by Tessa de Loo
Anna put the inkwell on the table, dipped the nib of her pen, bent over a sheet of pale blue notepaper. But the words had difficulty forming themselves into sentences in her head, drowned as they were by the fragments of conversation that entered her room from downstairs – apparently they were sitting in a circle around the fireplace. There was repeated mention of the Wolf’s Nest and the Bendler barracks. It sounded as though one of those present had to fulfil a mission at both locations, the details of which were being comprehensively discussed, and the timing arranged to the second. Beneath the controlled, rational tone in which they spoke she could hear a subdued tension that sharpened her attentiveness. Frau von Garlitz’s voice did not join in. Her only typically female contribution apparently was to offer the place for this rendezvous. Although Anna tried to regard what was coming to her ears as not intended for her ears, the more the evening went on, the more her dry pen floated inactively over the paper; the importance of all those words pressed upon her as though they were specially meant for her. She felt cold. It started with her feet and crept slowly up her legs to her middle. But in her head she was dominated by the feverish awareness that she was the only one in the world who knew about a breathtakingly bold plan. A plan that would interfere profoundly in the order of things and bring about changes too dizzying for her alone to grasp. Her head felt top-heavy, the responsibility was too great. In sudden desolation she considered entrusting everything she had heard to the blue paper, but her pen hesitated at the thought that it could be fatally dangerous to entrust a letter with such contents to the post. So she sat motionless until the visit had broken up and left an ominous quiet behind in the castle where, within its walls, beside the unfortunate emperor’s bed, it was now also keeping a secret whose timing mechanism had been set.
As though guided by an invisible hand, they ended up in the pâtisserie with the unrivalled merveilleux. At the other tables well-groomed contemporaries spooned in their cakes with ladylike mouthfuls, chatting pleasantly about everyday things. Why were Anna and Lotte doomed to dig endlessly over that war, at this age, in a history that really would not change for the better?
They looked at each other expectantly over their empty plates. ‘What I heard through the chimney then was precisely what was executed’ – Anna interrupted the silence as was only to be expected. ‘I read about it years later – about that one unforeseen chance, of course. They had had enough of the Sunday painter. It began with the Stalingrad catastrophe. Then there was a turnaround in the disposition of the nationalistic nobility because their sons too were perishing there. It was the end of the great dream. The military experts among them realized that the war could not be won, their estates were in danger as the Russians approached, their whole status was in danger. Thus was the conspiracy created. Frau von Garlitz had offered her services, probably under her father’s influence – that fierce Prussian of the old guard with his connections. And I in my maid’s room heard them talking as though I were sitting there! All the conspirators were there and devised the plot to the minutest detail. It would have worked if they hadn’t had such dreadful bad luck. It was all fixed up in the Bendler barracks in Berlin – at a password the officers would revolt, take the government prisoner, form a coalition and offer peace immediately. The war over! If it had succeeded Martin would still have been alive, and millions of others, many towns would had survived intact. I would have had a totally different life. Whether it would have been a better life I don’t know, more interesting, certainly not – my God, as a housewife in Vienna! But I did not see that at all then. I was very badly shocked, did not know what I ought to do. I was law-abiding although I had not much faith in the Führer. I believed in the necessity of authority, still do for that matter, I was in charge myself … in that I am very German, I admit it. Martin came the following Sunday. I told him what I had heard. He went white round the gills. ‘Keep quiet about it,’ he said, ‘you’ve heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. God grant that it succeeds!’
Lotte ordered another pot of tea. ‘Yet, it would, with hindsight, not have mattered much if you had disclosed the plan or not,’ she made light of Anna’s secrecy. ‘The plot would have failed anyway.’
Anna did not go along with her. ‘If I had betrayed it at that stage, perhaps an alternative plan would have been devised that really would have succeeded. In that case it would have been better not to have kept quiet.’
On this speculation a senseless discussion followed, in which the word ‘when’ often appeared with the meaning of ‘what if’. With their invented variations they still steered the course of history by their hands, in an argumentative tone because it mainly fell to Lotte to contradict Anna. Eventually they left the establishment squabbling wearily: Anna provoked and exhausted – it seemed impossible ever to convince her sister (with what artillery ought she to approach?) – Lotte angered on account of the fact that Anna imputed a central role for herself in an event which had proceeded completely beyond her.
