Today, Benita and Franz were alone. Clotilde and her grandfather had taken the train north to visit Franz’s ailing sister.
As soon as they entered the flat, Benita turned and hooked her hands into his waistband.
Franz took her fingers in his and brought them to his lips. Still holding them, he walked her backward to the brand-new sofa—yellow with stiff cushions—under the open window.
“What are you doing?” Benita laughed, pulling away her hands.
“Bringing you to the sofa,” Franz said. “Making you sit. Getting you a cup of tea.”
“But I don’t want tea!” she protested, catching his hand as she sat back, with a poof, on the cushion.
“I insist,” he said, pulling away. “A lady deserves tea after a long journey.”
“Oh, a lady!” she said. “How fine. And how has the gentleman been?”
“Lonely,” Franz said, lighting the gas under the kettle. “Waiting for your visit.”
“But now he wants to wait even longer?” Benita teased, batting her lashes and watching him blush. A widower, a soldier, a man nearing forty-six, and still such an innocent! With him, she adopted the old role of flirt and temptress that had once been her signature. She slipped off her shoes and tucked her feet underneath her on the sofa.
“How was the wedding?” he asked, measuring tea into the strainer. He was so careful and considerate—traits she would have hated in her young life, but that now endeared him to her. His carefulness made her feel safe.
“Wonderful,” Benita said. “The bride wore a gray suit and the groom his best lederhosen.” She laughed aloud at the image of Herr Kellerman in a pair of short pants. “No, but really it was nice. Ania looked happy—at least secretly.”
Franz handed Benita a steaming cup—thick white china, the kind one could buy at any market now, so different from Marianne’s fine Meissen. Benita would miss those when she became Frau Muller—their refinement and air of bygone elegance. But she held no more illusions; she could eat off fine china, but she would never be an aristocrat.
“Franz,” she said, hooking her foot around his leg as he started back for his own cup. “Franzl.” She loved calling him that—it was such a boy’s name, so inappropriate for the man before her. “When will you make me a good woman? Have you been looking at flats?”
His face slackened, and immediately Benita wished she had not teased. Franz would find one when there was enough money—she had no doubt. And then they would be married. It was only a question of time.
“Not yet,” he said as if breaking terrible news. “I’m sorry—I think it will be another month.”
“Hush—never mind. I’m only teasing.” She ran her stockinged foot farther up his leg. “But now you must stop teasing me.”
Slowly, Franz leaned down and took the cup of tea from her hand, placing it on the side table. Then he pulled her to her feet. She pressed her breasts against his chest, delighted by their regained roundness in her new brassiere—a white lace shelf that created real décolletage. It was the first piece of lingerie she had owned since before the war. In it she felt young again and excited by her own beauty.
“That’s better,” she murmured against his lips and unbuttoned her dress.
They made love four more times during the twenty-four-hour visit. It was never enough.
Benita had always cultivated her seduction skills—Connie was not her first—and her husband had benefited from her experience. There was Heinrich Kohl and Karl Josef before him, handsome, fresh-faced village boys with whom she had practiced, with the explicit intention of gaining expertise. She was a dreamer, but she was not naive. She had always known that it was not her brains that would get her out of Frühlinghausen. And so she had learned how to slip her tongue into the rim of a man’s ear just so, how to graze her nipples against his chest, a titillating reminder of their presence as she slid one hand down over his belly to the ridge of his hip.
With Connie, all this had come together in an impressive bit of theater that he had loved. For a man of experience—which Connie Fledermann certainly was—he had been oddly enthralled by her simple games. And she had used that to every advantage. But for her, the benefit was only his addled affection, never any pleasure of her own.
With Franz it was different. There was no pretending. After Berlin, sex was something she had never thought she would want again. Yet somehow she did. She wanted him. And around him, she had no shame.
“Franz,” she said, rising on her elbow sometime before dinner on the second day. Her stomach rumbled. They had eaten nothing except Marianne’s oranges and chocolate, and the sugar made her light-headed. “Let’s go to Lufner’s. I could eat five schnitzels.”
