by Peter Watson
Before going up to my room I scribbled a reply on the bottom and asked Ulrich to send it. I had written, “They appear to be doing too much damage to be Dwight or Winston. How about Spitfire and Messerschmidt? Shares now $1,062–$868 in your favor. Are you sure helmet will fit your big head? W.”
The dance that night was a riot—I mean it literally. It would be talked about for weeks to come. The band was terrific but that only made people all the more crazy to dance and that, in turn, made things worse. An entire busload of women failed to arrive. The bus broke down and, in those days, breakdowns could be very final affairs. Which meant that women were in far shorter supply than liquor. Inevitably men without girls fell out with men who had girls. Men who had girls left them to get drinks from the bar and returned to find the girls they claimed as theirs being pawed by other men, very often men from a different state, a different ethnic group or a different army unit. In other words there was no shortage of reasons for disagreement. Sooner or later a brawl was inevitable. We were lucky in a way that it didn’t happen until ten o’clock had come and gone.
One of the topics mulled over in the messes for weeks to come was whether there had been more damage inflicted on the dance hall itself or on the people in it. There was certainly a lot of blood, and a lot of light bulbs seemed to be broken. By general consent the band had the best of the deal, being paid in full yet having to play for only half the evening.
I managed to steer clear of the fighting just as what few women were there managed to steer clear of me. I did have two dances with a tall, sad-eyed Austrian girl who spoke no English and so found the fact that I was fluent in German not unattractive. But someone stole her while I was getting her a drink and before we had so much as exchanged names. I was in bed by eleven.
I went back to Mondsee on Monday. That way, I figured, it would convey the impression that what I was doing was a job. I had taken the weekend off to do more interesting things; now it was back to work. I was still around, and would stay until I got what I had come for.
I did not, however, go to the house this time. I went to the church. The main door, large, worn and wooden, with two arches, was locked and I let myself in by a side entrance through a curtain. It was cool inside the church, but already sunny. On the far side of the nave was a huge stone font, carved, with a bronze plate on the top. I sat beyond this so I could not easily be seen.
I noticed that there was a high ornate pulpit halfway down the nave—perfect for hectoring anti-Protestant sermons. There was a small private chapel on the far side, with white flowers, lilies. The main altar, in black and gilded stucco and deep green marble, was closed off behind an elaborate wrought-iron gate, which was also black. Green, smooth steps rose to this gate from a wood-dark choir, earthy in its simplicity. Beyond the altar two slender stained-glass windows showed the life of the Virgin in all its primitive ecstasy. None of the individual features of the church was magnificent but the overall effect was—and that, for me, was the essence of baroque. The whole was greater, much greater, than the sum of its parts. I opened the book I had brought with me and settled down to wait.
Konstanze didn’t appear until nearly two hours later, right at the end of the morning. She came in, walked quickly down the aisle and, without once looking back at her beloved organ and thus seeing me, sat in one of the front pews, crossed herself, knelt to pray. I had guessed that she would come. In the first place she had told me that she went to the church nearly every day. Second, today was exactly a year since she had gone with her husband and Dieter to the waterfalls at Krimml, when they had used the name von Haltern. It was the kind of thing I thought she would remember. She had come to pray for Rudolf.
Quietly, while she was absorbed in prayer, I moved to the back of the nave and sat where she could not fail to see me as she left. I had to wait, however, for the priest came by and, when she saw him, she got up and stood talking to him in the main aisle. From what I could hear they were discussing next Sunday’s services, at which she was to play. Slowly they began to come toward me, down the aisle, still talking.
Because of the gloom, she didn’t recognize me right away, but then she stopped and looked again. The uniform was unmistakable. The priest, who was doing most of the talking, stopped also. He looked at Mrs. von Zell, then at me, then back to her.
Her hostility was quite frank this time. She clearly felt that I had followed her into the church and was, in a way, eavesdropping on her prayers. It was too much.
It may have been clever of me to anticipate that she would come to the church today, but it was a mistake to surprise her as I had done. She was so angry that all the progress I had made before the weekend looked like it was ruined unless I could do something, say something, to calm her.
“I’m sorry if I startled you,” I said and held up my book. “I’ve been looking at churches in the last few days. I started with Salzburg and Innsbruck, but I thought it was time to try some of the smaller towns. This seemed as good a place as any to start.” I pointed across the nave. “I was sitting over there, by the font, when you came in. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I waited back here.”
“Waited? What for?” She was aggressive, but maybe there was a touch of curiosity in there too.
The priest, who until then had been standing nearby, mute and embarrassed, now muttered something and moved away. She turned to him, smiling. As she turned back to me, I led the way out of the church. Only when we were outside, in the bright sun, did I realize how cool it had been in there. We stood in front of the creamy building, squinting up at the twin towers, with their black clock faces and relief statues of the Virgin. To the right of the main facade a small fountain dripped disconsolately.
“Well, Lieutenant? What is it you were waiting for? I thought you said you were just looking at churches?” I had lost the advantage of the previous meeting. She was frankly suspicious and hostile.
