The Twins Read online

  Restless and self-reproaching, she wrestled on that double trail all through the winter, that pushed drifts of snow against the house and deposited a crow at the top of the steps, frozen to death, so that Hannelore, one of the maids, saw it as a bad omen, on finding it in the morning, after which the washerwoman warned her that superstition brought bad luck, and Anna, forgetting everything for a while, had to laugh at this rare form of recursive superstition. The past revisited Anna for the second time without her having intended it to. Hannelore, eighteen years old, recently extracted from Lower Saxony by the Countess, had been placed under Anna’s care since her arrival. The girl boldly announced that she was going dancing at the casino on Sunday afternoon. ‘You can’t permit her to go,’ said Frau von Garlitz, ‘unless you go too.’

  The casino seemed to be flirting with the new socialism. The walls no longer shut her out; the doors with the copper handles stood wide open. She wore a Marian blue dress; red silk shimmered though the skirt; her employer’s perfume still wafted out from the material. Anna handed the tickets in with a chaperon’s characteristic lack of enthusiasm. Thus she gained entrance to her own hall. The field of marble, the leapfrog square, the hide-and-seek pillars, the high dome where the songs collected … the marble staircase where she had fallen over … everything was still there … Somewhere she must, they must still be there … behind the pillars, in the passages … clouds of condensed breath rose up into the dome. Hannelore disappeared in the foyer. There were the sofas – Anna’s trampolines. She heard a deep rushing silence through the hum of voices, through the dance music, through the clapping and tapping of heels on the dance floor inside. Hannelore had saved places, wine was ordered and gone was Hannelore. Anna caught a glimpse of her now and then, waltzing round in the arms of a soldier whose shaved, thick-set neck kept coming back into view. The Westwall seemed to have been emptied; the cat-and-mouse war had transferred to the casino foyer on this Sunday afternoon in April.

  She drank her wine without tasting it and looked ahead of her fixedly – all of a sudden somebody placed himself between her and her memories. ‘May I have the pleasure …?’ She stood up dejectedly and allowed herself to be led to the dance floor. ‘Was machst du mit dem Knie, lieber Hans’ seemed like something from a former life. The soldier carried himself impeccably. She stared at the silver V on his sleeve with a vacant gaze. After the dance ended he returned her to her seat. Just as she was going to sit down a new number started up; he nodded briefly and invited her again. The images slowly ebbed away during the second dance, which was more compelling than the previous one; she now perceived this soldier clearly. His face seemed remarkably trustworthy to her – it was more the face of a person than a soldier, she reasoned, without interest.

  She moved her gaze away and discovered a large framed photograph of the Norwegian fjords on the wall. Were conquests already being flaunted? ‘They are suitably topical with their wall decorations here,’ she said gruffly. ‘It might also have been the bridges over the Moldau,’ he added. His accent surprised her. ‘You are an Ostmarker …’ ‘Austrian,’ he corrected her with a courteous nod. ‘But they are all soldiers out of operettas with red roses in their rifles instead of bullets.’ His face set. ‘Not much to laugh or sing about in Czechoslovakia.’ ‘Being a soldier is not your vocation, so it sounds.’ ‘I was called up,’ he smiled, ‘I’d a thousand times rather be at home in Vienna … with roses in my rifle.’ He spoke so melodiously that it seemed as though everything he said was in jest. Holding her more tightly, he began to describe passionate circles over the dance floor. When the number was over he brought her back ceremoniously – a pattern that kept repeating itself, as soon as the orchestra started on a new number he raced across the parquet floor again and stood before her. At about half-past eleven he excused himself. He had to be back in the barracks by twelve. ‘May I see you again?’ he asked. ‘Excuse me, I haven’t introduced myself: Martin Grosalie.’ ‘You can telephone me,’ she said flatly, ‘number fifty-two thousand.’ ‘Are you serious?’ He looked uncertainly at her. ‘Why?’ ‘It is such an improbable number.’ ‘You don’t really think I’m imagining it,’ she said annoyed. Blushing, he leant forward to kiss her hand. ‘Ich küsse Ihre Hand madame,’ said Anna ironically, pulling her hand away from beneath his lips.