Franz rolled onto his back. They were pressed against each other and lying on his cot—a rudimentary thing that he didn’t entirely fit into even on his own. He slept on this, his father on the couch, and Clotilde in the bedroom. The flat Benita envisioned for the future Frau Muller was to be much bigger, with a room for each and a proper wardrobe for Clotilde. She had spent hours daydreaming of this.
“Jawohl,” Franz said, swinging his giant legs off the bed. “Whatever Frau Fledermann wishes.”
While Franz was in the washroom, Benita scribbled a note to tuck into his underwear drawer. It was a silly little thing on a scrap of package paper—I love you and a picture of a goat with hearts for eyes. She did not mean to snoop. But suddenly, when she pulled out the drawer, here were his most intimate things—not only underwear, but a framed photograph of a woman who must have been his mother (square jawed and regal faced, with Franz’s high forehead), another of Clotilde as a baby, and a box full of letters Benita had sent to him. Beneath these, she noticed the corner of another letter, something official and typewritten. Almost without thinking, she pulled it out. It was a directive from the Spruchkammer, the local denazification council, dated August 1946. We have found Franz Muller to belong to Group III, Lesser Offenders, subject to sanctions accordingly.
Group III was an unlucky designation, a step beyond Mitläufer, or “fellow traveler,” which was the title every German liked to think he deserved. It was not as bad as Belastete, or “loaded,” meaning guilty (a strange term in itself). But it signified guilt nonetheless. A Group III designation entailed restrictions; you could not, for instance, teach or play a role in politics. Why had Franz kept the letter? In the last year, under Adenauer, such designations had become nearly irrelevant. Germany was in the Cold War now. The Soviets were their enemy once again, not the Nazis.
“I’m sorry,” Franz said, his voice startling her.
“For what?” Benita asked, coloring. The letter was still clutched in her hand.
“I should have told you.”
“Told me what? That everyone is guilty?” Franz did not seem angry, to her relief. “Don’t you think the Americans have made that clear?”
Franz remained solemn. “You’ve never asked me about the war.”
“Why should I?” She approached him. “You were in the reserve—you went to the east. You fought the Russians. I don’t need to know any more.”
Franz was silent.
“What? I don’t!” Somewhere inside a small pod of fear split open, sending doubt rattling. “Do I?”
“I don’t know, Benita.” Franz sighed. “I can’t tell you what you need to know.”
Benita stopped a meter away and felt the distance between them open like a vise. It filled her with panic. She could not lose him. She could not survive this.
“I know you,” she said, flinging her arms around him. “That’s all I need.”
Franz stiffened and averted his face.
“Franzl,” she pleaded. “We are new people now. This is our second life.”
For a terrifying moment he did not move. Then slowly, as if navigating some viscous substance, he lifted his arms and wrapped them around her and touched his lips to the crown of her head. Thank God! But as she held him tight, she could feel the presence of the past—
a great unknowable continent of experience pushing up between them, full of treacherous mountains and dry valleys. She did not want to explore it.
When they returned to the flat from Lufner’s Biergarten, the door opened from within.
“Papa!” Clotilde cried. Her eyes lit up and then widened as she noticed her father was not alone in the hall.
“What happened?” Franz stuttered. “You came home early—is everything all right?”
“Barbel was sick—not terribly sick, just not well, and so we took the earlier train to allow her peace and quiet.” She continued to stare at Benita.
“You remember Frau Fledermann,” Franz said, collecting himself.
“Frau Fledermann,” Clotilde said, politely ducking her head, then raising it to peer curiously back and forth between Benita and her father.
“Don’t let the draft in,” old Herr Muller called from within.
“Have you bought the meat for supper yet?” he asked as they entered. He was reclined on the yellow sofa, facing away from the door.
“Father—” Franz said, and, turning slightly, Herr Muller caught sight of Benita. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open.
“You remember Frau Fledermann?” Franz said, placing a hand at her elbow.
