The Twins

by Tessa de Loo

  One evening the American invited her to a party. ‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘Well …’ he felt his clean-shaven jaw, ‘there’s a bit to eat, a bit to drink, a bit of being happy …’ ‘And then?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Well, and then …? It would be good for you, you are young, you can’t be sad for ever.’ ‘Danke, nein,’ she shook her head, ‘the end of the party is quite clear to me.’ ‘I can’t help being a man,’ he apologized. ‘Nor I a woman,’ she added, ‘and my husband died a year ago. Excuse me but you didn’t seriously think I would go to a party with you …’ She uttered the word as though she had a bitter almond in her mouth. He bowed his head in acquiescence. He was no match for such intransigence, whether as a soldier or a man or a wordsmith. He was being re-posted the following day. An enormous bunch of red roses was delivered for Anna, proof of a frivolous extravagance in this time of shortages. A card was hanging among the leaves. ‘For the first German woman to say No.’

  Arrangements had meanwhile been made for her. A haulier from Bad Neuheim who had permission to cross the zone boundary was prepared to smuggle her to Koblenz. He drove up with his horse and wagon; she had to lie down with her suitcase on the floor that had been covered by a tarpaulin. Sacks with unknown contents were piled up over her, leaving an air hole. The relaxed Americans let them through but the French made spot checks, poking their bayonets into the sacks – just missing Anna, who was inhaling the smell of tarpaulin and waiting fearlessly. Perhaps she was only spared because secretly she longed for it and preferred the fate of struggling victims. The man on the box said his prayers, sweating, he admitted afterwards to her as he helped her out at Koblenz station.

  No more trains were running that night. A herd of stranded travellers was sleeping in the station. Anna installed herself on the ground next to an old man in a patched-up army coat who put a bottle of wine to his lips and then generously allowed it to circulate in his immediate vicinity while he spread butter on chunks of white bread and distributed them at random. Anna declined his offer but he pushed his bottle into her hands with a gesture that would brook no opposition. ‘I’ve got lots more,’ he grinned, unconcerned, pointing to his bag with a shaking finger. She hesitated no longer; the ebullient atmosphere round the generous old man was infectious. The vineyards on the slopes of the Mosel were praised unanimously, the bottle went pragmatically from mouth to mouth. Anna stretched out on the floor, the suitcase beneath her head, and slowly dozed off. In the morning she was woken with wine – breakfast had the same ingredients as the previous evening’s supper. They forgot their cares, there was singing, the autumn sun shone, even the train to Trier puffed into the station. Festivities continued in the compartment, the crumpled host at its beaming centre.

  The train stopped half-way. The rails were missing for a distance of a few kilometres. They continued on foot, singing travelling songs, drinking. The sun glistened in the profuse tinsel of wild hops along the railway line. Another train was waiting further on. Nothing could suppress the jollity. ‘What sort of company is this?’ growled a priest sitting by the window. ‘That boozing, that drunken talk.’ Irritated, he took up his breviary and began to pray, to compensate for the immorality surrounding him. ‘Will you have some?’ Anna offered him the bottle, laughing. He shook his head with pursed lips. Everyone got out at Bernkastel, leaving her alone in the priest’s company. She leaned out of the window to wave to the creased philanthropist who had spread so much happiness around him. He tottered along the platform, awaited by his wife who, with hawk eyes at a distance, had already put together the diagnosis for an empty bag. ‘Where is the bread …?’ she let fly, ‘where is the butter, where is …!’ The shrivelled-up little man raised his arms to heaven. ‘In paradise …’ he moaned.

  The train set off again. The feeling of happiness induced by the wine turned to sadness. Sentimental tears dribbled down the lowered window as she stared at his ever diminishing figure. She flopped back into her seat. The priest looked up flabbergasted from his breviary. Remembering his Christian duty he enquired haughtily why she was crying. She explained why the number of times she had been happy since October 1944 could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Moreover it was not an insouciant happiness as before but one that was rooted in despair. Familiar with this sort of paradox – suffering for the sake of salvation was another one – he nodded.

