The Twins

by Tessa de Loo

  Dismay was everywhere at Lotte’s home. A very old person who scarcely took up space on this planet. Why? And if an old man’s life was dealt with this carelessly so near home, what was the fate of those who were put on transports? The dismay had double foundations for Lotte – who had neatly delivered him to the one who would send him on to his murderers? Who, in her so-called innocence, had once again become a willing tool in the hands of the occupier? Watch out for me! I am even worse than those who openly make war. I am friend and foe in one. I? There is no I, only an ambivalent treacherous we, who deceives itself in itself … She immersed herself in housekeeping with an almost sardonic devotion, simply eliminating herself – her despicable self.

  As though crocuses and budding branches were out of tune with the phenomenon of war, spring got off to a hesitant start. Ed de Vries deserted his shelter address to fetch the box; he needed a couple of things that were in it, he said vaguely. Lotte’s father picked up a shovel and dug an immense hole, allowing for shifts in the earth and growth of tree roots, but the box did not surface. Perhaps they had made a mistake about the tree. Another spot was tried. The deeper the holes became the greater the suspicion he was loading onto himself. He took it very seriously. His image to the outside world was at stake. He set the children to work on it. All day long they poked the ground in vain with long iron poles. Max Frinkel advised engaging a renowned clairvoyant; before the war there had been one in Curaçao Street in Amsterdam. Lotte’s father dismissed the suggestion cynically, allergic to anything to do with religion or the supernatural. It was his wife, sufficiently recovered to contradict his prejudices, who sent Lotte forth – you never knew.

  No glass globes, playing cards, eastern trinkets. The psychic looked like a bookkeeper in a grey suit; his office was bare and businesslike. Sobered, Lotte took her seat by his desk. She looked at him expectantly, not knowing how to begin. ‘You have come because something has been lost,’ he said calmly, ‘I will tell you: it is still there. There is a path with trees. Parallel to it is another row of trees …’ She nodded in bewilderment. ‘… It is there … in the vicinity of the fifth tree … I would say.’ It was as though he were walking around in the wood with her and en passant pointed out the spot to her with his walking stick. And that without evident display, without magic tricks or rituals. He spoke in a tone in which one discusses business matters. She did not know what she ought to think about it; a bit of hocus-pocus might perhaps have made him more credible.

  ‘Then I’d like to ask you something else …’ she said shyly, fishing a photo out of her bag, ‘can you say anything about … him?’ He took it. She watched with a calm that surprised her – she could always disregard his findings. He took the photo in, glanced at her, at the photo, at her – without seeing her. The photo began to tremble; it seemed as though the person who was depicted in it was coming to life of his own accord. But it was the hand holding it that was trembling. The whole man began to shudder. With eyes that were bulging from fear he looked at the photo spellbound. He loosened his tie, wiped randomly over his forehead. ‘I … I … can’t tell you anything …’ he uttered breathing heavily, turning the photo over tormentedly as though he could no longer bear the image. Under his hand he shoved it towards her. ‘… But can’t you say … anything … at all?’ Lotte attempted. He shook his head, with tightly closed lips. She put the photo back in her bag and stammered a polite phrase. As she went down the stairs she felt slightly ashamed for leaving him in that condition.

  7

  It had become a familiar pattern by now: tired of eating, talking, raking up the past, tired from listening, softened up from the conflicting sensations, they were leaving a restaurant. Anna put her arm through Lotte’s, who accepted it with a certain resignation.

  They found themselves in the Place du Monument. Anna stopped at the foot of the monument, bending forward to read the text on the plinth.

  ‘Cette urne renferme des Cendres provenant de Crématoire du Camp de Concentrations de Flossenburg et de ses commandos, 1940–1945.’ She exaggerated the pronunciation like all foreigners.

  Lotte pulled her away, annoyed by so much perverse German curiosity.

  ‘Mensch, Mensch, are you still troubled by a guilty conscience?’ Anna exclaimed.

