In Search of Anna

by Valerie Volk

  I take little interest in fashion and dress, but I found myself so pleased to see my daughter properly attired as a bride. Perhaps a substitute for my wedding to Otto, no joy there, concerned only that my simple dress should not betray the swelling stomach that I had to conceal.

  Was this marriage any different from mine? No love, more an act of convenience. I could only pray, as I knelt in our church listening to their wedding vows, that it would be happier than mine. I looked to where Otto, mercifully sober for once, stood behind his daughter, the daughter whom he had once so adored, and wondered how he felt about these missing years.

  Now she is gone, to the home of her new husband in Mittelwalde, and already there is a child. Otto laughed crudely when they brought news that soon he would have a grandchild.

  ‘More life in the old man than I’d thought,’ he jibed. ‘More than in me, anyway, eh Anna?’

  It was true. There has been no coupling in our lives for many years now. I wonder often whether he misses the woman I know he had in Glatz, or whether the drink has taken away all such needs. I think of Macbeth: there the porter knows what he is about, when he reminds his hearers that while drink provokes the desire, it takes away the performance! I doubt that for Otto it even leads to desire, and certainly there is no performance! At least, not with me.

  There is little happiness in his life. I at least have Kurt and the years we have enjoyed. My son, in every way. A reader and a dreamer. But Otto’s son as well, and with the same fascination for the new worlds opening around us. Is it a matter of inheritance, I wondered. They tell us that each parent contributes, so why should it surprise me that Kurt has found a passion for steam and for what can be done with it?

  From the start I watched it with fear, sensing the threat it posed. There has been such pleasure for me to see the success of his schooldays, but no surprise. Otto once had intelligence, and has always known how to get what he wants. In our little Rauschwitz school he was clearly brighter than the other children, and his years of technical training in Glatz were a success. What life has made of him is not because of a lack of wit, but of something more important—understanding. Kurt has both: he is intelligent and is also a thinker. His schoolfellows know this. He is the one they turn to in trouble, his advice can be relied on and his suggestions followed. Perhaps it is this that so maddens Otto.

  It was as I had hoped. This child is more my Kurt’s son (as I still think of him) than Otto’s. This is the son that Kurt and I should have had; the son who died that terrible night in the snowstorm. How I have valued watching him grow and develop. But the qualities that I love in him are the qualities that enrage Otto.

  We have learned to keep out of his way when he returns from the inn, his wits addled by drink and his temper roused by the sight of our companionship.

  ‘Why do you stay?’ Hanna often asks, when she visits with little Theo. But this is rare. She comes only when she is sure her father will not be here.

  ‘Why do I stay?’ I reflect on her question. ‘But where would I go? How would I live?’

  ‘You could come to us. Franz would welcome you in the house; he knows what help you would be.’

  I could foresee my role in that household. A servant, working for my lodging. I had little contact with their child, and there were few bonds there.

  ‘There will be another child this year. I am already three months gone. I know how much I will need your help.’

  ‘But I could not leave Kurt alone with his father,’ I protested.

  She smiled and spoke with some bitterness. ‘Of course you would not leave Kurt. I should have thought.’

  When my boy came to tell us he had won a scholarship to the technical school in Glatz, my heart sank. I knew how empty my life would be. Yet there was some relief; he could at least come home at the end of each week.

  ‘This is your doing, Mutti,’ he said with pride. ‘If you had not always urged me to work, to study, I would not have reached this point.’

  ‘This is your doing, Anna,’ said Otto, accusingly. If I had not insisted on the hours spent reading, on teaching him the love of languages instilled in me by the Countess. If I had not encouraged him to apply himself so whole-heartedly to his books—then perhaps we would not be losing our son to another world.

  ‘What is there here for him, Otto?’ I asked. ‘Do you want him to follow in your footsteps?’

  The years have taught me cruelty, and the pity for him that once softened my words is long gone.

  The day Kurt left, his portmanteau packed with the new clothes he needed, he took the one bright spot in my life.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lewin, Silesia, 1886

  Did I not say how hard it was when Kurt left me four years ago to study at the technical college in Glatz?

  At least there I could visit him, and he could see us if there was a carter coming our way on a Sunday. Those days in Glatz were happy times for me. Our new pastor often travelled the seventeen miles and when he and his young wife were happy to fit an extra body into the trap with its spirited horse I accompanied them.

  Only a few hours with my dear boy, but such an opportunity, if he had no classes, to explore the city and hear of his progress. Though I confess tales of his studies left me bewildered—both the theory of his work in science and the complexities of the mathematics. I was delighted to find Kurt still reading as avidly as when we raided the bookshelves of the Chateau.

  Exploring the city of Glatz, so many times larger than our town, was a delight, its Roman relics from days when it was an important stopping place on the old Amber Road. So much history and, like life itself, so many ups and downs. We dwelt on the changing allegiances—the times when it was part of Bohemia, of Austria and Prussia, times of war, siege, plague—but now more than 13,000 people live here in the peace and prosperity of the new German Reich.

