The Dancing Bear

by Frances Faviell

  Ursula, however, came to see me a great deal now. She had been sobered by her sister’s death, and seemed to find some comfort in talking about her to me. I encouraged her in this, for it was evident that even if she had been jealous of the adored younger sister, she was missing her terribly and had loved her.

  She did not laugh so often or so whole-heartedly as before—and I was surprised when she told me that she was thinking of marrying Joe. They were making plenty of money on the Black Market and were changing it into gold and jewellery she said, which they could sell in the States. Americans were forbidden to marry Germans unless they left the country within forty-eight hours of the marriage. Joe had applied for compassionate shortening of his service and planned to marry her just before he sailed.

  “And do you love him?” I asked her.

  She smiled in a sceptical way. “I want to get out of this dead-pan place—and Joe’s a good guy and he’s crazy about me,” she said.

  “And your mother?”

  “Oh, Joe’s willing for her to come along too,” she said carelessly. “She’ll have to,” asserted the girl. “How else can she live?”

  Somehow I couldn’t see Frau Altmann in the United States. She just wouldn’t fit in.

  On a sunny morning I went to see her, and found her preparing lessons for her children’s class.

  There was a calmness in her face which was arresting. She looked as if her troubles had washed over her as a healing rain, and left her with renewed faith and strength.

  The look I had liked so much had come back again, and her smile was as lovely as when I had first seen her.

  She was glad that I had come—she wanted very much to talk to me, she said. First about Lilli. She mentioned the name without any of the pain with which she had mentioned Kurt’s. The child had liked me, she said, just as Ursula had told me. I wished so much that I had known this, I could have helped poor Lilli, but I had not known it.

  “I shall never forgive myself about Lilli,” she said, “Never! She did not confide in me—her own mother. I failed her very badly.”

  I said that the child had been so perplexed about her own feelings—she must have been, knowing her mother’s feelings towards the Russians; how could she have confessed her love for one of them?

  Frau Altmann did not want to pursue this side of the question. She still did not want to believe that Lilli had been in love—that what she had done she had done for love; she preferred to believe that the child had been taken advantage of, if not actually raped, by a Russian.

  I thought of the way Lilli had murmured over and over again the pet name of her lover—but I said nothing.

  Then about Fritz. She had been wrong about him, too. She saw now that he was not what she had thought him to be.

  “A mother does not care to admit that her son is either weak or bad,” she said sadly. “God sends us these trials in His own way, and we must bear them. I love my children whether good or bad, and I have tried to bring them up to be good. I am sure that Fritz will come back to me one day.”

  I reminded her that if he were now working for the Soviets that would be difficult.

  “We don’t know that he is,” she checked me gently, “but if he is, then he has chosen his own path and must follow it until he finds out his error.”

  “I have lost all my children,” she went on. “Only six months ago you saw us all round the lamp in the evenings, all except Kurt—and now I have lost them all. Lilli and Fritz and Pappi too.”

  “But Ursula,” I reminded her; “you still have Ursula.”

  “Ursula I have lost too,” she said, “but to America—the others to Russia. Ursula has no more use for the Fatherland. It is finished, she says, Europe is finished, and the only hope is to go to the States. Perhaps she is right. I have lived through two terrible wars, and it seems to me that only those two powers matter now, America and Russia. You British have beggared yourselves fighting for all you hold dear—your freedom—but is there such a thing?”

  America and Russia, she said, were vast, and with their unending supply of human cannon fodder, how could smaller countries such as France, Britain and Germany hope to pit their strength against them? She could see that merely from the struggle for Berlin that was going on now. There was constant trouble. Oskar, she said, had always pointed this out to her. He had been right.

  It was the longest speech I ever heard her make, and she apologized smilingly for it.

  Ursula wanted to marry this American, Joe. She neither liked nor approved of him—but what could she do?

  Would she go to the States with them? I asked later. She said decisively that she would not.

  “My place is here in Berlin,” she said firmly.

  Here she had buried her husband and Lilli, from here her two sons had left her—both of them might return one day. She had plenty of teaching now, and if Ursula went to the States, she would let the girls’ room and make a little towards the taxes. She could manage quite well—although Ursula thought that she couldn’t.

  She asked after John. I told her that he had to go away from Berlin for a few weeks and that I was taking him to Belgium. She thought that I myself was very thin, she said. A change of air would not come amiss for me—it had been a terrible winter for us all.

  I left her standing there in the sun at the much repaired front door. Her face had a soft wondering look as she pointed to a bush. “Look!” she cried. “The forsythia is almost out. Take some branches with you. They will open in a warm room.”

  It was true—the buds showed yellow cracks and would open to full bloom in a day or two. Under the hedge a few crocuses were peeping—relics of that once lovely garden which Herr Altmann had made for his bride.

  “It’s spring!” she cried, clapping her hands; “the winter is over at last!”

  In a few days the lilac buds were green, and suddenly with no warning at all the white world had changed and blossomed to a tender green. The icy winds gave way to softer ones with a faint scent of flowers, and the memory of those deathly winter days was already fading.

