‘I thought… I thought you were unwell. I don’t know what I thought.’ He let his tools drop, embraced her.
She was moved at the pain she read in his eyes, but she held herself stiff.
‘Forgive me, Anna,’ he murmured. ‘Forgive me. I don’t know what came over me.’
Looking at her, Johannes was struck by how he had lost his way in the tangle of his own jealousy, his attempts to master it only breeding a forest of his own excess in which he had lost her as well.
She said nothing, started to move away from him.
‘Where are you going?’ he held her back.
She turned. ‘To see your father. He’s dying. You should come too.’ Her tongue felt thick in her mouth.
‘My father?’ he was aghast.
She nodded.
‘Why?’
‘He asked me to.’
‘That letter…’ he scanned the room for it.
She gave it to him, watched the hostility and suspicion contort his features.
‘When did you see him, Anna, when?’ his tongue felt thick at her betrayal.
‘While you were in prison,’ she kept her voice calm. ‘I told him we were married,’ she laughed abruptly. ‘I promised I would treat him as a daughter would treat him. I gave my word. I don’t break my word.’ She edged towards the door.
‘Don’t go, Anna,’ he tightened his grip on her. ‘It’s madness. He’s implacable, manipulating, controlling. He’ll destroy you.’ He was shouting.
‘Madness?’ she stood very still, stared at him. ‘Manipulation, control? I should be inured to them now, don’t you think, Johannes? I’ve lived with you for long enough.’
‘What do you mean, Anna?’ Horror filled him.
She wrenched away from his hand, ‘Just think of that little episode with Janine, Johannes. Think of it. I’m sure your father couldn’t have done any better.’ Her voice rose and she struggled to control it. ‘In any event, I’m going. I promised.’
He raced ahead of her, stopped her at the bottom of the stairs. She could feel his eyes boring into her.
She looked at him. ‘You should come too, Johannes,’ she said softly. ‘I imagine he’s asked you. Several times. In a way, it’s your last chance. It’s time you buried your father, put his ways to rest.’
‘You’re telling me that I’m like him, Anna, is that it?’
She shrugged, ‘Not in any superficial ways, Johannes. Not in your ideas. But… Oh, I don’t know. All I know is that there’s a boat due to leave soon.’
She stood very still, ‘You could catch it,’ she murmured. ‘With me.’ Then, she evaded him, closed the door quickly behind her, only looking back once for a last glimpse of the house, the garden, like a half-finished painting against a blue sky.
The engine on the boat had already started purring when she saw him, a tall man in a pale suit, his hair tousled, a small case under his arm.
He sat down beside her, took her hand. He didn’t look at her.
‘Will you marry me, Anna?’ he murmured.
A laugh began to ripple through her, burst from her throat, ‘I’ll think about it, Johannes. How long do I have to think?’
‘As long as you need,’ he met her eyes, scrutinized her.
She squeezed his hand. ‘I thought we already were.’
It was midsummer by the time they arrived in Seehafen. Anna had hoped to leave Berlin sooner - straight after the small wedding party which had followed quick on the heels of Karl Gustav Bahr’s funeral. But there had been so much to catch up on in Berlin, so many people who wanted to see Johannes, that they had stayed on.
Johannes had behaved impeccably, if a little stiffly, with his father, as if he had prescripted his lines and couldn’t allow himself to deviate from them. To her, he had been so tender, so solicitous, that she sometimes wondered whether she had dreamt the entire episode with Janine. He had even made efforts to be friendly with her son, though so far these had done little to allay Leo’s suspicious hostility. Distressed by this, Anna had told herself everything would be better once they entered the idyllic precincts of Seehafen. There they would be a family. A happy family.
She had come ahead with Leo, while Johannes made a detour to Darmstadt where he had been invited to exhibit his work. The boy was easier when she was alone with him. He played quietly on the lawns of the house or scampered over fields while she looked on.
