The Twins

by Tessa de Loo

  3

  The heavy lunch had driven them, even so, into the fresh air. Shivering, Lotte sheltered behind her collar: it seemed that the east wind had become even more vicious. Anna, who commanded a robust layer of natural protection and was anyway less inclined to allow herself to be influenced by weather conditions, walked cheerfully into the Parc de Sept Heures. It was deserted now that the flea market had packed up. A clump of man-sized yellowed bamboos was rustling in the wind. Anna wondered whether the bamboo would recover in the spring; Lotte thought it certainly would and added the intelligence that once in a hundred years bamboo bushes all over the world flowered at the same time. This struck Anna as a myth, although she granted that there were plants that bloomed for just one night, though no one had witnessed it.

  Suddenly they were standing in front of a small natural stone monument that leaned against a steep rock, which seemed to close Spa off on the north side like a wall against the rest of the world. The monument had been erected to the designers of the footpaths around Spa. They were listed: from the Comte de Lynden-Aspremont in 1718 up to Joseph Servais in 1846. At the bottom there was a basin filled with frozen water; two copper frogs crouched on the edge with their heads thrown back; in summer, water probably spewed out of their open mouths. Anna had the bizarre sensation that they themselves were the two frogs, shut out by the ice and holding themselves in equilibrium on the edge, in expectation of the thaw.

  They turned right in unison, walked along Avenue Reine Astrid and a little later found themselves in front of an iron gate that was the entrance to a building housing the Musée de la Ville d’Eau. They nodded to each other and went inside. An old woman sold entrance tickets, huddled behind a table with picture postcards. Her face, round and red like a shrivelled star fruit, was ruled by an intricate network of wrinkles that got in each others’ way. But somewhere between the creases her eyes shone as she handed them their tickets with a gnarled hand. Anna asked for a guidebook – something faltered in the mechanism, then the head began to nod fiercely and a pale mimeograph appeared.

  ‘Scandalous,’ Anna whispered, ‘a woman of a hundred still put to work.’

  Suddenly they felt very young. With a certain bravura they went into the first room. The illuminated glass cases contained a large collection of ‘Jolitées’, objects that had been used by the visitors over the centuries: snuff and tobacco pouches, water bottles, walking sticks with the head of Napoleon or a wild animal, watch cases, quadrille boxes, delicate pieces of furniture – all painted and carved out of the celebrated wood proudly called ‘Bois de Spa’ – as though it were a kind of marble. The Arcadian images of elegant strollers with or without wig and crinoline on the routes laid out by Lynden-Aspremont and Servais elicited cries of wonder from Lotte. Anna felt annoyed at the frivolous baubles and saw the exploitation of underpaid craftspeople in the painted miniatures. She held the mimeograph up a long way from her eyes and began to read out loud in her wobbly accent.

  Long before Spa became Spa, Pliny the Roman had already praised the curative actions of the water that bubbled up in that area. Ever since Henry VIII’s physician had ordered his patient to drink the water from these springs, Spa became known in all Europe and the water, in flat bottles packed in plaited willow, found its way along all points of the compass. In 1717 Tsar Peter the Great honoured the town with a visit. The European aristocracy followed his example, surrounded by adventurers and parasites – statesmen, famous scientists, artists and ladies of royal blood strolled from fountain to fountain, a stick in one hand and a bottle in the other, and drank eagerly of the miraculous water that even enjoyed a reputation for curing the pangs of love. They were called ‘Bobelins’ by the inhabitants of the town. There was one firm rule of behaviour that the Bobelins had to stick to: all serious matters were absolutely prohibited. Quiet, harmony and loose reins were the ingredients of the cure. Famous names followed: Descartes, Christina of Sweden, Bollandius, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count of Orléans, Pauline Bonaparte … Anna fanned herself with a hand. Pfff – yes of course, only the rich people could afford such a cure, they had all the time in the world while the staff worked themselves into the ground. It was a miracle that they managed to become ill on top of that: from their earliest youth they had eaten well, played sports, had not had to lug muck carts …

  Deaf to Anna’s philippic, Lotte leaned over a trinket case on which two ladies with corseted waists and wide hats full of waving feathers were drinking glasses of water. ‘Look at this,’ she pulled on Anna’s sleeve, ‘what an elegant fashion that was: a really feminine silhouette. They were women with style …’

  ‘Of course they had style,’ Anna retorted, ‘they were brought up like that. I worked for them for years, I know exactly what they’re like. It is all a façade – they were not a whisker better than us, these people who were nobility on the outside. I feel I am on a decidedly higher level than that so-called élite.’

