The Empire of the Senses (39 page)

“I will end on this note,” Surén said, staring up at the star-studded sky, his voice softening, assuming a more mystical tone. “A Greco-German bloodline exists, and our return to the past will revive the
volkskörper
and strengthen the health of our race.” He paused a moment and then lowered his head, clasping his hands in front of him. “Thank you. And good night.” Applause erupted. Surén licked his lips, his light eyes glinting in the darkness.

The crowd dispersed into the woods, headed for the barracks. Peter and Wolf walked ahead, laughing. Franz trailed behind, feeling sorry for himself and at the same time chastising himself for such self-pity, pity that made the gorge rise in his throat. He stumbled on a loose rock, and thinking it wouldn’t be so bad if he fell, he almost relished the rough ground as punishment for his weakness, but a familiar hand steadied him.

“I’ve got you,” Paul said.

“I wasn’t looking.”

Paul gripped his forearm. “It’s dark; you have to be careful.”

Franz squinted into the darkness, but he couldn’t see Wolf anymore. They’d vanished. Of course, Franz thought, by the time I get back to the barracks, Wolf and Peter will be hunched over some girlie mag.

“What did you think of the lecture?”

“What?”

Paul ruffled Franz’s hair. “The lecture. Weren’t you listening?”

“Of course I was.”

The trees grew thicker in this part of the woods, and Franz felt as if they were walking under a heavy blanket, the stars hidden. He only heard the sound of their footsteps crunching through leaves.

“ ‘Of course I was,’ ” Paul mimicked, tugging on Franz’s shirtsleeve.

“You have to admit he went on a tad too long.”

“Hmmm,” Paul said, stopping.

Franz glanced back at him.

“Come here.”

Franz hesitated.

“Just come over here a moment, will you?” Paul leaned against a tree. “Don’t feel bad. I wasn’t listening either.”

“But I was,” Franz protested.

He laughed softly, in that fatherly way. From under a gathering of fir trees, Franz could barely see him. “Where are you?”

“Here,” Paul said softly.

The low hanging branches made Franz feel as if he were walking into a redolent green cave, the clean scent tingling his nostrils.

Paul took hold of his hand. It felt warm and moist. “I was thinking of you the whole time.”

Franz laughed nervously, wondering if anyone could see them. He listened carefully for footsteps, for passing voices, but the stillness of the night covered them. Paul held Franz’s hand firmly, guiding it down to his cock. Franz breathed in, surprised, and yet it was clear what Paul wanted. He couldn’t play the ingenue forever, hiding behind feigned naïveté and poring over those pictures in his magazines, cloistered in the safety of his bedroom, as if that would satisfy him. He wanted to touch a male body, have his body touched … He wanted to know what it was like.

Under Franz’s hand, Paul’s cock rose upward, as if pulled by a puppet string. His shirt breathed open, and he guided Franz’s other hand onto his chest. Franz gripped his woolly white hair there, tearing at it. Paul’s breath quickened. He kissed Franz’s neck, his collarbone, and then he knelt down, balancing on his knees. He unbuckled Franz’s belt buckle. “We don’t have much time.” He used the same voice he’d used during pole-vaulting instruction, firm but encouraging.

Blood rushed into Franz’s ears. The sight of this old man on his knees, looking up at him beseechingly, his eyes full of want, suddenly turned his stomach. It all seemed tawdry, vulgar, worse than sleeping with that prostitute. What would Wolf say if he saw how this old man with flabby arms begged to suck his cock? He propelled his foot back and swung it into Paul’s face.

His glasses fell off. He let out a yelp. Doubling over, Paul started looking for his glasses, wildly feeling the ground.

Franz kicked him in the side. There. Better.

Paul rolled over, trying to catch his breath. “I didn’t realize.”

“What didn’t you realize?” Franz demanded.

“I’m a bus driver on holiday. This is just a holiday for me. That’s all.” His mouth was bleeding and he was crying. He covered his face with his arm.

Franz ran back to the barracks, tearing through tree limbs, startled by the snapping sound of the branches, the sting of the broken-off tips scratching his arms, his face. When he got there, he stopped before the door. His hands trembled and he breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. Slowly, he opened the door and was relieved to find the lights out, bodies lying still in each bunk. He could easily slip into bed and forget about the whole mess—Paul’s bloody pleading mouth, that sickening needling desire, which Franz had nearly succumbed to … A few errant snores vibrated through the cool quiet hall. He found his cot and started to undress.

