The Other Side of Love (17 page)

He gave a goodnatured shrug.

“Take me, for instance. Did you ever see anyone less suited for a military career? But here I am, wearing a uniform because my grandfather commanded me to follow the family tradition.”

“OK, Sigi,”

Wyatt said.

“Granted Adolf stepped into this vacuum, this horde of obedient Volk awaiting a man who would give them order. Should I take that to mean the good loyal flock, including the generals, support his racial policy?”

“God knows I despise it.”

Sigi’s expression changed to earnestness.

“Nothing’s got any worse for the Jews since the Olympic Games.”

“Wunderbar!”

Wyatt said.

“We’ve just dug our way out of a deep rotten hole,”

Sigi responded.

“So don’t think too badly of us, eh, Kathe?”

Kathe didn’t hear her halfbrother. She was watching Wyatt’s baffled angry face.

107

Sigi glanced at her. Reaching out his thick arms to grasp Wyatt and Aubrey’s hands, he said:

“We’re all friends, and our countries will remain friends. So let’s stop upsetting my baby sister with politics.”

VII

Clothilde had put Aubrey and Wyatt in the same guestroom. The red coils of the small electric heater did little to dispel the chill, and both men undressed rapidly.

Wyatt switched off the light.

“Hitler’s sold the Germans some bill of goods,”

he said.

“Not all of them.”

“Bull! Sigi’s a decent guy in every way, yet even he’s convinced that the great leader is a staunch pacifist and in the fullness of time will come to love the Jews.”

“Sigi’s a German, that’s all. Don’t you stand up for your country?”

“Kathe thinks the Fiihrer’s pretty OK, too.”

“You will not pigeon-hole her as a Nazi!”

After a pause, Wyatt said:

“Jesus, I never heard you so snippy. Does that mean what I think it does?”

“Good night,”

Aubrey said.

“Pleasant dreams.”

After a long pause, Wyatt said:

“So you’re gone on her, too? I’ll say one thing for you. You sure kept your feelings well hidden.”

“That’s how we English are. Reserved.”

“Look, you might as well know that I’m out of my mind about her. We’re going to be married. I’d kill to keep her.”

“No need to issue warnings, Wyatt. Any fool can see that I don’t stand a ghost of a chance. Marry her quickly, take her as far away as possible from here. You have my every cousinly blessing.”

Wyatt’s mattress creaked.

“She’s half-English. Why should she feel so damn obligated to the Third Reich?”

“The von Graetzes have a code of honour that’s been bred in the bone for nearly a millennium. They might look modern, Wyatt, but they’re still the Teutonic Knights and their ladies. Sigi’s got the motto in his room. Roughly it translates into

“Loyalty to country, fidelity to oath”.”

“Big deal.”

“It is to a von Graetz. They give allegiance to the Reich; they never go back on a promise. Kathe can’t renounce that side of her any more than she can forget the English part.”

Aubrey sighed.

“This talk of divided loyalties is all Greek to you, isn’t it?”

Wyatt turned over, and his voice was muffled.

“Aubrey, there’s a lot you don’t understand about me. Divided loyalties happen to be my field of expertise.”

108

“Well, what do you think, Wyatt?”

Alfred asked, gesturing at the glitter of drinking-vessels.

Though Wyatt lacked both Aubrey’s depth of knowledge and loving respect for antiques, his aesthetic sense told him that he was looking at virtuoso craftsmanship. Whistling, he said:

“Fabulous, but too rich for our blood. Mother and Dad’ll back me up on this. Your average American customer wants flash; Abody’ll pay the price for museum quality.”

*

“No need to worry on that account. The collection’s going cheap. The poor devil has to sell. A Jew.”

“It’s an ill wind.”

“He set the price,”

Alfred added hastily.

“I don’t know the ins and outs of the immigration policy, but he’s buying exit permits for quite a number of his people.”

“Uncle, give him ten thousand marks more than he asked.”

“What?”

“Translated into dollars, that’s how much is in my bank account.”

“That might not set a good precedent,”

Alfred said, regaining his equanimity.

“One doesn’t know what might happen to wholesale prices if it got about that we were overly generous with Herr Leventhal.”

Wyatt’s carelessly handsome features twisted into a strange grimace.

“Who?”

“Herr Leventhal, the seller.”

109

‘Leventhal?”

“You’d recognize the name if you’d been here in the old days. Leventhal’s was Berlin’s largest department store, bigger than Harrods. It still is, for that matter, only now it’s under new management and called The Berliner. Herr Leventhal’s family founded the company. A very decent sort - a touch sarcastic for my tastes, but a gentleman. These”

- Alfred gestured at the treasure trove that covered his floor

-

“were collected by his father and himself.”

The boy had gone quite pale under the tan.

“Uncle, where’s the toilet?”

“Out the door and to your left,”

Alfred said hastily.

After his nephew had barged out, Alfred rubbed his hands together to warm them. Pay more than the asking price? Who ever heard of such a thing? But there was an unpredictability to Humphrey’s son

- he was the wild card in the Kingsmith deck, full of contradictions. Alfred blew warm breath on his fingers with a trace of irritability. People with jagged character-traits had always disturbed him. And here was Wyatt. He had been rudely distant at the Games, yet most kind to the girls when they were in New York. He had graduated from university summa cum laude so must be highly intelligent, yet he forever spouted those ridiculous remarks that Americans called

“wisecracks’. Though quick-tempered - definitely not a family trait

- he didn’t hold on to his anger; and Kingsmiths were a tenacious breed with their possessions, even their anger. Now this offer of a considerable sum - it must be his entire inheritance from Rossie’s parents - to some total stranger. Yet, despite his nephew being so irresponsibly complex, there was a decency, a warmth, a generosity to the boy. Alfred felt a rush of affection.

