In Search of Anna

by Valerie Volk

  How Kurt’s eyes shone when he talked of this man. ‘He, my dear one, has a vision for what our Fatherland can be. If anyone can unite our land he will be the one.’

  I nodded, and felt the passion of his words, and his wish to be part of this future. He was able to stir me—and not only by his vision.

  ‘Be careful, child,’ the Countess warned me. ‘He is an attractive young man, and I can see that you are drawn to him.’

  ‘He is like no one I have ever known,’ I admitted.

  ‘He finds you very appealing, that I can see. He enjoys your company. But you know that nothing can come of this. I would not like to see you jeopardise your honour. You are very dear to me.’

  I blushed, and as the pink rose in my cheeks I found it hard to meet her eyes. For she does not know how my heart races when he looks at me, and how my blood burns when Kurt’s hand touches mine. We walk in the pine forests and there, where we stop under the old trees to rest a little, his arm around my shoulders, I can feel the throbbing ache that is unlike any feeling I have had before.

  She continued: ‘And there is Otto too. I know that your mother believes that you and Otto will wed as soon as he returns from Glatz. You need to be careful with your reputation, my dearest.’

  Yet what did reputation count when Kurt’s hands moved quietly, insistently, exploring my body until I forgot who he is, who I am, and the ache to belong to him became impossible to bear? The pine trees looked down on us as we lay together, and I recalled words I had read in her books—‘the world well lost for love’.

  The first time it happened, he was aghast when he saw the blood. ‘I did not know that I would be your first,’ he stammered. ‘I had thought that you—’

  I stopped him before he could say more. ‘I could wish nothing better than that you should be the first one who loved me,’ I assured him. ‘It was with my full consent.’

  And I meant it. I had not known this sort of feeling before, and there was no one I could talk to about it. Certainly not my mother, we had never been close. And the sounds that came from my parents’ bed in the dark hours bore no relationship to the swelling feeling when Kurt’s body stretched above me.

  Not Lydia, for while the four of us would set out to walk together, she and Gustav would happily part to go their own way. She came back a little flushed and laughing merrily, but her gown never looked the product of anxious smoothing down, as mine did. Somewhere in Lydia there was, I knew, a cautiousness I did not have. I would not have talked to her about Kurt. The days of girlish sharing were over.

  What happened once continued, even though I knew we had no future. When the hunting season comes to an end, and that is soon, Kurt will disappear from my life, and I will return to being Anna, a village girl. Perhaps in Berlin he will remember a girl he once knew in the Silesian countryside. I hope I will not be a tale he will tell his companions, about a conquest made. I do not think so. He is a honourable man, and I believe he truly cares for me. But not enough to see this as more than a country idyll, a lovely word I learned from the English poets in the Countess’s books.

  If Lydia was more perceptive and less involved in her own flirtation—for I do not believe it is more than a flirtation—she might have realised how I have changed in these weeks, but Kurt’s and my discussions have bored her, and she has had no wish to share our walks. Only her mother has watched warily.

  Now he tells me it is time to part, and we walk for one last time through the forest and towards the grotto high on the hillside. Today it is crowded, with country carts and tethered horses. A picnic crowd has come, for this is a favourite destination for holidaymakers from surrounding estates. Kurt has recognised people there. He turns me away hastily, and we make our way back through the trees. It is clear to me: Anna is a passing entertainment, but not someone to parade as a companion.

  I know my place.

  In a hollow under the pines we lie together for a last time, and as he enters me I do not feel the familiar surge of joy, but a sadness that brings tears to my eyes.

  ‘Oh, little one, don’t cry. Let us be happy for this last time. It has been so joyful, so many happy memories.’

  So I blink back the tears and concentrate on pleasing him, which I know so well how to do. One day I will remember, and recall the pleasure we have had in each other’s bodies as well as each other’s minds.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lewin, Silesia, 1864

  Three years ago—how quickly those years have passed. Yet there has not been a day I have not thought of Kurt and wondered where he is, how he is, and, more than all else, who he is now loving.

  At times I think myself a greater fool than anyone I have known, to have been so easily seduced. But then I remember him, and the tenderness of his passion, and I feel I would not have missed this experience, even though it has spoiled me for anyone else. Spoiled me. Yes, that’s a fitting word to use.

  Just how much I had been spoiled was not immediately apparent. It was only some weeks after we had parted, after he had returned to his real life—and I back to everyday living—that I realised I had missed my monthly bleeding. And then a second time. And so I knew. As always, my mother took her problem to the Countess, who shook her head gravely.

  ‘I feared this. I was remiss. I spoke to the girl, but I should have also spoken to you, and sent her away. Now we must think what to do for the best.’

  ‘I do not want her publicly shamed,’ said my mother. I knew what she meant. The year before I had seen my friend Liesel make her confession before the congregation, and endured the censure of Pastor Liebelt and the condemnation of the members. She had crept from the back of the chapel at the end of communion each Sunday, and been permitted only to kneel and ask for forgiveness. Taking communion was denied her, and when in despair she took her own life she could not be buried in holy ground but in a small unmarked grave outside the churchyard gates, her unborn infant with her, both doomed to hellfire.

