The Life of Objects

by Susanna Moore

  I thanked Kreck for all that he had done for me.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “How to set a table and dust a chandelier. Very important in this new world. You can do that now, although I don’t believe you ever intended to clean a chandelier. You’d rather sit under one.”

  I was pleased to see that he hadn’t lost his malice. I wanted to go to bed (I was still bleeding), but I could see that he wished me to stay with him. “I was wondering,” I said, “if you’d like me to trim your mustache.” The white tips had grown into the hair at his temples and he looked like an old monkey. He said that he’d been waiting for me to ask. I used Caspar’s hunting knife, given to me by his mother, and cut his mustache and then his hair.

  “Mind you don’t throw it away,” he said, pointing to the hair I’d gathered into a pile.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  “We can use it for something.”

  Dorothea learned that her father’s villa in Dahlem, which had been given by the Nazis to the sculptor Arno Breker to use as his residence throughout the war, had not been destroyed, and we moved there in August. To our relief, the house was in the American zone. Herr Schumacher’s lawyer, Herr Abbing, had survived the war, in large part because he was also Reichsmarschall Göring’s lawyer. Fortunately he had the papers necessary to prove that Dorothea had inherited the house.

  Dorothea left me to unpack our things, setting off at once for the nearby headquarters of the Americans. Only three rooms on the ground floor had not been damaged. All of the windows had been smashed, and broken glass, charred bricks, and pieces of plaster lay in piles in each of the rooms and on the terrace. There was one chair.

  I decided that a torn tapestry could be used to cover the French doors at night, and the loose shutters would make good tables or even beds. As I cleaned the fireplace—books had been burned in it, as well as pictures—I remembered a photograph that had been in the library of the Yellow Palace. In the picture, entitled Profondeurs du Sommeil, a young woman in a skirt and sweater stretched comfortably across a narrow chimneypiece, her legs crossed at the ankle, her head resting in her palm, and I idly wondered if the mantel would hold me.

  I’d brought some of my own much-improved brown bread and some salted fish given to us by Madame Tkvarcheli, as well as the cherries that Herr Pflüger had sent from his new orchard when he learned that we were going to Berlin. I hid our food and clothes and the treasure we’d been able to find at Löwendorf (Josephine’s yellow diamond parure; a silver bowl by Cellini; the pearls; two Dürer goblets, the Hilliard miniature, two Houdon marble reliefs, one of them a dead thrush; some pewter, drawings, and silver; and several pieces of jewelry) behind a panel in the room that had once been the library.

  I was bleeding, and I changed the rag in my underpants. I had cramps, and I stepped over the rubble on the terrace to rest on a stone bench that overlooked an enormous bronze sculpture of a man. The sun was hot on my bare legs and face and I felt happy. Before we left Löwendorf, I’d found a piece of broken mirror. I was surprised to see how much I had changed. I hadn’t recognized myself. I was very thin. I’d lost quite a bit of hair. My eyelashes were gone, and my gums were bleeding, but I knew all that. What I hadn’t known was that my teeth were gray, and my skin green. There were rings around my eyes. My eyes were yellow, the lids red and patchy. My nose curved to the side, and one of my nostrils was bigger than the other. Other than that, I didn’t look too bad.

  Over the years, I’d learned many things. I was less ignorant, of course, than when I arrived, a greedy girl from the west of Ireland. I’d known nothing of politics—I still knew nothing—taking my few opinions from Mr. Knox, who’d found it difficult to think beyond 1918. I knew that I was susceptible to influence—the high-minded Mr. Knox and his birds, Inéz and her finery, the Metzenburgs and their love of the past. I was easily impressed and easily gratified.

  I understood that Inéz had once been Felix’s mistress (and that when she said she’d lived with Felix as slave and master, it was Felix who had been the slave). I saw that the arrangements she had worked out for herself were not only profitable but also pleasurable, and that they had required discipline and even courage, as well as a deep cynicism.

