Mephisto Aria Page 5

  For the briefest moment Katherina resisted, her back stiffening. She froze, as if waiting for some third party to arbitrate, then relented. Her defenses fell—to the heat of Sabine’s mouth and the flickering invasion of her tongue, to the strong arm that slipped around her back, to the hand that dropped from her cheek to her breast.

  Her own hands did not know where to go. They landed, helpless, on Sabine’s upper arms and her fingers curled feebly to clutch Sabine’s sleeves. She inhaled Sabine’s breath, tasted Sabine’s saliva mixing with her own. The hand on her breast squeezed and caressed, then ventured farther, down the side of her leg and under her skirt. When the intruder’s fingertips touched the skin on the inside of her thigh, something in Katherina broke away. Will and flesh seemed to separate, and the flesh surrendered.

  This is not me. I am not doing this. Katherina told herself, This is another part of me that is just for now, that will go away again afterward. The thought seemed to free her to throw herself into the maelstrom that drew her ever downward.

  She melted, her sex pouring out hot syrup over Sabine’s invading fingers. Tiny demons gathered in her groin, flickering like fireflies, growing in number and intensity.

  Was she still kissing Sabine? Yes, their tongues still slipped past each other, their panting breaths—the only sound—blew across each other’s cheeks.

  The flashing demons congealed, deep inside of her, merged into a burning ring that set her trembling. Tighter and hotter the ring closed, until she could no longer endure it and she moaned into Sabine’s mouth. Then it broke. She shuddered as the convulsions erupted through her, then collapsed against Sabine’s shoulder.

  Spent, Katherina rested for several moments with her forehead against Sabine’s neck. As the euphoria evaporated, she became aware that nothing more was happening, no further tenderness, no gentle promises. “What do we do now?” she murmured.

  “Now?” Sabine answered. “Now you have a train to catch.”

  VIII

  Alla Marcia

  Katherina huddled in her bathtub, brooding, trying to make some sense of what had happened two hours before. She was not a child, she told herself. She knew what sexual pleasure was; she had experienced brief moments of it with the boys at university. This was simply more intense—probably because it was more forbidden. If she was ashamed, it was only because she had let it be imposed on her. She had consented, of course, but only just. Sabine’s actions were somewhere between assault and seduction, and deeply unsettling. More than that, it was indecent to do such a thing scarcely two weeks after her father’s suicide. She was supposed to be in mourning.

  At the same time, her body remembered Sabine’s prurient touch, the way the lascivious fingertips had brushed along her thigh, then slipped so easily inside her. Lewd though the whole experience had been, Katherina’s body craved the invasion again. She hated only that the conquest had been so simple and that she was the one conquered.

  Was that the entire range of sexual intimacy? The fumblings of well-meaning young men that ended up in pregnancy and then marriage, or lascivious encounters that set her on fire but left her humiliated? If that’s all there was, she would rather give herself to singing. That at least gave her a sense of elevation.

  She stepped out of the tub and dried herself. It was still early in the evening and she was restless, with no one to talk to. The afternoon’s event had added more questions to the ones already buzzing in her head. Her confusion about herself seemed of a piece with the enigma of her parents. So many mysteries, and they all weighed on her like a phantom on her shoulders.

  She settled into bed. When it was certain that sleep would not come, she picked up the journal again. She could hardly bear to read more reports of battlefront wounded, concentration camps, or firebombings, so she jumped ahead to the spring of 1945, to the final Allied victories.

  April 22, 1945—On the Brocken

  You can feel it everywhere, exhilaration on one side and terror on the other. These are the final days. The Red Army is well inside Germany now and a race is on with the western Allies to see who will get to Berlin first. In the Harz Mountains, there are scattered American units as well as Russian. Both wanted to claim the Brocken Peak and its radio transmitter. The Soviets got here first.

  I spent three days patching up wounded Russians for transport by truck to the evacuation station in the valley. The dead were buried, to prevent disease, the German wounded rounded up for the POW camps. My work is done now. Since the trucks are gone, the orderlies are bringing horses around for us to ride down into Wernigerode, where they’ll ship us back to Chuikov’s main force.

