The Twins

by Tessa de Loo

  The train stopped at a seaside resort. A conspicuously large number of young women with two suitcases got off. You could be forgiven for assuming that one suitcase contained clothes and the other was stuffed full of comestibles. Hesitantly they trudged to the square in front of the station, to and fro, until they discovered that they had a common problem: how could they get to the hotel with their heavy suitcases? Two tanned women with a handcart smelling of fish approached Anna, after having searched round to look, holding up one of her wedding photographs. ‘Are you Frau Grosalie?’ ‘Yes,’ said Anna in astonishment. ‘Your husband has sent us. We have to fetch you and bring the suitcases.’ Without waiting for her reaction they took her suitcases and put them in the cart. The other women burst out in a torrent of abuse. Why had their husbands not made arrangements for them? ‘Dear heaven,’ cried Anna, ‘what’s the matter? We’ll load the cart full and all push it together.’ A bunch of women in summer dresses of wartime floral prints pushed the top heavy cart over the bumpy cobbles to the beach hotel. Martin had apparently explained the problem to a fisherman the previous evening and had arranged with him that Anna would be fetched in exchange for cigarettes.

  The hotel stood resolutely on top of a dune and seemed to challenge the sea: rise up, then. The barracks were three kilometres further on. Every evening the company went swimming with the commandant’s permission. They left their uniforms behind on the beach, walked three kilometres in their wet bathing trunks, and spent the night with their wives in their hotel rooms. One warm evening Martin and Anna went swimming as they had done in the lake. The smooth water reflected the light of the moon. They swam out next to each other at a calm, even pace. The element of water gave a sense of freedom, as though the war’s rules only counted on land. ‘I’ve just heard on the radio,’ said Martin with unrestrained joy in his voice, ‘that the Russians are in East Prussia.’ ‘Then it can’t go on for much longer …’ Anna spat out a mouthful of sea water. He dived under and came up a bit further on. ‘When that stupid war is over,’ he cried, sneezing, ‘we can go to Vienna for good at last.’ They swam on in an excited fuddle until Martin turned and said with surprise: ‘We really are rather far from the coast.’ Anna looked round mechanically. An unreal white strip on the horizon was all that was left of the coast. They turned round and began to swim back in equanimity. But when the strip did not seem to come a millimetre closer, their strokes took on a grimmer character. The moon accompanied them impassively, Martin looked round frequently, encouraging her to keep going. The sea water was heavy, it seemed as though litres had to be displaced with each stroke. She became breathless. The more fiercely she tried to keep calm, the more forcefully the panic struck. The strip of land continued to distinguish itself by keeping its distance. ‘Martin …’ she cried weakly – she disappeared beneath the water, came up again, ‘let me …’ ‘I’ll help you …’ Although his voice was coming from far away she felt his arm around her shoulders, ‘… right at the end of the war we surely can’t dr …’ suddenly sounded much nearer. She surrendered to him. Her sense of time was distorted. She did not know if hours or minutes stretched out before he no longer had enough strength to keep them both above the water. His cry for help, which skimmed over the surface of the water, vaguely got through to her. She was resigned to disappearing with him, to being sucked into the mother sea and never more needing anything. Unnoticed, without resistance, she allowed herself to float into a silent no man’s land.

  An eternity later she was lying on her back on the still warm sand, and someone was blowing his breath into her. A nauseated disgust flowed though her arteries along with her returning life. She was being rubbed dry and warm with a rough towel. Why hadn’t they left her where she was? It suited her there absolutely. But Martin was sitting next to her, blue-white in the moonlight, and watching out anxiously for the return of signs of life at the hands of their skilful rescuer, a sergeant from his company who had the shoulders and biceps of a gladiator – Martin even permitting him to give her the kiss of life. She could not yet know that a few months later, looking back on this evening, she would once again become consumed with regret that the arrival of the industrious sergeant had prevented her from dissolving into nothingness with Martin.

