by Warren Adler
"You gave them up."
"They were stolen."
She could see the beginnings of exasperation. Karla was not used to rebellion.
"You are a sad little beast!" Karla hissed.
"It is a condition I have lived with for many years," she said, proud of her retort. Helga watched as the old woman brought herself under control. Her face took on an ashen look and the flesh went slack.
"I could provide millions." It was the final surge, the last battle. "You must understand...."
She watched for a long moment. Karla's words came. But she had by then willed her ears not to hear. She concentrated only on the Teutonic banner snapping overhead. She felt a giggle begin. Perhaps they would give her the banner as the spoils of her impending victory.
"I must see him now," she said firmly.
"All right," Karla whispered, the voice now as aged as the flesh. "Just a little time. An hour. Let him have his rest. An hour. Here?"
Helga nodded, watching the old woman turn and move away, a beaten figure, hunched and drawn together.
Suddenly the old anxieties returned. She stood now, watching the empty promenade, a lone guard waiting for the enemy's return. For a moment she felt again like the empty-headed little princess, frightened, alone, bested by the von Kassel power. Never again, she vowed. She would make sure the fuse was lit.
CHAPTER 11
Siegfried lay on the unmade bed mulling over the events of the morning meeting in his father's suite. The eternal sibling tug-of-war. He had always been amused by the futile competition waged by brother Rudi. Nothing the poor fellow had ever done could excel over Albert. Physically uncoordinated, mentally sloppy, whiney, runny-nosed, Rudi was absurdly inadequate.
But seeing him this morning, he seemed the perfect model of a modern von Kassel, and the previous cherished picture disintegrated. No moral baggage in this fellow. No sense of sin, original or otherwise. No second thoughts as to who he was, what he represented. While Albert bubbled and fumed with very un-von Kassel-like inhibitions, a Hamlet walking the dreary halls of Elsinore, Rudi was as sure of himself as a perfectly aimed arrow.
In a way, the issue of the plutonium seemed distant from the heart of the issue. What, after all, did it matter? He felt no special concern for humanity. Here was the ultimate technology of destruction. Why split hairs over it? Albert was simply having a sudden attack of conscience. He knew the illness well, despite his brother's attempt to disguise it.
He got up and went to the toilet. While he peed, he looked at his shriveled organ. Good old Mr. Bone. Whatever else might fail, not you. Pleasure was all there was. Pleasure. Orgasm. Ecstasy. He wondered suddenly if Albert suspected.
Through the window, he could see Olga sitting on a bench, the same one behind which he and Dawn had fornicated the night before. Fornication was always a point of reference. It marked even the exact moment of his proposal of marriage with Heather. He had her bent over in the commodious stall of the big speckled stallion. They had been doing it exactly like the horses and she moaned and groaned while the stallion neighed. He hung spent over the angled form, and then popped the question. She gave a cute little wave of her bottom in affirmation and he uncoupled to provide the obligatory seal of the conventional kiss, while the long graceful neck of the stallion nodded approval.
He continued to observe Olga. At the other end of the green, near the forest's edge, her son and the twins seemed to be playing a variation of hide-and-seek. Suddenly Albert appeared and sat beside her. There was no question about his interest. He wondered if Dawn might be watching.
The telephone rang. He heard a stranger's voice, vaguely familiar in intonation.
"Siegfried?"
"Yes."
There was a long pause. He wondered if the phone had gone dead.
"Are you alone?" the voice said. He had heard it somewhere before.
"Only me," he responded, shrugging, mildly curious.
"I must see you," the voice continued. He caught the edge of anxiety in it, recalling the same urgency he had heard the night before. It was the voice of the odd woman in the lobby. He remembered his aunt's surrender, the woman's persistence.
"Now?"
Again the voice hesitated. He could hear her breathing. He looked about the room and shrugged. It was nearly time for the family luncheon, although attendance was not obligatory. Only tomorrow's picnic would be a command performance, the centerpiece of the reunion.