“Yes,” I said. “But looking at the few churches I have seen has given me an idea.” I took her elbow and gently moved her down the slope in front of the church and toward the main market square. As we went I took care to compliment her on her dress, which that day was white with yellow zigzags. Ahead of us the sun glinted on the iron balustrade in front of the Café Braun, the main gathering place in Mondsee, not counting the church.
“I have my car here,” I said. “Let me give you a ride back to your house. We can talk as we go.”
I had parked the BMW in a side street, not far away but out of sight so that she would not see it on her way into the church. The top was down and, when I opened the passenger door for her, she got in gracefully.
Nowadays, so long after the war, a drive in an open car in the sunshine along the edge of a lake is pleasant but hardly special. In 1946 it was quite different. For most of us, and for Mrs. von Zell certainly, it was a new and intoxicating experience. It didn’t take very long to get back to her house, and that may have been why the ride was so successful; it gave her the briefest of tastes of the pleasures of the BMW.
The lake, as I had come to expect, was black and glittering. The mountains beyond were beautiful. I knew Mrs. von Zell was enjoying herself, because she didn’t confront me again about what it was I was waiting to say to her in the church. She just enjoyed the mixed sensations of the car’s noises, the smell of the exhaust and the shimmering haze that the sun produced on the black, melting road. In fact, the ride that day, in perfect weather, could well have been the reason why the rest of this story turned out the way it did.
I drove past Mrs. von Zell’s house to the spot amid the trees where I had parked on my first visits. The engine died and the sounds of the lake took over. There were a few more fishing boats out today. The water was warming up all the time and the saibling were becoming more and more active. As we sat we could hear them feeding, soft but deep-sounding, comfortable swishes, as they took the flies and sank from the surface.
In front of us the road stretched in a straight line for almost a kilometer, un
usually straight considering it ran along the lakeshore. There were two figures at the far end walking toward us. What looked like a child and an adult.
“It’s Dieter,” said Konstanze. “With Martha.” And, oddly, I got the impression she was disappointed, as though her son’s return with the housekeeper would curtail her enjoyment of the open car. She was running her hand along the edge of the door, the top edge, almost caressing it as if it were alive, like a pet or a child. There was a sudden commotion on the lake—one of the silhouettes had caught a fish. His black rod was warped in a perfect parabola. We looked on as the trout was hauled in, glistening purple and brown, slapping helplessly.
Dieter, I noticed, kept stopping by the roadside, picking things.
“He’s a strange and wonderful child,” said Mrs. von Zell when I remarked on this. “He has decided that, since everyone else takes so much interest in flowers, he will be interested in leaves. He makes up his own words for their shapes and their different shades of green. He says leaves are nature’s underdogs. Can you imagine that?”
I saw my chance. “Do you think it matters, having a son, with your husband away such a lot?”
She surprised me by the frankness of her answer. “Yes,” she said plainly. “Dieter has not seen his father at all since the war ended. But he had seen him only infrequently before that. I’m sure it has made a difference. It may not show for years. But it’s there.”
Martha and the child were barely a hundred yards away now, still picking leaves. I knew that their arrival would break the spell that had been accidentally woven by the weather, the fish and the open car.
“I envy you, Dieter,” I said. “In America, because I am a well-paid professor and have no children, I am everybody’s favorite godfather. All my friends ask me when a Christening is coming up. I have seven godchildren—Katie is my favorite, then there is William, Simon, Christina, Pietr, Sally, and another whose name I can’t even remember, there are so many. I am flattered, of course, and it means that when I do go back to America, a bachelor again, there are always plenty of invitations to spend Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving. But it gets expensive, with gifts at Christmas, and hardly a month without someone’s birthday.”
I laughed. “I complain, but I miss them, you know. Every month I write them a letter—I send the same one to everybody.” I looked at Konstanze and smiled again. “You can’t imagine how hard it is to get six sheets of carbon paper into an army typewriter.”
She was holding back her head, letting a sudden gust of wind tug at her hair. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling, either at my story or at her own recollections of some of Dieter’s foibles in the past, things he had done or said that made her laugh.
The spell was working on her too. I would not get a better opportunity for what I planned. I glanced down the road to see how far away Dieter and Martha were. They were part of my plan too. I had a speech to make to Konstanze, a speech I wanted her to think about before replying, before saying no, as she would do if she had the chance to answer right away. If I could time my speech so that it ended just as Dieter arrived, then the spell might be broken at just the right time.
“Mrs. von Zell, you give me an idea. I hope that by now I have persuaded you I am not like the other men sent to find your husband’s whereabouts. I am not going to threaten you with deportation to the Russian zone, or anything like that. I am who I say I am and I do want to explore the architecture of this country. Therefore my idea is this. Come and explore the countryside with me for a few days. We can walk in the hills, explore the lakes, collect the flowers, see the rivers, visit churches. I have the perfect car for it—there is room for Dieter and the weather is on our side. You can keep me company and I can do the same for you. You have been separated for a year, you say, from your husband, so you must be a little bored at being confined to your house and to Mondsee. You must have some curiosity about the rest of this lovely country. I am tired of being married to the Army, of spending my life with other men or alone. I miss children. I have my army wages, saved up for months because there is so little I want to spend them on. I need a holiday.