  The soldier was not deterred. He telephoned two days later. No argument instantly occurred to her to refute the request for a meeting. They met in a café on the Alter Markt; it was raining incessantly. A feeling of alienation, shame, overcame her as they sat opposite one another without the dance’s option of escaping. But with the bravura of a schoolboy he took upon himself full responsibility for the meeting. He described Vienna to her, Schönbrunn, the Nashmarkt, the Prater, the house where Schubert was born, the house where Mozart lived, the house where Haydn died. The survey reviewed all the sights; he recreated his city and strolled through it with her, pointing everything out on the way, lively, enthusiastic – not in order to win her over but to put something else at a distance, something that was increasingly present in the background and was biding its time. Anna too, who thought she had nothing to do with it, felt it was there. Yet it still broke through unexpectedly. ‘And now we’re here,’ he sighed, ‘opposite the French, with all that equipment, and they are opposite us. Why? I hope that joke is over soon, then we can all go home again.’

  Other meetings followed. He collected her from the house; everyone called him a nice, polite boy, which needled her. She harassed the nice polite boy with teasing, which he openly enjoyed – she poked fun at his accent, his courtesy, at Austria. One evening there was a dancing party at the Stadthalle. When it was drawing to a close Anna dragged him towards the exit. ‘Come, it’s over.’ ‘No, no, they’re playing a couple more numbers,’ he implored her. ‘Shall we have a bet? If I win I can say du instead of Sie.’ He won. They sauntered silently through the deserted avenues in the suburb, the moon curved behind the clouds, there was a sweet smell of young foliage. I can’t start saying du just like that yet, thought Anna. At the bottom step in front of the house he kissed her, abruptly, as though he were settling a score with a voice that had forbidden him to do so all the way there. ‘You’re crying …’ Anna was shocked. ‘Not Sie, du,’ he corrected her hoarsely. Under these circumstances she did not dare to take her leave: she could not abandon a weeping soldier at the foot of the steps. Although she would have preferred to run inside to think about it behind a locked door, she pulled him into the grounds towards a stone bench that seemed to be pointed out in the moonlight, surrounded on three sides by a shining, clipped yew hedge. They sat down. Fragments of films and books shot though her head, in which the characters turned out all right in the next phase; embraces, official declarations … but a weeping admirer was not included among those. Although she regarded crying as a sign of weakness in herself, it occurred to her that on the contrary, for a man it demanded courage. The last time she had cried – an eternity ago – it was in rage, humiliation and pain. In the soldier’s case it had to be something else; she did not dare to embark upon it. He pressed her hand and looked serenely ahead towards the sleeping house. Something in her that had been waiting all that time fluttered away. An agreeable languor overcame her. ‘I’m so sleepy all of a sudden,’ she yawned. ‘Lie down,’ he whispered, ‘put your head in my lap.’ Without hesitating she stretched out, dozed off, stupefied by soldier smell.

  During her sleep the sickle of the moon moved to another place in the sky. She woke relaxed, in a condition of complete submission such as she had not known since her childhood. She observed him unnoticed. Sitting there, motionless, he reminded her of her grandfather’s dying soldier who lifted his face to a descending angel. It looked as though he were communicating wordlessly in an intimate way with something that was invisible to her. He swallowed. His Adam’s apple rose and fell, which gave him back his earthliness. Ashamed of her clandestine observation she said his name, He bent over her. ‘I had never thought …’ he laid a finger on
her lips, ‘that anything so beautiful could exist as when a girl falls asleep on your lap.’ ‘Didn’t I say so?’ She remained sober: ‘You are a Rosenkavalier.’

