Dreams of Innocence

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Yet Bettina had never sold the house.

  He was twenty-one when she told him about it in that straightforward unsentimental way of hers, her over-precise English issuing from her lips in clipped phrases. ‘I possess a country house in Germany, Adam. Probably very dilapidated now. I am giving it to you for your birthday. You can sell it, use it, do with it as you will. If you decide to keep it, I will cover the taxes on it until you can do so yourself or until I am dead, whichever comes first.’

  He had looked at her in astonishment. It was the first he had ever heard of a house in Germany. He couldn’t remember what he had said to her, probably ‘Gosh’ or ‘Gee’, followed by a bewildered, ‘thanks’. A horde of questions crowded his mind, but before he could ask them, she had gone on, that familiar wry smile crinkling her lips and eyes even more.

  ‘It is hardly an exciting present for a twenty-one year old, I know. The exciting part of the present is that I shall pay for you to go to Europe this summer, on the condition that you visit the house and place some flowers on my sister’s grave. On the grave of her useless, if brilliant, husband, too. Now that is better, isn’t it?’

  He thought he had probably danced with joy at that. In any event he remembered bending to kiss her dry cheeks. She was already smaller than him then, though he still thought of her as hugely tall and as stiffly straight as if she were somehow corseted in the bones of the last century. And he was a little afraid of her, though very fond. She always listened to him so carefully, made him say things he hadn’t known he had yet thought, only to clarify them with a little twist of that precision instrument which was her mind.

  Bettina Eberhardt - as unusual a character as ever there was, to be washed up on the once lazy shores of California by the waves of history.

  Over a plate of those Viennese cream cakes she still ate with relish, he asked her, ‘But don’t Dad and Mum want the house?’

  ‘Your father? Ha! He thinks I am a crazy old woman to have kept it this long, though he is pleased with himself for having indulged what he sees as my secret sentimentality. No, Max has never wanted anything to do with all that. Ever since the war, he has been 200% American. He even dropped his family name, as you know. Max Peters, short and simple. No Eberhardt to be found. It is a good thing I didn’t name him Max Wolfgang or Max Sigismund, then he might have had to use his imagination. As for your mother, has she ever contradicted your father over anything?’

  If any of Adam’s university friends had heard Bettina talk of his father in this offhand way, they would have been astounded. For Max Peters was something of an idol then, a vigorous civil rights lawyer who had defended draft resisters and free speech protesters, Black activists and Chicano farm labourers, a man who addressed the anti-Vietnam demonstrations Adam and his friends went on. But Adam knew well enough that Bettina was inordinately proud of his father, of his military record, his legal work, all of it, whatever her quips. His mother was another story. The old woman had never forgiven her for letting her mind and her degree go to nought and for merely staying at home and raising himself and his sister.

  He had asked Bettina then, since she seemed for once to be prepared to talk about the past, had nonetheless asked her carefully, ‘Did your sister die in the war?’

  ‘You mean like a good Nazi should?’ she laughed, her irony quick as fire. ‘No, Anna decided not to bother to wait for the war; in her wisdom, she decided to follow in her husband’s footsteps.’ And then Bettina had grumbled beneath her breath in German, ‘I should never have let them out of my sight.’

  He had heard her, had understood. Bettina and his father had always spoken German to one another and he had picked it up, the sound and rhythm of it perhaps more than any extensive vocabulary. Later, but that was after that first visit, he had studied it.

  And so in that heady summer of 1972 he had travelled to Europe, first to England, then to France and Italy, and finally to Austria and Germany. He was there in the wake of the Baader-Meinhof round-up, but the scenes of armed warfare students he struck up conversations with in Munich and Frankfurt described to him, seemed a million years away from what confronted him at Seehafen.

  The tangled, overgrown gardens, the silent house when he first saw it, had for him the aura of a ruined summer palace, a decayed remnant of an extinct branch of some royal family. It breathed of a time out of time. And he had fallen in love with the grace and romance of it, as well as with the roll of the hills and the valleys, rich mellow greens and clear blues of a texture and colour altogether different from those he knew.

