This Terrible Beauty: A Novel

by Katrin Schumann

  Change came so quickly, George always complained; it was happening when people weren’t even looking. No one had taken the time to document how these neighborhoods cycled through different cultures, swapping Italian for Czech, white for black. He was thinking of a spread he might be able to place in the Sunday Metro section, and he wanted to be prepared. All the while, Bettina was distracted as she worked. Each scene she composed in the frame of her camera became a jumping-off place to imagine what could be happening in her homeland. She wondered how much things had changed in Rügen in the past decade. Would it even be recognizable anymore? Roaming the streets of Chicago, she imagined smelling the salty breeze, watching the endless sea shift and splinter in the August sunlight. She found herself thinking about the beach in Saargen as Clara headed off, the many goodbyes she’d said and the goodbyes she hadn’t been allowed to say. The years she’d spent in this country trying to forget what she’d left behind became compressed into a shred of time, into nothing; they vanished as the memories rushed back in.

  And Herbert’s attempted kiss—his misplaced affection had reignited a painful longing in her. As she sat on a bench at the bus stop after work one day waiting for the Number 42 to take her home, she studied a Buick Skylark parked in front of Sam’s Bar. It was the pale turquoise of shallow ocean waters, its long trunk sloping like an animal preparing either to sit or to spring upward, and Bettina stared at it, mesmerized: it reminded her of the Tatra they had driven for a few years after Werner’s big promotion. She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten o’clock, and the sky was heavy with heat and summer dust and darkness; she was very tired. As she watched patrons go in and out of the bar, trying to imagine what these strangers were thinking, what their dreams could be, she felt unknown and unknowable. She had made so many false starts; could she still change and find a way to try again?

  She didn’t want to go back to her empty apartment. Rising, she made up her mind: she would take a cab home later. Inside Sam’s Bar a flattering semidarkness camouflaged tired faces. Over the years she had come here a few times when she craved the company of people who had no expectations of her. Bettina was out of place, but she didn’t care. Her hair was piled on her head in a french twist held together with two long pins. In her jeans and men’s shirt, she felt almost young again. “Martini, please,” she said, finding an empty barstool and nodding at the bartender.

  “Gin or vodka?”

  She rubbed at her eyes. “Gin.” The man sitting next to her wore a dark jacket and a wide beige tie, his face like a clenched fist. As soon as she sat down, he smiled at her, but she rebuffed him, turning her body away. She had tried being with men a few times since coming to America, and it was always a disaster. Craving the touch of a man’s rough skin, the press of his bones against her, was never enough to make the reality of a stranger’s ministrations bearable. It was safer for her to lose herself in solitude.

  A large black-and-white television hung at an angle above the counter, showing images of firebombings in Vietnam. Burning children, eyes and mouths distorted, running into the jungle. A mass of protestors somewhere in America—screaming, angry faces turned up at the camera and framed by long, disheveled hair.

  “Man, is this country ever going to the shit house,” the bartender murmured. He wore his thinning hair in a buzz cut, and his nails were blunt like corn chips. “President gets shot, women and negroes in an uproar. Fucking insanity.” He filled a shaker with ice and added gin. When he shook the drink, the ropy muscles of his arms pulsed.

  “There’s upheaval all over,” Bettina said. “Europe too. You know, there’s a wall now that divides my country in two. They built it, what, four years ago? It’s to keep people in, not to keep them out.”

  The man nodded absently. “Those kids, the ones protesting? Plain spoiled rotten. Go fight the war, and get it the hell over with. Who else is gonna do it?”

  “Do you mind?” she asked, nodding down at her camera.

  The bartender waved a hand toward her dismissively, pushed the drink in her direction, and started chopping limes. “It’s just, disagreements don’t fix themselves. Someone’s gotta get out there and do the dirty business of fighting for what’s right.”

  Bettina clicked the aperture open as far as it would go and held the Rollei steady at counter height. Sometimes, in low light, she could capture a kind of rawness through extremely low exposure. Faces were bleached out, ghostly, and the darkness of the surroundings served to conjure up something otherworldly, but whether it was ominous or inviting, she could never tell until she was in the darkroom with her chemicals, in control of the narrative. She wound through ten pictures this way, listening, and when the man next to her in the beige tie asked her if she wanted another martini, she said yes, she did.