  It was already dark and they were not yet in Trier. ‘Have you got an address for the night?’ he asked matter-of-factly. ‘The station,’ said Anna laconically. He looked disapprovingly at her. ‘Why do you think I look like this …?’ she pointed to her dirty uniform. He was silent, pensive. ‘If I took you to the nuns, in the convent? Would you come with me?’ ‘Good heavens!’ she cried, ‘does such a thing still exist?’ ‘Yes of course.’ ‘In these times?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ruffled. ‘Of course I’ll go with you.’

  When they arrived at Trier, Anna was in the middle of the hangover-thirst phase. She got out, dead-beat. ‘Follow me,’ said the father sternly. He walked rapidly into the dark town. She dragged the heavy suitcase like a dog on a lead behind her over the bumpy cobbles. He walked ten paces ahead of her without looking round, for fear of compromising himself. She thought that he was not so much driven by Christian charity as by protecting his own place in heaven: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ She followed the black habit past the dark façades, panting. Every step was a step back in time, up to the Romans in the form of the Porta Nigra that towered threateningly above her in its sombre massiveness. The representative of the Church turned right and stopped at a heavy wooden door with iron studs. He knocked, muttered three words and was gone, without shaking hands, without saying goodbye; no sign of humanity whatsoever escaped from this servant of God.

  God’s female servants had quite a different attitude to their status as the chosen. They raised a hand to their mouth when they saw her and immediately began to put things in order. A bath-tub was filled with warm water, her dirty clothes were received; while she lay in the bath the convent filled with nocturnal activity. She was wrapped in a chaste towel and taken to a guest room where she slid between clean, smooth sheets and fell asleep with the picture of a heavenly smiling nun before her eyes. When she woke her light grey striped nurse’s uniform was on the table, shining in the morning sun – washed, ironed and pressed.

  She arrived at Saarburg as an impeccable Red Cross sister. History repeated itself. Ilse had already departed again, as advocate for her fiancé who was still in captivity, prompted to hurry by the disturbing prospect of the approaching winter. But there was work for Anna. A particularly unsavory chore had waited patiently for her all that time. In revenge for five years of war the Luxemburgers had crossed over the border and had given full vent to their feelings of displeasure in a hit-and-run raid on the villagers’ property. The walls and windows of Ilse’s parents’ half-timbered house had been smeared with excrement. Linen had been pulled out of the cupboards and dirtied – they had sprawled on it, said the woman with a mouth taut from suppressed rage, and had manufactured the material of their revenge before her eyes. ‘The tit-for-tat answer, you understand. A disgusting people those Luxemburgers.’ She was too sickly to take on the great cleaning herself, while her husband spent long days in his sawmill.

  Anna rolled up her sleeves and began. She had gone away from a pigsty ten years ago, now she was back in it. What difference did it make? But when a lorry from the sawmill was able to take her some way in the right direction, she threw the mop and brush in a corner – she had made enough outflanking movements now. Ilse’s mother, who knew what had brought her diligent cleaning woman to these parts, had to let her go. The lorry drove out of the town in a thick drizzle, to Daun in the Eifel. She continued on foot, through immense pine forests that dissolved in a mist of fine droplets. It was chilly, the damp penetrated through her soles, but the knowledge that she was getting closer all the time made her indifferent to discomfort. This deserted
road, sauntering uphill, downhill between melancholy pines, was precisely what you could expect of a pilgrim’s route to the underworld. She was not afraid. The end of the journey was coming into view, afterwards there would be nothing more to wish for, afterwards … there was no afterwards. The cold crept up to her middle, she progressed more slowly, her soles were worn out, the patches hung loose and flapped with each step. All she could see was shiny black tree trunks and dripping branches – her spirit stubbornly insisted although her body was showing increasing signs of unwillingness. At a given moment he could not bear to look any longer and began to interfere. Listen, dearest, he said compassionately, do go home. What do you want? I’m not there at all … Thus he chatted to her; initially she ignored him but when he – carefully as always – arranged an approaching driver who loomed up out of the mist, she capitulated. Today you win, she admitted, but come I shall … at a more suitable moment …

