The Life of Objects

by Susanna Moore

  “Suit you, perhaps,” she said quietly.

  He looked at her in disappointment but said nothing. The possibility that Felix might be wrong was so new to me, so subversive a thought, that I felt myself blush in apology.

  Later when she couldn’t sleep, Dorothea lit a candle and asked if she could read to me—first in French and then translating the words into English. That melancholy which we feel when we cease to obey orders which, from one day to another, keep the future hidden, and realise that we have at last begun to live in real earnest, as a grown-up person, the life, the only life that any of us has at his disposal.

  Felix, who we thought was asleep, asked what she was reading. She said that she’d been rereading parts of Proust, having found some torn pages of Sodom and Gomorrah, which she’d laboriously pieced together.

  He was silent for a moment and then lifted his head. “You must never say that you are ‘rereading’ Proust, darling. Any knowledgeable person, hearing that you are reading Proust at your age, will know that it is not for the first time.” His head fell back on the pillow.

  “So much for the monastery,” she whispered to me.

  Roeder, suffering from a complaint that often left her unable to walk, asked Dorothea if she might return to her own village of Mittelbach, sixty miles from Löwendorf. Her nephew had been killed in the Ardennes, but her brother, a miller, and his wife had survived the war, and he’d sent word that he would welcome her in their home. At the last minute, she didn’t want to go, clinging to Dorothea’s knees like a child, convinced that Dorothea would die without her. Dorothea told her that she didn’t have to go, that she would look after her, and that she had always assumed that they would be old women together.

  Wiping her wrinkled face, Roeder looked slowly around the filthy yard, and at the ruins of the Yellow Palace and the looted Pavilion and at Dorothea in her mended men’s trousers and matted hair, and started down the avenue. We waved until she was out of sight.

  It was quiet at the Pavilion once the refugees and their children were gone. The village women brought us schnapps and more seeds in exchange for vegetables and fruit, and sometimes they brought eggs and even a chicken, enabling us to start a henhouse of our own. There were mushrooms in the forest and watercress in the river. I made coffee from dandelions, putting the leaves to dry in the sun before baking the roots in the brick oven Bresla built in the yard. Madame Tkvarcheli taught me to make schnapps, using beech leaves and wild buckthorn. Many nights, we had mushroom soup, pickled walnuts, watercress, plums, raspberry tea, and schnapps for supper, and we found ourselves wondering why we hadn’t eaten like that every night of our lives.

  The Russians forbade the reading of any newspaper but their own, which was written in German and distributed weekly. We no longer had a wireless, but friends from neighboring villages, having learned of our survival, walked for miles to bring us news, and perhaps a gift of a sausage or three trembling doves gathered in a handkerchief, and we gave the visitors our own news and fruit from the orchard. The Russians had ordered the towns in their sector to close all bakeries, arranging for the distribution of small amounts of mealy flour so that women would be forced to make their own bread. I asked the baker’s wife to teach me how to bake in exchange for fruit. I took to it very naturally, baking the bread in old garden pots. “It’s your peasant blood,” Kreck said, trying to swallow a piece of my first loaf.

  I wrote again to my mother and father, reminded of them by Kreck’s remark, which would have incensed my mother (I was going to tell her if I ever saw her again), to let them know that I was well. I wrote to Mr. Knox, enclosing a record I’d begun to keep of the birds I saw at Löwendorf, some of which had not been seen in years. I wondered if the birds had fled the war and only recently had felt it safe to return, but I didn’t mention my theory to my old teacher. As there were no stamps and no one I could ask to carry them, I kept the two letters under my mat until I found a reliable courier.

  Our new garden provided enough vegetables for our small household and for the women who helped us (levies of produce, grain, and meat were sent each month to the army, only now it was the Russian army). Every town and village had been required to accept a certain number of displaced persons, and Löwendorf had been told to take ninety of them. It would double the number of residents, and rooms and clothes and food had yet to be found for all of them. The country people were enraged to have to share their meager supplies with strangers who, they complained, did not even speak German. Every egg, every spoon of jam was begrudged the foreigners, who were viewed with mistrust and even revulsion, as it was conveniently said that they were to blame for the war. Even the Germans expelled from the Sudetenland were not spared the contempt of the villagers.

