This Terrible Beauty: A Novel

by Katrin Schumann

  Standing in front of these strangers, she would have liked to talk about the irony of an immigrant like her being awarded a prize for portraying “the American experience,” but she scrambled to find the right words when talking about such personal things. George had nominated her work without her knowledge, and when he told her that she’d actually won the award, she’d thought he was playing a prank. Even though her heart plummeted and her mouth went dry, she had smiled at him to let him know she had no hard feelings. That she understood he was just having some fun. He’d had to take both her hands in his and beg her to believe him. It still didn’t seem real.

  When she’d first set foot in this country, she had known nothing about the life she was thrust into. The vast plains of the ice-clad Midwest, the chubby-legged children, the cars with their extraordinary fins, so sharp and fluted they reminded her of the Baltic sturgeon. But that day, taking the picture of that little girl, she had warmed to the idea that it might be possible to find some sort of happiness here, so far from the people she loved and pined for, the people who suffered, even now.

  Bettina meandered around the gallery, champagne flute in hand. She wore new heels that pinched and a black silk shirt she’d bought that morning at Wieboldt’s on Grand and Ashland. Her slacks were undistinguished except that George’s wife had once complimented her on them. Bettina didn’t have much of an eye for fashion. She was thirty-nine years old, and her long hair, the color of wet earth, hung loosely around her face. The champagne tickled pleasantly at her throat. George caught her eye from across the room and raised his graying eyebrows, checking to see if she was all right. He knew that all this attention was hard for her. Bettina should have told her sister, Clara, about the event, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to her that it would be such a big celebration. She’d expected a handful of colleagues, a few amateur photographers perhaps.

  One after another the visitors touched her arm with soft fingers and leaned in to say how they admired her work, how much it moved them. Someone finally dimmed the overheads, and after she downed a few glasses of bubbly in quick succession, it seemed as though the faces tilted in her direction were emanating a kind of warmth, and it drew her out of herself. Bettina began to smile in a more natural way. There was music playing in the background, something modern with sitars. Everywhere now there were bright shots of color, not only in people’s clothing but in their skin tones: faces all shades of white and brown and everything in between. Hair that curled and kinked and flowed in disheveled waves (on men, too—this was acceptable now). There was a woman with long white hair, her body draped in a caftan. Some of the men wore suits with pencil-thin pant legs, and a sprinkling of women were in jewel-toned cocktail dresses, cinched tight at the waist as had been the style just a few years earlier, though this already seemed outdated.

  All these people, young and old, had come here to celebrate her! Bettina allowed herself the faintest prickle of pride.

  “Ms. Heilstrom,” said one of the men. Dark hair sprang from his jawline. “I’m from National Geographic. I wonder, will you be focusing exclusively on this country? Do you plan to travel and document change in other places too?”

  “I don’t have any plans yet,” Bettina said. She didn’t mention that George was putting ideas in her head, insisting that her work could make a real difference. That she had a voice now, and she had a responsibility to use it. He was pushing her to think about taking a position at Time magazine, but she was not accustomed to being hopeful—it made her vulnerable to disappointment. And there was a nugget of coal inside her, something toxic and vile that reminded her she did not deserve happiness or success.

  “I like to take it one day at a time,” she added, and this was true.

  A young woman with orange feathers hanging from her earlobes asked about one of the larger prints: an old photograph from Rügen that was, actually, the invisible backbone of the exhibition. Without it, none of the other pictures would exist—and yet she had almost not taken that roll of film with her when she left, and the composition had almost been relegated to nothing more than an idea. Black and white, a cluster of people at the base of a stark chalk cliff face; a distorted perspective that presented the cliff as a thing of terrible beauty and the people as helpless as insects. But it was too hard to explain her work. This one—it was a picture she both treasured and despised, yet she recognized it as connected to everything she was doing now. She shrugged and clinked her glass with the girl’s. “For me, it’s about the shapes, I suppose. For the viewer, it may have several meanings.”

  If she didn’t eat something soon, she would keel over. On her way to the buffet table, she recognized a number of her colleagues from the paper: Demetrius and Sarah, standing with John, the photo editor who’d allowed her to use the Tribune’s darkroom during the graveyard shift many years ago. There was a man in an ill-fitting olive suit behind a cluster of people at the bar area who caught her eye, but she didn’t think much of it until he began moving toward her, and she realized that he was missing his right arm.

  Her glass slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground, but it didn’t break. There was some commotion as people fetched napkins and one overeager woman mopped at Bettina’s trousers with the hem of her skirt. Bettina did not take her eyes off the man as he made his way through the crowd toward her. The sleeve of his suit was folded in half, and the excess material was neatly tucked under his armpit and pinned into place. In this country you rarely saw people with missing limbs. In her country you saw this all the time.

  She stared at the missing arm and then shifted her eyes back to the man’s face. It couldn’t be, but it was. Herbert Lange.

