One Last Summer (2007)

by Collier, Catrin

  I had been to Bergensee many times, but I never realized how much grander and more formal the house is compared to Grunwaldsee. Probably because I only had eyes for Claus when I was there. I knew it was vast, but I had no idea it had 465 rooms. The staff are dignified (dare I say pompous) and the housekeeper terrifies me. She is so prim and proper, and is always looking down her long nose. When she showed me the family portraits in the gallery I felt she considered me nowhere near beautiful or noble enough to be a von Letteberg bride.

  The tour she gave me was a short one. Claus said I would have plenty of time to become acquainted with the house after he had left. He ordered all our meals to be served in his suite. He insisted that although we had such a short time together, we should try to produce an heir for his father and his family.

  I hate sex – I refuse to call it lovemaking. What Claus does to me has nothing to do with love. There were times when I couldn’t stop myself from crying, no matter how hard I tried to remember Mama’s advice that it is a wife’s duty to submit.

  Mama telephoned to invite us to lunch at Grunwaldsee today. I was pleased, because it meant that I could keep my clothes on and say goodbye to Claus at home surrounded by my family. Despite all its magnificence, I find it difficult to think of Bergensee as my new home. I wonder if I ever will.

  Although it was warm, I had to wear a dress with long sleeves so Mama and Papa wouldn’t see the bruises on my arms, but I think Mama suspects something is wrong because she kept asking me if I was feeling well. I tried to smile and reassure her. Claus was the same as ever. He never changes, never seems happy or sad with anything or anyone. Now I realize that before we were married I saw no further than his handsome face, uniform and aristocratic refinement.

  The twins were in their new lieutenants’ uniforms, as was Peter. They were all called up into their regiments on Monday. Papa is devastated. He kept telling the boys that they have no idea what war is really like. He went on and on about the killing, the maiming, the blood until I felt sick. I don’t understand why he was so angry with the twins and Peter. It isn’t as if they were given any choice about being reservists or going into the army.

  As they have all already completed their military training all three have been given commissions. So my brothers and brother-in-law as well as my husband are now officers in the Wehrmacht.

  It seems strange to think of Peter as my brother-in-law. He was always playing the fool in the orchestra; there we were contemporaries. Now I am married I feel years older than him and that carefree girl who travelled out of Russia only a few short days ago.

  The boys couldn’t talk about anything other than the coming war. Greta joined us. As Peter is too young for her to flirt with and there were no other young men around except Claus, she was determined to be catty. I scarcely know what I said to her. I felt so ill and wretched after my ‘honeymoon’ I couldn’t eat any of the lunch Mama had taken such pains over, and I could see that Papa as well as Mama was concerned for me. They thought it was because Claus was leaving. Little do they know. I couldn’t wait for him to be gone.

  Mama and Papa had invited Mama and Papa von Letteberg to lunch. They drove all the way from Berlin just to spend the day with us and Claus.

  Although Papa von Letteberg had recently retired, he has been recalled to the army, given his old rank of General and appointed to an important position at army headquarters. He and Mama von Letteberg are making arrangements to move to Berlin for the duration of the war – however long that will be. Grafin von Letteberg is so kind. She asked me to visit them there as often as I can. I think she guessed that things are not so wonderful between Claus and me.

  But for now I have a breathing space. No Claus or horrid ‘married life’ for weeks or, if I’m lucky, months. But although being married is not all I expected or hoped it would be, it is bearable while Claus is away. Is it so wrong of me to pray for his safety – and his continued absence?

  WEDNESDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 1939

  Grunwaldsee

  War! German troops marched into Poland one week ago tomorrow. We cannot be sure but we are almost certain that Claus, Paul and Wilhelm were among them. I pray to God that he will keep them all safe from harm. But Papa has warned me that it may be a long war. Britain and France demanded that we withdraw from Poland. The government couldn’t do that, so both countries declared war on us on 3 September. We will soon have troops in the West as well as the East. Will Claus and the twins be sent there?

