Blood Ties (22 page)

The woman watched him, saying nothing, her fingers
clutching and unclutching the handkerchief. He decided to treat her gently.
Poor woman.

"Put yourself in my place," he said.

Mother ... the mere word could summon pain. He had envied
the boys at school, watching them with their mothers when parents came to
visit. Mother. Where is my mother? he had cried in the night, hating God for
taking her from him. Even now, the pain of loss stabbed him. She had certainly
picked exactly the right method to gain his attention. Annoyed, Siegfried
finished off the dregs of his glass and moved to look out of the window. The
scene was peaceful, pastoral. Albert was locked in conversation with Olga. The
boy, Aleksandr, and the twins continued their children's gambols on the
forest's edge.

He faced her again. She had not moved a muscle in her body.
Composed, she barely flickered her eyelids.

"So you've been in an institution." It was an
unworthy ruse. She showed no reaction. "I don't believe a word of
this."

"I can understand that." She bent down and
retrieved the battered passport. "Easily acquired," he said, like
some film detective. He had not even opened it. She looked at him gently.
Bending again, she reached for the fallen money draft and put it inside the
passport, replacing it in the pocket of her coat.

"Your father was a Jew. His name was Konrad Schneider.
He was my lover." Suddenly she lost her poise, but only briefly. Lowering
her head, she dabbed her nose with the balled handkerchief. "We were
discovered. Actually, we saw each other for four years and he fathered your
brothers as well. He was the gardener. I let them send me away in exchange for
his life."

She paused, obviously waiting for this new information to
be digested. He wanted to question her, but that would imply acceptance. He was
not prepared for that. Not yet! Apparently, she understood his reluctance,
continuing.

"There is no going backward. No room for forgiveness.
I left you. It seemed a fair bargain then." She bit her lip. "I am
not a clever woman. He was far more clever, this Baron, this von Kassel."
Her face seemed paler under the dead-white makeup. "I thought what I was
doing, what I did then, was better for the three of you." She seemed
trying to convince him now, to argue the issue. "You are rich,
powerful..."

If only she were softer, more like the idea of her he had
always cherished in his mind. Not this caricature of womanhood, this pitiful
creature. My mother? A part of him longed to lay his head against her breast,
the terrible impossible longing.

"But why now?" he asked, thinking of the dying
old man upstairs.

"He cannot die free of this knowledge. Not after what I
have suffered in this life. I want him to suffer now."

"He doesn't know? About the..." He wanted to say
Jew. It seemed to compound the agony of believability.

"I am about to tell him."

"And the others?"

"You will tell them."

"It will kill him," he said, feeling, for the
first time, a measure of compassion for the old man.

She shrugged. "What would it matter? He is not your
father."

"But why now?"

"You would have to have lived my life to understand
that," she said. He could see the toughness now.

Siegfried rose, went to the liquor table again. He heard
her stand up, hesitate. Bracing himself, he wondered if she would step forward
to touch him. Then he heard her footsteps and the closing door. Mother, he
cried in his heart, turning.

The shock of it had jarred him. He had, he knew, always
felt the void, the missing mother. Childish yearnings, screams in the night,
loneliness, a missing link. The Baron had been the father. There was never a
question about that. The father! Once, he had questioned why he could never
feel any warmth for his father, and that had set him on a journey of
cross-purposes. He had even consciously rejected his blood by refusing to
replicate himself. At last he knew the reasons. He was another man's son. Not a
von Kassel at all. Where then was his elation? And his real father?

The room seemed suddenly damp and he realized that his
shirt was soaked through. Taking it off, he replaced it, feeling the chill
against his skin. If only he could summon ridicule again, the old sardonic
pose, the quiver of barbed wit, the self-mocking irony. As the moment stretched
and the light changed in the room, he realized he could not stay another minute
alone.

* *
*

Siegfried needed to tell someone. It was the kind of
information that bloated the gut. Yet he found it impossible to find the
courage to tell his brothers. Not yet. Not now.

The idea of Dawn had popped into his mind as he had turned
and seen Albert talking quietly with Olga on the bench, oblivious to the trauma
that would soon descend on all of them. He moved quickly to the suite she
shared with Albert.

"God," she said as she opened the door, sluggish
with sleep. The suite was a mess. He followed her into the bedroom. Squinting
into the mirror, she put a brush through her hair, her flesh and her flimsy
clinging nightgown moving in tandem, the lack of modesty validating their
previous intimacy. Slipping into a satin dressing gown, she acknowledged his
presence again. "You look like hell."

Following her into the sitting room, he watched as she
poured coffee from a silver pitcher on a heated stand. She had felt its surface
first, wrung her hand as the heat pained, then poured the liquid into a
saucerless cup. "Want some?"

