But somehow she and Mary had come through. Somehow, they had even become close. It was as if the five thousand kilometers Mary had put between them had given her the space she needed to forgive her mother. They spoke on the phone every Sunday evening. And each fall, for three weeks, Ania flew across the ocean to stay with her daughter. Who loved her, improbably enough.
Mary sent her large-print books and special reading lights, photos of her children, homeopathic remedies for her bad back and arthritis. When she visited Germany, she took Ania to the movies and introduced her to chamber music and drove her to the cemetery where Carsten was buried. She was Ania’s most thoughtful and attentive child. Anselm and Wolfgang were dutiful sons, but neither ever thought about what might make Ania laugh or feel less lonely or more comfortable or better informed. Mary, on the other hand, tried to understand her. She tried to do for her mother what her mother had never done for her.
Mary did not mention the package again until after dinner, when the children had been elaborately and painfully put to bed (there was homework to help with, night-lights to leave on, snacks to bring upstairs, as if they were being prepared for a frightening and arduous journey rather than the luxury of sleep). It was nearly nine thirty when Mary emerged, looking haggard. Ania sat at the dining room table sewing a skirt at the sewing machine she had given Marianne so many years ago and that she used, every time she came to visit, to make some new dress or article of clothing for her granddaughter.
“Another schnapps?” Mary asked her mother hopefully as she poured herself one more half glass of wine from the open bottle on the counter. Ania agreed, even though the schnapps did nothing for her anymore—too many old-age medications had dulled her receptors, even her taste buds. But her poor tired daughter should not have to drink alone.
Mary refilled Ania’s glass and started to sit before jumping up again, her hands thrown into the air. “The package! I almost forgot!”
She disappeared into the front hall and reemerged with it. The sight sent a small, prescient shiver through Ania.
“So.” Mary slid the package toward her mother and collapsed into her chair. “Put away your sewing. Enough work for one day.” She waved her hand as if the project were frivolous nonsense. This condescension was the price Ania had to pay for their years of fighting. It was a small one.
Obediently, she folded the piece of skirt she was sewing and turned off the machine.
“Okay, so let’s open it!” Mary said.
“You want me to?” Ania asked.
“Go on. I know what it is already!” Mary took a sip of her wine.
Ania fumbled with the puffy envelope closure until Mary finally snatched it away and tore what turned out to be a neat pull-tab made expressly for this purpose. She pushed it back across the table to her mother.
Inside was a note folded over a large, formal-looking white envelope addressed to Ania Kellerman in an alarmingly familiar hand.
Dear Ania, it read.
It would be a great honor if you would join us at this event. It has been too many years. I would like to invite you to come to Burg Lingenfels as my guest so we could spend time together and know each other again.
Yours,
Marianne von Lingenfels
Ania felt the room swim and her hands begin to shake. It had been nearly fifty years since she had seen her once dearest friend.
“Look inside, Mother—go on,” Mary ordered.
Inside she found a photograph of Marianne, just as she remembered her, in rubber boots with tweed trousers ballooning over them. Ania recognized the bucket she was holding, too—what a precious object it had been then, metal, and dented on one side; they had used it for everything. Even in shadow, you could see the bright intensity of Marianne’s expression, daring whoever saw the picture to laugh at her—the young countess in washerwoman’s garb.
A party to celebrate the launch of Marianne von Lingenfels: Moral Compass of the Resistance. A book by someone named Claire Weiss. Five o’clock in the evening, the 21st of October 1991, the Falkenberg Institute, Burg Lingenfels, Ehrenheim, Germany.
“Frau von Lingenfels is inviting you—and me too, if you want my company—as her guests. And Martin will be there as well. I’ve spoken to him.” Mary’s excitement was palpable.
Ania stared at the photograph. The smell of limestone, stagnant water, and chestnut blossoms rose up around her, the particular bounty of a head of cabbage.
Involuntarily, she pushed the envelope away.
