“He was a soldier.” Werner coughs into his handkerchief. That damn dust from the roads. When she does not say anything, he coughs again. “You know, they consider me a hero. They told me they were impressed with my humility.”
“Congratulations, then,” Bettina says. “But I—I’m sorry to say it’s not really something I think should be celebrated.”
“I wouldn’t have told them myself. Never. I’m not proud of taking a life, and, well, we did agree never to speak of it . . . but . . . but Irmgard told them when they were questioning her—gathering information for the annual performance review.”
“You’re talking about our neighbor, Irmgard Bandelow, yes?” Bettina asks. “Why is she so interested in you?”
Her voice betrays incredulity, and this makes his heart begin to pound. She is acting like an imbecile. Can she not make one admiring comment? “Yes, of course; who else would it be? You’re the one who told her! Can’t you be happy for me, for God’s sake?” He realizes Bettina is staring out of a small window to the left of the altar, and he hobbles closer, his knee aching now, and grabs her arm hard, pulling her so she has to face him. “What are you doing? Why are you coming to this church all the time?”
His wife gives him no answer.
“I came here to tell you some good news—good news, do you hear me?” His voice rises, and the more agitated he becomes in the face of her bovine expression, the harder he tugs at her arm. “And I want to know what you’re doing here. Why were you in that field? What the hell is going on?” Before he can stop himself, his arm shoots out, and he slaps her on the side of her face.
This works. Her features crumple, and she begins to weep. He realizes he has not seen her cry since the bombing, and a surge of satisfaction wells up in him.
“Answer me—right now, answer! And what are you looking at out here?” He shuffles over to the window. Standing on tiptoes, he can see past the gravestones toward the Pfarrhaus. “Why are you not at work? Are you up to something? Do I have to beat it out of you?”
“I’m going to have a baby!” she yells, holding one hand to her cheek. “Beat me as much as you want; maybe you’ll kill it!”
“You’re . . . ?” He turns to her, his face flaccid with shock. A child—could it be possible after all this time? A baby!
“I came to talk to the priest—to Pfarrer Brenner,” she cries. “For advice.”
“That old drunk? You weren’t thinking of not telling me? Of—”
“No, no! Not that.” She smooths her hair away from her face. “I’ve been having nightmares. Awful—the baby is deformed . . . or dies . . . or is born already dead, like my sister’s.”
Her eyes move over his shoulder and stop on something. Rapidly he turns; next to the small window is a larger one fitted with a colorful stained glass depicting a saint with his head bowed and his slim fingers pressed together in prayer. Under the portrait a name is painted in old German script: Sankt Markus.
“I was frightened,” Bettina continues in a rush. “And the Pfarrer, he calms me down; he makes me feel as though everything will be all right. I was looking for him—I thought he might have gone to Johann’s farm next door . . .”
“All right, all right. I understand. Being with child.” Werner barks out a laugh that shoots into the silence around them. His surprise has shifted into something entirely different, something that seems to have wings, that lifts him off the earth, renders him as weightless as the air, takes his heart and calms it. He has been waiting for this for so long, his anger and disappointment a result of the stunted hope that’s haunted him, and now he will finally have his own family.
He tries to reach for her to pull her closer to him, but she flinches. “No wonder you’ve been so strange! And I was right about the belly . . . it’s fine now. I understand. Did he make you feel better, the Pfarrer?”
“I couldn’t find him,” she whispers.
“Remember what I said when I asked for your hand?” Werner moves away and sits down in the front pew, facing the altar. He is suddenly very weary. His eyes come to rest once more on the stained glass window, and he takes in the uncannily calm nature of the saint’s expression; everything is beginning to make more sense. His wife’s reticence, her seeming coldness; all along she’s been disappointed and afraid, just as he was. “I will take care of you. Both of you.” He grins. “Our child will be so proud of us! Very proud! Perhaps it will be a boy . . . we can name him Markus, like the saint in this picture, yes? What do you say? Hmm, Bettinalein? How about a little boy for a change in our home?”
Bettina nods, but it is tentative, and she will not meet his eyes, and he knows that it will take him weeks to cajole her back into behaving like a normal wife. It feels he has once again said and done the very opposite of what he wanted.
There will be no winning her over with kindness. He has tried that, and it has not worked. As these thoughts race through his mind, his joy shifts once again, and a kernel of anger blossoms inside him and multiplies.
25
Something has changed. In the mornings, instead of asking for a fried egg or some buttered toast, Werner demands it of Bettina. His movements around the house are assured and brisk, and this somehow leaves less space for her. Each night he lays his head on her stomach and maintains he can hear a heartbeat, feel movement, even though it is of course far too early for any of that. After she’s been silent during breakfast and the bruise on her cheek has begun to darken, he brings her allium he picked in the meadows, globular bursts of pinkish-purple flowers blooming on top of leafless stems. Most surprising of all, on the following Sunday when she prepares for her walk to Bobbin, assuming he will busy himself with tending to the last of the vegetables, he instead rises from the armchair in the front room, folds the paper, and announces he has decided to accompany her.
