Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman Read online

  grateful for her unwarranted good fortune and slightly out of breath, she thus reached the magnificent top of the Pincio, the place of her most painful sorrow, up here on the day after her arrival, finally approved by the authorities, on 11th November, at the end of a long, day-long walk, the first and only walk they had taken together through the city of wonders, Gert had told her with many oaths of love, as he stammered and fought back the tears, what a note from the Wehrmacht the previous day had said, the day of her arrival from Germany:

  Order for deployment! Africa! Day after tomorrow!, up here on the broad viewing terrace, on the square named after the wild warrior Napoleon, with the most beautiful view in the world, the Baedeker guide claimed, over roofs, hills and sky, was where she had been dumbstruck by the order,

  a shock which paralyzed her limbs, extinguished the promised delights, she had sobbed in the arms of her husband, united yesterday, separated the day after tomorrow, three days, it was incomprehensible, she was unable to stop crying in spite of his kisses, all those lovely plans shattered, an incomprehensible, overwhelming disappointment,

  while in the background horns had sounded and bells chimed on the children’s carousel, and the croaky, laughing voice of the entertainer from the puppet theatre had provided a commentary to the whole thing as if in mockery, just as now, as she recalled that dreadful moment, the carousel rang out and the puppeteer crowed once more,

  for in spite of her parents’ opposition she had departed from Mecklenburg with a hard-earned visa for the unimaginably far-off Italy, to the friendly and alien country, to the dangerous, unsafe, Catholic Rome, to the father of her child, after he had been recalled by the Wehrmacht to carry out light duties in Rome because of an injury and a tissue inflammation which would not heal, and so he was discharged for his real work, that of strengthening people’s faith in God,

  and the two of them had imagined that they would finally be together, together for the first time since their wedding, not yet together in an apartment, but with a little attic room for her in Via Alessandro Farnese, with the midwives’ ward three floors below, and a room for him in Via Toscana next to the church, together at last and only separated by a good half-hour’s walk, the last three months of her pregnancy, and then together again in the city safe from bombs, ready for the Roman delights, as Gert was fond of saying,

  all of this conceived in vain, in vain the battle with her parents won, in vain the papers for her visa and the forms filled out and stamped for foreign currency, in vain the months of planning and the twenty-four hours of travelling, she had thought at first,

  but then she had to learn again that no suffering is in vain, and she had made good use of this phrase to console herself over the past few weeks, she had not, in spite of her mother’s desperate pleas, returned home to the Reich, for in Rome she was closer to him, a reunion was far more likely here than in Germany, than in the small Mecklenburg town of Doberan, the trial both of them had to endure was easier to suffer in Rome, she thought again,

  as right on the parapet of the viewing platform, beside a group of close-cropped Italian children in uniform, boys in shorts about seven or eight years old, she looked down at the Piazza del Popolo and the now tiny sea god with his fork, at the long shadow of the obelisk and the endless landscape of roofs and domes, none of which she could name except for the dome of St Peter’s which dominated all else,

  certainly she would have been better able to recall all these churches and palazzi with their unfamiliar names if the Wehrmacht had kept its promise and spared him, rather than giving the order for redeployment, and if her husband had stayed beside her, her husband who, ever since that shock in the evening sun on the Pincio, had consoled her time and again that this was not some horrible blind chance at play, and had strengthened her belief that God, who is love, delivers this all to us, that it may benefit us in the end,

  for it was un-Christian to shed tears for one’s own misfortune and to forget the far greater misfortunes of others, the joys of life were limitless, every day she could delight in her child, and today she might look forward to the church concert and the cantatas, she heard Gert say,

  life is like a Bach cantata, the first thing we hear is that we can be helped, then we may lament, then we hear the Bible’s answer, then we may doubt, look inside ourselves and pray, then we hear Jesus speak, and at the end we find ourselves in the redemptive choir amongst the triumphant trumpets,

  and in wartime, life was a very particular sort of trial, God’s most difficult trial, in spite of all the tears your individual plans counted for nothing, the selfish hope of the Roman delights counted for nothing, all human endeavour counted for nothing, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord,

  she said silently to herself, looking at the cross on top of the obelisk, the sphinx figures on the walls which surrounded the square, the busy streets beyond, the bridge named Margherita, she could almost see the entire route she had come along, and she listened to the teacher

  talk about the city to the children who, in spite of their uniform, were not particularly disciplined, one of them, snotty-nosed and with chilblains on his legs, began to imitate the Duce, followed by three of his classmates, then they gave the Hitler salute, the Roman salute from the Pincio balcony to an imaginary crowd on the square below,

  which the teacher immediately forbade them from doing before continuing her talk, while the young woman could not understand a word except for via, piazza and obelisco, she could not even make out the names of the streets and hills from the hasty melody of this language,

  yet she did not feel alien, at least not up here on the Pincio, where the heavens were close, not even in St Peter’s Basilica or the Pantheon could you get closer to the heavens, and with the view, now familiar to her, to the south over the city lit up by the mild January sun, as far as the royal palace set up high, and the huge, blinding-white marble cake of the so-called Altar of the Fatherland,

