The Weather in Berlin

by Ward Just

  Well, any adagio could be made tender.

  You could bend an adagio to any wind.

  Dix began reading again, able now to put faces to the characters. Karen Hupp would play the plain brunette girl, the most forceful of the three. And it was always interesting to make a graceful girl awkward, a suggestion of asymmetry; she would still be Karen but not the same Karen. Karl would be the middle brother, Rolf, so ill at ease in the feral shadows of the forest; and if it worked, a triumph of casting against type. Dix placed himself again in East Prussia in 1899, the look of the estate, the weather, the rituals of the hunt, the weapons and the customary horn, times past though not lost, a vivid and unforgiving country capable of inspiring fierce devotion. He recollected his experience with Reinhold and the lure of blood sport, its danger and lust and competition, and always a mystery at the heart. He was seeing all this through the camera in his head, filming as he was reading, seeing Karen’s face and Karl’s, and the undefined features of the baroness.

  The script cut abruptly from the forest to the funeral, the interior of an ancient village church, the flickering candles emphasizing the darkness within. The scene opened with the casket being borne down the center aisle, the woodsmen of the estate acting as pallbearers. The casket was heavy and without decoration. The church windows were narrow and undistinguished, except the one where the camera lingered, a death dance, twenty-one brightly colored panels, skeletons clad and unclad, with scythes and without, grinning and lifeless; the word in German was Totentanzfenster. The nave was narrow and high, rising to a four-sided bell tower tapering at the summit and crowned by a small weathered cross. The church was constructed of darkwood, the wood glowing dully with the sheen of five centuries of palmsweat. The camera patrolled the interior, concentrating on the faces of the mourners as they sang the opening hymn.

  Rain began to fall when the doors opened and the procession spilled into the road and began to march in the direction of the family cemetery. The scene would be filmed as if it were happening in any century back to the Reformation, with no suggestion of the modern world except for the occasional sparkle of jewelry. And silence from the mourners, the only sounds the rustling of their garments and the thud of their footfalls on the wet cart path, the cemetery in the distance, graves in uneven rows and a small mausoleum on the rise back of the stand of white birches. The widow led, her three sons a step behind. The pallbearers struggled with the heavy coffin, watched closely by the villagers gathered at the iron gates of the cemetery. Other landowners were present along with the weekend guests, including the blond girls, who were heavily veiled. Karen stood apart from her sisters, watching the middle son follow the coffin to the gravesite. In close-up, the camera detected smiles and mischief behind the smiles. When the coffin reached the cemetery gates, from somewhere amid the birches came the low notes of the hunting horn, the notes rising and deepening into the familiar moan of an oboe. Taps at reveille, Dix thought, and just as suddenly recalled the look of the land in northern Illinois, the lakes, rivers, swamps, and forests of his youth, sodden with autumn rain, the uneven rows of headstones, the birches, and here and there an oak so large that two men could not embrace it. No one used hunting horns, though. The hymn that Harry had requested was “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” Fats Waller’s score, and Dix remembered the smiles on the faces of all the well-groomed men and women in the pews. Even his mother smiled. And in place of the carriages assembled in front of the baron’s church, Ford station wagons.

  Then the pastor was reading from the Bible and the pallbearers strained to lower the coffin into the ground, and then to fill the pit, shoveling the clotted earth until it covered the coffin, and tamping it down until the surface was smooth, finally covering the grave with fir branches.

  Greenwood rose and dropped more ice cubes into his glass and poured vodka. He was trying to get the sense of things settled in his mind. He sought a neutral place from which he could eavesdrop on the Germans talking to each other, explaining themselves, as Werner wanted them to do; but not by words, by gestures. They seemed to be unraveling knots.

  He picked up the script and continued reading. The time was later that afternoon, the camera approaching the grounds of the manor house, the gardens, the ragged hedges, the corroded sundial next to the arched gazebo, and finally the heavy façade of the building itself. The rain had turned to drizzle. Inside, the family was gathered in the vast hall, the sons standing in front of the fireplace, where a few logs smoldered. The room was dominated by a huge portrait of the original baron, one of the sixteenth-century barons, and a good likeness of the dead man as well, the wide forehead and the mustache, the severe cast to the eyes and mouth, and a long scar running from his nose to his ear. The widow remained veiled, so that when she spoke her voice was muffled and seemed to be coming from somewhere else. She was motionless in her chair, describing in a firm voice the business of running the estate, the care of the fields and the livestock, the work the woodsmen did, and what they earned. Many souls depended on the estate, the managers, the woodsmen, the servants, the stablehands, the families that cared for the livestock. The entire village, really, was dependent in one way or another on the estate. It was like a small nation and the baron’s family was the government, responsible for order and the general well-being. Like most families of the Prussian aristocracy, they were not rich. Instead, they had land, the same land in the same family for generations, and that would not change. She would not permit change, for she understood the particular virtues of their way of life, singular in the world. They asked nothing of anyone. Still, their situation was not enviable. There were debts, and someone had to provide.