  The following day the illegal holiday came to an abrupt end: the Waffen SS had permitted its eye to fall upon the group doing infantry training. Upset, they ran to the hotel that evening. They had had more than enough of the war; the approaching peace was already singing in their heads; they refused to join the corps of fanatics. Martin drummed his fists into the pillow. What could these orthodox officers, these war-horses in whose vocabulary the word surrender did not exist, be planning, other than to prepare themselves for collective suicide? Closed in by the English and Americans on the one side and the Russians on the other, would they stop at nothing to bring about the sacrifice of young warriors to old Germanic custom in order to placate the gods once more? It was the first and last time he rebelled. Anna rocked him to and fro, without conviction trying to calm him. ‘We have nothing to say …’ he capitulated finally, whispering, ‘nothing.’

  The company was moving to Nuremberg. From up on the Baltic Sea all the way down the Third Reich, in wagons for transporting goods or cattle. The wives travelled with them to Berlin – except Anna, Martin would not permit his wife to have to travel without any form of accommodation. ‘No question of it,’ he said proudly, ‘there is no toilet, no sink. My wife is not travelling in a cattle truck like an animal.’ He climbed in irritably. She would wait for the next passenger train. Anna shoved the suitcase with provisions in after him. ‘What’s that for …?’ His glance grazed the suitcase. ‘Provisions,’ Anna said. He put it back on the platform. Anna lifted it up and put it in the train again. ‘Take it with you, I get enough to eat.’ He heaved the thing out again with pursed lips. Does this have to be our parting? Anna thought. The departure signal sounded. Martin held her face in his hands and kissed her grievously. Wringing her hands she was left on the platform, hemmed in by two suitcases.

  The news that the Russians were in East Prussia blistered into the summer heat, causing anxiety on the one hand and secret joy on the other. In and around the castle everything was as before, farming and housekeeping were turning at full speed – a perpetuum mobile cranked up by the war. But the Russian prisoners of war and Polish forced labourers, Wilhelm whispered, found themselves in a state of permanent excitement that they only managed to hide from their guards with extreme collective self-control. Anna nodded; it could not go on for much longer now. They were in the kitchen garden, behind a tall rhubarb plant. He took her hands and brought his furrowed face close to her ear; she thought he was going to kiss her. ‘Warn the gnädige Frau … the day the Russians come to liberate us the Poles will kill everything German here. They are patriots, they will take revenge for what has been done to their country. Everyone will be murdered, except you. A finger won’t be lifted against you, they have promised us that. The Russians are protecting you.’ ‘But Wilhelm …’ Anna stammered, ‘you can’t mean that … Frau von Garlitz … and the children … surely they haven’t done anything …’ He lowered his eyes, let go of her hands and walked away with drooping shoulders as though a lead ball hung from each arm. Anna stared at the powerful stems of the rhubarb; the association with barbarians occurred to her. The well-tended kitchen garden, the smoothly cut lawns, the glistening castle, the washing as white as snow hanging out motionless on the line … she could not imagine the possibility of this self-evident order being disturbed. The human linchpin of this order, the inhabitants of the castle, the family whose name had been associated with this spot since the seventeenth century, Ottchen, Mamselle, the cleaning women and chambermaids, even the refugees – all these people with whom she had been involved day in, day out, had to pay the penalty? What had they done? For the first time she began to sense that the liberation they had yearningly looked forward to would perhaps be no liberation at all, that the war would continue as
usual – wearing a different mask, She began to move, walked straight in to Frau von Garlitz, who reacted with neither surprise nor shock. She had long understood that the hordes from the east would not bring liberation; her evacuation plan was ready.

  A letter came from Martin, an SS letter from an SS barracks. The Russians were approaching West Prussia, he wrote; resign and go to Vienna – that will be safer, you will be at home there. A sensible, understandable message. Martin, who had already travelled though Europe for six years like a gypsy, spoke about her departure from the estate as though it concerned a random change of posting. As though she did not have ties to cut, for the first time in her life. The tie with her employer, the two children, the staff – her surrogate family, that unwieldy, tried and tested, capricious rag-bag that she had been involved with so profoundly over the years. The renovated castle, her own creation, how could it function for a day without her? Did she have to leave all that behind, prey to …?

