The Safety Net (9 page)

And she longed for Hubert, waited for Käthe, for Mama, who would take her to Tolmshoven, where Hubert was now on duty. She would find an opportunity for sure, would look for one, if necessary talk Käthe into giving a party for all the security
personnel and their families: in the conference room downstairs where the Association held its sessions. That was an idea: to show one’s gratitude to all these people and their families; one might hire a band, a puppet theater for the children, and then when she had had a chance to talk to Hubert, to meet Helga and Bernhard—then she would look for advice from someone she could trust more than that terrible Kohlschröder. It might be useful, but not helpful, to talk to her brother Rolf: Erwin had never forgiven him for calling his son Holger—“the first Holger, the one he had with Veronica, fair enough, that was seven years ago—but now the second boy, the one he’s had with Katharina—to name
another
child Holger after what happened in November ’seventy-four—no, that part of your family is dead, as far as I am concerned, and anyway: setting fire to cars and throwing rocks!” Rolf would be objective, too objective, and although he would understand theoretically that her adultery was weighing on her, he would be too analytical in dealing with the fact that the adultery she had committed against Fischer did not weigh on her at all, while that against Helga weighed heavily. He knew all that, of course, but lacked empathy. Her brother Herbert would no doubt have been amusing but just as unhelpful, he would have laughed, been unreservedly delighted “because of the new life growing inside you, what a joy—a new life, sister!” and would have advised her simply to leave Fischer and to make a new start somewhere—where? where?—with spade and rucksack, so to speak.

Maybe the best thing would be to talk to Katharina. After all, they were almost the same age, close friends too, and had never quarreled—but it all seemed so remote to her when Katharina became political, applied her systems analysis, which sometimes did have a certain appeal, yet this situation wasn’t amenable to any systems analysis—or was it? She happened to have remained a Catholic and a churchgoer, and even two hundred lecherous Kohlschröders would never deprive her of that. Hubert was too, and it was serious, not a game, not a “bourgeois escapade,” and surely Katharina would understand
that, being so dead against porn and promiscuity. Katharina would probably urge her to see a psychotherapist, and he would probably forbid her to use the word “adultery.” And there was always the possibility that Erwin, if only to avoid the disgrace and the scandal—the disgrace being worse for him than any scandal—would acknowledge the child, have it come into the world as a Fischer, and suggest that they separate or get a divorce later. She would have no truck with that. She couldn’t live another day with Fischer. This longing for Hubert—for his hands, his mouth, his voice, and the serious look in his eyes.

Talk to Father—no, she couldn’t confess to him. He wasn’t a prude, of course—he had had that affair with Edith, and people in the village still whispered about that business with the young countess, although that was almost fifty years ago. Father might even be “understanding,” but he was shy, shy like herself. He had never liked Erwin, of course, and would be glad “we’ve got rid of him at last,” he’d be nice, Father would, he’d suggest she move into the manor with Kit and the new baby; he would do things for Hubert, would be kind, and unable to help her—and then Erwin would fight for Kit, “with bare fists”—he was good at that, fighting with bare fists. It was bound to hurt him—although it would never hurt Father—that it wasn’t one of his own crowd but a policeman. And of course he would want to remarry, he needed that for his image, needed it also for the Beehive: an attractive, outdoor type of woman who was also a good housewife—all of which she had been, more or less, and no doubt one of those tit-kittens would be glad to get him. It didn’t need much imagination—and she had some, as the nuns had testified and in that respect agreed with Rolf—to picture all the things that would appear in the newspapers, maybe even in her father’s paper. She’d be able to cope with that, she’d simply “duck,” as Rolf had done. “You know, it’s like an old septic tank exploding: the shit flies all over the place, and some of it hits you, but then there’s always hot water.”

