by Anika Scott
Soon the forest made way for the park. The smaller trees and bushes, now ragged, not sculpted as they once were, led to Falkenhorst’s back lawn. At its edge, she stopped. The house was still there, sprawling on its heights. It rose up before her on land rumored to be waste rock from Falkenberg coal mines. The family denied they had built on an industrial dump site, but she quite liked the idea. When nobody else was around, Friedrich claimed their family motto was Falkenberg: Built on rubbish. She used to hit him playfully for that.
The walls were the same soot-gray from the Works. She picked out her bedroom on the second floor, looked hard, and decided that, yes, a green plant was flourishing on the inside sill. In her mind, she left the room, tiptoed along the burgundy carpet past her brothers’ doors, and descended the main staircase. The parquet cracked under her shoes. When her mother hosted a soiree, conversation and cigarette smoke would drift down the hall and curl in the parlor chandeliers and spill onto the terrace where stone falcons roosted on their pedestals. As a girl she would crouch behind them and watch her mother floating from guest to guest. Once when Papa lit his cigar on the terrace step, she caught him gazing at her mother the way he looked at an intricate piece of machinery.
She scanned Falkenhorst’s roof for the family’s red and orange banner that used to fly over the house. They had taken it down in the war, but it was still the first thing she looked for, that spot of flame in the sky. Sluggish, the flag stirred, unfurled for a moment, and when she saw the deep blue and bits of white and red, she slid to her knees behind a hedge. The Union Jack over Falkenhorst. The British had taken over the estate. Was her mother, her English mother, still there? She had to be. From the moment she married Papa, Anne Heath considered the house hers, and inviolable. Growing up, the experience was of living in a kind of stylish barracks run by her mother, the servants in fear, visitors in awe, the children taught to respect the house by speaking quietly, closing doors gently, and refraining from leaving scuffs, dents, or stains. If her mother had had her way, all of Falkenhorst would have been encased in glass to be admired, not touched. Clara was sure not even the surrender would drive Anne out of her beloved home.
So close to the house, Clara moved with more caution, tree to tree and bush to bush, aware of the crunch her shoes made on the dead grass, and the gasp of her own breaths in the silence. Figures were moving behind the glass terrace doors. Hunched, she approached on the flank and knelt behind a boxwood shrub. She had no idea how she would find out if her mother was inside. Maybe one of the old servants would show up, or even a new one who didn’t know her but could say if Anne was there.
When the doors opened, Clara covered her mouth to keep her frosting breaths from betraying her. An officer, unmistakably British, stepped out. Besides the uniform, he had the mustache and a slightly bemused look as he flipped open a cigarette case and held it out to a second man. He was in civilian clothes, respectable but worn-looking, probably a German. His hat tilted at an angle that seemed familiar, as did his hand as he smoked, cigarette balancing between his fingers.
Even with his back to Clara, she knew him. She nearly called out his name. Max Hecht. Once her Max. Relief drowned out the pain of old grievances, the breakup of long ago. Max had survived. He was alive, and he was at Falkenhorst. But why? Did she really want to know? She couldn’t decide if she wanted to throw her arms around him or sneak away in ignorance, nursing the old wounds he’d given her.
A second soldier came onto the terrace and lit a cigarette. After a respectful nod, Max moved away to smoke alone. One of the falcons blocked him somewhat from the soldiers, and he seemed to relax. His old posture came back, the one reserved for when he was not in uniform or around people in uniforms. He leaned a shoulder against the stone bird, his feet crossed and a hand in his pocket, every move like liquid, one step away from dancing. He had put himself through university charging ladies in spa towns three marks for a dance, sixty to have him as their partner for the night. He was in such demand, people began to suspect him of offering something beyond the ballroom, at which point he was thrown out of some of the best hotels and clubs in Baden. By the time Clara met him, he’d given up all that, but she knew he had made good money. Nobody danced like him, with his hips, his whole attention fixed on her. When she was younger, she had thought there must be something beautiful in the soul of a man who moved so beautifully. He’d wanted to be a professional dancer, but his father had condemned it as “womanly,” and Max had read law instead, hating every moment, but strangely good at it too. As she had gotten to know him, she felt herself attune to his sense of inner rebellion, even as he walked, against his will, the sensible path his family expected of him.
She would speak to him after all. He would tell her why he was at Falkenhorst, and where her mother was. He might also know something about Elisa’s fate.
So Clara waited, trying not to shiver or to let her breaths show. When the soldiers lit more cigarettes and Max didn’t follow, she was afraid he would go back inside before she had her chance. But he was closer to her than the soldiers, and she decided to risk it. She shook the boxwood bush, rustling the leaves.
Max straightened, frowning out at the garden. She moved the bush again and he focused on it instantly. She raised her hand and waved.
The soldiers were deep in conversation. Max lit another cigarette and then strolled onto the lawn, not directly toward her, but meandering as if looking out over the park. The two British men glanced at him briefly, then turned back to each other. After a circuit of the garden, pausing a couple of times as if this tree or that interested him, he stopped near the bush. Without looking down, he dropped a cigarette nearby and whispered, “I don’t have anything else. Clear off before the Tommies see you.”
