The Life of Objects (3 page)

As we crossed the German border, the countess, wearing a black silk peignoir (another new word for me, and one with unsettling connotations), suggested that she hold my passport for the rest of the journey, not wishing me to be further troubled by tiresome customs officers. Later, I threw my coat over my nightdress and made my way through the train to retrieve a book of lace I’d left in her compartment. As I moved from car to car, I felt that I had never been so happy in my life. My new independence, and my equally false sense that I could look after myself—the elation at having left Ballycarra behind—were
so strong that I even walked differently (the countess’s own walk may have contributed to this). When I reached her door, I was surprised to hear laughter and a man’s voice. I hurried back to my berth, my coat clutched around me, no longer quite so elated. I wondered if the countess had changed compartments and forgotten to tell me.

On the last night of our journey, as the countess smoked a cigarette after dinner in the dining car, she confided that she owed everything in the world to Herr Metzenburg. He’d taken her, Inéz Cabral, a young girl of fifteen, straight from Cuba, where he’d found her, and groomed and dressed her. Herr Metzenburg’s house was the meeting place for the most fascinating men and women in Europe—not only politicians and diplomats, but writers and musicians and film stars—and he’d introduced her to a world that would otherwise have been closed, if not unknown to her. She confessed that her new manners and all the couture in Paris would not have amounted to anything in the end had Herr Metzenburg not stood behind her—and even then, she added mysteriously, there had been difficulties. After an arrangement of several years (living contentedly, she said, as slave and master), Felix invited his friend Count Hartenfels to a week’s house party to introduce him to her. Three months later, she and the count were married in the private chapel of the Hartenfels castle near Munich. Felix, she said, showed his customary good taste by choosing not to give her away in marriage.

As my experience of arrangements was limited to the feeding of Mr. Knox’s gull when he was in Dublin, I was understandably confused. I’d learned during my brief time with the countess, however, not to ask too many questions. She was a character in a fairy tale—Cinderella’s fairy godmother, or the Snow Queen, perhaps—and I, who’d been properly bewitched, was accompanying her to a distant kingdom where I would live in an enchanted forest and spin flax into gold.

We arrived in Berlin in the late afternoon, traveling directly to the Metzenburgs’ house on Fasanenstrasse. I thought at first that it was a hotel, but the countess said sharply that she had never stayed in a hotel in her life. She seemed puzzled when no one came to the door, and even more puzzled when Herr Metzenburg opened the door himself.

I could see that Herr Metzenburg must have forgotten that Countess Hartenfels was coming to stay. He kissed her hand with an amused, slightly mocking smile and led us to a pink drawing room, the look of surprise already disappearing from his face. I’d read about such things, of course, but I had it wrong—the man does not actually
kiss
the woman’s hand but takes her hand in his own and, with a little bow, lowers his face to her fingers. The countess introduced me, explaining that I was a present for the Metzenburgs, which startled me. “You must allow me these little
cadeaux
,” I heard her say as she took a cigarette from his case.

Herr Metzenburg may have forgotten that Countess Inéz
was coming to stay, but I was clearly a surprise. He turned to me smoothly, however, and said that he hoped that my journey had not been unnecessarily stressful, even if I was entering Germany, rather than leaving it, which tended to be more troublesome. Although Herr Metzenburg walked with a slight limp, he had a confident and easy way about him. I was so tongue-tied that I could only nod.

Behind him, a fair-haired, slender woman who could only be Dorothea Metzenburg floated noiselessly into the room, followed by an old man with a mustache and one eye, wearing white gloves and an apron, who immediately disappeared. Delicate and distracted, Frau Metzenburg did not have much to say, although she, too, seemed surprised to see us. Herr Metzenburg said something to her that I couldn’t hear, but I thought I heard her say, “Ah, my very own lace maker.”

The old man, without the apron but with a black monocle over his empty eye socket, returned with a tray of tea and cakes and dropped it onto a low mother-of-pearl table with a grunt. My idea of elegant manners had been taken from books and ladies’ magazines, and I was surprised, especially when Herr Metzenburg waved away the fretful old man to pour the tea himself.

