Climbing onto the bus to head back to the apartment later that afternoon and handing the driver a quarter, she realized with dismay that her hands were shaking quite badly. This often happened after assignments. She’d be calm, all her energy focused on the task of taking photos, and it was only once she was done that her body registered what she’d been through. With effort she brought herself back to the moment: the smell of her own sweat, the smoke in her hair, the feel of the city grime on her palms and face. The bus was full of people dressed in their Sunday best, heading to family dinners in other parts of the city, one last moment of communion before the beginning of yet another hectic workweek. Brown hats and felt caps. Women wearing white gloves, even in the heat. Strings of fake pearls on their necks, sensible shoes with thick rubber soles. Again Bettina thought of the check that lay on her bedside table, the two thousand dollars, and this time there was an abrupt shift inside her that jolted her, waking her up.
Yes, yes, the money . . . all day long it had been skirting at the edge of her consciousness with its promise of action, of change. First thing in the morning she would put that money in the bank. She’d call Clara and ask her advice. There were steps she could take now. Werner was sick; he might be dying, and she was going to find her child and reclaim her. It was possible; she could do it.
She ran home from the bus stop and was disappointed to find that Herbert had left; she’d wanted to tell him about her plans, the possibilities that were open to her now. The apartment was the same, a slight green tinge over everything as the late-afternoon light filtered through all her plants clustered at the window, the blanket and sheets neatly folded by the couch. Her familiar dish for her house keys, the small mirror she’d hung so that she could check her hair before leaving. How could everything be exactly the same when everything had changed?
14
Rügen
Fall 1951
The town hall is at the eastern end of the village square, where, years after the bombing, there are still gaps of architectural logic—the ghost of the bakery lingers here in the dusty pile of bricks, and there the footprint of the cellar of one of the grander buildings is still visible. From his office Werner can hear children in the streets below playing dice in the afternoons. They congregate on the corner—hands deep in the pockets of their hand-stitched shorts, waiting until the whole gang arrives—and then set about playing game after game for hours on end, screeching and laughing, a pregnant silence when awaiting the outcome of an important roll of dice. In good weather he often opens the window and leans out over the windowsill so he can better hear their cries floating up toward him. Sometimes they’ll glance up and offer him a wave, excited by his illicit participation—a man in a suit interesting himself in child’s play. It makes them hot with pride.
At five o’clock, Werner begins to get fidgety. He checks his watch every few minutes and pores over his accounts, his eyes seeing nothing but a mass of black lines that are supposed to be numbers. At 5:23 his telephone rings, and he jumps in his seat.
“Frau Nietz to see you,” Fräulein Krause from downstairs says.
“Thank you, Fräulein. Send her up.”
He stands when Bettina enters; her cheeks are glowing, and her brown eyes are clear and dark. Her breath comes fast.
“I came as quickly as I could, but I had to clean up first. That fish, blech!” she says. She wears an unfamiliar dress patterned with tiny blue flowers. It has a high neckline, which accentuates the length of her body, and short sleeves. Her arms and legs are lightly tanned. She does not look as though she spends hours in a cavernous factory under fluorescent lights. They are enjoying an indian summer and will walk to the beach together, perhaps get a beer at the café by the docks.
The fact that she went home and changed her clothes pleases him. “A new dress?”
“Yes. Can you imagine? The first in such a very long time!” She smiles, and her one crooked tooth casts a shadow on the others; this flaw in the symmetry of her face makes her seem at once accessible and unknowable.
Side by side, they walk through the square, and instead of turning left to head toward the fish factory, they turn right and make their way toward the edge of town, where the cliffs bend on creaky knees to reach the waters below. There are a few small businesses, including an outdoor café, that perch at the end of a narrow boardwalk near the piers at which fishing vessels dock. Here, unlike in Binz, the port is almost exclusively industrial. A long narrow strip of beach curves for many kilometers to the south, but it is largely unused for recreation.
