Case white, p.19
Case White, page 19
Uneasy as he is about returning by plane to Berlin, there is genuine relief in getting off the ground. Three times he has felt this sense of dislocation, he recalls as he weathers the shudders of the Junkers when it strikes air changes above the river. The first time was at Mehring Damm 26, the second at the pagan site on the coast above Niski Kosciol, and now Wewelsburg. Maybe ‘the magic is getting organized.’ Magic. That, too, is becoming real.
6
Like a snow queen in the silver dawn, Lutka stands at the foot of a frozen pond outside Niski Kosciol. Once she was a princess at this very spot, gathering her garlands from among the high grasses of spring and summer. Now she has come here to commit suicide.
Moving like a skater she starts out onto the ice: push-glide, push-glide, push-glide. Currier & Ives. Push-glide, push-glide – crack! Arms sweeping up in a pale ballet.
A bone-shattering chill grips her as she accelerates through the hole, the hem of her dress closing over her like the petals of a flower. Bubbles rise in short strings, white as pearls, and disappear as though corruptible in the air of the living. Seconds pass, and then she sprouts up again, gasping and draining like a leaky rain barrel. She has straightened her legs and found the bottom not much more than waist deep.
Her extremities are cruelly pinched, her clothes already beginning to stiffen with ice. Not thinking to tear anything off, she flounders to the edge of the pond and from there across the brittle snow to the first street, second house down. Almost too numb to feel the jarring of her fist, she pounds on the door.
In the few seconds it takes her Aunt Zofia to leave a chair, Lutka is sputtering out like a guttering candle. But then the door is open and a zephyr of hot air floats over her like a web, and her aunt’s enlightened gasp against the irregular wheeze of a tea kettle presupposes rescue. Strong hands clasp her like a block of ice, for she can no longer move, or even fall down now that the supporting door is open.
“Mother of God! Mother of God!” the old lady keeps repeating. She is still an erg of human flesh when the task requires, but age has wrinkled her skin the way waves wrinkle a beach. “What happened to you? Mother of God!”
Before the fire, she unwinds her niece like a mummy. The clothes pile up, stiff as plaster casts, looking much bigger than Lutka herself, who stands knock-kneed, slump-shouldered and eventually naked. Towels come out; a comforter is slung over her. The old lady brisks her as immodestly as she might have three decades earlier after a hot tub bath.
Lutka’s purple lips move, but the words remain locked up. Pink and saved and miserable, she sits on the hearth, swaddled in comforters and cupping a bowl of broth.
“Now, how did you get so drenched?” Zofia demands, re-enthroned in her chair an arm’s length away.
“The pond,” Lutka gets out, sipping broth. “I tried to drown myself.”
Old Zofia never misses a beat but continues to rock as if she has already figured everything out.
“Your brother Tadeusz went through the ice, did you know that? Christmas Eve, it was. You must have been two or three then. Right through on a sled. Henryk was there and had him out in a flash. Got himself soaked, too. They looked like a pair of cod packed in ice for Warsaw. Henryk, he wouldn’t undress. As if anyone cared to see his holy bare bottom.” She laughs shockingly loud. “Never complained about thawing out, but he didn’t father another baby for six years!”
Lutka smiles wanly in spite of herself.
“You didn’t want to drown yourself, dear. The pond is much too shallow for that. If you had wanted to drown yourself, there’s the lake half a kilometer further.”
“I forgot.”
Zofia stops rocking. “Is there a man worth hating yourself for?”
Lutka stares vacantly at the ascending sparks. “I’m preg – I’m pregnant. All that time married to Jan and he thought it was me. That I was the one who couldn’t … couldn’t –”
Leaving her chair without actually straightening, Zofia lifts another log onto the fire.
Lutka slowly shakes her head. “… unforgivable.”
Zofia grunts. “What’s unforgivable? Nature doesn’t much care where her seeds get sown. It was the German, I take it, and so now you’ve decided to do the noble thing, is that it? Spare your parents the shame. They certainly would have been grateful.”
“Papa would.”