He was thinner than she remembered, his bones finer, and there was a dark bruise under each eye, just as there had been in the war when he wasn’t sleeping.
“Max. It’s me.”
He stared down at her as if he didn’t understand what he was seeing. “Clara?” He lit up, and she remembered him in his dinner jacket under crystal chandeliers. “Clara, treasure—”
“Can we talk somewhere?” She said it firmly, more a statement than a question. He shouldn’t think she was begging him for help.
He glanced at the soldiers. “I’ll be at least two more hours. There’s a meeting.”
“You work here?”
He knelt and made the motions of brushing dirt off his shoe. “The military government confiscated your house and turned it into offices. The carriage house should be safe. I’ll meet you there.” Before he left, he reached for her, and she drew back, afraid of what would happen if he touched her, the old buzz on her skin, that familiar need for him she had pushed out of herself long ago.
Hurt and disappointment stood out on his face. “You’re still holding a grudge? After everything we went through?”
She almost answered him, wanted to say that some acts couldn’t be forgiven, but she knew her silence would hurt him more. She backed into the bushes, angry that he was appealing to a history together that was long gone. Too much had changed since the night they had begun their life together. She had been a sheltered girl, just turned sixteen and as sure of herself and her place in the world as if it was engraved in stone. It was the same year she met Elisa, and she had been nagging her mother to let her go out dancing or to a film with her older, more experienced friend. To her surprise, her mother agreed on one condition: a mandatory stop at an address on a slip of paper that Clara was to memorize and then destroy. She burned it in an ashtray with some amusement, as if playing the spy. Then she took a cab with Elisa to the place in question, a newish block of flats in the Steele district.
Max waited for them on the doorstep, a finger to his lips. Clara had never seen him before, but Elisa greeted him without saying how she knew him. His dinner jacket hung open, bow tie undone. This was his gigolo attire. Only later did Clara learn he had dressed for a conquest. He held the door, Clara accidentally
brushing against him on her way in. The contact made her hurry after Elisa up the stairs. He smelled like smoke back then, and the tiniest whiff of cologne. Clara sensed him behind her in the stairway, and she worried about how she looked to him from that angle, the drape of her gown in front of his eyes.
Music was playing low in the apartment. Six months’ pregnant and feeling well again, Elisa swayed into the parlor and straight to a sturdy man with light hair and spectacles. Reinhard Sieland, an accountant in the office where Elisa worked, and the man she would marry, though Clara didn’t know it yet. This was his flat, and he made a show of pointing out its highlights, especially the record player and music collection. It wasn’t the kind of place Clara was used to visiting, and at first she stood stiffly to the side, unsure of what was appropriate behavior in the flat of a bachelor she didn’t know. Elisa stuck by her, led her to the sofa, was the first to call the men by their first names as if she knew they’d all be friends. They drank beer out of water glasses, another new experience for Clara, who had only ever tried wine and champagne. She gradually relaxed, the beer tasting better the more she drank. After a little more chatter, Reinhard led Elisa to another room and closed the door behind them.
Clara was left by herself with Max. She opened the window and stayed standing before it, hoping for a breeze. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with him. So far, he had spent the evening gaping at her. “You look like a fish, Max,” she said.
“Thank you, Clara. I make an effort. Could I offer you another drink?”
There was a thump from the other room, and laughter. For Elisa’s sake, she had to stay alert. For her own sake. She waved away the glass.
Max was still looking at her with an intensity she would get to know well over the years. “You’re that Clara, aren’t you? Falkenberg.”
She sighed at his awe. She’d lived with it long enough for it to bore her.
He started buttoning his jacket. “I’m a lawyer. In the Legal Office. At the Works.”
So that was how Elisa knew him. Her first job at Falkenberg had been in the same office.
“You missed a button,” Clara said.
He went to the mirror and corrected the jacket and tied the tie, starting again twice, looking at her reflection instead of at what he was doing.
From the other room, the sound of wood creaking and a gasp from Elisa made Clara gnash her teeth. She felt sluggish and hot. Dirty. She had brought Elisa here. She was no better than a . . . what were those people called? A pimp. A procuress. Her eyes watered with humiliation and shame.
“Would you like to dance, fräulein?” Max put on a new record. The music, a brisk tango, soothed her hammering pulse. It tuned out the noises from the other room.
“I don’t know how to tango,” she said.
He positioned himself in the center of the room and held his arms out to an imaginary partner. “The link is everything,” he said. “Here”—he tapped his chest—“is the line between partners. Come here.”
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
“What tone would you prefer? Servile? Groveling?”
She opened her mouth in shock. But she was drifting toward him, filling that space implied by his arms in the air. She wiped her hands on her skirt and touched his jacket. When their hands met, she feared he would feel the tremor rolling through her.
“The link,” he said. A gentle tap at her neckline, and lower to where her heart rattled, and back to his own chest. “It never breaks. We sway, we turn, we dip. The line never breaks.” Slowly, he showed her the first steps, and she listened to his voice instead of the cries from the other room. She concentrated on her feet, tried to get the technique, the correct turn, the precise angle of her body to his.
