The Other Side of Love (18 page)

Alfred had just laid out the rules for the delayed engagement.

“Your aunt and I are in agreement,”

Alfred said.

“Kate’s far too young. After all, there is the matter of your being cousins, and that makes it much more of a decision. Besides, by 1940 you’ll be a solicitor, able to support a wife”

“I have money.”

Alfred gripped the worn leather strap as the Steyr edged around a slow-moving convoy of military vehicles that included bicycles.

“She’s far too young. Do I have your word to wait?”

Wyatt stared out at the convoy. He sajf nothing.

“They agreed,”

Kathe whispered to Wyatt. He and Alfred had just hung their things on the coat-rack, and her father was heading for the diningroom where platters of bread and cold meat had been set out for their return.

“Yeah, to let us be engaged three years from now.”

“Oh, how can we stand it?”

“Stand what?”

“Being apart three years.”

“Who says we have to do that?”

“We’ll see each other in the holidays.”

“If I clerk and we’re careful, we can make it.”

“I promised Mother not to elope.”

“You what’?”

“They wouldn’t have let us see each other.”

“Once we’re married, that’ll be a breeze. You might even get sick of seeing me.”

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‘I gave her my word.”

“Wyatt, Kate, have a bite with me,”

Alfred called.

“Coming,”

Kathe called back. Resting her hand on Wyatt’s cold cheek, she whispered:

“I had to promise. I couldn’t break their hearts. I couldn’t bear not seeing you.”

114

A blizzard in the Bavarian Alps deposited several feet of fresh powder snow, but by 20 December, when Clothilde, Kathe and Wyatt arrived at the twin villages of GarmischPartenkirchen the sky was a deep intense blue and thick whiteness like whipped cream covered the Loisach Valley with its quaint, steeply pitched roof-tops. The next three mornings Kathe and Wyatt joined the cheerful holiday crush on the trains snaking up snow-covered immntains to the gondola in the shadow of the soaring Zugspitze. Tney swooped down narrow, freshly covered trails until dusk.

Pleasantly weary, they passed their evenings in the snug, simple main room of the chalet. While Clothilde followed her schedule and read, Wyatt would crank the gramophone and play the records he’d brought from America -

“One O’Clock Jump’,

“In the Still of the Night’, the Andrews Sisters”

‘Bet mir hist du schori,

“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm’.

At ten, Clothilde would warm the butter-rich strudel and pour a little rum into the jug of creamy milk left by the cowherd’s wife who came in to clean and cook - most of the locals ignored the government’s stringent regulations about food.

Flanking the massive stone fireplace were doors to the pair of whitewashed bedrooms. Alfred and Clothilda’s room was furnished with a large bed painted with worn floral Bavarian patterns; Kathe’s had a trio of narrow cots to accommodate female visitors. Guests of the stronger sex climbed the sturdy ladder in the corner, making

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do with the bunks set below the slanting pine beams of the attic. Promptly at ten-thirty, Clothilde would retire, leaving Wyatt and Kathe to themselves. It was this blandly implicit trust that inhibited them from exchanging more than a few lingering good-night kisses before Wyatt climbed the ladder.

Sigi and Alfred were due to arrive on Christmas Eve. The night before, Kathe put on her nightdress and opened her window. The icy air cut deep into her lungs, yet instead of scurrying to bed as she normally did she leaned her elbows on the window-ledge, gazing at the blue glitter of moonlight on the majestic peaks. Smiling, she hummed the sinuous romantic notes of

“In the Still of the Night’; moving dreamily, she climbed between the cold starch-scented sheets, pulling the goosedown cover high. She shivered a few times, and then the feathers warmed her.

“Kathe?”

Wyatt whispered at her door.

“Asleep?”

“Not yet.”

“Mind if I come in a sec?”

There was no door-knob. Kathe got up to pull the antiquated iron bolt, which needed both hands to draw it back. Her hair, loosened from its long plait, reached below her waist, a pale cloudy cape silvered by the moon. The light also etched the slender curves of her body beneath the long full nightgown.

Wyatt gazed at her.

“I decided to hand over your present early,”

he said in a strangely pitched voice, then reached out to touch her hair.

She could scarcely breathe.

“Come inside,”

she whispered.

“I shouldn’t

She put her arms around his waist, pressing against him. With a groan he buried his face in her hair, kissing the base of her neck. Just as she felt the drumming of his heart, so he felt the rapid beat of her pulse.

“Kathe,”

he murmured against her ear.

“You’re shivering.”

“Trembling …

“

Lifting her, he carried her to the narrow bed.

She drew the feather quilt over his shoulders as he pushed up on one elbow, smoothing back her thick cool hair and kissing her eyelids before he kissed her mouth. Her lips parted, the endless kiss became more and more passionate, and she drew down the ribboned straps of her nightgown. He buried his face between her breasts. A breeze rustled the tied-back curtains, faraway sleigh-bells jangled. Without speaking, they drew apart briefly to throw off their nightclothes. Naked bodies clasped; they were both slick with sweat.

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An entire orchestra of emotions played tumultuously within Wyatt. Love that was almost worship, lust, the desire to be part of her; but these were dominated by the need to bind her to him for ever. The act he had forbidden himself seemed the sole bridge across the chasm her parents had placed between them - yet he couldn’t quell the compunctions swirling through him.

“Kathe love, I better go back upstairs.”

“I want to.”

“Love, I meant us to wait…

“

“Three years … ? Please, ah, please

His weight shifted on to her, and she moved her thighs apart. He caressed her until* she moaned and bit his shoulder, then he guided himself into her. At the sharp pain, she gasped.

