by Naomi Wood
Jenö cleared his throat. ‘It’s different this time.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘It will get worse.’
‘We’ll go then. You’ll understand why I’d rather she go with me later than with you now.’
‘Nothing will happen. I promise. It will only be until you get to London.’
I forced myself to meet his eye. ‘It’s up to her.’
‘She’s scared,’ he said. ‘You have to persuade her to go.’
I didn’t want to hear Walter’s words that so tormented me at night. ‘She can make up her own mind. She said she doesn’t want to go.’
‘She’s a foreigner,’ he said. ‘A woman who dresses as a man! Even at the Bauhaus, she’s avant-garde. Don’t you see what that makes her, to them? Persona non grata. A foreign agitator. An enemy of the state. No better than a Kozi. She’s in danger.’
Outside, rain began. We turned to watch it.
He finished his drink.
‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘I swear nothing will happen. And if I had all the money in the world there’d be a seat on that flight for you too. But I don’t. We’ll fly to London. I have a job with Uncle König. You can join us as soon as you can afford it.’
‘When I saw you at the Christmas party I never expected this to be your approach,’ I said, though I knew it sounded petty. ‘I thought it would be more direct.’
‘What approach?’ he said. His hands were on his lap. I wished he’d use them. I wished he’d hit me instead of this mild, dragging diplomacy. ‘This isn’t a strategy; this isn’t an approach. Don’t you see? Everything has changed. Since Hitler, nothing can be the same.’
I went to the window. I wanted shot of him: his galling innocence, his earnest goodness. As if we were eighteen again in a Weimar attic, I thought how much I’d like to do Jenö some violence. ‘You’ll live together? In London?’ There was bitterness in my voice now. ‘Is that how it will be? A cosy flat near Buckingham Palace?’
‘Only by necessity, Paul!’
‘Don’t you see why I can’t do that?’ I said to the glass. ‘How can you be so blind? How can you force me to make this choice?’
‘I am not the one who is blind! Why do you have such wilful disregard for her safety?’
I turned to face him. ‘Because it is our life! Because it is the only thing I have ever wanted! Because I have never wanted anything as much as I have wanted this, and I will not give it up! Not for anything, Jenö, not for anything!’
Then there was silence between us. Jenö looked around the room. He picked up the Klee book, and looked at the bookmarked painting. ‘You’ve seen her new work?’
‘Yes.’
‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ he said, his voice a little resigned. ‘All that yellow.’
‘I thought so too.’
He returned the book to the table. ‘Walter says Mr Steiner has his sights on the Bauhaus, Paul.’
I knew, then, that he would soon go, but I also knew that with these new words I’d be caught forever. A sickness in my stomach. A feeling of the uncanny; that from this moment on I was trapped. ‘What does that mean?’
‘That’s all Walter said: that Steiner has his sights on the Bauhaus. It can’t be positive, I know that much.’ When he spoke again it was as if from a distance. ‘Promise you’ll at least try.’
‘Why do you think Walter wants to help?’
‘He just wants us to be safe.’
‘You don’t detect anything more underhand?’
‘He’s not a monster, Paul. Whatever he might have done to her in the past.’
When neither of us spoke again he made his excuses.
‘I leave this Monday,’ he said, by the door.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’
And then, he embraced me. The gesture was as inexplicable as when he had done so at the mausoleum. I heard his steps go down the staircase. I wondered what I meant to him. I wondered what he meant to me. Only later did I realise Jenö was saying goodbye forever.
51
Berlin
For Montaigne, there’s a difference between lying and telling an untruth. We can tell an untruth without knowing it is untrue. But lying is dissembling: it’s going against one’s conscience. I do not know whether I told untruths or lies. Certainly, I was able to pretend I did not know what I knew. Disavowal. Verleugnung. It’s what the people of Weimar did with Buchenwald.
We didn’t know; we did know.
