Page 33 of Hell to Pay
My eyes had filled with tears, and my mouth wastrembling 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’tbelieve 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 becomespart 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.
