The Twins (3 page)

It is not only the father’s declining days we see in the dusky gold-yellow slide but also the family’s, in this ensemble. From the casino the same influence emanates as when gambling was still going on there: all or nothing, to the death. It was a building one entered full of expectations and left ruined, an alchemical trick whose secret recipe was kept within the four walls of the sanctuary. With his long, thin index finger he beckons his daughters over to him. Breathing heavily, he sits on the edge of the sofa. ‘Listen,’ he says slowly, as though speaking with a thick tongue, ‘how long do you think I’ve got to live?’ Anna and Lotte frown – this is a sum of astronomical numbers. ‘Twenty years!’ Anna bets. ‘Thirty!’ Lotte adds a little extra. ‘So, that’s what you think,’ he says indulgently. He looks at them, his mouth open, with feverish, glancing eyes, as though he wants to say something else, but then he is overcome by a rasping coughing fit and drives them away with a fluttering hand.

A few days later, as soon as they come back from school, they are led to the bedroom by Aunt Käthe. A smell of red cabbage with apples and cinnamon hangs in the house. The company in a circle round their father’s bed contrasts unpleasantly with this
spicy-sweet
smell. Uncle Heinrich, a crumpled cap in his hands crossed in front of his belly, stares at his sleeping brother with a farmer’s distrust. Is this such a special spectacle that they all must stand
there and watch? Aunt Käthe pushes Anna and Lotte towards the bed. ‘Johann,’ she says, bringing her mouth close to his ear, ‘here are the children.’ When he discovers his daughters, his eyes begin to shine as though he is surreptitiously amused by the ridiculous play-acting around his bed. He will get up immediately, Lotte thinks, and send them all home. But then his mood collapses. His gaze goes agitatedly from one to the other. He raises his perspiring head – from his secret inner world he seems to want to say
something
to them that cannot be delayed. ‘Anneliese …’ he utters. Immediately the head falls back onto the pillow and he sinks away again. On the sunken cheeks there is the dark bloom of stubble. ‘Why does he say Anneliese to us?’ asks Anna offended. ‘He’s thinking of your mother,’ says Aunt Käthe.

After the meal, one of the seven sisters takes them away from the celebration that is not really a celebration. They are put into an unfamiliar bed, a raft on a strange ocean that they can only prevent from sinking by hugging each other fervently and lying without budging exactly in the middle of the bed. In the night, they dream that Aunt Käthe wakes them up and kisses them with a wet face, but when they do wake in the morning she is nowhere to be seen. Seven pairs of hands get Anna and Lotte out of bed and lift them onto a chair, to make it easier to dress them. ‘Your father,’ remarks one of the seven, pulling on an underslip, ‘died in the night.’ At first the communication does not produce any reaction, but during the laborious lacing-up of the boots Anna sighs, ‘Then he won’t have to cough any more.’ ‘And won’t have any more pain in his chest,’ Lotte backs her up.

The last slide shows the farewell. The funeral is invisible, as is the constant dreadful ‘curtseying’ that is expected of the girls on this occasion. Also invisible are the rows, Aunt Käthe’s tears, her threat of legal action, and the packed suitcases. The last Lotte sees of Anna: she is standing half-way down the staircase in the hall, surrounded by members of the family who have come from afar. To one side, already cast off, stands Aunt Käthe, the traces of futile
lamentations on her face. Anna is full of self-confidence, in her mourning dress, with a large black bow like a crow settled in her blonde hair. Next to her stands the uncle who made fun of the Christmas carols; on the other side an aunt with a bust of
intriguing
dimensions, on which a golden cross rests, glittering. Several unclear figures without distinctive features complete the row. Behind Anna, his bony hands on her shoulders as though he has already appropriated her, stands a stiff old man in a worsted suit with a ragged moustache and a rampant growth of tufts of withered grass sticking out of his ears. The last Anna sees of Lotte: she is already by the door, right under the stained-glass window. Only from her face can you tell it is her; the rest is thickly wrapped up as though she is going on a polar expedition. Next to her is a stylish old lady leaning on an umbrella, with thin leather gloves loose between her fingers and an elegant hat with a veil. All day she has addressed the old man, whose hands press heavily on Anna’s shoulders, in a superior, teasing tone of voice as ‘Lieber Bulli’.