  27

  Rügen

  Winter 1953

  Sweat breaks out on her upper lip and tickles her skin. It feels as though small insects are crawling around her mouth. Then the pain comes again, the pressure on her abdomen, between her legs, and stars explode in front of her eyes. The urge to push and release the pressure overwhelms her.

  “Bitte, Frau Nietz!” Doktor Kreefeld says sternly. “Lie down, and try to relax. It’s not time for this baby to come yet. We’ll get you in a room and take a look, yes?”

  The high ceilings of the hallways, the darkness of the old elevator as it cranks its way up to labor and delivery, the antiseptic smell of the examination room—these things register faintly with Bettina as she is wheeled through the hospital on a stretcher. Nurse Schmitt, with her full, soft face, her mouth drawn in tight like stitches, tries to comfort her with pats on the shoulder, but everyone knows the baby will be dead. It will be dead; it is fated.

  Yesterday it stopped moving, and then today this terrible pain. It is only February, and she has two months left to go before she is due. Werner is solicitous, then angry, worried that she will fail to deliver him a healthy child. And Peter—she has been without him for months and months already! Though so full with child she might burst out of her skin, she is also as hollowed out as she has ever been. Bettina fears that she cannot bring a healthy child onto this earth. And even if she does, she is certain that it will be puny and sickly, fatherless—for having one father who has been betrayed and unloved and another who is invisible is surely as good as having no father at all, is it not?

  On the gurney she is turned and pulled and pushed, then moved onto a bed. She keeps crying out, hoping someone will understand her and know what she should do. A cool, soft hand comes to rest on the side of her face, and she opens her eyes.

  It is Doktor Kreefeld. “Frau Nietz,” he says, his face close to hers and his voice calm and low. His scars protrude from the skin of his sagging cheeks, two ancient vertical lines from the tip of a sword. “Stop this nonsense. You will have a beautiful baby, and not today, if I can help it. You will see. All will turn out for the best. Now let’s find out what’s going on here.”

  Hot tears snake into her ears. “You don’t understand! I don’t think . . . this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “But I do, child; I understand. Babies have a way of distilling complicated matters into something crystal clear. What you are afraid of now will disappear once you hold this baby in your arms. Try to relax.” He pulls on a pair of gloves and lifts the sheet that covers her belly. “There is no greater love than that between a mother and her child, no matter what the circumstances.”

  He doesn’t understand; of course he can’t. As the pain comes again, Bettina turns her face away from Nurse Schmitt’s curious gaze. Bettina is invisible to everyone, even though she is right here, the violent reality of her body unavoidable.

  After a week of daily hospital visits, Werner returns to his desk in Bergen, assured by Doktor Kreefeld that his presence will make no difference to the chances of averting a premature birth. What a great relief to be out of that hospital, with its nurses staring at him as though he is somehow to blame for this disaster, and the smell—the
cloying smell of misery and illness with which he is so familiar from his youth, when he was encased first in the iron lungs and then in the leg braces, year in and year out, until he could walk again. So he visits on Saturday afternoons and Wednesdays and on other days establishes a routine for himself in the cottage.

  Two weeks later he receives the phone call: the baby is coming. At the edge of Apolonienmarkt, their new car is parked: a Tatra 600 from Czechoslovakia presented to him some months earlier. It is the gray of a warplane, aerodynamic—bulbous, you might say—with a strangely curved back end and rear-mounted engine. This model caused so many crashes before and during the war that it earned the nickname killing machine, but never mind that business; owning it is an astonishing testament to his rise in status. He drives it rather ponderously, but then his feet are too quick on the brakes. All eyes are on him as he passes through Saargen and enters the open road to Bergen. En route he passes the bus and wonders whether he will ever take public transport again. Certainly he will avoid riding his bike.