  TUESDAY, 12 DECEMBER 1939

  Grunwaldsee

  I have not written a word in over three months because I am hardly ever well. First the honeymoon and now this baby. Mama keeps telling me I will be my old self again after the baby is born, but I don’t believe her. I don’t think I’ll ever feel well again after my wedding night.

  Claus has not been granted leave since he left me in Grunwaldsee at the end of August. It is a dreadful thing to say, but here, alone with my thoughts, I can be truthful. I am not sorry. We know he is stationed in Poland, as are Wilhelm and Paul. Wilhelm and Paul’s letters are full of stories of how quickly Poland fell before our victorious army, and of their drinking and singing parties. Claus’s letters speak only of what we will do in Bergensee after the war and how he intends to bring up his son. I wonder what he will do if I dare to present him with a daughter.

  I stay in bed most mornings. I feel so sick and weak; I can barely lift my head from the pillows. In the afternoons I sit with Mama in the drawing room. I haven’t touched the piano since I married. Papa dropped some hints that he would be glad of my help with running the estate, if only with the book-keeping and the ordering of supplies for the horses and the sale of produce to the war department, so last night I brought the estate account books up to date. Something is bothering Papa. I’m not sure what and, whenever I ask him, he says the only cares he has in this world are the war and my health.

  Papa is leaving soon to represent East Prussian businessmen at a conference in Bavaria. I asked him about it but all he would say is what he always says whenever Mama or I question him about business, that it is nothing for us to bother our pretty little heads about, which probably means it is something to do with the war or the Party. He has had so many responsibilities since he was appointed burgomaster.

  Fortunately for Grunwaldsee, Brunon is too old at fifty to be called up, so he, at least, will remain with us for the duration, but all the young men have been conscripted, except the idiot, Wilfie. Most of the maids have gone to the factories. The labour shortage is so bad that Brunon’s wife, Martha, now has to help in the house.

  Wood and coal are in short supply, so Mama has decided to shut off the ballroom, eight of the guest bedrooms and the formal dining room. I can’t imagine how we will all squash into the small dining room when the boys come home on leave at Christmas. Claus will not be coming. He doesn’t think it right for officers to take leave when so many ordinary soldiers have to remain at their posts. He wrote to tell me that he will probably be home for the New Year. If the angels smile on me, he’ll change his mind about that, too.

  Greta is also in Poland, supervising her BDM girls. They are preparing houses to receive ethnic Germans from Estonia and other eastern countries under Soviet rule. She writes to Mama and Papa nearly every day, telling them how the Poles didn’t deserve decent houses because they are such dirty people, and it is very hard work getting the Polish women to scrub out their old homes to make them fit for occupation by the incoming ethnic German families.

  Nina and Hildegard have both gone to Berlin to work in the War Office. Hildegard wrote to me and made her work sound very grand and important, but Nina, who is in the same office, says all they do is push models of planes, tanks and troop deployments around on a big board, in between answering the telephone and typing letters.

  I wish I didn’t feel so ill. Yesterday afternoon Mama ordered the car, and insisted I accompany her on a drive into town, but Brunon had to stop three times for me to be sick.

 
; Wilhelm wrote to ask Papa’s permission to marry Irena at Christmas in Grunwaldsee church. They are very young, but, as Papa says, it is not easy for boys who are about to go into battle to think of their whole life. Not when so many of them face an early death. Now the twins are finally serving officers, Papa has had to accept that they are adults as well as soldiers.

  I can’t imagine kind, gentle Wilhelm wanting to do the dreadful things to Irena that Claus does to me. And the more I think about Nina’s assertion that some women like it, the less I believe her. I find it incredible that some poor women are desperate enough to do it for money! I would rather hang myself or starve to death.

  Irena is so excited. She asked me what married life is like. I think she wanted to talk about sex, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. She looked so happy. As happy as I did before my wedding night, and, as she has already accepted Wilhelm, there is no going back on her promise. Besides, it is the duty of every German girl to marry and produce sons for the Fatherland, so if Irena didn’t marry Wilhelm, she would have to marry someone else.