  I realized that the most charming man in Berlin, Count von Arnstadt, who was said to have died in Döberitz, had each week erased any incriminating conversations that he found on the Gestapo’s secret telephone recordings before sending them to Hitler. The woman named Hilde Monte, whose illegal broadcasts Caspar and I heard on the radio and who bled to death when the SS at last caught her on the Swiss border, was the woman whose black feather hat I’d so admired at Christmas lunch. I understood that Kreck preferred men to women. I understood that Caspar loved me. And that I loved Herr Elias.

  If the old world had remained the same, I would not have been invited to lunch with Felix at the Adlon, or to swim with Dorothea in the river, or to sit with them after dinner to listen to Jean Sablon sing “Two Sleepy People.” Had the men not been sent to the war and the maids not been forced into slave labor, I would have disappeared into the sewing room with my bobbin and thread. I knew that the war had given me a life.

  Dorothea returned soon after dark. She’d worried that the Americans and other buyers would not want the silver engraved with coronets and crests, but it was precisely what they wanted. It didn’t matter if the initials didn’t match their own. The monograms topped with crowns were better than their own initials.

  “I saw the general’s adjutant today,” she said. “He was kind in that way Americans seem to be without any irony, and he promised to tell the general of Felix’s disappearance. The Americans have made a devil’s pact with the Russians. Herr Abbing told me in great bitterness that Field Marshall Montgomery was only days from Berlin when Churchill ordered him to hold back his army. I wonder what the English and the Americans have been promised in return for giving half of Berlin to Stalin.”

  I arranged our dinner on a piece of newspaper spread on the floor, but she didn’t eat, even when I placed a piece of bread and some cherries in her hand. After I put away the food, we cleaned the corner where we planned to sleep, scratching in the dust like cats.

  “As I described my plan to Herr Abbing, I noticed that he’d fallen asleep,” she said as she moved a rag across the floor with her foot. “He wears dark glasses, so it took me a while to realize it, but then there was a snore that caused even Herr Abbing to jump. He’s terrified that the Americans will arrest him.”

  I was silent, busy sweeping the corner with a piece of cardboard.

  “Do you wish to go home?” she suddenly asked.

  “We’ve only just arrived,” I said in surprise.

  “I ask because that, at least, could be arranged. Your mother and father may think you are dead.”

  I’d written twice to my mother and father since the end of the war, once when I returned from the Night Wood, but there was no way to know if they’d received my letters. I’d not had a letter from them, and they didn’t have a telephone. I hadn’t heard from Mr. Knox, either. “I can’t imagine any other life—”

  “Never could you have imagined this life,” she said, interrupting me. “No one could have imagined it. I’m not sure even they imagined it.”

  “Felix said the same thing the day he took me to lunch at the Adlon. A girl flirted with him, and I was furious.”

  “That often happens. He’s very attractive to women, as you know.” She paused. “I sometimes wonder if you are in love with him.”

  I was silent, not because Dorothea was right, or because I didn’t want to tell a lie, but because I didn’t know the truth. “You and Felix have taught me everything I know.”

  “He always insists that it is I who have taught him.” She paused. “Of course, it’s true.”

  We talked through the night, mostly about Felix, and in the present tense. Near dawn, I heard her take some treasure from its hiding place and slip quietly from the house.

  We�
�d eaten the last of our food by the end of the week, even though we were unable to eat more than a few bites at a time. There was food on the black market—meat and sugar and even real coffee, thanks to the Americans—but I was hesitant to leave the house. Dorothea was often gone all day. Her daily visits to anyone who might be able to help had given her hope that Felix would be found.

  When I told her that I needed money for food—we needed water and soap as well—she said that there was none. She’d sold the last of the silver to Herr Witte, who’d given her a good price, considering that he’d sold many of the pieces to her mother, but she’d given all of the money to a lawyer recommended by Herr Abbing who claimed to be in touch with men who knew where Felix was being held and who, for a price, could arrange his release. When she returned to the lawyer’s office, a furious clerk told her that the lawyer had gone abroad and had no plans to return to Berlin.

  “But we have nothing to eat,” I said, dismayed by her refusal to think of anything but Felix.

