Dreams of Innocence

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Anna laughed, ‘Leo’s a serious young man, not like you. Or me for that matter.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. You know those Hitler Youth camps, like the one he went to last summer. I’m told they have sister camps. And the pregnancy rate amongst those serious young women is not altogether negligible.’ He hummed a little tune:

  In the fields and on the heath

  I lose strength through joy.

  I’m told that’s the young ladies’ version of the great motto. But then the fatherland needs its babies. Babies for Hitler.’

  He saw the frown settle on her face. He had promised her that there would be not a breath of politics during this trip. He knew how concerned she was about Leo. She had convinced herself that he would grow out of what she called his Hitler nonsense, if only they didn’t argue with him. He knew she was wrong, judging from his one more recent encounter with the boy he was certain was Leo - though no one had acknowledged the truth of that.

  Johannes wrapped his arm round Anna, held her close. ‘But we won’t talk about that. Won’t mention the great man again. Promise.’

  Snow had started to fall again as they chugged through the countryside. Fat round flurries of flakes brightening the early evening sky, lulling them into dreaminess. Johannes stroked Anna’s arm.

  She turned to face him. ‘You’re behaving strangely, Johannes,’ she mused. ‘Has something happened?’

  She had always been able to read him like an open book. He shook his head, ‘I’m just enjoying the journey. Enjoying being with you.’

  ‘You haven’t taken anything?’ she murmured.

  ‘You know I haven’t, Anna. Not for almost two years.’

  Yes, it was true, Anna thought. She knew that. He hadn’t taken any drugs since that last cure, had entered a clinic of his own accord, just a few days after the boy he claimed was Leo had come to his studio. It was extraordinary how that event had affected him. Like a sleepwalker who has suddenly been awakened. But nonetheless, she still occasionally worried that when Johannes wasn’t with her, he might succumb. It was a habit she hadn’t been able to drop, obviously more ingrained than his.

  ‘I know,’ she murmured. Suddenly she smiled, turned to meet the good fortune of his latest mood, to kiss him flirtatiously, nibble his ear, whisper into it, ‘The surprise is that I’ve booked us into the restaurant car. While they make up our beds.’

  Johannes groaned. ‘And here I thought we could go to bed straightaway.’ He took her face into his hands. ‘Do you remember, Anna, in the old days we never used to eat. First.’

  She straightened his tie, pulled him up. ‘In the old days, Herr Bahr, I was always starving, but too timid to say anything.’

  ‘The things one learns with age,’ Johannes muttered.

  The dining car glowed with the soft light of bronze lamps. They sat opposite each other, giggling into their wine, like children. Each new arrival occasioned a little portrait from Johannes, refined by Anna.

  There was the stern suited man with exaggeratedly thick bifocals who held his menu at a vast distance from him and peered at it disgustedly. Johannes immediately dubbed him, The Reich’s Art Critic. There were the two plump thick-calved women sporting girlish blouses, their earnest faces scrubbed squeaky clean, bare of any trace of make-up, who Anna decided were the Führer’s Rhine maidens. ‘Righteous Rhine maidens,’ Johannes corrected her, ‘Soon to be in charge of the Reich breeding farm for muscled youths of little brain.’

  Anna laughed, then stopped herself. ‘None of this when we get to Berlin, Johannes.’

  ‘Promise,’ he looked at her woefully, ‘Not in Berlin.’ He laughed again. ‘Look here comes an undercover agent from the Soviet Union.’

  Anna looked up to see a dark bearded man with rounded spectacles, looking shiftily from side to side.

  ‘He’s been sent to convince the German Communist Party that the Nazi’s are really on their side. Don’t resist now and you can take over later.’

  ‘Johannes,’ Anna chided him.

  ‘But he looks so worried, that nobody believes him.’ He raised his glass to her, his eyes wry. ‘Why do you grow more beautiful everyday, Anna?’

  ‘It must have a great deal to do with the fact that you never wear your specs. A fact about which I should undoubtedly be grateful.’

