Please, Jack, she says.
She props herself on her elbows to watch him dress. He buttons his flannel shirt wrong so that one side hangs lower than the other. He thrusts his feet into his boots without lacing them.
Jack, please, she repeats. I had to. He—Is he Trudie’s father? She’s a fucking Nazi’s kid?
If you would let me explain—Anna, I’m only going to askJack whirls on her.
Did you love him? he shouts.
Anna stares at her legs, fish-belly white and fully exposed now that Jack has flung away the covers.
Did you?
Anna compresses her mouth into a thin line and shakes her head. But her eyes brim with tears, and she knows her face is growing red.
I’m waiting, Anna. Answer me.
It was not as you think, Anna mumbles. It . . . You see...With him, I...We . . .
But she cannot choke out the rest of the sentence. Her throat feels as though it has been stuffed full of black bread. She looks miserably at Jack.
Goddamn you, he says, his voice shaking. Goddamn you to hell.
He slams out of the room with such force that the doorknob embeds itself in the wall. Anna sits listening to his heavy tread thudding down the stairs. The screen door to the porch bangs below.
Anna knows that he will be crossing to the barn, head low, breath steaming. She would like to put on her robe and go after him. She would at least like to open the window and call out. But she cannot, for she has seen his face, contorted by hate into that of a stranger. She should have known this would happen even with him; she should have known better than to tell him the truth. She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame.
She reaches to pull down her nightgown, which is still rucked to her waist. Her fingertips brush the dark triangle of hair at her thighs and rest there. She has been unforgivably stupid. She has ruined everything. For how could she have hoped anybody would ever understand? How could her husband, this good and decent man, ever forgive the fact that during their conjoining it is always the Obersturmführer Anna feels, sees, smells; the Obersturmführer’s sled-dog eyes glancing up at her face from where he kneels between her legs, dipping his head to lap delicately at her like a cat and then using the pads of his thumbs so she can’t tell which is which; ceaselessly gauging her response; measuring, calculating, why can’t he leave her alone? but he ignores her enough, please, it’s enough, her gasping stop stop stop; he will not be satisfied until he has felt her spasm twice, three times, five; until he has stolen her reactions, taken her from herself, erased her; until she is as empty as the kitchen cupboards below because all Weimar is starving, everyone is starving to death; until she is burning and sore around his fingers and pleads for him to be inside her, begs him to mount her and be inside her in the real way because it is the only way he is ever going to finish.
Anna snatches her hands from between her thighs and yanks her nightgown down, weeping. She drives her fists into the mattress, pounding it over and over. She kicks it with all her strength, her mouth working in a silent wail, the tears coming hot from her eyes. But she cannot make a sound.
Of all the things the Obersturmführer has done to her, and they have been many and terrible, this is the worst, the most un-fair: he has blighted her ability to love. Everyone is born with it. Anna knows that she herself has been. But because of the Ober-sturmführer, her heart is now only a sick and limping muscle, and all she has left is her tie to the man, sometimes intense, sometimes not, but pulling at her always like an undertow. It is not fair that he should have afflicted her thus, that thanks to the Ober-sturmführer Anna cannot truly love her good husband. It is not fair that her dark heart should forever be yoked to such a man. It is not fair and it is not forgivable, and Anna will never speak of it again. To anyone. Ever.
After a time, when her tears subside, Anna gets up and makes the bed. She pins her hair into a coil and dresses. She ventures downstairs to find the living room a squirrel’s nest of shredded paper and discarded boxes. Trudie is shouting outside, so instead of bothering to straighten this mess, Anna shuffles through it to the closet and pulls on her coat. She steps onto the porch. The air sears her raw nostrils.
Jack is standing on the top riser, having finished attending to the livestock. He ignores Anna as she comes up beside him.
Lookin’ good, Strudel, he calls. Not too fast now.
