The Nazi's Wife

by Peter Watson

  One advantage of this spot, as I had found on my previous visit, was that the current slowed here, allowing sedges and cress of various kinds to take hold, attracting in turn all kinds of wildlife. Dieter was the first out, naturally, seemingly anxious to frighten off any birds or fish that we might have seen.

  His mother clacked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Now I see what his schoolmasters mean when they say he’s ‘volcanic.’ No wonder they moved him out of the main dormitory.”

  I didn’t know until then that the boy went away to school. It must be recent because it wasn’t mentioned in any of the letters. How could she afford that? I wondered.

  We took out the food and set it down on the bank. From the basket she had brought for the eggs and honey she took a yellow gingham cloth and spread it over the grass.

  While the lunch was being laid out I searched the trunk of the car. I soon found what I needed—a long length of string. I gave it a yank and tore it in two. One length I tied around the neck of the wine bottle, which I was then able to suspend in the river to cool it. The other length of string I took back to the car, where I picked up a slice of salami I had cut before setting out for Mondsee. With a series of knots I managed to tie a couple of pieces of this to one end of the string.

  “Fish won’t eat that, will they?” asked Dieter, skipping over to where I was kneeling. “Those lumps are much too big.”

  I winked and said, “Come with me.” I took him to a point about fifty meters away, where the bank jutted out into the river and the water slowed still further. I stood on the point and, taking firm hold of one end of the string, threw the sausages as far as I could into the river, upstream. “Now we wait,” I whispered. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

  But it did. It took longer than Dieter had the patience for. He had noticed some ducks downstream and just had to dash off and scare them. Mrs. von Zell was much less fretful; she was sitting contentedly, arranging the lunch. She had managed to light my portable army stove and was warming the water with which we would make coffee.

  Suddenly, though, not more than a minute or two later, her calm was disturbed by the “volcano”—Dieter—who hurtled back. The ducks had turned out to be cygnets and their mother, a Hindenburg of a swan only much more ferocious, had appeared from nowhere and cawed menacingly at the boy the minute he had ventured too close.

  While I was laughing at the story Dieter was telling his mother, with an air of perplexed indignation, as if the swan had disturbed his natural habitat, I felt a tug on the string. I said nothing but, very gently, pulled it in. You couldn’t rush these things. I knew from the weight that I had quite a catch and, sure enough, as I pulled the string free of the river, I could see there were two of them—a good start. When they were safely on the bank I called out, “Dieter, Mrs. von Zell, come and see. I’ve caught something!”

  Dieter barreled right over, nearly treading on them as he skidded to a halt. Mrs. von Zell stopped what she was doing and joined us.

  “See,” I said. “We can have a hot lunch after all.” Crawling about on the bank at my feet were two wet, crackly, parchment-colored crayfish. “Pieces of old chicken are the best bait for these,” I said, reloading my string. “But sausage works almost as well.”

  Dieter was delighted; crayfish were exactly the kinds of creepy-crawly things he liked. He asked if he might be allowed to hold the line from now on.

  I noticed his mother looking doubtfully at our luncheon guests.

  “Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “They are delicious when they are this fresh. The water in this river is quite clean, so there is no danger of disease. Just pop them in the boiling water with a little salt. With that fresh crusty bread I brought, we’ll have a real feast.”

  She was not convinced and just stood there, looking at them, not moving. I had to carry them over to the stove myself and place them in the water. I added salt and said, “I thought you enjoyed rivers. You must have fished before. Have you never caught crayfish?”

  She shook her head. She was about to say something when Dieter erupted again. “I’ve got one! I’ve got one!”

  I stood up. “Pull it in slowly,” I shouted. “Or you may lose it.” We both hurried over to the point, where Dieter, with total concentration, was pulling in the string very slowly indeed. We got there just in time to see him yank the string clear of the water. A single, dripping crayfish, larger and darker than the two we had already landed, was feeding greedily off the sausage.