  I asked myself if I should try to escape the Red Army now that I’m in Germany. Woods are all around and I could easily run. But then I realized that’s insane. The Russians are the victors; why would I want to join the defeated? Besides, I made a deal, after all, and this is where it got me. I’m at the Brocken Stone now, the highest rock on the highest mountain in Germany, writing this by first light. The air is crystal clear. Looking out over the hills in all directions, I have the sense I’m seeing the whole world. Unbeliever that I am, I can’t help but think of the Temptation of Christ. Except Christ refused the devil’s offer. Foolish man; it got him crucified. But this is a more pagan place, possibly even a place of sacrifice. They call the rock I’m sitting on the Witches’ Altar. Something about a mountaintop stirs the imagination—toward gods in the morning and demons at night.

  I hear the horses they’ve got waiting. A bell is ringing, calling us to the canteen, and the sun is up.

  April 25, 1945

  The Red Army has linked up with the Americans on the Elbe River. Big celebration, back-slapping, photos, exchange of cigarettes. Berlin is encircled. It’s only a matter of days. Both armies are rushing from their respective positions; each one wants to be the first to take the city. I fervently hope it is the Americans. Doctors bring up the rear in the line of battle, but I still can’t bear the thought of following troops that storm through streets where I’ve lived, or shopped, or shared a beer. I dread to find my friends and family among the dead.

  The army paper, The Red Star, is full of Ilya Ehrenburg’s articles fomenting rage in the troops, as if it needed fomenting. His propaganda is extreme these days, even for him. “Germany is a witch,” he writes, and, “The Germans have no souls. Not only divisions and armies are advancing on Berlin. All the trenches, graves, and ravines filled with the corpses of the innocent are advancing on Berlin. All the cabbages of Majdanek and all the trees of Vitebsk on which the Germans hanged so many people. The boots and shoes and the babies’ slippers of those murdered and gassed are marching on Berlin. The dead are knocking on the doors in all the cursed streets of that cursed city.”

  May 2, 1945

  Berlin has fallen to the Russians. Yesterday the city still thundered with desperate battle but now there’s an eerie stillness. I sit here on the front of a Russian tank and watch the Soviet flag flutter on the roof of the Reichstag and I feel nothing. I’m without allegiance, cold as the wind blowing through these streets. This is day zero, month zero.

  This city was my home and now it’s a cadaver. Covered with soot that the slightest breeze stirs up. Streets full of craters. Broken pipes spew water or gas, which burns with a blue flame. The dead are everywhere: Wehrmacht, SS, the old men of the Home Guard who stood on their pathetic hills of dirt and shot at us. They lie in the streets and on the barricades.

  And the suicides. In the parks, on the benches or the ground, like picknickers who fell asleep. In the houses, whole families of the dead sit poisoned around the table or they hang in their cellars. They hang by the neck on the lampposts too, but these are executions. One of them, only a boy, had a sign pinned to his shirt: Coward.

  This is Germany’s payment for its devil’s pact.

  Some of our troops are out of control. Stealing anything that shines. And raping any woman they find. Brutally. I’ve heard horrendous stories. They remember what the German
s did when they blasted their way east and are giving it back double.

  I finally got a few hours’ leave and went to Babelsberg to see if my house was still standing. Everything was gone, the neighbors’ houses too. Elsewhere, walls and pillars are covered with chalk scribblings, desperate messages: “Looking for Karl Hartmann. Notify Red Cross—his brother Rudi,” or “We are alive, Hr & Fr Stolz.” But in the ruins of my street there are no walls left to write on.

  I’ll search until I find out for certain, but I think my parents are gone. If they were killed, it was by Allied bombs, but in a war that Germans started. Yet if they had gone back to Russia, Stalin would have killed them too. There’s no side I want to take. I wash my hands of all of them.

  It’s day zero for me too.

