He was staring at the floor and refused to look up.
“Either they will pull her out of school and send her somewhere else, or . . .”
His head snapped up. “Or what?” He snorted in disgust. “They’ll kick me out of school?”
“They are not going to let this happen, Hans. They are not.”
“I am one of their top students. I plan to be valedictorian next year. The University of Berlin has already talked to them about giving me a full scholarship. That brings a lot of prestige to the academy. They are not going to kick me out of school.”
“And who influences the university to give those scholarships?” she exclaimed. “Count and Countess von Kruger.”
He said nothing, just clamped his jaw and stared past her.
“Will you do one thing for me, Hans?”
He didn’t move. She leaned forward, eyes hard. “I am your mama, Hans. And I have a right to be concerned. If you don’t want to talk to me, then I’ll go wake up your father.”
“What?” he grunted. “What do you want me to do?”
“Before Magdalena goes, you have to tell her not to say anything to her parents about the two of you. Not yet. Give it this next year. If you’ve managed to keep it a secret this long, then you can do it for another year. At this time next year, if you still feel the same way about each other, then you can tell them together. Then they can’t stop your schooling. Then you’ll be eighteen and a legal adult, at least.”
She sat back. There was nothing more she could think of to say that might reach him. Now it was up to him.
His eyes searched hers as a wave of emotion played across his face. Then finally he gave a quick nod. “Okay, I will do this much. I will tell Magdalena not to say anything to her parents. We’ll keep it a secret. But I promise to do that only for the summer. Come this fall, we will evaluate the situation and decide whether or not to keep our love secret. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can promise you.”
Inga was actually elated. She hadn’t expected to get anything from him. “I have your word on it?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“No more lies?”
“No, Mama. And what about Papa? Are you going to tell him all of this?”
“When you go to the train station with him, you tell your papa that you’ve asked Magdalena not to say anything to her parents and that you’re not going to see each other this summer. Then the rest—”
“Wait!” he blurted. “Who said anything about not seeing her? I only promised that we wouldn’t tell her parents. When she comes back from Scotland, I plan to see her. I’ll just be really careful that no one sees us.”
Inga sighed. She was very tired, and the lateness of the hour was only part of the reason. “All right,” she conceded. “Tell your father that she’s not going to say anything to the count and countess now. That will be a huge relief to him.” Her voice became very earnest. “He worries a lot about you getting kicked out of school. You know how much your education means to him.”
“I know.” Hans sighed too. “I’ll make sure he knows I won’t jeopardize that.”
“Gut. The rest can be between you and me for now.”
“Are you sure he will accept that?”
“Yes. He won’t like it, but he will accept it.” She hesitated and then added, “Though he is very angry, he doesn’t like confronting you.” She sighed with some bitterness. “That’s my job. Your job is to convince him that you are not going to throw this all away.”
He slowly got to his feet. He came over, bent down, and kissed his mother on the cheek. There was very little affection in the gesture. “All right, Mama. You have my word.”
July 31, 1913—Von Kruger Academy, Bogenhausen, Munich
Hans Otto was at the small desk in his dormitory room. He was barefoot and wore no shirt, only his trousers. A small fan whirred softly from his small bookshelf, but it barely stirred the oppressive heat. His window was thrown fully open. That made no difference either. The leaves on the sycamore tree just outside his room were as motionless as if they were carved from stone.
He straightened and then leaned back to scratch his back against slats in the chair. His whole body was clammy with sweat. With a sigh, he reached over and shut the book he’d been studying, sticking his notebook inside to mark his place. How was he supposed to study when he was smothering to death?
He pulled a face. “Come on, Eckhardt,” he muttered. “It’s not the heat that’s bothering you.”
He had been at this for nearly an hour, and he hadn’t comprehended more than a paragraph or two of his textbook, which for him was very unusual. It was a fascinating study, but the title alone was so ponderous that it was enough to put you to sleep: Rudolf Diesel and the Sparkless Internal Combustion Engine.
Normally Hans was enthralled by the brilliance of Rudolf Diesel’s design for an internal combustion engine. He wasn’t the one who first discovered that if air is compressed it generates heat, and that if it is compressed with enough pressure it gets hot enough to ignite fuel without using a spark plug. But Rudolf Diesel had taken the concept and developed it into an engine that generated the highest thermal efficiency of any internal combustion engine available. Since then, Diesel’s engines had become part of engineering history. They were everywhere—in factories, on steamships, in railroad engines, in trucks. Hans found all of it so fascinating that he was now thinking he might make it his specialty when he went to university.
He groaned. But right now, all he could think of was Magdalena. Today was the last day of July. Today her family was scheduled to pack up their things in Scotland and start back for Germany. Magdalena had told Hans she would be back by the fourth of August. That was this coming Monday. And for the last week, he’d been able to think of little else.
They hadn’t written, of course. At the graduation ball, they had been able to snatch a few minutes together behind the auditorium, where he told her that he had decided it wasn’t wise to tell her parents yet. He had expected a fight but was relieved when she readily agreed. He had then asked if he could write to her. She had panicked. “No, Hans! The servants always get the mail, and they always take it straight to Papa. You can’t do that.”
