by Tessa de Loo
From this it seemed that the balding, wayward chemist was the weak spot in Frau Stolz’s armour. Perhaps her domineering and perfectionism were purely means of preserving her self-respect. She recovered her strength whenever they were women together. The day after Anna had given evidence of her appetite for reading, she asked, holding the lid of the laundry basket in front of her like a shield, ‘Don’t you take any washing to your aunt on Sundays?’ ‘No,’ Anna said, surprised. ‘How is it that you hardly ever have any washing, a dress now and then …’ ‘I’ve only got two dresses.’ ‘… And now and then some underclothes … never a sanitary towel …’ ‘Sanitary towel? What’s that?’ Frau Stolz’s eyes popped. She towered over Anna who grew smaller and smaller. She possessed nothing, two dresses, some underclothes, she was nobody. ‘You’re not really telling me that you don’t know what sanitary towels are?’ ‘No,’ said Anna, ‘never heard of them.’ ‘But you menstruate?’ ‘Menstr …? No.’ ‘But every woman menstruates, each month.’ Anna was silent for a moment, bewildered. ‘I am not aware that I am lacking anything,’ she said defiantly. ‘Listen …’ With maternal concern Frau Stolz laid her impeccably well cared-for hand on Anna’s shoulder. In a lowered voice, creating an atmosphere of familiarity that aroused great distrust in Anna, she initiated her into the secrets of the female cycle. Frau Stolz’s ‘we’, which referred to all women in the world, met with violent aversion in Anna. If it was womanly to lose blood every month, just as Frau Stolz lost blood every month, then she was proud that her body was having nothing to do with it.
But Frau Stolz made an appointment for her with her gynaecologist. During the examination he asked her how it could be that the hymen was broken. ‘Have you ever been with a man?’ It did not strike Anna that a reply was expected. She scanned the ceiling stubbornly – she had discovered cracks and colours, shapes and figures that were unintentionally expressing something, the significance of which she strenuously tried to comprehend, as diversionary tactics against the penetration by fingers, by metal, in an area that truly belonged to her but that she could in no way make her own. He posed the question more forcefully. She shook her head indignantly. ‘Shhh,’ he soothed, nodding calmingly at her, ‘relax. Have you been examined before?’ ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘it was when … they tried to turn my womb.’ The memory of the previous examination pressed itself forwards, the atmosphere of secrecy in which it had taken place, the presence of the phantom Aunt Martha who watched over her virginity from a corner of the consulting-room. ‘You have indeed got a crooked womb,’ said the doctor, ‘something can only be done about it operatively … Moreover the ovaries are underdeveloped, but we’ve got a solution for that.’ The animal word ‘ovary’ made her think of the births of piglets and calves in an odour of hay and muck, of sweat and effort.
While she was getting dressed behind a curtain, the doctor telephoned Frau Stolz to inform her of his findings. He employed lovely, poetic phraseology about her: the hymen, the uterus, ovaria, follicles. Anna had the uneasy feeling, just as she had done years before, that an entirely strange woman was involved in an obscure fight with her to appropriate her female organs. ‘One every day,’ said the doctor smiling. He handed her a prescription. ‘Such a good-looking blonde girl ought to be able to have a whole lot of children!’
Every day Frau Stolz checked that Anna took her pill. She had assumed total responsibility for her fertility, as precisely as she had regarded it to be her duty to teach her embroidery. Anna’s exterior and interior had to be orderly and flawless, like the skirting boards when they had just been dusted. Only Anna’s thoughts escaped her all-seeing eye. She did not see that a rebel was biding her time beneath an increasingly thin veneer of servitude, provoked to the extreme. Months later, when the treatment first showed a dubious effect, she regarded this as a personal victory over chaos: something was being restored in the world order at the same time as in the order in Anna’s abdomen.