  Mama and Irena’s mother, Frau Adolf, discuss the wedding over endless coffee afternoons. It will be held at Grunwaldsee, not only because we have more room, but because it is the only place for a von Datski to marry. Unfortunately, the constraints of war and rationing will limit the food and the number of guests, so poor Irena and Wilhelm’s wedding will not be as lavish as mine.

  The twins will be home on Christmas Eve, and the wedding will take place on the evening of Christmas Day. Wilhelm and Irena will have to honeymoon at Grunwaldsee because Wilhelm has only one week’s leave and the railway warrant system is so uncertain. Papa has ordered the lakeside summerhouse to be cleaned and painted inside and out, and they will stay there. Martha will go down to cook for them.

  In some ways I envy Irena. It was horrible in the Grand Hotel in Sopot the morning after our wedding night, knowing that all those people realized we were honeymooners, and were thinking about what Claus had done to me.

  I will try to write more regularly, but now I am going to the station with Mama and Papa to say goodbye to Papa. Afterwards, Mama and I will call on Irena and her mother. I must make more of an effort to welcome Irena into the family, and try to warn her, tactfully, that married life is not everything the storybooks say it is.

  ‘Wrong side of the road, Laura,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Oh, hell, so I am! It’s Britain’s fault for driving the opposite way to everyone else.’

  ‘If you’re tired I can take over.’

  ‘No, I feel fine; that is, unless you’d rather be at the wheel,’ Laura replied, before remembering Claus’s warning about letting their grandmother drive.

  ‘Not at all.’ Charlotte folded the map spread out on her knee. She had studied the route. North from Warsaw, then follow the Elblag road until they saw the sign for Olsztyn. To her surprise, it had proved as easy as it looked. ‘Another hour or so and we should be at the hotel.’

  ‘Provided I don’t tempt providence by driving on the wrong side of the road again,’ Laura qualified. ‘After a month in Berlin you’d think I’d be used to it. I hope we reach Olsztyn in time to have a shower and unpack before dinner.’

  ‘I’ll never get used to calling Allenstein Olsztyn. It’s such an ugly word,’ Charlotte said feelingly.

  ‘Perhaps not to the Poles.’

  ‘Why are all these Trabis and Fiats at the side of the road? Surely they can’t all have broken down?’

  ‘Apparently spare parts for cars are still a major problem in Eastern Europe,’ Laura answered. ‘That’s probably why there are so many horses and carts plodding in the middle of the road.’

  ‘Not to mention bicycles that come from all directions,’ Charlotte commented, as a young man swerved precariously in front of them.

  ‘Do you recognize anything?’

  ‘Not yet, but the countryside is just as I remembered. I was afraid it would be polluted, but the forests are as green and the lakes as clear as when I was a girl.’

  ‘I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t all these new buildings and freshly painted houses.’ Laura slowed the car to read a signpost. ‘Olsztyn eight kilometres. Do you want to stop off anywhere on the way?’

  ‘That depends what road we go in on.’

  ‘We must be on the main road now.’

  Charlotte looked around. ‘I don’t see anything I know.’

  ‘What about that lake?’ Laura pointed to a small lake on their left.

  Charlotte paled. ‘Two, maybe three kilometres ahead there’ll be a turn to the right.’ She had thought she’d have more time to prepare. Some things had changed, after all. The trees had grown taller and altered the landscape. ‘It will be little more than a lane. There used to be gates with stone wolves’ heads capping the pillars.’

  Laura noticed that Charlotte was trembling when she slowed to look for the landmark. She had never seen her grandmother upset, and stopped the car when Charlotte’s hands tightened into gnarled fists.

  There were no gates, no pillars, no stone wolves’ heads; only two ivy-shrouded mounds of rubble.

  ‘Is this the lane you’d like me to go down, Oma?’ Charlotte nodded.

