The Safety Net (30 page)

It was a bit much, though, when the Schröters turned up too, invited by Käthe—“finally with success.” They did live in the village, of course, were relatives, though not officially, and they did have a common grandchild. One problem was the awkward one of how to address each other, something they had never been able to solve even after meeting three or four times at Rolf’s. Schröter flatly refused to use first names. The utmost to which he could be induced was to say Tolm rather than Mr. Tolm, and Luise, his wife, went on saying Fritz Tolm, while Käthe positively forbade them to call her Mrs. Tolm or Mrs. Käthe and insisted on Käthe. But since they met so
rarely, the forms of address always became confused again and seemed to end up with Mr. and Mrs. Then Käthe would hark back to the old days: “Imagine we had met when I was still living in the teacher’s house at my mother-in-law’s place and used to walk through the village carrying Rolf or when I was living at the countess’s, or even earlier when I was still Käthe Schmitz in Iffenhoven—we would have met, perhaps during carnival or at a church party at the vicarage, and I would have said: Please call me Käthe.”

“But that’s not the way it was,” Schröter would say with his mild yet bitter smile, “that’s not the way it was. Tolm without the Mr., I can manage that, but Käthe even with Mrs., I can’t manage that—and not to use names at all, I find that too discourteous, ridiculous, and I can’t very well call you too just Tolm. All this first-name business is too American for me anyway, it’s beyond me.”

“I was too young,” said Luise Schröter, “to call him Fritz in the days when he went to the village school, and later too, otherwise I might have managed to say Fritz now. Yes please, I like champagne. What are we celebrating? Oh, of course—pardon me, of course! Well then, here’s to you and all the best!”

Schröter insisted on beer, smoked his pipe, and when the table was set and Eva Klensch had brought in the soup: “Now I’m going to enjoy this. As long as we don’t start talking politics.”

“No,” said Tolm, “not as far as I’m concerned, I can promise you that.”

The seating was Käthe’s idea: Miss Klensch beside Schröter, herself beside Blurtmehl, and himself beside Luise Schröter. Plenty to talk about. He could inquire discreetly after Anna Pütz and Bertha Kelz, was told that one was paralyzed, the other dead; was also told that Kohlschröder wouldn’t be able to keep his job much longer, seeing how he—well, Luise blushed, she had always been one of the priest’s main boosters. Something must have happened that had to do with girls, school kids, and others who had apparently “exposed”
themselves or been made to expose themselves to achieve something or other. Luise would say no more than: “This time he really did go too far.”

To reinforce Blurtmehl in the feeling of being only a guest here, not a servant, he, Tolm, got up from time to time, poured more wine, opened bottles of mineral water, brought glasses from the buffet. Then he explained the virtues of caviar to Luise Schröter, showed her how she must wait for the toast to cool slightly but not entirely, so that it was still crisp and warm but no longer hot enough to melt the butter, and only then to put the caviar on it, “More, more, Luise, fill the whole spoon”—with half an ear he was listening to the others, was surprised that Schröter was having such a lively conversation with Eva Klensch although Schröter himself had started on politics—socialism, Catholicism, history of the Christian trade-union movement, imprisonment during the Nazi regime, Adenauer’s betrayal, the Christian Democratic Union beyond discussion and the German Socialist Party gone soft—and heard Eva reasonably and vehemently defending her German Socialist Party, and at the same time the Catholic Church too. He was sorry Käthe hadn’t placed him beside Eva, he would have loved to have a closer look at this astonishingly pretty person, but then, if he had been seated next to her, it would have meant Luise having to sit next to her husband.

He also helped remove the plates of the first course, poured red wine, was aware of a few momentary mental blanks: it really must have been too much for one day—his election, the interviews, his rambling thoughts on bird flights, the business with Sabine. He apologized to Luise Schröter for his taciturnity, but then told her in detail about Holger Count Tolm, gossip she plainly and unabashedly enjoyed. “Too bad,” was all she said, “he’s supposed to have been nice enough as a young lad.”