Anna took pleasure in his beauty, the soft sturdiness of his limbs, the downy curve of his cheeks, the clarity of that secret tawny gaze. But she couldn’t read him, didn’t know whether, when she embraced him, he would push her willfully aside, or relax into her arms. Nor could she make him speak to her except in response to direct questions. He was silent, closed.
Soon, she thought. It was simply a question of time. And there were so many things in him to be proud of: his dexterity with his puzzles, his careful but outlandish drawings. He was even beginning to read. That was Bettina’s doing, Anna knew. His second mother. She had begun with something of a shudder to characterize her as such.
That afternoon he was stretched out on the ground beside her on the little knoll which had once been her and Johannes’s secret meeting place. He was prodding the earth with a stick, taunting a beetle, who clambered over it, only to be confronted by the stick again. Anna smiled, folded her arm round the child.
‘We’ll go in the water soon, Leo.’
The boy glanced up at her. ‘Swimming,’ There was a sudden stubborn expression on his face. ‘Want to swim,’ he pointed towards the lake. ‘In the deep.’
‘You will,’ she ruffled his hair. ‘Soon. You’ll learn.’
Over this last week, they had created something of a family ritual over their bathing. Johannes would play with the boy in the small shallow strip near the shore, while she swam out, and he would swim while she played or tried to teach Leo. Yesterday the boy had started to protest, wanting to follow Johannes into the deep. She had laughingly cajoled him out of it, allowed him to flounder and then caught him in her arms.
‘Swim now. Now.’ Leo leapt up, started to race towards the water.
‘All ready then?’ Johannes appeared from behind the hawthorn and swept the child into his arms.
‘More than ready,’ Anna smiled, met his eyes. It was extraordinary the effect he had on her when she saw him here, in this place, this magic place, where she had first spied him. She wove her arm round his waist, needing to touch him.
He kissed her lightly.
It came to her now, as it had repeatedly in these last days, that they could stay here together, all three of them. Should stay here now that Johannes had been given a legal pardon. She already had a vision of the boathouse, enlarged into a proper studio; a bright nursery set up for Leo in the left wing of the house next to a room for a nanny. She hadn’t talked about it yet to Johannes, but she would, perhaps tonight.
‘Swim,’ Leo repeated, tugging at her arm, ‘Swim now,’ he said more emphatically.
‘Now, now, now,’ Anna chuckled.
‘Right,’ Johannes leapt into the water with the child in his arms. He set him down in the shallows, began a splashing game.
Anna followed them, a little more slowly, relishing the coolness of the lake.
‘Off you go,’ she waved Johannes away, caught Leo from behind. ‘Watch, Leo, Johannes is swimming. Now you kick your legs, kick, kick.’
The boy started to kick frantically while she held his arms, walked him to the height of her shoulders and back again. He began to shriek. ‘Want to swim. Swim deep. There.’ He lurched his arm away from her, pointed towards Johannes. ‘There, there.’
She caught him just where the bottom plunged. ‘It’s too deep there,’ she showed him, sank her head beneath the water, held him above it.
He paid no attention, struggled from her arms, ‘There, out there.’
Johannes was back at her side. ‘I’ll take him out, Anna. It’ll be alright. He’s a brave little tyke. Aren’t you Leo? Now you just k
eep kicking and hold on to my hand. Understand?’
Leo nodded as Johannes gripped him around the back, set off with him.
Anna watched them, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare on the surface of the water. It seemed to swallow them, leaving only bobbing outlines in a bright haze. With a tremor, she headed off behind them, her eyes glued to her son’s golden head.
They were already some fifteen metres from the shore, when she heard Johannes say, ‘Good, Leo, now I’m going to let go a little, and you keep kicking. You’ll swim.’
‘No,’ Anna shouted. But it was too late. Johannes had released the boy. He was floundering, his head going under, disappearing.’
‘Johannes!’ she shouted again, just as he caught the sputtering child.
‘That was good, Leo. Now shall we try again?’
There was a set look on her son’s face as he nodded.
‘No, Johannes!’ she grappled with his arm.
He laughed at her. ‘He wants to learn, Anna.’ He let the boy kick for a few seconds and then released him.
