what's happening now. What's over is dead and gone.
People who are born where there's a lot of water, in fertile
lakelands or on the banks of great rivers , are different. Their
bodies are soft, fragile and sensitive, their skin is darker, with an
olive tinge, cool and damp with blue veins beneath it. Their
hands and feet easily get cold, and when they're young their
foreheads arc covered in pimples and their hair is greasy. These
people are attached to the past, which makes them cautious and
not keen on change. I t is easy to offend them, to make an innocent remark that sinks deep into their memory and remains there for ever, engendering feelings that live on for the rest of
their life. They cry easily, not just as a result of sorrow or grief of
some kind , but also out of joy and excitement. They're as trustful as animals, so they fall in love early, and quickly form lifelong attachments. Their bodies grow accustomed to each other, while
their souls merge together like two puddles, so they don't need
speech to understand each other. Vhat they dislike mo�t is any
kind of journey. They say that everywhere is the same, so it's
better to stay at home and breathe your own air than go wandering about, even in the most interesting cou n t ries. I f they lose their home during wars or unrest, they die soon after. Their
children arc difficult and tearful, and they have to get up i n the
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night to comfort them. These children don't want to go to
school, not because they're stupid, but because they're frightened by all the noise and confusion. Their animals are just the same - quiet and affectionate. Their cows give them lots of milk,
their sheep have thick fleeces and their hens lay large, heavy
eggs. They build their houses for their whole life or for many
generations. They are squat, with thick walls.
There are also people born on rocky ground, on sandstone or
granite. Their skin is rough and hard, as are their muscles and
bones. They have strong hair and teeth, and the skin on their
palms and the soles of their feet is hard. On the surface they are
tough and robust, because their bodies are like armour. They
have a lot of empty space i nside, so everything they see and
hear echoes within them like a bell. They never forget anything.
They can remember almost every day of their lives, the taste of
every dish they've eaten, and every word that has ever been said
to them. They can get by without other people, although other
people need them, because they're like road signs or boundary
stones that show where something starts and finishes, and where
the road is going.
I asked Mana what type of person she is. Smart-aleck that she
is, she said she doesn't know. 'You only think up these systems
for other people,' she added after a while.
T h e m a n s i o n
The von Goetzen family lived in a mansion, although they didn't
build it themselves, or even know the whole building, which
berame apparent whenever essential renovations took place.
They had lived in the mansion for as long as they could remember, from birth - sometimes they even felt as if they had lived in
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it before then, in previous lives, because they dreamed of nothing but the mansion , its rooms and corridors, the courtyard and the park, as if their souls knew of no other place. They only had
to do what was required to keep the mansion going, and to
ensure that the fields and meadows brought in the necessary
income for extensions and improvements. Besides, there was
always money in some bank or other, so they would withdraw it,
invest it cleverly and pay it back into the bank again. They only
ever went away in order to learn something new about gardens,
soil cultivation or sheep breeding, or to see the frescoes in
Venice, the way a roof was capped in Switzerland, the interior at
Versailles, or the tapestries and rococo furniture adorning a
French chateau. And they brought it all home, either physically
with the help of ships and trains, or else in their imagination.
Some of them studied philosophy or literature, but this too was
even more fully and intensely.
For generations they had been born in the mansion. The children were brough t up rather neglectfully in the care of wet-nurses, peasant girls from the village who were always willing to heap their boundless affection on any little creature. They had no memory of any child having died before its time. They
were healthy, robust and well proportioned, with pink fingernails and bright eyes. Their only weakness was their teeth, but it didn't really matter in a world where the apples were always
peeled, only the soft part of the bread got eaten and the meat was
cooked until tender. So when their teeth prematurely went black
and fell out, there was always a barber who doubled as a surgeon
or a dentist in the mansion, who had perfected the an of making
false teeth for them, even finding ways to fit complete sets of
dentures to their innocent gums. There should have been a set of
false teeth on the 'On Goctzcn family coat of arms.
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So the children grew up amid parks and gardens, verandas
and bathrooms full of mirrors. I t was a painless process, without
any ups or downs. They never rebelled against their pleasureabsorbed parents, or had any objection to life in the mansion.
Occasionally they were drawn into the less well-defined world
outside and would end up attending a harvest festival or a
Corpus Christi fair in the village. But since they only enjoyed
being there for a while, they'd soon grow disenchanted and go
home for tea. As they grew up, they didn't even suffer from acne.