  Frau Kronkeit, the widow of a farmer who’d been killed at Sevastopol, stopped me one day as I returned from a lesson in baking to complain that life had been far better under Hitler than under the Russians. She must have sensed my disgust, for she shouted after me, “Nun bist du doch ebenso arm wie wir.” Now, at last, you are as poor as we are.

  The new mayor of Löwendorf, Herr Pflüger, sent word to Felix that as the schoolmaster was presumed dead, the village would be in need of a schoolteacher. As Herr Pflüger now had a say in the matter, he wished to discuss the appointment of the new master (the Metzenburgs traditionally paid the schoolmaster’s salary and provided the schoolhouse with wood). I was in the room when the boy delivered the mayor’s message—as there was no paper, the boy had memorized the words and recited them in a rush so as not to forget them.

  I often wondered if my letters had reached Herr Elias (I liked to imagine him reading them). I regretted that I had no souvenirs of him—not my German dictionary or the Fontane novels or the tray cloth I’d made for him. That afternoon, I walked to his house in the village, but Russian soldiers were living there, and I turned around and walked home.

  Later, as I worked with Dorothea in the garden—it was light until nine o’clock—I heard the song of a marsh warbler and stopped to listen to it, wondering dreamily if it had flown over the women on their long walk home to the Black Sea. Dorothea, who was watching me, said, “Don’t sentimentalize things. Not now.” When I asked what she meant, she said, “The marsh warbler imitates to perfection more than seventy-five birds. There’s no knowing who he is tonight.”

  There is no knowing who you are, I thought. I had no idea that Dorothea knew about birds. I did not tell her about the soldiers living in Herr Elias’s house.

  As soon as Felix was strong enough, I walked with him to the village to apply for the certificate that would declare him a Kleinbauer, or small farmer. While waiting our turn, I noticed a man nervously explaining to Herr Pflüger his need for transit papers. Felix thought that the man must be a survivor of a camp because of his emaciation, as well as his expression of worn derangement, and he invited him to share our small lunch—Dorothea, fearful that the wait might be long in our newly socialist village, had given us buckthorn jam with a loaf of my gummy black bread. The man, whose name was Daniel Vrooman, was grateful for the food, and Felix told him that should he be unsuccessful in his efforts, he was welcome to stop at the Pavilion.

  When Herr Pflüger caught sight of Felix among the supplicants, he beckoned him quickly into the small sitting room that served as his office. Still possessed of his unsettling combination of obsequy and contempt, he made me a mocking bow. “Comrade Palmer,” he said.

  To the accompaniment of Franz Lehar’s “The Land of Smiles,” played rather too loud on a gramophone that looked familiar, Herr Pflüger told Felix that, as mayor, he would be more than delighted to oblige Felix with a classification of small farmer, in exchange for the orchard at Löwendorf, as well as the ruins of the Yellow Palace and the rest of the motorcars in the garage and, as an afterthought, the garage itself.

  Felix and I walked to the Pavilion so that Felix could discuss Herr Pflüger’s offer with Dorothea. As they had little choice, the Metzenburgs decided to give the mayo
r what he wanted. It was dangerous for them as owners of a large hereditary estate in a Communist zone. The resentment and envy that some of the villagers had felt long before the arrival of the Russians was now expressed openly, and the Metzenburgs had been denounced more than once as rich capitalists whose family fortune had been made through the sweat of the oppressed.

  Felix and I returned to the village accompanied by Bessie, whom Felix held on a rope (the remaining two dogs had disappeared with the Russian tank). There were only a few lorries on the road, and it was very warm. Groups of German prisoners of war, guarded by American soldiers, walked past listlessly, and the Americans were startled when Felix greeted them in English.

  The pleased, although hardly surprised, Herr Pflüger told Felix that he was very fortunate to have the mayor as his devoted friend, as there had been talk about the Metzenburgs. “In fact,” confessed Herr Pflüger, “the Russians suggested that I exile you to another district, but now we can keep you and dear Frau Metzenburg with us. I’ll tell them that you are properly registered as a small farmer, and that the produce from your kitchen garden and your orchards goes directly to Berlin.” When we left, he gave Felix six packs of Camel cigarettes as a consolation prize.

