by Ben Pastor
Was that what it was? Though he had spent a good part of his life in army barracks and at the front, “whore” was a word Bora seldom used: perhaps because he thought that you couldn’t apply such a term to a woman if there wasn’t at least one man on the scene.
Inside, despite its dimness, all in all the hotel still gave an impression of sophistication. The concierge was the same from his stays with Dikta – only greyer, with the disenchanted, resolute look of a skipper whose ship may be sinking but who would never haul down the flag. He remembered Bora; his greeting had that special quality of recognition devoid of servility, and was impeccable. Each was quietly surprised that the other hadn’t died in the meantime. With a soldierly nod, the man answered Bora’s enquiry by saying that yes, Baroness Sickingen was in. Should he phone her room?
“Yes, please.”
“Your key, sir.”
The fact that he had been provided with a car at the airport (albeit the wrong one) and a bed at Berlin’s premier hotel courtesy of the Interior Ministry was so out of the ordinary that Bora began to think it might truly betray a concerted attempt to make Reinhardt-Thoma’s death appear natural.
“Please advise me as soon as there’s a call for me from the Schönefeld airfield,” he said.
The Blue Room, once so brightly lit, looked rather drab, despite the wall sconces doing what they could to make up for the obscured French windows. It was there that Bora paced the floor as he waited for his mother. At the funeral, they’d merely stood side by side; but this was a meeting: there was no avoiding the difficult chasm created by Peter’s death, the mutilation. It had to be bridged somehow.
Nina found him in the middle of the room, where he stopped at once and turned to greet her. She walked up to him; he clicked his heels and kissed her hand. Those formal steps were necessary for him to let go enough to embrace her. Thankfully, the looks they gave each other sufficiently expressed what would have been too hard to say with words. Nina couldn’t help but ask, “How are you, Martin?” He promptly answered “Fine”, and she did not persist. What followed were a few solicitous phrases, the sharing of news expected in those circumstances. How things were at home – and, yes, how suddenly Uncle Reinhardt-Thoma had been taken from them. Words floated like useless debris over real feelings. For Bora it was very sad seeing her in black, for Peter and now for his uncle too.
She led the way to a small table where the graceful armchairs were those of old, making this meeting in a bombed-out city less absurd.
“They’ve told me that the burial will take place as soon as possible,” she said. “At night, along with those of others.”
Briefly, the mirrored squares above the fireplace reflected her slender neck and shoulders as she walked past, and for a moment it was as if her delicate double were crossing a phantom room next door. “I must go to see Saskia next, if I can.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Best if I go on my own, Martin. Frau Sommer, your uncle’s secretary, is coming to fetch me in half an hour, and will accompany me to the Wilmersdorf hospital. Saskia is in the infectious diseases ward, you know.”
Bora, who was standing a few feet away from her, went to the door and closed it.
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“I imagine it was the only way she could think of to avoid attending the funeral. Times have not been easy for them lately.”
This would have been the right moment for Bora to report Olbertz’s gossip, but he decided against it; he sensed that Nina had herself heard something whispered by the nurses, which she was keeping from him for the same reason. He hoped to capitalize on the little time he had with his mother in Berlin, but he understood that there were things she had to take care of in Dahlem.
She sat down, inviting him to do the same.
“Martin, before the funeral Dr Goerdeler entrusted me with a message for you.”
“Did he?”
Bora wouldn’t usually admit to being surprised, but in this case he could afford to. Nina was discretion itself. Like her small handbag, her gloves, the light touch of face powder, everything about her derived its elegance from understatement.
“Yes. Tonight at nine you’re to report to the office of Arthur Nebe, chief of the Criminal Police.” She drew a small breath. “Carl-Friedrich was not concerned, so I believe it may be routine …”
This time Bora found it difficult to stay impassive. Routine? How can it be routine that the head of the Kripo – who, incidentally, is also a general in the SS and presides over the International Criminal Police Commission – is summoning me?
“Did he say anything else, Nina?”
“Only not to worry, and to use the service entrance.”
It made less and less sense. If his mother was frightened (and she might well be), she was concealing it for his sake. Bora, too, kept his composure.
“Very well. We’ll see what Group Leader Nebe wants.”
In fact, his heart was in his mouth, especially after meeting Salomon. He knew about Nebe from the days of Einsatzgruppe B and its death squads in the East. It did not give him any pleasure to march into his office of his own accord. He wished that he could tell himself that he hadn’t got himself in any trouble, but it’d be a lie – although the trouble he had got himself into fell under the Gestapo’s oversight, not the Criminal Police’s. The one element that reassured him a little was the messenger: Carl-Friedrich Goerdeler, a former official who wasn’t in the Party’s good graces. If Nebe had entrusted the message to him instead of one of his uniformed thugs, there was a reason for it. Olbertz’s whispered words came back to him; and although he didn’t share them with his mother, he did say: “It could have something to do with Uncle, Nina. If his clinic and residence are still standing, who knows, perhaps there was an attempted break-in overnight.”
