The Hollow Bones

by Leah Kaminsky

  CHAPTER 19

  Around mid-afternoon, they arrived at Göring’s opulent hunting lodge, built on the banks of Lake Döllnsee, home to a multitude of waterfowl. Driving through the massive entrance, the gates adorned with a shield bearing the coat of arms of a lion and a bear, Ernst wound down the driver’s window, inviting a shrieking cacophony of birdsong into the car. The landscape of wild moors, forest and lake, within which the lodge was nestled, was the soothing salve to his wounds. The driveway was long, curving its way under a canopy of trees whose leaves shone red and gold as they clung to overhanging branches. It took almost five minutes to reach the thatch-roofed house. The white stucco walls were punctuated with bronze statues of antelopes and deer. As they pulled in, Göring stood at the entrance waiting to greet them, surrounded by his attendants. He wore a vest over a white shirt with puff sleeves. A bronze dagger was fastened to his belt. Flanked by drooling black Tibetan Mastiffs, his pursed, thin lips showed not even the trace of a smile.

  Later that evening, the two men sat in green brocade armchairs in front of a giant fireplace, puffing on their pipes as they regaled each other with their stories of the hunt. A giant globe on a wooden stand rested between them. Göring spoke about the game reserve he had built up.

  ‘I am a friend of animals. The Reich Hunting Law that the Führer and I adopted has given our animals greater protection than any other country in the world. Whoever tortures innocent creatures violates the instincts of the German people. A clean kill is a kind kill.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Ernst said, raising his glass.

  Meanwhile, the two wives chatted. The gentle Emmy confided to Herta that she was two months pregnant, although her lack of appetite at dinner had already betrayed her condition to the younger woman. Not long after dessert and coffee had been served, Emmy excused herself and went up to bed. As the men talked, Herta occupied herself playing with Göring’s pet lion cubs. The smallest one, Caesar, was as adorable as a kitten, but nothing could ever take the place Klaus held in Herta’s heart. Lifting Caesar up, she cradled him like a baby, singing softly as she strolled across to stand before a floor-to-ceiling window. The moon was full in the sky. She stared out at the shining lake, a row of wooden boats moored beside a boathouse, bobbing up and down in the water. In the window’s reflection she could see tapestries draping the walls behind her, interrupted only by mounted stags’ heads, the scene lit up by magnificent chandeliers.

  The lion cub fell asleep in Herta’s arms as she stroked his little head, but when he started from his slumber he grabbed her wrist between his teeth. Both Herta and the diminutive king of the jungle squealed as they dropped to the floor, entangled in each other’s hold. The feisty cub reared up and lunged at her clumsily with its forepaws, leaving a rent in her chiffon dress. Göring rose quickly, donning a pair of leather gloves that lay on a table beside his chair. He grabbed the animal by the scruff of its neck and motioned to one of his attendants, who procured a rope on cue and lassoed it over the cub’s head.

  ‘Take them both back to that damned zookeeper in Berlin immediately,’ Göring barked.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And tell him he’s left them here far too long again. The replacement cubs should have arrived over a month ago. These have grown far too big to keep as pets. They don’t amuse me anymore.’

  ‘But Herr Göring, the Director himself has written to say the new litter is still in the process of being weaned.’

  ‘Insolence!’ Göring spat out the word like a drunkard. ‘How dare you? Lutz Heck is a hunting companion of mine. He has always been very cooperative.’ His face darkened with anger, all geniality and hospitality draining from his eyes.

  He shifted his attention to the butler. ‘And you, you imbecile, tend to the young Frau’s wounds! Can’t you see her blood is soiling the carpet?’

  The young man scurried off and came back with a silver tray that was laden with bandages and disinfectant. He dabbed at Herta’s wound, closing his eyes as she winced. His face was turning pale and he looked like he was about to pass out. Herta took the gauze from his hands and motioned silently for to him leave.

  Göring turned to Ernst, purring now. ‘My dears, I will let you rest. You have had a long drive and you must be weary. Young love needs time to be alone. Let us meet after lunch tomorrow and I shall show you around the grounds. What’s say we go shoot our own dinner, my good man.’

  ‘I would be delighted, Herr Reichsjägermeister.’