  bothered only by the coy or cheeky glances the boys gave her swollen belly, some sniggered as if they had never seen their mothers, aunts, or neighbours highly pregnant, but perhaps the objectionable thing about it, the thing she noticed, was that she had been once again recognized as a foreigner, a pregnant foreigner, even the adults here thought that was not right somehow,

  she moved away from the children’s intrusive glances and sniggers, and walked across the gravel towards the stalls and the puppet theatre, and now the changing voices of the puppeteer rang more loudly in her ears, from a distance she could see the figures bash each other, fall down, stand up again, and, making her way resolutely towards her goal, she turned to the path beneath the trees and thought about her husband, thought about why he had chosen this place on the Pincio that late afternoon to mention the terrible order, and she was grateful to him that he had been wise enough

  not to disclose to her immediately upon her arrival at the station the evening before, nor that morning, the order he could do nothing about, wise enough to show her first the columns, façades, streets, ruins, views of the city, embed in her all those beautiful and new things, and plant the images in her mind, so far as it was possible in one day, unclouded by the shadow of a terrible disappointment, wise enough to take her, on a late sunny afternoon, up to the Pincio and introduce her to this most beautiful of all views,

  before telling her, like a confession, the dreadful truth of the immediate redeployment, giving her comforting kisses, then pointing to the royal palace and the shining block of marble of the Altar of the Fatherland and saying,

  that’s south, that’s south-west, and from up here you have the best view towards Africa, beyond those hills you can see from here, beyond the Tiber valley over there on the left is the coast, beyond that the sea, and on the other side of the sea, in the south, there I’ll be standing and I’ll see you up here on the Pincio, and you’ll see me over there in Africa, and we’ll wave to each other every evening, and send each other a kiss from coast to coast,

 
he had repeated the play on words with coast and kiss until both of them started laughing, a brief laugh between sobs, and he told her that kissing in public was frowned upon in Italy, lovers and fiancés were almost liable to be punished if they kissed or embraced in the park, and married couples automatically refrained from doing so, the Fascists wanted to be exceptionally decent people, and they did not tolerate anything as indecent as kisses or laughter,

  she longed for such kisses and moments of laughter, which would make even the tears and pain of that November evening acceptable, and she was certain that she had not laughed since,

  she turned around once more to the spot where all this had taken place, other couples were now looking down on the square, hesitantly keeping their distance from each other, the schoolchildren jostled in front of the puppet theatre, no doubt having already forgotten the pregnant foreigner,

  while she wondered whether in a few years’ time her child, if it were to be a boy, would snigger as rudely as these schoolboys in the presence of a pregnant woman, the child did not move, gave no answer with its arms or legs, she just felt confident that with the correct upbringing all would be fine, even the trivial things are important, Gert had written, and as she promised herself that she would be as good a mother as her own mother had been,

  she continued her way under the trees whose names she did not know, and each time this troubled her, for in Germany she could identify every tree, often from a distance, down to the yews and ashes, she had been the best in her League of German Girls group, at flower identification too, but here in Italy she had not yet got beyond palms, cypresses, ilexes and pines,

  her way between the stone busts on tall plinths of famous Italians, the entire park, including the side paths and the areas around the small obelisks, was littered with these bright stone heads, all of them men whose names meant nothing to her, Ratazzi or Rossi or Secchi, some faces washed away by the weather, others still with sharp profiles, sixty, eighty, perhaps more than a hundred heads, and she could not help thinking

  that so many die each day on the battle-fronts, each head a life, each life a gift, each life at the centre of other lives, although she knew that every day it was thousands more than these men here, but with these heads, all so different from each other, it was easier to imagine what each individual life meant, just how many hopes, efforts, joys and pains, and yet she felt how narrow her power of imagination was, because in truth she was only thinking of one life, the one which influenced and affected her most,

  in passing she saw an old woman sitting alone on a bench between the many stone heads, singing to herself, now louder, now softer, giving the impression of being mentally ill or perhaps just deeply troubled, with a croaky voice, a warning to beware, you must not go mad amongst all these stone heads, amongst too many dead bodies,

  and she turned away with a glance to the left, where two German officers got out of a car outside a splendid villa and walked up the steps to the entrance, she had often seen military men go into this building or, on sunny days during these winter weeks, sit on the terraces in their long coats, German and Italian officers, who met to make decisions about the war’s progress and who could drink coffee here in the luxury of their own positions of responsibility,

  probably the good, genuine coffee like the one Gert occasionally sent her from Tunis, and which Roman housewives had not been able to buy for a long time, or only on the black market at unbelievable prices,

  she was quite happy her husband was not an officer, that he was even proud of the fact he was still just a lance corporal, an orderly, a driver, a clerk and telephonist, and that instead of planning great battles, making decisions about the life and death of thousands, and slurping coffee in luxury, he was happier giving her the advice to become better acquainted with art and, here in the park, to go further on to the left, to stroll to the other end as far as the Galleria Borghese, go there, have a look around, enjoy the beautiful things,