  I knew this was what my mother feared.

  ‘She must marry quickly,’ the Countess decided. ‘I think there is a boy who wishes to wed her?’

  ‘But when he knows?’ My mother was uncertain.

  ‘I will provide a good dowry to compensate,’ the Countess promised. ‘Anna is dear to me, and I should have guarded her better.’

  How well she understood the world, and the way that gold can sweeten all manner of bitter cups. Otto shut his eyes to the hard truths, and our marriage was a hasty affair.

  I have often wondered how the Countess managed the matter, for it had been agreed that she would see him and offer the dowry. How skilfully she must have put it, without explicitly shaming me, to convey to him that this was a needed marriage. And Otto, who had always taken it for granted that one day I would be his, had now found the unpleasant truth blurred by enough money to purchase this small holding and the little thatched house that was part of it.

  He must have made calculations. The value of land it would have been impossible for him to purchase weighed against taking on a used girl and a child he had not fathered. The Countess had judged shrewdly; Otto always had an eye for a bargain.

  It is good that my figure is slender, and even better that the swelling of my abdomen did not show until I was many months gone. We were able to have the pretence of a normal wedding, and Otto showed the world the face of a happy bridegroom.

  I did not think we would escape the usual noisy festivities, and our charivari was a rowdy affair. Even the most chaste of weddings would bring crowds of young men to rattle saucepans and kettles, play pipes and whistles, and make as much disturbance as possible. I dreaded that it might have been planned for the night before our marriage, a sure sign that people realised I was with child, making this a public condemnation.

  I waited in some fear the eve of my wedding, lest the sounds of my humiliation should come. Was it suspected? But no. It was an undisturbed night, and the charivari was, as usual, the night after the ceremony, surely not an ideal way to have your
first bedding together with a crowd of drunken louts banging their instruments of noise. It is an unpleasant ritual, but one that it seems we must endure.

  Otto saw it differently. For him it was important that our marriage should look as normal as possible, and we did not talk about the coming child. Nor did we discuss the discreet payment of the generous dowry, which Otto had seized upon to buy this small piece of land near the village of Lewin. He did not talk to me about it, and I was given no say in the place where we would live. Here we have built a start to our lives in the small wooden house that is our home.

  It is a satisfactory dwelling. Under the thatched roof the loft gives ample storage for the winter fodder, and we have been fortunate with our small crops. While there is only one room for our living and sleeping, there is good space for our animals in the adjoining room, and it has a separate entry. In many of these houses the animals must trek through the family living space to reach their quarters. We are lucky.

  Otto has not asked me about the child’s father since our wedding. That too I find strange. I know that in his own way he loves me, but now I have become a possession. But instead of buying me, he has been paid to take me. There was little love on our wedding night; or since.

  ‘You are with child?’ he questioned me only once before our marriage.

  ‘Yes.’ There was no point in denial.

  ‘Is the father someone I know?’

  ‘No.’ It was the truth. Otto had had no dealings with the Chateau guests. I sensed his relief that there would be no other father for my babe.

  ‘This will not be discussed elsewhere. The child will be mine.’

  It was as my parents had hoped. It would simply seem that the baby had come early. There were many other families in which this had happened. No one would question it.

  I lay on our marriage bed and waited for him to come to me. But he had joined the roistering crowd of the charivari. It was, after all, his obligation to provide them with drink, and as the evening passed the noise grew louder under the influence of our strong local beer. The stench of beer and the pain of his lovemaking are all that I recall of my wedding night. This was not the delight of my time with Kurt.

  It would have been easier, perhaps, if I had been able to lie there and imagine that Kurt was parting my legs and thrusting himself, urgently, inside me. But that would have seemed a desecration of all that he had meant to me. I heard Otto stumble as he lurched through the doorway of our new home, and I heard the raucous laughter of the men outside as they cheered him on his way. At least they believed that he was on his way to deflower an innocent, even if I was far from that.

  Perhaps that is why there was no tenderness in the way he tore my shift from my shoulders and stared drunkenly at my naked body. I was glad that the child did not yet show. This way he could pretend that he was the first to take me. I knew this was important to him. So I closed my eyes and tried to avoid the heavy beer-laden breath as it came closer. But it was not what he wanted.

  ‘Look at me, Anna!’ he ordered, then turned to strip his wedding trousers, fumbling clumsily with the fasteners. ‘Look at me! See me! I am your husband now.’

  The words were slurred, but the anger in them was clear. It was not the wedding night he had anticipated all those years he had been waiting. Always there would be that shadow of the man who had taken what he felt was his right. So I would pay a price. Three years on, I am still paying the price.

  Was it a sin? I ask myself that question over and over. I think of those days in the pine forest with Kurt and the joy I felt in loving him. Could this have been wrong? Yes, Pastor Liebelt would have thundered at me from the pulpit if he had known. Sin! Fornication! Only in the marriage bed should you abandon yourself to a man. You will be punished for those acts.

