Authors: Margaret Leroy
‘You suspected something, didn’t you? When I talked about Rainer?’ I say.
‘I wondered,’ he says.
‘And then you were beaten up, and Frank helped us … I felt I owed him. I said I’d do what he wanted,’ I say.
‘Oh, my darling. How awful for you. And you would have been putting yourself in danger.’ He pushes my hair from my face. ‘But, Stella, you did the right thing. If these men are as Frank suspects – and that certainly seems highly likely…’
I shake my head impatiently.
‘But that isn’t it, that isn’t the thing I wanted to say.’
There are frown-lines pencilled between his brows. He’s aware that there’s something he’s missing.
I move away from him. My voice is shaking.
‘I looked in his desk – in Rainer’s desk. This morning.’ I swallow hard. ‘Frank asked me to look at Rainer’s diary. At first I wasn’t going to, but then I thought that I would…’
The air is thick and sickly with flower pollens. I feel as though I can’t breathe.
‘And I found a photograph of my mother in Rainer’s desk,’ I say. ‘It’s a photograph my mother has, too. From when she was a young woman. It was taken at a house party, just after the Great War. She keeps hers hidden as well…’
Harri’s eyes are suddenly wide.
‘He’s my father, Harri.’ I can’t control my voice. The words come out too loud. ‘Rainer Krause is my father.’
‘Oh Stella.’
He takes me in his arms. I’m trembling. He strokes my hair, so tenderly.
‘I think in a way I knew it before, but I tried to close my mind to it,’ I tell him. ‘I’d felt – I don’t know – something. That we were very alike in some way.’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Something in me wondered…’
I’m silent for a moment. I think of trying to tell him the other thing – the thing that shocks me the most. That sometimes I’ve felt an attraction between us – between Rainer and me. That thin whisper of desire. But I can’t say it. Not now. I’m worried he might be appalled – even Harri, who delves into the silences between people, who knows about the darkness in us, the strangeness. One day I’ll tell him, I think. Perhaps one day he could explain it to me – him and Dr Freud.
‘And I thought how my mother had seemed a bit reluctant to send me here – even though the arrangement seemed perfect.’
He holds me.
‘There was just this little thread of suspicion in my mind,’ I say. ‘And I tried to push it away, I didn’t want to think it. It was like that thing you told me – how you can know something and not know it, both at the same time.’
‘Yes,’ he says quietly.
‘I feel so … lost. I don’t feel like
me
any more.’ I struggle to find the right words. ‘I want you to help me find out who I am,’ I say lamely.
‘Oh Stella. You’re just the same sweet person,’ he tells me, so gently, his hand moving over my hair.
‘I don’t feel it, I don’t feel the same. It just seems to blow away everything I’ve ever known. My childhood – my life in Brockenhurst … It’s like none of it was real. It’s like all my memories have been taken away.’ I think how everything seems different, when I look back to my childhood. Fractured. As though I’m looking at a family photo, but there’s a crack in the glass. ‘And Daddy – I mean, Ernest – his name was Ernest, the man who brought me up…’
It’s so strange to call him by his name. And now at last I cry.
Harri runs his finger tenderly down the side of my face.
‘You’re still the same person,’ he says again. ‘And Ernest is still your father, Stella. He loved you – that wasn’t a lie. Nothing changes that. Your true family are the people who love you – it isn’t just about blood. Ernest gave you a father’s love. That’s what matters.’
‘But why didn’t my mother tell me? She must have known, and yet she never said. She lied to me all those years. My life, my entire childhood, has been founded on a lie.’
A hot rage surges in me, as I think this.
‘I know how angry you must be,’ he says. ‘But’ – hesitantly – ‘I can understand why she didn’t tell you. Sometimes there are things that are too hard to say. And the longer you leave it, the harder it gets.’
‘She should have told me.’ My voice is hard. ‘I feel I never want to speak to her again. She should have told me…’
‘Perhaps she was waiting for the right moment, and it never came.’
But I can’t forgive her. I feel so angry with her.
‘I just keep thinking of what it all means,’ I tell him. ‘Keep thinking of more and more things. That little Lukas who I’ve been looking after – Lukas is my
half-brother
.’
‘Have you talked to Rainer?’ he asks me.
‘Not yet. It’s too soon. But I will. For now it feels too difficult.’