  His mouth is dry like a cracker, his eyes peeled and watching the road unfurl. The baby is coming, and he will be a father at last—his luck is simply too good to be true.

  Werner arrives too late for the birth. The doctor tells him that he’s now the father of a healthy girl and that Bettina is doing fine.

  “But Herr Nietz, I’m afraid there’s more,” Doktor Kreefeld continues. They are standing side by side in the wood-paneled corridor of the hospital, outside the room in which Bettina sleeps with the other maternity patients. Metal wheels screech, bumping over the uneven tiles, accompanied by a constant, rhythmic clacking of footsteps. “We have some bad news as well. We were surprised by something we had not anticipated—there, uh, I’m afraid there were twins.”

  The baby boy was born dead, the doctor explains, so underdeveloped that he was still entirely covered in fetal hair. He believes the child was probably dead for a few weeks already, which might explain why Bettina was feeling so poorly.

  “For God’s sake, man, how could this sort of thing be missed?”

  The nurses disposed of the body, and for this Werner is grateful; he does not ask where or how. He does not want to see this small dead thing that lived and died in ignorance, without love. In his mind he imagines the child would have had black hair like his father’s and an irregular smile like his wife’s. So she had been right, Bettina: a baby was delivered dead just as she had predicted. What did it mean, this life snatched away from them, a life that would have made them an instant family of four? He decides there and then that he will never again consider the fact that it was the boy who died; he will celebrate his daughter’s life in the way she deserves and never cast her in the shadow of the brother who is gone.

  It’s a girl, he says to himself, a daughter! A child who will slip her hand into his and listen to his stories and put thin arms around his neck at night before she falls asleep. A girl who will become a woman someday, striking and powerful like her mother, able to win men’s hearts and keep a family alive.

  “It’s a miracle the female fetus survived,” the doctor is saying. “In my forty years of practice, I have never witnessed something like this. Your wife, she was average size, perhaps a few centimeters larger than usual, but really . . . nothing to raise suspicions. There is no history in either family of twins, so as you may imagine, there was no indication of multiple fetuses. But Herr Nietz, consider this a blessing. This second child has an excellent chance of survival. She’s quite small but, as far as we can tell right now, perfectly healthy.”

  “I must see Bettina,” Werner says. “May I?”

  “By all means. She is resting in here.” The doctor indicates the maternity ward. “And if you wish to see the surviving infant, she is in the nursery on the third floor. But I should warn you, Herr Nietz, women, they sometimes suffer after birth. Not physically, you understand, but mentally. You must be prepared, ja?”

  “Of course I am prepared,” Werner says, turning away from the man and carefully folding up his annoyance as though it were a soiled napkin.

  Bettina is fast asleep, her hair on the pillow like a tangle of reeds. Her skin is gray with two alarming patches of red on both her cheekbones. Nine other cots surround her bed, each filled with a woman who has recently given birth: some hold infants, others sleep, and a redheaded one stares with tired eyes at the walls. It is a glorious sight, so many fertile women, so many mothers who will raise their children to be good citizens. Once they are out of this room and back in their homes, these women and children will form part of the new wave that pushes this country into modernity. It’s odd to feel much joy in this joyless room that smells of something metallic and cold—blood, perhaps?—but it courses through him, making it hard for him to remain calm.

  The sheets are pressed flat and pulled up tightly over Bettina’s chest. The mound of her belly is still visible. Werner goes to the side of the bed and studies his wife’s face. In her expression he sees nothing of her customary defiance—which he both loves and despises. Instead there is a slackness born of exhaustion. To create a human being inside your own body is a trick of magic so commonplace yet also miraculous. What must it feel like to have this life pulsing in your womb, to feel the tiny feet kicking at your organs? Placing his hand on her stomach, he presses down gently; under his fingers, it is as soft as a pillow. Bettina does not stir.

  In the downstairs nursery are nine babies wrapped tightly in blankets inside identical wooden cribs, only their wizened faces peering out. A young nurse takes Werner to one of the cots: NIETZ, MÄDCHEN. So she has not yet been named. The child is no bigger than a doll and, having managed to extract an arm from her blanket, sucks furiously on a tiny balled fist. She has an oblong head of long, silky black hair. Purple faced, with this mass of dark hair, she is not the least bit attractive.

