Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman Read online

  before she reached the bridge which bore her name, as Gert had said, Ponte Margherita, the woman had been a queen, and she had not forgotten that fact, you do not forget queens, particularly if they share your name, and if your own husband lovingly equates you with a queen, high above the famous Tiber,

  that sluggish, greeny-grey, greeny-yellow river with a row of houseboats and jetties for swimmers, inanimate and closed off in these winter days, the calm, almost static water reflected the bright, high walls of the riverbanks and the boughs of the trees with single, filthy-brown leaves, beside it well-camouflaged dirty-white and grey-spotted cats sat or lay on the stone banks,

  she slowed her pace, looked upstream across the extravagantly wide bridge with waist-high bulbous columns, and thought the view was pretty, she had occasionally crossed the Elbe, the Weser and the Spree, but she had never seen such a majestic river, framed by such fine, bright walls, and which divided the city and yet kept it together too,

  she looked downstream to the next bend and the next bridge, just beyond which one might catch sight of the Ponte Sant’Angelo, and found the view even more beautiful, because in this direction you could see, behind the bare trees on the Lungotevere, the palazzi in orange, red and ochre plaster, vaunting their towers, terraces and wide balconies,

  and in the middle of the Tiber, she was once again struck with astonishment that she of all people was permitted to live in this world city, in this city of all cities, as Frau Bruhns said, she, who had not even learnt Latin, just about knew the names Romulus and Remus, Caesar and Augustus, understood nothing about art, or about the popes, she,

  the country girl from Mecklenburg, who like her elder sister had not had any secondary education, the child from the Baltic coast who knew her way around Rostock and Doberan and Eisenach, but was already entirely overwhelmed and out of place in Berlin, she, who had only just turned twenty-one, she on the Mediterranean and in the most important and magnificent city in Europe, the navel of the world, as Gert said, who had shown her the navel of the world at the Forum,

  for two months she had crossed the Tiber almost every day via the Ponte Margherita, as if that were totally normal, but nothing was totally normal, especially not in these times, each day was a gift, each of the child’s movements in her belly a gift, each verse from the Bible and each glance across the Tiber, and so she told herself again,

  just how lucky she was, compared to others, compared to him, her beloved husband, who was needed in North Africa, in Tunis, in the desert close to the enemy, instead of in Rome, where he was also needed and urgently awaited, not just by her, and compared to her two younger brothers, who were also now in uniform, or her father in the admiralty in Kiel, or compared to her mother and three sisters in those ever more frequent, terrible nights when sirens wailed, with injuries, deaths, ruins, fires,

  no bombs would fall on Rome, that was certain, it was obvious, the English would not raze the Eternal City and the centre of Christendom to the ground, neither would the Americans, and the splendid matt-red palazzi from the turn of the century, which she passed on her way to the Piazza del Popolo, their windows adorned with arches, their grand balconies and elegant decorative stonework, were not in imminent danger of collapse, if you could trust those people who were well informed about the war and were confident in their opinions,

  she could not join in the discussion, she did not want to join in, she stuck to the belief that she was in the gracious hands of God, that was the one thing that remained certain, the one thing she took for granted,

  the view of the brick wall in front of the Piazza and the reverse side of the statue of some sea god which towered high above the wall, a powerful male figure flanked by two half-man, half-fish forms, even from behind the almost naked men presented a strange picture, and the one in the middle carried a sort of huge fork, and when she had walked along here with Gert she had asked why he had a fork in his hand, and, smiling, he had answered,

  that’s a trident, that’s Neptune, the god of the sea, and he’s represented by a trident, but you’re right, let’s call it a fork, he uses it to spear fish for breakfast and shovel them into his mouth, but perhaps the sea god doesn’t eat fish at all, it would be like in the Land of Milk and Honey, perhaps he’s not allowed to eat any, I didn’t pay attention at school, the gods only fed on nectar and ambrosia and drank wine, I’ll have to check on whether Neptune ate fish as well,