Herr Muller nodded but remained speechless.
“Don’t get up,” Benita said, crossing the floor with her hand extended. The old man stared at her. He was tall, even now, and his face was much like Franz’s, although not as handsome or as kind. A series of emotions—confusion, anger, and suspicion—passed across it. And Benita remembered her valise, lying open on Franz’s cot. Had Herr Muller seen it?
“Have you had a comfortable trip?” she asked hastily. For a moment both Clotilde and the old man stared.
“Frau Fledermann is on her way to the train herself,” Franz interrupted. His own face had turned a florid red. “I will take her to the station and pick up the meat on my return.”
Herr Muller gave a peremptory nod. In his manner, and in Franz’s sudden uncertainty, Benita saw their history. Here was the domineering father for whom Franz had married a sickly woman and become a carpenter.
“May I come, too?” Clotilde asked, breaking her silence. “Please?”
“I don’t think—” Franz began.
“Oh, why not?” Benita said warmly. “We can hear all about your trip.”
“Please,” Clotilde pleaded.
“All right.” Franz ducked his head.
“Is that your valise?” Clotilde asked guilelessly, pointing to the cot.
“Thank you!” Benita answered smoothly. “We stowed it there for the day so we could walk in the park. Franz?” She turned to her lover, who had suddenly become an overgrown boy in his awkwardness. “Can you get it for me?”
“Ah, of course.” He crossed the room in three great strides.
Benita smiled brightly at Clotilde.
Franz rejoined Benita at the door with the valise. “Frau Fledermann and I are betrothed,” he announced, almost fiercely, taking her arm. And for a moment, they—Benita, Herr Muller, and Clotilde—all stared at him gape-mouthed.
Clotilde was the first to speak. “Congratulations!” she said shyly.
“Thank you,” Benita said, smiling broadly at Franz, surprised at the enormity of her own happiness.
Chapter Eighteen
Ehrenheim, June 1950
The photograph in the newspaper made Ania look frightened, and Carsten proud and foolish.
“You were right,” he announced bitterly. “It would have been better not to invite that photographer.”
“No, no,” Ania lied. “No one looks at those pictures anyway.”
A month had passed and, so far, this seemed to be true.
But each night she had terrible dreams. In these, she was no longer on the march. She was a girl, in her father’s house. Ania, Herr Doktor Fortzmann would say in his stern, sonorous voice, it is vanity to think you can change fate. She would wake in a sweat, her feather bed soaked. And when she saw her own dim reflection in the mirror, she mistook it for a ghost.
Married life was not very different from her life as a tenant. As a paying boarder on Carsten’s farm, Ania had grasped his intentions early. He was certainly not flirtatious—God forbid! Even the idea was alarming—but he was solicitous. And her responsibilities were already those of a wife: cooking, cleaning, ironing his shirts . . . So Carsten’s unadorned offer of matrimony had not come as a surprise. And once she agreed, there was no sense in abiding by old-fashioned traditions of propriety. Neither of them was religious. Neither was a virgin. And for both, their union was a utilitarian arrangement. Carsten favored swift, silent encounters with no pretense of romance. They slept in separate bedrooms, but from the first day of their engagement, he had maintained a regular schedule of visits: Tuesdays and Fridays. He had not deviated from it once.
Which explained why, at the start of her marriage, she found herself undeniably pregnant. Five months along, the village doctor confirmed with unsubtle amusement. Herr Kellerman will certainly be pleased. He grinned.
But Ania was not amused. Denial had shielded her from the fact for as long as possible—her cycles had been irregular since the war and she had convinced herself she was too old to have children. Meanwhile, her belly grew round and she was hungry all the time. There was a flush of fat on her cheeks. Her pregnancy was too far along to escape.
Even so, she tried. She rode the wagon over rutted fields, scrambled up ladders and jumped down from the odd places the hens laid eggs, initiated a rigid program of bitter teas and scalding baths. She did not tell Carsten the news. But the baby was stubborn. It clung to her like a barnacle; she imagined its tiny fists grasping the soft tissue of her womb. It was determined to survive.