“Do you suppose so? Maybe.”
They were sitting in such a way that, by slightly leaning forwards, they could have reached for each other’s hand; but Bora would not initiate such a contact, which might undo the effort Nina was clearly making to control her emotions. They sat and looked at each other – she treasuring him, he treasuring her, but aware that even now, even in her presence, he was pulling away from things. He forced himself to keep to polite topics: enquiring about his stepfather, the General (whom Nina referred to as “your father”), his grandparents’ health, Peter’s wife and the baby, bombed-out friends staying at the family home in Borna … It surprised him to hear that his sister-in-law had moved out of the house on Birkenstrasse.
“She returned to her parents’ place in Esterwegen, Martin.”
“Ah. It’s safer, in the countryside out west.”
“True.”
“And the Bora Verlag’s Berlin branch …?”
Nina removed her gloves without haste, resting them in her lap together with the small handbag. “As we expected, the June raid completely destroyed the office in the Zeitungsviertel, and Grandfather Franz-August’s townhouse has been badly hit. But the printing facilities out in Potsdam are still functioning. Leopardi’s opera omnia is coming out next month, with a preface by the poet Ungaretti.”
“Ungaretti, right. He’s teaching in Italy now, isn’t he?”
“In Rome, I believe.”
Bora nodded. He found it difficult to relax his shoulders or look away from her. “Pulling away from things” offered no absolute protection from pain. From one moment to the next, words could feel insubstantial or unbearably heavy, easy or entirely impossible to pronounce. The fuller the heart is, the less it is able to empty itself. Oddly, the more distanced he felt, the more beautiful his mother appeared to him – a compliment Bora wasn’t able to pay her; he feared that whatever he said would only hurt her. Especially if he asked about her grief. His brother’s death was another reason for him not to talk about himself.
“Make sure you give my love to Saskia.”
“Of course.”
“And ask her if she needs anything.”
“I w
ill.”
His own wounds, the end of his marriage, knowing that he was politically at risk, seemed paltry compared to the loss that Nina, that everyone in the family, had experienced. She has lost one of her two sons, and I will for ever be “the other one” – I became “the other one” when it happened, and will always be the one who should have died instead of Peter. If I cannot forgive myself for it, how can my parents forgive me? The thought overwhelmed him, and Bora braced himself against his emotions. He was seldom moved to tears, and the fact that it’d happened in Rome, weeks earlier, filled him with shame, even though it had been brought about by extreme stress and anguish. If he remembered correctly, his mother had last seen him weep when he was maybe twelve years old. It amazed him that she wasn’t crying; he believed that his sitting here, while Peter was dead, must be intolerable for her. If I’d been the one to die they would still be a complete family – father, mother, son. Now we are two families – my mother and the General, my mother and myself – doubly mutilated.
“Have you heard from our friends in East Prussia lately, Nina?”
“Not directly. One of the Modereggers wrote that they’re all well.”
When Nina opened the handbag to put away her gloves, he caught a brief glimpse of a dainty cigarette case inside it. She never used to smoke, so she was clearly contravening one of the General’s diktats about healthy living. Bora liked her even more for it.
Here they sat, the relatives of a man whom the regime may have destroyed, while a bomb from an aeroplane was being defused a few blocks away and with a summons from Arthur Nebe for tonight, and he was courteously enquiring about friends. Well, we all protect ourselves as best we can. She is waiting for me to say something, and knows I can’t, so she waits without prompting me. Bora looked at his mother’s hands with admiration and a sense of gratitude, of comfort. She rarely wore jewels, and this was neither the place nor the time to put on a display. On her right hand she only wore her wedding band and an ancient family ring, the same one she’d intended to give Dikta the day of her church wedding to Bora. The General, who’d never approved of the match, had forbidden it. Now Bora wondered why she’d given in to him that time, since his mother was not the sort of woman who took imposition lightly. It’s because she didn’t care for Dikta either. Even in this I let her down, just as I did by not having children with my wife … Then he realized – and it was a raw awakening – that Nina might have known about Dikta’s abortions and never told him. If the General had found out he’d have thrown it in my face, like he did in Krakow five years ago when he spoke ill of Dikta’s behaviour before she met me. If he hadn’t already been aboard the train then, I don’t know if I could have controlled myself. I held a grudge against him for months, and in truth I still do today. Yes, Nina must have known of the abortions, or at least she’d suspected. When she wrote to me before Stalingrad that “Dikta isn’t feeling well”, it was because she was pregnant. Of course. And since nothing came of it she must have suspected that, unless she had suffered a miscarriage, Dikta had chosen not to carry the child to term. Dikta herself told me all about it in Rome – so that it’d be the final blow, the one that would make me break away from her, set her free. So now she is free, and I’m not.
Bora contemplated his mother with a humiliating need to admit his pain, one he would not give in to. “The fuller the heart is …” Whatever happens, whatever today’s strange meetings portend, I’m heading back to the front after this; let’s face it, we may not see each other again in this life. He used the same arguments on himself that he employed as an interrogator on captured enemies, which all came down to variations on “You had better start talking now.”