And so here is my guilt: here is my secret. Here is the reason I cannot paint my eyes – and it is not just because of my failure to do anything after the conversation with Walter or with Jenö. It is because of what I saw behind the Japanese screen. What I saw on Ernst’s desk. Since Dessau I had been able to decode Walter’s Lotti-line, and the title on that piece of paper was STEGLITZ.
Jenö was right. If I wanted proof, then here it was in abundance: Ernst Steiner had the blueprints for the school’s warehouse.
Ever since that day I have buried this knowledge within me. I told myself I didn’t know what I had really seen. I told myself the letters were blurred; then I told myself I couldn’t be sure, and then, in some magicking of consciousness, I told myself they were the Reichstag blueprints, which, with the fire, made sense. But just because something is logical doesn’t mean it’s true. Some part of me has always known what I’ve known: I just haven’t been able to admit it. I should have known the raid was coming. I should have warned her. I should have got her out.
Jenö’s words rotted away at nearly everything in the week before he went. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t paint. I couldn’t walk the city. I tried to read Charlotte’s penny novels but the romances were too much for my own Herzschmerz. Instead I nursed hangovers from the sofa. In the afternoons I drank even more, and Charlotte gave me uneasy looks. We didn’t talk, we didn’t make love; in the nights – which the booze at first made easier and then more wretched – we hardly touched.
I longed for one of my migraines. Then I could pass this week in illness, and by a court of law I’d be judged incapable of moral reasoning. The opportunity to act would be cancelled. I’d be let off the hook.
No migraine came; the days were left to me. I wanted to talk it out with Irmi, but she wanted nothing to do with all this mess. I remembered the image of the flood breaking though the pavement that I’d seen from her apartment.
A migraine or apocalypse; those were my last hopes.
I was so turned inward I hardly noticed what Charlotte did. I guess she spent her days at the Bauhaus. I knew Jenö would be there: saying the same words to her that he’d said to me. Each evening I tried to spit out three simple words. Go with him. Go with Jenö. But when I saw her standing in the doorway, shaking the snow off her coat, putting away her man’s hat, I knew I could not live without her here. I said nothing.
On Friday a letter from Walter arrived. She held the envelope in the light of the window, but I couldn’t really see her face. Maybe she was close to giving up. That night I became convinced she’d soon be gone. London would be her new home; and in a foreign land where she knew no one, Jenö would be her only friend.
The next day Walter’s letter was gone. In the morning, Charlotte left for a few hours. I had no idea where she went, or what she went to do. I checked her bag for the airline ticket. Still nothing.
On Sunday we waited for Kaspar and Irmi at the ice rink. By now I was convinced that this was the end. That she’d tell me, as we skated, in her wine-red jacket against the ice, that it was time for her to go.
Charlotte stared at the skaters with spacey horror. Under her eyes the skin was dark and sallow. ‘It’s getting bad.’ She gestured to the muffled people skating fast upon the ice. ‘Klee’s gone to Switzerland. The Director, Kandinsky, the Alberses; all everyone talks about is where they’ll end up. Someone asked me where I was going and I didn’t know what to say!’ She smiled tightly. ‘I just said Kreuzberg. What a thing. What will Kreuzberg do for us?’<
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Scrape, scrape, the boots slashing the ice; people wheeling round and round; and the light – from the ice, the snow, the clouds – made it appear like that ceramic menagerie, animated at last.
A woman leapt; turned. Another fell. Kids flew past.
‘It’s your decision.’
‘It’s ours,’ she said. ‘A few months. Then you’d follow.’
‘What about this being part of Walter’s strategy?’
‘Jenö said he can be trusted.’
Jenö’s words ball in my mind; rip, are gone.
‘Go with him, then. Go. Please.’ I pushed her away. I couldn’t stand to be near her any more. ‘It’s your choice. Please don’t pretend it is mine.’
Tears fell rapidly. People watched us. They were watching this man crying, they had seen how I had held this man’s hand. There were even boys daring to laugh.
‘I’m scared! I don’t know what to do!’
