Dreams of Innocence

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Johannes began to laugh at the warped logic of it all. Eight months ago, this very same man could have been charging him with the very same supposed crimes, but then he would have been speaking in the name of the Monarchy instead of the name of the Republic. It was all as he had predicted in his bleaker moments. Nothing had changed in the structure of power, except a name.

  He spent the night twisting and turning restlessly on the plank bed. From time to time the heavy silence was broken by the splatter of gunfire, the resonant wail of a voice. The next morning after a cup of gruel had been passed through the door, his warders arrived to take him to the exercise ground. He asked them about the shooting. They shrugged, refusing to meet his eyes, but one of them as they neared the door to the yard, whispered, ‘Careful out there, Comrade.’

  Johannes looked at the man in astonishment, but didn’t have time to question him before he was pushed out into the glaring sunshine of the yard.

  It was the same bleak rectangle he had passed through the day before. In a far corner, he could see a group of soldiers. Opposite him, alongside the bloodied wall, two prisoners walked listlessly.

  Johannes didn’t know what propelled him to shout out to them, ‘Hello Comrades, fine day.’ Perhaps it was only the desire to hear the sound of his own voice, to elicit some human response. One of the men, waved back at him. Johannes smiled, made the sign of victory, broke into a sprint. From the corner of the yard, the soldiers began to jibe and hoot,

  ‘It’s the pig artist.’

  ‘The one who paints the dirty pictures.’

  ‘You gonna paint for us, Red scumbag.’

  ‘No free love in prison, eh?’

  ‘Look he knows how to run.’

  ‘Let’s teach him to run faster.’

  Johannes approached the grinning faces, wondered for a split second whether he should retrace his steps or turn to make his way across the yard, which would mean passing in front of them. No, he wouldn’t turn back. He increased his pace, ran in front of the soldiers.

  ‘He’s making for the gate.’

  ‘Trying to get away.’

  ‘Stop him.’

  Johannes tripped over a foot that had been placed in his path. He stumbled, fell to the ground, heard the whistle of a bullet past his ear. There were shouts, ‘Stop, stop.’ Then the spatter of guns, a commotion, in which a single thought pounded through his mind. ‘They’re going to kill me. Here. Now. Like a dog.’

  Anna confronted the thin-lipped man on the other side of the warped wooden desk.

  ‘Why can’t I see, Herr Bahr?’

  The man rose impatiently from his desk and flicked his nose with a tobacco stained finger. ‘You’ve already been told once by my assistant Fraulein, visiting days are every second Wednesday. And then only for parents or husbands and wives. This is a prison, not a convalescent home.’

  Anna looked at the man with barely concealed hatred. It had taken five gruelling days filled with nightmare fears to learn that Johannes had been arrested, another two to ascertain what prison he was in, only to be told that Johannes had been moved to the prison hospital. And now, still they wouldn’t let her see him, nor even tell her what condition he was in. She was suspicious of the illness. So many ugly rumours had been making the rounds, of men being secretly executed, of accidents. She shivered, took a deep breath.

  ‘I am almost Herr Bahr’s wife, his fiancée,’ she said coldly.

  The man sniggered. ‘These Bolsheviks always have any number of ‘fiancées’.

  Anna glared at him.

  ‘Though you’re an exceptionally pretty one, I admit. Nonetheless, the category ‘fiancée’ is not a permissible one. And now, young lady, I’m a busy man.’

  Anna almost burst into tears. Then an image of Bettina flashed into her mind. Bettina would never take this kind of treatment sitting down.

  Anna squared her shoulders, drew herself up to her full height, took on her sister’s tone. ‘I shall complain to your superior about this, Herr Brucker. The slight to the honour of a von Leinsdorf is not to be taken lightly. And Herr Bahr is a respected artist. Whatever your own views may be, he has patrons in the highest places.’

  As she flounced away from him, she saw the startled look on his face. It almost made her laugh. Being Bettina had distinct advantages. Anna turned back for a moment for a parting shot.

  ‘Should you decide to make a special exception in my case, you can reach me here.’ She wrote her number on a sheet of paper, making sure that she signed it, Anna von Leinsdorf, and placed it emphatically on his desk. ‘I expect to hear from you,’ she said in Bettina’s clear dry tones.