He observed Blurtmehl with amazement: he had lost all shyness but not his dignity, kept his distance without distancing himself, was affable with Käthe without a trace of familiarity, yet there remained in his behavior a trace of the professional
that would allow him tomorrow to resume in all naturalness his status of servant, prepare his bath, massage him, and not embark on a chat without being asked. Even his polite but uncompromising rejection of any further assistance from Tolm (who in an overly democratic gesture had wanted to help bring in the omelets and the salad plates), the firmness—not authoritarian, merely sensible—with which, without a word, Blurtmehl interrupted Eva’s metaphysical conversation with old Schröter and steered her into the kitchen, where she at once started giggling with Käthe again—in all this there was something he could only call personality. It was a resoluteness, an ability to make decisions, that he himself lacked: there was no doubt that Blurtmehl would have made a fantastic president. For the first time something about Blurtmehl’s movements struck him, called to his mind a phrase, a description, applying to those movements for which he had long been searching: the “youth movement” of the twenties that must have persisted longer in Silesia. It may have been that, too, which had—erroneously—made him think of pederasty.

The evening was clearly turning into what might be called a successful party: they all enjoyed the food, all were deep in lively conversations, Blurtmehl even dug up some boarding-school anecdotes, spoke kindly of the bishop, and Luise Schröter was so relaxed that she spoke frankly about their financial worries, how her brother—“You know what a tough character he always was”—was increasing the rent, even piling it onto the water rates—and what a miserable pension Schröter had. He was almost tempted to offer her money, a loan of course, they would never accept it as a gift—but his old, his new shyness held him back. It was always a ticklish business offering money, no matter to whom: either they accepted it too quickly and wanted too much, or they froze when he offered it to them; that was something Käthe would have to look after. Luise even asked point-blank how much the caviar had cost, and then blushed, and he had to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder and explain that he didn’t
know because—and this might surprise her—he had received it as a gift, and from whom? From the Russians, of course, although he had no direct business connections with them—“They’d hardly want to buy my paper and sell it in the Soviet Union!”—he did meet them at receptions and conferences. He also told her how little they cared for associating with their own comrades, how after a few drinks they sometimes spoke about them as disparagingly, contemptuously you might say, as—well, as bishops, perhaps, about acolytes or cardinals about lowly prelates. And to come back to the caviar, it was exactly the same with the cigars from Castro’s empire: he’d been given those, too, by the Russians, he would never buy them for himself, nor the caviar, and he confessed to Luise Schröter that he would never, never get over certain traumas and inhibitions, never: the hungry son of the penurious teacher of Tolmshoven was still deeply entrenched in him, and he would never, although he had long been able to afford it, pay six or seven marks for a cigar or—“for all I know”—forty for a few spoonfuls of caviar. He was trying to lead her carefully back to the subject of money, and please, she mustn’t think he was stingy, no, that he most certainly wasn’t, simply that a car, even a manor house, was all right but he would never be able to step across the cigar and caviar threshold. He just wanted her to know the devious routes by which Castro’s cigars came into the hands of West German capitalists—like the caviar from the slashed bellies of sturgeons.…

For their coffee they moved to the living room, which Käthe also called “our tearoom” ever since they had been advised not to use the balcony. Eva Klensch insisted on making the coffee: “Turkish, if that’s all right with you.” It was all right, and they even found some little copper pots in Käthe’s kitchen cabinet. Turkish? She must have picked that up in Lebanon. Or Turkey or Syria? Did she know he was fully informed about her background? That he knew almost everything there was to know about how often she went to church and what she had
for Sunday breakfast, her business transactions and her career, her enthusiasm for archery? A sudden wave of embarrassment made him blush. This nice young woman, who was so obviously enjoying the evening, who was a little cockier than he had judged from her photograph, this efficient, friendly little person: there was a dossier on her, and he had perused it, against regulations, driven by curiosity about Blurtmehl, who, there was no denying, was physically closer to him every day than anyone else. What concern of his were Blurtmehl’s motorbikes, his friendship, his love affair? He felt embarrassed, yet had been unable to curb his curiosity.

