When I called her, in the late morning, her voice was perfectly calm. “We’re at the Kaiserhof.”—“Are you free?”—“Yes. Can we see each other?”—“I’ll come by and pick you up.” She was waiting for me in the lobby and got up when she saw me. I took off my cap and she kissed me delicately on the cheek. Then she stepped back and contemplated me. She held out a finger and tapped one of the silver buttons on my tunic with the tip of her fingernail: “It suits you nicely, this uniform.” I looked at her without saying anything: she hadn’t changed, a little older of course, but she was still just as beautiful. “What are you doing here?” I asked.—“Berndt had some business with his lawyer. I thought you might be in Berlin, and I wanted to see you.”—“How did you find me?”—“A friend of Berndt’s at the OKW called the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse and they told him where you were staying. What would you like to do?”—“You have some time?”—“The whole day.”—“Let’s go to Potsdam, then. We can eat and walk in the park.”

It was one of the very first fine days of the year. The air was getting warmer, the trees were budding beneath a pale sun. In the train we didn’t say much; she seemed distant, and to tell the truth, I was terrified. Her face turned to the window, she watched the still-bare trees of the Grunewald go by; and I watched that face. Beneath her heavy, jet black hair, it looked almost translucent; the long blue veins were clearly outlined beneath her milk white skin. One of them started at the temple, touched the corner of her eye, then, in a long curve, crossed her cheek like a scar. I imagined the blood pulsing slowly beneath this surface as thick and deep as the opalescent oils of a Flemish master. At the base of her neck, another network of veins began, unfurled over the delicate clavicle, and passed beneath her sweater, I knew, like two large open hands to irrigate her breasts. As for her eyes, I could see them reflected in the window, on the dense brown background of the trees, colorless, distant, absent. In Potsdam I knew a little restaurant near the Garnisonskirche. The pealing bells were ringing out their little melancholic tune, to a melody by Mozart. The restaurant was open: “Goebbels’s obsessions don’t hold sway in Potsdam,” I commented; but even in Berlin most of the restaurants were already reopening. I ordered some wine and asked my sister about her husband’s health. “He’s fine,” she replied laconically. They were just in Berlin for a few days; after that, they would go to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where von Üxküll would get his treatment. Hesitant, I wanted her to talk about her life in Pomerania. “I have nothing to complain about,” she said, looking at me with her large clear eyes. “Berndt’s farmers bring us food to eat, we have everything we need. Sometimes we even have fish. I read a lot, take walks. The war seems very far away.”—“It’s getting closer,” I said harshly.—“You don’t think they’ll get as far as Germany?” I shrugged my shoulders: “Anything is possible.” Our words remained cold, awkward, I could see, but I didn’t know how to break this coldness to which she seemed indifferent. We drank and ate a little. Finally, more gently, she ventured: “I heard you were wounded. From some of Berndt’s army friends. We live a somewhat retired life, but he keeps his contacts. I didn’t get any details and I was worried. But seeing you, it must not have been very serious.” So, calmly, I told her what had happened and showed her the hole. She put down her silverware and turned pale; she raised her hand, then put it down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I held out my fingers and touched the back of her hand; she slowly withdrew it. I didn’t say anything. In any case I didn’t know what to say: everything I wanted to say, everything I should have said, I couldn’t say. There was no coffee; we finished our meal and I paid. The streets of Potsdam were quiet: some soldiers, some women with strollers, not many vehicles. We headed for the park, without speaking. The Marlygarten, where you enter, prolonged the calm of the streets and deepened it; from time to time we saw a couple, or some convalescent soldiers, on crutches or in wheelchairs. “It’s terrible,” murmured Una. “What a waste.”—“It’s necessary,” I said. She didn’t reply: we were still talking past each other. Some tame squirrels were scampering in the grass; to our right, one of them ran up to snatch some pieces of bread from a little girl’s hand, withdrew, returned to nibble, and the girl broke out in peals of laughter. On the ornamental ponds, some mallards and other ducks were swimming or had just landed: just before impact, they quickly beat their wings, leaning backward to slow down, and pointing their webbed feet at the water; as soon as they touched the surface, they folded back their feet and ended up skidding on their rounded bellies, in a little spray of water. The sun was shining through the pines and bare oak branches; where the paths joined, little cherubs or nymphs stood on gray stone pedestals, superfluous and laughable. At the Mohrenrondell, a circle of busts set in topiary hedges, beneath terraced vines and greenhouse plants, Una gathered her skirt around her and sat down on a bench, casually, like a teenager. I lit a cigarette; she borrowed it from me and took a few drags before giving it back. “Tell me about Russia.” I explained to her, in short, dry sentences, what security work in the rear areas consisted of. She listened without saying anything. In the end she asked: “And you, did you kill people?”