She’d be able to duck, it would pass. But, go on living with Fischer, that she couldn’t do, not for a single day. Greet
him when he came home, a beaming, expectant father, have dinner with him; leave the door open when she was having her bath, he insisted on that, declaring it to be his conjugal right “because now you really have something to show when you’re topless.” She could hardly swallow her food, wept secretly when Kit was asleep, sometimes started crying in the middle of the morning, so that kind Miss Blum kept saying: “Why don’t you talk to someone? Something’s bothering you, and it’s not the baby that’s on the way and it’s not just the security measures either, though they’re enough to drive a person crazy.” Talk to Miss Blum? To that old-fashioned, warmhearted, unmarried sister of Blum the farmer, who helped her in the house and kitchen, insisted on using soft soap rather than detergent, despised all that “modern cleaning stuff,” considered liquid ammonia and vinegar sufficiently hygienic; to stout Miss Blum, who now sometimes also slept at the house; with her bun and her skirts that harked back to 1931, somewhere in her late fifties? Always surprising, shocking, almost obscene, when she lit a cigarette as she worked, her lips holding it at a jaunty angle as she inhaled deeply. “Smoking, Mrs. Fischer my dear, was something we learned in the war during the air raids or an artillery barrage, even here in Blorr—and I like it, I still like it, and in those days I often pinched a liter of milk or a kilo of potatoes from my brother to swap for cigarettes—I can’t give it up.” That woman who had lost her lover in the war and “was never attracted by anyone else and couldn’t marry anyone else, I couldn’t, even though I was expecting my Konrad’s baby, and there were quite a few who wanted to marry me, when I was pregnant and the news of his death came: Dnepropetrovsk—I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the name of that place, I’ll take it with me into another life and ask them there what we, what my Konrad, had to do with it—and it was a miscarriage, poor little thing, I would have wanted to keep it, even without a husband.”

Did she suspect something, Miss Blum, or did she even know something, when she kept saying “and it’s not the baby that’s on the way”—but it was the baby. Perhaps they hadn’t
been careful enough when Miss Blum had gone for the milk with Kit or simply for a walk through the village, escorted by Zurmack, not bothered by the machine pistol he was carrying behind them; perhaps she had noticed something, a look, a gesture, a fleeting touch in passing, maybe picked up something in the summer when she lay by the pool or when Hubert had swiftly—oh that haste, that unavoidable haste—embraced her in the hall, kissed her, or when she gave herself to him completely, “on the wing,” as it were? Of course Miss Blum had known for a long time that there was nothing but friction and tension between her and Erwin. Did she know there were not only “other women” behind it, but also another man? Yes, she could have talked to Miss Blum, but when it came to advice or help she could expect as little from her as from Father. Miss Blum had bravely borne the disgrace of the illegitimate child, yet it hadn’t been such a disgrace after all since everyone knew that Konrad had wanted to marry her on his next leave: hadn’t she been accumulating ration cards for butter and eggs for the wedding cake, and hadn’t she arranged with the butcher for an illegal slaughtering, and wouldn’t she, when she got to heaven, utter her grievance before the Almighty: Dnepropetrovsk—what business had we being there?

She must get away when Käthe finally arrived, get away with Kit, today, before he came home; no more having to lock the guest-room door where she had been sleeping for many nights, no more having to endure that rattle at the door when he “demanded his rights”—and might not have demanded his rights if he had known she was not three months pregnant but six.

For in Tolmshoven she would be close to Hubert, able to speak to him, perhaps be kissed by him, and perhaps even—in spite of her pregnancy—“on the wing”—they were used to that, after all. Only once had he spent a few hours with her at night, she had let him in when he was standing outside on the terrace—the day Kit had fallen asleep at her grandparents’ and stayed the night there. Unable to sleep, she had first stood at the window, looking through the curtains into the valley
where the power stations flickered on the horizon like circus façades, lighted up but not shedding light, old Kortschede had once explained it to her: they had to be lighted up for safety reasons, so that a leak could be spotted immediately a valve failed, lighted up also for decorative reasons, the “magic of the technical landscape”; but they must not shed light on anything, “so as not to show up the dirt, the smoke, the foul air, being released secretly at night.”

Through the trees, down in the dip, she could see them, the circus façades—and her heart beat like—like what? Had it ever beaten like that? For she knew that at ten o’clock he would relieve Zurmack, and it was already ten-thirty, the summer sky still faintly luminous to the west of the power-station lights. He hadn’t yet finished his round, and she didn’t even feel like a strumpet as she unlatched the terrace door, anxious that things might go wrong since so far they had always done it “on the wing”—and he did come, purposeful, it seemed to her, determined, a somewhat boyish determination, she found with a smile—past the little water-lily pond, up the short bank (trampling a few roses on the way, as it later turned out)—grasped the door handle and was in the room. He didn’t see her at first, the curtain caught in the door, he pulled it loose, and “I didn’t see you,” he said later, “I was dazzled, but I could smell you, oh yes, smell you, maybe I should say, felt you standing there—waiting”; but they hadn’t said a word, wordlessly and with a naturalness that alarmed her, he switched on the light, drew the curtains shut, and looked at her, naked, something he had never been able to see “on the wing,” before switching off the light again and getting into bed with her, his pistol on the bedside table. The transceiver on the floor. Only later did they speak, when he had resumed his post and she had made some coffee, he outside on the terrace, she inside by the open window, the coffeepot, the cups, and the transceiver on the windowsill: they had talked for a long time, until it began to get light, never using first names. He didn’t mention love, all he said was that he had desired her from the first, from his first day of duty.
Told her how he’d been fed up with school, had wanted to do something with his hands, worked in construction, at a conveyor belt “until, believe me, all the romance in that was shot,” and had joined the police—yes, because he “loved order”; had been despised by his father, who claimed to be a member of the legal profession and spoke of his son as lowering himself socially. Almost pedantically and in great detail he explained his surname, Hendler, to her, stressing that it was spelled with an
e
rather than an ä; that was very important to him, though she wouldn’t have cared if it had been an ä. He even offered an etymological explanation for his
e:
it probably came from the Bavarian word for young hen, and whether it had been derived from
Händler
, which means dealer, a man who had bought and sold something, or from the poultry keeper of a Bavarian count or bishop who as a result was called Hendler rather than Händler—she didn’t find all that dull, really, it was so sweet to stand with him by the open window, drinking their coffee and watching the dawn come up—but she was uneasy about the serious way he lectured her on the etymology of names.

She told him about her childhood and girlhood at Eickelhof. It had been part of the newspaper inheritance, an old-fashioned villa from the 1880’s, the kind that an owner of a printing plant and small provincial newspaper who was well off but not exactly rich would have been able to afford in those days. Her father, who had always been pretty hard up, had inherited the villa along with the printing plant and the newspaper—a magnificent house, those huge rooms downstairs, drawing room and dining room, that vast kitchen, even a cloakroom, all the rooms larger than any in the present manor house before they fixed up the conference room downstairs. A tennis court. Everything was a bit decayed, that soft-sweet decay which Käthe had tended so lovingly, the garden they were always arguing about, in fun—whether it shouldn’t really be called a park. Fruit trees, meadows, none of those stupid lawns she hated. Outdoor parties, paper lanterns, the dance floor Father had installed for them outdoors, tears, and her agonizing love
for that boy called Heinrich Beverloh—“Oh yes, that same Beverloh who’s presumably responsible for your standing here and whom maybe we have to thank for standing here together and for having just slept together, for having done it so often on the wing; yes, he’s the man who’s responsible and whom we can thank for it”—his alarm when she said “thank for it”—and she described to him the boy with the dreamy eyes and the acute intelligence whose lack of interest in sports and dancing they had all smiled at; well, they had taught him to dance—and how they had whirled around there, outdoors on summer evenings, indoors when it was raining.…

All this she told him that summer night, but not a word about Fischer, not a word about Helga, not a word about Kit, not one about Bernhard, nor did she tell him then that she was probably already pregnant by him, and the next day they had nearly gone crazy when he was on night duty again, but Kit was sleeping with her, and Fischer, back from his trip, was sleeping in the next room. She was sad yet relieved when he was transferred the following day to Tolmshoven. She also told him about Bleibl’s third wife, Elisabeth, how she had made friends with her, but then she had soon gone off for good to Yugoslavia. “When any of that lot happen to be nice, they soon disappear. She has a hotel down there now and is always inviting me, but I can’t very well go there with a swarm of security men.” And she also told him about their villa near Málaga, where boredom piled up—she told him a lot, almost everything, more than she had ever told anyone before.