more. The swimming pool had been plentifully filled with fire extinguishing water as required by ordinance. Everything was well organized.

They were drifting like the sole survivors of a shipwreck in an ocean of coffee, tea, wine, Ratafia de Pommes – bad for the
arthritis
, good for the soul. A warm gulf stream repeatedly brought them in sight of new, unfamiliar coasts without them going ashore
anywhere
. It was still Sunday. They ordered lunch. Instead of
exploring
the environs of Spa on painful feet they preferred to go down the paths and avenues of the past, even though the risk of land mines was gradually increasing.

Years later Lotte’s children were taught that the war began on 10 May 1940. But for the Germans it had already begun earlier, in September, or before that – a matter of perspective – in 1933, when the frustrated Sunday painter came to power. On that tenth of May the family did not leave the radio for a moment. Lotte looked outside through the tall windows. The unreal events that the broadcaster reported in a neutral voice were counteracted by the cloudless sky. Parachutists? Bombing raids on airfields? German troops crossing the border, like German housemaids had done all those years ago?

But the German army made swift progress. Rumours and facts jostled each other: the German parachutists were disguised as
postmen
and country policemen, it was teeming with spies, the royal family had fled, Rotterdam was in flames. The Germans were threatening to bomb other towns as well. Dutch soldiers defended themselves with the courage of despair. The Netherlands was small, but not small enough to be able to hide itself – from a
bomber
you could see it in its entirety.

The capitulation was frustrating but it also removed the anxiety. Threatened towns were spared, the occupier knew how to behave: no plundering, rape or slaughter as had been described in the books. Nevertheless, from then on marching columns constituted part of the street scene and the echoes of stamping boots and battle songs could be heard there. On the way to her singing teacher, Lotte chanced upon a group of Germans walking abreast, blocking the cycle path. Ringing her bell emphatically but in vain, she turned on to the road in order to pass. One of the soldiers ran after her, insulted that she had dared to ring a warning, and tried to grab her luggage rack. She stood up on the pedals to go faster; the blood whooshed in her ears. His swearing pursued her. She could hear the roaring and shooting in the night again. The soldier expanded, he swelled up behind her into something of monstrous dimensions that wanted to overtake her, pull her back, punish her. But she gradually gained ground. She did not dare look round until she was three roads further on and it had become quite quiet behind her.

Music was a good chaser-out of devils. For some time the choir’s accompanist in radio broadcasts had been a well-reputed student from the conservatoire, David de Vries. Lotte asked him to
accompany
her studying Mahler’s
Kindertotenlieder
at home, so she could concentrate fully on the singing part, which was already hard enough. Thus together twice a week they submitted to the magic spell of pain transformed into beauty:

The songs suffused her with an indefinable homesickness – her voice, unhampered by false breath, no longer came from her chest but from her whole body. She became a single accumulation of music, of diffuse longing; in between she saw the profile of her accompanist, in heart-rending abandonment as though he were effortlessly identifying with the grieving father. When they stopped, the feeling continued to float, it was difficult to part, they turned around one another with the music still in their ears, full of disinclination to break the spell and dissolve into ordinary life
separate
from one another. He lingered increasingly before putting the music in his case – at such reluctant moments he was an easy prey for Lotte’s father, who permitted him to hear his newest acquisitions.

He was also a diligent sailor, so as not to become an anaemic and languid musician like Chopin. On a fine day in summer he hired a boat and invited her out for a trip on the Loosdrecht Lakes. He praised her father as he initiated her into sailing: so
sympathetic
, and what impressive apparatus he had built! It would be blasphemy to say anything against him. Blasphemous of the fine day, of the water lapping syncopatedly against the boat, of the wind that gave her goose pimples that were smoothed out again by the sun; blasphemous of the sight of his sun-tanned body and long fingers, which were not now dancing over the keys but were involved in an active game with ropes, boom and rudder.