“But he wouldn’t know about the baby, would he? Just that his daughter committed suicide.”
Silence.
“And the baby, you’d be willing to kill it?” asks Zofia.
“What kind of life will an illegitimate child have in Niski Kosciol?” Lutka says leadenly.
Her aunt leans toward her with a crone’s scowl. “What kind of life will it have dead?”
Lutka winces and bursts into tears. Zofia nods in satisfaction and resumes rocking.
“You’re sorry, I take it,” the old woman says a minute or two later.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry … so sorry. I’ve never done anything right in my whole life. I couldn’t stay in the village when I was a girl, and I’m sorry for that. I went away to Germany against my father’s wishes, and I’m sorry for that. I fell in love with the wrong man and brought him home to defy my father, and when I should’ve married him, I married the wrong man instead. I’m sorry for all those things. I’m sorry for not having a baby when I should have and for having one when I shouldn’t have, and now I’m sorry because I tried to do a terrible thing to it, and I’m sorry because of the life I’m going to give it –”
“That’s much too sorry, even though you didn’t mention becoming an actress! Just as well. Now you have a real role to play.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you should wait and see about that life you’re going to give your child. How far along are you?”
“Three months, I think.”
“Well, I can’t give the baby a father, but I can make it all right with your parents and the village.”
“But how?”
“Never mind the details. Trust me. I’m like an old clam lying on the beach. There may be sea moss growing on my shell, but when I open my mouth it’s still smooth as silk. Maybe I even have a pearl or two inside. The family will be together soon for Easter. Trust me until then.”
“Pisanki!” cry the children, rushing for the wooden bowl containing hard-boiled Easter eggs.
“I did this one – see the stag?” Zbigniew boasts.
“Grazyna’s is the best,” asserts Bogdan.
“No fighting!” Prakseda warns, leveling a finger. “Let Grandmamma choose first.”
Helena Gerlak – Grandmamma – waves the honor aside. “Without my glasses I can’t even see the designs.”
“Take the brown one, Grandmamma,” advises diminutive Jagna, who boiled that particular egg in onion skins.
Zofia is accorded a similar choice, followed by Henryk and each of his four daughters in descending order of age – Prakseda, Lutka, Cecelia, Maria – then the three husbands and unmarried Feliks, and finally, the eight children. Nineteen in all. Henryk rumbles the prayer. Loaves of hot babka, a sweet yellow bread, are brought out. A plump chicken follows, goat’s cheese, cold sour milk, cherry vodka, a wine which Feliks says was “made in Hungary but aged in Poland,” and suddenly there is a knock at the door.
“It’s Father Ledochowski,” Helena predicts as Feliks goes to answer.
But the young man who edges in beside Feliks with his pant cuffs tied in the manner of bikers is a stranger.
“Telegram for Lutka Krantz,” he reads from the envelope.
The long table falls silent.
“People up the street said it must mean here,” the young messenger chirps hopefully.
Aunt Zofia’s eyes weigh heavily on her niece, and Lutka rises like a sleepwalker to accept the telegram, after which Feliks gives the delivery boy a slice of babka and closes the door. The shudder of the bike frame is audible against the crackle of the fire. Something fragile in the way Lutka holds the slip of paper as she reads demands interpretation, and when it flutters to the floor and she bursts into tears, the pang of raw sympathy that flashes round the room misses no one.
Aunt Zofia, having brazenly read over her niece’s shoulder, pushes Lutka into her parents’ bedroom and slams the door. An indecisive moment follows before the general rush to recover the telegram. Prakseda has it, raising it above all hands before slowly lowering it to eye level and reading aloud: “‘REGRET TO INFORM YOU HUSBAND DIED SATURDAY LAST IN AFTERMATH OF EXPLOSION YOUR APARTMENT -- stop -- DEATHBED WISH WAS FOR BABY TO BE NAMED AFTER MATERNAL GRANDFATHER -- stop -- FUNERAL TUESDAY 2 PM ST JAMES CHAPEL BERLIN.’”