  “Bettina, mein Gott . . . I had to see if it was really you,” he said to her in German. Though he did not smile, his eyes were friendly, small and surrounded by feathered creases. His mouth, slightly downturned, gave him the look of a man about to tell a bad joke. “I don’t know how many Bettina Heilstroms there could possibly be, and yet, incredible . . .”

  Her breath was caught in her chest; she was unable to utter a word.

  “You look well. Very well. I see you’ve built yourself a new life,” Herbert said. “This makes me extremely happy. You deserve it.”

  “You’re in touch with Clara?” Bettina managed to ask. “She knows about tonight?”

  He shook his head. Over the years her brother-in-law had aged considerably. His flaxen hair was thin on top, but he retained that mischievous air he’d had when he was younger. Her hand flew to her face, and she wondered how changed she appeared in his eyes. Herbert and her sister had fled Germany for Chicago just one year before Bettina arrived; for the first awkward months she’d been here, she’d lived with them in their one-bedroom apartment. She hated thinking back to that time: Her fragility and neediness, the absolute shock and desperation of it. The guilt as bitter as thistle.

  Her sister’s marriage to Herbert had already been disintegrating back then, though Bettina hadn’t known it. Until tonight, she hadn’t seen him since he’d moved away with Clara over a decade ago, this time to Milwaukee, in a last-ditch effort to reignite something that had already been thoroughly doused. Soon after that, they’d divorced.

  “We’re not—we don’t stay in touch. I didn’t want it to fall apart, the marriage,” he said. “It was never my intention to divorce, but you know your sister. She had other ideas.”

  Clara was now remarried to a man named Borvin Kuznetsov, who ran a catering business. The irony of this never ceased to amaze Bettina: Clara had left East Germany to escape the Russians, and then she’d married one.

  “I’m sorry, Herbert. I’m so surprised—I don’t even know where to start,” Bettina said.

  John, the photo editor, materialized at her side. His wavy hair hung to his shoulders, and an odor, something smoky, came from him. “Congratulations!” he said, clutching her hand. “You don’t have a drink. Can I get you one? Having a good time, are you?”

  Herbert stared at the man, a look
of incomprehension on his face.

  “John, this is, uh, my . . .” Bettina tried to find the right words. “My past brother-in-law, Herbert Lange. He is—that is, we haven’t seen each other in a very, very long time.”

  “Greetings,” John said. His eyes went straight to the missing arm, and he cocked his head. “Germany?”

  “Russland,” Herbert answered.

  “This lady,” John said, leaning toward him, “I’m warning you; she is one chill dame. An eye like a hawk. Real talent.”

  Herbert watched him walk off. When he turned back to Bettina, he raised his brows, revealing slivers of blue iris. “Where can we talk? I was in Berlin recently, and I have some news I think you’ll want to hear.”

  “You mean Rügen? You were in Rügen?” Bettina’s heart lurched and then fell. “Is it about Annaliese?”

  “I’m afraid I know nothing about the child,” Herbert said. “It’s about Werner. Shall we find a bit of privacy, yes?”

  4

  It would be another hour before Bettina was able to leave the gallery with Herbert Lange. The music kept playing in the background, an up-tempo jazz melody suggesting in its own chaotic way that everything was cool, under control, when in fact it clearly wasn’t. Its deep bass a constant thrum behind the cheery voices fueled by cocktails and art talk. She tried her best to be charming and to answer people’s questions. Knowing that Herbert was waiting for her—that something was wrong—made her fumble her words and flush with confusion. More than once she gave someone a blank look instead of an answer, and she could just imagine the headline for the snippet in the Arts section of the Tribune: Smithsonian Winner Snubs Fans. Sweaty palms slipped against her skin, too warm, too close. Smiles full of teeth and braying praise. She was grateful; she really was. But the noise and the lights . . . and Herbert, waiting for her.

  Finally around eleven the music died down, and George and his wife came over to say their goodbyes. “Soon you’ll be leaving us for sunnier climes,” he said, one big paw reaching out to help his wife, May, with her jacket. “At least professionally speaking.”

  “I haven’t decided anything,” Bettina said.

  “George told me he thought you’d do great at the Post or the New York Times,” May said. Her mulberry lipstick had smeared a bit, her black hair working itself loose to create a hazy halo around her face. “You’re not stuck in Chi-Town forever, are you?” May was from Barbados, and the few times the two women had met, she always found a way to hint at her yearning for the warmth of the islands.

  “Ach, it’s really not so bad here,” Bettina said. The idea of taking a permanent job with a bigger organization—of moving, perhaps, and being on staff—was tantalizing but impossible. In some strange way it seemed critical that she keep her life temporary, that she not commit her passion to anyone or anything. What would it mean if she accepted that this country was truly, incontrovertibly home now—that she could choose to climb the ladder of American enterprise, was willing to cast aside her otherness? It would mean she had given up on Anna.

  She cast her eyes around her to see where Herbert had wandered off to. “In truth,” she said to May, “I’m not very political. I think George has more ambition for me than I do.”

  “Bull. Life is politics. Culture is life. Every time you click that shutter, you’re already deep into a discussion,” George said. He handed her a tote bag, white tissue paper peeking out the top. “There’s a little something inside here for you. It was delivered to the Tribune offices. Open it when you get home, okay?”