In the living room they regrouped: Käthe at last next to Luise, Schröter next to Blurtmehl, and himself at last next to Eva Klensch, who wasn’t much older than Sabine. The coffee had turned out well, was probably too strong but he drank it anyway, apologized with a smile for getting up once again to offer cigars and cigarettes, while Käthe placed brandy and liqueurs on the table for them to help themselves. Schröter spoke of the cigar, at which he sniffed voluptuously, as “a fantastic thing, almost too good to smoke.” Eva took a cigarette, also a liqueur, inquired after his grandchildren, immediately blushed and bit her lip, but he reassured her. “Yes,” he said, “one of them, my oldest grandson, he’s off somewhere, probably in North Africa. Why not talk about it? Now the fourth grandchild is on the way—by my daughter Sabine.” He swallowed the question of whether she didn’t want any children, swallowed what lay on the tip of his tongue and heavily on his mind: Sabine’s worries, and the worries he had about Sabine. He asked her about her work, her business, admired her courage, her enterprise, and was afraid to look really deeply into her eyes. She told him about how quickly fashions changed, about the risks—“It’s like vegetables that wilt”—about competition and struggle, costings and costs, and he discovered that her apparent cockiness was merely the obverse of shyness, and she spoke of Alois, “who is such a faithful and beloved companion to me,” and of her nostalgia for Berlin.

“Now there’s a real city for you!”

Käthe and Luise seemed to have had a bit too much to drink, they were not talking now but whispering, village names sounded through the whispering—Kohlschröder again and again—and in the end it was Schröter who said it was time to leave, firmly, simply got to his feet, also not quite steady on his legs, hesitantly holding the half-smoked cigar. No, he couldn’t offer old Schröter another cigar to take along, it would have seemed like a handout, a charitable gesture; one, yes, not two, but if he went about it carefully he might be able to send him a box of them; that would be all right, then it was no longer a handout but a gift. Apparently the two ladies had made some progress after all, they were now openly using first names, for as they were leaving Käthe asked: “Isn’t there something else we can do for you, Luise?” And Luise said: “I’d just love to have a ride in your car, Käthe.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, if that’s possible.”

It could be arranged, only it wasn’t quite far enough to the Kommertz farm, and a detour was decided upon to which Blurtmehl agreed. Eva Klensch insisted on clearing up in the kitchen, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and although he would have preferred to go off to bed he felt obliged to go along on the drive, and the security officer had to be informed. Luise unblushingly observed that the “huge car purrs like a pussycat—you hardly know you’re sitting in a car!” She enjoyed the short drive—Blurtmehl made a few detours, calling it a “lap of honor”—and Käthe showed Luise the built-in conveniences: automatic windows, the little bar, and finally the phone, which she asked to be allowed to use. She called up Katharina, first spoke to Rolf, then to her daughter: “Greetings from the flying carpet to all of you, including dear Mrs. Fischer—and don’t take it too seriously—right? Politics, I mean.” Blurtmehl, who was obviously enjoying Luise’s naïve pleasure, turned on the stereo, inserted a Bach cassette, and Luise actually had tears in her eyes: “See Him, Whom? the Bridegroom Christ, See Him,
How? a spotless Lamb.” Schröter, who found all this somewhat embarrassing, wiped away her tears and murmured gently: “My dear, does it really move you so much?” “Yes,” she said, “I’ve never heard it like that, and I’ve sung it so often in the choir.” She accepted the cassette when they reached the Kommertz farm, and Käthe asked Blurtmehl to rewind the tape. Käthe said: “Believe me, I’ve never known anyone to enjoy Bach that much—you must accept it.…”

“I’d no idea,” said Luise, “that there were such things on tape. I’ll be only too happy to accept it.”

Behind them the security car, from which two officers jumped out; dogs barking, awkwardness, and Luise’s parting words: “Now you’ll have to come and see us too, we’re relatives, aren’t we? They’re not married, mind you, but they’re our children, and they’re living together properly.”

He would have preferred to take Käthe’s arm and walk the few hundred yards to the manor, but he got back into the car; the trouble caused by such a nocturnal walk would spoil any possible pleasure in it. Tolmshoven was open on four or five sides, clumps of trees, shrubs, the willows beyond the Hellerbach stream: limited visibility, the road poorly lighted. He could feel the anxiety of the officers, the tension in their courtesy, as he hesitated: he helped Käthe into the car, then followed her, supported by Blurtmehl: that seven- or eight-minute nocturnal stroll through the village was not feasible.

Blurtmehl was already undergoing a transformation, not yet quite the servant and chauffeur, no longer quite the guest; in any case the solicitude, one might almost say empathy of his touch and movements went beyond the professional; a man, he thought, whose wealth of nuances I am only now discovering, I always considered him a bit aloof.