The compliment seemed to be a way in for him to complain about his own father. Originally a cantor in a synagogue, he had been unable to resist the attractions of popular song. He enjoyed a
reputation among a large public, in the Netherlands as well as Germany: gramophone records of him were in circulation. The fame brought him pleasures and sorrows. Young women crowded outside his hotel room; he waited in a shiny dressing-gown,
champagne
in
an ice bucket, until the very loveliest of them forced their way in to him. He bought his way out of his guilt about his sick wife with gaudy jewellery, but his sentimental songs remained innocent and cheerful in tone: after his performances the audiences went home emboldened – they were prepared for life again. David, who accompanied his father on tour, sat in an adjoining
compartment
in the train the next morning: he could not bear his father’s presence. He closed his eyes in disgust and mentally escaped to Palestine, musing about studying medicine there after the
conservatoire
– you would get more out of being a pioneer there. The trip always ended with his father’s remorse. Moved to tears by his only son’s rejection, he begged him for understanding and affection, in exchange for laying the whole world at his feet. ‘You’ll get a sailing boat from me, boy,’ he implored him, ‘but let’s wait until the war is over.’

Lotte, who was letting the water flow over her feet, did not yet know that the imaginary sailing boat mentioned here for the first time would become the symbol for something that would cast a shadow over the rest of her life. Something too that would not be compatible with a cloudless sky, billowing white sails, and a joint dive into the lake – where they stealthily touched each other for the first time; the water was a good alibi.

The early days of the war shambled along at a level of groceries. More and more necessities were rationed; Lotte’s mother
encountered
few problems with it at first – because they lived out of the way, she always kept large supplies in the house. She got chests of tea from China from a former colonial who lived in one of the country estates, milk was fetched warm and foaming from the farmer, she baked bread herself. She did not go along with
hoarding
, but only stocked up on green soap. No extra measures had to
be taken to comply with the black-out: drawing the horsehair
curtains
completely closed was sufficient. Theo de Zwaan was released from captivity in June. He had noticed no warlike activities, he had been stationed in Limburg at a place where nothing happened. ‘He had hidden himself in a haystack of course,’ said his mother-
in-law
, ‘and waited quietly until the smoke of battle had lifted.’

The heavy lunch had driven them, even so, into the fresh air. Shivering, Lotte sheltered behind her collar: it seemed that the east wind had become even more vicious. Anna, who commanded a robust layer of natural protection and was anyway less inclined to allow herself to be influenced by weather conditions, walked
cheerfully
into the Parc de Sept Heures. It was deserted now that the flea market had packed up. A clump of man-sized yellowed
bamboos
was rustling in the wind. Anna wondered whether the
bamboo
would recover in the spring; Lotte thought it certainly would and added the intelligence that once in a hundred years bamboo bushes all over the world flowered at the same time. This struck Anna as a myth, although she granted that there were plants that bloomed for just one night, though no one had witnessed it.

Suddenly they were standing in front of a small natural stone monument that leaned against a steep rock, which seemed to close Spa off on the north side like a wall against the rest of the world. The monument had been erected to the designers of the footpaths around Spa. They were listed: from the Comte de
Lynden-Aspremont
in 1718 up to Joseph Servais in 1846. At the bottom there was a basin filled with frozen water; two copper frogs crouched on the edge with their heads thrown back; in summer, water probably spewed out of their open mouths. Anna had the bizarre sensation that they themselves were the two frogs, shut out by the ice and holding themselves in equilibrium on the edge, in expectation of the thaw.

They turned right in unison, walked along Avenue Reine Astrid and a little later found themselves in front of an iron gate that was the entrance to a building housing the Musée de la Ville
d’Eau. They nodded to each other and went inside. An old woman sold entrance tickets, huddled behind a table with picture
postcards
. Her face, round and red like a shrivelled star fruit, was ruled by an intricate network of wrinkles that got in each others’ way. But somewhere between the creases her eyes shone as she handed them their tickets with a gnarled hand. Anna asked for a guidebook – something faltered in the mechanism, then the head began to nod fiercely and a pale mimeograph appeared.

‘Scandalous,’ Anna whispered, ‘a woman of a hundred still put to work.’

Suddenly they felt very young. With a certain bravura they went into the first room. The illuminated glass cases contained a large collection of ‘Jolitées’, objects that had been used by the
visitors
over the centuries: snuff and tobacco pouches, water bottles, walking sticks with the head of Napoleon or a wild animal, watch cases, quadrille boxes, delicate pieces of furniture – all painted and carved out of the celebrated wood proudly called ‘Bois de Spa’ – as though it were a kind of marble. The Arcadian images of elegant strollers with or without wig and crinoline on the routes laid out by Lynden-Aspremont and Servais elicited cries of wonder from Lotte. Anna felt annoyed at the frivolous baubles and saw the exploitation of underpaid craftspeople in the painted miniatures. She held the mimeograph up a long way from her eyes and began to read out loud in her wobbly accent.