  Now that was going too far. ‘You twist things so beautifully,’ she said irritably. ‘I have absolutely no guilty conscience, why should I? That at the time I did take all the guilt onto myself … I was young and egocentric, thought I was the linchpin the world turned on, that I had influence over the fate of another. The arrogance of youth …’

  ‘You’re saying something there …’ Anna looked at her, touched. ‘It was like that with me too, young and egocentric. You hit the nail on the head … With heart and soul I only cared about that one person …’

  Lotte shook her head with annoyance. The egocentricity of her youth could not be put on a par with Anna’s just like that in one line – there was a chasm of difference between the two. Anna had a crafty habit of turning everything round. She sighed. She could not find the arguments fast enough to enfeeble this presumptuous equal treatment. She walked off, offended.

  ‘Wait … wait … Lottchen …’ Anna pleaded after her.

  That sounded like a very long time ago. As a child she had already been much faster than her plump sister. A whiff of nostalgia for her youth threatened to surface.

  ‘Listen here, do wait a minute … I want to tell you something, something you’ll be flabbergasted at … wait …’ Anna was panting. ‘Did you know that I could have changed the course of history? There was a moment when I …’

  Wearily Lotte turned. That tactic she recognized too from long, long ago. Anna would try to tempt her by making her curious: ‘I have discovered a jar of sweets somewhere, a jar of marbles …’

  Anna caught up with her. ‘There was a moment,’ she grinned, ‘when the war turned on a stupid housekeeper in West Prussia, a certain …’

  ‘Anna Bamberg,’ said Lotte laconically.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  With the flow of a caravan of refugees from Berlin, which probably no longer existed, Anna returned to the estate. Frau von Garlitz had received a billeting order. The castle swarmed with homeless townspeople who had to be provided with everything in the way of food and clean clothes, and, on Anna’s shining parquet floors, were trying to come to terms with the trauma of their burning, collapsing city.

  When the castle was already thoroughly saturated, the wife of a senior officer arrived, with a baby and a whining toddler.

  ‘My husband holds the Knight’s Cross,’ thus Frau von So-and-So introduced herself, reckoning that all doors would now be opened for her. Those who were awarded that cross had killed a lot of people, Anna knew. Whenever it was mentioned on the radio that someone had received this medal, Martin always said, ‘Somebody will have a sore throat again,’ because the order was worn hung tight around the neck. Anna had no idea where to accommodate the hero’s wife. She crossed the courtyard brooding until her eye fell on the coachman’s house above the stables. The coachman had disappeared at the same time as the horses. He had left an adequate dwelling behind, a large living-room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. We could let the high-up lady live here without us needing to feel embarrassed, Anna decided. But three days later another young mother arrived with baby and toddler – the wife of a factory worker without a ‘von’. Anna reasoned: if the noble lady gave up one room, and they shared the bathroom and kitchen in a friendly manner, they could live together in the coachman’s house. En passant she buttonholed Frau von Garlitz half-way up the stairs for her approval. ‘What?’ she cried scandalized, ‘You can’t saddle a lady of status with a woman from who knows where.’ ‘She’s just a mother,’ said Anna calmly, ‘with two children, nothing else, and that other one is also a mother with two children. She will still have two rooms to herself all the time.’ Frau von Garlitz looked at her as though she had a dangerously mentally ill person opp
osite her. She shook her head. ‘It is not on.’ War or no war, she was not allowing a headstrong housekeeper to remove with one stroke her conviction that different sorts of people existed who, from their birth – each at their own level – had a different destiny and therefore lived in different worlds. ‘Then I’ll give her my own rooms,’ cried Anna. ‘Out of the question.’ Their argument blared down the staircase; everyone could enjoy it. ‘You are a Bolshevik!’ the Countess accused her. ‘Fine, then I’m a Bolshevik.’ Anna turned her back on her and left her standing there. At the foot of the stairs Ottchen was waiting with a stern expression, he who had licked his superiors’ boots since childhood. ‘How dare you take such a tone with the gnädige Frau,’ he hissed. Anna positioned herself right in front of him. ‘Otto, I’ll tell you something. What I have to say to her I say to her face. I’d give my life for her if needs be. You bow low but with a knife in your boots. You say “Jawohl, gnädige Frau” slavishly but at the same time your eyes sparkle with hate. I’ve seen it, you don’t fool me.’

