Something wet nudges at her shin, and in horror she jerks herself upright. It is a small dog, a ridiculous-looking mutt with yellow tufts springing from his ears. Bettina tries to stand, and a stinging pain courses up her leg. In the cove of trees not far from her, she detects a mound of fabric, olive green and filthy, next to which lies a boot. Dozens of Scotch pines, battered by wind blowing in from the north, stoop along the edge of the sand, gray and wizened. Crimped limbs have been broken by storms. It takes her a moment to realize the boot on the sand is attached to a foot, and a person is lying among the dunes in the shelter of the trees. The person stirs and sits up. It is a man, a soldier.
Her body stiffens. This is what her father warned her about; she should have known better.
Acknowledging what must be a look of terror on her face, the beach man lifts a hand and waves at her.
A wave—a commonplace, casual wave! No one waves at strangers anymore. Bettina struggles to her feet. Leaning heavily on her ankle, she winces. As the man rises and begins walking toward her, she attempts to back up. His uniform is stained in oily patches and torn at the seams, and around the sleeve of his jacket is a grubby white armband.
“Please, I don’t . . . ,” she stammers, backing away from him. “Please don’t hurt me . . .”
The man stops. His face is fine boned and narrow, patchy with dirt and stubble, his eyes weary. He crouches down to pat the dog, and there is quiet for a time. The islanders have become so furtive, talking rapidly in hushed tones, eyes wide and mistrusting, yet this man seems different. When he looks up at her, it is with the look of an ordinary person, unafraid, unhurried. As he moves his hand over the small animal’s back, his shoulders are relaxed. An unaccustomed stillness settles over Bettina. Under these circumstances, in the early morning, on a litter-strewed beach at the end of a brutal war, she finds this discomfiting yet also exhilarating.
“I . . . uh . . . I was just going for a walk,” she says, and the man laughs, such a startling sound. But it is good natured, and as he rises, he lifts his rough workman’s hands into the air in a gesture of surrender. In one hand he’s holding a tattered notebook and pencil.
“A walk, at this early hour? Never mind—let’s take a look here.” He is close now and carries with him a penetrating musty odor, as though his clothes have never fully dried. His blond hair is darkened with grease. He sticks the notebook into his breast pocket. “The leg, can you put weight on it?”
She glances down at her bare feet, covered in sand, and shifts her weight onto the foot. It hurts, but not as much as before. Nodding at him, she begins to back away again.
“Good, that’s good. You know,” the man says, hands on hips, narrowing his eyes, “there will come a day again when we can greet strangers without fear. When children will run on the beaches, and there will be laughter, and we will laugh along with them. It will happen. We must believe this.”
She scowls. What gives certain people this confidence in the face of all that’s already happened? “We must believe? Believe what?”
“Come, come,” he says. There’s something so impish about his smile—a kind of uninhibited joy—that she finds the muscles in her jaw beginning to relax, and her lips draw into a hesitant smile in return. “Just look at the beauty everywhere.” High above them a white-tailed eagle soars on the thermals, the fringes of its shadowed wings elegantly splayed. They track its path; then their eyes settle on each other again.
“Well. I expect the children will forget all about the war, won’t they?” Bettina acquiesces.
“Aha—so I win!”
“We’re competing, are we?” she shoots back. She points the camera at him and clicks the shutter a few times, then laughs aloud into the brightening sky. “Sorry. I haven’t had film in years. I really miss it.”
Bettina limps toward her bicycle, and the man heads back to the pine grove. The dog trots alongside her. He seems quite content, and when she hitches up her skirt and lifts herself onto the seat, he regards her levelly, as though to say, Oh well; next time, perhaps. Far away on the beach, the soldier in green is just a speck among the pine needles, but a small white object moves back and forth rapidly in front of his body. He is waving again.
As she cycles back toward home, she wonders where the man will go. Does he live here, or is he passing through, on his way somewhere else? She wonders what he writes into his little notebook. It was impossible to tell how old he is, but she herself feels very old, like a woman who has already lived many lives. He could have been as young as seventeen or as old as thirty. He was filthy and emaciated; should she have invited him back to the house and given him some of her food? It would have been the right thing to do, but she promised her father she would be cautious, that she would try to stay safe.
The butcher Johann is an old family friend, and after both her parents died, he started dropping by occasionally to check on her. He gave her a treat for her birthday, and later that afternoon Bettina takes it out of the icebox and places it on the counter. Half a goose breast with some spiced fat preserved in a little glass jar. Her mouth waters just looking at it. Placing some of the fat in a pan, she sears the meat, sniffing frequently to prolong the pleasure. She brings out her grandmother’s plate with the picture of a stag painted on the front and a crystal wineglass and sets a spot for herself at the dining room table. She chews the meat slowly, the richness of the flavor like molasses. There is only water in her glass, but she pretends it is wine. As she eats, she thinks about humankind’s mysterious compulsions. Why is it that people insist on treating each other so cruelly? Why do men behave with such pride and violence and fear?
After clearing up, she unrolls some brown packing paper used for wrapping fish and brings out a few bits of charcoal. For hours she sits on a stool in the kitchen, almost motionless but for her left hand moving back and forth over the paper, drawing. Mostly she draws faces from memory, working especially hard on getting the eyes and brows just right. Today she is copying an old sepia photograph of Dieter dressed in his Wehrmacht uniform. The rejuvenated fire keeps her warm for many hours, and she does not head up to bed until very late.
In the coming years she thinks of that day often, the last birthday she spent alone. The radio with its portents of what was about to come. The beach, littered with debris, wind whipped. The food she savored but did not share. The unexpected laughter and the pictures she did not take.
3
Chicago
Summer 1965
The overhead lights dazzled her. It was like staring into the sun or being examined by an eye doctor—all sense of depth snuffed out. Looking out over the crowd, which was growing steadily by the minute, Bettina could make out a few splashes of color but no familiar faces, not one. She stood on the platform, holding a microphone unsteadily. A headache insinuated itself up the back of her skull toward her temples.
Who were all these people?
George, her boss, gently took the microphone from her and tapped on it. “Hello? Hello, everyone! Quiet, please—quiet.” His tone, its deep bass rumble, was an anchor. The swell of voices began to falter, and when he spoke again, a hush fell over the room. “Welcome to the Parkington Gallery,” he said, flashing a big American smile. Even after all this time, that was how Bettina still thought of those smiles: American. In no other part of the world could people instantly turn on that kind of warmth.