The Life of Objects

by Susanna Moore

  The train at last arrived in Berlin. The bridge leading to the station had been bombed, and there was no public transportation. People of all ages, their open hands thrust at us, hung on a sagging wire fence built to discourage the hungry from troubling those fortunate enough to ride a train. Dorothea gave them the food that we’d brought, and I had to stop her from giving away her hat, into which I had sewn two diamond rings.

  We continued on foot, blinking in the light. The air was full of dust, and ash and soot soon covered our faces and clothes. The city was crowded with refugees. Cleaning brigades climbed over enormous piles of rubble. American military police directed traffic, mostly their own jeeps and lorries, and patrolled the streets, many of them blocked by fallen timber and brick. Some of the MPs were Negroes, and the children stood in silent rows to gape at them. Shelters had been built against the ruins with whatever materials could be scavenged, and women boiled vats of water over open fires.

  We were shocked by the difference between the American and the Russian zones. Despite the endless destruction, the people, as well as the soldiers, were distinctly happier in the American sector, and it made us envious. There was no electricity, running water, or gas, and little food, but there was a mood of excitement, even elation, that made the ruined streets and the faces of the survivors less desolate. I gave my collection of letters to one of the smiling MPs to mail for me.

  It took us some time to reach Dorothea’s flat, and when we at last found the square, empty of trees and houses, we realized that we had walked past it more than once, confused by the desolation. We walked to the shop of the dealer who Dorothea had hoped would take her jewels, but the shop was empty. As we walked to the Metzenburgs’ bank, which meant entering the Russian sector, we passed the street where Herr Kreutzer had opened his last gallery. A man sweeping the street said that drunken German soldiers had burned the building. He didn’t know anything about a Herr Kreutzer. When we at last reached the bank, hot and thirsty, a Russian soldier at the door shouted in German that the bank was now the property of the Russian government. Dorothea sat on a pile of rocks and began to cry. I sat next to her, the weighted hem of my dress dragging in the dirt, until the soldier pointed his rifle at us and ordered us to leave.

  By the time that we found our way to the train station, it was dark, and we were so tired and sad, our dresses so heavy with unsold treasure, that we could barely walk.

  After our trip to Berlin, Dorothea again considered the possibility of leaving the country. The Russians boasted that they didn’t take bribes, but it had quickly become evident that the opposite was true. They were even greedier than the French, Dorothea said, and she was certain that she could obtain transit visas for us.

  The natural envy of the local people had increased, in part because of the enforced classes in socialism that the Russians required us to attend each week in the schoolhouse. Dorothea and Felix dutifully took the seats saved for them in the front row out of a residual respect for their traditional position in the village, just as the first pew in the Presbyterian Church had always been left empty for them, even though they’d only appeared at Christmas and at Easter.

  I often lay on my mat after supper, my legs swollen and sore, and listened to the Metzenburgs argue about leaving Löwendorf. The smell of my body was still strong, despite my frequent baths in the river, but Kreck and the Metzenburgs continued to pretend not to notice it.

  Toward the end of August, a car came noisily up the avenue, gears shifting as it labored over the ruts. The car’s headlights bounced across the bare walls of the room where we sat, before it came to a stop in the yard (even the sounds of Löwendorf were different—the paving had been stolen, and there was no longer the sound of hooves on cobbles). It was unusual for us to have visitors, particularly at night, but I wasn’t alarmed. Kreck appeared in the hall, but Dorothea sent him away with a nod. She woke Felix, who’d fallen asleep in his chair. Bessie, who lay at his feet, stretched with a low whine and yawned.

  Four men in suits followed a small man in a raincoat into the room. It was immediately apparent that they were Russian because of their faces and their clothes, and because the small man didn’t remove his hat. Herr Vrooman rose slowly from his chair, his book sliding from his lap. Felix, wearing new slippers I’d made for him, did not stand, and he did not ask the men to sit down.

  The small man, scraping his muddy shoes on the rungs of a chair, informed Felix that he’d been denounced as an enemy of the Soviet Union. He apologized for intruding on such a gemütliche family scene, but it was necessary that Felix accompany the men to party headquarters. He was so courteous, so respectful, despite his hat, that it was obvious he was mocking him. “We have received a number of letters,” he said. “You are known in Berlin to everyone.”

  “I confess I’m delighted to hear it,” Felix said. “I thought most of my friends were dead.”

  The man, looking at the few broken pieces of furniture with unconcealed disappointment, said that Felix would be released in a few hours.

  “Released?” Felix asked.

  The man smiled. “You will be home in time for a good night’s sleep.” He closed his eyes and held his hands against the side of his face, pretending to sleep.

  Felix put Herr Pflüger’s cigarettes and a box of matches in his pocket. “I assume that it would be pointless to refuse?”

  The man seemed to appreciate Felix’s self-assured irritability. Not for the first time, I felt as if I were on a stage with actors playing their parts. As I watched them, I realized, somewhat belatedly, that I, too, was acting, although I could not be sure which part. I took Felix’s arm, and he rested his hand atop mine for a moment, and then walked to the door.

