The Women in the Castle

by Jessica Shattuck

  But then Martin turned and embraced his mother with all the fierceness of a younger child. “Good-bye, Mama,” he said as Benita held him. And the word filled her with happiness. Mama. If nothing else, she had given birth to him.

  Benita and Marianne were silent on the drive to the inn. Marianne knitted, her needles tapping. She had learned this skill in the last few years from Ania and approached it as if it were a quaint, mildly entertaining art form rather than a tiresome matter of necessity, which it had always been in the Gruber household.

  The inn was shabby—an ugly, half-timbered house with a crooked roof and narrow yellow-glass windows on the ground floor. “I’ll have dinner sent up,” Marianne announced. “You can join me if you wish.”

  Benita demurred. She was happy to be left alone. And anyway, she was not hungry.

  They parted at the bottom of the stairs.

  But once Benita closed the little slanted door to her room under the eaves and saw the plain wooden cross mounted on the wall, the brown shaded lamp and worn coverlet, she knew she would die if she sat down.

  So instead, she descended the stairs and walked through the dingy foyer and out onto the street. The inn was located on a narrow pedestrian throughway, and people walked past, shuttling children home to supper, carrying marketing sacks. Benita felt raw and exposed. She was stripped of the love she had wrapped around her like a protective cloak. No more Franz. No more Martin. Suddenly, she saw everything in its harsh, naked state. She felt the pulse of the lives lived inside the mean little houses she passed: selfish or generous, kind or unkind, ugly or tolerable, almost all of them sad. And she saw the histories of the people passing by like x-rays stamped on their faces—ugly, mutinous tracings of dark and light: a woman who had ratted out a neighbor, a man who had shot children, a soldier who had held his dying friend in his arms. Yet here they were, carrying groceries, holding children’s hands, turning their collars up against the wind. As if their moments of truth—the decisions by which they would be judged and would judge themselves—hadn’t already come and passed. What a sham this new German present was! An irrelevant time—a mad scramble to cast votes after the verdict had already been reached.

  From behind the inn’s gate, there was the dull thud of a beer stein knocking against another, a clatter and an outburst of scolding. Benita turned her feet toward the noise and discovered a meager Biergarten behind a stone wall, long roughly hewn tables arranged over gravel. It was nearly empty: a group of older men sat in the corner, another group stood at the bar. The heavy smell of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air. Benita sat at the end of an empty table and ordered a schnapps.

  She thought of her mother, poor hardworking Ilse Gruber—how she had loved her glass of schnapps before bed. And now she was dead. Benita had never even said good-bye. To you, Mama! she thought as she swallowed the rough, tangy liquid, flinching at the burn. She felt a rush of sadness for her own loss, and for the decidedly unsparkling life of her mother, a woman who had existed entirely outside the reaches of love. And now she, Benita Gruber, would become just like her. She would return to Frühlinghausen in shame and be consumed by her own roots.

  Benita finished her first schnapps and ordered another. The world grew less bleak. She caught the bartender eyeing her curiously: a middle-aged woman in a proper dress, drinking alone. Did he see some trace of the girl she had once been? The Benita who Connie had boasted could turn even a blind man’s head? A woman whose smile made Franz Muller blush? Her knees began to feel watery. And the harsh tragedy of the world was enveloped in a soft, forgiving haze. The beer garden was filling up. A small group of teenagers sat at the end of her table. They were boisterous girls and boys, poor kids, workers’ children, the girls in their new American-style full skirts, but their hair still worn in plain farm-girl cuts.

  A man sat down beside Benita. He was young, a boy really, and handsome with a particular blooming sort of handsomeness that would not last, was even now beginning to thicken and dissolve. “Another schnapps for the lady,” he called, “and a beer for me.” He had the air of a posturing teenager. How amazing that such an impulse could still exist! That a young man could still care enough to pretend to be something he wasn’t. And the girls, too—she saw it suddenly, these young women, self-consciously sipping their beer-and-lemonades, affecting worldliness. It was at once horrible and marvelous. It made her feel a thousand years old.

