Darwin, good old Darwin, had come up with the money — a loan, that is, secured by a trust deed on the Oak Park property. Twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth, enough to redeem the print collection he’d left with Little,154 pay for the work in Oak Park, buy back the American rights for the Wasmuth portfolio and free him to break ground at Hillside. On the house for his mother. Or that was what he told Darwin, at any rate. And he swore too to give up Mamah, because Darwin was every bit as condemning as the rest of them, though he should have known better. Still, he was a fine and generous man and good-hearted too. And he recognized genius when he saw it.
But Mamah. Give up Mamah? No one could begin to understand what existed between him and Mamah, certainly not Darwin Martin staring blearily across the dining room table at his all but extinguished hausfrau, or Kitty, whose concept of marriage never seemed to rise above the kitchen and the laundry and the children’s clothes and looks and moods. All the while he was back he missed her with an ache that was irremediable, a steady burn of regret as omnipresent and physical as the loss of a limb — he couldn’t step outside the door or breathe the air without thinking of her, longing for her, worrying over her — and as soon as he had the money in hand he fled back to Germany to be with her. Of course, he couldn’t admit this to Darwin or Kitty or anyone else for that matter — he was returning to Berlin to shepherd the portfolio into print, a purely onerous task but absolutely necessary if a whole year’s work wasn’t going to go up in smoke, and God knew how he detested ocean travel. .
This time they were discreet. He met her in a hotel near the Tiergarten that was as unfashionable and private as the Adlon was chic and public. It took him the better part of an hour even to find the place, stopping passersby to ask directions in his tortured and rapidly dwindling German while the rank animal odor seeped down the alleys and various creatures chirped and howled in the distance, and when he finally arrived, when he marched into the lobby and announced himself at the desk, he was so wrought up, so impatient and angry with himself — and lustful, mad for the touch of her — that he had to take a minute to collect himself before following the bellman up the three flights of stairs to her door. To lift his hand and knock, to fumble with the unfamiliar currency and grease the man’s palm — what was the fool staring at and why the sick parody of a grin, or was it a grimace? — was nearly impossible. But he did it. And the door opened. And she was there.
“Frank,” she said, and he said her name too, but there was a moment’s hesitation before he took her in his arms, a strangeness they both felt, an airiness, as if there were no walls to the building and the wind was blowing right through it and the sky shifting crazily overhead — she looked different, so different, her color high, her hair lighter than he’d remembered it. . All the way across the Atlantic he’d pictured this moment, the scent and feel of her, the look of her face and the way she tilted her head back when she laughed, how he’d lead her to bed, straight to bed, but that wasn’t the way it was. He felt disoriented, uncertain of himself. A shudder of suspicion ran through him — she’d been seeing somebody else, of course she had, an attractive woman, a sensuous woman, alone in a European capital and flying the banner of free love. .
What did she say, what was the first thing? It’s good to see you, yes, of course. I’ve missed you. How I’ve missed you. Sure, likewise. But then, out of nowhere, she said, “I’ve been learning Swedish.”
They were standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, still holding on to each other, but now she led him to the couch and the low table there, where she’d arranged flowers, sandwiches, a bottle of wine, though he wasn’t thirsty and he didn’t drink, or hardly ever. “Swedish?” he echoed. And then it hit him: “For Ellen Key?”
Her eyes shone. “I’ve met her. And she’s the most astonishing — did I tell you she’s calling me her American daughter? Can you imagine that?”
It was dusk when he’d arrived, the gray weathered city grayer yet under a winter sky, and the darkness of night crept gradually over the room until she had to get up and turn on the lamps. She came and sat beside him on the couch then and took his hand in hers and they talked about the small things, catching up, keeping all the rest at bay. Free love had been convenient for him, hadn’t it, but if it was convenient for him, why not for some other man, some Lothar or Henning or Heinrich?
She was laughing her rich laugh over a story he’d been telling her about his mother and her ongoing feud with Kitty and Kitty’s mother and even her grandmother, her throat thrown back and her eyes rolling with the pleasure of it, when he said, “You haven’t been seeing anyone, have you?”
Her face went cold. “What are you talking about? Seeing who? Who do you expect me to see? I go from my rooms to the library and back. I see my students. The concierge — Frau Eisermann, did you notice her? The little woman with the mustache?”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant—”
“Men? ”
“No,” he said, “no. I was just — inquiring. After your social life. You must be lonely. I worry about you.”
She leaned away from him as if to get a better look. “I have no social life.” He watched her lift the wineglass to her lips, take a sip of the pale yellow liquid — it was a Johannisberger, she’d said, a special wine for a special occasion, though it was all the same to him — and set it down again. “I’m waiting for my divorce, if that’s what you mean,” she said, measuring out each word. “And for you.” She held him with her eyes. “Only you.”155
“I don’t want you to wait, not here, anyway.” He leaned forward in his seat. Now was the time for affirmation, now was the time to kiss her, but he held back. “I want you to come home. As soon as possible.”
Her smile was fragmentary, bitter round the edges. She dropped her voice. “Have you seen my children?”
“No. I can’t bring myself even to drive past the street—”
“They don’t answer my letters. It’s Edwin. He’s turned them against me. I’m sure of it.” She looked off into space a moment, then came back to him. “And where am I to go when I do come back? I can’t — I’ll never set foot in Oak Park again, I’ll swear to it.”
“I’ve taken care of that,” he heard himself say, and suddenly it was all right — it was a building problem, that was all, salvaged by design, materials, plans. “That hill in Wisconsin? It’s ours. Two hundred acres, free and clear. I’m building for you — a place that’ll put to shame anything I’ve done to this point. Something new, entirely new.”
“I miss them. The little one especially, little Martha. I keep asking myself what they must be thinking — that I’m in prison or something? Or dead? That I don’t love them anymore?”
He had the solution, all the solutions. “Bring them to Hillside. Anytime you want.”
“Edwin wouldn’t allow it. Never. He’d die first. I know him.”