“I lied to you before. I gave you the impression I have all the time in the world for this case. I don’t. If I don’t get the information in a few weeks, I’ll be pulled off the case. The deal is this. Spend the days with me, in the countryside, looking at churches, picnicking, enjoying ourselves. Then, at the end of ten days, if you feel like helping me with the gold coins, all well and good. If not, I’ll go away. I promise never to raise the subject of the coins until the very end. But even then, no pressure. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll just go away.
“Think of it, if you like, as a game. It lasts ten days and there is a winner and a loser. If you think you can hold out, what have you got to lose? You will enjoy the fields, my car, the churches—and keep your secret.”
Martha and Dieter had started walking toward us again but had still not seen the car, parked in among the trees. Dieter’s mother had stopped stroking the door. Instead she used the other hand to fiddle with the gear shift.
“I could teach you to drive,” I murmured.
She leaned forward and touched the dials closest to her on the dashboard, the fuel gauge, the rev counter, the battery charger, one by one, like a blind person feeling a lover’s face. She spoke softly, without looking at me.
“A game? It is like making a pact with the devil. You promise me … pleasure, relief, learning for a few days … but at what risk? I may regret it for the rest of my life. The hardships of the war lasted six long years. You offer respite for less than two weeks. You are not brutal, Lieutenant, that I accept. But maybe your plan is cruel.”
“Mummy!” Dieter had seen us at last. He left Martha and galloped toward the car, wrenching open the passenger door and scrambling onto his mother’s lap.
“Can we go for a ride? Please, Mummy, say yes! I’ve never been in a car like this before, all open. And Daddy always had that horrid driver, Kleiber. Please.”
He looked at me, expecting me to start the car. I looked across to his mother.
“Just along the lake then, as far as Sterneck. Then back home.”
We left poor Martha to walk back to the house alone and drove south along the shore to the next village. Dieter hung his head out of the side of the car so that he could feel the slipstream swish through his hair. He yelled loudly at all the children he knew as we passed, showing off. At Sterneck I pulled into the main square, turned the car and stopped by the café.
“Shall we have a pastry?” I asked generally.
Dieter’s smile said “Yes, please” but his mother was equally clear. “No. Please start the engine. We must go back.” I was being too familiar again.
Dieter’s disappointment vanished as soon as we were on the move again. “Can you go faster?” he said, but we were already doing seventy kilometers an hour and that was quite enough on a lakeshore road in those days.
When I pulled up outside the latch gate at their house, there was no sign of Martha. Mrs. von Zell opened the passenger door and said to her son, “Say ‘Thank you’ to the lieutenant. Then run in and find Martha. Tell her I have some fish for lunch.”
The boy squirmed around on his mother’s lap and held out his hand in that extremely old-fashioned manner some young children have. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Can we go farther next time? And faster?”
I nodded noncommittally, looking over his head at his mother.
He got down and skipped into the house. I waited. The car engine was still running. I noticed Martha sneak a look from one of the windows. Her glance was dark and disapproving.
“There is one condition,” said Mrs. von Zell after a short while. She was still not looking at me. “We must drive away from here to villages where they do not know me. Not Salzburg, not Mondsee, not Sterneck. Not anywhere on this lake or in the Fuschl Valley. You understand? It would look—unusual.” She stopped and at last turned her head toward me. “Those are my
terms.”
“I understand.”
“Then I accept the risk. It will be good for Dieter to get out and about. You may call for us tomorrow. At ten-thirty.”
CHAPTER SIX
1
And so the game I had planned began. The next ten days are the ones which, looking back, I most regret. I behaved brilliantly at times, and I behaved badly. Enough to say, perhaps, that my shame has stayed with me throughout the years since the war, growing more secret maybe, as each April passes and, once more, I think back. But it does not diminish. It is unfashionable now to admit to regrets, so let me say, plainly, that I am the exception. I regret what I did in those ten days: I regretted it as soon as I had done it and I have regretted it ever since. Some time ago I broke my ankle. It healed so that it is again as strong as ever; however, the bone has thickened fractionally and this small deformity serves to remind me of the injury every morning when I put on my socks. My shame is like that: emotionally I am deformed and a day never goes by without my remembering, with a shiver, what I did during those ten wonderful, terrible days.
We met the next day as arranged. I had polished the BMW for the adventure and Dieter was delighted, pulling faces in the bright chrome of the headlamps. Konstanze had dressed him in a thick jumper (no one said sweater in those days), bright green with red birds knitted into it. I admired it. She had on a cloak of some autumn color, russet or mahogany, maybe, under a cheerful butter-cup-colored hat and shiny brown boots. We were all, I think, looking forward to the day, all that is except Martha, who stared suspiciously from the balcony and waved back peremptorily as we shot off.
Having Dieter with me, I remember noticing that day how much the waxy undersides of the leaves on the trees shimmered in the sunshine. It was hotter than ever. Each time we slowed for a bend or a turn, or because we were held up by farm traffic, we could feel the sun beat on our necks. The exposed leather of the car seats began to smell with the heat.