  She left it all behind; goodbyes were said with tears and promises. Frau von Garlitz was touched and hurt as though her own mother were abandoning her. The children clung on to her like monkeys, the cleaning women blew their noses, Ottchen sniffed loudly to proclaim his contempt for members of staff who did not regard their function as a lifelong calling – he climbed up onto the box sullenly. A period was coming to an end with her departure, everyone felt that and no one knew what would take its place.

  Anna heaved herself up with her eternal suitcases and rode down the castle drive with red eyes, out of the gate, waving one more time. They drove along the Frederickian village road, the emaciated Russian prisoners of war formed a row on either side, in their worn-out clothes, waving their blue checked handkerchiefs. Their guards looked on from the sidelines. Wilhelm was standing at the front, with a tortured grin from ear to ear. They stood there like the last faithful followers of a queen who was being taken to the scaffold. The queen of the handkerchiefs, the toothpaste, the combs with a few teeth missing, burst into tears. Wilhelm stepped forward to give her his handkerchief. It was her last sight of the village, through a veil, the sentries on either side with their sadly waving rags, their drawn faces – who was disappearing out of whose life? The village ended and the fields began and there was only desolation – apart from Ottchen who stared unfathomably at the horse’s hindquarters swinging to and fro.

  ‘Yes, they loved me,’ Anna concluded.

  Lotte did not react, she could not reconcile all that adulation with her own, less flattering picture of Anna. Anna was romanticizing the past. ‘And …’ she said rancorously, ‘was Wilhelm right?’

  ‘It happened just as he had predicted. The castle was ransacked, many did not survive it. Frau von Garlitz fled at night to the west with the children and a few trusted ones across the frozen Oder. I heard it years later from Mamselle, whose tracks I came across by chance.’

  ‘And the castle, have you ever been back to see it again?’ Lotte, with her weakness for old houses, was curious despite herself.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about it!’ Anna sat up in pure indignation. ‘The Poles have the same mentality as those fat washerwomen when I came to the estate. They don’t know what work is. They never will, I’m telling you.’

  The bed, not intended for guests who sit up and talk emphatically, protested with strenuous creaking.

  ‘I have been to Poland by car with a friend last autumn. Warsaw, Kraków, Auschwitz, Zakopane, Poznań. I had an inspiration. “Let’s go to the village where I worked during the war.” “But surely that doesn’t exist any more,” my friend spluttered. “Of course it’s still there,” I said, “only it’s called something different.” We went in search, without a map, in an area with Polish place names that gave you nothing to hold on to. I drove purely from memory: a gnarled tree, an old barn, a three-forked road that struck me as familiar, were my only points of orientation in this empty country. All of a sudden we were driving along a straight road with chestnut trees – ramshackle farms, chickens in the road, tipsy chaps round the door of the post office that was also the village café. I got out and asked about the village, calling it by its old name. They looked at me indifferently without answering. A drizzly rain was falling, which made everything even more impoverished. I walked along the village street a bit, stopped in front of a colossal neglected house of … a landowner, I thought. Grass was growing in the gutters, which were hanging loose, the unpainted shutters were coming off their hinges, some windows were boarded up, the porch over the front door was shored-up crookedly, cracked plaster everywhere – geese were scratching about on a stubbly patch of grass, further on a pig was rootling in the mud, a mangy guard dog bared his teeth. I thought of our immaculate farms in Germany. See, I said to myself, this is how the Polish farmers go about their business. They simply haven’t a clue. An old man walked past. I buttonholed him, I used the old name of the village again. He stared at me through thick pebble lenses as though I were an apparition, then he began to nod slowly. “Stockow now …” he said in broken German. I nodded with him, suddenly excited. “Familie von Garlitz?” He said nothing. “The castle, where is the castle?” He smiled; he had a broken denture, the poor man. “Das Schloss …?” he repeated in surprise, “but it’s here … right in front of you …” I was standing in front of it and looking at it and did not recognize it. Can you imagine!’

