‘People usually do nowadays,’ said the old woman. ‘There’s far too much drinking.’ Without giving me much of a chance to answer she reached over for one of the pictures. Holding it in her hand, she looked at her daughter and said in rapid German, ‘Leave us alone, Ingrid. You can call us when lunch is ready.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
When I said how pleased I was that she’d spared time to see me again, I automatically continued in German.
The old woman’s face lit up in a way that I wouldn’t have thought possible. ‘Such beautiful German…You are German?’
‘I think I am,’ I said. ‘But my German friends seem doubtful.’
‘You are a Berliner?’ She was still holding the photo but seemed to have forgotten about it.
‘I grew up there.’
‘I hear you speak and I am drinking a glass of champagne. If only my daughter didn’t have that dreadful Bavarian growl. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday? Oh, how splendid that my daughter made me ask you back today.’
‘Your daughter made you ask me?’
‘She thinks I am being too Prussian about the house,’ she smiled grimly, as one Prussian to another. ‘She thinks I should let Lisl give it to the wretched Jew, if that’s what she wants to do. Poor Lisl was always the simpleton of the family. That’s why she married that piano player.’ It was a relief to hear her speaking German instead of her uncertain English with its terrible accent, the sort of accent people only acquire when they come to a language late in life. I suppose that’s how I spoke French. But Inge Winter’s German was – apart from a few dated words and expressions – as clear and as fresh as if she’d come from Berlin yesterday.
She looked at me. I was expected to respond to her daughter’s offer of the house. ‘That’s very generous, Frau Winter.’
‘It makes no difference to me. Everything will be Ingrid’s when I die. She might as well decide now.’
‘Lisl has borrowed money on the house I believe.’
She ignored that. ‘Ingrid says it’s too much trouble for nothing. Perhaps she’s right. She knows more than I do about these things.’
‘There will be taxes and so on…’
‘And Ingrid says it’s better that we don’t have to go to all the trouble of filing accounts and submitting tax forms. Who would I find here who knew about German tax?’
I didn’t answer. Considering how many rich Germans had big houses on the Riviera – and the fleets of huge German-registered yachts that crowded local ports and marinas – I would have thought it a not insurmountable problem.
‘But I have things there in the house,’ she said. ‘Personal things.’
‘I can’t think there would be any difficulty about that,’ I said.
‘The ormolu clock. My mother was so insistent that I should have it. Do you remember seeing it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Who could forget it: a huge horrid thing with angels and dragons and horses and goodness knows what else jumping about all over the mantelshelf. And if you missed seeing it, there was every chance that its resonant chimes would keep you awake all night. But I could see a complication just the same; Lisl had often expressed her fondness for that dreadful object.
‘And some other oddments. Photos of my parents, a tiny embroidered cushion I had when I was a little girl. Some papers, keepsakes, diaries, letters and things that belonged to my husband. I’ll send Ingrid to Berlin to get them. It would be tragic if they were thrown away.’
‘Nothing will happen as quickly as that,’ I said. I was fearful that she’d phone Lisl before Werner had spoken to her. Then there would be a fearful rumpus.
‘Just private papers,’ she said. ‘Things that are of no concern to anyone but me.’ She nodded. ‘Ingrid will find them for me. Then Lisl can have the house.’ She looked down at her hands and became aware of the photo she was holding. She passed it to me. ‘My wedding,’ she announced.
I looked at it. It had been an elaborate ceremony. She was standing on the steps of some grand building in a magnificent wedding gown – there were pages behind her to hold the train of it – and her husband was in the dress uniform of some smart Prussian regiment. Deployed on the higher steps there was a sword-brandishing honour guard of army officers, each one accompanied by a bridesmaid in the old German style. On each side the guests were arrayed: a handsome naval officer, high-ranking Brownshirts and SS officers, richly caparisoned Nazi party officials and other elaborate uniforms of obscure Nazi organizations.
‘Do you see Lisl there?’ she said with an arch smile.
‘No.’
‘She’s with the civilian.’ It was easy to spot them now; he was virtually the only man there without uniform. ‘Poor Erich,’ she said and gave a snigger of laughter. Once no doubt this cruel joke against Lisl’s piano player husband had been a telling blow. But this old woman didn’t seem to realize that history had decided in Erich Hennig’s favour.
I slid the photo back into its narrow allotment of space on the table.
‘Just private papers,’ she said again. ‘Things that are of no concern to anyone but me.’
Promptly at one o’clock her daughter called us for lunch in the small dining room which looked on to the courtyard. The old woman walked there, slowly but without assistance, and continued to talk all through the meal. It was always about Berlin.
‘I know Berlin not at all,’ said Ingrid, ‘but for my mother there is no other town like it.’
It was enough to start another story about her happy prewar days in the capital. Sometimes the old woman’s stories were told with such gusto that she seemed to forget that I was there with her daughter. She seemed to be speaking to other people and she larded her stories with ‘…and you remember that stuff that Fritz liked to drink…’ or ‘…that table that Pauli and I always reserved at the Königin on Ku-Damm…’ Once in the middle of a story about the gala ball she’d attended in 1938, she said to Ingrid, ‘What was the name of that place where Göring had that wonderful ball?’
