His eyes were suffused with tears. Stumbling, his limbs numb, he found his clothes. He wouldn’t look at her, even though he could hear her as if from a great distance calling his name. Somehow, despite the overwhelming dizziness, he found his room. He sat on the edge of his bed and wept silently into his large hands.
Anna too was crying, her body wracked with sobs. Why, why had he done that? She felt humiliated. Shamed. Her body bruised, debased. He was drunk, she knew. She had never seen him drunk before. He was always so kind, so considerate. Drink. Perhaps that was all it was and the strain he was under. But why had he called her a slut? Why wouldn’t he meet her eyes, answer her?
She cried until she had no more tears. And then, she got up slowly to wash, her legs feeling odd, flayed. She poured some water shakily from the jug into the bowl. In the small mirror above the dresser, she caught her reflection. Her eyes looked bruised, her face ghostly. But there was something about her sore parted lips. She looked at the tear-stained face more closely. And then she saw it. The mural. He must have seen the mural. She should never have let Johannes do it. But strangely, when she had watched the image emerging from the wall, she hadn’t thought of it as herself, only as something beautiful. Yet to Bruno it would seem as if…
Anna began to shake uncontrollably. An image from Otello leapt into her mind. She had seen the opera not so long ago, seen Otello’s hands encircling Desdemona’s neck, like Bruno’s had encircled hers. She could still feel the imprint of his fingers. But she wasn’t Desdemona. She was still here to tell the tale. Nor was she, Anna realised, as innocent. Certainly not in Bruno’s eyes. And he had found a form of punishment to fit the supposed crime. A humiliation of the flesh for a supposed sin of the flesh.
How cold she felt, as cold as a dank tomb. She drew the blanket over her. Johannes had said there was no shame in the body. But she felt shamed now. Horribly, radically shamed. She would never be able to face Bruno tomorrow. Perhaps never be able to face him again.
Anna curled herself into a small ball and wept silent tears.
Dreams besieged her, a plague of images: her own figure floating on a curving wall, no, no, on the grass, the tree split by lightning falling towards her. No, not a tree, but Bruno, his face huge amidst the spikes of branches, the chocolate glow of his eyes stony. Granite cold. That face was coming towards her, she had to move, to run, or she, too, would be turned to stone, but she couldn’t budge. Her limbs were like concrete, fixed in fear to the ground. ‘Stop, Bruno, it’s me,’ she was shouting, but no sound came to her lips, already stone and he was falling, coming towards her. Bruno.
But by the morning, Bruno had vanished. She found a note from him slipped under her door. A cryptic, terse, bitter little note. ‘Goodbye Anna’ it said. ‘Should you need ever to come back to Vienna, you will find me satisfactorily gone.’ She shuddered. As simple as that, the end of her marriage. She looked out the window on the rain swept grounds. He was driving through that rain now, hunched at the bleary windscreen. Driving away from her. Bruno, her bulwark.
An uncanny laugh formed inside her, echoed through the room. Suddenly, with a fierceness she didn’t know she possessed, she pulled the sheets from the bed, bundled them into a heap, went to find new ones and made up a fresh white bed. Then she crawled into it, drawing the blankets up over her head, thinking, though she knew it was childish, that perhaps if she lay still long enough, slept for a hundred years like some fairytale princess encased in stone, everything would have changed.
She didn’t know how much later it was that a knock roused her. She felt leaden, drugged. Frau Trübl, she thought, and murmured a ‘come in’. But it was Johannes who confronted her. He was wearing his uniform and she knew instantly what he had come to tell her.
‘I couldn’t find you anywhere,’ his voice was cool. ‘Or anyone else. So I thought I’d come up.’
‘To say goodbye.’
He nodded.
Anna laughed that uncanny laugh. ‘Two in one day,’ she burrowed under the blankets, hiding, ‘Goodbye Johannes,’ she murmured, heard the door close. The tears again. She let them fall.
‘What do you mean two in one day?’