  We went rambling now in the Grunewald with the puppies and with Hans and Renate, Dr Annemarie’s twin children. They had become good friends with John although they were much older.

  The old Baron brought me a present. His wife was dead. It was better so, he said simply, she had suffered so terribly. Time hung on his hands without her—he had made a kite for John and produced it shyly. It was the most beautiful kite. Painted with birds and flowers, it was both gay and amusing with its tail of many colours. I told him it was a work of art, far too lovely for a small boy who would soon break it, and that I would like to keep it myself. A delighted smile spread over his face as he asked if I really liked kites. Did I fly them? I said that I adored them and had flown them from childhood. He begged me to give this one to John and he would make me the King of all Kites.

  It was the weather for kite-flying, and John and I spent a blissful afternoon flying the Baron’s kite in the Grunewald.

  As we drove home Stampie said to me, “It’ll be Easter next week—just think of it!”

  Easter was early this year, and Good Friday fell in the first week of April.

  On the second of April Stampie came in excitedly. I was glad to see him looking more like his old self. He had been very quiet and gloomy since Lilli’s death, and had been drinking more than usual.

  “I’ve heard from Fritz!” he announced.

  I said that I hoped Fritz had written to his mother. He had apparently enclosed a note for her inside Stampie’s, being afraid probably to write direct to the house.

  “Well,” I said, “what does he say?”

  “Not much,” answered Stampie, handing it to me, “Have a look for yourself.”

  Dear Stampie,

  I have heard of my father’s death, and I am sorry but it was better so. He was old . . . and there is no place in the new world for the sick and aged. I am doing well and have been given a good and important job. I have a
great deal to learn before I am sent to the School in Moscow for the Course. I am learning Russian. It is a musical language, and I learn easily because I have a good ear. Please do what you can for my mother. It will be difficult for me to keep in touch with her now. Thank you, Stampie, for your kindness to us all,

  Fritz.

  “Well!” I said. “He is just as selfish as ever. Good job indeed—with the Soviet! What a rotten letter. He doesn’t ask about anything—his sisters or his mother.”

  “Don’t forget,” said Stampie, “that his letters are censored. Look.” He held out the envelope which had indeed been opened and bore the Soviet censor’s mark.

  “What’s the postmark?” I asked curiously, for there was no address on the letter.

  “Posted at Leipzig,” read Stampie, after a careful scrutiny. “And, oh, by the way, there was something enclosed for you.”

  He handed me an envelope. It was not sealed and bore my name on it. It contained one of those postcards similar to the one he had sent me for Christmas. This one was of the Dome cathedral—the upper part of the postcard depicting it as it was in 1933, and the lower portion as it was now—a ruin.

  Across the centre of the card were the same gaily coloured letters which had read, “Best Wishes from Berlin.” But on this one, Fritz had crossed out the “from” and substituted “to” in its place.

  At the top right-hand corner of the card were the arms of the city of Berlin—a black bear rampant with a crown above. He had struck this out with red ink, and drawn in its place the hammer and the sickle.

  SPRING

  1948

  ON the night of the Furtwängler Concert I called for Frau Altmann. She had, I knew, been a great admirer of the famous conductor. It had been rumoured again and again that he was returning, and at last he was back. Opinion was sharply divided as to whether or not his long absence had been due to British disapproval of his association with Hitler, or to his voluntary exile caused by Nazi disapproval of his championship of Jewish musicians. Whichever it was, he was now returning to the scene of his former triumphs to conduct the first performance of his new symphony. The Staatsoper in the Admiralpalast was packed, and among the huge audience feeling was running high. Some were for, and some were against his return; they had come to hear the symphony, but also to judge for themselves how their former idol had fared during his long absence.

  He was given an ovation as soon as he appeared, looking even more gaunt and more like a great scarecrow than ever, but at the first bars of the adagio allegro of Mozart’s lovely Symphony No. 39, which was to precede his own work, it was clear that he had lost none of his magic. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra had been giving magnificent performances under the brilliant conductorship of Celibadache, whom I noticed in the audience.

  The Mozart was in my opinion quite exquisitely performed, but the Germans round us were more critical. They all had scores with them, which they followed so closely that the rustling of the pages annoyed me. Music to me is the perfect enchantment, the one real magical escape from the world of reality. To these people it was something different. They knew a great deal about music.

  There were comments on the Mozart all round us in the interval. I clearly wasn’t up to their standard of criticism yet, for I had found it quite perfect.

  “Half of them don’t really know much about it,” said Frau Altmann when I remarked on this. “It has always been the fashion to be critical of music in Germany. Look. There is Ursula!” She was pointing to a couple some way back in the stalls. The girl was Ursula, but the man with her was a stranger to me. He was very tall, broad-shouldered and dark-haired—that was all I could see.

  “He is a second cousin of ours, and spent a great deal of his childhood with us—he was Kurt’s greatest friend,” Frau Altmann told me when I commented on his amazing good looks. “He has recently returned from England where he has been a prisoner of war.”

  It was astonishing to see Ursula at a symphony concert, and I said so.