  “They lose the hair and begin to look like humans after a few days,” the nurse says. “She’s a little fighter, this one; don’t you worry. She’ll pull through.”

  They will name her Annaliese, Werner decides, after a favorite aunt who used to massage his legs for him when his mother had tired of her nursing duties. Annaliese will be a strapping child, with strong, healthy legs and an athletic build, a girl who will bring her mother and father closer. This child will teach Werner to be more patient, to learn how to give Bettina time so she can grow into her role as mother.

  Werner’s heart is so full it hurts, and he turns his back on the nurse so that she cannot see the agony of joy on his face.

  28

  In Bergen some months later, Werner is staring out the row of front-facing windows toward the street below, where an early-summer rain has drenched passersby. He has recently shifted responsibilities once again and now works under the Directorate for the Protection of Public Property and Democratic Order. On the occasion of this advancement, Bieder and another associate had presented him with another new plaque for his desk, as well as—to his great surprise—a small gun called a Pistole M. It’s a copy of a Russian Makarov, all black, modern looking compared to the wooden-handled pistols he used to see strapped to the hips of the Volkspolizei. Stamped with a J2211 on the left, it takes nine-millimeter cartridges, and when he shot it at the range near Prora, he’d found it easy to control, compact, and sleek.

  A few years ago he’d approved budgets for arming the MfS and hadn’t given them all that much thought; in peacetime as in war, appropriate armaments are a necessary part of proving power. But the idea of Werner ever shooting an actual human being—laughable! It was true that now that the whole town knew about what he’d done during the bombing, he’d occasionally found himself embroidering the story about the soldier he killed (and had stopped himself in embarrassment), but was it really so bad to feel some pride in it? He had, after all, shown bravery in that moment. Now knowing this snug pistol lies in the drawer of his desk gives him a jolt of satisfaction. He need never again be at the mercy of idiots like those Nazi soldiers who ridiculed him for not f
ighting. And not insignificantly, this means his work is valued, that he’s finally put to bed any doubts about him that might have lingered after Clara and Herbert failed to return from their holiday. It had been a stain on his reputation; that stupid woman put his job in jeopardy, but he’s overcome that hurdle.

  He has just finished an audit of several of Rügen’s largest towns, and though he is reasonably satisfied with his work, he is beset with a feeling of unease. If he’s honest, the real reason he stays so late every day isn’t because of his workload; it’s the insufferable atmosphere at home. The baby seems to drain all energy from his wife; she has not reacted to the arrival of this child in the way Werner had hoped. Perhaps she is mourning the death of the baby boy. It is as though he does not know Bettina at all anymore. She rebuffs him every time he reaches for her, and he accepts this as an unfortunate byproduct of the difficult birth. But her demeanor, her physical appearance, and even her voice have changed; often she doesn’t seem fully present as she wanders through the house, tending to Annaliese or preparing dinner. Sometimes Werner has to repeat himself two, three times before she hears him and responds. She never even attends church anymore, and that he finds most odd. Last year she was more than willing to trek all the way over to Bobbin, but now when she’s not working, she just sits around the house all day.

  He considers going home early and trying to persuade her to open a bottle of wine and drink it with him so they can relax a bit. Perhaps they can just talk again or read some Rilke together. But then he imagines her sour face, the almost imperceptible way she recoils when he is near her. Can’t she just pull herself together? Is it so very hard to be a decent wife and a mother?

  He slips his reading glasses back on; he’ll tackle another file rather than head home just yet. As soon as he has some free time, he will go talk with their neighbor, Irmgard Bandelow. See if she can’t keep an eye on Bettina and try to get her outside in the fresh air more. Perhaps all his wife needs is some resolute direction from another woman, one who has gone through her fair share of upheaval and seems to have come through it all with her spirit intact. Clearly, she’s a decent person, and she did take in those two young girls, Alma and Elise. It appears she knows something about being a mother, even though she never had children of her own.