Neither Anna nor Lotte are worried. They do not throw
themselves
into each other’s arms, they do not cry, they do not say goodbye in any way whatsoever – how could they do that, they have no notion of the phenomenon of distance in space and time. The only one who makes the slightest gesture towards the fitting pathos of farewell is Aunt Käthe, who dashes across the hall at the last moment and in a torrent of tears presses Lotte to her breast.

‘J’ai retrouvée ma sœur, madame!’ Anna accosted a passing spa guest who shrank back horrified. Lotte recognized with distaste the impetuosity and clamorousness of long, long ago.

‘It’s unbelievable.’ Anna grasped her by her shoulders and stroked her arms. ‘Let me look at you.’

Every muscle in Lotte’s body braced itself. To have to be inspected now as well! That familiarity provoked her repugnance – she was somehow being sucked in and lacked the strength to resist that pull. But to have been born virtually simultaneously from the same mother seventy-four years ago was not something she could walk away from, however sophisticated the mechanism of
repression
she had developed over half a century. Two shrewd, light blue eyes were looking her over curiously and somewhat ironically.

‘You’ve turned into a real lady,’ Anna decreed. ‘Still so slim and with that pinned-up hair … sehr schön, I must say.’

Lotte regarded Anna’s opulent form and short hair with reserve; it suggested something youthful and self-willed about her.

‘I never managed that,’ said Anna with a laugh that resounded with self-deprecation as well as pride. She squeezed Lotte’s arm, brought her face close, a shining, determined look in her eye. ‘And you have Daddy’s nose, wunderbar!’

‘How … did you come to be here?’ Cornered, Lotte deflected her. Thank God, Anna let go of her.

‘I’ve got arthritis. The body’s entire locomotion system is worn out, you see.’ She pointed to her knees, her hips. ‘Someone told me about the peat baths at Spa – it’s not far from Cologne. And you?’

Lotte hesitated, anticipating that what she was going to say would please her sister. ‘Arthritis too,’ she mumbled.

‘It must be a family complaint!’ Anna cried enthusiastically. ‘Listen, let’s go and sit somewhere. I can’t stand up for so long.’

There was nothing to be done. Something inevitable had
commenced
; resistance was of no avail.

‘Meine Schwester, just imagine it!’ Anna rejoiced, half-way along the corridor. An old man dozing on a bench by the wall jolted upright, his bony hands clasping his stick.

Carrying cups of coffee from a machine, they went into the lounge dominated by a bold painting of a young woman in the company of a swan. By the time Lotte was comfortably seated and had drunk a few mouthfuls of coffee she was regaining some of her former equanimity.

‘Who would have thought we’d ever see each other again …?’ Anna shook her head. ‘And in such an extraordinary spot too … that must have a deeper meaning.’

Lotte squeezed the plastic beaker. She did not believe in deeper meanings, only in dumb coincidence – and it had considerably embarrassed her.

‘Are the peat baths doing you any good?’ Anna did not know where to start.

‘I’ve only been here three days,’ Lotte vacillated. ‘The only effect so far is a leaden tiredness.’

‘That’s the toxins coming out.’ Anna assumed an annoyingly professional tone. Suddenly she bounced up. ‘Do you still
remember
our bath-tub in Cologne? With lion’s feet? In the kitchen?’

Lotte frowned. Another bath came to her mind. She gazed
outside
contemplatively, where a wintry sun gave the buildings a naked look. ‘Every Saturday evening my father washed us one by one in a wash-tub.’

‘Your father?’

‘My Dutch father.’ Lotte smiled uneasily.

‘What was he like? … I mean, what sort of people? … As a child I imagined all kinds of …’ Anna groped in the air with her hands. ‘Because I knew absolutely nothing, I made it up in my own
fashion … I dreamed of calling on you … You have no idea how hard it was not to hear anything from you … Everyone behaved as though you didn’t exist … So, anyway, what kind of people were they …?’

