The Safety Net (12 page)

“Yes—what makes you think so … what do you know,
Maria? Tell me.”

“I know nothing, Mrs. Fischer, I don’t actually know anything—but I can see, I can feel, that there’s more weighing on your mind than the baby you’re expecting—something serious … would you like tea or coffee now?”

“My mother should be here any moment, there won’t be time for tea or coffee—what do you think, should I stay here?”

“No, you’d best go, I think … yes. I never had anyone I could go to when I had it up to here with my family—I could only go to my sister in town, but I could never stay for long, just for an afternoon—the apartment’s so cramped—when they all come home from work, the children and her husband—I didn’t feel like going to the convent, though they might have taken me in—in spite of the baby.… Be glad you have somewhere to go to—and go.…”

“Would you go with me, if—? Don’t cry, Maria, don’t cry—I’ll be back.”

“You won’t come back—maybe to Blorr, to visit us, but never again to this house—I’d go with you if—and one thing I do know, and I must tell you, I owe you that, you’ve always been so good to me: the child is not your husband’s, and you can’t go to the one whose child it is.…”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No.”

“Don’t you really?”

“No, I swear—but I can count, and five months ago”—and here she laughed a little—“how you could have, I mean, managed it with all this surveillance, without anybody noticing—it’s amazing, and I feel scared too—no one would have believed it of you.…”

“Scared of me?”

“No—just scared, scared at how artful people can be—there comes your mother now—and don’t forget me if you need me, I need you too—sure you won’t have some tea?”

“No, thanks, I’d like to be gone when my husband gets home.”

From the front door she saw the driver—it wasn’t Blurtmehl—get out, hold the door open for Käthe, and then stand beside Kübler—it wasn’t Hubert either, which it might have been, it was a stranger, a new man, who looked more like Association than police. Käthe—it was always a pleasure to see her—she must be close to sixty and looked better all the time. She had a manner, hard to define, of always seeming calm while actually being quite tense, and she wasn’t always lucky with her hairdressers; this time it had turned out well: the gray, white-streaked chignon suited her, and this time, too, she was obviously upset. She had brought along a little bag of some of her cookies, probably expected some tea, kissed Kit, then her, and said, almost cried out: “Have you heard?”

“What? No.”

“They’ve made him president, Fritz, your father—they actually voted him in, I just heard it on the car radio—so I must hurry home, I can’t leave him alone. This is the end for us, we won’t have a minute’s peace, not a single minute—alone, I mean. Bleibl’s had his way after all.”

“Oh my God, no one could’ve expected that—and Father’s an old man, and not well.”

“But he’s just the man for it, you know what I mean—white-haired, kindly, cultured, after Pliefger wouldn’t go on—he has such a pleasant manner—and his interview voice, much better than before, I just heard him on the radio. Of course he’s pretending to feel honored. Confidence and all that, responsibility and all that—and you, child, we had no idea you were pregnant, and already in your sixth month!”

“Has Grebnitzer been talking?”

“No, Bleibl told us, of all people—he read it in some sports supplement—Grebnitzer then merely told us the month—is that so bad? Why weren’t we supposed to know? Don’t you want the baby?”

“Oh I do, I do …” Crazy to say such a thing about a baby.

“Then what is it, something to do with Erwin?”

A nod—with the front door open, in the hall, a mere nod
that said much and nothing, too much and nothing. How could she explain to Käthe how dreadful she always felt after performing her duty, after, not even so much during or before, but after, when he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, couldn’t lie still and be silent for even a minute—and before, those expert caresses he had learned by heart, of which none, not one, was genuine, that “man of the world” pretense, that “experienced lover” pretense, whereas Hubert—involuntarily her thoughts went to Hubert, and it made her ill, yes, that might be wicked and for all she cared it was—whereas Hubert, when he stroked her eyebrows or pushed her hair back from her forehead or shyly touched the tip of her nose, whereas Hubert was always so nice beforehand, so quiet, so tender, and afterward so serious, so calm—and with Erwin those wretched, miserable jokes, all of which,
all
, he dreamed up from traffic reports on the radio with hardly even a semblance of variety: “There we’ve gone again, failing to give right-of-way—ha-ha-ha!”

“This time we really took the curve at seventy”—could she ever explain to Käthe, could she have explained to anyone, say a divorce-court judge, what these stereotype jokes did to her after making the supreme effort of performing that strange duty? He was obviously so fond of those jokes that they had now become a necessity to him. Joke before: “Got off for the weekend—no speed limit, no traffic jams!” Joke after: “Through construction area—traffic jam avoided—ha-ha-ha!”

