A novel about moral ambiguity that reflects the #MeToo movement

2015. Stella, a professor and historian, comes to the beautiful and ancient city of Bonn, Germany, for a World Heritage conference. With things at home tearing at the seams, she is determined to pretend all is well. At least, until she is assaulted over a trivial matter by another delegate, Professor Giovanni Costa. Bewildered, Stella descends into a shadowy observer, slowly becoming an obsessed stalker. When she meets the elderly Hildegard on a park bench by the River Rhine she is drawn into her wartime story, little seeing the similarities to her own situation.

1941. Hildegard, new wife to Kurt and student of architecture, surrenders to the inevitable; she needs a job for them to pay their rent. Interviewing for a hotel post, she does not realise her life now is off course, running on a track destined to collide with the sinister Fuhrer himself. Although repulsed, she must play along with the Fatherland ideals—to show anything but enthusiasm would not only leave her without a job but probably worse circumstances. She is thrust into the role of maid to Hitler in the infamous room 106 in a hotel he visited more than 70 times. She is no longer able to hide away from reality in her studies. Moving forward is the only option, no matter how dark it gets.

With the story switching between 2015 and 1941, Stella and Hildegard face questions of survival, identity, love and meaning as they juggle moral ambiguities in a world of elusive justice.

Excerpt

And then there it was. Moonlight Sonata. Stella bent over the glass case which protected the brittle manuscript bearing the beloved 1801 piano music. Quick, slightly slanted bar lines segmented the staves, with quavers and crotchets reduced to hurried dots with tapered tails. Some pages were covered in lacy tracks, a light pressure of composition coming without effort, the romantic ideal of a glorious outpouring of spirit. She had listened to the sonata in countless sad and happy times, and here was its genesis.

A voice behind. ‘What a lovely surprise to see you, my dear.’

Stella jumped. Takura? She was not sure in the conservation-darkness of the museum, but then she saw Hildegard by his side, smiling in pink lipstick.

Hildegard circled the man’s waist with her thin arm. ‘Neo, I introduce Dr Robinson—Stella—my new friend and a visitor to my Bonn.’

Hildegard beamed. ‘Neo is my son.’

Neo clasped Stella’s hand. She hid her bewilderment at the family relationship between the small, white, German woman in her green summer dress with patch pockets, and the towering, black African man in elegant dark trousers and a business shirt. In his fifties, perhaps. Stella knew a lot about Hildegard’s life, but not all; she must have gone on living richly after the war, but her eyes revealed that today she had been weeping.

Eagerly, Hildegard took Stella’s hand. ‘Neo lives most of the time in Gaborone, but we are mother and son for many years.’

Stella tried to smooth her matted hair. ‘You’re a tourist today?’

Neo shook his head. ‘I’m a classical pianist. When I visit my mother, I always come to this house; it’s a touchstone for me.’

Hildegard guided Stella back to Moonlight Sonata and beckoned to Neo.

‘A moment to share, dear ones.’

Stella let her new friend show her a treasure of Bonn—what an honour to be included with Neo. Costa’s insults diminished; inspirational music trumped his bullying. The hand of Beethoven blazed across this paper more than two hundred years ago. The yellowed pages rested on tiny props, imminent with music, islands of calm amid the museum horde. This was where Stella belonged.

‘Such intoxicating sound from these squiggles and dots!’

‘But it’s more,’ said Hildegard. ‘The sonata is part of the soul of Germany.’

‘Even more, Mama,’ said Neo. His elegant fingers hovered towards the sonata in a caress. ‘Of the world!’ His fingers dashed through an arpeggio. ‘From the third movement.’

Stella blurted, ‘You’re from Africa’.

Bemused, Neo nodded. ‘Yeah, Botswana.’

Stella flushed hotly. Neo and Hildegard had not realised that she had made a simple statement; she had not asked a question. Of course, an African could be a classical pianist. She knew that; she had not meant to suggest otherwise, how mortifying. And, of course, Gaborone was in Africa. She knew that it was in Botswana and even wanted to go on safari there one day, but they didn’t know that. She looked red and sweaty and now she appeared ignorant of geography, another patronizing Westerner who knew nothing of Africa. She would rescue the situation, show them how much she knew and cared about the issues Neo must juggle.

‘You don’t worry about Western hegemony and an oppressive musical canon?’

‘What a mouthful!’ laughed Neo. ‘No, I don’t worry.’ He shook a fist at the manuscript. ‘What a lot of chaos wrought by a sheet of old paper!’

Hildegard covered her lower face, but Stella saw that she too laughed.

