The American Lady (16 page)

Wanda heaved a heartfelt sigh. Marie had such a colorful, exciting life. She had a wonderful job, she had Pandora for a friend, she had a handsome lover, and she had many exciting plans for the future.

She, Wanda, had nothing. She didn’t even have a dance teacher anymore, let alone a passionate lover—when Harold embraced her, he did so like a big brother, and his kisses were just dry pecks on the cheek. And it looked as though she wouldn’t be going to Germany anytime soon either. She had pleaded with her parents dozens of times to be allowed to go, but to no avail so far.

Wanda shut her eyes and took a deep breath.
What does the air smell like in Germany?
she wondered.

She tried again and again to imagine all the scenes that Marie had described to her. She remembered what her aunt had said about the weekly market in Sonneberg, the nearest big town. Did it smell sweet, like cotton candy? Or did it smell of fish, like down at the harbor? And the people: Wanda tried to imagine a group of women like her Aunt Johanna, doing their weekly shopping at the market. How were they dressed? Did they all know one another? Did they laugh at one another’s jokes? Would Eva Heimer be there too?

Wanda opened her eyes. Come to think of it, was this Eva her aunt or he
r . . .
grandmother? Since she had been married to Sebastian but lived with Wilhelm Heimer as hi
s . . .
She wondered what her father had had to say about it when the whole scandal took place.

What did he even look like? Wanda couldn’t conjure a picture of the man in her mind’s eye. Marie had described him in such vague terms that she could have been talking about almost any man. Wanda had looked through her mother’s photograph albums in secret, but she hadn’t found a single picture of Thomas Heimer. There wasn’t even a wedding portrait. If there had ever even been such a picture, her mother had certainly destroyed it long ago. She had covered her tracks, as they say. And now that Marie had gone it was near impossible to find out anything more about where she really came from. There would be no more German bread, no more stories.

That night Wanda lay awake for hours.

“
Everybody has a mission in life
”—Marie’s words hammered in her brain like mischievous goblins, set on tormenting her. Gradually Wanda’s sadness vanished, to be replaced by stubborn resentment. Ha! She wasn’t going to give up just because she hadn’t found her own mission yet! Everything had to happen right here, right now—at least that’s how she had lived her life so far. Harold always said rather condescendingly that her spontaneous ideas were just castles in the air. Empty air. Meaningless air.

Shortly before midnight she sat up abruptly in bed.

Perhaps she had just been going about things the wrong way. What was so wrong with taking some time to stop and think?

She sprang nimbly out of bed and went to the window. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and looked out into the night.

Over in Lauscha they would probably see the stars scattered across a clear sky tonight, but she saw the lights in hundreds and hundreds of windows. And that was something, wasn’t it?

Wanda laughed softly.

How did the saying go? If Mohammed would not go to the mountain, then the mountain would have to come to Mohammed!

That was it!

Perhaps she couldn’t go to Germany—not yet. But there was something else that she could do.

It wasn’t quite eight o’clock in the morning when Wanda put her hand, trembling slightly, on the doorknob of a small bakery in a side street off Tenth Avenue. That was where Marie had bought the bread for their picnic, and she had been full of praise. “I’ve never had such good rye bread, not even back home! I can’t understand why your mother doesn’t have them send her bread every day.”

A sturdy-looking woman, busy heaving loaves as big as cart wheels up onto the shelves, turned to look at Wanda as she came in.

“What can I do for you, Miss?”

Wanda cleared her throat. It was now or never. She made an effort to speak in her best German.

“Is there somewhere nearby where the Germans meet, where I can learn more about Germany and its customs?”

2

Marie screamed and sat bolt upright.

“Marie,
mia cara
, what’s the matter?” Franco asked, sitting up in bed a moment later. He was wide awake in an instant, his eyes roaming the cabin, but nothing appeared to be wrong. He relaxed again.

“What happened?” He shook Marie’s arm gently. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Marie nodded, her eyes still wide with shock, one hand to her mouth as though she had seen something dreadful.

