This Terrible Beauty: A Novel

by Katrin Schumann

  “I wanted to tell you that I’ve decided to go by Christa’s house for a visit,” Bettina says. “I have some food for the Kellermann children, and I’m going to drop it off. Please don’t try to talk me out of it.”

  “You know that isn’t a good idea.”

  “I’d like it very much if you came with me.”

  He lays his napkin down on the table and leans back in the uncomfortable old chair, some relic that Bettina’s grandmother bought back when they had money. He sighs. Each day he is reminded, in one small way or another, that this was Bettina’s home long before he became the master of the house. “No food for the Kellermanns, or we’ll land ourselves in trouble, all right?”

  Abruptly she rises and heads for the kitchen, taking her plate with her.

  “You’re making too much of this,” he says, following her. As she turns around to regard him from the back of the room, her expression is so distant that anger begins to rise inside him and block his throat. He has done nothing wrong, and yet she seems to blame him for everything. She looks at him as though he were a stranger, when she herself is like a book with the pages glued together!

  Bettina grabs her old coat from the rack and hooks her basket over her forearm.

  “You’re leaving?” he says.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” she answers. “You can always come with me, Werner.” She steps into the square, tying a kerchief around her head. The brisk early-morning air pours into the hallway as though filling a vacuum.

  “But—wait. Wait, Bettina! Don’t you want to know about her? About your friend?” he says, his voice bright and false.

  She spins around to look at him. The knot at her core unties itself as he watches, softening her face. “You know where she is?”

  “I don’t have details, Bettina, though, believe me, I pressed for them.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, trying to think quickly. “But I, well . . . I asked for leniency, for some compassion. I—you see, I wrote a letter on her behalf.”

  “Oh!” She takes a step toward him and then frowns. “Why did you not tell me all this before? I—I’ve been . . . so confused.”

  Her voice is plaintive, and suddenly he’s deflated; how does she manage to do that to him? “I didn’t want to raise your hopes.”

  “Where is she? Do you know?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, pulling his mouth into a little grimace. Now that he has started lying, he finds he can’t stop. “They won’t tell me anything.”

  “Well, I’m grateful that you asked.” She hoists the basket higher on her arm. “I should go now—I want to drop these off before my shift. Are you certain you won’t come? We could talk along the way.”

  “I can’t go,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “I have to be at work.” His eyes follow her as she walks away from him, through the square. What has gotten into her? “Bettina, did you not hear me?” he calls out, and either she does not hear him, or she does and chooses to ignore him.

  12

  The road stretches out in front of her like a black ribbon. After she walks briskly for a while, warmth begins to seep into her muscles. She pulls the kerchief from her head. The fields of Rügen are an undulating sea of yellow. The rape flowers with their heavy pollen-speckled heads sway this way and that, bent by the never-ending winds, painting the meadows first sun yellow, then tan, then sun yellow again as the flowers shiver on their long stalks. Overhead, a lone seagull shrieks, having strayed too far from the ocean. It swoops up and down and then heads east, back toward Saargen.

  Every step she takes seems like a small act of defiance, and even though she hates the thought of Werner’s disapproval, after a while she feels a blossoming sense of exhilaration. Something about the beach man’s horrifying story about the crying child helped her decide that she had to take some sort of action, no matter how small. By the time she arrives in Bobbin, her body is buzzing with energy. On her feet she wears men’s shoes she managed to buy from a shipment of goods from Berlin, and they are large and clunky, causing blisters. But the sight of the little hillside church, with its blue-toned steeple visible for kilometers, is uplifting, and she feels more like her old self than she has in years.

  Christa’s house is one of the tiny thatched cottages at the bottom of the hill upon which the old church perches. As Bettina approaches, she slows down her frantic pace and shifts the wicker basket from her left arm to her right. Filled with tins of fish and two big potatoes, the basket is heavy. A rusty green car is idling at the curb to her left, and instead of turning down the dirt path where the row of cottages stands, Bettina continues along the main road as though planning to continue straight through town. As soon as she rounds a corner, she stops and turns to look over her shoulder. The car makes her nervous.

