The Twins (14 page)

Fran Stolz was convinced that, apart from laying down
requirements
, which she saw as a form upbringing, she also had a major responsibility for Anna’s welfare. She could not tolerate Anna being alone in her attic room on free evenings, but invited her for a cup of chocolate milk in the sitting-room. She taught her
open-work
and embroidery, in cross-stitch and
petit
point.
Skills that a young woman had to master, she explained, magnanimously
providing
Anna with the materials that were needed. They sat there as a threesome like that, Herr Stolz with his newspaper, his wife and the servant-girl united by a piece of needlework. Their daughter, Gitte, a girl of eight with long plaits, was already in bed.

Whenever a speech was expected from the Führer, he switched on the Volksempfänger – the standard issue utility radio set. Anna listened and did not listen. It was the same as the embroidery that she was working on: she did it but her head was not involved. Goebbels spoke first, about issues that fell far outside her field of vision. ‘The plutocracy – the Wall Street Jews want to ruin us …’ tatata, so it went on. This was only the prelude. Marching music, military commands, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil. Then he himself spoke, directly to his people, too loud as usual, and kept that up
throughout
the broadcast. ‘I must first of all reassure Mr Minister Eden that we Germans do not in the least want to be isolated and also that we do not feel isolated at all …’ Herr Stolz nodded in
agreement
. He folded his hands over the curve of his belly and listened attentively. Anna impassively allowed the bragging to drift over her, she waited until it was over, just as you wait for a rainbow to end – meanwhile she continued to breathe quietly. The Führer had become an institution. Everything was being decided and organized at an abstract level, over her head; she had not the slightest
influence
in it. So she felt entirely indifferent about it. The silent
struggle
against Frau Stolz’s authority was already exhausting enough.

Over the edge of her embroidery she had already peeked at the walnut bookcase dozens of times, where the books were kept behind glass as though they were jewels. She could not resist the
temptation any longer. ‘Herr Stolz, excuse me, may I …?’ She pointed towards the sanctuary with her embroidery needle, ‘… may I read a book one day?’ ‘Of course,’ he nodded to her with surprise, ‘choose one.’ Avoiding Frau Stolz’s staggered look, Anna stood up and went to the bookcase hesitantly. She pushed open the squeaking doors; a delightful smell arose from the bound volumes, many with gold blocking, a smell of thousands and yet more
thousands
of printed pages, of cardboard covers, of stories that begged to be woken out of their hibernation, of escaping from the foolish, unreal here and now – the promise of infinitely more fascinating worlds than that of cross-stitch and openwork. She read the titles giddily, Frau Stolz’s eyes burned holes in her back. She dared not hesitate too long, took out
Die
Leiden
des jungen
Werthers.
‘That is much too difficult,’ sputtered Frau Stolz. ‘Have you read it?’ said her husband. ‘No, but …’ ‘Well then, let her, culture is for
everyone
nowadays. It wouldn’t do you any harm if you read a book sometimes too.’ Frau Stolz fell silent, and laughed at Anna, to smooth things over. It was not clear whether the smoothing over referred to the humiliating remark from her husband or to the painful fact that she did not read. Anna opened the book and buried herself in it.

From this it seemed that the balding, wayward chemist was the weak spot in Frau Stolz’s armour. Perhaps her domineering and perfectionism were purely means of preserving her self-respect. She recovered her strength whenever they were women together. The day after Anna had given evidence of her appetite for reading, she asked, holding the lid of the laundry basket in front of her like a shield, ‘Don’t you take any washing to your aunt on Sundays?’ ‘No,’ Anna said, surprised. ‘How is it that you hardly ever have any washing, a dress now and then …’ ‘I’ve only got two dresses.’ ‘… And now and then some underclothes … never a sanitary towel …’ ‘Sanitary towel? What’s that?’ Frau Stolz’s eyes popped. She towered over Anna who grew smaller and smaller. She
possessed
nothing, two dresses, some underclothes, she was nobody.
‘You’re not really telling me that you don’t know what sanitary towels are?’ ‘No,’ said Anna, ‘never heard of them.’ ‘But you
menstruate
?’ ‘Menstr …? No.’ ‘But every woman menstruates, each month.’ Anna was silent for a moment, bewildered. ‘I am not aware that I am lacking anything,’ she said defiantly. ‘Listen …’ With maternal concern Frau Stolz laid her impeccably well
cared-for
hand on Anna’s shoulder. In a lowered voice, creating an
atmosphere
of familiarity that aroused great distrust in Anna, she initiated her into the secrets of the female cycle. Frau Stolz’s ‘we’, which referred to all women in the world, met with violent aversion in Anna. If it was womanly to lose blood every month, just as Frau Stolz lost blood every month, then she was proud that her body was having nothing to do with it.

