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A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!
Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III Scene I
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Part One
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MAASTRICHT, 10 SEPTEMBER 1936
Dear Egon,
This letter requires no postage stamp and will surely not go unread, as I am entrusting it to my daughter, who will make sure you open it. I have long since given up expecting a reply from you but my heart rejoices at the thought that you will make the acquaintance of that which is most precious to me in this life: Janna, born in a period you dismissed as a failure. No doubt you will laugh, with the cynical snigger of someone who has forgotten what laughter is for, to hear that my daughter of all people has been possessed by the insane passion you call a life-enhancing art. Killing to enhance life: no one but you could dream up such a notion. My daughter has dealt me an unsettling blow. Could it be true that the ground where war has raged can only bring forth conflict? Janna was conceived at the site of the battle, an admission that leaves me somewhat shamefaced. Was this an act of desecration on my part? If so, it was not my intention. By then peace had returned to the land. The wounds had healed, the scars were gone, the grass had grown back thick and lush. The weather was mild and the air smelled fresh. The scent of life carrying on regardless.
The weather was not as warm as it had been then. In the wake of the battle, no one understood where that sudden heat had come from; was it the sun beating down or the fresh blood steaming from the soil? Perhaps I am mistaken and it was not the same field, but it was certainly a place ripe for planting new life in a warm-blooded woman—a woman who later, once the dust had settled, would withdraw into a fixed and deathly chill.
I went there with another purpose, of course. Do not think I have forgotten. Believe me, Egon, I searched high and low. I questioned farmers, blacksmiths, coachmen but none of them could tell me anything. I have explained all this to you, but you have never deemed my explanations worthy of an answer. I tried my best. I did not find your horse.
And now my daughter shares your passion for combat. I have tried to dissuade her. As you can imagine, I did not stand a chance. My own dear headstrong girl belongs to a breed you often see nowadays; she is a girl with no desire to become a woman. Do you understand that I am trying to make amends? First and foremost I am presenting you, the maître d’armes, with perhaps the best pupil you will ever have. Janna has real talent! Secondly, my friend, I offer you my doubts—the same doubts I kept from you when you had such need of them. Many men grow strong by feeding on the doubts of other men. Perhaps swordsmanship is the one essential art about which I understand nothing. These days, I am wise enough to admit that I cannot know anything with certainty.
But this is not all. Once you have finished gloating, it may please you to know that I have immersed myself in the art of swordsmanship. Not that I have ever held a weapon. A doctor does not need to contract the disease to make his diagnosis. Before I came across the enclosed engraving, I had no intention of sending Janna to you. But things can change. Please study it closely. It comes from a rare edition of Bredero’s Low German verses.
‘Oh new man of arms so able and refined / who Wise Art with strength in unity combines.’
This engraving is not simply a curiosity. This is lost learning with the power to save lives. If you are interested, there is more to be found on this subject, not least the method itself, beautifully illustrated. I sat in a deserted library in Amsterdam, turning pages with gloved hands, taking notes. It is a remarkable book. This is the science of swordsmanship. They call it a secret, the clandestine knowledge of inviolability, but let us leave those mysteries for what they are. You know my views on such matters. It is merely the science of not conceding a hit—probably far from simple, but a subject that can nonetheless be studied. Do so, Egon. Protect yourself, your country, the whole world for that matter, protect them from even more misery. The peace is no older than my daughter, no older than you were when you decided to enlist as a soldier. I hope, no, I believe beyond all doubt that …
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1
You might say von Bötticher was disfigured, but after a week I no longer noticed his scar. That is how quickly a person grows accustomed to outward flaws. Even the hideously deformed can be lucky in love if they find someone who, at first sight, cares nothing for symmetry. Yet most people have a peculiar tendency to fly in the face of nature and divide things into two halves, insisting one should mirror the other.
Egon von Bötticher was handsome. It was his scar that was ugly: a careless wound, inflicted by a blunt weapon in an unsteady hand. No one had warned me, so his first impression was of a startled girl. I was eighteen and dressed far too warmly when I stepped onto the platform at the end of my first journey to another country. A train trip from Maastricht to Aachen, blink and you’re halfway there. My father had waved me off at the station. I can still see him standing beneath the window of my carriage looking surprisingly small and thin, columns of steam rising behind him. He gave an odd little jump when the stationmaster signalled for the brakes to be released with two blows of the hammer. Alongside us, red wagons from the mines rolled past, followed by trucks packed with lowing cattle, and in the midst of all this din my father shrank steadily into the distance, until he disappeared around the bend.
Up and leave, no questions asked. My departure was announced one evening after dinner, in a monologue that scarcely left room to breathe. The man was an old friend, had once been a good friend and was still a good maître. Bon. Besides, we had to face facts. We both knew I had to seize this opportunity to achieve something in sport, or would I rather go into domestic service? Well then, see it as a holiday, a few weeks of fencing in the beautiful Rhineland.
Forty kilometres separated the two railway stations, twenty years separated the two friends. On the platform at Aachen, von Bötticher was looking the other way. He knew I would come to him; that’s the kind of man he was. And sure enough, I understood that the suntanned giant sporting a cream-coloured homburg had to be him. Instead of a suit to match the hat, he wore a worsted polo shirt and what I took to be sailor’s trousers, the type with a wide waistband. The height of fashion. And there was I, the daughter, in a patched pinafore. He turned to face me and I backed away. The gnarled flesh of his torn cheek was still pink, though it had paled with the passing of the years. I think my shocked expression must have bored him, a reaction he had encountered all too often. His eyes drifted down to my breasts and I clasped my locket to cover what my pinafore was already doing an excellent job of concealing.
‘Is that all?’
He meant my luggage. He kneaded my fencing bag to feel how many weapons it contained. I was left to carry my own suitcase. The romantic image I had cherished before our meeting was fading fast.
It was an image conjured up by a blurred snapshot from our family album. Two men, one earnest, the