  He called the waiter, paid the bill. ‘I’m going to put on my specs straightaway, Anna,’ he threatened her mockingly as they walked back to their compartment, ‘to carry out a thorough investigation of the damage the years have wrought.’

  ‘You do that,’ she giggled.

  But when they entered the compartment with its tidily turned back bunks and he had locked the door behind them, he took her instead into his arms. ‘Anna, Anna,’ he murmured, kissing her so deeply that that old swoon took her over. His fingers played over her back, her neck, making music thrum through her, the notes of the Mozart sonatas she had taken to playing again, over and over, their bubbling innocence blotting out the dissonance of the times.

  She gazed into his eyes, saw his passion. Slowly she loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt. He was watching her, taking in every gesture, as if he were registering it. She ran her fingers over his lips.

  ‘Do you want those specs?’ she teased him clumsily.

  He shook his head, the grey-flecked chestnut hair falling over his brow, giving him the dishevelled air of the rude young man she had first met all those years ago on one of the paths in Seehafen. ‘I don’t need them, Anna.’

  He pulled her close again, loosened her dress, urging it from her shoulders so that it fell in a huddle at her feet. He stroked her bare shoulders, the silk of her slip, running his hands down her body, finding the bare skin where her stockings ended, rubbing. She pressed against him, her breath coming fast. It had been too long. It was always too long, when he came to her this way, with his passion clear, direct, whether it was only a day, a week or a year. But this time it had really been too long. Oppression had clung to him for months, making their lovemaking a mockery. Not now, not now. She lifted her lips to him.

  ‘Look,’ he suddenly said. He turned her towards the window. She saw their reflections hazy in the window, like figures coming towards them. A tall man with a strong thin face, a smaller woman, pretty, her mouth bright, her hair rumpled were coming towards them from a sleepy snow bound village, its slender church spire etched against the night by the flickering lights of the nestling houses.

  ‘Like our own ghosts. Pale. Beautiful. Coming from beauty,’ he murmured. He caressed her, his lips in her hair. She turned towards him, wanting his mouth, saw the tears in his eyes.

  ‘Oh Johannes,’ she kissed him, kissed until she felt herself melting into him so that she was sure if she turned now, there would only be one body coming towards them from that sleepy village.

  It was she who pulled him down on that narrow bed, wanting him to fill her, but slowly, augustly so that time stopped as they moved against each other, the chugging and whistling of the train drowning their moans as it careened through the dark night.

  She didn’t know when it was in the midst of that night of loving that she asked him. ‘Is it Max, Johannes? Is it because of Max that you’ve always refused to come to Berlin with me? I’ve never dared to ask you before.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ his voice seemed distant. ‘Though that was only one of countless reasons.’

  ‘Does it trouble you that you’ve never had any contact with your son?’ the words stumbled out of her, making her flush, making her welcome the dimness of the tiny nightlight.

  He laughed suddenly, a low rumble, lifted himself on one arm to examine her face. ‘No, Anna. What strange thoughts go through that head of yours. You know I have no particular feelings about biological property, paternal blood lines. I’m not a good enough German for that. No, no, though I have been curious on occasion, to see how Max would turn out. No, it’s more a concern for Klaus. I’ve always thought he should have no competition in fatherhood. He wanted it so much. H
e was so good at it.’ He laughed again.

  ‘You know I’m far too selfish to be a good father. I’d inevitably turn into a replica of my own, as you’ve been so kind to tell me on various occasions, I was managing to do so, in any event. And that’s another reason I don’t go to Berlin. I don’t like confronting those memories. It’s the Justizrat’s city, after all. ‘

  She curled against him. ‘Don’t be silly, Johannes. You’re not that selfish. Not anymore.’

  ‘Not that selfish,’ he mimicked her, grimaced. ‘Not anymore. But selfish enough,’ he looked away from her, seemed to lose himself in thought. Then he started to speak again, ‘What I’ve never told you, Anna, never dared to confess altogether, even to myself,’ he ran his finger along the line of her throat reflectively, ‘is that I’m afraid of small children. That’s why I was so abysmal with Leo all those years back. Small children, the ones I used to think of as the model for all human passions, are screaming monsters of selfishness. And I saw myself in them. Saw myself in Leo. I couldn’t handle that. And I had this feeling of displacement. Mother should love only me, I felt. I wanted to scream.’

