The House at Belle Fontaine

by Lily Tuck

  Felix was married at the time. His wife, Adele, his second cousin once removed, was, like him, an assimilated Jew. She was a self-reliant, uncomplaining woman, nearsighted and no beauty. She had grown up on a large family estate in Pomerania and was fond of describing the details either remembered or invented of her life as a child there: the all-white roses her mother grew in the garden, the mean little pony she was made to ride, a disturbingly gory painting attributed to Delacroix that hung in the somber dining room. Her descriptions also brought to life her sisters: Margaret, the plump, kind one, Friederike, the beautiful, arrogant one, and the spoiled baby, Elizabeth, to say nothing of the much indulged and admired handsome brother, Waldemar, and, finally, plain, rigid Miss Tennyson, the English governess.

  Felix and Adele had two children: a boy named Waldemar (named after Adele’s brother) and called Walli for short, and a girl, Sonia. Walli was two years old at the time of his father’s death and would not remember him; Sonia was older and did. Although he was a loving husband—if, at times, unfaithful—and a kind father—if, at times, distracted—Felix’s true passion was epic poetry. Specifically, the poetry of Homer and Hesiod. And, notwithstanding the difficulty of fixing the poets’ dates with any certainty—the issue being complicated by the fact that their poems were originally composed orally—Felix was obsessed with their chronology. After studying both the external criteria (comparing the work with historical and archaeological records) and the internal criteria (similar themes, phraseology and unusual diction), he was convinced—despite the more widely held opinion—that Hesiod was the older of the two and—this was a riskier stretch—that the poets were related.

  Coincidentally, the passage Uli was reading on the train on that fateful day was the one in which Odysseus angrily responds to Euryalus for ridiculing him on his appearance by arguing that the gods bestow different gifts on different men, but that the eloquent man is especially to be envied and is regarded as a god as he makes his way through the city. Exactly like Professor Solomon, Uli, at the time, could not help but think, recalling how persuasive and articulate his arguments to the class had been as he pointed out the similarity between that passage and the one in Theogony where Hesiod speaks of prudent kings who, with their sure and gentle words, are quickly able to end disputes among their people. “Sure and gentle words”—was that not the way she might describe those used by Professor Solomon to seduce her? In spite of herself, Uli had felt herself blushing at the memory of her naked self in bed with the professor, also naked, and, looking up from her book, she glanced around the compartment to see if any of her fellow passengers noticed. Sure enough, the stout woman sitting across from her holding a large, black leather purse tightly to her chest, who until now had appeared to be sleeping, was staring at her intently. Seconds before the train came to its abrupt, shrieking stop, Uli stuck out her tongue at her.

  Uli told no one of her affair with Professor Solomon—no one except her miniature white poodle. She whispered her secret into his rank pink ear and the little poodle, as, no doubt, a sign of approval, began feverishly to lick her hand.

  Nor, despite the fact that she was engaged soon to be married to the son of a wealthy Prussian officer, did she feel guilty.

  And it had begun innocently enough with Professor Solomon sitting behind his desk in his office listening as she spoke about how, in the world of Homer, the most important quality dramatized by his heroes is glory.

  Kleos, getting up from his chair and coming to stand next to her, Professor Solomon said.

  While Hesiod, Uli continued, describes a world where humans behave according to the laws of gods.

  Dikê, Professor Solomon said, putting his hand on Uli’s shoulder.

  Homer rarely intrudes in the narrative whereas Hesiod inserts himself . . . Uli could feel herself blushing and her voice trailed off.

  A few days before the accident occurred on the train, Uli went to be fitted for her wedding dress. Standing on a stool in front of the full-length mirror while the dressmaker was making adjustments to the lace dress—specifically letting out the waist as, inexplicably, Uli had gained weight—Uli fainted. A doctor was summoned and he quickly confirmed what Uli already knew.

