‘I have,’ he murmured, examined the menu.
She let him order for her, waited, no longer knowing how to begin.
‘I had a letter from that man,’ he said at last. He was pushing his food round his plate. She had never seen him do that. ‘I didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘No,’ she breathed. ‘What did he say?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Haven’t you worked out your stories together?’
‘Alright, I’ll tell you, Bruno. It’s like this.’ Her eyes suddenly blazed. ‘When you did to me whatever you did to me that night, nothing had happened between Johannes and myself. No, don’t look so disbelieving. Yes, yes, he had seen me. But so what? He’s an artist. He’s painted hundreds of women. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Anna could hardly believe her own ears. She had never told the story to herself like that. But it had truth. Yes, as she said it, she realised just how much truth.
‘My wife,’ Bruno murmured.
‘Yes, your wife. But simply a woman. Me. Anna von Leinsdorf, Anna Adler. A woman with a body. Like any other woman.’ She stopped, sipped some wine. How was she going to go on? She took a deep breath, ‘And I was there. And he needed to paint again. See something other than dead bodies.’ Did she know that was true, Anna wondered. Where was she finding these words? But he was looking at her now, looking at her directly. She plunged in again.
‘And then, after that evening, after…,’ she stopped suddenly unable to go on.
‘After that evening,’ he was prodding her now.
‘After that evening, everything changed. In me. I felt dirty, shamed.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘You wanted to shame me, didn’t you Bruno?’
He flushed. The colour coming back into his face, making him look more as she remembered him. ‘One can’t talk about these things,’ he muttered.
‘No, perhaps not. But I’m talking now.’ She drank some more wine. ‘And Johannes helped me to overcome it. He made me clean.’
He looked at her uncomprehendingly, ‘Clean? How, clean?’
‘I don’t think you want to know Bruno. I don’t think you’ll understand.’ Suddenly she lost her impetus. No, he wouldn’t understand, she knew that. But she had said it. Now there was only one more thing. And she couldn’t lie to him about that either. How much easier it would be anywhere but this room, or even if he let her touch him. ‘You didn’t protect me, Bruno. With all your wisdom, you didn’t protect me.’ She saw the pain shoot through his eyes, ‘No, that’s not fair. I shouldn’t have said that. What I did I wanted to do more than anything else I’ve wanted to do in all my life. Except cause you pain, Bruno.’
He rose from the table. ‘I… I have to leave you for a minute, Anna.’ He moved clumsily away, almost running through the vast space of the dining room.
She waited. Waited. He wasn’t coming back. She shouldn’t have spoken. She should simply have told him what needed to be said. That last thing. The tears came back again. Anna hid behind the menu. If he didn’t come back, she wouldn’t even be able to pay. She waited. No one. She told the waiter she had to go. Did Herr Adler have an account? Yes? Then please tell him when he returned that she had to get home, a visitor, yes. No, the housekeeper.
She walked blindly through the streets. Perhaps she should write to him. But she was so bad at words. Didn’t even always know what she wanted to say except once she had said it. And writing was so final. Anna stumbled over an uneven cobblestone, leaned against a wall to regain her balance. The street was deserted. Cold heavy rain fell mercilessly. She hadn’t even noticed how wet she was. She went on. At the crossroads, a car skimmed past her so quickly that she had to leap back onto the pavement.
‘Anna!’
It was him coming towards her. Of course, his car. She hadn’t noticed. Perhaps he wanted to kill her. She squared her shoulders.
‘You didn’t wait.’
‘I thought you had left.’
‘No, no. I wasn’t feeling well.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘I’m sorry.’
She looked into his face. It was sallow in the lamplight. And those eyes. She turned away unable to face them.
‘Come into the car. I’ll take you back.’
It was only a few blocks more and they didn’t speak. But when he stopped the car, Anna said again, ‘Will you come up, Bruno. Please.’
‘I’d rather not.’ He was looking grimly into the rain-covered windshield.
‘Tomorrow, then,’ she sighed. ‘There is something more I need to say.’