‘We Batswana take what we want and leave the rest,’ said Neo kindly. ‘No-one tells us what to do.’

Stella could not meet Neo’s eyes. There was no way to make this right. She had performed like one of those Westerners who were anxious to protect non-Westerners from the West itself, as if non-Western identities lay eternally in colonial tatters. She acted the fool; she knew it. The crush of the room, the shame of insulting Neo... She felt a wave of cold, then heat. She steadied herself on the edge of the cabinet.

‘Shall we?’ Hildegard pointed to the door.

Neo took her walking cane. She linked arms with him and Stella and walked gracefully between them through the international tourists to the back of the museum and into the bare room where Beethoven was born. Stella prayed that the awkward moment had passed. She grabbed the frame of the low door, ducked, and passed dizzily into the attic, with its scrubbed, wooden floor and small windows tucked under the narrow eaves, the shatteringly inauspicious birthplace of a genius.

Tourists dropped their voices. Stella hunched her shoulders, making herself small in the tight space. It was here that Beethoven first breathed, a little before Christmas in 1770, with ice clinging to the wavy, misting windowpanes and his parents still mourning the death of their first born. The new infant, Ludwig, was born into grief. So many identities criss-crossed in the impoverished space and somehow found a home as each place and time and culture and person discovered Beethoven’s music.

Tourists tried to separate themselves from others, each family group seeking to photograph itself in the lowly chamber as if it was occupied by a single family alone. Hot and cold waves accelerated across Stella’s head and body. Her bottled water was finished, and headache throbs converged behind her eyes.

Hildegard turned to Stella. Her eyes were penetrating and compassionate; how concerned she was to see her friend’s distress. Horrified by the misunderstanding with Neo, Stella pulled out her camera to give herself something to do. Hildegard probably thought her a racist. To steady herself, Stella copied the tourists who crammed into the bare room trying to photograph the interior, but it was impossible. Everywhere—floor, window, wall, door—sunburnt, twenty-first century tourists cooled themselves with museum brochures. The famous dark, furrowed brow and waves of romantic Beethoven hair flashed around the room as flapping pamphlets turned into fans.

Bonn was fixated on Beethoven, but the fate of Tzipi and Daniel was erased from daily memory. Stella panted in the claustrophobic birth chamber, sensing the children’s tragedy slipping into the casual violence of present-day Costa. Her body tingled, fiery then icy. Costa…she itched to slap him hard. Leave a bruise on his cheek. And then what dreadful consequences? An assault charge? Sacked from the university? She had always been self-disciplined, denying herself, forcing herself to do what she did not want to do. She had missed out on the joy of impulse her whole life. Creativity emerged from impulse, and she’d killed it. She was at war with herself. Stella blinked; Neo and Hildegard swayed. The short space across the plank floor to mother and son expanded and contracted. She wiped her eyes and tried to focus. They watched her, muttering. Their eyes met and travelled back to her.

Voices sighed, hummed, murmured in the tiny birth space under the old eaves. A foul sibilance sprayed. Saliva from every language spat, stripping out oxygen, coating the room in a repulsive slick. The walls glistened in a foul coating of hissed worship. The stifling birthplace shrank, reeking with sweat, as the walls tilted. Stella could scarcely see the wooden floor around her own feet. Through her lens, she tried to line up the tiny window with the dark grey bust on the garden plinth, but the image blurred, the window frame in sharp focus, and the bust, no more than a blotch. She grabbed the frame and shut her eyes.

Hildegard grasped Stella’s elbow and spoke muffled words. When Stella opened her eyes, Neo had appeared on her other side; tentatively, he touched her shoulder. She babbled an excuse— ‘hot, tired, conference’ —and teetered downstairs, knocking into visitors, blundering from step to step. Staircase too narrow. Walls swinging. Manuscripts jumbling.

Hildegard called, ‘Stel-lah! Stel-lah!’

But Stella did not look back from the door nor the scorching street beyond.

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About the Author

Jennifer Harris writes literary fiction inspired by the historic environment—not historical fiction, but fiction set in the contemporary era that responds to the past, remembered either publicly in monuments and memorials, or in subtle, private ways. Her PhD is in Cultural Heritage theory and she has lectured in and researched cultural heritage and museums for many years. She has also run a small museum, and worked as a journalist in Australia and London.

Jennifer is from Western Australia and has lived also in France and the UK. In 2020 she relocated to Seattle in the spectacular Pacific Northwest of the USA.

Connect: https://www.jenniferharriswriter.com/