Clara

by Kurt Palka

  “Can hardly walk? I beg your pardon. Look at me. I can walk very well with canes. It’ll just take a bit longer.”

  She agreed to go with Mitzi to speak to the priest, and Father Hofstätter looked at Mitzi standing there on the stone floor in the church annex, trying not to lean on her canes.

  “Mrs. Friedmann,” he said. He shook his round head. “The problem is the length of time it would take you to climb the stairs. Even just half-way up the tower the bells are very loud.” He brought up his hands and made them tremble close to his ears. “As you know they ring every fifteen minutes. It’s automatic these days, for years now, actually. A radio signal triggers an electric mechanism.” He pointed up. “From space. Imagine.”

  “How long would it take me?” Mitzi asked.

  “I don’t know. But longer than fifteen minutes. Even I can hardly go up and down within fifteen minutes now. The serviceman from the satellite company can do it, but he is young and fit and he’s used to it.”

  “My friend Doctor Herzog here,” said Mitzi. “She saw them when she was young.”

  The priest smiled. “So let her tell you about them. Nothing has changed. The beams and the bells are the same, but instead of ropes we have the satellite signal now.”

  They walked back to the house. Halfway there the bells rang eleven o’clock. “The first one,” she said. “This one is no bigger than your hat. The vesper bell is even smaller.”

  They stood on the sidewalk and a group of kindergarten children led by a young woman swirled around them like a river.

  “And this one,” she said. She held up a finger. “Just listen. It’s very big. Bigger than my desk.”

  Mitzi stood listening. Her lips moved with the number of bell strikes. “That big,” she said then. “Imagine.”

  THE NEXT DAY she was back in Father Hofstätter’s rectory. He stood up from the chair by the desk and folded his hands in front of his stomach.

  “Doctor Herzog,” he said. In St. Töllden everyone had always called her by her maiden name. “So soon again.”

  “Father, I realize what I am going to ask for may be inconvenient. It may even cost money for the technician, but I am prepared to pay for the service call.”

  He stood waiting. Behind him they were both reflected in the new climate-controlled glass case along the wall that held the leather-bound books with the history of the parish since the early Middle Ages.

  “What I am asking,” she said, and she reached into her coat pocket and took out a one-hundred-euro bill and unfolded it for him to see. Father Hofstätter looked at the bill. He looked back up at her.

  “I’m wondering,” she said. “Father, would you mind calling the technician and asking him to shut down the bells for as long as it takes Mrs. Friedmann to climb the stairs and come down again? Is that possible?” She offered the bill. “For the service call.”

  The priest hesitated. He took the money and slipped it under the flap of his jacket pocket.

  “Well,” he said. “It’s an unusual request, but I think it may be possible.”

  And so, a few days before the appointment with Dr. Gottschalk, she and Mitzi, accompanied by a young girl ministrant in a red surplice, climbed the stairs to the bell tower. The ministrant had blond locks and a button speaker to her cellphone in one ear. She was quick as a squirrel. She clicked light switches and she held a flashlight for them to see the oaken treads worn thin over time. On the way up she kept stopping and observing them bright-eyed over her shoulder.

  “Take your time,” Clara said over and over to Mitzi. “Always one hand for the railing and the other for the cane. One step at a time.”

  “Sorry to be so slow, dear,” Mitzi said to the girl. “It’s very good of you to do this for us.”

  “No worries,” said the girl. She took her cellphone from her pocket and looked at the display. This while Mitzi stood resting, leaning against the handrail and the stone wall nearly as old as Christendom itself.

  Eventually they did reach the top, and here was the bell chamber exactly as she remembered it. Except that on the south wall, lugged into the stone, was a dish to receive the radio signal for the bell timer. Mitzi stood breathing deeply, taking in the room, the enormous timbers and joinery; the ironwork and the bells in their bell tree, arranged not by size but by pitch.

  “My,” said Mitzi. “Imagine.”

