Somewhere in Germany Page 13

  The pain in her chest paralyzed her body and her head. Regina was so completely convinced that her parents and Max had been in an accident that she did not dare open the telegram. She hurried back up to the fourth floor before she found the strength to tear open the yellow envelope.

  The letters pierced her senses like newly sharpened arrows and burned her throat with the hot salt of a pain she had forgotten was still in her. The long-gone days attacked her and shook her with merciless passion, but when she opened her eyes and started to breathe again, it was triumph that made her howl like a hyena, erasing all other emotions.

  “Arriving frankfurt saturday 6 o’clock, martin barret,” the telegram said.

  10

  “GOOD GOD, JETTEL, HOW YOUNG YOU STILL ARE,” Martin sighed and pressed Regina so close that she immediately knew what was going on. Time, the merciless thief, had not been able to rob him, but had left him with the habit of the fleeting glance. Martin had confused her with her mother when she was still a child and he a king.

  His hair, too, had remained victorious in the fight against the curse of change. It was still the color of African wheat that has shot up too fast toward the sun. The man, who in earlier days had crossed the gulf between past and present with giant steps, had eyes that were shining in the same bright blue as in the beginning of the bewildering story without end. Even in a dark German corridor, smelling of floor wax and vinegar, those eyes instantly became as light as the fur of sleeping dik-diks in the midday heat of Ol’ Joro Orok.

  When she first met him, Martin had shown up in Nakuru, had released Regina from the prison of her school, and on the way home had given her the magic of early knowledge. Back then he had worn the wrinkled khaki uniform of a British sergeant and a crown that only Regina was able to see.

  Now he had disguised himself as a successful businessman on a trip to Europe, wearing a starched white shirt, a blue blazer with an emblem and gold buttons, a yellow and white striped tie, and a light-colored duffle coat. It was as if he had fallen out of the skies to embrace the friends of his youth. He had not, however, made too much of an effort to get used to his new costume in time. His hands still held too much of the strong grasp of the world he had come from. The light pressure of his lips on her skin scorched away any doubt. Regina had forgotten nothing of the unsettling crush of her childhood days although she had, years ago, buried it more carefully than an experienced dog hides its bone.

  “I am not Jettel,” she said when laughter no longer tickled her throat. “I am Regina.”

  “That is impossible. I know for sure that Regina is a child.”

  “A child without parents. They left this morning and will only be back tomorrow night.”

  The whistling, as sharp as the wind that has lost its way between two trees standing too close to each other, reached Regina’s ear even before Martin said, “I once knew someone called Lucky Hans. Is he still around?”

  “Sure, but he is called Martin now and sends his telegrams too late.”

  “There you go, you can see now how lucky that Martin is. May he come in? Or have you been warned to be wary of men?”

  “Only of strangers,” Regina said and pulled Martin into the hallway.

  When he hung his coat on the hook, she saw his face in the mirror and also noticed that he quickly swallowed the words his lips had already begun to form and rubbed the skin on the back of his nose with two fingers. She remembered that he had done that in her first life whenever he was embarrassed and needed time to think. Her mother had told her his secret then; now Regina was able to rely on her own eyes. “You must be hungry. Do you want to have something to eat?” she murmured and became as insecure as Martin’s hands because she realized that she was talking with Jettel’s voice.

  “For God’s sake, do you still talk like this here when you haven’t seen a person for years?”

  “I believe so. Where are you actually coming from?”

  “South Africa. I have been living in Pretoria for the past two years. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that. I write to your father on a regular basis.”

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “What? You didn’t know that I moved from Cape Town to Pretoria or that I write to your family every month?”

  “Neither,” Regina realized.

  “Good old Walter,” Martin said. “Still the same. And the better of the two of us when he is in love. I think he never quite forgave me that your mother robbed me of my wits before I even had any.”

  “There is another thing he has not forgiven you for, namely that you promised me on the farm you would come back when I was a woman. And unfortunately, I have never forgotten that either.”

  “Why ‘unfortunately’? I did arrive in time, didn’t I?”

  Martin Barret, who, when he was still called Batschinsky, had shared with Walter and Jettel his youth, hopes, and a friendship that did not even break when he desired Jettel and Walter knew about it, as well as later the fate of emigration, touched his nose once more. He noticed that his skin was getting moist, and that he was starting to behave like one of those aging men whom he despised when they prepared for the hunt without looking into the mirror and looking even less at the victim.

  For a long time, as if he had to remember their color and form exactly, he looked at the easy chairs covered in brown corduroy and the broad sofa on which lay a teddy bear with two glass eyes of different size and a picture book between pillows of dark red velvet. Only one meaningless breath still separated him from the many questions that would certainly have come to him easily if Walter and Jettel had been here. Yet his thoughts freed themselves from logic and concentration in a way that seemed all the more absurd to him because he was no longer used to breaking away from the secure walls of reality.