Trudie, her parka thrown carelessly over her nightgown, is pedaling her new bicycle in the circle Jack plows clear after every snowfall. The girl’s face rosy with cold and excitement, the butter yellow of her disheveled hair, the blue of her coat—these are startling against the landscape, which looks as though it has been painted by an artist whose palette consists solely of whites. Oyster white, gray white, eggshell. The horizon is indiscernible, the sky shading into the ground. They will have more snow by midmorning. Such a place, this vast blank plain. But at the moment Anna doesn’t mind it. It would be very difficult for anyone unfamiliar with these parts to find this farm. A former officer of the Schutzstaffeln bent on reuniting with his mistress, for instance.
Trudie races back and forth, skinny legs pumping.
Watch, Mama, she yells. Watch!
Anna draws her coat tighter at the neck, shivering.
Careful, she calls. There is ice beneath—
The girl pays her no mind, lifting her hands from the bicycle grips. Anna inhales sharply: one of Trudie’s arms is extended in the Nazi salute. Then Anna blinks and sees only her daughter, showing off.
Anna turns to Jack, who is watching the child with his fists bunched in the pockets of his sheepskin coat.
Please, make her to stop, she says.
Jack doesn’t look at Anna. All she can see of his face, his profile, is stony. He produces a match, ignites it with the flick of a thumbnail, and cups the flame to light his cigarette.
Please, Jack, tell her. It is dangerous. She could fall.
Jack chuffs smoke out through his nostrils. Then he calls, Not so fast, Strudel.
He slits his eyes at Anna.
Don’t worry, he mutters. It’s not her fault. I would never take anything out on her.
Jack, says Anna. Her voice falters. She clears her throat and tries again. Jack, I wish you would call her by her proper name. She is now American. We both are American. We have leaved Germany and everything in it far, far behind...Do you understand what I am saying?
Watch! Trudie screams.
Standing on the pedals, she topples into a drift, from which she emerges powdered head to foot with snow. She brushes herself off, laughing.
Anna touches Jack’s sleeve.
Jack—?
Jack moves out of reach and drops his cigarette to the wooden floorboards. He grinds it out beneath the heel of his workboot. He bends to retrieve the stub and bounces it in his palm. Then he throws it into the bushes and goes inside.
Anna turns to follow.
Where are you going? Trudie demands of her mother, indignant.
To make breakfast, Anna tells her. You may stay out for a while. But not too long.
She finds Jack in the kitchen, head lowered, knocking his knuckles against the table. She catches his hand and raises it to her lips. She presses them to each callus on his palm. Then she leads him upstairs to the bedroom. He comes slowly but willingly enough.
Although the room is now full of light, Anna disrobes completely. She undresses Jack as well before guiding him to the bed. They are both quiet. There is nothing to say; there is so much to say that Anna will never say it. She will never tell him, although perhaps they both know, that as Anna presses against him, initiating the lovemaking that might bring them a child of their own, it is not her husband she thinks of.
Trudy, May 1997
59
MAY IN MINNEAPOLIS IS LILAC TIME. AS IF TO COMPENSATE for the punitive winter, the city explodes with flower
s overnight—making it, if only for a week or two, one of the most beautiful places on earth. First there are sunny starbursts of forsythia; then the cherry and dogwood trees burst into life, showering petals everywhere, pink and cream, drifting thick as snow on the sidewalks. But it is the lilacs that truly herald the coming of spring: lavender and white and blue and sometimes a purple deep as grapes, they bloom in the alleys and over backyard fences and in graveyards. Beauty is everywhere, including the most unexpected places. There is no respite from it. And to Trudy, this abundance seems a personal insult, a trick of nature as cruelly calculated as certain forms of torture to inflict the maximum pain in the minimum time.
