The god of that summer, p.12
The God of that Summer, page 12
Two officers turned towards Luisa, and only now did her parents notice. With her cream-coloured organza stole on her elbows, her mother sucked a corner of her mouth into her cheek and shook her head with a quiet grunt as if she had just witnessed some sort of childish behaviour, while the silent admiration of her father, emphasized by his raised brows, exuded a melancholy that made Luisa’s eyes glisten, for whatever reason. She wanted to comfort him and didn’t know where to look, and when she quietly wished her brother-in-law a happy birthday with her arm outstretched, she actually curtsied out of embarrassment.
Her cheeks burned, but Vinzent, in a black dinner jacket with gleaming silk lapels, drew her to him and said between his teeth: ‘Let them talk. You’re allowed to emphasize what you’ve got, aren’t you? Your beauty will be a present to me this evening.’ Again he ran his thumb across the palm of her hand as if to rub away the sweat there. ‘I’ll show you the new bunker later.’
There was gentle mockery in Sibylle’s smile, but she offered her elbow, and with relief Luisa linked arms and stepped with her into the big drawing room. Black SS and red swastika flags hung on the walls of the oval room, which was crowned by an acanthus frieze and already very full. Officers’ caps lay on almost all of the sideboards and window seats, some with silver braids or death’s heads above the brim, and the fingers of pastel-coloured gloves protruded from the ladies’ handbags behind them.
The chairs and sofas had been pushed up against the walls, and people were chatting in small groups. Many women wore evening gowns with tight bodices and wide puffy skirts, and strapped pumps or dancing shoes of patent leather, satin or velvet, whose manufacture had been prohibited long since. There were also traditional costumes from the various Gau areas, and Husum lace caps, and Billie, who was wearing gold stud earrings, straightened her collar and said, ‘Stockings, skirt and dark-blue wool jacket with a white blouse, it looks good. But I’d actually leave out the rouge, little one; it stands out too obviously against your pale skin. And your mouth is still too fresh for lipstick. On the other hand always paint your eyelashes twice, trust me. Otherwise we redheads look as if we haven’t got any eyelashes at all.’
A uniformed man at a grand piano with the word ‘Bösendorfer’ on it was playing operetta tunes, and a waiter in tails held out a tray of glasses of sparkling wine. Billie wedged her envelope bag under her armpit, picked up the fullest glass and half-drained it with a gulp. But Luisa declined, she hadn’t been feeling well since the morning. ‘And what about perfume?’ she asked, sniffing her shoulder. ‘How much are you supposed to use? One drop? Two?’
‘Oh, that’s not so simple,’ her sister said. ‘You can easily overdo it. The best thing to do is get hold of a bottle with a pump, spray a quick burst in the air and walk through the cloud. That’s the most elegant way. What you smell here, by the way, is gardenia, freshly arrived from France and impossibly expensive. If you steal so much as a sniff of it, I’ll scatter your books with rat poison!’
Then she drained the rest of her glass and watched a tall civilian with a pearl on his tie as he passed in front of her. ‘That plonk’s not too bad,’ she said, smacking her lips. ‘It could even be champagne. But right now I’d rather have a tasty man. I haven’t danced for an eternity.’
As they walked among the people, many women looked askance at Sibylle, and she smiled at an officer, probably an acquaintance, standing at the ‘harbour bar’ set up specially for the party and decorated with nets and pennants. But no sooner had he made his cheek bulge with his tongue than Sibylle seemed to see straight through him, and when Luisa asked her if the Grand Admiral had arrived she jutted her chin. ‘Very unlikely,’ she murmured. ‘Not a halo to be seen. Perhaps he’s standing at the buffet and gobbling down all our Russian caviar.’
The pianist interrupted his playing with a flourish at the keyboard, and a white-haired woman, plumper than the people one generally saw during those years, approached the grand piano. Many guests surrounded the pedestal as she unfolded a sheet of paper, a densely typed page, and Billie let out a low moan. She pushed with her shoulder against a mirrored door, tugged on Luisa’s woollen jacket, and stole with her into the adjacent dining room. ‘Honoured guests, my dear Vini . . .’