  Bettina must have arranged for someone to clean up a little, for the house was not in as parlous a state on the inside as the overgrown gardens had led him to believe. Later, he learned that it had been occupied by some Nazi dignitaries during the war; relatives of the now dead Trübl’s had lived there after that, until the mid sixties.

  He had stayed for a few weeks, familiarizing himself with the countryside, rummaging through rooms, finding clothes that would have sat happily in some hippy market stall. And he had cleared Anna and Johannes’s grave, laid flowers for Bettina.

  But it wasn’t until the following summer when he returned with two friends, that he came across the store of Johannes’s paintings in the cellar. They were in remarkably good condition and he and his friends had dusted them off and hung them throughout the house. It was that summer too, that he had come across Johannes’s diaries and Anna’s book. His reading German really wasn’t up to the effort and it was only by dint of speaking the words aloud that he was even able to discover what it was he had found. He had brought Anna’s Book to Bettina. She had taken it from him with something of a disgruntled air, then returned it some days later.

  Her manner had been imperious. ‘Put it back in the house,’ she had ordered. ‘That is where it belongs. One day the historians will come and look at it and understand nothing. But it is the best of my sister. The best and worst of our lives.’ She had paused then, added more softly, ‘I never knew she had grasped so much. My little Anna.’

  Spurred by the manuscript, the house, he had studied German that year in the course of his graduate work in anthropology. And then, with growing amazement he had read Anna’s Book, twice from cover to cover. He wanted to talk about it with Bettina, wanted to test the truth of it, but she always deflected him, and he didn’t know how to be direct with her. Then he had gone off to Amazonia.

  When he came back she was bedridden, dying. There was a nurse in the house. On the second evening when he replaced his father by Bettina’s bedside in that austere bedroom he had rarely visited before, she suddenly opened clear grey eyes to him. They were huge in that wizened face. She started speaking very quickly, softly, in German. He bent closer to her. ‘I never believed in eugenics, Adam. Blood lines, race, the volk, national character or family character, that’s all Nazi rubbish. A politics of origins and essences is a politics of disaster. Life is what we make of it. Your father knows that. You know that.’ Then she had closed her eyes and whispered, ‘You’re a good boy.’

  A day later, she was dead.

  He had pondered Bettina’s words, that sudden quick fire German, the old formulations. He decided that whatever wisdom they bore, they were also a warning. Bettina didn’t want him to show Anna’s Book to his father, didn’t want him to stoke old embers, question Max about Johannes and Klaus, that minor matter, at least to her, of paternity. Was Bettina right on that score? He couldn’t judge that, though he certainly couldn’t imagine his father getting stirred up by the ancient question.

  So he left it.

  It was only when he came back to this house that it ever raised its head. Yet he felt comfortable in Seehafen, cocooned in a history which fed his imagination as much as those extents of time spent in tropical climes; full of an energy which at home in America was sapped. And during these last months he had spent here, his first winter in the house, he had sensed Johannes’s presence with particular strength, the battling excess of him. Perhaps because ev
erything seemed to dovetail with his research.

  Adam worked, his concentration now total.

  It was after he had turned out the lights and was climbing the stairs that he remembered he wasn’t alone in the house. That irritating woman was here, though there was no irritation left in him now, only a residual sadness, almost a sense of loss for what might have been.

  He had to pass by her door to get to his room and as he did so he paused. A distinct but muffled sound of sobbing reached his ears. It was the sound of a child crying inconsolably in the night.

  He hesitated, then knocked softly. There was an interruption in the sobs. He knocked again, ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked, ‘a night cap? a glass of brandy?’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ her voice had a quiver in it. ‘But no, thank you. Thank you very much.’

  She sounded utterly desolate and for a moment, he was tempted to open the door and urge her up. But she would only chastise him.