  At first, she refused to divulge the child’s paternity but, in the end, due to her parents’ insistent questions and threats she eventually relented on the condition that they not tell the son of the wealthy Prussian officer, to whom she was engaged. Although Uli’s father threatened to confront Felix and her mother wept, in the end, her parents decided it was too late to take action. Instead, they would make an excuse about the fragility of her nerves and the restorative qualities of country air and Uli would be banished to the estate of impoverished but discreet relatives where she would deliver the child, immediately give it up, then marry as arranged.

  From time to time, Felix suffered from gout. The pain began in his big toe, then spread to the heel of his foot. This attack began in the middle of the night waking him and, unable to bear even the pressure of the linen sheet, Felix kicked off the bedclothes, thus waking up Adele. Getting out of bed and putting on her robe, Adele went downstairs and prepared a cold water compress that she applied to Felix’s foot while he moaned and twisted and turned in the bed. In the morning, she gave Felix apple juice laced with vinegar and several drops of morphine to drink—a home remedy—which he swallowed making a face. As yet, the pain had not abated. His foot hurt like the devil, making Felix nearly senseless.

  What day is it today? he managed to ask Adele. Is today the day I have to take the train to Hamburg?

  No, today is Wednesday.

  Relieved, Felix sank back on to the pillows and shut his eyes. Soon the morphine would take effect but he would have to cancel his class.

  He could hardly think straight. He confused his appointment at the bank in Hamburg to discuss how best to invest his dwindling account with what he had assigned—the number of occurrences per thousand lines of enclitics in Hesiod’s Hymns? or the number of occurrences of proclitics in the goldmark?

  Not once did he think of Uli.

  Earlier, he in fact had begun a letter to her—a letter he was careful to hide from Adele inside the pages of The Odyssey—telling Uli that not only did he have to cancel their next meeting as he had to take the train to Hamburg but also explaining in the kindest possible terms that although he would never forget her or forget their time together, their affair must come to an end. Fortunately, Adele never came across the letter but, years later, Sonia, who had begun to study Greek in school and was searching through her father’s books for one to read, did. Afraid her mother might find it, Sonia threw the letter into the fireplace and, at the very moment she was lighting a match to it, her brother, Walli, walked into the room. Doubtless thinking this was a secret of Sonia’s he might use to tease her, Walli, laughing, snatched up the burning letter. Sonia eventually forgot about the letter except for, from time to time, at odd disjunctive moments much later in her life—driving down an unfamiliar road at night or waiting alone at a train station—she was reminded again of her father’s illicit affair and she wondered what had become of Uli. Walli, on the other hand, who had kept the letter and was often accused of having too vivid an imagination, always wondered.

  On the train on the way to her relatives’ country estate, Uli had brought along her little white poodle in a basket that she had placed on the seat beside her. When the train made its unexpected and sudden lurching stop, both the book she was reading and the basket fell to the floor and the poodle ran off. In the confusion that followed—compartment doors were flung open, people ran back and forth in the corridors shouting—the little white poodle disappeared.

  Wolfie! Wolfie! Uli repeatedly shouted, becoming more and more agitated. After leaping off the train, it was easy for her to imagine how the poodle was running heedless and crazed and in danger of being trampled by the cows in the field. Determined to rescue h
im, she pushed open the heavy carriage door and, hiking up her skirt and shutting her eyes, she jumped.

  An elderly conductor, who was standing on the ground next to the halted train gently helped Uli back to her feet. Her knees were scraped and she was in tears.

  Only then did she notice that farther back down the railroad tracks, next to the embankment, their backs turned to her, a group of men were covering up ­someone —Uli caught a glimpse of a pair of brown boots—with a dark blanket.

  After Uli had delivered the baby—not without certain difficulties resulting from a breech birth—and the baby was properly disposed of, she married the son of the wealthy Prussian officer as planned. Karl was not a bad sort. He was proud of Uli—of her blonde good looks and of her erudition. Often, in the evenings after dinner, he had her read to him in Greek. Although he did not understand a word of what she read, Karl claimed to like the sound of the words and the sound of his wife’s voice. Humoring him, Uli obliged, translating the text as she read—­frequently adding and embellishing although, mostly, this was not necessary. Not surprisingly, Karl much preferred Homer, whose tales celebrate heroic figures and their military exploits, while he found Hesiod, who sermonized on the need to work hard, dull.