Lotte pursed her lips. A dubious attraction emanated from the idea of raking up old memories. They were lying deeply stashed away in a corner of her memory, under a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Wasn’t it better to let them be than to go poking about there? Yet they were a part of herself; there was something
tempting
about bringing them to life. In such improbable surroundings as the Thermal Institute, going after them at Anna’s request. Challenged by the absurdity, even the immorality of it she
half-closed
her eyes and began to murmur softly to herself.

On Saturday evenings he scrubbed his four daughters clean in a wash-tub filled with warm soapsuds, growling ‘Sit still!’ while his wife was taking advantage of late shopping hours. The ritual was rounded off with a glass of warm milk; he whistled as he brought it to the boil. Four nighties, eight naked feet – sipping as slowly as possible to spin out the time. After he had accepted four goodnight kisses he resolutely sent them to bed. In summer the scenario worked differently. Then a group of older girls from the village gathered on the overgrown football pitch in front of the house to do rhythmic gymnastics in the mist rising from the grass. The
silhouette
of a delivery van was outlined against the red sky, churning up clouds of dust along the sandy path as it approached at speed. It came to a halt at the entrance to the field, the back door was opened, and then the miracle was performed that took Lotte’s breath away every Saturday evening: muscular arms hauled a piano out and placed it in a strategic position in the field amid buttercups and sorrel. Then a young man in an off-white summer suit sat down at the piano and launched classical melodies at marching pace into the evening sky.

The girls from the gymnastics club kicked their legs high and
bent far backwards; they stood on their toes with their arms stretched over their heads as though they had landed on the ground all together with invisible parachutes. All to the pianist’s inexorable quadruple time. Mies, Maria, Jet and Lotte, still warm from the bath, observed the spectacle from the edge of the fence until they saw their mother looming up in the distance, erect on her Gazelle bicycle, its handlebars seeming to sag under the weight of bulging shopping bags.

No bath for Anna. Soon after her arrival at the ancestral farm on the Lippe, it turned out that baths were regarded there as an exceptional, generally mistrusted activity. Immediately after the journey her grandfather sank into his usual chair, resting his clog socks on the edge of the cast-iron stove – an acrid smell of mould filled the small cluttered living-room – he was to die without his pale chest ever having been defiled by a piece of soap. ‘I want a bath,’ Anna whined. Mollified by the stubbornness with which the niece stuck to her principles, Aunt Liesl put a large kettle of water on the fire and filled a wash-tub on the flagstone floor. Thus was the tone set for a long-lasting habit, which Anna maintained
single-handedly
after Aunt Liesl had left the house. Years later, when she began to lock the door for the process, Uncle Heinrich rattled the handle and called with a titillated laugh, ‘You must be absolutely filthy if you have to make such a fuss.’

The village children were thoroughly suspicious of her town manners and cultured accent. They pinned a note to the back of her coat: Go away! She was outstanding at school – her classmates observed her
tours
de
force
with a mixture of fear and envy, and shunned her company. She was gradually realizing that to be dead meant that someone would always be absent from now on and could not be brought back, even by your fervent longing that he would make short work of your tormentors with his powerful demeanour. According to this definition Lotte was dead too. Anna kept hammering away about her return, circling around her
grandfather
until he uttered viciously, ‘Don’t be so impatient! If she
doesn’t recover properly she’ll die too. Is that what you want by any chance?’ Desperately she turned to Aunt Liesl, who was
spinning
and sang in a thin high voice, ‘Ich weiss nicht what’s
supposed
to happen …’ Her sagging bosom rocked in time to the wheel’s movement. Above her head hung a print that the family had received as a gift during the war when a son had been killed in action. ‘There is no greater love than to lay down your life for your country’ was written in decorative letters beneath a dying soldier and an angel who held out to him the palm of victory. Anna slunk off outside in the vague hope that Uncle Heinrich could shed some light on the question. But he was sitting on the WC in the back garden, in a wooden hut painted dark green, tall and narrow, and lopsided because of an underground branch in the Lippe. The door had a heart shape sawn out of it; it stood wide open. He was sitting sprawled out, involved in conversation with a neighbour, who was engaged in the same activity on the other side of a field of mangel-wurzels, also with the door open. The tête-à-tête
concerned
the shooting match and girls – Anna did not hazard this rifle range.

