“You can and you will. She’s already quite far along. Why they waited until now to telephone us is another matter, for discussion at another time. Right now I’m concerned only about her well-being and the well-being of the child. Your room key is there, if you’d like to refresh yourself. We leave for the cottage in thirty minutes.”
SHE HAS SO MUCH TO LOSE. The woman the world sees is the product of many years of hard work. In becoming that person, erasion has played as great a role as creation, a lesson she has never forgotten.
On their honeymoon, Louis took her to Europe for six months. They visited his ancestral homeland, over the Rhine from where she still had relatives. They rented chateaux; they were received by heads of state, escorted in grand fashion from one magnificent edifice to another, shown the world’s greatest art in private sessions, allowed to press their noses right up against the canvas, to run their fingers along the gold and silver surfaces. What she remembers most of all are the Michelangelos. Not the muscular David or the languid Pieth but the rough, unfinished Florentine sculptures, human form struggling to wrest itself from a solid block of marble. That has always been her great battle, a lifelong battle, won by divestiture. We shed; we lighten and rise.
She came over at the age of five, and in the beginning she was friendless. The other girls teased her about the way she said the letter s. It came out as a z. Or when she said shpelling instead of spelling. They would tease her about that, too. Shhhh they would say, laughing their little heads off. Shhhhhh. A clever joke, at once playing on her shortcomings and telling her that what she had to say was of no interest to anyone.
Her accent, thenthat had to go. Day in and day out she sat with the tutor. She sells seashells by the seashore, the shells she sells are surely seashells. The exercises made her jaw ache. They numbed her with boredom. She worked. She chipped away at herselfthe z’s and sh’s falling off, bits of stone and clouds of dustuntil she sounded like any other American girl. It was a painful process but a worthwhile one, certainly after the War broke out.
Off came her baby fat. She kept herself away from certain foods, and gradually she emerged as a woman who could turn heads in the street. Boys wanted to be by her side, and girls wanted to be by the sides of the boys. She shed her timorousness, shed her resentment, generously extending friendship to those who had maligned her in childhood. She shed her inhibitions, becoming known as a girl not only of exceptional beauty but of great wit. She tamped down an unbecoming tendency toward sarcasm and built up a tolerance for the inanity of social niceties. She entertained drawing rooms with lightning-fast passages from the Goldberg Variations. Everyone applauded. She learned to enjoy parties, to laugh on cue, to reflect in others what they most wanted to see.
By her eighteenth birthday, several men had asked for her hand. She turned them down. She had bigger plans, and so did her mother.
Her father thought them both ridiculous, and said so.
“I don’t see why you say that,” said Mama. “They like German girls. And I know that they will want to marry that one off as soon as possible.”
Mama was right. Bertha marveled. One moment she was a debutante; the next she was a bride, dancing with her husband in a ballroom as big as her imagination.
The first years of her marriage were her happiest. She barely noticed her husband’s lack of interest in her; she was too busy making the most of her newfound omnipotence. Papa was rich, but nobody was rich like the Mullers. It became a challenge for her to dream up new ways to spend. And still she continued to rise, cultivating important relationships and pruning dead ones. She invited and was invited by others. Her wardrobe was the envy of all, her clothing cut closely in homage to her figure. She became a regular in the society pages, noted for her grace but also for her charitable work. In her name grew a concert hall and a collection at the Met. She endowed functions and sponsored schoolchildren. She was only twenty-one but already she had done so much good. Her parents were proud; her life was full; and if her husband did not desire her, so much the better. It freed her up to work on refining herself, a new person, reborn as a Muller. It was she who had to ensure the bloodline. Louis could not be trusted. He had done everything in his power to sabotage his family’s future. She came to stitch up the damage, and in doing so, she took possession of her new name in a way that hea Muller by dint of Fatenever could. Unlike Louis, she had to work, to position herself, to choose; she became more of a Muller than he ever was; and thus her obligation ran much deeper than his, her mandate divine. How else to explain the rapidity of her ascent? Someone wanted her to succeed.
And she made sure Louis did his duty when the time came around.
During the early part of Bertha’s first pregnancy, Mama died. Before she went, she said, “I only hope your children take such good care of you.”
The disappointment, then, was twofold. Bertha felt as though she had denied her mother’s deathbed wish. After all, no defective child could ever take care of her. And the shame she stood to reap: oh the shame. Her whole life would fly apart, springs and gears and hinges scattering. All the good she did would come to naught. Who would give the kind of charity that she did if not her? Who would throw the Autumn Ball? Who would be the focal point? She had obligations to the people of New York City.
An accent, an inch of waistline, a recalcitrant husbandthe problems she fought always had clear and concrete solutions. She likewise approached the problem of the girl with a level head and a steady hand. This, too, was merely another problem to solve; the real question was how. The Home gave her her answer. Dr. Fetchett told them that such a decision was not uncommon, and she took comfort in knowing that she was following a well-beaten path. For every hurdle rising higher.
What she finds so troubling about the latest turns of events, this abomination, is the sense that she has stalled. Or worsebegun to sink. She sees now that the problem of the girl will never be solved, not as long as people have the capacity to reproduce themselves. Family is the problem that recurs.
IN AUGUST, DAVID RETURNS FROM BERLIN. He entertains his parents with stories of his travels, and shares his firsthand account of the rising political turmoil. Louis, who has been following the news closely, speculates about their economic effects. Several high-ranking officers in his Frankfurt branch have been forced out of their jobs, a trend that Louis disapproves of. Jewish or not, they were fine businessmen, and nobody with half a brain can believe that stripping a nation of its most qualified and experienced workers will lead to greater prosperity.
Having left at so young an age, Bertha has no strong feelings about the annexation of Austria or the breaking of synagogue windows, events that she does not regard as having any direct impact on her. She is happy to have her son back, to have the tableau of her life reestablished. Lately, she and Louis have spoken even less than usual, and his willfulness angers her. He has never fought back as hard as he is fighting now.
His chief complaint is that she has not gone to visit the girl. He goes every two weeks. Would it kill her, he wants to know, to show her face?
But she can’t. There are so many reasons why. Somebody needs to stay at home. What if a guest drops by unannounced. They couldn’t both be out of the house, now could they? People would want to know where the Mullers had gone in the thick of summer. The Mullers live fashionably, and what they do influences the whole crowd of Good People. Inquiries would be made; a rumor would ignite. One of them, at least, has to stay behind, and she is the more reasonable choice.
Besides, how could she help? Having been pregnant herself, Bertha knows that it is a highly individualized form of suffering. She knows how to soothe only one pregnant woman: herself. Whereas the doctor has soothed hundreds. Let him do his job.