Behind the closed door, Zofia has her niece by the arms as she whispers urgently, “Of course he isn’t dead. I sent the telegram. I had to surprise you and hope you’d cry. And so you did. Wonderful crying, and no acting at all. Now it’s struck everyone at once, so it comes out right and not twisted along the way. And you can be sure the messenger alerted half the village trying to find Lutka Krantz – he is the father, isn’t he? You never answered me.”
“Yes.”
“No matter. You and Josef were married, and when you found out you were pregnant, you came home to rest a few months. You were going to break it to your parents gently, and Josef was going to come in the spring when he could leave whatever work he does. You’ll have to go away a few days to attend the funeral, of course. I’ve made arrangements for you to stay at Leba – that’s where I went last week to pay the money and telegraph the Berlin office to send the telegram you got today. But you must insist on going alone. As for your belongings in Berlin, there will be nothing left. The explosion ruined everything, you’ll say. Do you understand? I’ve made it all right for your baby in Niski Kosciol, Lutka, and now you have the longest running performance of your life.”
“They’ll never believe it.”
“Are you telling me I’m not clever? Of course they’ll believe it. They saw it happen, didn’t they? Listen, when I think of a ruse it’s no common turnips. Why, you cried yourself, didn’t you? You have no idea how fancy this is. Did you see the way we sat? That was no accident, you know. Bogdan, who can’t read, on your left. Myself on your right so I could read the telegram first. That damned cart all the way to Leba. I’m an old lady, don’t tell me I made that trip for nothing. I even tucked an onion in my shoe to make you cry in here if necessary. Did you see the cat when I walked by? You feel guilty and you can’t imagine this thing working out, that’s all. Go confess to Father Ledochowski, if you want to feel guilty, but in the meantime look upset –”
A low knock trembles through the door. Helena’s voice.
“Well?” from Zofia softly. “Here’s your mother, ready to tell you how much everyone loves you, and how the baby will have a grandfather to replace his father. Can you act like a widow again?”
Lutka barely nods before the door opens and the whole family crowds around them.
Zofia lets herself be edged out of the room. Yes, indeed, they believe it. Hasn’t she always been able to manipulate old Henryk? And if you turn the mule the cart will follow. He is too simple and she has been too elaborate for him to suspect a deception. All the way to Leba to send a telegram!
Stooping to remove the slice of onion from her shoe, she winks at the cat.
Later, when everyone has gone to church to pray, Henryk sits alone cracking the last hard-boiled egg.
“Who does that old meddler think she’s flattering?” he asks the same cat. “Naming the baby after me if it’s a boy! Zofia, you never were as smart as you gave yourself credit for. And Henryk Gerlak is not as stupid as he used to be …”
7
“I was hoping I wouldn’t find you here,” Fritz Ender says in the doorway of Krantz’s apartment.
“Bartels has my sketches,” Krantz replies. “There was nothing else for me to do.”
“You have to supervise, Josef. They’re not skilled laborers. They’ll build turrets upside down and put a drawbridge where you have a door.”
Krantz frowns. “What kind of laborers are they? They look like zombies. When do they eat? I saw two of them collapse myself. I think one of them was dead. I don’t like knowing some poor bastard might drop in his tracks because I added a few meters on a blueprint.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard there are political prisoners here. The SS ordered them to work on the project.”
“If that’s the way they’re treated, why don’t they just hang them?”
Fritz closes his eyes. “That would certainly take all the fun out of being alive, wouldn’t it? Especially for the ninety-five percent who will survive Wewelsburg. They’re criminals, Josef. Don’t ask me what they’ve done, I don’t know. But there are criminals in Germany.” He rotates the visor on his cap to contemplate the death’s head. “Is that me? Do I look like a man with a whip?”
“You want some coffee, Fritz?”
“The SS is lots of people: cooks, tailors, clerks … civilian architects under contract. They shouldn’t pass judgment on each other.”
“Do you want some coffee?”
“Are you coming back?”
“In a few days.”
“Tomorrow.”
“It’s boring out there. No newspapers, no restaurants.”
“You can go to Paderborn.”
“The story of my sex life could be called Twelfth Night.”
