She begins shouldering her way toward the three of them. The soldiers are wearing the Reich’s uniform, but they do not look respectable, and as Bettina approaches, she can smell alcohol—as though they’ve bathed in it, for heaven’s sake. For years now her father has been telling her she needs to hold her tongue, that it is best for her to keep to herself. You cannot survive in times like these unless you put your own safety first, he insists. But this does not sit well with her. He thinks her willful, yet she is merely concerned with justice.
“Well, well, what’s this?” the darker soldier says, sticking a thin piece of wood in his mouth like a cigarette. “A pretty little lady heading our way.”
Werner makes a move toward Bettina, but the soldier will have none of it and grabs him by the arm. “Just a minute there, you cripple. I haven’t decided what I want to do with you yet.” The man, still a boy really, glares at Bettina, and she is aware that she left the house without a hat, like a young girl. Her thick dark hair is coiled in a bun at her neck, and she feels stripped naked by his eyes.
“Excuse me. He, this man, ah—we’re meeting, to watch the ceremony together?” she says, making it up as she goes along. “Is there some sort of problem?”
“I see, well. We’re just making certain he’s not a burden on the system. You understand, of course—now’s the time for us all to be pitching in. We don’t tolerate anyone who doesn’t pull his weight. We must all do the best we can.” The other soldier’s blond hair has been cut so short the ridges of his skull stick out. He raises a bottle of beer to his lips.
Bettina remembers boys like this from school, boys who were bullies and have become men who like wielding their power. How is it that the soldiers’ superiors tolerate this kind of behavior in public? The darker soldier’s accent establishes that he is from Bavaria; here by the Baltic Sea in the north, he’s almost a thousand kilometers from home. She smiles at him, hoping to calm him down. “Yes, I—”
Raucous cheers rise from the crowd, and the soldiers turn simultaneously toward the podium. In that instant Werner grabs her by the elbow and hustles her toward the stairs at the base of the town hall. They don’t stop till they reach the top near the wooden doorway, above the body of the crowd, short of breath and dripping with sweat.
“What do they want with you?” Bettina asks, panting, placing her cumbersome basket on the ground by her feet. “Have you done something?”
Werner’s cheeks are fevered. “Uh, it’s all nonsense. Something about my not fighting.”
Speakers on the podium let out a wavering note, shrill and prolonged. The mayor of Saargen emerges from the crowd, a skinny man with an imposing nose, wearing a uniform with gold epaulets and buttons that flash in the dusky light. The band strikes up a melody, and the crowd begins to sway; people are humming and singing. The harbor is only a few hundred meters away, and a breeze carries with it the pungent smell of the ocean. On the stairs next to them stands a little family: a stout woman and an older man whose arm is held out at a right angle by a dull silver contraption. He must be one of the lucky ones, home on sick leave. On the man’s shoulders sits a boy of six or so, woolen socks pooled at his ankles, suspenders drifting off bony shoulders. They wear expressions of expectation and excitement on their upturned faces.
The crowd begins to part as a large vehicle backs up toward the podium. In the truck bed lies an oak sapling. The foot soldiers tug at the burlap root ball and heave the lanky tree over to a hole in the very center of the square. It is meant to live a thousand years, this oak, but even from this distance Bettina can see the edges of its tiny leaves are curled and brown, its branches sparse and thin as fishing rods.
“I’m a soldier, Mama, a soldier!” cries the little boy, pointing one finger at his mother while clutching a sticky bun in the other hand. His delicate pink lips are covered in jelly. “Pow, pow, pow!”
Everyone nearby laughs.
Seagulls swoop overhead, beady eyes trained below them. There are murmurs of anticipation when the band stops playing. Bettina raises her head to the sky, still cloudless but edged with shadow as evening approaches. There is a hum or a buzz in the air that is getting louder and louder.
But—the sound is not really a humming. No one else appears to notice, and she pulls at Werner’s jacket.
“Do you hear that?” she asks sharply. “That noise?”