8
‘If you had a revolver in your hand at this moment and Hitler came walking round the corner would you shoot him?’
Leon Stein looked at her with an anguished laugh. They were walking in the wood; he was a head shorter than Lotte. In broad daylight he was strolling cold-bloodedly along the beech path and took her arm as though they were engaged. That cold-bloodedness was part of his survival strategy – up to now he had survived all daring exploits. He did not worry about his own death; he dealt with that of another more carefully. ‘I think I would,’ she said hesitantly, ‘but I don’t know if I could really do it.’ They passed the row of trees that was still keeping the secret of the box despite the clairvoyant’s prophesy. They had searched exhaustively following his advice but had found nothing: the earth there was loose and uneven as though colonies of moles had contested the territory with each other. Moreover, ‘In the vicinity of the fifth tree’ really was very vague.
‘I have a problem …’ said Leon. ‘A month ago we took a Jewish family – husband, wife, children – to three separate addresses. Meanwhile the wife was betrayed and picked up but set free a short time later. Since then she has been walking about unhindered and a number of us have been arrested, those who gave her coupons, identity card, a hiding address. We have followed her, we can work it out. You understand that we are not going to wait quietly to see who the next victim is going to be.’ He looked at her with partly closed eyes, as though speaking while half-asleep. ‘We have taken a decision: she is going to be liquidated.’ His arm held hers more tightly. ‘Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice one life to save other lives.’ Lotte looked at him, shocked. ‘To save my family I would also be capable of a lot, I think …’ ‘Exactly so,’ he nodded. ‘Who’s got to do it?’ she asked after a long silence. The little man, who could not permit himself to shirk the answer to the big questions, poked at a tree root that crossed the path with the point of his shoe. ‘That’s exactly the problem.’
After a few days’ absence he returned hurriedly; agitated dots of light shone in his glasses. There was no time to ask him anything. ‘A raid’s coming,’ he waved his hands in a vague direction, ‘they could be here at any moment.’ In the house there was the usual chaos. Those who did not exist officially, who were not allowed to occupy a square centimetre of the surface of the earth, dissolved into nothing. The game of cards, still warm from their hands, the forbidden books that they read, their unmade beds – they had an astonishing routine for wiping out life that should not exist. The ordinary Dutch family who lived there applied themselves to their daily activities with ostentatious industry, hoping that the deafening beating of their hearts would continue unnoticed.
They were mistaken in imagining that Ernst Goudriaan was, as usual, in the hiding place behind the mirror, until he appeared in the kitchen in a long leather coat with a kit bag on his back and misted-up glasses, where Lotte was doing the washing for the sake of form. ‘I have come to say goodbye.’ He held out a trembling hand. Lotte wiped her h
ands on her apron. ‘Goodbye? Why?’ ‘I … I … can’t take it any more …’ he stammered, taking his glasses off and putting them back on. ‘I … that tension … increasing again … I … I am going away …’ ‘Away?’ Lotte repeated, positioning herself in front of him. ‘You’ll walk straight into their arms! How do you get it into your head – you’ll betray us all!’ He shook his head nervously. ‘I’ve got some arsenic …’ he reassured her. Her mouth fell open. ‘Arsenic …’ she emphasized each syllable, ‘… you’re crazy … give that coat and bag here …’ She put her hand out authoritatively. He stood motionless opposite her. Was that the sound of voices in the distance? Barking dogs? Drone of an engine? Instead of his eyes all she saw was his stupid steamed-up glasses, his narrow face behind them, white and fixed in tension – perhaps this time he had to be thoroughly rattled. They hypnotized each other, a silent test of strength with the background sounds coming ever closer. ‘Come …’ ordered Lotte. She began to tug at his bag, helped him out of his coat – suddenly he let her do as she pleased, like a dog who submits to its master in blind obedience, against its instincts. ‘But I’m not going in the cupboard any more,’ he cried rebelliously. Without allowing himself to be prevented he turned and rashly walked out of the kitchen into the garden, straight to his studio, leaving Lotte behind with his coat and bag.