  At the same moment Martin remembered that he was only three months away from his fiftieth birthday and that he had been very impressed in his youth by the story of the man whose picture was aging while he stayed young and radiantly beautiful. For a short while he was deceived by the illusion that he could read in Regina’s eyes the confirmation that the same might have happened to him, but he did not give in to the temptation of looking at her and glanced at his watch instead.

  He heard it ticking and saw how the golden hand caught the light and quickly became dark again. With a sharpness that irritated him as much as his silence before, he remembered that a flood of carelessly summoned fantasies had once before swept him onto a shady shore. He saw a powerful tree in the dark African forest and a light piece of skin when Regina, who was still unaware of the traps she was setting, had unbuttoned her blouse. The thought of the irretrievable innocence changed him back into the man who had discovered early on that it was always the coincidences and never the morality that demanded renunciation.

  “Come,” he said and tried to look more cheerful than he was, “I am going to take you out to eat. An old fogy and a young girl don’t belong together under the same roof. Especially not when the beautiful, innocent child is the daughter of his best friend.”

  Only in the dining room of the Frankfurter Hof, where he stayed because his travel agent had recommended it as the best hotel in Frankfurt, did Martin realize how clever and prescient his suggestion had been. He had banned temptation with three sentences before it was able to extend its choking hold and had turned Regina back into the child he had hoped to find.

  There was no doubt that the guests, most of whom were from abroad, were not accustomed to an atmosphere of distinguished, just recently revived old-world bourgeoisie and luxury and were quite impressed by the splendor and elegance, which stood in stark contrast to the everyday life in town. Regina furtively looked around as if she were ashamed of her curiosity, only dared to whisper, and looked in total surprise at the bowls and platters that were carried past her till they disappeared.

  The black dress, which was too big for her with its tight-fitting sleeves, tiny buttons up to her neck, and the white lace collar that reminded Martin of th
e tablecloth that his mother only put on for visitors, made Regina look like one of those dressed up, giggling, prim young girls of his student days. Martin moodily anticipated that she would order lemonade and, most likely, instead of an appetizer a double portion of strawberry ice cream with those mountains of whipped cream that he remembered from Breslau, just like the upper-class daughters who mistook the smell of lavender for sensuality and whom a man could only touch while dancing.

  Martin tried to escape from the undergrowth of the tangled details that bothered his memory. As he looked at the menu without enthusiasm he ordered, in a sharp voice that struck him as unpleasantly exaggerated, “A martini, but dry.” He was annoyed when the waiter asked, “Also for your daughter?” but afterward even more annoyed that he had let himself be irritated by a man who had to wear such thick glasses.

  After the first sip he waved the waiter back to the table with a movement of his hand, which most conspicuously proved him to be a man from South Africa who is used to giving orders.

  “I said dry,” Martin complained and twirled the olive around.

  Regina actually started to giggle and held a hand in front of her mouth. He looked at her glumly and opened the button under his tie.

  “See,” she laughed, “nothing has changed. You fought with waiters all your life.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I knew that even before I met you. The sentence ‘Martin would not have put up with that’ was quoted daily on the farm.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Mama.”

  “If I believe anything, I believe that. I never envied your father. What do you want to eat?”

  “Everything. I mean I better have what you’re having.”

  “Are you always that easy to satisfy?” Martin smiled.

  “With food, yes. We were hungry for so long, we are still happy if we have enough to eat every day.”

  “I would not have had your father’s courage to go back to Germany this early. Is he at least happy here? And what about you?”

  “Those are two questions at once.”

  “With different answers?”

  “Yes.”

  Martin ordered a selection of appetizers from a cart; turtle soup that he expressly wanted to have prepared with cognac, not with sherry; filet steaks that he assumed in advance a German cook would overcook; and a Cape wine that was not on the wine list and the waiter had not even heard of. The manager was called to confirm this. Martin extensively discussed the matter with him and, on the outer limits of politeness, wanted to know why a hotel that had been recommended to him in Pretoria did not carry wines from South Africa. He finally asked with a sigh, “Is there anything at all one can drink here?”

  “Maybe a glass of champagne with the appetizer,” the manager nervously suggested.

  “A bottle of champagne,” Martin decided, “but properly chilled.”

  After the first glass it occurred to him that he was no longer used to champagne and Regina not yet. He had heartburn and she had red circles on her face, but her flushed cheeks seemed to bother her less than his stomach bothered him. She held her glass, which she had drained in one gulp, out to him and emptied the plate with the appetizers at a speed that perplexed him. The fast movement of her jaws reminded Martin of the hamster that one of his classmates had given him and he had not been allowed to keep. He was amazed that the disappointment had not abated for over forty-four years and he realized that the alcohol was attacking his head much faster than during the many drinking sprees in Pretoria. There he only had to contribute the good spirits of a man who had experienced more than most and knew the art of a good punch line.

  He was hardly able to catch his thoughts before they accumulated into an avalanche of discontent about things that had not been of any importance for a long time now. The waiter was just about to fill Regina’s plate with another selection from the appetizer cart. She had overcome her shyness and pointed, animated by the flatteries of the waiter, to the silver bowls with delicacies she had never seen before.

