Parallel Stories: A Novel (130 page)

What happened to Willi hurt him more than what would happen to Andria, left to her fate.

That last lucid moment on the dirty face, its human flesh fried to a sooty black; that last look on his sweetly, trustingly shining face.

He felt that his terrific climax in a randomly selected woman was due to the tremendous strength and magical joy of belonging among survivors, and he ejaculated into her with a hitherto never experienced intensity.

He screamed and bellowed in the messy bed of the woman’s cubbyhole reeking with face powder and bleach, just as he had when being prepared for the removal of a bullet from his shoulder and the surgeon suggested that he not bite his lip, which would only damage more flesh, which he’d have to stitch up, that he not hold back but let all the pain pour out, but that he not move.

I told you not to move, Lieutenant, damn it.

In his infernal pleasure, his entire being was possessed by awareness of a power linking him to other people’s bodies. He knew well that neither the loins nor the unpleasant perfume of the cheap little woman from Marburg had anything to do with it. Because at the instant of ejaculation males freeze and do not move. Or rather, such a shattering gratification could have happened only in her, in such a depraved woman, whose hastily rinsed vagina was still sloppy with someone else’s seed—no denying that. The shock was so intense and so unprecedented, and he was drained for so many hours, that he wanted to know what had happened, or what was happening at times like this in the impassively functioning universe.

And he remained consistent throughout his subsequent scientific activities in his efforts to clarify this question.

In such activities, one becomes stuck on Creation, as if nailed to eternity.

As an experiment, the night before deployment, when the cars of the train were being hooked up and the freight wagons packed, almost a thousand volunteer students, horses, fodder, machine guns, and fourteen cannons ready to start for Thuringia at dawn on March 19, as if going to the front, Schuer went back to the woman, who was happy to see him, but the shocking pleasure could not be repeated. It became the usual forced, dull little gratification and in the circumstances humiliating rather than pleasurable—almost identical with those pale sensations, barely rising above the monotony of thrusts, that later accompanied him throughout his marriage.

However dubious this may sound, this turned out to be his first successful, though isolated and inconclusive, anthropological experiment.

When the students returned from Thuringia to the university in April, he once again stole into the brothel, as if to hide his scientific passion from himself, but he did not find the woman. The rest of the girls there, strangely, kept quiet. As if trying to avoid answering him, as if not hearing what this young man, a medical student well known in the city, was so curious about.

Or they could not comprehend what more he wanted when everything was already at his disposal.

The Order of the Lions of Zähring, its medal a numismatic rarity, worn by its recipients on a green-gold brocade ribbon on their dress uniforms or on immaculate shirtfronts when they were in tailcoats, had been founded a century earlier by the grand duke of Baden, Karl Ludwig. The chancellery appointed to grant the award commissioned Moscow’s most famous jeweler, Fabergé, to design and make the medal; later on Le Ma
Î
tre too made a few exquisite samples in Paris that were perhaps more beautiful than their predecessors; and the requisite ribbons were always woven in the Venice workshop of the Montenuovo princes. The medal itself was made of finely and fastidiously combined elements: a lacy frame made of red and yellow gold imitated bizarre converging acanthus leaves and gave the impression of a jewel; on this frame was a cross, enameled with molten green glass and lined on both sides with silver foil, at the center of which, on a beautifully cambered heraldic shield decorated with hair-thin strands of spun gold, one could see a tiny masterpiece of enamel painting. The incredibly detailed miniature, painted under a magnifying glass, depicted the ruins of the Zährings’ fortified castle, richly overgrown with centuries of vegetation. They referred to it as their family castle, but it was a feared medieval eyrie, the kind of fortress surrounded by thick bastions that is believed to be impregnable and impossible to take. Obviously the award had to signify that lo and behold its valiant recipient had managed to prevent total ruination against all odds.

On the reverse of the cross, on the shield decorated with spun gold, the embossed miniature of a muscular rearing lion was depicted.

