by Tessa de Loo
Disbelief and indignation filled the room. Goudriaan submitted to it with a dejected laugh. Hesitating between sympathy and suspicion, Lotte looked at the slender student. It was difficult for her to imagine him as a violin-maker – wood shavings on his impeccable suit, endlessly scraping with a plane – a craft that evoked associations with muscular arms and workmen’s overalls. Her father put Beethoven’s Ninth on, in a more kosher performance. Would they never again be able to listen to music open-mindedly from then on? The ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’ resounded magisterially; why wasn’t it ‘Alle Menschen werden Schwester’?
As the year progressed it became increasingly difficult to find excuses for her native country. Never before had the radio been listened to as much as it was in the September days, when Chamberlain flew to Germany three times to prevent war and, finally, with Daladier, sacrificed Czechoslovakia for peace. Everyone was relieved; only Lotte’s father was agitated that France as well as England had reneged on their treaty with the Czechs in such a cowardly way. ‘Out of pure fear of Bolshevism,’ he sniffed contemptuously. ‘In their hearts they admire the way Hitler has cleansed his country of Communists.’ ‘That fear isn’t so crazy,’ said his wife, with her predictable arguments again; ‘when the workers seize power on a large scale, those people who come to the top also terrorize the people.’ ‘Do you know who you’re talking about?’ He was offended. ‘You’re talking about Stalin, he has to keep a whole continent in harness.’ Then he became sentimental, everyone knew how the ancient discussion continued. Lotte ducked behind her music theory. The division of the roles had already been fixed in advance. Her mother appointed herself defender of democracy, made a plea for a natural equilibrium between the parties; her father jeered the democratic principle away: ‘Do you by any chance want to claim that we have a democracy here? The poor are getting even poorer!’ He allowed himself to be swept along by his feelings, took a sip of gin; the war that had been averted at the last minute was pushed into the background. Another much older war was being fought out here under the pretext of a difference in political opinions – a battle that always remained unresolved. ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ her mother had the last word: ‘you know best of all that you yourself would be a dictator here in the house if you had the chance.’
Lotte had had the funds saved up for a trip to Germany for a long time – the more the threat of war grew, the harder it was to speak about her plan out loud. They all listened masochistically to the radio together, to a summary of a belligerent speech by Reichsminister Hess. They reassured each other: the Netherlands would never get involved, we have always been neutral. Anyway, half of the Netherlands is related to the Germans: our prince, the former Queen Emma, grandmother in Amsterdam, you name them. Louis Davids’ death was a greater tragedy than the annexation of Lithuania and the Italian invasion of Albania – Lotte’s mother walked about the house wailing and slapping her forehead with the flat of her hands as though she blamed herself; she sang his songs melancholically on the bench under the pear tree.
‘Now your Papa Stalin has made a poor showing,’ she said when Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact. ‘It’s Stalin’s trick,’ her husband laughed at so much short-sightedness. ‘There’s something behind it. It suits him well to make a pact at this moment.’ The Queen made a calm radio broadcast: there is no reason at all for concern. Mobilization was being proclaimed in order to preserve the country’s neutrality. Theo de Zwaan left on one of the hundreds of extra trains: not discontent, at last he had something to do.
‘Holland with its tin soldiers,’ sniffed Lotte’s mother, slipping a bag of apples and sandwiches into his hands. Two days later the Germans invaded Poland and another two days later England and France declared themselves at war with Germany: there was nothing more to discuss with Hitler. Yet faith in the safety of the negligible little kingdom by the sea, which no party chose, was still intact.
‘So you see, you were just as naïve as we were,’ said Anna.
Lotte nodded.
They continued eating, lost in thought. To Lotte’s dismay, Anna mashed her potato croquettes; she cut hers into pieces of equal size, which Anna thought petty.
‘Are they real?’ Anna stroked her finger over a red flower that was blossoming with suspect luxuriance in a slender pot by their table.
‘It’s all plastic,’ said Lotte, who had already seen this when she came in.
‘You’re right.’ Anna withdrew her finger. ‘It’s much too dark for plants here. Ach … that makes me think of Frau Stolz’s cactuses …’ She grinned. ‘They were fatal to me, you might say.’