—“Once, I had to give the coups de grâce. Most of the time I gathered information, wrote reports.”—“And when you shot at people, what did you feel?” I answered without hesitating: “The same thing as when I watched other people shoot. As long as it has to be done, it doesn’t matter who does it. And also, I consider that watching involves my responsibility as much as doing.”—“But do you have to do it?”—“If we want to win this war, yes, certainly.” She thought about this and then said: “I’m happy I’m not a man.”—“And I’ve often wished I had your luck.” She held out her arm and brushed her hand over my cheek, pensive: I thought happiness would suffocate me, that I would huddle in her arms, like a child. But she stood up and I followed her. She calmly climbed the terraces toward the little yellow palace. “Have you heard from Mother?” she asked over her shoulder.—“No. We stopped writing years ago. What’s happened with her?”—“She’s still in Antibes, with Moreau. He was doing business with the German army. Now they’re under Italian control: apparently they’re very well behaved, but Moreau is furious because he’s convinced Mussolini wants to annex the Côte d’Azur.” We had reached the last terrace, an expanse of gravel reaching to the façade of the palace. From there, we looked out over the park; the roofs and steeples of Potsdam were silhouetted behind the trees. “Papa liked this place very much,” Una said calmly. The blood rose to my face and I grasped her arm: “How do you know that?” She shrugged her shoulders: “I know it, that’s all.”—“You never…” She looked at me sadly: “Max, he’s dead. You should get that into your head.”—“You too, even you say that,” I spat out angrily. But she remained calm: “Yes, I too say that.” And she recited these lines in English:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Disgusted, I turned and walked away. She caught up with me and took my arm. “Come. Let’s visit the palace.” The gravel crunching under our steps, we went round the building and under the rotunda. Inside, I looked vaguely at the gilt finish, the small, precious furniture, the voluptuous eighteenth-century paintings; I was moved only in the music room, when I saw the fortepiano and wondered if it was the same one on which old Bach had improvised for the king what would become the Musical Offering, the day he had come there: if it weren’t for the guard, I would have stretched out my hand and struck the keys that might have felt Bach’s fingers. The famous painting by von Menzel that shows Frederick II, illumined by cathedrals of candles, playing his flute just as on the day he received Bach, had been taken down, likely from fear of bombs. A little farther on, the tour went through the guest room known as Voltaire’s Room, with a tiny bed where the great man supposedly had slept during the years he taught Frederick the Enlightenment and hatred of the Jews; actually he stayed at the Potsdam town castle. Una studied the frivolous decorations with amusement: “For a king who couldn’t even take off his own boots, let alone his pants, he certainly appreciated naked women. The whole palace seems eroticized.”—“That’s to remind himself of what he had forgotten.” At the exit, she pointed to the hill where some artificial ruins stood out, products of this rather capricious prince’s whim: “Would you like to climb up there?”—“No. Let’s go toward the orangery.” We strolled lazily along, without looking much at the things around us. We sat down for a bit on the terrace of the orangery, then went down the steps framing the large ponds and flowerbeds in a regular, classical, perfectly symmetrical order. Afterward the park began again and we walked on at random, down one of the long footpaths. “Are you happy?” she asked me.—“Happy? Me? No. But I’ve known happiness. Now I’m content with what there is, I can’t complain. Why do you ask me that?”—“Just like that. No reason.” A little farther, she went on: “Can you tell me why we haven’t spoken in more than eight years?”—“You got married,” I answered, holding back a burst of rage.—“Yes, but that was later. And also, that’s not a reason.”—“For me it is. Why did you get married?” She stopped and looked at me closely: “I don’t owe you any explanations. But if you want to know, I love him.” I looked at her now: “You have changed.”—“Everyone changes. You’ve changed too.” We continued walking. “And you, you’ve never loved anyone?” she asked.—“No. I keep my promises.”—“I never made you any.”—“That’s true,” I acknowledged.—“Anyway,” she went on, “obstinate attachment to old promises is no virtue. The world changes, you have to be able to change with it. You’re still a prisoner of the past.”—“I’d rather call it loyalty, fidelity.”—“The past is over, Max.”—“The past is never over.”