Werner knows how much his wife loves this stretch of Saargen. It is where her grandfather’s boat was docked: first a large seafaring trawler and then, after the first war, a one-man wooden vessel. Personally, Werner dislikes the insistent cawing of the gulls; the angry overhead cacophony is distracting. But he understands how much Bettina had enjoyed the uncomplicated pleasure of ritual as a child. She often came here after school, she told him, running as fast as she could, just so that she could wait on the piers and look out over the water for the telltale red-striped nose of her grandfather’s boat. His hair and beard and clothes suffused with the smell of the sea—she’d loved that.
“We should come here more often,” she says, clutching her cardigan to her sides against the wind.
He smiles to himself, having known she would say that. “There’s the ferry.” He points over the water and then checks his watch. “Must be the last one of the day.”
She’s brought along her camera and pops up the viewfinder, pointing it toward . . . he’s not sure what. He sees the sea and a boat and a series of old docks, but he has no idea why you’d want a picture of that. They walk closer to the edge of the docks, where she abruptly comes to a stop, and he almost walks into her.
“Oh!” she exclaims. “It’s—I think that’s Manfred. And Henning, maybe?” She tents her hands over her eyes. “Yes, it is!”
Before he can react, she moves away down the uneven planks that make up one of the last piers. At the very end, a midsize fishing vessel bobs, banging its plank against the dock. Instead of walking down with her, Werner fishes inside his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and lights one by turning his back to the wind and cupping his hands in two half globes over his mouth and nose.
When he turns around again, his wife is embracing one of the men. Then a shorter, narrow-chested man shakes her hand. Werner squints to see if he can recognize them. Wearing a navy cap and a scarf around his neck, the short fellow appears to be just a boy. Bettina gesticulates at Werner, but he stays put, dragging deeply on his cigarette. Something about the scene nags at him.
His thoughts turn to the neighborhood boy Bettina was in love with when she was a teenager: Dieter. She told him all about the boy one night, not knowing that Werner didn’t want to hear a thing, that knowledge, in this case, only served to weaken him. Had they made love? he wondered. He wouldn’t put it past her; there’s a stubborn streak in her that rankles. His wife has denied it, of course. Had the boy been handsome and brave—everything Werner is not? Images of their coupling invade his thoughts, even though he knows that she cannot possibly intend to provoke this by hugging this man on the dock in public. He throws his cigarette over the splintered wood, into the water below.
She raises her camera again, standing for what seems like a long time, picking her shots carefully. The two men are very close to her, but he figures they must be in the frame—and behind her is the sea, the beach, the cliffs, and the sky. What on earth can she be doing? Why would she take a picture with these two strangers in it? He doesn’t understand her relationship with that camera. All the negatives that remain undeveloped and the stacks of old pictures (of nothing interesting, as far as he can tell) that gather dust on the shelves. It seems nosy and intrusive to point that thing at people all the time.
“It’s Christa’s boys. The nephew and her son—that’s the little one, Henning. See?” Bettina says when she returns to him. “They’ve taken jobs here to earn
some extra money.”
The reminder of her attachment to the stupid Kellermanns irritates Werner further. Each week she has been trekking over to Bobbin, and he has already told her in no uncertain terms that she is endangering them with these visits. The Stasi is likely still watching the family. Not to mention that it’s embarrassing to him professionally that his wife insists on defying him so openly. But Bettina returns to Bobbin again and again, even though the woman, Christa, has been back at the factory working again for over a year. She’s fine!
“We’re just friends,” Bettina always insists. “It’s harmless.”
Now he grips her arm and pulls her toward him. “That was not proper,” he mutters.
“What?”
“You embracing that man—in public.”
A half smile hovers on her lips, as though she is trying to gauge his sense of humor. “They’re practically children, Werner. It was motherly.”