Thanks to the contents of the bookcase Anna’s disguised serfdom did not become unbearable. The embroidery was hardly progressing; it was on her lap for the sake of form, getting creased by the book open on it. Herr Stolz divided his attention between the newspaper and the radio, which exclusively reported successes. ‘Ten years ago we were the pariahs of Europe and now Chamberlain takes the trouble to visit us three times. Who would have thought it?’ said Stolz with satisfaction. ‘We have our Führer’s genius to thank for that entirely.’ On New Year’s Day Hitler totted up the balance on the radio. ‘The year 1938 was the richest in terms of events in the whole history of our people.’ The Third Reich had grown to ten million souls by restoring the German minorities in the surrounding territories to the German community – Heim ins Reich. Frau Stolz said with satisfaction that at last she dared again to be proud that she was a German. With a glass of Sekt they toasted the astonishing dynamism of the Führer and the big things he intended for them.
This euphoria left Anna unmoved. She had never been struck by the idea of being a German. When she heard Hitler and Beneš, the Czech president, blustering about each other on the radio she thought: give them each a club and they can fight it out between them. What is it to do with us? Tired of the villa district next to the enthusiastically smoking factory chimneys, broken in spirit by the suppression of her rebelliousness, she did her work in a deadly routine. But one weekday during the same winter, she suddenly reached her saturation point. From one small, innocent incident sprang that single inevitable spark.
She had to clean the dining-room on Thursday morning at half-past five. Everyone was still asleep; it was silent and cold in the house. Beneath a large window that overlooked the back garden was a large window-seat made of black marble, on which there were cactus plants. An exotic desert flower never appeared between the spines – it was unthinkable that anything could come into flower under Frau Stolz’s regime. She had to take the cactuses off the window-seat one by one, then she polished it with wax until the gleaming black surface reflected her own face. Later that day Frau Stolz called Anna to her. ‘Anna, you forgot the window-seat this morning.’ Anna denied it. ‘You are lying, look, here and here.’ Copying her employer she sank to her knees. In two places the polish had not been totally wiped away. There were a few clouds left behind, which could not be seen against the background of the dark garden at half-past six in the morning. They stood up. Merciless winter light shone inside. Frau Stolz’s face was flat and chilly, an icy shield against Anna’s accumulated rage.
She started to take her overall off. ‘Don’t worry, Frau Stolz, about your window-seat, your cactuses, your skirting boards, I won’t touch them with another finger, I promise you.’ ‘You need to be able to accept a bit of criticism,’ said Frau Stolz. Anna looked at the cactuses, took stock of the whole room, all the objects that had been through her hands and, now that it came to it, sided with Fran Stolz. ‘I can’t work like this,’ she said flatly, ‘this small-minded order, the Prussian sense of duty, there is no place for me here. Put me in the middle of the desert and I’ll lay out a lovely garden for you, but in my own way.’ ‘Ah …’ it dawned on Frau Stolz, ‘you want to sort out the linen here!’ Anna looked at her, suddenly it was from a dizzying distance. She looked at her properly, for the first time and the last time, Frau Stolz, as she stood there, a sturdy, rectangular woman. Th
ere she stood, exactly as she was, with her shocking limitations. The woman was thinking feverishly; it was very difficult for her to consider an appropriate coup de grâce that would enable her to maintain her dignity. ‘Do you know what it is with you? You have got too many big ideas …’ She snatched the overall out of Anna’s hands. ‘You won’t rest until you are in the banqueting hall at Bayer being waited on by two servants.’
Gitte would not let Anna go. On the day of her departure she had locked all the doors in the villa. She sat on the dark red velvet-covered sofa with her legs apart and arms folded, her bony knees sticking out apologetically: you can’t leave me behind here alone. ‘Where are the keys?’ Her mother gave her a good shaking; Gitte did not move a muscle. Anna went rigid between her suitcases; she recognized, in painful comparison, the feelings of the girl. ‘I threw them in the WC and pulled the chain,’ said Gitte arrogantly. She was registering her absolute opposition to Anna’s desertion. Formidably calm, Frau Stolz went to telephone a locksmith. Anna embraced Gitte in farewell but she turned away aggrieved. Finally Anna went to the kitchen with her suitcases, opened a high narrow window above the draining board, threw her baggage out and threw herself after it, off the sinking ship into the depths, which crunched pleasantly under her feet as she landed.
