by Vera Caspary
At eleven o’clock I rose, bathed, dressed in my best costume, a tailleur of English worsted in dark gray, with a white blouse and gloves. Under it I wore a new chemise, scandalously expensive. When I was ready I asked Pepperl to call a taxi so that she would be busy at the telephone when I carried my new overnight bag out of the house. “I’ll wait downstairs,” I called from the door. “Auf Wiedersehen, Pepperl.”
I felt very deceitful when I paid off the taxi driver and told him I should not need him. As he drove off Gerhard’s chauffeur arrived. He told me that Herr Metzger had instructed him to take me to an address on a street I had never visited. It was in that section of the city which had been the Russian Zone during the Occupation. The houses still looked shabby. Linden trees coming into leaf threw lacy shadows on the sidewalk. The chauffeur helped me out of the car before an untidy building. He pushed a button and an electric device opened the door. Down a dark corridor a second door opened.
There was nothing mean about the apartment I entered. Oriental carpets were piled on other carpets, antique carvings hung upon the wall, dark oil paintings and heavy furniture took up all the space that was not crowded with plants and flowers. My fiance hurried to greet me, led me by both hands into another chamber where there were many silver and crystal ornaments as well as paintings and carvings and rugs. Here waited a little man so plump that he was almost square, beside him a lady, the typical tall blond Viennese with an exquisite complexion and an impeccable black dress. Gerhard looked taller and thinner in a black tailcoat and striped trousers. The stout man seemed to have been upholstered in his broadcloth. Both wore white flowers in their buttonholes. The man was our lawyer. The lady, his wife, clasped me in her arms.
“Yes, she is beautiful. Bezaubernd, ravissante. I understand why you wish to marry her immediately. But she has no hat.”
“I never wear hats.”
“You must. A bride should have her head covered.” Her voice was as positive as the hard glitter of her diamonds, her statement as authoritative as her perfume.
The magistrate was ushered in. He bowed formally to Gerhard and the lawyer, kissed the lady’s hand and mine. “Are we ready for the happy ritual?”
The lady said again, “This child must wear a hat. Come, I’ll lend you one of mine,” took my hand and led me to her bedroom which was lined with mirrors and cabinets with glass doors through which one could see stacks of lingerie. Behind another door were shelves on which painted stands held dozens of hats. The lady insisted that I try on several before I made a decision. Since she was the first woman of fashion I had ever known, I obeyed her like a puppet. None of it was quite real. I thought about Frau Mayr and wished that Elfy could stand beside me as bridesmaid instead of this elegant lady who seemed to think the hat was as important as the husband.
In the suite at the Plaza Athénée we had two bedrooms. This shocked me, not only because I was a bride but because I had never known until I went into his lawyer’s wife’s chamber to choose a hat that a wife and husband could sleep in separate rooms. My husband said he could not rest with another person breathing in the room.
“We can come to each other.”
I had expected love to be quite different: irresistible excitements, immediate response. No one had ever taught me about physical processes and I had never thought they would be difficult to learn. Neither in school nor with pious Elfy had I ever talked about these things; Heda had laughed at me for being a virgin, but she had never told me there were methods. Martin had led me to believe that if we went to a private room together, we would kiss and melt into each other’s arms, that every moment and every caress would be filled with joy and importance. Gerhard’s lessons were quite different. But he was my husband, and a man of thirty-nine who knew the world better than I, so that I accepted his instructions as an inexperienced pupil receives knowledge from the lips of a teacher. There were many moods to his love, not always pleasant. At other times he sought tenderness like a lonely boy, and we would lie close to each other, peacefully.
