The Twins (10 page)

That even greater preparations were being made beyond the convent wall did not get through to them. There was no radio, no newspaper, only a gramophone with a stock of fashionable popular songs, to which they danced with the younger nuns – beneath the disapproving gaze of a cardinal in purple formal robes whose
portrait
hung over the fireplace. The tango ‘Was machst du mit dem Knie, lieber Hans’ made Anna most breathless; she circled across
the dance floor at a wild pace, her stockings sagging, her partner’s habit clutched against her calves. It was the top hit in the convent until one day Anna listened carefully to the words and discovered that Hans was using the tango as an alibi to drive his knee like a wedge between the thighs of his partner on each upbeat. She warned Sister Clementine, who was swirling round in the arms of a sturdily built orphan girl, a blissful smile on her lips as though she were in the arms of her heavenly bridegroom. The record was put on again; still breathing hard, the nun listened to the words with her eyes closed. She swayed her head gently in time. Blushes slowly appeared on her cheeks, her mouth dropped open. The last sounds left a hideous silence behind. With raised head, Sister Clementine walked to the gramophone and lifted the record off the turntable with two outstretched fingers. Following Hans’s example she raised her knee. Without scruple she brought the record down on it and broke it in two.

Anna’s stained honour had been avenged, but she soon
discovered
that far greater humiliations threatened it. One of the Mittagstischgäste was a forester, a middle-aged man, with a jagged purple scar precisely in the middle of his bald head, as though a drunken surgeon had undertaken an unsuccessful attempt at
lobotomy
. Whenever anyone’s eyes fell on it he declared casually that it had been a piece of shrapnel during a night-time patrol. Anna served him with scrupulous respect,
All
Quiet
on
the
Western
Front
still in the back of her mind. That pleased him; familiarity would have offended him. One day with an authoritative nod he beckoned her over. He seized her by one wrist. ‘And …’ his eyes shone
suggestively
, ‘have the nuns let their hair grow?’ ‘What do you mean?’ With vicarious shame Anna thought of Sister Clementine’s cropped head that she had once seen, moved by its vulnerable
nakedness
. ‘Because soon, when the convents are shut down, they’ll all have to get out of their habits,’ he said with a greasy laugh. ‘Then we’ll really see what they’ve got for legs!’ Her wrist was released. Her serving tray with full dishes was trembling in her hands; she
crashed it down on one of the tables to be rid of it and ran blindly out of the dining-room without bothering about the other guests. Her pulse was throbbing at her temples, the clumping of her feet resounded through the lofty corridors. She knocked sharply on Mother Superior’s door. Once inside she forgot all the rules of politeness and, out of breath, blurted out the self-evident
expectation
that the filthy Mittagstischgast would immediately be dragged out by his pigs ears from behind his piled-up plate, through the corridor of the convent and deposited on the granite pavement, after which the bang of the closing door would resound in his ears for days to come.

‘Gently, shhh, quiet now …!’ The abbess raised her hands beseechingly: ‘What exactly did he say?’ ‘That all the sisters must take off their habits because the convents are being closed. How can he say such a thing?’ panted Anna. Mother Superior walked softly to the door, which Anna had left open, and shut it carefully. ‘Let us pray,’ she said, turning round. ‘How did he get that idea?’ Anna insisted stubbornly. The abbess sighed. ‘That doesn’t
concern
us, it is all politics. They have all chosen that Antichrist together – he wants to close the convents and churches. Let us pray that it will never happen.’ ‘Antichrist?’ Anna stammered. The forester acquired horns on either side of his scar. Mother Superior put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Adolf Hitler,’ she said gently.

A short circuit in Anna’s head. A photograph, Bernd Möller, Uncle Heinrich, whizzed past each other, contradictory, evil. The champion of the poor and the unemployed turned out to be a destroyer of churches and convents. Her uncle was still being proved right – but did that justify the assault? How could she have been so mistaken? She was ashamed – at the same time she felt
contempt
for this titanic idealist’s arrogance: how could he do
anything
to Christendom, or the Church, which had already held out for nineteen centuries? God would intercede personally, she was sure. That’s why Mother Superior said ‘Let us pray’. A strong faith; no attacker would be a match for it. The abbess went to the
window and looked outside, a halo of yellow lime leaves around her wimple. ‘What we have discussed here,’ she said calmly, ‘stays within the four walls of my room. Never talk about it with the others, you will get yourself into trouble.’ Anna nodded, although she was not afraid of anyone.