He holds me close, wrapping me in his smell and his warm touch, till I stop trembling.
He murmurs into my hair.
‘My dearest, you’ll find yourself again. Truly. I promise you,’ he says.
At last I pull away, scrub at my face with a handkerchief.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I know we haven’t got long – before you go. I don’t want to mess up these days we still have together. I don’t want you to think of me like this, when you’ve gone. All teary and blotchy.’ I manage a weak smile. ‘I want you to think of me being happy … Thank you for listening to me.’
I blow my nose. I feel a little better already. Relieved at having told him. As if the very act of telling has healed me in some way.
It’s as though I become aware of my surroundings again – the great fretted shadows of palm trees falling over the path, the sounds of water dripping, the scarlet azaleas, lavish as a woman’s lipsticked mouth. Through the glass roof of the Palm House you can see the winter sky, as bright as if it’s burning.
‘Sweetheart. You mustn’t apologise. It’s such a huge thing for anybody to have to deal with,’ he says.
All at once, I think of him – of what he is facing. Leaving Vienna, crossing the ocean, going to a new life. Leaving everyone he loves. It’s so hard for him, it utterly dwarfs the things I have to deal with. Suddenly I feel I’ve been so selfish, so self-centred.
I put my drenched handkerchief in my pocket. I pin a smile on my face.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ I say. ‘I’ve been going on and on about me. Let’s talk about you…’
He shrugs slightly.
‘You’re got so much to sort out,’ I say. ‘Are you definitely still going on Friday?’
‘That’s the plan,’ he tells me.
‘And do you know where you’ll be living yet?’
‘It’s more or less organised. I’m going to stay in Mount Vernon to start with,’ he says.
I feel a small dark swoop of something at the edge of my mind. I realise how little he’s told me. That I don’t yet have a clear picture of what his life will be like.
‘Oh. Where’s Mount Vernon?’
‘It’s a district of Baltimore – quite central. I’ll be staying with an anaesthetist and his wife. They’re being very kind to us.’
To
us
?
‘How did you meet them?’ I ask him. ‘The anaesthetist and his wife?’
‘Oh, I haven’t met them yet. They’re people that Ulrike knows.’
My heart lurches.
‘Ulrike?’ In a little torn rag of a voice.
‘She’s Jewish too, Stella. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. Well, why would I? You never told me.’
‘She would be just as much at risk as me. If it does happen—’
‘Ulrike? Ulrike is
going with you
?’
‘She’s been offered a post at Johns Hopkins as well.’ His voice steady, careful. ‘We both feel it could get too difficult here.’
He looks in my face, reading me.
‘Oh Stella…’
He puts out his hand to touch me. I push his hand away.
‘You think we’re—’ He stops, tries again. ‘I mean, Ulrike and me…’
I don’t say anything.
‘Look – we aren’t, we’ve never been … She’s a work colleague. I’ve told you, Stella, I love only you. How can you doubt that?’
The jealousy seizes me, moves through me: hot, blinding.
Everyone has secrets,
everybody lies. Even those you love the most.
‘But I thought we had something special.’ My words are high, shrill, full of protest.
‘We did. I mean – we still do. Of course. And I so wish that the world were different – that we could just be an ordinary couple, just stay here in Vienna. But that isn’t the world we’re living in. I’ve thought and thought about it and I have to leave,’ he says.
The hot perfumed air nauseates me. I picture her in Harri’s attic bedroom, her long white body draped across his bed –
our
bed; her long white languid limbs wrapped round him. I think of what he said to me just a few moments ago.
Sometimes there are things
that are too hard to say. And the longer you leave it the harder it gets.
The words burn into me.
‘So this was all just a way for you to be with her?’ My voice hard, ugly, accusing.
‘No. No, of course not.’
But the thing has its claws in me.
‘Were you
never
going to tell me?’
‘Stella. I knew you got jealous.’ He’s measured, placating. It’s the way he must talk to his patients, his soothing, therapeutic voice. It just makes me more angry. ‘I knew you’d be upset if I told you,’ he says. ‘That you’d jump to the wrong conclusion. So I put off telling you. I didn’t want to upset you, just before we had to part—’
His voice breaks. I can see the tears that glitter in his eyes.
‘I loved you so much,’ I tell him.
I turn and walk away.
I hear his footsteps behind me.
I turn, put up my hand.