“I don’t feel well. I have such a knot in my stomac
h . . .
”

There was sweat on her brow.

When Franco moved to put an arm around her shoulder, he felt her nightgown clinging to her back. “You’re soaked through!”

He picked up a cardigan from the wooden chair that served as their bedside table and draped it around Marie’s shoulders.

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “I’m all right no
w . . .
Good heavens, though, it was such a nasty dream! I was in the clearing over behind the sanatorium. It was flooded with light, like you get when the sun’s shining down onto a white surface. There was a ma
n . . .
He had a great flowing beard and was dressed in a long robe. But it wasn’t anybody from here, from the mountain,” she added hastily when she saw the look on Franco’s face. She pulled the cardigan closer around her.

Franco reached over to the chair and pulled out a cigarette, and Marie kept talking as he lit it.

“The man asked me to dance, but I didn’t want to. His hand was ice-cold, and I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go and kept on as though he hadn’t heard me. We spun around in a circle and I felt quite sick. I didn’t hear any music, though perhaps I just can’t remember that part. There were other couples dancing there as well, some of them were women dancing with women and men dancing with men.”

“And I—where was I?”
Why is she dreaming of other men?

She shrugged. “ ‘I have to go to Franco,’ I kept telling the man, but he didn’t look at me and acted as though he hadn’t heard. ‘Franco doesn’t like it when I dance with other men,’ I told him, but again he ignored me. He held me tight in his arms and we went round and round and round and didn’t stop.” She swallowed. “We danced right on past the other couples. ‘We have to turn around; we’re getting too close to the edge!’
I shouted at him. I pulled at his arm and writhed like an eel, but he held me in a grip of iron. Suddenly the lake was coming closer and closer, not blue any longer; it had turned inky black like some vast chasm waiting to swallow us up. As we took the last step, he looked at me and laughed. Laughed like a madman. And his face was so horribl
e . . .
” Marie began to tremble so violently that she couldn’t go on.

“Marie, calm down! Everything’s fine.” Franco rocked her in his arms. “I know what it’s like to have dreams like that: you fall and fall and fal
l . . .
”

“Then there’s nothing more below you, it’s so awful! And then there’s the fact that it was somebody else dragging me down!”

For a moment neither of them said a word. Then Marie sighed.

“Alois Sawatzky, the bookseller I told you about, would love to hear about a dream like that. He would interpret it and then speculate about its deeper meaning.”

“I don’t need any specialists to tell me what it’s about,” Franco said irritably. “It’s because of this miserable wood cabin we’re lodged in. So much for fresh air and nature’s light! My father’s hunting hounds have better accommodations. This is the last night we spend in this shack. We’re moving to the Casa Semiramis tomorrow.”

He looked around the room, still fuming. He had wanted to stay in the hotel from the very beginning, since it promised at least a little comfort. But during their first tour of the grounds he had let Marie talk him into staying in one of the wooden cabins that were scattered through the forest.

“How romantic!” she had exclaimed. How charming to wash on the front deck in the morning with just a bucket of water! Sherlain had been equally taken with the idea. Pandora, however, had been quite horrified at the idea of getting so close to Mother Nature.

“If it’s so darn comfortable living in a chicken coop like that, why have Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hoffmann built themselves a villa with electricity and running water?” she had asked. It was one of the curious features of the place that the owners of the commune lived in far greater luxury than the other members. In the end the two women had taken a room in the little hotel that stood at the edge of the estate, with its spectacular view of the lake. Pandora had read out loud from the hotel brochure. “Peace and quiet and freedom for those who are tired, who can gather new strength here.” She decided that it was just the place for them.

Franco drew on his cigarette, furious. Why had he agreed to live in the forest like a savage?