  We walked home in silence, Felix holding Bessie’s rope. The dog didn’t require a lead and would never run off, but he liked to keep her close to him. “If we were ever in doubt,” Felix said, pausing to open one of the packs, “we now know for certain that Rousseau was wrong.”

  In late July, a letter from Inéz was found in the stables. She wrote that, after divorcing her Egyptian prince, she’d found herself in London with her two children, where she had married an English group captain with a large estate near Bath. Her new husband had recently been elected to Parliament, and she pressed the Metzenburgs to come to stay with them.

  Dorothea smiled as she read the letter a second time. “Do you remember when she said that Christ was the only person in history who combined an elegance of soul with an elegance of both body and dress?”

  “She has a genius for superficiality,” said Felix. He’d been reading aloud from a torn copy of Simenon’s The Hotel Majestic, holding the pages close to his face as his eyeglasses had been stolen. I sat next to him as he read (his voice was weak). His teeth pained him, and he packed them with melted candle drippings, giving him a slight lisp. I couldn’t bear to be away from him for too long. I worried that he’d need me or, worse, that I would need him.

  There was a horse chestnut that grew behind the Pavilion, and when the wind drew from the tree a humming noise, it frightened me. It was then that I reminded myself that tanks no longer rumbled through the park. Bombers no longer streaked overhead. In autumn, I knew, the paths would once again be slippery with leaves, and the brambles in the Fasanerie, once the covert of pheasant and partridge, would be heavy with fruit. In winter, I’d return wet and cold from my walk to the river. Bessie would race for the warmth of the fire, and I’d ask Kreck to save me some hot water. Felix would read aloud for an hour after dinner. I’d open the window in my room before I went to bed. I would drift lightly, as had become my habit, listening in my sleep should someone call me. Felix, perhaps, or Kreck. Or Caspar. Or Herr Elias. Or even the American.

  One morning, I found Herr Vrooman, the man whom Felix and I met in the mayor’s office, sitting at the gates, reading the Russian newspaper. I asked if I could help him. He rose stiffly and said in old German, his voice rising and falling in that pleasant way, that he hadn’t liked to disturb Herr Metzenburg, not knowing his hours. He was hoping to see him after breakfast.

  I suggested that he walk with me to the house. I knew that it was no longer acceptable to inquire of a person his place of origin or his destination, and I was silent as we walked up the avenue. I offered him a handful of cherries from my basket, which he accepted. Since the mayor had taken the orchard, I’d picked every cherry and plum that I could find, even if they were rotten, and my stomach had been swollen for days.

  The avenue, once in near darkness thanks to the overhanging elms, was bright with light, and it was possible to see the river, shining at the bottom of the park, and the ruins of the Yellow Palace. The overgrown knot garden of thyme and barberry had gone to seed. The Russian soldiers had used the beds of white violets as a trash heap and the smell of rotting garbage drifted across the park, but the ash from the fire had fertilized the hundreds of elm seedlings growing in ranks along the drive and the heat of the fire had caused the spores and seeds of plants not seen at Löwendorf in years to burst into life. The outer walls of the Yellow Palace were covered with trailing Pelargonium, Ceterach ferns (which looked like bright green rickrack), and the lovely Venushaarfarn. Wild iris, hyacinth, and lilies grew among the fallen statues. The villagers, no longer in awe of the Metzenburgs, sometimes had picnics in the ruins, and small family parties. It was so lovely a spot that a stranger might be forgiven for thinking it a romantic folly, although I doubted if Herr Vrooman, looking at the ruins in curiosity, found them particularly sympathetic. Herr Pflüger, their new owner, had put up a sign, there and in the orchard, forbidding trespassers. An agitated jay followed us as far as the stable yard, mocking us with its laugh, and I was grateful for the distraction.

  Felix did not come downstairs before noon, and I led Herr Vrooman to the library, where he sat in a broken chair to wait. I asked if he’d like a glass of water—it was already hot at nine in the morning—but he assured me that he was perfectly well. I felt that I should tend to him, but I could see that my attentions distressed him. I wondered if the close presence of other people was no longer tolerable to him. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do for him, so I left him there.