I had other lessons to learn. Paris was my first foreign city. Everything delighted me. For my sake the sun glittered on blue slate roofs, for me the light glowed gently over the Seine. Gerhard was often lighthearted. He showed me the city as if Paris were his creation, the harmony of architecture, the liveliness of the boulevards, a courtyard, a doorway, the morning light, the evening light, a superior bistro, the tower of St. Chapelle, the museums, small galleries, private collections, antique shops. “I was once happy here.” We looked at modern paintings, medieval carvings. Gobelins, snuffboxes, Japanese screens, Egyptian statuettes of cats and goddesses, spent a hideous morning in a cold cellar where Gerhard studied with undisguised relish a collection of antique torture instruments.
I turned suddenly and ran from the cellar, up the stairs, out of the shop. This action was pure reflex. I did not know why I had been so affected by the sight of a small whip, really quite inoffensive in comparison with the racks and boots and screws the owner proudly exhibited. At the end of the whip were three knotted thongs.
Gerhard soon noticed my absence and hurried after me to the street, found me studying jars and crystal bottles in a perfumer’s window.
“Why did you run away?”
My mind hardened. I did not wish to talk or even to recall the whip with the knotted thongs. Gerhard had awakened enough ugly memories, there had been too many repetitions of the prison stories. The present excited me in a happier way. I hoped that my husband, too, had had his fill of vice and squalor. “I cannot understand you, Gerhard. Why must you look at such cruel things? A man with your gentle nature.”
We walked arm in arm on the narrow street. His fingers dug into my flesh. On the bridge over the Seine he suddenly let go and we walked in separate silence. I was afraid to irritate him with more talk and gave my attention to the exquisite blouses and negligees, the bags and embroideries in shopwindows.
He could be interested in lingerie and perfumes, too. His tastes were very definite so that he chose everything for me, dresses, slippers, furs, ornaments, even nylons. Everything had to be of the finest fabric and workmanship. Sometimes I wondered at a man’s familiarity with the work of couturiers, at his knowing the difference between satin and peau de soie, between the lace of Brussels and Venice.
“You must have had a very chic mistress,” I remarked.
Clothes and money caused our first serious quarrel. In spite of endless spending Gerhard thought and talked about money every day, kept records, read the news of the stock market as if life and death depended upon a rise and fall in his holdings. Often he would say that he was not so rich as people thought, or that he had been spending too much and we should have to be more careful. I did not understand much about having money; when I worked at the Königshimmel and could buy three pairs of nylons at one time I felt rich.
He had promised that I could console Frau Mayr and Elfy with fine gifts from Paris. I went shopping alone to buy these things. My purse held only a few francs for taxis and tea and trinkets because I had no need for larger sums. In the finest shops I had merely to give my name and ask that purchases be sent to our hotel. For Frau Mayr I chose a black coat with a fur collar, for Elfy a dress of white wool with a yoke of chiffon, fine enough to be worn at her wedding. I showed these things to Gerhard happily. His disapproval came like a blow.
“Are you out of your head? You don’t have to buy such expensive things for those people. From Balmain! I’ve never heard anything so absurd.”
I tried to make him understand. Frau Mayr had been heartbroken when I had telephoned to Vienna and told her I had been married in Paris. “You said I could make it up to them with beautiful gifts. And Elfy would be so happy with that dress.”
He waved off my arguments. “Don’t go into that again. I know how sentimental you are. It’s fine to be grateful, but Balmain! For the bride of a fellow…what did you say he did?…a traveling hop salesman.”
“She’d enjoy it so much. They’ve ne
ver had such lovely things in their lives.”
“They wouldn’t appreciate the true worth. People of that background, they have no real taste.”
“What about my background?”
“You’re my wife.”
Immediately after the wedding this miracle was passed; my flesh changed, my nature was mystically refined. Frau Leonora, wife of Herr Gerhard von Richtgarten Metzger. Still a Jew, but this had become an advantage. The world always revolved around Gerhard’s latest whim. He bought many fine books on the history and traditions of the Jewish people, read avidly, spoke extravagantly about Jewish philosophers, scientists, musicians and poets, forgetting that most Jews, for all of their learning and cleverness, had been working people, poor and dirty like the rest of mankind. During the first months of our marriage my husband was determined to find extraordinary talent in my people, and would remark on the delicate bone structure molded by generations of culture and a face refined by centuries of spiritual suffering.
