Clara

by Kurt Palka

  “I’ll have to look for work outside the country,” Albert said to his mother eventually. “I’ll start in Germany.”

  Cecilia said nothing. She rose and cleared the table. When she was back from the kitchen she said, “In case you are wondering. I am very angry. You see what this has done to us, this harmless thing? It is getting worse all the time. Theo dead, your father in jail, and you having to flee now, which is what this is. And punching a Rittmeister, a well-connected monarchist, what on earth were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t. But I had no choice. Leave it, Mother. I’ll never apologize for that.”

  “And Clara? Look at me, look at your mother!” She sat angry and upright, waiting. “I like that young woman very much, Albert. If you leave to work in another country, what will become of her? She is good for you, and she has spunk, that girl, and substance. Make sure you deserve her and treat her well.”

  “I am. Clara knows I’ll have to leave. We spoke about it. She wants to get her degree first.”

  “Well, of course. I’d expect nothing less from her. No woman should ever have to depend on any man. God knows. Not even if he’s a son of mine.”

  “Mother. None of this, none of it, could have been foreseen.”

  “So you say, but I disagree. It was foolish. Look at the consequences.” She sat a moment longer, then she stood up. “I have work to do.”

  That same day he applied for a passport in order to be able to leave the country, and when he was denied one he went to the forger for documents in another name. Four weeks later he had just picked them up and surrendered his last money when he was approached by a man in a dark-blue winter coat and hat outside a tobacconist kiosk on Schubertring in Vienna.

  “Captain Leonhardt. Wait!” the man said. He stood with his back to the driving snow and he reached into a coat pocket and produced a German military pass. It identified him as a major, and a second document certified that he was the military attaché at the German embassy in Vienna.

  “Captain,” he said. He had a lean face and watchful eyes. He was taking his time. “To us you are still a captain, even if your own military has no use for you at this moment.”

  Albert nodded at the coat pocket into which the major’s passes had disappeared. “Are they real?” he said. “The documents.”

  “They are. I’ll give you a number you can call.”

  “About what?”

  The major shook his head. “Captain,” he said. “Is that not enough now?”

  “Enough what?”

  “Enough rejection. Every one of them an injury to the spirit. Such insults. And from people you thought respected you. You have a name, a good reputation. We’ve heard of the incident with the Rittmeister.”

  Albert shielded his eyes against the driving snow and stared at the man. “What’s this about?”

  “The general must have seen you once on a horse,” said the major. “And what the general wants, the general usually gets.”

  “What general?”

  The major now reached into the inside coat pocket and handed Albert a letter in a sealed envelope.

  “Read it,” he said. “Think carefully and call back. Call this number on the envelope. I will take your call and tell you what to do next.”

  The meeting took less than two minutes and the man was gone again.

  Albert stepped into the tobacconist’s shop. He nodded to the woman behind the counter and turned his back to read.

  The letter was typed under the official letterhead of the German Ministry of Defence; it said that his academic and military records had been carefully reviewed, and that on the strength of them he was being offered a commission and full pay at the rank of major. It said that if he accepted, he would be assigned to the Senior Officers’ Academy outside Munich, and that, after completing the intensive training in tank warfare, he would graduate at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He would also be given a horse of his choice and asked to ride in military competitions for the school.

  That evening he drove the Norton through a snowstorm to her flat. He showed her the letter. They sat at the small round table and she read by the light of the lamp her father had fashioned from a small Roman urn, some bronze fittings and a cloth shade.

  When she had finished reading, she looked up at Albert, and she saw it in his face that he had already decided. All he wanted was her approval.

  FOR HER, THE SEMESTERS of 1934 and 1935 were filled with hard work and academic challenge. The oral exams in English and Latin had to be prepared for, but they were easy compared to the papers she had to write in Philosophy. Professor Emmerich was as demanding as ever; now in his fourth year with them he had lost some students, but the remainder he drove as hard as ever. And he told them why. He said that this now was the time when they were putting in place the key elements of the intellectual structures they would be referring to for the rest of their lives.

  “These are not just words and ideas,” he said. “These are principles of thought. Of attitude and morality. Principles.”

  He had moved on to Nietzsche and his idea of the Übermensch, not as the Nazis would corrupt it for their own notions of superiority but as real men and women who did not run with the herd but who took on the solitary struggle to overcome their own dark sides, and who in doing so found morality and strength right there, within themselves.

  He gave them Kierkegaard again, and he advanced Kant and Hegel, and Husserl.

  “To truly know a thing,” he paraphrased Husserl. “To truly know anything, ask: what is its basic idea? What is its primary purpose? Never rush yourself. Make it one of your principles to be methodical and think things out for yourself. Ask, what is this thing in itself? Find the one perfect word to express it, and go from there.”

  He gave them these barebones men, as he called them, these uncompromising thinkers whose ideas were hard as granite, and he set their minds on fire all over again – hers and Erika’s, and all those who would not miss a lecture of his, not even if they had to travel extra miles around police actions and demonstrations and sometimes around gunfire to get to it.