  The waiter called her “Miss”; Martin’s expression changed from discontent to irony, but the two did not notice. He usually appreciated women with a good appetite and wanted to smile at Regina, but at just that moment he remembered how much his first wife’s habit to send the plate back to the kitchen after a few bites had always exasperated him.

  When he climbed out of the deep valley of his last youthful folly and needed unexpectedly long to remember when it had happened, he realized that his heartburn was gone and that he had come to a false conclusion. Regina was not a child anymore and above all not a squeaking girl from a good family, but a young woman who undoubtedly baffled him more than was good for him. Three of the small buttons of her dress were open. The lace collar now surrounded her slim neck like a fine veil and seemed to him the embodiment of a lightness that he had longed to see for quite a while.

  Martin felt an absolutely unfamiliar impulse to protect her, then caught himself with fantasies that he considered ridiculously adolescent and, finally and very abruptly, with the thought that he not only looked a lot younger than he was, but that his attitude toward life was not yet worn out by all those years that had demanded a lot of strength. He put his hand on Regina’s shoulder and noticed with satisfaction that the light touch excited her. He asked himself for the first time what Regina knew about him.

  He only rarely, and then always without regrets, thought of the fact that he had gone to law school and because of the Nazis had hardly been able to practice his profession. Because of his time in the British army, his emigration to South Africa had quickly been followed by the acquisition of citizenship. After the war he had experienced some painful financial disappointments with a garage and a textile company, but he had joined an export firm just in time and—just at the right time again—had taken it over. The revitalization of business with Europe and especially with Germany had made him a prosperous man. In sentimental moments like the one he was experiencing right now, he felt a slight need for German work ethics, efficiency, and culture, but he also knew that he had lived in South Africa for too long to seriously think about returning to Germany. Africa had given him the freedom to count the hours, not the days.

  “What are you doing?” he heard Regina ask.

  “Whatever one does in the wholesale business. At the moment I am trading oranges for machines.”

  “I am talking about your hand.”

  Regina immediately realized that she had asked Martin once before, under the tree at Ol’ Joro Orok, what he was doing. Then, too, she had only spoken about his hand and he had given the wrong answer. She talked without embarrassment about the encounter and did not allow her eyes to avoid his. The old invigorating spell—that she was talking about a strange child she had once known fleetingly—only lasted for a short moment. Then the certainty arrived that Martin would not leave her with unfinished pictures this time.

  He had started out like a young Masai who has not yet drawn his bow too often, and in his eagerness he had forgotten to protect his own body. Martin had not noticed the danger he had exposed himself to, but Regina’s eyes had taken exact measure.

  “Did you really not know that I thought you were a king and that I fell in love with you then?”

  “Do you always ask such damned open-ended questions?”

  “No. Never. Only when the glasses and plates are starting to dance around me, and the waiters all look like penguins,” Regina replied. Her throat was dry but her voice was firm when she said, “And when a king has finally come to fulfill his promise.”

  “Dear Lord, you have been drinking too much and I am a complete idiot that I let you. I hope you are not feeling sick and are not going to collapse here. Old men don’t like complications.”

  “I have never felt better and you’re not an old man.”

  “Two years older than your father if I am not mistaken.”

  “Thirty years older than me, but you are not my father.”
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  “Dear God, Regina, do you even know what you are saying?”

  “Yes.”

  Martin pushed his plate toward the small vase on the table and watched attentively how the pink and yellow pieces of the half-eaten ice-cream cake got submerged in the chocolate sauce. It seemed important to him to interpret the pattern of the running colors, but he had never had a tendency toward abstract contemplation and was unable to understand the randomly chosen symbol. He only knew that he had to fight if he wanted to protect himself from illusions and the long-overdue recognition that no man has the right to repeat his mistakes.

  He realized that, at the least, he had to take his hand off Regina’s shoulder. He succeeded in this one move and in such a quick and sure way that his lips were already starting to form a comment that appeared appropriate to him; however, he had only prepared his body for flight and could no longer prevent the furious battle in his head between vanity and wistfulness.

  The weight of his memories already stifled him on the first part of the path that he did not want to take. He saw Jettel in her ball gown—black-haired, laughing, attractive, almost ridiculously impudent in her demanding coquettishness—but he did not want to long for her again because Walter had fallen in love with her first and he was Walter’s best friend. Only he did not know the second time around either if he had passed the self-imposed test or not.

  The images of yearnings and experiences from later years got confused too quickly to restrain his emotions. Martin only became aware that he had spoken when Regina moved her head, but he could not remember what had entered his head in this moment of need. The knocking at his temples became louder.

  “Did your mother teach you how to unsettle a man?”

  “No. Owuor did.”

  “You mean the strange boy on your farm?”

  “He was not a boy. And not strange either. Owuor was Papa’s friend and the giant who held me in his arms when I flew up to the clouds. He lent his eyes to me. He also taught me to hear things that do not come from someone’s mouth.”