The Twins

by Tessa de Loo

  ‘A house out of a Chekhov story,’ Lotte sighed.

  ‘A house of rich people, who never touched a duster themselves,’ Anna corrected. ‘Pity the maid who had to keep such a barn clean.’

  ‘They’ve simply let it collapse,’ said Lotte indignantly.

  ‘Who could afford such a house now? The heating bills, the maintenance, the staff…’

  Anna’s pragmatism annoyed Lotte. It sounded like: justice at last. ‘Everything of beauty is disappearing,’ she complained.

  ‘Komm, meine Liebe.’ Anna walked on decisively. This lament for an old house that was about to collapse. She, Anna, was also old; her shutters were also hanging crookedly off their hinges.

  They walked on without saying any more. Anna, disapproving, was resolute in her silence; Lotte felt it with each step. The surroundings were becoming more densely built up, here and there the pavements had been cleared. Spa accepted them again – there was something reassuring about the lit-up shops, the bustle of people and traffic. They came to rest at a pâtisserie in Place Albert I, over a light tart of pears with whisked egg white. A potpourri of familiar melodies was playing in the background.

  Lotte looked up with an expression of recognition. ‘Isn’t that … “Lili Marlene”?’

  ‘The number-one hit of the war,’ said Anna scornfully.

  ‘Yes … I still remember what a stir she caused, Marlene Dietrich. She saw it all coming and left Germany in time.’

  ‘So she could make her career in Hollywood, you mean.’

  That scepticism again. Not anticipating which fire she would be stoking up she said with irritation, ‘I still don’t understand how all of you didn’t see it coming. Hitler would not have got a foothold with us, despite the depression …’

  ‘But you hadn’t had your confidence taken away like we had. He, this buffoon, gave it back to us. With his marches, party rallies, his speeches. With the most impressive Olympic Games of all time. The foreigners stood cheering on the tribune and Herr Hitler was host to the world. No one was saying, You’re no good. They all came. And then the newspapers, periodicals, the radio, the bioscope magazine, they all carried that one message – there wasn’t anything else. You took it in, every day, there was only one version … You swallowed it the way you swallow advertising. It ground its way into our heads, slowly but surely. Ach, you can’t imagine it …’

  Anna sighed; she stuck her fork abruptly into the tart.

  ‘Industry was flourishing. The young didn’t hang around on the streets – they were in the Hitler Youth and came to school fresh and happy. They were training for military service so that they would make good soldiers later on. When the war broke out they were already used to camps and discipline … it was all planned but no one realized it. The girls automatically became Blitzmädel, task force squads of young women in the Wehrmacht. And there was the Ideology and Aesthetics division for the educated youth – where they learned rhythmics, dancing, singing, making music: that’s how they also won over the higher cadres. It was an orderly, beautiful, fantastic world.’

  It was being said in an ironic voice, it is true, but so loud that Lotte made beseeching gestures and looked around nervously.

  ‘You must understand once and for all,’ Anna continued, just as loud, ‘I can sense only opposition in you. The mothers were relieved of the care of their children, there was no boredom, there were no drug addicts, you didn’t have the shambles we have now. Most people of my age who were involved in that still dream about it all the time. You should talk to a former BDM leader or an Arbeitsführerin, your hair would stand on end. It was their youth, the time of their lives, wunderschön!’

  Lotte stared at her. It was as though Anna had become larger and larger during this hymn of praise, as though – with her cake fork in her hand – she had acquired pompous dimensions. This bumptiousness, this wunderschöne, fatal enthusiasm from before the war, filled the whole pâtisserie.

  ‘Yet there were exceptions, people who didn’t lose their reason!’ Lotte was speaking into the wind, her words were blown back into her face, so weak did she feel in her defence. ‘Even when a whole people loses its head like that, there are exceptions.’

