The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘I wonder if Majken knew,’ I said, more to myself.

  ‘I think it was her who told Lisbeth.’

  ‘Bloody women, always sticking together.’

  ‘It all turned out okay, Teddy,’ was all he said.

  ‘What about Lisbeth?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Has she ever …’

  ‘Ever cheated on me? Is that what you’re asking?’

  He was getting a little rankled, I could tell. We were friends and we talked about all sorts of things, but here I seemed to be getting a little too personal.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never asked her. I have no reason to.’

  I stubbed out my cigarette, lit another and, wise man that he was, he asked:

  ‘I don’t suppose all of this could have anything to do with the fact that yet another marriage is on the rocks?’

  ‘I don’t have anything going on the side,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you usually do, but I’m not going to get into that,’ he said. ‘There are two sides to every story, you know.’

  The other side in this case being that of my present wife, Janne. She was an assistant lecturer at the Institute and I had fallen head over heels in love with her five years earlier, when she started as a Ph.D. student and I was growing tired of living alone. She had been married at the time, only in her early thirties; she left her husband and brought two small children into my life from that first marriage. It had not exactly been plain sailing. I felt I had had my share of small children. They took over the whole flat. They robbed me of my freedom, but if I wanted her I had to take her offspring too. And I was in love. Or at least: in love with the thought of being in love again. Of experiencing the grand passion. Although it was probably also a symptom of a midlife crisis. It’s not easy when the magic five-oh is looming on the horizon. Part of me did still love her, of course, but there was no passion to speak of. Our days followed a routine pattern punctuated by fights and icy silences. So it had actually been good to get away on this trip, even though Janne had gone on about the kids and who was supposed to see to them? And how she always got stuck with all the household chores. She had her work too. I had expected her to complain. But I had not expected her to give in so quickly, saying only that she supposed I’d better go then. I immediately began to wonder whether she had met someone else. To be honest I couldn’t have blamed her. Our marriage, if you could call it that, was stuck in a rut.

  ‘Did you hear what I said, Teddy?’ Lasse asked.

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s going to last between Janne and me,’ was all I said, and I could see that this did not surprise him. It was no secret between us that Janne and Lisbeth did not get on well. They were civil to one another, but no more than that. My previous wife, Majken, and Lisbeth were the same age and still saw a lot of one another. They were friends. My first wife and I had been teenage sweethearts, we married in order to get a flat. Five years and two children later it was over. Our divorce had been a relatively painless, amicable affair. These days we could run into one another, pass the time of day, without feeling any emotion, great or small. I think we both wonder what we saw in the other. The children had been a bond of sorts between us. Now they were grown up, married themselves, had provided us with grandchildren whom we saw separately. We very rarely met. Majken and I were married for almost twelve years, but the divorce was a nasty business. She had had one child from her first marriage and together we had three in rapid succession before it all fell apart. I cheated on her and she eventually found out. Both she and the children went ballistic and I don’t think any of them has ever really forgiven me. We imagine that we live in an age when our hearts cannot be broken, but betrayal and broken promises hurt as much as they ever did. Our youngest was eighteen now, we could have a polite conversation, but I was still not very popular. What annoyed me most was that it bothered me and affected me more than I was prepared to admit. Majken had remarried. She had had another child, late on. Her new husband already had two of his own. Just as well Majken was a mathematician. Because it took a mathematician’s brain and methodical mindset as well as a hefty diary to keep track of all the birthdays, the Christmas and New Year holidays, when you had to allow not only for your own offspring but also for all the various step-children. We belonged to a generation which had not gone through life quietly and unremarked. To be honest I don’t think we had ever thought about anybody but ourselves.

  ‘Do you even want it to last?’ Lasse asked.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘But let’s talk about something sensible, like Poland or NATO…’

  He laughed.

  ‘You started it. Lunch is on me, seeing as you’re paying all that child maintenance.’