"A drink maybe." His eyes found the liquor table
and he poured himself a whiskey.

"Hair of the dog," she said, raising her cup as
she looked out of the window. What she saw cast a shadow of anger over her
features. "He could have at least spared me that." She shrugged,
slipping into depression. She turned away and fell heavily into the couch.
"If you're here for a rematch, I'm not in the mood." She must have
realized her nastiness. "Pay no attention, Siegfried. I feel so goddamned
empty." She paused. "As soon as I pull myself together, I'm
splitting. I have had quite enough of the von Kassels."

"We may not be what we seem," he said slowly.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I've got to tell somebody," he said, feeling
foolish. "Have you got a mother?" His tongue sounded thick.

"Jesus, Siegfried. No riddles today." She watched
him and shook her head. "Are you drunk?"

"A little." He paused. "Yes, as a matter of
fact. It must have sneaked up on me." He put down his glass. "The
point is that I have just seen and talked with my mother ... or a reasonable
facsimile thereof. Someone who purports to be."

"Your mother's been dead for years. Even I know that.
Everybody knows that." She had, he noted, decided to be patient with him,
humor him. Looking toward the window, she shook her head. Her mind was
elsewhere.

"I just saw her. She talked to me."

"You are drunk."

"I wish I was hallucinating. Really, Dawn. I talked to
her." The story spilled out, drawing her interest. As he spoke, he felt
his hands shake and, at times, his voice cracked.

"Take it easy," she said. He felt his strength
ebb and sat down.

"I suppose I should be relieved," he said when he
had finished.

"And you believe her?" Dawn asked.

"Would you?"

"Nothing surprises me about you people," she
sighed.

"I feel nothing," Siegfried said suddenly,
tasting a backwash of held-in salt tears. "I was in the same room with
her. And I felt nothing. I didn't want to believe her. Even now ... I hope she
is a fraud. The von Kassels are always coming up with long lost relatives.
Fortune hunters."

"Perhaps she is."

"And where is she now?"

"She says she has gone to tell the Baron."

"Well that should shake things up a bit." She
smirked, slapping her thighs. "So you're all bastards," she mumbled.

Had he expected compassion? Understanding? She turned now
and stared at him coldly, enjoying the spectacle of his anguish.

"So the myth is all bullshit."

He had lived his life in conflict with it, protesting it.
Now the foil was gone and he confronted his own emptiness.

"I must stop her," he decided, moving toward the
door. But his legs felt shaky and Dawn's voice made him pause.

"You think you can deprive her of her moment?"

Closing the door behind him, he could still hear her
mocking laughter ringing in his ears.

Albert walked swiftly, passing through the great stone
gate, moving beside the road that the big Daimler had traversed the day before.
The road inclined downward and his legs moved fast. When tense, his body
demanded activity.

Perhaps if he had slept better, Albert thought, he might
have been more persuasive. It irritated him that he had not articulated his
rejection of the plutonium deal with more convincing power. Rudi's arguments
were far more compelling. In a way, he too felt some odd pride in his bumbling
brother's emergence as a stronger figure than they had all reckoned.

Dawn had come into their suite soon after he had got into
bed. He had feigned sleep, dreading a confrontation. Besides, she was most
certainly drunk, especially if she had been carousing with Siegfried. Or more.
He wished he was asleep. Once he had believed that she was necessary to his
life, that he had discovered what was essential, the completeness that love
brought. Love?

He knew she was hovering over the bed watching him.

"So you were with her," she said quietly.
Ignoring her, he strained his lids to keep them shut.

"I saw you," she said, her voice rising. When he
did not respond, she leaned over and shook him violently.

"You could at least have spared my pride." He
felt only pity for her now.

"We talked," he said finally.

"So I no longer am needed," she said bitterly. It
was true. No answer was required.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she said.

In the dark he nodded. He wondered if she had seen the
gesture.

"Tomorrow," she repeated.

"Yes," he said. "That is the best
course."

Through the ensuing silence, he could hear her breathing.

"You are a sonofabitch."

He wanted to explain about the end of love, to talk about
the good times. The past. She no longer mattered. It was painful knowledge. Why
could she not go quietly? No explanation from him could assuage her pain.

"I let your brother have me," she said, her voice
breaking. "But at least I kept it in the family. Goddamned von
Kassels."

He was not moved. Jealousy. All sense of possession had
died. He wished it could be graceful, an elegant parting. But she did not
really know how long ago it had disappeared, how long he had dissimulated.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. Tears had run down
her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Dawn."

"You shit," she screamed.

"What can I say?"

"Nothing. Say nothing. Just get me out of here."

He could not tell how long she had berated him. Then she
had, out of exhaustion, lay beside him. She must have cried herself to sleep.
Patience, he urged himself, thinking of Olga. The void had already been filled.
But for how long this time?

