The Twins (22 page)

Aunt Vicki seemed to have lost some of her talkativeness because of the terror. Uncle Franz was quiet and controlled as always – if the hospital caught fire he would also have to remain quiet and controlled. During the evening meal he tossed Anna an approving look: bravo Mädchen, you’ve brought an excellent chap with you. Aunt Vicki was beaming too: Martin was so polite and attentive – a man who knew instinctively what a woman was due. Uncle Franz
played operetta songs in honour of the Austrian, until the siren sounded right through ‘Mein Liebeslied soll ein Walzer sein’.
Pre-programmed
, Aunt Vicki went to the child’s room, lifted her asleep out of bed and hurried with her to the shelter. They followed her mechanically. The tumult of hasty footsteps and voices was
everywhere
. They settled on an empty spot in a corner. Anna looked up anxiously at the gas pipes and sewers and imagined how they would all go under in a porridge of sewage if the pipes burst. The prospect was so disgusting that she prayed silently that if the pipes did have to burst it should be the gas. This alternative calmed her. Every time the thought of the sewer threatened to gain the upper hand she performed the praying ritual with the help of the gas. But for the time being nothing happened. Aunt Vicki’s child slept on – it was unthinkable that anyone would want to kill an angel with blonde hair and gently fluttering eyelids. Perhaps she was a
talisman
that made everyone in the immediate vicinity unassailable. Anna herself felt sleepy at the sight. She leaned against Martin and slowly dozed off. She continued to sleep peacefully when the ground began to tremble. ‘Wake her!’ cried Aunt Vicki, upset at the idea of an adult woman meeting death sleeping. From her slumber Anna heard Martin’s calming voice: ‘Let her sleep, what difference does it make?’ The ground shook again. His arm was round her. Nothing could happen to her.

In the face of this permanent menace from the English
squadrons
, Frau von Garlitz finally fled for good to her parents’ estate in Brandenburg. Although the house was far from the city centre, on the other side of the Rhine, the chemical factory immediately
bordering
the grounds seemed an attractive target. Martin returned to Poland; once again, Anna stayed behind alone as housekeeper – a strange, vacant position, a lengthy, inert waiting – for what? An old feeling – to be deserted by everyone, remaining behind in
hostile
surroundings – drove her restlessly through the rooms of the house. Even the library offered no solace; her attention evaporated over the pages. Her powers of imagination failed, except on the
point about the different deaths a soldier could die. She exercised virtuosic indefatigability in creating threatening scenarios that took place in unfamiliar locations in Poland. A primitive country, they said. To pull herself together she cleaned the antique cupboards and polished them fanatically. After the cupboards she started on the beams – everything had to shine. When it got dark she
descended
to the luxuriously appointed air raid shelter where her bed was, resisting the feeling that she was entering a tomb, to stretch herself out in her quilted coffin, hands crossed, eyes closed, so.

At the end of the winter she was instructed to close the house and come to the east. In order not to leave it to the wolves just like that, she packed everything of value – table silver, crystal, dinner services – put it in the polished cupboards, locked them and stuck the large iron keys to the floor with plaster. She took the curtains down from the rods, folded them up and stored them away together with the expensive linen. Then she went into the garden to look at the house from a distance once more. It looked
vulnerable
and transparent without curtains in the pale March sun. She left it behind in no man’s land, hollow, lifeless, chilly in all rooms. To the extent that the house was riveted to this spot, so she herself was being uprooted again: she was going away – the series of
departures
and arrivals, of attaching and detaching, was growing ever longer. With a suitcase in each hand she walked down the drive to the tram stop. In Cologne she boarded a train that would in any case take her in an easterly direction to one end point.

On first acquaintance with Berlin she was shocked by the
inhabitants
’ blunt common sense. Dazed from the journey, encumbered by her suitcases, she accosted two passers-by on the platform. ‘Excuse me please, could you tell me where the Schlesische Bahnhof is?’ After a disapproving look, as though she had begged for alms, they hastily walked away to the stairs. She stopped another traveller, leaving aside the ‘Excuse me please’ this time, but she had not finished speaking before he too walked away
shaking
his head. Now she dropped all politeness. ‘Schlesische
Bahnhof!’ Her voice resounded beneath the roof. A man with a Homburg hat like a gangster stopped sarcastically: ‘It’s staring you in the face, can’t you see?’ He pointed upwards with his head to a sign on which it was shown in thick letters.

The ancestral castle was situated on the Oder in extensive estates with twisting paths, ponds, a family chapel and mossy gravestones in the shadow of conifers and yews. A central section topped with a tympanum, hiding the porch behind two tall white pillars, divided the façade in two symmetrical halves. The neo-classical severity was compensated for by southern yellow plasterwork and by geese scratching about freely on the terraces. Her arrival had been badly needed. Rudolf, Frau von Garlitz’s son, had contracted
tuberculosis
of the spleen. A guardian angel was needed day and night, who would watch over his strict diet and his rest periods and relieve the
seven-year
-old’s boredom by reading aloud. Separated from his contemporaries, he was confined by his illness, which was
threatening
not only his own survival but also the future expectations of his grandfather, whose only male descendant he was. The old man came every day, twirling the tips of his white moustache, enquiring about his grandson’s health. Every day Anna had to forbid him to bring sweets. Thus her status as guardian angel inclined more and more to that of gaoler. Uncles, aunts and cousins who brought
delicacies
surreptitiously, as with a saw blade inside a cake, to release the poor patient from his rigid diet, were unwittingly smuggling his death inside. She read to him from his favourite books to make him forget about the sweets that had been thrown away, and to
forget
that the only thing she was waiting for was a letter from Poland. Waiting, you could calmly say, was something which she had been adequately steeped in.

