This Terrible Beauty: A Novel

by Katrin Schumann

  Bettina fiddled with the collar of her shirt. Over her lifetime she had learned all about being patient. There was nothing to be gained by railing against reality. In her lap, she held Peter’s book, and from time to time she leafed through it to read the sections she had underlined.

  Hannes knew that death is not always recognizable. “There is death in life,” Rilke wrote in 1907, “and it astonishes me that we pretend to ignore this: death, whose unforgiving presence we experience with each change we survive because we must learn to die slowly. We must learn to die: That is all of life.” Hannes hauled the bag over his shoulder: He would not do this. He would not live as though already dead. What was the point?

  Each memory, a gem of limitless value. The light of which illuminated not only the sadness but the unending goodness too.

  “There is beauty in sorrow,” the man said to Isadore, but then he laughed, a braying so obnoxious that the ticket taker cast him a suspicious look. “I’m sorry,” he added, “we’re all doing the very best we can, aren’t we?”

  A slow sharpening, a darkening of shapes, coming into perspective: figures in the distance, crosscut by steel girders and a tall iron fence that closed off the mouth of the bridge. The two policemen lurched forward simultaneously. One of them grabbed binoculars.

  “Is it him?” the other one asked.

  “I don’t know,” his partner said.

  “I’ve got to get out,” Bettina hissed, yanking at the door. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Stay here,” the one with the binoculars ordered sharply. “Do nothing! No surprises.”

  They sat, the three of them, bodies tensed and compelled toward the bridge but held in place by doubt. Bettina took the binoculars and peered through them.

  Was it him?

  A man walking, wearing a black anorak that swallowed his upper body. His gait uneven but determined. He walked alone, arms stiff at his sides. In one hand he carried a small bag.

  He was close now—so close she could see the light hair darkened at the sides, the pallor that radiated from his skin. The pull of disbelief tugging on his features. His eyes scanned ahead frantically, his head moving a little from side to side.

  It was him. It was Peter.

  Guards in uniform and an official in a black suit clustered at the gate, and then it swung open, and Peter Brenner walked through. The time it took for him to confer with the men, to look up and past them to her vehicle, and, finally, to disengage and make his way toward her was the time it had taken her to live her entire life.

  She climbed out and took a step toward him. He stopped and furrowed pale brows. Raising a hand to her dyed hair, she frowned a little. Of course she didn’t look like herself. “It’s just a bad haircut,” she said.

  His stunned smile stripped away the years and made it seem as though she might be able to bear a lifetime without her child. He was very slender, and there was no strength in his embrace. But in a way nothing had changed—the smell of his skin was familiar; the sound of his voice saying her name made her want to weep.

  “Bettina, Bettina . . . ,” he said again and again, as though testing the taste of it on his tongue.

  Reaching for her hand, he pressed her fingers hard against his mouth. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “How is this possible? What are you doing here?”

  His face was gaunt, his neck too long now that his graying hair was short, but the eyes were dark and full of life. He looked skittishly at the others pressing around them now, their voices loud and intrusive. She caught the fear in his gaze and saw his mouth turn down; she knew he was remembering Rügen, the beaches and the ocean, the life he had led, and wondering what was to come now. This happened to her sometimes: She’d catch a whiff of sea air and think of her fish shop, the old wood that gleamed like a woman’s freshly brushed hair, the wide white beaches. And then her mind would turn to the fish factory, and she’d hear the terrific screech of the machines, the fuzzy pop of the loudspeakers readying for an announcement, and she would know that that life was over—and good riddance to it.

  They would talk. She would share with him the impossible ideas that might now be possible, the life they might have together. Perhaps his book would be published in America; he could write, and she could take pictures, and what a formidable team they would make! If she took the job with Time, if they moved to New York City . . . but she saw his skittish eyes on the others, the tension in his jaw.

  They embraced, clinging to one another as though only now understanding this was real. “I saw her,” Bettina murmured into his shoulder. “I saw Annaliese.”

  They held still in each other’s arms.

  “I think she’s happy.”

  The silence between them was filled with all they had not said to each other in the past decade. They would have to find their way toward each other one word at a time.

  “Last week, he came to see me. Werner,” Peter whispered back to her.

  His voice had not changed, but he talked haltingly, and she held her breath for fear of saying something wrong. She was perplexed: last week? “He . . . you saw him? When?”

  “A week ago, maybe more. He said he hadn’t been aware, you know. That I was in prison.”

  She pulled away slightly. “Do you believe him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Did it matter? She pressed her lips together, and a rush of something hot and light went through her, something like joy or relief. Something that released a deadening tension in her chest, made her want to laugh. “I read your book,” she said. “You must keep writing, Peter.”