“Problems with Erwin?” Käthe asked. “And in your sixth month? Isn’t that normal, child—I mean, serious enough, but not final, surely?”

“Oh, Mama, I can’t go on living with him, I can’t stand him anymore.… I’m driving back with you right now to Tolmshoven, with Kit of course and”—she gave a bitter laugh—“with my knitting.”

“What nonsense—can’t go on living with him, can’t stand him—that’s not unusual with pregnant women—so they go off to their mother for a few weeks!”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do, just wait till Kit brings
her dolls.”

“You mean, no cup of tea, no little chat with your mama?”

“No, no tea, and we can chat on the way, and at home. And, Mama—haven’t you learned to count yet—if I’m in my sixth month, when did I—well, let’s come right out with it—when did I conceive?”

“Five months ago, I would think.”

She looked confused, this dear, elderly lady, who had grown prettier, more dignified with age, and was the only one among all the “boardroom biddies,” as Erwin called them—and in this oddly enough, he agreed with Rolf—the only one who had real style, who had taste and dignity, though not always with regard to her hair, as a girl she must have dreamed of having little curls and would sometimes have her hair done that way. But otherwise, in her dress, gestures, speech, and movements, she had style—yet she was only the daughter of a bankrupt nursery gardener from Iffenhoven who had ruined himself with experiments in tulips and roses because he was no good at figures—and figures were something his daughter Käthe had never mastered either, although she sorely needed to. And she had no idea how to count in this particular category, had never understood why people laughed when a baby arrived five or six months after the wedding, had never understood that they—well, that’s to say, before the wedding—although she herself, if Rolf wasn’t one of those famous seven-month babies, had obviously, that’s to say, before the wedding—and bless her, surely she must know that nine months are nine months, and five are five, and that, if she was now in her sixth, she couldn’t possibly be pregnant by Erwin—as Miss Blum had known, of course—yet during the summer Käthe herself had often joked about Erwin being away so frequently and so long.

“No, I’ve got to leave today, right now, and you can lend me some needles and wool—and don’t you remember where Erwin was five months ago?”

Perhaps that was too harsh, too direct, for Käthe—her jaw fell, she turned pale, dropped the bag of cookies—on the
very spot where for the last time, when saying goodbye, she had given herself to him, between the cloakroom mirror and the door to the toilet, where the revolting advertisement for the Beehive—the Fischer family business—hung on the wall, showing a naked woman entering the opening of a beehive and emerging fully dressed from the other side. “Beehive Outfits Eve!” and now, facing her mother, it struck her that there was a psychological error in this poster: who would want to enter a beehive, where normally one wouldn’t be outfitted but stung? And now Käthe understood, color came back into her face, she took off her glasses, picked up the bag of cookies, and said: “Oh no, child, not you—not you …” and fortunately didn’t ask the obvious question: “Who was it?”

“Oh yes,” she said calmly, “me. Maybe I’ll explain it to you sometime—but now let’s get going, Mama dear, Kit’s brought her dolls …” and she longed to throw some of Erna Breuer’s words at that innocent, shocked-Mama face; she preferred them to Erwin’s sayings or the Fischers’ vocabulary, and she knew: something else urged her on—Hubert was in Tolmshoven, and she simply must talk to him, and of course she would never reveal his name, if only for Helga’s and Bernhard’s sakes—never!

And also—why not think of that too, it occurred to her—for the sake of his career. He probably wouldn’t actually be fired, but he’d be likely to run into trouble if it got out—she supposed they didn’t like such things happening while the men were on duty.

“All right then,” said Käthe, “let’s leave, let’s go, I’d also like to get back to Tolm as quickly as possible, he’ll be dog-tired, need comforting—and now I suppose we enter inevitably upon Phase One,” whispering suddenly: “Has she ever phoned again?”

“No.”

“But she phoned me. Got me at Kohlschröder’s, and d’you know what she said: ‘Don’t ever have tea at the Bleibls’.’ That’s all she said, and when I said to her: ‘Come back, child, come
back,’ she answered: ‘I can’t, I can’t, I wish I could’—and hung up.”

Kit was consoled with cookies, with the prospect of walks with Grandfather, of roasting chestnuts over an open fire. Miss Blum actually wept—not sadly, just wept, so that Käthe gave her a searching look, and Miss Blum asked: “What’ll I do with the milk?”

“Ask my husband whether he’d like some milk or milk puddings, otherwise take it to Mr. Hermsfeld’s or put it out for the cats in the empty Breuer house. Don’t cry.”