He made no attempt to hide his disappointment. She had leaned in and kissed him hard. “I know,” she said. “I’m going to miss you so much. But now that we’re not telling my parents about us, we can’t let them know we’re writing. We just can’t.”
So he had not heard anything from her in almost six weeks. And with each passing week, his ability to concentrate on his studies diminished exponentially.
He looked up as he heard the murmur of men’s voices and footsteps coming down the hall. A moment later there was a sharp rap on the door.
“Come!”
The door pushed open and two men stepped in. Hans leaped to his feet. “Hey, Elders!” he cried in English. “How are you?”
Elder Reissner moved forward and gripped his hand. “Sehr gut, Hans,” he replied in German. Then in English, “We’re very good.”
Elder Jackson joined them and slapped Hans lightly on the back. “What are you doing sitting in here? Let’s go find some shade. This is unbearable.”
“You’re telling me!” Hans grabbed his shirt and pulled it on without buttoning it and then shoved his feet into his loafers. “Let’s go.”
“Where have you guys been?” he asked as they started down the hall. “I was beginning to think you had gone back to America.”
“Not America. Somewhere a little closer to home.”
Something in the way he said it made Hans’s ears prick up. “Like where?”
“Let’s talk about it when we get outside.”
“Okay. I’m all for outside.”
Reissner laughed. “Your English is getting really good.”
“Danke.”
“You’ve only got one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“You speak it with an American accent. And yo
u’re picking up American slang. That won’t make you very popular in Europe.”
Hans brushed that aside as they exited the dormitory and headed for the deep shade of the sycamore tree. “Perhaps I shall go to America and make my fortune. Then when I come back filthy rich, no one will care what I sound like.”
He threw himself down on the grass, kicking off his shoes, still not bothering to button his shirt. “Ah. This is much better. Thank you for saving my life.” Then he squinted up at them. “Look, I know you have to look like missionaries, but can’t you at least take off your jackets? If anybody sees you sitting here in suit coats, they’ll think you are a couple of . . . How do you say it? Loo— uh—”
“Loonies?”
“Ja, loonies.” He grinned. “And no one wants to talk to loonies.”
He watched them take off their jackets and fold them up on the grass. “So,” he said. “Back to my question. Where have you guys been?”
“Jail,” Jackson said nonchalantly.
“Come on,” Hans scoffed, “I’m serious.”
“All right,” Reissner said. “We were kicked out of our apartment by the police two nights ago, but we were able to find a place that gave us two nights of free lodging.”
“Get serious, guys. What kind of place does that?”
“Jail,” Jackson said again, grinning.
Hans stopped dead. “You are serious?”
“Yes,” Reissner answered. “Very serious.”
“Who did you rob?”
“Very funny. Actually, the charge was not robbery. It was being a Mormon.”
“Go on, they don’t arrest you for that. Bismarck secured freedom of religion for Germany.”
Jackson pulled a face. “Things are getting better, but there are a lot of towns and cities that still think there’s a law against our Church holding meetings in Germany. In Berlin—well, actually, in all of Prussia—you can be fined 300 marks or sentenced to six months in jail for even attending one of our meetings.”
“I find that hard to believe, to be honest. Are you sure these are not just wild rumors?”
That clearly irritated Elder Reissner. “Okay, so how’s this for a rumor? I’ve talked to elders who were there when it happened. It was in June of 1910.”
“When did you come to Germany?” Hans interrupted.
“About fifteen months after that. So anyway, there was a meeting in Berlin and—”
“Wait. You’ve been here two years?”
“Almost.”
“No wonder your German is so good. How much longer will you stay?”
“We normally stay three years. My tentative release date is in October of next year. So you’ve got me for a while.”
“Good. Okay, go on.”
“Okay. We have apostles in our Church, just as Jesus did when He was on the earth. An apostle is one of the most senior of our leaders. We view them with the greatest respect. Kind of like Catholics would a cardinal.”
“I understand.”
“So in June of 1910, one of our apostles, whose name was Rudger Clawson, came over from England to visit our mission. A meeting was called for all missionaries and members who could make it to Berlin.”
Hans was listening intently, finally starting to take them seriously.
“So, they rented a big hall and all gathered there. There were several hundred missionaries, members of the Church, and what we call investigators—people who are learning about the Church to see if they are interested in joining. Elder Clawson was speaking. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the back of the hall and a bunch of policemen came busting in. One of them went up to the stand and very rudely shoved Elder Clawson aside, right while he was talking. He shouted that the meeting was illegal and was now ended. “If you can prove you are of German citizenship, you are free to go,” he shouted. “All others will be immediately banished from the city of Berlin and the state of Prussia.
“Twenty-five Americans, mostly missionaries but also Elder Clawson and a few students who were here on valid student visas, were marched off to jail and held there overnight. The next day they were escorted to the Prussian border, warned never to come back, and dumped off to fend for themselves.”