‘Alright then, now. Let’s get it over with.’ He slammed the door hard behind him.
They went up in the lift, silently, like strangers, looking straight at the wrought iron grills which marked the floors. Anna waited for him to open the door of the apartment, then realised he didn’t have the key. That distressed her almost more than anything else. She fumbled for her own.
The hall light was already on. Frau Gruber was there. She came towards them slowly, welcoming them, excited. She had found a black kitten in the apartment. Look, there he was now.
‘Oh, I’d forgotten.’ The kitten pawed at Anna’s skirts and she picked him up, stroking him. ‘He followed me home. He must be starving. I didn’t have anything to give him, except some cheese.’
‘I fetched a few scraps,’ Frau Gruber smiled. ‘There are so many of these strays around these days.’
‘I think he wants to stay,’ Anna murmured, carrying the cat with her into the salon. The lamps were lit, the place looked less forbidding than when she had arrived.
‘Shall I prepare you some tea. I think there’s some left.’
‘Yes, thank you, Frau Gruber. And thank you for coming at such short notice. I’m grateful.’
The woman beamed, ‘And shall I prepare your room, Herr Adler?’
‘No, no, that won’t be necessary.’ Bruno shrugged her off. ‘I won’t be able to stay for more than a moment.’
She left them in the room they knew so well, but in which they were now so awkward. They didn’t speak until the tea was on the table. Anna noticed that Bruno’s hand shook as he held his cup. She steeled herself, paced for a moment and then turned back to him. She had to see his face. She clenched her fists.
‘I’m having a baby, Bruno.’
He put his cup down with a clatter, his face as white as the porcelain.
‘Yes, I didn’t think you’d be pleased.’ There was no irony in her voice. ‘I’m not certain it’s yours, but it could very well be.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘I have no way of knowing.’ She turned away now, picked up the little kitten and fondled it. Waited. Bruno didn’t move.
‘I’m sorry these are the circumstances under which I have to tell you. But I thought you should know.’ The tears, the tears again. ‘Once you would have wanted to know.’ Suddenly she could bear it no more, that motionless face, that lack of response. She fled from the room, heard the splintering of glass behind her.
‘Anna,’ he called her back. He was standing by the fireplace. In the unlit coals, she saw their shattered wedding portrait.
‘What is it that you want of me, Anna?’ his voice was hoarse.
She sank back into a chair. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I just knew that I had to tell you, that you had to know. And from me.’ She averted her eyes. ‘I haven’t told anyone else yet.’
‘And you’ve told me, because you’re afraid he’ll be killed,’ he hissed.
‘Perhaps Bruno,’ she met him on it. Then she stood up. She was shaking, her legs barely able to carry her. ‘But that comment wasn’t worthy of you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow. That will be best.’ She walked towards the door, afraid she would fall, holding her back straight.
‘Anna!’ He gripped her shoulder, forcing her to turn back. Then instantly released her. His face was in turmoil. He passed a shaky hand through his heavy hair, dishevelling it. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… didn’t mean for you to go. Of course, you must stay. I shall take care of yo
u, take care of everything. I’ll have the Doctor come round tomorrow. But I must go now. I must.’ It was a plea.
She tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away. ‘No…’ his voice cracked. ‘Please understand, Anna. It hurts me to be here. This place,’ he waved his arms wildly, ‘I haven’t been here for months. And it hurts me to see you.’ The words seemed to tear out of him. ‘Perhaps it will get better.’ He tugged on his coat.
She watched him, her heart breaking. ‘I care for you very much, Bruno. I don’t know how to show it.’
Bruno stumbled down the stairs, clutching at the walls. Outside he breathed deeply, heavily, for some minutes, unable to move.