"All right," he said, his curiosity piqued. It had been, after all, a mildly diverting mystery.
"I'll be there in a moment. Thank you." He sensed her gratitude and smiled.
But it was the "thank you" that deflected the humor. Thank me. For what? He went into the sitting room and poured himself a whiskey, gulping it down, then refilled the glass. She was at the door faster than expected, a firm quick knock. There was no hesitation.
She stood there, face paint harshly applied over bloated flesh, the hair frizzy with a shelf of hanging bangs over her forehead. The clothes might have come from a musty attic. Seedy was the operative description that popped into his mind. Weathered by life, he decided. What did she want of him? It was always amusing to him to be singled out for petition by people who wanted things from the von Kassels.
She had been pretty once, he suspected. A handkerchief peeked from a balled fist. On her left hand she wore a narrow gold wedding band.
With exaggerated gallantry, he pointed to a chair and she settled into it primly, as if she might be frightened to take up too much room.
"Drink?" he offered perfunctorily. He was surprised when she accepted a whiskey.
Her eyes watched him as he poured. He handed it to her and she took it with knobby arthritic fingers, drinking it quickly. He sat opposite her, crossed his legs and smiled.
"Cheers," he said raising his glass and sipping. "So," he said, settling back, a spectator waiting with eagerness for the mystery to unfold, sublimely uninvolved. Her eyes searched his face. A thin smile emerged on her blurred, rouged lips.
"I can still picture you as a baby," she said. So she is an old nurse, he speculated. He had hoped it was something more exotic. It was not the first time he had been confronted by an old nurse. How boring! An old mistress from a teen-age peccadillo would have been so much more exciting. He had known a whole sequence of older married women when he was in his teens, now all fiftyish, fat-titted.
"Was I all pink and dimpled and cheesy smelling?"
"Yes." A glint of sunlight caught the deep blueness of her eyes, vaguely familiar.
"You are an old nurse of mine?" he asked, sipping again.
"I suppose you might say that." She was twisting the handkerchief in her fingers now. She is about to ask for something important to her, he decided. Probably money. They always wanted money.
"From Baden-Baden?" he asked, with indifference. He was sorry she had come.
"Yes. From Baden-Baden." He wondered when she would get on with it.
"I'm sorry. I have no recollection. We were packed off early. I went to England." The story of his early life was well rutted, but he declined to provide her with all the details.
"There is nothing about me you remember?" Straightening in the chair, she seemed to be posing.
"Not remotely." A hint of disdain had crept into his tone.
She sighed, twisted the handkerchief, looked about the room. He wondered if she were about to cry. But when she turned back to him her blue eyes were dry.
"You were only four. How could you possibly remember? It was more than thirty-five years ago."
"Oh. You were one of the early ones." Siegfried drained his glass. "There seemed a procession or a year or two, after mother died. Father was never quite pleased. There were lots of new faces." Servants were never trusted, always rotated in those days. There were always strange faces.
"You have no recollection of your mother?" the woman asked. Her attitude seemed suddenly sardonic. She had no right to such private questioning.
&n
bsp; "None at all," he said casually. He was suddenly uncomfortable. He had not expected to be probed like this.
"But where is her grave?" A child's voice, his own, intruded, increasing his irritation.
"Estonia," Aunt Karla had replied. "Von Kassels are all buried in Estonia." It was an acceptable explanation. How could they remember, anyway? There was not a single picture of her anywhere.
"She was a Hohenzollern," he said, further irritated with himself for acknowledging the family obsession, his principal detestation. Annoyed, he rose and poured himself another whiskey. He did not offer her any.
"Did they tell you how she died?" Bottle poised, he held it in mid-air. Turning too quickly, he spilled a trickle of liquid on the carpet.
"Why are you asking me all these questions?" he snapped. "What is it you want?" Why am I so touchy about this, he wondered. But he knew the answer to that. Succor of a mother's touch. He had longed for it, cried for it. There were long fantasies that it would suddenly come out of the darkness, from somewhere in the void. It was a longy forgrotten image of his earlier life. He poured the whiskey and drank quickly.
