Clara

by Kurt Palka

  “How can I help?” she said.

  “Albert likes you a great deal, Clara. He speaks of your sense of purpose, your pride. In a good way.”

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  “Come with us. With me. Max is getting the car.”

  There was no chauffeur. Maximilian himself was at the wheel, and when the car doors were closed he headed the Daimler out the main gate, along the estate road, and through fields and forests toward the village. Grain stood rich and golden to either side. Far ahead they saw dust rising from some vehicles driving away.

  They did not speak one word in the car. She sat in the back, and Cecilia in the passenger seat, holding on with white fingers to the handle on the dash. Cecilia wore no jewellery other than her wedding ring and a small gold watch on a black strap. Her dark-brown hair with the first signs of grey in it was pinned up with tortoiseshell combs, and strands of it had fallen to the lace collar of the blouse. She looked back once over her shoulder at Clara, but she never spoke.

  In a far field they saw people in a great patch of grain beaten down as if by hail, but there had not been any hail. Maximilian veered off the road and drove along the tractor lane into the field. There were men and women there, some of the women crying. More men and women stood farther out in the field.

  Maximilian stopped the car and climbed out. The men took off their hats and one of them came up and said something to him. Maximilian turned to the open window. He said, “Wait here,” and he walked away with the man.

  The people gave them looks and turned away. Grain crackled in the heat and cicadas rasped.

  “Excuse me. You, in the blue jacket!” called Cecilia out the window. “What is going on?”

  The man came up and he turned and pointed. “The soldiers,” he said. “They came with trucks and they …” He stopped when he saw Maximilian coming back.

  She and Cecilia met him less than halfway and he took Cecilia’s hand, and moments later they stood looking down at Theodor. He lay with his legs twisted and his arms flung out, as if he had fallen from some great height. His eyes were wide open and his lips pulled back. His front teeth were broken and bloody and bared in a grimace, a horror face that she could not look at but that she still must have seen, because it would later stare at her some nights and it would stare at her from Hemingway’s writing, when he said that in battle men died like animals. That they plunged in an instant from peaks of intensity and vibrant aliveness down to wholly unexpected horror.

  There was blood also on Theodor’s shirt and trousers, and blood had pooled under him. Flies were on him already, and Cecilia reached out to shoo them away. She looked down at the boy, and she turned away and then looked at Clara with a helpless, a terrible plea. Finally she fell to her knees by his side and leaned over and held him.

  At some point Maximilian left. He walked to the Daimler, started it up, and brought it close. He lifted Theodor up, held him in his arms, and carried him to the backseat.

  Years later, but not so many years, Cecilia would say that her husband began dying the moment he had to carry his dead boy like this. Broad-shouldered and strong though he was, she could see it in his face. Those few staggering steps to the car and the grief and humiliations that followed were what killed him, she’d say, and not the heart attack listed in the document.

  At the estate they put the body on a wooden trestle table in the hallway. They closed his eyes and lips. They washed his face and combed his hair with water, and they covered the rest of him with a white sheet. They put candles in stone niches in the walls, and staff came and went on tiptoes and bowed in silence to the parents sitting there.

  The date was July 27, 1934, and that evening in her nightgown at the desk in her room she began to write.

  IN HER FILES for the years leading up to the war she had the examiner’s handwritten death certificate. It gave Theodor’s age as seventeen, and it said he had died from three 9mm bullets through mouth, lung, and spine.

  With the Nazi rebellion put down, police came to the estate in several cars, and there was much door-banging and shouting and noise of police boots in the wooden stairways of the building. They performed a search that lasted several hours. Simultaneously police also searched the apartment in Vienna and various other buildings that Maximilian as the managing director of the estate was in charge of.

  They found nothing to connect him personally to the forbidden Nazis, but Theodor had been a minor and by law his father was held accountable for his actions. In a quick judgment by the travelling court he was sentenced to two years in prison; after his release he would be barred from practising his profession for two further years.