In these moods he wore an air of reverence. At other times he demanded fulfillment of whims which I learned to endure with taut nerves. Night after night with Gerhard kneeling beside me, naked, making love to my legs, my loins, my shivering flesh (his lips like his fingers were as soft as a child’s) I remembered, adulterously, Martin’s demanding vitality, Rick’s young vigor. I tried hard to experience pleasure because I did know that a man needs more from a woman than mere yielding. Sometimes I succeeded and slept well.
“Who were you so happy with in Paris?”
“Leonora.” The tone was unfriendly.
“Please…”
“I do not like prying.”
“I’m sorry, Gerhard.”
“I was happy with a friend. Does that satisfy you?”
“I didn’t mean to pry but it’s normal to be interested in your husband…”
He was gone, out of the room, out of the suite. He did not slam the door. Even in profoundest anger Gerhard von Richtgarten Metzger did not forget breeding. From the window I watched him walk along the street, wearing gloves and carrying a rolled umbrella. Height and carriage distinguished him. Among the hurrying ants at the crossing, his steady confident gait showed a man who set his own rhythms.
On the night table beside my husband’s bed stood a silver-framed photograph of his mother. She sat in a high-backed chair, hatted and veiled, gloved hands resting in her lap. In the boudoirs of those palaces which Elfy and I used to visit when we could afford the school children’s schilling fee hung pictures of ladies whose faces wore the same regal contempt, the same sense of inherent rectitude. Pale eyes looked out serenely at a world fashioned for the satisfaction of highborn whims.
Such people believe in guarding earthly treasures. Frau Metzger’s first treasure was her son. Her life had been devoted to the molding of his character. She had been a strong woman and had a strong influence. From Gerhard I learned a few facts about her life. Her daughter presented me with quite a different picture.
In Paris one day I was brought a letter with an American stamp. I was thrilled. No one had ever before written to me from America. My mother had told me that her sister and brother-in-law had gone to Brazil before Hitler came to Austria, and that some of my father’s people had escaped to North America. We never heard from any of them because no letters could find us after we left our apartment in Prague. We had been victims, not only of prison, but of anonymity. This letter came from a new relation, my sister-in-law, Irene Flood. Proudly I wrote to Elfy, “My sister-in-law wrote to me from Buffalo, U.S.A., to welcome me into the family. She says she may fly all the way to Paris to meet her dear brother’s wife.”
One morning she walked into our sitting room. Gerhard greeted her by asking what she had done to her hair. “It was always red,” she reminded him.
“Not that shade,” he answered. “Nothing human was ever that color.”
She was almost as tall as her brother with the same narrow head, but the features were not so handsomely cut. Her jaw was stronger, and she had a more common, earthier appearance. In a monstrous crocodile handbag she carried pictures of her four children.
Gerhard honored his niece and nephews with a meager glance. “I never thought you’d become matronly, Irene.”
She looked at the two cups on our breakfast table. “I never thought you’d become domestic.”
From the moment of greeting they snapped at each other. It seemed strange to me who had never had a family that brother and sister should not adore each other. They were most generous in criticism. My husband told me that in childhood his sister (she was three years younger than he) had been an intolerable brat, as an adolescent a rebellious bore, as a grown girl no better than a common slut.
“What did my darling brother tell you about me? That I was oversexed?”
The question embarrassed me. “He said you were very lively,” I answered.
Irene laughed like a goat. Several French ladies looked up from their plates. We were having tea and delicious pastries in a confectionery shop which Irene had visited with her governess when she was brought to Paris as a child. “Don’t be tactful, darling. What annoyed Mama and her precious son was that I did not restrict my girlish affections to hoch-wohlgeboren officers. Gerd’s a prig. Tell me,” although we sat so close that our sleeves rubbed together, she unfolded a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles and studied my expression, “what kind of husband is he?”
