The Empire of the Senses (40 page)

And last night’s dream, still so vivid it burned in Lev’s mind: they were going on holiday—not to Rindbach but some other Alpine retreat. Leah had never been to the mountains and she was giddy. He took her riding in the Maybach with the top down. Her black hair flew around her face. The road stretched endlessly before them. They had two precious days. She held his hand and wedged it between her warm thighs. He drove with his other hand. He wanted to pull over, but she told him to keep driving. “We only have two days,” she kept saying, in a voice that transmitted both joy and sorrow. Zalman, Josephine, the children, his work—their lives were suspended, two days magically granted to them without obstacles. The only promise they had to fulfill was the taking of their mutual pleasure.

Lev turned his head to the side. The sun had emerged from behind the clouds, burning with heat. He breathed slowly, replaying the dream, savoring each image, each sensation. Distantly, he heard Vicki and Josephine arguing in the kitchen.

On the drive back to Berlin, Lev couldn’t muster the energy to speak. His eyes burned as if sand had been rubbed into them, and his throat felt sore from having had circular arguments about which he could remember nothing. One fight in particular he did remember, as it had caused them to return to Berlin today, earlier than intended. The argument had been instigated by a fancy dress ball given by the D’Abernons, where a sprinkling of low-level diplomats and fading aristocracy dressed up in peasant costumes from Austria’s rural past. Lev had gone reluctantly, finding the whole affair retrograde and embarrassing. After eating too much duck terrine and drinking too much
sturm
, a kind of fermented grape juice, he’d found Josephine deep in conversation with a ridiculous man wearing a red tailcoat and white breeches. Noticing how Lev stared at his costume and mistaking this stare for flattery, the man informed them that he had always worn this to the imperial hunt banquets in Grunewald forest before the war. Josephine had clapped her hands and
said quite loudly, “Your ensemble is such a wonderful combination of elegance and simplicity.” The man beamed with delight.

But Lev could no longer restrain himself. “I suppose you’re an enthusiastic supporter of Hindenburg as well?” To which the man replied, “Anything to undermine the republic!”

Josephine then flashed Lev a threatening look, but he ignored her and went on to say that with Hindenburg in power, they could finally return to gorging Germany on heroic dead ideals, on philistinism, just when he thought the darkest chapter in their history had already unfolded.

The man sputtered that at least he wasn’t a Bolshevik, and Lev raised his glass in mock celebration, shouting how they must continue to live as cozily as stuffed geese.

The man looked from Lev to Josephine as if he were a small child watching his parents fight. He swayed on his heels, his half-closed eyelids shimmering with moisture. It’s like arguing with a fish, Lev had thought. Josephine fanned herself and said something about the heat, to which the man heartily agreed, overjoyed to veer off the subject of politics. Although the French doors had been thrown open, the room was exceedingly warm. Lev tore off his dinner jacket. Just then music started, a live performance of the tarantella. The women, in their faded flowered dresses and matching caps, swirled to and fro with their partners in the middle of the ballroom. They beat tambourines against their thighs and laughed with the feigned abandon of farmers’ daughters.

Then the D’Abernons’ grandson marched past in a soldier’s green uniform with a steel helmet and tin drum. With his little eyes flashing under the helmet, he received many admiring smiles, which spurred him on to beat the drum even more forcibly. Josephine bent down and straightened his lapels, asking him where he got such a beautiful uniform. Lev struggled to suppress the bile rising in his throat. The music surged. The dancing women shrieked with pleasure as the men whirled them around faster and faster. “It’s from my granddaddy,” the little boy yelled, puffing out his chest. “You’re quite the little soldier,” Josephine exclaimed.

Lev had to escape this feverish room. Not watching where he was going, he bumped into an elderly woman bedecked in jewels. She dithered before him, confused, her red-painted mouth frowning. Her dyed black hair made her skin appear sickly white, and yet she was well fed, barely fitting into the corseted dress meant to imitate the country style. Multiple rings with various flashing stones graced her fingers, although one in particular caught Lev’s eye: a simple band engraved with Hebrew lettering. There it was, buried in the opulence. She regarded Lev with woeful eyes. “Everyone’s dying. I just heard from the director at the institute that Herr Engel has passed and yesterday my cousin as well. And then it seemed this morning my poor dog might go too, but he has thankfully revived.”

