This Terrible Beauty: A Novel

by Katrin Schumann

  They passed a few grocery stores. She suggested the driver let her off at a local restaurant for an early lunch, but he insisted on taking her to his home. It was not unpleasant to have company, and she agreed, thinking she probably had no real choice anyway. Andreas lived in a development in a village outside the city, and when she entered his backyard, her legs weary from being crunched up in the car, she was shocked to realize that the wall ran right through his yard, not ten meters from his house. It took her breath away. The two of them sat at a metal table in the garden under a small umbrella, the uneven gray expanse of wall topped with loops of barbed wire directly behind them.

  Andreas’s wife, Heike, brought out a tray of Königsberger Klopse, meatballs in a lemon-caper sauce with boiled potatoes. While Heike was dour and watchful, remaining almost entirely silent during lunch, Andreas peppered Bettina with questions, and she found herself rather liking him. His mouth turned down in his flabby face, but his brows arched upward in an appealing show of curiosity and camaraderie. When he complained mildly about being overworked, she encouraged him to spend more time at the vegetable patch in the communal gardens.

  “Ja, ja,” he said, patting the small mound of his stomach, “Ich esse schon genug Bohnen.” I already eat enough green beans.

  He shared that his family’s holiday destinations were predetermined by the government, and she told him about a trip along the edges of Lake Michigan, how Americans strapped on sneakers and ran endlessly alongside the water simply as a pastime, to let off stress. She let him assume she’d been visiting for work.

  Andreas laughed at the idea of this aimless running, but his wife looked alarmed. “Those capitalists,” she muttered, unable to remain silent at this odd, indulgent behavior. “Always such relentless competition. Never stopping moving forward. Where will it all lead?”

  It was 12:51 p.m. when they arrived at the Lenin-Schule in Lichtenberg. Bettina asked Andreas to pull over and park opposite the school under the speckled shade of a linden. The unexpected warmth of the day brought sweat to their foreheads, the vaguely feral aroma of the city pungent in the air around them. Berlin was landlocked, and on days like this the air was trapped between buildings, rank. There weren’t enough trees. As Andreas sat at the wheel, waiting, his eyes fluttered closed. The weight of Bettina’s meal pressed on her stomach, but she was fully alert, sitting forward in her seat, eyes peeled.

  Less than ten minutes until school let out.

  “Have a cigarette break if you like,” she said. “Stretch your legs. I’m going to take some pictures of this playground.”

  Loading new film into the camera, her fingers were as unwieldy as rubber batons. The image Werner had shown her came back to her: a distinctive child with earnest, slightly drooping eyes. The last time Bettina had felt this anxious was when she’d taken the microphone at the Smithsonian award ceremony. But now the stakes were so high that the earlier turning point paled in comparison. She used the camera to scan her surroundings, glancing down through the viewfinder at the metal playground set on the square and the wooden double doors of the building covered in peeling red paint. The bell rang: the school day was over. Her pulse began to race. Within minutes the doors opened, disgorging children in white-and-navy uniforms with red kerchiefs tied at their necks.

  The children screeched and chattered, clutching the straps of their boxy backpacks, tumbling down the stairs into the school’s front yard. One after another, boys in blue shorts and girls in A-line skirts. From across the street, the kerchiefs around their necks made them look like a flock of redbirds. Down the stairs they came and came, until the doors shut behind an impressively busty woman wearing a straw hat.

  Bettina scanned the children as they ran toward their mothers or began trooping down the street toward home. She pressed herself against the side of a plane tree, even though there was of course no chance that Anna would recognize her. She’d been a baby when Bettina left, not yet walking or talking. The years had swallowed up so much, blocking out a whole swath of her life.

  A cluster of girls gathered at the swings, socks pooling at their ankles. They were too young, weren’t they—waiting for their mothers, maybe? Surely Anna was old enough to walk home alone.

