by P. G. Glynn
Otto shrugged. “That’s what any normal brother would do.”
“So now, on top of all the other insults you’ve been hurling at me ever since your return, you’re suggesting that I suffer from some abnormality?”
The family were seated at the table in the small salon and, knowing the effect it would have on Lenka, Mama had carefully kept her announcement very brief and low-key. There had been no means of announcing it, though, without stirring jealousy. “I’m not suggesting anything,” Otto said. “You’re the one with the problem, not me.”
“Now you’re maligning my virility!”
Otto smiled at his brother across the table. “Your virility, or lack of it, is your own business … and, natuerlich, Lenka’s. I can hardly help it if you and she lag behind Marie and me.”
“Becoming parents so soon after marriage is obscene.”
“That attitude is refreshingly un-Bohemian. Would it have applied, I wonder, had you achieved a baby quickly. Let’s ask Lenka, shall we?”
With Otto’s mocking eyes on her she wished she had some smart retort ready … wished she did not feel so inexpressibly empty. At least she had not fainted yet. “You bastard!” she said.
She lived in a castle now, far from Krumau and the wretched hut where she grew up, but at heart she was still what she had once been. Lenka’s childhood home had looked on to a castle belonging to a prince and the feudal kingdom had revolved round him, with serfs such as her father having to pay the seigneur rent for their hovels and to seek his permission before marrying. Since the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 Krumau princes had been entitled to dress their guards in a uniform of the Napoleonic period and each fine outfit had cost more than Lenka’s forester father could earn in two years. But he had had to bow and scrape and address the prince as Brotvater while his family starved. Lenka had from an early age questioned the arrangement’s justice and had grown to hate hearing each hour trumpeted from the castle’s fairy-tale towers. She was no believer in fairy-tales and had good grounds for her disbelief.
Life had been bad enough with Mutti alive but quickly worsened after she died. Lenka was twelve at the time and one week after burying his wife Vati came to the bed that she shared with two brothers and did to her what he had hitherto done to her mother. With the whole family sleeping in one room Lenka had had some idea how Vati used Mutti for pleasure, but the full horror of it was not brought home to her until that night when he forced his big thingy quite brutally into her own body. Afterwards her littlest brother had been terrified by all the blood and by her crying. These combined to set him thinking that she too was due to die and for a long time Lenka had hoped he was right. Better to die and be with Mutti than be used by Vati night after night. But Lenka had not died.
She ran away aged thirteen and just kept running. The nights in southern Bohemia were warm in summer and she survived by sleeping rough and eating weeds, berries and fungi. Occasionally, under cover of darkness, she stole from people’s gardens although she had regarded theft as a last resort. She caught a rabbit once, which she killed and ate raw, desperate by then. She was, she thought, more animal than human. Not that she cared. Lenka had gone beyond caring.
Then autumn came, bringing more pain. In agony she writhed on the cold ground, arms clasped round her belly as the baby Vati had made rampaged its way into a world where it had no place. Lenka saw that it was a girl before severing the cord with a piece of flint and burying her. Whether alive or dead it did not matter. Nothing had mattered any more.
Turning her back on Bohemia Lenka had concealed herself aboard a goods train bound for Vienna. There she learned new lessons in survival, using men as she had been used. She had never expected to love one of them. Confident that her heart was frozen she had created a new persona, burying the past and becoming in time a woman who both magnetised and mystified. Men drawn to her by the drama in her looks and temperament paid for sex with expensive presents (including a luxurious apartment) having fallen for the illusory Lenka without ever being given a glimpse of her true self. Then Otto had come along and, with his coming, her heart had thawed … so much so that he had seen eventually into her soul. She had at first fought against the thaw setting in but had lost the fight, letting Otto into her heart and mind.
