Restitution (31 page)

Marie sent her telegram from the huge red-brick post office building in Stettin.

Three days before the wedding, when Marie was packing up her things in the Berlin hotel that had been her home for the last three months, a carved wooden box came from the
Tyrol with a congratulatory letter from him.

She folded Anton’s letter and put it into the carved box. He’d probably made it for her himself, he had a skill with wood – she remembered that hand-turned bowl he’d
given her after her first performance as Rosalind in
As You Like It.
And yes, her career. She’d pushed the thought of next season to the back of her mind when Peter’d asked her
to marry him, writing vague letters to the directors she’d worked with in Vienna, saying she’d be away for the summer and promising to get back in touch when she returned. Now perhaps
she should admit to herself that she had no intention of returning to the stage.

She felt almost angry with Anton for forcing her to face this fact. She was throwing away all those years at the Academy and the promising start she’d made to her career. Peter had told
her he was in no rush to start a family, that she should carry on acting if she wanted, perhaps follow up the interest she’d received from Babelsberg studios. She should devote herself to
films, if that was what she wanted. And if she wanted to work in Vienna, he’d rent an apartment for them both and spend as much time down there as he could spare from the estate.

If she never saw Vienna again it wouldn’t worry her. Or Viktor. She never wanted to remember the rapture in his face while Eva writhed on top of him. Even now, the memory of that scene
filled her with an emotion she could almost label as terror. He hadn’t even noticed Marie’s reflection in the mirror as she stood watching them. He’d overlooked her and like a
small child she’d felt fury. Hurt pride and fascination with something she didn’t understand were driving her into marriage.

Just as something mysterious had driven Eva into her sudden wedding to Matthias. Marie had had suspicions, but as months passed she’d decided she’d been wrong. Then she’d seen
Eva just last week, for coffee in the Fischers’ apartment.

‘Thanks for coming here.’ Eva moved a pile of newspapers from the sofa so that Marie could sit. ‘I’ve been sick. The doctor says I mustn’t travel.’ Her
clothes seemed to hang less elegantly than before and her face was fuller around the chin.

‘What is it, Eva? Why don’t you tell me?’ Of course Marie had guessed by now. That sudden marriage.

Eva twisted her hands in her lap. ‘I’m . . . expecting.’

‘I rather thought you might be.’

She gave an apologetic little smile. ‘I’m so sorry I’ll miss your wedding. You’ll love married life. Have I already told you that my Matthias is a darling and I adore
him?’

Marie met her dark gaze and saw Eva’s eyes were almost overflowing.

‘Are you
really
happy, Eva?’

The hands stopped their twisting. ‘When I found out . . . when it was clear Viktor wasn’t coming back I was desperate. I thought I’d die. Matthias made me laugh. I probably . .
. became close to him rather too quickly.’

‘We hardly knew him. At least, that’s how I remember it. He was just someone who came to parties.’

‘Perhaps. But sometimes you can tell what a person’s like very quickly. Matthias was the right man for me. He’s not like Viktor – all mystery and things left
unsaid.’ Eva sat straighter. ‘He tells me where he’s going and when he’ll be back. And when the baby’s born we’ll have even more fun.’

Impossible to ask the question about the baby she longed to put to Eva:
When is it due?

‘When can we come to Pomerania and visit you?’ Eva took Marie’s hands in hers. ‘You’ll find my Red of a husband a lamb in social situations, so don’t worry
that he’ll alarm the Junkers.’

‘He seems very affable.’ Marie remembered Matthias’s quick smile.

‘Even Anton Preizler couldn’t help liking him.’ Eva gave a dismissive wave. ‘But enough of men. Are you going to follow up that interest from the film directors,
darling?’

And Marie’s intention of asking Eva directly about Viktor had come to nothing.

Now here she was in Stettin with her husband-to-be, enjoying their last excursion together before they married. She felt herself relax. This was the right decision. Perhaps
taken for the wrong reasons, but right nonetheless. How long would a girl like her have lasted on the stage anyway? Times were turbulent, anything could happen. Peter was a darling, eccentric, yes,
but devoted to her. She could love a man like him. She corrected herself, she already did.

