“In the zoo?”
With raised eyebrows, Klara fixed her gaze on me with the air of someone who vaguely remembered going there a long time ago. At least I was in Martin’s company — obviously it wasn’t thought strange he should go to the zoo regularly, and he was much older than I. In fact, she insisted on assessing Martin’s new work before anything else, we found a place under the trees, and she hadn’t even ordered a drink before Martin was made to open his portfolio. “Mineral water or a soda — no, I’ll have water”; she didn’t mind, the drawings lay spread out on the table in front of us. Klara, who didn’t appear to be interested in animals, compared the hare with the graylag goose, pulled a series of eagle studies closer to her, the line on this page, the fine hatching over there, as though just breathed onto the paper, a bird in motion, and then—“Could you move that glass, please”—that line on the head of a resting bearded vulture.
“Tell me, do either of you know which house Kokoschka stayed in?” Martin pointed across at the palace pond. “Is that the one? The one in front, maybe? Or is it one of those that was bombed? I’m sure you can tell me, Klara.”
Klara shook her head, as though she knew exactly. I, on the other hand, didn’t even know the name Oskar Kokoschka, I was hearing about this painter for the first time, and especially about the life-sized doll he got someone to make in the image of the woman he idolized, an ugly, crude monster puppet which Kokoschka hoped would inspire him in Dresden.
“I have heard that the doll was found one morning soaked in red wine and with twisted limbs somewhere here in the garden. I’d love to know where, precisely.”
A policeman on his beat had thought at first that the limp figure with the dead face was a real female corpse, Martin went on talking, and I was grateful to Klara when she interrupted him in midsentence: “I hope you don’t mind, Martin, but I think that’ll do.”
We sauntered around the palace pond, to the Flutgraben — that is, I saw Klara strolling next to Martin, saw the toes of her shoes, yes, Klara was strolling through Dresden as though demonstrating how you should move in the distant future along the boulevard of an imaginary metropolis. Her ankles. Her dark, very slightly wavy hair.
“Martin has told me about your episode with the dachshund owner,” I dared to address her.
“Oh, that old story”—amused, I thought, or perhaps like someone tired of hearing the same anecdote repeated. And I wasn’t expecting that Klara, acting as though Martin were suddenly in the way, would drop back a step and smile across at me.
Martin suggested hiring a rowboat. Apparently the idea appealed to Klara too, he was inviting us to take a boat ride, I could see Klara and me sitting next to each other, Martin facing us on the oarsman’s seat. But when we got in, it was “No, no, Hermann, you’ve got to sit at the front.” We both looked questioningly at Martin, he shrugged his shoulders, “Enjoy the trip,” he pushed the boat off, “Water makes me nervous,” Martin stayed behind on the landing stage: “We’ll meet up again in an hour’s time, in safety, on dry land.”
Klara and I on Lake Carola. Martin followed us on the bank. That is to say, he had to keep stopping because my rowing was so bad that we hardly moved from the spot. I was on a collision course, all around us boats were gliding smoothly through the water, all of the strong young men oblivious of the labors of their upper body, their shoulders, their arms, their hands. The evenness of the oar movements was impressive, everything working like clockwork, each one of them enjoying a trip with their beloved could concentrate on taking a close look at those eyes, those lips, that nose.
I succeeded in steering our boat under the bridge without capsizing, the narrow part of the lake was behind us, for a while we were moving toward the fountain. And that was when Martin appeared again, Klara spotted him as we passed the restaurant, mixing with the families at the feeding place, Martin in a flurry of ducks, hopefully he wouldn’t think of waving.
Martin waved to us.
Hordes of children squatting on the bank looking for fish in the shallow water, children, half scared and half overconfident, holding out dry bread for the ducks to take, parents watching over their offspring — they would all turn instantly to look at the waving man in their midst, would follow his eyes across the lake, point to a boat, and have to laugh, the splashing water, somebody snatching hastily at the oars. But Klara didn’t turn a hair. I was rowing with my right arm, I wanted to bring the boat around, Klara was directing me. I was gripped by ambition, I was aiming at least to circumnavigate the little island with the swan’s nest. I no longer noticed the other boats. Once I had to push us off again from the bushes onshore. Once some twigs brushed Klara’s hair. And precisely when I was thinking with relief that Martin could no longer see us at this point, she said, “Made it.”
No, Klara wasn’t laughing. But as we moved more or less calmly between the island and the bank, and I didn’t even have any trouble maneuvering the boat a little so that Klara could get a better view of the white plumage over there in the bushes, I could have sworn that sitting facing me was an unknown lady I had heard laughing one November evening long ago. The woman in the fur coat wearing a peaked cap, the way she held her cigarette on the dark Elbe hillside, how she swept past me in the hall, and Klara in her blue dress, her hands holding on to the gunwale to get a good look at the island in Lake Carola: one and the same person, I could have sworn to it.
10
KLARA STOOD BAREFOOT in the doorway, in her blue summer dress which I knew from our boat outing in the Great Garden — the blue formed a very striking contrast to the green of Klara’s eyes. It could be the way the light was falling, I thought, evenly shining through the leaves of a big beech tree by the entrance. Klara watched me calmly as I approached, she might have seen me standing at the iron gate reading the nameplate, the Hagemann property, the path through their garden, the house where Klara and Martin live. I went up the steps to the entrance, the blue dress, the green eyes, Klara’s bare feet on the threshold, I really didn’t know where to look.
I had come to pick up Martin, it was all arranged — in my confusion I may not even have said hello.
“Oh, really? He’s not here. Perhaps he’ll be back soon. As far as I know, he was going down to the Elbe. You can go and look for him if you want.”
Even as she was saying this, quickly, decisively, as though to get rid of me, she stepped aside in the doorway. I followed her, we crossed a small anteroom, more a ventilation chamber, and Klara pushed open a swing door as if unaware that somebody was behind her. The wings of the door sprang back, I was just able to slip through.
“The door nearly caught me.”
“Oh dear, you poor thing.”
I assumed she was going to take me straight to Martin’s room, where I could wait for him, but she paused: “We used to play around with the swing door, Ulli and I, every evening after supper, we used to run back and forth in our nightgowns from the corridor to the vestibule and back. Our parents shouted that we shouldn’t romp around near the cold entrance, and we shrieked every time one of us had been hit on the head by the door. Out of breath, overexcited, faces flushed, just the state to be in when you’re meant to be going to bed.”
The “vestibule,” not “a ventilation chamber” or “a small anteroom”—for me the word is inextricably linked with that afternoon, when I heard it, from Klara, for the first time.
“A lovely house, with this swing door.” And I must have also said something like “You’ve got lots of space.”