The two loves of sophie.., p.8
The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, page 8
Across a sea of faces, Max saw Sophie smile shyly at him.
Hans
He walked hand in hand with Sophie through the mild May night, the mizzle wetting their foreheads as they talked. Sophie was telling him how thrilled she was that he would finally be able to see her mother’s new art. Hans looked back at the entourage trailing along the street behind them. He wanted to be alone with her, to taste her soft mouth again, to bask in the shared glory of their performance, to catch her up on all the things he hadn’t yet got round to sharing with her. ‘Tell me again why the Arnsteins are here,’ he said, trying not to sound annoyed.
‘Jens’s father is writing a piece about my mother for the newspaper, remember? I’ve been meaning to tell you, actually: I think we may have misjudged Jens. He’s not so bad once you get to know him. He’s quite sweet, in fact.’ Hans stared at her, speechless. It was true that Jens Arnstein seemed a much nicer person in his dreams, but surely Sophie didn’t expect him to just forget all those months of bullying and humiliation. He was about to say this when she gripped his arm. ‘Hans, look! We’re here.’
Inside the bright gallery she pulled him by the hand through the elegant, wine-sipping crowd. ‘Come on, I want to show you my favourite pieces!’ She took him to see a series of paintings of Vienna viewed from the air. In the first, the edge of a shadow was just visible in one corner; by the fifth, it stretched almost all the way across the city, covering the streets and buildings in darkness. From the other side of the room, Hans heard Sophie’s mother talking loudly to Herr Arnstein: ‘No, I am not a prophet, simply a seismograph. The things I see and feel are already here around us. Those who are unaware of them lack sensitivity. Or they prefer ignorance.’
‘But my favourite series is over here,’ Sophie said, leading him into an adjoining room filled with sculptures. ‘You recognise this one?’
Hans looked down and saw the clay head split in two by a cleaver, mounted on a white plinth. ‘Rift #1, 1933’, said the label. On the wall next to it was an ink drawing of a girl playing a grand piano, except that the right-hand side of the instrument was falling, like liquid, onto the ground. Even parts of the girl’s hair and dress were pouring sideways. Hans thought of Sophie playing the Bösendorfer in his father’s shop window hours before it went up in flames. One day I will tell her the truth, he swore, vaguely imagining the two of them as adults together, perhaps even married, the secrets of his past out in the open. ‘Is that you?’ he asked, pointing to the drawing.
But she didn’t respond because Jens Arnstein sidled up beside her just then and gushed: ‘Your mother’s a genius, Sophie.’
‘Thank you, Jens,’ she replied politely. ‘I’m glad you appreciate her work.’
Hans whispered: ‘Sophie.’ But she was talking to Arnstein now, her back turned to Hans, so he moved on to the next sculpture. This was a clay figure, about three feet tall, of a man whose torso divided into two necks and heads. The head on the left looked angry and its arm was making a Nazi salute, while the head on the left recoiled in terror. Hans read the label: ‘The Other, 1934’. Was the Nazi’s face scarred or was he imagining it? He examined it more closely. The moulding was so crude that it was impossible to tell, but even so the idea disturbed him.
Sophie was still deep in conversation with Jens Arnstein. Hans said her name again, touching her arm. She turned towards him, about to speak, but Hans and Arnstein’s eyes met at that moment.
‘Schatten,’ his enemy said, turning suddenly pale.
At the same moment a tray of canapés went flying. It clattered metallically to the floor as tiny squares of ham and pastry rained down. ‘What is this shit?’ someone yelled angrily. The hubbub of voices fell silent, as if the needle had been lifted from a gramophone record. ‘You call this art?’ Hans turned. It was Bauer, still dressed in his tux and bow tie. Suzanne Strom recoiled as Bauer yelled insults at her, spittle flying from his mouth. ‘This isn’t art, you bitch. It’s filth, it’s poison!’
Sophie looked as though she was about to faint. Hans put his hand to the small of her back, ready to catch her.