  Otto did not come. I confess I would not have wanted him, and it was worth facing his anger when I returned late in the evening, the minister’s trap leaving me at our gates.

  ‘I left food ready for you,’ I protested. ‘You were sleeping when I departed.’

  ‘The fire had gone out, and the oven was cold.’

  I fought my irritation. ‘You could surely have started it again.’

  I knew he would have gone instead to the alehouse, full of complaints against the wife who had left her duties.

  ‘What do you do when you are in Glatz?’ he asked once, when not so far gone in drink.

  ‘I walk around the town, sometimes with Kurt if he is free to join me, or on my own. Sometimes Frau Muller from his boarding house will join me.’

  We had become friends, the older woman and I. She loved her town, and never tired of showing me all its beauties. The old city walls were almost entirely gone, but parts still reminded me of times when the gates, now long demolished, had closed each night securing the lives within.

  ‘It is a beautiful place,’ I told Otto. ‘I can see why you were happy to be there during those years.’

  He scowled. ‘I would not wish to go back again. Not like this.’

  I could understand that. Frau Muller had told me as we walked along the banks of the Neisse River one day, of Otto’s reputation in the town.

  ‘He was known for his strength,’ she said with reluctant admiration. ‘At fair time, he would win the trials of strength and few would take him on in the wrestling ring or at the axe chopping. It was terrible—what happened to him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. By now we were on close terms, calling each other by the familiar terms. ‘It was terrible, and it changed him.’

  ‘But I think, my dear,’ her voice hesitant, ‘that he would never have been an easy husband.’

  I nodded. ‘He was always dangerous to provoke. And I have a gift for rousing his anger. I did not mind that he spent so much of his life here. Mine was a cold bed for him.’

  Berthe nodded comprehendingly. ‘But now?’

  ‘Now he is shackled in Lewin and feels he has
lost everything. It drives him to fury, to lashing out at whoever is within reach. Usually me.’

  ‘The children?’

  ‘I have tried to protect them. It has been worst for Kurt because he felt he should protect me. Many a beating that got him. I think he knew there would be bloodshed if he stayed. That it would be easier for me if he was not there.’

  ‘Was he right?’

  ‘No,’ I confessed. ‘With Kurt here at school and Hanna married and gone, there’s no one else to lash out at. But I stay. Where else can I go?’

  ‘It is indeed sad,’ Bertha agreed. ‘He was highly regarded here. Not just for his work, but in other ways.’

  She told me of the floods of recent years, when the placid Neisse, for twenty-five years tranquil and easy-flowing, had burst its banks. We stood together on the Gothic bridge, looking over at the peaceful tree-lined waters. A beautiful spot, and a beautiful bridge.

  ‘They say,’ I ventured, ‘that this bridge is famous, almost like the lovely Charles Bridge in Prague.’ Kurt had told me that on one of our walks through the town. ‘It is hard to imagine it in flood, and dangerous.’

  ‘What year …?’ she ruminated. ‘Yes, it would have been six years ago—in 1879. And then again, two years later, and two years after that.’

  ‘But what has this to do with Otto?’

  ‘He had warned us,’ she explained. He had looked at the flooding patterns of the last centuries, and had predicted more. Before his accident, he had tried to get big banks built, the sort they have now in other lands with flooding …’

  ‘Like Holland?’

  ‘Yes. Also in the northern parts of our land. He read of it and gathered a group of men, strong men, to begin work. But then, his accident. And after that, nothing more.’

  I was impressed. I had always guessed that Otto could have been so much more than the drunken shell he had become.

  ‘When the next floods came, several years after he left us, people remembered his words. But nothing has been done. We will live, as we have always lived, with the Neisse holding us in its power.’

  I had thought to tell Kurt of this the next time we were together. Instead I found myself on a seat overlooking the river listening to him in dismay.

  ‘My teachers here have suggested that I need a bigger school, a college where I can learn much more than they can teach here.’

  ‘But you are happy here! This is such a lovely place.’

  I did not add what was in my heart, that he could still come home. That I could come to him and talk to Berthe about his life. I looked at the Marian Column in the town square, where we were seated. Mary too had known what it was to love and lose a son.

  ‘They’ve suggested I transfer to Breslau.’

  ‘But that is so far.’

  I knew he could hear the misery in my voice, I made little effort to hide it.

  ‘No, no, Mutti.’ He put a comforting arm around my shoulders. ‘It’s not so far. It’s only sixty miles from our home, and already you have come to me in Glatz.’

  ‘Ah, but my son, my dear son, it is not even twenty miles, and here I have had the good Pastor Heinrich and his wife to bring me. Breslau will be very different.’

  ‘Come,’ he said, and drew me to my feet. ‘Let us walk a little along the river.’

  ‘I had always thought that some day, when your studies are finished, you would find work in this area. That you would be able to visit us often.’

  ‘Us?’ There was bitterness in his voice. ‘I would be coming to see you. Why would I return to be abused and struck? I had more bruises than you ever saw. I have trouble with my hearing. The doctors here have said it was caused by the blows to my head—’

  I felt my hand go, of its own volition, to my mouth.

  ‘Your father struck your head?’