Anton wrote no more letters, and three years had passed when she received a brief note telling her that he too had married, a Clara Becker in Munich. The timber export business
was on the point of collapse because of the economic crisis. Somewhere in the letter was an unwritten accusation she couldn’t ignore. She couldn’t lie and say she hadn’t been
aware of his unspoken hopes.

But Anton was far away in Munich so she didn’t find herself thinking about him often.

The arrival of Alexandra within a year of her marriage, the start of her film career in Berlin, Hitler’s rise to power, the unexpected passion that built up between her and Peter; all
these things kept her attention from her childhood friend.

Anton’s telephone call in July 1938 took her by surprise. He and the family had moved to Stettin so he could take up a new position. Might he and Clara call on Marie and
the baron? They’d be driving through that part of Pomerania on the Saturday evening and would very much like to pay their respects.

‘Which means we’ll have to invite them to dinner,’ Peter told her. ‘Anton is probably a Party member. Tell Eva to be discreet, he might not realize who her husband
is.’ For Eva and Gregor were here at Alexanderhof, enjoying a respite from the stifling atmosphere of the capital. Matthias Fischer, that rumpled man with the cheerful grin, gentle manners
and left-wing opinions, had been taken off to Sachsenhausen, branded an enemy of the state. Did Anton know this? Marie racked her memory to recall if she’d ever mentioned Eva’s sudden
marriage to him. She thought he’d been at a job interview in Innsbruck when Eva and Matthias had slipped off to the registry office.

The last thing Eva needed was another encounter with a potentially hostile Anton. But if she was careful there was no reason for Anton to know who her husband was. They’d present Eva to
the Preizlers with her maiden name:
Anton, you remember Eva Mauer? We used to share an apartment when we were both at the Academy.

Marie shook her head. This was
Anton
they were talking about: a decent and kind man, a carver of wooden bowls and boxes.

But the tense expression on Peter’s face, so rarely seen until these last few years, made Marie think that perhaps her husband was right and discretion should be the order of the
night.

Alix

Pomerania, 2002

At first glimpse the old house hasn’t changed much. The white walls look as impregnable as I remember them, despite the streaks of yellow staining them. The formal parts
of the garden have disappeared under grass and weeds, as has the tennis court. Mami’s fruit bushes and borders are only a memory, although occasional hollyhocks and foxgloves still sway in
the light breeze and the air smells sweet with honeysuckle. Faint white lines on the grass show that a football pitch has been marked out on the upper lawn where Papi once played croquet with
Matthias Fischer while they argued about politics and books.

Many of the trees I remember still live on, including the acacias Papi had planted and the oak in the meadow, which was already a giant when my great-grandfather Friedrich was born and Napoleon
fought at Austerlitz. Further away the birches and firs sway in the forest, just as they always have done. Early July is a good time of year for the garden – warm but without the alternating
droughts and thunderstorms of later summer which played such havoc with Mami’s beds of hollyhocks, delphiniums and lupins. The summerhouse has gone, already rotten by the time we left in
forty-five. It would never have survived another sixty years of Baltic winters. A small rusty bench now occupies its place.

I think of all the valuables Mami buried in concrete pipes under the vegetables. Perhaps they’re still there. Probably not. The Russians must have grown wise to that ruse.

And the house itself. Some roof tiles are missing and weeds grow out of chimneys. One could spend a fortune tending to roofs, Papi used to say as he settled yet another bill for a broken gutter
or loose tiles.

Michael parks at the bottom of the steps. Frost has bitten chunks of stone from them, leaving them dangerously crumbly. Distance has deceived. The house is putting on a brave front like a
dowager fallen on hard times. Over the decades small maintenance jobs have been left undone.

‘Poor house,’ I say under my breath. ‘Poor house.’ It seems smaller, too, which is ridiculous because it’s still a three-storey Prussian country house built in the
grand style. But now I can hardly see because ghosts are swarming round me: Mami, Lena, Papi and the wagon with its yellow horses, waiting to take us west. And Gregor with his Red Army uniform,
Polish insignia and desperate eyes.

‘You want to go inside now?’ My son’s voice, so reassuringly American and relaxed, breaks into my reverie.