There is no chance of talking to Peter that day or the entire following week. Her body is in revolt, and she cannot hold down her food. The smell of the fish at the factory, the cleaning agents, and the tang of briny water turn her stomach. As she walks home after her shift, the bones in her legs ache with such intensity she must sit at the side of the road, catching her breath. It feels as though she is in a room with no windows, the air stale and heavy; her breath cannot reach her lungs; her brain cannot form full sentences. Each option she examines, turning it over in her mind like a gem, seems flawed and pointless and impossible. Her thoughts have no middle and no end—they are questions with no answer, corridors in a closed-off maze. She cannot run, because where will she go?
Her panic at learning about the pregnancy has shifted again. The nervous energy is still there, but instead of radiating inward, it radiates outward. Can she keep the child safe? What should she do? Sometimes she wanders through her house, trailing her fingers along the brocade on the back of the couch, the chipped soapstone countertop in the kitchen, the stack of sheets in the closet. Her father seems to linger there alongside her as she stares, unseeing, at some familiar household object. His love for her is evident, and he is afraid for her, for her child. In her imagination he tells her to be careful, alarmed by her unruly, adventurous nature. This is the homestead she inherited, that she is responsible for. It contains the family she has built for herself; it is the place she is supposed to be. He warns her not to be rash.
She loves every last corner of this house. Memories live in each closet; a story hovers over each wooden step. Will her child run these corridors? She tries to imagine Clara, so far away, and her mind fails her; she cannot picture the reality of that new world. Clara herself had badly wanted a child; what would she do now if she were in Bettina’s shoes? It’s hard to believe that it’s likely Bettina will never again lay eyes on her sister. It’s too dangerous for them to be in touch, and yet she waits for something, not knowing exactly what. They’d made a loose plan involving Johann and a letter addressed to someone fictitious, but they’re both aware they can’t create a thread that might be traced back to Werner.
At dinner
he eyes Bettina sideways, telling her about a recent raid the Stasi ordered on a printing press in Stralsund, on the mainland. “They resisted, those idiots. Looking for trouble,” he says, spiking a fork into the beef she prepared for him. He expects her to ask him what happened, and when she doesn’t, his fork hovers in midair.
He frowns.
“There’s no point resisting, you know. None at all,” he says. “Klemperer shot one of them in the chest, and when the other one tried to escape, he was shot in the back.”
“But what had they done?” Bettina’s voice is high.
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, though? I don’t understand. Innocent people getting hounded and even killed.”
“If they were innocent, they wouldn’t be running from us,” he says, “would they?” The way he is looking at her makes her stomach shrink into a fist.
His gaze is direct, his underwater eyes no longer wavering. Later that week he arrives home with a small gold plaque in honor of his bravery and an electric alarm clock that hums gently, never ending. Eberle mews pitifully, and Bettina does not have the energy to comfort him.
When she detects the faintest pink stain in her underwear, she stands stock still in the bathroom, her heels icy on the tiles, and everything becomes clear: what she wants for herself is irrelevant. If she tries to leave now, the fear, the lack of resources, of safety—all that will risk the life of this child. And all that matters now is that her baby remains safe.
Finally she gets an opportunity to slip a note under the door of the youth center before heading to the factory. Meet me at the beach in Glowe today at 5pm. She hopes they will not be under watchful eyes there, and she clocks out of work early.
It has been eight years since she first laid eyes on Peter Brenner on this very beach. At the appointed time she watches as he makes his way toward her over the sand. He has come straight from school and is wearing his ill-fitting jacket despite the warm weather. They walk toward each other slowly, and underneath her dress the smooth movement of her hips, the swell of her breasts, and her soft belly remind her that she is more vulnerable than she has ever been. She can only trust herself now; she must stand by her decisions.
They stand together amid a group of pines, and she takes a seat on a weathered log. It seems as though she has just walked ten kilometers, and she struggles to catch her breath.
“I’ve missed you,” Peter says. “I didn’t dare come by.”
“No, you can’t—it’s not safe!” she says. “I mean, that’s good. Werner, he’s suspicious.” She hunches her shoulders over the bag on her lap and looks at her shoes in the sand and pine needles. He must know that this is the end. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I don’t see how we can stay together. I don’t see any other way out of this mess.”
“I’m not someone you can just toy around with, Bettina. You can’t just leave me, please. Please!” His panic, his loneliness, his quest for happiness are visible in the lines around his mouth, in the bloodshot whites of his eyes. But in a few years she will be thirty years old; they can’t behave like children. She is going to be a mother, God willing. This is not some game anymore, where they are merely putting themselves at risk.
“Things have gotten bad at home, Peter. I . . . it’s impossible. We can’t do this any longer. We just can’t.”
“Bettina, are you unwell?”
She looks away. “No, I’m fine. At least, as fine as I can be, considering.”
Peter falls on his knees in front of her. Placing her hands on his lips, he kisses them. “You must leave him, I beg you. He doesn’t deserve you.”
“Stand up. Come now. I can’t leave; he will find us!” She does not say anything about the baby because this will make Peter push even harder, and if she succumbs and tries to leave, Werner will not stop hunting them down until he gets this child back. He will never stop; she knows this in her heart. Hasn’t he spent years telling her—showing her—that she is incontrovertibly his?