Motherly. The blood begins to pound in his ears. For too long now, he and Bettina have been playing a strange tug-of-war. She resists his efforts to make love; he can feel her stiffen when he approaches her, the bedsheet cold against his thighs. During the day she’ll be in the kitchen, warm and solicitous toward him, giving him hope, and the next moment she’ll be chilly and disdainful. Each kindness she shows him and each haughty glance she throws his way arouses in him a seesaw of feelings, as though he is a crippled teenager all over again. “And what on earth were you taking pictures of?”
“I—Werner, I was just . . . I don’t know how to explain. Stop yanking my arm, please, will you?”
The heat of his unanswered questions muddles his mind. Surely the important thing now is to be unwavering and firm; he doesn’t want her to think he is a pushover. He pulls her to the side of the café, out of the wind. With one finger he lifts the dark wing of hair that has fallen over her face. “Do you know anything about her family”—he gestures toward the dock—“or her past? You jumped to her defense without knowing whether she was even worth defending. It needs to stop. They’ll be keeping track, the police.”
“She’s a friend . . .” Her words die out, but she keeps staring at him, as though making up her mind about something. He does not allow his eyes to shift away. Looking so steadily into her dark-brown pupils, he feels he is drowning inside her. Why can’t he see what she is thinking, understand what she wants from him—who she wants him to be?
She takes a step back. “But . . . you said you helped her, didn’t you? You stood up for her too?”
“Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?”
She regards him so earnestly, her eyes skittery, but it is impossible to tell what is on her mind.
“What is it?” he asks. “What is it now?”
“The changes at work . . . are you a member of the Stasi now?”
“It’s not official, not yet, but . . .” He takes a few long strides, then turns and takes a few more. “There’s a lot going on at the town hall that I’m part of. I’ve told you before, my work is important. I am important to our government. I have information about people—information that would not be considered favorably by certain others.”
“I’m sorry, but I have no earthly idea what you mean.”
“The Russians, yes, yes, so they’ve reorganized things. I’m ready and waiting for when they need me.” Werner tries to take out another cigarette for himself and finds his fingers thick and clumsy. He has a sudden image of her leaving him, and he wants to tell her that she can never, ever think of it. That if she so much as thinks about it, even for a second, he will know, and he will never accept it. But as much as he wants to tell her this, the words stick in his mouth like a wad of paper. His love for her feels like a noose.
He cannot stand it any longer: he imagines he can hear the click-clicking of the levers of her mind filling up the silence between them as she wonders, Do I trust him, or do I not? Grabbing her by both elbows, he leans toward her and pushes his lips roughly against hers. Under his touch she is stiff and unyielding, and he takes a step forward and presses harder against her. The urge to crush the fine bones of her clavicle, to press into her with his thumbs until she cries out, is overwhelming. The stupid Rollei is in the way, and he yanks it from her shoulder and throws it to the ground.
“My camera!” she says, falling to her knees on the wooden boardwalk and cradling it in her palms.
As though facing the blistering heat of a flame, he turns away from her. This time he saw it in her eyes: pity. “That stupid thing,” he mutters. “You’re wasting your time with that.”
How can he explain what he wants from her? It is not complicated. He wants her respect. Her love. He wants not just her physical presence next to him but her soul.
15
In the bluish dusk, a small group makes its way toward the local elementary school to attend a Russian “friendship performance” in celebration of the harvest. Bettina is with her neighbor Irmgard Bandelow and two children who have been assigned to live with her. The older girl, Alma, is an orphan, and the younger one’s mother is in an institution in Dresden. Alma walks alongside them, humming a tune to herself. In a dull black leather case, she carries a violin, which she swings back and forth. She wears a bright-blue Young Pioneer uniform, with the emblem of the rising sun sewn on the left sleeve. She is a single-minded girl, engaging in conversation only to discuss schoolwork or a simplified version of Communist political theory. At nine years old the little one, Elise, is doughy from eating too much starch, and she lags behind the three of them.
Hanging over the school’s doors, a red felt banner proclaims: Für’s Vaterland ist keine Pflicht zu schwer, kein Opfer ist zu groß für’s Vaterland!