  June 10, 1945

  They are everywhere, the Trümmerfrauen. Women in filthy dresses with woolen scarves or rags around their heads. Clearing the blockage from the streets, they labor for food coupons—only workers get a livable ration—or to collect the bricks for themselves. They knock off loose mortar with their rusty hammers, pile up the bricks in carts, and strain starving muscles to drag them away. Other diggers ferret in the hills of gravel looking for firewood, flooring or broken furniture. They crawl over the mountains of rubble, digesting them like microbes, carrying away the useful particles to live.

  The city is quiet. All you hear is the clopping of wooden shoes, the ‘tok, tok’ of hammers, the rattle of handcarts. And everywhere ragged coughing.

  I see practically no men. Only the old and a few pathetic, broken soldiers in the ragged remains of Wehrmacht uniforms. Everyone is hungry and everyone smells bad. Only the allies have soap. The Germans have Ersatzseife, crumbly stuff that smells carbolic and even that’s scarce.

  How many years will pass before Germany recovers normalcy? Its dignity? Will children born tomorrow still suffer the guilt? Will mine? The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons…

  Black market is everywhere and cigarettes have more exchange value than Reichsmarks. A pack of British or American cigarettes will get you sex for the night. The victors have everything, can get anything, and what they trade out—cigarettes, cans of Spam, marmalade—filters out into the population.

  Commander Chuikov, who is in charge of Soviet occupation forces now, has not called on me for months, which makes it easier for me to lie low. I answer only to Dr. Tchelechev, who ignores me as long as I do my work. There are still sick and wounded to treat even while the division is reorganizing. It’s a good time to break away, but I can’t go back to being the felon that I was before the war, so I’ll stay on awhile with Chuikov’s army, for the regular meals, if for nothing else.

  June 15, 1945

  I tried again at the Red Cross to get information on Michael and Alma Marovsky, but found no record of them. Had an hour left on my leave so I walked around the Brandenburg Gate. In the Friedrichstrasse, only the façades of the national library and the opera are still standing. I watched two old men digging out a corpse. A woman, in an evening gown, of all things.

  A man leaning against a lamppost called out to me. I thought he wanted to strike some kind of deal, but I had nothing to trade. He had pale eyes, a thin blond beard along the edge of his chin. Well fed, he wore clean, tailored clothing. He pointed toward the opera house. “Staatsoper.” He spoke beautiful German, like an actor. “Strauss conducted here, and von Karajan.” He smoked leisurely, not like a hungry man. “And the singers: Melchior, Lehmann, and Chaliapin. Unforgettable.” He seemed to assume that I would know all the names and of course I did. “People poured in to listen, right up until ’45, when it was bombed.” He smoothed his fine leather gloves. “But it will be back,” he said, puffing on his cigarette. I could smell that it was good tobacco. Not like the trash the Red Army was issued. We watched the diggers heave the black corpse into the rubble cart. “It has a certain poetry, doesn’t it? Dying at the opera, I mean,” he added.

  “Not for me.” I thought of Stalingrad.

  “You seem like an intelligent man, an ambitious man,” he said. “I collect things and have things people usually want. Try me.” He offered his hand. “Peter Schalk. Businessman.”

  “I’m just a Russian soldier,” I said. “With no money.”

  “A Russian soldier who speaks perfect German. As for payment, there are many ways to pay. Pledges, goods in kind, counter-favors. I prefer long-term clients. Loyalty has its own value, don’t you think?”

  “How could I find you? If I did want something?”

  “Around here,” he said, sweeping his hand across the ruins. “If you don’t see me right away, just come back later. This is my terrain.”

  I walked away from the opera house and it struck me. There was something I wanted. I needed to kill Sergei Marovsky.

  IX

  Minaccioso

  A dog blocked Katherina’s path to the stage entrance to the concert hall. Plump and sleek, his coat long and black, he hardly seemed like a stray. But he had no collar and there was no one in sight who could claim him. He was neither hostile nor friendly, did not bark or wag. She took a tentative step forward, and still the beast did not move. He simply glared at her through orange-brown eyes, panting softly. Then, finally, he turned and trotted away.

  A bad omen for a performer, she thought, then scoffed at the superstition.