When she finally told Carsten, he was both delighted and embarrassed. He never spoke of the pregnancy by name and made no changes to their daily life—except for the conjugal visits, which immediately ceased. Ania did not tell anyone else. Let Carsten and Doktor Schrenke, the old gossip, spread the word.
In the evenings, Carsten liked to sit with her in the parlor—an uncomfortable, dark room with nothing but the fire in the brazier to recommend it. They listened to the news on the radio and he forced himself to read the Bible, self-imposed penance for a man who never went to church. As he read, his lips shaped the words. Ania sat beside him in the reclining armchair he had given her as a wedding present, darning socks and half hearing the news.
Sometimes Wolfgang ventured into their little cocoon with a question about schoolwork. Unlike his brother, he was a terrible student. He hunched over his books like a man flinching from a blow. The softer subjects were of particular difficulty—the vague but cautionary parables of history, the dense imaginative formulations of literature. He could not wait to work full-time on the farm and genuinely enjoyed making the rounds with his stepfather, learning how to stack the baled hay, when to hose down the pigs, where to reinforce a fence. He didn’t even mind Carsten’s finicky and exacting commands. Next fall his official apprenticeship was set to begin. Yet Ania always felt a twinge of sorrow at the sight of his dark head bowed over his schoolwork.
He was her mistake, poor child, born at a time when only wickedness was being ushered into the world. He was the product of her hungry, ration-fed womb and thin, insufficient breast milk. As a young mother, she had not had time to care for him. When he was sick with scarlet fever as a toddler, she had tied him to the bedpost on a leash to quarantine him. Carsten’s farm was her way of making amends.
“Here is something for you,” Carsten said from his armchair one evening, extending an envelope with Frau Ania Kellerman written across the front. The baby hiccupped in her belly.
“Thank you,” Ania said, her heart suddenly pounding. She did not recognize the address—a street in Momsen. But the name—R. Brandt—took her breath away.
She sat rigidly still, terrified that Carsten would ask her about its sender. The torrent of chemicals in her
womb made the hiccupping stop.
Thankfully, Carsten was engrossed in a seed catalog.
Ania resumed her mending. The minutes sagged. The pages of Carsten’s magazine rustled. It was weaning season, and outside the mother cows bellowed for their calves. Across the pasture, in the barn, the calves cried back.
When enough time had finally elapsed, Ania excused herself.
Behind the closed door of her room, she tore open the envelope.
Inside was a thin sheet of airmail paper, the script written in a shaky but familiar hand.
Ania? it read. Do I recognize you?
Yours, as always,
Rainer
The words swam before her eyes. She tried to focus on the uneven ink, the fussy elegance of the A and the D—a kind of pidgin Old German script he had taught himself. After everything, apparently, this pretense remained.
From where had he emerged? Missing, presumed dead. This was what she had found at the Red Cross office. Dead, she had thought. After all, she knew the Warthegau. And she knew Rainer, or at least she once had.
But here he was, on this scrap of paper, slipping into her life.
The truth will out, her father had always said. Though, so far, in Ania’s experience, this was not quite right. The truth was in God’s hands. Or the devil’s, more likely. The very word truth seemed quaint. Where had it been hiding during the reign of obedience, pride, and duty?
Ania lay on her bed and counted the rows of tiny flowers on the curtains to still the chaos in her head. But it seeped through. In her mind, doors banged open and shut. The stench of mud defrosting in the spring, the long blank horizon of the east. The cruelty of boys playing games in the cold. A baby’s hand absently pulling at her ear. Beneath this were other, softer pieces. Rainer, not as the man she had last seen, but as a boy, sitting on the horsehair sofa in her father’s waiting room, waiting for his own prematurely aged father to emerge with a new round of pills. Already he had been the man of the house. Dark haired and dark eyed, his feet barely reaching the floor, still he was in charge.
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