Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman Read online

  perhaps there were even Jews in Rome, she did not know, she could not recall having seen any, maybe wearing yellow stars on their coats, and she had not heard the thorny word Jew uttered by any of her Roman acquaintances, not even Ilse,

  it could be dangerous if, in passing, you thought of something as simple as the ladder to heaven, even if it was not angels going up and down but normal Romans, city people who bestowed no glances of amazement or pride upon the wonder which they used as a short cut between the upper and lower city, just one old man, selling freshly roasted chestnuts in the middle of the steps, seemed to have something of the reverence and patience of an angel,

  at any rate, you could not expect joyful, frisky steps and laughing faces in these times, not even on a ladder to heaven, but perhaps some people striding more respectfully or at least sitting on the steps and enjoying the magnificent view,

  she would have been able to discuss the Jews and her Jewish thoughts with Gert, were he here, but not with anybody else, this was another reason she needed him beside her, so she could talk about something so awkward, about the danger of the ideas that came into her head,

  on her own she could not work out what you were allowed and not allowed to say, what you should think and what you ought not to think, and how to cope with her ambivalent feelings, all she could do was to keep these things to herself until his return,

  once Gert had said, and her father used to say something similar too, when he spoke about Christian principles, our God, our Bible, our faith are greater than all reason, and also greater than all the figures of authority we include in our intercessionary prayers in church, so that they may act responsibly, but if the Führer places himself above God and God’s will, then we must not obey him blindly,

  and neither does the Bible say that we are against the Jews or must fight against them, our faith is closely connected to their faith, therefore it is wrong to malign them for everything, this is roughly what the men of the Confessing Church said, who were of similar mind to her father and husband, things that could only be communicated secretly and quietly,

  it was all so difficult, GOD WITH US stood on the soldiers’ belt buckles, above an eagle on a swastika, God and Führer were united on every uniform, even Gert wore God and the eagle and the swastika across his stomach, but he did not like to talk about it, it was all too difficult,

  in any case it was better to keep quiet, and as a woman it was even more important to restrain oneself, how quickly an idea or a thought can escape from one’s lips, improvident words could help the enemy, The enemy is listening!, she had learnt, or it might be dangerous on a personal level,

  there is the weapon of silence and the weapon of words, she had learnt with the League of German Girls, and as she preferred to remain silent anyway, especially if she was not confident of her thoughts and her faint doubts were not assuaged, she knew what she had to do, to trust patiently in God, and continue undeterred along her path,

  and, as she turned around and cast the obelisk a brief, backwards glance, she noticed a human figure on it, on his knees before a bird-person, which immediately made her wonder

  whether they would soon start boarding up this obelisk with its oddities, the Spanish Steps and the lovely boat fountain, or use sand and concrete to protect and clad them because of the ever more frequent air-raid warnings,

  as they had the other sights you could no longer see, such as the equestrian statue of an emperor on the Capitol, a large picture of which was in the Baedeker, now enclosed in a shed-like construction with protective timbers, the Arch of Constantine packed on all sides by sandbags, Michelangelo’s Moses bricked up, or the tall, ancient Roman columns supported by vast wooden scaffolding,

  these protective structures were to be seen ever more frequently in the city centre, sometimes daubed with propaganda such as Vincere! Vincere! Vinceremo! or with maps of the Italian Empire including Abyssinia and the North African conquests that in the meantime were being intensely fought over or had already been lost once again,

  why did they not also secure the balustrades, steps and railings of the Spanish ladder to heaven or the obelisk with the bird-person from possible bomb attacks as they had the other works

  as a safety precaution, like the other safety precautions, after all you had to show the population that safety was being attended to, even though no bombs fell on Rome, no bombs would fall on the city of antiquity and of the Pope, in the city with the silly, albeit in wartime useful moniker, Eternal, which the British and Americans knew and respected too,

  and which no doubt the German military respected also, three naval officers stepped out of the hotel beside the church, a very posh hotel, so posh that she only dared to glance momentarily at the revolving door and the porter with his blueand gold-braided uniform, who saw off the officers with a snappy salute, but not the Hitler salute or the Roman salute, which Hitler had borrowed from the Italian Fascists, who in turn had imitated the ancient Romans,

  from Via Sistina a horse and cart crossed the officers’ path, they stood there, faintly amused, and then strolled across the street to the barrow of a souvenir seller, who was waiting for customers by the steps,

  even the Germans, even the military loved Rome, even the Germans would never do anything to harm the splendour of the Eternal City, the capital of their allies the Italians, here every officer saw the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from the history books,

  all Germans that she had met here were agreed on that, especially those within the Church or Church hierarchy, most of whom were not official people, as Gert said, but nobody believed that even fervent National Socialists would harm sacrosanct Rome, however bad the war situation,

