Dr. B. Read online

  He stared blankly across the water, now an even deeper green, until the sound of light footsteps could be heard approaching.

  There she was again, in front of him. Delicate, gossamer, as if the rays of the autumn sun could shine through her. It came as a surprise when, with a gesture up toward the castle, she began speaking, her voice soft yet firm.

  “Miss Lorentzon knows you’re here. She’s working with Madame in the salon but wants you to wait on the grand terrace.”

  “The grand terrace.” Immanuel repeated the words hesitantly, unsure why he felt the need to do so.

  She set off up the steps without checking whether he was prepared to follow. But follow he did, of course. He could barely keep pace with her as they climbed up the steep stone ledges, and he was already regretting his decision to take with him the weighty tomes from Mittag-Leffler’s library. He could perfectly well have collected them on his way back into the city, but now the massive leather briefcase his wife had purchased on one of their final days in Warsaw was as heavy as if loaded with the same flat slabs that were under their feet. They hurried up the gravel paths that zigzagged between the flights of steps leading them toward the increasingly imposing mansion.

  The young woman—he guessed she was the same Karin about whom the man with the gun had been speaking, and into whose destiny he had been given an unwarranted flash of insight—almost flew along the balustrade ahead of him. Panting, he managed to catch up with her, and for a few seconds they walked side by side. He turned to her and, with a boldness, an impertinence even, that surprised him, breathlessly asked a question he hoped would instigate a conversation.

  “So you were working here in Mr. Kassman’s time?”

  Whatever had got into him? This woman’s sad fate was none of his business. Not in the slightest. She had nothing to do with the task ahead, which was already quite complicated enough, nor with the subtle game that formed the purpose of the entire visit and should undoubtedly be his focus.

  As it turned out, his impertinent question had no effect. The luminous figure had increased her lead and now disappeared through a glass door standing open on the object of their climb, the grand terrace. He mounted the last step and, gasping for breath, put his heavy bag down on the ornate flagstones, set in a lavish mosaic the likes of which he had never seen, even in villas he had visited in northern Italy.

  He dropped into one of the chairs on the terrace and was aware at once that behind the white curtains moving gently in the breeze something was happening. He heard the dulcet tones of a woman’s voice, apparently reading from a script, and another slightly deeper voice interrupting in Russian and then making comments on the reading in what seemed to him to be very broken Swedish. Sometimes the more pleasing voice delivered long pages without intervention. It sounded flat and slightly forced, as if they were in a hurry to work through a large body of text.

  “But who is this new independent woman? She is a child of the large-scale capitalist system. She is not a rare apparition, but as an everyday phenomenon she was born simultaneously with the infernal din of machines and of factory sirens summoning the workers. The independent woman, of whom our grandmothers and even our mothers had no idea at all—she exists, she is a real, living person.”

  She was interrupted by a testy comment in Russian. There was a clatter of china and the sound of other voices chiming in with questions about entirely different matters, followed by silence. The mellower voice resumed but was obliged to repeat the phrase “real, living person” several times. After a short pause, the reading continued.

  “Independent women are a million gray-clad figures, pouring out of working-class quarters in an endless stream, and at daybreak, when the dawn sky still battles with the dark of night, they set off for the mills and factories and railway stations.”

  At this point the reading was cut short by prolonged throat clearing.

  “Right, right. That’s enough. Thank you, Emy. Thank you. We’ll continue this afternoon.” Silence fell, and it sounded as though the women had left the terrace room without noticing Immanuel’s presence.

  From this position he could gaze out over the fountains in the garden and the lush vegetation of rhododendrons and exotic trees, and he thought how out of place they looked in this Nordic archipelago. He leaned forward to inspect the sunflowers growing nearest to the villa. Their extraordinarily long stalks reached up to the terrace. They seemed to be staring him in the face, like huge black pupils.

  “They turn during the course of the day and follow the sun, as if they have no choice but to look straight into the ball of fire,” a woman’s voice behind him declared suddenly. “Madame loves them. They’re one of the reasons she rents the villa. She’d really like to buy it, but who knows what the future will bring? We tie the sunflowers back with string so they don’t collapse under their own weight. But they’ll wither soon anyway, now it’s autumn. Do forgive me, my name is Emy Lorentzon, Madame Kollontai’s secretary. You’re extremely punctual. Did you have a comfortable trip across?”

  Immanuel nodded to the young woman who had appeared beside him, but there was no time for even a pleasantry in response before she carried on with her account of the flowers’ daily rotation around their own axis.

  “Heliotropism, a tendency Madame has taken an interest in, as something with potentially profound significance for social movements. It’s hardly surprising if that intense mass of light creates the right conditions for a completely different type of politics, is it? Pavel Dybenko, who spent many white June nights on the Baltic Sea, introduced her to these ideas. You know the story about the Lapland sunflowers that grow so far north they never have the chance to turn their heavy heads back at dusk?”

  Miss Lorentzon gave him a searching look, like a teacher with high expectations of her student, and continued without waiting for a response.