Lamps made of antlers hung on the walls, which were lined with dark red leather. Bar tables with white cloths had been set up, and in an old glass cabinet, alongside all kinds of Meissen figurines, a service was displayed in such a way that the gold swastikas were visible on the base of the mocha cups.
Behind a long buffet, between columns of plates and bowls, staff stood in naval blouses, waiting to be able to serve the guests their starters: smoked eel, marinated roast beef, pumpernickel with shrimps and dill. There were potato, pasta and spinach salads, half-eggs with sardines, stuffed cucumbers, Bismarck herrings and salmon tartare. In the middle of the table, still with the bristles on its hoof, lay a wild boar ham, and behind it the main courses steamed, a row of rectangular pans heated by little paraffin flames, full of mashed potato, rice with peas, sole and bacon and all kinds of sliced roast meats. The whole thing was crowned by a many-layered marzipan cake with a chocolate ‘40’ at the end of the buffet, where candlelight shone through jelly and candied fruits.
Flickering in the draught, it was reflected in the rimless glasses of a man handing out plates from a stack. He wore a dark flannel suit with waistcoat and watch chain, and had a whitish duelling scar below his cheekbone, proud flesh. ‘Yes, amazing, isn’t it? It’s almost incredible,’ he said, and smiled at the wondering girls, who were slightly at a loss in the face of such variety. ‘In Berlin they’re eating the mildew from the basement walls, and here . . . How many warehouses do you think were looted for this?’
His hair, combed straight back, smelled of birch water, and ignoring the staff he took a chicken leg from the buffet and added in an undertone: ‘Children, enjoy this war, the peace is going to be terrible!’
Then he looked at Sibylle, her high breasts, and whispered something in her ear that made her laugh, embarrassed and mocking at the same time. When she turned away from him with a shake of the head, her underpinned hairdo swayed slightly, and the man, with a gilt-edged Party badge on his jacket, also nodded to Luisa. ‘I was just telling your sister that she looks like that Queen of Egypt, the beautiful one,’ he said, smiling with plainly false teeth and biting off a mouthful of meat. ‘But I couldn’t remember the name. You’re sisters, aren’t you? What’s your name?’
Luisa asked for a lemon tart. Colourful hundreds and thousands trickled from it and crunched under their shoes. ‘Nefertiti,’ she murmured distractedly, left Billie alone with the man and stepped into the little bay window, enclosed in velvet curtains, at the end of the room. In that corner, which held a library from Gudrun’s time as a teacher, there was a chaise longue next to a palm tree, and she lifted the blackout blind high enough to see the glittering Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, over a hundred metres wide at that spot.
The transporter bridge swung over from Rendsburg before disappearing behind a row of silos, and she drew her feet up onto the cushion and spooned the cream from the pastry. After the speech in the drawing room, after the cheers and applause, music was played again, a record this time, Marika Rökk. Luisa knew the voice from the radio and moved her head back and forth. In the next room people were starting to dance, although she couldn’t see them since the door to the drawing room was only slightly open; but after only a few bars the steps of many pairs of dancers set the old parquet floor vibrating and the tips of the palms twitched. ‘In der Nacht ist der Mensch nicht gerne alleine – No one likes to be alone at night.’
They sang along with those lines. Outside the stars dimmed in the light of the circling anti-aircraft lights, dimmed and then flashed again. A completely dark navy ship, a massive tower of steel and shadow and dull grey, from which the gun barrels pointed in all directions, glided slowly past the house towards the Baltic, towards Kiel harbour. No one could be seen on deck or behind the black windows and portholes, and the water only wrinkled a little in front of the pointed bow. At one point on the ruptured starboard side the ribs were exposed, inadequately concealing the huge banner fastened to the railing and the anchors with the inscription ‘The Jews wanted this war!’
*
She lowered the blind again, switched on the reading lamp and flicked through a picture book. It was a book of photographs from Africa: men with painted bodies and spears in the savannah, women with pointed breasts skinning an antelope, children wrestling by a fire with meat roasting on it. The paws of a sleeping cheetah hung from a treetop, and a black marabou stork prowled like an inspector through the shallow water otherwise occupied only by flamingos.