  Scrambling up a small rise and through a thicket of yielding saplings, she doubles back on herself. From the narrow chimney of Christa’s cottage, below her now, a stream of smoke emerges. There is no activity on the path in front of the house, and Bettina emerges from the trees and heads toward the side door. Her knock is not answered for a long time. She peers through the small window. Inside there is a gloomy hallway, its walls pocked with brass hooks weighed down with coats in all different sizes. She knocks again, more loudly this time. A face appears in the doorway that leads to the kitchen; it is Manfred, Christa’s teenage nephew. She’s met him a few times at the beach in the summertime.

  An earnest boy with restless eyes, he stands and blinks at her. Bettina waves at him through the window, smiling timorously. Manfred unlocks the door and opens it a crack. “We’ve met before,” Bettina says. “Remember me? I’m Bettina Nietz.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he says. “You know what happened, don’t you?”

  Bettina puts her basket on the ground. Pain shoots through the muscles of her shoulders. “It’s all right; no one can see us. Has anyone told you anything yet?”

  “Oh, you don’t know,” he says, wide eyes darting behind her, strafing the area. “Last night they brought her home. She’s back.”

  Bettina’s hands fly to her mouth.

  “She’s in bed. She’s—I don’t know.” The boy shifts his weight. “She’s different.”

  “Is she . . . was she, uh, hurt?”

  He shrugs lightly. “Want to come in?”

  Christa is in the upstairs bedroom under a quilt, even though it’s already getting warm outside. The curtains are drawn, and the room smells of something sweet, like a rotting plant or sweat. Standing on the threshold, Bettina is gripped by the realization that after all these years of working next to this woman, she doesn’t really know her heart, her dreams and fears. This knowledge rises inside her like a swell of water, catching her unawares and leaving her shaky.

  “Hallo,” she says quietly, not wanting to wake her friend. “It’s Bettina, from work?”

  The sheets shift, and Christa’s head rises, her graying hair a mass of unruly curls. Her face has thinned out, and the texture of her skin is like sandpaper, the pewter shadows in the hollows of her eyes startling amid the pallor.

  “I brought some food.” Bettina comes closer. She fidgets with her kerchief and looks down at her feet. “I gave it to Manfred. Are you all right? I’ve been so worried.”

  “Yes,” Christa says. “I’m fine.”

  Bettina searches her friend’s face. “Did they—are you hurt?”

  “No,” Christa says, “not really.”

  Should Bettina ask more questions or leave well enough alone? This sense that in fact they barely really know each other makes her reluctant to pry. She pulls over a wooden chair and takes a seat. “Work hasn’t been the same without you. Putzkammer’s getting fatter by the minute. They must be giving him extra rations.”

  “I see.”

  “What . . . Christa, what happened?”

  “The police, they were . . . it was strange. You wouldn’t think it, but they were polite,” she says, her voice barely audible. “They don�
�t hit or shout. It’s like torture. It messes with your mind.”

  “I don’t understand. Polite?”

  “It’s inhuman. They ask the same thing over and over again. And I didn’t ever know what it was they wanted from me.” Christa closes her eyes and leans back again. She whispers, “A secret police force, just like in Russia.”

  Bettina places a light hand on her shoulder, and her friend flinches.

  “I miss Rolf so much. He’s gone, and he won’t be coming back again. It’s all they wanted to talk about.” Christa’s lips are a thin line, chalky and cracked. “What could I tell them? What on earth did they want from me?”

  “You’re here now,” Bettina says. “And they didn’t hurt you; you’re healthy.”

  In the gloom, Christa’s eyes gleam like a skittish cow’s. She takes a deep breath. “But when you don’t understand why, then you don’t know if they’ll come again . . . ,” she says. “That’s what drives you crazy.”

