Clara

by Kurt Palka

  He was smiling. He had kind brown eyes and a moustache, and he looked pale, but there was something else in his smile or perhaps in the way he looked at her and then briefly around at the people in the café; the full tables and the people lining up for his autograph and a word from him; a sadness, she thought, a solitariness even in the midst of so much admiration; a darkness that she could not forget for the next several days.

  Eventually she did, and when he and his wife killed themselves years later in Brazil the terror was already everywhere and it was unspeakable but nothing could be taken back.

  “For Clara Emilie,” Stefan Zweig had written. “We have art in order not to die of the truth (Nietzsche).” And he had signed his name.

  THREE

  IN HIS WILL Albert had left everything to her, to use as she saw fit. There was a bit of money, and she had the bank transfer twenty-five thousand euros to Willa and she wrote a cheque in the same amount for Emma.

  Willa called on Skype from Australia. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “Sending the money. But thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Spend it. Enjoy it.”

  “I will. Now, about the Knight’s Cross. You mentioned it in your email, so tell me. Who took it?”

  “Forget the Knight’s Cross. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “I don’t want to forget it. Who took it, Mom? One of Emma’s kids?”

  “Willa. Let it go.”

  “I won’t. Do you know how few of those they awarded? It’s up there with the Victoria Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor. Apart from that it’s worth a fortune on eBay.”

  “I know you are joking. You can’t sell those things on eBay because of the swastika on them.”

  “Well. The thing, as you call it, has a history. It was the one medal Dad valued, and you know why. Because of who gave it to him.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But your dad would not want you to cause trouble over it.”

  “Or maybe he would. One day I’ll find out who took it and I’ll ask for it back. Was it the snarky one with the tattoo?”

  “Willa-dear,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.” There was a silence into which she said, “Willa? I’m fine. There is no need for you to stand up for me. Or for your dad. Really. I miss him of course, and I know you do too.” She sat back in the chair and tightened the Sellotape on the microphone, which was a thing of inferior plastic that had broken on the first day.

  “Willa,” she said. “You have your love of animals from him, you know that. I don’t know why I’m saying that.” She listened. “Willa …” she said gently. “Willa-dear …” and she paused and then did not know what more to say.

  Next day in the late afternoon, when it was getting dark already and she had turned on the lights in her study, Emma came by to pick up the cheque. Her husband, Tomas, had come along, and Clara made tea for them and she held on to Emma’s shoulder as she climbed the chair to bring a fresh tin of Mitzi’s raisin cookies down from the kitchen cupboard.

  They sat in the living room under the tasselled lampshade and Emma poured tea and talked about school. Tomas sat eyeing the envelope with Emma’s name on it, and when tea had been poured and he had munched the first cookie, he reached for the envelope and opened it with the handle of his teaspoon. He took out the cheque and read the amount. He put the cheque back and pushed the envelope with two fingers across the tablecloth toward Emma. Emma blushed. She indicated his mouth and he brushed away a cookie crumb.

  “Did Willa get the same?” he said.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.”

  “That’s all there is, Tom. For now.” She did not dislike him, not exactly, but she’d liked Emma’s first husband better. As had Emma, she knew. Claude had been a pilot with Air France, and he’d been fun and intelligent, but then something had gone wrong in the marriage. Emma had moved back to St. Töllden and she’d met Tom, a widower with two children. They had three more. He took early retirement when his accounting firm closed over some lawsuit, and he’d been looking for part-time work ever since.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “The amount. We appreciate any help you can give. Thank you. Did you speak to them at the museum?”

  “No. Not yet, Tom. I’ll wait until they’ve come to pick up the boxes. There’ll be a natural opportunity then.”

  “There must be something I can do there.”

  “I don’t know. They probably have an accountant already.”

  “Their archives, maybe. The sooner, the better, Clara. A small favour.”

  “People study for that line of work, Tom. It is special. They have degrees. Art history, archaeology, library arts. Maybe there are courses you could take to get some kind of qualification. Even just as an archivist.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Just ask them.”

  “I said I would.”

  And Emma, sweet and unlucky Emma trapped here between mother and husband, said, “It’s getting dark so early these days. Look at that sky. Tommy, maybe we should go soon.”

  After they had left, and after she’d cleared away the tea things, the lawyer called.

  “Doctor Herzog,” he said. “Did your husband leave a firearm of any kind? There’s none licensed to him, but you never know. They’ll need a declaration from you.”

  She sat down on the chair by the telephone. “A firearm? Like a rifle?”

  “Or a pistol. Any kind of gun. Is there a gun in the house?”

  “Not that I know,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t you know if there was one? It would have to be kept secure, like trigger-locked and in some kind of gun safe. They are strict about that now.”

  “There isn’t one. No gun,” she said.

  “Good. I’ll send a messenger with the form. Please sign it and send it right back.”

  The form arrived and she stood at the bottom of the stairs in the freezing lobby and read it. The messenger was a young woman in tight clothing and a red bicycle helmet with blue-black bangs sticking out. “I’ll shoot it right back,” she said and did a clicking little dance step in her cycle shoes.

