How could she have forgotten?
The fact was preposterous. What kind of woman would forget a letter from her dead husband? Why had she never read it? In the beginning, she had been too angry. This was true. But afterward . . . afterward she had simply let it slip. It filled her with shame.
Benita opened the envelope. The letter was not long. But at first, her eyes refused to make sense of the words, which swam and jostled on the page. Gradually, though, they fell into place.
My dearest Benita, it read. She could hear Connie’s voice. It had been so many years since she had heard it. If you are reading this, it means the plot I have given my life for has failed. That Hitler is still in power and I am dead.
She felt that time rise up around her—the flat in Berlin, Martin playing marbles on the floor. The restless loneliness and anger. The shriek of the air-raid siren.
I am sorry then that I put this spike between us for nothing. That is what I most regret.
I never meant to keep secrets from you, my love. I only wanted to protect you. The less you knew, the safer you would be. I could not let you bear responsibility for my actions. And I don’t even know if you agree with them. Our love is not a part of world events and politics. Our love has always been its own country.
Benita, I am so sorry for the ways I have hurt you. I know I have not been the husband you dreamed of. I have been foolish. I have been selfish. I have acted sometimes with my own interests, and our country’s interests, at heart. But I have always believed our future as individuals is fused with Germany’s. If I, as a human being, don’t act against Hitler, I cannot live with myself. If we Germans don’t put out our own demon, he will never be exorcised.
My dearest, I write this by way of explanation, if you should want one.
But what I most want to say is that I loved you from the moment I saw you on the day of the Anschluss, by the millpond, in your solemn little uniform. And I never stopped. Even now, as you read this. Be happy. Care for our son. Raise him to know happiness as you do. And I will be with you.
Yours always,
Connie
Benita set the letter down. Connie—her dear Connie, whom she had never even said good-bye to. Whom she had hated—really hated—for so long. But he had always been strong. He had lived his life on a plane of grand ideals and all-encompassing rights and wrongs. His view had been much longer than the trappings of his own life. And she had been the little mouse who could see no farther than her own nose, stumbling over roots and stones, oblivious to the oncoming storm.
She sat for a long time. Night deepened outside. The rain passed and stars shone. A sliver of a moon rose, shedding no light.
Her collection of objects lay in heaps, no more substantial than the scraps of leaves and paper a bird might use to shore up her nest. Somewhere, out in the world, Franz Muller moved through life, serving dinner to Clotilde and his father on the yellow tablecloth, or working late in his coffin shop. And somewhere Marianne was doing . . . God knows what: writing, organizing, dining with friends—Marianne never just sat. And Martin, her own son—Benita imagined him in his room at Salem, head bent over his books, improving his life.
There was a purpose to each of their lives. Even Franz was responsible for old Herr Muller and Clotilde. Only Benita had no purpose. She had already raised her son. All she could do now was hold him back. She was a woman built for love. But love was dead—at least to her and to her generation. There was no place left for it in this world. And yet, she had never wanted anything else.
In the dark, she removed her dress and jewelry and lay down on the bed. She took one of the pills Lotte’s doctor had prescribed to help her sleep. And as the warm, floating feeling of a dream came on, she shook another pill into her hand. She saw Connie’s face as it was when he had come to her that last night, and it felt almost possible to go back, to turn to him and say Good-bye and Good luck. To give him her blessing. And she saw Martin in her arms, as a baby, his sweet, innocent face lighting up when she bent toward him. To this too she could return.
She took a few more pills, and then the rest, swallowed them with one gulp. And then she lay back down.
Chapter Thirty-One
Frühlinghausen, December 1950
The train ride from Tollingen to Frühlinghausen was long and full of transfers. Three minutes to change trains in Frankfurt, seven in Kassel, twenty in G?ttingen . . . everything was once again on time. In the cities, bombed-out remains of buildings had been oddly integrated into the general forward motion of life—like assimilated amputations, noticeable only to strangers, such as those passing through on trains.
Marianne and Martin managed, for the last leg of their journey, to find an empty compartment. It was not a busy travel time: midday, midweek, children at school, adults at work. Everyone was caught up in the reassuring web of industry. Only the travelers had come unstuck.
“When the war ended, why did my mother go to you instead of her family?” Martin asked, startling Marianne. She had almost forgotten he was sitting across from her, wrapped in his own cloak of grief. He had grown tall in the last months at school, and his legs sprawled across the aisle, his shoulders hunched forward like folded wings.
“It made sense at the time,” Marianne said. “Everything was mixed up. No one was where they started. And I don’t think—” She stopped herself. She was unsure what Benita had relayed to Martin about her family.
“What?” Martin pressed.
Marianne sighed. “I don’t think she was close to her family.”
Martin turned to stare back out the window. One after another poor, dilapidated farm flew past—prosperity had returned to Germany but not to this corner of the country. Martin did not ask the obvious question: Why, then, had Benita gone back to Frühlinghausen in September? His mother must have offered him some sort of explanation. And whatever it was, it had not turned him against Marianne. For that she was grateful. Benita had “died in her sleep,” according to the telegram. But Marianne had understood. It was her fault Benita was dead. Her meddling had killed her. She would never outlive this.
What Martin understood of his mother’s death remained unclear.
He was an inscrutable boy. Not just now, in his grief, but always. Unlike Fritz, no matter where Martin went, he was well liked. He was popular with his peers and with his teachers, the kind of boy parents were happy to invite to their homes. He was agreeable and excelled in school, but what he cared about, what he felt passion for, remained mysterious. He had inherited his father’s likability without his streak of rebellion and strong-mindedness.
“Will you recognize your aunts?” she asked him.
“Lotte and Gertrud?” Martin looked worried. He had met them only a few times.
“Never mind,” Marianne said. “We’ll find them together.”