But Frau Stolz made an appointment for her with her
gynaecologist
. During the examination he asked her how it could be that the hymen was broken. ‘Have you ever been with a man?’ It did not strike Anna that a reply was expected. She scanned the ceiling
stubbornly
– she had discovered cracks and colours, shapes and figures that were unintentionally expressing something, the significance of which she strenuously tried to comprehend, as diversionary tactics against the penetration by fingers, by metal, in an area that truly belonged to her but that she could in no way make her own. He posed the question more forcefully. She shook her head
indignantly
. ‘Shhh,’ he soothed, nodding calmingly at her, ‘relax. Have you been examined before?’ ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘it was when … they tried to turn my womb.’ The memory of the previous
examination
pressed itself forwards, the atmosphere of secrecy in which it had taken place, the presence of the phantom Aunt Martha who watched over her virginity from a corner of the consulting-room. ‘You have indeed got a crooked womb,’ said the doctor, ‘something can only be done about it operatively … Moreover the ovaries are underdeveloped, but we’ve got a solution for that.’ The animal word ‘ovary’ made her think of the births of piglets and calves in an odour of hay and muck, of sweat and effort.

While she was getting dressed behind a curtain, the doctor
t
elephoned
Frau Stolz to inform her of his findings. He employed lovely, poetic phraseology about her: the hymen, the uterus, ovaria, follicles. Anna had the uneasy feeling, just as she had done years before, that an entirely strange woman was involved in an obscure fight with her to appropriate her female organs. ‘One every day,’ said the doctor smiling. He handed her a prescription. ‘Such a good-looking blonde girl ought to be able to have a whole lot of children!’

Every day Frau Stolz checked that Anna took her pill. She had assumed total responsibility for her fertility, as precisely as she had regarded it to be her duty to teach her embroidery. Anna’s exterior and interior had to be orderly and flawless, like the skirting boards when they had just been dusted. Only Anna’s thoughts escaped her all-seeing eye. She did not see that a rebel was biding her time beneath an increasingly thin veneer of servitude, provoked to the extreme. Months later, when the treatment first showed a dubious effect, she regarded this as a personal victory over chaos: something was being restored in the world order at the same time as in the order in Anna’s abdomen.

There were further secret watchers over her fertility – equally concerned with order. That summer the Stolzs went travelling for a week, leaving Gitte behind in Anna’s care. They went to the swimming baths together in the afternoon, beach bags dangling on their shoulders. Each day there was a clear blue sky above the roofs and the motionless tree tops. When they came home on one of their languid afternoons, a strange car was in front of the house. Two men were leaning on the doors, their hands in their pockets, their eyes screwed up against the sun. They hurried after Anna up the garden path as she put the key in the lock. ‘Good afternoon, gnädige Frau, may we have a word with you?’ Anna pushed the front door open; Gitte shot into the house under her arm, upstairs to her room. In the hall they remained standing, Anna with raised eyebrows, the two men – although somewhat embarrassed –
energetic. ‘You see, we have come from the Erbgesundheitsamt, the genetic investigation branch of the health ministry. You have a servant, a certain …’ Documents were consulted. ‘Anna Bamberg? ‘Yes indeed,’ said Anna haughtily, ‘what about her? ‘Well, you see …’ they both began together. They laughed apologetically to one another, after which one of the two did the talking and the other confined himself to nodding supportively. ‘We don’t know exactly, we’re still investigating, but this Anna Bamberg is a bit feeble-minded.’ ‘Oh really?’ said Anna icily. ‘Is that what she is? She looks quite normal, this employee.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ he breathed, ‘that could well be so, gnädige Frau, but … you must understand … this woman has to be sterilized.’ Once again she was hearing a word for the first time. Frau Stolz would certainly know what it meant. She kept her options open: ‘Why?’ ‘Well, you see, we
cannot
… feeble-mindedness is inherited; if she has children, they will be feeble-minded children too.’ A ticklish laugh rose up from her chest. ‘How do you make out that Anna …’ ‘Haven’t you noticed anything about her then?’ ‘No.’ ‘Listen …’ The one who had done the talking held up the documents like a trophy. ‘It’s all in the guardianship declaration.’