  “There was a woman in his office who is also looking for her husband. He has the misfortune of bearing the same name as one of the commandants at Dachau. The Americans arrested him when the camp was liberated, and nothing will persuade them that he is not their man. Perhaps he is their man. She, too, gave the lawyer all of their money.”

  “I have the drawing that you gave me the night the Yellow Palace was bombed. Felix says it’s a Veronese.”

  Dorothea looked surprised. “That belongs to you. Besides, there is more treasure at Löwendorf, although it won’t be easy without his map.”

  I slid the map from its hiding place in my shoe and opened it. “There’s nothing left,” I said. She was standing at the garden door. The sky behind her was filled with light, and I couldn’t see her face. “In the beginning, he only took a few things at a time, and never the best. He’d hidden so much. It was like Aladdin’s cave. It was inconceivable that it would ever run out. There were so many people to help.”

  She slowly crossed the room to take the map from my hand.

  “He used it for many things,” I said. “Not just food. There were bribes. And documents. A ship, perhaps. There was much that I didn’t know. I only discovered it at the end. He said that it was necessary to keep things from you in case you were arrested. He made me promise not to tell you. Until we went to the Night Wood, he awoke each day expecting them to take you away.”

  “I never understood why they didn’t arrest us,” she said. “Perhaps they thought we were too frivolous and foolish, although there were many like us who were shot in the street. I sometimes wondered if Felix gave them money, but, of course, no matter how much you gave them, they took you if they wanted you.” The map was beginning to tear at the creases, and she folded it carefully. “The Cranach?” she asked.

  I nodded. When all of it began, I’d never heard of Augsberg silver. Or Nymphenburg porcelain. Or Hans Memling. Or oeufs en gelée, for that matter. I looked at my hands, calloused and chapped, the fingernails broken and split. “I can still sew,” I said. “There will be an interest in lace again. And what I have left of my savings. Nearly twenty pounds.”

  “Could you teach me to sew?” she asked.

  I hesitated. “Your very own lace maker,” I said.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you for some time that I’ve never liked lace as much as I’m meant to like it.” She began to laugh. “It was my father who loved lace and, like many things, it was just assumed that I loved it, too.” She was laughing so hard that she began to choke.

  “I never finished your dress,” I said when she at last composed herself.

  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Too late now.” She sat in the chair and slipped her feet from her shoes to rub her dirty toes.

  “They say Inéz is a spy, but not for our side.”

  “Our side?” She smiled. “It wouldn’t surprise me.” She thought about it. “I never imagined that she was in Ireland for the hunting. At least not for foxes. Of course, she needed your Irish passport. Her position was always tenuous, despite her German marriage. There were rumors that she was born in Armenia, which counts for less than Cuba, I’m afraid, and that her papers were forged. Once she was Farouk’s courier, she didn’t need any of us. She didn’t even need papers. Now she’s Lady Averill. Any kindness one now receives from her ladyship will be disinterested. Perhaps.”

  I knew that Inéz was an adventuress without a conscience, but it had never occurred to me that she had used me for my papers. I wished that Felix had been there to share the joke, but then I realized that he must have known all along. I consoled myself with the thought that as much as Inéz had taken advantage of me, I had taken advantage of Inéz.

  Dorothea continued to visit the headquarters of the Americans each morning, reasoning that if she made a pest of herself she might have a chance of getting their attention. The crooked lawyer’s office was closed—even the angry clerk had fled. Dorothea saw those of Felix’s old friends and colleagues who had survived, coming away astonished that they had returned so quickly to their former lives as great men of the nineteenth century, talking about ententes, embassy postings, restaurants, and women.

  She gave me the money she received for the Dürer goblets, and I walked each day to the market run by the Americans and then to the black market. The relief that we felt to be under the protection of the Americans both soothed us and filled us with dread. It was temporary, we knew.