  ‘Of course. But the political opposition had been waved aside at once, you know that, they had neatly removed them. The rest of them, the intellectuals, the clever ones, like those who had contacts with foreigners so they could also get hold of other information, or people like Uncle Heinrich who understood it intuitively: all those people would have been in great danger if they had opened their mouths. That’s why you didn’t hear voices of dissent. All hands were raised in the same direction, the one direction …’

  ‘But you, Anna … why did you do nothing?’

  ‘I was a servant girl, someone’s servant girl, a non-person. I had to be there all the time, for the gnädige Frau, I had to do what she wanted me to, like lightning. I didn’t take kindly to Hitler, but beyond that I didn’t care. It was all the same to me.’

  The blood rose to Lotte’s head. One way or another Anna was becoming increasingly elusive – she was putting up a smoke screen under the guise of candour. But Lotte would not permit herself to be misled.

  ‘And the Jews?’ she said fiercely. ‘The disappearances, Kristallnacht …?’

  ‘The official answer to that was: we have taken them in for protection because otherwise the wrath of the people would kill them. Because the Jews had brought about all the miseries: the First World War, the scandalous Treaty of Versailles, the depression, degeneracy in art … that even persists now in some German heads, it had been so hammered in. Listen … Lotte …’

  Anna leaned close to Lotte across the table. There was a fleck of egg white foam on her top lip. Lotte felt that the last opponents of the Nazi regime were represented by this trivial bit of foam – and at once a thick, shiny tongue came out to lick it away from its insecure position on her top lip.

  ‘Listen, you can pose all these questions because you know about everything that happened. We didn’t yet know where it was all leading so we didn’t pose the questions. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Wir haben es nicht gewusst … We did not know … we’ve all heard that one for so long.’

  Anna started pricking the base of her tart with her fork, she really seemed angry. That pricking was getting on Lotte’s nerves, she was very close to becoming angry herself.

  ‘You all point with your accusing fingers,’ Anna snapped. ‘You’ve been doing that for forty-five years already, but that’s the easy way. Why did the German people let it happen, you cry. But I turn that round and ask: why did you in the West let it happen? You allowed us to rearm quietly – when you could already have intervened under the Treaty of Versailles. You allowed us to march into the Rhineland without let or hindrance, and Austria. And then you bargained away Czechoslovakia to us. The German emigrants in France, in England, in America warned. No one listened. Why didn’t they stop that idiot while it was still possible? Why did they leave us to our fate, turned over to a dictator?’

  ‘So we did it, finally!’

  ‘Why? That’s what I ask.’

  Lotte’s eyes sparkled. ‘You twist things beautifully, Anna,’ she said with a hostile laugh, ‘this really is the prettiest argument I’ve ever heard to exonerate the Germans.’ She stood up angrily. ‘Allow me to pay,’ she said haughtily. She lifted her coat from the back of the chair and veered off towards the young woman at the cash till. Ow, the walk had severely affected her calves.

  Anna stood up in a panic. Why was Lotte so piqued all of a sudden? She had set out her ideas in all sincerity. They had not been formed unthinkingly, just like that: you could not see past the piles of books she had read in order to fathom all those lurid patterns. It was doubtful whether Lotte had ever taken so much trouble to read up about it herself.

  ‘Lotte,’ she called, ‘wait a moment …’

  ‘I’m tired,’ said her sister over her shoulder. Suddenly she looked ve
ry old and fragile. ‘I think I really am very tired.’

  10

  As the door of the pâtisserie closed behind Lotte, Anna snatched her winter coat from the chair. She found it stuffy among all those women – it was smoky and her effortfully obtained insights had evoked nothing but the unwillingness and incomprehension of the only person in the world she wanted to convince. It was one big misunderstanding. She wormed between two chairs to the cash till. Lotte had paid for her too – was she wanting to justify her overhasty departure in that way? Anna went out into the snow; she tried to breathe deeply but it seemed as though her lungs had shrunk. Her heart was beating fast and unevenly. Here, now, it could happen, just like that, suddenly, the discord with Lotte would never be set aside. Walking slowly, she tried to get her breathing under control; perhaps it was the sudden feeling of futility that was making her short of breath.