  With nothing to fear now that Professor Solomon was dead, Uli nevertheless was curious to know if Karl suspected her of an earlier attachment—her loss of virginity she had attributed to a horseback riding accident. And, at times, too, perversely, she was tempted to confess to Karl—not that he might forgive her but to establish herself in his eyes not merely as a wife and mother of his children, but as someone with a past, someone who had had an adventure. Thus, Uli spoke often and quite freely to Karl how she always looked forward to Wednesday, the day of Professor Solomon’s lectures, and how she would not forget them. The two hours he spoke flew by, she told Karl, and were, for her, more like ten minutes, and never once during that time did she glance down at the gold pocket watch hanging from the belt at her waist. Also, she could not write down her notes fast enough—dipping her pen over and over into the inkwell. Afterward, her hand so stiff, she could hardly button up her coat to go home.

  Emboldened by her own descriptive powers, Uli went on to tell Karl how trim and handsome Professor Solomon looked in his black frock coat and starched shirt with the high collar as he stood in front of the classroom. On and on—tempting fate or Karl’s patience—she continued to describe Felix’s thick moustache and his piercing black eyes, as she closed her own blue ones for a moment to allow herself to remember how Felix had looked in bed. Karl, however, did not appear particularly interested in Professor Solomon or in his looks. His remarks to Uli on the subject made it clear that he pictured Felix differently—if he pictured him at all—as a frail, gray-haired old man, which needless to say irritated and further emboldened her.

  Before Felix, Uli had never seen a man naked. An only child, she had no brothers or sisters and the reproductions of statues of the Greek and Roman gods she studied at school only whetted her appetite. As for the all-too-secret act of intercourse, that, too, was a mystery that she wanted to solve—her only brush with sex, prior to her affair, was having her little white dog, his penis a glistening pink, try to hump her leg. So that, although she had had little idea what to expect, her eagerness to learn—and who better to teach her than Professor Solomon?—did much to allay her anxiety and shock when Felix took off the black frock coat and the starched shirt with the high collar and stood naked in front of her. Nor was she shocked by the thick black hair that covered his back, his arms and legs, his chest and stomach and, more thickly, his groin. In fact, later, Karl naked would shock her more. He was blond, hairless and not circumcised. Until her own son was born, this latter anomaly had puzzled her but she had not dared to question Karl on this delicate subject.

  When the war broke out, Karl immediately joined the Eighth Army commanded by General Maximilian von Prittwitz and was sent to the Prussian front to fight the Russians. Less than three weeks later he was dead. Killed on either August 19 or early on the morning of August 20, 1914, at Gumbinnen, the first major German offensive, Karl would not live to see what would turn out to be a famous and defining victory for the Germans, the Battle of Tannenberg. Nor would he live to learn about the 170,000 Russian casualties or hear how the Russian general Alexander Samsonov shot himself in the head after his defeat so as not to face Tsar Nicholas II.

  Uli received a single letter from the field. The letter was postmarked Allenstein, East Prussia, and it arrived several days after Karl died.

  August 17, 1914. Königsberg

  Dearest Uli,

  A victory today! We beat back the Russians at Stallupönen! As yet, I myself have not seen any action and we have, for the time being, been ordered to withdraw. I am writing you as I sit underneath a large oak tree in the Zulkiner Forest. It is a clear night and I can see a few stars shining above the canopy of leaves. Except for the sound of occasional stamping and snorting from the horses who are tethered nearby, it is very quiet and, for the moment, peaceful so that I find it difficult to imagine battle—the noise of cannons, artillery, gunfire. Instead, I am thinking of you, my darling wife, and I like to imagine I can hear your sweet voice as you read to me in the evening. I also cannot help but be reminded of Odysseus and of his military exploits and glory.