There were further secret watchers over her fertility – equally concerned with order. That summer the Stolzs went travelling for a week, leaving Gitte behind in Anna’s care. They went to the swimming baths together in the afternoon, beach bags dangling on their shoulders. Each day there was a clear blue sky above the roofs and the motionless tree tops. When they came home on one of their languid afternoons, a strange car was in front of the house. Two men were leaning on the doors, their hands in their pockets, their eyes screwed up against the sun. They hurried after Anna up the garden path as she put the key in the lock. ‘Good afternoon, gnädige Frau, may we have a word with you?’ Anna pushed the front door open; Gitte shot into the house under her arm, upstairs to her room. In the hall they remained standing, Anna with raised eyebrows, the two men – although somewhat embarrassed – energetic. ‘You see, we have come from the Erbgesundheitsamt, the genetic investigation branch of the health ministry. You have a servant, a certain …’ Documents were consulted. ‘Anna Bamberg? ‘Yes indeed,’ said Anna haughtily, ‘what about her? ‘Well, you see …’ they both began together. They laughed apologetically to one another, after which one of the two did the talking and the other confined himself to nodding supportively. ‘We don’t know exactly, we’re still investigating, but this Anna Bamberg is a bit feeble-minded.’ ‘Oh really?’ said Anna icily. ‘Is that what she is? She looks quite normal, this employee.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ he breathed, ‘that could well be so, gnädige Frau, but … you must understand … this woman has to be sterilized.’ Once again she was hearing a word for the first time. Frau Stolz would certainly know what it meant. She kept her options open: ‘Why?’ ‘Well, you see, we cannot … feeble-mindedness is inherited; if she has children, they will be feeble-minded children too.’ A ticklish laugh rose up from her chest. ‘How do you make out that Anna …’ ‘Haven’t you noticed anything about her then?’ ‘No.’ ‘Listen …’ The one who had done the talking held up the documents like a trophy. ‘It’s all in the guardianship declaration.’
As she was listening to what he had to say, she was conscious that they represented a sort of bizarre unreality, standing together in the hall – as long as she was the lady of the house to them, regarding herself as feeling at her ease in her own hall, and at the same time referring to herself as though she were an absent third, an abstract person.
The men had been to the court and read the guardianship declaration that she herself had signed. The part she had left unread concerned the obligatory annual reports by Uncle Heinrich, in which he had to account for the fact that he was keeping Anna Bamberg, daughter of so and so, at the farm. He had filled it in conscientiously every year, saying that since the death of her grandfather he was exercising the guardianship, that she was feeble-minded and too delicate in health to be educated or look for a job. It was so matter-of-fact there, so unadorned, in the same phraseology every year, that no one from the guardianship board had ever contemplated going to look at the problem child with their own eyes for once.
There it stood in black and white, in the familiar calligraphy: Anna Bamberg is feeble-minded and in delicate health. A single sentence erased her, destroyed the only thing – except for two dresses and some underclothes – she possessed: that she, the daughter of Johann Bamberg, was equipped with a good brain and a parrot’s memory. The hall was too small for the explosion in her head – of rage with retroactive strength, which could not be expressed anywhere in the absence of a target. The beach bag, still hanging from her shoulder, slid to the ground. She succeeded in channelling her rage and directing it at the functionaries in a supercooled way. ‘Gentlemen, she is standing here before you, Anna Bamberg. I am the delicate, feeble-minded girl you are looking for. What would you like to know? How much six times twelve is? From when to when the Thirty Years War lasted? Should I take a dictation for you? Just say!’ They backed off in shock. One of the documents fell to the floor. They did not have the courage to bend down and pick it up. ‘Just say! I’ve had enough of it now. More than enough. When my uncle wrote that in the guardiansh
ip declaration he did so because he had kept me at home to work for him for nothing all those years – in the sheds, on the land, day in day out, year in year out, without end. Because he beat me up, because he allowed me to be terrorized by his wife and because your dear Board of Supervision believed him all those years! That judge of yours, the one who’s mentioned here at the top of the declaration – why did it never enter his head to find out if everything really tallied with the facts? And now on top of that you want to sterilize me. I have had enough, I really have had absolutely enough!’