  “It’s already dark out there,” said Clara. “Be careful. It might be slippery.”

  “It’s nothing,” said the girl. “And I’ve got flashing lights front and back.”

  Clara signed her name in the box where in bold letters it cautioned her not to make a false statement or risk a penitentiary sentence of seven years. She wondered if that was the biblical seven years, meaning forever.

  Because the gun was there of course. The Walther. Upstairs, once she had her breath back, she went to check on it, just to make sure. It was on a shelf at the back in the linen closet, stripped and oiled and the pieces wrapped in cloth and zipped into freezer baggies. Barrel, slide, the cross-hatched walnut grip and magazine, and a box half full of shells.

  She would have to find a way to dispose of it. Which was just as well. It was time.

  FOUR

  IN THE EARLY 1930s they would drink cheap wine and sing student songs like “Gaudeamus Igitur.” They’d burn candles and argue sometimes half the night about the best form of government to return dignity and well-being to the nation. Looking back, it made her cringe at how naive and touchingly earnest they’d been, all of them: Monarchists, Jews, Communists, National Socialists.

  The Monarchists wanted to roll back history to the way things had been before 1914, as if such a thing were possible. The Communists wanted workers to be in control of all means of production; as the saying went, they wanted not just bread, they wanted the bakery.

  The Jews of the Zionist League promised peace and equality, and a society based on reason and spiritual values, like the one they envisioned for Palestine. They did not expect ever to be able to form a government in Vienna, but if they received enough votes they could certainly influence one.

  And the National Socialists, whom everyone simply called Nazis because their full name was such a mouthful, promised work and
dignity, the two things at the top of everyone’s wish list. They had a plan, they said. They pointed north across the border where Hitler’s work-creation projects after years of runaway inflation and economic depression were instilling a new pride in people and putting money in their pockets.

  So popular did the Nazis and the Communists become with the public that on March 7, 1933, the government in Vienna under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss evoked Emergency Rule and threatened to outlaw them. Police raided their meetings and took everyone away in crowded paddy wagons. In the morning police clerks wrote down their particulars, gave them a warning, and let them go.

  ALL THE FIRST WEEK of the Emergency it snowed, and it snowed worse in the west of the country. In her hometown of St. Töllden avalanches thundered down the mountain into the valley and one of them blocked the main road from the east. Since the army was busy enforcing the Emergency the road remained blocked for six days and nights, her mother said on the telephone, until locals could make their way through the snow with shovels and horse-drawn carriages.

  On the Sunday following she met Peter at Fröhlich’s in the first district. Soldiers and police were in the streets, checking cars and pedestrians at random. It was the end of March but still cold and some side streets were impassable with heavy snow.

  Peter had arrived before her and when he saw her he stood up and waved. The place was full, and in the salon through connecting doors a violinist and a pianist were playing the inevitable Strauss. She hung up her coat and scarf on a stand and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  “Clara,” he said. “Have you heard from home?”

  She told him what her mother had said on the telephone. They were fine.

  “Oh good. I was away in Paris and London.”

  “For the League?”

  “Yes. Everyone’s worried about Berlin, and now about the dismissal of parliament here. I’m supposed to be seeing Chancellor Dollfuss tomorrow.”

  “He shouldn’t outlaw those parties. It will only make them stronger.”

  “Probably.”

  A waitress came and took their orders. Peter asked for coffee and she ordered hot chocolate.

  She grinned at him. “They have the best here. You should try it.”

  “Maybe next time. What’s new? Last time I spoke to our mother she said you’re doing well at school. And you have Heidegger and Wittgenstein. That’s fantastic!”

  “I know. We even have Freud, on a good day.”

  “And? Come on, let’s have it. I hear you’re not seeing the Heller boy any more.”

  “Not really. I’m too busy.”

  He sat watching her. He smiled. “Too busy. You’re blushing. Who is it?”

  “Who’s who?”

  “Come on. What’s his name?”

  “Stop it, Peter. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

  “All right. Did you know any of the students who got arrested? You weren’t among them, I hope.”

  “No. But I do know quite a few of them. If they’re outlawed they’ll just meet in private homes. It certainly won’t stop them.”

  The coffee came, and the hot chocolate. She made a hole with the spoon in the whipped cream and took a sip of chocolate through the hole.

  She held out the cup. “So good. Taste it.”

  He shook his head. “No thanks. I was thinking, Clara. You should probably keep a journal. In a year or two it’ll be all very different. You’ll look around and wonder what happened.”

  “Albert said that too.”

  “Albert?”

  “Oh, all right. You win. His name is Albert. He says this is a groundswell and at university I have a front-row seat and afterwards it’s always just a blur.”

  “He is right. And don’t you get caught too. Don’t get a police record. A police record never goes away.”

  Peter went on to talk about the Reichstag fire in Berlin that Hitler had used to stage his coup. “They all use some sort of excuse. Some sort of phoney emergency and overnight instead of a democracy we have a dictatorship.”

