The Life of Objects (23 page)

To the accompaniment of Franz Lehar’s “The Land of
Smiles,” played rather too loud on a gramophone that looked familiar, Herr Pflüger told Felix that, as mayor, he would be more than delighted to oblige Felix with a classification of small farmer, in exchange for the orchard at Löwendorf, as well as the ruins of the Yellow Palace and the rest of the motorcars in the garage and, as an afterthought, the garage itself.

Felix and I walked to the Pavilion so that Felix could discuss Herr Pflüger’s offer with Dorothea. As they had little choice, the Metzenburgs decided to give the mayor what he wanted. It was dangerous for them as owners of a large hereditary estate in a Communist zone. The resentment and envy that some of the villagers had felt long before the arrival of the Russians was now expressed openly, and the Metzenburgs had been denounced more than once as rich capitalists whose family fortune had been made through the sweat of the oppressed.

Felix and I returned to the village accompanied by Bessie, whom Felix held on a rope (the remaining two dogs had disappeared with the Russian tank). There were only a few lorries on the road, and it was very warm. Groups of German prisoners of war, guarded by American soldiers, walked past listlessly, and the Americans were startled when Felix greeted them in English.

The pleased, although hardly surprised, Herr Pflüger told Felix that he was very fortunate to have the mayor as his devoted friend, as there had been talk about the Metzenburgs. “In fact,” confessed Herr Pflüger, “the Russians suggested that I exile you to another district, but now we can keep you and dear Frau Metzenburg with us. I’ll tell them that you are properly registered as a small farmer, and that the produce from
your kitchen garden and your orchards goes directly to Berlin.” When we left, he gave Felix six packs of Camel cigarettes as a consolation prize.

We walked home in silence, Felix holding Bessie’s rope. The dog didn’t require a lead and would never run off, but he liked to keep her close to him. “If we were ever in doubt,” Felix said, pausing to open one of the packs, “we now know for certain that Rousseau was wrong.”

In late July, a letter from Inéz was found in the stables. She wrote that, after divorcing her Egyptian prince, she’d found herself in London with her two children, where she had married an English group captain with a large estate near Bath. Her new husband had recently been elected to Parliament, and she pressed the Metzenburgs to come to stay with them.

Dorothea smiled as she read the letter a second time. “Do you remember when she said that Christ was the only person in history who combined an elegance of soul with an elegance of both body and dress?”

“She has a genius for superficiality,” said Felix. He’d been reading aloud from a torn copy of Simenon’s
The Hotel Majestic
, holding the pages close to his face as his eyeglasses had been stolen. I sat next to him as he read (his voice was weak). His teeth pained him, and he packed them with melted candle drippings, giving him a slight lisp. I couldn’t bear to be away from him for too long. I worried that he’d need me or, worse, that I would need him.

There was a horse chestnut that grew behind the Pavilion,
and when the wind drew from the tree a humming noise, it frightened me. It was then that I reminded myself that tanks no longer rumbled through the park. Bombers no longer streaked overhead. In autumn, I knew, the paths would once again be slippery with leaves, and the brambles in the
Fasanerie
, once the covert of pheasant and partridge, would be heavy with fruit. In winter, I’d return wet and cold from my walk to the river. Bessie would race for the warmth of the fire, and I’d ask Kreck to save me some hot water. Felix would read aloud for an hour after dinner. I’d open the window in my room before I went to bed. I would drift lightly, as had become my habit, listening in my sleep should someone call me. Felix, perhaps, or Kreck. Or Caspar. Or Herr Elias. Or even the American.

One morning, I found Herr Vrooman, the man whom Felix and I met in the mayor’s office, sitting at the gates, reading the Russian newspaper. I asked if I could help him. He rose stiffly and said in old German, his voice rising and falling in that pleasant way, that he hadn’t liked to disturb Herr Metzenburg, not knowing his hours. He was hoping to see him after breakfast.

I suggested that he walk with me to the house. I knew that it was no longer acceptable to inquire of a person his place of origin or his destination, and I was silent as we walked up the avenue. I offered him a handful of cherries from my basket, which he accepted. Since the mayor had taken the orchard, I’d picked every cherry and plum that I could find, even if they were rotten, and my stomach had been swollen for days.