They lift their eyes. Just as the sound becomes a low, rumbling growl, as other eyes begin to turn upward, the crowd seems to take in one shallow, collective breath, a surprised ahhhh! For an interminable second, the intake of breath swallows the roar of the planes. The terrible ah! of recognition sucks every sound and movement into its stunned emptiness—then, commotion and screaming.
The air-raid sirens begin their wailing just as the warplanes swoop over Saargen Square. Airplanes coming from the direction of Peenemünde dot the sky like malevolent birds. An earsplitting shriek and a crash of explosive onto wood, stone, earth, bone. Another crash so loud it cuts through the whistling wind and swallows the sudden sound of screaming. Werner and Bettina fall to the ground. The air instantly goes from fresh and salty to acrid, and it burns right through her nostrils.
Bombs are dropping from the pregnant sky. Werner yells something at her, yanking her arm so sharply it hurts, but she is mesmerized: The mother picnicking with her family is crouching over the little boy. He is lying like an object thrown from a great height, and a leg is missing. The panicked crowd pushes the mother this way and that; she falls onto her side and then gets back on her haunches, her mouth open in an imploring scream. She shakes her child’s shoulders, but he does not respond. The child is dead.
Bettina is catapulted down the steps; she lands heavily at the bottom and lies, inert, on the ground. Her basket is gone. People trample over her; a boot kicks her hand. A woman steps onto her torso as though she is a rolled-up rug laid out for the refuse collectors. But Bettina does not move to save herself. All these years into this interminable war, she is struck by the notion that human life is not only fleeting—a mere blink of an eye—but essentially meaningless, snatched away for no reason and given for no reason. It is the end, just as her father predicted, but not in the way he was hoping. She will die here, in Saargen, on a cool day in March.
Does it matter all that much? She thinks not. Her father is lying in their little cottage, alone, with only weeks or months left to live. Her mother is long gone, dead from influenza. Bettina is already alone in the world. The little boy is dead, Germany is dead because of a madman hell bent on destruction, and soon she will be dead too.
Someone pulls at her, and she peels open her eyes. Werner is grasping under her shoulders, dragging her up on her feet. Her wool stockings are torn, and she has lost a shoe. There is blood on her hand, but she cannot tell if it is her own. Her ears are ringing. Werner takes her hand in his, and she rises unsteadily, holding on to him tightly, and puts one foot in front of the other. They head back up the stairs.
He pulls a key from his pocket. She remembers then that he is a civil servant; he must work here at the town hall. Werner hurries her through the marble front hall. “There’s a bunker,” he explains, “out back. We’ll be safe if we can get there.” But the cavernous hall magnifies the screaming, the drone of planes, the hum and crashes, and as awful as it is to be outside where people are groveling and dying, it is far worse to be in here, to feel the walls tremble as though they’re as fragile as parchment paper.
They come to a door leading outside into a garden planted with gnarled apple trees. At the side of the building is a trapdoor that Werner hauls open. Wet air rushes up from the darkness below, foul smelling.
“It’s the cripple,” comes a cry, and a piece of wood crashes down on Werner’s shoulders, sending him to the ground. Behind him stands the drunken soldier from earlier, gasping and reeling. His jaunty cap is missing, but Bettina recognizes his dark hair, the boyish face. He raises his arms to strike again, and she throws herself at him with all the strength
she can muster.
“Leave him alone,” she screams, tangled in his army jacket, his flailing arms, breathing in the smell of his ripe body, the alcohol that seeps from his pores. “He hasn’t done anything!”
He throws her down so easily, pinning her to the ground, digging his knees into her shoulders. “Silly girl,” he huffs. “I’m not interested in . . . in him . . .”
Underneath her, pebbles pierce her clothes, and she rakes at them frantically with her hands, flinging up fistfuls, shredding the skin on her fingers. She screams as loudly as she can, but no one can hear her. The man begins dragging her toward the opening of the bunker.
“You’re a fighter, yes, yes . . . I like that! We can . . . let’s fight some . . . you and I will fuck like rabbits, and the others can all go to hell.”