  “Since she gave up her music studies, yes,” agreed her mother. “But in the old days she never missed a concert. Max persuaded her to go with him. He was mad to hear Furtwängler again.”

  I had forgotten that Ursula had wanted to become a musician. Her life, as I knew with Joe, was as far divorced from symphony concerts as were the jazz and boogie-woogie she indulged in with him.

  “Max is coming to live with us,” went on Frau Altmann. “The poor boy has come back to find his father dead—his mother died when he was quite small. He has no home and he is going to have the girls’ room.”

  “And Joe?” I asked.

  “It has nothing to do with Joe,” said Frau Altmann firmly. Max apparently spoke excellent English and had already obtained a job with the Control Commission. He appeared to have made many friends while he was a prisoner in England and had brought back letters of introduction.

  “He seems to like Ursula,” I observed, watching their animated faces.

  “And I think she likes him,” said her mother with satisfaction.

  The interval was over and we were all attention for the Furtwängler symphony. It was the 23rd of February. A year had elapsed since old Oskar’s death, Lilli’s death and Fritz’s flight. Frau Altmann was thinner and more worn, but her face with its peculiarly luminous quality was strikingly attractive. She was in deep black still.

  The symphony disappointed some of the audience. They applauded politely and generously after the four movements had culminated in the Finale, and gave the composer-conductor many curtain calls, but having witnessed the audiences at some of the recent operas I knew that this one lacked the fiery enthusiasm and wild applause which music can awaken in the German.

  “What do you expect? He composed it in Switzerland, so they say,” said an old man behind me. “It’s like the Swiss, dull and smug, nothing grand about it.”

  “Like these times—a muddle and a mess. Ach! Give me Beethoven, he never disappoints,” said another, struggling into his coat.

  “Interesting. But somehow just missed,” said a large woman next to me. “What did you think of it? You’re British aren’t you?”

  I said stoutly that I liked it. I liked it very much.

  “The British are not a musical race,” she said coolly. Frau Altmann thought otherwise. She had been astonished at finding amongst her British pupils a great love and feeling for music. The German music masters at the Study Centre told me the same thing.

  “You don’t talk about it much, but you feel it,” they had said. “Some of these young men are really musical and very gifted.”

  Frau Altmann had also liked the symphony.

  “But he is a very sick man,” she commented as we left. “One can see it in his eyes. His soul is sick.”

  I thought that he had plenty to be sick about. He must have felt worse than I had when he first saw Berlin on his return.

  We joined Ursula and her companion Max. He addressed Frau Altmann as “Tante Maria” and was plainly devoted to her. He had black hair and very blue eyes set deep in a lean tanned face. He was intense and virile-looking—the sort of man over whom women go quite mad.

  “Max has been over four years in England,” said Ursula as she introduced me as a friend of the family. “He speaks beautiful English, much better than mine!”

  “But yours is American!” he said laughing as we shook hands. Ursula was laughing too. She looked alive and lovely this evening and somehow softer. Her eyes had a brilliance I hadn’t seen in them since Lilli’s death, and there was less paint than usual on her face.

  We went to a small cafe near the Admiralpalast and had some ersatz coffee. It was very nasty, but it served its purpose, for we could sit there and talk.

  I asked Max where he had been in England. After various prisoner-of-war camps he had been put to work on a farm, first in the Lake District, and then in Wales.

  He had liked it. He had liked the farmer in Wales who had been very good to him. He had become great friends with th
e farmer’s small sons, and had ridden with them every day. He had taught them both German in the evenings, as well as helping them with their school homework.

  “Were they Welsh?” I asked him.

  “Not really,” he said; “they had bought the farm about ten years before the war and had come from the Bristol neighbourhood.”

  He pulled a crumpled letter from his pocket and showed it me. It was from the elder of the two little boys.

  Dear Max,

  It’s a rotten shame that you are gone. We miss you very much. Stephen and I are saving up to come to Germany to see you. Rosie is fine, she is not lame any more, but Prince is still very lazy. Primrose has dropped her calf, Daddy says to tell you its legs are too weak. We are sending you some food parcels as we hear there is not much food in Berlin. Auf wiedersehen,

  Lots of love from Stephen and Paul.

  “Rosie is one of the ponies they ride, and Prince was the horse I rode,” explained Max. “They are splendid boys. I miss them too. I was wondering if you could be so very kind as to send a small parcel to them through your Field Post. I have got them some tiny German farm models, but cannot send them through our post; it is forbidden.”

  I said that of course I would send the things. “But you are a Berliner, you weren’t used to country life, were you?”

  “Oh yes, I was. I was born in Berlin and went to school here with Kurt, as Tante Maria will have told you, but I spent all my holidays with my uncle in Bavaria where I used to help on the estate. Farm life was not new to me.”

  Frau Altmann had told me that Max was over thirty now; he had been the same age as Kurt. There were very few men of either his age or physique in Berlin now, but some were slowly beginning to trickle back from prisoner-of-war camps. It was easy to tell those who had been in Canada and the United States; they looked in splendid condition. The ones from Britain were in pretty good form too, those from France were not so good, and the ones from Russia were broken men.