Above the fireplace – which had been blocked, so that smoke and debris from air raids would not come down the chimney – the mirrored tiles reflected the opposite wall. Above them, reaching nearly to the stuccoed ceiling, a painted scene showed two girls reclining in an impossibly idyllic landscape. Bora looked at the delicate décor, and kept avoiding the heart of the matter between them. Finally, he said – as one who begins to acknowledge the necessity of getting to the centre, but starts at the furthest point of the spiral – “Somehow I was sure that Peter’s wife would stay with you. I hope Dikta’s leaving had nothing to do with it; I realize how close the two of them were.” It was another way of saying, “I hope Dikta was not a bad influence on her, at least in your eyes.”
“The girls were close,” Nina agreed. Too tactful to add a comment, she did use the moment to say, without looking directly at him, “A few months ago, when you wrote to me and asked me to, I did ask your wife, ‘Do you love him?’ At first Benedikta just smiled. You know her smile. Then she answered, ‘Of course.’ ‘But enough to have children by him?’ I insisted. ‘Nina, I don’t think we’re ready to have children.’ ‘Martin is.’ ‘I’m not. But I do love him. Do you love your husband?’”
Bora was painfully jarred by finding himself so suddenly at the spiral’s core – another reaction that he strove to conceal. He said something under his breath, and when Nina’s glance indicated that she hadn’t caught his words, he repeated, “A disrespectful comment on her part,” as if her impertinence had been the centre of the spiral all along and he could now simply back out of it again.
“That was Benedikta, Martin. Then, in September, when you were wounded in the ambush, it was the last straw as far as she was concerned. She was even more distraught than during the Stalingrad days, because you were so severely injured. I was hoping they’d repatriate you. But your father informed me that you’d asked not to be, that you’d chosen to be hospitalized in Italy, and added, ‘He’s right. He’s a soldier, he doesn’t want to risk being returned to Germany and being reassigned to a desk. I understand him, and support him.’ Then Benedikta told us quite plainly that it could not go on like this, and that she’d already started the paperwork for an annulment. In fact, that was the reason for her forthcoming journey to Rome. ‘I already wrote to him,’ she said. ‘Martin knows why I’ll be there, and it’s better this way.’ Your father became so enraged, he slapped her.”
“He should have never done that.”
Nina absent-mindedly passed her fingers along her cuff, as if smoothing over Bora’s criticism. “But as we now know, the letter did not reach you. The rest – we are sadly familiar with.”
“Yes, we are.”
He’d stepped out of the spiral again, having avoided the centre. But then Nina – whether because she now felt able to speak more freely or because she was seeking to distract him – admitted: “We are having some difficulties with Margaretha at the moment, your father and I.”
Ah, yes, Duckie was moving out of her in-laws’ home, where both women had spent their married lives. Was there more to it? Nina and the General seldom called their young wives by their nicknames, like they did their sons: thus Dikta remained Benedikta, and Duckie was Margaretha. Bora jumped at the chance to forget the topic of his failed marriage.
“How so?”
“She has changed so much since Peter was shot down over Russia. Grief, bitterness. She has soured, Martin.”
Nina looked down. Bora had the brightness of his eyes from her; he saw himself in her act of dimming them quickly, to shield herself, as if she felt responsible for the behaviour of those around her – another trait she and he shared.
“Margaretha is … Oh, it’s become quite difficult to relate to her. For the first six months after her little girl was born, she spent entire days in bed with the curtains drawn. She was angry at the world, at all of us. Since this spring, she has been seeing one of Peter’s former squadron colleagues, who is on an assignment at headquarters.” Bora wanted to ask, Is that the problem?, but his mother anticipated him: “It is understandable. I know, I have been a young widow myself. But those were other times, there were different rules: even in mourning, time moved more slowly.”
“Not now,” Bora said. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, my dear. Anyway, that is
n’t the problem. She is free to do with her life as she wishes, after Peter. The fact is, Margaretha always wanted everything to be rosy for the two of them. She expected it. Her sweetness depended on the continuation of their love story. Because they were so much in love, you know. We were awaiting Peter in Leipzig for the birth, and then …” Nina straightened her back, facing the recollection. “I can never thank Benedikta enough for the role she played when you called from Russia with the terrible news, thirteen months ago. The women were down in the garden – the birth was only days away – and it was enough for your father, distraught as he was, to look at Benedikta from the window, for her to understand that disaster had struck, and that it concerned Margaretha. She was able to put on a good face, I don’t know how, and in her sensible way convince her sister-in-law to go out for a long walk. She did this so that we would have time to grieve alone for an hour or two without her knowing. And so Margaretha found out only a month later when all the risks had passed, concerning her health or the baby’s.”
“I didn’t know.”
“In the weeks after the incident Benedikta was superb. She was such a help to me, Martin. She kept the secret by telling Margaretha that all furloughs had been cancelled, and thus capably kept her away from your father, who was silent and withdrawn.”