“Where were you?” Wolf whispered harshly, his eyes glittering in the darkness. He sat on the top bunk, cross-legged, staring down at Franz.

Franz pulled off his shirt. “Nowhere.”

“That’s curious. I saw you with that older man. The two of you disappeared into the woods after the lecture.”

Franz stood bare-chested in the moonlight. “I tripped on a rock—he helped me.” His voice sounded high-pitched, panicked.

Wolf put a finger to his lips. “We don’t want to wake everyone.”

“Why are you awake?” Franz asked. He started to button up the front of his pajama shirt, but his fingers felt numb and thick.

Wolf smiled. “I was waiting up for you. Because I thought maybe … something untoward had happened. Between you and that man. And here you are, late, unsettled, looking as if you’ve had a dalliance in the woods.”

“There was no dalliance!” Franz nearly shouted.

Wolf slid down from the top bunk and stood close to Franz now, only a few inches separating them. Franz admired the downy hair on his upper lip, the way his eyelashes curled upward, his faint thin eyebrows.
Wolf took him by the arm, and Franz felt the heat of Wolf’s palm seeping into his skin through the thin nightshirt.

“Tell me. I can see it on your face.” Wolf’s breath smelled peppery.

Franz looked down at the floor. “It was nothing, really. He tried some funny business on me—but I whacked him across the face. That shut him up.”

Wolf nodded for Franz to continue.

“He was bleeding and crying like a little girl.”

Wolf scanned the darkened room. “Where’s he now?”

Franz shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s find him—finish him off.”

“But, I—” He gulped down air, trying to stall. “I think he’s learned his lesson.”

Wolf clenched Franz’s shoulder. “Don’t you want to?”

Franz’s heart started beating violently again, his skin prickling with anticipation. Wolf’s warm hand now rested on the back of Franz’s neck, and his sharp eyes blazed with excitement.

“Yes,” Franz said. “I want to.”

Franz and Wolf tore through the woods. They ran in their sandals, their shirts flying open in the wind.

“Turn here,” Franz called out in the darkness.

“I think I heard something,” Wolf said, coming up behind him.

“He’s blind without his glasses. He’s probably still writhing where I left him.”

Wolf let out an explosive sneeze, shaking his head. “Which way?”

“Here,” Franz yelled, zigzagging through the trees. His body felt light and agile, and his muscles tightened like springs. In front of Wolf, he would not let pity get the best of him, even if the old bastard cried for mercy. But as he ran and circled and cut back, he realized the old man had escaped.

Franz walked back, wondering if at least his glasses were still there, tangled in the underbrush.

Wolf came up behind him. “Looks like he got away.”

Franz put his hands behind his head. “Damn.”

“Hey,” Wolf said, patting his back. “Next time.”

He felt his eyes water with relief. Paul had gotten away. He stared at the white birches gleaming in the darkness.

Wolf swung an arm around Franz. “This place is for the dogs anyway,” he said, kicking at leaves. “For perverts. And all that talk about sun exposure and nudity, Surén’s not actually
doing
anything except prancing around naked all day, dipping in and out of cold water.”

Franz laughed, grateful that at least Wolf seemed to favor him after what had felt like a long absence. Now it was summer, and they were together again in the woods joking about Surén and his theories, laughing about pole-vaulting in the nude. Dark low-hanging branches skimmed their heads, but every few paces, Franz would glance up at the flickering points of light dotting the sky, and he felt lucky.