  It took some time to say her goodbyes, and then she grabbed Herbert by his good arm and nodded at the bartender. “I’m ready,” she said. “Please, let’s go.”

  The gallery was on the south side of Chicago, in the Hyde Park neighborhood. She and Herbert stood outside on the pavement as a young man in a jean jacket pulled the iron grille over the windows of a small grocery store next door.

  “Bettina, Bettina,” Herbert said. “Always so serious. Remember when you used to like to have fun?”

  His eyes had a glazed look to them, and when he lit his cigarette—a trick he managed to pull off with only one hand, and quickly, too—his entire body leaned forward from the knees up, and it looked as though he might tip forward. He seemed out of place in these grimy streets, the city air washing him in a kind of gray scrim. In this context he seemed like a stranger, and she found herself wanting to touch his shoulder or his hand to convince herself it was really her brother-in-law. She didn’t even know where he lived anymore, let alone what he was doing in Chicago. The immensity of all she didn’t know weighed on her, not an absence but a crushing burden. She wanted to sit down for this conversation.

  “All right, listen,” she said. “I’d better take you to my place. You need to sober up.”

  “Aha,” he said, raising his brows suggestively.

  “Herbert. I hope you’re just having some fun at my expense.”

  “Of course, of course,” he answered. “Take me home and feed me something, and we’ll talk.”

  Under his suit jacket, Herbert wore a wrinkled blue shirt that made his skin look very pale. Even when he was younger, he’d never been conventionally handsome, but as he tried to chat in the kitchen of her apartment while she fried up some sausages, his face became increasingly animated, and she recognized in him the young man she’d known before the war. He was living back in Germany, but in the West, he explained, working as a plumbing-fixture salesman for a company in Hannover that exported gaskets to America. They had just started sending him to visit the major showrooms in the States, and Chicago was only his second stop. He held up a small, battered dictionary he extracted from his jacket pocket: he was trying to learn some English.

  She served him the sausages on the old stag plate from her grandmother. All these years she had treasured this plate, and now it was once again serving a member of her family. Or at least someone who had once been part of her family. It was wonderful to feel German words in her mouth again. Often she spent whole weeks feeling as though she hardly knew who or where she was, still surprised after all these years by the intensity of her disorientation. It was only when she picked up one of the German magazines she occasionally bought, or every now and then when she talked to Clara on the phone, that a temporary calm settled into her bones.

  But something was holding them back as they tried to make conversation. They had parted rather badly, and now, as much as she wanted to hear his news from Germany, the prospect of knowing actual details of the life she’d left behind was frightening. It had been such hard work to push away her homesickness, to stop thinking about her child. Work had helped, eventually. George had helped—more than he even knew. And now here was Herbert, with his secrets, his news.

  The kitchenette was in a corner of the living room, demarcated by a short Formica counter and two peeling laminate cabinets. When Bettina found the place, she’d expected to stay just a few months but ended up staying more than ten years. Having Herbert sit with her where she took her daily meals made her see the room through his eyes: it was shabby and cramped. But as different as it was from her fisherman’s cottage on Apolonienmarkt, this studio was the only place she could really be herself. Eventually she’d painted the walls a pale yellow (like the curtains in her old bedroom). There were pots of dracaena and cascading ivy, as well as a fiddle-leaf fig by the window that was over five feet tall. The windowsills were lined with cacti in bright ceramic containers. There was a rubber fig, graying but healthy enough, and a luscious jade plant that was supposed to bring good luck. She needed the greenery in order to survive bitter winters, the winds that howled for months on end, rattling her windowpanes. On the walls hung dozens of her photographs (unframed, tacked up with strips of tape) and a map of the United States. In the opposite corner was a large bamboo screen that she used to cordon off her single bed. The windows faced an alleyway and led to a small fire escape where, in the summertime, she’d sit on a cushion wrapped in the aroma of rosema
ry and basil from her flowerpots and the occasional waft of exhaust or cigarettes from the streets below.

  When he was done eating, Herbert attempted to place his fork on the plate, but his aim was not accurate, and his movements seemed overly deliberate. “I was very impressed tonight, Bettina.” He took a deep sip from his beer. “This career. The accolades. I’ve thought about you often over the years.”

  “Well. Thank you,” she said. She took the greasy plate from him and placed it in the sink, overtaken now by an exhaustion that rolled over her like a wave.

  “You know you are beautiful, Bettina, yes? I don’t know why you waste your life here, living alone in this city. Don’t you want anything for yourself?”

  “I like being alone. And I have my work.” She thought about the daughter she’d left behind. She had never chosen to be alone—in fact, just the opposite.

  He wiped his hand over his forehead. “I don’t know. Sometimes being alone is just another way of running away from yourself.”

  It seemed very stuffy in the room, the air in her nose and lungs too heavy and warm. She went over to the window to crack it a little. As she leaned down, she felt a presence behind her, and when she turned around, Herbert was standing with his face just inches from hers.