The Other Side of Love (8 page)

Kathe flushed.

“We were invited to a reception at the Chancellery. He told me he was disappointed in my hundredmetre performance.”

Wyatt’s face was expressionless as he pulled a straight chair close to Araminta.

“Now, give your old cousin the straight dope,

“Minta. Dad’s been spreading the word that you were out with some Habsburg prince who races at Le Mans.”

Araminta laughed.

“Jiirgen’s a pilot, and his father’s a baronet that’s what Freiherr means, isn’t it, Katy? The true story is …

“

She launched into a vivacious bowdlerized report on the midnight prank

- or as much of it as she cared to disclose.

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Kathe and Aubrey, who’d heard the story before, couldn’t control their laughter; and when she reached the part about driving home in a horse-drawn Bolle milk-wagon Wyatt laughed so loudly that the woman at the writing-table ostentatiously gathered together her postcards and departed. When Wyatt spoke to Kathe, he was cordial but removed, and she could hear a stilted note in her responses. Araminta kept a lively shuttlecock of conversation going during the tea and cream cakes.

Kathe glanced at her watch.

“Nearly five-thirty. I have to dash.”

Aubrey jumped to his feet.

“Let me get a taxi and take you back to Friesen-Haus.”

“A shuttle bus is stopping by for me.”

“I promised the guys to be back at the Olympic Village for a victory celebration,”

Wyatt said.

“OK if I grab a ride with you?”

Kathe gave him a startled glance before she nodded.

After they had disappeared in the bustling foyer, Aubrey continued to stare at the glass doors.

It was a beautiful late afternoon, warm, with a soft bronze haze of sunshine. Traffic was flowing in heavy streams between the great columns of the Brandenburg Gate and into the vast green vistas of the Tiergarten. The only way Kathe could keep herself from gazing at Wyatt was by focusing her attention on the Quadriga, the bronze equestrian statue that topped the Gate.

“What if you miss that bus?”

Wyatt asked.

“Impossible. The baroness”

“We’ll have a short stroll in the park, I’ll take you back to the dorm in a cab, and your guardian gaoler will never know the difference.”

“But”

“Why not try something new and different? Just do something without an argument, OK?”

He took her arm, leading her across the Pariser Platz towards the Brandenburg Gate.

IV

She hadn’t walked in the Tiergarten since the afternoon two years ago when she had come here with Anna Elzerman. That was the first time she’d seen the signs that forbade Jewish people to sit on benches. Trapped in shame, she had gripped her friend’s trembling hand and made an inner vow to forgo the park and its pleasures, including the zoo. Kingsmith’s was near by, on Unter den Linden, and her father sometimes invited her for an ice-cream at one of the park’s open-air cafes: she always suggested they go to Bauer’s or the Victoria Cafe instead. Not enjoying the park was a protest known only to her, a meaningless protest. Yet strolling at Wyatt’s side in the

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shade of the tall trees along the newly broadened Charlottenburg Chaussee rechristened the EastWest Axis towards the distant golden Siegessaule, the statue of winged Victory, she couldn’t help staring guiltily at the benches with their paler rectangles. The signs had been removed before the Games.

Wyatt said:

“Maybe the chaperon will hear you played hooky. You’re not exactly incognito in that outfit.”

Preoccupied, she hadn’t realized that the cyclists and strolling pedestrians, the people rushing past in automobiles, were eyeing her trim white uniform.

“There’s a pretty pond that way,”

she said, raising her left hand.

“Sounds good to me.”

The meandering little lake had retained its enchantment. A graceful willow wept into the green lily pads, a pair of gliding swans carved V-shaped ripples beneath the hump-backed stone bridge.

Wyatt slowed.

“Nice,”

he said, then looked at her.

“I’ve been pretty rough on you. And the thing is, I don’t usually go around like Jack the Ripper.”

“The Games, competition, everybody watching us. We’ve all been under tremendous stress”

“Ye Gods,”

he said with a mock sigh.

