perfectly plausible, surely? Besides, I could hardly walk around in riding gear all day. I was determined to be inconspicuous and slip lizard-like onto the terrace. No such luck. Leni was ahead of me with the tea trolley and the wheels got stuck in the gravel. She turned around and immediately began to coo, ‘Pretty as a picture! Sure you won’t catch a chill once the sun goes down? Hurry to the table now, our honoured guests are waiting. As for those strange boys, let their mother round them up. We’re not at the fairground now, for heaven’s sake. Oh look, there she goes already. On her stocking feet across the grass! Oh well, why ever not … Nothing around here surprises me any more.’
At the table, the sabreurs shoved their food into their mouths without so much as glancing at it. A toddler lets himself be fed, grinning trustingly at the world around him till he tastes what’s on his tongue and his face clouds over. With these boys, even that realization failed to dawn. They only had eyes for each other. They left the asparagus untouched and fed each other devilled eggs, a sight only I appeared to find distasteful. Their mother made no comment. Von Bötticher shook water droplets from the glasses and filled them to the brim. She tipped back the bottle when he spilled some on the tablecloth.
‘You’re keen! Can you actually see what you’re doing?’ She shot me a conspiratorial look. ‘He can’t, you know. That eye of his has affected his depth of vision, don’t you think?’
‘There is nothing wrong with my eyesight.’ Von Bötticher pushed his chair away from her. ‘With my eye. I wasn’t hit in the eye, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
Heinz came marching up to the table wearing a blacksmith’s apron. His master showed him the bottle.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Heinz.
‘Whose hooves have you been trimming?’ von Bötticher asked.
‘Careful,’ said the mother, ‘there will be more spills if you don’t watch out. Heinzi, don’t you agree that Egon has trouble judging depth?’
Heinz stared at her blankly. You could almost hear the wind whistling in one ear and out the other. ‘Megaira. And I treated the crack in her left back hoof.’
They raised their glasses and drank greedily. The wine brought a flush to Heinz’s cheeks, and his paper mask became a face of flesh and blood. He gazed down at his half-empty glass as if it were a source of amusement, pulled up a chair and in a single motion shoved three stalks of asparagus and an egg onto his plate. Von Bötticher nodded approvingly. ‘Thank you. But keep those hooves greased in future. Prevention is better than cure. Why aren’t you drinking?’ He was talking to me all of a sudden. Having cast a fleeting eye over my summer dress, he said firmly, ‘You’re allowed to drink you know. It will help you get over your fright.’
‘Leave the girl be,’ said the mother. ‘You’re always picking on her. She doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going.’
‘Why don’t you leave me be, and spare me your nonsense. Or would you like me to show you how deep my vision goes? The depth of this garden, for example. I’ll knock you from one end of my estate to the other. Heinz, fetch my rapier, so I can drive this woman off my terrace. A fencer with no depth of vision, now wouldn’t that be something.’
She did not react but drank with her eyebrows raised, gazing at her stocking feet in the grass. She looked fragile. It was hard to imagine she had ever been through such a difficult birth. To say nothing of what came next! One child, fair enough. A single infant you can park on one arm while holding onto your hat with the other, but two—two boys at that—must have been hard going. Suckling both at once, like an animal.
‘The blacksmith told me cracked hooves have nothing to do with greasing,’ said Heinz. ‘But don’t worry. I’ve carved a notch in the hoof to stop the crack spreading.’
Von Bötticher shrugged irritably. He poured me a glass of wine, passing the sabreurs over. Not that they showed any interest. They behaved as if they were still getting to know each other. I had been introduced to them briefly out in the hall — Friedrich and Siegbert—but seconds later I had been unable to tell them apart. Most twins differ in height—not these two. They wore their hair the same way and the golden lock they kept flicking out of their eyes struck me as their mother’s idea. When Siegbert asked if he could go to the toilet, Friedrich leaped up too, but his mother reined him in: ‘Stay here Fritz.’ Without his brother, Friedrich barely knew what to do with himself. He sat out those few minutes looking like he might choke. Such was his plight, it pained me to look at him and he didn’t eat a thing until Siegbert returned. Together they were at their most beautiful, no doubt about it. Both had their mother’s blue eyes and flawless skin, both had a hint of golden down along the jawbone. There were differences, but even these seemed calculated. Siegbert had a mole on his left cheek, Friedrich on his right. Friedrich had the same smile as Siegbert, but it began at the opposite corner of his mouth. Siegbert revealed a chipped top tooth when he laughed, while one of Friedrich’s bottom teeth had taken a knock. They moved with chronometric precision. Their pale hands crumpled their napkins simultaneously. They even chewed in synch. If Friedrich wanted water, Siegbert had already picked up the carafe before a word was spoken. They were well aware of their beauty, sitting bolt upright at the table in their red waistcoats, two kings of hearts pulled from identical packs.
Leni brought in the second course, her voice ringing with reproach. Her oblivious husband hadn’t even cleared the table. What a useless creature he was, while in Leni he had a real woman with a plentiful supply of everything a man could need. He was halfway through his second glass and already reaching for the bottle.
‘Top up my glass while you’re at it,’ said the mother.
‘How are things with your husband?’ Heinz inquired.
Leni hurriedly began serving up helpings of meat. ‘There’s more in the kitchen if this isn’t enough. The butcher always gives us more than we order. That swindler knows I can’t just send him away once he’s here at the gate. Might as well pick our pockets and be done with it.’
‘Your husband was a first-rate sportsman,’ said Heinz, dodging his wife’s behind. ‘Far and away the best long jumper at the club! No one else came close. You know what he should be doing with his talents?’
‘Do tell,’ said the mother, icily.
‘Kraft durch Freude! Now there’s an organization that can use people like him. Excursions, activities for the working man. Sport in the open air, and then it’s back to serving the fatherland with renewed energy!’ He slammed a triumphant fist down on his blacksmith’s apron. In the silence that fell, he quickly drained his glass and continued his rant.
‘We cannot allow ourselves to be overtaken. Negroes winning medals at our Olympiad: it should never have been allowed to happen. What did your husband make of that?’
‘I have no idea. I didn’t ask.’
‘We missed the boat, me and my Leni. KdF didn’t exist when we were younger, all we had to join was the union. Oh, I would have loved to go on a trip like that, even if it was only to the cabaret. Matthias Schmidt tells me the whole club is off to the Baltic coast next month. Imagine! And for free! They don’t have to pay a pfennig!’
Leni huffed. ‘Matthias Schmidt is always shooting his mouth off about something. Raeren beats the Baltic coast any day. Am I right, sir?’
Von Bötticher’s face was drawn as he chewed his meat. I sensed his anger brewing. Two pale-brown moths fluttered in front of his face, heralding the approaching dusk. Anyone else would have swatted them aside,