  Lotte pulled her along from one display case to the next. She refused to allow her pleasure to be spoilt by carping at the aristocracy. She simply wanted to enjoy the curious paraphernalia with which that class had surrounded itself – life in that period seemed so much more intense and richly coloured than life now. All at once they were in the hall again. The old woman had fallen asleep or, perhaps, even died. They left the museum – the wind pursued them two blocks further into the, by now, trustworthy pâtisserie, where they once again took seats beneath the hideous wrought-iron lamp fitting and ordered merveilleux, this time with coconut.

  After the French campaign the family returned from the east. The Führer had done it again! The Sekt flowed in torrents, the flush of victory lasted until the first English bombing raids over Cologne. Anna made attempts to learn to swim – she floated on her back in the fire-extinguishing water and looked at the blue sky through her eyelashes. Weightlessness … to be there and not there … to forget for a while that Martin was in Poland with his division. After their first meetings, which subsequently seemed to have taken place in a dream rather than in reality, he began to be an ordinary person in the Feldpost letters in his choice of words, his observations: a tree in Odrzywót that was a thousand years old, a richly gilded baroque church in a village where there were more pigs than people, a weathered old man who lisped three words of German in which he bragged because his forefathers had been with Garibaldi on the barricades, a locality with hundreds of lakes that reflected the sky so that you ended up not knowing what was above and what was below. Warlike matters were not mentioned at all, though marriage was – a proposal full of Viennese flourish and elegance. From the moment he had seen her on the other side of the dance floor, in her blue dress, lacking any form of coquetry, even sending out a mildly aggressive ‘don’t come too near me’, he had known it. On his next leave he wanted to ask her father for her hand. But he is dead, she retorted. Her guardian then? She had declared him dead. He had to ask someone for her hand surely? She found his obstinacy on this point old-fashioned but endearing and suggested that Uncle Franz should take that role upon himself. The idea of a marriage was so extravagant that she burst out laughing from time to time. I’m going to get married, she said to herself. It sounded as though it concerned somebody else – something like marriage could not possibly have anything to do with her. But at the same time the seriousness of it did permeate her, as expressed in the stereotypes: one body, one soul – till death us do part … Never to be alone again – her fate would be coupled to his for ever in the practical and metaphysical sense. She would no longer be ‘someone’s chambermaid’ but ‘someone’s wife’ … Yet stronger than all these considerations was a feeling of tranquillity – events overtook her in any case.

  One afternoon in the autumn Martin got off the train safe and sound. The smoke from the locomotive hung under the roof. Coughing, she allowed herself to be embraced. Then he held her away with outstretched arms to look at her. She was shocked. During his absence he had become transparent in the physical sense. On pa
per he was as familiar to her as someone whom she had known since her youth, someone to whom no detail was too irrelevant. Now everything switched round at high speed. The old friend from the letters evaporated; in his stead was a soldier with a tanned face and shining eyes. To conceal her shyness she forced a way to the exit for him through the thronging masses.

  The cook, housemaids, governess, washerwoman, he won them all over again with his courtesy, the flawlessness of his appearance and a rare combination of natural authority and boyishness. After the news of the imminent engagement they treated Anna with a new respect. Frau von Garlitz arranged two rooms for them in a small hotel in the Eifel; they deserved some undisturbed time together after all those months of separation and uncertainty, she thought.

  Through a landscape that the autumn had set on fire the train puffed southwards with interruptions. A cousin of the hotel owner, who was himself at the front, fetched them from the station in a rickety jalopy that, preserved as a museum piece for years, was standing in for the requisitioned car. Wheels rattling on the road, forest air and an unfamiliar destination. At any moment Anna expected to see a convent appearing on the crest of a hill next to the von Zitsewitz castle at a bend in the road. One glance at Martin’s profile brought her back to 1940 – times had moved on, don’t look back. Under his care they would be able to bring her everywhere. Although up to now in spirit she had withdrawn as much as possible from reality as it presented itself to her, and in compensation had been in league with the world of literary imagination, now, as each bump in the unmade road threw her against Martin, she felt reconciled with everyday reality – she even loved the bumps in the road that were throwing her against him.