Hans was shaking his head. “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were crazy, but . . . Wow! It’s really hard to believe that they’re throwing you guys in jail.”
“Hey,” Jackson said, “getting thrown in jail here is so common that it’s almost a rite of passage for us. If you haven’t been in jail, you’re not considered a real missionary yet. Now Elder Reissner here, he has four incarcerations under his belt including this latest one, so he’s considered the elder statesman of incarceration.” He giggled. “Get it? Elder statesman?”
Hans rolled his eyes and looked at Reissner. “How many times have you really been in jail?”
“Four times. Twenty-three days all together.”
“Wow, I would never have believed that possible here. But you are out of jail now, so where are you going to stay tonight?”
“Actually, that’s why we came to see you.”
Hans gave him a sharp look. “You want to stay with me?”
“No, no. That could get you in trouble with the school. Not because we’re Latter-day Saints, but because we’re not students.”
“Ja, I can’t even have a fellow student sleep in my room without permission from the senior resident.”
“So,” Reissner said, taking a quick breath, “we had another idea.”
“Go on.”
“We’ve learned that local police don’t often share information with other cities and towns, so if we’re kicked out of one place, we just pack up and move to a new place and start again.”
“I don’t see any luggage.”
“It’s at a member’s house. So, here’s my question for you: don’t you have a sister or something who lives over in the west part of Munich?”
“Not a sister. An aunt. And my uncle. Yes, they live over in Menzing. Know where that is?”
They both nodded. Reissner looked like he wanted to say something but then changed his mind and shook his head.
“What?” Hans asked.
“I . . . Look, I don’t want to put you on the spot, so let me ask it this way. Would you have a problem with giving us their address?”
“You want to teach them?” he scoffed. “My uncle is even more agnostic than I am.”
“No, no!” he said hastily. “It’s just that we don’t know anyone out that way. And we don’t know the area at all. So I was thinking that maybe they could steer us to some places that would be available for rent.”
“Oh, is that all? No problem, Elder. My aunt would be happy to help you. My uncle too. He’s with the Public Works Department here in Munich, so he knows the city well. Remind me when we get back inside and I’ll give you their address.”
“That would be great. Danke schön.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll also write a short note introducing you if you’d like.”
“All the better.”
They talked for nearly half an hour, first about the mission conference, then about Hans’s schooling, and then about life in general. Finally, Elder Jackson said, “I saw where Leipzig won your national soccer match last week.”
Hans hooted. “Soccer? What kind of word is that? We don’t ‘sock’ the ball. That’s against the rules. We kick it or butt it with our heads.”
Jackson looked crestfallen. “Oh, yeah. So what do you call it again?”
“Fussball.”
Jackson puckered his lips and pronounced it with a long ooh sound—“Foohsbahl.”
They all had a good laugh at Jackson’s expression. Then Hans got to his feet and looked across the quad toward the clock tower. “Hey,” he said. “It’s 11:30. What say we go to the Ratskeller and grab some lunch? I’m starving. And I’m buying.”
The two elders exchanged quick glances.
“What?” Hans asked.
“Uh . . . Actually, the
re’s another reason we came to see you, Hans.”
“Oh, brother. Not another jail story.”
“No. Nothing is wrong,” Elder Reissner said. “It’s just that . . . Well, you know why we’re here in Germany, Hans. We’ve come to teach the gospel. Our mission president talked to us about that at the conference. He said that sometimes we missionaries make friends among the German people and spend a lot of time with them, but we never get to teach them the gospel because they’re not really interested.”
Hans grunted. “Like me, ja?”
“Ja.” Elder Reissner took a quick breath. “He didn’t ask us to stop seeing you, but he did recommend that if you’re not interested in our message, perhaps we should start spending more time seeking out others who might be.”
Hans was pulling on his lower lip now, but finally he nodded. “Ja, I can see the sense in that.”
“Any chance at all that you are interested?” Reissner asked.
“Sorry, guys. I wish I were. I like you two a lot, but religion just isn’t my thing.”
“The other problem is,” Jackson added, “if we move over to the west side of Munich, it will be much farther for us to come over here to see you. We’re on a limited budget, and . . .”
“I understand. That’s no problem. I love talking to you guys, but . . . Well, I understand.” He reached out a hand to Reissner and hauled him to his feet. “Okay, so Ratskeller, here we come.”
The Ratskeller
The restaurant was busy, but not as packed as it was when school was in full session. They found a corner table inside to get out of the sun and ordered. The elders tried to settle for light fare, but Hans wouldn’t hear of it. He was saddened to think that they wouldn’t see one another as frequently as before. He had come to view these two young men as some of the best friends he had. So he ordered for them and chose the largest dishes on the menu. He also pulled the waiter down close and ordered a large stein of beer, telling him to put it in front of Elder Jackson. Hans almost fell off his chair laughing when Jackson turned a shade of green at the smell of the beer under his nose. Then Hans placed it in front of himself.
Fire and Steel, Volume 1 Page 12