Why had she come back? It had almost got better and now her presence confronted him with it all again. He had hated her, how he had hated her, convinced himself that she wouldn’t come back. Had barely been in Vienna fearing to see her, to bump into memories of her. Outside, in Galicia or Moravia, he could breathe more freely, even though everything else was terrible. He had travelled, from office to office, factory to factory, seeing the worst, seeing the women working, the old men, the growing poverty, the hungry children, the encroaching chaos. What profits he hadn’t lost, he had given away. Why not? There would never be children of his own now and there were so many others. He had refused, despite the money to be made, to convert his factories into munitions works. He preferred to throw his fortune to the winds. Or to invest patriotically in those much vaunted war bonds, which he sensed amounted to the same thing. It made him feel lighter, lifted some of the burden which pressed him into the ground.
In Vienna, he stayed at the Sacher Hotel. It suited him, the anonymity of the suite, the lack of questions. He shouldn’t have brought her there. It was stupid of him, but she had taken him by surprise, repeating over and over how she wanted to talk with him. And she looked so pale, so small, no more than a child. A child, who had betrayed him but who was kind to him, who spoke with such directness in her tawny eyes.
The kindness made it worse. God, how it shamed him.
Bruno stared through the car window unable to summon the energy to start the motor. The shame had eaten at him for months, nibbling away at his own idea of himself, crushing it, until there was nothing left.
It wasn’t simply the shame of her preferring another man to him. He fought the jealousy that gripped him again, even now. Controlled it. That had been partly his own fault, in any event. He shouldn’t have left her alone so much. There was a far greater shame, the torment of his own behaviour. There were ways of dealing with wives who betrayed one after all. Civilized ways. But he, he had behaved like an animal. No, like a deranged ripper, some demented brute raised in a hovel. Attacking her, hitting her, forcing her, his own wife.
And there was worse still, what he hated to admit, what he had only admitted to himself after the scene had played itself over and over in his mind obsessively with never lessening force until he felt he was going mad: he had enjoyed it. Yes, had lusted after her while hating her, hitting her. Anna. Little Anna. The woman he adored.
He hadn’t been with a woman since. He no longer trusted himself, recognized himself. Bruno Adler, that upright man, honest, dignified, civilized. The shame of it, the guilt gnawing at his entrails.
And now he was no longer himself. All his ideals had toppled, his dreams. He had loved her so much, had cherished her, wanted to protect her, to build a life together. Even after the war had eaten away at things, she still represented a purity, a hope. Perhaps his only one. And he had destroyed it with his own mad bestiality.
What was it that she had told him over dinner, that had made him gag, started that terrible churning in his stomach so that he had to flee to his room? ‘You didn’t protect me.’ He certainly hadn’t protected her. He had attacked her himself, a ravaging unforgivable brute.
And now? Bruno felt the sickness rising in him again, that dizziness which took him over from time to time and left his mind blank. He fought it back, started the engine, drove to the hotel, too fast, the pain blurring his vision as much as the pelting rain. He lay down on his bed and stared bleakly at the ceiling. Now there was to be a child, the child he had once so wanted. No, not that child, but a creature conceived from either his own savagery or another man’s. God, how that hurt, like a knife slowly twisting in him.
Yet he would try to behave well, redeem a tattered shred of his dignity, care for her. As long as he didn’t have to see her too often. Have those eyes look at him, remind him, reflect his guilt, his shattered pride.
As long as he didn’t have to come too close to her so that he was tempted to fold her in his arms.
With a sob, Bruno turned over and covered his face in the depths of his pillow.
The baby grew inside Anna, making her sick in the mornings. But by mid-day she was better and she went off to work in an orphanage where she helped delinquent boys with their reading. It paid little more than self-respect, but that was important to her and the few shillings went into her rainy day box. Bruno had been as good as his word. The bank account was there, the apartment taken care of.
He came to see her only irregularly. He hated her, she knew, wanted to avoid her. She prayed he would get over it. She so wanted him to take an interest in the child he had once avidly desired. And she missed his presence in the apartment. From Johannes there was still no word and with each passing week, the idyll of Seehafen receded, so that even though she still dreamt of him, she began to think in the bright light of day, that the whole episode had been a dream conceived of her own longing. The baby she convinced herself must be Bruno’s, though in herself she knew that she would only be sure when she saw it.