Bettina looks up at him and sees the pinched concentration on his face melt into incredulity. His nose is too long for his otherwise stubby features, and his mouth is slack and open but silent. He flops forward, almost gracefully. His own army-issue knife sticks out from the side of his neck, plunged in so deeply that only the deer-antler handle remains visible. Blood spurts from the wound, running in rivulets over his shoulders.
The heat of his body and his blood, warm and wet, is on her skin. He is heavy and motionless, but the blood seems alive like lava. Bettina writhes and twists, trying to free herself. She hears only the crashes, the faraway shrieks of the dying, the unending roar and whistle of plane and bomb.
“Help,” she cries. “Help me!”
A handkerchief passes over her eyes, clearing her skin of debris and blood. It is Werner again, kneeling. He drags the soldier off her, the body slumping heavily as though the muscles have dissolved. Werner’s round face is ashen, contorted with pain, his hair sticking out from his head. “He’s dead,” he says quietly. “Herein! Come on—get in here, quick.”
Bettina stumbles into the dank bunker.
Hours later when Bettina and Werner emerge, their secret—their murdered soldier—is buried in the mounds of chipped and shattered bricks, the tumbled trees. A ringing sound pings through Bettina’s head, and she cannot hold on to her thoughts. It is impossible to believe that the marketplace, surrounded by medieval stone buildings and grand redbrick businesses, will ever be normal again. There is no sign of the podium, the truck, or the young oak tree. The musicians and their instruments are gone. Paramedics have arrived, and they work quietly and quickly, turning over bodies to check for signs of life, ignoring the dead, sorting the injured men and women into two groups: those who need transportation to the hospital in Bergen and those who suffered only superficial wounds. Werner is stunned, eyes blinking. There is dried blood on his hands. Thick rays of light from torches illuminate the scene. The moon is briefly obscured by a cloud, and under the impenetrable black sky the ruined town looks hateful.
Bettina refuses treatment for her hands or the gash in her calf but accepts a ride home in a van lined with wooden benches. Werner helps her into the back, clutching at her hand in an effort to recapture her attention, his doleful eyes searching hers. “Bettina!” he says urgently. “Will you be all right?”
Before they are jostled apart, she reaches down and holds her fingers lightly to his cheek, as though he is a child. This man helped her. His eyes are kind, and he does not want to let her go. An elderly woman climbs gingerly into the van and sits next to her. A fur stole is wrapped around her shoulders, and she is hatless, her thin hair covered in dust. The van begins working its way through the blocked streets and alleyways at an excruciatingly slow pace.
The force of the blast in the town center has shattered some windows in her neighborhood, but the cottage is still standing. Her father is safe. Bettina jumps from the van and races in, calling out to him. Even here, the air smells acrid, and there is a sense of tension, of time trembling on a broken continuum where everything and nothing is normal.
Jürgen Heilstrom is sitting up in bed, sheets pulled to his chin, lips parted in a rictus of fear. Father and daughter hold each other close, sobbing. She says nothing of the soldier or what he tried to do to her or that it was Werner Nietz, the man from the shop—the one who comes every Friday—who saved her. Her thoughts are incoherent, and she cannot latch on to anything that makes sense. She has lived with war for years already, she has already experienced death, and yet on this day something inside her closes up tight.
2
Papa lives another twelve months, but he does not live to see the end of the war.
It is not yet morning on the day of Bettina’s eighteenth birthday. Her eyes open before day breaks, and she is not able to fall asleep again. A week earlier her father’s body was removed from the house. Her sister, Clara, has been coming as often as she can to help out, but it is hard for her to get to Saargen given the severe shortage of petrol. Before the war she was a secretary in the chalk mines, but she no longer has work. Her husband, Herbert, suffers fevers and nausea from an infected wound in his arm. There is no penicillin to be found, and the sulfonamides cause blisters so big they weep. Clara might as well be living in another country.