  I brought home the newspaper of the American army, and I studied the mysterious cartoons and read the dispatches from the Pacific. I read the paper aloud to her each evening, and we discussed the liberation of the Philippines and the sinking of the Indianapolis until we were exhausted by emotion. We shared a pack of cigarettes a day, even though they made us sick. We consumed so much chocolate and tinned sardines and Nescafé with powdered milk that we sometimes spoke wistfully of our suppers of wild mushrooms and watercress. I bought a bolt of navy-blue silk and thread and needles on the black market to make us each a fall suit, and when I took our measurements, using my fingers as a guide, we were astonished at the weight we’d gained.

  Our days had moments when we were lighthearted, and even girlish. There were no air raids. No sirens and searchlights. No fires or corpses. No arrests or executions. The war was over, and we, at least, were alive.

  I liked to sit on the terrace each afternoon when the day had increased in warmth, in the hope that the sun would heal some of my more superficial ailments. One day, I saw a woman in a heavy coat standing next to the Breker sculpture of the man. When she did not leave, I walked across the dry grass and asked her into the house. I offered to take her coat, given the heat, but she shook her head. Dorothea, who was making a new list of American diplomats in Berlin, rose from her chair and insisted that the woman, who seemed ill, sit in it.

  The hair at the woman’s temples was dark with perspiration, and she found it difficult to look at us, snapping and unsnapping her worn handbag. I brought her a glass of water, and we waited patiently as she calmed herself, taking a big draft of air and holding it in her lungs before expelling it with a moan.

  The woman, whose name was Frau Dremmler, was the wife of a doctor who’d been arrested by the Russians in May. He had refused throughout the war to join the Nazi Party, despite relentless pressure and threats. Most of his patients had dropped away in fear of the Gestapo, but he had continued to treat Jews, Communists, and even homosexuals. Against all logic, the Nazis had left him alone, their power maintained in part by the arbitrariness of their persecution. At the end of the war, the Russians, needing doctors for their many camps holding political prisoners, arrested him and sent him to Sachsenhausen, where they had recently replaced the Nazis as jailers. With her husband in the camp were Red Army deserters, Trotskyites, partisans from Eastern Europe, German officers, soldiers with venereal disease, White Russian officers and anyone else suspected of being an enemy of communism. A prisoner who’d recently been released had been asked by the doctor to te
ll his wife that he was alive. Once her husband had realized that the Russians had no intention of freeing him, the population of the camp increasing daily, he had abandoned all personal concerns and devoted himself to his fellow prisoners. One of whom was Felix Metzenburg.

  Dorothea walked to the window.

  Frau Dremmler paused. “Some of the prisoners are let go for no reason at all, and some are kept.”

  “And my husband?” Dorothea asked, her back to us.

  The woman exhaled slowly and somewhat unwillingly. “Your husband was taken to Sachsenhausen the night of his arrest.” She took a handkerchief from her bag and wiped her face. “He died of starvation ten days ago. He was buried by my husband at the edge of the camp, along with several other men.”

  Dorothea was silent. I asked Frau Dremmler if I could bring her another glass of water, but she waved her hand nervously. Now that she’d brought her news, she wanted to leave as quickly as possible. I saw that she could not bear much more sorrow, and I helped her to her feet—she was not old, but she moved as if she were crippled with age. She assured me that she knew her way home.

  Dorothea was still at the window when I returned from seeing Frau Dremmler to the street. When she turned to me, I saw that her eyes were dry. “What would Felix do?” she asked.

  To my surprise, Dieter was at the front door the next morning when I left the house. He’d gained weight, too, perhaps because he’d spent the last years of the war near the Danish border, hiding on his wife’s family’s dairy farm, where they’d survived on milk, cheese, meat, and butter, selling what they didn’t eat for exorbitant prices on the black market. He’d been able to buy a small piece of land near his father-in-law’s farm. “How nice,” I said, mostly happy for him.

  He had an artificial arm attached to his shoulder with a new leather strap. He’d finagled himself a job as guide to an American colonel whose military driver had yet to master the chaos of the city—there were no street signs, and many of the streets and squares had disappeared altogether. He smiled mysteriously and said that the colonel’s driver was in his debt—Dieter was able to use the jeep whenever the colonel left the country, which was as often as twice a month.