The first month of the year 1933 was almost over when Anna looked down below out of a window on the first floor, and saw a gigantic flag flying where two roads crossed at the centre of the
village
. She recognized the spiders’ legs with the points bent to the right; they rotated before your eyes if you looked at them for long. She hurried irreverently down the broad oak stairs, her footsteps rattling through the staircase. ‘A flag!’ she cried, storming into the refectory where two nuns were laying plates on the table with the precision of draughts pieces. ‘They have hung out that flag, in the middle of the village, and no one is taking it down!’ Mother Superior came in because of the racket, a soothing expression on her face. ‘If I were a boy,’ Anna raised her hands, ‘it wouldn’t be up there any more!’ ‘But you are a girl,’ the abbess reminded her, ‘so behave like one.’ ‘But that flag …’ Anna spluttered, pointing through the walls at the thing that taunted the sky. Mother Superior shook her head. ‘Anna you lack moderation. There are two possibilities for you: either you will become something
formidable
or you will end up in the gutter, there is nothing in between.’ ‘But the Nazarene said …’ she stammered, gasping for breath, ‘… “because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth” …’ The abbess laughed indulgently. ‘Ach Anna, we could take that flag down, but what it stands for … we are powerless against that. Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich today.’

Annoyed, Anna ran outside. The word ‘powerless’ coming from the mouth of the Mother Superior was an insult addressed to the Almighty. The gate of the convent closed behind her with a crash. The road led straight down to the crossroads. She stopped beneath the flagpole. She threw her head back. It was no more than
a piece of cloth. If it rained it would get wet, in the wind it would flap. There wasn’t much left of the provocative character she had seen from the window on the first floor. From close up, as an object, it rated disappointing. She turned round in order to see the convent better for once. But it paled into insignificance, together with the church, the naked treetops, the January greyness of walls and roofs, in comparison with the red-white-black decoration on the spires of the fairy-tale castle. Von Zitsewitz had also hung out the flag.

‘They were so good to me …’ Anna took her leave from the nuns. Her education in the convent had been completed, the
tuberculous
cold treated, she had gained fifteen kilos, a layer of hard skin had grown over her inner injuries. It gave her an
unprecedented
self-assurance to have been brought back from absolute rock bottom. She returned home, down from the mountain to the river. She would not allow herself to be taken advantage of again. Uncle Heinrich – joy at her return gleamed through his reticence. Aunt Martha – her jealousy at Anna’s rosy appearance, the
frustration
that she was alive at all, gleamed through her forced
self-control
. But she kept quiet: the eyes of the world (pastor, child welfare) were directed at her from now on.

During Anna’s voluntary exile a change had crept into the
village
. Ever since farmers’ sons with their own horses had been able to enlist in Hitler’s élite corps, the Reiter SA, its image had risen to staggering heights. Moreover, he had upgraded the farming classes to the honorary first rank of providers in the Third Reich, the pivot on which society turned, the Reichsnährstand. Former school comrades, brothers and lovers of Anna’s former friends – almost everyone joined the SA. No longer did anyone say: you don’t do a thing like that. Only in the Catholic Congregation of Virgins, to which she had belonged since her confirmation at fourteen, were there some girls who shared Anna’s distaste. The leader of the
congregation
, Frau Thiele, a teacher in whose class they had all been, had hastily set up a singing group, a dance group and a theatre group, to prevent her pupils going over to the Nazi youth
organization
, the Bund Deutscher Mädel, BDM, which had beaten her to it. Nevertheless her days as leader were numbered. A decree
obliged her to join the National Socialist teachers’ union. A
subsequent
decree forbade members of this union from being active in church organizations.

Jacobsmeyer took Anna to one side after mass. ‘Listen Anna,’ he looked at her conspiratorially, ‘this time I want to ask something of you. Will you replace Frau Thiele as leader of the congregation?’ ‘I?’ Anna’s voice caught. ‘I’m just eighteen, they won’t take me
seriously
!’ ‘Shhh,’ he calmed her, ‘I haven’t finished yet. At the same time you and a group of trustworthy girls will join the BDM.’ Anna’s mouth dropped open. He unfolded his plan, smiling slightly. To infiltrate the girls’ section of the Hitler Youth, to bring him reports of everything that went on there and, finally, with God’s help, to undermine the local section from within. ‘You can do it Anna. I’ve known you a long time.’ Anna stared at him with bewilderment. This representative of God, so trusted and reliable in the incense-scented robe in which he had just conducted the mass, would shrink from nothing! It filled her with pride that he had selected her for this mission. At last she could do something instead of remaining stuck in the fatalism that Mother Superior had preached. ‘Will you do it or won’t you?’ Jacobsmeyer asked.

