A House on the Rhine

by Frances Faviell

  That had been difficult too. There was always a waiting list because the place had a reputation for its high standard of care and consideration for its employees. They took only girls of good reputation there. Many of them came straight from school, like Krista, and stayed there all their working lives. He knew that there she would get advantages which she wouldn’t have elsewhere. She would mix with girls of a better type than those in her home and village, and she could continue her education in the factory’s extension classes. He had seen that both she and Anna kept in constant contact with the nuns at the convent. Katie would have nothing to do with them. The girl wanted to get out to work; she hated being the drudge at home, but with two babies what chance would she have of that? Sometimes the priest thought despairingly that there were no good girls left at all. He thought of the local legend of St. Ursula martyred with eleven thousand virgins and knew that it would be no easy task to find eleven thousand now. The Occupation troops, Belgian, American and now British and French, had all played a part in this deterioration begun by the ill-fated Third Reich. But the fact was that although the women had pleaded hunger as their first excuse, then that they had been ordered to make themselves pleasant to the conquerors, they needed no excuse for sin. It was always there in everyone. And now, with the new capital Bonn near, and its surroundings full of foreign troops, with temptations increased by the revival of the notorious Carnival and constant wine festivals, there was simply no keeping the women from the men. It was not easy for a man with daughters here, and when the mother herself was amoral what could one expect?

  The schoolmaster had spoken to him about Robert. The child was growing even more nervous and apprehensive. He looked tired and could no longer concentrate properly. Although Robert was so young, both hoped that he was earmarked for better things than his brothers. Father Lange had taken Robert with him one afternoon on a visit to the large seminary for students for the priesthood. It was a beautiful place, and the child had shown an intelligent interest in the life there. Robert was one of the Father’s most faithful servers, and it was of him in particular that he was now thinking.

  Joseph went on his way to the station. A small French car came to a stop by him and the Frenchman from the house opposite asked if he would care for a lift. In astonishment he accepted and climbed in beside his neighbour. The Englishwoman next door sometimes gave Moe a lift in her car into Cologne when she was going to visit Carola, but this was the first time anyone had offered one to Joseph. He was pleased. There was no joy for him in his work any more, and something in his defeatist attitude, in the very set of his shoulders, had made the Frenchman notice him. He knew him of course; it was impossible not to know each member of that noisy family by sight. The Frenchman, lonely and bored, spent a good deal of time in the garden watching them.

  “I can take you right into Cologne—where d’you work?” he asked Joseph. They agreed on a point at which Joseph should be dropped, and from which he could reach the steelworks.

  “I work in coal, with the Comité des Forges,” he told Joseph. “It’s right that steel and coal should travel together!”

  They discussed the factory and its problems, then the Frenchman said, “You have a fine bunch of children; I envy you.”

  “Have you no children?” asked Joseph abruptly.

  “I had,” said the Frenchman quietly. “My fourteen-year-old son was shot as a hostage with several other schoolmates during the Occupation of France. My wife died during that period too. Now I’m alone.”

  Joseph was silent. Then he said, “I wonder you can bear to come to Germany.”

  “I was sent here,” said his companion. He did not tell Joseph that he had accepted the mission for one purpose only, to try and find the man who was responsible for his son’s death. He had hunted him down now. He was at the end of his long search; and the strange thing was that the vengeance was already losing its savour. The whole thing was beginning to sicken him. He had vowed to give a champagne party on the day that his son’s murderer paid the penalty for his crime.

  “I’m sorry,” said Joseph, “The war was terrible. I was in France. I was a prisoner there at the end.”

  “What was it like—bad?”

  “No. Better than the endless fighting. Except for the cage. I can’t forget being caged.”

  “I was in prison too; it’s the most appalling thing that man can suffer.”

  They talked of prison camps. Joseph was surprised how quickly they reached the town. The Frenchman spoke good German; he had learned it in a German prison. Joseph spoke quite good French, acquired in a French prison camp.