“No man could be more kind and generous.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean,” she pushed the cake around on her plate, “how is he as a husband?”
“Since he is the first husband I have ever had, how can I compare him with any others?” I tried to seem flippant.
Apparently her lenses were too strong for a close view of my face because Irene fitted the spectacles back into the crocodile case while she stared at me. “Has he told you anything about himself?”
“Quite a lot,” I answered. Irene waited with an inquiring look in her eyes, and I hurriedly went on, “About his schools and the Army and such things.”
“What things?”
“That he did not care for army life and never became more than a lieutenant.”
“But that he was compelled to do his duty as a German and his mother’s son?” To these questions I merely nodded, and she persisted, “Nothing about his early romances? Or the adventure in the gay capital of France?”
I showed a smile. “A man of his age…a man who is good-looking and rich…must have had many sweethearts, but I don’t ask questions. He dislikes prying.”
The goat laugh again, the stares of the ladies in hats, a sense of being too closely observed. “Tell me, dear Irene,” I begged, “what gifts would your dear children like from their new aunt?”
“You’re a smart girl, aren’t you?”
“Quite simple, I’m afraid. Please come with me to a shop. There is a doll so lovely I am sure my dear niece would adore her. I think I would like to have such a doll for myself.”
“Doesn’t the doll you’ve got satisfy you?”
Irene tried very hard to show herself an American. The conversation sounded unreal, like the talk in one of their movies. “Please, I would like to go back to the hotel. Gerhard will be anxious about us.”
At dinner that night she complimented me to her brother. “You’ve married a clever girl. Behind that piquant little face there’s a nimble mind.”
Gerhard accepted this as a tribute to his taste. He showed me off like some unique object he had discovered in a shop, recognized as worthy, acquired. And he told her in great detail about my life in the prison, repeating with relish the most brutal facts. “Beaten!” He sipped cognac and licked his lips. “Starved! Exposed to every sort of vice! Blood, and rape! Both by men and women! As another child looks at a Kaspar theatre she watched Lesbians make love. And she has seen…”
Irene beat her fists against the table. “Stop it, Gerd. You can leave out the gory details. I’ve had as much as I can stomach and to
make poor Leni sit here and listen…”
“Leni is not so thin-skinned. She tells these stories magnificently.” His suave tones contrasted pleasantly with Irene’s rage. “One would never think to look at her that she had experienced such horrors. And she will become more elegant when I have taught her a bit more.”
His sister looked down her skeptical nose at my Paris dress, the emerald on my hand, pearls at my throat. “Stop playing the lordly gentleman who has raised up the little beggar girl. Forget the blue blood and remember the butcher.”
Gerhard gave her a stricken look. Their mother had been a blue-blood, Fraulein Irmengarde von Richtgarten, member of one of Berlin’s proudest families. She had been a handsome young lady with masses of red-gold hair, but so high-handed and haughty that when the First War started in 1914, no young nobleman had asked her to be his wife. Afterwards she gave the death of all blue-blooded young men as an excuse for not having married until she was twenty-eight.
“Although she told Papa she was only twenty-four.”
Irene told the story with smiling cynicism. Gerhard looked remote and disgusted. Their mother, then Fraulein Irmengarde von Richtgarten, had met her destiny in an Army hospital where many blue-blooded young ladies were performing patriotic duties. Before the war she’d never have looked twice at a Metzger. The family name had been derived from the family’s trade. Pork butchers. “In Pomerania!” added Irene gaily. Pomerania was always the butt of German jokes. The butchering Metzgers had been rich long before the war, had invested in steel and motors and armaments of foreign countries as well as their own, and had kept making profits right through the war. “Papa’s people weren’t only rich for Berlin in those days, they would have been rich any place. So Mama’s hoch-wohlgeboren friends and relations were in no position to snub the butcher’s scion. Do you remember, Gerhard, how often she’d explain that the name wasn’t Jewish?”
Gerhard said, “She was a victim of her times and her background.”