She was hated far more than Joseph. Joseph, who now had to be dragged and carried through the street dead drunk from time to time, was a spectacle which shocked and outraged these river villagers, and for which they blamed Moe. From the first they had never liked her. Anyone who had actually lived for four years in a bunker with all those children was something below their understanding. No one in this village had actually lost his home. That it had been in the line of actual fighting as the Allies advanced had been terrible enough. There were shrapnel-holes all over the houses, but they had been spared the horrors of bombing, although they had seen the fires of the blazing town every night, and heard the bombers in great droves going over them to drop their monstrous loads.
Decent people lived in houses—they got them somehow. Just as they had no pity for the homeless bombed-out people from the town, neither had they any for the refugees now. Let them stay in their own East zone. Weren’t they occupied here too? Was it their fault if the victors had cut the country into four quarters and they happened to find themselves in the worst one?
After a time, when the bunker family had started their weekend evening concerts in the gardens, the villagers had gone to the authorities and complained. They had got no satisfaction. Then they had the idea of urging the British family next door to them to complain to the Bürgermeister. He would listen to the voice of the Occupation, they said. But the British family said that they were not disturbed by the noise, and nothing would induce them to complain. The Frenchman who lived in the little white house under the weeping willows, and who managed the coal in the district, also insisted that he was not inconvenienced by the concerts which the bunker family sometimes kept up until the early hours of the morning.
Father Lange was heartily sick of hearing of the misdeeds, the rudeness, the noise and the unsatisfactory behaviour of the most tiresome family in his parish. In fact he would no longer listen. The latest rumour, for instance, was that certain members of the family went out in the early hours of the morning and did not return until dawn; that there was something sinister going on there. Knowing the family and the village, the priest put it down to amorous adventures of the elder ones. Both Anna and Katie had borne illegitimate children whom he had baptized. He came to the conclusion that they were using the boy Robert as a lookout to let them in and out of the house. He decided wearily that he would soon be baptizing more little bastards with black eyes, but nothing worse than illicit love ever entered his head.
He was therefore surprised when, returning just before dawn one morning from administering the last sacrament to a dying-woman, he found himself nearly run down by a motor cyclist in the dark lane. Father Lange was carrying a torch and flashed it on the rider. To his astonishment there were three people on the machine. They were dressed in dark clothes and with a sort of hood which children wore on their mackintoshes—Capucin hoods. The light from his torch shone full on the face of Hank, and revealed clearly Katie’s brilliant red hair under the hood which had slipped back as she clutched at the driver when he swerved to avoid the priest.
“Stop! Stop there!” he shouted furiously, but the machine, which had been coasting, began to function again and, gathering speed, went on down the lane.
It was with a very thoughtful face that Father Lange returned to his little house by the church. He was alert and observant, and in spite of the shock which his near-accident had given him, he had made a mental note of the number of the machine.
XV
FRANZ JOSEPH had the soul of an explorer. He played alone, he wandered alone, liking his own company. Too young for school he was taken every morning by his brothers to the kindergarten kept by the nuns in the convent next to the church on the river. His merry monkey face with the black mischievous eyes and big laughing mouth made him a great pet of the good sisters there.
He was fond of wandering through the village and worming his way into strange houses and gardens, so great was his desire to explore the world which lay outside his home. He had twice been found in the laundry near the station, and once even watching the dentist, whose house was near their own, removing a lady’s tooth. He had hidden behind a screen and only been discovered when he had clapped his hands in appreciation as the tooth came out. The dentist had been amused when the boy explained that as the door was open he thought he could come in, but the lady had been very annoyed.
The house next door was one to which he could always go provided the Englishwoman was there. The horrid girl who usually answered the door always told him roughly to go away, but if the Englishwoman was at home she usually invited him in. He liked to stand and look at all the queer things in her house. They were all so different from those in Moe’s house. There were lots of pictures there, while in Moe’s house there was only the one of the Lorelei.
“Moe doesn’t have one like that!” he would say after gazing in rapt silence at some picture or object. “Hers is much better than yours.”
He said it as if to reassure himself that it really was so. He was too young to understand that the fascination which the objects held for him was their beauty. Like his father he loved beautiful things—bright colours, flowers, butterflies and beetles. Of all the boys this child was the one most like his father. In childhood Joseph had had the same merry acceptance of life, the same exciting desire to see and explore for himself the enthralling mysteries of the world. At a time when this child should have enchanted and compensated him for much, Joseph was too utterly shaken by life’s struggle to notice him.
The English lady had become a great friend of Franz Joseph. She would often give him sweets. If she forgot, he would say, “Have you any sweets today?” and she would take the box or tin from the glass-cabinet in the corner and open it gravely.
“How many may I take?” he would ask, looking anxiously at her.