“Can’t I apologize without a battle?”

“I’m not arguing.”

“What, then? You’ve pulled your head back, your eyes are narrowed. You’re one goddam irritating, sensational-looking female.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Mixed.”

The smile faded, and he stared at the swans with a curiously hurt expression.

“What a lauA. Me! Making time with a big pal of Hitler’s.”

w

“The Nazis make me cringe.”

“Hey. Aren’t you the girl who leaps to defend that group of thugs like they walk on water?”

“If I attacked Roosevelt, how would you react?”

“I’m surprised. Why aren’t you putting that nasty twerp on a far higher level than the President?”

Sudden tears filled her eyes. It was like the basketball match, but this time there was no escape. She fished in her bag for a handkerchief.

“Hey, I was trying to say I’m sorry.”

He touched her arm gently.

“You shouldn’t take me so seriously. I’m famed far and wide for my short fuse.”

“It’s an insect in my eye …”

“Shh,”

he whispered, and put both arms around her, holding her loosely. She had the same feeling that had come to her during the race: that she had stepped out of normal time and into a bubble

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of perfection. Tears still oozing between her closed eyelids, she let her cheek rest on his jacket, hearing and feeling the strong beat of his heart.

“Kathe,”

he whispered hoarsely, pronouncing her name perfectly.

“Rathe … what’s happening to me?”

A pair of stout matrons were curving into sight on the path. Wyatt moved away. Kathe loathed the fat Hausfrauen.

“Let’s go over there,”

he said, and they crossed the little bridge. Halting by the marble statue of a nymph, he said in a low voice:

“You feel the old chemistry, too, don’t you?”

“It’s crazy,”

Kathe murmured.

“You’re my cousin.”

“No.”

“What?”

“We’re not related at all,”

he said.

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Her mind swirling with Araminta’s disclosure of Humphrey and Rossie’s unlikely pre-marital fall, she looked at him and said nothing.

“This isn’t coming out of the blue, is it?”

he said. In the shadowy twilight, his face seemed heavier, older.

“I just found out that your parents didn’t get married until right before you were born.”

She moved the toe of her pump carefully along the marks left by a recent raking.

“It didn’Meem possible. Aunt Rossie is … well, too sensible. And Uncle Hum*rey’s not like that, either.”

“Exactly. But until last month I took Dad for granted. You know how it goes: he was my father, so of course he loved me. Frankly, sometimes it got embarrassing. He might as well have been wearing a badge: Wyatt Kingsmith’s my son and I’m proud of him! So when”

“Sondermeldungl”

One of the loudspeakers that reported on the Olympic events had been planted on the bridge. From the quadruple megaphones poured an announcement of another victory for the Reich.

“Christ, there goes the perfect background noise for this particular conversation.”

Wyatt began to stride rapidly along the curving path. Kathe hurried to keep up. The voice faded into the rustle of leaves, and he slowed. Thrusting his hands in the pockets of his grey flannel slacks, he asked:

“Has the German press mentioned the make-up of our basketball team?”

At this abrupt retreat to the impersonal, Kathe moved a bit apart.

“No, but basketball’s not considered a real sport here.”

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‘Tell me about it!”

he said. He explained that this was originally a movie-studio team but some of the players had been forced by financial considerations to stay home in Hollywood.

“I was scheduled to spend August with a buddy, but suddenly I was hot to show these Nazi bullies what it was like to be up against the great Kingsmith. I made the team. When I told my folks I was coming to Berlin, Mom went crazy.”

“Aunt Rossie? That’s hard to imagine.”

Wyatt walked a few steps.

“Let’s face it,”

he said.

“You’re not the only one who wondered why they waited so long to make it legal. After Dad was asleep, Mom came to my room. It seems she’d been married before. The guy’s name was Myron Leventhal. Jewish, in case you’re wondering.”

Kathe felt the blood drain from her face as the pieces tumbled into place. Wyatt’s outbursts against Germany, his impulsive anger at her, the baiting remarks about those Jewish Mayans.