Meanwhile, however, she obtained an answer to the question of why her father’s name had had such a magic effect on Frau von Garlitz. She had asked von Falkenau point-blank. ‘Johann Bamberg … yes … wait a minute … I’ll never forget him … an exceptional young person, very dedicated and ingenious, he thought up various
improvements within the business to make things work more
efficiently
…’ He looked at Anna thoughtfully. ‘Outwardly you don’t look like him but in you I detect the same effort and
incorruptibility
. Alas we were not able to profit long from your father. I
remember
that he was offered another job … he was a socialist, well yes, that was his affair … an extraordinary person, that Bamberg …’

‘You yourselves had begun to bomb towns,’ said Lotte, who was annoyed at the way Anna depicted the inhabitants of Cologne as victims. When she thought of the bombing of Rotterdam and London her sympathy froze.

‘Yes of course we had started it,’ said Anna.

‘Then you shouldn’t have been surprised that there was retaliation.’

‘We weren’t surprised, we were afraid – just like the Londoners when they were packed on top of each other in air raid shelters. That fear is actually universal!’

‘With the difference that you had yourselves to thank for it. You had chosen the regime that would shrink from nothing to bomb towns.’

Anna sighed. She rested her plump arms on the table, leaned forwards and looked wearily at Lotte. ‘I have just explained to you how the poor stupid people let themselves be blinded. Why won’t you accept that? We still aren’t getting anywhere this way.’

Lotte sipped from her empty cup. She felt the rage rising to her head – she was being lectured here, would you believe! What arrogance!

‘I’ll tell you now in exact detail why I can’t accept it,’ she said angrily. ‘Perhaps then, in your turn, you’ll also understand
something
for once.’

The water that had lapped against the keel of the boat was scraping beneath their Friesian skates six months later. They were gliding over the ice in a cadenza, hands criss-crossed in each other’s. It
looked as though together they made one skater. Frosted reed
borders
and willows shot past; above them the sun hung low and was slowly turning red. Lotte stumbled over a scar in the ice. David caught her. Twisting on the narrow blades they stopped, facing each other; he kissed her frozen lips. ‘Ice queen …’ he said in her ear, ‘what would you say if we were to get engaged …’ ‘But …’ Lotte began. She looked at him in amazement. He laughed and kissed her on the end of her nose, which was numb from cold. ‘Think about it …’ he said. He grasped her hands and they
zigzagged
onwards. Mist formed; minuscule particles of water took on the colour of the setting sun. The cold penetrated through her clothes. A line of verse from the song cycle went round in her head: ‘In such a stormy weather, I never would have sent the
children
out …’

In the dark they cycled back. Outside her home he said goodbye. ‘I wouldn’t want to give you a fright,’ he said, ‘but I’m simply mad about you.’ She blew on her hands, he took them in his and rubbed them warm. ‘I’ll come on Saturday,’ he promised, and then we’ll talk it over.’ ‘No, no …’ she said in confusion, ‘I mean … I can’t on Saturday … let’s wait a little …’ He kissed her cheerfully. ‘Fine … fine … we’re not in a rush …’ He rode off humming, turning round to wave once more.

For days, absent-mindedly, she did the things that had to be done. The as yet unnamed love should last for ever for her; she loved the secrecy, the unspoken and the painful. A concept like ‘getting engaged’ made her nervous. Yet she knew that ultimately she would not say no. Before their relationship accelerated and everyone interfered with it she wanted to harbour ambivalent
feelings
and the reliable solitude. Perhaps he felt it – she heard nothing from him.

The illusion that the war was turning out well came to an end. In Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter there were clashes between WA men, stirring up trouble, and Jewish gangs; a WA man was killed. As a reprisal, on 22 February, hundreds of young Jewish men were
picked up arbitrarily. In the official report there was mention of ‘a murder so horrible and bestial, as only Jews were capable of
committing
’, but the illegal newspaper
Het
Parool
demythologized the affair: it was a question of manslaughter in an ordinary fight – the dead body had been found with a cosh round the wrist! Lotte’s father brought home a manifesto from the underground Communist Party, exhorting resistance to the Jewish pogroms: ‘
STRIKE
!!!
STRIKE
!!!
STRIKE
!!!’ the working people were urged. The strikes that broke out in various parts of the country thereafter were stopped by the Germans with executions. Calm apparently returned again.

Just as Lotte was beginning to grow restless – it had been ages – she was telephoned by David’s father. In a dull tone he asked if it would be convenient if he and his wife could come round the same evening: they had something to discuss with her. Blood rushed to her head. Why was David sending his parents instead of coming himself? After everything he had said about them? They were received solemnly (the famous singer!). Lotte’s father shook hands in silence. The singer smiled sadly, turning his seducer’s
moustache
into a stripe. His glance slid over the four sisters. ‘And who is Lotte?’ Lotte nodded cautiously. David’s mother hurried to seize both her hands and squeeze them delicately. Overcome with emotion she clicked open her crocodile skin bag and took out a handkerchief. ‘We did not know that he had a girlfriend …’ she said, moved.