The Butterfly Plague (12 page)

My voice froze in my throat. My hands began to sweat. I adjusted my veils in an attempt to dry my fingers.

“You look well,” said Lissl. Her tone remained unbearably formal. I longed to put my arms around her and to hear her laugh. Her laughter was once so marvelous.

“I am well,” I said.

We looked at beds of blue delphiniums and pink tea roses. Day lilies and late poppies. She pointed out nightblooming nicotiana and snapdragons and beautifully formalized rows and ranks of shrubs and trees, japonica, magnolia, camellia. Some in bloom, some not. Yew trees and sculptured firs. At intervals, scissored and razored cedars formed archways and arbors underneath which we walked. All the while her hand held mine and her fingers stroked my wrist and palm. I sensed that this was her true conversation with me, that the words would have to remain formal and stilted, meaningless and polite, even unspoken, and that somehow her real messages were reaching me through her touches and signs. They were not in code. At least I hoped that they were not. If they were, I never deciphered them, never discovered what it was she wanted to say, but I imagined that I did decode it emotionally. It was a plain, stark monologue, messages of fear and loneliness, regret and sadness. Touching me as though I alone was reality.

None of this was evident to the watchers, with that everlasting physical pose that seemed to go with their uniforms: hands behind the back, pelvis forward, knees out, strolling in ways of menace. They were everywhere in that garden, everywhere in the shadows, everywhere in the inner passageways of the palace, behind every tree and door, at the extension of every telephone, even behind the distant eyes of binoculars. But none of this prevented my sensing what was being said.

We stopped by a bed of yellow roses. She showed me the bush from which my bud had been cut. I had pinned it to my dress.

“Yellow roses,” she said, “are a sign.”

A phrase that could mean anything or nothing. She had said it in the same tone as everything else. But her hand gripped mine tighter as she spoke.

On the way back inside she asked me how I thought she looked. She had waited to do this until we were abreast of one of the listeners.

I answered almost in a shout that I had never seen her look so well, that she was positively radiant, and this answer seemed to please her. She smiled.

Indeed, her beauty had increased. But it was a lacquered beauty now. Every hair was in place and I could sense in the makeup and the beautifully shaped nails the presence in the house of cosmeticians and manicurists. She seemed cared for and turned out like a film star. It was a look I recognized and knew all too well. It hid the real beauty but it had a beauty all its own. Cold layered.

“The Count will dine with us,” she said.

We made a progress, nodding and being saluted, all the way down a six-hundred-foot corridor. At the far end doors were thrown open by invisible servants and we came into a room of massive distances—unseeable ceilings and such ruthlessly carved and heavily adorned furniture that it seemed to have been torn in chunks from the timbers it was made from.

We stood in the recess of tall windows, looking out at the terrace where we had been, and we drank sherry—a light, light gold in color. The glasses were crystal, with eagles cut so sharply that their claws were capable of piercing your fingers.

Lissl said, “We will wait.”

We waited.

Presently, along the corridors we heard the echoes of iron steps and the battering of heels as someone approached, heralded by shouts of “Heil!” and by tones of subservience and deference.

“Put down your glass,” said Lissl. “Do not look at him until he speaks.”

I lowered my head. From the corner of my eye I saw that even she, not only a Countess and of equal rank but his wife and companion, bowed her head and dipped her body before him.

I smelled him first. Black leather and silver polish. Cigarettes and a curious, extremely Germanic cologne. Also the male smell of warmth. His hand, as he raised me up from my curtsy, was strong and clean. I felt womanly—a rare experience, living with Bruno.

“So you are my wife’s American friend,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied.

I looked.

His bearing was Caesarean.

His head was enormous and his hair, silver-blond, was brushed forward.

The veins stood out at his temples.

His mouth was wide and shaped for sexual appetites and it looked as though he had come directly from a feast.

His gaze was brilliant. It hinted of miraculous kindness.

But I knew better than to believe this. Character is in mouths, not in eyes, and I had seen his mouth first.

