“What about you? You could have signed the adoption papers.”
“No. I was only twenty when you were born, and I didn’t dare go against my parents. And then later, by the time I was of legal age, I was engaged to marry Daddy. By then I was so used to keeping it a secret that I didn’t want to think about it.”
“‘It.’ You mean me. So why did you and Daddy finally decide to adopt me? I mean, I was safely out of sight way down there in North Carolina, out of sight and, at least in your case, out of mind. You could’ve left me there to rot, if you’d wanted to.”
“It was your father’s idea. Well, no, it was my idea. Under his conditions. Once we realized that we weren’t going to have any children together, I begged him to let me take you from that place and raise you as our child. He agreed, but only if I promised to say that you were adopted and never revealed to anyone, not even to you, that I was your real mother. My parents were happy to go along with it. And so were the people who ran the home. In the end, everyone got what they wanted. Which was to save face. Everyone got to save face. Even me.”
“Even you. Why weren’t you going to have children together, you and Daddy? Was there something wrong with you?”
“No, not with me.”
“With Daddy, then. I never heard anything about that.”
“It wasn’t a physical thing with him. Not really. Your father was…a difficult man. Sexually, I mean. He didn’t…he didn’t like to make love. Also, he was very old-fashioned, and when he found out that I wasn’t a virgin…” She trailed off.
Vanessa said, “Keep talking, Mother.”
“Oh, I hate telling you all this!”
“It’s too late to stop now. Tell me the rest.”
“In the very beginning, when we first tried to make love, it went…badly, let’s say. The fact is, on our honeymoon he found out that I wasn’t a virgin, and he rejected me for a time. Later on, months later, when we tried to make love, he couldn’t. And then…well, then he wouldn’t. We were both pretty shy about it, about sex, and it was just simpler not to do it at all, and he never complained about it, and neither did I. Although it made me very lonely for a long, long time.”
“My Christ!” Vanessa said. “This is mad. I don’t know if I can take it all in. Or even believe it! It’s all so fruity and weak and pathetic. You disgust me, Mother. Truly. You amaze and disgust me. Both you and Daddy. And Grandma and Grandpa, too. But especially you!”
“Vanessa, please don’t be angry with us. We did the best we could.”
“Well, they’re all dead, Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa. So I can’t get back at them for what they did. But you’re not dead. And look at you, you’re trying to put me out of the way again, like you did when I was born. Like Grandma and Grandpa did when I was a baby.” Vanessa took the glass from her mother, set it on the dressing table, and pulled her arms behind the chair and tied her wrists. “Where are all those photographs Daddy took of me when I was a little girl?” she suddenly demanded. “You know the ones.”
“I don’t…I don’t know.” Her mother looked up, wide-eyed and frightened, at Vanessa. “Those photographs? What photographs? They’re in Daddy’s albums, I suppose,” she said. “In the library here, where he kept them stored. And on the walls, framed. And at home.”
“No. You know what I’m talking about, so don’t play dumb. Photographs of me. Naked. I want them.”
“Naked! What do you mean? He took hundreds of photographs of you back then. He loved photographing you. He had his own darkroom and everything, where he developed and printed them. But I never saw any pictures of you naked. What are you talking about? Please don’t put the scarf over my mouth, Vanessa. It makes me feel like I’m suffocating.”
“From before the war. From when I was four or five. Or maybe I was only three and recently ‘adopted.’ You were there, Mother. You knew! You knew he was taking those pictures.”
“No. Daddy was very shy about that. He didn’t like to see you naked, ever.”
“If you don’t tell me the truth, I’m going to tie the scarf over your mouth. I don’t want to listen to your lies anymore.”
“Vanessa, it is the truth! Daddy always made me or Hilda make sure you were properly covered before he went into your room, and he never bathed you or even saw you being bathed. Some things I don’t remember from those years before the war, you know, because of my bad nerves back then. And the medicines. But I do remember that.”
Vanessa sighed heavily. “Oh, God, Mother, you’re still lying to me. Or else you’re lying to yourself and believing it. Either way, it’s a lie. Because you were there, and you know where those pictures are. Daddy was very orderly and never threw anything away. I’m sure you’ve gone through all his files since he died and know exactly where those pictures are. You said you remember being present when he took them.”
“No, no! He wasn’t like that, Vanessa. He wasn’t.”
“I’ll bet I’m not the only naked little girl he took photographs of. Wasn’t the only naked little girl, I mean.”
“Your father wasn’t the kind of man who—”
Vanessa cut her off with the silk scarf, tying it tightly this time so it wouldn’t slip down. “No more lies, Mother. No more lies,” she said, walking to the open window, which she shut and locked. Then she pulled down the shade, dropping the room into darkness. “I’ll come back for you after Hubert’s been here and gone. Maybe then you and I will go through those albums in the library together. Won’t that be nice? Just the two of us. What fun. Mother and daughter leafing through the family albums. Maybe then you’ll tell me everything.”
She locked the bedroom door behind her and walked from the living room to the porch. From the deck she saw a guide boat a half mile out on the lake. It was Hubert St. Germain — smoothly, expertly, his oar blades barely making a ripple in the water — rowing toward the camp.
The doctor shook the young woman’s hand and said, Good-bye, Vanessa, and bon voyage. Your luggage will be in your stateroom, he added, and she nodded as if agreeing. He turned her toward the other passengers, and she followed them onto the bus. When the bus had departed, the doctor walked into the hotel bar and ordered a schnapps and filled his pipe with tobacco and lighted it. A half hour later, in a soft, drizzling rain, the passengers arrived at the airfield and were taken inside a cavernous hangar, where they were inspected a second time for matches, lighters, and batteries. Beyond the hangar, tethered by its nose to a mooring mast, the enormous zeppelin floated in the air, ten feet from the ground. The silver ship was nearly a sixth of a mile long, shaped like a gigantic whale. An open staircase extended from its gleaming belly to the ground. One by one, the passengers climbed the stairs and entered the leviathan. A steward escorted the American woman to her room on Level B and left her alone there. She removed her hat and veil, exposing a single red spot above each eyebrow, tiny circular wounds recently healed. After a few moments, she stepped to the large rectangular window and looked down at the crowd of well-wishers and officers on the ground. A uniformed brass band played “Muss I Denn?” and a choir of Nazi youth sang the “Horst Wessel Song” and “Deutschland Über Alles.” Gradually, the crowd below — the brass band, the Nazi youth contingent, the Zeppelin officials and groundsmen, and the government officials and SS officers — began to diminish in size. Without a ripple of felt movement, the airship was silently rising. At about three hundred feet the muffled sound of the diesel engines penetrated the silence of the stateroom, and the great zeppelin slowly turned northwest and in the gathering dusk headed toward the lights of Koblenz, following the Rhine to the sea.