The Empire of the Senses (57 page)

Manfred stood to the side, his body tense.

“We’re only taking a stroll.” Franz’s voice reverberated through his head—it sounded weak, feminine. The sun beat down.

“We were only taking a stroll,” Wolf mimicked. He clapped his hands together. “What do you think Lutz will say about this?”

“Lutz is an ass.”

Wolf slid off his horse and shrugged.

He slung an arm around Franz’s shoulders and grinned at Manfred. “Would you mind leaving us?”

They watched Manfred walk away through the tall grass and the trees.

Wolf stroked the side of his horse, the back of his hand caressing the large canvas of gray-white hair. “Secluded here.” The horse bent its neck to retrieve some grass. “He’s good-looking,” Wolf added.

Franz stared down at the fallen acorns and the crushed chestnuts and the dirt, kicked up in clumps where Wolf’s horse had halted abruptly.

“And all that time, pushing Greta on you.”

Franz felt his cheeks burn, his ears turning crimson. The sun shifted behind a cloud. “It doesn’t mean—” he started, but he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He leaned against the tree, his arms crossed over his chest. It was better to say nothing.

“Let’s keep this between us.” Wolf touched his arm and relief flooded through Franz. Then Wolf squeezed his shoulder, a little harder than necessary. “Anyway, I came to find you for another reason. I was thinking about the Jew.”

The sun drifted out from behind the cloud, shining down on them again. Wolf turned his face up to it and closed his eyes. Franz noticed that his eyelids were sweaty. “You know—that dirty little Jew your sister’s running around with.” He sighed deeply, enjoying the momentary warmth on his face.

“Geza?”

Wolf opened his eyes and focused on Franz. “When are you going to kill him, as we discussed?”

“I haven’t planned it out yet, exactly.” Again, he sounded vague, indecisive. I must stop that, he thought. I must announce a date, a time.

Wolf laughed, leading his horse back to the path.

Franz followed him and Wolf said over his shoulder, “A half-Jew yourself, you should feel scandalized by such pride, his thinking he can whisk away your sister and ruin all the social progress a family such as yours has made.”

He got back up on his horse and motioned in the direction Manfred had gone. “I didn’t mean to frighten him.”

Franz nodded, panic budding under his skin, little pinpricks. Would he have to kill Geza tomorrow? Or the next day? He had never killed anyone. Only beaten up a few Poles.

“Big white teeth. Good skin. He must have grown up in the country,” he added, adjusting his saddle. “Greta’s been invited to Vicki’s good-bye party at some apartment near Moritzplatz. That’s where you will do it.” He spoke crisply and cleanly, as if dictating a timetable of when trains were due to arrive and depart. “I’ll be there to make sure it goes off smoothly.”

“When is it?” His voice caught.

“Next Monday. Nineteen hundred hours.”

Then he cantered off, waving as he went, his body moving with the horse’s body to the point where Franz could no longer distinguish between horse and rider.

42

The house was calm and filled with white sunlight. Vicki pulled the curtain aside and shoved open the bedroom window, feeling the warm spring air against her bare arms. Languishing in a state of undress, she wore a long V-neck tunic patterned with an oriental motif, and a silk sash around her head. Tossing a few dresses aside, she looked in the oblong mirror and held one up to her body. Glittery and beaded, with alternating panels of satin, she would have no use for such a garment in the Holy Land. She imagined plucking tomatoes in this beaded affair. Ha! That wouldn’t do. And Elsa was more than happy to inherit it, having already expressed a keen interest in Vicki’s clothing, which was, she said, “unfit for the kibbutz.” And her favorite peach satin evening pumps with the buttoned straps and Cuban heels? Would those have to go too? She put them on, clicking her heels together in front of the mirror, about to break into the Charleston when she heard the front door open. Their voices echoed in the foyer as they discussed how the rector looked gaunt. “But he’s always been a slight little man,” Josephine said in her high theatrical voice. Franz mumbled something back. Yes, it was the voice her mother reserved for church on Sundays, for socializing with a certain set of women who always needed impressing. It was definitely not the voice she would use when she would have to explain how her only daughter was moving to Palestine with an Eastern European Jew to work on a kibbutz. Vicki flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, pulling the silk sash off her head. She wound it around her hand, wondering what her mother had said this time, about her daughter’s absence from church. Was she feeling ill, perhaps? Had she suffered an allergy attack from all the pollen in the air? Had a terrible toothache swelled up the side of her face?

