by Peter Watson
Nothing more was said until we arrived back at the house. But she hadn’t finished with me, not yet. As we slowed and I applied the hand brake, Dieter awoke. “Where are we going tomorrow?”
“Sadly, nowhere. There are other things I must do. But don’t worry, I’ll come the day after. I thought we’d explore the Löser.”
“What’s that?”
“A mountain,” said his mother.
“You can see fourteen lakes from there,” I added. “Or so I’ve read.”
“I’ll look it up in the atlas,” he said, “so I know all of them.” And he disappeared into the house, running, to tell Martha about the crayfish he had caught.
Mrs. von Zell stood by the car. “He enjoyed it. Thank you.”
“So did I.” A pause. “And you?”
She nodded. “Except for the rubber bands. And the ice cream.”
“Maybe we should steer clear of rivers,” I said, crossing my fingers and hoping that I wasn’t going too far.
She ignored the remark. Or appeared to until, as she turned, she said, “I would invite you inside, for a glass of wine. But I have a letter to write.”
3
That night Hartt and I were attending a concert in the cathedral at Salzburg—the profits to help repair the bomb-damaged roof—and as I dressed I pondered Mrs. von Zell’s throwaway remark: “I have a letter to write.” Letter. It could have been a coincidence, but the word leapt at me. She was playing me at my own game. Earlier in the day I had sought to confuse her by mentioning things, intimate things, I had read in her letters, then pretending they were coincidences. Now she was returning the favor. She might really have had a letter to write, it might indeed have been a coincidence. On the other hand, she needn’t have mentioned it. She could have made some other excuse for not inviting me in. She needn’t have said anything at all. Was she telling me that she had realized I had read the letters? On balance, I decided, she was probably uncertain. And she was paying me back for that uncertainty. Mention of a letter told me that she was onto me; it was a tease, a deliberate ploy to confuse me in return. Who was she writing to? Rudolf? She was telling me, in the most deliciously tantalizing manner, that she had my measure. That she could play any game I played, and just as well.
Dammit, she was clever. And the worst thing about her cleverness was that it was so attractive. The cleverer she was, the harder it made my job. But I found I liked it. My situation was becoming paradoxical. She had pictured the game, from her point of view, as a pact with the devil. But if I was the devil, I wasn’t a very good one. That night I got the first inkling that it was I who was being ensnared, not she.
I half expected her to be at the cathedral that night. Besides Mozart the program included Schubert and Bruckner, her favorites, but although the cathedral was full, nearly a thousand people in all, and although I looked hard for her during the intermission (feeling a bit like Bruno, all those years ago), I didn’t find her. It would have been difficult, I suppose, for her to have returned to Mondsee after the concert, which didn’t end until 9:30. There were hardly any buses in the area in those days and, of course, she had no car.
The next morning my uncertainty had disappeared. Konstanze was nothing if not suspicious, those suspicions sharpened on earlier interrogators. She would wake this morning, just as I had done, with her mind made up. She would know that I had read the letters. Next time we met the rules would be different.
As I ate breakfast I wondered whether I should regret giving myself away so quickly. So far I had been able to use the knowledge I had gained from the letters to good advantage. I had, I thought, persuaded her to like me and to respect me. I had been able to pretend that I was more like her than I really was. Otherwise, being the woman she was, she would probably have never agreed to our deal. I had needed the advantage which the letters gave me. Now I no longer had it. On top of that, she might wake up this morning, or any morning, so appalled by my intrusion into her privacy that she would never agree to see me again.
By the time the breakfast things were cleared away I had thought myself into a panic. I had gone as far as I ever would. I had made a fatal blunder the day before in trying to be too clever over Dieter’s cello. What I wanted to do was see for myself by driving straight out to Mondsee. But I had saved today to do more reconnoitering. If Konstanze would not see me again, that was it. The end. But if she would, I had to stage-manage our future expeditions just as I had managed the Krimml trip and the picnic by the Salzach. So today I wanted to explore the countryside east of Salzburg.
