by P. G. Glynn
She must not let that happen. She must at all costs hang on to the sanity she had somehow regained and stay here in Schloss Berger where she was safe.
The knock sounded again. Someone was knocking. She was not imagining things. Old Emil was back from the dead to tell her that she was wicked to have done as she did. Lenka sometimes wished she could remember what it was she had done. But most of the time she was glad to have forgotten, glad to have blackness where once there had been colour … where once there had been Carla.
Perhaps it was Carla knocking on the door.
In case it was Carla, she must go and answer. She dreamed, frequently, that the child cried for her Mama … and that Lenka was the Mama she cried for. She dreamed of soft arms clinging to her. It was only in nightmares that these did not cling, only in nightmares that the child cried for some other Mama.
At least nightmares were not real. She must hold on to reality and to the fact that she had done nothing wrong. Emil, not Lenka, was the wrongdoer. Everyone knew that and it was right that he had been punished for his wrongdoing. Now he was dead, which was better than being alive because death brought perpetual nothingness instead of perpetual problems. She would like to lie down and die, but death was not so obliging.
Unless she answered the knock Carla would run off as before. Lenka had opened her door only to hear the echoes of small feet running along the corridor. It must be Carla knocking. Who else could it be, with the whole family and most of the servants gone to the mausoleum? It was Carla, come to tell her true Mama that she loved her …
Lenka’s head throbbed as she padded barefooted from her bed to the first door, which stood ajar. What she would give to be free of pain, free of the uncertainties that plagued her these days! Standing irresolute in her sitting room, she tried to remember why she was there. Another knock reminded her and, like a sleepwalker, she drifted across the soft blue carpet to the suite’s outer door.
+++++
Hugo thought that if Tante Lenka didn’t open her door soon he would very likely wet his Lederhosen. He had never wet them before but then he had never knocked three times and waited before either. Knocking once had usually been quite enough. He was much braver than when he was four although he didn’t feel brave and his legs felt like jelly. He was glad that Helga couldn’t see him, glad that she …
The door was opening. Rooted with fear, Hugo watched as it slowly opened wider. He saw Tante Lenka’s feet first. They were bare and so were her legs, at the top of which grew a dark patch of hair. Fancy having hair there! Wait till he told Helga! She would be amazed to hear that Tante Lenka had hair instead of a willy … and that above her brown stomach she had brown hanging things. Hugo had seen these before in the distance but never as close as this. They must be the breasts that Helga said she would get when she was bigger. She had also said that if he was nice to her she might let him touch them. Perhaps, then, he had better be nasty because he would never want to touch such horrid, floppy objects. He could not look any higher. If he did he would see Tante Lenka’s eyes and then be still more terrified. Somehow doubting that he could feel more terror than he was already feeling, he heard his aunt gasp: “Carla … oh Carla, my darling!”
Curiosity outweighing his fear, he asked her: “Why are you talking to my sister? She won’t hear you from her coffin.”
Lenka wasn’t listening to him. She saw, as if in a dream, the child she had so longed to see. And the voices – the voices that spoke only to her – were telling her they had brought her daughter. Knowing she must tread gently she said: “You’ve grown into such a big girl!”
In his surprise he had looked into Tante Lenka’s eyes and now he was mesmerised. Unable to look away, unable to move his feet, he stammered: “I … I’m not a girl. I … I’m a …a … boy.”
“Come and kiss Mutti.”
Totally bewildered and bending back from the mouth coming towards him, Hugo protested: “You aren’t my Mutti … you’re my aunt.”
“Kiss me, my sweet baby, and say that you still love me.”
Her hand had reached out to him and was now gripping his shoulder. Through his jumper he could feel her fingernails digging into his flesh. “Let me go!” he said.
“I love you,” she whispered, strengthening her grip, “just as I always did. So give your Mama a kiss.”
“My Mama is … ” He felt the kiss, full on his lips, and the horror of it sent strength to his limbs. Kicking her shin and twisting suddenly, he broke free and began to run.
