34
It was pretty dark on the embankment, now that the summer evening had faded into blackness. Only occasional gas lamps gave any light. It was as though the city authorities had decided that those pavements that led only to offices and warehouses and an indefinable muddle of minor streets scarcely needed lighting. The shops at the street corners were closed. On the further corner there was a Kneipe, the outpost of a great brewery, a dull place with frowsy lace curtains and a lamp outside and placards fixed to the walls, a place nevertheless that attracted numerous clients, singly or in twos, sliding in, sliding out.
You could hardly distinguish the faces of the people moving here and there. There were not very many, you might think at first, but if you stayed a while, undeterred by the smell of dirty water and the creeping dankness, you became aware of a hum, a continuous shuffle. Men standing singly in the shadows of the black buildings, smoking for the most part, now and again striking a match. Men walking slowly up and down, some well dressed, others rougher, peering into the shadows. There was little traffic, perhaps every fifteen minutes or so a cab might pass – who would want to travel down this baleful street? The prevailing sound came from the water, the water that snakes through Berlin. Now and again the faint murmur of voices grew louder as the speakers gained confidence, or subdued steps sounded on the cobbles as two sets of legs set off together.
The man walked hesitantly over the bridge, as though not knowing where he was going. A bystander could hardly have made out his face, his hat was pulled down so low. In spite of the warm evening, he wore a dark coat. He stared at the ground. In the deep shadow of a high building, he stopped and looked around.
He had been noticed. His coat did not disguise the fact that he was wohlgeboren or that there was a pleasant face half-concealed under the hat. He did not stay long beside the bridge, made as though to leave but lingered in the shadows. Though his face did not alter, attentive eyes might have realised that he was steeling himself, that his shoulders were growing steeper. Someone moved towards him.
‘Hast du Feuer?’ this person said, holding out a cigarette.
The man peered at his questioner. He saw a fresh young face, blond, rough, good-natured, at least it seemed so, moving closer to him. He felt, in this inhospitable, rustling street where drops of moisture fell now and again from the saturated buildings onto the pavement, the warmth of a body, tobacco on the breath. He produced his cigarette lighter, realised it was silver, wished he had brought a cheap one, lit the cigarette. The young man’s fingers grazed his.
‘Danke,’ said the young man quite loudly, not like the flitting whisperers who seemed to form an invisible audience. He smiled and nodded. Then, a little hesitantly, ‘Ich bin Karl,’ he said and held out his hand.
Friendly he certainly seemed. But how would he be in some greasy hotel room, or under a railway bridge? The man shook his head violently. His mouth contorted like a frog’s. He turned his back on Karl, and hastened down the embankment and across the bridge to the safe world of busy streets and trams and cafés. He told himself he would never return to such a place. He could not understand why he had ever gone there. This would be the last time.
35
Irene gave a lunch for both families, at which English dishes (reinterpreted by Gretchen) alternated with traditional Silesian ones. The conversation was animated. The Germans were curious about politics in Britain, the crises over the House of Lords, the rise of the Labour Party, the strikes. The English asked about the German Empire and the Kaiser, and were surprised by Freddy’s comic impression of the Emperor posing for the camera while hiding his withered arm. ‘It is just that the All-Highest is always parading himself in public,’ he explained.
‘For us,’ said Sir William, ‘it is not easy to understand the current place of Prussia within the German Empire or the workings of the federal system.’
The Germans laughed. ‘No, nor is it for us.’
‘Look at us,’ said Paul, ‘we are a divided household. That is to say, Frau Mamma comes from Mecklenburg but is a Prussian on her mother’s side, and Herr Papa comes from the south, but neither of them approves of modern Berlin. They hardly consider themselves Germans.’
Freddy waved his napkin in the air. ‘Prussia is not Germany, you must not let it deceive you. Prussia is a monster, we do not like Prussia or the Hohenzollerns, though Papa has to pretend to. Don’t get angry, Herr Major, allow other people to have different views to yours. You must understand, our Herr Major is a fine Prussian – though since she married, Elise has become more Prussian than the Prussians themselves.’
‘Freddy, don’t be so annoying,’ said his mother.
‘I’m not being annoying, I’m only being helpful to our English friends. Prussia is a fiction put together by the Hohenzollerns, not a true country like England.’
‘Here we are in Berlin, the capital of Prussia,’ said Sir William, ‘and you say Prussia is a fiction.’
‘You can’t really say Berlin is a Prussian city, or even a German city.’ Paul looked very serious, no doubt as he would when he was a professor. ‘Berlin is a mongrel city. Most of the people here aren’t Prussians at all. What these Berliners admire–’
‘Aren’t you a Berliner yourself, Paul, my dear?’ his mother asked him.
‘Frau Mamma, in spite of what Freddy says, I am first of all a German. What these Berliners admire is America: their awful Negro music, their clothes, their business methods, and the fantasy of the Wild West. The United States obsesses them.’
‘It’s not just fantasy,’ cried Freddy. ‘Initiative, freedom, equality, business enterprise, that’s what we admire in the United States.’
The major erupted. ‘I cannot bear this criticism of Prussia. Prussia is Europe’s guardian, she preserves Europe from the eastern hordes. We have grown strong through sacrifice.’