Long before Spa became Spa, Pliny the Roman had already praised the curative actions of the water that bubbled up in that area. Ever since Henry VIII’s physician had ordered his patient to drink the water from these springs, Spa became known in all Europe and the water, in flat bottles packed in plaited willow, found its way along all points of the compass. In 1717 Tsar Peter the Great honoured the town with a visit. The European
aristocracy
followed his example, surrounded by adventurers and
parasites
– statesmen, famous scientists, artists and ladies of royal blood strolled from fountain to fountain, a stick in one hand and a bottle
in the other, and drank eagerly of the miraculous water that even enjoyed a reputation for curing the pangs of love. They were called ‘Bobelins’ by the inhabitants of the town. There was one firm rule of behaviour that the Bobelins had to stick to: all serious matters were absolutely prohibited. Quiet, harmony and loose reins were the ingredients of the cure. Famous names followed: Descartes, Christina of Sweden, Bollandius, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count of Orléans, Pauline Bonaparte … Anna fanned herself with a hand. Pfff – yes of course, only the rich people could afford such a cure, they had all the time in the world while the staff worked themselves into the ground. It was a miracle that they
managed
to become ill on top of that: from their earliest youth they had eaten well, played sports, had not had to lug muck carts …

Deaf to Anna’s philippic, Lotte leaned over a trinket case on which two ladies with corseted waists and wide hats full of waving feathers were drinking glasses of water. ‘Look at this,’ she pulled on Anna’s sleeve, ‘what an elegant fashion that was: a really
feminine
silhouette. They were women with style …’

‘Of course they had style,’ Anna retorted, ‘they were brought up like that. I worked for them for years, I know exactly what they’re like. It is all a façade – they were not a whisker better than us, these people who were nobility on the outside. I feel I am on a decidedly higher level than that so-called élite.’

Lotte pulled her along from one display case to the next. She refused to allow her pleasure to be spoilt by carping at the
aristocracy
. She simply wanted to enjoy the curious paraphernalia with which that class had surrounded itself – life in that period seemed so much more intense and richly coloured than life now. All at once they were in the hall again. The old woman had fallen asleep or, perhaps, even died. They left the museum – the wind pursued them two blocks further into the, by now, trustworthy pâtisserie, where they once again took seats beneath the hideous wrought-iron lamp fitting and ordered merveilleux, this time with coconut.

After the French campaign the family returned from the east. The Führer had done it again! The Sekt flowed in torrents, the flush of victory lasted until the first English bombing raids over Cologne. Anna made attempts to learn to swim – she floated on her back in the fire-extinguishing water and looked at the blue sky through her eyelashes. Weightlessness … to be there and not there … to forget for a while that Martin was in Poland with his
division
. After their first meetings, which subsequently seemed to have taken place in a dream rather than in reality, he began to be an ordinary person in the Feldpost letters in his choice of words, his observations: a tree in Odrzywót that was a thousand years old, a richly gilded baroque church in a village where there were more pigs than people, a weathered old man who lisped three words of German in which he bragged because his forefathers had been with Garibaldi on the barricades, a locality with hundreds of lakes that reflected the sky so that you ended up not knowing what was above and what was below. Warlike matters were not mentioned at all, though marriage was – a proposal full of Viennese flourish and
elegance
. From the moment he had seen her on the other side of the dance floor, in her blue dress, lacking any form of coquetry, even sending out a mildly aggressive ‘don’t come too near me’, he had known it. On his next leave he wanted to ask her father for her hand. But he is dead, she retorted. Her guardian then? She had declared him dead. He had to ask someone for her hand surely? She found his obstinacy on this point old-fashioned but endearing and suggested that Uncle Franz should take that role upon himself. The idea of a marriage was so extravagant that she burst out
laughing
from time to time. I’m going to get married, she said to herself. It sounded as though it concerned somebody else – something like marriage could not possibly have anything to do with her. But at the same time the seriousness of it did permeate her, as expressed in the stereotypes: one body, one soul – till death us do part … Never to be alone again – her fate would be coupled to his for ever in the practical and metaphysical sense. She would no longer be
‘someone’s chambermaid’ but ‘someone’s wife’ … Yet stronger than all these considerations was a feeling of tranquillity – events overtook her in any case.

