Clara

by Kurt Palka

  Breck saw them and he waved from the barn door. He stomped snow from his boots and called, “More snow comin’, Master Albert!” He pointed at the dark skies.

  “I see that,” said Albert. “So let’s cut back on the oat feed and get the shovellers lined up for tomorrow. I want the main paths and all access to buildings kept clear around the clock. And tell the men to use the red lifter and dump the snow behind the north shed where it’ll run off downhill.”

  THAT SUNDAY NIGHT they took the Daimler to a Nazi meeting at a house in the outskirts of Vienna. Theo had guaranteed that there would be no police, and that he could get them in. It was a special meeting. Very interesting, he said. A woman speaker from Germany.

  Grim-faced security men stood at both ends of the street, and more patted them down for concealed weapons before they were allowed in.

  The meeting took place in the living room and adjoining dining room of a large home. People stood on the stairs and on the landing and craned their necks to see. A slight young woman in a long black skirt and white blouse was in charge. On her blouse, like a brooch, she wore the round party pin with the swastika. She stood against a glassfronted bookcase, and she gave a report on the economic and social progress across the border in Germany.

  While in Austria the government was unable to do anything other than cling to power with force, she told them, the jobs created in Germany were in the millions now; in road construction, in hydro-electric power generation, in home construction, in agriculture, in cars and machinery, and in armaments.

  Especially now, with the Communists there defeated, she said, the economy would be improving ever more rapidly. She spoke of a new pride to wipe out the insult of Versailles. And she spoke of a new and important role for women to help form a kinder society. A society where family values came first, where social insurance and health care were available to all. She spoke of hope and dignity; of change, and of a fair distribution of resources and work among men and women; and of financial well-being.

  “You are outlawed here in this country because your government is afraid of you. Its politicians and supporters want to cling to power and privilege,” she said. “You may have been forced underground for now, but in a way that only makes you stronger. Now you can grow and prepare, away from public scrutiny. We are ready to help you. Have no doubt; you will be forming the next government.”

  She spoke well, in clear and measured sentences, for half an hour. Then she introduced a man by the name of Seyss-Inquart as the new leader of the Austrian National Socialist Party. It would be his job to prepare the takeover, she said.

  Back outside Koren was subdued. He admitted that their platform sounded good. “Too good,” he said. “Afterwards, when they’re in power they can do whatever they want. I should have stood up and asked her if the Jews are next, now that the Communists are defeated.”

  “We wouldn’t have to adopt all their policies,” said Erika. “Just the ones we want.”

  Koren put his arm around her shoulder. “Really?”

  “Well, we wouldn’t. In any case I don’t think they’ll get in. And if they do and then don’t deliver, we’ll just throw them out at the next election.”

  At the Daimler Theo wiped snow off the windshield, unlocked the vehicle, and leaned across to open the passenger door.

  “But I did like that young woman,” Clara said. She moved over in the backseat to make room for Albert. “A woman spokesman. Nobody else has an agenda that includes women.”

  “She was good,” admitted Koren. “I’m glad we came. I can write about that. A moody setting. All those people and that blond little slip of a woman holding their attention.”

  “And did you hear what she said about Versailles?” said Theo. “Why don’t we stand up and do something too?”

  “Because we signed an armistice agreement,” said Albert. “Breaking it would amount to an act of war.”

  “Maybe that’s what it takes.” Theodor started the engine. “The politicians aren’t the ones who are hurting. Without an opposition they can just take whatever they want. It’s a dictatorship.”

  “It is,” said Albert. “Just about. But you’re not hurting too much, Theo. Are you?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Looking at Theodor from behind and to the side, Clara could see the angry tilt to his head, the jaw muscles working. He raised a gloved hand from the wheel and formed a gun with it. “Start at the top.”

  “Just drive,” said Albert.

  Theo felt her gaze and he looked away from the road and quickly at her over his shoulder. “What?” he said.

  “Theo,” said Albert. “Drive.”

  THE NEXT TIME they saw David Koren was in January 1934. He had come straight from Berlin. He had made up his mind, he told them: anti-Semitism was clearly on the rise and he’d be moving on. He would go and live in France or England. Maybe in America or Canada, even though it remained to be seen if Jews that weren’t rich and famous were really welcome in any of those places.

  “You could stay here,” she said to him. “You’re a writer, you can work from anywhere.”

  Koren shook his head. No, he couldn’t, he said. No more than he could go back to Hungary. He looked at Erika and said, “We’ve been having talks about that.”

  Erika said nothing.

  “You can’t go back to your childhood,” said Koren. “Too many unpleasant memories. I’d shrink as a person, never mind as a writer. And then, what if the Nazis do get in?”

  They sat listening; she, Erika, and Mitzi. Albert had not been able to come. They were drinking coffee on a hotel terrace near the university. Mitzi wore her white cosmetician’s coat because she was helping out that day in the hotel spa. She and Erika had their books with them because an exam was coming and their heads were swimming with Arthur Schopenhauer and Rainer Maria Rilke. With an exploration of his Sonnets to Orpheus. And for a history paper they were living in their minds not with desperate dictators, but with men of fabulous vision and strength of character, such as those of the Convention of 1787. They were reading We the People, the entire text of which they were expected to know point by point.