My chore was pleasant enough, though nowhere near as much fun as if I’d had company. And I could not stop thinking about her remark: “I have a letter to write.… I have a letter to write.” It kept going around and around in my head. I would not have been surprised, on my return that afternoon, if there had been a letter or note from her calling off all future meetings, canceling the rest of the game. But, save for my room key, my pigeonhole at the Goldener Hirsch was mercifully clear. I was ridiculously pleased.
As I drove along the Fuschl Valley the next day I prayed that Konstanze would not cancel out. It was Saturday and the weather mocked me; the sun was as cheerful as ever and, along the lakeshore, the barks of the birches gleamed as if some giant hand had silver-polished them moments before I passed by.
She had my measure, all right. Far from giving me a cool reception, Mrs. von Zell was waiting in the garden, with Dieter, and was wearing not only a creamy-lemon dress of the finest silk but a simple gold necklace and, in her hair, a lemon ribbon. She looked fantastic and, I guessed, she knew it. As I arrived she stopped pushing Dieter on the swing and picked up an envelope that had been lying on the grass.
Dieter dashed across to the fence first. “May I ride in the front today? Please!”
“If your mother agrees.”
“Good morning!” she said brightly, coming to stand behind her son and placing her hands affectionately on his shoulders. They looked so healthy, the pair of them, that it was hard to believe they had once had TB.
“Good morning,” I replied, surprised at the warmth of her welcome. “Dieter would like to ride in the front today. What do you say?” Was she going to back out? I kept my fingers crossed.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled radiantly. “So long as he is careful. And so are you.”
Since Dieter had already clambered into his privileged position in the front seat, I got out and held forward mine so that his mother could slip into the back. As we drove off she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Could we go via the main square in Mondsee, please? I have a letter to post.”
I said nothing, but that was a very odd request. In Mondsee it was market day, the square choked with vegetables, flowers, even cows. At the post office I turned and offered to take the letter for her but Mrs. von Zell insisted on getting out and mailing it personally. It was already stamped, so all she had to do was pop it into the mailbox. It took her seconds, then she was back in the car and we headed east, into the mountains.
After the crayfish, and the swan incident, Dieter treated me as a firm friend; I knew what he liked and I knew at least one of his weaknesses. The business about the ice cream seemed to have been forgotten. As we drove he spoke about school, about the other boys who, on the whole, he liked and the masters whom he didn’t. And he spoke about cars—he was as mad about them as Bruno had been. One of the masters at school had a Bugatti; some of the other boys had been in it, but not Dieter. His rides in the BMW were clearly intended to make up for that deficiency and, when he went back to school, he would have such stories to tell. He made it clear that if I would let him sit at the wheel once or twice I would be an even firmer friend.
Although I readily promised Dieter that, at some point, he could “drive” the car, I had only half an ear for his chatter. My mind was on his mother. It was silly but what disturbed me was the friendly reception I had received, the way she was dressed and the fuss she had made about posting the letter. Yet again I foun
d myself admiring her cleverness, especially over the letter. It might have been an innocuous note. On the other hand, the packet she posted was just bulky enough, and the right shape, for it to have contained the sheets of music, Rudolf’s, which I had given to her. And the fact that she insisted on mailing it herself at the mailbox, when it would have been much easier for me to have dropped it in, meant that she was deliberately teasing me, leading me to wonder whether she was in touch with her husband and sending back to him the music which he had unfortunately left behind in his hurry to leave Berchtesgaden. She had mailed the packet herself so as not to show me the address on it. If that was the case, then I was being made a fool of, and God help me if Hobel or Eisenhower, for that matter, should ever find out. I had the power to intercept mail, but she knew that I would not risk it. She might only be testing me and, if she was, and I did intercept that packet, the interrogation was all over. I would have lost. Christ, she was clever. It also occurred to me, as I headed the car off the main Salzburg-Linz road into the valley that led to the Löser, that if she was again corresponding with her husband, she was saying to me that at any time she wanted she could regain the privacy that I had, in effect, stolen from her by reading the letters.