Marie had had trouble sleeping even on their first night there—there were too many strange noises, rustlings in the undergrowth, small twigs cracking as though underfoot. She admitted to him the next morning that she had strained her ears at every sound, while he himself had slept like a log, since he’d taken a quick tour of the taverns down in Ascona that evening. She also told him that she always felt as though she were being watched. No wonder, given that there were no curtains in the cabin, or even shutters for the windows. “Now who on earth is going to watch us sleep in the middle of the night?” he had reassured her, then suggested that they move to the hotel. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Then she should come down to Ascona with him in the evenings, he said; some wine would certainly help her sleep. But she hadn’t agreed to that either. He asked whether she had converted to Monte Verità’s creed of abstinence. At that Marie just laughed, unbuttoned her blouse and invited him to find out just how abstinent she had become. After that there had been no more talk of moving to the hotel.

He felt his desire reawaken now. He reached out and stroked her breast gently. Maybe he could get her to take her mind off things for a while.

But Marie wriggled out of his arms a moment later.

“That’s enough feeling sorry for myself. I won’t let one silly dream spoil my whole day. What I need right now is a cold shower,” she declared with conviction in her voice. She pulled her nightgown over her head and walked outside, stark-naked, blowing him a teasing kiss first.

Franco watched her go. What was it about this woman that she could twist him around her little finger? Ever since he had met Marie he had been a different man—sometimes he barely recognized himself. He did things for her sake that he would never have dreamt of doing before. Such as this detour to Ascona. It had taken quite a lot of persuasion to talk his father into giving him these three weeks of leisure, and he had to promise to make up for lost work once he got back home. When the old count had grumbled that other men never let their love affairs get in the way of business, Franco had answered heatedly that this was more than just a love affair, that Marie was the woman he’d been waiting for all his life. His father had replied that he could hardly believe that some chance acquaintance he’d met on his travels in America was so much better than the many blue-blooded marchionesses and countesses his mother had presented to him over the years—any one of whom would have made a good match. Whereupon Franco had announced that he loved Marie. The old man spluttered with laughter and said that he loved his dogs.

After the heated exchange over the telephone in the Ascona post office, Franco decided it was probably best not to mention for now that he would be bringing Marie back with him. Clearly his parents needed time to get used to the idea that they would soon have to share their only son with a woman. But the time was drawing near when they would have to set out for Genoa.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to call his father today and fill him in on the details—after all, there were preparations to be made at the palazzo.
A glassblower’s studio? Have you finally lost your mind?
He could just imagine what the old count would have to say about that. Franco took a deep breath, as though gathering strength for the coming duel of words. This time, he swore, he wouldn’t let the old man’s barbs get to him. There would be no repetition of the whole drama with Serena. He was no longer a boy whose father could break his will. He and Marie were strong together, and together, they could face down the count. He would follow her example and dedicate himself to his work in the vineyards, just as she let nothing distract her from her glass. And he would no longer serve as his father’s errand boy. He was looking forward to the day when he would have nothing more to do with the smuggling. He had never let it show how revolting he found that part of their export trade, but it always hung over him like a dark cloud. Admittedly the cloud had thinned somewhat since Marie had come into his life; at least, it had become easier to bear. But everything would be so much better when it had vanished entirely. Oh yes, the old man would have to get used to the idea that from now on, his son had his own plans. And who knows, maybe at last his father would come to appreciate his efforts to renew the vine stock and breed new grape varieties?

Through the open door he could see Marie washing her breasts with a sponge. She dipped the sponge back into the bucket, careful not to lose a drop of water, then squeezed it out before rubbing it up and down her right leg. Wearing her nakedness like a simple, costly garment, she moved without a trace of self-consciousness. How beautiful she was, his princess!

He drew on his cigarette one last time and then stubbed it out.

From now on she would live in the lap of luxury; he would take care of that. As for his fathe
r . . .
he didn’t want to think about him right now.

3

After Franco had set off for the village, Marie walked over to one of the sunbathing areas, wearing nothing but a half slip. She met Pandora and Sherlain here every morning to lie in the sun. Sometimes Ida Hoffmann or Susanna, the partner of Pandora’s New York friend Lukas Grauberg, joined them. Marie loved the hours they spent there. Ruth, who was always meeting her friends for lunch or afternoon tea, would probably have seen nothing special in such an arrangement, but for Marie it was the first time she had ever had a group of female friends. When she sat at the lamp back home, Peter, Johannes, and Magnus were always in the workshop; and as a woman doing a man’s job she felt she had to play like a man to keep up with them.