  Bettina could hardly take a full breath. She peered into each of their faces. A corrosive tide of uncertainty began rising inside her: perhaps she might not recognize her own child. She stared, edging closer. Mothers came and called to their children. Boys kicked around a soccer ball. One by one, children began peeling away from the others, heading home.

  The sun beat down on Bettina’s gray beret, and she pulled it off her head. She worried at the nail of her thumb, her camera hanging limp around her neck. Twenty minutes later, all the children had either walked off or been picked up by their mothers.

  And the playground was empty. Her daughter was nowhere to be seen.

  46

  Andreas drove her around, trying to make conversation, but Bettina did not respond. If she tried to talk, she thought she might begin to sob, and she needed to stay in control. There had been far too much crying these last few days. She peered out the window at the passing houses and the people on the streets, blurred and uninteresting, lacking any sort of distinctive quality, as though they’d been flattened or drained of all color. She could not bring herself to take any more photos; the very act of recording reality, interpreting it, seemed senseless.

  What had she been thinking, that she could just come over to East Berlin and claim her child?

  “Where to now, Frau Gurlinsky? Would you like to see the river?”

  The fact that she’d chopped off her hair and dyed it this black color—that she was pretending to be someone else—seemed risible now. “Anywhere,” she said. “I mean, yes, all right. Perhaps the river.”

  He drove her to the Spree, and she walked along the river’s edge. Andreas went with her a short distance, keeping quiet now, pausing at a concrete bollard. It wasn’t very attractive here: there were squat factories and chimneys emitting fuzzy ribbons of smoke, overturned trash barrels and papers fluttering in the gutter. The sunlight seemed only to highlight the ugliness. Surely the river’s edge should be pretty, especially in the sun; there should be trees and grass, children dipping their toes into the water?

  The wall emerged from the water, a grotesque gray monster.

  The wall, this false division of a people, her people, her homeland. She couldn’t wrap her head around what had been lost. When she thought of the future, she wanted to imagine it filled with children running and playing and laughing like those she’d seen earlier, ready to conquer the world, unsaddled with past grievances, and not yet hungry for power. Their energy, their charming, bumbling momentum, their curiosity—those were the things that made life worth living.

  This barren, dirty river and this pathetic wall made her want to die. There was nothing here to give her any hope.

  “Can we go back to that school for a bit?” she asked the driver. “I’m tired. I think I just need a few more pictures of the play structure.”

  “Of course,” he said. He stared at her for a moment. “Whatever you want.”

  At the school she left Andreas at the car again and walked around the playground, pretending to take pictures. He was lingering by the car, smoking a cigarette, pacing and looking away, and she walked briskly to the end of the street and rounded the corner. Once she was out of sight, she started running. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but running felt good. There was a terrible pressure in her chest, and sweat trickled down her neck. People looked at her askance.

  But there was nowhere for her to go, and after a minute she stopped, gulping to catch her breath. More slowly this time, she rounded the corner and headed back toward the car. A tall boy was standing by the edge of the schoolyard, holding some books and talking to a girl with blonde hair. A smaller child was playing at their feet, digging in the earth with a stick. Bettina walked by them.

  “Petra,” the tall girl said, lea
ning away from the boy. “Watch out! Mami won’t like it if you get your skirt covered in dirt.”

  Bettina took a seat on a bench nearby and watched them. About ten minutes later two more children joined the group, and one of them seemed about Anna’s age. Bettina sat up straighter and then picked up a newspaper from the ground and pretended to read. Looking into her viewfinder a few minutes later, she could see the children without seeming to be spying on them. Her body was a live wire, unpredictable and dangerous; she couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t burst into tears or start yelling.

  Because it was her—it was definitely her. Bettina felt it in her bones.

  Her instinct was to crush Anna in her arms, and a brief fantasy played itself out in her mind in which she saw the two of them talking and Anna happily getting into the car with her, heading away from this life and straight into Bettina’s.