The avenue, once in near darkness thanks to the overhanging elms, was bright with light, and it was possible to see the river, shining at the bottom of the park, and the ruins of the Yellow Palace. The overgrown knot garden of thyme and barberry had gone to seed. The Russian soldiers had used the beds of white violets as a trash heap and the smell of rotting garbage drifted across the park, but the ash from the fire had fertilized the hundreds of elm seedlings growing in ranks along the drive and the heat of the fire had caused the spores and seeds of plants not seen at Löwendorf in years to burst into life. The outer walls of the Yellow Palace were covered with trailing Pelargonium, Ceterach ferns (which looked like bright green rickrack), and the lovely
Venushaarfarn
. Wild iris, hyacinth, and lilies grew among the fallen statues. The villagers, no longer in awe of the Metzenburgs, sometimes had picnics in the ruins, and small family parties. It was so lovely a spot that a stranger might be forgiven for thinking it a romantic folly, although I doubted if Herr Vrooman, looking at the ruins in curiosity, found them particularly sympathetic. Herr Pflüger, their new owner, had put up a sign, there and in the orchard, forbidding trespassers. An agitated jay followed us as far as the stable yard, mocking us with its laugh, and I was grateful for the distraction.

Felix did not come downstairs before noon, and I led Herr Vrooman to the library, where he sat in a broken chair to wait. I asked if he’d like a glass of water—it was already hot at nine in the morning—but he assured me that he was perfectly well. I felt that I should tend to him, but I could see that my attentions distressed him. I wondered if the close presence of other
people was no longer tolerable to him. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do for him, so I left him there.

Dorothea heard that the Americans and the English were buying, and she wished to dig up some of the treasure to sell in Berlin. Felix said that he’d prefer to hold on to things until prices were higher. There had been several messages from friends seeking the treasure they had entrusted to him, and he’d had to explain that the park had been destroyed and many of the objects entrusted to him stolen. He was hopeful that some of the treasure would be found, but it would take time. He wondered if his own beautiful things had survived and what their lives would be like with the end of the war. Dorothea knew that it was difficult for him to part with his treasure, whatever the price, and she promised that she would sell only those things that belonged to her.

She confided to me that she also hoped to inquire about friends in Berlin. It had become evident that people were no longer simply divided by class or race but by the different levels of suffering they had endured in the war. Those who had lost the most found it difficult to talk to or even to see those who had not suffered equally. It was not that they were incapable of sympathy, but that those who had suffered less than they had suffered did not awaken their curiosity or even their humor in the same way.

Dorothea asked me to go with her to Berlin, leaving Felix in the company of Herr Vrooman, who had moved into Roeder’s old room. Over several weeks, Felix had learned that Herr
Vrooman was Belgian and a former professor at Ghent University, where his field of study had been fifteenth-century Gothic sculpture, particularly the work of Veit Stoss. In the fall of 1938, a few months before my own arrival in Berlin, Herr Vrooman, on his way to see the church of Casimir V in Kraków, had stopped in Berlin, where he was arrested the day after Kristallnacht. The SS had identified the buildings owned or occupied by Jews and arranged for the telephone wires, gas, and electricity to be cut, and there’d been no chance of escape. He and a cousin had been sent to Sachsenhausen prison, where his cousin had died. When the guards abandoned Sachsenhausen at the end of the war, Herr Vrooman managed to slip from the long line of prisoners. It took him a week to reach Löwendorf—he was headed for Kraków—where he collapsed in front of the inn, remaining there for two days until Madame Tkvarcheli found him and sent him to Herr Pflüger.

Although Herr Vrooman was too frail to help with the chores, he was an engaging companion for Felix. I often heard them talking, and I was relieved to see Felix slowly regain his spirits. When Felix told Herr Vrooman of the altarpieces, stained glass, and lime-wood figures that had been buried in the park, Herr Vrooman was speechless. When Felix told him that the carved wooden altar from St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków had been broken apart by the Nazis and taken to Nuremberg, Herr Vrooman burst into tears.

