She reached for a sheet of paper, a pen, carefully chose her words, said how she hoped he had arrived safely, liked the place, and would he please write to give her news. She added that she had put a sum of money into his account, should he need to draw on it.
She should already have done that, Anna chastised herself. But she would do it tomorrow. Then she would wait for an answer. Perhaps it would come by the time Max was out of hospital, by the time the house was packed up.
It was when she returned home from the bank the following afternoon, that she found the telegram sitting there, inconspicuous in its brown envelope on the hall table. She opened it with trembling hands and a little prayer to obviate the image which had leapt into her mind of Leo bandaged in a hospital bed.
There were only seven words on the sheet of paper:
‘Come to Seehafen urgently Stop Frau Trübl’
Anna stared at them. Repeated them. What did it mean? Leo must have appeared at Seehafen. But then why hadn’t Johannes sent the telegram, called? He must have gone into Munich. But at last Leo was found. He was home in Seehafen.
Anna suddenly whirled into action. She could make the night train if she hurried. She found Klaus in his study, told him the news, embraced him, rushed to pack. Bettina was still in the hospital, but with luck she would be back before Anna had to leave.
Bettina’s voice caught her unawares just as she was shutting her case.
‘We may never meet in this house again, Anna.’
Anna twirled round to see her leaning on the jamb of the door, watching her. There were tears in Bettina’s eyes.
‘But our boys are safe, Bettina. That’s the important thing.’
‘Yes,’ Bettina murmured. She lifted Anna’s case for her. ‘But once we would have taken that as given and wanted so much more.’
Anna shrugged, squeezed her hand. ‘You’ll write.’
‘From another country,’ Bettina nodded. Then squaring her shoulders and forcing a smile to her face, she said, ‘You’ll come Anna, won’t you? New trees, new flowers, a new landscape in which to build your paradise.’
A little shiver went through Anna, ‘I think we’ve had enough of building paradises, don’t you, Bettina. It would be heavenly enough just to have all of us quietly together.’
Chapter Sixteen
Had Anna had an inkling of what awaited her at her destination, her haste in reaching it would certainly have been far less. As it was, the very fact of having a destination, after what seemed like an eternity of fearful waiting, gave wings to her thoughts as well as her feet.
In Munich she sped to buy chocolates, candied fruits, tiny fluted pastries and more substantial tarts - delicacies calculated to cheer and sway a young man whom she imagined as at once hungry and ill-tempered.
On the train she had allayed her own fears about Leo’s physical state. It wasn’t a hospital that had telegrammed her, she told herself, Max’s example clearly in mind. Leo would certainly be tired, more difficult than ever to communicate with, but nonetheless, safe and within her reach. She played out a hundred different dialogues which would ensure that he stayed by her side.
She didn’t try to contact Johannes at the studio. That could wait until after she had seen Leo. Leo was the important one now. Johannes would understand that, already understood it. Instead, burdened with packages, she hired a taxi to propel her through the remaining kilometres.
As always the sight of the rounded twin domes of the house from the turn in the road occasioned a little surge of joy. It was Seehafen that had become her home in the course of all these years, her resting place. The curve of the land, the clusters of snow-clad bushes, the trees with their gothic tracery of branches, the nestling village above the lake and the jutting peaks in the distance, all beckoned to her. And today, too, the turn of her heavy key in the bronze lock, quickened her pulse.
‘Hello, I’m back,’ Anna called out. She motioned the driver to leave her parcels on the gleaming hall table, and called out again, ‘Hello.’
The ancient ginger cat appeared to rub itself against her legs. She stroked it absently.
‘Oh Frau Anna,’ Frau Trübl came waddling towards her from the kitchen, her girth unequal to her feet. ‘Frau Anna, you’ve come.’
The old woman’s crinkled face bore an expression of utter dismay. Her eyes were red-rimmed.
Anna stopped in her tracks. ‘What is it, Frau Trübl? Weren’t you expecting me?’
The woman nodded, let out a sob and then threw her arms around her, ‘Oh Frau Anna.’
Anna held herself stiff, ‘What is it Frau Trübl?’ she repeated.