‘Haus der Flieger,’ said Ingrid. I must have looked puzzled for she added, ‘I know all Mama’s stories very well by now, Herr Samson.’
After lunch her mother quietened. Ingrid said, ‘My mother gets tired. I think she should have a little sleep now.’
‘Of course. Can I help?’
‘She likes to walk on her own. I think she’s all right.’ I waited while Ingrid took her mother to her room again. There was still another quarter of an hour before Gloria was due to collect me so Ingrid invited me to sit in the kitchen and share a second pot of coffee she was just about to make for herself. I accepted.
Ingrid Winter seemed a pleasant woman, who waved away my suggestions that forgoing a share in the house was a generous thing to do. ‘When Mama dies, and Tante Lisl dies,’ she said, not using any of the common euphemisms for death, ‘I will have no use for a house in Berlin.’
‘You prefer France?’ I asked.
She looked at me for a moment before answering. ‘Mama likes the climate.’ There was no indication about her own likes and dislikes.
‘Most people do,’ I said.
She didn’t respond. She poured more coffee for me and said, ‘You mustn’t take any notice of what Mama says.’
‘She’s a wonderful old woman considering her age.’
‘That may be true but she is mischievous: old people often like to make trouble. They are like children in that respect.’
‘I see,’ I said and hoped she would explain.
‘She tells lies.’ Perhaps seeing that these allegations had little effect upon me she became more specific. ‘She pretends to believe everything but her brain works like lightning. She pretends to believe that you’re a writer but she knows who you are.’ She waited.
‘Does she?’ I said in a bored voice and sipped some coffee.
‘She knew before you arrived. She knew your father a long time ago: before the war she said it was. She told me your father was an English spy. She says you’re prob
ably a spy too.’
‘She is a very old woman.’
‘Mama said your father killed her husband.’
‘She said that?’
‘In those very words. She said, “This man’s father killed my darling husband” and said I must be on my guard against you.’
‘You’ve been very frank, Fräulein Winter, and I appreciate it, but I truly can’t fathom what your mother was referring to. My father was a British army officer but he was not a fighting soldier. He was stationed in Berlin after the war, she might have met him then. Before the war he was a travelling salesman. It seems very unlikely that she could have met him before the war.’
Ingrid Winter shrugged. She was not going to vouch for the accuracy of anything her mother said.
There was a peremptory toot on a car horn and I got up to go. When Ingrid Winter handed me my coat we were back to discussing the vagaries of the weather again. As I said goodbye to her I found myself wondering why her mother might have said ‘killed my darling husband’ rather than ‘killed your father’. I didn’t know much about Inge Winter’s husband except what I’d heard from Lisl; that Paul Winter had been some kind of civil servant working in one of the Berlin ministries, and that he’d died somewhere in southern Germany in the aftermath of the war. Now that I’d met Ingrid – this woman of whom her aunt Lisl knew nothing – I could only say that there were a lot of things about the Winter family that I didn’t understand, including what my father might have had to do with them.
9
We spent the last evening of that hectic weekend in Provence at the nearby home of Gloria’s ‘uncle’. Gloria’s parents were Hungarian; and this old friend wasn’t actually a kinsman, except in the way that all Hungarian exiles are a family of crazy, congenial, exasperating individuals who, no matter how reclusive their mode of living, keep amazingly well informed about the activities of their ‘relatives’.
Zu he called her. All her Hungarian friends called her Zu. It was short for Zsuzsa, the name she’d been given by her parents. This ‘Dodo’ lived in an isolated tumbledown cottage. It was on a hillside, sandwiched between a minuscule vineyard and the weed-infested ground of an abandoned olive oil mill. One small section of earth had been partitioned off to be Dodo’s garden, where the remaining leaves of last year’s winter vegetables were being devoured by slugs. Perched precariously over a drainage ditch at the front there was a battered Deux Chevaux with one headlight missing.
He was introduced to me as ‘Dodo’, and judging by the vigorous way he shook my hand was happy enough to be called that. My first impression was of a man in his middle sixties, a short fat noisy fellow who any casting director would engage to play the role of a lovable Hungarian refugee. He had a lot of pure white hair that was brushed straight back, and a large unruly moustache that was somewhat greyer. His face was ruddy, the result perhaps of his drinking, for the whole house was littered with bottles, both full and empty, and he seemed quite merry by the time we arrived. To what extent his imbibing advanced his linguistic ability I’m not sure but his English was almost accentless and fluent, and – apart from a tendency to call everyone ‘darling’ – his syntax had only the imperfections of the natives.
He wore old brown corduroy trousers that had, in places, whitened and worn to the under-fabric. His shaggy crimson roll-neck sweater came almost to his knees and his scuffed leather boots had zipper sides and two-inch heels. He gave us wine and sat us down on the long lumpy chintz-covered sofa, in front of the blazing fire, and talked without taking breath.
His house was about thirty kilometres from Le Mas des Vignes Blanches, where the Winters lived, but he seemed to know all about them. ‘The Hitler woman’ the locals called Inge Winter, for some talkative plumber had been there to fix a pipe and broadcast news of the old woman’s photo of Hitler all round the neighbourhood.
