A Book of Memories (21 page)

"What happened?" I asked very quietly, perhaps too quietly, because of the shock, far greater than mere fright, that seized my neck and throat, but without responding
—she may not even have heard me—Mother now walked out on the terrace, took a few steps, and, as if the irritatingly loud tapping of her slippers made her stop, rushed back into the room; "What happened?" I asked again, louder this time; and now she was at the front door again, opening it, and once more turning around, and at this point I simply had to jump out of bed, I had to try to help her.

Moving fast in opposite directions, our bodies collided, and for a moment we clung to each other in the middle of the dark room.

"What happened?"

"I knew it, for five years I've known it."

"What?"

"I knew it, for five years I've known it."

We were holding on to each other.

Her body was terribly rigid, I could feel the tension in it, and though for a brief moment she hugged me and I tried hard to yield to her by hugging her back, I sensed that our physical contact was of no help to her, that my eagerness was in vain, that though I could feel her she could not feel me, I might as well have been a table or a chair she was using to regain her balance and resolve, resolve bordering on hysteria, to propel her on to carry out her will, and still, not wanting to let her go, I pressed my body to hers, as if I knew precisely what she was about to do, what awful act I had to keep her from committing
—it made no difference to me what it was, I had no clear idea what it might be, but my instincts told me to protect her and keep her from doing whatever it was she now seemed desperate enough to do—and it felt as though my persistence did affect her, as if she had finally recognized me as her son, as someone who belonged to her, and she bent down and kissed my neck passionately, almost biting it, but the next moment, as if having drawn strength from that kiss and from my quaking body, tore my clinging arms from her waist and pushed me away—"Unhappy boy!" she cried, and ran out the terrace door.

I ran after her.

Instead of heading for the wide staircase leading to the park, as one might have expected, she ran in the opposite direction, stopping at the door of the Fräulein's suite.

Candles were burning within, and their lambent light reached our feet.

The sensation that I was standing on my feet had never been so acute.

Nor the feeling that not only my eyes but my whole body was there only to absorb the sight before me.

I cannot honestly say that I didn't know what it all meant, but neither can I claim that I did.

Because a child doesn't merely have knowledge of what ought to take place at such moments but, shocking though it may be to admit it, may have already experienced it, when squeezing pleasure out of his own flesh; nevertheless, what I was seeing came as such a surprise I am not sure I could comprehend it.

Here the spectacle was created by two strange bodies.

Their nakedness gleamed on the bare floor.

With pieces of white garments strewn all about them, the Fräulein seemed somehow to be lying on her side, her knees drawn up almost to her breasts, her body bending into itself, turning her formidably ample buttocks to Father; seeing them in retrospect, with experienced eyes, those buttocks seem extremely beautiful and "turning to" a most inadequate phrase; she was proffering, tendering, serving up her buttocks to Father, while he more or less squatted, knelt above her, one hand frantically clutching her loose dark hair, as he slammed against her, the convex hollow of his loins thrusting in, clinging to, then retracting from the concave double bulge of her behind; he was inside the perfectly enclosed body, able to ravage it freely, powerfully, yet most exquisitely; today I know how that is
—in this position not only can one's member slip to the deepest or, I should say, highest reaches, but the sensitized foreskin, the bulbous glans, the bulging blood vessels, while rubbing against the stiffened clitoris and caressing the vulva, can swab and scrub the tight yet slippery cave of the vagina, making the erection so tumescent, so throbbing, that the organ, having reached the mouth of the womb, the last obstacle, can fill the hollow so fully, so perfectly, that one can no longer tell what is ours and what is hers; in this odd position, therefore, violent entry and tender lovemaking can merge and become one; could anyone wish for pleasure more intense? but on that occasion all I could see was that Father's spine was bending sharply, his buttocks spread almost as if he were about to defecate, and he was supporting himself with his free hand: in the moments of rhythmic disengagement his enormous, slightly updrawn testicles became visible, and then he would lunge again, covering completely the spot that induced such bubbling pleasure in both of them; the Fräulein squealed in a piercing, high-pitched voice while Father's mouth opened—and this frightened me because, as if unable to close it, he let out a deep rattle, the tip of his tongue stuck out, and his wide-open eyes stared into space, but of course I couldn't connect the shriek and the rattle to the carnal delight I was witnessing, because when Father reached the highest point of penetration, when he seemed to find his place at last, he froze, and his whole body, covered with thick patches of black hair, was shaken by an uncontrollable and insatiable trembling; still holding her by the hair, he kept raising and banging her head against the floor, and though this produced in her the most pleasurable shrieks, she also began squirming underneath him, as if trying to escape, so that dropping back from his climax, Father's loins resumed their gentle but firm thrusts, which she greeted with softer, more intimate squeals; then Father yanked her head up and knocked it against the floor with a resounding bang.