  Lotte was relieved. The sabotage that she had committed just now uplifted her, she felt liberated – she had allowed herself to be taken in far too much by Anna, the limits of her empathy had been reached. It was as though they had been involved in a mock battle. They tossed worn-out arguments that had been heard a thousand times at each other’s heads, ostensibly going right to the heart of their direct opposition to one another while, actually, something much larger was going on outside them. Something that withdrew as soon as you tried to bring it closer to you by observing it through a telescope.

  They arrived at the Thermal Institute at the same time the next morning, except that Lotte was standing at the foot of the stairs while, for unknown reasons, Anna was on the opposite side of the road, waiting for a military procession to pass. Surely she hadn’t been on the lookout? Lotte would not have noticed her if she hadn’t been waving and calling out, between the vehicles driving past at a sedate pace towards the west. Lotte waited. She had slept wonderfully well that night after she had made up her mind not to allow herself to become so upset by Anna any more. And now there she was, waving; then she disappeared for a moment behind a jeep, a tank, a military ambulance. There was no end to the procession, creeping past her according to its own logic. Helmeted heads, looking ahead with martial bearing, as though they had just taken Spa by force, purely to enable them to drive through it. Lotte began to laugh. She saw that Anna was laughing too on the other side. Were they both discovering at the same moment that it was nothing more than a mock performance separating them? When the last camouflage-painted tank had passed, Anna crossed the street shaking her head.

  As though nothing special had occurred the day before, they ascended the steps of the Thermal Institute, supporting each other. It seemed that the previous day had cleared out something thorny – you could not tell what sort of twists the human spirit followed. Later in the day they met up again in one of the corridors. On a long white bench they discussed the effects of the different baths on their muscles and joints like seasoned visitors at a health resort. Now the highest peak was over, the curative results would gradually have to reveal themselves. They decided to have dinner that evening in a restaurant opposite the Pouhon Pierre-le-Grand. According to Anna, whose scrutiny did not miss much, it looked convivial and affordable.

  Lotte’s father did not emerge unscathed from his illness. The thrombosed leg limped a bit with every step. His heart sometimes began to beat faster for no reason. Then he would clutch his chest as though the moment he was going to die had actually arrived. The gesture immediately revived the old anxiety in everyone. Conversation stopped, music was turned off, a window was opened – although they knew that he exploited his heartbeats and feigned them at times when other methods for attracting attention failed. He had been the focal point at all times during his long period of illness; his wife had been completely devoted to him as she had in the springtime of their marriage before she became distracted by the children. After his recovery the youngest returned home and he fell into the old habit, worse than ever, of provoking the children (her children) with unreasonable demands and punishments. It was the simplest way of getting into a row with her; during the reconciliations he regained exclusive rights to her for a while. Instead of being grateful for the fact that he had survived three different causes of death, he was embittered, as though the regained life in no way fulfilled his expectations. He also developed the habit of sniffing repeatedly, first through one nostril, then the other – even the smell of his second life did not please him.

  The sniffing got on Lotte’s nerves; she could hear it everywhere. Behind closed doors, at the end of the passage, just round the corner, at night through the bedroom walls. She dreamed of escaping from this father and from the disharmony that he was constantly inducing in the family in different ways, on account of his inexhaustible inventiveness. She also wished to be released from his permanent grousing. About the impotence of Minister-President Colijn, who intended to combat the depression by cutting payments to the unemployed and loans to civil servants. Her father noticed it specially in the retarded growth of his record collection. Grumbling about the Communist Party, which had called on all political parties to sink their underlying differences in a collective fight against the National Socialist movement – now he could no longer draw his sword against the popes and Calvinists. Grousing about Hitler, who had merely been a half-wit at first, but had gradually come to enjoy the status of a dangerous lunatic. Grousing about the German people who marched behind the dangerous lunatic, whereby he conveniently overlooked that his own mother was German as well as his grandparents on her side – and also his musical niece. Sniffing violently, he took possession of the newspaper as soon as it dropped through the letter box and would not surrender it to anyone, as a dog grips a bone between its teeth. The more Lotte heard him carrying on against the German people, the more that people filled her with affection. Each negative remark on his part aroused her longing for a reunion with Anna. If her father thought that the Germans were good for nothing, she wanted to be one of them.