She returned to her uncle’s house, to the bedroom with the medallion wallpaper, the living-room with the easy chairs and the gramophone and Uncle Franz’s operetta music, but she was oblivious to it. Furniture and practical objects still came under the heading of compulsion – the compulsion of cleaning, every week, the eternally recurring tasks. Uninspired, she wrote off applications to advertisements. She had a bath, got out and stood politely before her dripping reflection in the mirror. ‘How do you do, I am Anna Bamberg, my mother has been dead for years, my father too, then I also had a sister, Lotte, but to be honest she has not been around for a long time either. I, Anna, on the other hand, am alive and kicking, that is obvious …’
A reply came to one of the letters, an envelope of marbled paper with the sender’s name in unadorned, businesslike handwriting. Charlotte von Garlitz Dublow, Countess von Falkenau. Instead of inviting Anna for an interview she announced her arrival, on the very same day. A countess! – Aunt Vicki excitedly ran to her clothes cupboard to find a dress for Anna. Anna stared at the upright, sober letters, overcome with misgivings – a countess, that recalled associations with serfdom; there went her tender, hard-won freedom. Through a chink in the net curtains she watched the Countess getting out of her Kaiser-Freser, beneath her open fur coat she was wearing a cream silk blouse. Aunt Vicki pinched Anna in the palm of her hand.
The sitting-room, which not long ago had struck Anna as the high point of luxury and comfort, became conventional and bourgeois with this lady in it. She kept hold of Anna’s hand as she scrutinized her without embarrassment. ‘I would like to ask you something,’ she said. ‘Are you related to Johannes Bamberg?’ In a reflex Anna withdrew her hand, in no condition to reply to a direct question innocently posed. No one had ever spoken this name again: the family had buried his memory along with his material remains. She looked at the woman without seeing her. The tick of the pendulum in this room affected her for the first time – the tap of a stick on a cobbled street. Aunt Vicki looked from one to the other, wringing her hands, and when the silence had persisted too long said, ‘Johannes Bamberg, yes, that was her father, a cousin of my husband … I never knew him because he died young …’ ‘Her father then,’ the woman interrupted her, satisfied, turning her swan’s neck towards Anna. ‘Yes indeed, her father,’ breathed Aunt Vicki obligingly. ‘Then everything is in order.’ A gloved hand descended on Anna’s shoulder. ‘Will you come with me? My car is outside.’ ‘But her things,’ cried Aunt Vicki, breathless at the speed with which the transaction was being concluded. ‘I’ll send my chauffeur later on.’ The Countess with the unpronounceable name guided Anna out in front of her, out of the citizen’s living-room, along the passage; Aunt Vicki had no opportunity to open the front door for her, she did everything herself with great determination. As she gracefully swept one hand through her short brown hair, she held the car door open for Anna with her other. Anna stepped in blankly, as though hypnotized.
Cologne slipped past on either side, a mobile stage set. Time and place lost their normal proportions. Her father’s name had set something going that still seemed mainly like a film rolling at accelerated speed. It was a blatant abduction; had he taken responsibility for her again after all that time, and was the woman behind the wheel an emissary fulfilling his commission in style? She steered the car with one hand, lit a cigarette with the other. An angel who smoked. They left the built-up area behind; did the inhabited world stop here? The car turned off the road, a manicured finger pressed the klaxon, wrought-iron gates opened. A broad drive, flanked by old trees whose crowns were enmeshed in each other. In the park landscape that flickered past between the trees, Anna recognized the Elysian Fields out of Herr Stolz’s Greek mythology. Lawns sloping to the horizon, evergreen hedges, groups of trees and shrubs – all maintained with care and trimmed into shape like the driver’s fingernails. They penetrated deeper into the tunnel beneath an arch of black branches, which ended in a circle of light. A motionless figure in a dark suit stood at the top of the steps of a majestic, blindingly white house; only his eyes followed the semicircle the car described before it came to a halt at the foot of the steps. The woman got out. Anna, who was expected to do the same, remained seated, disorientated. ‘Come, we’re here.’ The door opened, she squirmed out, blinking. Dizziness overcame her as she went up the wide stairs. She could see no more of the dark figure than a long arm with a hand on it that held the door open for them, thereafter he seemed to command two arms with which he helped them out of their coats, in the centre of an enormous hall with passageways, doors and stairs leading off it.