  For the mother, who was unaware of the storms raging over her head, Anna eventually found a draughty attic room without stove, without water, without window. The unsuitability of it deprived her of all the pleasure of continuing to have civilized contact with her employer. She had been accustomed to waking her in the mornings, drawing open the curtains and having a gentle morning conversation with her from the end of the bed. For Frau von Garlitz this was a precious ritual that reconciled her with the umpteenth day of war in the scarcely manageable chaos that had the estate in its grasp. Now Anna snapped her a contemptuous morning greeting, tore the curtains open and disappeared fast. After five days the Countess could endure it no longer. ‘Damned mule,’ she cried unladylike from her four-poster bed, ‘can’t you say good morning at least?’ ‘I said good morning.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ she sat up against the embroidered pillows, ‘but how! Come …’ she tapped her fingers on the edge of the bed, ‘don’t be cross any more … sit down. Go and fetch that woman and take her to the coachman’s house … do what you wish … you understand so much more about that sort of thing than I do …’

  One Sunday in March a younger sister of the Countess was getting married. Frau von Garlitz set off with her children before the crack of dawn to her parents’ castle, where the wedding was to be celebrated: her husband would come by aeroplane from Brussels to Germany. Deo gratias, thought Anna, the empire alone at last. As she was turning over in bed once more, a popular song went through her head: ‘This is my Sunday delight, in bed till ten o’clock, then nobody can get me out of it …’ But at nine o’clock there was a merciless knocking at her bedroom door. It was Ottchen, so agitated he could scarcely get his words out. The military aircraft that was to bring Herr von Garlitz to Berlin had crashed over Bohemia: none of the occupants had survived. Anna was quick to get over the shock. She did not delude herself into believing that she was sad. The only one she was anxious about was Frau von Garlitz, who reappeared at the gate half-way through the afternoon. The wedding had been postponed. She gave orders with the remarkable self-control required of her position – only her nostrils were trembling slightly. She kept a cool head about everything: a state funeral had to be prepared.

  Anna was sent to Frau Ketteler at great speed to tell her in person of the tragic death of the apple of her eye. With a horse and carriage she rushed to the remote villa. Through a dark tunnel of spruces that exuded a damp spicy smell she walked to the staff entrance. She pushed the door open. No one was there. The only thing that was sounding, with regular interruptions, was the electric bell with which the lady of the house summoned the maid to her room via a pedal next to her armchair. Surprised, Anna walked along the corridor. Where was the staff? Did they all have Sunday off? What was the point of calling them then? Although Anna did not know Frau Ketteler’s villa, it was not difficult to find her room – she only needed to look for the source of the staccato sound. The door stood open a crack. She looked in on a dim room, spruce branches pushing up against the windows. On a Persian carpet in front of the hearth, where a professional fire was blazing, lay Herr von Garlitz’s aunt – on her back. She was being mounted by her favourite sheepdog: both were at full gallop, which explained the continual on and off of the bell as she was lying on top of the pedal. Apparently she had not allowed herself enough time before the ride to pull this out from under her back. Anna held her breath. She had never suspected that what she saw here, illuminated from the side by the flames, could exist at all and even now, as she looked at it, she did not believe it. With fascinated horror she stared at the animal lover’s flushed face – this was an unsuitable moment to trouble her. The sheepdog looked into the distance with glazed eyes. Suddenly Anna was afraid that he would get a scent of her presence. She fled down the passage, out of the house, between the antiseptic spruces to the ordinary world where the spectacle easily seemed like a bizarre dream.