When Marie turned the corner and saw Lake Maggiore and her friends all waiting for her, she forgot her nightmare. The naked female bodies were as white as the finest china against that azure background. She was almost overwhelmed by the wish to hold the moment forever. A wave of happiness washed over her.

“So, Franco finally let you get out of bed!” Pandora said, standing up. Grunting and groaning in a most unladylike manner, she walked past Marie and spread her sheet out on the mossy grass.

“Oh no, it was quite the other way around:
I
let
him
go, albeit reluctantly!” Marie replied, grinning. She squinted and watched Pandora head toward one of the big wooden bathtubs that stood at the end of the meadow.

“You don’t seriously intend to climb into that fishpond!”

The first fallen leaves of the season were floating on the surface of the water, and hundreds of midges flew up from the tub as Pandora approached.

“Don’t I indeed! Didn’t you hear Ida’s lecture about how water can magnify the sun’s healing powers? Apart from which, I’m frightfully hot!” Pandora let the towel fall from her body and began to dance naked around the tub.

“
You have to dance to the music in your hear
t . . .
” she sang, then jumped into the tub with a raucous splash. Stagnant water dribbled down its mossy sides.

“It seems to me that there are others who can hear the music in your heart as wel
l . . .
” Susanna pointed uphill, where a group of men were practicing archery—though at the moment none of them were looking at the targets at all, for their eyes were fixed on Pandora’s breasts.

“Let them stare. Maybe they’ll be s
o . . .
excited by what they see that there’ll be something for us to look at as well,” Pandora said, giggling. She stood up with exaggerated slowness and turned around once, then dove down into the water again. “Well, do you see anything moving?”

Marie and the others all giggled. They had already cracked a few jokes about the tiny loincloths that the archers wore.

Once she lay down in the sun, Marie realized that she was really quite tired. Her eyelids drooped. How nice to nod off for a while in the middle of the day! Whatever would Johanna say to such a change in her habits? She grinned.

“You look like the cat that got the cream,” Sherlain said, as she sat up to untangle her red hair.

“That’s how I feel,” Marie said, stretching out on her towel. “I was just thinking how much my life has changed since I left Lauscha.” She smiled. But she wasn’t the only one to have blossomed with the change of scenery. Sherlain had recovered astonishingly fast after the botched abortion.

“It’s just as I always say: you have to get out of your rut. If you only want it to be, life can be one huge adventure!” Pandora called over from her tub.

Marie rolled her eyes. Sometimes Pandora rubbed her the wrong way with that worldly manner of hers. But then again, she was often righ
t . . .

There she was, Marie Steinmann, lying stark-naked on a mountainside in Ascona above Lake Maggiore with three other women, none of whom she had known for more than a few weeks. All around her, exotic plants were growing on the rock faces, and waterfalls were tumbling down in an Eden she had never even known existed before now. People were singing wordless melodies, strolling about with flowers in their hair, and moving in ways that even Pandora couldn’t quite fathom. By now Marie and her friends had learned that this kind of dance was called eurhythmy, and Pandora was so carried away by it that she got up hours before her usual time to practice. She and the other dancers could be seen at daybreak, when tendrils of mist still veiled the lake, moving along the shore like a fairy cavalcade.

Everybody here—apart from a few oddballs—was friendly and smiling and loving. Many of them seemed to take “love thy neighbor” quite literally. Love was in the air, and people kissed and hugged and stroked and touched one another whenever they felt inclined to do so. It was a sensual and erotic backdrop for the playground of Monte Verità.

Once Marie had realized just how unconventional relationships were here on the mountain, she began to worry that Sherlain might simply pick up where she had left off in New York. And lo and behold: it took less than a week for Sherlain to go into raptures over Franz Hartmann, one of the founders of the commune, and his “powerful words,” his “sacred devotion to principles,” and his “gaze that drank in the starry skies.” Marie and Franco laughed about the strange words people used here on Monte Verità, but Sherlain was quite intoxicated by the “honey wine of mountain poesy.”