Two large men in suits approached Bauer. He raised his arms and said: ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m leaving. I have no desire to keep breathing this decadent bourgeois air. You lot will be first against the wall when the Führer takes Vienna, mark my words.’ His gaze strafed the faces in the room. When he saw Hans his expression changed instantly. In a relaxed, affable tone, he called out, ‘Hallo, Hans! See you at the rally next week!’ before nonchalantly walking out of the gallery, accompanied by the hulking figure of Karl.
Amid the frowning murmurs and nervous laughter that rose up in his wake, Sophie turned to Hans and said accusingly: ‘You know that man?’
Hans withdrew his hand from the small of her back.
Max
He sat next to Sophie at the Arnsteins’ long dining-room table. Jens was on the opposite side, deep in a philosophical debate with his sister Charlotte.
‘I think you have an admirer,’ Sophie whispered to him as he sipped his leek soup.
Max frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Jens’s sister. Surely you’ve noticed? She can’t keep her eyes off you.’
Max looked up. Charlotte, who was staring at him, blushed a deep red and looked down at her plate. ‘She’s probably just remembering all those times she thrashed me at chess.’
‘She’s pretty,’ said Sophie.
Was this true? If it was, Max had never paid attention. Jens’s sister was boyish and brainy, not to mention almost three years younger than him. ‘I think you’re just imagining things,’ he said.
There was a shriek of laughter from the far end of the table where the adults were sitting. Max’s father was running through his repertoire of jokes. Frau Arnstein and Helena the shop assistant were hanging on his every word while Max’s mother, who had heard all these lines a hundred times before, smiled indulgently. Sophie and Max listened to the next one and Sophie gave a throaty laugh. ‘He’s a charming man, your father. I remember him now …’ Max looked at her, surprised, and she moved her chair closer to his. ‘And you. I thought it was you when I saw you on the first day of school, but you didn’t seem to recognise me so I—’
‘I did recognise you,’ Max cut in. ‘And I was going to say something about it, but …’
‘Paula Weiss happened?’
He rolled his eyes, laughing. ‘Yeah. But that’s over now. She—’
‘I heard.’ Their faces were inching closer together as they spoke, as though their words were a string of spaghetti that they kept sucking between their lips, finishing each other’s sentences, their voices growing quieter. ‘It was horrible, what those Nazis did to you in the Augarten! Jens told me about you biting his hand, though. That was really brave.’
‘Stupid, more like,’ muttered Max.
‘Stupid … brave … Same thing, really.’
They both smiled, then seemed to realise how close they’d grown and looked around guiltily at the other guests. Across the table, Jens raised an eyebrow while Charlotte appeared to have discovered a fly in her soup. Sophie shuffled back in her chair to a more respectable distance and said: ‘I was shocked when I went back to your father’s shop to see you and it wasn’t even there. It’s lucky none of you were hurt.’
Max thought of Hans. ‘Yes, it could have been worse.’
‘So, maybe we can finally play a duet together?’
‘I’d like that,’ he said with a smile.
The rest of the evening passed swiftly and sweetly. There were several toasts – to Suzanne Strom’s new exhibition, to Franz Spiegelman’s new shop, to the Arnsteins’ warm hospitality – and a magnificent meal of roast chicken with potatoes and figs, followed by Kaiserschmarrn. The conversation went over Max’s head at times but he enjoyed it all the same. At one point, during a discussion of Jung’s concept of individuation, Frau Strom said: ‘What he’s saying is we cannot be fully human until that shadow, that inner darkness, is brought into the light of consciousness.’
‘You know,’ said Herr Arnstein, sucking on his pipe, ‘a wise man once told me that no one is fully human until they’ve had their heart broken, lost a loved one, and become a parent.’
‘Oh come on, Papa, you made up that line yourself, didn’t you?’ drawled a loud voice from across the table.
Herr Arnstein shook his head. ‘You’re so cynical, Jens.’
‘So, wait, are you saying that we’re not fully human?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Well, in the sense of being wholly developed, of understanding life and the world, then no, probably not. But you are only twelve, Liebchen.’
‘According to the Nazis, most of us here aren’t fully human,’ said Jens. ‘They think we’re Untermenschen.’
‘They’re the ones who aren’t human!’ Sophie said savagely.
