At the Wolf's Table

by Rosella Postorino

  “That’s not necessary,” she was quick to reply. “It’s just a fever, that’s all.”

  Elfriede looked at me, worried.

  “Then eat what you’ve been served,” Ziegler said, “and tomorrow we’ll see.” He glanced around, commanded the SS guards to keep an eye on Heike, and walked out.

  The next day, Heike ate like the others, then asked to be escorted to the washroom. She did that for a while, relying on the alternation of the guards. She vomited quickly, trying not to be heard. In order to verify that it wasn’t poisoned, the food had to remain in our stomachs for the established amount of time, and purposefully ridding ourselves of it wasn’t allowed. We knew she was vomiting, though. Her eyes were deeply sunken into two dark hollows, her skin waxy. No one dared ask. How long would it be before they took our next blood sample?

  “She has two children to feed,” Beate said. “It’s not like she can afford to lose her job.”

  “How long do you think her flu will last?” I asked with a sigh.

  “She’s pregnant,” Elfriede whispered in my ear while we were in line. “Hadn’t you realized that?”

  I hadn’t, no. Heike’s husband was at the front. She hadn’t seen him for almost a year.

  * * *

  WE WERE WOMEN without men. The men were fighting for our homeland—First my people, then all the others! First my homeland, then the world!—and sometimes they returned on leave, sometimes they died. Or they were declared missing.

  We women, all of us, needed to be desired, because men’s desire makes you exist more fully. Every woman learns that at a young age—at thirteen, fourteen. You notice that power when it’s too early for you to handle it. It’s not something you fought for and won, so it risks becoming a trap. It emanates from your body, still unknown to you—you’ve never looked at yourself naked in the mirror—and yet it’s as if others have already seen you. Unless you exert this power it will consume you. Yielding power over oneself is easier than wielding power over others. It’s not the masses who are like women, but the opposite.

  Who was the father of the child Heike carried in her womb? I couldn’t imagine him. She, however, I imagined with her head on the pillow, her other children sleeping at her side, and she, with her eyes still open, stroking her belly, her mistake. Maybe she had fallen in love.

  At night I envied her. I pictured her in bed, frightened by her body’s signals, exhausted from the nausea, and unable to sleep. But I also imagined her organs as they began to pulse. A life had been kindled, a heartbeat just beneath her navel.

  16

  The invitation from Maria Freifrau von Mildernhagen arrived in a card adorned with the family coat of arms. It had been delivered by a messenger boy while I was at work. That’s how I was saying it by then: I’m going to work. Receiving the liveried boy at the door, Herta was embarrassed not only by her stained apron but also by Zart, who came over to greet him. The messenger boy freed his ankles from the cat’s endearments and tried to complete his task promptly but politely. Herta had laid the sealed envelope on the credenza, curious to know what it contained. However, since it was addressed to me she would have to await my return.

  The baroness, I read, was holding a soirée that weekend and would be delighted if I attended.

  “What does that woman want with Rosa?” my mother-in-law grumbled. “She’s never invited us. She doesn’t even know her.”

  “She does know her,” my father-in-law said, avoiding any mention of the occasion on which I had met her, though Herta may have deduced it on her own. “I happen to think a little amusement would do Rosa some good.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  Any form of amusement would have been an insult to Gregor. Nevertheless, the recollection of the baroness, that creamy complexion, the way she had held Joseph’s hands in her own—it gave me the same sensation as a cloth draped on a chair beside the hearth which is then raised to touch your cheek … that same warmth.

  I could wear one of the few evening gowns I had brought with me from Berlin, I thought. What are you going to do with all those? Herta had asked, seeing me hang my things in the wardrobe in which she had made room for me. Nothing. You’re right, I replied, picking up a hanger. You’ve always been so vain, she said.

  It was true, but I had slipped those evening gowns into my suitcase because Gregor had given them to me, or because they brought to mind a moment I had spent with him—the year-end office party, for instance. He had stared at me the whole time, heedless of the rumors it would inspire at work the next day. It was then that I realized he liked me.

