The Rose Gardener

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The Rose Gardener Page 52

by Charlotte Link


  For her part, she saw herself as being hardly in a condition to do so. Helene’s death had thrown her into a state of shock from which she was only slowly recovering. And then the story that Kevin had told her … she felt like someone who was wandering through the day in a trance, caught in a feeling of unreality, cut off from everything happening around her by a fine haze. The only thing that could still draw a reaction from her was Alan’s alcohol problem. Her worries about her son forced their way through to the space in which she had enclosed herself in order to think about Helene, about the woman she had shared her life with and by whom she felt she had been deceived — about that life, and about much more.

  “Don’t think so much about it,” Franca was now saying in response to Beatrice’s frightened comment about Alan. “I believe Alan will get a hold on his life. Don’t ask me why. I just have a sure feeling.”

  Beatrice gave her a searching look. “You look good, Franca. As the woman who plopped into my house unexpectedly last September, you’re almost unrecognizable. Life here agrees with you.”

  “Freedom agrees with me,” said Franca. She brushed her hair away from her forehead, a gesture that betrayed some of the insecurity of earlier days. “I’m starting to believe in myself a little again.”

  Beatrice would have liked to ask her if she still took pills, but she told herself she didn’t have the right to inquire about it. The anti-anxiety pills were Franca’s own private matter. You couldn’t know what wounds you’d open up if you spoke of it.

  And so instead, she said, “Although one would think you’d have to feel like you’ve landed in a nightmare. No one is ever prepared for such an event, right? We always think we know about these things — about gruesome crimes, about the atrocities that people commit against one another. The world is full of them, and through newspapers and on TV we’re always immediately following along with them. We consider ourselves rather hardened. But it’s something else when it touches us directly.”

  “It’s a tragedy,” said Franca, “and yet …” She looked for the right words. “Oh, Beatrice,” she said finally, “I shouldn’t say this. After everything that’s happened … but for me it’s as if I were standing at the start of a new life.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for that,” said Beatrice. “You have your life, I have mine, Helene had hers. Fate just happens to play out in very different ways. You have a good time ahead of you, Franca, one can see it on you. Don’t let anything spoil it for you.”

  “I wanted to go to the cemetery,” said Franca, “and bring Helene a few flowers.”

  Beatrice smiled. “You do that. Actually, has your husband left?”

  “The day before yesterday. He finally gave up.”

  “And you’re sure you want a divorce?”

  “Completely sure,” said Franca.

  2

  Franca pushed open the small gate that led into the cemetery south of St. Peter Port. She wore jeans that stuck to her legs in the heat, a sleeveless T-shirt, and on her head a straw hat. It was as warm as midsummer, and had been for days. Summer had set in right in time for Liberation Day. People had stood along the sidewalks in droves, cheering, and the flowers on the parade floats had been resplendent in the sunlight, each more magnificently colorful than the next. A band had performed, and all had sung along: “Land of Hope and Glory” and “Rule Britannia.” A speaker dressed as Winston Churchill had ended his incendiary, patriotic speech with the former prime minister’s famous words, which to this day were still music to the ears of those who lived on the Channel Islands: “And our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today!” In the thunderous roar of the cheering crowd, no one could have heard themselves speak.

  Franca had been in St. Peter Port briefly, she had taken a look at the event, not really wanting to participate. Helene’s death was too recent. The cheering of the crowd was painful for her.

  It’s not the time for it, she had thought, this spring isn’t the time for boisterous celebration.

  Now, today, she wanted to be alone, completely by herself, so she could think about things. At first she had planned to walk to Petit Bôt Bay and to lie there in the sun on the warm stone, but then she had thought of Helene and of the fact that somewhere out there her murderer was still free to walk around, and immediately the horror had been present again. Guernsey had lost the semblance of paradise for her. Somewhere amongst the quaint villages, the magnificent flower gardens, the picture-perfect bays, and the wild cliffs, there was a madman at large who attacked women and slit their throats.

  She had bought a large bouquet of different-colored roses and thought it would be nice to bring it to Helene, to sit at her grave for awhile, have a talk with her and think about how things should go from there. Michael hadn’t contacted her since his departure, and she had no desire to call him in Germany. After the evening at The Old Bordello he had shown up at Beatrice’s house a few times, completely shocked at the drama with Helene and more determined than ever to take his wife away from “all this insanity.” The police had soon issued a directive against this: Franca, like Beatrice and Kevin, was for the time being not to leave the island. Michael went off and began making threats.

  “Listen to me,” he said, “you don’t have anything to do with this goddamn mess. They have no right to keep you here till they’ve found out, some time in the next hundred years, who killed the old lady. And even if I’ve got to go to the consulate, I’m going to make sure that you can get away from here!”

  “It won’t work, Michael,” Franca had said.

  He was immediately incensed. “What does that mean, it won’t work? That’s typical Franca, you know that? Why shouldn’t it work? Why do you put up with it when these people …”

  “I’m not putting up with anything,” Franca cut him off. “You’ve misunderstood me. I want to stay here. I don’t want to go back to Germany with you. And so it’s not a question of whether I’m being kept here in just or unjust fashion. I’m here because I want to be.”