  “Another reason I’ll need to move is so I can finally write the truth,” said Koren. “My story on the Austrian Nazis? I queried Ullstein, and a friend took me aside and warned me off. ‘You’re a Jew,’ he said to me. ‘What are you thinking?’ So that’s the reality now.”

  He went on about party thugs and criminal elements, and they listened. They nodded. They sipped coffee. The waiter in an old black suit with a white napkin on his sleeve shuffled up once in a while and set down fresh glasses of water from a silver tray.

  “I’ll have to go soon,” she said.

  “I can tell you’re not worried, Clara,” said Koren. “You’re hardly listening.”

  “Oh, I am listening.”

  “We’re no longer thinking of the Nazis or the Communists,” said Erika. “If anything, maybe we’ll vote for the Social Democrats.”

  “Vote. Did you say vote?”

  “Yes. There’ll have to be an election at some point. But we also think we need a new party altogether; maybe that’s what will come of all this. More women at the top.”

  “You’re dreaming,” said Koren.

  They had in fact been talking about that, over wine by candlelight: their own political party. Women who weren’t simply waiting-and-hoping but who went out and took action. Women Who Did. Women without Prince Charming.

  That afternoon at the café David Koren went on to predict that, should the Communists come to power in Austria, they would ruin what was left of any economy by their inherent corruption and lack of productivity. And if the Nazis came to power, the entire country would be swallowed up by Berlin and run as a colony.

  In the end only Mitzi took David Koren seriously; she and Erika did not. Not then, anyway. At the very least it would have required taking a position, and they had no real idea what that position would have to be, especially since t
hings kept changing. Apart from that, their heads were elsewhere.

  “SO IS THEO A NAZI?” she had asked Albert that snowy Sunday night after the meeting. “I mean, is he active in the party? Not just going to those meetings?”

  She’d tiptoed to his room long after dinner at the horse farm. His parents were still in Vienna. From the bed they could see the window, and in the pale light of snow everywhere they could see just the outlines of furniture in the room; the desk by the window, the dresser mirror, the screen with her clothes hung over it. They could hear the wind on the roof building drifts, hard snowflakes curling down against the window glass.

  “Is he?” she said sleepily. She was lying on her side, with her head on the pillow and her hand on his chest. She stirred and stuck one hot leg out from under the duvet into the cooling air.

  “Well, yes. You could tell at the meeting. They let us in because they knew him.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous for him? I think Erika is right that we shouldn’t go to those meetings any more. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “I agree. Theo confessed to me that he was arrested in those first few days of the Emergency. He was actually proud of it.”

  “So he shouldn’t go either. Or at least not be active.” She yawned heartily. “Excuse me. What a day. What I mean is, wouldn’t he get a serious sentence if they caught him a second time?”

  “He won’t get caught again. We had a good talk about it and I think he’s learned his lesson.”

  They were silent for a while. “That young woman at the meeting,” she said then. “I have to admit I really did like her. So cool and in control. No doubt in her mind. So focused. How do you get that way?”

  “You believe. That’s how. You’re falling asleep.” He leaned over and kissed her goodnight.

  SEVEN

  ON FEBRUARY 12, 1934, she and Erika were at home studying when they heard gunshots. They opened the window and leaned out trying to see what was going on. It had rained the day before, then frozen and begun to snow. Ice and snow was covering streets and roofs, and in the early morning people had put sand and fireplace ashes on sidewalks. Now gusts of wind were raising clouds of dust, and flakes of burnt paper rose high in the air.

  They heard shouting somewhere and truck engines racing, and with every harsh sound pigeons rose from roofs opposite and circled and landed again.

  “I should go and see,” said Erika.

  “Don’t. At least wait until we know what’s going on.”

  They closed the window and tried to ignore the noises. There were more gunshots farther away, then near again.

  In the afternoon Albert came pounding up the stairs. He took off the motorcycle coat and hung it on a peg. He took a black pistol from the coat pocket and laid it on the table.

  Nazi agents had infiltrated the security forces, he told them. They had arrested some Social Democrats, who were now fighting back, organized assaults from trucks with machine guns on the back.

  During that day and the next he made quick forays into the streets. He always came back within a few hours and put the pistol back on the table. Once, he slipped out the magazine and put two new shells into it. From somewhere he brought milk and bread and cheese and apples. By the end of the second day the various militia had united against the government, and army units had been mobilized.

  In the apartment the radio was on all the time; not because the official news was trustworthy, but because if the government needed mounted units, Albert’s dragoons might be called up.

  He made her and Erika practise pointing their index fingers. “The lamp,” he would call. “The door! Do it more quickly. The radio! The window on the left! The kitchen door!”

  “That is how you fire a handgun,” he told them. “You don’t aim. You straighten your arm and point. Again. The door lock! The picture above the bed!”

  He took out the magazine and ejected the shell, and he made them point the empty gun and squeeze the trigger. “The kitchen sink! The window!”