  He made them write paper after paper, and he taught them how to think and he made them come alive to ideas even as the social world around them was disintegrating, as the government that had replaced the murdered Dollfuss was slipping deeper and deeper into economic failure, and as the forbidden Nazis and the Communists were gaining strength.

  “This merely temporary world,” Professor Emmerich reminded them. “A passing and insignificant one in its current confusions and contradictions. Pay only enough attention to it to get by, but don’t take it seriously. Eventually we will deal with that too; with different ways of seeing it. For now, as always, trust only your own mind and be secure and calm within yourself. Nothing else matters. Nothing. Nothing.”

  ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 1935, they became engaged. They celebrated at the Leonhardt flat, with Erika, Mitzi, and Cecilia as the solemn witnesses to this happy deed.

  There was wine and good bread and black-market ham, and Cecilia played American music on the piano for them. They danced and they sat on the big couch in the living room, she leaning against him as he held her. At one point her happiness overwhelmed her, and not just her happiness, but a sudden fear also, a dawning of perhaps some enormous consequence looming.

  Always look closely at fear, Dr. Freud had said to them. Fear as a warning, an alert like pain to pay attention. Or fear as a yellow traffic light. The least one ought to do, he said, was slow down and look in both directions. A day later she understood what the fear was, and she packed and took the train to St. Töllden. There she admitted everything to her parents. Peter, who was visiting with Daniela, sat in.

  She told of the shooting death of Theodor, of the incarceration of the father, and of Albert’s dishonourable dismissal from the Austrian cavalry. She skipped his breaking the nose of the Rittmeister, but she did tell of his signing up with the German military and finally of their engagement.

  D
efiantly she said she fully intended to marry him, once she had her doctorate and her own career. But as she said so, her lips were quivering and her eyes filled with tears.

  When she had finished, there was a terrible silence. Peter looked stunned. Her father looked heart-broken, and her mother had raised both hands to her mouth in disbelief. Only Daniela was secretly winking encouragement.

  ELEVEN

  LATER SHE AND PETER sat in what used to be called the study room; now, with all of them grown up and gone from home, garden chairs were stacked in a corner, and under a bedsheet a pile of unwanted items awaited the Samaritans.

  “After you were here with him, your father had the family investigated,” Peter said. “His brother, Theodor, was picked up during the Emergency. Did you know that? Look at me. I think you did. Mother called me and asked my opinion, and I said let’s wait and see. The man is an officer.”

  “You could have told me. Investigated? Isn’t that a bit … what else do they know?” She watched him pacing back and forth. “Peter. Would you please sit down? I know they want you to talk some sense into me, so let’s have this conversation. But sit. You’re making me dizzy.”

  He crossed the room and sat down in the ancient leather armchair. She was sitting on the matching couch. When she was small the boys had shown her how to use that couch as a trampoline, cheering her on to bounce as high as she was tall. Once her mother caught them, and the boys lost their pocket money for an entire month.

  “What else do they know?” he said. “They know about that Rittmeister getting punched a few weeks ago. You conveniently forgot to mention that. Actually …” Peter was suddenly grinning. “I think that’s rather funny. Maybe not wise, but funny.”

  “It was, in retrospect. The man was so shocked. You should have seen him. But I hate to see Mom and Dad so upset.”

  “They are worried. Can you blame them? The brother a dead Nazi, the father in jail, he a pugilist.”

  She laughed at that. “Peter, Albert’s not a pugilist. He just had enough. If you’d seen that man, the little whip he had, his condescending way. The way he spoke to Albert, like to some serf. No, Albert did the right thing. He stood up and I support him fully in that.”

  Peter sat watching her.

  “He did do the right thing,” she said.

  “If you say so. Why didn’t you ever bring him around for dinner? Or at least introduce him.”

  “I called a few times but you were never there.”

  “Well. Too late now.”

  “Too late for what? I think everyone is overreacting. We can work it out. Albert will go to Munich, on that course, and I will carry on with my studies. No change there. The Germans made him a major, Peter. And he’ll be a lieutenant colonel when he gets out. He has a military career again.”

  “But not here. And once he leaves, he won’t be able to come back. And if you marry him, neither will you.” He shook his head at her. “His family, Clara. What are they? Managers of another man’s property. And from one day to the next they were evicted. Not much substance, was there? Traditions and principles are important anchors in life. They give you a place in the world, but they also determine what you may do, and what you must never do. His brother, and I’m sorry he died so young and all that, but he was a fool and on the wrong side.”

  “I don’t think he was a fool. On the wrong side, yes.”

  “Drop him, Clara. Cancel the engagement. Concentrate on what matters. Your studies. Nothing else does. Especially in these times. Get the best education you can. Have something to offer.”

  “My studies are going very well. If anything, Albert’s a help. He is a good man and I love him.” She paused and listened happily after those words. “I don’t know that I’ve ever said that out loud. But I do. And his mother is nothing short of admirable. I’m not going to drop anybody.”

  “You’ll regret it.”

  “I don’t think so. But please let it go, Peter. Tell me about your father instead. The count. How did he die?”

  He shook his head. “Drop Albert. It’s my advice and it’s what your father thinks too.”

  “I won’t. I know different. I feel different.”