As she was listening to what he had to say, she was conscious that they represented a sort of bizarre unreality, standing together in the hall – as long as she was the lady of the house to them, regarding herself as feeling at her ease in her own hall, and at the same time referring to herself as though she were an absent third, an abstract person.

The men had been to the court and read the guardianship declaration that she herself had signed. The part she had left unread concerned the obligatory annual reports by Uncle Heinrich, in which he had to account for the fact that he was
keeping
Anna Bamberg, daughter of so and so, at the farm. He had filled it in conscientiously every year, saying that since the death of her grandfather he was exercising the guardianship, that she was feeble-minded and too delicate in health to be educated or look for
a job. It was so matter-of-fact there, so unadorned, in the same phraseology every year, that no one from the guardianship board had ever contemplated going to look at the problem child with their own eyes for once.

There it stood in black and white, in the familiar calligraphy: Anna Bamberg is feeble-minded and in delicate health. A single sentence erased her, destroyed the only thing – except for two dresses and some underclothes – she possessed: that she, the daughter of Johann Bamberg, was equipped with a good brain and a parrot’s memory. The hall was too small for the explosion in her head – of rage with retroactive strength, which could not be expressed anywhere in the absence of a target. The beach bag, still hanging from her shoulder, slid to the ground. She succeeded in channelling her rage and directing it at the functionaries in a
supercooled
way. ‘Gentlemen, she is standing here before you, Anna Bamberg. I am the delicate, feeble-minded girl you are looking for. What would you like to know? How much six times twelve is? From when to when the Thirty Years War lasted? Should I take a dictation for you? Just say!’ They backed off in shock. One of the documents fell to the floor. They did not have the courage to bend down and pick it up. ‘Just say! I’ve had enough of it now. More than enough. When my uncle wrote that in the guardianship declaration he did so because he had kept me at home to work for him for nothing all those years – in the sheds, on the land, day in day out, year in year out, without end. Because he beat me up, because he allowed me to be terrorized by his wife and because your dear Board of Supervision believed him all those years! That judge of yours, the one who’s mentioned here at the top of the declaration – why did it never enter his head to find out if
everything
really tallied with the facts? And now on top of that you want to sterilize me. I have had enough, I really have had absolutely enough!’

One of the two glanced over his shoulder timidly to see the height of the door knob. The other snatched the document off the
floor, laughing nervously. ‘Entschuldigung, Entschuldigung …’ they mumbled, going backwards out of the hall towards the door, ‘wir haben es nicht gewusst das … we did not realize that …’ Suddenly they had disappeared. She stood there in the hall, left to the mercy of her bewilderment, which was much too great and
violent
for her alone. She heard the car start and drive away. She was nauseated, she was disgusted by the two gullible innocents who had come to convey the disastrous tidings to her. The whole story was so sickening that she felt the need to do something violent, to shatter something that was totally respected and valued, to destroy something. But it was too hot; now she just felt that it was
altogether
too hot for anything. Her dress was clinging to her body; it was too hot to think about anything. Yet they were within reach, the things it would be nice to destroy: all the objects around her, the interior with its compulsive Prussian order would be a lovely target. Dropping lengthways into a chair in the spotless room she looked round with weary eyes. She felt no urgency at all, the stolid neatness left her cold, everything left her cold, it did not matter to her. The rage imploded beneath her skull, the emotions ebbed away. She looked round the room that was utterly strange to her, even though she had dusted, polished and washed all the
components
a thousand times. She felt empty and exhausted.