One Sunday she sang and danced for the Catholic Church, the next for the Hitler Youth – in a dark blue skirt with white blouse and brown jacket, the neckscarf through a ring-shaped toggle of plaited leather links. Jacobsmeyer was well rewarded. They received political training and learned how to write press reports. Anna was praised for her ability with the pen. Uncle Heinrich looked the other way, having been put in the picture by Jacobsmeyer. One sunny day in April the headmaster, who
remembered
Anna as an exceptional pupil, cycled out to the farm. ‘I’ve brought you something.’ He took a thin book out of his briefcase. ‘Will you learn this by heart? The fact of the matter is a big
celebration
is being organized on the first of May: a play is being staged.’ Anna wiped her muddy hands on her overall and leafed through it quickly. Uncle Heinrich came over suspiciously. ‘The
Kreisleiter, the political chief of the district, is looking for a Germania …’ The teacher picked nervously at the lock on his case. ‘she has to be sturdily built and blonde.’ ‘Why our Anna of all people?’ said Uncle Heinrich; ‘There are plenty more blonde girls in the village’. ‘Because she’s the only one who speaks decent German and can recite poetry.’ ‘Yes, that she can,’ boomed Uncle Heinrich, ‘but listen here … Germania! That’s really going too far!’ ‘We’ve got no one else,’ the headmaster pleaded. ‘I am a
public
servant. I have a family. I must see that it happens.’

There were rehearsals all month long. At the dress rehearsal Anna wore an elaborate wig of long blonde curls. With a straight face she had to recite the most melodramatic verses that ever flowed from a German pen. A soldier from the war with a bloody bandage round his head lay at her feet; he had to be visible from the back of the hall. Anna positioned herself facing an imaginary horizon, ‘All around I see distress in German provinces, no rays of hope, no
sunlight
… poor, unhappy Germania, all her sons are dying here … the people are laid low there …’ The only acting talent required of the soldier was to be dead in a convincing manner, but the artery in his neck ignored the stage directions and pulsed so firmly that Anna burst out laughing half-way through the elegy. Shaking all over – the curls joining in subversively – Germania stumbled from the stage, her hand over her mouth, as though she might pass out at any moment. ‘What’s going on now,’ shouted the director, at the end of his tether because it was forbidden to fail. ‘I can’t go on,’ Anna hiccuped from the wings, ‘if I’ve got to be serious! In God’s name put a bandage round his neck too …’

But on the first of May, Germania did not desert her role for a moment. She acted with so much dedication that she convinced herself too, not just her audience. Afterwards the Kreisleiter opened the ball. Without giving her a chance to change, he invited her to dance with an authoritative nod of the head. They waltzed over the empty dance floor, her chin on his epaulette, the goddess costume billowing out, the curls describing a circle round her
head. Around them, boys in uniform and girls with garlands in their hair watched in admiration. The Kreisleiter was dancing with her! She was the tangible symbol of something they believed in, unsuspecting that the symbol in question had sneaked inside from an enemy camp. The triumph went to her head. The Kreisleiter held on to her firmly, as though from then on he would
energetically
take good care of the sorrowful Germania’s fate. Anna felt herself submitting to temptation, allowing herself to be led with her eyes closed, and thoroughly enjoying her new status. Her
former
one, that of the poor maltreated orphan, was now quite
hopelessly
outdated. After the celebration she floated home on a pink cloud with golden edges. Uncle Heinrich tore the cloud to shreds with his scepticism. ‘That’s how they get young people to do their dirty work,’ he said disdainfully, ‘the seducers. Now even you see how they do it.’

The district section of the BDM sent a young woman with expertly pinned-up hair to the village to introduce morning
gymnastics
to the local section. From then on they had to gather on the square by the church at the crack of dawn, she announced, not to start the day with Our Father, but to hoist the flag, sing the national hymn and the Horst Wessel song. After that they would do morning gymnastics for a healthy and supple body, pushing up, swinging round, bending the knees, arms raised, bending over. She lectured them in a high-pitched urban accent. The charitable farmers’ daughters observed her silently and full of inner
resistance
. How could they combine all these rituals with their work on the farm, which had already begun while it was still dark? Anna’s eyes narrowed. When the woman had finished she stepped
forwards
out of the circle. ‘I invite you,’ she said, ‘to start the
gymnastics
with me at five in the morning on the farm. You can pump water, feed the chickens and fifty pigs, give the calves water, and during the milking you can raise your arms up high and bend your knees, while the animals are content beside you.’ The circle burst into relieved laughter. The leader laughed along with them,
shocked; she rearranged something in her hairdo and hastily
disappeared
. Nearby yet unseen, Jacobsmeyer recorded her first success. There was no more mention of morning gymnastics.