  He stood up and sat down again. “So pigheaded. You can still be so very pigheaded. How old were you that time when they grounded you and you jumped out the window into the lilacs and walked back inside through the front door.”

  “Maybe eleven. It wasn’t that far down. In any case, you’re wrong. He loves me, and he has lots of substance. And he’s very good with horses.”

  “Horses. There are grooms for that. Hired hands.”

  “Oh? And what’s this?” She turned and pointed at a picture on the wall, a photograph of Peter as a thin young man on an enormous horse; Peter in a First World War lieutenant’s uniform – the cap, the braid, the sabre. Tall and straight, looking down his nose at the camera without a smile. But the horse made up for that, for it was curling its lips in a big toothy grin, as if it alone could see the vanity of uniforms and young men’s big ideas. The picture was a family classic.

  “Peter,” she said. “Do you love Daniela?”

  “Danni? Of course I do. With all my heart.”

  “Didn’t Mama think she was beneath you? And Bernhard did too, I seem to remember. A dancer?”

  “A former ballet dancer. You should have seen her on stage. Bernhard was only jealous. Daniela is wonderful.”

  “Of course she is. I like her too. But my point is—”

  “There’s no comparison here. Because of this Nazi thing your Albert has a criminal judgment against him that will follow him for years. And now he’s putting on a German uniform. How can you defend that?”

  “Defend what? There’s nothing to defend. The Germans were our allies in the war, when you sat on that horse. You fought on their side and they on ours. And I would not have wanted Albert to wait around and be more and more humiliated. He has pride. You can feel that in him. The Germans must have, and they made him a senior officer. It’s an honour. Their military, not their politics. He warned me that there’d be those who don’t know the difference.”

  “Nonsense. The military goes where the politicians of the day send it. For example, we know that Hitler wants Alsace-Lorraine back. What do you think will happen? And tanks? What’s he thinking, your Albert?”

  “He says tanks are now what heavy cavalry used to be. In any case he has a horse there too.”

  Peter grinned at her. “How sweet. They gave him a pony to lure him across.”

  “Don’t make fun of him. He loves horses and he wins all kinds of trophies. You big oaf.” She kicked off her shoes and swung her legs up on the couch. It was of the smoothest leather, buffed and worn thin in places by generations of grown-ups’ bottoms and children’s sockfeet.

  “And speaking of it,” she said, “are you happy with the guilt clauses? What an insult! In a way you can’t blame the Germans for getting off their knees. Billions of marks.”

  “Hundreds of billions, actually. But it’s no excuse for provoking another war.”

  “But, Peter. It was bitter everlasting revenge, nothing more. On us too. Making sure we’ll never stand up again. We should rebel against it too. Don’t always be such a reasonable lawyer. For God’s sake, be a wild man once in a while.”

  “Clara. That famous treaty … the worst thing about it is not the debt itself, it’s that it enabled a man like Hitler to ride in like a white knight with promises to restore the nation’s honour. And about your Albert, I’m only cautioning you. I want the best for you. We all do.”

  “I know that.” She swung down her legs, reached out and patted his knee. “I know you mean well. Thank you. But enough of that. Trust me to work things out for myself.” She took a deep breath. “Can we change the topic now? Count Torben, your father. How did he die? Mother has never really said.”

  “Probably because he died in a duel, which most women think is a ridiculous way to go.”

  “A duel? Really? With
pistols?”

  “Swords. He died in some forest clearing. He and a Hungarian captain ran swords through each other. In their full proud uniforms, with their seconds looking on.”

  “Both dead?”

  He nodded. He sat in the chair, his knees nearly as high as the elbow rests. “I have his sword.”

  “You do? Can I see it?” She stood up.

  “Drop him, Clara.”

  “What? No! Please stop it now. You’re sweet and I thank you for caring. But let it go. Sometimes it’s good to be wild, a bit reckless even. It makes life much more interesting.”

  He said nothing to that and she looked at him, sunk in the chair. “Peter,” she said and crouched down in front of him. She took his hand. “Peter. You’ve always been so good to me and helped me and given me useful advice. But in this case, listen, I’m so very happy with him. I feel no need to try to explain him, let alone apologize for him. Look at me. I am so very happy altogether. Can’t you tell? My studies, my career plans. And Albert. I’m happy, Peter.” She waited. She patted his hand and let it go and stood up. “Now, where’s that sword? Show me!”

  “Why?”

  “Because these things are interesting.” She put a finger to her lips and whispered, “I think Mama still loves him.”

  “My father? She loves your dad. She adores him.”

  “I know that. But that doesn’t mean she can’t love the memory of her first husband too. Come on now. The sword, Count Peter.”

  He sighed and rose, and he crossed to the wall closet and reached behind the clothes there. His hand came back holding a long nickel scabbard. The handguard gleamed golden.

  “Be careful. It’s very sharp,” he said. “Hold it there and pull. Don’t touch any metal.”

  It came out of the sheath with a whisper of steel, and she held that lethal thing in her hand and turned it in the light.

  “Good Lord,” she said.

  “Cut and thrust, double-edged with a stiff centre spine. The grip is sharkskin, the guard gold-plated.”

  “He killed the Hungarian with this?”