It became clear to Schuer—perhaps he concluded this from inexplicable signs—that the poor woman from Marburg must have killed herself, slit her veins or drunk caustic soda, who knows, so he could not count on further experimentation. For a long time he toyed with this notion—that she had committed suicide because of him. That she had done so because of the extreme and merciful good that Schuer had been compelled to experience in her specifically and in most ignominious circumstances. He was very curious to know whether the woman had experienced the same thing. After all, it was for that knowledge of hers that he wanted to return to her, he kept telling himself. And why would she not experience the same thing with him, even though she’d shown no signs of it. He wanted to know. Was the extent of pleasure a function of personal characteristics or a mechanism to ensure the dynamics and frequency of the reproductive act—thus disconnecting, or lifting, the individual from the system of his or her own characteristics. This question truly excited him.

For more than a century the grand duchy’s chancellery had debated its choices in the greatest anonymity. Given the delicate nature of the matter, to make their decision they needed information from as many sources as possible, and checked as thoroughly as possible. The candidates not only had to have accomplished exceptional military feats that helped to protect the country from ruin, but also had to be men of flawless reputation, which would guarantee that they would never disgrace the respectable knightly order. Otmar Baron von der Schuer not only had the reputation of being such a man but, despite some weaknesses and occasional lapses,
was
such a man.

The one thing that might have induced the chancellery to further deliberation would have been knowledge of Schuer’s regular visits to the brothel.

And as he had never done before, driven by the desire to remain faultless and to assuage his inauspicious announcement well in advance, he now placed his hand on Baroness Thum zu Wolkenstein’s arm, richly encased in fluttering white silk. A gesture in which there was a touch of unpardonable condescension; a well-bred person would not behave like this with his peers.

The baroness was not, in her origins, socially inferior to Schuer, nor was she a woman without means, but in conformity with her scientific activity and puritan inclinations she usually dressed very simply, sometimes not even elegantly but in a plain skirt and blouse. Now, however, she wore an intricately collared shirtwaist with puffed sleeves reminiscent of national costumes and wide cuffs at the wrists; it was quite fashionable, as was her slender, slightly bell-shaped skirt of raw silk, slit high on the sides, which gave her a girlish silhouette. She had made an effort today because she did not wish to be underdressed when with the countess. It was part of her dressing peculiarities that she never wore jewelry now, but she purchased the finest and most expensive shoes and handbags, which she selected fastidiously and in great quantities. She knew no moderation in this, for she adored odd and whimsical items on her hands and feet.

It seemed that the strange men in the Lützow Street bar also knew about this passion of hers, the men who grabbed her legs and felt them up in the dim reddish light of the private room. Not only the plush seats but also the walls and the ceiling of the Boîte Rouge were covered with red velvet, and there was hardly any lighting. They held her arms, their strong fingers made their way up from her ankles and down to her elbows, but she did not let them touch her breasts.

Which did not occur by chance but because of the shame she felt about her excitement.

But at this moment the baron’s unpardonably intimate gesture was not meant for her; it was his way of introducing himself to the Hungarian countess. As if he wished to initiate the woman stranger in the depths of his tenderness, even if with his gesture he was suggesting depths to which he had never descended since to his great sorrow he had never been able to love anyone, though he had seen with his own eyes people who were capable of it, even of mutual love.

The hand that Baroness Thum’s arm could not forget even hours later was a comfortably heavy, strong hand.

As opposed to her older friend, the Hungarian countess was dressed with heart-warming elegance. Lately the darling of diplomatic circles for being the betrothed of the regent’s son, she had arrived in Berlin two days earlier at the invitation of Emmy Göhring,
*
that truly charming grand patron of the arts. As part of her semi-official visit, and accompanied by Emmy and other highly placed ladies, the countess was supposed to drop in on Arno Breker at his imposingly large studio in Käuzchensteig to view the sculptor’s latest monumental nudes.
*
One might say the countess was unrelenting in her pursuit of cosmopolitan elegance, and in her own country this was considered a kind of muted political stance. She felt that a certain social extravagance was obligatory, and to society’s great surprise her future mother-in-law, Her Excellency the wife of the regent, enthusiastically supported her in this view. In Berlin, where her peers painfully preserved a semblance of modesty in their severe two-piece suits, sincerely hoping that they wouldn’t be charged with bowing to cosmopolitanism, she had a powerful sense of her provocative youthfulness and her obstinacy in matters of taste.