‘Forgive me. I was miles away.’

We climb the steps of the old house. No wooden troughs of lilies now, no geraniums, just a few cracked flowerpots.

Michael frowns. ‘The door’s open.
Hello?’
His voice resounds through the emptiness. No answer.

My eyes accustom themselves to the darkness of the hall. The antlers mounted on each side have gone. I never much liked these hunting trophies but I miss them now. I can make out the outlines of
doors and rooms farther inside the house. Damp and mustiness has replaced the smells of beeswax and roses. Wallpaper I haven’t seen before peels away from walls and wires hang from the
ceiling. Someone has covered the black and white marble floor with linoleum, laced with holes and stained orange where the rain’s come in. It took Mami ten years before the war to decorate
this house. She scoured Paris and London for fine fabrics and wallpapers. I’m glad she never saw this.

Concern furrows Michael’s face.

‘Do you think it’s a burglar?’ I ask. Someone shuffles upstairs. Judging from the uneven footsteps the intruder has a slight limp. A cough echoes down the staircase.

‘Stealing what?’ Michael waves a hand at the empty light fittings and rows of naked curtain hooks hanging from plastic rails.

‘It’s all right.’ Something is telling me that whoever is in the house bears us no malice. I follow my son upstairs, with care, because the treads on the steps groan as I tread
on them. Nobody can have replaced or repaired them in the last half-century.

I lingered on this staircase the night of the dinner party in 1938 when Mami accidentally locked Gregor in the cellar, waiting for her and Preizler to wander into the garden so that I could
tiptoe down and liberate him. In February 1945 I crept down the staircase again to release him, my heart almost hammering its way out of my chest because Preizler was again in the house, desperate
and armed with a revolver.

A noise – familiar yet unexpected – grabs my attention. It’s the wall clock still ticking on the landing. I frown. Nobody lives here any more but the clock tells the correct
time. Perhaps the caretaker keeps it wound.

A shadow moves towards me from my old bedroom door. A shiver runs the length of my body. My hand flies to my mouth and I feel as cold as death. Perhaps I am dead. Perhaps this is why I see him
in front of me.

‘Alix!’ he whispers.

‘Gregor Fischer – after all these years,’ I whisper, grasping at the banister for support. He
can’t
be real. I must have conjured him up. He
moves towards me and I shrink back. If he’s dead he mustn’t touch me. He must know how scared I am because he halts in front of me. When we met here unexpectedly the last time he
terrified me so much I couldn’t speak. His reappearance now is almost as traumatic.

‘Alix?’ Same eyes, alert and almost amused. But soft, too. ‘It’s me.’

I put out a hand and find the courage to touch his arm. The linen jacket feels smooth and warm. ‘But how did you know I’d be here?’

‘Alix!’ Michael strides towards me and puts his arm round me. ‘Are you all right?’ He shoots Gregor an accusing stare. ‘Who is this man?’

‘It’s all right,’ I tell him. ‘He’s a friend, an old friend.’

‘There’s an old bench in the garden.’ Gregor’s eyes haven’t left mine. ‘Let’s go downstairs. I’ll explain when we’re
im
Freien.’
Michael looks confused at the German.

‘He says we should go outside,’ I mutter, starting to follow Gregor down the staircase. I shake away Michael’s protective arm. I don’t want Gregor to see me as a frail
old woman. I walk straight-backed across the hall, watching Gregor as he moves ahead of me to open the front door. How stiffly he moves that left foot. That aside he seems in good, almost robust,
health. The linen jacket, olive in colour, is obviously of good quality and barely creased. His shoes shine. His hair is now completely silver but seems almost as thick as it was sixty-odd years
ago.

He can’t be here. But he is. In silence we follow him out to the garden. Gregor and I sit on the rusty old seat beside the abandoned football pitch. Michael stands in front, like an
anxious parent examining two worrisome children. Gregor stretches the stiff foot out in front of him.

‘That Kolyma injury never healed properly,’ I say.

‘The Kirov wouldn’t want me, that’s for sure.’ He gives that old mocking Gregor smile. His face is lined, but the creases aren’t deep. Trust Gregor Fischer to evade
the signs of ageing.