And, to her evident pleasure and embarrassment, everyone applauded.
Hans
He knocked but nobody answered so he sat outside her door and waited. He had barely slept last night and his whole body ached now. Twelve hours earlier Sophie had left the gallery with her mother and the Arnstein family, refusing to even look at him. He understood why she was angry but he felt sure he could explain if only she would listen. He didn’t want to lose her. He couldn’t. Surely they weren’t going to let politics drive them apart …
The lift door clattered open and Sophie’s mother emerged. A cold glare. Hans struggled to his feet, clumsy as a puppet. ‘Frau Strom, do you know where Sophie is? I need to talk to her.’
‘I’m here,’ said Sophie. She was still standing inside the lift, as if the sight of him had frozen her to the spot.
Suzanne Strom said something stern in French and Sophie replied, conciliatory. Her mother sighed, then went into the apartment. Hans and Sophie stood facing each other. Hans took a breath. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, I had no idea he was going to—’
‘Hans, we can’t be friends anymore.’
‘What?’ He felt like he was falling and had to put his hand to the wall to steady himself.
Sophie’s face looked small and pale. ‘How can we be? After what you did to Jens? He told me all about it.’
‘Oh come on, Sophie. I know you like him now but he’s a bully.’
‘But you didn’t attack him because he was a bully, you attacked him because he was a Jew.’
‘That’s not the point!’
‘Oh, it’s not?’ she said icily.
‘If you’ll just listen to me, you’ll understand …’
She crossed her arms and stared at him fiercely. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘I wanted to tell you last night. About the Hitler-Jugend, about Arnstein, but … not with all those people around.’
‘All those Jews, you mean?’
‘No, it’s not like that! National Socialism isn’t about hating Jews, it’s about being part of something bigger … building a better future …’ He began to stammer. He’d heard these arguments so many times at HJ meetings, spoken by authoritative men, and they’d always seemed to make sense. Now, in his own mouth, they were just words, rolling around meaninglessly like the beads of a necklace with the string cut.
‘You don’t even believe it,’ she said. ‘I might have more respect for you if you did. You’re just doing this because the others are doing it, because you’re afraid of what they’ll say if you don’t. Because you want to fit in.’
‘What about your father? He joined the Party, he works for the Führer. You still love him.’ Hans felt his face turn hot. Sophie said nothing and for a moment he wondered if he might have won her over. ‘You said it yourself: he hasn’t really changed. Well, that’s true for me too, Sophie. I—’
Suddenly her cheeks were red. ‘My father designs office buildings, he doesn’t beat people up in parks!’
Hans felt winded, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. ‘But …’
‘I have to go,’ she said coldly, turning away.
He put his hand on her arm. ‘Sophie, wait.’ Only three days ago they had kissed for the first time and Hans had believed that she was God’s reward to him for all the suffering he had endured. He wanted to tell her the truth about himself – that he was the boy in the music shop that afternoon, that he was Jewish and his parents had been killed by Nazis. If only the words would come out of his mouth then surely she would forgive him, understand, not turn away. But in the end all he managed to say was: ‘I love you.’
‘Please let go, Hans,’ she said in a quiet, shaky voice, staring down at the floor. ‘This is hard for me too, you know.’
He let go. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Hans stared at the blank wooden rectangle in disbelief. He couldn’t have lost her. He couldn’t.
June
Max
Water lapped the sides of the rowing boat. A hawk circled the blue sky. It was mid-afternoon, the air so hot that even the birds had fallen silent. Max and Sophie sat close together on the bench while Jens rowed them towards the shade of the tree-lined shore. He rested the oars in their rowlocks and the ripples in the lake faded to a glassy lull. Jens pulled a bottle of strawberry wine from his rucksack and took a swig, then passed it to Max. ‘I stole this from the icebox this morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some bread and cheese too.’
Max and Sophie grinned at him and they spent the next half-hour contentedly eating and drinking, dipping their hands in the lake’s cool water, hardly speaking for a change. ‘This is perfect,’ Sophie sighed, and Max nodded. He and Sophie had been staying at the Arnsteins’ house in the Wachau Valley for the past seven days and Max wished they could stay here forever.