  She said, Your father was not a provident man.

  And in that way he was weak.

  He refused to recognize the position he was in, and take steps to correct it. So someone had to clean up his mess. Christian—she nodded at the oldest son—had his army commission, so he was not a candidate. Ernst—she looked at her youngest son—was not yet mature, and was unsuitable in other ways. Someone in this family had to take up a trade or, equally useful and altogether more practical, marry someone rich—an Englishwoman, some woman, some suitable woman who had an appreciation for the spiritual side of the life they led and the land they led it on. These were things the better English families understood. The family was indistinguishable from the land they occupied and owned, owned fundamentally no less than you owned a wedding ring, a pair of shoes, or a horse. Someone would have to do his duty. Someone had to make it his life’s work to restore the fortunes of the estate, otherwise they would all be lost. They would be adrift. They would cease to be a serious family.

  The camera moved from face to face, the boredom of the oldest son, the grief of the youngest, the wry expression of the middle son, Rolf, who anticipated correctly that he would be nominated to marry the debutante and bring her and her bank account back to Prussia, where they would ride horseback all day long while his mother managed things, because nothing could dislodge her from her manor house amid the Masurian Lakes; and that would be the end of his life at the university, his friends and his poems, his philosophical discussions in smoke-filled cafés, his travels to Italy and Greece. His mother seemed to be looking directly at him, though it was hard to tell, her veil was opaque. He looked down, studying the figure in the carpet. It seemed to him that he had been studying the figure in the carpet for the length of his lifetime, his mind directed elsewhere as one parent or another lectured him on his responsibilities, and how he was neglecting them in favor of his life in the soft, sunny cities far to the south, cities remote indeed from the family estate in rigorous East Prussia. Someone coughed. When he looked up, he saw his mother staring at him. She had removed her veil and joined Christian at the fireplace, a general and her aide-de-camp inspecting the troops. The sixteenth-century baron stared down at Rolf with hooded eyes. Ernst was staring also, with a demure smile on his thin lips. A servant arrived with a spray of flowers and was waved away.

&n
bsp; Rolf, she said.

  He said nothing, merely stood with his hands behind his back, his fingers locked.

  I want you to visit our cousins—

  Distant cousins, he said, knowing exactly whom she meant. I have never met them.

  —in Gloucestershire, explain to them about your father.

  His debts?

  No. How gallantly he accepted his death. The English admire gallantry.

  He turned again to the figure in the carpet.

  You will go during the English “season.” You will meet someone, your cousins will see to it. You are a charming boy, and I know you will find something agreeable. They are not hot-blooded, these English girls. But they have other qualities. They are domestic. They are good with horses.

  And rich, he said. She must be rich.

  All of them are rich, his mother said.

  He did not reply. His mother the baroness had never been out of East Prussia except to go to Berlin twice a year, to buy shoes and for a physical examination by a doctor who had been a friend of the family’s. She distrusted country medicine, a farrago of superstition, folktales, and useless herbal remedies. Her Berlin doctor was an internist with a special competence in metalism and phrenology. Of course she distrusted Berlin generally, finding it decadent and moneygrubbing, the natural milieu of an industrial metropolis financed by Jews, a race that avoided the strenuous outdoor life. Jews were indoor people, sallow from lack of sun and wind. The baroness always returned to the estate with a sense of relief at having escaped the claustrophobic capital, its sarcasm, its license, its noxious swamp gases, and its indoor people bent over ledgers, and now the Communist proletariat agitating for revolution. The first thing she did on arriving home was to take her horse for a bracing gallop through the forest.

  Tell them he died on his horse, she said.

  But he didn’t, Rolf said.

  Don’t be insolent, the baroness said.

  They appreciate horses, she added. The English do. They would have sympathy, a healthy man struck down while riding his horse, directing the hunt. Tell them the horse was not destroyed. Tell them he was put out to stud.

  Rolf nodded.

  I will write to our cousins tomorrow, she said.

  I must collect my things at Heidelberg, he said, speaking deliberately, having given the matter careful consideration. I have my books, friends I must see. I have consultations with my professors, and a paper that is overdue. I have examinations, he added, the end-of-term examinations that determine the ranking.

  Never mind them, she said.

  And I must collect my clothes.

  Later, she said. Collect them later.

  Things I will need for the journey, he continued, to Gloucestershire. Rolf was already calculating his assets, wondering if he had enough money to get to Italy. He had good friends in Venice and Rome. He was fluent in Italian and could earn a living tutoring foreign students or translating novels.

  We will go to Berlin together. I will buy you shoes.

  I have shoes, Rolf said firmly. And that gave him the thought that he could walk to Italy if need be.