“Sorry, Uncle.”

Wyatt had returned from the lavatory.

“You look a bit pale about the gills. That sausage must have been a bit off. The Hotel Central’s diningroom used to be reliable, but nowadays it doesn’t matter where you are, the menu’s filled with these ersatz concoctions. I’ll telephone Gunther to collect you.”

Wyatt shook his head.

“Not yet. Uncle Alfred, I have something to discuss with you.”

“No need, my boy. I’ve thought it through. None of us would wish to take advantage of anyone’s bad luck. Kingsmith’s will put in the extra amount.”

“It’s not about that.”

Wyatt paused.

“Uncle Alfred, bear with me. The truth is I don’t know if I’m coming or going. It’s been like that since the Olympics.”

“The Games?”

110

‘Since I met Kathe.”

“Kate? My Kate? What does she have to do with what you had for lunch?”

“That’s just it. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep - that’s how crazy I am about her. She feels the same way.”

He drew a breath.

“That’s what I’m asking. About marrying her.”

Alfred wondered bemusedly if this was one further example of his nephew’s incomprehensible American wit.

“You’re asking for Kate’s hand?”

“And the rest of her, Uncle. It won’t be a plush life at first, but later on …” The boy’s smile was forced. Til make her happy, I swear it.”

“Kate never said a word to us.”

“We agreed that I should be the one to talk to you.”

“But damn it all!”

Alfred cried, breaking his decades-long selfimposed ban against even the mildest curses.

“You’re cousins! First cousins!”

A muscle jumped near Wyatt’s mouth.

“Genetically speaking we’re on good ground, then,”

he said.

“Other than short-sightedness, which neither of us has inherited, the Kingsmiths are a healthy crew.”

“She’s a schoolgirl.”

“Not any more. She’s eighteen.”

“A child.”

Alfred, unable to look into the brown eyes, stared out of the clerestory window. Snowflakes drifted, snow mounded high on the ledge. Why hadn’t Rossie had the decency to stay home and protect her niece? Women were meant to chaperon young girls, not dash about bossing their husband’s business. Why hadn’t Humphrey warned him something was going on? A

“She’ll always be the most important thiHg in my life.”

“Let me think about it,”

Alfred said in a strangled tone.

Alfred’s impulse was to rush to the mansion in the Griinewald and tell his wife - he deferred to her judgement in all matters beyond this shop. He was too much a creature of habit to detour from his routine of locking up after his employees departed. All afternoon he slumped at his desk, occasionally removing his pincenez to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

Arriving home, he climbed heavily to his bedroom, sliding the bolt on himself and his wife, as he did for their unchanging yet astonishingly pleasurable bouts of passion. As he described his interview with Wyatt, his German grammar became imprecise and his accent stronger. Clothilde’s expression retained its normal placidity, but her spine crumpled until the knobs and swirls of the chairback cut into her ample body.

Ill

She said nothing until he finished his story.

“It was a mistake allowing your father to send Kathe to America.”

And they began listing the impediments to the marriage.

Unlike Alfred’s, Clothilde’s objections were not based on consanguinity: to her mind this was a geographical and cultural misalliance. Her daughter, from a family who had commissioned several of the works of Mozart and subsidized Goethe, who could trace her ancestry in a direct line to the thirteenth century, living in an uncultured pistol-crazed desert!

“Impossible,”

they both kept repeating. Yet their expressions softened with memory. Hadn’t their romance been played out against the bitterest criticism as well as a viciously devastating war?

“It’s too large a decision for a young girl,”

Clothilde pronounced.

“They must wait until Kathe’s of age.”

“Absolutely. In the mean time let’s hope they change their minds.”

“If they haven’t, we’ll announce the engagement at Christmas of

1940.”

Alfred raised his worst fear.

“She’s never had any serious entanglements, the child. He’s a goodlooking young chap.”

Alfred’s close-set ears reddened.

“What if he talks her into … ?”

“My daughter is not a scullery-maid.”

Alfred, who wouldn’t arrive in GarmischPartenkirchen until Christmas Eve, had intended suggesting that his wife keep a close eye on the lovers. Intimidated, he mumbled:

“No, no, of course not. Kate’s a lady through and through.”

IV

“Three years, Mother?”

Kathe whispered.

It was after dinner on the same evening. The two of them were in the Damenzimmer, a small brocade-walled room where Clothilde received her women guests.

“Three years from this Christmas,”

Clothilde said.

“By then you’ll be of age. Your father is explaining to Wyatt that you aren’t ready to make such a decision.”

Alfred and Wyatt had just left the house; Alfred had bought three tickets to a boxing match, intending to go to the Sportspalast with both nephews, but Aubrey had disappointed him by returning to London a day early.

“We’ll be on different continents. We might as well be on different planets.”

“He may visit you on his holidays. And of course there’ll be letters.”

Clothilde paused.

“Listen to me. You think you’re grownup, but you’re very young, and so is Wyatt. He’s at university still.”

“Please, Mother, make it next year.”

“We’ll announce the engagement in 1940.”

112

Kathe groaned.

“That’s forever …”

“We have your word not to do anything rash?”

“Rash?”

“Elope. We prefer to trust you and Wyatt.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“We have no choice, then. He may not visit you.”

Kathe stared pleadingly into the placid unlined face. But when did her mother ever compromise?

After a silence that was broken only by the ticking of the Biedermayer clock, Kathe sighed.

“I promise.”

“Say it.”

“You know I never break my word.”

“Kathe.”

“I promise not to elope,”

Kathe cried, and darted from the snug room.

At this minute, Gunther was driving Wyatt and Alfred through the softly falling snow to the Sportspalast.