‘No. No. Don’t follow me.’
When I step outside the glasshouse, the bitter air slams into me, freezing the tears on my face. I walk off rapidly, weeping.
I tell Marthe I won’t be coming to dinner – that I think I’m ill, I can’t eat.
‘Oh, Stella. You don’t look well, I must say. You’re awfully pale. Should I call the doctor?’
‘No, don’t worry. Really. It’s probably just a chill.’
‘Well, if you’re sure. Best stay well away from Lukas till you’re better.’
‘I don’t suppose that Lukas could catch what’s wrong with me. But I’ll be careful.’
‘You’re always so considerate, Stella. I’ll have Janika bring something light along to your room.’
I lie on my bed. Sometimes I weep. Sometimes I pound my fists on my pillow. I watch the devastating picture-show that is spooling out in my mind. I see them on the boat together, sailing to America; he pulls her to him and holds her close, sliding his finger down the linked pearls of her spine. I see them on the street in Baltimore; he cups her face with his hands, kisses her, consuming her, searching her mouth with his mouth. I see them in a room together. They shut the door on the world, he goes to her, tears off her clothes. She’s like the women in the magazine that Kitty Carpenter stole – her pale body shockingly lovely. He’s so hungry for her.
I can’t bear this. I grind my face into the mattress.
But occasionally the feeling will recede for a moment or two, and in those moments I want him so much I can’t breathe. I don’t know whether I’ll ever see him again, and the thought fills me with sadness. What if I misread everything? What if he was telling the truth, and he loves only me? I think of the touch of his hand, pushing the hair from my face. I remember making love with him in the ruined winter palace, all around us the hush of the garden, secret under the snow. Have I wantonly destroyed the most precious thing in my life?
And then the tiger leaps again, digs its claws in. I see Ulrike as I saw her at the Kunsthistorisches Museum – her soft raven hair, her lips like redcurrants; how she walked quite slowly across the room, drawing every man’s gaze. Any man would want her.
And beyond that picture, something else, at once vivid and very remote. An image from long long ago, imprinted on my memory. A woman in an open-top car – so young and lovely, laughing, her glossy red mouth open, her long dark hair flying back. Taking the one I loved away from me.
There’s a knock at my door. It’s Janika, with food on a tray, and a cup of hot chocolate.
‘You just get back in bed, Fräulein Stella.’ She plumps up my pillows, settles me; she puts the tray on my lap. ‘This should help a bit,’ she says.
‘Yes. Thank you so much.’
She looks at me thoughtfully.
‘You’ve got a chill, Frau Krause tells me.’
‘Well, sort of…’
Her eyes are on me, warm, and brown as leaves in autumn.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ she says, a little tentative, ‘but are you having trouble with that special young man of yours?’
I wonder if she has the sight, like her mother.
‘Yes, I am,’ I say.
She thinks for a moment. She’s frowning very slightly.
‘He sounds like a good man,’ she says.
I nod mutely.
I have a sudden urge to confide in her – to ask her what I should do. She’s always so kind to me. But how could she advise me, when her world is so different from mine; when she talks about the evil eye, and werewolves; and believes there is a shadow soul that can leave the body in sleep, a separate, perilous part of us, that’s invoked in curses, and feared?
I don’t say anything.
‘Well, drink up your chocolate, Fräulein Stella. They say chocolate’s good for healing hearts. Just you drink it up and have a good rest, and perhaps it won’t all seem quite so bad in the morning,’ she says.
But in the morning it still seems as bad; and the next day, and the next. I feel unreal. As though I’m cut off from the world behind walls of glass, so I can still see out, but can’t touch. Or as though I’m sleepwalking through my life.
And, like a sleepwalker, I’m passive, unable to act. There are things I have to do, but I don’t do them. I know I should give Frank Reece the information I have. But I put it off. It’s still over a week till the date in the diary – the date of Rainer’s next meeting. There’s time enough; and Frank can always contact me.
There’s no chance to talk to Rainer either. He’s out a lot, he’s rarely home for meals; and he has a preoccupied look, his wintry eyes veiled, as though his thoughts are somewhere else entirely. And he never comes to the Rose Room when I’m practising any more; there’s never a time when he and I are alone. In a way, I’m relieved – I don’t feel strong enough to talk to him, to start the conversation I know we need to have.