  ‘Well, if you change your mind, I keep some in my room, at the end on the left. There’s a fire in there.’ It suddenly occurred to him that she hadn’t brought a bag with her, that she might need some things. ‘And there’s a spare robe in the bathroom on the right and an extra toothbrush. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  He put a log on the fire, Mozart’s mournful string quintet in G Minor into the tape deck and stared at the leaping flames. It was better this way really. He had become something of a recluse over these last months. The work benefited. And he loved dreaming in this spacious room, his burrow, the only one apart from the library and the small bedroom, he had done any work on. It doubled as a bedroom and a sitting room with its two deep blue chairs inviting one to sink down and meditate by the fire. He did so now, but then shrugged at the direction of his thoughts and picked up the thriller he had been reading erratically.

  He couldn’t have read more than a few pages before he heard that awkward, ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Please,’ he turned to see her standing by the door. She was wrapped in his old burgundy robe, only her feet and that blonde head visible. She looked strangely fragile, not at all the woman who had knocked boldly at his front door not so very many hours ago.

  ‘I thought I could use that drink after all,’ she attempted a pert little moue, but there was a tremble in her lip.

  He poured her a brandy.

  ‘I’m not usually like this, you know. I don’t break down and cry and frazzle.’ She shook her head impatiently so that her hair tumbled about her face. ‘Nor do I repay generosity with rudeness.’ She was staring into the flames.

  He didn’t say anything, just looked at her. He couldn’t stop himself looking at her.

  ‘Believe me?’

  He smiled, ‘I believe you. I won’t call for the references.’ He handed her her glass, felt the cool flicker of her fingers.

  ‘Good, though they’d be sterling, I’m sure,’ she laughed with no evident mirth.

  He wanted to take her hand, touch her, stop her feeling that she had to justify herself. He had been wrong to berate her.

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ He pointed to a chair.

  She curled into it, tucking her feet beneath her. ‘This is nice,’ she murmured.

  ‘But you were crying.’

  ‘I was,’ her voice caught.

  ‘Tell me about it. I’m good at listening. They teach us.’

  ‘I’m not very good at self-revelation.’

  He waited. The shadows of the flames flicked over her face.

  ‘Can I touch you?’ he asked. ‘Would you like me to touch you? Sometimes it helps.’

  She looked up at him abruptly, her pupils vast, velvety. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I never know.’

  It was true, Helena thought, though she hadn’t put it into words before. She never knew whether she would like to be touched, didn’t think she liked being touched very much at all. It wasn’t on the whole why she went to bed with men. And perhaps she only did because occasionally one somehow had to. Though there were other more complicated reasons: they had to do with helping or pleasing or easing a working relationship. She had no qualms or guilts about that and she liked the helping and the pleasing or the easing, though she didn’t do it very often any more. It wasn’t necessary. She preferred other methods. And in bed, she preferred to do the touching, the initiating, to be in control. Of herself as well.

  Adam Peters was staring at her, his eyes brooding. ‘Sometimes it’s easier. To talk, I mean. Afterwards.’

  ‘Is it?’

  He stood up. She could hear him pacing behind her. He was fed up with her, right to be. She should go. She was no use to anyone today, least of all herself.

  But before she had extricated herself from the chair, his hand was on her head, ruffling her hair, smoothing it gently, lifting it from her shoulders, so that his fingers skimmed her neck. Soft. She shivered, turned to him. He traced the line of her cheek, the arch, the curve, her lips. He had big blunt fingers, but soft, intelligent, so that she could almost read her features from his touch. And his eyes… She looked away, something in her afraid, despite the gentleness.

  ‘I’d like to know you better, Helena. I don’t quite know why, since…,’ he cut himself short, lifted her to his lips, kissed her. It wasn’t like it had been this morning, that hard snatched kiss. She could cope with that. But this soft exploring, this desire to know, to search out; his hands on her back, touching, touching, smoothing.

  ‘Please,’ she turned her face away from him.

  He let her go. There was a flicker of yellow in those hazel eyes, an anger. But his voice when it came was light.