He in turn had banished the demons afflicting her. His arrival had silenced her dead daughter who had hitherto often cried at night. And his skilled and tender lovemaking had helped Lenka forget her father’s brutish behaviour. Those sounds, those images had been in the process of fading by the time Fritz Meyer did his dirty work and Otto ran away …
She had not had him down as a coward who would run. She had loved him so much that she had seen him as being made of sterner stuff. But men were all cowards, weren’t they?
It was amazing that Lenka’s traumas were not reflected in her face. She could still to this day gaze in her mirror and see unblemished beauty, despite all the pain … despite the black pit that was waiting. She was ever conscious of this pit, likening it to her daughter’s grave. Lenka often wished she had buried the baby properly but, weakened from the birth and having no tool with which to dig, she had had to scrape at the hard earth with her bare hands, creating little more than a hollow before covering her offspring with leaves and twigs.
Had the grave’s shallowness resulted in animals finding the pathetically tiny body and tearing it to pieces, as Lenka had torn the rabbit she had eaten? The black abyss awaiting her, and into which she would one day slip, was deeper. There would be safety of a sort there, since she would be beyond the reach of scavengers. All the same, it was terrifying at times to tread the fine dividing line between the real and the imaginary and to be less and less certain as to which was which. It also seemed somehow dishonest to be so beautiful on the outside and so ugly within. Maybe it was better to be honestly a baboon like Ludwig than to be a beauty dishonestly.
However Lenka owed everything to her looks. But for them she would never have left the gutter in Vienna and would by now be dead. It might be that being dead was better than being alive – especially now that Otto had arrived in Schloss Berger with his pregnant bride – but not having experienced death Lenka couldn’t tell. So living was probably preferable. At least she knew something of life and its idiosyncrasies. If there were any justice she would live long enough to punish Otto, both for leaving her on the eve of their wedding and for giving away her baby. How dare he give Lenka’s baby to Marie … how dare he?
Otto was the only person in the world she had told about her lost daughter – and she had told him too that, more than anything, she wanted to carry his baby. But she had told him too late, telling him after Fritz Meyer had done the devil’s handiwork, when she should have told him before. Otto might still have married her had she come clean earlier instead of leaving him to discover from a third party that she had once been promiscuous. Had she herself mentioned her past promiscuity and the reasons for it he might have seen that it had been essential … and that it had stopped upon meeting him. No use dwelling, though, on ‘might have beens’. Otto’s stomach was weak and hearing about Vati after hearing about Lenka’s activities within his regiment had sent him almost off his head. The knowledge had in any event sent him running for cover, buying himself out of the Dragoons and decamping from Vienna. She had despised him then, but had despised herself more. Instead of being a bride she had gone into hiding, feeling dirty … feeling worthless. And she hadn’t heard from Otto again … no, never a word.
But she had heard from Fritz. He had sought her out, braving her reaction to his betrayal and offering her a solution of sorts. Telling her that the door to Schloss Berger was still ajar he had introduced her to Ludwig who, poor dolt, had been putty in her hands, having paid Fritz for the introduction. She had learned of the payment from her husband – after marrying and coming to live where by rights she should have been living with Otto. Living here she could at least keep tabs on the man she should have married. But she was paying the price. She had paid all
along, having to tolerate Ludwig and his horrible habits, but the price had been still higher since Otto’s marriage.
How could he have married such a prim little miss when he could have had Lenka and the delights that went with her? Marie had led too sheltered a life to know the first thing about pleasuring a man as Lenka could pleasure him. Or was it because Marie was so prim and proper that Otto had married her? He had gone for colouring and build similar to Lenka’s, but there the similarity ended and beyond question Marie was boring in bed. She was too virginal to know how to be anything else. Was she a virgin when he found her? Was it her virginity that Otto had seen as the decider?
Whatever it was, Marie was now Frau Otto Berger and she was soon to be a mother. Lenka knew this could not be permitted. She could not permit it … not with Otto’s baby rightfully Lenka’s. Aware that something further was expected of her, she said to Marie in German: “You’re an impostor. I am the child’s true mother … and shall keep a watchful eye on my … my incubator.”
