Herbert stared at the man, a look of incomprehension on his face.
“John, this is, uh, my . . .” Bettina tried to find the right words. “My past brother-in-law, Herbert Lange. He is—that is, we haven’t seen each other in a very, very long time.”
“Greetings,” John said. His eyes went straight to the missing arm, and he cocked his head. “Germany?”
“Russland,” Herbert answered.
“This lady,” John said, leaning toward him, “I’m warning you; she is one chill dame. An eye like a hawk. Real talent.”
Herbert watched him walk off. When he turned back to Bettina, he raised his brows, revealing slivers of blue iris. “Where can we talk? I was in Berlin recently, and I have some news I think you’ll want to hear.”
“You mean Rügen? You were in Rügen?” Bettina’s heart lurched and then fell. “Is it about Annaliese?”
“I’m afraid I know nothing about the child,” Herbert said. “It’s about Werner. Shall we find a bit of privacy, yes?”
4
It would be another hour before Bettina was able to leave the gallery with Herbert Lange. The music kept playing in the background, an up-tempo jazz melody suggesting in its own chaotic way that everything was cool, under control, when in fact it clearly wasn’t. Its deep bass a constant thrum behind the cheery voices fueled by cocktails and art talk. She tried her best to be charming and to answer people’s questions. Knowing that Herbert was waiting for her—that something was wrong—made her fumble her words and flush with confusion. More than once she gave someone a blank look instead of an answer, and she could just imagine the headline for the snippet in the Arts section of the Tribune: Smithsonian Winner Snubs Fans. Sweaty palms slipped against her skin, too warm, too close. Smiles full of teeth and braying praise. She was grateful; she really was. But the noise and the lights . . . and Herbert, waiting for her.
Finally around eleven the music died down, and George and his wife came over to say their goodbyes. “Soon you’ll be leaving us for sunnier climes,” he said, one big paw reaching out to help his wife, May, with her jacket. “At least professionally speaking.”
“I haven’t decided anything,” Bettina said.
“George told me he thought you’d do great at the Post or the New York Times,” May said. Her mulberry lipstick had smeared a bit, her black hair working itself loose to create a hazy halo around her face. “You’re not stuck in Chi-Town forever, are you?” May was from Barbados, and the few times the two women had met, she always found a way to hint at her yearning for the warmth of the islands.
“Ach, it’s really not so bad here,” Bettina said. The idea of taking a permanent job with a bigger organization—of moving, perhaps, and being on staff—was tantalizing but impossible. In some strange way it seemed critical that she keep her life temporary, that she not commit her passion to anyone or anything. What would it mean if she accepted that this country was truly, incontrovertibly home now—that she could choose to climb the ladder of American enterprise, was willing to cast aside her otherness? It would mean she had given up on Anna.
She cast her eyes around her to see where Herbert had wandered off to. “In truth,” she said to May, “I’m not very political. I think George has more ambition for me than I do.”
“Bull. Life is politics. Culture is life. Every time you click that shutter, you’re already deep into a discussion,” George said. He handed her a tote bag, white tissue paper peeking out the top. “There’s a little something inside here for you. It was delivered to the Tribune offices. Open it when you get home, okay?”
It took some time to say her goodbyes, and then she grabbed Herbert by his good arm and nodded at the bartender. “I’m ready,” she said. “Please, let’s go.”
The gallery was on the south side of Chicago, in the Hyde Park neighborhood. She and Herbert stood outside on the pavement as a young man in a jean jacket pulled the iron grille over the windows of a small grocery store next door.
“Bettina, Bettina,” Herbert said. “Always so serious. Remember when you used to like to have fun?”
His eyes had a glazed look to them, and when he lit his cigarette—a trick he managed to pull off with only one hand, and quickly, too—his entire body leaned forward from the knees up, and it looked as though he might tip forward. He seemed out of place in these grimy streets, the city air washing him in a kind of gray scrim. In this context he seemed like a stranger, and she found herself wanting to touch his shoulder or his hand to convince herself it was really her brother-in-law. She didn’t even know where he lived anymore, let alone what he was doing in Chicago. The immensity of all she didn’t know weighed on her, not an absence but a crushing burden. She wanted to sit down for this conversation.
“All right, listen,” she said. “I’d better take you to my place. You need to sober up.”
“Aha,” he said, raising his brows suggestively.
“Herbert. I hope you’re just having some fun at my expense.”
“Of course, of course,” he answered. “Take me home and feed me something, and we’ll talk.”
Under his suit jacket, Herbert wore a wrinkled blue shirt that made his skin look very pale. Even when he was younger, he’d never been conventionally handsome, but as he tried to chat in the kitchen of her apartment while she fried up some sausages, his face became increasingly animated, and she recognized in him the young man she’d known before the war. He was living back in Germany, but in the West, he explained, working as a plumbing-fixture salesman for a company in Hannover that exported gaskets to America. They had just started sending him to visit the major showrooms in the States, and Chicago was only his second stop. He held up a small, battered dictionary he extracted from his jacket pocket: he was trying to learn some English.
She served him the sausages on the old stag plate from her grandmother. All these years she had treasured this plate, and now it was once again serving a member of her family. Or at least someone who had once been part of her family. It was wonderful to feel German words in her mouth again. Often she spent whole weeks feeling as though she hardly knew who or where she was, still surprised after all these years by the intensity of her disorientation. It was only when she picked up one of the German magazines she occasionally bought, or every now and then when she talked to Clara on the phone, that a temporary calm settled into her bones.
But something was holding them back as they tried to make conversation. They had parted rather badly, and now, as much as she wanted to hear his news from Germany, the prospect of knowing actual details of the life she’d left behind was frightening. It had been such hard work to push away her homesickness, to stop thinking about her child. Work had helped, eventually. George had helped—more than he even knew. And now here was Herbert, with his secrets, his news.
The kitchenette was in a corner of the living room, demarcated by a short Formica counter and two peeling laminate cabinets. When Bettina found the place, she’d expected to stay just a few months but ended up staying more than ten years. Having Herbert sit with her where she took her daily meals made her see the room through his eyes: it was shabby and cramped. But as different as it was from her fisherman’s cottage on Apolonienmarkt, this studio was the only place she could really be herself. Eventually she’d painted the walls a pale yellow (like the curtains in her old bedroom). There were pots of dracaena and cascading ivy, as well as a fiddle-leaf fig by the window that was over five feet tall. The windowsills were lined with cacti in bright ceramic containers. There was a rubber fig, graying but healthy enough, and a luscious jade plant that was supposed to bring good luck. She needed the greenery in order to survive bitter winters, the winds that howled for months on end, rattling her windowpanes. On the walls hung dozens of her photographs (unframed, tacked up with strips of tape) and a map of the United States. In the opposite corner was a large bamboo screen that she used to cordon off her single bed. The windows faced an alleyway and led to a small fire escape where, in the summertime, she’d sit on a cushion wrapped in the aroma of rosemary and basil from her flowerpots and the occasional waft of exhaust or cigarettes from the streets below.