She trudged despondently to the river, crossed the bridge and stood with shoulders drooped in front of a shrine to the Virgin, in the shadow of an overhanging elderberry. Someone had put a bunch of dark red peonies at the base of the statue. The mother was looking down devotedly on her child, a mysterious, hidden intimacy suggesting that all curious stares were excluded. Anna had the impulse to upset this introspection and to damage the pious face. Instead of that she tugged the flowers out of the vase, ran on to the bridge with them and threw them into the Lippe with an angry toss of the wrist. She looked at them as they floated slowly away towards Holland. One peony behaved deviantly: after circling wildly in an eddy it was sucked into the depths. Anna stared enviously at the spot where the flower had disappeared. To vanish from one moment to the next, she wanted that for herself too – to join her beloved absent ones. There was a stiff breeze carrying the
smell of damp grass and straw. She did not resist as it took hold of her and raised her up, her clothes flapping. It went aloft, in a deafening rustle, straight into the cloudless sky. Far down beneath her she saw her grandfather’s farm, half hidden beneath the crown of a lime tree. She saw the fields, the grassy alluvial sand banks where cattle grazed, the school, the church, the Landolinus chapel – the whole settlement on both sides of the Lippe, which tried to transcend its insignificance through desperate contortions, its
inhabitants
inflating the village’s status with fabrications about Widukind who, with his Saxon hordes, had offered bloody
resistance
to the king of the Frankish empire there. Anna, hovering far above it, had nothing to do with it.

Lotte lay in the garden in a pine summerhouse that was set on a rotating axle so that it could be turned towards the sun or away from it as preferred. Stretched out in bed she turned with the weather – her narrow face on a white lace-trimmed pillow. Her Dutch mother drew a kitchen chair up to the bed and taught her Dutch; she also gave her a book of fairy-tales by the Brothers Grimm, with romantic illustrations. In German, ‘So that you don’t forget your mother tongue,’ she said. She herself looked as though she had stepped out of the book of fairy-tales. She was tall, erect and proud; she laughed easily – her teeth were as white as the doves that flew to and fro to the dovecot at the edge of the wood. Everything about her shone: her complexion, her blue eyes, her long brown hair held in place by a few strategically placed
tortoiseshell
combs. An abundance of the joys of living poured forth over everyone who came within her orbit. But the most fairy-tale thing about her was her unfeminine strength. If she saw her husband lugging a sack of coal she rushed over to him to take the burden lovingly off him – she carried it to the fireplace as though it were a bag of feathers.

Lotte soon realized that she had ended up in a related branch of the family: those of the long noses. The head of the line looked strikingly like her own father. The same acute melancholy gaze, the
thin arched nose, the dark hair combed back with the same
moustache
. In fact he was a first cousin of her father and had passed his genetic characteristics onto his daughters undiluted; a similar proud and sensitive organ of smell was already developing in them, via the round children’s nose. Years later, when it had become
dangerous
to have such a long nose in the middle of your face, this simple biological fact would almost cost one of them her life.

Depending on the position of the sun, Lotte was always able to see another part of the universe from her lodge. There was the wood, on the other side of a wide ditch that bordered the garden on two sides. A group of conifers formed a natural gate by the dovecot, a dark niche that drew her gaze to it – across a mossy bridge straight into the twilight between the trees. From another sightline she saw the orchards and kitchen garden where the
pumpkins
expanded so fast that Lotte thought she could hear them groaning from their growing pains, having become susceptible to fairy-tales in which apples and bread rolls could speak. Then there was the view of the house and a sturdy octagonal crenellated
water-tower
– all in masonry with decorative arches in green glazed brick over the windows and doors. One day she saw her Dutch father climbing up there to hoist a large flag. Her breath caught when she saw the diminutive figure at the top beside a flag that flapped in the wind like a loose sail – was it not the fate of fathers suddenly to be blown away out of the world?