  ‘There was much you did not see, for all your care and protection. And I knew that to speak of it would make your life worse.’

  I saw the truth of his words. I had known that Otto disciplined the children according to his own rules, but not that so much had happened that was outside my ken. Only now was Kurt willing to tell me more.

  ‘But when? How did I not know?’

  My son looked uneasy, then shrugged. ‘Ach, Mutti, it’s all in the past now, and I’m away from it.’

  We walked in silence for a while.

  ‘Christmases,’ he reminisced. ‘Do you remember the Ruprecht?’

  I nodded. Every German child knew that story, and most had experienced it. Before Saint Nikolaus came at the beginning of Advent with his bag of sweets and small gifts, in our area Knecht Ruprecht would come, masked and threatening, with jangling bells and a big stick.

  So frightening. I could remember my childhood, and the way we children would run from the sound of the bells. Yet often he would find us, and the distorted booming voice would ask … ask? Demand! Interrogate!

  Had we been good children? Had we said our prayers? Anyone too slow to give the right answers would feel the stick around their legs. And then the monstrous figure would move on to the next farmhouse and the sound of the bells would fade away. Saint Nikolaus following, with his sack of toys, was scarcely a compensation for the terror we had felt.

  I had wondered how the village leaders chose the actor to play Ruprecht, as we called him. Now it did not surprise me that Otto had been given the role. What I had not known was how often Kurt had been singled out for special attention, and the punishment he received each year had made Christmas a nightmare for him.

  ‘But, Kurt, there was also happiness, surely?’

  ‘I truly enjoyed the Advent wreath on our doors, and the lighting of the candles each Sunday. And yes, both Hanna and I loved opening the twenty-four windows on the Advent calendar. But …’

  ‘But?’ I urged.

  ‘But the threat of the masked figure each Christmas loomed over me. The fear and the beating I knew would come.’

  ‘I am sorry, ‘I said simply. ‘I did not know.’

  ‘When we brought home the Christmas tree and added the candles and small ornaments, when we put the tiny crib at the foot of the tree and placed the wooden animals around it, all I could think of was the Ruprecht and fear that he might, as he had threatened, come back for me.’

  ‘I did not know.’

  ‘What could you have done? I know how often you were his victim. So many nights I hid behind our bed curtains, away from the sounds of his blows and your sobs.’

  I had always known that Kurt feared his father, but not how deeply he had been hurt. There was nothing that would change this.

  ‘I cannot forgive what he has done. I want only to get far away. The further the better. I cannot return to Lewin. Glatz was a start. I will go to Breslau, though it hurts me to be away from you. Then further yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Now his eyes shone with enthusiasm. ‘I want to work with steam, Mutti. It fascinates me. We have not yet explored all its possibilities. It will change our world even more.’

  ‘Are you talking of rail? I have seen how the new lines travel further and further. Soon they will crisscross our land.’

  ‘No, no. These are impressive, it’s true. But other things too. Ships. Huge ships are now being built that can cross oceans in half the time of sail ships. I want to find out how far the new power of steam can take us.’

  I could see how this boy of mine was also Otto’s son. His eyes had shone in just the same way when he was captured by the new world of rail. But Kurt’s words frightened me.

  ‘Breslau is on the river, and there is a great deal of shipping traffic there. But you are talking of more than that, aren’t you?’

  Kurt did not reply but took my arm and turned me towards the river. ‘See how beautiful the light on the water is.’

  We did not talk further that day about his future, but a fear had been planted in my heart. I was right to be afraid.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lewin, Silesia, 1886

 
Glatz had been a start; Breslau was the next stage in my son’s escape from the past.

  ‘It is not so difficult, Mama,’ said Hanna, when I told her. She had dropped the familiar ‘Mutti’ of childhood, and now used the more fashionable ‘mama’ when she spoke to me.

  ‘Breslau is easy to get to now that the train goes from Glatz. Without the children I would accompany you, but there is no way I could leave them with Franz.’

  ‘Is he kind to you, child?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, he is not Papa!’

  I winced. I knew what she meant.

  ‘But he is old—and at times he seems very like an old man. But a kind old man. I cannot complain. I knew what my life would be when I married him. Though I have been surprised at times. I did not foresee that he would want more children. Or be so demanding of the marriage bed.’

  We did not talk intimately. She had always rejected discussion of such matters and I found talk of them difficult.

  ‘Would Papa not go with you to Breslau?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ If I examined my heart I would have admitted I did not want his company. ‘Perhaps Frau Muller would accompany me,’ I suggested. Though I knew I did not want a third person intruding on my relationship with my son.

  ‘Anyway,’ Hanna continued, ‘it will be good for Kurt. He is too tied to your apron strings, even in Glatz. Perhaps in Breslau he will meet more young people. Maybe even find a girl who appeals to him.’

  I found that thought oddly distasteful. ‘Many years for that. He is only nineteen.’

  ‘Mama, at nineteen I was married with a child. He is not too young!’

  ‘He has many years to study and explore the world before he thinks like this,’ I said decisively. ‘But I will think about Frau Muller.’