The Rose Gardener Page 11

The Germans declared a general prohibition on public gatherings which encompassed even the most harmless pastimes, such as bridge clubs. They imposed a nightly curfew. It was understood that the operation of the island’s schools, which had been interrupted shortly before the invasion, should resume as soon as possible. The foremost goal for instruction would be the teaching of the German language.

  July was dry and hot and hopeless. Beatrice made no more attempts to leave the house. She looked after the roses. For her this meant feeling connected to her father, and it drew only a condescending smile from Erich — but at least it was tolerated.

  “Now is not the time for flowers and other frivolous things,” he said. “There’s a war on. Ultimately, however, I have nothing against your tending to the garden, Beatrice.”

  True to his word, he insisted that she take daily German lessons from Will. Beatrice hated learning German, but she told herself that the situation on the island could last a long while yet. It would only be an advantage for her to understand the language of the enemy.

  And besides, she got on well with Will. A friendship quickly developed between them. He became a stand-in for the older brother she had always wished she had. She had hoped that he would live with her and Erich in the house, but apparently Erich didn’t consider this appropriate. He had put Will in the small apartment in the loft above the barn, which had always housed the workers Andrew had taken on every now and again. The whitewashed room, with its sloping walls, was actually quite comfortable, thanks to Deborah’s work furnishing it. Flowery drapes billowed in front of the dormer window in the warm summer wind; the bed could serve as a couch during the day, and there was a round table and a wicker chair, a washbasin in the corner with a mirror set above it, and a small electric hot plate with a tea kettle. Will had said he would come over to the house for the lessons, but Beatrice had explained that she would like it better if she could come to him. Will accepted this without asking why, and Beatrice guessed that he understood her motive: this way it was possible for her to be at least a few steps removed from the realm of Erich’s influence. To Erich she claimed to not be able to concentrate in the house, and he could hardly argue with such a claim. There was in fact a steady stream of officers entering and exiting the place. Meetings were held, cars came and went, and there was always hectic activity.

  And so every afternoon at three o’clock, Beatrice climbed the steep ladder leading up into Will’s domain, where for two hours she would grapple with the confusing and complicated rules of the German language. Will would receive her each time with a large pot of tea and a few words full of humor and encouragement. He would never have risked uttering an angry word about Erich in Beatrice’s presence, but she was quick to realize that he did not like his superior. He seemed equally unhappy with his role as part of an occupying army, but this, too, he refrained from putting into words.

  Only once did he dare come near to broaching the risky subject. It was when Beatrice appeared a few minutes too early for a lesson and arrived to find him writing a letter. He had just put down his pen and was staring out through the little dormer window at the hot July day, which was heavy with the smell of flowers. The day held the threat of a coming storm that filled people and animals alike with a strange restlessness. A sadness showed in his face that Beatrice found strangely moving.

  “Will,” she said timidly.

  He jumped. He hadn’t heard her come in.

  “Oh, you’re here already,” he said. His features relaxed. He was the same cheerful Will again, who knew how to bring joy to others. But Beatrice had seen the other side of him.

  “I’ll put the water on for tea now,” he said. “Or do you think it’s too hot today for tea?”

  “I’d rather have some cold water,” Beatrice replied. After a brief pause, she added. “You looked so sad, Will. What’s wrong?”

  He filled two glasses with water and set them on the table. “I’ve just written a letter to my parents. Somehow …” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Are you homesick?” Beatrice asked.

  Will hesitated, then he nodded. “I miss my family. But then you know all too well what that’s like.”

  They looked at each other in earnest, the eleven-year-old girl and the grown man, both bound together in this moment by pain. It formed a bond stronger than anyone could have expected, united them despite the war, despite the barriers of their two different languages and two different nationalities. Finally, Beatrice said, softly, “But I didn’t choose to be separated from my parents. And you …”

  “Oh, it’s not as simple as that, Beatrice. If you think that I wanted anything like this situation, such as it is …” He sounded so bitter all of a sudden. She had never heard him speak like this before. “You mustn’t think that all German soldiers are happy with the way things have turned out,” he said quickly. But then, suddenly, he seemed aware that he had gone too far. He smiled and said, “But these aren’t the things we should be concerning ourselves with. You’re here to learn German. Will you show me your homework? I’m sure that, yet again, you’ve managed not to make a single mistake.”

  He was afraid of Erich, Beatrice could tell. Everyone was afraid of Erich. The many soldiers who were coming in and out each day displayed an obsequiousness that was apparent to Beatrice even without understanding the language. No one seemed to want to cross him in even the least of ways. Beatrice imagined that the caution they all showed in their dealings with him was connected to the complete unpredictability of his nature. She had never known a person whose moods changed so frequently and so drastically over the course of the day. Sometimes she felt like she was dealing with completely different people. Eventually, though, she noticed that there was a certain pattern to Erich’s moodswings.

  Early in the morning he was tired, looked ill, spoke hardly a word and never touched his breakfast. He drank only strong, black coffee and smoked his first frantic cigarette of the day. Then, however, his mood improved rapidly. Even his appearance improved. He got more color in his cheeks, his eyes shone, he became talkative and lively, almost cordial. Not even bad news could bother him during this phase, and whoever came to see him was received with magnanimous offers of cigarettes and liquor.