“Oh, Mutti!” Mary’s face fell. “I think we should go, don’t you?”
She grabbed the card and studied the photo. “I never understood why you and Frau von Lingenfels fell out. It was such an important time of your life!
“Oh, Mutch!” she exclaimed, looking at Ania’s face. “Never mind.” She pushed the card back into its envelope. “I thought you would be excited! Your long-lost friend . . . it was supposed to be a nice surprise.”
But Ania was suddenly immersed in another time and place—the kitchen of Burg Lingenfels, dimly lit and boarded up. Rainer at the table, the smell of sickness. And the look of innocent surprise turning to shock on Marianne’s face.
From a distance came the thundering, bumping rush of a city bus. Mary picked up her empty wineglass and Ania’s untouched schnapps. Ania heard the sound of the faucet running, the dishwasher opening and shutting. Mary walked around the living space, turning off the lights. Around Ania, the condo became a twinkling landscape of artificial brightness—the flickering green panels of the entertainment center, the glowing red light switches, a stuffed bear with a purple digital screen in place of a heart. Densely packed, mysteriously animated: this was life on the other side of the apocalypse.
Mary sat beside Ania and took her mother’s hand in her own. “I think it would be wonderful to make this trip together—to go back and see these people and that place. I can leave the kids with their dad. You could tell me more about that time of your life.”
Ania leaned back in her chair. The idea was preposterous, really. There would be too much to explain, too many questions to address.
But her sweet daughter was looking at her, asking for answers. Not simply half the story this time, but the whole truth.
“Maybe,” she said. “Let me think about it first.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Burg Lingenfels, October 1991
Burg Lingenfels is now home to the Falkenberg Institute of Moral and Ethical Inquiry. From the start, Marianne has been a great supporter of the institute. The founder is a distant cousin, and the son of a fellow member of the resistance. The gift of Burg Lingenfels was a boon for the institute. Now academics and intellectuals from all over the world apply for its cushy fellowships: a six-month stay in a German castle, access to the significant library, a gourmet chef. What better conditions for contemplating the moral and ethical challenges of civilized life?
Claire Weiss, the author of the biography, was a fellow at the institute some years ago, and the castle was, in fact, where she “discovered” Marianne, as she says, as if Marianne were a starlet, or some sort of rare mineral. Claire is a force of nature—a modern lipstick-and-high-heel-wearing feminist. She was drawn especially to the story of Marianne as a woman in a man’s world, though Marianne herself never felt particularly constrained by this. After all, as she has pointed out to Claire, if she were a man, she would be dead.
In the last five years, the castle has been “redesigned” by a notable architect. Marianne has seen the brochures and pictures, but it is still shocking to stand before it. When she climbs out of the airport shuttle, her knees feel weak. The old bridge remains, thank God, and the moat is filled with remarkably clean-looking water, but the battered, metal-reinforced door has been replaced by a glossy, heavily grained slab of wood. To Marianne, it looks like a marbled cut of meat. Plate glass windows have been cut into the crumbling limestone where the small, deep-set openings used to be, and the grand stone hall features an enormous chandelier of m
odern Chihuly glass.
“Different, I am sure,” the director says with a nervous laugh. “Shall we allow you some time to rest before I give you the full tour?”
Behind her, Alice clutches her purse to her chest. She did not want to come—Marianne had to wheedle and plead and even promise a church tour: Alice is suspicious of Germans and also very devout.
“Let’s go now,” Marianne says, despite her light-headedness.
“Are you sure?” Martin asks. He has flown with them from Boston, and for the umpteenth time Marianne is grateful for his company. He was meant to come along. Her own children would be too skeptical and full of judgment. And, anyway, Katarina hates to travel and Elisabeth is busy with important prior engagements. Fritz will arrive on Sunday in time to hear Marianne’s speech.
“I’m not tired,” Marianne assures him, although it isn’t quite true.