  They looked out the small arched windows over the town, the warren of tile roofs edged in copper for snow to melt from eaves; the tower at the end of the once-gated market square; the ten-foot sundial high on the south wall of that tower.

  The building that had once been her father’s museum was now being used for social housing. Its contents had been moved years ago to the site where the dig had been, and the Roman villa there formed the centrepiece of a new museum and of the town archives. In those archives the key contents of her files would have their own display wall behind glass, the archivist had promised. Her father’s name was engraved on a plaque near the door.

  “And what’s that out there?” said Mitzi. “Are those the new suburbs?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And subsidized housing.”

  The ministrant stood thumbing her cellphone. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said without looking up.

  “Are you ready to go?” she said to Mitzi.

  Mitzi nodded, and they began the slow descent. The girl first, then Mitzi, then Clara.

  SHE KNEW it was from her mother that she had her love of churches. But churches as works of art: no priests, no sermons, no people to distract from just these great vaulted spaces full of peace and art and timeless yearning.

  “Chambers,” her mother had once quoted Rilke more or less accurately in the Benedictine Abbey Church at Lambach, “in mimicry of the human heart and, like it, forever waiting to be filled.”

  The fabulous Benedictine Abbey at Lambach was one place where young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had walked, as had schoolboy Hitler, when his name was still Schicklgruber and he was just another village lout looking for trouble. And while Mozart had been inspired there to compose his bright Lambach Symphony in G-Dur, young Schicklgruber it was said had seen there for the first time the ancient sun rune set in stone; the crooked cross. The firewheel obliterating all in its path to make room for a new order.

  ALBERT’S ASHES had come from the crematorium in a small brass urn with his name on it. Albert Bertolt Leonhardt, and the dates of his birth and death.

  At the grave Father Hofstätter uttered a few words in Latin and swung his censor over the frozen ground while the stonemason placed the urn in the wall niche and cemented the glass window shut. She, Mitzi, and Emma in dark clothes and hats stood by the grave. Albert’s name was on the marble tablet now too.

  She slipped Father Hofstätter a twenty-euro tip and the stone mason a ten, and then she and Mitzi and Emma went for a coffee at the new restaurant by the post office.

  “Have you heard from Willa?” said Emma. “I rarely do.”

  “Yes. By email. She’s fine. That trip to Nairobi probably won’t happen.”

  “So we won’t see her until – whenever.” Emma sat sipping her latte, her eyes on her mother’s face. Clara reached across the table and Emma set down the cup and took her hand. She gave a squeeze and let go.

  Light came in soft and even through the half-curtains, and in the background the espresso machine chortled. A little girl with black hair in braids said something in Turkish and a woman answered patiently in that language.

  IN THE MORNING of the day before the appointment, Mitzi came to visit. While Clara cleared her desk and shut down the computer, Mitzi made coffee. Clara was roughly one-third into the translation of the English novel. She’d been working on it steadily, a certain number of pages each day.

  They sat on the old elbowchairs in the study and Mitzi said, “None of your girls wants the salon, am I right? Or even one of Emma’s kids. They’ll think it’s beneath them.”

  “Your hair salon? What brought that on?”


  Mitzi took her time. “The hair salon, yes,” she said then.

  “Maybe. Have you asked Josephine? She’s the younger one of Tom’s kids.”

  “Josephine, yes. I did, last fall. She told me she wanted to be a fashion model.”

  “She worked in an office for a while. Emma says she’s on some kind of social assistance now, some government program. Maybe ask her again.”

  “Once they’re on that …” Mitzi waved a hand.

  “You could still ask her. Or Emma. Or Tomas. Well, no. And Emma likes teaching.”

  They were sitting in the corner away from the desk with the computer. The sun was on the other side of the house, and pale blue light came down from the sky in the window. It fell on Mitzi’s shoulder and on her cheek, and in this light Mitzi’s dear old cheek looked like a wrinkled peach. Her hair was snow-white with just a faint blue cast.

  “What’s this about?” she said. “That question about the shop. They do these operations all the time now. Doctor Gottschalk says the risk is negligible.”