  The hotel had an atmosphere of charming, dilapidated chic. The only guests, they dined in the faded dining-room in the company of an invisible élite who ate in a whisper at the scattered tables between dusty palms. Via the radio the owner’s wife was in permanent contact with the nocturnal threat that was flying over the sea towards Germany. Instead of calm music from a string band, during the evening the meal was repeatedly graced by the familiar tick-tock, followed by a report of approaching danger. Determined not to let this one evening that was meant for them to be disturbed by any calamities, they let the woman show them to their rooms, which were pointedly at the opposite ends of a long passage, as though an extremely sensitive pair of scales had to be kept in balance.

  But a little later on there was a knock at her door and he surprised her with a bottle of Sekt. They drank it all at a frivolous pace on the edge of the bed. The war disappeared from their consciousness – they were seized by a sense of freedom, separated from the external world, separated from time, in a room that belonged to someone else, among objects that had been seen by thousands of others. They touched each other, raised up from themselves by the tingling Sekt and a dizzying lightness. He began to undress her with trembling fingers, draping her clothes carefully over a chair. They crept into the bed shivering and pulled the sheets over them. ‘I have not been with a woman before,’ he confided in her ear. His erect member seemed to want to bring something to her memory, a warning, a reflex that had nothing to do with the here and now. Veiled by the vague recollection of a recollection, she lay still while he explored her body with his lips. He could do what he wanted with it, it was worth little – there had always been others to decide about its amenities.

  ‘The sky, Martin, look, the sky!’ Anna raised her head from his chest. They got out of bed and went to the window. In the north behind the hills a red glow fanned out in all directions. Dull roars sounded, like an approaching thunderstorm or drumroll. Anna felt a great disgust at the disturber of the peace on the horizon and at the unrelenting employer who could claim Martin back again at any moment. ‘It’s on fire in any case,’ she said. ‘Come.’ She closed the curtains with a brusque gesture and pulled him back towards the bed with her. Above it hung a Lorelei swathed in clouds, brushing her blonde hair on the fateful rock.

  A mountain of debris a metre high blocked the tram rails; the passengers got out and continued on their way, clambering over twisting paths that had come into being in a few days. The route passed between burnt-out blocks whose scorched façades were still standing half upright. Anna thought of a line of verse by Schiller: ‘Horror dwells in the bleak window caverns …’ In an intact window frame curtains flapped; further on, like a doll’s house, the blasted-away front façade gave full view of completely furnished floors; the residents had not returned to hang the chandelier that had taken wing back in its place. They got lost in the disrupted layout of streets; a man with a sweating face clearing rubble told them the way. Peculiarity was the norm. Life had resumed its course – the ordinary noises of the city prevailed instead of the reverberations of explosions and collapsing buildings, of crackling sheets of fire, of frightened screams and wailing. People clambered with their shopping bags over the rubble beneath which perhaps fellow citizens still lay.

  Aunt Vicki seemed to have lost some of her talkativeness because of the terror. Uncle Franz was quiet and controlled as always – if the hospital caught fire he would also have to remain quiet and controlled. During the evening meal he tossed Anna an approving look: bravo Mädchen, you’ve brought an excellent chap with you. Aunt Vicki was beaming too: Martin was so polite and attentive – a man who knew instinctively what a woman was due. Uncle Franz played operetta songs in honour of the Austrian, until the siren sounded right through ‘Mein Liebeslied soll ein Walzer sein’. Pre-programmed, Aunt Vicki went to the child’s room, lifted her asleep out of bed and hurried with her to the shelter. They followed her mechanically. The tumult of hasty footsteps and voices was everywhere. They settled on an empty spot in a corner. Anna looked up anxiously at the gas pipes and sewers and imagined how they would all go under in a porridge of sewage if the pipes burst. The prospect was so disgusting that she prayed silently that if the pipes did have to burst it should be the gas. This alternative calmed her. Every time the thought of the sewer threatened to gain the upper hand she performed the praying ritual with the help of the gas. But for the time being nothing happened. Aunt Vicki’s child slept on – it was unthinkable that anyone would want to kill an angel with blonde hair and gently fluttering eyelids. Perhaps she was a talisman that made everyone in the immediate vicinity unassailable. Anna herself felt sleepy at the sight. She leaned against Martin and slowly dozed off. She continued to sleep peacefully when the ground began to tremble. ‘Wake her!’ cried Aunt Vicki, upset at the idea of an adult woman meeting death sleeping. From her slumber Anna heard Martin’s calming voice: ‘Let her sleep, what difference does it make?’ The ground shook again. His arm was round her. Nothing could happen to her.