  Things went downhill again in the early afternoon, but now he wasn’t tired and sluggish, as in the morning, but filled with a buzzing nervousness. He couldn’t sit still. He paced back and forth. He smoked like a fiend, stomping out each half-smoked cigarette only to light a new one a second later. He shouted at anyone who got in his way and sometimes his hands shook so much he could hardly hold a cup of coffee. Around five — Beatrice could have set her watch by it — he passed his lowest point and slowly transformed into the all-too-talkative, unnaturally good humored man that Beatrice still remembered from that first evening. Starting at six o’clock he enjoyed a few aperitifs with guests — every evening he would invite officers to come for dinner — and later he drank wine, which he reacted to by turning beet red in the face and by growing ever more wild in his hand gestures. He laughed, talked, declaimed his theories about how things stood in the world. But at some point, usually quite suddenly and without any real transition, he collapsed. He was overcome with a leaden weariness, he sank into a melancholy that bordered on depression. His skin grew pallid, his lips grey. Sometimes Beatrice would hear him wandering through all the rooms and muttering all kinds of things to himself. She could hear him, but she could not understand.

  One day towards the end of July, their German lesson began with Will smiling conspiratorially and saying, in a hushed voice, “Mrs. Feldmann is expected today. She should be here around five.”

  Until this moment, Beatrice hadn’t known that Erich was married. “Really?” She asked in surprise.

  Will nodded. “Apparently she didn’t want to come here at all, but Major Feldmann insisted on it. I mean, sure, I imagine he has no interest in flying solo the whole t
ime.”

  Beatrice needed a few moments to recover from the shock. It wasn’t like she found it pleasant to spend her days alone with Erich, but still, at least the current situation was beginning to become familiar to her. Mrs. Feldmann was an unknown, and this filled her with fear. She might turn out to be a tyrant. She would make life even more difficult for her.

  “Oh, Will,” said Beatrice with a sigh. “What’s Mrs. Feldmann like?”

  “I don’t know her,” Will said regretfully. “All I’ve heard is that she’s supposed to be very beautiful.”

  For Beatrice, that was even more disheartening. She imagined an elegant, glamorous woman who would swoop in like a movie star and scoff at all she saw around her. In all likelihood nothing would be fancy enough for her and the first thing she’d do was to order a whole slew of changes. A man like Erich, who clearly held a position of some consequence on the island, just had to have an exceptional wife.

  She’d already been depressed and unhappy that day. She had been hoping all this time that some kind of message would reach her from her parents, but there was neither a letter nor a postcard, and the telephone never rang at all, no matter how imploringly she stared at it. Will said it didn’t mean anything, of course, since there wasn’t any possibility of contact between England and the Channel Islands, but Beatrice was hoping beyond all reason that her parents would manage to get a message through to their daughter. That this didn’t happen made her gloomy. She still wasn’t able to cry over the cruel changes in her life, but the pain that filled her soul grew stronger. On top of this, Erich had shouted at her violently over breakfast. He had spoken to her in German and she hadn’t understood him, which had made him angry. As he saw it, she was progressing far too slowly.

  “Two hours a day you’re up there in that room, you and Will. What is it you two are doing?” he screamed. His usual morning lethargy gave way to a violent rage. “Are you playing Parcheesi or what?” He gave Beatrice a dark look. “Either way it’s not good that you’re spending time alone with a young man in his quarters. I should have realized that a long time ago. From now on, he comes over here, and everything happens under my supervision, understood?”

  Luckily, he was in a good mood at midday, and when Beatrice excused herself to go to Will’s, he seemed to have forgotten his order from that morning. He just nodded. Absentmindedly, he said, “Yes, run along. Study hard, do you hear? I’ve got big expectations for you.”

  She didn’t know what he’d meant with that last thing he’d said, but she found it unsettling.

  She mentioned Erich’s unpredictable moods to Will. He replied cautiously, saying that many people had taken note of this and that it was a frequent topic of conversation on the island.

  “Luckily, I more or less know when to stay out of his way,” said Beatrice. Softly, she added, “if only it were finally over!”

  They were both struggling to get through the afternoon. Will seemed distracted and Beatrice made considerably more mistakes than usual. When they were finished, Will pressed a book into her hands and told her she should try to have the first chapter read by tomorrow.

  “Head on back,” he said, “and don’t worry too much. Maybe Mrs. Feldmann’s perfectly nice.”

  Beatrice had no interested in dealing with even one of the Feldmanns, and so she snuck off into the garden at once and found her favorite spot: a tall, white stone wall, where her father had planted a grapevine. Conditions on the islands weren’t ideal for wine grapes, but they did quite well if the vines were planted in a sunny spot, propped up, and protected from the wind. Andrew had built the white wall himself. It reflected both light and warmth, and they had always been able to harvest a few grapes. But disrepair had started to set in here as well. Beatrice saw the signs already, the weeds that crept out from the earth and spread in every direction.