  But by the time Anna had made her way out of the dank grey building, the momentary exhilaration had passed. Despondency trailed her. She had been haunted by a sense over these last weeks that Johannes had been returned to her only to be taken away, as if she had to be punished for her excessive happiness.

  It was a ridiculous way to think, she chided herself. Johannes would be the first to laugh at her for her silly superstitiousness. It came of being alone too much. Alone and only half a person. Anna shivered despite the warmth. In those long nights spent without him in their bed, she felt as if she had been torn in half, her skin a scarred surface from which Johannes had been ripped.

  She needed to take advice, to talk to someone about the best course of action. How long could they keep him in prison? Would there be a trial? She wouldn’t go to Bettina again, be the eternal younger sister. Besides, for all her sensible advice, Bettina would inevitably make light of her desperation. As she had when they had spoken over the telephone yesterday evening.

  Anna walked, forced herself to think coherently above and beyond her fears. Bettina had suggested she might go and visit Klaus at the clinic to see how he was getting on. Klaus wouldn’t make light of her worries. He would know about procedures.

  Anna found a taxi, asked him to wait while she clambered up to the studio. She found the Clinic’s address, emphasized to her downstair’s neighbour how important it was that any callers were to ring her back after five or leave messages. With a silent prayer, she hoped against hope that Herr Brucker might see fit to do something about her request to see Johannes.

  The Clinic was on the outskirts of the city on the road which eventually led to Bayreuth. Having asked the smiling receptionist for Herr Klaus Niemayer, Anna was promptly met by a plump woman in white who introduced herself as Dr. Gerda Hilferding and who invited her for a stroll round the grounds during which she expounded the philosophy of the clinic, its concern with releasing the repressed forces in individuals, buried angers, hidden desires, as a way of reintegrating the patient’s personality.

  All of which Anna gradually realised was intended to pave the way to telling her that she might not find Klaus in quite the state she had last seen him in.

  ‘He’s, of course, still in the midst of his crisis,’ the woman said casually, ‘still obsessed with the notion that he’s a murderer. But we’ve had several cases like this in this last year. They eventually mend. It’s a question of accepting that in our imaginations, in our infantile state, we all harbour murderous desires. History has recently given us a little too much scope to live these desires out. There are those of us who can’t put up with the enactment of buried fantasies.’ She clucked under her breath.

  ‘So, you’ll wait here.’ She motioned her towards a table and chairs in a little arbour.

  Anna waited, worrying for Klaus, worrying too that this visit may have been in vain.

  But when Klaus appeared, he looked strangely fit. His cheeks were ruddy, his embrace firm.

  ‘Anna, how good to see you. Have they offered you coffee, a drink?’ He was like a concerned host, fussing over her, hoping the drive hadn’t been too long, hoping she wasn’t too hot.

  When she asked how he was, he returned her question instantly with his own, asking after her welfare, after Leo and Bettina and Max. Anna decided she had misinterpreted what the doctor had been trying to
tell her and she plunged straight in with her immediate concern.

  ‘Johannes has been imprisoned.’

  Klaus put a finger to his lips, hushed her.

  ‘I don’t know what to do. They won’t let me see him. What can we do, Klaus?’

  He looked at her oddly for a long moment. The silence grew.

  ‘Klaus,’ Anna prodded him.

  He seemed to recollect himself. ‘Do, yes. Get a good lawyer. Let me think. Heilbron, Octavius Heilbron. He’ll be sympathetic, but hasn’t been implicated. Try to make sure there’s a proper trial and soon. Otherwise…,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Otherwise,’ Anna felt herself blanching.

  ‘I’ve heard that people disappear in these prisons,’ he said with an uncustomary hint of relish. ‘Yes, disappear.’

  Suddenly he leapt up and executed an outlandish dance, as if he were being marched at rifle point by an invisible patrol. His legs flew out from his thighs, his back arched forward, his arms shot up over his head. ‘Prison, prison, prison,’ he chanted rhythmically, his eyes wide with fear. Then he stopped abruptly in front of her. His tone grew confidential again, ‘That’s where I’m going, Anna. Where I should be. Where we should all be. Inside. Awaiting proper trials. Who knows what crimes we’re all guilty of, eh?’