  In the following days her thoughts went on circling round the soldier like a cloud of summer flies. How could he be simultaneously trustworthy and mysterious? – this paradox held her in pleasant confusion. There did not seem to be a way back. They arranged to go to the Drachenfels at Whitsun. A picnic basket was packed. But that eponymous dragon did not wait for their arrival. It had been woken from a sleep that had lasted about two decades, it stretched, yawned, looked in the mirror to see if its eyes were in place and its scales were shining, sharpened its claws on the rock face, opened its mouth wide to check the fire and sulphurous fumes mechanism and descended from the mountain, thrashing about with puffed-out chest and sweeping tail, in a westerly direction.

  The telephone rang on 9 May. ‘For you,’ said Hannelore. Anna picked it up. The soldier was out of breath on the other end of the line: ‘All leave has been cancelled.’ Alarm, quick march. He had climbed over the barracks wall to telephone her. He had to go back immediately. If they found him he would be shot dead, without mercy. She was still standing there with the receiver in her hand long after he had put the phone down. There it was again, no longer in the background. It cast its entire shadow over her, settling itself in her diaphragm. Tears slid down her cheeks entirely of their own accord. ‘Jaja,’ said Frau von Garlitz, ‘that’s war, eh?’ The laconic observation made Anna furious. Tears that had been conserved for years now flowed out. She had read enough to know that crying for a soldier who was departing for the front joined her to the company of millions of women throughout the ages. It had been written and sung about over and over again, but even so her grief was the only one, the worst one of all. Again she was powerless against the things that were happening; this time it was a powerlessness for two.

  His first Feldpost letter came from Bad Godesberg. ‘I am here in a gymnasium, I have a candle, pencil and paper, and I am writing to you because I care about you. Please let me hear something.’ So began a correspondence that would last for years. It would survive the campaigns in Belgium, France, Russia, up to the last letter, which was not written by him. The love really developed on paper, with all the self-denial that was associated with it: … all’s well with me…

  ‘The French are coming!’ Frau von Garlitz fled to the east with her retinue again. Anna and Hannelore were left behind to take care of the house. The door of the air raid shelter, which had already foresightedly been built in 1934, would not close any more. The swimming pool had been plentifully filled with fire extinguishing water as required by ordinance. Everything was well organized.

  They were drifting like the sole survivors of a shipwreck in an ocean of coffee, tea, wine, Ratafia de Pommes – bad for the arthritis, good for the soul. A warm gulf stream repeatedly brought them in sight of new, unfamiliar coasts without them going ashore anywhere. It was still Sunday. They ordered lunch. Instead of exploring the environs of Spa on painful feet they preferred to go down the paths and avenues of the past, even though the risk of land mines was gradually increasing.

  Years later Lotte’s children were taught that the war began on 10 May 1940. But for the Germans it had already begun earlier, in September, or before that – a matter of perspective – in 1933, when the frustrated Sunday painter came to power. On that tenth of May the family did not leave the radio for a moment. Lotte looked outside through the tall windows. The unreal events that the broadcaster reported in a neutral voice were counteracted by the cloudless sky. Parachutists? Bombing raids on airfields? German troops crossing the border, like German housemaids had done all those years ago?

  But the German army made swift progress. Rumours and facts jostled each other: the German parachutists were disguised as postmen and country policemen, it was teeming with spies, the royal family had fled, Rotterdam was in flames. The Germans were threatening to bomb other towns as well. Dutch soldiers defended themselves with the courage of despair. The Netherlands was small, but not small enough to be able to hide itself – from a bomber you could see it in its entirety.

  The capitulation was frustrating but it also removed the anxiety. Threatened towns were spared, the occupier knew how to behave: no plundering, rape or slaughter as had been described in the books. Nevertheless, from then on marching columns constituted part of the street scene and the echoes of stamping boots and battle songs could be heard there. On the way to her singing teacher, Lotte chanced upon a group of Germans walking abreast, blocking the cycle path. Ringing her bell emphatically but in vain, she turned on to the road in order to pass. One of the soldiers ran after her, insulted that she had dared to ring a warning, and tried to grab her luggage rack. She stood up on the pedals to go faster; the blood whooshed in her ears. His swearing pursued her. She could hear the roaring and shooting in the night again. The soldier expanded, he swelled up behind her into something of monstrous dimensions that wanted to overtake her, pull her back, punish her. But she gradually gained ground. She did not dare look round until she was three roads further on and it had become quite quiet behind her.