  “I know. So listen: Magdalena, the woman who’s running the salon for me, has been loyal since day one. She works hard and she’s a single mother. The clients like her and she’s good with the stylists. She runs the place and I’m never even there.”

  “I know. You’ve said so.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “What? Your salon? Mitzi-dear. I’m speechless.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “I’m not a hairdresser, I’m not even a businesswoman.”

  “You could just run it. Own it.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I like what I do and I plan to do it for as long as I possibly can. This.” She waved at the desk. “For what it’s worth.”

  Mitzi sat looking at her. “I know,” she said. “I’m asking because this afternoon I’m seeing the lawyer.”

  “Ah. The lawyer. I see.”

  There was a long pause. Cars passed in the street below and not far away the ten-o’clock bus honked its horn at the blind corner with the traffic mirror.

  Eventually she said, “Do you want me to walk there with you? To the lawyer?”

  “If you could. I’d like that. If you can take the time.”

  SIXTEEN

  THERE WAS A PHOTOGRAPH of her graduation in the box on family and social history before the war. In the picture she stood in cap and gown displaying the scroll, with all her family and friends around her. Her parents were standing as far away as possible from Cecilia and Maximilian, whose face even in this black-and-white picture looked yellow and his collar two sizes too big. They had been introduced, but after that had pointedly ignored one another.

  The university was giving a reception in the cafeteria, and it was there, in the corner by the display case of school trophies, that she told them she’d talked it over with Albert. She wanted them to know that she would soon be making preparations to marry him.

  “I know you don’t agree,” she said as gently as she could. “But I hope you’ll change your mind. I really do hope so. I can’t explain it to you. And I won’t try to justify anything. I said that to Peter too. It’s how I feel, and I am asking you to give him a chance.”

  A difficult time followed; her parents would not speak to her, and Peter said it was astonishing that one could be both so smart and so stupid at the same time. He said she was making a mistake that could not be undone. He had travelled in Germany recently and he had seen the steel towns from the train. Essen, the entire Ruhr district. The sky red by night and black by day. And fields and fields of brand-new weaponry, tanks and artillery, all in defiance of Versailles.

  “If it’s just the sex,” he said. “Get it over with and come back to your senses.”

  She almost slapped him for that, but he apologized quickly. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll take that back. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t think you’re mad.”

  Only Daniela was still openly supportive, and for a while Daniela became part of their group. In the winter of 1937–8, the women would meet regularly on Sunday afternoons at the Leonhardt apartment for coffee and conversation. But then Peter found out, and he asked Daniela not to go there any more.

  He said that this was about family, and on family matters there could at times be disagreement, but in the end the family must always, always stand together.

  Clara kept the Vienna flat she was sharing with Erika, and over the weekends she travelled by train to Munich and on to Landshut near the base, and stayed at the hotel there. Albert as the battalion commander had a small house on the base, but it would have been unseemly for her to stay there with him, unmarried. Twice a week in Vienna she was allowed to assist Professor Roland Emmerich in Philosophy and Professor Ferdinand in English. At times, after they had seen and approved her lesson plan, they would even allow her to lecture first-year students herself, while they sat in the very last upper row making notes.

  Christmas that year was difficult. Albert could not go home, and she wanted to be with him. She stayed again at the hotel, and at Christmas Eve she was there with him in the officers’ mess at a long table covered in white linen, with silver and crystal and many candles. The men wore the full dress uniform, the women evening gowns. Sommeliers poured wine and champagne, and waiters in white jackets served the meal, the main course of which was poached carp under copper domes, as was traditional. A candle-lit tree stood in the corner, and on the Gramophone Lale Anderson sang “Stille Nacht” and “Lili Marleen,” and Hans Albers sang “La Paloma.”

  That winter semester she taught American Literature to Professor Ferdinand’s class, and in her first lesson plan after Christmas she wrote, The importance of detail: example: F. Scott Fitzgerald. And conflict as the lifeblood in all writing, perhaps best in Am. Lit.