  She laughed. ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you?’ he mused. ‘It was far worse than thinking of you with another man.’

  ‘But not with another woman?’

  He considered. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps that too.’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘I think Bettina would have liked you to pay more attention to Max,’ she said then.

  ‘I think if Bettina had wanted it, she would have told me. She has never had any trouble in saying anything she thinks.’

  ‘You’re hard on her, Johannes.’

  ‘Am I? I’ve always assumed that Bettina thinks all children are rightfully hers since she can bring them up better than anyone else. And heaven knows, she may be right.’

  Anna laughed a little uncomfortably.

  ‘I think what you’re really saying to me, Anna, is that you would have liked me to pay more attention to Leo.’

  She flinched at that, but took it. ‘Perhaps.’

  He sighed, stroked her hair, pulled it back from where it had fallen over her face. ‘I should have, of course. I’m sorry about it now. Truly I am. But…,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ve spent most of the last years being a wretch to everyone, including myself. In the name of what, I’m not quite sure. A few paintings. And…,’ he stopped short.

  She prodded him. ‘And what?’

  He reached for a cigarette, passed her one, lit them, took a deep puff. ‘And, I don’t know. By the time Leo had grown into less of a beast than I was, and I could even exchange a few words with him, it was somehow too late. You were always so protective of him, guarded him so jealously. And perhaps the fact that you had insisted so often that he was Bruno’s son, nothing to do with me, made it easy for me to pretend that he wasn’t there. I don’t know.’

  He stretched back, looked up at the bunk above. ‘I failed you in that, Anna, as in so much else. I’m sorry.’

  She snuggled closer to him, ‘And I failed you,’ she murmured.

  ‘Not that. Never that.’

  She was happy that he had said it. But the tears crept into her eyes nevertheless. Why was it that all those years ago, she had been so certain, so adamant, that Leo was Bruno’s son? She had no proof after all, except the insistence of her conscience. Bruno had wanted a son. Bruno who had been so good to her and whom she had repaid with the present of his death. She shivered.

  ‘What is it, Anna? Don’t cry, my darling. Life leads us all a merry chase. And we’ve had some good moments.’ He kissed her tears, her lips, her bosom.

  ‘We should take more journeys together, Johannes,’ she murmured.

  He gazed into her eyes as if he were looking into a great distance, nodded, and then with a groan which seemed compounded in equal parts of sadness and pleasure, pressed into her again, so that she forgot everything but the tender weight of his body and the lapping of her own flesh.

  Bettina gazed at the tall Christmas tree which dominated the sitting room. Martha and she had dressed it lovingly just two days before, unwrapped the little silver bells and mosaic globes, arranged the candles. And now they all glowed, flickering over the freshly scrubbed faces of the youngest children, Thomas’s elder son and the three little ones who still remained with her, over the presents heaped under the tree, over Klaus and Johannes and Anna and Thomas and his wife, Gretel, and their baby, sleeping peacefully in her lap. The fire crackled pleasantly in the hearth and through the large window, she could see the trees, their branches gracefully arched with snow.

  Johannes had just begun a song and the other men had joined in, their faces teasing, wreathed in smiles.

  What shall we get little Michael.

  For this cold Christmas feast

  A bouncing ball? A drooler’s bib?

  A small light next to his crib?…

  Tucholsky’s Christmas song written for the Christmas of 1919. The kindly satirist Tucholsky, now in exile, silenced.

  Bettina watched the wide-eyed children, their growing incomprehension.

  Shall I give him a bedpan on wheels?

  Or offer him a moratorium?

  A roundly swollen piggy bank?

  Or perhaps a doll’s crematorium.

  A new intelligent face for the nation?

  Now that would fill him with rare elation.