  ‘Excellent! I’ll have my gamewarden make the arrangements. It’s not every day I get to entertain Germany’s most famous explorer.’

  Although Ernst had tasted modest celebrity since the publication of Mountains, Buddhas and Bears, about his first Tibet expedition, no one ever stopped him in the streets to ask for his autograph, and, as the state of their apartment attested, he certainly couldn’t live off his writing. It was flattering to know his books took pride of place on the shelves of Carinhall’s extensive library.

  ‘You must tell me more about your travels in the Orient with that American cowboy. I am so proud that this time you will lead our own heroic team of men into those mystical lands. We share the same passion, my good man,’ Göring said, staring at Herta.

  Ernst wasn’t sure if the man was intoxicated by her beauty or the copious amount of wine he had already drunk during dinner. Göring heaved himself up from his chair, shuffling across the rug to stand in front of the fireplace. A veil of smoke filled the Jagdhalle, giving a surreal air to the room. Blasts of wind swept down the chimney, and blackened logs crackled in the giant fireplace as if the Devil himself were trapped in its flames.

  ‘It’s sealed then.’ Göring swirled brandy around in his glass. ‘Tomorrow, as my honoured guest, you shall be treated to an experience beyond compare. Only last week I entertained Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, and the brute was lucky enough to snag a bison. I told him about my plan to host an exhibition of caged Jew-beasts. Their ugly noses remind me so much of elks.’

  Herta glanced across at Ernst, who was staring into the fire.

  Göring laughed and turned to Herta. ‘Frau Schäfer, don’t worry your pretty head. I won’t keep you away from your husband for too long, I promise. Perhaps you two might enjoy some pleasant boating in the morning, before we meet for the hunt? The ducks are yet to leave the lake. Please find at your disposal all that Carinhall has to offer. You might enjoy a visit to our very own cinema – I believe Heidi, with that new child actress who’s all the rage, is screening now. We have obtained a copy for a sneak preview. Or you may prefer tenpin bowling? It’s the latest fashionable sport, you know. We have our very own bowling alley right here in the west wing.’

  ‘That is very kind of you, Herr Göring.’

  ‘Call me Hermann, my dear,’ he said, walking over to where she stood. He took her newly bandaged hand in his.

  ‘Thank you, Hermann,’ she said, blushing. ‘I would be happiest just browsing through the books in your library, if I may.’

  ‘Of course, my sweet. After all, you are the wife of a famous author. And looking at you in all your radiance, I am sure you are your husband’s muse.’ He made his way over to the door but spun around at the threshold. ‘I do think a young bride would be advised to spend tomorrow morning prettying herself for her husband. Perhaps in the sauna first and then indulging herself in a luxurious massage in one of our tempting new Elizabeth Arden massage chairs?’

  Herta looked across at Ernst, hoping he would answer for her, but he was busy examining the hunting trophies that hung on the wall.

  ‘Thank you so much.’ She smoothed the creases from her dress with her uninjured hand. ‘However, I would very much like to accompany my husband on a boating trip tomorrow morning, if you do not mind, that is. Perhaps I could avail myself of your generous offer during the afternoon, while you men go off hunting?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Excellent idea.’

  Herta tried to stifle a yawn. Her head was pounding, and the sh
adows outside seemed to lunge at her. She was growing tired of the small talk. When Ernst stood up, placing his hand on her shoulder, she almost wished he might carry her upstairs. She still had so much to do before she could place her head on the pillow. There were his boots to polish and rifle to shine. Bride school had not been a waste of time after all. She would have Ernst’s rifle gleaming as if it had just been issued and never been fired, his boots so clean no one would imagine he stepped in such murky terrain. Wouldn’t Frau Scholtz-Klink be proud of her now, she thought bitterly. And later, in bed, she would perform her womanly duties for the Fatherland.

  After finishing her chores, she changed into her nightgown, shivering as she wrapped a shawl around her. She climbed into bed. Herta may be his wife, but she knew that in Ernst’s blue dreams, Tibet was his illicit lover. Like one of his migratory birds, Ernst was bewitched, destined to answer the siren call of a distant land; Herta, on the other hand, loved the smell of home. The Thousand-Year Reich needed room to spread its wings, his colleagues said – the more land on which the German people would be able to live, surrounded by the beauty and peace of nature, the better for all. Lebensraum, they called it. So much spoken about ancient superstition, and she wondered if one day scholars would write of the monuments that weren’t built, or those that would crumble in time like those of ancient cities.