Last night, Vicki had been at Elsa’s flat for Passover seder with Geza, Maya, Zev, and Elsa’s new boyfriend, who was a radical journalist. They had dipped bitter herbs in salt water. They had reclined on pillows and drunk red wine. They had recited prayers, their hands hovering over the flickering candlelight, the Hebrew less foreign on her tongue now.

“Hello, hello,” her father called, coming inside with Mitzi, whose long nails tapped over the parquet floor. He preferred walking the dog to sitting in church, an arrangement Josephine had accepted for many years. He couldn’t be bothered with God anymore. At least that’s what he said. Vicki had expected her mother to barge into her bedroom this morning and demand she attend church, given it was Easter Sunday, but she left the house quietly with Franz, careful not to wake Vicki, as if such scenes were irrelevant because Vicki had already erased herself from the family. But when the door had slammed shut, the sky a milky purple, Vicki pulled the comforter over her ears and tried to squelch the bereft feeling that enveloped her, the feeling that she had been purposefully left behind, even though she didn’t want to go.

Downstairs, they were discussing when luncheon would be served. She sighed, heaving herself up. She would have to get dressed eventually. The smell of that ham baking in the oven with the mustard crust nauseated her. An insistent, somewhat insidious smell, it penetrated the rugs and pillows, it floated up the staircase and weaseled through the space under her door. She went over to the window again and jerked it up higher. Then she sat on the windowsill and lit a cigarette. Just then, a solemn knock on the door.

“Entrez
,
”
she said jokingly.

Franz opened the door, hesitating on the threshold.

“You look as if someone’s died,” she said, swinging her bare legs from side to side.

He forced a smile and asked if he could come in.

She waved her cigarette in the air. “I said enter!”

He closed the door behind him. “In French.”

She rolled her eyes. “Which is unpatriotic. I know.”

“Remember when you got in trouble for that at school?”

“I always got in trouble.”

He glanced around her room, and she could tell he was taken aback by the Zionist pamphlets that littered the floor, how she’d hung a portrait of Theodor Herzl on the back of her armoire, how her evening dresses were strewn together in the corner, how a pamphlet entitled
Immigration to Palestine: A Process of Cultural Re-Integration
stood open on her desk.

She tapped her cigarette ashes out the window. “Right on Herr Levenski’s roses. That should make you happy at least.”

“So it’s tomorrow, this good-bye party?”

She jumped off the windowsill and hugged him tightly. “You’ll come? Oh, I didn’t think you would. I know how much you hate that crowd. But if you come, I promise not to …”

He pulled away from her. “Are you really going to marry him?”

She blushed a little and put on a turban with blue feathers that had been lying on the bed. “We’re emigrating first.”

Franz nodded, pacing the room, stepping over the pamphlets, the discarded shoes, the empty suitcases.

“But, yes, I think so,” she added.

He stared down at the carpet.

“Don’t you have anything to say? How about ‘Congratulations’? How about ‘Safe travels’? Nothing at all? Everyone else seems to have something to say about it.” She frowned and pulled off the feathered turban, tossing it into the corner with the dresses.

“Vicki, you—” He leaned into her desk, accidentally knocking over a book. It landed facedown with a thud. “You’ve got to think about the larger implications. You’ve got to think of our family.”

She had moved behind the bamboo screen and was shimmying into a summer shift, the yellow one with the scalloped hem and boatneck collar. She zipped up the side zip, her tan skin flashing for an instant, reminding her of how dark she turned in the sun if she didn’t wear a hat and gloves. How dark she would get working in the fields. How dark and unrecognizable. Dusky, almost. She stepped out from behind the bamboo screen, smiling. “But you’ll come? Meet my friends?”

From downstairs, Lev called out ceremoniously, “Luncheon is now
being served.” Then he rang a little bell, and Mitzi barked sharp joyous barks.