  The child was so beautiful: gawky limbs, long and slim, her skirt rising above bony knees. A violin case dangled from her fingers, and the other child carried a guitar; they must have been practicing together after school. As Anna spoke to the boy, she swayed back and forth on her heels and waved a bare arm around to emphasize her point. They appeared to be arguing about a book.

  “It’s just boring,” the boy was saying. “Can’t they make this stuff more exciting?”

  “Not everything can be an adventure,” Anna began, but Bettina couldn’t catch the rest. Her hair was springy, with round curls that fell below her shoulder blades. It was the kind of hair that would take hours to dry and, when tangled, would be almost impossible to comb through. It was hard to see any resemblance to her or to Werner, and with those dark curls she seemed quite different from Peter too. Her eyes were spaced far apart, and Bettina remembered so well that gaze of hers from when she nursed at her breast. Intense and warm, deeply engaged. But what was shocking was Anna’s smile; Bettina could never have anticipated her child would smile in this way—it entirely changed the shape of her face. She seemed to like this boy and would periodically lunge backward as though worried she was getting too close, and then she’d grin at him and inch her way closer again. When she smiled, her cheeks pushed up into her eyes, and she showed almost all her upper teeth. It was as though she gave her whole self to the act of it.

  Bettina watched, mesmerized. She stood up and moved a little closer. The children paid no attention to her. The younger child was humming a tune to herself. It sounded like the national anthem, perhaps, or a lullaby.

  “Oh,” said the boy suddenly, and Bettina shifted the camera down. He pointed at her. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a camera, silly,” Anna said.

  Would she remember the camera from when she was little? Bettina raised it again and held it out toward them, her heart clattering in her chest. “Would you like me to show you how to use it?” she asked. “It’s a Rolleiflex. My father gave it to me. It’s quite old but works like a dream.”

  “I’m Petra,” said the little girl, running up and standing very close to her with her hands behind her back and her belly sticking out. “May I touch it?”

  “I’m Klaus,” the boy said. He hung back, trying not to be overeager.

  “I think your fingers might be a little dirty,” Bettina said to Petra. She turned to face Anna, hardly able to breathe. Would the girl recognize her? Would they share a look that would change everything? “And who are you?”

  “Annaliese,” her daughter said. She, too, had come close and was peering at Bettina’s hands. She smelled of warm skin and something salty. Bettina ground her teeth together and told herself to stay calm.

  “Here, I can show you how it works.” She flipped the viewfinder up and then down and showed them the double lenses at the front and how the crank worked. The children peppered her with questions about choosing what to shoot, how to focus, the development process, how many pictures she took and why. They seemed at ease, their bodies relaxed and supple.

  “Papa showed me some things from work,” Anna said. “They were cameras, I think. But they were tiny. People aren’t supposed to know you’re taking pictures.”

  “Annie, you’re not allowed to say that,” said the little girl, Petra. “He said it was a secret.”

  “Are you sisters?” Bettina asked.

  Petra nodded. “He’s just a friend,” she said, pointing to the boy.

  Anna put her hands on her hips. “We’re just like sisters,” she said, “but we have a different mother.”

  “Why do you always have to say that?” Pink spots emerged on Petra’s cheeks. “It’s not nice.”

  “It’s perfectly nice, Mausie,” Annaliese said, leaning down and putting her arms around the girl. “It’s just that I know everyone’s wondering why we don’t look anything alike.”

  “Her mother died,” the boy said. “She was on a boat and went out and got caught in a storm and never came back. And no one ever found her body, and it’s possible it washed up on shore somewhere very far away, like Sweden even.”

  Anna looked up, her fingers stroking Petra’s wispy blonde hair. Bettina worked hard to control the expression on her face, but inside her it felt as though her stomach had flipped over. She could say something now, right now. She could say: It’s possible your mother didn’t die, isn’t it? But that would be the same as saying: People you love have lied to you. Anna’s face would crumple, or worse, she might retreat in fear. Right now the girl seemed unconcerned, not at all self-conscious. It seemed as if she had told this story many times.