  Back in Saarburg she continued the cleaning. The grousing about the Luxemburgers did not cease. It pursued her into all the rooms like a drill, driven on by revenge, which was overheard by an old lady who lived in some rooms at the rear of the house. ‘How can you stand it here?’ she said, observing Anna cleaning, ‘You’re surely not going to stay on here doing that for ever.’ ‘What should I be doing then?’ said Anna defensively, ‘I’m waiting for Ilse.’ ‘My God, then you could be in for a long wait. Who knows when she’ll find help. But listen, I’ve got a suggestion for you. I have an acquaintance in Trier, a retired teacher from the grammar school. She is looking for someone to do the housekeeping … not just anyone, you understand. Perhaps it’s something for you.’ Anna nodded slowly – her life ultimately hung together on improvisations.

  She recognized Kaiserstrasse in Trier from her nocturnal journey in a priest’s wake, and there she got to know a fascinating type of person full of incomprehensible contradictions: Thérèse Schmidt, a narrow, bony woman with thin grey hair held together by a clip, stingy in terms of material things but generous and helpful where the intellect was concerned. It was not apparent that she went to her brother’s farm every day just outside the town, to stuff herself with bread, meat and dairy foods. Without shame she expatiated upon it. It never occurred to her to bring something back for Anna, who was trying to stay alive on two slices of bread a day, some potatoes and a cup of black coffee dregs – the rationing imposed by the French in retaliation for the hunger they had had to suffer. It was much harder to reconcile Frau Schmidt’s rare stinginess with her daily visits to church, Bible study and fervent praying – never had Anna encountered close-up so much bigoted religious zeal. There were a lot of books in the house; her earlier appetite for reading returned between the housekeeping tasks. Surprised, the teacher drew up a chair when she returned from her daily visit and found her reading. ‘You are not destined to spend your whole life between the stove and the kitchen sink, I could see that right away … What do you really want to do?’ ‘I have no idea …’ Anna stammered, overwhelmed by the sudden interest. Her plans for the future extended no further than completing that one mission. ‘Isn’t there something you have always really wanted to do?’ Anna frowned. Dante slid from her lap but was intercepted in his fall by Frau Schmidt’s narrow hand. The idea of having the freedom to choose a career for oneself was so revolutionary that it paralysed her thinking. She had to let go of her picture of the world in which women were clearly divided into three categories: a broad lower layer containing farming women and servants, a small upper layer of privileged women who had the decorative function of being civilized, elegant wives, and the remaining category of unmarried women in teaching, nursing or convents. No one chose for herself, it was something they came straight into – through birth or circumstances. Frau Schmidt repeated her innocent question. ‘Well …’ Anna sighed. Her head was light, she did not know if it was from hunger or the thorny questioning. Her thoughts flitted criss-cross back in time, in search of examples for possible candidates to identify with, for someone who could say the word for her – thus she landed up in a dark, stuffy, small room where it smelled of sweating feet and a dead soldier hung on the wall who had been born to die for the fatherland (such an inevitable, obvious destination again). Opposite her stood a woman resolutely closing the door with her backside and lovingly opening her arms: come here …

  ‘Child welfare …’ Anna blurted out ‘… I believe I have always wanted to do that.’ ‘I see … but why don’t you then?’ ‘It would be quite impossible,’ Anna said brusquely, ‘I would have to do matriculation first …’ Frau Schmidt laughed at her: ‘Is that all!’ From her past in the education system she ferreted out a teacher who was prepared to cram her ready for the state examination. Another woman attended his lessons; Anna could join her. From then on, every afternoon she walked to his house through the centuries-old streets between piles of debris and people collapsing from hunger, worn-out rubber overshoes over her worn-out shoes. ‘Listen, you don’t need to understand,’ the teacher impressed upon her, ‘all you have to do in the exam is to be able to give the precise answers. Read it out of your head.’ Everyone had already been astounded by her memory when Anna recited ‘The Song of the Bell’ next to her proud father. Now it was the teacher who was breathless at the speed with which she acted on his advice. He rushed her through grammar, the foundations of mathematics, through history, geography, German literature. After fourteen days he said: ‘I am working with two dissimilar racehorses here. You run ahead like a madcap, the other can’t keep up. I shall have to separate you.’