  She knew this expedition was the beginning of a new world for her husband. He was about to undertake an adventure in a continent whose skies were lit up by as many stars as there were stones on the ground. So far away from the thunderous arena of civilisation. Meanwhile, she was still learning the geology of the man she loved: the crevices in his heart and the depths of his moods, changing in a flash like the onset of a bad storm.

  And, right on call, he threw her down on the bed, her legs splayed like one of his specimens, doomed to be stabbed alive. She knew if she pretended to writhe and shriek a little, it might heighten his fervour. Instead, she stayed silent, which made him lose control, and his kleine Mauser, as he called his manhood, went off half-cocked instead of firing point blank into her.

  Herta woke in the middle of the night, Ernst snoring contentedly beside her. She crept out of bed and stood by the window, looking out at the lake, the moon leaving long white trails along the surface. Where did it all cleave, this deep love they shared? Herta had always been certain they would write about Ernst effusively in newspapers, journals and books. He would be regarded as one of the most brilliant naturalists of his day, filling the museums of Philadelphia and Berlin with an extraordinarily rich array of specimens, lauded as one of the first to bring together scientific disciplines. But even though he believed he was looking for unity, his quest for knowledge reduced life to compartments, sections, categories, lists.

  On a recent evening at home, Herta had been looking through hundreds of photos, helping Ernst document his previous two expeditions with Dolan. The albums were strewn around the apartment after Ernst had taken them out of the boxes to show off to Geer and Bruno. Snapshots of her husband the hunter, lying on the ground in front of a campfire, cuddling three bearskins, and Brooky wearing a peaked cap and heavy coat, riding a mule across a barren plain. And then she saw the horror. At twenty-four, Ernst had become the first white man in the world to come home with the prize of a baby panda. She burst into tears. Ernst snatched the photo from her hand.

  ‘You don’t understand, Herta. It was one of the biggest breaks in my career. President Roosevelt’s son Theodore, who happened to be a good friend of Brooky’s, was the first to shoot one of these creatures in the wild. When they put it on display at the Field Museum in Chicago, it drew crowds the size of which had never been seen before. So, the museum in Philadelphia wanted one, too, and Brooky told them I was the only man for the job. After camping in those bamboo forests for weeks, we had nearly given up hope. The mission would have been a failure had I not spotted a juvenile hidden in the trees, only four hundred metres away.’

  Ernst described how the shot had echoed as he watched the tiny animal fall and become tangled in the branches of bamboo. A badly wounded specimen was a lost specimen, of absolutely no value to a museum, so he carefully fired a few more ‘kisses’ until the creature dropped to the ground. Running towards his catch, he could feel his heart beating wildly. The baby panda was sure to take pride of place in a diorama in Philadelphia. The carcass would need some tidying up, but it would be the making of his career.

  Herta took the photo back from Ernst and looked at it again. The skinned panda was tucked under his arm, his free hand clutching an ornithological find by its scaly legs as he posed for the camera.

  Herta threw the photo back on the pile. ‘You will never be able to see the real Tibet, Ernst. You are too busy dissecting it.’

  ‘And you know nothing of science, my dearest wife.’

  Where was that young child who would frolic in the woods? Some days, she still saw him bathed in sunlight, the boy she knew before, eyes the colour of honey. But duty had blocked his ears to her pleas, while Tibet oozed in through the cracks in the windowpane and floated in through the front door.

  As Herta stood by the window, watching the dark lake, Ernst slept fitfully, his thoughts plagued by the photo of them with Margarete that Herta had shown him. He thought his wife was a common starling he had held in his hands all these years, but it had burst into flames before his eyes and some mythical creature emerged to rise up against him. The threat to his career, possibly endangering his very life, had materialised in black and white. His empty promises to Herta to ask about Margarete were no longer a tale spun in the air that he could laugh off as malicious gossip if anyone happened to find out. This photo was proof. It implicated him. He could tear it up, burn it, but somewhere the negative existed. His image had stared back at him, smiling knowingly, as if to say, you are caught in a trap of your own making.