  “Because there’s no dusk, ever, nor is there the essential respite dusk brings. For the twelve longest days of the year the flower twists in a spiral until it finally strangles itself. And in exactly the same way the stalk of north European socialism is threatened by the optimism of its own blooms, or ought we say, extremism?”

  She smiled serenely at him, as if her words were the most natural thing in the world, so self-evident they hardly needed voicing. He looked closely at the young woman, utterly convincing in her gray suit, thoroughly proper and exemplary. A secretary, a typical secretary at an embassy in a north European capital. Behind her he glimpsed the indistinct shapes of the dark-centered heads in a sunflower sea, motionless in the morning calm.

  Nebulous thoughts flashed across his mind without really taking shape. Dybenko, the naval officer, the Ukrainian giant in the Baltic Fleet. The love affair that nearly had the woman he was about to meet expelled from the party. He recalled the words the irreproachable Albert Oeri earnestly and repeatedly pronounced: She is an authority, perhaps our greatest authority, on the field of carnal love.

  He was roused from his musings by a booming voice.

  “And you’ve been sent here by Albert Oeri, editor of Basler Nachrichten, a man my Swiss friends hold in such high regard they overlook his political stance, by and large.”

  Her appearance was so sudden, he didn’t quite grasp what had happened, but there she stood in all her splendor, wearing a long morning gown of dazzling silk.

  “I presume you see yourself as a liberal voice in the continental darkness. You’re a journalist, I understand. And you wish to ask about the woman question. Or, as you wrote in your letter, ‘so-called feminism’—is that so?”

  Madame Alexandra Kollontai gave him a piercing look. Under the arched brows her gray eyes appeared lit from within, their luster truly uncommon. And now this warm iridescence was directed at him in a way that made abundantly clear it would be difficult to hide anything from this woman. Had he been far too rash in taking on this project? Had he overestimated his own ability?

  In any event it was too late to change his mind. Now he was stan
ding in front of this formidable person, with no possibility of beating a retreat or holding anything back. Or more accurately: she was standing in front of him with such a clear advantage that the notion of him staging any kind of subtle maneuver was ridiculous. Of course he had heard about her charisma and her unfading beauty. But he could never have foreseen the authority she commanded physically, the aura of absolute power surrounding her. He pulled himself together and took the plunge.

  “Your Excellency, that is correct, I arrived here in the city some time ago after many years in Warsaw, and I continue to work as a correspondent for Basler Nachrichten. I am first and foremost German, and my mother tongue is German. I am delighted to hear that in your circles too the esteemed journalist Dr. Oeri enjoys the respect he deserves in these dark times.”

  “So you’re the one with the pen name Dr. B. I was only reading you yesterday. You wrote about our problems in Finland.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Immanuel answered, unsure whether her remark held any criticism.

  “Basler Nachrichten has another correspondent here in Stockholm,” she said.

  How could she know that? Gabriel Ascher, for years the Vatican City correspondent, had been in Stockholm for a while now, an awkward situation in several respects. Immanuel had never liked Ascher, and there would obviously be stiff competition for space.

  But he had no time to expand upon that. Kollontai continued, in a more conversational tone, “You spent the night at Mittag-Leffler’s villa on the other side of the water, my secretary tells me. Isn’t that what you said, Emy?” She turned to seek the younger woman’s confirmation, but Miss Lorentzon had quietly withdrawn.

  With a gesture into the light-filled room, Kollontai invited Immanuel to take a seat in one of the two gray armchairs, relatively modern for a palace. “Another splendid house I’ve considered renting as a summer residence in the past. I suppose the famous library is still there, but I heard that plans for the mathematical institute itself were put on ice after the bankruptcy. Anyway, I prefer spending weekends out here on the island, and I hope we’ll be able to move in properly next summer. I’m contemplating bringing some of the legation over—at the moment I’m getting help from Kassman’s old staff. You’ve met Karin, poor girl. She’s working for me now, and her brother pilots the boat.”

  So the man with the gun was the gossamer woman’s brother. That explained his vehemence, and his despair. But aloud Immanuel said, “Yes, the library is still there. Thousands of mathematical treatises on mahogany shelves stretching up to the ceiling. Excuse me, but who is this person Kassman who builds a palace on an island in the Stockholm archipelago?”

  “Of course, I’m sorry. You don’t know Director Gunnar Kassman, do you? I’d forgotten you’re new to the city. A great friend to Russian culture, a financier with connections on both sides of the Baltic Sea. He hit problems around the same time as Mittag-Leffler was declared bankrupt. And now both villas stand empty. Speaking of which, you will of course be aware that Sonja Kovalevsky, our first female mathematician, was awarded her professorship thanks entirely to Mittag-Leffler. A forward-looking scholar, an exemplar. Higher education wasn’t open to women in Russia, and under Professor Weierstrass in Göttingen, who naturally saw her talent, only private study was possible. You’ve heard of Kovalevsky?”