He was still there, she gulped down her tears.
‘Bruno’s gone,’ she mumbled.
He pulled the sheets away from her face, ‘Gone where?’
Anna shrugged, ‘Left me,’ she buried her head in the pillow.
He took her hand, stroked it gently. ‘Why Anna?’ he asked after a moment. ‘Was it the mural?’
‘I don’t know,’ she looked at him, shivered.
He folded her into his arms. ‘I looked for you in there, saw it. Someone threw red paint at it. Poor Anna. All my fault.’
She snuggled against his rough jacket, wanting his warmth.
‘And you mind terribly, don’t you?’
‘I mind,’ she said, meeting his eyes, unable to lie.
‘I’ll write to him. A convincing letter. Perhaps it will help,’ his voice was flat. He rose.
‘Don’t go, Johannes. Please don’t go,’ she stretched out her hand to him.
He took it. ‘But if I stay…’ his eyes burned into her.
‘Stay,’ she said softly.
He turned toward the door and for a moment, her heart stopped. He was going after all.
Then she heard the click of the key and he was back at her side.
‘Anna, my Anna,’ he buried his face in her hair, kissing her gently, stroking, finding her lips. She gave herself to that gentleness, her body humming to his touch, returning his caress, urging him as he urged her, helping him undress, touching, touching, gazing at his limbs, seeing, feeling his joy in her flesh until she thought she would faint from the pleasure of it. And then, as he came into her, slowly, so slowly, tantalizingly, that she felt herself melting against him, she whispered, ‘I think I love you Johannes, I think I know what it means.’
He smiled, his eyes so clear above her, that she felt she was looking into the bluest sky. And then he covered her lips, pressing more deeply into her probing, probing, rubbing, until she cried out.
‘Love me, Anna, love me like you did that day on our knoll,’ he whispered into her ear, his breath warm on her, tickling. He turned her over, so that her weight rested against him, her lips found his chest. He arched against her, arched so high, that she felt as if her body were opening, flowing into him as he flowed into her calling her name, calling his. Johannes, Johannes, Anna, Anna.
Later she lay in the circle of his arms, feeling his moistness, gazing out at the patches of blue in the clearing sky.
‘I could love you forever,’ he murmured.
She turned to him, stroked his face, his chest, the scar, ‘But…?’
‘But I only have ten days,’ he smiled, his lips quivering.
‘We will have to make ten days forever then,’ she looked up at him, her eyes serious.
‘Yes, my Anna. We will have to do just that.’
Chapter Seven
There was no welcoming party to meet Anna when she returned home that afternoon late in November 1916. Under a slate grey sky, Vienna was shrouded in mourning. Only a thin mewling kitten patrolled the pavement in front of the house. It followed her through the doors, tucked itself snugly between her cases in the lift and preceded her into the empty apartment.
As she looked round, Anna resisted the tears which these days sprang too readily to her eyes. Ghostly white sheets covered sofas and chairs. Dust was gathered everywhere on the once gleaming furniture. Stately palms had turned a mottled desert yellow, monuments to their own past life. Anna lifted the little kitten into her arms and stroked it absently.
‘We’ll have to make do somehow, won’t we,’ she murmured.
Not that she had expected a welcome. But she hadn’t known that Bruno had closed down the apartment altogether. Perhaps she should never have left Seehafen, though there hadn’t really been much choice now that winter had set in and there was so little work to do.
As it was, she had outstayed her time. Bettina had sensibly said well over a month ago when the fogs had obliterated the mountains and everything else, that soon they would have to close up the big house for the winter. Fuel was too precious a commodity these days to be squandered. Not that Anna had had any of the big tile stoves lit: she simply wrapped up in old coats to face the cold evenings. Frau Trübl had begun to give her strange glances, even once asked her whether she would like to join them in their snug little cottage beside the stables.
