When We Danced on Water (17 page)

Teo was frantic to find a way for Freddy to finish quickly. He was pulling too hard on his hair, smashing his nose into his groin, and the cold snow was beginning to seep through his trousers to his knees. Freddy was at a steady rhythm, plunging himself deeply into Teo's throat, when suddenly he released his grip on the boy's hair and stopped pumping. He pulled Teo to a standing position. Freddy's face was wild, his mouth a crooked frown. “Step out of your skis and your snow boots,” he ordered. “Now, quickly!” he added, in the moment that Teo hesitated.

While Teo did as told, settling his stocking feet gingerly onto the freezing snow, Freddy yanked the boy's ski clothing and underclothes away from his body and pointed to his socks. “Take those off, too,” he said brusquely. Again, Teo did as ordered and stood, finally, bare and shivering in front of Freddy.

Freddy rubbed his hands up and down Teo's chest, tweaked his erect nipples and gave a tug to Teo's limp penis. He pulled him close again, at first in an embrace that Teo mistook for a kind gesture, Freddy wanting to warm up his freezing body. But Freddy was groping for his buttocks, the buttons on his ski jacket boring small circles of freezing pain into the skin up and down the boy's chest.

Freddy turned him around, spit into his hand, made an initial stab at forcing his way in. Teo stood frozen and raw, stunned and numb, too shocked to plead or argue. He no longer cared whether another skier would catch them there; in fact he no longer felt guiltily complicit in this horrible act, but, finally, a victim. And although he knew that if caught and brought before the authorities it would be he who would be punished and not Freddy the aristocrat and high-ranking officer, Teo nevertheless prayed for someone, anyone, to come close enough to them to interrupt Freddy and make him realize the madness of his obsession. But the slopes were eerily silent, deserted, and Teo could imagine Freddy having bribed some ski patrolman above to keep skiers off their slope for an hour. He was devastated to realize that in this horrifying moment, as always, no one would come to his rescue.

A raven cawed noisily overhead and for a brief second Teo thought the bird had pulled Freddy back to his senses. Instead, Freddy pushed him roughly to the snow, flat out on his belly, and was immediately on top of him, tearing at him with more ferocity than he ever had before. He clawed and pawed and humped him, mashed his face and body into the snow thrusting himself deep, deeper, without compassion or mercy. Finally, after several terrifying minutes, when Teo could no longer contain his shivering pain, he began to scream and sob. Freddy, hearing Teo, increased his pace and his ferocity, pushed harder and harder and, much too late for Teo, released himself in a raging gush. Teo was by this time barely conscious, no longer moving, and so he pulled himself off the boy, roused him, and dressed his raw, bluish body, talking the whole time to revive him. He put him on his own skis but then moved him down the hill pressed up against his back, until they reached the lodge a difficult twenty minutes later.

“He fell behind and I didn't realize he'd taken a spill,” Freddy told the startled attendants. “He must have lain in the snow for half an hour before I reached him.” They covered Teo with blankets and plied him with hot chocolate, but his fever was climbing and he could not stomach the drink.

Back at the castle, Teo remained bedridden and delirious with fever for days. A nurse was brought in to care for him, but Freddy himself insisted on doing most of the nursing, ignoring the comments made by his wife and his mother. He ladled warm broth into Teo's mouth, kissing away the droplets that remained on his lips. He carried the boy tenderly to the toilet, cooled his forehead with dampened cloths and lay next to him on the bed, holding him tight to keep him from shivering. He spent hours crooning love songs in English, German and Italian, and read to him of Alexander the Great and of the Emperor Hadrian, whose love for the dark and lithe lad Antinous he claimed was the greatest love the world had ever known. He begged Teo to get well quickly, promising him they would leave the south just as soon as he could travel, and was oblivious to Leopold, who, silent and stealthy, crept up the secret stairway to spy on them. They needed to return to Berlin, Freddy told Teo, where they could continue their life together. He knelt next to Teo's bed. “I love you,” he told him as Teo drifted off to sleep, his fingers tangled lightly in his beloved's hair.

