Berlin: A Novel (26 page)

The gate at the end of the park is child's play for Henry, they've jumped it dozens of times, but you can easily lose your seat without a saddle, particularly when Henry jams on the brakes instead of jumping. Detta sails solo over the bars, rolls over as she comes down, and finds herself sitting in the meadow, surprised. Henry turns and trots briskly home. 'You beast!' she hisses after him, and sets off on the long walk back, slightly dazed and with a triangular tear in her jodhpurs over her left thigh.

A red-striped marquee has been put up behind the house. It's crowded with people. Detta hopes to get past, but Bensing has seen her. Bensing, clad not as usual in shirtsleeves and an apron but in dark-blue livery with gilt buttons, takes a deep breath, thrusts out his chest and trumpets: `Henriette Sophie Charlotte, Baroness von Aichborn.'

Father is suddenly beside her. As Bensing is announcing the next guest, he steers her through the throng towards a slender gentleman in tweed. 'Imperial Highness, may I present my daughter Henriette?"

Detta bobs a half-curtsey. Adelheid has practised it with her, and has taught her that a full curtsey is due only to the Kaiser; the Crown Prince gets a half-curtsey, even if he isn't really a Crown Prince any more and nor, in the tenth year of the Weimar Republic, is the Kaiser a Kaiser.

, my dear Aichborn, what a splendid young lady.' An appraising glance at the firm, girlish thigh showing through the tear. His Imperial Highness likes them young.

A little riding accident. I hope your Highness will excuse us.' Mother removes Detta from the danger zone. 'You'll be confined to your room for a week.' she says sternly. 'Hans-Georg will bring you your meals.'

'Yes, Mother.' The fourteen-year-old smiles to herself. That won't be so bad, not if Hans-Georg can visit her.

The gong summons the family to breakfast: bacon and eggs, kidneys, grilled sausages, tomatoes and toast. This is 'English morning' at Schloss Aichborn. Miss Imogen Thistlethwaite, the English governess from Somerset. makes the two younger siblings sit down at the table. 'Fritz, sit still. Viktoria, put your hands on your lap and straighten your back.'

Ah. Bratwiirstchen,' says the Baron with pleasure when he sees the sausages.

'Speak English, darling,' his wife reminds him.

'I bet none of you know what Haferbrei is in English,' Hans-Georg challenges the company. Detta looks affectionately at her big brother. He looks fabulous. He's a senior officer cadet, and home on leave. Now that Germany has a proper army again, not just a ridiculous force of a hundred thousand men by kind permission of the entente, he has a whole career laid out ahead of him. Of course he will join the traditional Aichborn regiment, the Ninth Cavalry in Potsdam, known popularly as the 'von Neun' because so many of its blue-blooded members' names contain the aristocratic von.

'Haferbrei is porridge.' Detta's reply comes quick as lightning. She is twenty, and has been speaking fluent English since she was six.

'What are you going to do this morning?' her father asks.

'I plan to show the girls how to shoot,' Hans-Georg announces.

'The girls' are Detta and the girl with the black, bobbed hair just coming downstairs in culottes and a shirt with two top buttons undone - which is two too many. She is yawning. 'What an unholy hour - when all good people are still in their beds,' Miriam complains, casting Hans-Georg a glance that Detta doesn't like at all. The extremely chic Miriam Goldberg is heiress to the banking house of Goldberg & Cie. She arrived yesterday in her sensational white BMW sports convertible. Hans-Georg has invited her to Aichborn for the weekend. 'I ought really to be in Biarritz. Grandfather has rented the Braganzas' villa. He's negotiating with the Portuguese there - he's planning to move the bank to Lisbon, and the family's supposed to go too. Totally crazy, what would I do in Lisbon? When the Berlin season's about to begin any moment! Lilian Harvey is giving a phenomenal cocktail party on the Pfaueninsel, and the Bulows are planning a ball at the Adlon. I mean, are we going to miss all that just because of this new Reich Chancellor? The man doesn't even speak proper German, and he has no sex appeal at all,' she says, nonchalantly dropping the latest fashionable term into the conversation and sipping her tea. Another glance at Hans-Georg, who returns it with a smile.