Three months had passed and there had been no word from Johannes. This time the tears did fill her eyes. He might be dead and no one would think of telling her. No, she wouldn’t even consider that. He had warned her that he wouldn’t write. On that last night they had had together, he had said - she could remember his words precisely - ‘I won’t be able to fight if I think of you, Anna. I’ll be afraid of dying. And the fear brings on the death. I’ve seen it. It’s those who have too much to lose who go first.’
Anna swallowed hard. She had thought of him, of course, thought of him all the time. No, not thought. Thought was the wrong word. She had felt him in the lapping of the lake against her body, in the rustle of the high grass, in the tug of the wind on her hair. He was everywhere during those first weeks after he had left - in that house, in those grounds, in her, so that she didn’t feel her separateness. And then with the first chill of winter, he was suddenly gone, so that she was half a person, bereft, meagre. A hole seemed to have formed inside her and the hole bore the name of his absence. But it was a secret space, and with her everyday mind she worried about other things. Central amongst them was Bruno.
Gently Anna lifted the little cat from her lap and began to put things away, pull the sheets from the sofas, search out dusters. How little she knew about the running of this place. It was a distressing incompetence, one that would make Bettina laugh. Bettina.
Anna had resented her presence when she had come down to Seehafen for those few days with little Max. She had wanted Johannes to herself in the brief time they had together. She still wondered if Bettina had noticed anything between them. No, perhaps not. She had been so engrossed in tugging every particle of Johannes’s war experience out of him, that there was hardly time to notice anything else. And she had learned more in those few days, than Anna had garnered in weeks. Johannes had spoken easily enough, ruffling little Max’s hair unseeingly while he did so, getting down on all fours to find lost toys.
It had all made her just a tiny bit jealous, but at night, lying in his arms under the stars, she had forgotten.
Anna watched the kitten nibbling at the cheese she had brought from Seehafen. She would have to buy food and that, too, was a problem. She had so little money. She hadn’t dared tell Bettina. Hadn’t dared tell her about Bruno either.
She had heard nothing from him in all these months. She had written, of course, to say that she was coming back. Perhaps the letter hadn’t reached him. The post was so bad these days. Then, too, he might not even be in Vienna. Whether Johannes had ever written to him, she didn’t know. What could he say, in any event, after everything that had transpired.
Anna roused herself. The first thing to do was to phone Tante Hermine. Then tomorrow, she would start looking for work.
She tried the phone tentatively, heard the signal with relief. At least that hadn’t been cut off. And her Aunt’s voice when it came was as scolding and blustering as ever.
‘Why have you been away for so long?’ her Aunt didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘I’m getting old and things are really too difficult these days. You must visit me more often. But you’ll come tonight, at last. And make sure that husband of yours comes as well. I’ve been trying to reach him for weeks, left messages in his office. At seven. Promptly.’
She rung off, before Anna could get in a word. Anna laughed and looked at the buzzing receiver: at least there was still one unchanging point in her universe.
She left in good time, taking a tram to conserve her money, and walking the rest of the way, despite the light drizzle. Everything looked bleak. Vienna, she had to remind herself, was in mourning. Franz Josef had died and though many may have thought or wished him dead before, the city wore a shroud of intractable melancholy. Some of the familiar cafés had shut their doors. People hurried brusquely through the streets, avoided each other’s eyes. There was a dankness in the air, a smell of creeping poverty which emanated from the beggars and rose to enfold them all.
Anna, too, hurried, her eyes on the cobblestones. Even at her Aunt’s house, things had changed. There was no longer the familiar footman at the door, only a maid to take her coat.
But her Aunt still presided in her favourite corner chair.
‘Anna, at last.’ She proffered her cheek. ‘Let me look at you, girl. Hmmm, a little pale.’ She held her pince nez to her eyes and examined her critically, her gaze travelling down her form. ‘And still not producing any children.’
Anna gulped, happy that the room was still almost empty.