The day before we left for Berlin, Dorothea and I spent several hours in the park, Felix’s treasure map in hand, trying to locate
the spots where her jewelry was buried. Herr Vrooman offered to help, but Dorothea did not want to tax him with the effort of digging.

The park had been destroyed by the Russian tanks, and many of the trees cut for firewood, so Felix’s map, drawn with such care, was more frustrating than helpful. Much of the treasure had been discovered by the soldiers, but after a morning of pacing and circling and probing and digging, we at last found a case of her jewelry and an iron trunk containing thirty medallions of mythological figures by James Tassie, although two Holbein paintings that had been buried with the medallions were gone. It had been very warm all week, and I found digging for emeralds far more tiring than digging for carrots.

Using strands of horsehair and my needle, I sewed the Empress Josephine’s yellow diamonds, a handful of baroque pearls, five of the Tassie medallions (Adam Smith and Henry Raeburn, among others), and four gold watches that had belonged to Dorothea’s father into the hems and seams of the clothes that we would wear to Berlin. Our dresses were much warmer than the weather required, but the weight of the treasure demanded fabric heavier than silk or linen. I felt a certain unaccustomed gaiety as we set out, as if we were taking a trip, which lasted until we reached the Ludwigsfelde train station.

A company of Russian infantry patrolled the station. Suddenly I could hear the heavy watches ticking noisily against my knees, and the clatter of fat pearls, rolling back and forth with every step. The train was meant for freight, and there were no seats or lights, which suited us, as we did not want to sit on the medallions. As we swayed back and forth with the hot and
weary crowd, I thought of the Zoo flak tower and Herr Elias’s lost books and the woman who had disappeared in a faint. As we drew near to Berlin (it was possible to judge distances and location by the extent of the destruction), a man standing next to me began to rub his face in my neck. I was certain that he could feel the jewels (I’d once feared that Herr Elias could hear the beating of my heart while we danced), and I twisted and turned, pushing his head from my shoulder. It seems he’d fallen asleep, and he apologized for the rest of the trip.

The train at last arrived in Berlin. The bridge leading to the station had been bombed, and there was no public transportation. People of all ages, their open hands thrust at us, hung on a sagging wire fence built to discourage the hungry from troubling those fortunate enough to ride a train. Dorothea gave them the food that we’d brought, and I had to stop her from giving away her hat, into which I had sewn two diamond rings.

We continued on foot, blinking in the light. The air was full of dust, and ash and soot soon covered our faces and clothes. The city was crowded with refugees. Cleaning brigades climbed over enormous piles of rubble. American military police directed traffic, mostly their own jeeps and lorries, and patrolled the streets, many of them blocked by fallen timber and brick. Some of the MPs were Negroes, and the children stood in silent rows to gape at them. Shelters had been built against the ruins with whatever materials could be scavenged, and women boiled vats of water over open fires.

We were shocked by the difference between the American and the Russian zones. Despite the endless destruction, the people, as well as the soldiers, were distinctly happier in the
American sector, and it made us envious. There was no electricity, running water, or gas, and little food, but there was a mood of excitement, even elation, that made the ruined streets and the faces of the survivors less desolate. I gave my collection of letters to one of the smiling MPs to mail for me.

It took us some time to reach Dorothea’s flat, and when we at last found the square, empty of trees and houses, we realized that we had walked past it more than once, confused by the desolation. We walked to the shop of the dealer who Dorothea had hoped would take her jewels, but the shop was empty. As we walked to the Metzenburgs’ bank, which meant entering the Russian sector, we passed the street where Herr Kreutzer had opened his last gallery. A man sweeping the street said that drunken German soldiers had burned the building. He didn’t know anything about a Herr Kreutzer. When we at last reached the bank, hot and thirsty, a Russian soldier at the door shouted in German that the bank was now the property of the Russian government. Dorothea sat on a pile of rocks and began to cry. I sat next to her, the weighted hem of my dress dragging in the dirt, until the soldier pointed his rifle at us and ordered us to leave.

By the time that we found our way to the train station, it was dark, and we were so tired and sad, our dresses so heavy with unsold treasure, that we could barely walk.