Marie snorted in derision at the idea that Sherlain had fallen for someone who preached morals morning, noon, and night. Just a couple of days before, Franz had walked past their cabin as Marie and Franco were having a pillow fight on the wooden deck. How he had looked down his nose at them!

“Are you off to bring your body and soul into harmony with nature, then, you loon?” Franco called out to him. Franz didn’t react but walked on, his hands folded in prayer and his eyes turned to the sky, whereupon Franco giggled and whispered to Marie, “He’s halfway to Heaven already!”

“Or he’s taking his nourishment from the forest air,” she answered. Then they raced into the cabin and made passionate love.

A shiver ran down Marie’s spine. Even if all the Greek gods of Olympus came down and danced stark-naked, holding hands right here on Monte Verità, Franco was the only man for her. She would never have believed she could find such happiness in a man’s arms. The way h
e . . .

Someone shook her arm, tearing her away from her daydreams. When she opened her eyes, Susanna was in front of her, an expectant look on her face.

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”

“I just asked whether you wanted to go and see Katharina von Oy later on.”

“Mmm!” Marie said noncommittally and shut her eyes again. She suddenly felt sick. She opened her mouth and took several big gulps of air to fight the nausea. It seemed the nightmare had really upset her. She hadn’t the least desire to get up from the soft mossy hillside where the sunshine warmed her skin. Quite apart from which, Susanna had already promised several times to take her to see the glassblower who lived up on the slopes above Ascona in a sort of hermitage, but nothing had come of it yet.

Katharina von Oy used to live in the commune with everybody else. However, once the sanatorium had opened up, and more and more visitors came to the mountain, she had left the hubbub and gone to live in a lonely forest shack. She made a living making pictures in glass, which were sold to tourists down in the village. Of course Marie was interested in what kind of glasswork people liked here, and she had not the first idea what pictures in glass might be. Did it mean stained-glass windows, like those found in churches?

“If you wait for my dance lesson to finish before you go for your walk, I’ll come with you,” Pandora muttered sleepily.

“You? Why do you want to go and visit a glass artist?” Marie asked in surprise. “Are you considering a career change?”

“Nonsense. I just want to see how she lives. Ask her a few questions. How she came to own the land. How much it cost, that sort of thing. Lukas tells me that after phylloxera killed off most of the vineyards hereabouts a lot of land was sold off for cheap. Who knows? Perhaps I can afford a little cabin here myself. I’m not going back to New York, that’s for sure.”

“You would stay here? Don’t you think you’d miss the hustle and bustle of the city?”

Pandora stretched her right leg up into the air, admired it for a moment, and then crossed it gracefully over the left. “I won’t miss anybody or anything. Quite the opposite. I’ve never been able to concentrate so completely on dance as I have here. I seem to feel the air vibrating around me.
You have to dance to the music in your heart
. . .
” she sang again.

“Lukas and I knew this would happen,” Susanna said triumphantly. The next moment, though, she frowned fiercely. “Pandora, darling—you’re not lying right, again! How often do I have to show you how to sunbathe? This is how you have to do it, watch!” She lay down flat on her back with her arms and legs stretched wide, her back slightly arched, her face to the sun.

“I’ll lie however I like,” Pandora grumbled. “If I lay the way you told me to, I’d feel like I was on a rack.”

Marie, who was lying on her belly, giggled. “I don’t find it all that pleasant either, to tell the truth. You feel so defenseles
s . . .
”

“That’s right, isn’t it?” Pandora said emphatically. “And I always worry that a bug will crawl in between my legs. Or even get into my bottom.” She laughed merrily.

“The way you lot chatter away, it’s worse than having to listen to the magpies cawing on the balcony,” Sherlain grumbled.

The others looked over at her. Unlike the others, Sherlain had assumed the prescribed Monte Verità sunbathing position. Her hair lay spread out over the green moss like a ring of flame, making her look more than ever like a Celtic goddess.

