“Aha, well,” Marianne said, breaking the somber mood, “we live in elegance here, don’t we, Alice?”
“Maybe so.” Alice smiled shyly. She had a scar on her neck, Martin noticed, a thin white line that snaked down from her ear.
“Love is the thing, we agree, is it not?” Marianne asked.
Alice looked from Marianne to Martin. “Yes, ma’am,” she said when it became clear that Marianne was addressing her. “Love is great.”
“You see?” Marianne said to Martin. “This is what I mean to say: love is great.”
Martin felt suddenly consumingly tired. The heaviness of the exchange, the awkwardness of the moment—what had he expected?
“Would you like anything else?” Alice asked in her soft, pleasantly accented voice.
“No, no—except a schnapps for Martin. He needs one, I think.”
It was maybe an hour or two later, with the sun softening to forgiving afternoon ripeness, that Marianne posed the question. It wasn’t a question, actually.
She placed a card in front of him—thick white stationery like a wedding invitation. The return address caught his eye: Burg Lingenfels.
Inside was a postcard with a black-and-white photograph of a woman squinting at the camera, shielding her eyes against the sun, one rubber booted foot propped on a low wall. Marianne, at the cistern.
marianne von lingenfels: moral compass of the resistance was printed underneath.
Martin looked up at her, surprised.
“Yes, it’s me. A biography.” Marianne made a gesture of dismissal.
“That’s wonderful,” Martin said, turning the card over. “A remarkable story of a woman at the heart of one of the most courageous stands against evil in our time . . .” he began to read.
“Oh, it’s a little much,” Marianne said, though she could not fully conceal her pride. “But that’s not the point. There is a party. This fall. At Burg Lingenfels.”
Martin sat back. “A weekend of talks, discussions, and meditations on the subject of resistance,” he read aloud.
“Martin,” Marianne said, leaning forward, “I want you to take me there. And I want to find Ania and bring her, too. I want to invite you both—as my guests.”
Martin sighed. “I would love to, Marianne, but I don’t know—”
“Stop.” She lifted a hand. “Don’t say no. I won’t let you say no. Think about it first. It is the wish of an old woman. Think of it, if you want, as my last wish.”
Martin looked at her: the thin gray hair, the fragile, papery skin of her face. “Why do you want me to come with you?”
Marianne cocked her head to the side. “Why do you think, Martin Fledermann?”
“Because I am my father’s son.” He sighed.
“No,” Marianne said, knitting her brows. “Because you are your mother’s son.”
It was not decided in that moment.
The sun sank lower in the sky, and at Marianne’s formidable insistence, Martin took her for a swim.
“Swim where?” he asked when she proposed the idea.
“Where?” Marianne laughed. “Look around you, Martin Fledermann. The sea.”
The swim trunks she provided were folded dustily on the top shelf of the towel closet: a voluminous pair of brightly flowered shorts—a style Martin dimly recalled from his early days in America as “jams.” Her son-in-law’s, apparently. Martin was a good swimmer, albeit out of practice. As a boy, he had been the star of the Salem swim team. But it was years since he had swum in the ocean, and never with an eighty-three-year-old.
Marianne wore a blue-skirted suit with violent splotches of purple. Against this, her skin was a pale greenish-gray, finely webbed with wrinkles. Her arm was looped through a bright pink inner tube.
“Ah,” she said, beaming. “My swim escort.”
“You really want to do this?” he asked, as lightly as possible, though in fact he felt vaguely panicked. He might be responsible for Marianne von Lingenfels’s drowning. People would shake their heads and wonder what sort of idiot had allowed an old woman to climb into the cold northern Atlantic Ocean.
“Come,” Marianne said. “We will have an adventure.” She wrapped his hand under her arm and clutched it against her bony rib cage.
From the porch, there was a dusty path and a set of wooden steps over the rocks, which led to the dock. His bare feet smarted against the rough dirt, and a rivulet of sweat trickled down through the thin patch of hair on his chest. It was still blazing hot in the direct sun, but he did not falter.
And walking, he was struck suddenly by the memory of swimming in the small, gravel-shored German lake where they would picnic on Sundays after the war. “Schwimmen!” Marianne would bark at his mother and Ania and their children. “Nicht sitzen!” To Marianne, sitting and eating and skipping stones without first plunging in and swimming at least as far as the float was tantamount to sloth. She herself would swim all the way to the other side with her oddly effective head-above-the-water version of the crawl. She was so utterly German in those moments, so determined and so filled with the folksy belief in physical activity and the trappings of innocence, it was hard to separate her from the Teutonic forces she and Albrecht and Martin’s father had spent their lives conspiring against. And it was with simmering resentment that Martin would set out behind her, overtake her, and swim until his lungs almost burst.
“So what now?” he asked when they reached the dock. Waves crashed against the rocks of the shore and sucked back out, leaving eddies scurrying in the crevices.
“There is a ladder at the end,” Marianne said. “You should go in first”—she handed him the inner tube—“and hold this for me.”
“All right.” Martin accepted the plastic ring. The metal planks whistled in the wind.
Martin yelped when his bare feet came down on the dock’s gleaming surface. He ran forward and, with one ungraceful jump, dove into the water.
A shock ran through his body at the cold. He swam out a few lengths and watched Marianne as she navigated her own cleverly aqua-sock-shod way along the dock, holding the rails on either side. At the end, she removed her glasses and looped them over the railing by their strap. Then she stood, squinting down at him.
“It’s bracing!” Martin called, shielding his eyes with one hand. “Are you sure—?”
By way of answer, Marianne began the serious business of lowering herself down the ladder. Her foot paddled the air once, twice, before finding purchase on the top rung, and in the bright sun, her pale, naked limbs shone like some dangerous evolutionary beacon, beckoning the darkest forces of the sea. The ropy veins on her legs seemed treacherous and parasitic—strangling her fragile limbs. But when her feet entered the cold water, she did not flinch.
“Bring the donut here,” she directed. “You hold it steady while I sit.”
Martin did as instructed.
And then, with a surprisingly tremendous splash and a great bobbing jerk, she was in. Through the spray and the swelling waves, Martin held on. The water peeled away from his eyes, and there she was, in her donut, like some delicate hatchling in a postapocalyptic nest.