‘Yes, but do we want to be strong through sacrifice?’ Freddy loved to provoke his brother-in-law. ‘It’s surely more useful to grow strong through business deals. People like you, Heinz, are always looking backwards to the Middle Ages, the Teutonic Knights. I am looking forward to cooperation between nations, with battles restricted to the boardroom.’
‘For some of us, England is a fine model. Her parliamentary tradition, her liberties, her buildings – and indeed her daughters.’ Thomas smiled at his wife.
‘Of course we like England,’ added Freddy. ‘At least the sensible ones among us do.’
‘I disagree,’ said Paul. ‘For me, the future for Germans lies not in an artificial union with other lands but in realising the nation’s proper character. We must strive for a Germany that will be true to our best ideals.’
‘Ah, listen to Paul,’ said Freddy. ‘Nowadays he’s always talking about an ideal Germany. For me, a country with soul is a country that looks after its citizens properly, rather than sending them to die on the battlefield.’
Sir William asked Herr Curtius which country he saw as a model.
‘For my generation,’ he replied, ‘it was France. We thought of Württemberg as a poor relation of France. Though we had to become part of Germany, we were fortunate that France was close by.’
‘I hope now all is clear,’ said Frau Curtius.
‘Germany is so very much larger than England,’ offered Lady Benson, who had been studying the atlas.
‘Yes,’ said Heinz disagreeably, ‘but you have taken so much of the world for your empire. . .’
Thomas cried, ‘Who will play tennis this afternoon? Tennis – now that’s something we owe to our friends in England, as we owe so much.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, lifting his glass up to the light. ‘The invention of organised sport, that is the great British achievement. In Germany we have created modern philosophy, and art history, and the systematic study of the natural sciences, and the new music, and the science of warfare. To England the world is indebted for empire-building, and organised sport.’
‘That’s rather biased,’ said Mark, stung in spite
of himself.
‘Of course it’s biased,’ answered Paul coolly. ‘I wish to provoke argument.’
Irene rose, and the conversation ended. Throughout the discussion she had remained calm, concerned for the guests’ well-being, detached. She was perfectly happy in Berlin. That was evident to everybody.
36
‘These postcards show the Schloß and the park at Charlottenburg – we went there all the time. It was a beautiful place. I gather the palace was badly damaged in the war, I don’t know how it is now.’ She stares at the postcards. ‘You should go and see for yourself, it’s in West Berlin, you know. You could see how the Mommsenstraße looks these days.’
‘I wish we were in touch with my grandfather’s family. I find it odd, that you broke off relations like that.’
Dorothea avoids her daughter’s look. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘No. There’s a lot I don’t understand, Mum. You’ve become so English, you don’t talk about things seriously. I don’t understand why you married Daddy, to be honest. Or why you stay with him. You don’t seem to have anything in common.’
‘Pandora, don’t speak to me like that.’
‘It’s true, isn’t it? I think you’re unhappy in this flat, doing nothing, feeling depressed, waiting for a man to come home who bores you.’
Dorothea sits very still. Her daughter realises she is crying, and puts her arm round her mother’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t. . . but I love you, I’d like you to be happy.’
37
Even on a fine day, the park at Schloß Charlottenburg was often quite empty. Once you left the environs of the Schloß, you found yourself in a generously spreading English garden; the tall white belvedere stood to one side, the great trees around the edge of the grassy field created an undulating belt of shade, and the winding paths coaxed you into green distances among curving streams and ponds crossed by iron bridges. The vistas were long: you could see quite a way across the grass, as though you were in open country rather than surrounded by the genteel royal borough of Charlottenburg. If you wished to be alone, or with one other person, you would hardly be interrupted.
On this particular quiet July afternoon, if you had stood high up on the belvedere and looked across the grass, you might have seen a youngish man enter the park and look from side to side as though he did not know the place. He was bearded, with long dark hair, not tall but stocky, and wore loose, light-coloured clothes that blended into the greenery. After looking around him for a moment, he hurried purposefully towards a grove of trees. He sat down on a bench in the shade. Then nothing much happened. Only the occasional mother with her children, a solitary contemplative, a young soldier with a young maidservant, wandered through the summer landscape, mildly talking, perhaps pointing out the play of sunlight on the leaves, or looking up at the belvedere on whose summit nobody appeared, nobody to look at the walkers following the meandering paths, disappearing into shade, re-emerging into the light.
Some minutes later another purposeful figure appeared, this time a young woman holding a parasol, walking briskly, gazing straight ahead, apparently oblivious to the beauty around her. As she neared the copse where the man was sitting, her pace slowed. The man sat smoking and watched her. Only when she was quite near did he abruptly stand and move towards her, arms outstretched. She stopped, out of his reach, and nodded.
After a short while the two of them approached one another. But they did not sit on the bench, which was visible from many points in the park; they stood in the deeper shade. Then they followed the winding way out of the sun and into the shade and back into the sun. The woman did not take the man’s arm companionably, as you might expect when a young man and a young woman walk together among waving grasses and flickering sunshine and humming bees. Instead, they remained apart, talking, but only sporadically, the woman looking ahead, the man glancing at her, before they again disappeared from view at a point where the path turned into the shrubberies.