  “What is a beautiful woman like you doing drinking by herself?” the boy asked. His curls poked out from underneath his cap, small and sweaty and distinct. Under the table, Benita felt the warmth of his leg against hers.

  “What is a young man like you doing with a beautiful woman drinking by herself?” she found herself asking, her old sharp-tongued self returning.

  In a moment, two other boys joined them—straight from work at a building site, plaster dust on their jackets and under their fingernails. And all of a sudden it was a party! More schnapps and beer and wursts with curry ketchup and crusty Brötchen. When was the last time food had tasted so good?

  The night grew cool and when Benita shivered, the boy—the man, now that she was playing along—gave her his jacket. It was warm and smelled of paint and sawdust and, beneath this, of him. It had been so long since she had been drunk. Franz had never drunk more than one, maybe two beers, which was like a thimbleful of water for an ox, and it had never occurred to her to outdrink him. Before that, during the war, with the Russians and their stench of vodka, she had never wanted to touch the stuff. Now she was reminded of those early, heady days of her romance with Connie, when he had filled her with champagne and berries, Sekt and peach juice, and Brandy Alexanders, delicious, exotic drinks. She had the same lovely clumsy feeling, a sort of numbness in her face and jerkiness to her vision. Dear Connie. She felt a swell of warmth for him—he had shown her a good time in the beginning. Once, he had presented her with a fox stole that wrapped around her shoulders with a glimmering, silky softness that made her feel like a movie star. A woman everyone envied. And Connie, confident, sleepy eyed, with one arm draped around her, had enjoyed the attention as much as she did.

  In the middle of this reverie, Marianne appeared.

  She stood in the doorway of the grubby Biergarten, a homely shawl clutched around her shoulders, her eyes searching the crowd. For an instant, her eyes met Benita’s and a look of surprise, even shock, registered so transparently in them that Benita felt a corresponding jolt. There was no joining these two worlds—Marianne’s ordered existence on one side, and these boys, this place, this buoyant, drunken feeling of irresponsibility on the other. And so Benita looked away. It was not so much a decision as an instinct. She threw her head back and extended her neck in a way she knew was loose and inviting. She laughed an indiscreet laugh. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marianne hesitate as if considering whether to barge in.

  But she didn’t. And a moment later she was gone.

  Benita was disappointed and relieved at once.

  The boy placed his hand on her knee, rubbing the fabric of her dress against her thigh in a way that made her skin feel rough. What did it matter? Benita rested her head against his shoulder—she was the slut and idiot Marianne had always thought she was. She was nothing but a stupid girl. The empty doorway where Marianne, her friend, her roommate, her coparent, really, had stood, was like a black hole.

  Upstairs, in her room under the eaves, what happened was quick and unclear. Benita floated through it as if from above: the sweaty hands on her breasts and the boy’s wurst breath, the hot, surprising baby smoothness of his belly, the hard strength of his thighs. He was no expert. And more surprising, he had a false leg below his right knee, a hard stalk of wood that pressed against her shin through the pants he kept up around his knees. Did she imagine it? She reached down, but he pushed away her hand. And so she let him finish without knowing for sure.

  Only after he was asleep, with one arm thrown gratefully across her breasts, snoring slightly, did she verify. Gently p
ushing up the leg of his pants, she felt the smooth wooden shape of the false limb and ran her hand to the end where it attached to his leg with primitive leather straps. A delicate nub of scar tissue covered the bone, dimpled and uneven, yet still smooth—as delicate as the head of a penis. She winced and the boy stirred in his sleep. Benita sat beside him for a while, in the lamplight that shone through the window, beside his clumsy, damaged body. A war injury, probably, despite his youth. Maybe he had been one of those hapless boys ordered to the front when no one else was left, shot on the spot if they so much as looked the wrong way. Or maybe he had been a cruel child soldier and performed some God-awful task.

  As quietly as she could, she gathered her things, the small bag she had packed, the shoes she had kicked off, the skirt she had dropped to the floor. Stepping carefully, she slipped into the hall and down the stairs, this time without question as to where she was going, and with the cold, relieving calm of purpose; and when she shut the door of the inn, there was a satisfying finality to the click, severing her ties to this strange in-between life.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Burg Lingenfels, October 1950

  Without Benita and the children, the flat in Tollingen was too quiet. No more Fritz scuffing the baseboards in the hallway, no more piles of shoes by the door, no more Martin lying on the sunlit parquet with his books. And no more scent of Benita’s coffee in the morning or eau de gardenia perfume wafting from her bedroom at night. No more strains of sentimental music drifting down the hall from her precious Victrola, though the player was still there. Theoretically, Marianne could have listened to a record. She herself had given the Victrola to Benita, but it wasn’t in Marianne’s nature to select an album, place it on the turntable, and play. Some innate self-consciousness, or even an inexplicable anxiety, held her back. One evening, she went to the shelf and hesitantly flipped through the collection of records—almost all were unfamiliar names and faces—until she landed on Benny Goodman. She knew who he was. But when the needle touched the record, the notes that blared forth were startlingly loud and by the time she had managed to adjust the volume, she was too jarred, too caught, really—a person mucking about in someone else’s business—to want to hear more.

  Now there was only the light tap of her own house shoes as she walked through the flat. For dinner she ate a roll spread with jam or butter and a thin slice of ham. Instead of using the wide kitchen table, she ate at her desk—a grand, polished Biedermeier she had inherited from one of the von Lingenfels cousins. She had moved it into the middle of the parlor, where she could look out the bay windows to the town square below and write letters to the children—one each night.

  The desk was her new home. And from behind it she threw herself into a fresh project: documenting a history of the German Resistance. Every day she drafted plans, wrote lists, and took notes. She wrote to old friends and acquaintances, asking for journals and photographs, copies of their letters. She organized Albrecht’s papers but was too restless, too unsettled, to actually read them.

  Benita had returned to the town where she was born, where Connie had “discovered” her. Beyond this, Marianne knew nothing about the place. She had written to Benita asking how she was and when she would be back, but received no response. Marianne’s last image of the girl, sitting on the lap of some loutish Biergarten youth, was a horrible one.

  Alone in the flat with no one to distract her, Marianne was left to deliberate over Benita’s departure. She had overstepped. She should not have gone to see Franz Muller. She had allowed her own sense of betrayal to influence her actions. And when she had tried to apologize, something in her apology fell short.

  In their letters from school, the children asked why Benita had moved. Only Martin was silent on the subject. So far, he had written two dutiful little letters detailing his life: early-morning chapel and cold showers and endless math. Obviously, he wrote to his mother, too. What did she tell him of her decision to return to Frühlinghausen, a place she had only ever spoken of with scorn? Marianne was afraid to ask.

  She began to compose another letter to Benita, one that sought to offer a more complete apology. But where to begin? Our flat feels empty without you. The flowers on the balcony have shriveled without your care and when I noticed, I soused them and now they look both shriveled and waterlogged, if that is possible. Herr Dressler asks after you every day when I walk past his flat.

  I owe you an apology, she wrote, and crossed it out.

  I was wrong to intervene in your plans to marry and I am sorry, she wrote instead. If you would like, I will return to Herr Muller and apologize myself. I did what I thought was right, at the expense of your happiness. I see now that it was not my place. This did not sound right either. Too implicitly scolding. Too righteous.

  The truth was that Marianne had misunderstood their relationship. She had imagined Benita’s affair with Franz to be a mere diversion, a flight of fancy. She had not grasped how fundamental it was to Benita’s happiness. If she had known . . . then what? Should she have applauded the choice? An ex-Nazi for a resister’s wife? She could never celebrate this. But she had been wrong to interfere. This was what she needed to convey.

  But it was so hard to say both what was true and also what was required! At her desk in the lonely parlor, a thick, doldrumy feeling threatened to descend on Marianne. Through her friendship with Benita, she found herself dragged into the quagmire of complexity. Don’t overcomplicate, she had always advised Albrecht. There is a right and a wrong in every situation, and it is our job to extract it.

  She stood abruptly and shook her head, capped the pen and folded the letter. She would finish it later.

  A warm breeze blew through the open window. It was an unseasonably warm fall day. The kind of day in which late field poppies bloomed and bees worked frantically to finish their work for the season. Years ago, she would have been preparing for the countess’s party—ordering wine and champagne, cakes and cuts of meat. The thought made her want to climb the hill to Burg Lingenfels. She had not visited the castle in ages, not since they had boarded it up.

  It was strange to climb the hill alone, no children running alongside her gathering flowers, throwing stalks of wheat, no Benita trailing behind, stopping every so often to rest. But the sunshine and Herr Kellerman’s new herd of cows grazing on the hill went a long way toward dispelling Marianne’s loneliness. What shall we do with the castle? she asked Albrecht as she walked. Give it to the state, she imagined him saying, his voice unusually clear in her head. His answer was easy to guess: he was too much the aristocrat to suggest selling it. The very thought made her laugh. Albrecht von Lingenfels, intellectual, revolutionary, hero, yes . . . but a terrible businessman.

  And then there it was—squat, yellow, and impervious. On this day, Marianne felt only pleasure at the castle’s intransigence. It was like a steady friend. She quickened her pace. Here was the old linden. Here was her favorite patch of stone wall. Here was the footbridge, and the grand opening, like a wide dark mouth. She tracked around the side to the smaller bridge that led to the kitchen and stopped short.

  There were voices coming from within. Marianne could not make them out clearly, but one belonged to a woman. Arguing. She froze and listened. It was Ania.

  Marianne’s heart gave a contradictory flutter—relief that it was her friend and not some intruder and dismay at the awkwardness of having arrived in the middle of a dispute. Who was Ania arguing with? She had never heard the woman so much as raise her voice. Her tone was tense. Possibly she had come to check on the castle and been accosted by some dangerous vagrant holed up within its walls. They should have locked it up more thoroughly!

  Marianne stooped to grab a large stone and tried the door handle. It was unlocked. She threw it open, her heart racing.

  But the scene in front of her did not appear violent.

  At the table, a man sat before a bowl of soup. He was gaunt and hollow eyed and obviously sick. Ania stood across the room, leaning against t
he old dry sink. A series of emotions crossed her friend’s face. Shock, dismay, and then something like resignation.

  Marianne stood, still holding the stone, and gaped.

  “I’m sorry—” she began. “I didn’t know—”

  The man looked from her to Ania and back again. With a frail hand, he pushed away the soup. “This is your castle,” he said to Marianne.

  The words sounded strange. Burg Lingenfels was not really hers.

  He was a land surveyor, maybe, a tax auditor, a salesman of some sort? Her mind leapt toward possible explanations.

  Still Ania did not speak.

  “And Ania has not told you about me,” he said, dashing the possibilities.

  Marianne looked at her friend, whose face was now turned to the floor. Milk spread in two dark stains from her breasts.

  Marianne felt an overwhelming need to sit. From outside she could hear the swallows. Inside, the room was dark and close as a crypt.

  “I was going to,” Ania said, finally lifting her eyes. “You must believe this.”

  Marianne stared at her.

  The face that stared back was unfamiliar—sagging with despair and a chilling sense of calm.

  “This is my husband,” Ania said.

  When Marianne left the castle, the day outside was shockingly unchanged. The afternoon sun lay thick across the stubbled fields, the poppies bloomed . . . But she didn’t see this. Her mind circled and darted like a bird whose nest has been destroyed.

  Her own actions in the castle were a jumble in her mind.

  He can’t stay here, Marianne had said, coldly regarding the man Ania had just referred to as her husband. Ania had bowed her head.

  Even in his sickly state, the man emanated cruelty. He narrowed his eyes and shrugged. Where would you have her take me? To her new husband’s home? To some American hospital? They were more like threats than questions.