  Albert, too, was held at least morally accountable. The judge in the black stole of his office said that as the older brother and as an officer Albert ought to have influenced Theodor and steered him onto a better path. Albert was handed a dishonourable discharge from the military and given a notation in his police file for moral wrongdoing bordering on the criminal.

  That day in court as the entire family stood accused of having neglected the youngest son, Cecilia requested to be allowed to speak. She stood up and asked the judge if he had children.

  “An inapproprium,” said the judge, an old man in an Imperial beard not seen much any more. “But I will answer it. I do have two sons. And I provided them with much stricter discipline to their benefit than you appear to have done. Your son was a—” he glanced at the documents before him. “Your son was a mere boy, not even finished with his baccalaureate. Boys that age need the rod and a very short leash.”

  He frowned at her, and when she opened her mouth to speak again he waved a hand and looked away from her at the court gendarme.

  “Next,” he said.

  Lawyers acting for the count in faraway America gave the family just three days to remove their personal belongings from the estate and to hand over all keys and records.

  They loaded their things onto a truck. She had ridden out there that moving day with Albert on the motorcycle, and she stood by as Breck handed him his riding boots and hefted the English hunter saddle into the sidecar.

  “A bad thing, Master Albert,” said Breck, and he nodded at her and said, “Young miss.”

  FOR THE DAY of Theodor’s funeral Maximilian was allowed out of prison. The family walked behind the two-wheeled horse cart that carried the coffin through the small Mariahilf cemetery in Vienna. From beyond the brick walls they could hear trains at the station. Cecilia’s face was hidden behind a black veil, and Maximilian in a black suit and black tie supported her with one hand under her elbow. Albert walked by Cecilia’s other side, and young Sissy, his sister, walked behind them. Sissy had on a sailor dress, black stockings, and new black patent leather shoes. She walked looking down at the path in order to avoid the horse droppings. Behind the family came Erika, and Mitzi, and Clara, followed by a handful of friends of the family and of Theodor.

  A hole had been dug, and the diggers with fresh mud on their shoes stood back leaning on their shovels among some apple trees in fruit. A chair had been provided at graveside for Cecilia, and there she sat, with Maximilian behind her and his fingers on her shoulders.

  The priest said something about there being no political parties in heaven, and forgiveness at hand for all who repented even in the last moments of their lives on this earth.

  He took the censor from the ministrant and waved it at the coffin.

  The diggers took this as their sign and they came forward and took hold of the ropes, and down went the coffin into the black hole. The ornamental lip caught at one corner, and they had to raise the coffin again and one digger passed his rope to someone else to hold while he chopped at grass and soil with the edge of his shovel and then levered the coffin away from the edge to help it on its way down.

  EIGHT

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE she was in the kitchen, basting the goose, when she heard Mitzi in the hall. She opened the door and said, “Why don’t you ever ring the bell? I’d have
come down to help.”

  “Because I don’t want help.”

  “But it’s slippery around the house and I’d much prefer it if you rang so I can come down.”

  Mitzi shook her head. “You’ve put down sand, so there’s no problem.” She raised her nose. “Smells good.”

  Clara wiped her hands on a towel and said, “Come. I want to show you something.”

  In her study she pointed at the row of banker’s boxes against one wall. “These are the ones they’ll be picking up any day now. Mr. Heller at the archives knows about it and he’ll be sending someone. But not those two with the red labels.” She pointed. “See? They’re marked personal. They are staying here.”

  Mitzi gave her a look and said, “All right. And why are you telling me?”

  “Because I want you to know. Someone besides me should know.”

  Back in the kitchen they made coffee and then sat drinking it. A grainmoth fluttered. They sat while the light outside dimmed.

  She outlined the new novel she had been sent by a Frankfurt publisher to translate from English into German. It was good, she said. Good story, good writing. She was looking forward to the work. The London publisher was the same house that had distributed her own works in English translation.