“You’re too soft,” he said, and tightened his hold on her hand. “Keep the tension in your body. Push me back.”
She tried the step again, yielded to his pressure, and stumbled.
“This dance is a battle, fräulein. Push back.”
“I am.”
“Push me.”
“I am.”
“Harder.”
Her forehead touched his chest and her arm trembled at the effort of holding her ground. Every bit of her was pushing against him until she didn’t know whether the pounding in her ears was his heartbeat or her own.
The bedroom door opened. The scraping hinges seemed far away and insignificant compared to Max’s next move. His body absorbed her.
“What a handsome pair.” Reinhard was smoking against the doorway in his undershorts, the tails of his shirt to his thighs.
“For God’s sake,” Max said, “get dressed.”
Clara pushed past them into the bedroom. Elisa was snoring gently on the sheets, wearing only her heels and stockings. Her naked body shocked her, the misshapen bulge of her stomach.
“Wake up.” Clara shook her by the arm. She pulled Elisa’s gown over her friend’s feet and up her legs little by little, Elisa a dead weight and immovable from the waist up. “Elisa.” Clara slapped her cheek, and Elisa whimpered in her sleep. Clara cried, “Elisa, get up, get up. We’re leaving right now.”
Elisa stirred and leaned on Clara’s shoulder. “Don’t hate me. Reinhard is a good man. He is. We’re getting married. Isn’t that nice?” She burst into tears.
They staggered together to the bedroom door where Max caught Elisa’s other arm and propped her up. “I’ll help you.”
“We don’t need your help.”
“Don’t be silly,” Max said, “you’ll never find a cab to take her like that. I’ll drive.”
During the ride, Elisa dozed between them. Together they got her home, Max holding her outside the door while Clara searched her purse for the keys.
“Fräulein, this was a bad way to start. We can do this again properly. Dinner and—”
“I don’t want to have dinner with you, I don’t want to start anything with you, I want you to go away.” Clara pushed open the door, coaxed Elisa up two flights of stairs, listening for Elisa’s widowed mother, and managed to get her inside and to her room. She left her snoring, her arms tight around her stomach.
Outside, Max was waiting by the car. She marched away from him. Something horrible had been done tonight and she had done it. But what? Why had her mother wanted them to come here? How did she know Reinhard Sieland? And why would Elisa go straight to bed with him? Even knowing she was pregnant, it was a side of her Clara hadn’t been able to imagine. In the two months they had known each other, Elisa had never said a word about him. And now she was marrying him? Just like that? Was he the baby’s father, the man Elisa refused to name? The one time Clara had brought up the subject, Elisa had looked distressed and said, “If you’re my friend, please don’t ask me that again.” If it was Reinhard, why not say?
She stopped in the street. Max was waiting a short distance away. He was only a shadow, but she knew it was him. She was already used to his intense way of watching her. There was something both soothing and unnerving about it, as if he wanted to protect her from dangers she couldn’t yet imagine. Her palms were moist, and she wiped them on her skirt. She didn’t want to go home, not yet, not when her nerves were bound up with the memory of her body pressed against his.
“Take me dancing,” she said.
For a while, she forgot her anxieties in his arms. That was part of what would keep her with him for so many years. He knew how to make her forget the things that unsettled her. He found a club where they were playing swing, but she couldn’t keep up with him, didn’t understand yet what his body would do, where it would go. But she wanted to learn.
At the end of the night, at midnight sharp—the grandfather clock had boomed from the foyer of her house like a warning from her mother—he embraced her in Falkenhorst’s drive and gave her a long, electric kiss. The kiss and the clock broke the spell. Deep down she knew she was not to speak of this night again. She couldn’t be Elisa’s friend and look too closely at the things she did. There were questions
Clara shouldn’t be asking herself or anyone else. It would be far better, she would be far happier, if she closed her eyes and kept her mouth shut and focused on the man who had given her music and dancing and her first kiss.
11
The carriage house was older than Falkenhorst, though Clara never knew if the stories her father used to tell about the place were true. He had shown the children the half-timbered structure and said it had once been a stable for some long-lost convent. She didn’t know if her father believed this, but he did consider the carriage house to be holy ground. Her mother never dreamed of setting one of her slippered feet into the place. She always said it was too dirty, too smoky, “too manly, darling. Men are just boys in long trousers. Leave them to play in their dreck. They’re happier that way.” As a girl, most of Clara’s experience of the place was peering into it secretly through one small window.
It was thick with grime now, impossible to see through, but Clara scratched at it gently with her thumbnail until she’d made a small circle on the glass. She didn’t want to presume it was safe based on Max’s word alone. He was working for the British, after all. She wondered how that had happened, what he had told them to wipe away enough of his “guilt” that they would hire him. Regardless, she didn’t think his cooperation went so deep that he would turn her in.
Through the circle she had made on the window, she saw only darkness. She crept along the back wall and remembered Papa in the garage touching each car as he passed it—the armored Mercedes, his beloved Bugatti Royale, the Model T from Henry Ford himself—a gift from one engineer to another. The south end of the carriage house had been blocked off and reserved as his workshop.