Albert's legs carried him swiftly down the incline. If only
this thing with Dawn did not come simultaneously with the other complications
of his life. His mind roared back to the issue of the plutonium.

"We are never responsible," his father had
intoned. If his father had doubts, there had never been the remotest hint.
"If one von Kassel had faltered, where would we be?" This
indifference to consequences was the adhesive that bonded the myth. How dare he
question that? Sooner or later the substance would find its way into irresponsible
hands. Was that really a moral question? That was fear. How presumptuous to
imagine that he was so high-minded. He was a hypocrite like the rest of them.

When he began to perspire heavily, he stopped, rested
briefly, then proceeded back to the castle. But thoughts of Dawn persisted.
She, too, had charged the ramparts of the von Kassel obsession.

"But why?" she had asked.

"Why what?"

"Why arms? There are a hundred other ways. Banking.
Real estate. You are rich enough, clever enough to do anything. Why this?"

She had brooded over it, broadening the theme as they grew
closer until it became the Greek chorus of their affair. He had long given up
its justification to her, but had listened patiently, the arguments of little
concern. Perhaps it was that that had killed it in him, the stubborn probings
of his inner life, moving mental furniture that had once been carefully placed.

"If you think that I am a pariah and what I do
disgusts you, then why are you with me?"

"Because I love you," she had replied.

Once, in the midst of a coupling, she might have come to
the heart of it. Albert was in her, his phallus heavy with the blood of his
desire. He mocked it now, but then he was gorging himself, filling her with
himself, and she was responding in white heat. Then she stopped suddenly, her
body abruptly calmed.

"What is it?" he had whispered.

"Why are all those weapons shaped like cocks?"

"Not now, Dawn."

"But I am close to the truth," she had said.

"Not now." Quickly, she had picked up the rhythm
of their intercourse again. But what she had said triggered some malevolence in
him and when she was at the point of greatest tension, he moved his pelvis,
uncoupling.

"Please," she gasped.

"You need something?"

"Please."

"What do you need?"

"Your cock. Please. In me," she whimpered.

"Say weapon," he chided, cool now, sure of his
manhood.

"Weapon," she cried. "Don't do this."

"Just a little lesson in power," he whispered,
bringing his body down again, finding the sheath, feeling her suck him into
her, writhing in the anguish of her need. She spent herself in a series of
furious explosions.

"Not power. Simply proving your manhood. Silly macho.
There is a meanness about it. You only defeated yourself." She had patted
his limp phallus. "See?"

Coming through the gate again, Albert saw Olga sitting on a
bench. She was alone, a figure in reflective repose and he watched her silently
for a long moment, wondering if their mutual searching could lead to the same
treasure. Finally, she had sensed his presence.

"You look flushed," she said. She had been
expressionless, inward-looking. Now her face brightened and she smiled broadly.
For me? he wondered.

"I've been walking. And I'm in lousy shape."

She looked fresh and clean in the morning air, the sunlight
flattering her skin.

"And Aleksandr?"

"Somewhere," she said, looking about her.
"He was playing with the twins."

"So they are becoming friendly," he said, sitting
down beside her.

"So it seems."

Her loveliness dispelled his anxieties, lifting his
spirits.

"Dawn's going home today," he said, revealing what
thoughts were on the top of his mind. She said nothing and turned her face
away. "It is the best course ... for both of us."

"That's too bad," Olga said, continuing to avoid
his eyes.

"At least it is honest," he said firmly.

"Yes. I recall. It is one of your passions."

Again, he detected the underlying belligerency, the odd
sense of ambivalence and conflict.

"It confuses you?" he asked gently, as if the
question were posed to him as well.

"Of course."

"Me as well," he confessed.

Her lips puckered in a gesture of disbelief.

"You? Really Albert. You're teasing. You. The heir
apparent. That borders on rebellion." She looked at him closely. "I
had a hint of that last night. Is it a pose? Or do I misunderstand?"

"I'm not sure. If you mean: Is the justification for
the family business becoming increasingly difficult for me? The answer is
yes."

"Last night you were an advocate. You were defending
it." Her eyes narrowed. "Or are you making fun of me?"

"In a way, we're both objects of some amusement."

"You're talking in riddles."

"Look at you. The wife of a man who spoke against us
all his life. Then suddenly, with his body barely tucked away, you appear on
the scene. On the one hand you rage against our moral decadence, profess your
repugnance at the naure of our business, and on the other you tell me that you
have come to search for a sense of family, the von Kassel blood bond. Love and
hate. Wolfgang's affliction. You can't really have it both ways, you
know."

"I never said I wanted it either way." Her cheeks
had flushed. He was pushing it too far, he decided, but he could not stop
himself.