She had the better of me. My dilemma was of my own making.
Then there was her dress that day. That was a different kind of tease. Until now she had dressed tastefully but modestly. Her clothes were well chosen for her coloring and figure but almost all, save for the yellow shirt, prewar. The creamy-lemon dress, however, was not only frankly sexy, it was also very obviously brand new. It was as if she could read my mind with uncanny accuracy; she knew what my suspicions were, and what I felt about her. And proceeded to tease me about it.
How soon, and how often, in a relationship does the balance change? Until very recently I had felt myself well in control of this interrogation. It had been going slowly, as I had known it would, but it had been going according to plan.
Now things were different. The balance was changing, may already have changed. I was, in some unaccountable way, losing control. I could feel it, but I could not stop it. That was a terrible thing from a strictly military point of view. On the other hand I liked what was happening.
All my life I had been attractive to women and attracted by many types of women. A few had meant more to me than the others, but, invariably, I was more loved than loving. One effect of this was that I usually saw affairs as competitions, with winners and losers, where to be in love was more a handicap, a hindrance, than the object of the whole business. It meant that I tired of my companions easily, but then relationships were by nature difficult. It had never seemed a problem. Mrs. von Zell was different. On paper she should have been easier than most: I had lots of inside information about her, she was lonely, she had been on the losing side in the war. I had a car, money. She should have capitulated. Yet here she was, controlling me in all sorts of ways, large and small, telling me that, whatever our relationship was or might become, it would be equal. She had to be treated as an equal, with care, or not at all. I might have inside information about her but that was simply an accident of history; it had not been earned.
You can see how she had set me thinking. What I had not anticipated—because, I suppose, I had simply not thought about it—was how enticing I found Konstanze’s reaction. I had not imagined that the game between us would be an easy one, but that I would win I had never doubted, until recently.
The approach to the Löser is very steep toward the end, where the road rises above the tree line. The grass survives to quite a height, however, so in spring the slopes are green, sprinkled in places with yellow crocuses and the glacier blue of the gentian. Dieter had turned around in his seat so that he could see the view that began to stretch out behind us. He hadn’t stopped talking the entire trip. He was particularly interested in buffalo and questioned me closely about how common they were in America and what they tasted like. I told him that, sadly, I had never seen any, nor had I come across buffalo steak in California restaurants.
A few minutes after we had left the trees behind us, the road curled through a small gully, widened into a turning circle and stopped. From here we would have to walk.
“Are you going to be warm enough?” I said to Mrs. von Zell as we got out, thinking of her history of “That dress looks pretty thin to me.”
She stretched after so long in the car, and for a moment the smooth outline of her breasts could be seen, pummeled by the silk. But it appeared to have been done entirely unself-consciously so that I was unable to be sure whether she was being deliberately provocative or not.
“No,” she replied. “Silk is quite warm, thank you. Especially after we have started to walk.”
“Come on!” yelled Dieter impatiently, already fifty meters along the path. “I can see three lakes even from here.”
I made to follow the boy but his mother put a restraining hand on my arm. “Professor … Professor Wolff—you know, I prefer that to lieutenant—military ranks are so out of date now, don’t you think? Professor is much more civilized … much nicer. Don’t you think that first names might be easier, friendlier? It would certainly be more natural for me. The war is over.” She paused, looking at me with a smile but also, I thought, with a trace of nervousness in her face, as if, for once, she wasn’t too sure of my reaction. “My name is Konstanze, as I am sure you know.”
