Unknown - The Genius

Bertha has never been one to succumb to anger; hers has been a life of self-control. She did not become a Muller—remain a Muller—save the Muller name from extinction—by losing her head. She may be sick, but she’s not dead yet, and as long as she can draw breath, she will believe that all problems have solutions; that no turn of events, no matter how bleak, cannot be turned further, bent into an advantage, the barrel twisted back toward the shooter. Her memory has decided to run riot. Fine. Let it. She might not be able to remember the day of the week, but she can bring back her childhood with a thrilling vividness. She will enjoy herself. She opens the album and remembers.

She remembers: walks in the forest and wonderfully sour Kirschkuchen and the yeastiness of her father and the soapiness of her mother. Baths in a small wooden tub, the stump of a barrel. A wooden soldier that clapped its hands when you pulled a string in its back, a painted top that cut bright orange circles in the air. The housekeeper taught her to sew until she was reprimanded for doing so and thus Bertha never learned more than a simple running stitch. The day her parents told her they were moving to America she ran crying to her best friend Elisabeth’s house, but nobody answered and in her time of greatest misery she felt lonelier than ever. At home she cried in her mother’s arms and her mother promised We will always be together, I will always take care of you. The journey will be long but you will see so many things girls your age never get to see. Bertha was unconsoled.

The port at Hamburg, the ship’s huge fluted mouth belching loud enough to shake her in her shoes. The waiters in long black coats who called her Mademoiselle. In the big dining room she ate snails; they tasted like rubber and butter. She did not get seasick; her mother did. They sunbathed on their private veranda. Her mother read to her from a book of fairy tales, using different voices for each character. The princes were noble and the princesses gentle and the witches sounded like grinding chains, everyone exactly as they should be. As they sailed into the sunset she thought of her home and she wrote lots of letters to Elisabeth that she intended to deposit in the mailbox as soon as they landed but forgot about when she saw the green lady in the sea.

She remembers her first sight of Central Park, from their hotel window. She was disappointed. She’d hoped it would be bigger. It didn’t compare to the parks and woodlands she knew. It was full of wheelbarrows, trenches, overturned earth. It wasn’t a park; it was a pit. She cried, and to quiet her down, her father gave her a package of peppermints that she ate, one by one, until she was sick.

She remembers school. She remembers being teased. She remembers the tutor. She sells seashells. Who sold those seashells? She never found out.

At Bloomingdale’s, tailors stuck her with pins. She didn’t enjoy the process but then the dress came. Everyone fussed over her, but she didn’t need their confirmation, she could see for herself: she had talent. In yards of green silk, she outshone Lady Liberty herself. Standing before her mother’s three-sided mirror, she decided that it would be terribly ungrateful if she did not use her gifts to become someone important.

She remembers her debut. The eyes all on her, not just the men but the women, too, whether jealous or shamed or in unabashed worship. She remembers descending the stairs on a cloud, her tiara held in place with so many hairpins that she thought her head would break off and roll away. Dancing and champagne and young men’s sweaty hands slipped into hers over and over. Her mother pointing out a certain young man in a narrowly cut jacket. That is Louis Muller, of the Mullers.

And her wedding.

She remembers early summers in Bar Harbor, the gleaming sailboats white, so white, her smocks flawless and dry even in the woolly heat. She changed her outfit four times a day: after breakfast, after lunch, in the afternoon before tea, and then for dinner. So many meals, piled high with those coarse American dishes she would never quite get used to, the Southern-style cornbread that her father-in-law liked but that tasted to Bertha like a block of animal feed. She ate sparingly. While other women talked about the need to reduce, she wore a bathing costume that emphasized her bust. She was the most divine creature on the Eastern Seaboard. So said her father-in-law. Dear Walter. He called her his little Bavarian rose; never mind that her family came from Heidelberg. He was always a little in love with her, openly scornful of his son’s indifference. What a catch Louis had landed, what radiance, what wit, what charm, what skill. She could play the piano. How many girls had a figure like hers? She could count them on one hand. And could any of those girls play the piano? She could count them on one hand, too … if you cut off all her fingers … but then she wouldn’t be able to play the piano. Ha ha ha ha. Walter always implied that, had the vagaries of time not torn them asunder … But she ended up with Louis. Oh Louis. Dear Louis. She wants to be charitable to him. She will choose to think of him fondly.

Think of the delight he took in buying her things, how he loved to adorn her. In the cushions of her house, she has lost diamonds worth a king’s ransom. Think of how he took her everywhere. After David was born she felt sad. It came from nowhere and gummed up her mind. Nights she could not sleep; dragging herself from bed in the morning became torture. To cheer her, Louis bought a villa in Portofino. Every summer after that they would spend a month, the baby tucked away with a nurse and Louis promising not to work at all. They would eat rich meals and drink luscious wines and travel the coast, down to Rome or round the bend to Monaco, where the Prince himself would escort them through the casino. They played with chips made of real gold. Servants brought deep saucers sloshing with champagne and wet towels to cool their necks. And then during the War, when travel became impossible, Louis bought another house for her, a thirty-five-thousand-acre ranch in the middle of Montana. She tired of it quickly. He sold it at a loss. He bought her a home in Deal. He did whatever she wanted. He was a good husband. She cannot think of him now without tearing up; oh, how maudlin. He was a decent man, after all. She was glad that he went without suffering. His heart stopped a few months before the birth of David’s first child. What is the girl’s name. Amelia. For a moment she almost forgot, but she triumphed through sheer willpower. Amelia, yes. And her baby brother, Edgar. The year after Edgar

was born, her old friend Elisabeth died. Elisabeth’s husband had been an officer in the SS and after the War they got to him; the stress killed him and then her. What luck. What timing. Every time David has a baby someone dies. A lesser woman might have ordered him to stop having children. He had a son and a daughter; enough already, stop killing off the rest of us. If anyone is to go next it will be her. But she was glad when Yvette got pregnant, regardless of the outcome. Bertha will sacrifice herself for the cause, because Yvette will be a good mother, far better than David’s first wife, who Bertha never liked and never approved of, even though she and Louis played along for appearance’s sake. They even footed more than their share of the bill at the wedding. David argued that they should foot the entire bill; it wasn’t as though they had a shortage of funds. Everyone argued. David was twenty-five then and his bachelorhood had begun to worry her; he might turn out to have his father’s tendencies. Where she had never doubted her own ability to manage Louis, how could she ensure that a prospective daughter-in-law would have the same strength and conviction? Women could not be relied on. Nobody could be relied on. You had to do everything yourself these days. Thankfully, David did get married. A relief to her, on the one hand; and on the other hand, she did not trust the girl he chose, the daughter of a man who owned clothing stores in the Middle West. She called New York ugly. Who was she to be so stuck-up, she came from Cleveland. Whatever Bertha’s opinions of the changes that have taken place in the city since her arrival so many years ago, she firmly believes that nobody has the right to make comments when they’ve been in residence for less than a month. That wicked girl. Bertha can remember her name all right but chooses not to. Picking fights with David over everything, making scenes everywhere, icy dinners where nobody spoke: Bertha thinks about them and suddenly two sets of memories collide: silence and silver on china and crystal on linen … and silences, and— and—and notes delivered by hand, notes from Dr. Fetchett. No, that is not right. That did not happen then. She is mixing up the chronology and she does not want to think about certain things. With tremendous strain she turns the page and finds another one, a page full of good memories, another