‘Give me six months,’ I said, talking fast, knowing if I slowed down my guilt would show itself in all its ugliness. ‘I promise. Six months and we’ll be gone from here together.’
‘Hallo!’ a voice blasted from the crowd. I had never been happier to see Kaspar. He studied us both. ‘Why all the glum faces?’ he said, then sotto voce: ‘Is Adolf himself doing the rounds?’
She gave him a smile but it changed quickly to another sob.
Kaspar took her in his arms. ‘Charlotte, Charlotte. Please, don’t worry. Are we on Jenö’s suggestion again?’ Very softly he said, ‘It’s nothing. It’s nothing. What did I tell you at the theatre? We’ll be fine, I promise.’
Charlotte shook her head, as if to let the air in.
‘In the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up. Alas, wilt thou now go ashore?’
Charlotte pulled away. ‘Zarathustra?’
‘What else?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything.’
‘Well, neither do I,’ said Kaspar, grinning.
The world would turn; Kaspar would quote Nietzsche; Charlotte would stay. As the old song went, as long as there were linden trees, Berlin would be Berlin.
I was surprised to see Irmi heading toward us, her boots slung around her neck. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’
‘I was persuaded,’ she replied. ‘The last hurrah, and all that.’
I wanted to tell Irmi everything: what had happened with Jenö, with Walter, with me and Charlotte. But she didn’t want to know; she had made that clear. And if she did, she could ask Kaspar. And so I kept quiet. I had learnt at least one thing.
After skating we walked past the Kaiserhof as the flag snapped on the Chancellery behind us. Irmi ducked down, not wanting to be seen by her boss, and Kaspar hid her in his overcoat, so that he looked like a bloated camel, especially with his winter tan. I scanned the bar to see if Ernst was in there. He wasn’t; neither was Mrs Steiner; and neither, of course, was Walter. Uniformed men were starting early with cocktails and smart parted hair.
‘You wouldn’t even be able to afford a glass of water,’ said Irmi. ‘Come on.’
We walked down Unter den Linden. Only weeks ago men had marched here with torches. Now, Kaspar and Charlotte were horsing about. Irmi kept on dragging them along, asking them to hurry; she wanted to see Teddy. We let her go on without us, and before Kaspar was to be reunited with Dacia (I was surprised she’d lasted so long) the three of us stopped for fried potatoes with bacon at Friedrichstrasse, and the waiter had the good grace not to shame us for only ordering two plates between three.
With my mouth full of bacon and potatoes, I heard the trains’ shrieks below. They reminded me of Charlotte’s screams as she and Kaspar had fallen on top of each other at the ice rink and Irmi – who was a strong enough skater but no match for them both – had tried to disentangle them but fallen over herself. As I too had fallen helplessly into the pile of bodies, I had thought, with the clarity that comes in these moments: here they are! My Berlin friends!
‘Serious Painter,’ says Charlotte to me. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, ‘nothing.’
I skewer more potato. Charlotte scoots closer. Jenö’s words turn to dust. The bacon is good: so salty and hot. Charlotte laughs at one of Kaspar’s dumb jokes. And, despite everything, I think how happy I am.
52
Berlin
A month later, Jenö’s warnings came true. Steiner did have his sights on the Bauhaus, and the school was violently raided. For the third time in the Director’s career the school’s looms were wrecked, its canvases ruined, and its windows smashed. The contents of drawers and files – a decade’s worth of the Director’s notes, all the way back to the Citizens’ Survey and the Metal Ball – scattered by Storm Troopers. Rain came in at the windows and drenched the papers.
Our history, our secrets; all gone.
I imagine Charlotte on the morning of the April raid, an apron over her suit. She is working at the loom. Her expression is calm, the colours she’d finally found streaming from her; a new life ablaze. Otti is near; that’s important, I want her close to hand, so that she might give Charlotte some comfort when they are both taken away. Anni and Josef are teaching in the other workshops; Franz is studying his strident type. Maybe it is only the Director who watches the uniformed men approach: he’s the only one looking outward.