Then they reached the age for love. Their wise mothers usually provided them with objects for their affection on home ground, but they did sometimes travel with this aim in mind, to
their relatives in Pomerania or Hess, and then love would take
on an exotic quality. They would bring their wives or husbands
home to the mansion, and then they would have to build a new
wing or floor, or convert the attic into living quarters, so the
mansion kept growing along with them, plunging deeper into
the park or pushing higher into the sky.
Young love always blossomed indoors, at tea parties, card
games, or small family dances, with the light falling gently through
the window, taking the gloss off their faces better than the finest
powder. It was quiet, with no wind to drown out a whispered
word or spoil a carefully arranged curl. They usually fell in love at
first sight. Love had special powers in the mansion, where most
couples lived long and happily - if not passionately in love, then at
least with respect and friendship. Their betrayals were never very
dramatic - involving a maid or a gardener, or a brief moment of
forgetfulness in the cloakroom after a ball when they were guests
at another mansion. There was once a Mrs von Goetzen who left
her husband sudden!)� and for no reason - she simply disappeared
into the dark world outside
. He suffered, but not for long - next
year he married a lovely neighbour, and they even had twins.
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1 95
Not many of the von Goetzens had children, however, perhaps to avoid overcrowding the mansion. Some had just one child, and to have two children , like those twins, was a rarity.
Children introduced a certain degree of noise into the life of the
mansion, but you could dress them nicely and let them get their
mouths all smeared in strawberry jam, and at once they were the
stereotype in miniature of their flourishing tribe, living
metaphors for the bloom of youth or innocence, like the spring
personified, or whatever the adults wished them to be.
Dinners in the conservatory went on late into the night.
Lamps burning in the garden emphasized the famously gigantic
lime trees. One generation of von Goetzens had added a winter
garden on to the conservatory, full of ivies, philodendrons and
rubber plants. In the warmest part of the garden cactuses grew,
one of which flowered once a year, always on the very same
night. On that date the family held a ball , inviting relatives from
all corners of the country and neighbours from other mansions,
and the party went on until dawn. The flower was actually quite
modest in appearance, rather like a thistle , nor was it part icularly large, yet it was immortalized in several paintings and later in photographs.
Their old age was serene and healthy. None of them ever had
a lasting illness or lost their powers of intellect, or succumbed to
paralysis, sclerosis, high blood pressure or all the other ailments
that plagued the lives of old people outside the mansion . Maybe
it was just that the flies settled on them more often ; somehow
flies always seem to know best who is first in line for death. At
most they grew weak, imperceptibly at first, year by year, and
then day by day, but they still found enough strength to draw up
plans for extending one of the wings, to sort out old photographs or write their memoirs - or other peoplr's, as they didn't actually have many memories of their own. \'hen they were
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old, they moved into rooms spread with Turkish carpets, whose
windows looked on to the llowerbeds; they would lean out and
pester the gardeners, saying, That's not the way to prune roses,'
The azaleas are too tall,' The dahlias need weeding,' or The jasmine doesn't have much of a scent.' The resident dentist would gently encourage them to remove their false teeth more often,
for their gums had grown softer and softer and, as in infancy,
were coated in a fine layer of mucus - an unerring sign o f
approaching death.
The von Goetzens always died beautifully and gently. Death
came over them like a mist, like a sudden break in the electricity
supply - their eyes grew dim, their breathing slowed down and
finally died away. Those attending the deathbed had only to close
their departed relative's eyelids and then go about their business - in the warmth of the conservatory, the coolness of the ground-floor corridors, among the rustling pages of illustrated
books on horticulture and art, or in sunny lethargy on the terrace, where they could hear the babble of people and animals drifting up from the village. There were photographs left of the
deceased, as well as llowerbeds, diaries, cupboards full of mouldering clothing, and crumbs in the bed-sheets, but someone else would immediately occupy his room, so it was as if they had
never died. Besides, as a result of all the family intermarrying they
were all so alike that the lack of a particular individual was never
felt. Someone else would soon stick their head out of the window
above the llowerbeds and start ordering the gardener about in
exactly the same tone of voice: That's not the way to prune roses,'
'The azaleas are too tall,' or The jasmine doesn't have much of a
scent' - so you could say that no one ever died in the mansion.
Life is beautiful, despite the terrible things o ther people say
about it. Life is beautiful - that could have been the family motto
beneath the coat of arms.