If at this moment my enjoyment proved far greater than my surprise, if, forgetting Mother's presence, I focused all my senses on this spectacle and even considered myself fortunate to be witnessing it, it was not a child's openmouthed curiosity that was responsible, or the undeniable fact that I was already privy to such secrets, thanks to Count Stollberg, my playmate at Heiligendamm, a boy just a few years my senior; the truth is that many different, hitherto buried desires, cruel impulses, and inclinations had to clash together into some harmony, as if exposing me, as if the Fräulein, with her squeals of delight, had caught me in the act! and what I saw became an illumination of the senses, a revelation that had to do not only with me or with an abstract knowledge of the act or even with my playmate, whom I came across in the swampy reed bed one day, spread out on the soft soil, playing with himself, or even that much to do with Father, but directly with the object of my admiration and affection: Fräulein Wohlgast.

Could it be that those nocturnal escapades had had consequences, after all? those many nights when on our shared terrace I wanted to be alone but was nevertheless happy to find her and have her draw me to her body redolent with the warmth of her bed and of her restlessness?

Beauty radiated from her body, even though this beauty lay not in the shapeliness of her form and not in the regularity of her features but in her flesh, one might say, in the hot exhalation of her skin, even though in purely aesthetic terms she obviously did not measure up to an abstract ideal; her attraction proved stronger than that exercised by so-called perfect beauties: how lucky it is that we trust our fingers more than we do some insipid aesthetics; I hasten to add that even Mother had not escaped the Fräulein's confusingly profound influence and though always willing to accept tiresome rules, in this case Mother also chose to trust her own judgment; she was quite enamored of the Fräulein, indeed idolized her, even fantasized about being as intimate friends with her as Father was with Frick, and was affected by many of the Fräulein's physical features
— the sparkling, impertinent brown eyes, the gleaming, darkly Mediterranean, almost Gypsy-like complexion, with skin taut over wide cheekbones, the tiny quivering nostrils, and the full cherry lips that looked as if a ritual sword had split them in half not just horizontally but vertically as well— was stimulated, galvanized in her company, and in spite of Father's frequent and somewhat teasing warning, "The Fräulein is quite common, really," she put up with her loudness, closed her eyes to her uncouth lack of refinement, and did not seem bothered by the limited intellect whose physical manifestation may have been the low, flat brow which the Fräulein not only failed to offset with a measure of self-discipline but added to with her licentiousness; the body lying on the floor I also knew well— the small, hard, pointed breasts and the waist, which her cleverly cut dresses made seem much slenderer than it was, and the voluptuous hips, which those same dresses tended to overemphasize—I knew this body well, because on those nights, when driven by insomnia and restlessness she appeared on the terrace and embraced me maternally, with an exaggerated tenderness I now know was meant for Father, I came to be familiar with it, precisely in its disproportionate and unconcealed perfection; she didn't bother with a robe then, and the sheer silk of her nightgown conveyed everything unhindered, I could even feel her soft bush below whenever my hand strayed there, as if by accident, and I could inhale the heavy fragrance in which I sank and sank.

Thus far, and no farther!

Propriety and good taste demand that we pause now in our recollections.

Because Mother, emitting what sounded like a moan, collapsed in a faint.

