So their letters had continued. But now there were also visits.
Over the last two years, Benita had been to Franz’s flat above the coffin business several times. She had met old Herr Muller, who was bitter and unpleasant and spoke to his son as if he were still twelve years old—how did Franz stand it?—and little Clotilde, who was a sweet thing, all skin and bones and large, soulful dark eyes. She clearly needed a mother—someone to teach her how to put her hair back in something other than a plain braid, how to look people in the eye, how to keep the house. They had sat on the makeshift furniture Franz crafted from coffin scraps and eaten Clotilde’s homemade, nearly inedible, cookies. And Benita had daydreamed of all the ways she could improve on this.
Today, Benita and Franz were alone. Clotilde and her grandfather had taken the train north to visit Franz’s ailing sister.
As soon as they entered the flat, Benita turned and hooked her hands into his waistband.
Franz took her fingers in his and brought them to his lips. Still holding them, he walked her backward to the brand-new sofa—yellow with stiff cushions—under the open window.
“What are you doing?” Benita laughed, pulling away her hands.
“Bringing you to the sofa,” Franz said. “Making you sit. Getting you a cup of tea.”
“But I don’t want tea!” she protested, catching his hand as she sat back, with a poof, on the cushion.
“I insist,” he said, pulling away. “A lady deserves tea after a long journey.”
“Oh, a lady!” she said. “How fine. And how has the gentleman been?”
“Lonely,” Franz said, lighting the gas under the kettle. “Waiting for your visit.”
“But now he wants to wait even longer?” Benita teased, batting her lashes and watching him blush. A widower, a soldier, a man nearing forty-six, and still such an innocent! With him, she adopted the old role of flirt and temptress that had once been her signature. She slipped off her shoes and tucked her feet underneath her on the sofa.
“How was the wedding?” he asked, measuring tea into the strainer. He was so careful and considerate—traits she would have hated in her young life, but that now endeared him to her. His carefulness made her feel safe.
“Wonderful,” Benita said. “The bride wore a gray suit and the groom his best lederhosen.” She laughed aloud at the image of Herr Kellerman in a pair of short pants. “No, but really it was nice. Ania looked happy—at least secretly.”
Franz handed Benita a steaming cup—thick white china, the kind one could buy at any market now, so different from Marianne’s fine Meissen. Benita would miss those when she became Frau Muller—their refinement and air of bygone elegance. But she held no more illusions; she could eat off fine china, but she would never be an aristocrat.
“Franz,” she said, hooking her foot around his leg as he started back for his own cup. “Franzl.” She loved calling him that—it was such a boy’s name, so inappropriate for the man before her. “When will you make me a good woman? Have you been looking at flats?”
His face slackened, and immediately Benita wished she had not teased. Franz would find one when there was enough money—she had no doubt. And then they would be married. It was only a question of time.
“Not yet,” he said as if breaking terrible news. “I’m sorry—I think it will be another month.”
“Hush—never mind. I’m only teasing.” She ran her stockinged foot farther up his leg. “But now you must stop teasing me.”
Slowly, Franz leaned down and took the cup of tea from her hand, placing it on the side table. Then he pulled her to her feet. She pressed her breasts against his chest, delighted by their regained roundness in her new brassiere—a white lace shelf that created real décolletage. It was the first piece of lingerie she had owned since before the war. In it she felt young again and excited by her own beauty.
“That’s better,” she murmured against his lips and unbuttoned her dress.
They made love four more times during the twenty-four-hour visit. It was never enough.
Benita had always cultivated her seduction skills—Connie was not her first—and her husband had benefited from her experience. There was Heinrich Kohl and Karl Josef before him, handsome, fresh-faced village boys with whom she had practiced, with the explicit intention of gaining expertise. She was a dreamer, but she was not naive. She had always known that it was not her brains that would get her out of Frühlinghausen. And so she had learned how to slip her tongue into the rim of a man’s ear just so, how to graze her nipples against his chest, a titillating reminder of their presence as she slid one hand down over his belly to the ridge of his hip.
With Connie, all this had come together in an impressive bit of theater that he had loved. For a man of experience—which Connie Fledermann certainly was—he had been oddly enthralled by her simple games. And she had used that to every advantage. But for her, the benefit was only his addled affection, never any pleasure of her own.
With Franz it was different. There was no pretending. After Berlin, sex was something she had never thought she would want again. Yet somehow she did. She wanted him. And around him, she had no shame.
“Franz,” she said, rising on her elbow sometime before dinner on the second day. Her stomach rumbled. They had eaten nothing except Marianne’s oranges and chocolate, and the sugar made her light-headed. “Let’s go to Lufner’s. I could eat five schnitzels.”
Franz rolled onto his back. They were pressed against each other and lying on his cot—a rudimentary thing that he didn’t entirely fit into even on his own. He slept on this, his father on the couch, and Clotilde in the bedroom. The flat Benita envisioned for the future Frau Muller was to be much bigger, with a room for each and a proper wardrobe for Clotilde. She had spent hours daydreaming of this.
“Jawohl,” Franz said, swinging his giant legs off the bed. “Whatever Frau Fledermann wishes.”