A muscle jumped at his jaw.

“So tell me, Briinnhilde in the white suit, why the stunned expression? Have I sprouted horns?”

“Please stop doing this to me,”

she whispered.

“Forget I said that,”

he said repentantly, and began telling her of the Wyatts”

displeasure and the Leventhals chopping Myron from the family tree. His voice grew low and he swallowed when he came to the end of the lovers”

brief marriage. He picked a lime leaf and tore it apart before he continued with Rossie’s refusal to go back south.

“It must have been a truly rotten time for Mom. Widowed. Pregnant. Nineteen. She’d never worked before, but she landed a job at Kingsmhh’s. Dad fell for her immediately. After he found out I was on the way, he insisted on a wedding. When Mom finished I told her that was in the past, and I didn’t feel any different. In other words, lied. Because everything was goddam different. If I wasn’t a Kingsmith, who was I? I consulted the Manhattan telephone-book for Leventhals.”

“Were there any?”

“You sure don’t know New York.”

The fading light glinted on his smile.

“A pageful. Fortunately Mom had mentioned Myron had lived near Columbia. There was a Judge and Mrs Leventhal on West

102nd Street. I fought against going, but after a sleepless night there I was. I stood outside so long I could diagram the ironwork grille. Finally I rang the bell - my hand shook. An ancient family retainer answered. He hobbled away and returned to say that they would see me, his tone indicating that I had been granted an audience with the Lord God of Hosts.”

“They must have been so happy.”

“Are you kidding? It was obvious they’d kept track of Mother and knew exactly who I was. Mrs Leventhal - she’s thin, with a

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long bony face - left it all to the judge. He asked what it was I wanted. He had a slight German accent and spoke deliberately, as if handing down a verdict. Mom had given me Myron’s watch. I put it down.

“This belongs to you,” I said. They both sat very still for a few seconds, then Mrs Leventhal rang for coffee. Neither of them referred to the watch. The judge asked me a couple of questions

- did I go to college, what was I studying, that kind of thing. After that he talked about them. In a way it was like the Rossies and the Wyatts. Ancestral net worths. Except the Leventhals could trace their families back further, to fifteenth-century Spain. When the Inquisition expelled the Jews, they moved on to Germany. The judge obviously thought it swell that both he and his wife’s parents had come from Germany, which struck me as wild. Why would a Jew be proud of being German? A cousin of his owns a place called Leventhal’s.”

“The department store?”

“From the way he spoke I should be impressed.”

“Since 1933 it’s called The Berliner.”

“Hey, on Leipzigstrasse? Acres and acres of shop with a glasscovered central court?”

“That’s it.”

Wyatt whistled, then squinted up at the rays cast by the setting sun.

“We had seconds on coffee, then the judge picked up the watch.

“Young man, we have no connection to this.”

“

“Rotten,”

she said.

“Rotten.”

“Sad’s more like it. Here they knew I was their grandson, their only descendant, yet even after all these years they couldn’t back down. I still can see them sitting on those stiff chjlrs, two old people, lonely, so lonely.”

Wyatt sighed.

“At the time, tho h, there was no measured compassion in me whatsoever. I was ready to howl at the moon. Here was rejection on the most basic level. Because their son had married a Christian girl he was dead to them. They had mourned him. I didn’t exist.”

Kathe touched his arm consolingly. He gripped her hand, then released it.

“I’d been considering visiting the local Leventhals to see if they needed anything. On the q.t., of course - it’d be a shot through the heart to Dad if he knew I was in on the secret. Hearing they’re in the Rothschild league takes a load off my mind.”

Kathe thought of the letter delivered to Aubrey’s hotel room. She thought of Anna Elzerman emigrating because her father’s fashionable practice had been ruined. She thought of the signs stripped down for the Games. She thought of the crude, hate-drenched, anti-Semitic cartoons in the chauffeur’s newspaper. Yet in a sense Wyatt was right. The German Jews were not subjected to the same