The Twins (42 page)

For her husband the stresses were different. He grumbled about the English, the Canadians, the Americans; he lashed out against the new government; he opposed the rejoicing and
glorification
of the Western Allies while nothing was said about the grandiose exertions in the east. ‘The western front would not have stood a chance,’ he argued, ‘without Stalingrad, without the
eastern
front, without the millions of losses in the Soviet army, without Stalin’s indomitability and slyness,’ he argued. ‘The serious danger came from the east, Hitler knew that very well, all Germans knew that – why is everyone silent about it, why is it deliberately covered up in the press?’ During his philippics he was generous enough to give himself the answer, ‘From fear of the Bolsheviks! Ha! Because their actual enemy is Communism, not Fascism.’ He added a
further prediction without obligation: ‘That fear will unite them all.’ Shaking with indignation, he put a record on the turntable. Only the greatest composers could calm him – apart from Wagner who had to spend the rest of his life at the bottom of a deep drawer.

Long ago they used to sit in a bath-tub together, now they were lying in separate baths in pastel-coloured bathrooms and thinking about the bizarre, painful relationship that was attracting and repelling them. Every day they met in the deserted corridors on the way from the peat bath to the underwater massage or the
carbonated
bath. Overlooking the water flowing tirelessly from the
fountains
, they were driven together at the end of the morning by the longing for a cup of coffee in the Salle de Repos. Their penchant for coffee at least they had in common; could such a thing be built into the genes? They met beneath Leda and the Swan and drank their coffee in little gulps. Usually it was Anna who dispelled the heaviness and languor of the
après
bain
by beginning on ‘it’ again.

Anna was outside the gate with her suitcase. It was the end of September, it was raining, it was peace. She had no one to go to. There was only one person she longed for; having decided to go and look for him, she had thought up a plan of campaign for
getting
as close as she could to his vicinity.

The first phase of it was Bad Neuheim in Hessen, where she would meet Ilse. She was allowed to ride in the back of an open freight lorry, crammed in with sixty released Wehrmacht soldiers. The wind went right through her drenched nurse’s uniform. She clung on to the side of the lorry, shivering and teeth chattering. ‘Go and sit inside, next to the driver, sister,’ urged one of the
soldiers
. ‘If he gets intimate, call us and we’ll make quick work of him.’ One of them knocked on the cab, the lorry stopped – he explained the reason in broken English. ‘Of course,’ nodded the black American, opening the door courteously for Anna. Inside it
was warm and comfortable. He shared his lunch fraternally with her. Each communicated in their own double-Dutch on an
unfamiliar
wavelength. ‘Where are you going to?’ he asked. ‘I have no one,’ she explained, ‘my husband is dead, my home has been bombed. I have a meeting in Bad Neuheim with someone who can perhaps help me with work.’ Shocked by her own frankness, she looked at his supple brown fingers that held the steering wheel loosely. Who was he? Who was she herself? Where did they
originate
from? Where were they going to? A former slave from Africa come to Germany via America. A former maid from Cologne back in Germany via Austria, as an ex-prisoner, in the company of an ex-slave from Africa who had been regarded as a potential rapist until a few moments ago. As though he sensed her confusion he laughed with her in an amiable way.

At Bad Neuheim she went in search of the address Ilse had given her, lugging her suitcase. Dawdling Americans spoke to her. They looked at her, surprised to be ignored; most women put up no resistance to their lures, only too glad to saunter through the village on their arms and smoke their cigarettes. Anna was so focused on her unapproachability that it took a long time before she discovered that the street she was looking for was right there under her feet. The woman of the house let her in and pushed a letter from Ilse into her hand as though it concerned a state secret. She had already gone to her parents in Saarburg and requested Anna to follow her at her own convenience. ‘How do I get there?’ Anna asked. Saarburg was in the French zone; only the original inhabitants in possession of the correct papers had the right to return there. Anna, as a Viennese, had no ghost of a chance. ‘We’ll think of something,’ whispered the woman, leaving her in a neat bedroom.