  Her head was entirely empty – she had hidden the war deeply away, deliberately lost the key. There was plenty of space for the dizzying quantities of information, so agreeably neutral in their capacity as cultural wares. She crammed and crammed, almost fainting away sometimes under the high revs. ‘Are you dizzy?’ the teacher enquired. ‘Yes …’ she said hazily. ‘What have you eaten?’ ‘Two potatoes …’ ‘Good heavens, you should have said so earlier!’ He made her a plate of oatmeal porridge. ‘Don’t be concerned, I get food parcels from the English zone.’ Each day the lessons began with a plate of porridge: first the body, then the mind, was his view. He also pointed out that her overshoes had had it. It did not occur to her employer, who had at least ten pairs of shoes in the same size, to hand over one pair to her. The teacher bartered two bottles of gin for sound leather shoes. At home Anna showed them to her, elated. Frau Schmidt raised her eyebrows without interest: ‘So …?’

  On Christmas Eve she went to her brother as usual for an advance on the Christmas meal. She had said before her departure that she wanted a bath when she returned – to cleanse the body before she dealt with the soul during midnight mass. Anna had to get everything ready and heat a large cauldron of water on the coal stove in the kitchen. It was already dark when the bell went unexpectedly. A woman was standing at the door, clasping a crying baby wrapped in rags to her, threatening to collapse from exhaustion. Anna caught her, brought her to the kitchen and took the child from her, which smelled as though it had not been changed in weeks. She could see the steaming cauldron and the tub from the corner of her eye – everything was ready for the gnädige Frau. Without thinking about it she filled the bath, unwrapped the child and threw the stinking rags in the passage. After she had washed the baby she wrapped him in a flannel towel. En passant she gave the mother a piece of bread and butter, a boiled potato and a cup of black coffee. Not a word was said, everything happened in a hurried sequence of self-evident actions – under the constant threat of the phantom Frau Schmidt, who might come home at any moment. What now, Anna asked herself feverishly, where should they go? The convent! The nuns, those angels of mercy! She slipped a coat on and took the mother and child to the Ursulines, who eagerly took pity on them. A comfortable feeling of synchronicity came over her on the way back: it was the eve of Christmas and there was no room at the inn! Above Trier’s piles of rubble the sky was strewn with stars, she was walking beneath it in her new shoes. Everything was in equilib
rium – for a little while.

  She came home at the same time as her employer. When a tub full of dirty water was awaiting her there instead of a warm bath, the teacher was outraged. She raised her arms in a grotesque gesture; a torrent of accusations descended on Anna. ‘Just a moment,’ she squeezed past, ‘I’ll put a new cauldron on the fire, I’ll clean everything up, it will be done in a moment.’ Frau Schmidt only calmed down when order had been restored and the picture of the kitchen corresponded with the one she had had in mind as she walked home flushed and satisfied from the meal.

  During the midnight mass she sat in the pew, smelling of soap and starch, singing, rejoicing, praying lustily. She ranted and raved like an angel of Our Lord with the same voice that was so good at torrents of abuse. Anna watched stoically. On the way home Frau Schmidt said, ‘It escapes me how you could let such a dirty woman and dirty child into my house.’ Anna stopped, looked her in the eye and quoted serenely what the pastor had said shortly before: ‘… because there was no room for them in the inn … and Mary gave birth to her first-born son in a stable … she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger …’ ‘You are trying to get out of it by making a pun …’ said the teacher, walking on gruffly. Nevertheless Anna received a Christmas present. No warm stockings, no vest, no milk or meat, but a Latin missal: the Sacramentaria, the Lectionarum and the Graduale – a silent hint that Anna still had a lot to learn when it came to Christianity.