Luisa gave a start. The people at the buffet also interrupted their chat to see where the scream had come from. Throwing her sequined dress and petticoats around her like foam, so that her stocking tops could be seen, a woman rushed from the room, skidded by the balcony door and reached for the handle. Her smile was radiant, the glance with which she looked back over her shoulder before disappearing into the night was filled with wild awe, and the guests at the standing tables, spoons or forks raised halfway to their mouths, turned their heads curiously.
But the gaunt officer in the gala uniform who followed her a few heartbeats later was in no hurry. Striding at a moderate pace he greeted the assembled party, a brief nod with his chin raised, once rested his fingertips on his temple, and only revealed the true urgency of his situation by making the mistake of closing the door before he was fully standing on the terrace. The tip of his dagger of honour in its silver-plated sheath was still sticking into the room, and the clatter made everybody jump.
‘Ah, this spring,’ Gudrun said, suddenly standing by the bay window. The ribbon on her pink dress was orange, as were her shiny satin shoes, and she folded her fingers over her belly and smiled at her stepsister. ‘Men are children, aren’t they? They always want to play chasey. But why are you sitting here on your own like this? Don’t you like it at our house?’
‘I do,’ Luisa said politely and smoothed her skirt. ‘It’s lovely, it’s very festive, thank you. I’d just like to read for a while.’
Gudrun touched the curls above her ear, rolled into the shape of a snail, and looked at her with a frown. ‘At my party? Hm, I don’t know . . . Are you really reading? Or are you just hiding behind your books so that you don’t have to talk to anyone and can pursue your own dreams? Come, child, mingle with the people a little, we’ve got interesting guests. They’ll teach you how the world really works.’
She stepped beneath the fringed pelmet and looked at the book along with her: the sun was falling beyond the river on whose shores the buffaloes and zebras drank, and here and there the eyes of crocodiles flashed in the murky water. ‘Yes, I’ll do it in a minute,’ Luisa said. ‘I’ve been wondering that too. But right now I’ve got a bit of a headache.’
With a sigh Gudrun pointed to the windowsill, to the plate with the unfinished cake. ‘Then perhaps you should get something proper to eat, don’t you think? Potatoes, roast meat or eel, so that you put on a bit of weight. I’ve been wondering for some time why you don’t gain anything on the farm, where there’s any amount of fat. And incidentally men don’t like bean-poles, you know. If they grab you as they do it’s always better to have a bit of upholstery.’ She smiled. ‘But yes, perhaps it’s a bit early to think about such things . . . Or am I mistaken, does the make-up have a deeper meaning? Are you finally trying to catch up with Billie?’
Without looking up, Luisa shook her head and went on flicking the pages. One chimpanzee with a silver-grey furry back was sniffing the growth-like hindquarters of another, and she wrinkled her nose and said, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’
Gudrun sat down beside her and ran the back of her fingers over Luisa’s cheek. Her wedding ring felt cool. ‘And I have no idea what’s supposed to be pretty about it. The natural look is still the best one for us. And you shouldn’t pay any attention to her opinions, believe me. That sort of loose talk could cost you your life. You’ve heard the way she used to talk about the Führer and his victory. What on earth put such crazy thoughts in her head? That fashion-obsessed girl hasn’t got a clue about politics. And tell me, is it true about Dad, and his endless drunken chatter?’
Luisa frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked hoarsely. ‘I don’t remember. Did you just break wind?’
‘Excuse me?’ Gudrun, startled, leapt to her feet. ‘Oh God, that’s quite possible, sorry!’ she whispered and opened a window. ‘That darned brat is so impetuous already, it’s unbelievable. That fluttering feeling was quite pleasant at first, but recently it’s been trampling on my guts every minute of the day. Perhaps it really will be a boy.’ She flapped her hand through the air and gave a pained smile. ‘Is that better?’
Luisa shrugged. ‘It didn’t bother me. By the way, do you know that in horse-breeding you can tell the sex of the unborn animal very easily? For example if a mare has a female foal in her belly, she stands calmly and peacefully among the others in the pasture and eats grass. But if she’s pregnant with a stallion she gets irritable and aggressive and keeps mounting other mares, as if she were a stallion herself. Incredible, isn’t it?’