The woman gazed at her for a moment. ‘No, no, don’t take off your coat. Wait, wait, I’ll get mine.’
Anna’s mind raced. Herr Trübl, Leo. What had happened? ‘Tell me, Frau Trübl,’ she said as soon as the woman reappeared. ‘You must speak.’
Frau Trübl blew her nose, took Anna’s arm and motioned her towards the door. ‘Another moment, Frau Anna, and you’ll know everything.’
They walked along the packed snow of the path towards the lake, Frau Trübl leaning heavily on her. Too many feet, Anna suddenly thought, had trodden here. Had Leo come with his friends? Had there been a raid? Her heart skipped a beat.
‘Frau…’
‘Hush, child.’
A hare suddenly bounded out of the bushes and crossed their path. Anna jumped back, watched him disappear into the snowy expanse.
Where was the woman taking her?
They had arrived at the boathouse which Johannes had once used at a studio. Everything seemed quiet, in order. Except for the thin stream of smoke curling from the chimney. But there was Herr Trübl limping round from the front. She waved to him.
And then she saw it. A pale long box perched on the rickety old trestle table. A box of palest ash. A coffin. Anna broke free from Frau Trübl’s arm and raced towards it, sliding, stumbling. Suddenly she knew, knew as clearly as if someone had written it for her in blood. Red blood on white snow.
She screamed, her cry piercing the quiet of the countryside, echoing blindly through the trees.
‘Johannes! Johannes!’
She heard the rustle of a bird’s wings.
‘Johannes,’ she cried again.
Frau Trübl had caught up with her. ‘A terrible, terrible accident, Frau Anna. ‘He must have fallen into the lake, where the ice was thin. We didn’t know. We didn’t know…’
The old woman was sobbing now, her words suffocated.
‘They found him the day before yesterday,’ Herr Trübl took over. ‘Brought him back here,’ he shook his head grimly. ‘We sent you the telegram. Thought it best to keep him out here in the cold. In case…’
‘Let me see him,’ her voice seemed to come from somewhere else.
Frau Trübl crossed herself three times in rapid succession.
‘It’s not a pretty sight, Frau Anna,’ the old man mumbled.
‘Let me see him,’ she was screaming. She controlled herself, ‘Please, Herr Trübl.’
He lifted the lid of the coffin.
Anna looked down, saw a figure that was Johannes and wasn’t Johannes. A bloated man’s face, mottled, blue. But with his thick lashes caressing the cheeks, his hair, springy, alive. Still alive. She sobbed, threw her face down to cover his. She hadn’t known. Hadn’t suspected. Had hardly thought of him. Thought only of Leo. The sob tore through her again. She kissed him, kissed the cold lips willing them back to life, stroked his hair, tried to lift the heavy, unmoving head to her breast. ‘Johannes,’ she moaned.
‘Let him be, my dear,’ Frau Trübl tried to edge her away from the coffin.
‘Leave me with him,’ Anna shrugged her off forcibly. ‘Leave me alone with him. Go. Please,’ she added more softly.’
The old people looked at each other then disappeared into the boathouse, Herr Trübl emerging a moment later with a stool.
Anna sat and gazed at Johannes. At what had been Johannes. A grotesque mask of h
im, executed by a bad painter. She covered his hand with hers. Cold, cracked, stiff. Sat there, holding it, until her own was as icy as his. Until the cold of her own body had blotted out her mind and the grey afternoon light had closed round them in darkness.
‘Frau Anna, you must go in now. You must,’ Herr Trübl was all but lifting her off the chair, closing the lid of the coffin.
‘So terrible. Such a terrible accident,’ Frau Trübl whimpered as they walked. ‘Still so young he was, too.’
‘Hush woman, can’t you see she wants quiet.’
They led her to the pastel sitting room, made her sit in the soft striped chair by the fire which Herr Trübl stoked into a blaze, brought her soup. The cat curled into her lap.
She was dimly aware of all this, dimly aware too that she had sat like this before, all her senses muted, as if already dead, the cold inhabiting her like a polar stream impermeable to warmth. Had sat like this for Bruno. Bruno whom she had betrayed for the fire of Johannes. Abandoned. And now Johannes had abandoned her. No, no, she corrected herself. She had betrayed him too, abandoned Johannes for Leo. A son for a father. A son for two fathers. Had left Johannes to his own devices. To die. Had she been here, with him, where she belonged, he would never have gone out to walk alone. To be swallowed by the ice.