  Nevertheless, Theo de Zwaan, Marie’s fiancé, set out for Germany with two friends on the rumour that there was abundant work there. After two weeks he was back again. Instead of having earned something he had spent all his savings on a Leica that hung on his chest like a war trophy. ‘How will you get it into your head!’ said Lotte’s mother. ‘We don’t buy German goods on principle and you come home flaunting a pricey Leica.’ But he was not elated in the slightest about his purchase, rather it seemed like a sort of plaster over the wound. He was depressed and sparing with information. Yes there was work enough there, but he had no business being in that country. Half the people were in uniform, even children; there was a revolting general enthusiasm about the Anschluss with Austria; there were posters, banners everywhere, placards with ‘Ein Volk – Ein Reich – Ein Führer’. He had seen it with his own eyes and wanted nothing more to do with it. ‘I could have told you that already,’ said his future father-in-law, ‘then you could have saved yourself that whole trip.’ Lotte mistrusted the bearer of these bad tidings. Probably no one had wanted to take him on; you could see from afar that he was a drip. The way he had experienced Germany had been coloured by frustration of course; it spoke well for the country that it did not take anyone on just like that.

  To compensate, Theo longed for the camera to provide him with glittering photographs. He asked Jet and Lotte to be guinea pigs. As neither of them could take him seriously, they put on men’s trousers and jackets and Homburg hats, for a joke. With their lips made up to excess, they permitted themselves to be immortalized beside the water-tower in masculine poses, leaning on each other’s shoulders, cigars in their mouths; staring into the camera with sphinx’s eyes like Greta Garbo; in an imitation of Marlene Dietrich – ‘I’m ready for love from head to toe’. Eventually they burst out in hilarious uncontrollable laughter. Theo took his photos, phlegmatic as always, setting the diaphragm and deciding the angle of view. When the minuscule pictures with zigzag edges had been developed, the worldly, sultry, negligent, independent women they perc
eived aroused their curiosity. Was this them? Their mother passed the photos round with a proud laugh among visitors: just see what good-looking daughters I have!

  A Mahler symphony was on the turntable. Lotte attached herself to the group that sat in a circle listening as though at a religious confession – a waterfall was gushing down at the foot of a rock in a clearing in a wood, threatening rumblings sounded from behind the mountain tops, deer were on the run. Sammy Goldschmidt was listening with pursed lips; mentally he was performing along with it. For Ernst Goudriaan, who was gazing ahead darkly, the music seemed to arouse more sombre visions. ‘Who was the conductor?’ he asked when the last note had died away and they seemed rather dejected because the spell had broken. ‘Wilhelm Furtwängler,’ said Lotte’s father, sniffing left and right. ‘Furtwängler!’ said Goudriaan. ‘He plays for the Nazis now!’ ‘Furtwängler?’ Lotte’s mother repeated shocked. ‘Oh well,’ her husband muttered, ‘that symphony was recorded years ago, we’ve already enjoyed it many times.’

  Goudriaan looked round uneasily. He was just back from Germany, he explained. It sounded like an apology. He had been serving an apprenticeship with a famous violin-maker. During that time he had lodged with a Jewish family, and had more or less become a member of the household. A few days ago the violin-maker had come up to him. ‘I have heard that you are staying with Jewish people. If you want to complete your training here you must leave there as quickly as possible.’ ‘But I have nothing to do with those regulations,’ Goudriaan retorted, ‘I am Dutch.’ ‘You are here in Germany, you have to go along with it. Either you leave that family or you do not remain here any longer.’ ‘Then I’ll leave here,’ said Goudriaan.