A ladybird landed on Sophie’s left thigh and Max put his hand close to lure the insect onto it. Sophie pressed her leg to his finger-tips. The bare skin was smooth and warm. He glanced at her and their eyes met: a brief, silent electric shock. Then the ladybird flew off in a flash of red and black and Max reluctantly moved his hand away. He forced himself to keep breathing. Sophie passed him the bottle of wine. He drank some, then passed it to Jens.
Sophie cleared her throat. ‘So, what was your favourite book when you were a child?’ They had been asking each other questions like this all week, opening up their pasts and hopes and fears, and Max could feel their friendship growing more closely woven with each conversation. He suspected Sophie was just trying to erase the tension of the last few minutes, but the question interested him all the same.
‘Emil and the Detectives,’ Jens said quickly. ‘Although I reread it recently and it seemed a bit sinister to me, probably because I was imagining Emil and his friends as members of the Hitler-Jugend hunting down some poor Jew. It’s banned in Germany now, though, so apparently the Nazis don’t see it that way.’
‘Max, what about you?’ Sophie asked.
‘Peter Pan. I loved the idea of being able to fly, being taken to another land.’
‘Ich auch!’ said Sophie. ‘I used to read fairy tales all the time when I was little. Just that idea of a door opening in reality and leading you through to a place where magic happened …’
‘Jung says fairy tales are expressions of the collective unconscious,’ Jens said.
‘Still ploughing through his essays, then?’ she asked teasingly. Jens had asked her yesterday if she was ‘still ploughing through’ War and Peace, after she’d insisted on reading it despite his warnings about its length and dullness.
Jens sighed. ‘Jung isn’t boring, just hard to understand.’
‘What about you, Max?’ Sophie asked. ‘Are you still reading Freud?’
‘Yeah …’ Max had begun The Interpretation of Dreams earlier that week and was now close to the end. It was fascinating but its conclusions had left him perplexed, and slightly anxious. If dreams were wish fulfilment, what exactly was his subconscious wishing for? That his parents had died in a fire? That Paula was still his girlfriend? That he and his friends were Nazis? He stared into the haze of golden-haloed leaves above them and shuddered as he remembered last night’s dream. And to think he had once felt sorry for Hans …
‘My dad’s met Freud a few times,’ Jens offered. ‘Says he’s a bit of an oddball. But brilliant too, of course.’
‘Aren’t all brilliant people considered oddballs?’ Sophie asked.
‘Like your mum, you mean?’
She kicked him and the boat tilted.
‘I had a horrible dream last night,’ Sophie said. ‘Hitler was the headmaster in our school.’ Max watched her as she spoke. In profile, with her high cheekbones and long slender neck, her dark bobbed hair, she struck him at that moment as almost regal. ‘And everyone around him was being so obsequious. All our teachers, all the parents and students. They would beam with pride whenever he paid them a compliment and rush to put his orders into action. It was sickening.’
‘What about me?’ Jens asked. ‘Was I in it?’
‘Yes, you and Max were just like the others. I was the only one who hated him.’
‘What?’ Jens looked outraged.
Sophie shrugged. ‘I can’t control my dreams.’
‘I would never bow down to that bastard in real life – I hope you know that.’
‘I don’t think anyone can say that, really,’ Max said. ‘What if we’d grown up with different parents? We might be Nazis now, all three of us.’
‘Horseshit! There’s good and evil and that’s all there is to it.’ Jens downed the last gulp of wine, then flung the bottle as far as he could across the lake.
‘Calm down, Jens,’ Sophie said. Turning to Max, she frowned. ‘What makes you say that, Max? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but …’
Max hesitated, but not for long. Jens and Sophie were his friends and he trusted them completely. Besides, it didn’t seem such a momentous step, out here on the lake in the endless afternoon, so unmoored from reality. So he told them everything, from the dream that had saved his parents on the night of the fire to the most recent ones about a Hitler-Jugend summer camp. He gazed at the horizon while he spoke, avoiding their eyes. Then he fell silent and looked up to find them staring incredulously.