The four women sunbathed in silence for a while, and Pandora even began to snore. Marie smiled to herself. She had never known her friend to be so relaxed.

In New York Sherlain and Pandora had been birds of paradise, praised and adored for their eccentricities—while here they were just two people among a whole crowd of self-appointed creative geniuses. Life on Monte Verità seemed to be doing both of them good. When she was honest with herself, Marie found the constant quest for wisdom rather silly. And it was almost shocking the way they thundered against alcohol here. Franz Hartmann stridently preached the message that wine and beer were only for the weak-willed, and many of the residents lapped it up, so to speak. Sherlain hadn’t drunk a drop since she had arrived at Monte Verità, but Pandora wasn’t quite so self-denying. The same held true with regard to meat. The hard-liners here talked of meat as carrion and held that it polluted both body and spirit. Marie rather liked the meals of sliced apple, grated carrot, and kohlrabi, but Franco refused to try being a vegetarian even for a short while.

“The whole of Ascona enjoys
la dolce vita
and I’m supposed to eat rabbit food?” he had said right at the start. He had since gone down to the village for at least one meal a day. Now and then Marie and Pandora joined him, but Marie always felt guilty after indulging in prosciutto and other meats. Besides, Italian food was bad for the figure. She had never been as plump as she was now.

Franco however had the time of his life strutting through the narrow streets of Ascona with Marie on his right arm and Pandora on his left. Whenever they sat down in a tavern, he insisted on picking up Pandora’s check as well, which was beginning to get on Marie’s nerves since the dancer didn’t show the least sign of gratitude—quite the opposite in fact.

“How can you make so much money in the red wine trade when it sells for so cheap all over the world? Who knows what business you’re really in?” she had teased him just the other evening, at which point Marie gave her a hard nudge in the ribs. Franco had once told her in no uncertain terms that aristocrats thought it very coarse to discuss business affairs, and that was the last time she had asked where all his money came from. All she had meant was that she didn’t like the thought that he always paid for everything, but he had put on such dreadful airs that she had changed the subjec
t . . .
And maybe it wasn’t so bad to let him spoil her.

Marie sighed contentedly. She seemed to have it all these days. The best lover in the world an
d . . .

“What do you think, Marie?” she heard all of a sudden in her right ear. “You’re an artist yourself, wouldn’t you like that? It would be like Greenwich Village on a mountainside.”

“I’m sorry? What do I think of what now?” Marie blinked in the sunlight and looked up into Pandora’s face.

“Admit it, you weren’t even listening!”

Marie smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry; I must have been daydreaming.”

“I don’t think I need to ask what you were dreaming about! Are you so much in love that you’re losing track?” Pandora said, peering at her irritably, and then turned back to Sherlain. “I’m sticking with what I said before—if nobody but artists came to live here, it would be just a ghetto and it would do art more harm than good!”

“Which is exactly where I disagree with you. You’d get something like the purest form of art, crystallizing from the very air.”

Marie looked from Pandora to Sherlain and back again in confusion. What on earth were they talking about?

“Don’t worry about it,” Susanna said, her breath tickling her right ear. She came over so close that Marie could smell her body odor. “When I was in your condition, I couldn’t concentrate on anything for half an hour at a time either. I felt so restless—and so sick every morning! It’s the hormones, they say. Anyway I hear that there are doctors now who specialize in just this sort of thing.”

Sherlain and Pandora turned their heads like bloodhounds picking up an interesting new scent.

“A doctor? My condition? What do you mean?” Marie frowned.

For a moment Susanna looked at her in astonishment; then a knowing grin spread across her sunburned face.

“Well really, Marie, you don’t have to play the innocent with us! Here on Monte Verità we take a fairly relaxed view of that sort of thing as you know. Or are you really worried one of us might be shocked at the news?” Susanna seemed to be enjoying the moment enormously and glanced over at the others to be sure she had their attention. “How daft does she think we are?”