One afternoon in the autumn Martin got off the train safe and sound. The smoke from the locomotive hung under the roof. Coughing, she allowed herself to be embraced. Then he held her away with outstretched arms to look at her. She was shocked. During his absence he had become transparent in the physical sense. On paper he was as familiar to her as someone whom she had known since her youth, someone to whom no detail was too irrelevant. Now everything switched round at high speed. The old friend from the letters evaporated; in his stead was a soldier with a tanned face and shining eyes. To conceal her shyness she forced a way to the exit for him through the thronging masses.

The cook, housemaids, governess, washerwoman, he won them all over again with his courtesy, the flawlessness of his appearance and a rare combination of natural authority and boyishness. After the news of the imminent engagement they treated Anna with a new respect. Frau von Garlitz arranged two rooms for them in a small hotel in the Eifel; they deserved some undisturbed time together after all those months of separation and uncertainty, she thought.

Through a landscape that the autumn had set on fire the train puffed southwards with interruptions. A cousin of the hotel owner, who was himself at the front, fetched them from the station in a rickety jalopy that, preserved as a museum piece for years, was standing in for the requisitioned car. Wheels rattling on the road, forest air and an unfamiliar destination. At any moment Anna expected to see a convent appearing on the crest of a hill next to the von Zitsewitz castle at a bend in the road. One glance at Martin’s profile brought her back to 1940 – times had moved on, don’t look back. Under his care they would be able to bring her everywhere. Although up to now in spirit she had withdrawn as much as possible from reality as it presented itself to her, and in
compensation had been in league with the world of literary
imagination
, now, as each bump in the unmade road threw her against Martin, she felt reconciled with everyday reality – she even loved the bumps in the road that were throwing her against him.

The hotel had an atmosphere of charming, dilapidated chic. The only guests, they dined in the faded dining-room in the
company
of an invisible élite who ate in a whisper at the scattered tables between dusty palms. Via the radio the owner’s wife was in
permanent
contact with the nocturnal threat that was flying over the sea towards Germany. Instead of calm music from a string band,
during
the evening the meal was repeatedly graced by the familiar tick-tock, followed by a report of approaching danger. Determined not to let this one evening that was meant for them to be disturbed by any calamities, they let the woman show them to their rooms, which were pointedly at the opposite ends of a long passage, as though an extremely sensitive pair of scales had to be kept in balance.

But a little later on there was a knock at her door and he
surprised
her with a bottle of Sekt. They drank it all at a frivolous pace on the edge of the bed. The war disappeared from their
consciousness
– they were seized by a sense of freedom, separated from the external world, separated from time, in a room that belonged to someone else, among objects that had been seen by thousands of others. They touched each other, raised up from themselves by the tingling Sekt and a dizzying lightness. He began to undress her with trembling fingers, draping her clothes carefully over a chair. They crept into the bed shivering and pulled the sheets over them. ‘I have not been with a woman before,’ he
confided
in her ear. His erect member seemed to want to bring
something
to her memory, a warning, a reflex that had nothing to do with the here and now. Veiled by the vague recollection of a
recollection
, she lay still while he explored her body with his lips. He could do what he wanted with it, it was worth little – there had always been others to decide about its amenities.

‘The sky, Martin, look, the sky!’ Anna raised her head from his chest. They got out of bed and went to the window. In the north behind the hills a red glow fanned out in all directions. Dull roars sounded, like an approaching thunderstorm or drumroll. Anna felt a great disgust at the disturber of the peace on the horizon and at the unrelenting employer who could claim Martin back again at any moment. ‘It’s on fire in any case,’ she said. ‘Come.’ She closed the curtains with a brusque gesture and pulled him back towards the bed with her. Above it hung a Lorelei swathed in clouds, brushing her blonde hair on the fateful rock.

A mountain of debris a metre high blocked the tram rails; the passengers got out and continued on their way, clambering over twisting paths that had come into being in a few days. The route passed between burnt-out blocks whose scorched façades were still standing half upright. Anna thought of a line of verse by Schiller: ‘Horror dwells in the bleak window caverns …’ In an intact
window
frame curtains flapped; further on, like a doll’s house, the blasted-away front façade gave full view of completely furnished floors; the residents had not returned to hang the chandelier that had taken wing back in its place. They got lost in the disrupted
layout
of streets; a man with a sweating face clearing rubble told them the way. Peculiarity was the norm. Life had resumed its course – the ordinary noises of the city prevailed instead of the
reverberations
of explosions and collapsing buildings, of crackling sheets of fire, of frightened screams and wailing. People clambered with their shopping bags over the rubble beneath which perhaps fellow citizens still lay.