  Dieter swelled with pride.

  “Well done!” I said. “Now we all have some lunch.”

  We returned to the picnic site, Dieter triumphantly carrying his trophy, which he dropped with relish into the boiling water.

  I retrieved the wine from the river, opened it and presented a glass to Mrs. von Zell. The acrid bite of the cooking crayfish began to flavor the air about us. I sampled the wine myself and lay back on the gingham cloth. Dieter was standing, inspecting his crayfish as it cooked in the water.

  “How long do they take to cook?” He was transfixed by what was happening in the pot.

  “A few more minutes. Until I finish this glass of wine.”

  “What will they taste like?”

  “Have you never had shellfish?”

  “Have I, Mummy?”

  “Never.” And that, I knew, meant never.

  I rolled over and looked at Konstanze. “What would you say shellfish are like? How would you describe the taste?”

  She was cutting the baguettes into small pieces. She stopped, looked at the boy, then at me. “Warm, salty, rubber bands.”

  I laughed as Dieter pulled a face.

  I got to my knees. “I think they should be done now, if there are any takers, after that.” I put on one of my army gloves and pulled the pot from the stove, tipping the hot water into the river. “Now the shells are very hot,” I said, gingerly lifting the crayfish out of the pot and sliding them onto the plates. “Let them cool for a while; then we spread a little butter over them, a little more salt, maybe. Then … ecrevisse piquenique.” I turned to Mrs. von Zell. “Shall I peel Dieter’s for him?”

  She smiled and nodded and I began, the boy standing over me to watch. I spread butter on the pale gray meat, added salt and handed the plate to Dieter. Although he took it, he said, “You first.”

  “Not as tough as you look, eh,” I said, laughing, and started to peel my own. I garnished it and, without a second thought, munched away in front of them. I shook my head in admiration, the butter slithering between my lips. “Delicious.” Neither Dieter nor his mother moved. I appealed to them. “It has to be. The poor creature was swimming around alive less than fifteen minutes ago. This is a treat you rarely get, I promise you. Come on—eat up.”

  Dieter at last nibbled on his. Tentative at first, but as soon as he found it was not like a medicine he admitted that he liked it and chewed with increasing gusto. “We get rubber bands at school,” he said, joining the joke. “And boiled seaweed, and cardboard. This is much nicer.”

  Mrs. von Zell picked at hers. She took off the tail and ate some of that, but she didn’t even attempt to touch the claws. I passed her the cheese and salami; no point in forcing the crayfish on her. The crusty bread, golden as autumn, was delicious with butter.

  Dieter did most of the talking. He was on holiday from school just now, he said breathlessly when I questioned him, and had only a few more days before he must go back. He didn’t mind, though. It was unusual, but for a boy of his years he seemed to enjoy school, mathematics and music especially, and, of course, games. They had soccer every Tuesday afternoon; he played and loved it.

  “Bet you can’t guess what instrument I play,” he said, fidgeting over and standing right above me. “Go on, guess.”

  He was so earnest, just then, so certain that I would never in a thousand years be able to guess his instrument, that I couldn’t resist it.

  “Let’s see,” I said. “How about … how about … the c
ello.” I felt slightly guilty at the sudden flash of disappointment that he showed.

  His eyes widened. “Gosh! That’s clever. How did you know?” He looked at his mother. “How did he know?”

  “Just a lucky guess,” I said, making light of it and offering him some salami. I had the army map in front of me. “Now,” I said loudly, in a way designed to change the mood. “Why don’t we explore the river. According to this there should be another bridge farther downstream, where we can cross. And there should be some waterfalls beyond that. What do you say?”

  Dieter was delighted to be on the move again and pulled his mother up from the grass. We left the picnic things as they were. We had seen no one during lunch, so it seemed quite safe.

  Left to himself, the boy would have run on ahead and I would have been able to talk to Konstanze. But she was wary; it was a river, after all, and quite deep in places. Dieter could swim, she said, but since he was so young, not strongly. She made him stick close.