  She sat holding the warm cup with both hands, listening and thinking and studying him up close. Scrubbed and neat, her big brother in a dark blazer and striped tie. He was fifteen years older than she and his degrees in international law had earned him an enviable job with the League of Nations. He had never steered her wrong.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. “Keeping notes, I mean. But I’m pretty busy right now.”

  They sipped from their cups. She caught the violinist winking at her. Out the windows it was snowing. A police car stopped and men in coats and wide-brimmed hats jumped out and arrested a man and a woman on the sidewalk. The woman was carrying an umbrella and in the struggle it collapsed and broke, and as the policemen were pushing her into the car she beat on them with the wreckage.

  “You see?” said Peter. “Even if the Emergency law is contested, they can do whatever they want while it lasts. That’s why they evoke it. Your Albert sounds sensible. What’s his last name? Maybe I know the family.”

  “Leonhardt. His father is an estate manager and his mother a pianist. A coach for opera singers.”

  “I don’t think I know them. Bring him around for dinner sometime. What does he do?”

  “He is a captain in the cavalry.”

  “A loyalist. Good. Let’s meet him.”

  In the weeks to follow she called Peter on two occasions. Once, his wife, Daniela, picked up and said he was out of the country, the other time the telephone just rang and rang.

  THAT SUMMER Albert competed in a military equestrian event, representing his unit, the 3rd Dragoon Regiment. He won gold in cross-country, ahead of a French major and a German lieutenant. There was a celebration at his parents’ apartment in Vienna, and a day later she took him home to St. Töllden, for the first time.

  They travelled by train south past fields of wheat and rye, and past ancient farmhouses with thatched roofs and storks’ nests on high platforms erected for this purpose. Through the open coach window they could smell the ripening grain and the summer heat on grass and earth. They saw flocks of birds swooping in formations that opened up and regrouped and settled and took flight again. The sun felt warm on her face, and warm on the grainy wood of the folding table by the window; it shone on his bare forearms and on his hands. Through the open window they could smell the hot coal smoke of the train engine.

  She was so much in love, all she had to do was look at him and a smile came to her face, and wild hope and gratitude to her heart. His hands, his face, the way he was looking at her. He made her feel loved and cherished, and secure, and of course she took it for granted that her parents would see all that, and accept him and like him too.

  But the visit did not go well, and afterwards she would puzzle about it and examine it moment by moment, situation by situation.

  “It was so strange,” she said to Erika back in Vienna. “Father tried, he really did. He took us to the new Roman dig and we all had dinner and went for a walk, but something felt wrong the whole time. It was mother. I asked her what was wrong and she said only that she had a migraine.”

  “Isn’t that possible?”

  “She hasn’t had a migraine in years. Well I don’t know, but I think it was just an excuse. She was so strange with Albert. Even more reserved than usual. Distant with him, with all of us, and that big straw hat she wore on the walk. You should have seen the way she looked at him from under the brim. Watching him. What was she thinking?”

  The answer arrived in Vienna only three days later in a letter written in her mother’s hand, the precise and slanted writing the old people called Corinth.

  I am sorry if I seemed out of sorts on the weekend, Clara-dear. I’ll try to explain, and I’ll come straight to the point. I can see how much you love this man and I am happy for you. But I look into his eyes and I am afraid. I will say it just this time and then no more.

  Wild men, Clara, bold and dashing men, beware of them. I know only too well the terrible at
traction they can have for a woman. There is something primal about it, something of the cave. A woman sees in his wildness a readiness to defend her and her offspring. She also senses an opportunity through him to go places, and even if they are only places in the heart, they are places she would never tread alone. His wildness makes her feel safe and so very alive; all the more so if the basic man-woman attraction between them is working well, and if his wildness is expressed also in the way in which he desires her. I know you two have this; one can feel it. It is important. It is to a marriage and to a family what a locomotive is to a train, and so I am happy for you.

  Your father would faint if he read this, but I know he won’t. We are grown women and you know what I mean. You probably also know where my fear comes from. It comes from your brothers’ father, of course, my Torben. I know I’ve avoided talking about him, and perhaps one day I will tell you more. Men like these—Clara, their wildness is so very dangerous because even as their love sweeps us away, these men are also prone to excessive risk-taking and most often the possible gain is not worth the risk. It may be to them, just as Russian roulette seems a worthwhile risk to some in the moment of passion, or a duel for nothing more than a slight. Honour, my God! Clara-dear, men can be such children.

  Your Albert; I look at him, I look into his eyes and at his bearing and the tilt of his chin, and I see my Torben. I recognize what it is that drives these sorts of men. I feel I do, so help me God. But then I can also see and feel your love for each other, and so there is nothing more I’ll to say on this matter, other than that I wish you both well. But please be careful.

  My dear Clara, thank you for your visit. Your father and I are proud that you are doing so well in your studies, and we send our love as always. Mama.

  And on a separate page in the same envelope, her father, whose love for her was the purest certainty in her life, wrote: