The Women in the Castle

by Jessica Shattuck

  But maybe this was what Ania deserved? She had lied to Marianne, to Carsten, to everyone in her life. She had thrived under their misconceptions, abused Marianne’s generosity, and taken advantage of her desire to help. She had married a man under false pretenses. And now she had brought this stranger to die at Burg Lingenfels. For this, she should be exposed.

  But there was Carsten to consider. Surely the knowledge of his wife’s deception would kill him. And he deserved better, even if she did not. He deserved to end his life in the upstanding and peaceful way in which he had lived it. And those poor boys, Anselm and Wolfgang, whom Marianne had never liked—suddenly she felt compassion for them. They were harnessed to their mother’s lies.

  So Marianne summoned her largest self and walked away. She left the man, this Rainer Brandt, whoever he was, to die in Burg Lingenfels. And she left Ania, who was not really Ania, who was in fact a liar and a false friend—a woman who had pretended to be something she wasn’t—shackled to his death. Whoever Ania really was, Marianne did not care to know. Let her rot with that man in the castle.

  The only thing Marianne could do was turn her back on them.

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dortmund, January 11, 1923

  One of Ania’s earliest memories is of the day the French soldiers arrived in Dortmund.

  She is twelve years old and her father has forbidden her to leave her room.

  But from outside, she can hear the rumble of the troops. First the tanks, then the horses, then the African soldiers the French have brought from the colonies to help with the occupation. Frau Richter, the Fortzmanns’ cook and housekeeper, says they are bloodthirsty men, ready to spear and eat German children at a signal from their French overseers. She says the shortest of them is nine feet tall, that they can breathe fire and throw flames, and will march half-naked across the continent, their heads bald as bladder balls. In comparison, the French soldiers will look like milkweeds—seedy, slender little men with devious faces, here to make off with the first valiant sputters of output from postwar German industry.

  Ania is old enough to understand that Frau Richter is an irrational, superstitious woman with no education. But also that her husband and son died in the war, which they will all come to think of as the First War, but for now is still simply (optimistically, really) defined by a finite the. This loss grants Frau Richter a certain authority about all things military.

  The French are here to commandeer the coal factories that employ much of the city. It is the finest industry in all of Germany. Reparation is the bad word on every German’s tongue. Just like in the schoolyard, Frau Richter says, rolling her eyes. We took their lunch money, now they must take ours. Last month, eight men were arrested—fancy men in top hats and tails, the owners of several local factories. For shame, Frau Richter said, looking at their picture in the paper. Is it not enough to take away their businesses? Do they also have to take their dignity?

  Most of what Ania understands about politics comes from Frau Richter. Ania’s father, Herr Doktor Fortzmann, is a man of the old kind and believes children should be silent before their superiors. He is against politics in general and longs for the restitution of the monarchy. They have seen nothing but rioting and inflation in the five years since Wilhelm II abdicated. And Ania knows not to mention the Communists. Her father has not recovered from the shock of their brief takeover of Bavaria, which, for a few weeks in 1919, became the Bavarian Soviet Republic. If he begins on the subject, no one will hear of anything else for days. For Doktor Fortzmann all was better under the kaiser. And he is the kaiser of his own home.

  Because her father is a doctor, Ania’s small family is able to live relatively well on a currency of traded goods—eggs and potatoes in exchange for stitches, help stacking wood or cleaning gutters for treating a sick child. And there are always sick children because the local coal factory workers live in such poor conditions. Unlike the many locals relying on cash wages in a period of food shortages and inflation, the Fortzmanns are at least warm and well fed.

  Frau Fortzmann has not left her bedroom since Ania’s younger brother died. Back pain. Chest pain. Her delicate constitution. She does not venture beyond the confines of her sitting room. My sweet Ania, she says when Ania brings the breakfast tray Frau Richter prepares each morning. She runs her hand through Ania’s hair and her eyes fill with tears. Ania can barely stand to look at her. Her breath smells of the chamomile tea she drinks, and underneath of something sour—the essence of inaction. Tell me what is happening, she asks. And Ania is nothing if not dutiful: Frau Richter has a new cozy for the kettle, knitted by her sister. Father read from Corinthians last night. In school we studied fractions. Some men in Munich tried to kill the president. All news is equal. She has no idea what to tell her mother, no idea what she might be most interested to hear. Frau Fortzmann listens without really listening. She pats Ania’s hand if she stands nearby, or smoothes the soft skin with her thumb. For Ania, the act of recounting feels like vomiting. When she finishes, she immediately flees to the relative warmth of the kitchen and to more of Frau Richter’s salacious talk of politics.

  On this day, when the French troops roll in to occupy the Ruhr, Ania has already visited her mother and completed her daily quota of embroidery. Frau Richter has gone out on “errands” and can certainly be found among the crowds gathered to watch the advancing troops. Herr Doktor Fortzmann is reading in his office, frowning over the latest news of German indignities. Only Ania is at loose ends, trapped in her room with the oppressively dark armoire, the stark painting of her paternal grandmother, and the tightly made bed she is not supposed to sit on. Out there in the world, not two blocks away, a conquering army is taking over her city, and here she is, locked in a chamber of relics.

  Standing at the window and picking at the pills on her stockings, she has an idea. The most radically transgressive idea she has ever had in her life. She will climb out the window, across the roof of the kitchen, down the mirabelle tree, and into the garden. If someone catches her, she will certainly receive the beating that lurks behind all her father’s commands, implicit in the switch that peeks out from behind his umbrella stand and his perpetual air of restrained violence. She would rather die than catch this beating. So she will make sure she is not caught.

  Ania crab-crawls along the window ledge to the flat roof, a move so nimble she is surprised at her own ability. At the edge, she shimmies down the rough tree trunk and drops to the ground. From there, she dashes along the bushes at the far side of the garden and into the alley. And with a heaving chest, she looks around. She has done it. She has escaped. It is the first time she has ever disobeyed her father; the feeling is thrilling and sickening.

  Ania draws closer to Uhland Strasse and hears the booming rumble of tanks receding—she has missed it!—and the hard clip-clop of horses’ hooves. But rounding the corner, she comes upon everyone: here are the citizens of Dortmund, lined up on both sides of the street, watching restively.

  The French ride through the middle of the street on proud, high-stepping horses, bayonets poised on their shoulders like oversize needles. Underneath their helmets, though, they are disappointingly ordinary looking. There are no nine-foot Africans. No fire breathers or weasel-faced French overlords. But the soldiers’ disregard for the crowd is an open insult. The air is thick with anger and hostility.

  Ania edges her way forward. She reaches the front line in time to witness a humiliating spectacle. One of the foot soldiers marching at the front of the battalion breaks formation to lunge toward a man in the crowd who has forgotten to remove his hat. The soldier knocks it to the ground.

  The man, who is young, stocky, and strong looking—the kind of boy Frau Richter would call ein richtige deutsche Bursche, a real German lad—attempts to fight back, striking at the soldier, but the people around him grab his arms. It sends a stir through the crowd, a collective intake of breath. Once the soldier has moved on, the people release the young ma
n’s arms, and Ania watches him scurry forward to retrieve his hat, now rolling dangerously close to a set of stamping hooves. As he darts before the great beast, he nods at the mounted soldier—a small, demeaning act of self-preservation.

  It is nothing in the grand scheme of things (they have just been through a war, after all), but at the time, Ania is shocked. The rough way the soldier swatted the hat from the man’s head—it was as if he were an unruly child, or worse, an animal. It alters her understanding of what it means to be a German. This is a personal manifestation of defeat. This is what it means to be a member of a defeated nation.

  Ania’s next transgression is more complicated.

  The chancellor of Germany has encouraged citizens in the Ruhr to engage in acts of passive resistance against the occupiers. The girls’ troops at the Munich Gymnastics Installation carry signs proclaiming we don’t want to be your serfs. Workers at the steel and iron plants are on strike. In the south, there are violent clashes between Communists and right-wing Freikorps militias. Maybe Ania is influenced by all this protest. Or maybe she has simply reached the age of rebellion.

  On the first Sunday of Lent, Ania is supposed to accompany her father to visit her grandmother and aunt. It is a tradition, like most in the Fortzmann household, that Ania hates. Aunt Gudrun believes it is her singular responsibility to mold Ania into a proper young woman. Since her mother has decided to become a useless invalid, Gudrun teaches Ania to wash and scrub and “learn household responsibilities” and to sit absolutely straight and silent while the adults eat. So Ania is forced to perch on her aunt’s horsehair sofa and nibble digestive biscuits while the adults eat slices of cream-topped gooseberry tart. The oppressive ticktock of the clock, the sour air of the room, and the dry, shaggy bits of skin that hang from Grossmutter’s face all make Ania think, in an oppressive, suffocating way, of death.

  So, on this particular afternoon, when the time comes to leave for Gudrun’s, she hides beneath the weeping willow in the back of the Fortzmanns’ garden. Its branches hang to the ground and provide a thick, leafy cover.

  The smooth patch of dirt here is one of Ania’s favorite places. She loves the smell of the garden wall’s decaying stucco, the damp ground, her own warm hands after playing with the twigs and leaves and worms. She hides things under the willow’s branches. For instance, the cheap novel she found on a park bench that she knows her father would disapprove of—too modern, too sensational. He believes in reading only the Bible and Schiller. Even Goethe is too liberal for him. Ania has also hidden the candy she pilfered from her class graduation party, a snake skeleton, and a colorful mosaic brooch she stole from her mother’s dresser three months ago.

  Why is this willow here in the Fortzmanns’ orderly suburban garden? There is no pond, no stream, no river to quench its thirst. The tree is a leftover, someone told her once—maybe Frau Richter, who is, at heart, a romantic, or her uncle Dierck, who is young and bad and recently ran off to find work on a ship. The tree is left over from a time when the whole neighborhood was marshland, dotted with ponds and sloughs and great waterbirds. Its bent, grief-stricken shape is a product of its longing. While Ania lies under its grand draping branches she feels that same longing—her own cells thirst for the disappeared body of water, her ears fill with the ghostly burble of an extinct stream.

  On this particular Sunday, Ania does not go into hiding alone. She is accompanied by her best friend and neighbor, Otto Smeltz. When she hears Frau Richter calling, she grabs his hand and squeezes it.

  Shhhhh, she whispers fiercely, and Otto’s eyes widen in surprise.

  He is a little nymph-like boy: thin and pale and dark haired, and he and Ania often play for hours under the willow, making hospitals for sick animals. Sometimes Otto pretends to be a girl and lets Ania braid his shaggy hair. They carve games in the cool, smooth dirt, using pebbles as pieces.

  No one else on Langebein Strasse plays with Otto Smeltz. For one thing, his father is not a doctor or a lawyer like the other men on the street. He is a shopkeeper who runs a small specialty goods shop in the city center. For another thing, the family is bohemian, at least compared to everyone else. And also they are Jewish, immigrants from Poland.

  Sometimes, when the weather is nice, his family plays music in the garden. Herr Smeltz has a fiddle and his wife a mouth harp. Their daughter, Susi, a wild girl with messy hair and an insolent expression, plays her accordion. It is considered unseemly—like a carnival, according to Frau Richter, who would have a heart attack if she knew how much time Ania spent with little Otto. On warm summer evenings, Ania opens her bedroom window and listens as she lies alone in bed.

  This afternoon, Ania’s rebellion makes Otto nervous. When will you come out? he whispers. What if they don’t leave without you? What will your father do when he finds you? His questions nip at her high spirits. Shut up, she hisses, suddenly aware of her own power in their friendship. She is a year older and taller and also in possession of a more intangible authority. Be still.