  Had I loved Kurt? As time passes, I am no longer sure of that. I loved the ways our minds connected as well as our bodies, and after he had gone I was desolate. The yearning, the wretchedness, they were so agonising that I doubted I could bear it. I had never expected anything more from him, but to lose that sense of being beloved was like a plunge into a well of unhappiness. But now? It is becoming harder to recall his face and I wonder if he ever thinks of me. I wonder how long I will think of him.

  Otto knew, his look as my body swelled was dark and brooding. I think he tried to blot out the past by force—it has always been his way to take control. I understand his love of the monstrous engines in the trains that he now drives, because these forces are under his guiding hand. He is their master, and the power they unleash as they thunder through the countryside is Otto’s power.

  If the child had lived, I would have had a part of Kurt to cherish. Even that has been taken away. All my memories have been clouded, tainted, by the horror of the night the baby was coming. I sensed there was something wrong. I have seen women in childbirth; I have watched animals in labour. I knew what should happen.

  But this was different.

  Otto had never been a gentle lover, but in those last months before the babe was born his hands, his body, had been more demanding, less careful of my body. My mother had worried over the dark circles beneath my eyes, and I wondered what she would have thought if she had seen the purple bruises on my thighs.

  If I remonstrated or tried to resist it only seemed to anger him more. So I learned to endure in silence, and to try only to protect my womb. That too gave offence.

  ‘You think to mock me with your body?’ he snarled one night, when I dared to put out a feeble hand to weaken the impact of his battering flesh as he entered me.

  ‘Did you stop him, the other one?’

  It was the closest he came to admitting the fury that was driving him.

  When my pains began, and I moaned that we needed the neighbour who had offered to help deliver the child, he pointed to the driving snow outside our door.

  ‘You won’t get Frau Schmidt in a night like this. I doubt the devil himself would come to you tonight.’

  ‘The devil is here,’ I gasped from where I lay, doubled up in agony. ‘The devil is in you, Otto—’ but I could not finish my words. My waters had broken, and I lay in a flood of wet warmth.

  ‘Otto, in God’s name get Frau Schmidt. I beg you, Otto, help me.’ Then the wave of pain seized me again.

  As the hours passed, I think he came to understand that this was not a normal birth, but by the time he returned with the stooped figure of our neighbour it was too late. I lay shuddering in the mess of blood and waste, trying to reach to hold the twisted body of the dead child. It was a boy, and the cord that bound us together was still coiled tight around his neck. Frau Schmidt’s hands were gentle as she cut the cord and laid the child for a moment on my limp body. Two exhausted bodies. We had both fought for his life, and we had both lost.

  I relive it in my nightmares. I relive also the moments when we laid the small body, wrapped only in a swaddling cloth, in the little grave in the children’s section of the churchyard. He was not baptised, but in my heart I had brought him to God, and silently named him for his earthly father.

  Now those days have passed, and I think back over the blur of the months that followed. I know that I must have eaten, slept, talked to people, but the days came and went.

  At least Otto was gentler with me. Perhaps the death of the child had shocked him, as he watched the agony of my labour. Or perhaps it was that now there was no baby for eager faces to peer at, wondering why they saw no trace of Otto in the little face, or at the size of this seemingly early child. Whatever the cause, one source of misery and anger had been taken from him, and a near peace descended on our house.

  He comes and goes, as the network of trains bring our land and people closer. Some day, Otto says, the railway will also come through Lewin, because it will bring us closer to Glatz, but for now he is happy to stay there for part of each week. For me too, that is a relief.

  Especially now, for this new child has brought me back to life. Perhaps it offers hope, for this time Otto wa
tches my body swell with pleasure. It is his seed, his child, not a bastard foisted on him.

  The house that he purchased for us with the money from the Countess is small, but comfortable. It is typical for this area, with its wood and plaster walls and the deep overhanging eaves giving us shelter from the winter winds. It is a haven for me, especially in the times when Otto is away.

  After my son died, I found solace working in the plot of ground around our house, and the vegetables I grew were sufficient for our needs. True also of the potatoes, which make the potent schnapps that all our men drink—so often too freely! I have come to like the daily walk. I drive our animals easily to the small field he bought, finding comfort in the slow rhythm of the beasts as they plod contentedly toward the ground where they graze, their long tails swishing idly as they pace. The clear blue of this summer sky is a tent, stretched taut above me.

  In his times at home, Otto works hard, and his sowing of the rye crop has been profitable. When he returns from the mill we estimate how much I need for the dark pumpernickel bread he likes, and the rest brings us a small sum of money. It is better than the sugar beet planting he first tried, like our neighbours. It was soon apparent there would be little profit in the new crop.

  There are times of peace between us, when he shares with me the excitement of the new world of steam that fascinates him. While it means little to me, I rejoice to see him so absorbed.

  I have been existing, as if in a dream, and I watched the changing seasons as summer brought its golden glow over the fields around our township, to be followed by the colours of the autumn woods blazing against the pine forests.

  But I do not go to the forest. That part of my life is finished.