  “Just what we needed,” Herta grumbled, drying the dishes. She noisily stacked them in the credenza. It was May.

  * * *

  WHEN I CONFIDED to Leni that I had been invited to a soirée by the Baron and Baroness von Mildernhagen, she let out a squeal that drew the attention of all the others, so I was forced to tell them as well. “Anyway, I’m not going,” I said.

  The other women insisted. “Don’t you want to visit the castle? It might be the only chance you’ll ever get!”

  Beate said she had rarely seen the baroness walking around town, children and governesses in tow, since the woman was always cooped up in her castle. It was because she was depressed, some said.

  “Depressed? Her? Give me a break!” Augustine shot back. “She’s always throwing parties, poor thing—only you’re not invited.”

  “If you ask me, we never see her around town because she’s often traveling the world,” Leni said. “Who knows what wonderful journeys she’s been on?”

  Joseph had told me the baroness spent entire afternoons in the gardens, breathing in the scent of her plants, and not only in spring or summer—she also loved the smell of the rain-drenched earth and the colors of autumn. She had grown fond of Joseph, her gardener, because he grew and cared for her favorite flowers. When he spoke to me of her, I didn’t picture her at all as being depressed, but rather a bit dreamy, a delicate woman protected within the walls of her own private Eden—no one would cast her out.

  “She’s a kind person,” I told them, “especially with my father-in-law.”

  “Oh, please!” Augustine said. “She’s just a snob. She’s never seen around town because she thinks she’s better than us.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the baroness thinks,” Ulla broke in. “All that matters is that you go to the party, Rosa. Do it for me, I beg you! That way you can tell me everything.”

  “About her?”

  “Yes, but also about the castle and what a real soirée is like, how people dress for the occasion.… Speaking of which, what are you going to wear? As for your hair”—she tucked a lock of it behind my ear—“I can do it up for you.”

  Excited by this new diversion, Leni said she would help.

  “Why did she send you an invitation? What do you have to do with her?” Augustine asked me. “Tsk! You’re going to start putting on airs again.”

  “I’ve never put on airs.”

  But she had already stopped listening to me.

  Joseph offered to be my chaperone, seeing as I didn’t have one. According to Herta, neither of us should go. He repeated that I had the right to amuse myself. I didn’t want to amuse myself, though, and I didn’t care about my rights. For months I had been devoted to nursing a pain that distracted me from everything else, a pain so extensive that it had gone beyond the original object of that pain. It had become a personality trait.

  * * *

  ON SATURDAY AT around seven-thirty Ulla burst into the Sauer home. She wore the dress I had given her and was carrying a bag full of hair rollers. “You’re wearing it at last” was the only thing I managed to utter.

  “Well, today’s a special day, isn’t it?” she said, smiling at me.

  Leni and Elfriede were with her too. We had said goodbye not long before on the bus. Leni must have nagged Ulla half to death to let her come, but Elfriede? What was she doing here in our kitchen, which Ulla had gotten it int
o her head to transform into a beauty salon? She hadn’t said a word about my invitation to the castle, and now here she was, inside my house for the first time. I was too caught off guard to know how to receive her. Our intimacy had been confined to hidden, lowly places like the barracks washroom. This was a breach, a rupture, something we couldn’t even acknowledge. Outside the framework of our time as food tasters, our friendship lost its urgency. It confused me.

  I had the women make themselves comfortable, somewhat hesitantly, worried that Herta wouldn’t enjoy having visitors. The somber spirit of our days had become a form of homage to Gregor, and she was devoted to her belief that her son would one day rise again. The least deviation from this was sacrilege. She already couldn’t bear that I was going to the castle—who knew how much Ulla’s festive spirit would upset her?

  Instead my mother-in-law showed only a touch of uneasiness, and it was because she was being kind—she wanted to be hospitable but doubted she would manage to do it well.