  ‘Thank heavens my own two are over eighteen now,’ I mumbled morosely and we both laughed again, possibly as a way of covering up a growing awkwardness, and I felt better.

  We strolled along the narrow streets like two gentlemen, coats open and arms swinging. All we needed was a couple of top hats and somebody to tip them at and we could have been in a Hollywood musical. Horses’ hooves clip-clopped over the cobbles, but as yet there were few passengers behind the drivers in the carriages they drew. Down by the old Town Hall, where a hot-dog stall emblazoned with the evocative name ‘Dania’ struck a strangely tasteless note, Lasse suddenly stopped short and put a hand on my arm.

  ‘Don’t look now. Remember the old days in Moscow …’

  I knew what he was getting at. I bent down, pretended to be tying my shoelaces. I glanced back. There were about a dozen people behind me.

  ‘There’s a woman, d’you see her?’ Lasse said. ‘Blue coat, chest-nut-brown hair, sensible shoes. Good-looking woman in her early sixties. Maybe a bit younger. Well-preserved, but still …’

  I scanned the street, then I spotted her. She stopped short, made a big show of looking in the window of a sports shop, then she glanced towards us, turned on her heel and strode off briskly down a side street.

  I straightened up.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Old habits die hard when I’m in this part of the world, even if the country is a member of NATO and about to join the EU. I can’t help looking over my shoulder. You remember how sometimes in Moscow you could simply sense that you were being followed?’

  I nodded. I remembered. We had not spent all our time with our noses buried in dusty books in the endless reading rooms in the yellow palace of the Lenin Library. We had also met people. We had visited the homes of the hospitable Russians and we knew that they knew that an eye was kept on dangerous foreigners who were liable to spread noxious ideas about democracy and freedom.

  ‘What about her?’ I said again.

  Lasse looked after her, but she was long gone. Then, as he took my arm and led me away, he said:

  ‘She was in the back row at the Institute of Economics when I was speaking there yesterday. I thought about it when I saw her this morning, sitting in the front row at the Institute of History, when you were giving that talk on stagnation phenomena …’

  ‘Oh that – I had them snoring in the aisles during that one.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a good speaker and the history students have need of your insight.’

  ‘Okay – and …?’ I said, as we walked on in the now somewhat chillier late-afternoon sun. It was still only March. Spring was not quite here yet.

  ‘She was in the hotel lobby, and now here. It’s too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘You’re seeing things,’ I said. ‘The Cold War ended a long time ago. And we won. The Poles won.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘She’s probably just a tourist. There aren’t that many sights to see here. I just think it was a bit odd. There’s something professional about it. You get the feeling that she’s been trailing us for a while and has finally decided to let us know about it. The way the KGB used to do, in the old days.’

  ‘Those days are over,’ I said.

>   But she showed up again in Prague. During the symposium at Charles University, when we were all lined up on the platform, boring the pants off each other and the audience in the large auditorium. I sat there half-asleep while Lena held forth and Klaus Brandt, the leader of the delegation, got himself tangled up in long-winded expositions. Again she was seated in one of the back rows, high up. Lasse and I spotted her at almost the same moment. She was wearing a plain blue dress with a simple white necklace. She appeared to be listening intently. Made notes and looked for all the world like a refined middle-aged lady taking some extramural course: her husband is gone, the children have flown the nest, now she can devote herself to learning and culture. At the interval I hurried down to confront her, but she had vanished. As mysteriously as she had appeared – I had not seen her arrive and I did not see her leave.

  Afterwards there was a reception at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the former prime minister made his remark and my evening was ruined. I had too much to drink in the bar, but did eventually go up to my room. I called home – no answer – and fell asleep with a sour taste in my mouth that no toothpaste could dispel.

  The next morning Klaus hustled us along like a bunch of little kids and I could positively see his blood pressure rising when I deliberately did not turn up until the last minute, then took my time finishing my cigarette before climbing into the bus that was to take us to Bratislava. Thus prompting the other smokers to get back off. Anarchy threatened, and at the sight of our leader’s puce face I climbed aboard feeling slightly more cheerful. Lasse had of course observed the whole performance.