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1 97
The von Goetzen roses are the finest in all Silesia. At the back
of the mansion there is a sizeable terrace with a rose garden. The
rose bushes grow along espaliers and are arranged in carefully
planned Oowerbeds. The paths are covered in fine gra'el that
crunches beneath your feet, as the intoxicating fragrance of all
sorts of roses envelops you. A dark border of crimson wilhelminas surrounds the entire garden. The flowers are lush and glossy, but their fragrance is not intense - that would have been too
much. Inside this blood-red circle there are four beds, each
planted with a different variety of rose: warm pink odet tes, the
fuchsia-coloured 'Pope joan' variety, and bright red and yellow
melittas. Between them winds a sinuous border planted with
tea roses, eulalias - these have the strongest scent, a fragrance of
exotic fruit that pours over the wall into the village, where on
fine days it blends with the smell of cows and freshly mown
meadows. I t's breathtaking. The petals are delicate with pointed
tips. At the centre of the flowerbeds there's a ring of white roses the rarest and most precious variety. They don't have a name; they were cultivated by one of the Mrs von Goctzens, but no one
remembers which. Their whiteness is dazzling, like snow, with
the slightest hint of blue in the deepest folds of the petals. N o
one could fail t o b e struck b y their beauty, but something has
gone wrong with their fragrance. When they grow and reach full
bloom, they start to smell like wine that's gone sour, or rotting
apples. Maybe that's why no one has ever ventured to give them
a name.
The approach to the mansion is between two lime trees that
always blossom at the beginning of july. A road paved in sandstone leads up to the broad steps and a small courtyard shielded from the road by the servants' quarters. On the huge from door
is the coat of arms of the von Goetzen family, which features an
eye-catching rocking horse against a field of fleur-de-lis - a sign
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of the famtly's wider European connections. The door opens
into a large hall, off which there is a dining-room that leads into
the conservatory. a library and two reception rooms opening on
to the terrace. There is also a music-room, with a grand piano
and a harpsichord, and a smoking-room originally for the gentlemen, but eventually the ladies too. A staircase laid with a cream carpet leads up to two ballrooms and an irregular
drawing-room, added on at some point. Beyond these rooms
are living quarters for the older generation of the family, while
the second floor consists of apartments for the younger. All this
is crowned by a vast attic, with high, sloping ceilings and little
windows on to all four corners of the world. From them you can
see the mountains, and houses set into the valleys like valuable
cutlery pressed into a plush-lined box. The crowns of the spruce
trees polish the skies as they float by. All this belongs to the von
Goetzen family.
There was no warning that they would have to leave their
mansion. The very idea was unthinkable - as absurd as expecting a mussel or a snail to leave its shell. And yet one of the von Goetzens had had a presentiment - he wasn't sure how it had
come about, but before the war he had bought a smallish estate
in Bavaria. The landscape was strikingly similar - the same
gentle hills dark with spruce, the same shallow streams with
stony beds - even the people looked the same, as did the
churches, wayside chapels and winding little roads. The
Bavarian palace was admittedly smaller, but by that token all the
more sui table for development. He didn't pay much for it,
because its former owners, who were strangely reticent, had
gone off somewhere abroad. In fact he never even saw them; he
made all the arrangements through a lawyer.
He hadn't said a word to anyone - it was meant to be a surprise. Then, as he got caught up in autumn hunting, winter
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balls and spring picnics, he simply forgot about the new mansion. When the family were orficially informed that the Bolsheviks were just around the corner, they assembled in the
drawing-room and decided to break into their oldest wine stock.
One of the women played the grand piano, while another played
patience. Then the von G oetzen with the estate in B::IVaria
brought down photographs and showed them the new mansion.
For a long time no one said anything, but the prospect of all the
potential renovation and rebuilding was very tempting. They
liked the solid classical form of the new house. They started to
sketch out plans, but towards evening they fell strangely silent
and felt dispirited. They slunk about the great house, running
their fingertips over the English panelling and casting their gaze
across the patterns on the wallpaper.
'Can't someone find a way for us to stay here?' asked the
oldest of the ladies.
But in the morning she instructed the gardener to dig up the
roses.
A tremor ran through their dreams. Prompted by a strange
feeling of anxiety, the von Goetzen who had bought the mansion
in Bavaria went off to the local town and found it in lllter confusion. People were packing their belongings on to cans ami trucks, and pressing doggedly along the only road west between