  Dorothea heard that the Americans and the English were buying, and she wished to dig up some of the treasure to sell in Berlin. Felix said that he’d prefer to hold on to things until prices were higher. There had been several messages from friends seeking the treasure they had entrusted to him, and he’d had to explain that the park had been destroyed and many of the objects entrusted to him stolen. He was hopeful that some of the treasure would be found, but it would take time. He wondered if his own beautiful things had survived and what their lives would be like with the end of the war. Dorothea knew that it was difficult for him to part with his treasure, whatever the price, and she promised that she would sell only those things that belonged to her.

  She confided to me that she also hoped to inquire about friends in Berlin. It had become evident that people were no longer simply divided by class or race but by the different levels of suffering they had endured in the war. Those who had lost the most found it difficult to talk to or even to see those who had not suffered equally. It was not that they were incapable of sympathy, but that those who had suffered less than they had suffered did not awaken their curiosity or even their humor in the same way.

  Dorothea asked me to go with her to Berlin, leaving Felix in the company of Herr Vrooman, who had moved into Roeder’s old room. Over several weeks, Felix had learned that Herr Vrooman was Belgian and a former professor at Ghent University, where his field of study had been fifteenth-century Gothic sculpture, particularly the work of Veit Stoss. In the fall of 1938, a few months before my own arrival in Berlin, Herr Vrooman, on his way to see the church of Casimir V in Kraków, had stopped in Berlin, where he was arrested the day after Kristallnacht. The SS had identified the buildings owned or occupied by Jews and arranged for the telephone wires, gas, and electricity to be cut, and there’d been no chance of escape. He and a cousin had been sent to Sachsenhausen prison, where his cousin had died. When the guards abandoned Sachsenhausen at the end of the war, Herr Vrooman managed to slip from the long line of prisoners. It took him a week to reach Löwendorf—he was headed for Kraków—where he collapsed in front of the inn, remaining there for two days until Madame Tkvarcheli found him and sent him to Herr Pflüger.

  Although Herr Vrooman was too frail to help with the chores, he was an engaging companion for Felix.
I often heard them talking, and I was relieved to see Felix slowly regain his spirits. When Felix told Herr Vrooman of the altarpieces, stained glass, and lime-wood figures that had been buried in the park, Herr Vrooman was speechless. When Felix told him that the carved wooden altar from St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków had been broken apart by the Nazis and taken to Nuremberg, Herr Vrooman burst into tears.

  The day before we left for Berlin, Dorothea and I spent several hours in the park, Felix’s treasure map in hand, trying to locate the spots where her jewelry was buried. Herr Vrooman offered to help, but Dorothea did not want to tax him with the effort of digging.

  The park had been destroyed by the Russian tanks, and many of the trees cut for firewood, so Felix’s map, drawn with such care, was more frustrating than helpful. Much of the treasure had been discovered by the soldiers, but after a morning of pacing and circling and probing and digging, we at last found a case of her jewelry and an iron trunk containing thirty medallions of mythological figures by James Tassie, although two Holbein paintings that had been buried with the medallions were gone. It had been very warm all week, and I found digging for emeralds far more tiring than digging for carrots.

  Using strands of horsehair and my needle, I sewed the Empress Josephine’s yellow diamonds, a handful of baroque pearls, five of the Tassie medallions (Adam Smith and Henry Raeburn, among others), and four gold watches that had belonged to Dorothea’s father into the hems and seams of the clothes that we would wear to Berlin. Our dresses were much warmer than the weather required, but the weight of the treasure demanded fabric heavier than silk or linen. I felt a certain unaccustomed gaiety as we set out, as if we were taking a trip, which lasted until we reached the Ludwigsfelde train station.

  A company of Russian infantry patrolled the station. Suddenly I could hear the heavy watches ticking noisily against my knees, and the clatter of fat pearls, rolling back and forth with every step. The train was meant for freight, and there were no seats or lights, which suited us, as we did not want to sit on the medallions. As we swayed back and forth with the hot and weary crowd, I thought of the Zoo flak tower and Herr Elias’s lost books and the woman who had disappeared in a faint. As we drew near to Berlin (it was possible to judge distances and location by the extent of the destruction), a man standing next to me began to rub his face in my neck. I was certain that he could feel the jewels (I’d once feared that Herr Elias could hear the beating of my heart while we danced), and I twisted and turned, pushing his head from my shoulder. It seems he’d fallen asleep, and he apologized for the rest of the trip.