But Teo thrashed in his bed, finding himself back on the Staats-oper stage, poised to begin his solo. He could hear the boots of the German vice-minister receding into the darkness backstage, could see the no jews sign on the Unter den Linden; he was staring into the faces of two thousand rapturous Germans—suddenly his official enemies—awash with the excitement of an impending victory and conquest. He could also now, with a clarity of vision he had not experienced since leaving home, see his family: his sister, Margot, her weak eye and black, kinky hair, her shy and lovely smile; his father, Oskar, wiping his eyes and waving from the pier in Danzig; and mostly his mother, Rosa, at his side for every adventure and every disappointment. Anger rushed up from the floorboards through his body so violently that it nearly threw him from the bed. In wakeful dreams his legs shot up from the floor, his arms flung out from his shoulders. He felt out of control of his own body. He was suddenly a bloodred demon spinning across the stage, setting the floor beneath him on fire with each pirouette. His skin was burning, his fingers and toes were stilettos, each movement was razor-sharp, each breath fire. Kill, slash, burn. The music was faster than he had ever heard it, the sweet melodies gave way to leering violins and mocking clarinets; or maybe there was no music at all, maybe the musicians had caught fire and imploded, maybe, too, the audience had burned up, the hall smoky with the scent of singed fur and silk and human hair. He did not know what had happened to them all for sure, he could see and hear only red, a screaming, howling, throbbing, fuming red. He was no longer dancing: he was hurtling, flying, flailing; he was a tornado, a tidal wave, an earthquake, a volcano. His body was a devil's chorus of shouts and groans, a cacophony of pain. And then, after one final tremendous leaping spin in the air—around and around and around so many times, too many times—he landed, and there was a tiny moment of complete silence before sound erupted and washed over him and he was aware of the musicians stomping their feet and tapping their bows to their instruments, the audience jumping from their seats to shout
Bravo! Bravissimo!
Up to the highest balcony he could see them, their hands raw from clapping, their mouths open and red, barking praises. Every last one of them, save one officer, so close by at the edge of the first balcony, simply staring at him.

He took it all in, rooted. He did not smile, nor would he bow down before them. The audience was still applauding with ecstatic energy when he dashed from the stage and vomited noisily into a pail of water holding dozens upon dozens of perfect white roses.

Teo opened his eyes to find Freddy wiping his brow.

Several weeks passed before Teo was fully well enough to make the trip to Berlin. Freddy remained solicitous, and although he resumed his sexual demands before Teo's fever had completely waned, he was gentler than before, cautious and tender with his depleted boy. He kissed Teo more than he had before, held him for long hours in his arms, told him he loved him and needed him. Once, as they lay together, he asked the boy whether he loved him in return.

Teo held his breath until a small bird trilled outside the window. Freddy did not ask him again.

It was nearly February by the time they returned to Berlin. Germany's war was clearly going well; the city was full of bunting and flags and cheering crowds. At home, Freddy felt it would be a danger for Teo to be around Cook any longer; she had been suspicious from the start about his origins and Freddy worried she might turn them both in. He installed Teo in an old servant's bedroom at the back of the cellar, where he remained motionless and silent during daylight hours; Cook was informed that their guest had at long last returned to Denmark. Then, after a week, he fired both Cook and Albert on the pretense that he would be closing the Berlin house until further notice.

It then became Teo's job to cook and keep house, which he did without interest. Day after day, locked in the gated house and forbidden even from strolling in the garden, he made simple meals, washed and ironed Freddy's clothes, made the beds and swept the floors and all the while dreamt his dreams: of his family, of returning to Denmark to dance, of simply walking out the front gate and into a park, where he could watch the swans bathe and squabble. He dreamt of Madame Valentina, his ballet teacher in Warsaw, who (he had no way of knowing) had been killed as the small airplane ferrying her and her diplomat husband to a new posting in the Congo had sputtered and swooped, plunging with grace into a cool lake at the edge of the jungle.

Freddy became more and more busy as the war blazed on. He was up early, gone before Teo could climb from their bed and home often past midnight. Occasionally he would be away for several days, after which he would return with a new painting or sculpture. He had less time and less patience to explain these works to Teo now.