On the last day of January, when she had had to have her dresses let out to accommodate her new girth, she rang Bruno. She rarely dared to. But this time was different. Saturday was his birthday and she wanted to invite him over, for a drink, perhaps dinner. It had been some weeks since he had visited. Bruno, located, agreed, if a little stiffly.
She was pleased. She went to do the shopping herself, collecting together the ration cards she had saved, thinking that if she protruded her belly a little further, some of the merchants might take pity on her and give her a little extra. Everything was so scarce, but she managed to find a scrawny chicken, some vegetables.
After having helped Frau Gruber with the cooking, she dismissed her, and laid the table herself with the best silver and the Sevres china she had inherited from her mother. It looked so pretty, she thought, and she, too, would make an effort today, a blue dress he had chosen for her himself, now suitably adjusted; a little rouge on her cheeks; her hair freshly washed. And the present. It wasn’t much since she had wanted to use her own money, but cigars were hard to come by at the moment, and she hoped he would be pleased.
They sat opposite each other in the dining room, candlelight glowing over the table. They were a little on edge and Anna covered over the silences by babbling about the orphanage, telling him stories about the boys. From time to time she caught him glancing at her stomach.
‘He’s growing,’ she said on one of those occasions.
Bruno swallowed hard. ‘Why do you say he?’
She shrugged. ‘That’s how I feel.’
He looked away, that strange ache she didn’t recognize in his eyes again.
‘Bruno, do you remember, in Paris, on our honeymoon, that man whom we met, whose wife had left him?’
‘Why do you bring that up?’ he asked fiercely.
‘I don’t know, I think about it from time to time,’ she mused. ‘I… I didn’t run away.’
He grimaced, ‘Only because there was no one to run with.’
‘You would have wanted me to?’ she said quietly.
‘Perhaps.’
The kitten, sleekly plump now, leapt into her lap. She stroked it slowly.
‘Don’t hate me, Bruno, please don’t hate me. I’ll try to make it up to you,’ the tears formed at her eyes.
He winced.
‘T
he kitten likes the baby,’ she said after a moment. ‘It kicks now. Here, feel.’ Suddenly she was by his side, lifting his hand to her stomach. He could feel the warmth, the small movements. Like the tug of his own mortality. A child to judge the wreck he had become, to hate him as he had hated his own autocratic father, as he loathed himself. Bruno sobbed, buried his face in her belly, and then leapt back blindly, pushing away his chair.
She pressed herself against him, her arms round his neck, wanting the shelter of him, ‘Oh Bruno, I do care for you.’
‘Please, Anna,’ he drew away, hurried into his coat, thanked her for his present.’
‘Will you come again, next Saturday, it means so much to me,’ she murmured.
He fled. But he came back, drawn to her, to that swelling mound as if to his own death. He had even managed to find her some flowers, two orchids like the memory of a time which would never be again, and chocolates, rich dark.
‘Like your eyes,’ she said to him laughing up at him, grateful, fluttering around him, making him comfortable, disappearing into the kitchen. He leaned back into the sofa, ‘Like a wife,’ the thought formed itself. Perhaps he could come back, here, to her. He was so tired, always so tired.
He stirred himself, gazed round the room, went slowly into his old study. Nothing had been touched, but the wood shone, his leather chair, his desk with the embossed paperweight and the row of antique figurines. He fingered them, moved slowly into the morning room where they used to have breakfast. She had made it her room now, he could see the signs of her, the basket of wool, the imprint of her weight in the flowered chair. He sat down in it. On the table beside it, there was a sheaf of papers. Drawings. He looked at them. Pictures of war, macabre bodies, flayed, arched, mutilated. His temples began to pound. Brothels, women with sagging breasts, wearing officer’s caps, men on their knees. A letter in the pictures’ midst. He couldn’t stop his eyes from perusing it.
From him. ‘Dearest, I try not to think of you. If you need money, send these to Fischer in Berlin. He’ll help. Everything is rightfully yours.’
Dreams of Innocence Page 22