"You knew her?"
She nodded.
"What does that mean?"
She balled the handkerchief again and stood up, silhouetted against the window. This is absurd, he thought. He could not see her features clearly.
"She is not dead," she said.
He stiffened. His hands shook as he completed the act of pouring. "Not dead?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Afraid?"
Shoulders hunched, the woman moved gracefully to the chair and seated herself.
"What you see is what you get," she said, smiling now. It seemed like some vague American joke. She is taunting me, he told himself unconvincingly. She is playing with me.
"Just what are you getting at?" he asked.
"I am your mother," she paused, swallowing deeply. "Sorry." She seemed determined to make the revelation casual, low key.
"You?"
She looked down at her hands, her fingers nervously pulling at her handkerchief again. Why me, he wondered? Rudi would have made a much more amusing target. Conscious of a deep giggle rising in his chest, he made no effort to contain it and it emerged as a kind of bleat.
"I've heard every ploy around to find a von Kassel connection, but this beats all. I must say you have audacity. Really. It's positively marvelous." But he remembered Aunt Karla and her sudden surrender.
"I hadn't quite expected you to throw yourself in my arms," she said. He searched her face. Could it be possible? Was this ravaged creature the apparition of his early life, his longed for mother?
"I am your mother," she repeated calmly, her eyes rising to find his.
"If I was more of a sentimentalist, it could be a cruel joke."
"It probably seems so."
Siegfried's mind groped back in time for some faint shred of memory. Every query had been met with the briefest of logical explanations. A woman had borne them. She had been a Hohenzollern. She had died. Various explanations had emerged. Pneumonia was one. Heart failure. Flu. Then they were never quite sure and their speculations were merely among themselves, young boys imagining. It was, they must have mutually decided, a subject to be ignored.
"There is more," she said. "I can offer proof." She reached into the pocket of her coat. "An old passport." She removed it carefully. He could see the gold swastika on a red field. Inside the passport was another piece of paper. "They had the birth certificate taken from the records. And here is a draft made out to Helga von Kassel. You see, I have not cashed it yet." Her hand remained outstretched, but he made no move to transfer the contents. What would that prove, he decided. Finally, she rose and put the passport and draft in his lap. The draft floated to the floor.
"Circumstantial," he mumbled, looking down at the ancient passport on his lap, the swastika emblazened on the red field. "You've gone to a great deal of trouble needlessly."
"I said there is more," she said. Her voice was firm. Her fingers did not shake, as he knew his would if he reached for the "evidence." It was her face that absorbed him now, as he sought genetic similarities. Was it his imagination? Did he see Albert's lips, his own chin. And Rudi's furtive blue eyes, and chubbiness, the pouches beginning to age like hers. He had never seen such signs in his father. No. He checked himself. Not this ravaged creature. Remembering last night, he asked, "And have you confronted the Baron with..." he paused and waved his hand, "...all this?" The attempt at ridicule fell flat.
"I am about to."
Again the giggle began, but it did not emerge as a bleat now. It came out as a screech through a cracked speaker.
"That will be something."
"Yes, that will be something."
He continued to watch her, refusing the possibilities. It was information to be shut out, a door to be slammed.
"I would love to see my father's face," he chuckled, struggling to recall an air of sarcasm.
"I told you there was more."
"Could there be any more? You are, after all, buried in the family plot on the old estate in Estonia."
"Of course, they would tell you that."
He was stalling, he knew, bracing himself. The "more" seemed more ominous than what he had just heard and he was having trouble enough absorbing that. He was sweating now. His back against the chair facing her was cold and wet. Looking down at the passport, the gold outline of the swastika faded and chipped, he still refused to reach for it. His mother had always been ethereal, a gossamer apparition, a heavenly being who watched over them in their loneliness. Not a creature like this!