On this glorious Saturday morning, Trudy is in the passenger’s seat of Thomas’s van, en route to an interview in Min-netonka. She has asked him to drive, saying it is silly that they should take two cars to one destination—a point with which the ever-amenable Thomas instantly agreed. Of course, Thomas is agreeable by nature, but he is being so gracious that Trudy wonders if he suspects her real reason for wanting him to play chauf-feur: without him, she might forsake the interview altogether. This is the first Trudy has conducted since Rainer’s departure, and not only has she almost forgotten about it—having scheduled it a month in advance—she has lost her taste for the entire business. Despite Rainer’s assertion to the contrary, Trudy can’t help feeling that her Project must have played some part in his decision. She has done nothing to prepare for today’s meeting other than making a halfhearted call to the subject, Mr. Pfeffer, to confirm the appointment; she has not done her research into his background nor come up with her usual list of questions, a breach of work ethic that would have been unthinkable in the days before Rainer left. She will have to wing it.
Thomas is driving past Lake of the Isles, the water throwing light into the cab of the van, and Trudy twists in her seat to watch it go by. Through the trees she sees families picnicking on the shoreline, lovers walking with their arms around each other’s waists, the ubiquitous panting joggers. She cranes until it is out of sight, then faces forward again.
Are you okay? Thomas asks. Forgive me for saying so, but you look a little ragged.
Trudy is picturing Rainer standing by a man-made lake ringed with palms, its water like a bath; taking his daily constitutional along canals slithering with alligators. He would walk steadily through the simmering heat, his fedora replaced by a white straw Panama. Trudy roots through her briefcase for a Kleenex.
Allergies, she mumbles. Damned lilacs.
Thomas leans over, pops the glove compartment, and hands Trudy a somewhat elderly SuperAmerica napkin. She daubs the corners of her eyes.
Thanks, she says gruffly.
You’re welcome.
Thomas turns onto Highway 7 and drives for a few minutes in silence. Then he says, I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Goldmann.
Trudy sits up straighter.
How on earth did you know about that?
Ruth told me.
Ruth! Trudy says, bridling. God in heaven, does everybody have to know everybody else’s business around here? You’d think we were all in high school!
Sorry, Thomas repeats. I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up. Clumsy of me. I apologize.
No, don’t, it’s fine, Trudy mutters.
She glares through the side window and applies the napkin again.
You know, says Thomas after a pause, I lost my wife two years ago. About this time of year. Car accident. I was driving.
Oh, says Trudy. Oh, Thomas, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.
Thomas cracks his joints on the steering wheel. It’s all right. I mean, it’s not, but of course you wouldn’t know. It’s not exactly something I advertise. And I only bring it up now to let you know I’m in your corner. Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends. So I understand. That’s all.
Trudy looks at him. He is wearing black sunglasses that make it impossible for her to see his eyes, but his face seems serene enough. Yet Trudy feels bad, not only because of what he has told her but because she has never thought much about Thomas outside of the Project. He is just always there whenever she needs him, ready with his equipment and benign smile and words of encouragement. Trudy has a sudden flash, shocking but not unpleasant, of what Thomas would look like in the nude: a potbelly and slightly concave chest, either with scant hair around the nipples or completely smooth. She takes a small breath.
Thank you, Thomas.
You’re welcome, Trudy.
They are in Minnetonka now, a privileged suburb of huge houses set far from the road on properties the size of golf courses. Old trees reach across the street to entangle in a canopy that allows only a few coins of sunlight to fall through. Thomas slows, canvassing the bronze nameplates and address plaques screwed into stone columns, and turns into the drive of 9311 Hawthorne Way.
Heavens, he says mildly of the house at the end.
Trudy silently concurs. Mr. Pfeffer’s residence is more of a showcase than a house, a towering structure of glass and steel that seems to float on its vast green lawn, an architect’s dream of contemporary angles. It is not the sort of place Trudy would choose to live in even if she could, in her wildest dreams, afford to: with those glass walls one would be as dreadfully exposed as in a dollhouse. Particularly at night. But Trudy has to grant that it is impressive, if only for the money it must have taken to construct.
And Thomas is apparently following a similar train of thought, for as they climb from the van he asks, What does this guy do?
I don’t know, Trudy admits.
You don’t? I thought that was one of the questions you always ask over the phone first.
Well, I do, says Trudy, but to tell you the truth, I don’t remember.
She takes out her portfolio and flips it open. Of course, there is only Mr. Pfeffer’s scrawled address, but the action prods her memory as to the long-ago contact conversation.