  ‘She likes being touched and she doesn’t like being touched. That’s alright. I’m a master of contradictions. Remember? I like them.’

  She tried a smile that didn’t quite work. ‘I’m a little shaky tonight.’

  ‘Only tonight?’

  ‘Mostly tonight.’

  He walked over to the bed, sat down on the edge of it, patted the space next to him. ‘Come on. It’s big and comfortable and you’re tired. And it’s warmer in here. I won’t touch. I’m a big boy, you know. I’ve learned all about self-control.’

  ‘Which you rarely have to exercise,’ Helena tried to joke along with him, ease the tension in herself, in the room.

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘Because I imagine they all tumble over your big feet. The women, I mean.’

  He laughed, ‘Of course, they do. But not always the right ones. I can’t imagine it’s any different for you.’

  ‘I guess not.’ That made her happier, equalised things a little.

  She sat down cross-legged on the vast bed, leaned against the headboard.

  ‘This is a lovely room.’

  ‘It has a very lovely person in the midst of it. But then you’ve heard that before.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’

  ‘It’s hard to be original with beautiful women.’

  He sipped his brandy, scrutinized her. ‘What is it Helena? What’s happened?’ The banter had evaporated.

  ‘I think Max Bergmann may be my father,’ it came out bluntly. Just like that.

  He whistled beneath his breath. ‘Found only to be lost. Or is it lost only to be found?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t make fun of me.’

  He took her hand, kissed it softly. ‘I’m not making fun of you. The words only tumble out like that sometimes.’

  She didn’t know why, but tears came into her eyes at that. Perhaps it was because he was looking at her so protectively. ‘You look like a good father now,’ she mumbled, searching for humour again.

  He let that pass. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Look for him, find him, check out some facts.’ She said it with a kind of desperate determination.

  It was strange, Adam thought, how they had filled their separate spaces that evening with parallel questions. The spectre of paternity, more powerful as spectre he
sometimes suspected, than as the actual everyday lived occurrence. The lost father more significant than the existing father. No, he musn’t think of that. Must think of her.

  It was terrible the way she had stretched out so seductively now. It made it harder to think. And he needed to know. What was it that had brought her to this conclusion? Or had it been there all along and she had simply kept it veiled from him. No, he suspected it had something to do with that visit to Elsa’s. That was when the trouble had all started.

  ‘Helena, may I kiss you again?’

  ‘You may kiss me again,’ she felt easier now that she had said all that about Max out loud.

  ‘Will you kiss me back?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘No, don’t try.’

  He switched off the bedside light.

  ‘No!’ There was a sudden note of panic in her voice. ‘No, I must have the light.’

  ‘For the kissing or the sleeping?’ he asked softly.

  ‘More the first than the second,’ she murmured.

  ‘Trust me, Helena, trust me,’ he whispered against her cheek. ‘I don’t want to see you now. I want to feel you.’ His hands were running over her body, gently rubbing the rough towelling of the robe against her bare skin, finding the skin itself, tentatively, delicately. She felt his hardness against her, tried to still her panic.

  Suddenly, he rolled away from her. ‘It’s no good,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s get some sleep. Here, get under the blankets, I won’t touch.’

  She heard him get up. She didn’t want him to leave.

  ‘Please don’t go, Adam. Just hold me.’

  He came back. He had undressed. She could feel a matching robe. She snuggled up to him, ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

  He lay very still, the warm bulk of another being. Here in the present. Protection. Against what? That momentary eruption of the past? Why was it that she trusted him so soon?

  Before she could answer the question to her own satisfaction, Helena slept.

  She woke or thought she woke before her eyes opened. The dreams still played themselves out. Em youthful, smiling, a tall handsome man at her side. The man turned. It was Max, she was certain of it. Why were they together? Em and Max, a mother and a father just for her, dignified, stately, not like the sordid, brawling Moores, that other parental couple. Stupid to allow her dreams to fulfil her hidden wishes.