Bettina is trying to warm herself by the grate in the kitchen, which she has filled with twigs gathered at night from the edge of the nearby forest. After their fish shop was destroyed in the bombing, she worked only on keeping the two of them fed and warm. On making her father comfortable, reading to him from Schiller and Hauptmann, and even, toward the end, Thomas Mann, frowned upon by the authorities but adored nonetheless. Day after day she read aloud the passages from Death in Venice describing Aschenbach’s exotic journeys. They talked of adventure and the fullness of life while hiding in the tight-ceilinged rooms of their cottage. He made her promise to be watchful, cautious, but he did not know that he no longer needed to urge her toward withdrawal. They were both waiting, praying that Hitler would be killed, that this war would be over. His daughter washed his body daily and, as they felt the end drawing close, slept curled up beside him on his sickbed, listening to the sound of his breath receding. When Clara was there with them, it was just about bearable. Now that she’s returned to her village to nurse Herbert back to health and Papa is gone, the house echoes with their absence.
The fire sputters. The fisherman’s cottage lies on the northern edge of a small cobblestone square called Apolonienmarkt. Dark thatched eaves cap the roof, swinging down at sharp angles toward the ground. The four-square windows and fading-green shutters distinguish it from the other houses on the square. Even though it is not in any way grand, with its long sloping roof and the small central window above the front door, it is the biggest house on the square, a sign of the status the family once enjoyed. By the late 1800s the Heilstrom men had built up a successful export business, managing the distribution of thousands of tons of fish to large mainland cities throughout Germany. But after the Great War the family’s holdings dwindled, eventually leaving nothing of their business but the one fish shop in Saargen, gone almost a year now.
Wearing old wool pants, workman’s boots inherited from the butcher’s son, and a wool sweater, Bettina shivers in the early-morning coolness. With the entire year to go and only forty-three points left out of one hundred on her ration card, she has to manage with whatever garments she can sew or scrounge up. The kitchen faces northwest and has a window looking out on a patch of lawn, hard as flint after the bitter winter, and a small shed for the chickens. It is a utilitarian kitchen, painted pale blue with speckled honeycomb tiles on the floor and a trestle sink. There is a compact table with a chipped enamel top around which the women of the house—her grandmother, her mother, Clara, Bettina, and sometimes an aunt or two from the mainland—used to knead batter for pumpernickel bread or stuff meat into cabbage. Now she is the only one left. The front room with its low-hanging beams and mullioned windows feels too big for her, and so the kitchen is where Bettina spends most of her time.
The radio drones and then barks on the countertop. It broadcasts constant, terrifying warnings about the Bolshe
viks, and sometimes when there are noises on the cobblestones outside, Bettina imagines it’s the Red Army at her door, or perhaps stragglers from East Prussia fleeing the onslaught. The Führer promised them a swift victory, but it has long been clear that this is not to be the case. All the values Bettina and her neighbors have been taught to believe in—order, hard work, reliability—mean nothing anymore. No intelligent person can trust the media; everyone knows the Russians are advancing steadily westward, even if Goebbels denies it. Behind them they leave a trail of devastation; a scarred, barely recognizable landscape; and people so horrified by what they’ve seen and done that they no longer feel part of the human race. A neighbor’s son, Otto von Donnersberg, saw it with his own eyes on his endless overland journey home. Half-witted, he tells his tales of misery and horror, and people can barely bring themselves to believe him. Yet you can see from his dead eyes that the unthinkable is happening.
Bettina’s Ersatzkaffee long gone, the slightly bitter taste of the oak nuts lingering in her mouth, she heads into the dining room. She surveys the dishes from her grandmother glinting at her in the breakfront, thinking she should set the table today, her birthday. The blackout shades are still drawn, and the room is dark. Catching sight of a compact wooden dresser with swollen drawers next to the hutch, she has a sudden idea. After clearing a path to the door, she drags the dresser into the kitchen. There is a large hammer under the sink. Wielding the tool with both hands, she smashes it down on the dresser, again and again. At first, the hammer bounces back as though on a spring, but she doesn’t give up. Hitting the edges, she hears the first crack as the wood splits. Her long brown hair hangs loose, and moisture is accumulating at the base of her scalp. She peels off her sweater and continues pounding until the dresser has been smashed into long, irregular pieces.
This Terrible Beauty: A Novel Page 2