  ‘How childish,’ he said as I sat down beside him.

  But the Czech politician’s snide comment still rankled. At any rate I was too sunk in gloom to enjoy the sight of the budding Bohemian countryside, dotted with sunken haystacks. The landscape and the little farms reminded me of Denmark in the fifties. It had an old-fashioned air about it. We had to sit in a queue at the Slovakian border and Klaus got my back up even further by archly calling out to Lena:

  ‘Well, Lena – we’re about to leave the shelter of NATO protection behind us. I hope you’re not feeling too nervous.’

  ‘Who’s being childish now,’ I muttered to Lasse.

  Things were bound to go wrong. And so they did, after another few days of tedious meetings. It was late in the evening. I had had too much wine with dinner and too many drinks afterwards. On top of everything else my teeth had started hurting, or rather – according to my dentist – my gums. They’re going to rot away if you’re not careful, the heartless money-grubber had declared. I got into an argument with Klaus. I maintained that it would have been better if Gorbachev had been allowed to reform socialism a little at a time, instead of having the system suddenly collapse like that. Not that I actually believe this. I am glad that the rotten Soviet system came tumbling down like the vile, absurd house of cards that it was, but I knew exactly which buttons to push to get Klaus going. So we sat there yelling at one another like a couple of idiotic teenagers while the more sensible members of the delegation took themselves off to bed and eventually Klaus stomped off in high dudgeon leaving me alone, like the stupid fool that I was.

  So there I was, caught in the straitjacket of toothache, with my earlier inebriation reduced now to a raging hangover, when there came a knock at the door. It was long past midnight. I got up off the bed, peered through the little spy-hole. Outside was that woman. My first thought was to just leave her there, but then I opened the door. She stared at me. I stared back at her. For a moment I thought I was seeing things. She looked like my older sister. They had the same ears and nose and the same dark green eyes. The same features one saw in the few pictures of our father.

  ‘Yes,’ I snapped.

  She gave a faint smile, as if she were shy, then she put out her hand and said in slow, heavily accented, but perfectly lucid Danish:

  ‘Good evening, Teddy. My name is Maria Bujic. I plucked up the courage to come here. I almost didn’t dare to, but I did so want to meet my brother.’

  2

  IT TOOK ME A MOMENT to grasp what she had said. I was still a bit woozy. Nor0mally the only people likely to come knocking in the middle of the night in Central Europe are hookers, but she did not look like a hooker. She bore an astonishing resemblance to my older sister Irma. She was possibly a couple of years younger. It was the mouth mainly, and that piercing green gaze, with which Irma had a way of transfixing her students. I stepped aside and invited her in. Even at this late hour she looked fresh and almost youthful, her skin clear and with the usual age lines, neither overly pronounced nor invisible. Which was just as it should be. One should be able to tell by looking at a person that they have lived. The short hair curling and waving softly around her head looked almost black. Did she dye it, I wondered. She wore a smart skirt and a shirt-blouse, with a small string of pearls at her throat. She was carrying a good-sized briefcase in soft calfskin. She could almost have been a successful modern businesswoman, the sort you see on any morning flight to Århus, but only almost. Because there was an emptiness in her eyes, a look of coldness or pain which at first glance was hard to fathom. I did my footman act, waved her into the spacious hotel room. The bed was unmade, but I shifted some newspapers and offered her an armchair.

  She shook her head. We stood facing one another. Both uncomfortable with the situation.

  ‘What the hell is all this?’ I asked, with anger in my voice.

  She looked me in the eye.

  ‘Could we possibly speak Russian or English?’ she said in Russian, fluently and with hardly any accent as far as I could tell. My own Russian is excellent, although I read it better than I speak it.

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said in English.

  But that too she could speak without any difficulty.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  I motioned again to one of the armchairs and she took a seat, perching on the edge of the chair with the briefcase in her lap. She looked as if she was attending a job interview.