One of the two glanced over his shoulder timidly to see the height of the door knob. The other snatched the document off the floor, laughing nervously. ‘Entschuldigung, Entschuldigung …’ they mumbled, going backwards out of the hall towards the door, ‘wir haben es nicht gewusst das … we did not realize that …’ Suddenly they had disappeared. She stood there in the hall, left to the mercy of her bewilderment, which was much too great and violent for her alone. She heard the car start and drive away. She was nauseated, she was disgusted by the two gullible innocents who had come to convey the disastrous tidings to her. The whole story was so sickening that she felt the need to do something violent, to shatter something that was totally respected and valued, to destroy something. But it was too hot; now she just felt that it was altogether too hot for anything. Her dress was clinging to her body; it was too hot to think about anything. Yet they were within reach, the things it would be nice to destroy: all the objects around her, the interior with its compulsive Prussian order would be a lovely target. Dropping lengthways into a chair in the spotless room she looked round with weary eyes. She felt no urgency at all, the stolid neatness left her cold, everything left her cold, it did not matter to her. The rage imploded beneath her skull, the emotions ebbed away. She looked round the room that was utterly strange to her, even though she had dusted, polished and washed all the components a thousand times. She felt empty and exhausted.
Eventually the word ‘sterilize’ got her moving again. She stood up listlessly, went to the bookcase and took out the dictionary blindly. ‘Make infertile.’ Then her ovaries, which thanks to Frau Stolz’s tenacity were developing very slightly, would be returned to their former condition by order of the county authorities, or even removed from her body, to be absolutely certain. So the court wanted to organize things in order that no feeble-minded children would ever be born again. But surely that was idiocy, she said to herself: it was just as feeble-minded as not tolerating for any reason any dust anywhere along half a metre of skirting board.
9
The day began with an absolutely clear sky and sharp sunlight – the snow hurt the eyes. Life was becoming extrovert. On the Place Royale it was busy opposite the Thermal Institute – an attempt to make up for lost sunshine? When they came across one another at the changing rooms Anna proposed going for a walk after lunch. To one of the springs perhaps, provided that was acceptable at their age, with their rickety joints, in the snow, in the hills, and so on. Lotte yielded to Anna’s self-mockery.
Each equipped with a stick, they passed the Pouhon Pierre-le-Grand. Just for a second they looked right through the building. The view entered through high bow windows above the door and emerged via stained-glass windows in pastel colours illuminated by the low sun. They had decided to begin with the Sauvenière spring, the oldest spring in Spa, and not to go there through the wood – over difficult, impassable footpaths bearing such idyllic names as Promenade des Artistes and Promenade des Hêtres – but simply along the road to Francorchamps; then they couldn’t get lost. In the discussion that preceded this decision, they secretly noticed the same fastidiousness in one another, the same profusion of fantasies when they considered what could go wrong on the way. Was that old age or a family trait?
There was no snow left on the branches of the trees. They were plodding up a constantly rising incline. Anna was panting prodigiously. Lotte was not troubled by breathlessness – she registered this small difference, not without satisfaction: she had often felt weak and weary in contrast to Anna’s indefatigable vitality. She was instantly ashamed of her thoughts. Surely she wasn’t engaged in a competition with this woman who was her sister? ‘Let’s catch our breath.’ Anna laid a hand on her arm. They stopped on the verge, a car struggled past now and then in the melting snow. They stood there side-by-side and looked at the landscape of white hills stretching out in front of them, quiet and still, as though it had originated in their own fantasies.
‘There is a legend connected with the Sauvenière spring,’ said Anna. ‘The patron saint of Spa, St Remaclus, fell asleep while praying by the spring. As a reprimand God saw to it that his foot sank into the ground and left an impression in the rock. Newly married men have taken their wives to the spring since the Middle Ages; it had a reputation for encouraging fertility. If the bride placed her foot in the impression of St Remaclus and drank water from the spring, they could be confident of being blessed with heirs. A lovely story, no?’ She laughed. ‘Perhaps there were hormones in the spring water!’
‘It was medieval sales talk of course, to entice people to the spring,’ said Lotte.
They continued their walk. The road ascended even further.
‘We seem to be climbing Mount Golgotha,’ Anna sighed.