  He had stared at her for a few seconds, not saying a word. “There’s no helping you,” he said finally. “You’ve gotten carried away with this fixed idea about self-liberation or self-actualization or whatever it is that’s going through your head. I think you’re making a huge mistake. If in the near future you come to this realization too, please give me a call.”

  She considered this a demand that she think everything over yet again and finally give in, but she was certain in her feeling that there was no going back for her; and since nothing about her stance had changed, she saw no reason to phone him. She felt better, she’d realized, when she didn’t speak to him, when she didn’t hear anything from him. And where her own future was concerned, this had nothing to do with him anyway. She had to figure out for herself what her next step would be.

  She went along the gravel-strewn path, then went down the steps that led to the rows of graves. From here you could see past the blooming trees clear out to the ocean. Today it was the same light blue color as the sky.

  It looks like a painting, thought Franca.

  It did her good to be here. All this time she’d been haunted by the thought that she hadn’t really said goodbye to Helene. Droves of people had been in the small cemetery for the funeral, everyone just about tripping over themselves in the crowd.

  Was Helene so well loved? Franca had asked herself, but then she had seen the dark interest, the lust for the sensational in many of the faces. Most of them had come for the spectacle, they’d come to shudder. They had stared at Beatrice, and at Kevin — it was known by now that Helene had spent that evening with him. Franca had felt disgust, which she had tried to tamp down, feeling it was unfair. People couldn’t do at all otherwise than to have a kind of grisly fascination at the thought of a woman found on a country path with her throat cut.

  She had lingered at the grave for two seconds a
t the most, then she’d been pushed aside. Now she would recover the opportunity she’d missed.

  The grave was in the row farthest down, right where the cemetery ended and the forest began, which stretched all the way up to the cliff path. Erich Feldmann had been buried here more than half a century before. Now, in the same grave, Helene had also found her final rest.

  Coming closer, Franca noticed that she wasn’t alone. Someone was already standing by the freshly dug grave and looking at the stone’s inscription. It turned out, to Franca’s astonishment, to be Maya. She was the person she would least have expected to meet here.

  “Hello, Maya,” she said hesitantly. “Would it bother you if I placed a few roses here?”

  Maya was startled. “No, of course not. Good day, Franca. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing here.” She furrowed her brow. “It’s so hot today, I’ve already got a real headache.”

  “Yes, for me it’s almost too warm today,” Franca agreed. Maya turned towards her. Just as Alan had been a few hours earlier, Franca was surprised to notice the young woman’s tear-swollen eyes, as well as the fact that she was standing before her with no makeup on.

  “Poor Helene,” she murmured.

  Franca had never had the impression that Maya had a particularly close relationship with Helene. She wondered at her sadness.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Poor Helene. A horrible end, so senseless and so cruel.”

  The two of them looked at the grave. The black earth shimmered. Soon grass would be growing here like on the other graves. Erich’s name stood on the stone; Helene’s had not yet been set there.

  Lieutenant Colonel Erich Feldmann

  Born on December 24th, 1899

  Died on May 1st, 1945

  I hadn’t even realized that they’d both died on May 1st, thought Franca. How strange. Fifty-five years in between them, but both on May 1st!

  She laid the roses on the mound of earth. The heat had already left its mark on them, they looked a bit wilted. They would wither very quickly.

  “It’s going to rain tomorrow,” said Maya. “I can smell it.”

  “That would be very good for the plants on the island. If there’s really going to be a change in the weather, maybe that’s where your headache is coming from.”

  “Maybe,” Maya said indifferently. She looked at the freshly covered grave with a hopelessness that left Franca shaken. She withstood the impulse to put an arm around Maya’s shoulders. She wasn’t sure if the girl would have appreciated it.

  “Were you very attached to her?” she asked with a sidelong glance at the grave.

  Maya shook her head. “I barely even knew her.”

  “But the crime was very frightening for you?”

  “It was frightening for me that someone was dead all of a sudden. One minute she’s alive, now she’s dead. And it all just makes no sense, and …”

  “A crime seems particularly senseless, but …”

  “I don’t mean the crime,” said Maya vehemently. Again tears were falling from her eyes. “I mean life. What did she get out of it, anyway? What did Helene get from her life?”

  Franca took a step back, surprised at the vehemence with which Maya had spoken these words. “Maya …”

  “She lost her husband when she was very young. And then she never again found anyone who loved her. She lived in a country that wasn’t her own. With people who spoke a language that wasn’t hers. And everyone knew that it was only out of pity that Beatrice didn’t throw her out. She put up with her — like a poor old aunt who you’ve got to look after because she doesn’t have anybody else in the world. She’d have liked to have been rid of her sooner rather than later, and Helene knew it, too. Her life was a waste. And no one is giving her the lost time back now.”

  “Maybe she didn’t consider it lost at all.”

  “Oh — of course she did! You just didn’t know her long enough, otherwise you’d have known too. Helene was disappointed and lonely and knew that she’d thrown it all away.”