  Bettina doesn’t stay long. There is a sour taste in her mouth. She brings Christa a glass of water and drinks two entire glasses herself. When she leaves the house, her basket empty, she looks in both directions to make sure the green car is not idling at the corner anymore. It seems there are eyes everywhere these days, when previously it felt as though the islanders were invisible to the larger world. For years what they did or did not do was of no consequence to anyone.

  No longer. Someone or something—hawkeyed, lingering—seems to be watching them, intent on something, but what the point of all this can possibly be is not clear to her.

  PART TWO

  13

  Chicago

  Summer 1965

  Herbert stayed the night in her apartment, too drunk to return to his hotel in the city center. He must have been nervous, waiting for Bettina to finish up at the gallery, wondering how his shreds of information would impact her—even though, in truth, his news was both laughably incomplete and fundamentally unhelpful. He had no more information; he didn’t even know details about Werner’s illness and whether it was fatal. What was she supposed to do with this piecemeal news? After he told her, there had been silence. It seemed as if he wanted to comfort her, but she didn’t want that; she wished she were alone. She waited till he’d used the bathroom and then let him stumble over to the couch before bidding him good night.

  After grabbing her robe from behind the screen, she went to wash her face and brush her teeth. Her fingertips were prickling as though she had become deeply chilled. She could not control her trembling, and a heavy dread lay in her stomach like a rock—what was she supposed to do now? She had been gone for more than eleven years, an eternity. There had been so very little hope of reconciling in any way with those she’d been forced to leave behind—and now . . . was a door opening? Was this an opportunity? But she had no means, no agency. No access to people, money, information, power. So Werner was sick; what did that change for her?

  Slowly she unclipped her pearl earrings and leaned over the sink to look at herself in the mirror. Her dark-brown eyes were bright, their slight slant a little more exaggerated with each passing year, lending her an air of skepticism. Her skin was feverish even though she felt strangely chilled. Herbert had told her that she was beautiful, but she saw in her reflection a woman whose life was passing her by. She wondered if, back in East Germany all these years, Werner had ever remarried. Perhaps he’d been promoted again. She still wore his wedding ring because it protected her as a single woman alone in a big city. But it was also a daily reminder of what she had to atone for.

  A small black-and-white picture of Annaliese was attached with a piece of tape to the wall by the light switch. The child—not yet a year old—was propped up in a metal tub in the kitchen, dark hair plastered to her cheeks and neck, eyes closed but mouth open in laughter. It was pure joy: the blurry grin, the water glistening on her chubby arms. The photo had been taken in haste and was out of focus, but it told a simple story of fearlessness and trust, a story so powerful Bettina felt it jolt her every time she looked at the picture, even now.

  She undressed hastily and, emerging with her robe tied tightly around her waist, saw that Herbert was already asleep on the couch, fully clothed. She slipped off his shoes and pulled the blanket over him. It was hard to be angry at this lonely man. He had tried to comfort her when she’d first arrived in America, stunned by the hairpin turn her life had taken, and for a brief time they’d confused the tenderness of their connection to each other with something else. It was disappointment that tied them together, and a certain tentative fondness, nothing more. Her sister had been oblivious (and for that Bettina was grateful), but the marriage had failed regardless.

  There was a moment back then when Bettina had looked into an empty bottle of Fleischmann’s gin, reeling, her head pounding with anger and pain, but she’d found it within herself to stop turning to the bottle for comfort. What use would she be as a drunk? How could she ever make amends to her child? She discovered that, even in the depths of her distress, she did still have the capacity to make choices about her life.