In the autumn Hitler called the farmers together at Bückeberg near Hamelen to celebrate the harvest festival. Uncle Heinrich went along, curious despite himself. After he got back he fell into a gruesome week-long silence. Trustworthy people had become scarce in the village; the only person he could ultimately disclose his news to was Anna. Millions of farmers from the whole country had flocked together on that day, he recounted. In Lower Saxony, the Teutonic heartland full of holy oaks where the spirit of Widukind roamed about, they had waited on both sides of the road where the march would take place. Uncle Heinrich stood among them. He had read
Mein
Kampf
,
he knew that the author wanted to put its contents into practice word for word, he knew who would be coming past on parade. But what did happen was beyond his wildest fantasies. The Führer’s appearance, perfectly
stage-managed
from beginning to end by carefully chosen artists, exceeded those of Nero, Augustus and Caesar put together. The crowds began to cheer, songs flowed through the ranks, a frenzied passion caught hold of the masses, red-white-black banners
fluttered
against a purple sky. Unanimous adoration went out to the single magical figure in whose hands the fate of the whole nation lay. Uncle Heinrich fought against the pull of the seduction as though he had fallen straight into a whirlpool in the Lippe. Gasping for breath, he wrested himself free from the gigantic, heaving, clamouring body and fled. ‘They will follow him blindly,’ he predicted, ‘this Pied Piper of Hamelen. To the abyss.’

The Pied Piper’s lust for power was tangible everywhere; not even the Archbishop of Paderborn was spared. He was arranging a pilgrimage to a shrine to the Virgin Mary on a Sunday; the BDM promptly organized a gathering on the same Sunday. ‘Fine,’ said the archbishop, ‘then we’ll arrange the pilgrimage for the following Sunday.’ The BDM followed his example. The Archbishop was
not dismayed, and once more rearranged the event, his footsteps again followed by the BDM. Eventually the pilgrimage was
postponed
indefinitely. Anna’s patience was exhausted. ‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked at the next opportunity, ‘sabotaging the
pilgrimage
?’ ‘What do you mean?’ the leader of the BDM looked at her inanely. ‘We’re not doing anything.’ Anna said severely, ‘We are Catholics, we really do want to go there.’ The others nodded in agreement. The leader shrugged her shoulders. ‘I know nothing about it.’ ‘You’re lying! You’ve thwarted the Archbishop of Paderborn intentionally. You are an underhand mob. I don’t go along with it. I am a Catholic first and only after that a member of the BDM.’ The leader’s mock innocence was driving Anna into a blind rage. ‘You’re lying!’ She pushed her chair back – the feet slid across the floor – and walked up to the woman, who hid her
uncertainty
behind a sheepish smile. ‘I’ll have nothing to do with someone who lies,’ cried Anna, ‘goodbye.’ She went out without the Hitler salute, the door closed behind her with a bang. All chairs were immediately pushed back, the entire complement of the local
section
of the BDM stood up and left the room; the leader remained, her hands raised in astonishment, deserted. Jacobsmeyer’s
assignment
had been completed: the BDM had disbanded itself in this village.

Anna was just cleaning the pig shed, putting straw down, taking the muck out, when a large black Mercedes drove into the yard, a small flag with a swastika on the bonnet. Who have we here, she thought, walking into the yard inquisitively. A sturdy woman got out, in a uniform richly decorated with badges. A real high-up, Anna could see, a Gauführerin. The driver stayed inside the car and stared glassily ahead. After a haughty glance at the farming things, and looking past Anna, the woman stuck her arm out towards Uncle Heinrich. ‘Heil Hitler. I am looking for Anna Bamberg.’ Uncle Heinrich looked at her with weary suspicion and said nothing. Crossly, as though she had accidentally addressed a deaf mute, she turned to Anna. ‘Heil Hitler. Are you Anna
Bamberg?’ ‘Yes.’ Anna’s figure was assessed from on high, from head to toe – her muddy overall, her unpainted clogs. ‘Are you the one who excelled at writing press reports?’ she asked sceptically. ‘Yes,’ Anna wiped her nose on her sleeve, ‘did you by any chance think I couldn’t read or write because I clean out the pig shed?’ The woman ignored her remark. The way her body had been crammed into the uniform was almost pathetic – the tension of the compressed flesh transferred itself to her fixed, controlled
expression
. She had come to call Anna to order: how could Anna break up the BDM just like that? ‘Just like that?’ said Anna. ‘You are liars, that’s what, just like that. I will have nothing more to do with it. Leave me in peace, I’ve got work to do.’ She turned, picked up her muck cart and called over her shoulder: ‘The Reichsnährstand is the first rank in the Third Reich.’ She heard the Mercedes door slam sharply behind her.