He kissed her hair, her face, her throat, whispering incoherent endearments before he pressed again, and then she was moving in the same rhythm as he. A cloud passed over the moon, and neither noticed the darkness. Snow fell with a powdery thump from an eave above her window, but they did not hear. All at once Kathe was still, the same stillness that might be felt if the earth ceased its rotation; then spasms fluttered around Wyatt, and his body was no longer his but transmuted into another being, their joined selves, and he raced yet faster into the mysterious darkness.

She drowsed. Waking, for a brief instant she imagined she was dreaming, but his body, the moisture gluing their legs together was real.

“How long was I asleep?”

“A minute or so.”

He kissed her ncSe.

“I never intended this to happen. Oh hell, why lie? The other guy, the civilized Wyatt Kingsmith, he didn’t intend. The real me hasn’t thought of much else since I saw you outside the Olympic Stadium.”

He kissed her nose.

“What would you say about coming back home with me?”

She sighed.

“Wyatt, it’s impossible.”

“Myself, I rank what we just did over their three-year plan.”

“I love you so much. But they’re only doing what they think is right. Besides, I gave my word.”

” didn’t.”

“Hush,”

she said, kissing him.

“I’m not going to give up, love, so be prepared.”

He rested his cheek against hers. He said:

“Kathe, when we get another chance, I’ll be careful.”

“Careful?”

His chuckle was soft in the darkness.

“Maybe you are too young. Birth control ever heard of it?”

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‘In theory, not in practice.”

He chuckled again, rubbing his knuckle lightly over her lips. Then the mattress creaked as he rolled on to his back.

“Kathe, did you have anything to do with Heinrich Leventhal bringing Uncle Alfred his collection?”

“No,”

she said; and, though this was true, her face burned. She had told Wyatt nothing about her meeting with Herr Leventhal on Museum Island or the activities that resulted from that afternoon.

“Just a thought.”

He took her hand, pressing it to his chest so she could feel his beating heart.

“One thing you should keep in mind. What just happened, making love to you, was the best part of my entire life. If I live to be a hundred, it’ll be the best part.”

When she got up the following morning, she stumbled on a worn jewellery-box. She pressed the catch. On the inset velvet lay a large oval amethyst centred with a star of tiny diamonds and seed pearls. Wyatt had folded a note inside the box: Christmas, 1937. This brooch belonged to my great-grandmother Wyatt, who owned slaves. What’s more appropriate than for you to receive it from your personal slave?

IV

Alfred and Sigi arrived on the afternoon train. That night they lit the beeswax tapers on the Christmas tree. After the traditional goose and gingerbread, they bundled up and hurried through Garmisch. Candle-lit trees shining in windows of the wide-eaved houses dimly outlined the scenes of peasant life painted on exterior walls. Breath streaming, Clothilde and Sigi carolled:

Stille Nacht

Heilige Nacht

Alles schlaft,

Einsam wacht…

Kathe, Alfred and Wyatt joined them in English.

Silent night,

Holy night,

All is calm,

All is bright…

There were two St Martin’s churches in the village of Garmisch. As a rule Alfred and Clothilde, like most of the holiday people, attended the newer one, the eighteenth-century onion-domed church. Tonight, however, they selected the medieval arches and faded frescos of Old St Martin’s. The cold air smelt of sweat, heavy loden cloth and strong Bavarian beer.

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When they emerged, the church gateposts had been freshly affixed with signs: Jews not welcome here.

Wyatt strode forward, yanking them both down.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Planted in front of Wyatt stood a man equally as tall but hugely thick in his clumsy mountain togs. With his feathered hat pulled low, his bushy moustache seemed to divide his broad face in equal halves.

“What does it look like?”

Wyatt responded, crumpling the signs on to the snow.

“A hell of a birthday message.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Stop me if I’m wrong, but we’re celebrating Christ’s birthday, aren’t we? And wasn’t he Jewish?”

“What sort of accent is that?”

“American.”

The moustached giant glanced at the churchgoers who had gathered around them.

“What can you expect from mongrel foreigners?”

“Go soak your head,”

Wyatt said, clenching his fists.

Alfred pulled at Wyatt’s arm, muttering in English:

“This is Bavaria; the politics is stronger here.”

A shorter local had stepped forward.

“Is he a Jew?”

The question that reverberated throughout the Third Reich.

“Are you crazy?”

Sigi responded.

“I’m Siegfried von Hohenau, and this is my cousin.”

The burly man with the moustache glanced at Sigi’s uniform topcoat, then bent for the paper signs.

“Well, then, Herr Oberleutnant von Hohenau, if your American relation don’t like the way we do things in the Reich, tell him to stay home, where he can put his tongue up the arses of his Jew friends.”

v

Wyatt clenched his fists.

“

An unpleasant smile of satisfaction showed below the moustache.

“So you want to fight, do you, Jew-lover?”

“You’re on, buster,”

Wyatt said, raising his fists.

Side-stepping the blow, the big man swung his enormous fists at Wyatt’s stomach. The old one-two. Both blows connected. As Wyatt staggered backwards, the second man gripped his right arm, twisting it behind him. The duo’s movements showed a rehearsed quality. It struck Kathe that they must have provoked this sort of incident many times. As Wyatt struggled to free himself, the larger assailant landed a left hook.

Kathe didn’t see the blood spout from Wyatt’s nose. The churchgoers had converged on the fight.

“Where’s a policeman?”

Alfred shouted.

Sigi shoved through the crowd to help Wyatt. A hobnailed boot was thrust out. Sigi tripped, expelling a dry little breath as he dropped into the snow mounded on the side of the path.

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Wyatt had broken free. Shoulder muscles bunching, he landed a blow in the middle toggle of his huge assailant’s jacket. The smack of the blow could be heard, then a grunt.

Fury contorted the moustached face.

“You need a real lesson!”

“Enough!”

Clothilde’s voice rang with the command that can only be acquired through generations of unquestioned authority.