He was fairly evasive about his profession, now that I think of it, she tells Thomas. All he said was, Oh, I do a bit of this and a bit of that; I’m a man of many interests, dear lady.
Thomas gazes around as he and Trudy proceed up the flagstones of the front walk: at the manicured grass, the clever lack of any landscaping that would compete with the house, the wink of Lake Minnetonka behind it.
No wonder he was evasive, Thomas comments. He probably robbed a bank.
Probably, Trudy agrees, and then jumps, startled, for Mr. Pfeffer opens the door before she has pressed the bell.
Come in, come in, he says, ushering them into a foyer with the echoing dimensions of a cathedral. Welcome to my home! Is it not a lovely day?
He rubs his hands, then jumps aside to let Thomas pass with his cart. He is a small and dapper man, this Mr. Pfeffer, with the wiry build of a tennis player and a head as bald as a cue ball. His hair, when he had it, must have been black, for his eyebrows still are. They climb his tanned forehead in delight as he looks Trudy up and down.
But the morning is not half as lovely as you, dear lady, he adds. I suppose this is to your advantage as an interrogator, yes? I will be putty in your hands.
Trudy blinks and touches her hair, which now nearly reaches her shoulders. She has been too dispirited to have it cut. Surely Mr. Pfeffer is poking fun at her.
But he tilts his head and eyes Trudy with bright, robinlike appreciation. He is wearing a three-piece charcoal suit of fine Italian design, Trudy notices, and she is amused to see that the rose in his lapel is the exact shade of yellow as the silk handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket.
Tell me about yourself, Mr. Pfeffer says.
Well, as you know, I’m a professor of German Studies at the university, and I—No, no. Please, something more interesting. Are you married?
No, says Trudy. I was once, but—
No? says Mr. Pfeffer. He makes a face of astonishment. But how surprising. How can it po
ssibly be that such a charming lady as yourself is unattached?
Trudy tries to smile, but when her eyes fill she turns toward the glittering blue expanse beyond the clerestory windows.
Thomas, carrying a sound boom past them, says quickly, This is an incredible house, Mr. Pfeffer. What is it you do for a living?
Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that, Mr. Pfeffer replies, not looking away from Trudy. I’m a man of many interests, dear fellow...But how rude I am! I have not even offered you a refreshment. Please, this way.
Cupping Trudy’s elbow, he escorts her into an enormous living room. Trudy gives Thomas a grateful glance as they pass. He reaches out to press her arm, then occupies himself with setting up screens near a white Steinway.
Mr. Pfeffer pats a leather couch.
Come, he says, sit here by me.
Trudy does. She is amazed to see, among the glinting chrome furniture, the sprigs of orchids in Meissen vases, a hotel tea cart at Mr. Pfeffer’s elbow. It is stocked with a silver service and little crustless sandwiches and—can they be actual crumpets? They must be: a pyramid of small cakes, the hybrid of English muffin and scone.
Tea? Coffee? Crumpet? asks Mr. Pfeffer.
Just coffee, please, says Trudy.
She accepts a cup and smiles at him, more successfully this time.
Where in Germany were you born, Mr. Pfeffer?
Felix, dear lady, please. I come from the forests of Thuringia; I was born in a dank little hovel there, the seventh of eleven children, if you can believe that . . . The closest city was a small one, Weimar— but of course you would be familiar with it, given your field of study.
Trudy sets the coffee on her knee, feeling as though she has been doused in cold water. To hear the name of her own birthplace in the mouth of somebody who has actually been there produces not only a chill but the images so much a part of her that she is rarely conscious of their existence: more mood, almost, than memory. A muddy street running past a shabby store front. The winding stone wall alongside. The field behind the bakery, gray and white with snow. The dark smudge of the Ettersberg woods at its edge. A bare lightbulb swinging. Melancholy. Fear. Brötchen under glass. And the officer, of course, standing in the doorway or upstairs in the bedroom. His light wolfish eyes.