  The man in the hat turned to Herr Vrooman (he was only a supporting player and had not required his attention until Felix had said his lines) and nodded in a friendly way. Herr Vrooman, eyes bulging, nodded in return. The man then turned to Dorothea with an expression as if to say, You see how civilized we are, lady, despite what you think of us? Refusing to acknowledge him, she went to Felix.

  “I regret that we only have need of your husband tonight, Frau Metzenburg,” the man said with a smile.

  Dorothea was stunned. “I’m not going? But of course I am.”

  Felix looked at me for a moment. Perhaps, I thought, this is what he had in mind that first morning in Berlin when he said that I might be of help to Dorothea one day. For an instant, I saw in his face his complete acceptance of life—it had always been there, but I had not understood until that moment. He kissed Dorothea and went into the yard, followed by the men. Halfway to the car, he turned back and said, “My book.”

  Dorothea asked him which book he wanted.

  He smiled. “Anna Karenina. I haven’t finished it.”

  She ran into the house and returned with the book he’d read many times, putting it in his hands as she kissed him again. Kreck stood with us in the yard. One of the Russians held open the door to the backseat, and Felix climbed inside. Two of the men squeezed next to him, one on either side.

  We listened until we could no longer hear the car before we returned to the house. We sat in the front hall, the door open, too stunned to do more than trim the candle so that Felix would not return to a dark house. At dawn, Herr Vrooman rose stiffly, his hands shaking as he gripped the arms of his chair. I knew that if I tried to help him, he would wave me away in anger, and I watched in silence as he stumbled across the room.

  I made dandelion coffee and brought a cup to Dorothea with a spoonful of jam, but she didn’t want it. She moved a stool into the yard, where she would have a better view of the avenue. When I left to feed the chickens, she glanced at me for a moment but did not speak. When I returned, the stool was empty.

  Kreck took the eggs from me. “Perhaps an omelet. Herr Felix likes an omelet with scallions,” he said, and I went to pick some.

  In the garden, Dorothea lay motionless on the ground, her face in the sand. I lifted her to her knees, an
d wiped her eyes and mouth. Together, we picked scallions, as well as some green tomatoes, and returned to the house.

  Felix did not come home that night or the next or the night after that, although we were visited three days after his arrest by several Russian soldiers and two more men in suits. The soldiers searched the house, overturning in boredom the boxes that held our few belongings and idly kicking to pieces our last chairs.

  I was alarmed to see that one of the men held Felix’s keys in his hand. The man demanded that Dorothea tell them where the gold was hidden. When she said that there was no gold, he threw the keys at her. Herr Vrooman reached for them, but a soldier quickly picked them up and tossed them to the man.

  We stood in the yard and watched in silence as they took what little remained in the house—two broken tables, some torn linen, a few plates and knives and forks—piling their loot into the back of the lorry that had followed them into the yard. I was relieved that they did not consider my small pile of books worth taking. Kreck dragged the straw garden chair that had been Dorothea’s throne in the Night Wood into the yard, and she sat in it. She hadn’t been in the chair five minutes before one of the soldiers nudged her shoulder with the tip of his gun and gestured that she was to get out of the chair. He threw the chair into the lorry, along with my bicycle.

  “Where is my husband?” Dorothea asked each of the men, but they did not bother to answer her, busy watching one another to make sure that no one kept anything for himself, their contemptuous silence far more effective than any lie.

  “When will Herr Metzenburg return?” Dorothea asked, following the men to the lorry.

  “Perhaps next week,” said one of the men, as if wary of accepting an invitation to dine. Her face brightened, and then he said, “Or we may return tomorrow. As we like. You’ll have found your husband’s papers and the gold by then.” He grabbed her hand before she had time to pull it away, kissing her fingers with a loud smack. He tipped his hat, and they were gone, rattling down the avenue.

  I’d hidden Bessie in the stables when I heard them coming up the avenue, and we went to find her. As Dorothea lifted the dog from the barrel, she noticed that the earth where the altar panels from the Church of Our Lady in Würzburg were buried had been disturbed. She fell to the ground and began to dig with her hands, Bessie joining her in excitement. I looked at Kreck, catching his eye for an instant before he turned away. The altar panels and two ivory crucifixes were gone.

  “And Herr Vrooman?” Dorothea asked Kreck.

  He nodded. Herr Vrooman was also gone.

  That night, as Dorothea and I prepared for bed, I again told her that my name was Beatrice.

  “Yes,” she said, “why not a new name?” She paused. “Who shall I be?”

  “It’s not a new name,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.

  Every morning and afternoon, we walked to the mayor’s house in the village to inquire about Felix. And each time, Herr Pflüger said that he hadn’t the slightest notion where Felix might be. He would not even concede that Felix had been taken away, although he did admit that if the men who came to the Pavilion were members of the Russian secret police, there was cause to be concerned. The villagers did not wish to be seen talking to us, in case local party members were watching, and they hurried away at the sight of us.

  Dorothea slept on a mat in the hall so that she would hear Felix when he returned. Kreck fell into a lassitude so deep that he rarely spoke, and he no longer left his cot. I assumed his chores, as few as they were, and tended to the hens and to Bessie, as well as to the kitchen garden, preparing the food we’d grown ourselves and whatever I could find in the village. I wasn’t strong enough yet to cut wood, and I found two boys in the village to help us (we discovered one morning that the wheelbarrow had been stolen).