“How does my hair look?” she demanded.

“Fine.”

“Fine?” She leaned closer toward the mirror, scrutinizing the slight wave rippling through her hair. “But it sort of lacks shape.”

“You should cancel the good-bye party.” He cracked his knuckles in quick successive cracks.

Using a circular brush, she tried to curl the ends of her hair upward. “I hate when you do that. Makes my skin crawl.”

“Mother’s already suffered enough with you leaving, but then to throw a party, making a spectacle.”

He grabbed her arm.

“Ouch.” She pulled her arm away, inspecting the red marks he’d left there. “You always take her side. Always.”

“If you left peacefully, instead of this big ballyhoo you’re planning …” He breathed quickly, cracking his knuckles again.

“Franz—what’s wrong?”

Lev called from the bottom of the stairs, “The ham is getting cold!”

She shook her head. “You look as if you’ve taken the whole world on your shoulders when it’s only Mother.”

Studying the carpet, Franz dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief.

She hooked her arm through his. “Let’s not be late for the all-important luncheon,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Leading him down the stairs, she added, “You know, you look so much smarter in a suit and tie, as opposed to that silly brown uniform.” She tightened her arm through his and dropped a kiss on his cheek.

43

Monday, June 11, 1928

They had been carrying on for months now. It was an actual love affair, despite the disappointing fact that she never saw him outside of his office. But he said it had to be that way when she’d suggested they stroll through the park one afternoon. It was hot and stuffy in his office. She wanted to get outside, with him on her arm. When he reminded her she was married, she went on about how exhilarating it would feel to walk arm in arm under the linden trees, to ride horses, to share iced tea, to amble along the hedged pathways, passing people they might know, or might not know, but either way, she would be publicly linked to him—the good, kind doctor, the handsome, empathetic man who resembled Mahler, who often misplaced his eyeglasses, and when he did find them, they were inevitably smudged with her fingerprints. “You have traces of me on you everywhere,” she had said, pinching a stray blond hair off his shirt and fluttering it against the side of his face.

But how wonderful would it be, if she were truly his? Josephine asked herself this as she walked to his office on a warm Monday afternoon in the beginning of June. Two young men who looked as if they’d been dipped in bronze strolled past, their hair parted on the side and slicked back with some kind of pomade. They didn’t even notice her—but why should they? She was as old as their mothers. Recently, she’d looked down at herself during an inopportune moment, only to catch sight of the loose skin gently swaying from under her thighs as the doctor thrust himself forward and back. Luckily, the doctor did not see
this. He was quite concentrated on a point just above her head, where the arm of the velvet chaise curled into itself.

Halfway there and already she was sweating, despite taking the pains to apply extra borated talcum to her underarms before leaving the house. At least the blouse was loose-fitting with flared sleeves so that when the wind blew, it provided relief. She had applied a little rouge to her cheeks, even though she’d often criticized Vicki for wearing makeup during the day. Well, a little color lent her cheekbones dimension, brought out the blue of her eyes, and made her appear flushed, vibrant, girlish. She didn’t want to seem old to him, especially because she was
old
—or rather she was
older
than he was, by a good seven years. She paused in front of Bruno Kuczorski’s before crossing the street—the double-breasted sports jacket featured on the headless mannequin would look beautiful on him. And paired with a crimson tie and those suspenders too?
No
, she thought.
I’m always buying him little presents. He pointed out last week that I was overcompensating because I’m married and can’t be with him normally, so then I shower him with trinkets instead
. She looked longingly at the sports jacket before the light turned and she crossed the street.
No, I mustn’t
, she reminded herself, dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief. Sweat trickled down between her breasts, and she caught her breath, thinking how he would lick that spot and then nestle his head against her, and she would run her fingers through his fine wheat-colored hair.

His building rose in the distance, and her heart leapt at the sight of the stone edifice, so stately at the end of the street. Picking up her pace, she wondered if the passing people detected how her heart throbbed and her mind tumbled forward, envisioning the glass door overlaid with ironwork, how she would push the buzzer and he would ring her inside, and she would nearly gallop up the winding staircase to the second floor, where he would be waiting to undress her.