She heard the footsteps echoing along the corridor as they had so often echoed before. Carla had kicked her Mama and was now running from her. She was not a proper daughter. Proper daughters did not kick or run when their mothers kissed them. They liked being kissed and didn’t behave like this. The voices in Lenka’s head were urging her: ‘Kill! Kill!’
Hugo looked over his shoulder instead of looking where he was going. He saw that Tante Lenka was chasing him and didn’t see the wrought iron balustrade at the top of the servants’ staircase. Crashing into it, he lost his balance and landed in a heap on the floor with blood pouring from one of his knees. Seeing the blood and seeing that his aunt was now towering over him, Hugo burst into tears and pleaded: “Don’t kiss me again! Boys don’t like being kissed.”
Seeing the child cowering and crying reminded her of the last time the child had cried. These cries were comparatively quiet while the others had been noisy and needed silencing. How had she silenced them? Lenka could not quite remember. “All I ever wanted was your love,” she said. “Just love me and there’ll be no need to do as I did.”
He knew that nobody could talk and kiss. This knowledge prompted, between sobs, a shaky: “What did you do?”
She tried to think. “Nothing.” Oh, if only the voices would stop! But they never stopped. They just kept on and on. “That is … didn’t I drop you?”
Hugo could see that she was not in her eyes. She was seldom in them. Despite his panic at having her breasts hanging over him and at the fact that at any second she might try to kiss him again, he managed, his teeth chattering: “No, you didn’t. Or are you talking about my sister?”
There had been a balcony and she … but no, that had not been the end of it. Lenka had thought it was the end. She had been wrong, for Carla had cried again: at another time, in another place. When? Where?
“Stop your snivelling! I can’t stand it.” Her voices were louder now, urging … compelling: ‘Kill!’ Hugo felt Tante Lenka’s hands on his neck. She was squeezing so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. “You little minx! Why will you never say what I want to hear? Why won’t you listen?”
Everything was going dark. He struggled but couldn’t loosen his aunt’s grip. His head was swimming. What was happening to him?
“Let him go,” said Ludwig. “He isn’t who you think he is.”
Her hands instantly relaxed. “He?” she queried bemusedly.
How hard he had tried to hold on to his darling! He had protected her from the family … helped her distinguish between fact and fantasy … tried to prevent her slipping back into the chasm. All to no avail: one look at his beloved told him that Lenka was lost to him again.
Her loss mattered more than anything – more than his hatred of Otto, more than his disinterest in whether Otto’s son died or lived. Such things were secondary. Lenka quite simply came first with him. So, putting his arms round her and hardly noticing the state Hugo was in, he said: “Come with me, Liebchen. I’ve made plans for us – exciting plans that you’ll love.”
Back in her dream-state, Lenka let him help her up from her knees. She pleaded piteously: “Don’t leave me!”
“Never!” he said, semi-aware of the boy scrambling dazedly to his feet. “Leaving you is something I could never do. I shouldn’t have left you alone today. It’s my fault that you’re in this state. You won’t be on your own again.”
She shrank from him. “Not Berlin?”
Thankful that she was compos mentis eno
ugh to question him thus, he reassured her: “No, Lenka, not there. I wouldn’t put you through that, knowing how bad it was. We’re off in a very different direction – to Munich, my love.”
+++++
Marta faced Ludwig across the big, cluttered desk in her study and asked him: “How long have you known this?”
He said self-pityingly: “For too long. It has been a terrible strain, keeping up the pretence that all was well with Lenka when in private I saw her succumbing to her demons again.”
“I meant … how long have you known that it was she, not Emil, who killed Carla?”
There was something strange about Mama’s demeanour. Ludwig could not gauge what altogether was wrong with her. “I can’t say, exactly.”
“A day? A week? A year … more than a year?”
“Definitely not more,” he answered. “I’d say less, at a guess.”
“I see. And throughout that time you’ve let me continue to hold my brother responsible for my granddaughter’s death?”
“Better that, surely,” Ludwig said, “than involving my poor Lenka.”