  Laura drove slowly over the track. Piles of leaves and pine needles were trapped between broken cobblestones. She swerved to avoid potholes, some large and deep enough to trap a wheel. The lane veered sharply to the right, she turned, and they entered a vast courtyard. In front of them and on their left towered an L-shaped, six-storey baroque mansion.

  ‘You lived here?’ Laura gasped.

  Unable to answer, Charlotte fumbled with the door handle. Shivering in spite of the sunshine, she stepped outside. The breeze carried the distinct pine-resin smell of the forest. She looked around and took in everything; the fountain in the centre of the courtyard; the features on the stone cherubs that decorated it, disfigured and crumbling; the water spouts choked with weeds and caked slime that had dried to a rusty brown; the curved roofs, more gaping hole than red tiles; the windows boarded over with planks that had been prised away in places in the lower storeys; the decay in the once-decorative stonework, the cement veneer crumbling at the corners, so weather-stained and filthy its original cream could only be guessed at in one or two of the more sheltered nooks and crannies.

  ‘Is this Grunwaldsee?’ Laura’s voice fell unnaturally loud into the silence.

  ‘Bergensee.’ Charlotte’s voice was clotted with tears. ‘The home of your Uncle Erich’s father.’

  ‘And you lived here, too?’

  ‘For a little while after I married him.’

  ‘I had absolutely no idea you lived somewhere so splendid, and I’m sure Claus doesn’t. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘So you’d never be dissatisfied with what you have.’

  As Charlotte spoke, three dark-skinned, ebony-haired women, with babies in their arms and small children clinging to their skirts, left the stables and walked across the courtyard towards them.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  The question was put to her in Polish. Charlotte understood it, but only just. Her command of the language had never progressed beyond the rudimentary, even when her father had employed Poles before the war. She pointed to herself and said, ‘Von Letteberg.’

  The reply came in German. ‘You’ve returned to claim the house?’

  Charlotte looked back at the ruins of the mansion. She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I don’t.’ She turned to Laura. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You don’t want to see any more, Oma?’

  ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  Realizing that her grandmother was too upset to make a rational decision, Laura suggested, ‘Perhaps we could return later?’

  Charlotte climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. ‘There’s nothing to come back for.’

  ‘Is this what Grunwaldsee will be like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Charlotte looked at Bergensee fo
r what she hoped would be the last time. Sad, broken, with gypsies living in the courtyard where carriages and motor cars had once waited for princes and presidents. ‘Grunwaldsee was never as grand as Bergensee. My only hope is that it’s not as derelict now. Greta was right. I should never have come back.’

  Laura gripped her hand. ‘The sooner we get you to a hotel, a good meal and a soft bed, the better.’

  ‘You sound like my mother.’ Charlotte tried to smile through her tears.

  Laura switched on the ignition, slammed the rented Fiat into gear and drove back out on to the main road.

  Chapter Six

  Laura knocked on the door of Charlotte’s room an hour after they had checked into the hotel. When Charlotte opened it, she stepped inside and looked around. ‘Your room is identical to mine.’

  ‘Bland, soulless, comfortable, and easy to clean.’ Charlotte walked through the French doors on to a small balcony that overlooked the lake.

  ‘Our balconies adjoin. All you have to do is knock on the wall and I can climb over.’

  ‘You make me sound like a sick old martinet who needs constant attention. Next thing you’ll be giving me a cane to rap and a code. One knock for “urgent”, two for “you have time to put your shoes on”.’

  ‘I am concerned about you. I can’t make up my mind whether you’re ill or just worn out.’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘Physically exhausted from all the travelling, and emotionally spent after seeing Bergensee. I thought I was strong enough to face anything. It’s come as an unpleasant surprise to realize I’m not.’

  ‘You’ve had a shock. Bergensee must have been some house in its heyday.’

  ‘My mother-in-law’s housekeeper would have delighted in telling you that it had four hundred and sixty-five rooms, acres of marble from Italy, and original artwork by Bartlomiej Pens and Piotr Kolberg on the walls of the principal reception rooms, the same artists who decorated the baroque church at Swieta Lipke in the seventeenth century. There was even a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in the dining room.’