What on earth, Detta wonders crossly, does he see in that snake in the grass? 'Let's go shooting,' she says out loud, although she is not particularly fond of the sport. However, she would be happy to go fishing, hoe weeds, cycle or catch butterflies with her brother, just for the sake of his company.

Bensing bends down behind the wall of the nursery garden and puts a clay pigeon in the sling. 'Pull!' calls Detta in her clear voice. The little disc rises in the blue August sky. Detta raises her gun and pulls the trigger. A loud bang. Her target falls into the nearby meadow, intact. The shot comes down on the greenhouse in a fine shower of lead pellets. 'Oh, shit.' Detta lowers the shotgun in disappointment.

'Your turn, Miriam.' Hans-Georg stations himself behind her. Miriam leans back, pressing close to him. Like a cat with a tom, thinks Detta scornfully, and traces Miriam's shot into the void with satisfaction. Impatiently, she snatches the gun from her hand.

'You have to settle the butt into your shoulder, Detta.' says her brother, looking lovingly at Miriam. 'Look straight along the barrel. Follow the course of disk, swing with it, take a step forward and press the trigger as you move. Ready. Bensing?'

Sensing is ready. Detta waits. 'Pull!' A swinging movement, a bang, the clay disk shatters into a cloud of white. Again. 'Pull!' Swing, bang, a hit. Now she has the knack of it. Her brother is beaming.

Miriam is pouting flirtatiously. 'Come on, Georgie, never mind this silly old shooting.'

'Georgie', indeed! Detta reloads, throws Miriam the gun. 'Here, you do it.' Miriam jumps back in alarm. The gun falls to the ground. Hans-Georg picks it up. 'Sensing, pull!' He shoots a double. Detta tries, but she hits only one of the two flying disks. 'You lower the gun after the first shot, then you take aim again,' her brother tells her. He knows all about these things, he's a soldier after all. 'Pull!' She hits both clay pigeons. Hans-Georg is pleased with her. The gong goes for lunch in the house.

'Well, how was it?' asks the Baron.

'Boring.' Miriam helps herself to a tiny chicken wing and half a stick of celery. Detta tucks in heartily.

'Detta has a real gift for it,' Hans-Georg praises her.

'Maria Inocencia is arriving the day after tomorrow,' Mother tells them. 'I'd like everyone who can to speak Spanish to her, even if you may not be as fluent as in English.' Maria Inocencia is a cousin from Madrid.

'I wonder if she can shoot?' Detta tries it out loud in Spanish. 'Me pregunto si Maria Inocencia es buena tiradora.'

'No seas tonta. Una mujer espahola no tocaria nunca un arma,' Mother tells her in elegant Castilian. A Spanish woman doesn't touch a weapon.' The Baroness was born an Alvarez de Toledo.

There is more shooting after lunch, this time with a rifle and a telescopic sight. Hans-Georg has put up the target by the cowsheds: the heap of dung behind it will catch the bullets. 'Point the gun, take aim, breathe out, pull the trigger slowly, rather as if you were squeezing a sponge, or you'll swerve to one side.' Detta follows her brother's instructions and aims at the centre of the target, using the cross-hairs. Slowly, she pulls the trigger. The recoil hurts. A three. Not a good start. When she finally hits the twelve her shoulder is hurting like hell, but she doesn't let anyone see, if only because of Miriam, who is watching with a bored expression.

'Well done, Detta!' Hans-Georg is genuinely proud of his sister. 'We'll go hunting together this autumn.'

Detta beams. 'Shall we go for a ride later? Miriam can have Senator. He won't try anything on with her.'

Another time, my dear,' Miriam says. 'Coming, Georgie?' The two of them disappear into the park.

I suppose they just can't wait, thinks Detta with venom.

The sound of an engine catches her attention. An aeroplane is skimming low over the trees and comes down like a hawk on the lawn behind the house. A daring landing. The pilot climbs out of the open plane and comes towards Detta, taking off his flying cap and goggles. A brown, masculine face smiles at her.

'Thomas Glaser,' he introduces himself. And you must be Hans-Georg's sister Detta.' Suddenly Detta's heart is thudding, and there is a rather pleasant tingling inside her. 'Where's your brother, then?'

'Somewhere in the park with his new flame.' Funny, but the thought of Miriam suddenly doesn't bother her. 'Do you always come calling by plane?'