When he heard that we’d visited his mysterious neighbours he added to my knowledge, telling amusing stories about Inge’s father-in-law – old Harald Winter – who’d been a rich businessman. Vienna abounded with all sorts of tales about him; his motorcars, his violent temper, his unrelenting vengeance, the titled ladies seen with him in his box at the opera, huge sums of money spent on amazing jewellery for women he was pursuing, his ridiculous duel with old Professor Doktor Schneider, the gynaecologist who delivered his second son.
‘In my father’s time, Harry Winter was the talk of Vienna; even now the older people still tell stories about him. Most of the yarns are nonsense I suspect. But he did keep a very beautiful mistress in Vienna. This I know is true because I saw her many times. I was studying chemistry in Vienna in 1942 and living with my aunt, who was her dressmaker for many years. The mistress was a bit down on her luck by that time: the war was on, the Nazis were running Austria and she was a Jew. She was Hungarian and she liked to gossip in her native language. Then one day she didn’t turn up for a fitting; we heard later that she’d been taken off to a camp. Not all the money in the world could save you from the Gestapo.’ Having said this he sniffed, and went to stir something in the kitchen. When he returned he heaved a big log on to the fire. It was wet and it sizzled in the red-hot embers.
Dodo’s little home was as different as could be from the well ordered good taste of the Winters’ house. The Winter mansion had a Spartan luxury but Dodo’s ‘glory hole’ was a wonderful squalor. Half the south-facing wall had been replaced by sliding glass doors and through them – just visible in the twilight – there was a ramshackle terrace. In retirement he’d become a painter. The only other sizeable room in the house faced north and he’d put a skylight into it and used it as a studio. He showed us around it. There were some half-finished canvases: landscapes, bold, careless, competent pastiches of Van Gogh’s Provençal work. Most of them were variations of the same view: his valley at dawn, at dusk and at many of the stages between. He claimed to have a gallery in Cannes where his works were sold. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too difficult to sell such colourful pictures to the rich tourists who came here in the holidays.
When we returned from our tour of the premises the damp log in the living room fireplace oozed blue smoke that billowed into the room, blackening still more the painted walls and irritating the eyes. Gloria set the table that was conveniently near the door of the kitchen. Behind it stood a massive carved wardrobe that almost touched the ceiling. Its doors missing, it had been provided with unpainted shelves for hundreds of books. Philosophy, history, chemistry, art, dictionaries, detective stories, biographies, they were crammed together in anarchic disorder. Everything was worn, stained, bent or slightly broken.
When we sat down at the big table, he pulled a wheel-back chair into position for me and the arm of it came away in his hand. He roared with laughter and thumped it back into position with a deftness that had obviously come from practice. He laughed often, and when he did his open mouth revealed gold molars only slightly more yellow than the rest of his teeth.
I knew of course that we’d come here because Gloria wanted to show me to ‘Dodo’ and that his approval would be important to her. And in turn, important to me. In loco parentis, he eyed me warily and asked me the casual sort of questions that parents ask their beloved daughter’s suitors. But his heart wasn’t in it. That role was soon forgotten and he was laying down the law about art:
‘Titian loved reds and blues. Look at any of his paintings and you’ll see that. That’s why he was always painting auburn-haired models. Wonderful women: he knew a thing or two about women, eh?’ A roar of laughter and a quick drink. ‘And look at his later work…never mind The Assumption of the Virgin, or any of that…Look at the real Titians: he was putting the paint on with his fingertips. He was the first Impressionist: that’s the only word you can use. I’ll tell you, darling, Titian was a giant.’
Or on Gloria’s interest in British higher education:
‘You won’t learn anything worth knowing at Oxford or Cambridge. But I’m glad to hear you’re not going to study Modern Languages. I had
a graduate here last year: he couldn’t even read a menu, darling! What are quenelles, he asked me. Ignorant beyond belief! And his accent was unimaginable. The only people who can understand an Englishman speaking French are people who have been taught French in England.’
Or about gambling:
‘Use two dice and you change the odds of course. Why, I’ve seen men backing the same odds on two as on six.’
Gloria provided the cue. ‘Shouldn’t they have?’ she asked.
He swung round to the fire and, supporting himself with a hand on each armrest of his dining chair, he aimed a kick at the log so that it exploded in sparks. ‘Naw! With two dice? No! You can throw six so many different ways. You can get it with two threes; with a four and a two; four and a two the other way; a five and a one; five and a one the other way. That makes five different ways. But you have only one chance to get two; both dice have to come up right for you. Same with getting twelve.’
He swung back to face us and reverted to being Gloria’s guardian. He looked at Gloria and then examined me as if trying to decide if my motives were honourable. What he decided did not show on his face. He was remarkably good at concealing his feelings when he was so inclined.
Art and science and cookery and politics and weather forecasting and ancient Greek architecture, and every so often there came that penetrating stare. And so for the whole evening he was roaring down the motorways of conversation and then slamming on the brakes as he remembered I was the man who was taking his old friend’s little girl to bed every night.