  In the face of this permanent menace from the English squadrons, Frau von Garlitz finally fled for good to her parents’ estate in Brandenburg. Although the house was far from the city centre, on the other side of the Rhine, the chemical factory immediately bordering the grounds seemed an attractive target. Martin returned to Poland; once again, Anna stayed behind alone as housekeeper – a strange, vacant position, a lengthy, inert waiting – for what? An old feeling – to be deserted by everyone, remaining behind in hostile surroundings – drove her restlessly through the rooms of the house. Even the library offered no solace; her attention evaporated over the pages. Her powers of imagination failed, except on the point about the different deaths a soldier could die. She exercised virtuosic indefatigability in creating threatening scenarios that took place in unfamiliar locations in Poland. A primitive country, they said. To pull herself together she cleaned the antique cupboards and polished them fanatically. After the cupboards she started on the beams – everything had to shine. When it got dark she descended to the luxuriously appointed air raid shelter where her bed was, resisting the feeling that she was entering a tomb, to stretch herself out in her quilted coffin, hands crossed, eyes closed, so.

  At the end of the winter she was instructed to close the house and come to the east. In orde
r not to leave it to the wolves just like that, she packed everything of value – table silver, crystal, dinner services – put it in the polished cupboards, locked them and stuck the large iron keys to the floor with plaster. She took the curtains down from the rods, folded them up and stored them away together with the expensive linen. Then she went into the garden to look at the house from a distance once more. It looked vulnerable and transparent without curtains in the pale March sun. She left it behind in no man’s land, hollow, lifeless, chilly in all rooms. To the extent that the house was riveted to this spot, so she herself was being uprooted again: she was going away – the series of departures and arrivals, of attaching and detaching, was growing ever longer. With a suitcase in each hand she walked down the drive to the tram stop. In Cologne she boarded a train that would in any case take her in an easterly direction to one end point.

  On first acquaintance with Berlin she was shocked by the inhabitants’ blunt common sense. Dazed from the journey, encumbered by her suitcases, she accosted two passers-by on the platform. ‘Excuse me please, could you tell me where the Schlesische Bahnhof is?’ After a disapproving look, as though she had begged for alms, they hastily walked away to the stairs. She stopped another traveller, leaving aside the ‘Excuse me please’ this time, but she had not finished speaking before he too walked away shaking his head. Now she dropped all politeness. ‘Schlesische Bahnhof!’ Her voice resounded beneath the roof. A man with a Homburg hat like a gangster stopped sarcastically: ‘It’s staring you in the face, can’t you see?’ He pointed upwards with his head to a sign on which it was shown in thick letters.

  The ancestral castle was situated on the Oder in extensive estates with twisting paths, ponds, a family chapel and mossy gravestones in the shadow of conifers and yews. A central section topped with a tympanum, hiding the porch behind two tall white pillars, divided the façade in two symmetrical halves. The neo-classical severity was compensated for by southern yellow plasterwork and by geese scratching about freely on the terraces. Her arrival had been badly needed. Rudolf, Frau von Garlitz’s son, had contracted tuberculosis of the spleen. A guardian angel was needed day and night, who would watch over his strict diet and his rest periods and relieve the seven-year-old’s boredom by reading aloud. Separated from his contemporaries, he was confined by his illness, which was threatening not only his own survival but also the future expectations of his grandfather, whose only male descendant he was. The old man came every day, twirling the tips of his white moustache, enquiring about his grandson’s health. Every day Anna had to forbid him to bring sweets. Thus her status as guardian angel inclined more and more to that of gaoler. Uncles, aunts and cousins who brought delicacies surreptitiously, as with a saw blade inside a cake, to release the poor patient from his rigid diet, were unwittingly smuggling his death inside. She read to him from his favourite books to make him forget about the sweets that had been thrown away, and to forget that the only thing she was waiting for was a letter from Poland. Waiting, you could calmly say, was something which she had been adequately steeped in.