  On that walk, I remember, she did most of the talking. Maybe she wanted to prevent me leading the conversation into areas she didn’t wish to go. She knew a great deal about the plant life you find on riverbanks and she talked interestingly and clearly, keeping Dieter’s attention as well as mine. She never talked down to the boy and treated him just as she treated me. If either of us said something silly, she told us so. If either of us asked a question, the answer to which we could have worked out ourselves, she was short with us. Dieter might be only seven but he was already treated as an equal. I found myself thinking that, whatever happened, when I returned to America I would want to have a family.

  We reached the bridge, crossed to the other bank and followed the river as far as the waterfall. It wasn’t really a waterfall as much as a stretch of rapids, and below these, we were fascinated to see, stood a solitary fisherman, up to his shins in the water, a whiskey-colored cane rod in his hands. He was wearing a floppy green hat with a wide brim to protect his eyes from the glare of the sun, and as we stood watching he cast and recast with an easy but powerful grace. The white-green line curled lazily behind him, not unlike the long tentacles of a crayfish; then, smoothly, he flicked it forward again so that it reached out across the river, farther and farther, quite level, before it finally gave up and sank as if exhausted onto the water all at once, the artificial fly dipping and skidding just like a real insect.

  As we watched, the three of us standing close, I caught occasional, elusive snatches of Mrs. von Zell’s smell—mainly the smack of clean clothes hung out to dry in the warm, fresh air. I was standing behind her and found myself staring at the collar of her yellow shirt; it looked quite new. It went against the grain, but once more I found myself wondering whether the gold coins had paid for it.

  The fisherman caught nothing—much to Dieter’s sorrow—and after a while we turned back. On this return trek Konstanze noticed, across the river on the opposite bank, a very rare species of plant. I forget what it was but I do remember that she got quite excited. So much so that, when we crossed the bridge again, we had to turn back and examine the spot in more detail. We found it without any difficulty and once again she gave us both a mini-lecture. As she spoke I was amused to note the similarity between mother and child. When she was preoccupied she held her face in exactly the same way as Dieter: her mouth slightly open, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond us, the slightest of puzzled frowns on her forehead. What she said was as clear as the waters of the Salzach. She would make a fine university lecturer in botany or biology, I thought as we listened.

  After the lecture, on the way back to the car, we passed the spot where Dieter had his encounter with the swans. They had disappeared but I now noticed something that would make a perfect memento for the day—a dislodged white swan’s feather. I gave it to Dieter to keep safe for his mother until they got home.

  As we neared the picnic spot Dieter was allowed at last to skip on ahead while Konstanze spotted another plant that she didn’t recognize and stopped to examine it. She stooped, snapped off a couple of shoots, straightened up and fixed me with those sharp eyes.

  “You are right, Lieutenant. I am interested in rivers. But how did you know?”

  She didn’t miss a thing, Mrs. von Zell. I had deliberately planted that but she hadn’t responded at the time and I thought she hadn’t noticed. Remember, I told myself—do not underestimate this woman.

  “It was in the file on you,” I lied. “The report I read back at the base.”

  She had walked on a step. Now she wheeled and faced me again. “And how did you know that Dieter plays the cello?”

  “That was a lucky guess. Really. It’s my own favorite instrument. Why are you asking all these questions?”

  Now it was her turn not to reply. At least for a while. We walked on in thoughtful silence until the car came into view and Dieter saw us and waved. He had tied a piece of uneaten sausage to the string and was fishing again for crayfish. Mrs. von Zell stopped out of earshot of the boy and looked at me. “It is not only swans who will turn nasty to protect their families, Lieutenant. Remember that.”