We sat down.

Lissl was silent.

She watched him dutifully, like his dog. But I could tell that she loved him. Was trapped in this love.

I thought, She and I have walked into the same Nightmare.

Count von Buëll gave us a little of his attention. This consisted of polite remarks about my hopes of winning in the events and classes I was entered in. He had heard of me. He was interested in Bruno. He understood that Bruno had many original theories about the human body and its performance under duress. He said that the Fuhrer himself had expressed a desire to know these theories better and he informed me that Bruno was considered with high regard in certain circles.

All this was news to me. I remained silent. During this conversation Lissl’s eyes rested on her food. She did not eat.

Finally the Count rose.

We rose with him.

He had dined voraciously and well.

He was totally masculine. Self-immersed.

He wished me good fortune. He kissed the Countess’s wrist. He departed. Heat followed after him and the room shadowed and became cool.

“Well!!!” I said. I whispered it.

Lissl looked at me.

“You understand?” she said. I told her that I understood.

We walked arm in arm to the bathrooms. They were marble and spacious. There was a large table spread with linens, cosmetics, and brushes. Lissl seated herself and I stood behind her. I wrote, with lipstick on a piece of tissue, Are we alone? and she wrote back, No. She pointed to a ventilator over our heads.

We stayed there a long time in silence, she sitting, me standing behind her, both of us facing into the mirror. She carefully brushed and combed and powdered her hair (yes, she powdered it, very lightly—blue). I did not show her that I was bald. She brushed some sort of lacquer on her lips so that they gleamed for a moment and then froze. I put on lipstick. She offered me perfume, but I declined to wear it for fear Bruno should ask me where I’d been. However, I put some on my handkerchief.

She took my hand, which rested on her shoulder, and held it. She looked longingly at our reflections in the mirror. We were not as we had been. We closed our eyes, hoping together to open them on other images and other days, but we faltered in that dream and the world remained real.

She wrote,
Where did you get that star?
and I wrote
From Mr. Seuss in France
, and she wrote,
We do not carry stars
, and I looked at her and then I wrote,
We should
.

She looked at this and looked at me and nodded. Then she wrote,
We cannot meet again
. I nodded violently, meaning that we must, but she shook her head. Her eyes were sad.

I could not take the time to write. I said it. “Why?”

She thought for a moment and then stood up. She went into the lavatory and flushed our writings down the toilet.

She came back. She had not answered me. She did not speak. She took me gently by the arm and led me out into the great hall.

I realized that she had not answered me because one of her “followers” had been standing outside the bathroom. The door was ajar, and apart from being overheard through the ventilator, we had probably been watched from the hall.

We got to the steps outside. The giant motorcar with its flags and drivers was waiting.

She said, “
Auf wiedersehen
.”

I smiled. I said it too. I knew she did not mean it. Could not, for some reason. I wanted to weep with frustration, leaving her there, not knowing what was going to become of her.

She laughed. It was the last time.

“You know,” she said, “your German is terrible, Ruth. You must work on your verbs. Begin again…” and then she stressed the next part oddly. “
At the beginning
.”

I looked at her.

The sun was in my eyes.

She was dazzling.

We kissed.

I went down the steps.

I did not look back just yet.

I got into the car.

I was driven away.

At the end of the driveway, I looked back.

She had gone inside.

Begin at the beginning.

On the way home I thought about this. The beginning. What is the beginning? I thought of her face, of her tone of voice. Of her hands. Of her husband. She had said, “Your German is terrible. Work at your verbs.”

My verbs.

The beginning.

I thought of it.

The Dark Angel driving the car turned to look at me. I was weeping. It did not matter what he thought of me. I had understood. This was her answer.

The beginning of learning German.

Sein
.

Ich bin
.

Du bist
.

Er ist
.

Wir sind
.

Ihr seid
.

Sie sind
.

This was her message.

To be.

I am.

You are.

He is.

We are.

You are.