Who the father of this baby is will remain unknown. And yet this, too, is evident to her: Even if she were to tell her husband about the affair, he would never give up on the idea that the child might be his. If Peter learns about the child later, then he’ll assume it is Werner’s, too, and that’s for the best in the long run.
There is one thing of which she is certain, however: the baby is hers.
“What’s this?” Peter asks sharply, touching the faintly bruised curve of her cheek. “Did he hit you, that bastard?”
“Peter,” she says softly. “Don’t make this difficult.”
“Then . . . what?”
Blushing, she turns away. “It’s not what you think. Werner loves me, and he’s not prepared to let me go. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“Listen, we’ll go to the police. We’ll tell them about his threats, the insinuations—the lists of friends, all of it!”
“No one is going to listen to our complaints. They close ranks, those men. He’s a decorated hero now. And he knows people; he can do things, to . . . to your father if he finds out, or to you. You could lose your job, your life even. This is serious—they’ve got the energy of the righteous.”
“I don’t care! We can move out of here. We’ll make a new life.”
“Aren’t you listening to me? They hunt people down. They don’t stop!” She drops her head into her hands. “You must find someone who is free to be with you.”
“I’ll kill him. I’ll break his head right off his neck.” Peter rises, his shoulders hunched under his jacket, face contorted. He lurches forward and reaches for a stunted pine, pushing against it with his body and then yanking it toward him. He pushes and yanks until the wood splits, then picks up a stick from the mat of sandy grass and begins beating it against the trunk. His hands fling wildly in the air, his breath hard and fast.
“Don’t come to the house, ever,” she says, rising. Never before has she seen him behave this way, but she cannot succumb to pity or fear or love; she must not. His pain is her pain, and yet she does not feel the anger he does, not anymore. “You must leave us alone; do you understand?”
His face opens up in astonishment, and he takes a step toward her, but she moves backward, away from him.
“It’s not too late for us to make amends,” she says, “to make this right again.”
“Amends? What—”
She raises a hand. “Remember when I came to you at the Pfarrhaus? You said then you had to take your cue from me because I’m not free.” Her throat is constricted. “I’m not asking you, Peter; I’m telling you. It’s over. I’m not free. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
He sees that her mind is set, and for a split second she wishes he would keep fighting for her. But he is a man of honor who has done something he is ashamed of—stolen another man’s wife. He will do as she asks.
His face is drained of color. “I’m sorry, but I don’t regret a thing,” he says, “not a thing,” and then he turns away from her.
How will the days and weeks and months unfold with this man living in the village next to hers? How could she have been so stupid, so very, very stupid? This is the price she pays for her willfulness.
Once she’s on the road, she places both palms on the small mound of her belly and begins to run, and even though her muscles are screaming and she can hardly breathe, she keeps running toward home.
PART THREE
26
Chicago
Summer 1965
When Bettina went to deposit the two-thousand-dollar check on the Monday after the award ceremony, she was struck with the irrational fear that the bank teller might tear it up right there and then, telling her it was a forgery. The edges of the pale-blue paper as she handed it over were damp from her fingertips.
The woman barely looked up at her, not even registering the vast sum of money, and only asked, “Cash or deposit?”
“Deposit,” Bettina said. “Please.”
It wasn’t unt
il she’d been handed the receipt that it began to seem real: the money was actually hers to do with as she pleased. There had never once been enough in her bank account for anything more than her daily needs. Now various possibilities unfurled in her imagination like a magic carpet, leading her to her child. She exited the building and stood on the pavement in the morning light, squinting. The crowd of people heading to work paid no attention to her, and this anonymity was fine, good—it allowed her to think, to plan.
Her thoughts were chaotic, but there was an energy to them, a hopefulness that she hadn’t felt since she’d set foot in this country. Her Rollei hung from her neck, and she fiddled with the plastic beads she’d laced onto the leather strap—some slippery new ones she’d bought when her strap had broken a while ago, some old. As she always did, she imagined her daughter, her everyday life. All the ordinary things that made up the seconds and minutes of a regular day, things that seemed precious only when you couldn’t see them for yourself, when they were denied to you.
Right now Bettina’s imagination was all she had, but maybe that would change. A crack had formed in the wall between mother and daughter, and—now that she had the means—she could try to slip through it.
After a week, the riots in Wilcox died down, but the story was still keeping her busy. Since then she’d been roaming various neighborhoods, from the old Lithuanian center in Bridgeport near the canal (now more Irish than Russian) to Englewood a little farther south, which had pockets of racial diversity but was becoming more and more monotone. George asked her to scout up north too: Lincoln Park, with its beautiful old brownstones, had experienced a rash of gang graffiti on its buildings last year. She took a photo of a building on Orchard and Dickens, a faded Coca-Cola sign hanging from the window, Young Lions spray-painted over the boarded-up storefront: evidence of a gang. In that one, she focused the picture on a young tree that had managed to weave its branches through the broken boards and was sprouting new leaves, weedy but green.
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