  I felt disoriented. The dress that Ulla was wearing was one I had worn myself in a now-remote era. The fabric, which was too warm for the season, now hung down the sides of another woman, yet the story it told was mine.

  Herta boiled some water for tea and I took the good cups out of the credenza. “I don’t have any cookies,” she said apologetically. “If I had known, I would have made something.”

  “There’s jam,” Joseph said, coming to her rescue, “and bread. Herta’s is delicious.”

  We ate bread and jam like children having an afternoon snack. We had never eaten together in a place outside the lunchroom. Did the other women think about poison whenever they brought food to their lips? My mother used to say that eating meant battling death, but only in Krausendorf had I believed it.

  Having finished her first slice, Leni distractedly licked her finger and picked up another. “You like it, do you?” Elfriede asked, snickering. Leni blushed, and even Herta laughed. I hadn’t heard her laugh for months.

  Meanwhile, Ulla was anxious to do my hair. She stood up, her cup of tea still steaming, had Herta bring a basin with a little water in it, stood behind me, and dampened my hair with her hands.

  “It’s cold!” I protested.

  “Oh, stop making such a fuss,” she said.

  Then, hairpins gripped between her lips, she began to wrap my locks, one by one, around the rollers, some larger, some smaller. From time to time I would tip back my head to catch a glimpse of her—she looked so serious—but she would push my head forward again. “Let me work.”

  Back when I was dating Gregor, I went to the hairdresser’s once a week, wanting to look impeccable if he took me out to dinner. I would chat with the other women trapped in the mirror in front of me as the stylists teased and tamed our hair with brushes and hot irons. The sight of one’s appearance spoiled by hair clips and barrettes, one’s forehead pulled taut by combs, or half of one’s face hidden behind a curtain of locks flipped forward, made it possible for us to talk about anything—about all the compromises marriage required, like the wives did, or about how amazing love was, like I did. Once, after listening to me, a woman slightly older in years had told me, Dear, I don’t like playing the part of Cassandra, but you should know it won’t last forever.

  The recollection felt so far away, there in my in-laws’ kitchen. Maybe it was because of that mismatched little group—Leni, Elfriede, Ulla, and Gregor’s parents—gathered in the house where Gregor had spent his childhood. And along with them was me, who had once lived in the capital and spent my money at the hairdresser’s every week, so young and naïve that the older women couldn’t wait for their chance to begin to dampen my spirits in small doses—but only for my own good.

  I tried to distract myself from the unfounded trace of concern that left my palms damp with perspiration. “Joseph,” I said, “why don’t you tell Ulla about the castle gardens?”

  “Yes, yes, please!” she cried. “Oh, how I would love to see them! How big are they? Are there benches, fountains, gazebos?”

  Before Joseph could even reply, Leni jumped in: “What about a maze? I love hedge mazes!”

  My father-in-law smiled. “No, no garden maze.”

  “The kid thinks she’s living in a fairy tale,” Elfriede said, smirking.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Leni asked.

  “Since she’s lived this close to a castle her whole life,” Ulla said, “it’s to be expected, don’t you think?”

  “And where were you born, Elfriede?” Herta asked.

  She hesitated before answering. “Gdańsk.”

  So she had been raised in a city too. How was it possible that after all those months I hadn’t even known where she was from? Since every question seemed inopportune with her, I never asked any.

  In ’38 Gregor and I had passed through Gdańsk before setting off from Sopot. Who knew if Elfriede had been there as we walked down the streets of her city? Who knew if we had crossed paths without being able to imagine that years later we would share the same table, the same fate?

  “Must’ve been hard,” Joseph said.

  Elfriede nodded.

  “Who do you live with here?”

  “I live alone. Leni, would you pour me some more tea?”

  “For how long now?” Herta was trying to be kind, not indiscreet, but Elfriede made a noise with her nose—it sounded like she had a cold, but that was just her way of breathing. On certain winter afternoons, I still hear it.