Her Aunt caught her glance. ‘Not many of us tonight. My officers are all busy elsewhere,’ she laughed raucously, ‘except old von Effinghen. He’s been retired. Got too deaf, I guess.’ Her powdery face crinkled. ‘That’s what I need to see Bruno about. Where is that husband of yours?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Anna murmured.
‘Eh? Speak up girl, I’m not as young as I used to be. Ah’ her Aunt looked beyond her, ‘There he is now. Why didn’t you say so, girl.’
Anna blanched, not daring to turn round. As if in silhouette she saw Bruno kiss her Aunt’s hand, turn stiffly to her. She stepped back, her heart rising in her throat. ‘Hello, Anna,’ he said softly. She couldn’t believe the change in him. It was as if he had shrunk into a spectre of himself. His hair, his moustache had turned grey. The lustre had gone from his eyes; the skin sagged, loose round his features.
‘Hello, Bruno,’ she murmured, tears tugging at her eyes. She had done that, she with her callow unthinkingness. She wanted to take him in her arms, comfort him, but he was already edging away from her, sitting down by her Aunt’s side, listening, his eyes elsewhere. How would she speak to him? He wanted nothing to do with her.
The room was beginning to fill up. Anna moved into the fray. She must mingle, listen. Perhaps someone would know of a job for her. She greeted some old acquaintances, tried to accommodate herself to the chatter she had forgotten how to make, heard endless catalogues of Franz Josef’s sixty eight years of glory, gloomy speculations about the end of Empire, of Poland’s new nationhood, of more food riots in Berlin.
And then he was beside her, this ghost of Bruno. ‘I’m leaving now, Anna.’
‘May I come with you?’
‘If you wish.’
He was looking through her to something at the other side.
‘Thank you.’
She said goodbye to her Aunt, promising to return within the next few days, got her coat, climbed into the car beside him. Then the silence mounted with the passing streets until she could bear it no more.
‘Bruno, will you come back home with me?’ her voice broke.
‘That is no longer my home,’ he said tersely.
She took a deep breath. ‘I… I would like to speak to you, Bruno.’
‘I don’t think we have much to say to each other, Anna.’
Silence again and that tension. It was unbearable. Anna opened the window.
Then he cleared his throat, ‘I would have had the apartment ready for you, but your letter only arrived today. I shall send someone round tomorrow.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘I shall provide for you while I can, Anna.’
There was something so grim in his voice that the tears leapt into her eyes.
‘You don’t have to provide for me,’ she murmured.
They were turning into their street.
‘I will be correct. You are still my wife. Technically. There is an account open in your name.’
‘Please
come up, Bruno. Please,’ The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. ‘I… I’m afraid to be alone.’ It wasn’t what she had meant to say. ‘It’s… it’s just that I want to speak to you.’
They pulled up in front of the house. He glanced at his watch, ‘Frau Gruber might still be awake. I could send a fiacre for her. We could talk over a bite of supper somewhere,’ his voice was so cold, it chilled her.
‘You don’t want to come up to the apartment then,’ she said bleakly.
‘No, Anna, I don’t.’
She put her hand on his shoulder tentatively.
He shrugged it off, as if she had burned him, but he met her eyes for the first time. The pain she read there frightened her almost more than his coldness.
‘Please don’t touch me Anna. As you well know, that is all over between us.’
‘I know,’ she murmured, ‘But Bruno, please, I must talk to you, make you understand. It’s not what you think.’ Again her words had carried her where she didn’t want to go.
‘Understand!’ the word was strangled in his throat. ‘I understand too much.’ He started the car and pulled off abruptly, veering round the corner, going much too fast. ‘Sacher’s,’ he said, stopping short. ‘They should have a table for us.’
He ushered her into the dining room, left her at the alcove table while he went for a messenger. Chandeliers, silver, white cloths, the light dazzled her. She escaped to the powder room, tried to blot out the signs of her tears, took several deep breaths. He was waiting for her when she returned, still avoiding her eyes.
‘Look at me, please, Bruno. I haven’t changed that much.’
Dreams of Innocence Page 21