The countess had told me that after university in Heidelberg, Herr Metzenburg had been sent abroad by the German ministry as ambassador, first to London and then to Madrid. She also said that his grandfather had built all of the railroads in South America. “While it’s not the most ancient of fortunes, it’s perfectly lovely. He was so attractive that money
hardly
mattered. Madame de la Roche once slid over a small cliff for love of him.” Although I was disappointed to discover that the Metzenburgs were not royal (and their house, although grand, was not a palace), both the excessive luxury and the excessive simplicity of the rooms, so unlike the dark and fussy rooms I’d conjured from magazines and books, made me wonder about all of the other things I’d imagined over the years. I’d always understood that if I were ever to have the things that I desired I would have to leave Ballycarra—I just hadn’t known how much there was to desire.

As the old man showed us to our rooms (I heard Frau Metzenburg tell him to put me in a guest bedroom as the servants’ rooms were filled with packing crates), the countess whispered that everything in my room was mine to use—bath towels, writing paper, soap, even the hot water (the last a bit unkind, I thought)—but it was an hour before I dared even pour myself a glass of water. The old man had made no mention of dinner, and by seven o’clock, I was hungry, despite the tea cakes. I heard footsteps in the passage and the sound of a bell, but no one came to my room, and I wondered if they’d forgotten me. Fortunately, a tin on a table next to the bed contained ginger biscuits, and I ate a few, then a few more, until the biscuits, to my dismay, were gone—it wasn’t that I was still hungry, although I was, that worried me, but the fear that I shouldn’t have eaten all of them. I fell asleep on top of the covers, my feet in a pair of silk slippers I found in the closet, waking in the middle of the night when I grew cold. I thought at first that I was in my own bed until the light from the streetlamp in
Fasanenstrasse, shining through the open curtains (I’d been unsure about closing them), reminded me that I was far from home.

The next morning, I had already bathed and dressed, made the bed (twice), and folded and refolded my towel and facecloth when the old man, whose name was Kreck, came to my room to tell me that Herr Metzenburg wished to see me in the library. I followed him downstairs, certain that I was to be sent home. What most distressed me—even more than the thought of my mother’s triumph—was the loss of my new bed with its silk sheets and satin quilt (and, yes, the hot water).

Herr Metzenburg appeared upset, looking for a moment as if he didn’t remember me or why he wished to see me, before pointing to a chair and wishing me good morning. I thought at first that we could not possibly be in a library—red lacquer cabinets lined the walls, tall china pagodas between them—but then I noticed the books; there were hundreds of them.

There was the unfamiliar smell of coffee. A tray on the desk held two cups and saucers and a silver pot with an ivory handle. I was very hungry, and I glanced at the tray to see if there might be a scone or a piece of fruit, but there was nothing. Without asking if I wanted coffee, Herr Metzenburg made a sign to Kreck to pour me a cup.

When I felt that it was safe to look at him, the cup and saucer rattling in my hands (I wasn’t used to drinking coffee, and I was nervous), I saw that he was staring out the window. There was a crowd in the street, running back and forth and shouting, and he asked Kreck to close the shutters. Like many people who command your attention, his head was a bit large for his body.
He wore his dark hair combed back from his face. His gray eyes reflected light in a way that made me uneasy—I felt that to look directly into his eyes was to risk revealing my most secret thoughts, had I any. He was close in age to my father. They were both about forty years old, but my father looked much older.

He turned to me and said that I was welcome to accompany him and Frau Metzenburg when they moved to their estate thirty miles south of Berlin. He said that a few days before my arrival he’d been offered his old position as ambassador in Madrid, which he had resigned in 1933, but he had refused the post, angering the foreign minister, who had immediately requisitioned the Metzenburgs’ house (my pretty room!) and conscripted all of the servants under the age of fifty. He and Frau Metzenburg had been given ten days to empty the house. A circumstance of which the countess had perhaps been unaware when she left Ireland.

Although I was free to leave (he would, of course, arrange my passage), he had, upon thinking about it, realized that I might be of help to them in the weeks to come, especially as there were no longer any servants other than Kreck and the cook. He could offer me in return a small salary. He apologized that, given the events of the last few days, he could not warrant his protection, as it clearly amounted to very little. He feared that it was only a matter of time before there was a war between Germany, France, and England.