  She must have realized that wasn’t so, because without waiting for a response, she carried on with her account, as if everyone needed to be informed of the Russian mathematician’s fortunes. She spoke as if delivering a lecture, or possibly a welcome speech to a full delegation.

  “She devised important calculations concerning Saturn’s rings and subsequently wrote On the Motion of a Rigid Body about a Fixed Point, which at a stroke made her famous in scientific circles across Europe. But the Royal Academy of Sciences here in Sweden drew the line at accepting a woman member. On the other hand, apparently the academy did preserve her brain in alcohol as an example of something that violated the laws of nature, something that really ought not exist, genius in female form. We’re touching on our topic now, aren’t we?”

  “I beg your pardon? I’m not sure I follow your train of thought.”

  Her expression when she looked at him was hard to determine. But when she continued, her tone was markedly less friendly. “Kovalevsky did not publish only mathematical research into cosmic rings. I suppose her autobiographical novel might be of interest, if it really is so-called feminism that concerns you. But perhaps it’s now time for you to explain to me what we’re going to talk about. I see you’ve made notes and picked out some quotations, which I presume are from my writings. But first a question for you: What does the year 1905 say to you, if I give you the clue ‘Halle’?”

  He had not imagined the conversation unfolding like this. It began to smack of an examination, and that even before it was properly underway. To extricate himself from this uncomfortable situation he answered in a tone he hoped would convey a certain levity.

  “That isn’t the story I wished to speak about with Your Excellency, but instead, more specifically, your view on woman’s position today, as expressed in the novella about Vasilisa Malygina, the knitter. Vasilisa is pregnant, she forgives her husband and his mistress, and she makes a life for herself, devoted to the party. How should this be read in the light of your critique of marriage today?”

  His hope was that a reference to the only book by Alexandra Kollontai he had actually read from cover to cover, Love of Worker Bees, would provoke a lively discussion and obviate the need for him to confess that he had no idea what might have happened in the small university town of Halle in 1905. He gazed at her with an expression that probably betrayed a certain hopelessness.

  At once she seemed to take pity on him, answering in a kinder voice, “As I’m sure you know, I usually do argue that marriage, the modern-day compulsory union of two individuals, is still, for all its shortcomings, the mainstay of woman’s affluence in the middle bourgeoisie and obliges her to cling to this institution. Are you married, sir?”

  He nodded cautiously, welcoming the invitation to move on to something personal, but before he had a chance to mention his wife’s name, they were interrupted by a sliding door opening almost soundlessly, and a trolley with tea was wheeled up to them. Two steaming cups.

  She broke off her exposition with a short, “Thank you, Emy,” without so much as a glance at her secretary. Just as soundlessly the latter vanished from the large room, the wide glass doors still open to the sunflower terrace. They were already bathed in warm morning sunshine.

  They remained silent as both attempted to drink the piping hot tea. What then followed was nothing short of a lecture on the economic plight of the single woman in the Soviet Union. As though to demonstrate his intense interest, Immanuel made assiduous notes in one of the pads he had brought, interrupting occasionally with a brief question or to request further clarification. The literary examples came thick and fast but were far from familiar to him, and the language became steadily more high-flown.

  Finally, after a prolonged pause, she arrived at what he took to be a kind of summary. “The transformation of the female psyche, adapted to the new conditions of its economic existence, is not achieved without dramatic self-delusion. You understand that, of course. And this conflict playing out inside the female soul gradually draws the attention of writers. By degrees woman is transformed from an object of the tragedy of the male soul to the subject of an independent tragedy.”

  To indicate his awareness that at this point an official person of her rank would probably judge she had spent enough time with her guest, and other duties beckoned, he cleared his throat and rose to his feet. Was this the right moment to thank her humbly for a fruitful discussion and then, without in any way revealing how important this was to him, progress to other questions and observations about the diplomatic world? He had been mulling over this move for days, but now it seemed out of the question. Suddenly openings to the kind of conversation he needed looked high
ly unlikely. How could he ever have thought otherwise? However, when he nervously cleared his throat again to offer a few pleasantries, she remained seated and continued gravely:

  “If it’s the situation in the new Germany that interests you, there’s clearly much more to be said. You will obviously understand what National Socialism means for these issues. But let me remind you of a bit of history here. German feminists worded their bourgeois concerns very precisely at the women’s congress in Halle. On the one hand they demanded that society should recognize one single morality for men and women and that the state should be prevented from interfering in personal sexual morals, while on the other hand they insisted on measures for the protection of social morality from that same state. Do you follow me?”

  He really didn’t know what he should say to this. There was no point pretending he knew what had been discussed at a women’s congress several decades before. Instead, with forced enthusiasm, as if she had never posed the question, he said, “I’m convinced this will be a fascinating portrait, and your views will attract much attention. As you know, initially it will be published in Basler Nachrichten, a free voice in the German-speaking world, but naturally the hope is that we can place the article in a number of newspapers, in all probability De Telegraaf, and why not in a paper in a Nordic country too? Has Uusi Suomi or any daily paper in this country talked to Your Excellency about these subjects?”