  Back at the podium after the break she was nervous at first, but as she spoke, her nerves settled.

  “In The Great Gatsby,” she told the class, “look at the way the narrator describes Tom Buchanan when he meets him again at Daisy’s house. Feel the darkness gathering. He shows us Tom’s muscles shifting under his thin coat. He shows us the memorable detail of his powerful calves straining the laces of his gleaming boots. The potential violence contained in this body. In fact, what he thinks is, it’s a cruel body. It puts him on guard and there you have the seed of conflict planted like a promise to the reader that, yes, there will be blood.”

  THE GOOD THING about that Christmas away from home had been that her parents realized she was serious: she meant to stay with Albert. One day in January, while she was in Vienna, she received a telegram from them that said, We love you and we miss you. Do as your heart desires. We wish you much love and happiness.

  The wedding took place in February at the municipal office in a small town just across the border in Germany so that no one needed to travel very far. Afterwards they sat down to a meal at the local inn. Out the windows they could see the mountains not far away and granite cliffs blackened with melted water and a swath of trees between cliffs broken and uprooted from some slide, earth or snow, and the lumber yet to be harvested. Clouds had moved in and already it was snowing heavily above the tree line.

  At one point her father stood up and said it was a fine day. A day of great happiness for both their families. He was seventy-two by then. He had to pause and look away from her face because he was so moved.

  Most of the people she loved were there that day, except for Peter. Daniela explained that he’d been asked as a representative of the League of Nations to accompany the chancellor on a mission to Hitler’s residence in Berchtesgaden. It was not a request he’d been able to refuse.

  SEVENTEEN

  AFTERWARDS PETER SAID the whole thing had been terrible. He said they’d been travelling in the chancellor’s private railroad car, a lavish affair, but the mood had been tense. For much of the journey the chancellor had sat in a chair in the far corner and read briefs that his secretary, Mrs. Helwig, passed him from a black leather case. She sat taking notes.<
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  Shortly before they arrived, Dr. Richard Bachmann, the chancellor’s senior adviser and diplomat, sat down next to Peter and reminded him that Hitler had signed an agreement not to invade Austria, an agreement that was not renegotiable. The chancellor would be reminding Hitler of that, and Peter would be the international witness.

  At the station they were met by SS guards and drivers in two Mercedes cars and whisked away to Hitler’s elaborate mountain residence. There was no formal reception, no one to greet them other than more SS in black uniforms who took them into a long ante-hall and told them to wait.

  They waited for more than half an hour and eventually a door at the end of the hall opened and an SS major came their way and asked if they were ready.

  They all stood up. Mrs. Helwig dropped some papers and Peter crouched to pick them up for her.

  Just the chancellor, said the SS major.

  They watched them walk away, their blond earnest chancellor and the major, through the door that then closed and only minutes later the shouting began. It was at least two rooms away but it was so loud, Peter said, they could understand every word, every humiliating threat of invasion and devastation and of levelling Austria, country of the man’s own birth, down to burnt soil, down to nothing, nothing, nothing, they heard him shout. To nothing for a thousand years.

  Mrs. Helwig in her nice dark-blue secretary’s suit with the white lace collar sat round-eyed and shocked, and Richard Bachmann would not look up from his lap, he was so embarrassed.

  They sat, the three of them, on wooden chairs in the hall hearing the shower of abuse while the SS men stood unmoving in their blacks and in their shined boots and gun holsters. They stood like statues with their hands clasped behind their backs, and never once did they unclasp their hands or turn their heads or pay the least attention to the foreign visitors.

  Eventually the door opened and their chancellor came out white-faced with the SS major at his side.

  Through that same door, Peter said, he saw Hitler just turning away. Peter was strangely detailed and troubled about it when he told her. He said he kept seeing that five-second image for days after, like some never-ending coiling motion in dim light, and he caught a glance from those black eyes and he saw the moustache and the strand of black hair across the pale forehead, and he saw the shoulder and then the man had turned away and the doors were closing.