A police van drew up in front of the house. A dozen soldiers began to spread out according to ludicrously strict stage directions. Some positioned themselves like macabre guards at strategic points in order to close off possible escape routes, others searched through the house and showed themselves at the windows to check whether there were any camouflaged rooms. An officer strode through the apple trees to the TB-house. In the parental bedroom they allowed themselves to be enticed to the three-bay window by the lady of the house to admire the view on to the meadows and edge of the wood. The cloudless sky and sun shining through the branches seemed to be ignoring the danger. Lotte, mesmerized by the quiet and stillness around the studio, kept going to the window expecting to see Ernst Goudriaan coming out with a rifle in his back and his hands raised. Eventually she could not bear it any longer and went the same way she had seen the officer go. She looked mock-casually inside through the window at the back. Ernst, his glasses half-way down his nose, was holding up a half-complete violin and pointing at something, giving enthusiastic explanation. The officer had put his cap on the workbench and was listening in fascination, nodding now and then and stroking his chin. Lotte opened the door. Distracted, they both looked over their shoulders. The German was stroking his middle finger caressingly over the back plate of a violin hanging on the wall. ‘Ein sehr schöne lacquer …’ ‘I make it myself without pigments,’ said Ernst proudly. ‘Wunderbar, wunderbar …’ the other cried euphorically. He stood up and inhaled deeply with closed eyes. ‘It smells good in here too,’ he discovered, ‘marvellous …!’
Disconcerted, Lotte took large strides back to the kitchen, putting her feet down without thinking. But even before she reached the door she was overwhelmed by a feeling of triumph: at one moment he was prepared to take poison from fear of the occupier, the next moment he welcomed him in – enthusiastically – to the secrets of violin-making. A wonderful alchemical transformation that enabled her to forget all danger. She was just going inside the house when violin music sounded behind her. An ardent, heartfelt passage from the Beethoven concerto arose from the studio and penetrated through the pale blue planks. The soldiers, losing their interest in the insides of the house, assembled in the garden to listen to the officer’s musical intermission. They listened in a controlled way, as though it were part of military discipline. The sun glittered on the buttons of their uniforms. Now that the raid was being graced with a famous concerto, Lotte’s father also came outside to listen with his hands in his pockets. After the last notes had died away, it was more quiet than ever before, until a magpie flew off noisily from a branch and the officer dreamily left the studio. He swayed through the fruit trees, drunk from the music. Suddenly he saw his subordinates in view; he ran a hand through his dishevelled hair, put his cap on and adopted an expression suited to the war. ‘Well then …’ he said gruffly, ‘what are you waiting for …’
The engine drone died away. Those who did not exist emerged sweating and smelly and gave vent to their surprise at Beethoven’s wonderful intervention, which had even been heard behind the mirror. Max Frinkel had plenty to say about the power of music. Only Ernst Goudriaan stayed behind in his studio and went on planing the back plate of a violin. ‘You seduced the commandant …’ said Lotte delightedly; she sat down among the wood shavings. ‘Thanks to you …’ he grinned. ‘… She is doing the washing as usual, I said to myself as I walked to the studio. If the people in hiding are discovered, there’s a huge chance that the whole family will be put against the wall and yet she is doing the washing as usual. Why, I thought, don’t I get on with the plane then? Someone who is at work has something inviolable, something invulnerable … as though he is placing himself outside the war with it …’ She was shyly silent. She did not feel indifferent to his singing her praises. It brought her into an enjoyable confusion that now for a change she had had a positive influence on the fate of another. ‘And he even played a solo for you …’ she sighed, as a diversionary tactic. Ernst nodded. ‘An enthusiastic amateur. He said: if we weren’t in the middle of a war I would buy this violin from you.’ With a craftsman’s pride he repeated, ‘He wanted to buy a violin from me!’