  Music was a good chaser-out of devils. For some time the choir’s accompanist in radio broadcasts had been a well-reputed student from the conservatoire, David de Vries. Lotte asked him to accompany her studying Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder at home, so she could concentrate fully on the singing part, which was already hard enough. Thus together twice a week they submitted to the magic spell of pain transformed into beauty:

  I often think they have only gone out

  and will soon be coming home again.

  It is a beautiful day – do not worry,

  they have gone for a long walk.

  Yes, they have only gone out

  and will presently be home again.

  The songs suffused her with an indefinable homesickness – her voice, unhampered by false breath, no longer came from her chest but from her whole body. She became a single accumulation of music, of diffuse longing; in between she saw the profile of her accompanist, in heart-rending abandonment as though he were effortlessly identifying with the grieving father. When they stopped, the feeling continued to float, it was difficult to part, they turned around one another with the music still in their ears, full of disinclination to break the spell and dissolve into ordinary life separate from one another. He lingered increasingly before putting the music in his case – at such reluctant moments he was an easy prey for Lotte’s father, who permitted him to hear his newest acquisitions.

  He was also a diligent sailor, so as not to become an anaemic and languid musician like Chopin. On a fine day in summer he hired a boat and invited her out for a trip on the Loosdrecht Lakes. He praised her father as he initiated her into sailing: so sympathetic, and what impressive apparatus he had built! It would be blasphemy to say anything against him. Blasphemous of the fine day, of the water lapping syncopatedly against the boat, of the wind that gave her goose pimples that were smoothed out again by the sun; blasphemous of the sight of his sun-tanned body and long fingers, which were not now dancing over the keys but were involved in an active game with ropes, boom and rudder.

  The compliment seemed to be a way in for him to complain about his own father. Originally a cantor in a synagogue, he had been unable to resist the attractions of popular song. He enjoyed a reputation among a large public, in the Netherlands as well as Germany: gramophone records of him were in circulation. The fame brought him pleasures and sorrows. Young women crowded outside his hotel room; he waited in a shiny dressing-gown, champagne in an ice bucket, until the very loveliest of them forced their way in to him. He bought his way out of his guilt about his sick wife with gaudy jewellery, but his sentimental songs remained innocent and cheerful in tone: after his performances the audiences went home emboldened – they were prepared for life again. David, who accompanied his father on tour, sat in an adjoining compartment in the train the next morning: he could
not bear his father’s presence. He closed his eyes in disgust and mentally escaped to Palestine, musing about studying medicine there after the conservatoire – you would get more out of being a pioneer there. The trip always ended with his father’s remorse. Moved to tears by his only son’s rejection, he begged him for understanding and affection, in exchange for laying the whole world at his feet. ‘You’ll get a sailing boat from me, boy,’ he implored him, ‘but let’s wait until the war is over.’

  Lotte, who was letting the water flow over her feet, did not yet know that the imaginary sailing boat mentioned here for the first time would become the symbol for something that would cast a shadow over the rest of her life. Something too that would not be compatible with a cloudless sky, billowing white sails, and a joint dive into the lake – where they stealthily touched each other for the first time; the water was a good alibi.

  The early days of the war shambled along at a level of groceries. More and more necessities were rationed; Lotte’s mother encountered few problems with it at first – because they lived out of the way, she always kept large supplies in the house. She got chests of tea from China from a former colonial who lived in one of the country estates, milk was fetched warm and foaming from the farmer, she baked bread herself. She did not go along with hoarding, but only stocked up on green soap. No extra measures had to be taken to comply with the black-out: drawing the horsehair curtains completely closed was sufficient. Theo de Zwaan was released from captivity in June. He had noticed no warlike activities, he had been stationed in Limburg at a place where nothing happened. ‘He had hidden himself in a haystack of course,’ said his mother-in-law, ‘and waited quietly until the smoke of battle had lifted.’