The child splashed frantically only to sink again after a moment.
‘Johannes, stop,’ Anna was shrieking now.
‘Well done, Leo,’ he paid no attention to her, swam away with the boy bundled under his arm, then after a moment asked, ‘Again?’
Leo nodded.
Anna caught the grim set of her son’s lips, the fear in his eyes. ‘Stop it Johannes, that’s enough.’ She swam up to them, tried to take Leo from Johannes’s arms.
‘No,’ Leo kicked out at her.
‘He wants to swim, Anna,’ Johannes’s look was implacable.
She let them go, watched from a distance, panic gathering in her as the intervals of kicking and sinking grew longer, until she could bear it no more.
She plunged towards them, ‘That’s enough, Johannes. You’re mad. He’s just a baby.’ She was shrieking. She snatched Leo from Johannes’s arms, saw the mute tears in her son’s eyes, saw in the same instant Johannes’s rage, saw him pound off towards shore, clamber onto it, walk away, his shoulders stiff. In that moment, while Leo pummelled her and grabbed savagely at her hair, she had a certain sense that Johannes would continue walking, would pack his bag, would leave, and she would be left here with this furious stubborn child, his face contorted with hatred.
She held on to him tightly nevertheless, dragged him back to shore. By the time they reached it, the tears were streaming down his face. With the ground firm beneath his feet, he started to blubber with stubborn determination, ‘Swim. I want to swim.’
‘You can’t swim,’ Anna was harsh. ‘Can’t.’ Her hands shaking, she wrapped him in a towel, carried him across the grounds, deposited him unceremoniously with Frau Trübl just outside the stables, while she raced to find Johannes.
Leo stared after her, his eyes wide, unmoving. Continued to stare as she vanished from view. To gaze at the space where she had been.
At last, he announced to Frau Trübl. ‘She’s gone. Gone cause I can’t swim.’
For a long time, he was certain of that fact.
Chapter Twelve
1925
Cars hooted and blared their way down the Kurfürstendamm, their gleaming headlights illuminating the human fauna and flora which sprouted magnificently in the Berlin night. Slender long-legged women as brightly appareled as an array of exotic birds eyed loose-suited young men affecting American ease. Rat-eyed pimps and prostitutes of any number of sexes jostled with plump frockcoated gents and elegantly furred matrons. Jewelled bands glittered on pale foreheads, long sparkling clusters fell from ears, lavishly feathered boas flew through the air. From the revolving doors of bars and restaurants and clubs, trumpets moaned, player pianos jangled, bands boogied.
As a large motorbike roared noisily past the taxi in which Bettina sat, she was reminded of a phrase she had recently seen in an English magazine: ‘The roaring twenties’.
Yes, it was an apt term for the times. That was what lay at the heart of their epoch. A frenzied love affair with speed and sound. Speed enough to mark a rupture with the past, to escape into a new time zone. Sound enough to drown out its murmurings and some of the uglier rumblings of the present, the cries and moans which emerged from the squalid tenements of the city.
Bettina sighed, snuggled into the capacious folds of her fur and looked out the window. But there was no cause for sighing, she told herself. Over these last five years, the first five of this roaring decade, dour, dark, Prussian Berlin had flowered into a city of noisy revellers engaged in a perpetual carnival. And even if their primary desire was for pleasure, their excitement had infected the very air they all breathed and created a new freedom, a new openness. It pervaded casual exchanges and intellectual debate alike.
She felt it in herself, too, in the length of stockinged leg she could show and shock only herself; in the words she could use. The horrors of the war years, the terrible plight of the inflationary period, were at last behind them. The blight of censorship both external and self-imposed was finally disappearing. In their place a joyous new Weimar democracy was being born in which everything was possible.
She had said as much to the women’s meeting she had addressed this afternoon. True there was still so much to be done. One had only to go to the working class quarters of the city to be struck by the blatancy of that. But now, at last, it seemed possible for reforms to bite. She had exhorted the women to make good use of their new short-skirted freedom, called on them to elect more women to the Reichstag so that laws which concerned them and their children would be passed, improvements made to the educational system, equal wages for equal work.