  His head jerked back as if he had heard someone spying on them. His voice grew lower, secretive, ‘And the judgements have to be made, Anna, the sentences passed and served. But where shall we find the judges? Stern judges, virtuous judges with a real sense of right and wrong. Not just scoundrels on the pay-roll of power.’ He suddenly laughed raucously. ‘Eh Anna? ‘Hypocritically virtuous scoundrels like Johannes thinks his father is.’ He slapped his thigh. ‘What a way to pay back the old man. Get himself thrown into jail.’ he giggled.

  Anna looked at him askance.

  ‘It would be wonderful if the old man had to pass sentence on Johannes.’ He laughed uproariously again.

  ‘What are you saying, Klaus?’ Anna wanted to shake him.

  ‘Stop it. There’s nothing funny. Johannes is in prison. He might be killed,’ she shivered. ‘We have to do something.’

  ‘Yes, to find an honourable judge. Like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ he muttered to himself, ‘but if you find one, tell me. I’ll walk up to the prison gates myself and bellow my crimes.’

  ‘Klaus, Klaus, look at me,’ she was shouting.

  He looked startled, shivered, ‘What were you saying, Anna?’ he murmured. ‘Little Max is well, is he?’

  Anna nodded, the tears gathering in her eyes.

  ‘I’ll have to get back, Klaus. Are they treating you well here?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, too well,’ he said absently. ‘You’ll kiss Bettina from Herr Niemayer won’t you.’

  She hugged him. ‘Soon you’ll be able to kiss her yourself. As soon as this is all over. The garden needs you.’

  Klaus smiled. ‘The garden, yes. I wanted to plant an oak for Max. You know, near the lake where lightning split that old tree.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Anna trembled, remembering. ‘That would be a very good thing to do.’

  On the journey home, Anna found herself in a state of even greater despondency than on her way to the clinic. But that evening, after she had spoken to Bettina and was once again replaying the troubling sequence of her encounter with Klaus, she was suddenly struck by an idea.

  It quickened her pace as she made her way the next day to Octavius Heilbron’s office, made her tone in speaking to him more certain; made her pick up the telephone to ring Herr Brucker and tell him that she had every reason to believe that he had thought over their meeting and that he would now grant her dispensation to visit Johannes at the earliest possibility. It made her pack a small case with alacrity and board the 19.07 to Berlin with a sense that she was acting with as much practical good sense as Bettina could have wished.

  When she arrived in the city the following morning, she was initially weighed down by its grey heaviness, the dour facades of the stately buildings, the monumental statues. But keeping her purpose firmly in mind, she manoeuvred her way swiftly through the crowded streets and checked in at the Unter den Linden hotel cheered by the trees and cafes which lined the avenue beneath her. Ten o’clock. She would telephone straight away. Octavius Heilbron had found the number for her in his directory.

  A clipped woman’s voice answered her. Yes, Anna was told, this was the residence of Geheimer Justizrat Karl Gustav Bahr, but Justizrat Bahr could not come to the telephone at the moment. No, nor could a meeting be arranged for the time being. Herr Dr Bahr was not well.

  ‘But it is vital that I see him,’ Anna pleaded. ‘Tell him I have an urgent message from his son. I am certain he will want to hear it.’ She gave the woman her number. ‘I won’t move until I hear from you,’ she added.

  Anna waited, pacing the small room. She looked out impatiently on the busy street below. A father could not but respond to a plea from his son, she told herself. An hour passed. And then a second. Despair began to gnaw at the edges of her hope. She stretched out on the satin covered bed and closed her eyes, willing the telephone to ring. At last, through the rampant images of a dream, she heard it, playing in and out of the bells of St Hedwig’s Cathedral as they tolled out the hour. She leapt up to reach for the receiver.

  ‘Fraulein von Leinsdorf? Herr Dr. Bahr will see you tomorrow morning at 11. Please be punctual.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, thank you, thank you.’