  After a moment she stepped back and took his hand in hers. She was calmer now. Peter’s single traveling bag was placed in the trunk of the vehicle. It contained everything he owned, and it was almost empty.

  They settled into the back seat, leaning against each other. The trip to her hotel seemed monstrously long, and they were silent. She thought of Apolonienmarkt, the Pfarrhaus, the summer meadows—all the places where they’d stolen time to be together. As the car pulled off the main road, the city streets became choked with people heading to work. They stopped at a traffic light. Bettina rolled down the window to peer out, and Peter leaned over as far as he could toward the fresh air and breathed in deeply. A quivering halo of fresh sunlight hovered over everything.

  As they gazed out the open window, his body pressing into hers from behind, Peter brought his hand around her shoulder and slipped it into the collar of her cotton shirt. The air coming in from outside was cool, but his hand against her skin was hot. With this one gesture he reclaimed their right to happiness.

  EPILOGUE

  Radical Changes in East German Academia

  Brightest Stars Allowed to Study Abroad

  By the Associated Press

  January 21, 1977

  New York, NY—In an unprecedented move, the repressive regime of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is allowing young academics to study abroad.

  Minister of Education Helga Labs indicated Friday that the country is granting special visas and scholarships to four outstanding science students seeking advanced degrees.

  Herman Gutig, 25, from Leipzig, will complete postgraduate research in biomedical sciences at the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, England.

  Jan Kleboviz, 26, from Dresden, will pursue a PhD in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

  Annaliese Nietz, 23, from East Berlin, will begin PhD studies in environmental engineering at Columbia University, New York City, NY.

  Käthe Mann, 28, from Schwerin, will complete a dual international masters in mathematical informatics at University Cathleen de l’Ouest, France.

  Previously, East German athletes have been granted permission to travel outside the GDR’s borders to attend special events. This is the first time East German students will be allowed to live abroad for extended periods of time.

  “These young stars will return with the latest tools to help strengthe
n our fine homeland,” Labs said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My family left Germany when I was two years old. It’s often the case that children reject their parents’ influence, especially in families that straddle different cultures, and I’m so grateful for the patience and commitment my father and mother, Peter and Occu Schumann, modeled for me. German school on Saturdays; transcontinental drives from London to Freiburg; lengthy, vigorous hikes; frequent nudity (without embarrassment!); punctuality—I resisted all of it, and yet it made me who I am and drove me to build a life with stories at its center. Thank you for sharing what it meant to live through your extraordinary experiences. Thank you for taking me to Rügen.

  Much gratitude also to my aunt Jane Laack, ninety-four years old and strong as ever, whose deep love of the island is infectious—and whose stories would make your hair curl. My German relatives, including Herbert and Gerda Fritz, not only helped fire my imagination but endlessly impressed me with their fortitude and sense of adventure.

  Eve Bridburg, executive director of GrubStreet: I’ll never forget the day you called to say that against your better judgement (you were inundated with work), you’d read the first few pages and just had to know what happened. I’m so grateful that you believed in my ability to tell this story—it’s what gave me the energy to keep at it.

  Thank you to Erin Harris, my incredible agent, who continues to surprise and delight me with her attention to detail, commitment, and know-how. She is both a dreamer and a doer. Huge thanks to Jodi Warshaw and the team at Lake Union, who took a gamble with this story. Your enthusiasm for the characters and the time period is gratifying. Tiffany Yates Martin encouraged me not to shy away from pivotal turning points, gently and assuredly helping me deepen the book. I am grateful to David Drummond who—twice now—has designed the most compelling and beautiful cover an author could dream of.

  Kathleen Buckstaff: How can I ever thank you sufficiently? Whenever I worried whether this story would move readers the way I hoped it might, all I had to do was think of your ten-minute-long voice mail, that unbridled outpouring of support, your absolute certainty that this story was worth telling.

  In the early days before I found my GrubStreet community, I was lucky enough to have a few generous and insightful readers who are themselves gifted writers: Hugh Kennedy, Billie Fitzpatrick, and Erica Ferencik—thank you for the hours you’ve spent with these characters. Tom Jenks and David Colson pushed me to keep trying to get it right. My dear friend Kristi Perry provided moral and creative support, as well as good laughs—thank you! Jennifer de Poyen, Christiane Alsop, Anne Marie Welsh, Jennifer Perini, Susan and John Howard, Amy Beckwith, and Lynne Griffin were astute and insightful readers, and I’m immensely grateful to them.