As if even with her extravagant wardrobe she intended to emphasize the semi-official character of her visit.

Count Svoy, the protocol chief of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, in a private conversation had given her to understand what was expected of her.

The count had most unpleasant-smelling breath and, in addition, the bad habit of leaning too close to his interlocutor to emphasize the confidential nature of his words. His country will not restrict its own freedom or relinquish its spiritual independence because of the two nations’ allied relationship or because of charming Madame Göhring. A statement that the countess, leaning back almost more than was possible in her armchair, understood well and endorsed wholeheartedly. Or at least, we preserve appearances in tune with our own foreign-policy interests. Now, peering out from under her mauve straw hat decorated with gently fluttering plumes, impudently pulled down on her brow, she followed Schuer’s daring gesture with lively interest and some repugnance.

The familiarity revealed to her more of the two persons’ tense and complicated relationship than they would have wanted to know or let the outside world notice. After such a moving sermon, continued Schuer in a much lower tone, in a voice adjusted to the intimacy of the gesture, one no doubt feels the urge to unburden one’s soul.

I’m sure this is understandable, he added.

Then again he interrupted his own apparently polite but rather absentminded sentence with a peremptory wave of his hand to indicate that he expected both women for lunch and hastily turned his back to join his family, which had been swept to the margins of the throng.

Daring, daring, stirring, an enthralling man, Countess Auenberg remarked, not without an edge to her voice, while with their gloved hands they both waved cordial good-byes over people’s heads to Baroness Erika, Schuer’s wife.

I guess you never know where you stand with him.

The sky above Berlin that day was brilliantly and cloudlessly blue.

No doubt, replied Baroness Thum with a slightly exaggerated severity, he is a stirring and unpredictable man, that’s true, but it would not be advisable to forget for even a moment that above all he is a wonderful scientist with a clear, brilliant mind, and therefore one can forgive him for many things.

And before they started off together on the shady street fragrant with the smell of pines, the baroness stole one more fleeting glance at the countess’s face shining with youth and health, to see whether Schuer’s rude manners had insulted her guest. It had been rumored that the Horthy boy, Mihály, would be elected Hungary’s king, and then this young friend, who was also best friends with Geraldine, queen of Albania, and because of that friendship already a frequent visitor in European courts, would herself become a queen.

And you know, she said with a small, raspy laugh, which resonated both with self-mockery and with admiration bordering on hatred for her boss, I can’t help myself, his manly beauty never fails to move me.

I could not help noticing that it affected you too, she added cautiously.

From under her hat Countess Auenberg gave her a rather inquiring glance, for she had unerringly caught the jealous edge and intention of the remark.

How can you say such a thing, how can you even think such a thing, she replied reproachfully, though not without some self-irony or defiance.

I don’t want to know what you think.

Oh, please forgive me. I’ve been carried away by my own lack of restraint.

Lack of restraint was a delicate subject for many reasons, and just as frequently as they managed to avoid it, they also fell into its trap. The two women were deeply devoted to each other, the girl to the grown woman and, oddly, the mature woman to the younger one. Which they both felt was unusual, and which they accounted for by the great difference in their ages and experiences. On the one hand Countess Auenberg and her two sisters had been small children when their pitiless mother left them; she’d run away with a trickster and they never saw her again; she and the trickster were allegedly living somewhere abroad in very modest circumstances. And on the other hand Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein had been blessed with a son conceived in a very early love affair, and ever since the little boy’s birth had been living in strict scientific seclusion, as if in continual penitence; she always found a place for the child, never giving up hope that one day her family would forgive her. For these reasons, neither of them thought silly and pointless sentiments were permissible, and naturally they did not speak of them—although there wasn’t much they could do about them. From the first moment of their friendship they had a secret language, and in their quiet, persistent rebellions, which they indulged in as a counter to their lack of restraint, they revealed much to each other in this language.