  Ania—Otto tugs at her sleeve and she shakes him off. Shut up—Ania clamps a hand over his mouth and watches an instinctive, animal-like fear jump in his eyes. Reluctantly, he stays with her and does not call out.

  Later, when she is finally discovered by the policeman neighbor Frau Richter enlists to help with the search, Ania is both terrified and jubilant. Why did you do this? Doktor Fortzmann asks gravely, sitting in the big leather chair in his study. You should know better. He uses his deepest, most moral voice. The switch is propped against his chair.

  He made me, she says, squirming and looking down at the carpet.

  The Smeltz boy?

  The policeman found Otto, too. But, unlike Ania, he was dragged by the ear to the police station.

  She nods her head, thinking of the officer’s expression. It was his idea, she says, and her heart races. He wouldn’t let me come out.

  Something changes in Doktor Fortzmann’s bearing—his hands spread over his knees and tighten slightly.

  What do you mean by this?

  Ania’s story gathers steam. He held on to me. He put a hand over my mouth when I wanted to call out.

  Herr Fortzmann’s brows lower. You are not to play with him again. Do you understand?

  Yes. She nods. I understand.

  To Ania’s surprise, the switch remains untouched. She is sent to her room without supper, and later that night Frau Richter slips her a bowl of pea soup with a slice of ham. Poor child, the woman says, shaking her head, clucking her tongue against her teeth. We should have guarded you against that boy. It leaves Ania with a peculiar feeling, as if the lie is a physical object stuck in her gut. And though she is hungry she can’t eat. The night is beautiful, but there is no laughter or music from the Smeltz house.

  Afterward, people throw stones through the Smeltz family’s windows. Someone paints a slash across their door. Word has gotten out. Otto does not return to school.

  In fact, Ania sees him again only once. He is walking across the park, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and she is surprised at how small he looks. It gives her a funny feeling—the way his dark hair flies up like feathers in the wind, and the thinness of his legs in short pants, like delicate twigs. So Ania tells herself the story she has concocted: he is a manipulative child who forced her to disobey her father and clamped his sweaty, dirty hand over her mouth. She imagines it so carefully that it feels real.

  Then one morning the Smeltz family disappears. In the middle of the night, they load up their wagon from Herr Smeltz’s shop and leave their home for the Jewish neighborhood.

  On the long, boring afternoons at 34 Langebein Strasse in the days and years to follow, Ania misses her friend. And at night, she lies in her silent bedroom and attempts to recall the music his family used to play. It makes her heart ache. She knows it is her own fault the music has disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dortmund, 1934

  By the next time Ania runs away, Otto Smeltz has faded to no
more than a whisper in her childhood memories. This time she decides to leave home for a convent, the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament. She is now twenty-three, a young woman, but under her father’s roof she is still a girl. She has finished high school with high marks and honors but is not bound for university. Herr Doktor Fortzmann does not believe in higher education for girls. He believes it is Ania’s duty to keep house for him now that her mother has died. One day she will marry and have babies, so what is the point of a higher degree?

  Ania, on the other hand, is not interested in housekeeping or marriage or, for that matter, babies. She is an athletic girl with a quick, literal mind, accustomed to spending most of her time alone. In a crowd of girls, nothing about her stands out. She is of average height, has average blondish hair, and ordinary features. Her eyes are maybe a little wide set, her lips a little thin, her legs gangly. She doesn’t care. Her body is strong and healthy and in her gymnastics troop she runs faster and hurls herself higher than any of the other girls. Her steadiness of character and good citizenship make her well liked. She is always invited to the young people’s dances at the Guild Hall. But she accepts the invitations only to be polite. What is the point of romance? It seems like a distraction from the important things in life.

  Which are, in order: the wider world (not Germany, but the whole planet, full of all the odd varieties of human life—she has devoured every book in Herr Doktor Fortzmann’s collection on foreign civilizations and anthropological research), science, and physical fitness (or her membership in the local Girls’ Sport Training Group, to be exact).