  By the entrance door sat the gift bag her boss, George, had given her as she left the gallery. She brought it into her sleeping area and closed the bamboo screen behind her for privacy. Herbert’s breathing was heavy and regular, a little wheezy. In the stillness of night, her world suddenly seemed overly crowded and confusing, as though the many millions of people inhabiting this earth were no more important than insects. Striving toward something indefinable, working ceaselessly. It seemed impossible that earlier this evening, people had been applauding her for her work, that she had been the center of attention. It all seemed so pointless, even though a small part of her had been excited at the thought that this might mean she could change after all—she could still make something of her life.

  Bettina laid out the contents of the bag onto her terry cloth coverlet. There was a bottle of Dom Pérignon—real champagne—with a silky blue ribbon tied around it and a card: Dearest Bettina, You have a powerful voice and it is being heard! Many congratulations! With love, George and May.

  There was also an unopened envelope addressed to Bettina Heilstrom, Photo Journalist c/o Tribune Publishing, 435 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60611.

  Inside lay a lovely piece of cream-colored, embossed paper that congratulated her on being the 1965 winner of the Smithsonian photo contest. And slipped into the folds of that letter was a check made out to her.

  She could not believe her eyes: $2,000.

  The phone rang the next morning, waking her from a light, twitchy sleep. Instantly she remembered the money and bolted upright, her heart racing. Two thousand dollars! What she could do with that money—she could hire a lawyer; she could even fly to Berlin if she wanted. The money gave her something she’d never had before: power. The phone trilled again.

  It was George. He apologized for waking her. Two days earlier a fire truck up in the Garfield Park area had run into a signpost, toppling it and killing a young black woman. A photo in the Chicago Daily News showed protestors holding signs claiming the death hadn’t been an accident, and unrest was spilling over into other neighborhoods. “There’s a full-fledged riot broken out now. Sorry, Bettina. Can you come? We need action shots, good ones. Meet me at the Wilcox firehouse. Take a cab, pronto.”

  Bettina was not George’s usual go-to on-the-ground photographer; that was Dan Markowski, who was on vacation. She dressed quickly in jeans, a men’s shirt, and a pair of well-worn sneakers. She pulled her hair from her face and tied it back. Herbert was still asleep on her couch, and even when she tapped his arm, he didn’t stir. Bettina left him a note on the kitchen counter; he would have to let himself out.

  The scene was chaotic. She found George talking to one of the reserve firemen at the side entrance to the station. He motioned to her with one finger to hold on, and she began snapping pictures. For the next three hours she took photos with the old Rollei. The faces around her were steeped in hatred and
fury, exhausted from a night of screaming and a life of being overlooked. In her crisp white shirt, with her white face, she stood out in the crowd, and George loomed beside her, often putting a hand on her protectively, his enormous presence offering her a kind of shield. But she was not afraid; she was never afraid when she had the camera. Eyes raked her greedily, angrily, seeing her as an institution, a symbol of the endless, unbearable oppression they were forced to endure. And yet there was something . . . something that joined them together, and the people could feel it, and they let her do her work.

  The pressing heat of another summer’s day rose around them, making the faces slick with sweat. As she snapped her pictures, Bettina considered the light on a glistening cheekbone, the scraggle of wiry hair pearled with water from a broken hydrant. She approached, closer and closer, so close at times that she could have reached out and wiped away a teardrop of perspiration from someone’s cheek.

  The eyes, so full of hunger. She recognized it without analyzing it. She took it all in, absorbing it into herself, while at the same time reflecting it. This was not art; this was life. Real life, beautiful and ugly in equal measure.

  On the way back to the office in the cab, she already knew that one picture would stand out from the rest. It was a man with a boy on his shoulders, a skinny brown child in shorts who clutched at his father’s temples, trying not to fall off in the swaying, rumbling crowd. There was a second when the father and the boy shared the exact same expression: eyes flashing in terror yet jaws set square in defiance. Mouths open, screaming. The picture would be dark (she’d have to work on that during development), but the flash of the eyes, the mirroring in their faces of their shared yet contradictory impulses—it was powerful. This would be the picture that revealed the humanity in these strangers, their indelible connection to all other human beings.