  Joachim von Hausen was nothing if not a man of the theater. To dramatize the opening sound of the great choral work, he had all house lights turned off, even the emergency-exit signs. For one long moment, the audience sat in chilling darkness. Then, as if some transcendent being had opened its eye, a single needle of white light shot down from the rafter onto his upraised baton. Another thirty seconds passed and the tension in the hall was palpable. The baton sliced suddenly downward like a whip and BOOM! The timpani thundered its opening crash.

  “Ooooooo Fortuna, veeeelut luna” the chorus sang, full-throated, ominous and ecstatic at once.

  The emotional level set, the work took off at full throttle. Pastoral maidens, randy suitors, roasted swans, drunken monks, all sang of lust and power and inebriation and doom, their chants sending wave after rhythmic wave of sound over the audience. Finally, Orff’s thundering great wheel came full circle. The opening chorus became the last, culminating in the shattering, orgiastic, nine-measure-long fortissimo chord of lament, “Plangiteeeee.” Hardly had the cry ended when the audience rose to its feet in ovation.

  Now Katherina stood in the post-concert reception line in the green room. In a few moments the well-wishers would flutter in like a flock of doves into a dovecote. Friends, fans, and regular—mostly elderly—concertgoers who viewed the reception as part of the evening’s performance. Usually they settled for a handshake, a few moments of small talk, an autographed program.

  Someone said, “What a lovely concert,” and another, “Such a beautiful voice.” She smiled and nodded toward the line of faces, familiar with every compliment. Sometimes they admired her concert dress or the way she interpreted the music. Katherina had struggled to craft a different response each time until she realized it was unnecessary. The hand-shakers did not really want to exchange ideas; they simply wanted to connect in some way with the musician, to prolong the evening.

  She replied to each remark and tried not to glance over at Sabine, who was in animated conversation with her own admirers. Katherina had not spoken to her since the evening before and Sabine showed no interest in her.

  Seduced and abandoned, Katherina thought to herself with bitter humor.

  The crowd of admirers had shifted again, and she focused on the next person. White-haired, probably in his seventies, he was elegantly dressed. Sleek, she might have said, except that sleek implied softness and he had nothing soft about him. He was trim, his haircut professional, as perfect as his charcoal suit. He offered his hand and she took it, found it cool and soft.

  “I trust you received my letter,” he said.

  She was confused for a moment.<
br />
  “Forgive me. I suppose it would be helpful if I told you my name.” He chuckled softly. “Raspin. Gregory Raspin. I sent the letter right after your splendid Tosca last month.”

  “Oh, yes. I did get it. Thank you. So much has happened recently, I haven’t had time to reply.”

  “That’s quite all right. It pleases me just to be sure it arrived so that you know how much you are appreciated. I am familiar with every nuance of the great women’s voices, and you should know I count yours among them.”

  “You are very kind,” she replied, as she always did to excessive flattery. In most cases, she knew, the fan said it to every singer they got the chance to meet.

  “I am also fortunate to be able to support great vocal music—in my way,” he added cryptically.

  The public had begun to filter out of the green room. “I believe your conductor wishes to speak with you.” Gregory Raspin touched her elbow delicately with a fingertip, causing her to turn. Then he stepped away and joined the mass of departing well-wishers.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to talk to you earlier today.” Joachim von Hausen was already at her side. He guided her back to the rear door of the green room. “Too many last-minute preparations for the concert.” His eyes sparkled and he paused, like a person about to bestow a gift. “As you might know, I’ve been rehearsing Rosenkavalier in Salzburg. Agnes Schongauer, who is singing the role of Sophie, has had a car accident.”

  “An accident? I’m so sorry to hear it. Not serious, I hope.” Katherina wondered why he was telling her that. She did not know Agnes Schongauer.

  “She’ll be all right—just a few broken ribs—but she has had to cancel, obviously. Salzburg does the casting, you know, but I have recommended they offer the part to you. Assuming your agent likes the contract, Salzburg’s approval will largely be a formality. They’ve never said no to me before. So the question is, can you learn the part of Sophie in two weeks?”