Anna shivered, glanced up above the mantel. Her mother. She had hung her picture there herself. Her mother with the bright presence, the glowing eyes, yellow like the leaping flames. A picture now, no longer even a memory. She wouldn’t even be that to Leo. He would never gaze like this at an image Johannes had painted of her.
The thought startled her. She hadn’t known that she was considering her own death. No, no, she musn’t think of that. She couldn’t do that to Leo. Her mother’s death had left her with so vast, so unnameable a sense of loss, that in a way she had given herself up to filling it. Through love. But there was no more love. Only Johannes’s poor cold body, which she had betrayed.
Her thoughts stumbled round, wounded creatures circling in a dark maze, drowning for lack of light.
‘The fire is lit in your room, Frau Anna. You should go up, sleep. Sleep helps.’ Frau Trübl was murmuring to her, urging her up.’
‘Thank-you,’ Anna mumbled. She hadn’t realized the hours had passed.
‘I’ve put the chocolates out for you, the cakes. Perhaps…’
Anna looked at her blankly.
The room. Their room when they were here together. And they had been much together these last years.
Anna suddenly sobbed, threw herself on the bed, fingered the soft satin quilt. There would be no more dreams of coming together after this last rupture. The final one. She smoothed the bedclothes. If only they still bore the imprint of him as they did on those days when he rose before her, leaving her with the scent of him, of their tumbled nights. But everything was starched, untouched. Anna buried her face in the pillow.
Something crackled beneath her burrowing hands.
Paper. The thought formed slowly in her mind. With a rush, she brought out an envelope, her name written on it in Johannes’s hand. As she tore it open, her ears seemed to echo shrilly with the thumping of her heart.
My dearest Anna,
Please forgive me. I am saddened by the thought that my selfish action will once again cause you pain. I have caused you enough already. But if I had been even more selfish than I already am, I would have asked you to accompany me on this last journey to the only other country left to me. Asked you to take my hand and walk into these waters with me, as we used to do. Young lovers. In perfect harmony.
But I am no longer young. You have your son and I am an old man weary of the sickness of his world. My work is dead, and apart from you, it was my life. Whatever relics of dreams I may have fostered are dead too. A lifeless husk only needs a burial.
Please understand, Anna. I can no longer take part in what this country has become. And this is my one remaining form of protest, the most unGerman act that I could perform: to die not for my country, nor out of any deep metaphysical and ohsogerman anguish, but out of simple selfishness, because it was enough. At some point one has to say, ‘enough!’.
Forgive me. And remember, as I’ve tried to tell you before, that I have loved you far more than this ridiculous life.
Do not go to the studio to sort through my remains. Our friends in uniform have already done that admirably. Leave this blighted country. Take Leo with you. He needs to go before it is too late.
And Anna. I am happy. Horribly, selfishly happy. No tears. Laugh for me.
Johannes
Anna gazed at the letter and then with a sudden burst of rage, she crumpled it, flung it across the room. No accident, not the work of fate, but a deliberate leave-taking. A flagrant goodbye. She wanted to scream, to shout, ‘You bastard, how dare you, how dare you.’ She thrust open the windows. Blackness. A sliver of a moon. A single star. A blast of cold. He wanted her to laugh, did he?
As if a demon had fired her limbs, Anna raced from her room, down the stairs, out into the night. Raced, stumbling, skidding, along the path to the boathouse.
‘You bastard, Johannes,’ she screamed, pounded on the coffin. ‘Do you hear me, you bastard? How dare you? How dare you leave me?’ She pounded and shouted and sobbed until her voice was hoarse, her fists hot with pain. Then, suddenly, she stopped.
The silence was vast. In it she felt the moon glinting down on her, a stupid woman shouting at a dead man in a box. A laugh tore through her, too loud, raucous, rending her throat, raw. The wind took it up, carried it through leafless branches, transformed it into a wail, shivered it across the lake into the hills beyond.