They are.

And to this I added the word “good-bye.”

I do not need to explain the history.

At the Olympics I won three gold medals. I do not have them any more. Bruno has them. After all, they were his.

I dressed always in the uniforms now. When I swam, my baldness startled people, but the more I won the more they got used to it.

But I could not.

I also had to endure another of Bruno’s innovations above and beyond the baldness. This was my breast truss.

It was like a belt made of elastic and cotton. It pulled my breasts to either side as far toward the armpits as I could stand. I wore it under my suit. I had to slightly readapt my reach to accommodate it, but it flattened me and it worked. It was agony.

These things did not matter. I was a guinea pig. I was alive and I could perform. Later, this became my career.

Bruno’s face changed. His mouth stiffened. His nostrils flared more often. It became impossible to see into his eyes. He shaved his own head. He gained weight. He began to carry a riding crop. He donned boots. He wore leather. He bought a cap. Slowly he changed his language. He became German.

On the last Olympic day of all, August 16th, 1936, Hitler was to speak to us. Each team was to parade before him. We all had to learn the salute.

A drill master came. In uniform.

We lined up in the underground tunnels. I was just a member of the team. Bruno was absent. Above ground there was a tumult of bands and singers. I knew that all the flags would be flying. I knew the sky was blue. I felt old. I was sad.

The drill master educated us in the art of saluting.

As each captain of each team came abreast of the Fuhrer’s box, he was to “eyes-right.” At this moment, still looking ahead of us, we were to commence the count.

One: Arm out to the side.

Two: Eyes right.

Three: Raise the arm, sighting along it on a slight diagonal.

Heil!

One. Two. Three. Heil!

It was simple.

Yes. The bands played, the flags flew, and we marched up onto that resplendent field, some of us with our medals, all of us in our Olympic blazers, all the nations of the world, obedient and shouting. This was the Master Leader. This was the Master Leader’s Fatherland. These were his people. We were there. We did it.

As we passed the place where he stood and as we shouted our approval, my heart leaped into my throat. I thought I was stricken. There beside him, saluting too and smiling down, was Bruno. Standing with those others. Now, I was destined to know them.

It had happened.

Up there, also, was the Count von Buëll.

And the Countess.

And no one else I recognized.

Hitler spoke.

He spoke for two hours.

He was faraway, partially hidden and small. But we heard him.

And it grew dark as we stood there.

For a time thereafter, Bruno forced me to travel with him, here and there, riding in official motorcars. We visited the doctors and scientists at Tubingen; ministers of physical education in various state capitals; teachers, physiologists, gymnasts. We visited sports centers, where I gave demonstrations of strength through joy. We called on Goering, Hess, Himmler, and Streicher. They voiced their approval. We were much in the company of Dr. Goebbels. Hanover, Leipzig, Bayreuth, Nuremburg, Regensburg, Augsburg, Munich, Saltzburg, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Cologne, and always, always—home to Berlin.

Home to Berlin.

Nightmares begin with acts. Sometimes an act of Absolution. Sometimes an act of Atonement. The act will inevitably involve your integrity.

I wanted to go home—really home—truly home, to America. But no. I was married. I was a wife. I stayed with my husband.

I was his guinea pig.

I was bald. Once a week he shaved my head.

I wore his uniform. My picture was published.

He designed swimming paraphernalia, breathing devices, eye goggles, webbed feet. I even wore strange fins on my forearms and rubber things strapped to my legs. My breasts became deformed. I got ill. I was sick. I had headaches, nausea, rashes, and torn muscles. I stood in the cold, I swam in ice, I stood against walls. It was all part of a plan. I was placed in snowbanks, nude. I was told to run, walk, lie down, stand up, sit, crouch, stoop, stop and start. I had orders constantly in my ears.

Ointments and oils were spread on various parts of my anatomy. Greased with these, I was told to enter different sorts of water—distilled, salt, lake, and river. Temperatures were varied. I developed piles and chilblains.