They had clapped her loudly and a voice had called out from the back of the room beseeching her to stand for office, asking who better placed than Bettina Eberhardt, who sat on innumerable committees, who edited a magazine.
That little moment was in part responsible for her high spirits, Bettina acknowledged, rebuking herself simultaneously for her vanity. But it was only one part, Bettina smiled again secretly.
Only Klaus remained untouched by the excitement in the air. She turned from the spectacle of the brightly-lit Ku’damm to look at his face, absolutely still except for the shadows of the street which played over it. Nothing seemed to stir him these days. He had become increasingly reclusive since his breakdown, rarely leaving the house except to go to his laboratory, sitting mutely though with seeming contentment through the many gatherings in their own home. An old man before his time.
She touched his arm ‘I’m so glad you decided to come tonight.’
He shrugged, ‘It’s not every day that a retrospective of Johannes’s work opens at the famous Flechtheim Gallery. ‘And for his sake, for old time’s sake…’ his thin, lined face was suddenly illuminated by a smile.
‘And here I thought you were coming out to celebrate this great new year of 1925. And my new hairdo,’ Bettina laughed, touched her hand to the short bristle at the back of her neck, the smooth sides. Her head felt so light.
‘It suits you. Makes you look just like Max.’
‘Are you sure? I let myself be talked into it by Maedi. She said it was the latest thing,’ Bettina grinned ruefully. Now I feel like an overgrown schoolboy masquerading in his mother’s earrings,’ she shook her head so that the earrings jangled.
‘It really does suit you.’
The car slowed as they neared the Gedächtniskirche. As always a small crowd in an outlandish mixture of garbs was gathered round its steps. Tonight there was a man with shaven head and flowing oriental robes addressing the group. A little further along, a salvation army band blared out a tune.
Bettina chuckled, ‘The latest ism being expounded. Another sign of our roaring times. Salvation’s on offer everywhere. From right and left, God and the new heroic producer, nation and the international, art and nature, even women.’ She laughed, ‘It makes me think of Werfel’s Mirrorman ditty. I quoted it at my lecture today.
Eucharistic and Th
omistic
But also of course Marxistic
Theosophic, communistic,
Small-town godly churchly mystic
activistic, brassily Buddhistic,
superior eastern Taositic
Salvation from this enmired time
in artistic primeval slime
fashionably mixing into one fat pot
Barricade and word, god and fox trot.
Klaus didn’t laugh. ‘Weren’t we like that once? In the business of salvation, I mean.’
Bettina wouldn’t meet his mournful seriousness. ‘Still are,’ she quipped. ‘Though only partial salvation, of course. The slow, steady somewhat unfashionable kind, that isn’t bloated with its own instant certainties. And that only when we’re not showing the weight of our years.’
For a moment, looking at him, she felt their weight and sighed again. An odd notion propelled itself to the front of her mind. Would she live to a time when she could see clearly which ‘ism’ history had backed? History - which was always so full of surprises, which had converted what she had experienced as a glorious flourishing time into something now recognized as the decline and last gasp of the Austrian Empire. History - which, depending on the next piece of the jigsaw - would make of this decade an epoch of competing lunacies or a fertile laboratory of the future. She must consider this more in her next article, insist on the need for clarity.
But the car was already turning into the street which bordered on the Landwehr Kanal, pulling up in front of Flechtheim’s Gallery. It was hardly the moment for seriousness. Seeing the laughing, glamorous crowd milling round the Gallery doors, Bettina drew back her shoulders proudly and showed her deservedly famous profile to advantage. Thomas might be here, she thought with a girlish shiver of excitement.
‘If you can make your way through that mob to a picture, you’re a better man than I am,’ Josef Winterstein, a social democratic MP, embraced her with a smile.
‘I’ve always been a better man than you are, Josef,’ Bettina chortled, excused her way through the throng. ‘And we must find Johannes.’
Dreams of Innocence Page 36