  Once again I’ve been so heartened by the generosity of authors who took the time to help me. Warm thanks to these novelists who, despite touring with bestselling books; teaching; and managing pregnancies, summer vacations, and deadlines, supported This Terrible Beauty: Rachel Barenbaum, Jillian Cantor, Christopher Castellani, Eoin Dempsey, Erica Ferencik, Olivia Hawker, and Maria Hummel.

  I wrote much of this novel in the Writers’ Room of Boston. What an amazing resource: a quiet place to work full of dedicated, talented people. Also, many thanks to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Hemingway House in Hull, Massachusetts, where I toiled on rewrites in a magical setting.

  During the many years of researching this book, I was inspired and informed by writers, historians, and filmmakers too numerous to thank here. Please see my website (www.katrinschumann.com) for a more detailed list of the talented people who fueled my work—from novelists such as Bernhard Schlink (The Reader), Jenna Blum (Those Who Save Us), and Eugen Ruge (In Times of Fading Light), to nonfiction writers such as Anna Funder (Stasiland), Jana Hensel (After the Wall), Timothy Garton Ash (The File), and Joel Agee (Twelve Years), to directors of movies such as Good Bye, Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker) and The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), to researchers at the German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College, to name just a few.

  I was lucky enough to have teachers whose impact on me was profound and lasting, especially Dr. Richard Cooper from Brasenose College, Oxford, who filled me with enthusiasm for beautiful words, romance, and history, and Penelope Nelson, my fifth-grade teacher from PS8 in Brooklyn, whose enthusiastic encouragement to be true to myself stuck with me as I was trying to figure out where I belonged after leaving America when I was eleven.

  And where would I be now if it weren’t for my partner in crime, Kevin O’Marah? You make everything possible. You listen hard; what a precious gift. Your steadfast belief in me fuels my work and my life. Ubuntu, my love.

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  Do you think this book is more a love story or a political one? In what ways do the public and private angles play off each other?

  The novel’s title, This Terrible Beauty, is from a line in William Butler Yeats’s poem “Easter 1916,” which is about the steep price people pay in their brutal yet valiant battle for independence. How do you think this connects with East Germany’s struggle to define itself after Hitler? In what ways do you think it might also apply to Bettina’s personal troubles?

  In this story, we follow closely as Bettina and Werner try to rebuild their lives after the devastation of World War II. Are these two lost souls good for each other, or do they hold each other back?

  We are told that Irmgard Bandelow scraped off the swastika from her husband’s gravestone at the end of the war. What do you think about punishing people for the crimes of their country? Should soldiers like Peter Brenner ever be forgiven for their actions?

  What does the fact that Werner is threatened by Bettina’s photography say about men of that era in general and about Werner in particular? Do you find it frustrating or understandable that Bettina capitulates, given how independent she was as a teenager?

  What do you think it is about Peter that is so irresistible to Bettina? Is there any justification for what she does?

  Many characters in This Terrible Beauty have an appreciation for art: the Heilstrom family loves to read the classics, Werner is drawn to books, Peter writes, and Bettina ends up becoming a successful photographer. Why are people in all different circumstances drawn to creating art? Do you think creative acts can have political impact?

  Bettina, Werner, and Peter all embrace Communism. Each has different reasons for being drawn to this system, politically and philosophically. What are those reasons, and how do they reflect on their characters?

  Are there any points in this book where you feel sympathy for Werner? If so, when and why?

  Bettina is deeply tied to the place of her birth, Rügen. How do you think life on the island shaped her personality—and how did world history shape her? After ten years in America, she still feels like an outsider. Do you think this experience is true of all immigrants, or is it particular to Bettina?

  The two male protagonists—Werner and Peter—both change significantly over the course of the novel. How do they change, and is it for the better or worse?

  In the 1960s, America was experiencing race riots, assassinations, and the escalation of the Vietnam War. How does this contrast with what was happening in East Germany?

  Do you think Bettina is right about her decision in the end, regarding Annaliese? Is it true that family is what a child really needs, above and beyond anything else?

  Imagine the story continuing after the last chapter. What do you think the newspaper article suggests about what might happen to Bettina’s family?

  If you read Katrin Schumann’s first book, The Forgotten Hours, you might think these novels are very different. But the author sees a strong connecting thread between the two stories. Can you identify it?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Katrin Schumann is the author of the Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller The Forgotten Hours. Born in Freiburg, Germany, she lives in Boston and Key West. She is the program coo
rdinator for the Key West Literary Seminar, teaches at GrubStreet in Boston, and was an instructor in PEN’s Prison Writing Program. Katrin has been granted numerous fiction residencies and is the author of several nonfiction books. Her work has been featured on Today and Talk of the Nation and in the London Times, among others. She studied languages at Oxford and journalism at Stanford. For more information and to sign up for her newsletter, go to www.katrinschumann.com.