There it was again: “… as I’m sure you know.” The breeze was sweet up here. It stroked our faces, lifted up our hair, then, unhurried, moved on. I knew that Mrs. von Zell—Konstanze—was trying to be friendly but, at the same time, she could not help chiding me for having delved so deeply. She wouldn’t admit it openly; but neither would she let it go.
When she touched me with her hand I felt the opposite of an electric shock sear through me. A bolt of relaxation imploded across my shoulders and down my spine. Now she took her hand away and with it went my sense of well-being.
“My first name is Walter,” I said. “I should be happy for you to call me that.”
She nodded and walked on. The wind pressed her hair flat to the back of her head, emphasizing the rich varieties of autumn blond that made up her coloring: whiskey, corn, crocus. I fell into step on the path behind her.
We walked for perhaps ten minutes, rising steadily all the while. Dieter had again run on well ahead, far out of sight. Konstanze walked strongly, used to mountain paths, but at one point she stopped to pick at some loose pebbles that had become lodged in her shoes. As she did, she looked up at me.
“Tell me about your wife, Walter. Why didn’t it work?”
Her tone was so warm, so friendly, so confidential that I had no problem responding. Or, rather, I had no problem wanting to respond. Another part of me, however, grew alarmed at her questions. Now it felt as if I was being seduced, interrogated. It occurred to me that I knew a great deal about the von Zells; she now wanted to know about the Wolffs, and why not?
It was also true that I was relieved to talk about myself. She had, at that point, beaten me to the extent that I actually felt eager to redress some of the balance between us if I could.
I suppose that day on the Löser, when Konstanze and I moved on to first-name terms, was the first moment that I regretted reading the letters. The war perhaps justified what I had done. But, on the mountain with Konstanze in that lovely dress, the war seemed a long way away.
“My wife is as American as apple pie—that’s what they say over there. She is blond, like you, tall. Her name is Nancy. Her family were Dutch originally but they were early immigrants so that even Nancy’s great-grandparents were born in America. We met at a sailing club—I am a Sunday sailor and Nancy likes to drink. She is a scientist—well, a psychologist anyway. I thought at first that science and the arts could mix. We had a wonderful six-month romance. We honeymooned on the Mississippi, taking a boat from St. Louis to New Orleans.
“I remember two things from our honeymoon—aside from the things ever
yone remembers. First, we had a family in the cabin next to us who had two children—twins, a boy and a girl. The young children, Dorothy and Dashiell, could speak English very well if they needed to, but they had their own form of the language. Many twins do that, I understand, and only they can decipher this private language.
“When we got back to California there was a letter waiting for Nancy. It was an incredible coincidence, for the letter was from a woman in New York who said she was Nancy’s twin. Nancy had never known she was a twin but this other woman—Brooke—had known since she was sixteen. She had never done anything about it but suddenly, God knows why, she had decided to look for her sister. She had employed someone trained in tracing people and had been looking for Nancy for almost a year. She said she wanted to meet her twin and that she had some information about their parents.”
The path was growing steeper, the view improving all the time. The Wolfgangsee stretched out far below us, black and glittering. Konstanze put her hand on my shoulder as she negotiated some boulders poking into the path. Far ahead and above, we could hear Dieter, yelling then waiting, listening to his echo.
“What happened then? Go on.”
“Brooke said she was taking up a new job in Los Angeles and asked Nancy to meet her there. I was against it. I thought it might be disturbing for Nancy and that Brooke might prove such a disappointment she would be depressed. Brooke might want money. But Nancy had been fascinated by the twin children on the boat, with their secret language and intimacy, and there was nothing I could do to stop the meeting. Brooke was coming out by train so they did not plan to meet for about three weeks. During that time Nancy and I set up housekeeping in Berkeley. We had a lovely house; no garden or pool but a big balcony with a view of the Bay. It was all I wanted and I was very happy. But things had already started to change for Nancy. She began to say that she had always felt ‘incomplete’ but had never known how to put it into words. Now she knew she was a twin and that seemed to her to explain everything.