“I’m sorry,” Lev said, his mouth dry, his head pounding. A waft of fresh air floated into the room from the open French doors. “If you’ll excuse me.” He gestured to the balconies. She explained what her dog ate for breakfast. Lev nodded, stepping around her. He had to get away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another ridiculous man, dressed in equestrian clothing, invite Josephine to dance. Moving through the crowd toward the open air, he remembered the urgency with which he had wanted to marry her. They’d shared this urgency, this rush to be locked into a mutual bind, which now, from the outside looking in, felt like a cage he occasionally rattled in an attempt to get free.

And Leah? Would he have eventually felt the same with her, if they had married? He had left when their desire felt boundless. If he had stayed, would her body have become as familiar as an old shoe, instead of the exhilarating newness of her hair, her breasts, her skin? He didn’t know. Perhaps it was unfair to only remember Leah in a blaze of passion. Perhaps he would have grown tired of her touch. And yet part of him thought: maybe not.

Breathing in the night air, relieved to be outside overlooking the vast grounds of the estate, he took out a cigarette, pausing before lighting it. He relished the feeling of an unlit cigarette in his hand, knowing he would smoke it, and yet he prolonged the moment before the smoke filled his lungs, his throat, his mouth. The anticipation is always better, sweeter, he thought.

“Where were you?”

Lev looked up from the balustrade, startled to find Josephine standing before him.

She pursed her lips, anger thinning and elongating her face.

He lit the cigarette. “I had to get some air.”

“And just abandon me?”

“You were enjoying yourself with those idiots.”

“Just because some people still care for the way things are done, you call them idiots.”

“The way things
were
done.” Lev glanced around at the neighboring balconies. Two men in top hats smoked cigars.

She started to say something, but her voice grew tight as she held back her tears. She hugged herself, looking pitiful, light and shadow playing on her face from the torches affixed to either side of the balcony. He was about to console her when she lashed out: “And what is so repellent about that little boy in his soldier’s uniform?”

Lev shrugged. “It seems a bit militant, to dress him up like that.”

“And when you came back, where was your uniform? Your gun? Your papers? How did those things just disappear? You think I’m too stupid to know what that means.”

He felt his chest weaken, his mouth go dry. “To know
what
?”

She glanced away, into the wooded darkness. “I prefer not to humiliate you.”

Of course she couldn’t bring herself to say it: he had deserted, escaped, to preserve his own life over the lives of others. And she hated him for it.

He pushed his cigarette into a stone planter brimming with gladiolus. “I hate this place.”

“Not even a scratch,” she muttered.

He walked away from her and back into the crowded hot room.

Lev rubbed his eyes, glancing over at Josephine, who still gazed out the car window, focusing on the passing wheat fields. Though she’d acted overjoyed to see him in the fall of 1918, over the years, his early and safe return home had aroused the suspicion of her family, suspicion
that eventually seeped into her view of him. And now, when she wanted to hurt him, in her most cruel moments, she pulled out this trump card, to which Lev now responded with silence. The first few years after the war, whenever she raised a question about his early return home or about his lack of medals, he defended himself. He described the bitter winters in Mitau, the marauding tribes of Cossacks, the wounds he’d treated and disinfected, the roads he’d cleared, the territory they’d gained for Germany. But he never sounded confident enough, wounded enough, for her to believe him. She would nod, but her eyes clouded over, opaque blue orbs of doubt. And for other reasons too, he stumbled when trying to convince her: between the pauses and sighs and sentences he left unfinished, there was also a love story.

Since last night at the D’Abernons’, they hadn’t spoken except for clipped terse exchanges. At least Vicki’s presence ameliorated the icy air, but she too was lost in her own thoughts, twirling the ends of her hair, giving Lev a half-hearted smile when their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

“Shall we stop for lunch in Nuremburg?” Lev asked.

Josephine sighed. “It’s early.”

“I’m getting hungry,” Vicki offered.

Lev stretched his fingers out against the steering wheel. “Otherwise, it’s another five hours.”

“Fine,” Josephine said, still avoiding eye contact. How impossible she is, Lev thought.