An American officer was billeted in the same house, a lawyer from Chicago. She was introduced to him the next morning and discovered that the enormous empire reaching from one ocean to the other, conquered by covered wagon, lasso and rifle, had for
once brought forth a civilized citizen by chance who, above all, spoke her own language. ‘I find it so awful, what the Nazis have done to the German people …’ ‘They haven’t done anything to me,’ said Anna dourly, ‘American artillery shot my husband, American bombs destroyed my apartment, Americans took me prisoner.’ But he would not be put off, patiently he dragged in his arguments so as to bring her another perspective. At the same time his lessons in politics and war studies were a veiled form of subtle seduction – Anna, not deaf to the erotic undertone, managed to keep her distance with polite objections during the days of enforced waiting. Bad Neuheim teemed with German soldiers who had lost an arm or a leg; they sat wearily on benches next to each other and stared silently at the passing Americans who had conquered their women as well as their country. Anna recognized Martin in their midst – it cut her to the quick to see them sitting there.

One evening the American invited her to a party. ‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘Well …’ he felt his clean-shaven jaw, ‘there’s a bit to eat, a bit to drink, a bit of being happy …’ ‘And then?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Well, and then …? It would be good for you, you are young, you can’t be sad for ever.’ ‘Danke, nein,’ she shook her head, ‘the end of the party is quite clear to me.’ ‘I can’t help being a man,’ he apologized. ‘Nor I a woman,’ she added, ‘and my husband died a year ago. Excuse me but you didn’t seriously think I would go to a party with you …’ She uttered the word as though she had a bitter almond in her mouth. He bowed his head in acquiescence. He was no match for such intransigence, whether as a soldier or a man or a wordsmith. He was being re-posted the following day. An enormous bunch of red roses was delivered for Anna, proof of a frivolous extravagance in this time of shortages. A card was
hanging
among the leaves. ‘For the first German woman to say No.’

Arrangements had meanwhile been made for her. A haulier from Bad Neuheim who had permission to cross the zone
boundary
was prepared to smuggle her to Koblenz. He drove up with his horse and wagon; she had to lie down with her suitcase on the floor
that had been covered by a tarpaulin. Sacks with unknown contents were piled up over her, leaving an air hole. The relaxed Americans let them through but the French made spot checks, poking their bayonets into the sacks – just missing Anna, who was inhaling the smell of tarpaulin and waiting fearlessly. Perhaps she was only spared because secretly she longed for it and preferred the fate of struggling victims. The man on the box said his prayers, sweating, he admitted afterwards to her as he helped her out at Koblenz station.

No more trains were running that night. A herd of stranded travellers was sleeping in the station. Anna installed herself on the ground next to an old man in a patched-up army coat who put a bottle of wine to his lips and then generously allowed it to circulate in his immediate vicinity while he spread butter on chunks of white bread and distributed them at random. Anna declined his offer but he pushed his bottle into her hands with a gesture that would brook no opposition. ‘I’ve got lots more,’ he grinned, unconcerned,
pointing
to his bag with a shaking finger. She hesitated no longer; the ebullient atmosphere round the generous old man was infectious. The vineyards on the slopes of the Mosel were praised
unanimously
, the bottle went pragmatically from mouth to mouth. Anna stretched out on the floor, the suitcase beneath her head, and slowly dozed off. In the morning she was woken with wine –
breakfast
had the same ingredients as the previous evening’s supper. They forgot their cares, there was singing, the autumn sun shone, even the train to Trier puffed into the station. Festivities continued in the compartment, the crumpled host at its beaming centre.

The train stopped half-way. The rails were missing for a
distance
of a few kilometres. They continued on foot, singing
travelling
songs, drinking. The sun glistened in the profuse tinsel of wild hops along the railway line. Another train was waiting further on. Nothing could suppress the jollity. ‘What sort of company is this?’ growled a priest sitting by the window. ‘That boozing, that
drunken
talk.’ Irritated, he took up his breviary and began to pray, to
compensate for the immorality surrounding him. ‘Will you have some?’ Anna offered him the bottle, laughing. He shook his head with pursed lips. Everyone got out at Bernkastel, leaving her alone in the priest’s company. She leaned out of the window to wave to the creased philanthropist who had spread so much happiness around him. He tottered along the platform, awaited by his wife who, with hawk eyes at a distance, had already put together the diagnosis for an empty bag. ‘Where is the bread …?’ she let fly, ‘where is the butter, where is …!’ The shrivelled-up little man raised his arms to heaven. ‘In paradise …’ he moaned.