She would laugh and tell him, five, ten, or perhaps more: it depended on the size and variety.
He would choose them solemnly and slowly, counting them out and savouring the lusciousness of each one. She would replace the box in the cabinet and say, “Well, Franz Joseph, and what do you say?”
He would bow gravely, click his little heels as he had been taught by the nuns and say, “Thank you.”
Sometimes he would tell her various bits of news and gossip of the family, or of the village. He knew a great deal because he got around so much. Sometimes he would only look at things, or she would show him pictures of her little boy. Sometimes he just went and asked for the sweets, or in season apples or pears, and later in the autumn for walnuts which grew on the large tree at the bottom of her garden. He had told her all about Carola in the hospital, and one day she had given him a parcel for his sister. Moe had been astonished and delighted when he had brought it home. He told her about the Englishwoman’s cat and dog who were great friends and slept together in a basket and ate from the same bowl. She had a little boy, he told his mother, but she had sent him away to school in England. He lived in the school and slept in it. “Fancy that! Horrible!” said Moe. She had heard that the British sent their children away and kept dogs in their place: now here was proof of it!
Franz Joseph usually called next door on Fridays; that was the day of the week when the Englishwoman renewed her stock of sweets. He knew exactly when she came back from shopping and all the parcels had been taken in from the back of the car. He knew to a nicety when the girl who answered the door would be out, because if he climbed the tall poplar by the acacia he could see everything that went on in his own and her house. He loved to climb to the top of the poplar and, hidden in its leaves, peer through the windows of old Fräulein Schmidt’s room upstairs. She was like the old witch in Hansel and Gretel, always stirring something evil-smelling in a pot on her gas-ring. The window through which he could look into the Englishwoman’s house belonged to the room in which she painted pictures. He would watch her as she mixed the colours on a wooden thing and she had lots of brushes. One day she had looked up and had been startled to see the little
monkey-face so close to the window-pane; but she had opened the window very gently and told him to be very careful not to fall.
“Can your little boy climb as high as this?” he had asked, and she had nodded and said that in the summer holidays he would come home and Franz Joseph could see for himself.
“From England?” he asked. And she said, “Yes, on a big boat from England.”
After that he had often climbed up and watched her painting, until one day the horrid girl who did the cleaning had caught him peering into the room. She had shouted so roughly that he nearly fell: told him to go away at once: that he was a rude inquisitive boy. Franz Joseph had been very hurt.
“The Englishwoman doesn’t mind,” he had shouted; “she likes me, I tell you.”
But at that moment his father had come home and looked up, hearing the shouting in the tree. He had been very angry.
“She’s quite right, it’s very rude to look into other people’s windows, and if I catch you doing it again I’ll beat you.”
Although Joseph had never beaten any of the children and Franz Joseph had climbed the tree again, he had not dared to peep into either Fräulein Schmidt’s or the Englishwoman’s windows again.
The day that Moe set off for the hospital after questioning Katie about her pregnancy, Franz Joseph had one of his exploring moods. Kindergarten was over at half past three when he was fetched by Moe or Katie. At four o’clock the nuns stood in the garden of the convent handing over the last little ones to their respective families. Franz Joseph had been making a paper boat in the handwork class. Sister Elizabet had taught them to make paper cut-outs with blunted scissors. Franz Joseph had only just been promoted to scissors, but he had made the best boat in the class.
He held it in his chubby hands as he waited with Sister Elizabet at the convent gates for Katie. The boat had opened new visions of the world to him. Already he could see it sailing up the great river which Pa had told him went in one direction to Switzerland and in the other to Holland. He just could not get there fast enough to try it out. The tow-path was to him the scene of many glorious adventures. Here, lying on his stomach in the tall grass he would travel, an intrepid adventurer, through the jungle and swirling waste waters in a canoe made of bark. The reeds became huge tropical trees, the insects great jungle beasts.
The river was strictly forbidden unless someone accompanied him. But today Franz Joseph’s soul was already far away with his boat. Vivid pictures of the jungle which the nuns had shown him fired his imagination. He couldn’t bear to wait to begin the great adventure. When Sister Elizabet’s attention was taken off him by Sister Gertrud, who had come to ask her something, Franz Joseph ran up to them saying, “Here’s Katie—I can see her, good-bye, Sisters, and God be with you,” which was the farewell they were taught in the kindergarten.
He ran off up the road as if he had really seen someone coming for him. Sister Elizabet called good-bye and thought no more about it. She was astonished when ten minutes later a hot and impatient Katie arrived to collect her brother.
“But you came for him ten minutes ago!” she protested. “He saw you coming down the road.”
“Well, he couldn’t have—I’ve only just come!” retorted Katie crossly.
Sister Elizabet was loath to think the child had lied.