Quite a while later they could be seen again at the bench where they’d met. The woman extended her arm formally, as though to say goodbye. The man looked at her and took her hand, raising it to his lips and holding it there. The briefest moment later, she drew her arm away, turned, and moved, slowly at first and then with increasing speed, towards the park entrance.
He sat on the bench, watching her disappear. When she’d gone, he remained on the bench, often looking in the direction she’d taken. He smoked a cigarette, and then another, and after a while took a little sketch book from his pocket and began to draw, until the sunlight sank into a softer gold, and a distant clock struck six. Then he moved towards the park gates, and went on his way.
That was all an observer might have seen.
38
‘Here are the two families at Salitz, where Thomas’s Prussian aunt and uncle lived. It’s East Germany now, of course – the house is an orphanage. Mother told me that the weekend when her parents visited the Lützows was very important for her, she felt the two parts of her life had been joined together. There they are, lined up on the steps of the manor house.’
‘Who is the old man in the hat with a feather?’
‘That’s Herr von Lützow, and his wife beside him.’
Pandora studies the photograph intently. ‘The house is quite small. I’m surprised.’
‘They lived plainly, that was the tradition. They were darling people, I often stayed there when I was a child. They had a quality – it’s hard to explain – they were fully themselves, they were content though never complacent. They believed it was their duty to do everything they could for others, their people, their family, their country.’
‘What happened to them under the Nazis then?’
Her mother draws in her breath. ‘Under the Nazis they lived more quietly than ever, they were old by then. He died just as the war was beginning, and she lived on there till the end of the war.’
‘And then what?’
There is another silence.
‘I knew it would hurt, doing this.’ Dorothea is silent for a while, looks into the fire. ‘I last saw the Lützows in 1936 when I went to see Father. They seemed unchanged. Salitz showed no signs of being Nazified. . . That visit healed many things. I stayed several days, they were very pleased.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘Tante Sibylle was like her sister, my German grandmother, only quieter. When she was an old lady she was like an old apple – a little gnarled and twisted on the outside, all sweetness within.’ She makes a gulping sound.
‘Don’t tell me that story if it makes you sad. It’s probably better to suppress some memories, in spite of old Sigmund.’
Dorothea sits up straighter. ‘I’ll tell you another day. Let’s look at the album, there’s nothing sad there.’
39
‘I hope you will like our house. We are very pleased, that you here are – that you are here. You are all most welcome, by us.’ Frau von Lützow spoke these English words slowly and carefully. At the end of her little speech, she patted her hair, coloured, smiled nervously at her guests, and turned to her husband. Herr von Lützow wore a dark green jacket with buttons in the form of stag’s heads, leather breeches, a hat with a feather. His clothes, which his English guests would have smiled at in London, looked natural here.
‘Yes, you are very welcome,’ he said, also in English. ‘From all of us, we welcome our English guests. We are proud, to be with you related. We are proud of our English niece, and now we are glad, your hosts to be.’ The guests clapped.
The Lützows were standing on the steps of their house. It was built in the plainest classical style, two storeys on a basement, a flight of steps to the double front door. The house and its surroundings – the double gates with piers supporting heraldic bears, the avenue of oaks, the circular gravel sweep, the rose beds – conveyed decency and family pride. The front door was wide open. This was most unusual, as Frau Curtius whispered to Lady Benson, a mark of honour.
Sir William cleared hi
s throat. He did not look nervous, he was at his most benign. ‘Wir freuen uns, hier zu sein. Es ist für uns eine Ehre, bei Ihnen als Gäste zu kommen.’
It was Lady Benson’s turn. She too had prepared some words, but at the moment of delivery forgot her lines. She blushed, waved her parasol energetically, nodded, eventually said, ‘Ja, ja. Dankeschön.’ Everyone laughed and applauded. She turned to Thomas. ‘I’m so sorry, Thomas dear, that was hopeless, I felt so nervous.’
At the top of the steps, Herr von Lützow gestured towards his domain and spoke in German. Thomas translated.
‘My uncle says, this is his property, and you are most welcome everywhere you wish to go. The house is quite small and plain beside an English house, but it is the house of his family, he loves it because he belongs here. He says, his family had some money in the early nineteenth century but they spent it on rebuilding the house, and what was left, his father gambled away.’ Herr von Lützow, listening closely, shrugged. ‘So now he must work on the farm. But he is proud of his farm buildings, they are over there, hidden behind the trees. He would like to show them to the gentlemen if they are interested.’ They nodded enthusiastically. ‘The house was built in 1816, we like to think that the great Karl Friedrich Schinkel was involved.’ Thomas paused. ‘Speaking for me, this is the place where Irene and I are building a house – our aunt and uncle have generously given us the land. Irene says progress is slow because I keep changing my mind, but for me this house is an experiment in design where I can try out my ideas.’ He pointed vigorously. ‘It is a nice spot, close to the woods but also to the farm buildings, we can smell the good country smells of pigs and chickens.’
The Iron Necklace Page 10