The road now went through a beech wood; smooth dark trunks rose up on either side. A hollow opened on the left of the road, with a brook flowing in it, twisting blackly through the snow. After a single passing car they were entirely alone for the first time. Far more than the public places where they had already met, this desolation emphasized their being together. Only the two of them, in the Ardennes – somewhere in these woods, these hills, East and West had come to blows, twice.
‘Ach, my poor feet,’ said Anna.
A small hexagonal pitched roof appeared in their field of view, somewhat lower than the road. There was a small opening in the ground filled with brown water. A little house had been built around it to protect the sanctuary. The impression of the foot was there too, in the hard stone floor, close to a tap from which they did not dare drink. They had imagined something bubbling up out of the ground spontaneously, but here everything seemed to be concealed deep below the pathetic little construction, which would not have looked out of place at a Catholic cemetery.
‘St Remaclus would be embarrassed,’ said Anna with disappointment.
‘The café is closed,’ Lotte indicated with her head towards a tea garden, which looked dark and abandoned.
‘There’s no money to be made from two old women,’ said Anna. ‘Oh well, they have constructed a little brick wall for us, let’s give our poor feet a bit of a rest.’
So this was the object of their pilgrimage, which had set their joints on fire: a spot by the roadside, lacking any romance, adapted to the demands of tourism.
‘If there had been such a fertility spring in our neighbourhood,’ Anna laughed to herself, ‘I certainly would have drunk litres and litres at the time, for sure.’
‘Those pills you took helped, didn’t they?’
‘Ach,’ she waved the idea away as though chasing off a fly, ‘that whole women’s story never got sorted out in me, I must say. I’ve never had a normal cycle. Nor did my womb get back into position: years after the war X-rays showed that when I was growing, because of labouring on the farm, my spine had set too deeply into my pelvis. Otherwise I certainly might have been ten centimetres taller, like you.’
Lotte could see before her the group photo of her children and grandchildren taken on the occasion of her seventieth birthday, a photo brimming to the edges with offspring. She felt guilty, just for a while – it was an uneasy feeling when the roles were reversed. In a certain sense then, Anna had worked for two. If her own lungs had been healthy she too would have grown up in her grandfather’s house and been put to work. A staggering thought. It was an incomprehensible arbitrariness; if Anna had been afflicted with TB instead of her, everything would have been the other way round. Wou
ld she have made the same choices then? She looked with confusion at the profile beside her. A dangerous vacuum resulted from all these reversible ideas. It would clearly be better to keep the relationships as they were. ‘Never trust a Kraut – once a Kraut always a Kraut,’ said her Dutch father, who could not be trusted an inch himself. In the war, those who could be trusted had been carefully distinguished from those who could not. It had to be so. Without that firm division they would not have managed. Either you were a collaborator with the Nazis or you weren’t. This division did not suddenly cease to exist after the war, only a past participle was added.
‘Let’s go,’ she shivered, ‘I’m getting cold.’
They walked on through the pain in their joints, which were protesting at the resumption of the walk. The sun had disappeared behind the trees; the reflection on the clouds cast a pink glow over the snow-covered fields. As they were approaching the built-up centre of Spa, the silhouette of an old chalet towered above the trees on the right of the road. Lotte stopped.
‘Look,’ she exclaimed, ‘what a lovely house.’
‘A ruin,’ Anna said coolly.
‘That woodcarving …’ Lotte walked to the edge of the bank. The house, dark and mysterious in the twilight, seemed to be built of dream fragments. It was lofty and square, with balconies of dark brown stained wood on each floor along the full extent of the façade, connected to each level by wooden stairs. Doors opened out onto the balconies with shutters of delicate lattice-work. The broad protruding eaves were decorated with lacy carving. It must once have been a pleasure to wake up in this house, she imagined, to throw open the shutters, walk out onto the balcony in bare feet and look down onto the garden in the early morning sun. The house seemed to have been victimized for that good life. Black holes gaped behind the broken windows, shutters hung crookedly off their hinges, parts of the sagging stairs seemed to have been hacked off for firewood.