“You’re very late,” she said reprovingly. “Have you come straight from your home?”
Katie replied sulkily that she had not. She had, in fact, come from the repair station. She had been upset by Moe’s questions and on the impulse had rushed off to try and find Leo. He was working on a boat and she had not been able to see him.
“Well, hurry on then,” urged the nun. “The child will be back home by now.”
She locked the iron gates carefully after Katie and went to tidy up the garden after the children’s games there. She was a little worried about Franz Joseph; the Reverend Mother might think that she had been negligent in not looking for herself to see if Katie was outside the gate as the child had said.
Katie went home angrily. She would give that lying little beast something to remember when she got at him. She hurried up the main street and entering the garden called loudly for her small brother. Robert and the twins had just come in and she asked if they had seen him. They had not.
“Go and look for him at once,” she shouted at them. “The little devil has gone off again.”
When Karl came in she sent him off too. The boys were tired and hungry and departed grumbling. It was hot and dusty, but Katie was merciless. They must go. She herself had to prepare the evening meal before Moe returned from the hospital. She had slept all the forenoon instead of doing it then.
When Anna and Krista got back from the town the child was still away and Moe was at home raging about the missing boy. As usual it was Katie who took the full blast of her fury. It was Krista who suggested inquiring next door. She knew that Franz Joseph sometimes went there. She had seen the Englishwoman frequently. Now she was stirred with a curiosity to speak with her. She spoke the same language as Paul did, or almost the same. She was invited in. No, Franz Joseph had not come as usual for his sweets. They had not seen him today.
“You’re Krista, aren’t you?” said the foreigner. “I know all your names.”
“You’ve seen Carola, too, haven’t you?” said Krista. “Isn’t she lovely?”
“Carola’s a lovely child,” agreed the neighbour, “and very like her mother.”
Krista was astonished. It seemed a far cry indeed from Moe’s florid beauty to the little waxen face with the gold curls and dark pansy eyes lying in that white hospital bed.
“Let us know if you don’t find him. We’ll run round in the car and see if we can find the rascal,” said the Englishwoman.
Krista pondered over the likeness between Carola and Moe. She herself could not see it . . . and yet sometimes when Moe sat dreaming with a cigarette, wasn’t there something of Carola in her? When her eyes were soft and her mouth relaxed, wasn’t it true then? Was this why Moe loved this child so much more than any of her other daughters? Did she sense in this dreamy, sweet-natured little girl the child she had once been herself?
She took a bicycle from the yard and rode through the village main street to the river. Franz Joseph loved the river. A child whom she had questioned told her that he had made a beautiful paper boat at the kindergarten that afternoon. When she reached the tow-path and the going became too rough she was forced to dismount. She was wheeling the machine and calling out the boy’s name when Leo came swinging along the path. He barred her way with his long arms outstretched. His smiling mouth belied the intent look in the blue-green eyes. They travelled up Krista from her feet to her hair and a great burning flush swept over her at what she saw in his look.
“Let me by,” she said bravely; “I’m looking for Franz Joseph, he’s lost.”
“Put down your bicycle!” he said without taking his eyes from her face. “I’ve been wanting a little talk with you for a very long time.”
The bicycle slipped from Krista’s hands and slithered down in the grass across the tow-path. One wheel grazed her leg as it crashed down, but her fear was so great that she did not notice the pain. Speechless, she began to tremble. The sight of this excited Leo. The bicycle lay between them, and as he stretched out his arm to grasp her she broke away in a panic and fled up the bank into the little wood. He came crashing after her. He was tall and lithe, in splendid training from running and swimming, and she realized with terror that she had put herself into further peril by fleeing into the wood. Here there would be less chance of anyone coming to save her. On the tow-path there would always be the hope of someone coming along hearing her cries. She turned quickly, and began running back down the slope trying to reach the open again, but the trees had been felled and their stumps were hidden in the long grass. She tripped heavily over one and fell headlong.
With one bound her pursuer reached her, and before she could move had flung himself upon her. He l
ay with his hard body pressing hers into the soft grass and his cruel face laughing down at her. With frenzied terror she hit out blindly at him, but catching both her hands in one of his own strong ones he pinned them down. One agonized scream came from her before his other hand clamped down on her mouth.
She lay there with her heart almost bursting from her, helpless and terrified whilst he pressed his weight on to her. He was bruising and crushing her mouth, her hands held in a merciless grasp, when through the thick undergrowth crashed Robert followed by the twins. Without hesitation Robert hurled himself upon Leo, hitting valiantly at his face. To defend himself Leo was forced to release Krista’s hands and mouth. Her white shocked face brought the twins to Robert’s aid. They did not like Leo, although he was their chief.
A House on the Rhine Page 15