  Anna’s face had become flushed. The walls of the Salle de Repos looked as though they were bulging out from the indignation that she exuded. She opened her plump arms. ‘There used to be a wall round it, and the grounds with old trees. All gone. There was the castle, threadbare, pitiful, between the mud and the exhausted grass. I can’t tell you what was going on inside me there. It was as though my last remaining trust in humanity – and there is not much left of it now – was being disposed of. As though everything, everything had been for nothing. “Can I see the house from the inside?” I asked, “I used to work there during the war.” He nodded but I don’t know if he understood. Twelve Polish families had been living there since the end of the war, he explained, the farm had become a co-operative.’

  She turned up her nose. ‘One of those kolkhozes. We got permission to see a part of the castle from inside. My God, what an ordeal. We started in the hall, that same hall of the conspiracy. Washing lines were strung across it, with some yellowed sheets and shirts hanging up. The walls were grey, the tiles cracked. We opened the door to the dining-room. I put a hand over my mouth. “Look at that, my parquet floor!” I cried. There was my pride and joy, my best floor that had endlessly been rubbed with wax – dried out and cracked, whole pieces were missing. A couple of rusty bicycles leaned against the wall, a thin pale ginger cat slunk off with its tail between its paws. I was staggered, as you can imagine. “Let’s go outside, please,” I pleaded. We walked to the back door along an empty, ominous passage – without runner, unpainted walls without hunting scenes – I almost stumbled over a bucket of dirty suds. Outside I took a deep breath. “The cemetery,” I suggested, “there must be something there from earlier times.” The old man shook his head. “Alles kaputt,” he mumbled. I walked to the place where we had buried Herr von Garlitz in the earth, or what had had to pass for him. The old paths were still intact but dark holes gaped instead of the graves, overgrown with creepers and ground ivy. Here and there a fragment of marble. The branches of mature shrubs bent overhead as though they wanted to cover up the shame. “They have not even left the dead in peace,” I cried. “Everything ruined,” said my guide resignedly. So it was. They had been so vengeful they could not even leave undisturbed the graves that went back to the seventeenth century.’

  ‘But that’s easy to understand really,’ said Lotte over the edge of her sheets. ‘They certainly had enough reason to.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Anna impatiently, ‘but as I stood there looking into those gaping holes I didn’t understand any of it.’

  It was quiet for a moment. Then she said, in a voice suggesting she was entrusting Lotte wit
h an intimate secret: ‘I picked up a conker. A large shiny conker. I always have it with me, as a memory of those days … when I was very happy, without realizing it.’

  Vienna. You will be safe in Vienna, Martin wrote. When Anna arrived her father-in-law was just packing his suitcases. ‘I am going to Nuremberg,’ he declared, ‘the SS is inviting the parents to come and have a look.’ He came back content after a few days: ‘You need have no worries about Martin, he is having an excellent time. Order prevails, comradeship prevails, they’ve got brand-new kit. Everyone is friendly and polite.’ ‘You’re telling me stories,’ said Anna suspiciously. ‘I swear to you, he is like a fish in water.’ ‘But he hates them, those Nazis.’ ‘You’ll see for yourself, the wives will be invited soon.’

  She received a travel permit; she set off in the last week of August for a fortnight. Bombing had not left much of Nuremberg, but the press hotel taken over by the SS was still standing and undamaged. Luxury suites had been reserved for the married couples – in the mornings the officers had gentle training, the rest of the day they could do what they wanted. The barracks too were an island of peace amid the chaos. Everything shone and glittered – respect prevailed, for people as well as things. Her father-in-law had not exaggerated: Martin, who put so much store by good manners, neatness and courtesy, had thoroughly come into his own there. They took advantage of the unexpected reunion, it was just like a honeymoon – the army leadership pampered its youngest scions. A bomb fell now and then, a small aberration that had long since ceased to surprise them. There was a mania for photographing each other: Martin, good-humoured, in his uniform – Anna in a cream suit constructed out of what had been a tennis outfit belonging to Frau von Garlitz.