The incident pepped her up and brought the credit-debit balance more or less into equilibrium. Chastened by the thought that this person in hiding actually belonged to her, since she had held him back from his ridiculous kamikaze action, she offered no opposition to the feeling of being in love that flooded over her as an apparently natural result: with him and with all the activities that are necessary to making a violin: sawing, planing, polishing, lacquering. That the front and back plates were of fine-grained Yugoslavian maple wood, the fingerboards of ebony on the other hand, that a bad lacquer affected the tone, that the sides were bent with steam, all of it moved her, as when she also caught the stink of the bone glue that was used for sticking various components together. But the loveliest thing of all about him was that he seemed unlike her father in every respect.
In a guidebook promoting Spa’s fame as a health resort it says: ‘The resort guests at Spa should forget about everyday life. They are urged to live according to a slower, a more regular rhythm. They are gathered up into a caring and protective milieu, which is closely connected to the medical world, which is in itself a symbol of reliability and certainty.’
A fat lot the two sisters cared about these good intentions. None of the ‘slow and regular rhythm’ showed up. The more they confided further to each other about their incompatible lives, the more the tension and the awareness of the irrevocability of the past grew. It was the last chance they were being offered for rapprochement and reconciliation. The one wanted to, out of profound need, but was already too willing; the other was still bracing herself, because of a mistrust at least as deep. The war was overrunning their health cure. They summoned up ghosts and the ghosts came … with their frayed souls, in a deserted landscape, under leaden skies in a smell of gunpowder and phosphorous … one great lament against remaindering the right to life, freedom, humanity, Christian charity … values that had once had significance, words from an archaic language, an Esperanto of naïvety. The ghosts came past in columns and left deeply ingrained traces behind them.
It is true that Anna and Lotte were lying full-length on their couches in the Salle de Repos, but they did not keep their eyes closed and they were not listening to the cooing of the doves. As there were no other patients in there that morning, they continued as usual with the war, horizontally.
‘The twentieth of July, the day Hitler was not killed,’ said Anna, ‘I remember it as though it were the day before yesterday. Frau von Garlitz had the radio on. She knew precisely when it woul
d happen of course. There was a brief mention of the attempt, nothing more, she had been expecting it. “Thank God!” she cried, delirious with joy, “The Schwein is dead!” It echoed through the corridors and staircases. I went rigid. Then Ottchen suddenly appeared and said: “The Führer is alive, he is talking on the radio now.” Oh my God, I thought, let no one have heard Frau von Garlitz. The house was full of strangers! We only found out later what had gone wrong. The Führer, who never left his seat at meetings, had walked round the table to the other side – just before the bomb went off. The conspirators were arrested immediately, von Stauffenberg was shot that same day. The gentlemen I had seen on the front steps with their briefcases, including a nephew of Frau von Garlitz, not one of them survived. All those senior officers from good families whom the Schweinerei did not want any more … most of them were hung at Plötzensee, on meat hooks.’
‘An exhibition …’
Anna nodded. ‘As a terrifying example. Their wives and children were taken off to camps. They had a great purge right away and absolutely everything with a bad smell was picked up and sent off.’
‘And Frau von Garlitz?’
‘No one knew that she had been involved in it.’
‘I am lying on my back and watching the aircraft fly over,’ Martin wrote from Normandy. He had enclosed two photographs. In one he was sitting in a military coat on the rocks of Mont-Saint-Michel, looking out over the sea to England – the other showed him sitting on the wing of a shot down English aircraft with a star on its side. One week later he telephoned unexpectedly. ‘I’m nearby, I’m here, in Stettin.’ His signals unit had been disbanded. They had to go for brief infantry training at a Wehrmacht barracks on the Baltic Sea. The inventive company commander, who had once rustled up the illegal leave from the Ukraine, had thought up a new trick. All spouses received a telegram with the news that their husbands were seriously ill. With this official document in her pocket, which authorized a journey north, Anna got on the train. And again at the end of this journey, a steep grey wall rose up as the train tipped over sharply to one side. What would they be hiding behind that one? Anna thought. The miracle weapon that had been highly praised on the radio occurred to her, the weapon with which Germany was going to win the war. Perhaps V2s were indeed being deployed behind that wall! But wrinkles appeared in the enormous wall, it was moving – the train swayed simultaneously, it toppled back, and for the first time in her life she suddenly saw an unending grey water surface with a boat drifting on it.
