Since her parents moved away from Berlin she had not been back to Fasanenstrasse, where she and Carl had first met, where her unmoored existence had begun. Her courage at the outset, like her nostalgia for what she had to leave behind, had been boundless. She and Carl swam upstream, never tiring or losing hope, never afraid. After her parents’ farewell dinner she had watched him as he walked away, and he had turned round and seen her, and had waved in surprise because she was waving too. That cheerful, hopeful hand still waved at her each day from the garden gate. Carl was the complete opposite of her father, as transparent as glass, a miracle of straightforwardness.
Through the open windows reverberated the chimes of a clock striking the hour. Emma counted twelve – she had been there for an hour already, she must leave. She apologised for staying so long, saying she would come back another day, if that was alright. A whole hour! She cringed with embarrassment. She had hardly said a word while Elka Wapenaar entertained her, squeezed oranges for her, rocked her to sleep, so it seemed.
She headed back to Dahlem, cycling on automatic pilot as she thought of her father. And for the umpteenth time of the remark about her mother. The glint in her interrogator’s eyes had been malicious, his tone insinuating. Quite a looker, know what I mean. Do you get what I’m saying. Suddenly it dawned on her. Clamping the brakes hard, she heard the tyres skid over the road. Her father had another woman.
She stopped, parked her bicycle in the verge and cast around for a bench to sit on. Her inclination was to weep, but the tears did not come. Her face was hot, her hands were cold. Quite a looker. Her thoughtless, faithless father had been seen in the company of a woman, and not just any woman. They had been followed, and even from a distance her appearance had been striking, or rather, her father had obviously found her striking. That had to be it: the mystery of his evasiveness in Geneva explained. He had been half out of his mind when he joined her and Carl, his eyes more than once shifting away from hers. Emma looked about her: it was busier now on Königsallee, with people on foot and on bicycles passing by. To her surprise, it was not plain anger that she felt, rather an old sadness. It had to do with something she had been hiding for years. That she did not really know her father. Her love for him was so naive and unconditional. As love should be. Her father, who belonged with her mother, who would never leave her, never ever, not for anybody, not even for the love of his life, or whatever she was. Suddenly she was seized with rage. Rage over what he was putting in the balance, over his bit on the side, over his secrecy and his deceitfulness and his refusal to meet her gaze.
She picked up her bike and wheeled it to the side of the road, hardly aware of where she was going, unable to stem the flood of memories.
She saw him enter the restaurant where he was meeting her and Carl. Her boyish papa. She had gone up to him as quickly as decorum permitted, she had thrown her arms about him, had taken his hand and drawn him to their table, where Carl was waiting. It had been more than a year since she had seen him, a radically altered world ago, countless bombing raids and massacres ago, though nothing of that was mentioned. It was too much, too overwhelming, too huge to grasp. She had watched him and seen the shadows passing across his face, the way he sidetracked her as soon as she asked him a personal question, the way he seemed not to want her to get too close. He probably hadn’t even wanted to be there at all, she could see that now. He had been at pains to avoid every form of intimacy. Had he taken against her marriage with Carl? No, that was unlikely, as she could tell he regarded Carl as a friend. He had even spent more time talking to him than to her.
“The last time we were together, you, me and Mama, was up here in the mountains, wasn’t it?” His discomfort had become almost palpable when she said that. He responded by asking her about Berlin, steering the conversation away from himself yet again. Her feelings had been hurt, she had so looked forward to this, longing to see him, hear him, relish the known gestures, be close.
Another woman, for God’s sake, Papa. Her rage flared up again, at him, and at the Gestapo for exposing him. What were they after, why would they be so interested in him? Her father, with a lock on his mouth and a lid on his soul. What else had he been up to all these years?
From nearby came the sound of those wretched tennis balls; playing tennis now was a criminal pastime, a cruel joke. She would leave Carl out of it, much as she ached to confide in him. In some ways she resembled her father, she realised. She would keep this to herself.
“Looking for someone?” A man on a bicycle slowed down, stopped, and looked her up and down. She shook her head and prepared to move on.