  “Done!” Ulla exclaimed, having placed a green hairnet over my head. “Now, please, don’t touch it.”

  “But they’re so tight.…” I wanted to scratch my scalp.

  “Hands off!” Ulla slapped my wrist and everyone laughed, even Elfriede.

  Luckily, Herta’s question hadn’t bothered her too much. There was something obstinate, even rude, about her secretiveness. I was allowed to get closer to her only when she decided I could, though at the same time I didn’t feel rejected.

  My discomfort faded and for a moment we were simply four young women focusing exclusively on beauty. Then, as if it were the right moment—as if the right moment for that question even existed—Leni asked, “Will you show me Gregor?”

  Herta stiffened, drained of words.

  Without a sound I stood up and went to my room.

  “I’m sorry,” Leni stammered. “I shouldn’t have.…”

  “What on earth were you thinking?” From her tone I could tell Elfriede was reproaching her.

  The others remained silent.

  Minutes later I returned to the kitchen, moved the teacups aside, and spread the photo album open on the table. Herta held her breath. Joseph put down his pipe, almost as though out of respect for Gregor, like taking off his hat.

  I quickly flipped through the pages, some covered with a sheet of tissue paper, until I found him. In the first photograph he was sitting on a deck chair in the backyard, wearing a tie but no jacket. In another he was lying on the grass, wearing knickerbockers, the first buttons of his sweater undone. I was beside him, a striped kerchief on my head. They had taken the photo of us here, during our first trip together.

  “That’s him?” Ulla asked.

  “Yes,” Herta replied in a tiny voice. Then she tucked her upper lip into her mouth, pulling taut the skin beneath her nose. She looked like a turtle, she looked like my mother.

  “You’re a fine-looking couple,” Ulla said.

  “What about your wedding picture?” Leni was hungry for more.

  I turned the page. “Here it is.”

  There they were, Gregor’s eyes, those eyes that had studied me so closely on the day of my interview at the office, almost as if they wanted to search inside every atom, spot the nucleus, isolate it, pare away the rest, to directly access what mattered, what made me me.

  I bashfully held a bouquet of flowers, the heads resting in the crook of my arm, the stems against my belly, as though to cradle them. One year later he would set off for the war. The following phot
ograph was of him in uniform. After that he disappeared from the album entirely.

  Joseph gently pushed Zart off his lap and went out back without saying a word. The cat followed him, but Joseph closed the door in his face.

  * * *

  ULLA TOOK THE rollers out of my hair and used her brush, which she then rested on the table. “Well, Frau Sauer, did I do a good job?”

  Herta nodded unenthusiastically, then quickly said to me, “You need to get dressed.”

  A somber spirit had taken over once again. By now it was a familiar condition, for her a more-than-comfortable condition, since freeing herself from it would have been exhausting. I understood her. With my friends around, the photos of Gregor were no longer very different from the pictures Ulla would clip out of magazines—portraits of people you couldn’t touch, with whom you couldn’t talk, who might as well not have existed.

  I dressed in silence, Herta sitting on my bed, lost in thought. She stared at the photo of Gregor at age five. He was her son, he had come out of her. How had she lost him?

  “Herta, would you help me, please?”

  Herta got up and did up my buttons one by one, slowly. “It’s very low-cut,” she said, touching my back. “You’ll catch cold.”

  I walked out of the room, ready to go to the party yet feeling as though I had never decided to. Even Herta, perhaps, felt tricked into it. The other women were as bubbly as bridesmaids, but I was already married, no man awaited me at an altar. Why did I feel afraid, then, of what?

  “The dark green of your gown looks good with your blond hair. And, not to compliment myself, but your hairdo flatters your round face,” Ulla said. She looked so pleased it seemed like she was the one with the invitation.

  “Have fun,” Leni said from the doorway.

  “Even if you don’t have fun, remember everything,” Ulla begged me. “I don’t want to miss a single detail, got it?”