"Then what the hell are you here for?" He was, he
knew, challenging himself. He had stunned her. Angrily, she stood up. Reaching
out, he took her arm and forced her down again.

"I understand it, because I feel it myself."

"How could you?" she said between clenched teeth.
"You are..." Pausing, she searched for words.

"I know what I am," he began, wanting at last to
confront his own hypocrisy, to tell her of his own self-loathing, but then they
heard the boy's scream. She rose in panic and ran in the direction of the
sound. Following, he moved swiftly into the woods. The screams grew louder,
more repetitive.

They found Aleksandr, ashen and frightened, floundering in
a stream, waist high, too petrified to move. He had obviously been traversing a
small bridge and had fallen through the rotted wood. Albert broke a branch from
a nearby tree and, instructing the boy to hold on to one end, pulled him out of
the water. The danger had been more from panic than drowning. Olga gathered him
in her arms soothing him with kisses.

"I used to play here as a kid," Albert said,
remembering that a DANGER sign had been there. While Olga continued to comfort
the boy, he poked around in the bushes. Someone had uprooted the sign and flung
it out of sight. Replacing it, he banged it into the ground with a rock.

"Where are the twins?" Albert asked the
distraught boy. He shrugged, indicating his innocence of their whereabouts,
although he pointed to the other side of the stream.

"I'd better take him up," Olga said, leading the
boy away by the hand.

Albert watched their figures recede. At that moment, he
would have gladly changed places with Aleksandr.

The sight of the twins and their overpainted mother increased
his irritation.

"Who moved the sign?" he snapped at the twins,
ignoring Mimi's hostile look. The twins huddled closer to the ample figure as
her chubby arms embraced them.

"I said who moved the sign." His eyes searched
their identical faces. Inger and Ingrid. Rudi's furtive eyes peered back,
indicating their transparent joint guilt.

"Go on to lunch, children," Mimi said suddenly,
and the two girls swiftly disappeared into the rectory.

"They removed the danger sign from the little bridge.
The boy might have been killed. He was lucky."

"Come now, Albert. Let's not overdramatize a harmless
childhood prank."

"They should be punished."

"My. How your attachment has clouded your
judgment." The sarcasm was heavy.

"They probably reacted to your venomous paranoia. You
can't keep mouthing off and expect the kids to be neutral."

It was obvious that he had struck the right chord. She
flushed with anger and he braced himself for her onslaught.

"She has no business here, except to hurt us."

"Hurt us?"

"I tell you she is a KGB agent."

"And if she is?"

She looked at him with contempt. "Rudi is right, you
know. You have lost your balls."

He was ready to say more, but Adolph had come up behind
them. Seeing him, Mimi sneered with disdain and stormed into the rectory.
Albert was thankful that a scene had been averted.

"They are getting cocky, don't you think,
cousin?" Adolph whispered, placing himself close enough for Albert to get
the full measure of his cologne. Then he placed a chubby hand on his arm and
whispered in Albert's ear.

"There is more to this than meets the eye,
cousin."

Adolph was given to cryptic implications. To him, most
people had sinister motives.

"I agree with you completely, Albert. I wouldn't touch
the plutonium deal under any circumstances." He paused. "Don't
misunderstand. I'm not being high-minded. I'll leave that turf to you. Everyone
is entitled to at least one tantrum."

"Tantrum? Is that what you think?"

"A kind of hysteria induced by too much conscience.
This too shall pass."

"And if it doesn't?"

"God help us. Do you think your asshole brother can
run things? You had better get your act together and spare us the
experience."

"I will not deal in that commodity," Albert said
firmly. "I think I have made myself clear."

"It may be too late for such luxurious morality,
cousin."

Albert looked into Adolph's face, the mask of jowls unable
to hide the animal intelligence beneath it.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"In due time, cousin. In due time. We'll both know
soon enough."

Albert studied his fat cousin. He was efficient and loyal.
But devious, oblique. Sexuality was not his only aberration. He had little
respect for the human race, and under the pose of the voluptuary was a hard
cynicism.

"Soon enough," Adolph repeated.

At that moment, the elevator door cranked open and his
father emerged slowly, moving unsteadily on his cane. He was alone. It struck
Albert as odd that his aunt did not accompany him. Rushing forward, Albert
grabbed the old man's free arm to support him.

"Where is Aunt Karla?" Albert asked. The Baron,
too, was obviously confused and disturbed by her absence.

"I don't know. It is not like her."

"She is not upstairs?"

"She said she would be back. But the time was moving
on. I thought perhaps she might have come herself and was assuming that I was
resting." There was a whininess about him, like a disturbed child. Karla's
presence had also, somehow, protected his heroic image. The Baron's dependency
on her was total. They walked slowly toward the rectory, the effort taxing the
old man.