23

On the way back from Rindbach, they always stopped in Nuremburg for lunch. The Maybach acted up on the hot dusty roads; the car proved unreliable in warm weather. Lev found it annoyingly opulent for motoring in the country, but Josephine preferred it to the sweltering train, full of workaday weekenders, as she called them. At the moment, she stared at the passing countryside with a mournful look on her face while Vicki, who sat in the backseat, complained of the heat. Lev resisted leaving Berlin, often sending Josephine ahead to set up house. In the past, he’d even managed to spend just four short days in the deafening quiet of the country. But this year, with Franz away, Josephine refused to leave without Lev, arguing that she couldn’t manage Vicki on her own given Vicki’s recent moodiness and general disregard for all things familial. He thought he would appease her by staying the whole week, but everything had vexed her, from the china dish she’d mistakenly shattered, to Vicki’s recalcitrance, to the lackluster concerts at Mendelssohn’s villa; and Franz’s absence endlessly possessed her. “What do you suppose he’s doing now?” she would demand in the middle of dinner, interrupting a perfectly good conversation. Or she would worry that he was overexerting himself, not eating well, and training too much. When Lev tried to reassure her that Franz could look after himself, she grew tearful, arguing that Lev didn’t understand Franz, at which point Lev threw up his hands and remarked, “You’re quite right there.” She complained of fatigue, but when he suggested she rest upstairs, she snapped that she only wanted to be left alone. When he left her alone, reading his newspapers in the garden, she criticized him for burying his face in the papers, occupying himself with stories of distant people and places while ignoring his own family. Perhaps she was right,
Lev thought, as his eyes scanned the headlines, searching for any news of those far-off Baltic provinces … for news of Mitau, or even Riga. It had become a kind of habit over the years, to scrutinize the international section of the paper, in hopes of finding some trace, some small thread that might tie him back to Leah. But there was nothing today:
Yugoslavia severs diplomatic relations with Albania; Chamberlin takes off from Roosevelt Field to Germany in
Miss Columbia. Lev sat up, his interest renewed by the next item:
A total eclipse of the sun casts dark shadow over Sweden, Finland, and the northernmost regions of Russia
.

Josephine glanced at him from under her wide-brimmed hat. She squatted a few meters away, pruning her white roses.

“Did you know there’s been a total eclipse of the sun in Russia?”

She snipped and snipped. “No.”

“Imagine, the whole country dark.” Leah must have seen it, from wherever she stood, a great huge shadow cast over the earth. Was she surprised? Frightened? What was she doing just before it occurred?

Josephine snipped more vigorously.

“You’re mutilating the poor rose bush,” he said.

“What do I care if the sun disappears for a few minutes in Russia?” She sighed, pulling up her long gardening gloves. “It’s a dark country anyway.”

“Hmmm,” Lev said, knowing when to retreat. It was no use engaging her in any kind of political discussion. In her mind, Russia was bad and Germany was good and that was that.

“And why,” she said, brandishing her sharp scissors through the air, “do you insist on reading about Russia, of all places. Every time I peek over your shoulder you’re reading about that godforsaken place.”

The high afternoon sun beat down on them. Lev wondered where Vicki was. She could dilute this brewing argument. His head itched under the ridiculous Tyrolean hat Josephine liked. He pulled it off. “Where’s Vicki?”

“Upstairs, reading. She’s been rather dreamy lately.” She gathered up the dead black twigs, arranging them into a neat pile. “Your scalp will burn.”

Lev threw the hat onto the grass. “It’s not as wretched as you say. I spent four years in the east.”

She faced him squarely. “Sometimes, it seems as if you never came back.”

“What do you mean?” Lev demanded. What more did she want? He came back to her. He provided generously for the children. He’d played along all these years, acting the happy husband, attending her soirees and hosting dinner parties and accompanying her to the ghastly opera, box seat and all.

Her voice quivered. “I sense sometimes that …”

“Mutti!” Vicki called through the kitchen window. “Mutti—where’s the needle and thread? I’m sewing new ribbons onto my pointe shoes and I placed it here just yesterday, and now it’s vanished!” Nearly half her trunk had been filled with gleaming satin pointe shoes, a faint rose color, each pair perfectly packaged within its own rectangular paper box. When Lev had joked that there were no ballet studios in Rindbach and asked if she was planning on pirouetting across the town square, Vicki, in a characteristic outburst, exclaimed how most likely she’d die of boredom here, so she might as well sew.

“It was here, on this windowsill!” she called out again.

Thank God, Lev thought. Thank God for Vicki’s missing needle and thread.

Josephine got up from the dirt and roses and strode into the kitchen.

“I only used it to mend a button,” Josephine said.

“But now it’s gone!” Vicki cried.

Lev closed his eyes, feeling the sun burn his scalp. His arm dangling from the chaise lounge, he stroked the grass. For a moment, a puff of clouds cast a shadow across his face. What does she know? he wondered. Does she know how often I think of Leah? How often I dream of her? Does she know I read the personal ads, wondering if anyone from Mitau is searching for relatives in Berlin? Does she know I once even placed a small personal ad in a few of the Yiddish dailies a year after I returned from the war?
Leah from Mitau—if you are in Berlin, meet me at Monbijoupark, next to the Spree River, at 10 a.m., September 14. I’m
waiting for you
. He went there for a month, standing by the fountain, listening to its pitiful gurgling.