  Dorothea wrote letters to anyone who might be of help, although many of the men who once had influence were either dead or held in military prisons for war crimes. Friends of her father and Felix’s friends in London and Madrid were hesitant and evasive, cautioning her to have patience. There was little they could do, especially as Löwendorf was under the authority of the Russians. Their own situations made it difficult for them to take much interest in the troubles of others. It’s not that they were unkind, but that they had little of anything to spare.

  It was the first time in twenty years that Dorothea had been apart from Felix. I found her going through a box that had escaped the notice of the Russians, with two of Felix’s shirts, a hat, and the homemade razor. Dorothea held the hat to her face, hoping to find his smell. “It is just like him,” she said excitedly, and pushed the hat into my hands, but all I could smell was wood smoke.

  I went to the village every few days to barter vegetables, eggs, and herbs for milk, butter, and flour and to call on Caspar’s mother. She had leased her field to Herr Pflüger, Caspar’s man of the future, who had already put in a crop of wheat and rye. She hadn’t seen Caspar, or had news of him, and like me, although we didn’t say it, she feared that he was dead.

  After years of war, the creatures that had lived in the house for generations—bats and mice and hedgehogs—once again took up residence. I listened at night to their scratching and rustling as they made themselves comfortable. I thought about the man in the Night Wood and I thought about Caspar. I thought about Herr Elias. Unlike Dorothea, I found no solace in the hope that Felix would return. I knew that the night that Felix climbed into the car, Anna Karenina under his arm, was the last time that I would see him. My sadness was not a heaviness but a weightlessness that frightened me.

  Three weeks after Felix disappeared, as I carried water to the house, I felt such pain in my lower abdomen and in my back that I had to sit on the ground. I waited for the pain to ease—it came in sharp waves—and eventually I was able to crawl across the yard. As I neared the house, I felt a burst of warm liquid between my legs.

  The milky shape of the child was barely visible in its cowl of blood and mucous. If I hadn’t come across placentas in the fields, and seen the birth of foals and calves, I might not have understood. I’d been feeling unwell for several months, and my cycle was erratic. Because of my diet, the swelling in my body had been unremarkable—I’d thought that I’d begun to gain a little weight or else was bloated from the vegetables I’d been eating.

  I looked around me. The women would not come to work in the garden until the late afternoon. Kreck and Dorothea were in the village, but I hadn’t much time before they returned. My only witness was Bessie, who sniffed cautiously around me. She, like me, was shocked, but unlike me, she was curious. Pushing her aside, I scratched a shallow hole in the dirt. I did not want to touch it, and I used the hem of my skirt to push it into the hole. I packed the hole with dirt, tamping it down with my shoe, and dragged a rock from the pile next to the well to cover the little grave. That a child of the Russians had been growing inside me filled me with wonder. Never once did it occur to me that I had made it, too.

  I crawled slowly to the house, pulling the excited dog after me. I made it as far as the back staircase before I had to stop, sitting at the foot of the stairs, my back against the wall. My bloody handprints were on the floor and walls, and there was a pool of blood at the kitchen door. I put Bessie in the laundry room, then pulled off my skirt and wiped the floor. I found a rag and folded it between my legs. I wiped the walls with a dish towel and hid the towel and my underpants and skirt behind a loose board. I pulled myself up the stairs, hand over hand, and lay on my side on the landing, rocking back and forth with pain. There was a little blood on the banister and I wiped it with my shirt—I knew that Kreck was nearly blind and wouldn’t notice it, and Dorothea no longer came upstairs.

  Later, when Kreck knocked on my door to ask if I would be having supper, I told him that I had a headache. He offered to bring me something. No, I said, I’m going to try to sleep. I listened to his soft shuffle as he slowly made his way downstairs.

  For the first time in months, my body didn’t s
mell.

  A few days later, Dorothea told me that we were going to Berlin to look for Felix (at the mention of his name, Bessie lifted her head and looked around the room). She arranged for Bresla to move from her mother’s house in the village to the Pavilion, where she would look after Kreck, who was too frail to be left on his own. An embarrassed Kreck, his burlap eye patch slipping from his eye, allowed us to carry him to Felix’s old bedroom, where we made him as comfortable as possible on a fresh mattress of summer grass. Bresla would sleep in the dressing room nearby, with Bessie as her companion. There was enough food in the house and in the garden to last until the end of the year.

  The night before we left Löwendorf, I made an opening in the sole of my shoe for Felix’s torn and faded treasure map, which he’d slipped into my hand the night they took him away. I hid the map in the shoe and went to say good-bye to Kreck. He was asleep but awakened when he heard me at the door.

  I sat on the floor alongside his mat and held his hand. Was it possible, I wondered, that we had never touched each other except by chance? Our fingers brushing as I handed him a cup. Our hands touching as we folded a blanket. I thought of the time six years earlier when I’d taken my father’s hand, equally unfamiliar to me, and told him to think of my journey to Germany as an apprenticeship.