+++++
Marie felt as if everyone was watching her. She sometimes thought that even the walls were watching … and counting the days until the birth of her baby. The Bergers seemed to be taking her over and they were all assuming that ‘their’ baby would be born here. She hadn’t as yet had the heart to tell them – especially Mama – differently, and Otto couldn’t have been less helpful. He was in a class of his own for delaying tactics. And she felt disadvantaged by her inability to speak anything but English. “I still can’t understand,” she told him when they were alone for once in the Rosenzimmer, “why they don’t make it compulsory.”
“It?” he queried.
“English! I’m coming to believe that you frequently speak in German or Czech just to frustrate me.”
“Really?” Otto found her stance funny. The Germans and Slavs had struggled for centuries within the Historic Provinces to settle the language question – though it had certainly not occurred to them to introduce English as their mother tongue. The issue was already quite complex enough. For while the Czechs claimed to be heirs to the Slavonic heritage of the medieval kingdom of the Premyslids, German Bohemians claimed Bohemia as an ancient German land like Saxony, Austria and Bavaria.
So German settlers saw the Czechs as a minority in the midst of their lands whereas Czechs saw the Germans as the minority – with each striving constantly to show who was stronger. Czech professors would publish their work exclusively in Czech knowing that most educated Germans viewed it as a servants’ language not worth learning and the Germans in turn traded, economy permitting, with only their own nationality. So it seemed there would always be a language problem and that there could be no winner in the age-old battle for supremacy. Not that any of this would be of the slightest interest to Marie. He said: “English as a compulsory language wouldn’t go down too well. In fact,” he grinned, “it could cause havoc, whereas if you were to learn German … ”
“Why should I bother when we won’t be here much longer?”
“We’ll be returning periodically. You surely wouldn’t deny Mama the opportunity to see her grandson or granddaughter?”
“No,” Marie said pensively, “except that it’s a terribly long journey. Speaking of which … ”
“We’ll tell Mama together,” Otto said, “but not quite yet. It’s good, don’t you think, to see her looking so happy … and planning a nursery? I can’t bring myself to spoil her pleasure before that’s absolutely necessary. When our month here is up, then we’ll talk to her. That isn’t asking too much, is it?”
Marie bit her lip. He was making her feel guilty. She shouldn’t be feeling guilty though, should she, when all she wanted was for him to keep his original promise? “The longer Mama’s left to think that the baby will be born here, the worse it will be for her when we tell her differently … and I expected to be travelling at the end of a month, not just discussing our eventual journey.”
“Compromise,” he said, “is sometimes the best answer … and you’re fond, aren’t you, of Mama?”
“I am,” Marie readily agreed. “She’s already more like a mother to me than my own mother.”
“So you aren’t in too much of a hurry to hurt her?”
“That isn’t fair! Hurting her wouldn’t be necessary if we’d put our cards on the table in the first place. Anyway, Mama will understand that this land of saints and statues is not my land … and that I belong in the theatre, not here. Even if I belonged in Bohemia nothing would induce me to stay for long under the same roof as Lenka and Mama would understand that, too, having warned us of her instability. The woman you almost married gives me the creeps.”
“Mama was only warning us of Lenka’s long held wish for a baby,” Otto pointed out reasonably, “and of the possibility of jealousy. You have nothing to fear from Lenka. You’ve simply got what she wants.”
“I’ve got you, you mean?”
“Yes – the best of the Bergers,” he grinned boyishly, “so make the most of me!”
+++++
Returning from a shopping trip to Arnau the following morning Marie suddenly felt a kick. It was quite distinct and as she clutched her abdomen in awe she told Otto: “The baby just kicked me!”
“It did?” Appearing from behind a pillar in the main hallway, Lenka had spoken before Otto could gather his wits. “This was her first kick?”