  ‘First I must tell you how sorry I am about the death of your, our, father,’ she said.

  ‘Now hang on a minute!’ I said. ‘What are you talking about? My father died almost fifty years ago. I never really knew him. He left us when I was very young. A hundred years ago, it seems like. In another time.’

  With neat, efficient movements she opened her bag, produced a large manila envelope, removed a black-and-white photograph from it and handed it to me. In the picture was a young man; he was smiling the smile which Irma and Fritz shared with him. His hair was black and he was smooth-shaven, he had a little, triangular chin and a fine, high brow showing beneath his German army cap. The SS runes were clearly visible on the cap and on the old-fashioned, black uniform jacket. I’m no expert on SS insignia, but going by his badges I guessed the man in the picture to be a Sturmbannführer. My natural father, a major in the Waffen-SS. But that couldn’t be right. The face was most definitely that of my father, whom I could not remember, but of whom I had seen pictures. The SS uniform knocked me off balance momentarily. I broke into a sweat. The woman was eyeing me intently, she handed me another picture.

  This one was in colour. It showed the same man. Some years older now. His hair a grizzled salt-and-pepper, but still thick. He had his arm around a rather plump little woman wearing a summer frock in a large floral print. They were standing in front of a yellow-painted house. Vines were visible in the background. A patch of blue sky. An array of brightly-coloured flowers in pots and vases. Leaning against the man was a young woman, she had on a simple yellow dress, the skirt of which had been lifted slightly by the breeze, revealing something of her bare, brown legs. It was a younger version of the woman sitting across from me in this hotel in Bratislava. She had been an exceptionally beautiful young woman. It was a nice summery, idyllic picture. I gave the photo back to her without a word and, just as wordlessly, she handed me yet another.

  Thi
s one too was in colour. It was the same man, but on his deathbed this time. His hair was sparse and white, his features very pronounced and the skin so thin that one felt one could see right through it to the bones of the skull underneath. He was dressed in a white shirt. His eyes were closed. His hands folded on the emaciated chest. Death had taken the big, strapping man whom the woman opposite me claimed was father to us both.

  I did not know what to think. Every family has its myths and legends, its secrets and skeletons in the closet and my own had plenty. My family’s history was a tragic one, but it had also been a success story. My parents’ bakery went bust because people began to talk: ‘Seems the baker was on the wrong side during the war. Decent people had better find somewhere else to buy their bread.’ But as a child I was never told exactly what it was he had done. It seemed to have something to do with him having gone to work in Germany. But a hundred thousand others had done the same. It was either that or lose their unemployment benefit. I knew his name was in the Bovrup Files. He had been a member of the DNSAP – the Danish Nazi Party. But so were forty thousand others. And it was not as if it was against the law, although just after the war ended it did mean you were a marked man. As a small boy I had pondered this a lot. I was the baby of the family, a bit of an afterthought, hopelessly spoiled by my mother and step-father and by Irma and Fritz. I was also too young to really understand the marital breakdown which followed in the wake of the social disgrace. I knew that it had been an extremely traumatic experience for my sister and brother. They did not like my mother’s new husband, but I thought of him as my father and continued to do so right up until his death five years ago. We three children had all done well for ourselves, two of us within the academic world. I was a historian, as was my sister, but she was also a professor of comparative literature, specialising, not surprisingly, in feminist writing. Fritz had originally been a baker, of course, but had gone on to set up his own bread factory, mass-producing all sorts of bread and rolls, which were sold in the supermarkets as home-baked, even though they all came off a conveyer belt. But he had soon discovered that image is everything. And that a good advertising campaign can do wonders for sales. He instinctively understood, long before the media researchers got round to formulating the concept, that we do not buy goods but experiences, stories. He was also quick to spot the organic trend and latch on to that. He was the wealthy member of the family. We came of age just as consumerism was really taking off and we were doing very nicely, thank you. A pretty ordinary story, really, when told in a few words.