  that was another thing she admired about him, if there was something he did not know, he immediately had an idea where you could find it out,

  on the wall, a few metres to either side of the group of figures, fish stood on their heads, a pair on the right and a pair on the left, fat, grinning contentedly, heads adorned with fins, on plinths, bodies and tail fins stretched upwards, looped and twisted around each other, the bodies in contact, the tailfins not touching, but playing with each other in the air, waving over the bodies and heads with acrobatic ease, and the whole thing hewn in stone, fish in love, Gert had said, that’s what fish look like when they’re in love,

  and here, beyond these figures and the fish, Via Ferdinando di Savoia divided, passers-by had to decide whether they wanted to walk left or right along the medium-height wall, past the left-or right-hand pair of lovestruck fish to the Piazza del Popolo, on the gate side or the city side of the magnificent, spacious square, cars and bicycles were directed right into the narrow, one-way street that sloped gently downwards

  along which the pedestrian herself mostly walked whenever she went to enquire after letters from her husband or to deliver post at the Wehrmacht headquarters in Via delle Quattro Fontane, the best route to which was by way of Via del Babuino,

  but now she chose the left fork, as always when she was on her way to the Pincio and to the church, on the black-grey, greasy paving towards the gate side of the square,

  and no matter from which direction she approached, each look, each step was drawn to the massively high obelisk in the centre, a magnet, bordered by four fountains, past which the occasional car drove at a respectable distance,

  it was hard to resist this magnet and to avoid walking closer until you were almost at the stepped fountains, upon which stone lions spewed water from their mouths, the same, powerful spurt for centuries, probably, in peacetime and wartime,

  she stopped, she did not wish to go any closer and make a detour, she came past here almost every day, and yet she stopped each time, to direct her gaze up at the viewing terrace supported by pillars, and the palms and pines of the Pincio, and then slowly let it fall back down to the bright oval square, and wander around and

  focus on the shadows of the three large streets which led to the narrow, sombre jungle of the city centre, and then on to the café on the corner until her gaze alighted on the group of sea gods with the fork and the fish lovers, posing above a semi-circular fountain, at the foot of which three cars were parked,

  and each time her eyes would then wander up to the tip of the obelisk, to the cross right at the top, she liked this, and found it comforting that the Christian symbol triumphed over the heathen one, according to the Baedeker guide the Egyptian stone was supposed to be three thousand years old,

  could you imagine that, older than Christ, perhaps even older than Moses, now a roundabout circled by the odd tiny car and cyclists in black shirts, this incomprehensible limitlessness made her feel dizzy, the very thought of all those things she would never learn or understand made her feel dizzy,

  even the Italian that was spoken around her was as alien as the hieroglyphics on the obelisk, and the Latin inscription on the plinth that Gert had translated for her was, apart from the word CAESAR, as unintelligible as the Egyptian characters, the whole of Rome was full of hieroglyphics and puzzles that bewildered her

  like the threshing of the corn at the foot of the obelisk in the middle of the piazza that Ilse had talked about, in summer Mussolini always had lorries deliver crops on the Piazza del Popolo, which were then thrown into a threshing machine,
bales of straw and sacks of corn were supposed to demonstrate the connection between the countryside and the city, what a waste, and so she was relieved that at least she understood the cross in this square and could abide by the cross and the churches, even if they were Catholic,

  and once again, before she continued on her way, she looked to the left of the twin churches into Via del Babuino, down which she had already walked four times this week, Monday and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, the street of letters and packages, the street of the signs of life she hoped for, the street of happiness, from where she had returned yesterday with two letters from Gert, received at the Wehrmacht headquarters, full of gratitude after a first glance at his lines and the silent, short prayer: He’s alive! Thank you, O benevolent God!, and this is why, of the three streets which ran radially between the domed churches towards the obelisk, she knew Babuino best of all, her street of happiness and gratitude,

  in the first few weeks she often had made part of the journey to Via delle Quattro Fontane by bus, until one day a man, a total stranger, a man of about fifty in a good suit, had touched her bottom, had touched her, the manifestly pregnant young lady, with his groping hand, with an unbelievable nerve, the like of which she had never experienced before,

  it thus took her too long to react and scream, which she failed to do because, as she was about to scream, she started to feel ashamed that her body had been defiled, and immediately thought that, as a foreigner, as a suspicious German without the language, she would have been just as unable to explain her screaming to the other people as she would have this brute’s behaviour, so instead of screaming loudly she had turned and pushed her way to the door, to get out at the next stop,

  a distressing moment, and on Via del Corso too, which she had avoided since, the main street with the upmarket shops, almost cleared out by the war, and a memorial plaque for Goethe, who was called Volfango here, the most distressing moment of her nine weeks in Rome, which she had not told any of the deaconesses about, not even Ilse,

  she had only confided in Gert, who tried to comfort her from Africa, that’s very rich, he had written, particularly given your condition, unfortunately such sick men did exist, and this sort of thing happened more often in Catholic countries, he had written, but she had been right to get off the bus straight away,

  since that incident she had kept as far away from crowds as possible, out of consideration for the child as well, and in the dangerous sea of the hospitable and harsh, beautiful and uncanny city, had sought out her little islands of reassurance, such as crosses on obelisks or the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, along the side façade of which she now walked towards the Pincio steps, the only one of the over-elaborate, proudly grandiose churches in which she did not feel alienated,

  because Martin Luther had once stayed in the convent here, and said Mass in front of the altar and preached, when he was a young monk in Rome, as she knew from Gert, appalled and disgusted by the improvident extravagance, lack of belief and licentiousness of senior as well as junior church dignitaries, you could say that here, Gert had told her, in this corner of Rome, the seed of the Reformation was sown,

  and then he had shown her a painting, the conversion of Paul, a blinded Paul hurled to the ground by the impact of the conversion and lying under his horse, and Gert had said that it was almost a Protestant painting, its conception inspired so radically by faith, she had forgotten the name of the painter,

  each time she felt good when she passed this church on the way to her church, and felt a warmth that emanated from the perceived closeness of Luther and the converted Paul and from the gentle afternoon sun, and she stepped past the sphinxes sitting on the wall of the square up to the Pincio steps, had to dodge a cyclist in a blue skirt with a conspicuously blithe, even happy expression on her face, who shot down the street, and she saw the exertion of the climb that awaited her, seventy or eighty shallow steps that curved gently to the left to a point halfway up the hill,

  Dr Roberto’s funny phrases in her head, yes, the steps are good too, walk if you like to walk, until the birth you walk as much you want, young lady, healthy lady, no problem at all, just straining not good, walking better than in bus driving into hole in road, and better than cycling, she was looking forward to that as well after her pregnancy, to get on a bicycle again and relish dashing downhill, as happy as that young woman,

  and she caught her breath before she started shifting her heavy body step by step upwards, on the right-hand side, where the light stone steps had been worn down, something she had only seen on old wooden staircases, and halfway up she turned round again, taking a short rest,

  and whispered to her child, who seemed to enjoy being carried upwards and rocked, soon you’ll see this too, the beautiful oval of this broad, light square, and the sea god with his fork and everything here, and then she continued upwards, carefully because the stones were greasy and slippery, it was not only when it was wet that you had to walk especially slowly and carefully, it was also important to take care now, and be deliberate with each step,

  two German soldiers in uniform approached her, one slipped with the smooth soles of his boots, almost fell onto the steps but recovered and shouted Scheisse!, which startled her, because it was not something you said, not as a soldier and role model, and especially not in public right beside Luther’s church, as a German in your ally’s country you had to behave properly, and she tried her best to avoid being recognized by these two and other passers-by as a German, she wanted nothing to do with men who said Scheisse!,

  and climbed the last few steps, panted lightly, relieved to have completed the most strenuous part of today’s journey, she briefly thought about whether she should now continue upwards via the narrow Pincio road or the steeper, winding footpath, where a black cat darted out of the bushes, pursued by a larger, mangy-looking feline, and decided to begin by turning left, past the closed door to the convent, clearly no longer used, where Luther once stayed, to the stone basin perched on a pedestal,

  Gert and she, as if one and the same person, had both said bathtub when they spotted it during their one and only walk together through Rome nine weeks ago, one could imagine that at some point during these two and a half thousand years, it would have been commonplace for the Romans with their loose morals to take a bath in the open air, after all there were several more of these around, such as the two large bathtub fountains on the square in front of the Palazzo Farnese, a building she especially liked because it was one of the few names she could keep in her head, it was also the name of her street,

  and behind the stone basin, which was on a platform high up on the ancient Roman city wall, there was the view of the roofed entrance gate to the Villa Borghese and the stone eagles and griffins which kept watch on the crests, sculptures of eagles and griffins were to be found everywhere in the park, they must be heraldic beasts,

  once she had become aware of the fact she started to discover one eagle after the other, on buildings, statues, plinths, fountains, bridges, and she was surprised because she had always thought of the eagle as a German heraldic beast, as a German peculiarity, and initially she had thoroughly disapproved of the fact that it cropped up so regularly in Italy,

  something fascinated her from the start about these eagles, they looked familiar and yet different, it had taken her a while to solve the puzzle and identify the difference, the German eagles looked sterner, they stood erect down to the last feather, fanned their wings in military fashion, or clutched the swastika,

  whereas the Italian eagles were represented more like real eagles, almost like pets, with softer, more naturally formed feathers, stern also, but watching and waiting, they were more paternally strict and protective than militarily correct, and she had to admit that she preferred the Italian eagles, particularly these four, flanked by grinning, smirking griffins which, at her eye-level, looked out in every direction from the roof of the entrance gate to the Villa Borghese,

  she had always wanted to ask Gert why
there were so many eagles in Rome, it must have something to do with the ancient Romans, with Caesar, Augustus, Romulus, everything was somehow connected with the ancient Romans, he would, no doubt, have been able to tell her off the top of his head, it seemed that he had an answer to all her questions,

  but there was so much to write every day, so much she had to tell him, so many worries of his to dispel, to convey comfort in confident handwriting, hope and trust in God in exemplary German handwriting, and place her love in every sentence, because each letter might be the last, she would have found it completely ridiculous, even disturbing if the question of the eagles’ origin had become a main topic of her letters to Africa,

  and, her thoughts focused on the letter she was going to write to him that evening, she carried on, past a life-size, smiling lion made from that white marble-like stone which could be seen everywhere here, and whose name she had forgotten, on beyond the bend in the road, and slowly along the path marked with shallow steps and lined with laurel bushes and gnarled trees, and as ever

  when she became melancholic at the thought of her lover redeployed to the front, she comforted herself with the phrase that was his phrase too, better than being an infantryman in Russia, the last few steps stood before her, she looked straight ahead at the shallow steps, a pace apart, Africa is better than Russia, desert better than snow, one step, orderly room better than infantry, another step, lance corporal better than corporal, another step, he was alive, many had died or gone missing, yet another step, and he could look forward to the child with her, and one more, and he was close, just beyond the sea, far away and close at the same time, very close,

  when she thought of Ilse’s fiancé, who was stuck in Australia, interned by the British, how fortunate she was compared to Ilse, who while waiting in Rome for her final papers for the boat journey to see her fiancé in Australia was surprised by the outbreak of war, and since that time, now more than three years ago, had been working uncomplainingly as a housemaid for the deaconesses, and was longing for the end of the war,