Gudrun laughed, but it sounded wooden. ‘My God, what a crazy thing you are,’ she said and closed the window. As she did so she studied her stepsister with the appraising seriousness of a teacher who can’t tell whether a child is naive or unusually refined. ‘Is that really true?’ she asked. ‘Or is it just another thing you made up?’
Herr Thamling had told her, but before she could say so, Vinzent joined them, holding a glass in front of his smiling mouth. ‘So this is the cave where the most beautiful girls of the evening are hiding,’ he said and put his arm around his wife. ‘While I’m getting bored to death with those wizened and bemedalled old raisins out there, you’re telling each other the wildest love stories, isn’t that right? I can hear you!’
His pointed lapels stuck out over the chest of his dinner jacket, and Gudrun smiled up at him. ‘You’re not the only one with secrets, my friend . . . I’ve just been given a lesson in poetic biology, very interesting. And I’m trying to persuade our little one here that it would be a good idea for her to mingle with the people. She doesn’t need to be quite as forward as her sister, who’s letting them write their addresses on her stocking. But I’m sure that a bit of conversation with such a cultivated girl would delight our guests.’ She straightened his bow tie. ‘But she seems to prefer the society of books.’
Vinzent took a sip and smacked his lips. ‘Which I understand very well!’ he replied. ‘Before my life with you I had the happiest hours of my life in the old agricultural college in Malente, in the library. Those comfortable armchairs with the foot supports, that incredible peace! You could spend whole afternoons dozing among the shelves.’ He winked at Luisa, set the glass down and hugged Gudrun more tightly. ‘Will you come then, please? Duty calls; Hinrich has already asked for you twice. He probably needs another speech . . .’
*
Applause rang out, and the slender exultation of a cornet. The piano and a bass joined in, and suddenly the door at the back end of the dining room was thrown open. Brightly coloured paper streamers shot through the air and hung on the antler lamps, and amidst loud singing a conga came stamping past the buffet; the lined-up glasses tinkled against one another. The glittering lights on the sauces trembled, cherries rolled from the jellies, and cream toppings sank in on themselves as the horrified staff tried to wave away the confetti snowing down on them with napkins or their bare hands. ‘As fast as the propeller spins, the pilot’s wanton joy begins . . .’
Sibylle was in the line as well, smiling broadly, and she nodded to Luisa to join in. It was her lovely, free, slightly frivolous smile; it seemed to create a glittering space around her. But Luisa just waved and stayed sitting where she was with her book, and when her sister disappeared through the drawing-room door with the others she could see a strand of hair slipping on the back of her head, revealing the red velvet pincushion. ‘Pilot, greet the sky for me / give my love to the Milky Way / across the vault of heaven you speed / until the break of day!’
*
The song grew quieter. For a moment the smell of sweat and perfume overwhelmed the aroma of the food, and an old waiter in tails that were far too big for him picked up things that the partygoers had lost: a cufflink, hairpins, a pair of glasses.
Raising the hem of her coffee-coloured brocade dress slightly, Luisa’s mother stepped through the French windows and watched after the conga line. She had put the stole, which was really supposed to cover her upper arms, around her neck like a scarf, and stood sighing by the bay window. ‘The wind is mild, everything smells of spring and the sea, and the bridge and the roofs are intact, as they were in peacetime. The residents of Rendsburg must be good people. Have you seen my daughter?’
Luisa giggled quietly and turned the pages. Elephants trotted through the savannah in a cloud of dust, the young among the legs of the adults. ‘Mum, I am your daughter . . .’
She waved a hand dismissively and looked at the sweets on the buffet. ‘Of course, child, I know. You’re my darling, you always will be. Right now I mean the other one, our Gudrun. She’s behaving so strangely, don’t you think? She was going to get me some drops for my heart and that nail-fungus tincture, and she hasn’t said a word about it, just imagine. I think she’s cutting me out. She’s staying out of my way, God alone knows why.’