As they drove into town, men in brown shirts paraded down the road holding banners high above their heads. They were singing and laughing and marching along, their young faces beaming with ebullience. The cerulean blue of the sky was piercing to look at; the color made Lev’s eyes water. Alongside the road, the lush vegetation of summer promised shade and respite. Lev inhaled the clean, pure scent of the country coming in through the open windows, and for a moment, he appreciated the surrounding nature, chastising himself for resisting
its charms. The boys marched alongside the car, waving and smiling. Vicki waved back.

The medieval town rose up before them, the spires strong and imposing, the stone buildings quaint and squat. As they pulled up in front of the hotel, the streets were alive with anticipation. People walked briskly. The shutters of all the houses were thrown open. Women stood on balconies stringing garlands of asters. Getting out of the car, Lev wondered aloud if there was some sort of parade today.

They decided to walk into the center of town for lunch. Along the way, men tipped their hats at Josephine and Vicki. When Lev accidentally bumped into an older man, the man apologized profusely, clasping Lev’s hand in both of his. Lev joked that Berliners should come here and take a course in manners. For the first time since their fight, Josephine revealed a small smile.

From three blocks away, they heard a laughing roar swelling toward them. A street band played, caustic brass instruments that made Lev wince. The noise grew in pitch as the crowd approached, moving down the street at a measured pace. Rippling in the warm wind, swastika banners hung from the facades of buildings. Moments later, the marchers came into full view, SA soldiers brandishing the black, white, and red flags of the Hohenzollern empire.

Lev clutched Vicki’s hand. She flashed him an uncertain look.

After the first row of men passed, two troopers strode behind, clutching a diminutive figure, head hanging down, flopping from left to right. Dressed in drab loose clothing, muted and rumpled, she could have been mistaken for a man except for the honey-colored hair that hung over her face. As the procession moved closer, Lev felt the crowd bristling with sharp excitement: warm bodies pressing into his back, people straining to see the spectacle standing on tiptoe, their hot baited breath sweeping over his neck. Lev saw her more clearly now—a young woman, her glassy light eyes flitting from face to face, jaw locked, her mouth screwed into a grimace. A semicircle of eager bodies had instantaneously formed around the girl, and the troopers did all they could to keep the people back from pouncing, from tearing at her clothing,
her skin, her hair. The crowd clapped and shouted, hurling insults at the girl, urging the troopers on. One of the troopers, after a few excruciating minutes filled with heat and laughter in which the girl started trembling, produced a pair of rusted barber shears from his rucksack. All around, people roared with appreciation.

Vicki stared at Lev, her eyes widening. “What’s happening?”

He held Vicki close, one arm around her shoulders, the other one tense by his side.

The girl jerked back in refusal, her eyes squeezed shut. The trooper—a boy barely older than she was—grabbed a fistful of honey hair. Then he methodically, almost tenderly, started clipping off chunks, following the curve of her skull, careful not to nick her. Head tilted to the side, she kept her eyes closed. The closed eyes, the tilted head oddly reminded Lev of an early-thirteenth-century painting of the Madonna and Child, peaceful, flat dimensionless hand over heart, a halo of gold shimmering around her head as she sorrowfully holds her child in her arms, riddled with the foreknowledge of his crucifixion. Perhaps it was this young girl’s passive resignation that triggered such a strange comparison. He didn’t know. He only knew he had to leave—witnessing such a disgrace brought bile into his throat, made him want to retch on his shoes. But he couldn’t move, packed on all sides with these lusty people who pressed into him, demanding blood. And he must protect Vicki. He didn’t want to draw any attention, and trying to push through the crowd at this pivotal point might steer the crowd’s focus away from the girl and toward them. And then, who could tell what might happen once this collective hungry gaze shifted to Vicki? He stood paralyzed with these thoughts, clenching Vicki’s shoulders, hoping she didn’t fully realize the severity of the situation, how awful it was. Strands of the girl’s hair fell on the hot cobblestones. After the first fistful had been sliced off, people erupted into frantic applause, shouting for more. The trooper paused, held up a hand, and nodded to the crowd—he wasn’t finished yet, not nearly. He would cut it all off—neuter her. A middle-aged woman next to them, her cheeks florid from the heat, sweat stains on her silk blouse, shouted, “A lesson indeed!” She was
utterly enthralled, her predatory eyes watering with excitement when the trooper clipped off another chunk.