  Augustus, the Pope and Goethe, Frau Bruhns said, will see to it that Rome remains safe and that we can survive here, and the somewhat idealistic Herr Bruhns said, and even if the British couldn’t give two figs for our Goethe, those gentlemen will not bomb the graves of Keats and Shelley, Frau Bruhns may have said Caesar instead of Augustus, she could no longer remember, Herr Bruhns may have cited other English names, she could no longer remember,

  she heard phrases like this over and over again, and yet there was a blackout from half-past five in the evening until half-past six in the morning, and she was not thinking about Goethe or the Pope, at this precise moment she was thinking about the strange bird-person on the obelisk, about the two old horses as well, about the chickens and rabbits on the balconies, which she had never seen, and she thought about her child, she prayed to be allowed to bring her child into the world during a night without sirens and without bombs falling on the world,

  and as she turned now into a dark Via Sistina, between the posh hotel and a splendid corner house, which, like a ship’s bow, towered high above the square next to the Spanish Steps, and had a spectacular terrace on which large trees seemed to grow, a building belonging to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, where Herr Bruhns worked alongside other German art historians, on the façade of this building, too, there was the ugly black arrow pointing to the air-raid shelters,

  and along the narrow, shadowy street, the bit of her journey that she liked the least, going into this gloomy street after the beauty of the Spanish Steps and the square with the obelisk in front of Trinità dei Monti,

  the phrase Enter ye in at the strait gate came to mind, the maxim for January, and she could not help smiling at the fact that she thought of it here, after the bright, broad path she had trodden until this point, and that, too, was a miracle or a blessing, how the Bible always provided helpful and comforting words of encouragement for every circumstance in life, even for an afternoon stroll through Rome,

  after every confinement there was space, after every darkness, light, after every emergency, help, but it was uncomfortable and exhausting and involved much sacrifice to obtain light and salvation, redemption and beatitude, that was more or less the meaning of this verse, everything was good, everything was in God’s hands, and the more solid people were in this bel
ief, the less they would be troubled by questions and anxieties, the more calmly they could wander down dark streets such as this,

  the office where friendly Herr Bruhns worked must be behind one of these windows, there were so many friendly Germans here looking after her, because they had learnt of the tragic separation, as some said, of the young couple after only three days together, friends and acquaintances of her husband, who invited her for tea or spoke to her after church or passed by the deaconesses’ mission and cheered her up by kind-heartedly enquiring as to how she was,

  she liked listening to them talk about this city, they all knew each other and knew each other very well and, as they were not allowed to speak openly about the war or the situation in Germany, they discussed the inexhaustible subject of Rome and all there was to complain and admire about it,

  obviously everybody had their own fixed opinion, their image of Rome, one would be interested almost exclusively in churches, the secretive Vatican and the silent Pope, the other would focus on antiquity and the Forum, the triumphal arches and the many emperors, some people admired the ornate architecture of the Baroque, others the new, sober, straight-line Mussolini buildings, some saw elegance and lightness everywhere, others laziness, sluggishness and ugliness, and only a few of them seemed to like or love this contradictory, impenetrable city of Rome in its entirety,

  and neither had she ever met anyone who liked and esteemed the Romans, the Italians, except perhaps for Ilse, who preferred to chat with the washerwomen and ironers in the basement than hear reports of conversations with the wives of diplomats, envoys or attachés,

  in general they looked down on the inhabitants of Rome, not openly and without contempt, but with the same matter-of-factness that they, in spite of all Christian love for one’s neighbour, placed staff, servants, helpers and caretakers on a level below themselves,

  as a silent observer in many conversations her impression was that even Italian professors, politicians or other people in positions of respect were more ridiculed than equivalent Germans, hence they sometimes smiled or made a little joke about the Duce, but never, ever about the Führer,

  even she had been forced to admit that she found the Italians foreign, almost uncanny, the people she bumped into on the overly narrow pavements of Via Sistina, whether they were younger or older, women or men, most of them stepped aside for the pregnant woman, but did not appear

  as if they wanted to further the understanding between the peoples of the two Axis powers, they did not behave as happily and high-spiritedly as one might expect of Italians, but rather indifferently or like disappointed conquerors whose national pride had taken a tumble, and if their faces, their eyes betrayed anything at all, it was the silent question: how much longer,

  most were in a hurry or looked as if they were in a hurry, with their shopping bags or briefcases, nowhere in this lively city did you see two people standing together, chatting, as if this in itself was suspicious, inside a hardware shop two elderly gentlemen waited side by side at the door for customers, as stand-offish as guards, as if they were forbidden from letting anybody in,

  since the ugly episode on the bus she had sought to create even more distance between herself and the Italians, and only ever got on a tram or bus if it was raining heavily, and although people would immediately offer her a seat when they saw her rounded belly, she preferred to walk, since that assault she had also lost the desire to write down Italian words in her vocabulary book, and at least to try to learn, and yet she felt happy walking down Via Sistina, free in the thought

  that she did not have to join in the conversations with all the nice Germans who knew so much about Rome, who knew each other and gave each other recommendations about the few preferred restaurants that received supplies, or about the purchase of the few Italian specialities that were still available, who seemed to have their fixed opinions on Rome, the Romans, Italy and the Italians, and who all behaved as if they had found the key and solved the puzzle of Rome,

