First, Alice helps her into the supportive hose Marianne has to wear underneath her skirt to stop her blood from pooling, or seizing, or whatever it is. She holds on to Alice’s strong back while the younger woman rolls the stockings up over her puffy, mottled knees. It strikes Marianne as funny that Alice is now more familiar with Marianne’s body than she is herself.
After the hose, Alice helps Marianne pull on her tweed skirt and gray silk blouse. Before she left, Elisabeth sent her a navy-blue tunic and a buttonless jacket composed of a lovely half-cashmere fabric for the occasion. Something to wear on your big day, the card read, as if Marianne was a child going off to perform in a spelling bee. There is not enough air in a room for Marianne and Elisabeth to share. They have learned this the hard way, but acceptance of the fact has made life easier. Now they see each other twice a year, for a weekend in the early summer and for the American holiday of Thanksgiving. For both occasions, Katarina, Fritz, and their children are present to diffuse the tension. Elisabeth never married. She is now the president of a well-regarded university, a celebrity in her own right. This navy-blue lounge suit is the sort of thing she wears to family holidays or weekend brunch. For speeches or awards or television appearances, she always wears crisp Angela Merkel suits. Marianne can overlook the insult inherent in this, but she will not wear the outfit.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“Beautiful,” Alice says. “Like yourself.”
In the mirror, an old woman with a stern expression stares back.
Downstairs, the first party of the weekend has begun.
Various fellows—mostly Europeans and a few Africans, a small cadre of Chinese dissidents—mill around a table of wine and hors d’oeuvres: fancy cheeses and pickles and ham toasts, platters of shrimp cocktail and chicken satay, a funny mixture of European and American cuisine. The countess would approve of such eclecticism. But the Falkenberg Institute itself would be far too serious for the countess’s taste.
Marianne is overwhelmed by the internationalness of the world represented here. So many cultures and backgrounds in a castle built to protect some probably illiterate, surely small-minded feudal overlord. There was a point in her life, not so long ago, in which the castle’s transformation, the diversity of this audience, would have seemed like insurance against the rise of another Nazi-like regime. But now the connection feels obscure. Her hip aches, and her face is stiff. There are so many people in the world. This, above all, is what Marianne sees demonstrated here.
Claire arrives and makes a beeline for Marianne, full of questions and ideas, accompanied by people she would like to introduce. She is lovely with her thick, dark hair piled messily on top of her head, wearing a bright red low-cut blouse. Marianne thinks of Benita, who lived at a time when it was impossible to be both intellectual and voluptuous. It gives her a pang of sadness. Unlike Claire, Benita was a prisoner of her own beauty.
“How was the trip? Did you request the vegetarian meal? What do you think of the renovation?” Claire takes Marianne’s arm and leads her through the party, whispering information and making introductions. There is a German woman studying Sophie Scholl and a Swiss “fan” of Marianne’s, and the man organizing Albrecht’s letters into a new book. Marianne shakes hands and tries to listen and absorb. But her eyes keep flickering to the door. How silly that she did not arrange for a more private place to first meet Ania.
And then there she is. An old woman stands in the doorway with someone who must be her daughter: little Mary, Marianne’s namesake. Ania is smaller than she remembers and uses a cane, but her back is surprisingly straight. Her hair hangs around her face in a neat and sensible bowl cut. But her face! It is old, wizened with wrinkles of every direction and stripe. She looks into the room with an expression that is at once tremendously sorrowful and alert. When her eyes land on Marianne, they ignite. And she is Ania again—full of the same unique and unflappable strength. How familiar she is still, from the forward jut of her head to the intense seriousness of her gaze.
“Ah, this is the guest you have been waiting for,” Claire says, following Marianne’s gaze. “You must introduce me!” It has become clear to Marianne that she has spoken remarkably little of Ania or Benita to Claire, despite all their long hours of interviews. The fact makes her uncomfortable, as if the women are secrets she has kept.
Somehow, with the help of Martin, who swoops in from the side, Marianne makes her way over to her friend.
“Frau von Lingenfels!” Ania’s daughter exclaims with a smile—she has a kind, attractive, if slightly beleaguered face.
Ania is silent, but her eyes are bright as she reaches for Marianne’s hand. And grasping it in her own—brittle, aged, claw on claw—she gives it a squeeze.
“I always knew we would see each other again,” Ania says.
“Of course,” Marianne answers, though to her, this did not always seem evident.
The last time Marianne saw Ania was the day before Rainer died. It was late November 1950 and winter had set in. Before that, she had not seen her friend in weeks, not since that horrible day she had walked up the hill to the castle and discovered Rainer.
Wolfgang had appeared at Marianne’s door, blue with cold, stamping his feet, blowing on his hands. He was thin and rawboned in the manner of a growing calf and shifted uncomfortably on his feet. For the first time, possibly ever, Marianne had felt something soft and genuine for him. “Don’t just stand there letting in the cold air,” she ordered, as if he were her own son.
Uneasy silence descended as she opened and closed the bare cupboards to find coffee and milk to serve.
“How can I help you?” she asked when he was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee between his palms.
Wolfgang cleared his throat. At age thirteen he still had a boy’s manner, although his voice was low and his chin awkwardly whiskered. “Herr Brandt—my father”—his eyes darted to meet hers and then away again—“is very ill. He can’t sleep. My mother wondered if you had any laudanum.”
Marianne regarded the boy. His face betrayed great discomfort: Embarrassment? Pain? Sadness? Probably all three.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I imagine I can get you some.”
“Thank you,” he stammered. “My mother will appreciate—”
“You have been dealt a bad hand,” she said, cutting him off. “But it isn’t your fault.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“You are not responsible for your parents’ mistakes.”
The words emerged from her mouth without forethought, inspired by the young man’s miserable face. But were they true? Hadn’t she taught her own children to accept their father’s heroism as part of their inheritance? So wouldn’t this also be true in the reverse?
She stood for a moment, staring at him, until he lifted his eyes.
“When do you need this?” she asked.
She delivered the medicine herself.
Inside the castle, it smelled of coal smoke and sickness. The man lay on a mattress beside the stove. He was paler and more skeletal than he had been when Marianne first saw him. Sweat shone on his face.