Chapter 15 With My Heart
WITH MY HEART
I was finishing with my makeup the next morning—how unnecessary a task when one is thirty and still has beautiful skin, like Alix, and how necessary in old age, unless one wishes to frighten dogs and small children—when I heard a knock at the door.
I looked at my watch, the same one my father had given me all those years ago, appearing more oversized than ever now on my narrow wrist. Eight-ten.
It was Alix, all of her brimming with excitement.
“I see you have news,” I said. “Come in and tell me while I finish my disguise.”
She followed me into the bathroom and sat on the padded bench—was it for visitors, or for clothes, I’d wondered? Visitors in the bath sounded odd, yet here we were. She asked, “Are your pajamas silk?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why not? They’re washable in the machine.”
“No reason,” she said. “You’re amazing, that’s all. OK, guess what? You won’t, so I’ll tell you. I heard from Dr. Bauer. She wants us to come to an emergency board meeting.”
I paused with the mascara wand in my hand. “When?”
“Today. That’s why she called me at seven forty-five.
They want to meet with us at noon, ‘although such quick action is highly irregular, but these are unusual circumstances.’ I’m quoting, if you can’t tell.
She sounded almost flustered, if you can imagine that.
It won’t be the whole board, but enough of it to make a decision. ”
“A quorum,” I said.
“It always surprises me how much better your English is than mine,” Alix said. “Right, a quorum. Dr. Bauer knew the word too. So—showtime, huh?”
My heart was beating too fast, and I was a little breathless.
I set the tube of mascara on the counter.
It rolled off and hit the floor, and I made a small annoyed sound even as I held onto the edge of the marble slab.
Alix bent and picked the mascara up off the floor—I can get down there, and back up again, too, but it’s much more of a production, and one I prefer not to display before an audience—handed it to me, and asked, “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” I said. “I just need to sit a minute.”
I sank onto the bench myself now. A fainting couch, I thought irrelevantly. Alix hovered anxiously, and I said, “I’m all right. I was just thinking—” I broke off.
She sat beside me and took my hand, which was pleasant. How abruptly one can lose the pleasure that is human touch, and how cold one becomes without it.
“What?” she asked. “If this is all too much, if you want to forget the tiara part, we can. I don’t need the tiara. I’ve loved being here with you, hearing all these stories I never knew about, and seeing the palace and the city. It’s felt like kind of a precious time, you know?”
“Yes,” I said. “To me as well.”
“Then,” she said, “we both know that’s what matters. If you want to drop the tiara thing now, say the word and we will.”
My eyes had filled with tears, and my mouth was trembling enough that it wasn’t easy to say, “You have a good heart, Liebling. A helpful heart. And I’m so proud of you.”
“Oh, Oma,” she said, and now, she’d teared up, too.
I laughed in a watery sort of way. “Goodness, how sentimental we are. I do wish, though—”
“What?” she asked. “Tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll do it.”
“Oh, I’m afraid we can’t do that,” I said, pulling a tissue from my pajama pocket and carefully dabbing my eyes.
“I wish I’d come back here with your grandfather, that’s all, once the Wall fell, even though the palace wouldn’t have been restored.
They only opened those three or four state apartments a few years ago, and I’m afraid I’ll never see the kitchens or the nursery again.
But I wish I’d come back with him anyway, that I could feel his arms around me and hear him say, “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.
We’ll make it through this, too. We’re bulletproof, you and me. ”
Alix didn’t answer right away. “I can imagine him saying that,” she said at last. “I can imagine it perfectly, because that was how he talked to me, too. Like there would always be an answer, if I stayed calm and looked for it. I just can’t imagine you needing to hear it.”
“That’s why I loved him so,” I said, and there were the tears again. “He saw past my coping, past the stiff upper lip. He saw the hurt the same way Sebastian does. He saw it, and he gentled it away. And I’m—” I had to bite my lip now and take a breath. “Sometimes I miss him too much.”
Alix put her arm around me. Her embrace was nothing like Joe’s, but it was the same in one way. It was full of love. “You’ve always been so strong,” she said. “I’ve hardly ever even seen you cry.”
“That’s because,” I said, with another attempt at a laugh, “it’s too lonely to cry alone. He was my shelter, you see. From the fears. From the pain. From the memories.” I couldn’t believe I said the next thing, but I did. “Would you do something for me?”
“Anything,” Alix said.
“In the drawer of the bedside table,” I said, “there’s a packet of letters. Bring them to me, will you?”
She didn’t answer, just got up, and was back within seconds, the packet in her hand and an arrested look on her face. “Oma. Are these his letters from back then?”
“Yes. To his father, during the war. You can read them later if you like. There’s an extra one in there to me, though. Will you pull out the last one, please, and open it?”
She removed the plain envelope with its brown spots from the ribbon-tied bundle and pulled out the fragile sheet of onionskin within. “Something’s been spilled on it,” she said. “That’s too bad.”
“No,” I said, “it’s part of the memory, too.
This is from the morning after our wedding night.
We spent it in the flat where I’d been living, because there was no such thing as a honeymoon in that time and place.
One was lucky just to have a roof. It was one room merely, with the bed in a curtained alcove and the smallest kitchen, a toilet, and a shared bathtub down the hall for which we heated endless water on the stove, but what a palace it seemed to me then!
He brought me coffee that morning. Ersatz, of course, made of chicory, acorns …
oh, all sorts of terrible things. It was never good, especially since one almost never had sugar, but at least it was hot and brown.
I spilled some on the paper, as you see, and we laughed about it. Such small things are one’s memories.”
“It’s in German,” Alix said.
“Yes,” I said. “A poem from Rilke. Here, give it to me.”
The paper had been folded so many times, I’d had to mend it on the reverse side with tape.
Now, even the tape was brittle and brown, but that didn’t make me love it any less.
When you love something or somebody for so long, that love becomes part of you.
If you sliced me down to the bone, I’m convinced Joe would be there in my depths.
I read the simple words aloud in German, and felt my throat close as I had that morning so long ago.
I could see Joe’s brown eyes, warm behind his glasses, could see his curly dark hair cut close to his head as the Army required, his angular face with its beaky nose, the kindness in his smile.
That’s what I see when I close my eyes at night, and when I hear my recordings of him on his cello.
Joe at twenty, not yet grown into his face, but so sure in himself, in what he knew to be true.
“It’s beautiful,” Alix said when I finished. “What does it mean?”
I cleared my throat. I had to. And spoke the English words from memory.
Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.
Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.
“It doesn’t rhyme, of course, in English,” I said.
“But it’s nearly as beautiful all the same.
I knew then, that morning—I don’t know how—that Rilke was right, and so was Joe.
That I would love him forever, and what was more astonishing—that he would love me that long and more, until the end of time.
I was sure, and I hadn’t been sure for so long.
I’d been surviving, but now? I was sure. ”
“Wow,” Alix said. “I didn’t realize Grandpa was so romantic.”
“Nobody could play the cello as he did,” I said, “and not be romantic. But—” I rose and went back to the sink. “If we’re going to meet this board, I’d better finish getting ready. Breakfast in the restaurant today, I think. How are Ashleigh and Ben getting on?”
“Ben’s still asleep,” Alix said after a moment. “I suspect they were up until the wee hours posting videos, because there are two more up now, about the bombing. Do you want to see?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t need to. I was there.”