On a crisp Sunday morning in autumn 1941, more than two years after Teo had come to Berlin, Freddy announced an outing. “Pack us a picnic lunch, we're taking a drive.” Teo was glad for the diversion, but surprised to see that Freddy was taking his leather bag of magnifying glasses, solvents, brushes, tweezers and chisels with them, as if going to work. On the way out of town Teo spotted passersby with yellow Stars of David pinned to their coats. He swiveled his head to get a better look, which Freddy noticed. “New regulations,” he explained. “Can't leave the house without them. I understand Jews in other parts of the Reich have been wearing them for a while already.” Teo could see that Freddy was bothered by this medieval form of ostracism, but his mood was too jubilant to ruin.

“Why do they stand for it, why didn't they leave?” Teo asked, his gaze fixed on a young Jewess just passing in front of the car.

“They can't anymore, Teo, but even when they had the chance they stayed, always thinking the situation would improve.” Teo thought about all those clever Jews on the ship bound for America, and his own parents probably still in Warsaw.

“You know,” Freddy said in a matter-of-fact voice, “a frog will leap out of his pond if you pour a lot of hot water in all at once. But if you add it slowly, gradually, the frog will remain through discomfort, then danger, then death. He never figures out it's time to jump, and then it's too late.”

“Some frogs,” Teo said quietly, “don't have a choice.”

They headed west in the Mercedes, toward Brandenburg, but turned off at an estate on the Havel River. As they entered a huge park of forests and ponds with an enormous home set at the river's edge, Teo read the name Himmel-an-der-Havel—Heaven on the Havel—on the stone portals.

They pulled up in front of the house, where the door was opened by a thin and sallow man in an elegant suit. Freddy bounded up the stairs and shook hands warmly with the man. “Teo, come meet Ernst Halberstadt, Berlin's foremost collector of art and my most esteemed teacher. Ernst, this is my assistant, Teo.” Teo was surprised by the thin man's strong and bony grip on his hand. “Please, do come in,” he told them both.

Inside, the house was nearly denuded of furniture, and what remained was covered in cloth. Halberstadt was clearly planning an imminent departure. “My apologies for the state of affairs here,” he told his guests as they passed through the kitchen to a hidden stairway that led down to a secret room underneath the house. Here it was cozy if crowded, obviously the room to which Halberstadt had removed all his most essential belongings. There was a bed, a desk, several chairs, neat piles of clothing on a bureau and a large bookcase built into the stone walls. A fire glowed in the hearth. Herr Halberstadt invited them to be seated while he poured three snifters of brandy.

“Ernst, you'd be proud of your pupil,” Freddy said as he stuffed and lit his pipe. “I picked up an exquisite van Gogh and discovered a brilliantly forged Brueghel last week, both in the same collection. Stein family, you know them, they love anything Dutch. I don't believe they knew what they had, the old wheezer blanched and almost fainted when I showed him the worthless Brueghel. Must have paid a fortune for that one, though I had the feeling he'd gotten the van Gogh for a song.”

Herr Halberstadt was mainly quiet, nodding occasionally or asking a question when Freddy's prattle slowed. He had a neatly trimmed mustache that twitched and bobbed and seemed to have a life of its own. Several times Teo caught Halberstadt peering over his snifter at him.

After a refill of brandy Freddy sat up higher in his chair. “Well, now, Teo, we've come to help our dear friend Ernst here with a problem he's having. You see, like yourself, Ernst is of the Jewish persuasion and should have left Germany long ago.” Teo and Ernst exchanged glances, each quite astonished. “But he could not part with his art, and couldn't get it out of Germany, either, so he stayed. Now we're going to help him escape.”

Ernst stood, pulled a book from the shelf on the wall, reached his hand into the empty space and then stepped back from the shelf. The entire bookshelf spun slowly sideways, revealing another room behind the cozy sitting room. “Ah, the good stuff!” Freddy said as he tapped the remaining tobacco leaves from his pipe and put it in his pocket. The three of them passed by the bookshelf and into the room.

Even Freddy was silent as they stood on the threshold peering in. It was a large room, perhaps the size of the entire floor above them, and it was completely full of the most sumptuous works of art. Teo could identify many, had seen a number of them in Freddy's art books. But there were others, new and raw and exciting, that he did not yet know.