The Dutch Maiden. Marente De MoorЧитать онлайн книгу.
to hire their equipment. The maître had no official qualifications—to this day I have no idea how he came by his title—and he was having a fling with the cashier at the Palace Cinema.
I was allowed to borrow a rusty child’s foil. Everyone in Louis’s class fenced with rusty equipment, a good incentive: avoid being hit or end up with a reddish-brown mark on your pristine jacket, one that will never wash out. It wasn’t until my sixteenth birthday that I received my first adult foil. After class, when everyone else had gone home, Louis called me in and with a flourish produced a bewitching weapon. This was the real thing! The blade looked new to me, gleaming and flexible. Louis opened his fingers to reveal a ridged leather grip.
‘Take it.’
I took the foil from his grasp. My hand barely fitted around the grip, the end of which rested against the wildly pulsing artery in my wrist.
‘Not too big?’
‘No, it’s wonderful,’ I whispered.
‘It will mould itself to your palm before long. The steel is still very stiff, let me bend it for you a little.’
I looked on anxiously as he drew the weapon under the sole of his shoe to curve the blade.
‘That’s more like it. This foil is yours if your father will do something for me. It is important that you ask him immediately. It has to be done soon and requires complete discretion. From you too, so mum’s the word.’
My father frowned when I passed on the message. Of course, I immediately asked whether there was an abortion in the offing. Perhaps my maître’s bit of skirt down at the Palace had a little problem that needed attending to? My father was as dismissive as he was indignant. Who on earth had been planting notions like that in my head! And whatever Louis wanted in return, there was no call to assume that I was about to become the owner of a brand-new weapon. Such decisions were not Louis’s to take. Father had wanted to give me something else for my birthday, not a weapon for heaven’s sake. That was when I looked at my father, the pacifist and professional healer of wounds, and explained all. I told him a foil is not made to kill. It is a weapon to practise with, a sporting invention, never once used on the battlefield. The blade bends on impact to prevent fatal stab wounds and could never be used to sever limbs; besides, the rules of foil-fencing only permit hits to the trunk of the body. I told him it used to be called the fleuret, its point protected by a small leather cap that was said to resemble the bud of a flower. It was the first time my father took note of anything I had to say. With this weapon, my own dear foil, I became a grown-up.
My father idolized me, his only child, but my only idol was Helene Mayer. For years I dreamed of fencing against her. On the Olympic podium in Berlin the ‘strapping lass from the Rhineland’ had stood solemn as a statue in her high-necked fencing jacket and white flannel trousers, the swastika like a brooch below her left shoulder and her right arm extended in front of her. One step higher stood a Hungarian, gold medal around her neck and a little potted oak in her hands. By all accounts, making do with silver did not trouble Mayer much, but oh how she wept over that tree. She had so badly wanted a memento from German soil to take back to her new home: America. Only later did I discover that she was leaving Germany as I arrived. As if we had just missed each other. Perhaps it was for the best. Von Bötticher insisted that to be a good fencer you needed only one idol: yourself.
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4
On my first night at Raeren, the pigeons found their way into my room. I dreamed of wrinkled claws walking all over me and a fat-necked grey bird trying to peck a birthmark from my throat. Stifled by the heat, I had left the balcony doors ajar and now I was too frightened to get up and close them. The birds seemed to be everywhere, scratching about the room. A preening silhouette was perched on the chair. The flapping curtain only let in fitful streaks of moonlight and, too tired to look for the light switch, I pulled the covers up to my chin. The second I woke up in the morning, the stink of the birds hit my nostrils: there were creamy splatters on the carpet and down floated through the air when I threw off the covers. The balcony looked like a battlefield. The pigeons had strutted around in their own droppings and seemed to have lost half their plumage as they wandered in and out. What had they been after? Now the roof was eerily silent.
‘A proper disgrace,’ said Leni when she came to tell me breakfast was ready. ‘Pigeon shit contains all kinds of germs. It can give you pneumonia, I read it in Die Woche. I’ll ask Heinzi to fit a screen. Or maybe we could furnish a room on the next floor down.’ She took the water jug from my washbasin and sloshed some of its contents over the balcony. In the end she had to fetch a scrubbing brush from the hall. Feet planted wide, she went at it, hunched and cursing. ‘The filth I’ve had to clean up today! It’s more than my job’s worth. What does he think we are, muck collectors? Oh, it’s a far cry from the biscuit factory.’
She was going to be a while yet, so I would have to find the kitchen on my own. Downstairs to the entrance hall, the door to the right of the mirror, all the way to the end of passage and down the steps at the end. I couldn’t miss it. No need to worry, the master was in the very best of spirits. He had been out for a walk, shot a young hare and was making breakfast himself. Oh yes, and she was to let me know that he was looking forward to my company. I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. This gallant invitation had ushered Bolkonsky back on stage. I pinned up my hair, straightened my back and off I went to meet him, doing my best to sweep silently down the creaking stairs. As soon as I set foot in the kitchen my expectations were shattered. Instead of sitting at the head of a table decked with white linen, von Bötticher was standing with his back to me kneading a lump of minced meat over by the sink.
It seems to me now that I spent all my young life daydreaming. The dedication I devoted to my fantasies made this a tiring habit. There was never enough time to see them through and, picking up the thread when I next had a moment to myself, I was confronted with all manner of imperfections. Even castles in the air needed cleaning, and there was always the risk of some young wench stealing away your beloved or an old harpy ruining your picture-perfect romance with her interfering ways. Besides, what exactly did a prince do all day? It could easily take me a good hour to iron out the wrinkles. My daydreams kept me awake at night and I lived with some stories for years, layering detail upon detail, down to the trim of the sleeves of my bridal gown. Only girls daydream with such dogged determination, of that I am sure. All young souls idealize the future, but it takes a girl to idealize the present along with it.
There he stood, von Bötticher, not Bolkonsky, in a long shirt, his wide sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Without his homburg, I noticed his hair was already turning grey. He was only a few years younger than my father. How long would it take for that fact to sink in? Imagination is more stubborn than reality—ask any madman who experiences moments of clarity. An illusion will always steal back onto the scene as soon as the original is out of sight, like a lover stepping out of a wardrobe and every bit as alluring. Even though von Bötticher tarnished his ideal image time and again, I had dreamed up enough to keep me going for nights on end. He turned his good cheek toward me and nodded as if he knew what I was thinking. He did not ask me whether I had slept well. It was a matter of indifference to him.
‘Where’s Leni?’
‘Cleaning up pigeon mess in my room.’
Von Bötticher pretended not to hear. He took white plugs of ground bacon fat from the mincer, pushed them into the stuffing and added an immoderate glug of brandy. These were unfamiliar smells. My mother spiked her stews with vinegar, as tradition dictated. Wine wasn’t something to be poured into a pot but something we drank once a year. Spirits never made it past the front door. Our next-door neighbour had once slipped me a slug of bitters during a snowball fight in the street, passing it off as apple juice—his idea of a lark. That morning, the maître’s kitchen must have smelled of the ingredients for a pie: bacon fat, cognac, a hunk of marbled boar meat, calf’s liver, kidneys, pickled mushrooms, and the egg pastry rising under a tea towel on the windowsill. The scent of the countryside poured in through the open window: vegetables sprouting in the kitchen garden and the clover on which the cows were grazing. The same clover was in the stomach of the hare that had just been shot. It lay limp-eared on the table, ready to be hung by its hind legs,