The grand rooms at the front of the castle are mostly the same, but in the back, where they all lived after the war, everything is changed. The kitchen is gone—no more giant oven, and no more cistern. It has been subdivided into a hive of glass-walled cubicles. The pantry and washroom are the new kitchen, outfitted in a modern institutional style. The bedrooms where they once slept have become offices with plush carpeting and sleek white desks.
Ghosts look on over Marianne’s shoulder, their voices loud in her ears: the countess, Albrecht, Connie . . . and Benita—what would they make of this transformation? After a while, Marianne stops nodding and smiling. Martin can carry on the chitchat. It is more exhausting than she imagined, absorbing all this.
The front rooms upstairs, where the countess once housed her most dignified visitors, are now the “guest accommodations.” The tour ends here, and Alice commands Marianne to rest.
Marianne lies on the bed she has been given, hands folded over her chest. She is tired, but not sleepy—and the air in this sealed and modernized room feels too close, the mattress too soft. Ania Kellerman is due to arrive tonight. The uneasy thrill of anticipation is agitating.
With some effort, Marianne rises from the bed. Outside the window, staff members cover small tables with white cloths. In the light wind, these flare out, reminding her of sheets—unfurled from windows, hung from church steeples, we surrender, we surrender, don’t shoot. That time is so near in her mind these days. Not the war, not the failed assassination, not the time leading up to it, about which she has written and been extensively interviewed—but the end, and the afterward. This is not yet fossilized into a clear narrative.
At quarter to five, Alice returns.
“Time to dress.” She sighs. “But you didn’t sleep.”
First, Alice helps her into the supportive hose Marianne has to wear underneath her skirt to stop her blood from pooling, or seizing, or whatever it is. She holds on to Alice’s strong back while the younger woman rolls the stockings up over her puffy, mottled knees. It strikes Marianne as funny that Alice is now more familiar with Marianne’s body than she is herself.
After the hose, Alice helps Marianne pull on her tweed skirt and gray silk blouse. Before she left, Elisabeth sent her a navy-blue tunic and a buttonless jacket composed of a lovely half-cashmere fabric for the occasion. Something to wear on your big day, the card read, as if Marianne was a child going off to perform in a spelling bee. There is not enough air in a room for Marianne and Elisabeth to share. They have learned this the hard way, but acceptance of the fact has made life easier. Now they see each other twice a year, for a weekend in the early summer and for the American holiday of Thanksgiving. For both occasions, Katarina, Fritz, and their children are present to diffuse the tension. Elisabeth never married. She is now the president of a well-regarded university, a celebrity in her own right. This navy-blue lounge suit is the sort of thing she wears to family holidays or weekend brunch. For speeches or awards or television appearances, she always wears crisp Angela Merkel suits. Marianne can overlook the insult inherent in this, but she will not wear the outfit.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“Beautiful,” Alice says. “Like yourself.”
In the mirror, an old woman with a stern expression stares back.
Downstairs, the first party of the weekend has begun.
Various fellows—mostly Europeans and a few Africans, a small cadre of Chinese dissidents—mill around a table of wine and hors d’oeuvres: fancy cheeses and pickles and ham toasts, platters of shrimp cocktail and chicken satay, a funny mixture of European and American cuisine. The countess would approve of such eclecticism. But the Falkenberg Institute itself would be far too serious for the countess’s taste.
Marianne is overwhelmed by the internationalness of the world represented here. So many cultures and backgrounds in a castle built to protect some probably illiterate, surely small-minded feudal overlord. There was a point in her life, not so long ago, in which the castle’s transformation, the diversity of this audience, would have seemed like insurance against the rise of another Nazi-like regime. But now the connection feels obscure. Her hip aches, and her face is stiff. There are so many people in the world. This, above all, is what Marianne sees demonstrated here.
Claire arrives and makes a beeline for Marianne, full of questions and ideas, accompanied by people she would like to introduce. She is lovely with her thick, dark hair piled messily on top of her head, wearing a bright red low-cut blouse. Marianne thinks of Benita, who lived at a time when it was impossible to be both intellectual and voluptuous. It gives her a pang of sadness. Unlike Claire, Benita was a prisoner of her own beauty.