  I can get his things for him, Lieutenant-aspirant Christian said smoothly, laying a massive arm on his brother’s shoulder. That way he need not trouble himself. He can concentrate on what must be done, learning the manners of the English, familiarizing himself with the English manner of doing things. They are very particular about form, you see.

  I must insist—

  You leave at the end of the month, his mother said.

  And he needs to study his English, Christian said, his thick fingers massaging his brother’s shoulder muscles.

  My English is fluent, Rolf said.

  Yes, it is, the baroness said. You have always been an exemplary student, perhaps too exemplary for your own good. Book knowledge is not the only knowledge, and in the end perhaps not important knowledge. In any case, you speak well. What is the name of that poet the English admire so?

  Wordsworth, Rolf said.

  Study your Wordsworth, the baroness instructed.

  Droll, Greenwood thought. Another side of the character Rolf, so clumsy at life, so graceful at music. Within his own family, he was a sacrifice. Everyone make way for Christian, future field marshal of the Reich. The baroness was less successful. There was no hint of her antecedents, no hint of what animated her beyond her estate and her horses. Vast ignorance was uninteresting unless it led to unexpected insights; ignorance combined with power had dramatic possibilities, but this baroness was a cartoon. Would she be more interesting if she were an arriviste, as cold-blooded as the baron but tough because of who she was and where she came from? Dix put the script aside and lit a cigarette, wondering if Willa’s translation was faithful. He thought he could guess the rest of it: Rolf and the empty-headed debutante returning to Prussia with a trunk full of clothes, a brace of geldings, and a letter of credit. The deb would be experienced, perhaps somewhat older, and middle son Rolf would continue to yearn for soft, sunny, southern climates for the remainder of his days or until 1914, whichever came first. The English girls would be viscountesses, or conceivably—touring the salons of Mayfair and beyond—Rolf would find an American, a southern belle who knew about the importance of land, horseflesh, lost causes, and Christianity. She would fit into the East Prussian estate as she had fitted into the plantation near Richmond. Difference was, the peasants would have white skin. No doubt there would be some tension between the belle and the baroness while the unfortunate husband dreamed of the sensual life in the hill towns of Italy. Responsibility would weigh heavily on Rolf’s shoulders, unless it developed that his empty-headed debutante was as fierce as the baroness. So perhaps he would find a way. And then Dix remembered the judgment of middle children: geniuses surrounded by morons.

  The telephone was on its third ring before he heard it, so absorbed was he in the philosopher’s script. Rising to answer, he decided he would not anticipate what was to come. The writer had tricks up his Marxist sleeve. Best to let him disclose them in his own time, in his own way.

  Herr Greenwood?

  The voice was hesitant.

  I am Jana, she said.

  Yes, he said impatiently. He was still in the manor house with the baroness and her sons. He had no idea who Jana was.

  Jana, she said again. I saw your picture in the newspaper.

  How can I help you, Jana?

  I am living in Berlin now.

  Yes, he said.

  When I saw your picture, I decided to call on you in Wannsee. They said you were out, but they gave me your telephone number. Your voice is strange, Herr Greenwood.

  Do we know each other, Jana?

  She gave a little dry laugh, the laugh muffled at the end as if she had placed her hand over the receiver. After a moment, she said, Oh, yes, I think you do. Didn’t we spend a summer together? It’s very clear in my mind. I am the one who didn’t want to devote myself to films. Acting in someone else’s story.

  He heard her voice but her words eluded him. He stared into the oval mirror and it seemed to him many seconds before he spoke, in a voice not his own, Jana?

  Yes, I am Jana. You thought I was dead.

  Where are you? He shifted the telephone from one ear to the other, as if that would improve the connection, though he heard her clearly.

  I told you, she said sharply. Here in Berlin.

  Berlin, he said.

  Yes, Berlin. You are surprised?

  I’m sorry, he said. I’m very sorry. I didn’t recognize your voice. It’s been so many years and I never expected—

  I thought you would remember me, she said.

  I’ve never forgotten you, Jana.

  And I have thought about you often, Herr Greenwood. You remember the evening by the river, we talked of the future, and I said no more films. I kept my word.

  You did indeed, he said, and not knowing what else to say, added, Congratulations.

  Herr Greenwood—

  Call me Dix, he s
aid.

  I liked working with you.

  We made a wonderful film, he said.

  We did, she said. And Herr Jeidels?

  He’s fine, living in Los Angeles.

  Good, she said.

  He’s no longer in films, Dix added.

  That is a pity.

  They talked on for a few minutes. She asked about the boys, Tommy Gwilt and the other two, but Dix had to admit that he’d lost touch with them because he, too, was on the sidelines of the movie business. After an awkward pause, he said, Jana, I’m involved in something now, it’s out of the ordinary but perhaps you’d be interested. I’d like to explain it to you, then you can decide for yourself. Perhaps lunch. Can I take you to lunch?