“Involving her? She was involved! Whatever her state of mind at the time, she not only poisoned Carla but came close today to strangling Hugo. She’s been a danger to him ever since the poisoning, yet you said nothing … did nothing.”
“What could I say, Mama? What could I do, without pushing Lenka over the edge again?”
“Whether she was pushed or not is of little consequence,” Marta snapped. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see, Ludwig, that because of her I could have lost Hugo as well as Carla … and that because you didn’t confide in me sooner I’ve let my brother go to his grave thinking I believed him to be a murderer?”
“Onkel Emil was round the bend, incapable of thinking anything.”
“He was not! With hindsight I can see that his loss of speech, far from being the sign of guilt I took it to be, probably signified his shock at what he had witnessed, along with his disappointment in me. How disappointed and disillusioned he must have been! I acted as his judge and juror, then as his jailer and can never forgive myself for permitting circumstantial evidence to convince me so easily that he was guilty. Emil was entitled to better things from his sister – infinitely better – and also from his nephew, who should have come forward at the very first hint of his innocence.”
“Don’t look at me like that, Mama! I’ve enough on my plate with Lenka, without you condemning me. Personally, I can’t see what difference it made to Onkel Emil whether he was locked up or not. He’d been bonkers for so long.”
“That’s not a term I’d use, if I were you,” Marta said with ice in her tone. “I’d have thought you’d see it as being too close to home. As for your inability to see that my trust made a big difference to Emil … that makes me very sad. I feel that if you’re so lacking in perception I’ve somehow failed you as a mother. My brother might not have been strong mentally but he had always been happy in the knowledge that I loved and trusted him. His unhappiness when I accused him of killing Carla was there in his eyes, yet I was so set on judging him that it completely passed me by. I now realise that he didn’t speak initially because I didn’t give him the chance to say anything in his own defence … and by the time he had that chance he would have been mortified that I could think him guilty of such a heinous crime. Silence was preferable to telling me the extent of my misjudgement, so my darling Emil stayed silent right until he died.”
Marta broke down then and wept and, watching her, Ludwig felt helpless and inept. When eventually she dried her tears he said: “Don’t hate me, Mama! I couldn’t live with your hatred … and … and meant no harm.”
“If I hate anyone,” she sighed, “it’s myself. What I did was vile. I’m a wicked woman … but you contributed to my wickedness.”
“You are not wicked. Don’t say such things. You’re the best mother there is.”
“Am I? Am I, really, Ludwig?”
“Beyond question and I’m … I’m sorry for my contribution to your current feelings. Lenka was always my priority, you see, and she … she’s two people. Never knowing which one she’s going to be is quite an ordeal for me and helping her keep her secret hasn’t been easy. I can now accept that I shouldn’t have helped in that respect, but at the time it seemed right. I was so afraid, Mama, of her slipping away … of … of losing her again.”
She saw that he was fighting tears and took pity. “You still love Lenka very much, then?”
“She means the world to me. My life would be so empty without her.” Ludwig grimaced. “It will be empty, once she … ”
He could not phrase the rest of his sentence so Marta said gently: “You’re taking her back to Berlin?”
“No. She was desolate there and I think her desolation hindered her progress. I have a friend – do you remember my mentioning Fritz Meyer?” When his mother nodded he went on: “Well, Fritz lives in Munich but we’ve kept in touch since a chance meeting in Berlin and he has mentioned a much more enlightened clinic near him in Bavaria. I feel that Lenka will have a better chance of full recovery there, so that’s where I’m taking her.”
“You and she had best leave quickly, before Otto and Marie finish dealing with Hugo’s distress. I wouldn’t want to be in your, or Lenka’s, shoes when they turn their attention to the cause of it. And, Ludwig, I must insist that this time there’s no quick return. Whatever the doctors say about Lenka’s state of health, I cannot have her here while there remains any possibility of risk to Hugo. You do see that, don’t you?”
“I see,” he said bitterly, “that once again Otto wins. Never in a million years would it be him who was banished.”
“Why would it be when it’s Lenka, not Marie, who’s sick?”