“How was the trip? Did you request the vegetarian meal? What do you think of the renovation?” Claire takes Marianne’s arm and leads her through the party, whispering information and making introductions. There is a German woman studying Sophie Scholl and a Swiss “fan” of Marianne’s, and the man organizing Albrecht’s letters into a new book. Marianne shakes hands and tries to listen and absorb. But her eyes keep flickering to the door. How silly that she did not arrange for a more private place to first meet Ania.
And then there she is. An old woman stands in the doorway with someone who must be her daughter: little Mary, Marianne’s namesake. Ania is smaller than she remembers and uses a cane, but her back is surprisingly straight. Her hair hangs around her face in a neat and sensible bowl cut. But her face! It is old, wizened with wrinkles of every direction and stripe. She looks into the room with an expression that is at once tremendously sorrowful and alert. When her eyes land on Marianne, they ignite. And she is Ania again—full of the same unique and unflappable strength. How familiar she is still, from the forward jut of her head to the intense seriousness of her gaze.
“Ah, this is the guest you have been waiting for,” Claire says, following Marianne’s gaze. “You must introduce me!” It has become clear to Marianne that she has spoken remarkably little of Ania or Benita to Claire, despite all their long hours of interviews. The fact makes her uncomfortable, as if the women are secrets she has kept.
Somehow, with the help of Martin, who swoops in from the side, Marianne makes her way over to her friend.
“Frau von Lingenfels!” Ania’s daughter exclaims with a smile—she has a kind, attractive, if slightly beleaguered face.
Ania is silent, but her eyes are bright as she reaches for Marianne’s hand. And grasping it in her own—brittle, aged, claw on claw—she gives it a squeeze.
“I always knew we would see each other again,” Ania says.
“Of course,” Marianne answers, though to her, this did not always seem evident.
The last time Marianne saw Ania was the day before Rainer died. It was late November 1950 and winter had set in. Before that, she had not seen her friend in weeks, not since that horrible day she had walked up the hill to the castle and discovered Rainer.
Wolfgang had appeared at Marianne’s door, blue with cold, stamping his feet, blowing on his hands. He was thin and rawboned in the manner of a growing calf and shifted uncomfortably on his feet. For the
first time, possibly ever, Marianne had felt something soft and genuine for him. “Don’t just stand there letting in the cold air,” she ordered, as if he were her own son.
Uneasy silence descended as she opened and closed the bare cupboards to find coffee and milk to serve.
“How can I help you?” she asked when he was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee between his palms.
Wolfgang cleared his throat. At age thirteen he still had a boy’s manner, although his voice was low and his chin awkwardly whiskered. “Herr Brandt—my father”—his eyes darted to meet hers and then away again—“is very ill. He can’t sleep. My mother wondered if you had any laudanum.”
Marianne regarded the boy. His face betrayed great discomfort: Embarrassment? Pain? Sadness? Probably all three.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I imagine I can get you some.”
“Thank you,” he stammered. “My mother will appreciate—”
“You have been dealt a bad hand,” she said, cutting him off. “But it isn’t your fault.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“You are not responsible for your parents’ mistakes.”
The words emerged from her mouth without forethought, inspired by the young man’s miserable face. But were they true? Hadn’t she taught her own children to accept their father’s heroism as part of their inheritance? So wouldn’t this also be true in the reverse?
She stood for a moment, staring at him, until he lifted his eyes.
“When do you need this?” she asked.
She delivered the medicine herself.
Inside the castle, it smelled of coal smoke and sickness. The man lay on a mattress beside the stove. He was paler and more skeletal than he had been when Marianne first saw him. Sweat shone on his face.
When Marianne entered, he did not appear to notice.
She held out the bag of laudanum for Ania to take. Doktor Schaeffer had been generous. A toothache, she had told him.
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