  They finished their coffee and then Mitzi passed the cups and she rinsed them and put them upside down on the drainboard. She checked on the goose once more and turned down the heat and looked up at the wall clock.

  There was snow on the ground and on tree branches and as the taxi crossed the bridge, steam rose from the cold river into air even colder. Mallard ducks sat on islands of skim ice around rocks.

  At the cemetery they bought candles and matches from one of the vendors at the gate. Inside it was already busy, shapes of people moving along paths, standing before graves, striking matches for candles.

  High above, the icefield shone like silver and the mountain stood black against the sky. Small yellow lights glowed in houses along the mountain road and the Christmas fire burned on the Tölldner peak. The flames sawed in the wind and when they leaned west they shone onto the enormous cross of polished steel up there, and onto the trusses that anchored it to rock.

  First they went to the family grave of the monarchists from her mother’s first marriage, a corner plot with evergreens and Japanese maples, and with memorial tablets set into the wall. The monarchists were Count Torben and his family and her own two stepbrothers, Peter and Bernhard. Peter’s wife, Daniela, was buried there too; utterly loyal Daniela, who had doted on Peter and loved Clara like a sister. How proud the monarchists had been of their history, of the title and the heraldic family emblem.

  “But if you half-close your eyes,” Daniela had once whispered to Clara. “If you squint a bit, then that thing might also be a plucked chicken with just a few feathers left. Rather than a plumed helmet.”

  They lit candles and put them into small wrought-iron lanterns by the list of names in black marble. After a few moments of silence they walked to the other grave, the one of her mother and father and her mother’s side of the family. Albert would be resting here too, once his urn was installed and his name carved on the tablet. If the stonemason ever came back from his holiday. They lit candles at the foot of the angel with its wings chiselled in great detail and the face turned away and hidden behind the hands. In silence they stood close together in the dark for a minute, and left.

  LATER EMMA AND TOMAS came to the house to exchange small gifts. They did not stay long. As he was buttoning his coat, Tom asked in a low voice if there was any news from the museum and she just shook her head. Then he asked if they might perhaps take Albert’s wall clock. Emma would love to have it, he said.

  Clara looked at Emma, who was already standing by the door, waiting for him.

  “Emma?” she said. “Is that right? You want that clock?”

  “I’d love it, Mom. It would look nice in the living room.”

  “Fine. It’s yours.”

  The clock was the four-day Silverbell Napoleon that Cecilia had rescued from the bombed Vienna apartment. If Emma wanted it, she should have it. It would go to her anyway. Or to Willa. She wondered briefly if she should be more specific in her will as to who should get what.

  They left with the clock wrapped in a blanket, the two of them bent over and stepping carefully while carrying it downstairs to the car. Emma called another Merry Christmas from around the corner in the stairway. The lights went out and Clara pushed the button for them.

  She and Mitzi enjoyed the roast goose with potatoes and peas and a small green salad, and they shared a bottle of wine. There was no tree, just a small Advent wreath of evergreen on the table, with the four candles burning in it. By Mitzi’s place setting, Clara had put a purple cashmere shawl in a paisley pattern, nicely wrapped, and Mitzi had given her a small plate of home-baked cookies including almond crescents and vanilla kisses covered in cellophane.

  At eleven o’clock, when the bells rang at the stone church, they gave each other a hug. They were family to each other, now more than ever. Mitzi’s own parents were long dead and buried some place she did not even know, maybe in what used to be East Prussia, maybe in Poland, but she thought of them often and now in her old age she met them in her dreams, two people in shtetl clothes sitting side by side on a wooden bench. Mitzi had never been to a shtetl, but it was one of the many Yiddish words that came to her lately. In her dreams her parents sat close together on that bench but far enough apart to also suggest a certain self-reliance so as not to lean too much on the other, as they would have said in the marriage vows of old. Behind them was the wall of a small clapboard house, a heusele with fine scrollsaw work around windows and eaves.