She was assigned a room on the first floor with a view onto a turquoise swimming pool – an unreal, poisonous element amid the natural green lawns. The governess, cook, servants, chauffeur, washerwoman, cleaning women, maids and gardeners seemed to live in contented symbiosis, each had their own territory. It was a centuries-old collaboration, a stylized form of servitude to the former Prussian nobility, which had proved its effectiveness in the centuries-long government of castles and country houses. Anna was entrusted with the care of Frau von Garlitz’s wardrobe, replacing the previous chambermaid who had been dismissed. Whenever a seam was loose she had to repair it, she took the clothes to the washerwoman, picked up the evening dress that lay crumpled on the parquet floor and hung it in the cupboard. This luxurious life stood in such stark contrast to the daily battle of attrition in her previous job that she was ashamed of the size of the wages: double what she had earned with Frau Stolz, not counting the tips and gifts that Frau von Garlitz regularly slipped the staff with an intimate laugh.
In hours of idleness she floated through the house. En passant she learned how the table had to be laid when a general, a big industrialist, a baron came to dine; which dinner service was sufficiently respectful without overdoing it; she learned to arrange a seasonal bouquet on a half-moon table beneath an eighteenth-century still life with grapes and pheasants. Frau von Garlitz slept separately from her husband – their bedrooms, in a private wing of the house, were joined by a pink marble bathroom. A search for her night-dress, which had to be hung up in the morning, brought Anna into Herr von Garlitz’s bedroom, as a smirking maid had advised, where to her disillusionment the sought item lay carelessly on the floor by his bed – the Countess had gone to him!
Anna won the trust of the cook, who generously provided her with background information, legitimized by a devout attachment to her employer. The gnädige Frau was born a von Falkenau, related to the oldest Prussian nobility. Her husband, on the other hand, Wilhelm von Garlitz Dublow, merely came from the coal-scuttle. Anna raised her eyebrows. The Ruhr area, the cook explained. His father, captain of a ship that had brought the Kaiser t
o Norway, had fallen in love with one of the Kaiserin’s ladies in waiting, Countess Dublow. He was ennobled in great haste in order to be able to marry her. Thus Garlitz came into his ‘von’ and Dublow was added on at the end. In recognition of Kaiser Wilhelm, the first-born was named after him.
The respect and affection with which the cook spoke about the gnädige Frau was at right angles to the disdain with which she disclosed Herr von Garlitz’s curriculum vitae. ‘He is a weakling, a Casanova,’ she said, ‘but she is crazy about him, the poor woman.’ The management of the factory, Die Basilwerke, where vitamin preparations and herbal remedies were manufactured as restoratives for the Wehrmacht troops, he left to subordinates. ‘Horses, he is always messing around with horses,’ the woman sighed defeatedly, as though all the misery in the world resulted from it. Invisible behind a medieval rampart, the factory grounds bordered the park. Sometimes he spurred his horse and galloped around the nineteenth-century complex of buildings to remind the workers that the chimneys were smoking at his expense.
‘Have you met my husband yet?’ said Frau von Garlitz. ‘Come, then I’ll introduce you.’ She rushed to meet him, down the entrance steps. Anna followed awkwardly. She was seeing a snippet from a Ufa film: the godchild of the Kaiser, in white uniform, bolt upright on his Lippizaner, trotting between the black shiny pillars of the drive. At the foot of the steps the Rider on the White Horse came to a halt; he dismounted and allowed himself to be embraced with self-indulgent absent-mindedness. ‘Anna, my new chambermaid.’ Frau von Garlitz pushed her gently towards him. He gave her a hand fleetingly while his eyes looked for a baluster to tie the reins round. To him, Anna understood, I am less than a horse.