  Finally he taught them how to load the gun, and to pull back the slide and feed the first shell into the chamber.

  “Keep it here,” he said. He looked around. “Maybe in that drawer. Hidden but close by. Keep this box of shells with it.”

  The battle lasted three days. When it was over, the militia had been defeated by regular police and military units. Many were dead, especially in the crowded workers’ districts. Some had been executed in the streets.

  The government in Vienna declared a new constitution that swept away the last pretence of democracy and the mood in the country darkened further.

  A few months later, on July 25, eight men climbed the sweeping stairs of the chancellery and walked quickly along the hallways to the chancellor’s office. The newspaper later said that the two security men at the door had stood aside, but old Mrs. Kaltenböck, the chief secretary, had tried to stop the men. They pushed her aside and crowded into the inner office.

  Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was sitting at this desk, and the men took out pistols and began shooting him in the face and chest. Twenty-four bullets, according to the newspaper.

  SO BEGAN the Nazi putsch of 1934. Simultaneous with the assassination in Vienna, thousands of young men and women across the country stormed provincial and municipal offices. In the south and west large groups of them fought police and Home Front units. Some of the young Nazis had firearms, and so now they were no longer mere hothead students. The police had orders to shoot to kill. The military was called out and issued live ammunition. Gun battles took place in city streets and in country lanes and fields.

  In the apartment the radio was again on continuously. The announcer became hoarse with excitement and he kept clearing his throat until another announcer, a woman, took over. She said that the eight assassins, among them two third-year medicine students, had already been arrested and executed.

  Albert’s 3rd Dragoons were ordered to stand by in full gear at their horses. He and his men were issued the longbarrelled pistols carried in saddle holsters and the heavy dragoon battle sabres. They slept and ate beside their horses, awaiting orders.

  SHE RACED to the post office on her bicycle, standing in the pedals for extra power and speed.

  “You should have come home,” cried her mother on the telephone. “My God, why didn’t you? It must be so dangerous in Vienna now.”

  “I was going to come home next week. Erika and I are studying. And Albert is here. Was here.”

  “Albert,” said her mother.

  “It’s all right. He was keeping us safe. Now that he’s gone his parents are sending a car and Erika and I can go to the estate.”

  “It’s not safe anywhere with those Nazi fools and the police in the streets. Here, talk to your father. He’s been so worried about you.”

  Back at the apartment she and Erika packed for a few days. They brought along Arthur Schopenhauer on Will and Destiny, the work that had influenced Nietzsche and Wagner, and they brought William Blake for a tricky paper to be written over the summer on Sensuality and Freedom.

  When the chauffeur arrived she asked if Mitzi could come too, and the chauffeur in tunic, cap, and grey deerskin gloves said he did not know, but he supposed so.

  He called them young misses. “If the young misses are ready,” he said. “Hurry a bit. The army is blocking some of the streets.”

  In the Daimler the glass to the driver’s compartment was slid shut but the windows in the back were open wide. They rode with warm air blowing in and out, stirring their hair and clothes. They saw a column of military trucks, and twice they saw a line of soldiers combing a field. Once, they were stopped but the chauffeur showed papers and they were waved on.

  ON THE ESTATE grain stood high and golden in the sun. In the long sheds down by the river saws were ripping the first pine logs of the summer, and everywhere the air was warm and filled with the crackle of things drying and with the lazy buzz of bees and flies.

  Servants in green aprons showed them to
their rooms in the guest wing. Doors and windows stood wide open, and from across the yard they could hear a piano. The playing stopped abruptly and they heard Albert’s mother, Cecilia, speaking to someone in her regal way, then a door slammed and a radio was turned on somewhere. They could hear that clearly because even though the yard was large, perhaps thirty metres across, the air lay heavy and still.

  For lunch they were five at the table, with one more place set but the chair empty. They were served panfried trout and vegetables and small summer potatoes in a dill cream sauce. Servants passed bowls and platters, but no one ate much. In the kitchen the radio was on, and Cecilia told the maid to turn on the apparatus in the living room also.

  The announcer was speaking excitedly about confrontations across the country. Police and army were winning everywhere.

  Cecilia instructed the maid to keep Theodor’s lunch warm. He might be home any time.

  “Where is he?” said Mitzi. Cecilia glared at Maximilian, and Maximilian shook his head at Mitzi.

  By mid-afternoon that day the parents had sent servants off in all directions to search for Theodor. Cecilia in her buttoned and laced city dress swept into Clara’s room, where she sat studying at the desk by the window.

  She slipped a pencil between the pages and stood up from the chair. Cecilia stood by her side, looking at the book cover.

  “Schopenhauer,” she said. “Almost all our sorrows come from our relations with other people. So true. Motherhood and marriage would be good examples there. What else? Something about fleeing to solitude, away from the stings and flies in the marketplace. Meaning the sheer annoyance of other people, of course. But you probably know all that.”

  Clara stood looking at her. The last quotation had been Nietzsche, not Schopenhauer, but she said nothing. The woman had been crying but had worked at repairing the damage to her face. Cecilia stood proud and erect, her chin up, but her eyes red.