  The letter continues by reminding Uli of some household duties, such as the hiring of a new servant, the payment of certain bills, and, finally, urging her to escape the summer heat of the city and visit his family in the country and not to forget to give them his best regards. The letter ends with Karl sending fond kisses to their twin infants, Jasper and Charlotte, and his boundless and eternal love to Uli.

  Soon after the war, Adele left Bonn and went to live in Koblenz with Walli and Sonia as she was able to find work in a publishing house that had begun again to print medical texts. She found two furnished rooms on the second floor of a widow’s house—she shared the kitchen with her and had to go outside to use the toilet. The woman’s husband had died as had her son, at Ypres, and life had become hard for her. Hard for Adele as well. A professor’s pension was not enough to live on and, by then, the mark had begun its terrible plunge and soon was worth almost nothing.

  The American occupying forces—part of the Second Infantry Division that had fought under Major General Lejeune in the Argonne Forest, marking the end of the war—were stationed in Koblenz; their barracks were located on the banks of the Rhine. The insignia stitched on the soldiers’ uniform sleeves—an Indian wearing a feather headdress inside a five-pointed star—was quite unusual and Walli, who was eleven at the time and had a tendency to embellish and dramatize, persuaded himself and his schoolmates that the soldiers of the Second Infantry Division fought with tomahawks. Adele felt sorry for the poor soldiers. There was nothing for them to do in Koblenz; they were bored and they wanted to go home. The townspeople resented them of course.

  In the mornings, Adele walked to work. The publishing house was located on the banks of the Rhine and every morning an American soldier on a spirited sorrel mare would ride past her. Adele got accustomed to seeing the soldier, sitting straight and tall on his mare, and soon he, too, began to politely touch his cap and say good morning to her. One day, as he was riding by, Adele’s straw hat, in a sudden gust of wind, blew off her head and blew directly in front of the mare’s head, causing the mare to shy violently and causing the soldier, who had one hand raised up in the air ready to touch his cap, to be thrown. While the soldier was slowly getting to his feet—he had hurt his ankle—Adele walked the few yards to where the mare was standing by the side of the road, placidly eating grass, and took hold of the reins and adjusted the saddle that had slipped down—had she not learned how thanks to the mean little pony she had been obliged to ride as a child?—and led the mare back to the soldier. Resting his hand heavily on Adele’s shoulder for balance and grimacing with pain, the soldier managed to get b
ack in the saddle.

  The soldier’s name was John Murray, but he was known as Jack. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered from his sprained ankle, Jack, although engaged to be married to his high school sweetheart back home in Virginia, began an affair with Adele. He was not in love with Adele, but he was lonely and grateful. Adele, on the other hand, did fall in love with Jack. Jack was blond and handsome and she liked his courteous ways and liked the unfamiliar, southern inflection to his voice when he spoke—so different from the English she had learned from Miss Tennyson. Also, Adele had not had sex since Felix had died. The affair was brief and the sex—where they could have it—proved the main difficulty. On account of the children, Sonia and Walli, as well as her widowed landlady, Adele could not take Jack up to her rented rooms, nor could she go with him to the army barracks. Luckily, it was springtime and the weather was warm and Adele and Jack made love outdoors—in the woods, on a secluded part of the river bank, in a deserted field. Adele hardly seemed to mind the discomfort of lying on her back in damp grass or on an uncomfortable tree root or the other difficulties posed by their clandestine meetings. Once they disturbed a hornets’ nest and had to get up and run not to be stung; another time they nearly got caught by a boy riding by on his bicycle; and still another, and this was the last time, a little white dog appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and with no visible owner and, circling the prone couple, barked furiously at them the entire time Jack and Adele were making love. And, every time, too, Adele could not help but briefly wonder to herself what Felix would have thought if he could see his staid, practical wife with her breasts bare, her skirt hiked up to her chin, her glasses askew on her nose, taking such pleasure.