  We packed the picnic things away in silence. I didn’t quite know what to make of her reference to the swans. Did it mean that she had realized I had read the letters? I had introduced those references partly because it was the only way I knew to accelerate our intimacy and partly because I wanted to see how she would react once she knew I had read the letters. Of course I was cheating in the game. I was not supposed to make any direct reference to her husband or the coins. But in constantly raising material from the letters I was keeping up the pressure, as I had to do. Maybe she had not fully realized yet what I was up to. At this stage she might have found it difficult to believe that anyone could be so dedicated, so intrusive, as to have read the entire correspondence so closely. If so, she would be disillusioned.

  We dragged Dieter away from his crayfish and drove on down the river. The two churches we visited that afternoon were smaller than the one we had seen at Krimml but in some ways they were better examples of stucco work. That afternoon we established a routine. Konstanze and Dieter would pray in each church when we arrived while I examined the outside of the building. Then I would show them quickly around. Dieter would disappear, to play outside, while his mother and I went around again, this time more slowly. I remember that afternoon we saw some fine examples of Beduzzi frescoes and statues by Peter Widerin.

  And I must say Konstanze began to teach me something about art. Not factual things. But her reactions to paintings, and especially to sculpture, were quite different than mine. In the first place, she responded more to sculpture than to painting. Whereas I had always found paintings more expressive, more subtle, she seemed to find the three dimensions of sculpture more real. For me, someone like Peter Widerin was a series of dates, with a known oeuvre which fitted into the development of sculpture in Europe. Konstanze saw none of that. She saw a religious man who had no knowledge of evolution, no scientific doubt, a man for whom the ordinary emotions of the flesh were as nothing when compared with his feelings for God. She used sculpture, as she used paintings, to try to understand what the emotional life of mankind was like before the corrosive influences of modern times. That seemed to be her aim—to recover that emotional texture. That was what her religion meant to her. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t long for the same thing. In time I came to understand what she meant.

  It was on the drive back that day that the ice-cream incident occurred.

  At Vigaun, a town about an hour south of Salzburg, I stopped when I noticed a café that had just put out its tables for the summer season. Dieter had announced that he was thirsty, and so was I. We had tea, lemonade for Dieter, and ice cream. I had to spend my wages on something and the ice cream was my gift for the day, I said.

  I read out the flavors from the menu. “Vanilla, of course. Strawberry, chocolate, mint—”

  “Daddy used to buy me Italian ice cream. He said it was the best,” the
boy chirped up eagerly.

  “Dieter!” his mother shouted sharply, glaring at me. “I told you, father has gone away and until he comes back again, you are never, never to mention him.” She was extraordinarily angry. She stood up. There would be no ice cream today.

  Dieter, naturally, could not see that he had done anything wrong. He retreated into a sulk, with the odd tear or two. And there was the added injustice that he now wouldn’t get any ice cream. I paid the bill, leaving a large tip to compensate the waitress for the sudden loss of business, and we got back into the car.

  The boy’s silence soon turned to sleep and, as before, he curled up in the backseat and was no bother. When she was quite sure he wouldn’t hear, his mother turned to me.

  “We have an agreement, Lieutenant. We are to enjoy these few days—you in your way, I in mine. And the strongest person wins. You seem to know a lot about me, far more than I expected.… There’s nothing I can do about that, I suppose. But don’t pick on the boy. You must play fair or it’s all off.”

  But he said nothing wrong, I thought to myself. The tenses he had used were all past tenses. If Dieter was a weak link, it could mean only one thing. He still saw his father from time to time.…

  I should have found this deduction encouraging. Part of me did. But for some reason my main reaction was disappointment. It was as if part of me, paradoxically, did not want Mrs. von Zell to be in touch with Rudolf. I should have recognized the signs. As we drove back along the Mondsee lakeshore, with the afternoon sun to our left, glittering on the small waves like a million gold coins, I found myself thinking for the first time that I was torn, torn between pushing the “case” as fast as I dared and drawing out these pleasant days with Mrs. von Zell for as long as I could. Certainly for as long as the good weather lasted.