“That,” he conceded sadly, “is an inescapable fact. But don’t ever forget, Mama, that my darling girl is ill, not bad.”
“I’ll try not to forget that.”
38
Fritz Meyer was a changed man from the one Marie and Otto knew on their Viennese honeymoon. He now had a purpose in life – a raison d’etre – and money, along with a smart uniform: the uniform of the Sturm Abteilung. Yes, the past was behind him and a bright future beckoned. Fritz had never felt better, or stronger, or more certain that he was going where he was destined. His bitterness was still there and he would not forget what the war had done to him but he could now control these feelings. They no longer controlled him.
This was all thanks to one man – a man similar in some respects to Fritz. Firstly, both their fathers were illegitimate. It was funny how the shame Fritz had felt about his father’s origins had turned almost to pride now that he knew whom he shared the distinction with. He and his mentor had also both been born in a rural area of Austria but now regarded themselves as Germans rather than Austrians. They had both known the worst extremes of poverty, begging in the streets and seeking asylum in the Asyl fuer Obdachlose. But they had clawed their way up from nothing to where they were … and there the similarities ended, since Fritz would not presume to compare himself further with the apostle of peace now rising like a meteor in Germany. Adolf Hitler was beyond such comparison for he stood alone – as a god, almost. Fritz was fortunate indeed to have met him in Berlin in 1923 and now to be serving him in Munich as an active member of his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
The Party needed funds so that it could continue to expand and spread Herr Hitler’s philosophy and it was providential, therefore, that Ludwig was currently in Munich. Who better than a Berger to help fund the NSDAP – especially when the Berger in question was in need of a friend just at present?
It was almost as if the bats in Lenka’s belfry had been arranged with the express intention of bringing Ludwig to Munich and raising Fritz’s status within the Party. Yes, things were changing and at long last starting to go his way!
Ever since loosening Ludwig’s tongue with Schnapps some years back and learning of his reason for being in Berlin, Fri
tz had been at pains to be a friend to him. He had been both friend and confidant and had had his reward when Lenka – predictably, given her domestic set-up and unfulfilled longings – went off her head again. Then a frantic Ludwig had turned to him and Fritz had made all the necessary arrangements for her to be treated in Dr Loehry’s Clinic on the outskirts of Munich. Christoph Loehry was a pioneer in new methods of dealing with insanity and had a fine reputation.
So it might even be that he could cure Lenka permanently, which would endear Fritz to Ludwig still further. Ludwig clearly hadn’t stopped loving her despite her dementia and was now obviously lost without her. Which was fortunate for Fritz, since lost souls needed help in finding themselves. It was fortunate, too, for Ludwig, who could not have help from a better source but who had yet to appreciate his good fortune.
Thanks to Fritz, the NSDAP – which Adolf Hitler had founded in Munich in 1920 – was interested in Ludwig Berger and no less a personage than Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, leader of the Sturm Abteilung, was taking a personal interest. Why, Franz had even hinted that a private meeting with Herr Hitler himself was not out of the question! Yes, Ludwig had much in store for him and ample cause for gratitude to his friend Fritz! He was almost to be envied his unenlightened state and all the discoveries he had yet to make.
So full was Fritz’s life these days that he could scarcely recall the empty one he had lived before his enlightenment. He had just drifted, back then, without hope and without aim – much as Ludwig seemed to be drifting. Then the Fuehrer had ended the emptiness forever. Such was his magnetism that when he spoke it was impossible not to listen to him. Fritz well remembered first experiencing the power of his oratory in the extraordinary atmosphere of the Buergerbraukeller, where he had been invited by Claus Lochner – a cousin and a good Gauleiter. The proceedings had begun with ‘Heil Hitlers’ thundering through the air and with hundreds of hands raised in the Fascist salute as Adolf Hitler marched into the Cellar. He had marched ahead of his Brownshirts, who were preceded by the drummers, the Flag and the standard-bearers, and his very presence had sent shivers of recognition through Fritz. Here was a man who commanded attention. Here was a man with a vital message – and Fritz had known already then that he would follow wherever this man led.