  “Poor garden,” she whispered. “But I can’t do anything. I can’t do enough.”

  She opened the book and tried to read the first story, but her vocabulary was still too limited and she couldn’t manage to make sense of any of the sentences. Worn out and frustrated, she finally gave up. I’ll probably never learn this language, she thought wearily.

  The heat made her sleepy. She dozed a bit, and might even have fallen asleep for a few moments. She jumped when she heard the noises. In that first instant she didn’t know what they were. Then she realized that it was a woman crying, not far from her, and she stood up to go investigate.

  The woman was hiding out past the wall. She sat on the stone lip of a birdbath which no one had filled with water in weeks. Thick bunches of moss sprouted out of every crack. The white summer dress that the woman was wearing would have green stains on it when she stood up. She was holding her head in her hands. Her sobs came in fits; they died down, then grew even heavier. Her blond hair shone red in the evening sunlight. It was arranged in a complicated coiffure, but some of the pins had already come undone and long, wavy strands fell over the woman’s shoulders.

  By instinct, Beatrice knew at once that she was looking at Mrs. Feldmann. “Hello,” she said timidly.

  Mrs. Feldmann raised her head with a jerk and looked at Beatrice. Her face was wet with tears, her eyes blood red. Perhaps it was this that made her look younger than she was; in any case she seemed very young to Beatrice, scarcely half Erich’s age. Her dress was elegant and made from good material, but there was nothing fashionable about her. She looked like a sad little girl, who’s gotten lost and doesn’t know how she’ll ever find her way back home.

  “Hello,” she replied and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She seemed to want to stand up, but at the same time she seemed unable to find the strength. “You must be Beatrice.” Her English was less accented than her husband’s, but she had to pause more often to search for the right words. “My husband has told me about you. I am Helene Feldmann.”

  She searched in her skirt pockets, found a wrinkled handkerchief and wiped her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought there wouldn’t be anyone in the garden. You must have a strange impression of me.” Her voice shook. She could burst into tears again at any moment.

  “I was sitting over there behind the wall,” said Beatrice. “I was trying to read this book.” She held up the book that Will had given her. “But I barely understand a thing. I’m trying to learn German, but somehow I’m just not getting any better.”

  “You’ll get there,” said Helene. “You learn quickly at your age. Sometimes you think you won’t get any further, but then suddenly the floodgates open up and you don’t even know why you were having problems before. You’ll see, pretty soon you’ll be dreaming in German.”

  That wasn’t exactly a comforting notion for Beatrice, but she understood that Helene meant well. The fears she’d harbored towards the unknown Mrs. Feldmann all dissolved; but the hope, flaring up for just a few seconds, that she had found someone who would take her in her arms and ask about the pain she felt, left just as quickly as it had come. Helene might have been a grown woman, but she had the constitution of a bird fallen from its nest. The comfort she could provide would be limited to her helpless efforts to find the right words; and even as she searched for them, her eyes would always be begging for comfort themselves.

  Helene began to cry again. She stammered out an apology for this, but obviously she wasn’t able to stop her tears. Beatrice waited for a moment, then, carefully, she sat next to her on the mossy edge of the birdbath. Finally, she shyly put her arm around Helene’s shoulders.

  This gesture was enough. It caused Helene to lose the last bit of her self-control. She buried her face in Beatrice’s neck, sobbing loudly.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Beatrice, without believing that what she said was true and without knowing what Helene’s pain consisted of. Helene cried and cried, but gradually she grew calmer, her body stopped trembling. She seemed to find some kind of hope,
without being able to say, exactly, what this hope consisted of. All her life she had been looking for this support — and in the eleven-year-old Beatrice, she had found it.

  8

  “And it’s been that way ever since,” said Beatrice. Kevin, who had just placed a vegetable casserole on the table, looked up at her in surprise.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking about Helene. About our first meeting among all the roses in our garden.”

  “I’ve told you once already, you shouldn’t think so much about the past.”

  “It’s strange,” Beatrice said dreamily. “There are so many small details that come back to you when you really try and remember. Things that you haven’t thought of for decades. Suddenly they’re right there again.”

  “And what is it that’s come back to you?” Kevin asked. “What important detail?”

  “I remembered the dress that Helene wore that day. I see it right there in front of me. For the longest time I wouldn’t have been able to describe it, but now I know what it looked like again.”

  Kevin brought the potatoes. “And what’s so special about that?”

  “Nothing. I just find it interesting, the way we remember things. Helene’s dress back then looked exactly like her clothes look today: romantic, fanciful, like a little girl’s dress. She has never deviated from that style. It’s as if she’d just stopped at a certain stage and was never able to progress any further.”

  “That’s just the way she is.”

  “Something else occurred to me. Helene lay in my arms and wept, and at some point, after an endless amount of time, her tears dried up and she pulled herself away from me. And then she said to me …”

  She paused. “What did she say?” Kevin asked.

  “It was something close to her saying that I was a brave little girl, I was strong, and there was no question that one day I’d take my life in my own hands and … face whatever came my way without fear.”