  “I used to live on the ocean,” Anna said. “She loved the ocean, and if you have to die, I think it’s not a bad way to die. Anyway”—she rose to her full height again and squared her shoulders—“we share a mutti now, don’t we, Petra, and she gets angry if we’re too late, and practice ran long today. We’d better go.” The sun hit her face as she spoke, revealing a cluster of freckles on her brow and nose. She gave Bettina a courteous but dismissive smile and grabbed the two backpacks and her violin case. “Tomorrow, Klaus.”

  Anna’s interest had waned as quickly as it had been ignited, and she and her little sister turned away and began walking down the street. Her child, so mature, so fatalistic. Too stunned to do anything else, Bettina nodded goodbye to the boy and hurried back to the car. Maybe if she could just figure out where they lived, she could come back and talk to Anna later, or she could find a way to tell her that she had some important information—give her a chance to steel herself.

  “Andreas, do me a favor, will you?” she asked, sweat prickling her upper lip. “Drive behind those two girls, but not too close?”

  “I’m not sure . . . ,” he started, but when she drew out ten American dollars from the pocket of her jeans, he snuffed out his cigarette and climbed in the car. “Suppose it can’t hurt,” he said.

  Anna and Petra walked quite a long way down a large-tree-lined boulevard and then into the side streets, winding their way in and out of the minimal shade. They swung their clasped hands between them as they walked, their heads tilted toward one another the entire way. When they reached Schottstraße, they stopped outside an apartment block with multiple entrances opening up onto a grassy bank. A few water fountains and benches were dotted around under unruly bushes. Andreas parked down the street and across from the building.

  The child’s words were still ricocheting through Bettina’s head: dead, ocean, not a bad way to go.

  Dead.

  Werner had told Annaliese that her mother was dead. This shouldn’t have been such a surprise, and yet Bettina realized that she’d always assumed he would tell Anna that her mother had deserted her. That he would want to obliterate his daughter’s feelings for the woman who had betrayed him. The sorrow Bettina carried with her about leaving her homeland was tinged with shame about the child feeling abandoned, unloved, discarded. But it wasn’t like that at all; Annaliese seemed at ease with the fact that her mother was gone. She carried no shame. She didn’t seem to have unanswered questions or doubts.

 
With her camera, Bettina captured the deep blue of the sky against the top of the apartment block, with its rough edge of crumbling concrete. She captured the two girls as they stopped at a fountain, situating them in the lower edge of the frame and allowing the vertical flight of balconies that punctured the facade behind them to soar out of the top left of the picture. The act of taking these photos made it possible for her to maintain her composure, but when she stopped and saw that the girls were talking to a woman with one very small child on her hip and another in a wheelchair, her tears began to flow.

  It was Irmgard. Her face was relaxed and free of makeup, her blonde hair twisted into a high bouffant.

  Anna knelt down in front of the wheelchair. Her face broke into a smile, all teeth. She took the child’s two small hands in hers and waved them in the air, laughing. The little boy reached out to grab her hair, and she pulled a mock frown that was disarming and lighthearted. Looking up toward Irmgard, she asked her something and then unstrapped the child from the chair and lifted him up. He was about three or four years old, extremely thin, with a big head of tousled brownish hair that he leaned on his sister’s shoulder. Irmgard pushed the wheelchair ahead of her, and the four of them began walking away, down toward the end of the street.

  Werner had found real love; it was all around him. He had built the family he’d always wanted.

  Andreas turned to look at her over his shoulder, but she could not tear her eyes away from the family. “Drive; please drive!” Bettina whispered. Her breath burned in her throat; it stung her lungs and rattled back out through her mouth and nose. Her eyes streamed, and she did not wipe the trails from her cheeks or the sweat from her hairline, and her tears did not stop, even when Andreas bade her goodbye at the border or when she arrived back at her hotel an hour later.