  The men were harmonizing happily, their voices rising to a crescendo.

  Oh dear cousins, uncles and aunts,

  Give him something, I don’t know what it might be.

  You’re the quick and clever ones

  Hang it for him on his Christmas tree.

  But please don’t give him reaction

  He’s already had that to distraction!

  Fifteen years since the warning song had been written and despite all their efforts, things had only grown worse. Far worse.

  Bettina tried to shed her gloom and concentrate on the scene. It was idyllic, almost as if she had decided to provide an illustration for a picture book. The Bauhaus chairs with their clean functional lines, the moulded table with its capacious earthenware bowl, now laden with fruit and nuts, the gleaming radio consul from which the sounds of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy would soon spill out, the warm smell of chocolate and spices and burning logs. And her nearest and dearest nestled together in this high-ceilinged, well-proportioned room, where ideas had crackled and life had unfurled for over a decade.

  Johannes looked handsome, his eyes clear, almost the youth she had once briefly loved, yet with a calm certainty about him that she didn’t recognize. Klaus, a little stiff in his limbs, but gangly as ever beneath the white mien, was strangely cheerful, his old sociable self, buoyed as ever by Johannes’s presence. Thomas as quickly elegant in his movements as he was in his wit, had his perennial ironical twinkle; while Anna was clothed in that particular radiance which always signalled that she and Johannes were once again in love. Even the chattering Gretl was composed tonight, quiet.

  Bettina smoothed the full skirt of her Titian-red dress and then restlessly signalled for Martha to serve the mulled wine.

  Everything was perfect and everything was wrong. For one thing, the boys weren’t here. She let her mind rest on the thought she had evaded. Weren’t here and should have been here hours ago. And she had no idea where they were. Not that that was unusual in itself. Max after all was rarely here except at weekends. He had just turned twenty, she had to remind herself, and was no longer a child. But still she worried. Worried because the city had grown so hostile. A battleground for opposing forces, a site for criminal warfare. Three times in this last year Max had come home, trying to hide bruises, bandages.

  He had taken a room in Wedding. Room was a euphemism. She shivered. It was more like a shared hovel at the top of one of those rank, cramped tenements, where disease was as rife as gang brawls, where the smell of sewers and stale cabbage lingered permanently in the air. She should know. Sh
e had spent enough time there, even been to visit Max’s room, against his wishes.

  If the room was bad enough, the reason he had taken it was worse. Oh yes, he might be enrolled as a philosophy student at the university, but in fact he was working in an electrical factory and underground for the Communists. She knew that well enough, though he had never told her, had known it for years. Not only from the line he took in discussion, but from the publications she had found in his room at home - everything from the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung to Die Linkskurve to a variety of Muenzenberg journals. She hadn’t objected then. After all, she shared many of their sympathies though she had been progressively enraged since the beginning of the decade at the way the Communists refused to support the Social Democrats in Parliament. Still, far better the left than the right.

  But ever since Goering’s henchman had raided the Communist headquarters, and the KPD had been declared illegal and all left wing publications banned, Max was blindly endangering his life. Bettina let out an inadvertent sob.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Anna was instantly at her side.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Bettina tried a smile. ‘It was just the wine,’ she coughed dramatically. ‘It went down the wrong way.’

  Anna looked at her queerly. ‘Do you think Leo will be back soon?’

  ‘In time for dinner, I expect.’ Bettina put as much assurance into her tone as she could muster. Leo hadn’t even bothered to wait for his mother before leaving this morning. Bettina glanced at her watch. ‘We should give the little ones their presents now, then get them to bed.’

  Anna looked at the little grouping by the tree. ‘I’ve never seen Johannes so engrossed in play,’ she mused.

  ‘He’s come of age at last,’ Bettina muttered under her breath.

  ‘Don’t be nasty, Bettina,’ Anna chided her.

  ‘Sorry. I’m in a foul temper.’

  ‘The boys?’ Anna asked softly.

  ‘Them too.’

  In the distance they heard the brush of the front door, a call, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Max,’ Bettina leapt to her feet.