  “But that’s no reason for you to …” Franca began, but Maya interrupted her immediately. “Helene is just an example! With her I see what a mucked-up life looks like. I see in her how my life is going to be!”

  Franca looked at her in amazement. “Your life? But Maya, your life can’t be compared with Helene’s in any way! You’re a young, uncommonly attractive woman. All hearts flock to you, men’s hearts especially. You’ll run around for a few more years, and then you’ll marry a nice man and start a family. There isn’t the slightest parallel to Helene!”

  “Oh, don’t talk such nonsense!” Maya cried. She was out of line, but it seemed not to matter to her at the moment. She was looking for an outlet, and Franca was right there. “I’ve already ruined everything! I don’t have a diploma. I don’t have any training. I don’t have a job. I have to beg my grandmother for money and have her tell me that she’s disappointed in me. Everyone treats me like I’m a failure. I …”

  “That’s not true, and you know it. But as far as a diploma and training are concerned, nobody’s preventing you from going back and getting those things. You’re twenty-two! You’re so young. All paths are still open to you.”

  Maya turned away. She’d become even paler in the last few minutes and looked much younger than she was.

  “But not the path back to Alan,” she said softly.

  Poor girl, thought Franca. How alone she is all of a sudden.

  She took a step closer to Maya, and now she did put an arm around her. Maya pressed herself against her and began to weep, heavily and still more heavily, until the sobs shook her whole body.

  “It’s all so horrible,” she whined. “I lost him. He’ll never have anything more to do with me, ever again. All these years I knew I could do whatever I wanted to, he would always take me back. Always, no matter how much I’d hurt him, how much I’d upset him. He took me in his arms and forgave me, and I …” She couldn’t say anything more, she just let her tears pour from her. Franca gently stroked her hair.

  “You’ve hurt him often in the last few years, is that right?” she asked gently.

  Maya nodded. “I did everything I could think of,” she sobbed. “Whatever I felt like at the moment. Sometimes I got involved with awful guys. You’d barely believe it, with drinkers, with criminals, with real trash. Somehow I wasn’t ever afraid. Alan was behind me. It was always like he was protecting me. I knew that nothing could happen to me.”

  “But there’s still nothing that can happen to you.”

  “He’s not there anymore.”

  “He’s still there. At the moment there might be a lot of pain and bitterness between you, but that will pass, and what works between you will still be there. He’ll always be your friend, Maya. Not your lover, but your friend.”

  “But I love him,” Maya cried out. Her sobbing subsided. She looked very sad. “I really love him!”

  “He’s almost twice as old as you, Maya, and each of you has a different view of life because of this. You want to enjoy yourself, flirt, dance, try out your effect on men. Alan’s over forty. He sees life much differently. He wants something different. And that’s just as normal. The two views just don’t mesh very easily.”

  Maya looked at the gravestone as if she saw in it the embodiment of all the hopelessness that life could bring.

  “He died on May 1st too,” she said. “Just like Helene.”

  “Yes,” Franca nodded. “That occurred to me earlier too. May 1st, 1945. And just like Helene, he had a violent death. By his own hand, to be sure, but no less violent because of it.”

  “Would the two of them have stayed together if Erich hadn’t died?”

  Franca shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I think so. Helene wouldn’t have had the strength to force a separation. She would have been d
ependent on Erich, just as she later was dependent on Beatrice.”

  “Why,” asked Maya, “was it, actually, that no one could help him back then? Had he … shot himself in the head?”

  “As far as I know, he only shot himself in the chest, and then was still alive for hours after. He probably could have been saved. He bled to death because no doctor could be summoned. Your great-grandfather was elsewhere on the island for all of that day, and they couldn’t find anyone anywhere else either. That was what sealed Erich Feldmann’s fate.”

  Maya furrowed her brow. “My great-grandfather was gone the whole day?”

  “It must have been rather chaotic on the islands. Hitler had shot himself the day before. The Russians were in Berlin. The allies were advancing. No one knew what was supposed to happen to the occupation force on the Channel Islands. All the doctors were engaged, and you can be sure nobody cared any more whether or not there was someone who could be reached on call.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Maya. “I was just wondering, because …”

  “Yes?”

  “I think great-grandmother Wyatt told me that her husband was over there the day Erich died. In Beatrice’s house. Sometime late afternoon he was called to go there … There’d been an accident with a French prisoner … I don’t know anymore exactly …”

  “Strange,” said Franca. “I’m certain that Beatrice told me that …”

  “Oh, maybe I’m mistaken then,” said Maya. She wrapped both her arms around her body, as if she was freezing. It was still just as hot, but the freezing might have come from within.

  “I’m sure I misunderstood something,” she added.

  Her skin glistened, as if a layer of sweat had covered it. “I think I should go home. I’m sorry, Franca, for bothering you with my problems.”

  “I didn’t feel bothered. Goodbye, Maya. Go home and sit in the sun and calm down a little.” She watched her go, the slender, tall figure with the long hair and the endless legs.

  A child, she thought. How could Alan throw away so many years of his life on a child?”

 

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