Irmgard arches her light brows. Her face is square, with wide-set eyes and a mouth that even when straight always makes her look a bit like she is smiling. “No duty is too difficult, no sacrifice too great for the fatherland?” she parrots. “Sounds just like the old days to me.”
Alma overhears and pokes Irmgard in the back with the violin case. “Hush,” she says. “That’s disrespectful!”
“You don’t remember the war,” Bettina says, taking Alma’s hand in hers. “If you did, declarations like that might make you uneasy too.”
The child snatches her hand away. Her freckled face flushed in annoyance, she heads for a group of blue shirts huddled by the swinging doors. Little Elise slips her sweaty hand into Bettina’s and pipes up, “I remember the war!”
“Of course you do,” says Bettina. “But there’s peace now, right? Nothing more to worry about.”
Dark beer and Russian vodka are being served on long wooden tables in the hallway of the school building, and the mood is already somewhat raucous. It’s common for high-grade spirits to be given to factory workers—a production incentive, according to Werner—and there’s often free Russian vodka at cultural events. Irmgard heads for the table, downing one glass quickly and bringing two more to where Bettina stands with Elise. Her white-blonde hair has been carefully curled in large rolls that run along either side of her face and above her forehead, and the men in the room are casting her sidelong glances. Her shoulders are broad, her hands large and chapped, and until now it has not occurred to Bettina that her neighbor is beautiful.
Bettina takes a quick, deep slug from the glass. The vodka tastes of fresh wind and salty seas. It is not quite cold enough, but it burns her throat pleasantly as it goes down. Alma has gone off with her friends. They inch their way into the large hall, which is filled almost to capacity. A phonograph plays Russian marching music, and East German soldiers in khaki uniforms with braided epaulets and hammer and sickle medals pinned onto the lapels stand in a loose group, chatting among themselves.
The lights dim and then blast back on; the spectacle begins. Elise sits on Bettina’s lap at the back, writhing in excitement. When the Russians sing together, their embroidered shirts bright under the stage lights, their voices weave in and out in multiple harmonies that are tender and rousing. I
t stirs Bettina’s heart in a way that makes her vulnerable to hope. They strum balalaikas and tug at accordions; one man makes a harmonica sing with reedy, drawn-out notes. The audience quiets down, and Elise stops her squirming as a hulking Russian officer, well known around town for his spectacularly mean wife, steps onstage and adds his sonorous voice to the refrain.
When the musicians pause, a deep silence fills the room, followed by a sharp intake of breath, and as the singers exit the stage, thrilled whispers swirl amid the audience: “How could it be?” “Singing like innocents!” “Just imagine, those brutes, so refined!”
At the end of the performance, the school chorus marches in single file onto the stage to sing the national anthem of the DDR. The children wear their blue uniforms and stand in perfect formation, heads high and low, dark and light, hands clasped behind their backs. Alma stands in the front row, braids white under the spotlight, her face pinched with conviction. She raises the battered violin to her shoulder and begins her thin sawing.
Let us plow and build our nation,
Learn and work as never yet,
That a free new generation,
Faith in its own strength beget!
German youth, for whom the striving
Of our people is at one,
You are Germany’s reviving,
And over our Germany,
There is shining sun;
There is shining sun.
The anthem is plain, with no complexity to its sound or rhythm, and it leaves behind a sense of unease that lingers like bad breath. Standing facing the children is a tall man in a shabby suit whose long arms motion up and down in time to the music. His back is narrow, but his shoulders strain at a dark jacket stitched together out of inexpensive materials. When he turns around to take a little bow at the end of the last verse, Bettina gasps: it is the beach man, cleaned up and hatless, looking almost nothing like the man she bumped into the previous year at the Bobbin church.
“Elise?” Bettina whispers into the warm circle of the little girl’s ear. “That man. Do you know who that is?”
This Terrible Beauty: A Novel Page 10