Necessary Lies(24)
“There was never enough love,” he said, and Anna thought of a little boy pulling at his mother’s skirt. He could plead and whine all he wanted and the most K?the would do was to tell him to stop it, or hand him over to his nanny. He always felt the sting of her stubborn, silent mourning for his father.
Bel ami, bel ami, bel ami! he remembered the song from some afternoon tea-room, in Breslau, his mouth full of poppyseed cake, crumbs falling onto a tiny china plate with little flowers all around it. This was an unusual time, his mother was smiling then, listening to the song. For a moment her face was carefree, and so pretty that he thought her an angel. She was wearing a white dress with a v-shaped collar, with a single pink rose pinned to it. He felt a desire to put his head on her breasts, quickly, to feel the beating of her heart before she had the time to stop him. She was tossing her hair back and then, suddenly, as if she could read his thoughts, her face grew tense, and she sat up straight. “Let’s go, Willi,” she said, ignoring his protests. He had not even finished his cake.
“Is that all that happened?” Anna asked. It seemed to her strange that he would remember a moment of such little consequence. There could have been so many reasons to hurry.
No, he didn’t like it when she said things like that. He didn’t want her to find ordinary explanations for what he had felt. His mother was full of them, too. “But it was the war, Willi. Your grandfather was in prison! Those were dangerous times!” Words like these came too late, he said, and only after he had complained of her silence. A belated effort to soften his heart, or maybe just one more call of duty, a little, self-satisfied station on his mother’s way of the cross. How could she hope to atone for all the incomprehensible moments of harshness? To make him forget the sharp pulling of his arm, her kisses that brushed his skin lightly without leaving a trace. His mother never raised her voice. He used to dread her calm more than he would dread an outburst, her subtle sighs of resignation echoed by every wall in the room.
This was a dangerous zone Anna was trying to enter, a minefield of hurt feelings. She may have learnt quickly what not to say, but that didn’t mean she understood.
William said that his mother had always kept him at arm’s length. He liked this expression; it suited what he wanted to convey. Not too far, and not close enough. He was her duty, her responsibility so faithfully fulfilled, but he was not her joy. When Anna objected that there must have been other times, he conceded. Yes, during that terrible winter trek from Breslau. When he thought he would die and she, holding him close to her, promised he wouldn’t. She kept me warm, he said. She fed me. Then, there was nothing more important than hot cabbage soup and fur gloves she somehow managed to get. But as soon as they were out of danger she was back to her old ways.
His presence, William would tell Anna, was his mother’s punishment, a cross she had to bear with patience and humility. This is what he had really remembered from Breslau. These walks on which she always hurried him home. On which there was never enough time for another swing, an ice-cream. So, in the end, he would hurry, too, home to Gretchen, his beloved nanny, who waited for him at the door.
It was Gretchen who pinched his cheeks, drew his bath and tickled him until he sputtered with laughter and saliva. Gretchen who taught him songs and stories he would remember for a long time after. “Hear this?” she would ask, and he listened to the thunder rolling through the sky. “The Wild Hunt.” She told him about Wodan, the king of the gods, leading his frenzied gallop through the sky. Wild, wild horses carrying their masters, the warriors slain in battles, galloping through the darkened sky, in hot pursuit of some fantastic game.
“Good warriors, Gretchen?”
“The bravest. The best. The most valiant. In the heat of battle a beautiful Valkyrie, a maiden on horseback, would appear to the chosen one. ’Get ready,’ she would say, ’Get ready, my brave one. For you the great Wodan will open the sacred doors of Valhalla.’ And so went the valiant warrior, his eyes still filled with the memories of the fight. He would join Wodan at the last battle, at the twilight of the Gods.”
During all these uncomfortable evenings in K?the’s living room, when conversations faltered, or went in circles, or stopped at unpredictable moments, it seemed to Anna that both, mother and son, tried to catch each other at some grave transgression. All they were looking for was one more proof that would finally lay bare what they both knew was there all along.
Anna remembers one such evening, a few years ago. K?the’s sixty-fifth birthday. William bought her an old musical box and restored it himself. It was lovely, Anna thought, with its inlaid pattern of fern-like leaves. K?the still lived alone, then, on Terrebonne Street, a housing complex for seniors.
Anna had her own worries consuming her then. Marie had just come back from Poland, her first trip after martial law was declared. She talked of dark grey streets, of people walking without a smile in their faces, trying to remain invisible. All telephone conversations were monitored, all letters opened and read. There was no food, no coal for the winter. Police were everywhere.
She had visited Anna s parents. “No one says martial law there. They all say the war,’ she said. ”Your mother said it was worse than the war because this time it was not the Germans who were pointing the guns at them.”
For days afterwards Marie spoke of nothing else but dark, dirty cities, of the Wroclaw Central Station smelling of spilled beer and sour vomit, of people standing in line-ups for hours, motionless, seemingly resigned to what was happening to them. Her visa said three weeks, but she had to leave after two - she couldn’t take it any more.