He grins. 'Not on the Kurfiirstendamm. The overhead tram cables would get in the way. Have you ever flown?'

'Not yet.'

'We'll take a little trip tomorrow.' He doesn't ask if she wants to, this astonishing man, he just decides. She imagines flying through the air, pressing close to him in alarm, an unrealistic thought since the two open seats in the Klemm 25 are arranged one behind the other, but it's nice all the same. Even the hope of a ride with Hans-Georg pales in comparison.

They have all changed for the evening. The Baron wears a starched shirtfront with a wing collar under his dinner jacket. Hans-Georg looks fantastic in his white uniform jacket, but Detta has eyes only for her airman. He appears at the top of the stairs, looking round for help. 'Could someone please tie my bow tie for me?'

'Come down, Herr Glaser, and I'll do it,' calls Detta eagerly.

'If you call me Herr Glaser again I shall use Henriette for you,' he threatens her, smiling. 'I'm Tom to my friends.'

The Harsteins from the neighbouring estate have come to dinner, the local clergyman Pastor Wunsig and his wife, the veterinarian and his wife. And a certain Herr Fanselow, the district farmers' leader. A kind of Party agricultural official,' the Baron surmises. 'He could help us finance the new stud farm. That would be a good contribution to National Socialism - or in this case local Socialism.' The Baron is prepared to move with the times.

Wearing boots to dinner? Detta doesn't take to Fanselow at all.

It turns out that the man used to be a shoe salesman at Leiser's in Berlin. The Party has given him his lucrative position as a functionary in the country because of his record as a 'meritorious old campaigner', someone who backed the National Socialists from their early days. He hasn't the faintest idea about farming or stock breeding, but he lards his conversation with jargon about 'blood and the soil', 'sound Reich husbandry' and 'iron ploughshares'. Detta thinks it all rather silly.

'Have you seen the plans for our stud farm yet?' Father steers the conversation straight to the subject on his mind. A project intended to benefit all the farms in the area. With your Party's support it could be up and running in half the time.'

Fanselow dismisses the idea. 'Later, Baron. First we must cleanse the new Germany of Jewish bloodsuckers and parasites. Take our own district here. Two Jewish doctors, a Jewish dentist, a Jewish notary. And the architect of the stud farm you're planning is called GrUnspan. They'll all have to go.'

'Oh, and will our friend here have to go too? Or when you were introduced did you conveniently overlook the fact that Fraulein Miriam's surname is Goldberg?' Hans-Georg asks sharply.

Bensing brings in a platter of crayfish. 'We mustn't let the last month without an R in it go by uncelebrated,' says the Baroness, smiling as she changes the subject. 'Will you do the honours, Pastor?'

Wunsig says grace, his voice loud and clear. All but Fanselow bend their heads. 'I suppose,' Detta challenges him, that as a Local Socialist you don't believe in God?'

'National Socialist,' Fanselow corrects her, and announces grandly: 'I believe in the German spirit as it manifests itself at this historic time and place.'

'My plaice had an awful lot of bones in it last Friday,' says Detta innocently, earning herself an amused look from the airman and a glance of annoyance from the champion of good Reich husbandry, who is waiting for someone else to tackle the crayfish first. He's never eaten them before, Detta realizes.

'Do you like crayfish, Herr Fanselow?' Detta pushes her plate aside and spreads her napkin on the table in front of her with a business-like air. She holds her soup spoon in her left hand. With her right hand, she picks up a crayfish by driving her fork into its soft part. Fanselow does the same. She ceremoniously transfers the shellfish from the platter to her spoon. Fanselow follows her example. Then she puts down her fork and takes the crayfish from her spoon with the serving tongs. She drops it from chest height to her napkin.

'Here, Herr Fanselow.' She politely hands him the serving tongs. The others are watching this performance, spellbound. Miriam is grinning to herself. Detta carefully folds all four corners of her napkin over the crayfish and brings her fist down on it a couple of times. Fanselow copies her. Detta unfolds the corners of the napkin. 'Delicious,' she murmurs. Fanselow opens his own napkin and looks rather doubtfully at the smashed crayfish inside. Then he begins poking about in the ruins with his fork.