I wonder if their eyes met: Ernst and Charlotte, as he went his way around the Bauhaus workshop, pulling out the Jews, the foreigners, the Communists; just as he had done once before in words. I imagine she was looking instead at Jenö’s desk, empty since February. She must have thought of the disappeared promise of London.
Steglitz. I had seen the word on the blueprint. I had.
53
England
On Wednesday, as promised, I find Jenö outside my house. His hair is silver and his heft has gone. My gaze goes straight to his hands; I wonder if they’re still made for brawling. A lift of anger that he’s here, then I remember we are comrades again; we are both her widowers.
‘Paul,’ he says, ‘I hope it’s not a bad time.’
Odd that we are speaking English. I suppose our ruse is important; even to each other. That he should be here in person stupefies me. Charlotte’s case is against the wall. Its blackness absorbs the afternoon’s light. I wonder what’s inside. I think of Jenö’s green-chalked portrait revealed once more. I wonder how much of the past I will be able to rethink.
‘Jenö,’ I say. ‘Hello.’
Inside, I take him up to my studio. Jenö looks around, appraising. He puts the case on the floor. He wraps his army coat around him, rocks the chair with his weight. I wonder if he fought for the British. I’ll have to ask Irmi.
The case is a black heart between us.
‘Where have you been, Jenö? I looked for you when I first arrived. Mr König, the uncle’ – I cannot say Walter’s name in the undefended air between us – ‘he said he hadn’t heard from you either.’
‘I was in Newcastle for a while.’ With a little devotion he touches the bulb on the lamp. ‘Then I came back to London.’
Jenö Fiedler, loquacious as always.
I wonder whether he has seen Charlotte’s damaged yellow weave above my desk. Instead he finds a photograph from Dessau: we are on the balcony, very happy. Charlotte is trying to smile but the light makes her frown. Franz – the typographer of the gates she will walk through – is there, as is Walter. Jenö’s not in the picture; perhaps he was the one taking it.
I look out of the window. Jenö too looks elsewhere. Two men in an enclosed space, our suspicions a third in the room. Everything we cannot talk about is here.
I want to say how much I miss her.
I want to say sorry.
I want to say how I should have insisted she left with him. But he knows I did not, and nothing can change. ‘You went to the funeral.’
‘Irmi made a nice speech.’
‘How is she?�
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‘The same. Very funny.’
‘And Teddy?’
‘Good, good. He’s a chef now. He didn’t think much of Dacia’s vol-au-vents.’
‘She never was a very good cook. She passed off a lot of things as old Russian recipes, but I think they were just bad.’
He smiles. ‘We buried Walter under a linden tree.’
‘Ah. Yes. Young Werther at last.’
‘You couldn’t make it?’ he says. ‘Irmi said you were busy with an exhibition.’
‘I wasn’t busy. I just didn’t want to be there.’
Something new passes over his expression, something I can’t read.
‘What’s Berlin like?’ I ask.
‘The border crossings are distinctly unpleasant. Did you know they call the crossing at Friedrichstrasse the Palace of Tears?’
‘I didn’t know that.’
Friedrichstrasse. Friedrichstrasse.
I ask Jenö if he wants some tea. I wonder whether he’ll say something about us turning English, but he doesn’t. When I return he’s on his haunches, looking at the self-portrait I thought I’d hidden: the axed man, the eyes a-swim. ‘That’s nothing,’ I say too quickly, putting down the tray.
‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’
Now I see what it is that bothered me about my gaze: what I am hiding from isn’t cowardice, it’s shame. ‘You warned me. You said Steiner had his sights on the Bauhaus. I ignored you.’
Jenö rises. His knees click. ‘It’s not your fault.’ His tone is neutral, though it’s not quite an acquittal. ‘Do you know the painting Not to Be Reproduced? The Magritte?’
It is a man staring into a mirror, but the reflection shows only the back of his head. ‘Yes.’