  A silly girlhood hum set up a dance in her mind.

  ‘Lucky day, lucky day. All the birds fly this way.

  Lucky night, lucky night. All the stars shine so bright.’

  It was being called Fraulein von Leinsdorf again which had brought it back, Anna thought. She knew she had used the name out of sheer deviousness. People seemed to respond with greater attention when she used it. And that was certainly a good enough reason in this instance.

  ‘Geheimer Justizrat Karl Gustav Bahr’ - the gold lettered plate on the side of the wrought iron gate glistened in the morning sunlight.

  Through the arch of dappled leaves, Anna could only just glimpse a turreted house with an imposing stone facade. She wondered for a moment if this was the house in which Johannes had grown up, if it was over these little rounded hills and amidst these trees he had run as a child to fish in the shimmering pond in the distance, where two youths were now flicking their rods. Who would have thought that this vast sprawling city contained this quiet enclave.

  But there was no time for dreaminess now. She was already late: Grunewald had proved further away from her hotel than she had expected.

  A push at the bell elicited the sound of fierce barking, then a man’s voice followed soon after by the man himself.

  ‘Fraulein von Leinsdorf?’ he enquired.

  Anna nodded and the door at the side of the gate swung open. She followed the man up the path to the house, found herself ushered in by a hatchet-faced woman, who pronounced with grim disapproval that she was ten minutes late, and then whisked her unceremoniously into a large gloomy room. She motioned Anna towards a stiff backed chair and closed the door firmly behind her.

  Anna waited almost afraid to look round her. Then she braced herself, reminding herself that she came from a family who had made its life in imposing governmental buildings. She had nothing to fear from a Prussian Justizrat, she who had wandered as a child in the Kaiser’s Hofburg. Never mind that she had hated it all even then. She had never been afraid.

  Karl Gustav Bahr startled her by emerging from a second door hidden by rows of leather-backed tomes. She rose abruptly, was surprised to see him wearing an ordinary suit. Somehow she had imagined a judge’s cloak.

  Watery eyes squinted at her from beneath bushy brows, ‘Be seated Fraulein von Leinsdorf.’ The voice was deep, commanding, but his step as he moved behind his desk was uneven and his clothes hung round him as if they had once belonged to a far larger man

  ‘So. I gather my renegade so
n is in trouble again and has sent a woman as his emissary,’ there was an unmasked bitterness in his tone alongside the blatant contempt.

  Anna countered it hurriedly.

  ‘No, no, Herr Justizrat. It is entirely on my own initiative that I have come here to entreat your help - as I would have entreated my own father’s had he still been alive,’ Anna gazed directly into his eyes, her own filling with tears.

  He looked at her sceptically. ‘You know that my son and I have had no communication since before the war. He has consistently abused me and made a mockery of the family name.’

  ‘Surely not. I have never heard him do anything of the kind.’

  ‘You have not known him long then.’

  ‘Since before the war,’ she countered him.

  He made a scoffing sound from deep within his throat. ‘It was before the war that we severed all relations.’

  ‘Surely one cannot sever relations with one’s own flesh and blood, one’s own son,’ she looked beseechingly up at him. She had the sudden sense that if she touched him, if she took that gnarled, blue-veined hand in her own, he would trust her. She moved her chair a little closer to the desk. ‘Surely not.’

  He laughed, a cold unnatural sound. ‘You are a mere slip of a girl. When you have lived as long as I have, you will learn that when honour is at stake, when the natural order of authority is deliberately flouted, it is as possible to sever all links with one’s own flesh and blood as it is to do anything else in this world.’

  He banged his fist on the table, rose to his full height. ‘My son’s continuous disobedience, his lack of respect for paternal authority, his immorality, is a direct challenge to the order of the German state. I have no more feeling for him than I have for a common criminal. Indeed were he to appear in my court, I would pass the harshest sentence,’ his voice boomed, his face grew red. Anna felt herself beginning to shake. ‘Yes, like those deserters I condemned to death during the war.’ His fist folded round a heavy glass paperweight on his desk and for a moment Anna thought he might crush it, as he so evidently wished to crush Johannes.