The train set off again. The feeling of happiness induced by the wine turned to sadness. Sentimental tears dribbled down the lowered window as she stared at his ever diminishing figure. She flopped back into her seat. The priest looked up flabbergasted from his breviary. Remembering his Christian duty he enquired
haughtily
why she was crying. She explained why the number of times she had been happy since October 1944 could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Moreover it was not an insouciant happiness as before but one that was rooted in despair. Familiar with this sort of paradox – suffering for the sake of salvation was another one – he nodded.

It was already dark and they were not yet in Trier. ‘Have you got an address for the night?’ he asked matter-of-factly. ‘The station,’ said Anna laconically. He looked disapprovingly at her. ‘Why do you think I look like this …?’ she pointed to her dirty uniform. He was silent, pensive. ‘If I took you to the nuns, in the convent? Would you come with me?’ ‘Good heavens!’ she cried, ‘does such a thing still exist?’ ‘Yes of course.’ ‘In these times?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ruffled. ‘Of course I’ll go with you.’

When they arrived at Trier, Anna was in the middle of the hangover-thirst phase. She got out, dead-beat. ‘Follow me,’ said the father sternly. He walked rapidly into the dark town. She dragged the heavy suitcase like a dog on a lead behind her over the bumpy cobbles. He walked ten paces ahead of her without looking
round, for fear of compromising himself. She thought that he was not so much driven by Christian charity as by protecting his own place in heaven: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ She followed the black habit past the dark façades, panting. Every step was a step back in time, up to the Romans in the form of the Porta Nigra that towered threateningly above her in its sombre massiveness. The
representative
of the Church turned right and stopped at a heavy wooden door with iron studs. He knocked, muttered three words and was gone, without shaking hands, without saying goodbye; no sign of humanity whatsoever escaped from this servant of God.

God’s female servants had quite a different attitude to their status as the chosen. They raised a hand to their mouth when they saw her and immediately began to put things in order. A bath-tub was filled with warm water, her dirty clothes were received; while she lay in the bath the convent filled with nocturnal activity. She was wrapped in a chaste towel and taken to a guest room where she slid between clean, smooth sheets and fell asleep with the picture of a heavenly smiling nun before her eyes. When she woke her light grey striped nurse’s uniform was on the table, shining in the morning sun – washed, ironed and pressed.

She arrived at Saarburg as an impeccable Red Cross sister. History repeated itself. Ilse had already departed again, as advocate for her fiancé who was still in captivity, prompted to hurry by the disturbing prospect of the approaching winter. But there was work for Anna. A particularly unsavory chore had waited patiently for her all that time. In revenge for five years of war the Luxemburgers had crossed over the border and had given full vent to their feelings of displeasure in a hit-and-run raid on the villagers’ property. The walls and windows of Ilse’s parents’ half-timbered house had been smeared with excrement. Linen had been pulled out of the
cupboards
and dirtied – they had sprawled on it, said the woman with a mouth taut from suppressed rage, and had manufactured the material of their revenge before her eyes. ‘The tit-for-tat answer,
you understand. A disgusting people those Luxemburgers.’ She was too sickly to take on the great cleaning herself, while her
husband
spent long days in his sawmill.

Anna rolled up her sleeves and began. She had gone away from a pigsty ten years ago, now she was back in it. What difference did it make? But when a lorry from the sawmill was able to take her some way in the right direction, she threw the mop and brush in a corner – she had made enough outflanking movements now. Ilse’s mother, who knew what had brought her diligent cleaning woman to these parts, had to let her go. The lorry drove out of the town in a thick drizzle, to Daun in the Eifel. She continued on foot, through immense pine forests that dissolved in a mist of fine
droplets
. It was chilly, the damp penetrated through her soles, but the knowledge that she was getting closer all the time made her
indifferent
to discomfort. This deserted road, sauntering uphill,
downhill
between melancholy pines, was precisely what you could expect of a pilgrim’s route to the underworld. She was not afraid. The end of the journey was coming into view, afterwards there would be nothing more to wish for, afterwards … there was no afterwards. The cold crept up to her middle, she progressed more slowly, her soles were worn out, the patches hung loose and flapped with each step. All she could see was shiny black tree trunks and dripping branches – her spirit stubbornly insisted although her body was showing increasing signs of unwillingness. At a given moment he could not bear to look any longer and began to
interfere
. Listen, dearest, he said compassionately, do go home. What do you want? I’m not there at all … Thus he chatted to her;
initially
she ignored him but when he – carefully as always – arranged an approaching driver who loomed up out of the mist, she
capitulated
. Today you win, she admitted, but come I shall … at a more suitable moment …