As I listened to him, I kept thinking that I had missed something. Something I couldn’t see. I looked at the old man, but he was absorbed in arranging the silver on the tray. It was only when he signaled with an impatient shake of his head that I
was keeping Herr Metzenburg that I was able to give him my answer.

Over the next few days, I noticed that people came to the house at all hours, even through the night. I thought at first that someone was ill—Kreck labored ceaselessly up and down the stairs, cursing under his breath as he carried trays of coffee and brandy, and newspapers and telegrams. Among the visitors were grave-looking men in uniform, dispatch cases under their arms. There were men in fur hats and dark coats, and I wondered if they might be Jews. I’d never seen a Jew, and I felt both excited and afraid.

Countess Inéz stayed for two nights, breaking her journey as she advised me to do when I traveled. On the day that she was leaving, I heard her ask Herr Metzenburg how anyone could possibly stay in one place for more than a month, and Herr Felix said, “Fortunately for you, a war is coming.” The countess laughed and said that she was eager to return to Munich as she intended to divorce the count in order to marry a young Egyptian prince she’d met in Ireland.

Herr Felix said nothing, only lit a cigarette—he may have frowned; it was difficult to tell—but I was shocked. The idea of divorce was disturbing enough, but the countess had led me to believe that she trusted me. Despite her many confidences, she had clearly forgotten to mention the Egyptian prince. I consoled myself with the thought that she would certainly have told me in time—it was so busy in the house with the packing of the Metzenburgs’ belongings and the coming and going of
visitors that she clearly hadn’t found the right moment to tell me. As she said good-bye, a swirl of chinchilla and gardenia, she kissed me on both cheeks. I was unused to kissing and made the mistake of touching her cheek with my lips, nearly tearing her veil.

“You’ll be happy at Löwendorf,
niña
,” she said, settling her veil. “And don’t forget, Dorothea is inclined to
couche tôt
, but you will find Felix an excellent confidant.” When I looked at her in surprise, she said, “Don’t tell me I’ve misjudged you.” Before I could ask what she meant, she was gone.

I felt a sudden panic at her leaving. It was easy to feel assured when she ceaselessly flattered and praised me. I’d been aware that all through our journey she’d been training me (“Not that spoon, my dear. And it’s not necessary to stand when the porter enters …”), but with her departure, I would be on my own, when I would inevitably disappoint the Metzenburgs. I felt sick (what could
couche tôt
possibly mean?), but the thought of returning to Ireland was so much worse that I determined to make myself indispensable, at least until I’d been caught out and sent home, which would surely be only a matter of time.

My first task was to pack Herr Metzenburg’s collection of turned ivory. Kreck proudly explained that turning ivory had once been the occupation of princes—“the tusks spun on the lathe in three directions at once!”—and I was terrified that I would break one of the delicate towers. Some of the pieces, thirty inches high but only five inches wide, had their own ebony cases, which made them easier to pack. When Kreck
said that Herr Felix had begun collecting art while he was at school, eventually possessing one of the best collections in Europe, my dread increased, causing me to work with unaccustomed slowness.

That evening, I took a sheet of Frau Metzenburg’s gray writing paper to my room, running my fingers over the little gold telephone and numbers at the top of the page, before hiding it in Mr. Knox’s book.

Frau Metzenburg came into the pantry where Kreck and I were sliding soupspoons into little flannel bags to say that we would soon be at Löwendorf, where she had been born. I would have my own sewing room with a table and good light, and there would be people in the village to help Kreck. As she turned to leave, she asked if I would like to see the collection of lace she’d inherited from her father, who had died three years earlier. It was going to the bank at the end of the week, and she didn’t know, given the state of things, when there’d be a chance to see it again. I was relieved to have an excuse to put aside my work for a moment, and I followed her up the stairs to the second floor.

The lace room (next to the gray-and-gold room that Kreck said was her private sitting room) had three chairs and a long table with brass apothecary lamps. A tray held several pairs of white cotton gloves and a magnifying glass. There were two long books, not unlike my father’s ledgers, although Frau Metzenburg’s were bound in red damask. Narrow drawers
were built into the walls from floor to ceiling. A library ladder leaned against one wall. She turned on the lamps and handed me a pair of gloves.