“Do you want me to requisition a couple of whores for you?”
“Two days,” Krantz says. “Give me two more days.”
“I really don’t like showing up here like the Gestapo, you know,” says Fritz. “Two days, you said, and it’s been four. You’ve done a marvelous job so far, Himmler is pleased with the plans, no doubt the Führer himself feels generously disposed toward you, but Heydrich thinks you should belong to the Party. Are you listening? Reinhold Heydrich, Himmler’s deputy in the Gestapo and head of the SD. He’s nobody to fool with, Josef, and he wants your immortal soul on the dotted line. I’ve told him that you don’t have a political judgment in your head, that you live solely for form and design. That’s why it’s so embarrassing for me to try and explain why you keep coming back to Berlin. Well, this time I’ve got good news for you. The heavy work is done except for the north tower dome, and that should be finished by the end of the week. There are only a few political prisoners on hand – well-fed and underworked – and they’ll be gone by Friday. Hired craftsmen are working inside, the firm of Liebler-Hintz is handling wood interiors, and bids from private glaziers have been taken. Your services are henceforth mandatory, your absences indefensible. Don’t make it sticky, Josef.”
He was going back anyway.
He doesn’t know why he keeps the apartment in Berlin. He will live at Schloss Wewelsburg until the project is completed. No SS barracks for him, no garrulous village widow with spare room. Lutka Lednicki is a village widow. (He doesn’t know why he keeps the apartment.) There really isn’t any reason for keeping the apartment. He is going to stay at Wewelsburg this time. And he doesn’t know why he keeps the apartment, or leaves the key above the lintel. After all, Lutka is probably very happy in Niski Kosciol.
So he goes back to Wewelsburg and strolls through the crazy castle gate imprinted with the twelve ancient circles of the diocese of the Bishops of Paderborn – twelve is important, as in twelve members of the Supreme Rite at Thule – and over the stones of the lower hall, and up to the wood floors of the higher levels to the upper chamber in the north tower where sits the Round Table – as in King Arthur’s Knights – whose twelve thrones for twelve SS elite are in the crafting, and whose twelve pillars to support their twelve coats of arms are already in place – as in twelve, Ibid., Op. Cit., et al.
There are glaziers glaziering on the east face and masons masonrying on the steps of the Treppenturm. A matched set of skeletal beings in gray workmen’s uniforms remind him of the other reason he didn’t want to leave Berlin as they bear rolled tapestries from room to room as rigidly as pallbearers. He makes a few notes and inquires if the mosquitoes are bad in the castle after sunset, then asks an
SS-Mann to place some blankets and wood in the un-windowed lower chamber of the north tower. This particular room is to be used for rituals, including the burning of a knight’s arms. Twelve knights arms. There are twelve plinths for holding funerary urns around the walls. An eternal flame will be lit here, but eternity hasn’t started yet for Himmler’s knights, and so the wood …
Later he eats in the village, and when he returns to the castle the other workmen are gone, except for one of the glaziers tap-tapping on a casement in the distance and swearing in thick, slow syllables. After awhile that stops too, leaving Krantz to sense the castle’s solitude. If solitude is the word. He has resurrected this structure from foundation to roof, and yet it shuts him out somehow. The newest masonry seems to respire with the old, as if hidden capillaries have worked their way up through stone and mortar, pumping an ancient vitality out of the ruins. Goethe was right: “The fate of the architect … to produce buildings he may never enter in.”
Heat lightning shimmers on the horizon and a sudden wind comes furrowing across the tops of the Westphalian forest like an armada of galleons. A storm is imminent. From a second floor window opening he watches an SS sentry struggle with his rain cape against gusts in the courtyard. Not far away a cigarette sheds embers beneath the silhouette of another sculpted helmet. Knights.
The next flicker of lightning is closer, and he makes his way to the north tower by intermittent flashes. There he uses a flashlight to enter the lower chamber, arrange his blankets and seat himself against the wall. A ventilation system – like the Vatican’s – for removing smoke from the burning of a knight’s arms allows the lower chamber air to circulate.