And if she were to follow it? Anna gazed out at the glimmering icy surface of the lake. A few steps, a little leap, a walk toward its centre, if necessary a jump, and then the water’s icy embrace. She would join Johannes.
Mesmerized she followed her own path, saw her own slight figure in the midst of that silvery expanse. And then no longer saw it. Instead another figure seemed to emerge from the distance, walk towards her with quick strides, then pause bewildered, look round. Johannes, she thought. A slender, youthful Johannes, his hair almost white in the moonlight.
But no, not Johannes. ‘Leo,’ her lips moved, trembled. She rubbed her eyes. Nothing.
She turned back towards the coffin. You have your son, Johannes had said. With a little sob, Anna walked slowly back to the house.
The next day, a knock at the door startled her from fitful sleep.
‘The Reverend Father is here, Frau Anna. Frau Trübl was wiping her hands nervously on her apron. ‘To make arrangements about the funeral. It’s already eleven o’clock.’
Anna leapt up. She was still fully clothed, her pale blue woollen dress crumpled around her. She smoothed it, touched her hair. ‘No, Frau Trübl. Send him away.’
Frau Trübl looked at her strangely. ‘But…’
‘Thank him and send him away, Frau Trübl. Johannes would not want to be buried by a priest in a churchyard.’
Anna turned away from her to draw back the curtains. The sky was high, a crisp sunny blue. It was so clear she could see the indentations of the snow on the distant peaks, almost touch the clumps of shadowy blue-green pine. Through the tracery of the elms, the tiles of the boathouse roof caught the sun. Anna took a deep shuddering breath. Then her eyes moved to the left along the curve of the lake and stopped short. Yes, she thought, yes Johannes, there.
‘I don’t think, Frau Anna, that it would be right…’
The woman was still there. Anna veered round.
‘You heard me, Frau Trübl, and ask Herr Trübl to round up some strong men. As soon as he can. Please, do as I say,’ Anna stared her down.
The old woman shuffled disconsolately away.
Anna gazed out the window. Images fluttered through her mind. Images of Johannes and herself in those grounds, the way, a mere girl, she had stumbled over his legs as he lay sketching beneath a tree, the two of them painting, ridi
ng, lying there, the sun warming their bodies; and then later, the arguments, the storms, the pain, the departures and comings together again. And the swimming. Always the swimming, the water rippling over their bodies. She shivered.
The letter, where had she put the letter? She searched beneath her pillow. The paper still bore the marks of her rage. She smoothed it again, read, heard his voice.
She wasn’t sure how much later it was that the knock came. ‘They’re here, Frau Anna. Four of them. As you asked,’ Frau Trübl grumbled.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Anna smiled a brilliant smile to console her. ‘I’ll be down in a few minutes. Give them a drink.’
She glanced at her face in the mirror. Pale, but calm, strangely calm. Swiftly, she pulled on a pair of trousers, a warm shirt, and then with a gesture of defiance, she ran to Johannes’s room, rummaged through his drawers, found a pullover, soft, rust-coloured wool. She sniffed in his fragrance. Yes, that would do very well.
The voices came from the kitchen. Four men and Herr Trübl were sitting at the long oak table and sipping hot drinks. Anna gestured Herr Trübl to her, took him to a corner of the room, whispered.
He grimaced, ‘It’s not possible, Frau Anna. ‘Apart from anything else, the ground’s too hard.’
‘We’ll manage,’ Anna looked at him sternly. ‘Of course, we’ll manage. There are four men, after all.’ His opposition filled her with grim determination. ‘Light the fire in the boathouse, boil water if we have to. Even if it takes days,’ she stared him down, ‘Even if I have to dig myself, Herr Trübl.’
‘But what about the funeral, what about Herr Eberhardt and your sister?’
For a second, Anna felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t thought about the others. But there was no point telling them, disturbing them even more. And Max was still in hospital. It was the last thing they needed to know. In any event, Johannes was hers. Johannes would have preferred it this way.
‘No, no Herr Trübl. They couldn’t come now in any event. Today. It’s best today or tomorrow, if needs be.’
‘As you wish, Frau Anna,’ he grumbled.
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