She asked the driver to stop for a moment at the chapel, went in, wiped her eyes, was now calm, almost composed; she would leave Hubert out of it altogether, if he agreed. That would be better for Helga, for Bernhard, for his approaching First Communion; there were enough flowers for the Madonna; the Beeretzes, Miss Blum, and the Hermanns women would look after that, during Rosary month, sometimes they even held a Rosary service without a priest and she had sometimes gone too.

“Fine,” she said as she got in the car again. “It’ll be lovely with Grandfather. You can feed the ducks again.”

And although the driver could listen, a stranger whom she didn’t know, Käthe said: “You, child, you of all people!” She shook her head and whispered: “Before marriage, oh well—when you’re fond of each other and intend to marry—but while married, with another man!”

Blurtmehl had everything ready, had adjusted the temperature of the water and stirred in the bath oil, helped him to undress, in particular to untie his shoelaces; stooping down made him feel panicky, and Grebnitzer had advised him to avoid stooping. Jacket, trousers, underwear, he could still manage all that himself, wouldn’t accept any help, only his socks and shoes, Blurtmehl was needed there again, had to help him into the bathtub too, half lifting him as he murmured: “Lost weight, I see, a little lighter again, I don’t have to weigh you, I can feel it—six, maybe seven hundred grams.” And needless to say, the instant his feet and bottom touched the water he felt the urge to urinate (always those vain attempts to deal with that in advance!) and, wrapped in a bath towel, he had to use the adjoining toilet while Blurtmehl checked the temperature of the water with his left hand, let in a little more hot water, and added another dash of bath oil.

He had had the bathtub positioned in such a way and the window set low enough so that he could at least see the
treetops, the sky, which was never completely blue. Today the wind seemed to be blowing from the southwest. The emissions from the power stations, already turned to clouds, moved across the sky, the effect was idyllic, as evocative of nature as in some Dutch paintings, or early Gainsboroughs and Constables—yet twelve kilometers to the west they had still been massive pillars of smoke, harmless—as Kortschede had sworn to him by all that was holy—and consisting only of steam, which happened to form clouds, make weather. Only when the wind blew from the north or northwest—which it very seldom did—was the sky clear, cloudless, it was always gray; only on very rare days—he never counted them though he had often intended to—blue.

Blurtmehl sat on the stool beside the bathtub, knowing that he couldn’t bear anything or anybody behind him, knowing also that that sense of panic had its origins in the war, in a few very sudden retreats that might have been called flight. To be shot at from behind was worse than being shot at from the front. But perhaps—this was Blurtmehl’s intelligent theory—it was also a Sparta complex that had been instilled into him at school and could never be eradicated, a fear of disgrace. If he was right, it must lie very deep, not quite so deep as the milk soup, confession, the “alone or with others”; he had never felt disgrace, always felt fear. They did get him once, and it had been his salvation, taking him to Dresden, to a military hospital, that was where he had found Käthe; besides, the wound had been ideal, made to order so to speak, and right on time; not dangerous, not very painful, yet not so insignificant that one got stuck in some field hospital. In Dresden he had merely been afraid that someone might find out that he, the battery commander, had issued a standing order: “When they come, as soon as you see them: beat it, scram!” At least he had stayed, like a captain on his ship, till the last moment and had taken along only his cigarettes, pistol, and map, staggered by that overwhelming superiority of tanks and infantry—far from being “ragged Russians” they were all in clean uniforms.
Apparently no one had denounced him, not even his Lieutenant Plohn, who always spoke of final victory but obviously no longer believed in it. Dresden, Käthe.

Today again at breakfast, on the final day of the conference, before going downstairs “into the labyrinth,” as Käthe called it, “to face the Minotaur”—today he was again struck by the resemblance between Käthe’s eyes and Rolf’s. Hers were a little lighter, the merest shade lighter, but they also had that quality of poetic sorrow, barely disguised by an optimism masking despair. At the time she had advised him to sell the paper immediately, to keep Eickelhof, and to become a museum director, a minister of culture, or at least the head of a cultural section—he might have had that chance: the British had found him acceptable, and he would have found some political party; his erroneous and harrowing internment had even enhanced his credit, and he really had never been a Nazi—was that mere chance? He wasn’t quite clear about that: of course he had found them totally revolting, beyond discussion, and for years, under the countess’s patronage, he had managed to make a living as a private tutor and curator, in mansions and archives, cataloguing private art collections and occasionally publishing something in a journal, until the war came and he landed in the artillery.