  while she still found everything as puzzling as the scene on the obelisk above the Spanish Steps, the man, if it was a man, kneeling before the bird, hieroglyphs or not, such images stuck, inexplicable, heathen, images that could not be interpreted even with verses from the Bible,

  deep down she was relieved that she did not have to join in this competition of Rome experts, it did not bother her at all that she understood Rome as little as she did that tiny picture on the obelisk, she had no wish to be avidly cultured or to have to appear avidly cultured, she did not wish to be diverted from the two tasks she had, bringing her child into the world, if that should be God’s will, and to be as close as possible to her husband and to take him into her arms again as soon as possible, if that should be God’s will,

  and she saw herself, he who leaves all power to God, at the entrance to a pharmacy, where a long mirror extended down to hip height, much larger than the mirror in the bathroom at the deaconesses’ mission, she glanced at herself in her hat, and thought she looked almost too jaunty, too cheeky, too conspicuous, will be wonderfully sustained by Him,

  but Gert liked it when she looked smart, as he said, always dress well and behave, in all modesty, like a lady, so that they have respect for you, and at that moment, as she saw herself with Gert’s eyes, she in fact had respect for herself,

  looked proudly at her belly and the narrow, fine, to her mind always too childish face, like a Madonna painted by Perugino, Gert had once said and shown her a postcard with an altarpiece by this painter and spoken of an uncanny similarity, vain thoughts, put them aside,

  Via Sistina led straight ahead, first downwards, crossing the square with the human fish fountain, and then up into Via delle Quattro Fontane to the Wehrmacht headquarters, where she collected the letters from Africa, envelopes full of promise, without stamps but simple postmarks, signs of life carrying the field post number 48870 and

  opened them, if not in a quiet corner, then on the street, and scanned the lines on the square paper before she read everything three or four times in peace at home and, if Ilse was not in the room, read the letter softly to her child, and it was her greatest and most secret pleasure when she felt the stirrings of a wordless answer inside her,

  kept busy by strenuous work from six in the morning to midnight, Gert could usually only write short letters, or at night, when there was no more light, put down a few sentences by candlelight, and after reading these, she would commit at least one phrase to her memory until the next letter, so that some of his words stayed with her, went around with her, shone inside her day and night and in her dreams and in the morning,

  as on this Saturday she carried round with her the words that were nine days old, nine days fresh from the letter she had received yesterday of 7th January, Absorb all the beautiful things Rome has to offer, allow them right inside you, then the child will benefit too,

  and turned at the corner into Via Crispi, which rose steeply, right in front of her a knife-grinder jacked up his bicycle, set the grindstone going with his pedals, and began to sharpen a medium-sized kitchen knife, this old man looked almost identical to the knife-grinder who came every few weeks to Bismarckstrasse in Bad Doberan, everybody called him Fritz, Sharp Fritz, and she was on the verge of addressing his Roman counterpart in Low German dialect,

  into Via Crispi, where jewellers, tie shops and underwear shops displayed their sparse offerings in the windows, wedding rings of pale brass, as if they had been made from bullet casings, three dark ties beside a strange cap and the uniform of the Italian Hitler Youth, which obviously had a different name, but she did not know it, some vests and three discreetly folded pairs of knickers,

  these shops with their almost empty shelves looked abandoned, people did not buy jewellery in wartime, and who still buys ties when starvation sits at one’s table, at a pinch black ties for funerals, and perhaps there was still some business to be done selling warm underwear, given that most apartments were not heated,

  perhaps thermal underwe
ar was another thing only available on the black market, for everything that kept you warm, wool and cotton, was allocated to the soldiers in ice-cold Russia under the slogan Wool for the Fatherland, and private ownership of woollens was practically an act of treachery against the brave fighting troops of the Axis,

  the street rose very steeply, and after a few strenuous strides the young woman turned right into Via degli Artisti, a narrower side street which also led uphill, and she tried to free her mind of these difficult, unpleasant thoughts, not exactly all the beautiful things Rome has to offer, by thinking of her beloved husband,

  who recently, in view of the difficult situation on the Russian front, had written to her quite openly, how kindly God was to lead me, so that I ended up here and not there, and who a year and a half ago had had the fortune to be wounded in the leg after only a few weeks of the Russian campaign, and was sent to military hospital, an unpleasant, prolonged affair of a wound that kept on reopening,

  and which first of all saved him, as an infantry driver, from being sent back to the snow and the ice of the Russian front, where so many men had already fallen, and now entire companies were surrounded, and which allowed him, being lightly wounded, to perform some clerical work at headquarters in Rome, and to return finally to his calling and fulfil his duty in the pulpit, at the altar and at the baptismal font in Via Sicilia, which is what he should have been doing this winter too, with her to keep him company,

  if yet another great battle had not been lost at El Alamein, with the result that, for military reasons, the army now also needed the reservists, those in reserved occupations, the lightly wounded, at least for the orderly rooms in Africa where his leg continued to afflict him and where he repeatedly consulted with doctors and staff surgeons over the correct therapy, and between the lines written on square paper expressed the hope that he might soon be sent back to Rome for better treatment for his leg,