  One year, when the first day of spring came to Waltershausen, the sodden earth was already filled with ditches and mud from melting snows. Clouds were scattered across the sky like chalky scribbles. Ernst had been itching to race to the forest together with Herta straight after school to visit their secret hide-out, and to search for fox cubs in their carefully concealed dens. But Herta’s father forbade her to go out and play, insisting she needed to stay home and catch up on her flute practice. When Ernst turned up at her house that afternoon, she was sobbing.

  ‘Poor Margarete has been stuck inside her room all winter. I really wanted her to come out with us today.’

  Ernst stood awkwardly at the door, wanting so badly to share the rush of blossom and hypnotic birdsong with his best friend. He looked down at his feet, shoes worn thin, the brown laces frayed. ‘I’ll take her.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous, Ernst. Vati will hear her wheelchair rattling across the path.’

  ‘Leave it to me. You distract him with your flute and I’ll carry her there, then you sneak out and join us when you’re finished.’

  Herta whistled their secret birdcall to let him know no one was watching. He lifted Margarete from her bed, her legs thin and mottled, dangling limply as he carried her out through the back door. She kept licking her lips, her blonde eyelashes fluttering in the sunlight. Ernst marched with her, climbing over rocks and wading across tiny streams until they reached the clearing in the wood.

  Lowering her onto the damp ground, he propped her up against an old pine. She sat surrounded by white cyclamens, her hands knotted in her lap. He would often collect pinecones and place them in a pile before Margarete, cracking them open using a jagged stone and gathering up the Pinienkerne, the hidden delicious nuts, as they scattered on the ground. From the pocket of his shorts he would pull out some pieces of chocolate and make sweet pine-nut sandwiches for her.

  Today, though, Ernst disappeared for a short while, climbing up the old oak tree to collect newly laid eggs before they had a chance to hatch. He found the nest of a tiny wren, but it was too late. A cuckoo chick had already completed its grisly business
of evicting all the other occupants and sat alone in the empty nest, its huge orange throat gaping within its tiny skull. With an insatiable appetite, it waited impatiently for its surrogate mother to return.

  Ernst reached in and grabbed the chick, holding its knobbly legs carefully between his fingers. When he laid it down in Margarete’s lap, the baby bird squirming and cheeping furiously, her eyes gleamed like faint sparks from the pearly fog of her mind. Even though he knew Margarete couldn’t hear him, Ernst sang a song as he stroked the bird.

  Kuckuck, Kuckuck ruft aus dem Wald.

  Lasset uns singen, tanzen und springen!

  Frühling, Frühling wird es nun bald!

  Cuckoo, Cuckoo calls from the forest.

  He makes us sing, dance and jump!

  Spring, spring will soon be here!

  He was glad, in a way, that he could be alone there with Margarete to share the delight this bundle of fluff brought her. Herta would never have allowed him to steal it from the nest. Uncurling Margarete’s stiffened fingers, he deposited the chick in her palm. What harm would it do if he returned it in a few minutes? Margarete’s face contorted into a smile. Snorting, she groaned as the bird’s downy feathers tickled her skin. As Ernst looked on, her fingers started spasming violently, closing around the cuckoo like a vice. Before Ernst could do anything, she snapped its spinal column. Then the bird and Margarete went limp.

  At break of day the singing of thrushes rose in the distance and the wind roared, as though the air itself was crying out in defiance. Mist cloaked the house. This morning they would go out on the lake; at long last some time alone together. As she lay in bed, waiting for Ernst to wake up, Herta was agonised with indecision – when should she tell him the news? She wanted to choose a time when he was relaxed and in a good mood, away from that clingy Geer, who hovered by his side, morning and night.

  This was how she woke of late, the shadows filling the musty corners of the room. They winced in the light when she pulled back the curtains. Some days, she opened her eyes at dawn thinking it was dusk, hoping the long day ahead might already be over. Through the gauze of half-light, she stared at her blank face in the mirror. She recalled how she used to greet each day with bursting excitement at first, dreaming and planning for her future with Ernst, ignoring her father’s apprehensive gaze.