“That,” Marie retorted, “is none of your business.”
“It is Berger business … and I am a Berger.”
“Through marriage to the wrong brother,” Marie said before she could stop herself.
“The wrong one?” Lenka’s eyes hardened. “Why would you say such a thing … unless Otto has been talking? He’s been telling you, has he, that he should have married me?”
“Quite the opposite! He is happy for you to have married Ludwig … but whether you are happy with that is another matter.”
“Naturally I am happy with it. Not,” Lenka added with a glower, “that my happiness with my husband has anything to do with you.”
“Then you will understand how I feel about my baby,” Marie smiled. “She – or he – is mine, not this family’s … and I’d be glad if you’d remember that. I’d also appreciate it if you’d stop butting in when I’m trying to speak to my husband in private.”
“Oh, la-di-da – how very possessive you are, both of ‘your’ baby and of Otto! Aren’t you forgetting that he is its father and that therefore the child, when born, will belong to the Bergers?”
“I haven’t forgotten who its father is,” Marie told her coldly, “and will never forget. Perhaps you should be asking yourself how a baby born in Britain could possibly belong to a family living in Bohemia.”
Otto, realising he had stayed on the sidelines too long, said quickly: “This is neither the time nor the place to discuss such things.”
“It isn’t?” They all turned as Mama Berger approached from the direction of the kitchen wing. “I’m sorry, my dears, but I couldn’t help overhearing. Are you saying, Marie, that you don’t wish your baby to be born here?”
Facing her mother-in-law and seeing the hurt in her eyes, Marie felt ashamed for having let Lenka get the better of her. She also felt angry with Otto for his reluctance to keep his word. Had he only kept it and been honest with Mama from the beginning this situation would never have arisen. “I’m saying,” she answered defensively, “that I’m sick of Lenka’s interference. It’s hardly my fault that she hasn’t a child of her own, so I shouldn’t have to put up with her sticking her nose in where it isn’t wanted.”
“I’m sure she meant no harm,” Marta said soothingly. “It’s hard for her, watching someone else become a mother when she so wants to be … involved. Could it be that you are feeling a little … homesick? At times, when I first came to Schloss Berger, I hated it here and yearned to go home but it slowly dawned on me that Kruh wasn’t home any longer. I discovered that at some point the castle had mysteriously become home and Kruh had beco
me somewhere I’d lived once, before falling in love and marrying my husband. Such things don’t happen overnight, though. They take time … especially for a young bride who has travelled as far as you have to a new country and a new culture and who will hardly have adjusted to being a wife before she is a mother.”
Marie felt her face flood with hot colour. “I’ll never belong here,” she told Mama. “I didn’t come with a view to staying. I came because Otto wanted to see you again … and because I wanted to meet his mother. We’re only visiting … and should have told you so. Please forgive us for not telling you sooner. My baby must be born in Britain.”
A shocked silence greeted her announcement. Then Lenka asked Otto in German: “What’s wrong with you? Has Marie so emasculated you that you cannot speak even when she tries to make you leave your heritage? Did you knowingly become prince consort to your self-styled queen, or did it happen while you were asleep? Whichever is true, you are not the man I once knew!”
“Must?” Mama echoed as if Lenka had not spoken. “Why ‘must’ it be born there?”
“Because … I’m British.”
“But Otto is Bohemian, besides which too much travelling could put your baby at risk. Speaking as someone who knows how it feels to lose a baby – or in my case babies – through a miscarriage, I’d advise extreme caution. A lost baby can never be replaced.”
Thinking of the daughter she had buried that long distant autumn Lenka said: “Nor forgotten. Tell her, Otto … tell her not to be so selfish!”
Knowing that he was on dangerous ground Otto placed a protective arm round Marie’s shoulders and, smiling at Mama and Lenka, said: “I don’t need to tell her anything. In case you haven’t noticed, it has started snowing.”