"It will be most amusing," he whispered, but the heat had gone out of the irony. What does she feel about me, he thought suddenly as the old sense of abandonment returned. Where was she for all those years if she loved us? He felt the beginning of anger.
"He is not your father," she said. The words hung there in a vacuum, unmoving. It is a dream, he thought tritely, mentally giving himself the obligatory pinch.
"Who?" he asked stupidly, forcing his words to move again.
"He is not your father."
"Really," he mocked, taking refuge in ridicule, always a cooler place. Now she had gone too far, he thought.
"None of you," she said calmly. Then again to underline its meaning, "Not one."
He might have begun to believe her, he decided, but this was too much. He might play the fool, but he was not a fool. Now he felt the unburdening relief. No, he thought. He might have believed that one of them was, could be, illegitimate, a skeleton in the closet. But three. He shook his head and walked to the forest of liquor bottles, pouring himself another drink.
"Now really," he began, feeling the whiskey burn deep. "Have I gained a mother and lost a father?" He looked at her and shook his head. A wild ploy, he thought. But a good try. He'd grant her that. "Surely there must be more. It simply can't end here."
The woman watched him, saying nothing, her fingers clutching and unclutching the handkerchief. He decided to treat her gently. Poor woman.
"Put yourself in my place," he said.
Mother ... the mere word could summon pain. He had envied the boys at school, watching them with their mothers when parents came to visit. Mother. Where is my mother? he had cried in the night, hating God for taking her from him. Even now, the pain of loss stabbed him. She had certainly picked exactly the right method to gain his attention. Annoyed, Siegfried finished off the dregs of his glass and moved to look out of the window. The scene was peaceful, pastoral. Albert was locked in conversation with Olga. The boy, Aleksandr, and the twins continued their children's gambols on the forest's edge.
He faced her again. She had not moved a muscle in her body. Composed, she barely flickered her eyelids.
"So you've been in an institution." It was an unworthy ruse. She showed no reaction. "I don't believe a word of this."
"I can understand that." She bent down and retrieved the battered passport. "Easily
acquired," he said, like some film detective. He had not even opened it. She looked at him gently. Bending again, she reached for the fallen money draft and put it inside the passport, replacing it in the pocket of her coat.
"Your father was a Jew. His name was Konrad Schneider. He was my lover." Suddenly she lost her poise, but only briefly. Lowering her head, she dabbed her nose with the balled handkerchief. "We were discovered. Actually, we saw each other for four years and he fathered your brothers as well. He was the gardener. I let them send me away in exchange for his life."
She paused, obviously waiting for this new information to be digested. He wanted to question her, but that would imply acceptance. He was not prepared for that. Not yet! Apparently, she understood his reluctance, continuing.
"There is no going backward. No room for forgiveness. I left you. It seemed a fair bargain then." She bit her lip. "I am not a clever woman. He was far more clever, this Baron, this von Kassel." Her face seemed paler under the dead-white makeup. "I thought what I was doing, what I did then, was better for the three of you." She seemed trying to convince him now, to argue the issue. "You are rich, powerful..."
If only she were softer, more like the idea of her he had always cherished in his mind. Not this caricature of womanhood, this pitiful creature. My mother? A part of him longed to lay his head against her breast, the terrible impossible longing.
"But why now?" he asked, thinking of the dying old man upstairs.
"He cannot die free of this knowledge. Not after what I have suffered in this life. I want him to suffer now."
"He doesn't know? About the..." He wanted to say Jew. It seemed to compound the agony of believability.
"I am about to tell him."
"And the others?"
"You will tell them."
"It will kill him," he said, feeling, for the first time, a measure of compassion for the old man.
She shrugged. "What would it matter? He is not your father."
"But why now?"
"You would have to have lived my life to understand that," she said. He could see the toughness now.
Siegfried rose, went to the liquor table again. He heard her stand up, hesitate. Bracing himself, he wondered if she would step forward to touch him. Then he heard her footsteps and the closing door. Mother, he cried in his heart, turning.