  EARLY IN THE NEW YEAR, Mitzi had another appointment with Dr. Caroline Gottschalk about her hip. Clara came along.

  “We’d better do it sooner than later,” Dr. Gottschalk said to Mitzi. She looked much like her grandmother, slim and fine-featured like Cecilia had been, and those same black and steady eyes and resolute ways.

  “Give me those canes and stand for me.” She held out her hand and looked at Mitzi over her glasses. “No. Let go of the bed. Let me see you stand on your own.”

  Mitzi stood, or tried to.

  “Now, take a step,” said Dr. Gottschalk. “Mitzi-dear. Look at you. How much longer do you want to wait? And wait for what?”

  NINE

  IN OCTOBER 1934, three months after Theodor’s funeral, Mitzi had finally asked Cecilia for the name of the forger. She was washing Cecilia’s hair at the time, putting in a chestnut rinse because of all that grey suddenly.

  “What forger?” said Cecilia without opening her eyes. They were in the bathroom of the Leonhardt apartment, with Cecilia sitting on a chair and leaning back into the handwash basin.

  “Albert said you knew one. From the estate. Something about customs documents that he could … you know.”

  “Albert said that?”

  “He did. Lift up a bit and turn this way.”

  And so it began, Mitzi’s quest for a safe personal history. What she wanted was a new name, she said to Cecilia. And an ID card and a driver’s licence. Getting them might take a while and she wanted to be ready, for the day that everyone was whispering about.

  “Why?” said Cecilia. “This is not … what’s your real name?”

  Her name was Naomi Friedmann, she said. German Jews, her parents, both long dead. Raised by an aunt, she’d been; one Mitzi Schuster, from whom she’d learned her trade and taken over the business name. And David Koren had said that if the present government were to lose to the National Socialists and she wanted to stay here, she would need another identity.

  “You’re Jewish,” said Cecilia. She wiped away foam and squinted up with one eye. “Child, half the gifted world is: musicians, writers, composers, you have no idea. That’s why you’re so good at what you’re doing. You’re an artist at this, with an eye for the three-dimensional.”

  “Thanks,” said Mit
zi. “Will you help me?”

  Cecilia said of course she would, and later that day she and Mitzi took a taxi to call on the forger. He lived in an apartment in Hietzing, on a narrow street not far from the little church there and from the palm house and Schönbrunn zoo, where peacocks screeched and monkeys threw peanuts at children.

  The forger took his time inspecting them through the spy lens in the door. He let them in, glanced past them down the stairway, then closed the door quickly behind them. He was a small red-haired man with unusual glasses that had layers of extra lenses attached. He led them into the living room, which was filled with shelves of papers and books, and tables with special lamps and presses and photographic equipment.

  Cecilia came straight to the point and told him what Mitzi needed: a birth certificate, a certificate of baptism, an identity card, and a driver’s licence.

  “And all in a name that has a clear history,” she said. “A pedigree, Mr. Binder.” She spoke to him the way she had spoken to the staff at the estate, clearly and firmly. She sat forward on the wooden chair, her feet in high heels tucked back and close together, her shoulders straight, her chin up.

  “But I don’t do those, Madame Leonhardt,” said the forger.

  “Of course you do, Mr. Binder. What is your fee?”

  “My fee,” he said and looked at Mitzi with his pale eyes, with all those strange lenses trembling. “What Madame Leonhardt is asking is illegal,” he said. “We would all be risking jail.”

  “Nonsense,” said Cecilia. “Look at me, Mr. Binder. What is the fee?”

  He sighed and moved and consulted a list in a folder that lay so conveniently close by on his desk that it was clear theirs was not an unusual request. He adjusted one of the lenses and read out a few names, looking up after each one.

  They agreed on Anna Susanne Toplitz, the real one dead and buried in faraway Maria Zell eight years ago, but the name according to his research cleared to 1867.