  but she was afraid of getting to know art on her own, and she was also uneasy about the nakedness that was on display and painted there, which Ilse had told her about, and she could not tell Raphael apart from Michelangelo, although she had seen the Michelangelo film with Gert in Berlin, Sistine Chapel, Moses, sure, but what was it about pictures,

  each time she visited a museum, as she had again recently with the cultured Frau Bruhns on the Capitol, she realized how much she relied on having her husband beside her, by herself she could not get excited, only with his eyes and explanations would she have been able to feel happiness, understand better what she was looking at, you can only see properly when you are together, only when you are together does the meaning reveal itself,

  and she looked from the Viale del Belvedere, which continued along the top of the hill in the direction of the Spanish Steps to the church of the Trinità dei Monti, towards the south in the direction of Africa, she fixed her gaze between the royal palace and the Altar of the Fatherland into the distance as far as Tunis,

  where he sat in a captain’s study on the edge of the city from six or seven in the morning until midnight, he was not allowed to be more specific about his military work or reveal where it was, even the place names in his letters were kept as general as possible, Africa, 7th January, and only once, it might have been an oversight or perhaps a clue for her, he had written Tunis instead of Africa,

  in the meantime she had learnt that the battle lost at the end of October in the desert at El Alamein had been the reason for the surprise relocation order in November, for the shock of their separation, tens of thousands of soldiers had died, Germans and Italians, this is why they had called up the reservists as quickly as possible, even those in reserved occupations, they had also ordered her husband back to the front, there were to be no more disasters, no more defeats,

  Victory! had become an imperative for the Germans, and also for the Italians whose eyes were assaulted every day on large squares, at the corners of broad streets and in the headlines of the wall-newspapers by the bold-type words Vinceremo! or Vincere!, always with exclamation marks, sometimes with three exclamation marks,

  and yet there were too many defeats, in Russia the picture was no longer one of great victories, they hardly spoke about victories any more, they only spoke of the length of the war, and what was the point of this dreadful war if there were to be no more victories, they could not imagine a war without victories,

  since she was twelve years old the Führer of the German Reich had proceeded from one triumph to the next, for as long as she could remember he had only won, conquered, been celebrated, cheered, even during church services thanks were offered up for the political and military successes too, and her husband would only be able to return soon if they were victorious, but if more defeats threatened on almost all fronts he would stay there, his life in ever-increasing danger, and she would have to wait longer and longer,

  it was impossible to think what might become of the beautiful Germany without victories, thinking this was forbidden, she forbade herself from thinking it, and while her yearning flew south to Africa,

  Wartburg castle appeared before her eyes, as if the hills and valleys of Rome were similar to the hills and valleys of the Thuringian Forest around the Wartburg, and the Roman roofs similar to the Thuringian treetops, and the villas on the Gianicolo similar to the villas of Eisenach, nothing was comparable, and yet the proud, beautiful German Wartburg with its towers and gates, battlements, the walls and rows of windows of the long buildings were all of a sudden quite close, the destination of their first walk together, when their love began to germinate two and a quarter years ago,

  instead of going to Café Tigges the young man, who she had made wait two years before agreeing to a date, had suggested a stroll up to the Wartburg, their first hour of getting to know each other a walk up through larches, oaks and beeches, their timid, solemn steps together on the castle’s land, made sacred by Luther, and the view into the distance from the south tower, formal conversations about h
er education and his time in the army and about her family and his family on the path to the Sängerwiese park and while drinking a coffee outside,

  in beautiful October weather, it was the first time she had dared to go for a walk alone with a young man, back down from the Wartburg through the Marienthal, and at the end of this long day his question as to whether he might come again, from Kassel to Eisenach, and see her once more, before he travelled to Rome,

  yes, she had said, but so softly that he had to ask her again, yes, she had repeated a little louder, and blushed, blushed like never before, and a few days later,

  he was back with chocolates that he had bought in France, where he had been a soldier, bought, not taken, he had emphasized, they strolled through the woods below the Wartburg and ate the chocolates, and in the evening he took her by surprise with the cautious question of whether he might already address her using the informal du, because the formal Sie was so ghastly, and after the first du everything had gone at the speed of light until their engagement,

  for this reason she was not at all surprised to see the Wartburg on the Roman horizon like a Fata Morgana, the impregnable fortress, towering high above the woods, was a symbol for the belief that He, the God written with a capital H, would, with the verse from the Bible, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, help her and had helped her to react correctly to the letter from her suitor,

  and at the same time was a symbol for the belief in their love, which had been awakened in the October sun below this castle, and had grown to become the gift of an immeasurable happiness, the first words of love etched in her memory, I think you are far too good for me, and I fear I do not have enough to give you,

  each one of these syllables, against which at first she had protested in vain, you think far too well of me, and all his declarations of love that followed she had written down before the wedding and she bore them in her heart, they gave her strength in every moment of anxiety and helped in her Roman solitude, and here too, on the Pincio path,