  Back at the castle she said she had not found Frau Ketteler at home. The truth could not cross her lips – it would be thought that she was imagining perverse fantasies. Moreover, everyone was preoccupied with the mystery of how the military aircraft had crashed over Bohemia. That was surely far off the route from Brussels to Berlin? There had been no bombing raids that day that one would have had to avoid. Secretly it was suggested that a political reason existed for taking Herr von Garlitz out of the way; discredited individuals were increasingly having accidents. Anna remained level-headed. She could think of no single reason why the life of this clever dick would be worth the sacrifice of a military aircraft. Yet she also slowly realized that another truth might exist behind the generally accepted one. Just as beneath the exterior of Frau Ketteler something lurked that was completely, inconceivably different.

  The coffin with the material remains was delivered after a few days. It was entrusted to the gardener. He grabbed her behind the hedge and said, looking round with panic: ‘Did you know there’s absolutely … nothing in the coffin …’ ‘Oh no,’ Anna swayed back. With a weathered hand, which had toiled in the earth for half a century, he led her by the elbow to an outbuilding where the coffin stood on trestles in the semi-darkness. It was too small to contain an adult man. When they lifted it up it seemed remarkably light, something rattled back and forth inside. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ the gardener whispered, ‘not a whole person in any case.’ ‘Frau von Garlitz mustn’t notice,’ Anna said hurriedly. ‘Put stones into it before the funeral so that the coffin weighs as much as a person. That thing will have to be carried. Cover it with flags, decorate it with flowers and greenery …’

  Until late into the night she sat at the sewing machine in her room making a mourning dress out of a black evening dress of Frau von Garlitz’s for her daughter, fourteen-year-old Christa. ‘What are you doing Anna?’ the Countess’s voice suddenly sounded through the noise of the machine, flat and robbed of any inflection. ‘Christa doesn’t have a dress for the funeral,’ Anna mumbled with three pins between her lips. Frau von Garlitz dropped down into a chair in her night-dress. She followed Anna’s actions with an empty gaze. ‘What would I do without you,’ she whispered, ‘no one has done so much for me as you.’ Anna, who had little experience of receiving compliments, blushed up to the hairline and cranked the sewing machine with double force. Her employer was seated on the upright chair, nodding off, as though Anna were her last remaining refuge. Her head sagged onto her chest – now and then she lifted it with a jerk as though the inner realization of early widowhood kept occurring to her. Anna’s head was reverberating with worries about the funeral the following day: the state guests had to be offered a welcome fitting to their status and function; no element must be missing from the military ceremonial … the whole farce in memory of a nonentity had to go off faultlessly.

  When the sun rose the dress was ready. There was no point in going to bed. She felt a strange lucidity that overcame her tiredness and would have prevented her sleeping. She took Frau von Garlitz, leaning heavily on her, to bed, an
d hurried downstairs. It was a chilly, lustreless day. Everyone conformed to the scenario: the official guests played their parts with a practised, abstract dignity that led to the suspicion that funerals were just as much a commonly occurring and obvious aspect of their careers as thinking up strategies or inspecting troops. In the front rank, behind the coffin professionally draped with Nazi flags and flora, walked Goering’s representative with clenched jaws, broad and massive as a tank. Frau von Garlitz, flanked by her children, floated behind like a black angel, pale and serene and not of this world. To the accompaniment of speeches, in which his services for the fatherland were made much of and rhetorically vanished between the chestnut trees, the deceased was placed in the family grave on the estate where he had been born – not for long, as history would relate.

  The undermining thing about the war, thought Anna, was that it continued as a matter of course and that you could not dwell on any single disaster or tragedy. Fresh problems immediately presented themselves anew which demanded an immediate solution. Onwards, onwards, onwards, one cog slotted into the next. Work went on, plodding on, purely in order to keep everything turning in expectation of … of what?

  There were also those who opposed the apparent inevitability. One evening, a month after her husband’s death, Frau von Garlitz received a notable visit. From her window on the first floor Anna saw a group of gentlemen arriving – they walked towards the front door discretely but purposefully, briefcases under their arms. She recognized some of them, officers in civilian dress, who had also been at the funeral. They were received in the great hall, immediately below her room. Murmuring voices ascended through the hot air duct that began in the fireplace and had an outlet in her room.