Girls

The garden was huge, like a park, shady, mildly fragrant in the warm summer air; pungent smell of pines, their resin dripping from green cones that snap quietly as they grow; firm rosebuds resplendent in red, yellow, white, and pink hues; and yes, a single, ruffled, and slightly singed petal that could open no further, now almost ready to fall; and the tall, rearing lilies with their wasp-enticing nectar; violet, maroon, and blue cups of petunias fluttering in the slightest breeze; long-stemmed snapdragons swaying more indolently in the wind; and along the footpaths, great patches of foxgloves luxuriating in the flaming brilliance of their own colors; opalescent shimmer of dewy grass in the morning sun; clusters of thick shrubbery arranged in rows
—elder- and spindleberry bushes, lilacs, intoxicatingly sweet hyacinths, and, in the deepening shadows, under the forsythias, hawthorn and hazel bushes, the damp rot in which green ivy runs riot, exuding a sour-sweet odor, tendrils and shoots creeping over fences and walls, wrapping around tree trunks, fine clinging roots covering everything in sight in the effort to protect and propagate the mildewy decay on which ivy feeds and which it keeps producing; it's easy to see this plant as a symbol of life: in its dank profusion it consumes twigs, branches, grass, everything, then every autumn lets itself be buried in a red grave of fallen leaves, only to revive again in the spring, rearing its waxen head, navigating atop long, hardy stems; green lizards and pale brown snakes once used to enjoy the cool shade here, and fat black slugs traced their convoluted paths with their ooze, which turns white when dry and cracks when touched; when I think of this garden today, I know there is nothing left of it, they cleared the shrubbery, cut down most of the trees, tore down the gazebo with its green trellis and pink rambling roses, carried off the rock garden, putting the stones to some other use and destroying the vegetation in it: the ferns, the stonecrop, the blue and yellow irises; the lawn went to seed and is now burned out in spots; the white garden chairs probably rotted away and fell apart; the stone statue of Pan blowing his pipe, porous with age, that stayed lying on its side in the grass after a storm knocked it off its pedestal may have been thrown into somebody's basement, and even the pedestal disappeared; the plaster ornaments on the façade of the main house, the openmouthed goddesses rising out of seashells over the windows and the decorative scrolls of the fake Grecian columns were all knocked down and the glass veranda walled in; and during one of the reconstructions they even tore the creeping vine off the walls, the favored haunt of ants, beetles, and other insects; but no matter how much I know about all these changes, and know this garden now lives only in my memory, I can still sense every leaf stirring in it, every smell, every ray of light, the direction of every breeze, know them as well as I did then, long ago, and if I wish, it's summer again, a silent summer afternoon.

And there stands the boy I once was, slight, fragile, not ill-proportioned, even if he feels clumsy and ugly and is therefore reluctant to undress completely even in the summer heat; if he can help it, he won't take off even his shirt and will certainly keep on his undershirt, and prefers to wear long pants even in summer, would rather sweat though he finds the strong smell of perspiration repellent; today, of course, we smile at all this and note sadly that we are never fully aware of our own beauty, which can be appreciated only by others, and we can do so only nostalgically, in retrospect.

There I am, then, standing on the sloping garden path, and it's one of those rare moments when I'm not preoccupied with myself or, more precisely, am so taken up with anticipation that I myself have become an actor in a scene that follows an unknown script, and for a change, I don't even mind not having my shirt and trousers on, and stand here in only my blue shorts so faded from repeated washings they are almost white; I disregard all that, even though I know she'll soon be here.

I am simply there, along with the garden, the street, and the woods beyond the street; I am holding a large slice of bread smeared thick with lard and covered with slices of green pepper. I cut up the pepper myself, careful to leave the veins that make the pepper hot attached to the stem. When I lift the bread to my mouth, ready to bite, I have to press down on the strips of pepper to make sure they don't slip off
—of course they always do—but not too hard, or else I squeeze the fat off the bread and get it all over my face.

The sky has turned hazy gray from the heat, the sun is beating down, it may be the hottest hour of the day, not even insects bother to stir, yet on my skin, still moist from sleep, I seem to sense a breeze, very gentle and cool, that blows nowhere else but on this steep footpath.