  “At least one good thing came out of our two enforced confinements,” his neighbour said as he set Joseph down by the new bridge. “We’ve learned each other’s languages, even if we could have wished the circumstances different under which we did so.”

  Joseph went on his way slightly cheered. The man had been very decent to him. He was surprised. He worked now like an automaton. He was always at the top of the individual output list. He spoke very little, but thought a great deal while his hands manipulated the complicated machinery. His thoughts ran always on the same lines. Rudi and Moe . . . and now Krista and this American. On the journey to these ends they ran through every kind of general problem—war, peace, destruction, building, bombs, war, destruction, building—in this kind of endless circle. And God? Joseph pushed that problem as far away as possible. He just could not face it.

  He had one friend at the factory with whom he had been together during most of the war. This man, Peter, was now as happy as Joseph was miserable. He had been a prisoner in France with Joseph, and they had come back together, Peter to find that his wife and children had been killed in the bombing of the town. Peter had found this ironical. That he should have been through so many violent campaigns without a scratch struck him as ludicrous. He had since married a buxom widow who had lost her husband in the war. They were not going to have any children. No, definitely not. They were both agreed on that. Children nowadays were nothing but trouble. They simply could not be kept in their proper place. It was a world for the young—and didn’t they take advantage of it? No, Peter would not contemplate a family. Joseph found this shocking. One should have children. The church said so. Politics were playing a prominent part in the daily life of the workmen now. The elections were in the offing and feelings were running very high. Joseph could not understand how so many of the men wanted a new leader as Chancellor. Wasn’t the “old one” good enough for them? Look at what he had accomplished. Why, the country from being a heap of dust and ruins was already assured of a place in the sun again. And it was all due to the efforts of this dauntless old man. How could there be any other party for men of his faith? But they seemed to be able to separate these things successfully in their minds now. Thousands of them wanted a change, and managed to compromise with their religious beliefs.

  Peter, for instance, was going to vote for the Opposition leader. What he wanted was a new leader. They were all looking for that, but until one emerged Peter was advocating the Opposition party and actually holding meetings supporting it. He was a fluent and witty speaker and the men liked listening to him. Joseph listened too, and what he heard only puzzled him the more.

  “Push out the Occupation . . . send them packing . . . give us separate sovereignty. . . .” These were the words everywhere now. Everyone was tired of the endless squabbles of the Allies. First it had always been Russia who would not agree and who was always blamed for their non-agreement; then when the country had been split and the East isolated from the West by the dropping of the Iron Curtain, and the refugees had begun trailing out in a steady stream to wreck the new economy, it was evident that there was trouble between the others as well. France was opposed to the Peace Treaty, but they’d seen how the French fought: they were not afraid of the French. America and Britain couldn’t agree either. Were they going to wait indefinitely while their victors quarrelled?

  “You can’t kee
p us down,” they were beginning to chalk up on the buildings and fences, and that was always the gist of Peter’s harangues during the lunch hour at the factory.

  “We can’t be kept down. We’re up—listen boys, we’re up! Soon we’ll be at the top, the very top!” And they would all cheer and shout.

  Joseph was silent. At the top of what? Didn’t these fools realize that there was a slide from the top which could lead to the lowest basement? Hadn’t they all experienced it? Wasn’t that why he was feeling as he did now, why no one had a home, why the children had starved, why there were still not enough schools and they had to attend in shifts, why they were all slaving and striving and building like a great hill of disturbed and frightened ants? He got up when Peter had finished to a burst of applause. Joseph was cheered loudly as he indicated his wish to speak.

  “It’s no good, no good,” he said. “You’re all building on nothing and it means nothing if there’s no foundation. You don’t stop to think—where did it all lead before? It led to this—” he pointed out at the great heaps of debris still waiting to be cleared away—“and to that”—and he pointed far out to the endless rows of still devastated homes.

  “Why must you always want to be on top? Tell me that. What’s the matter with taking only a part, like every other nation. What are we building like mad for? Tell me that. To have it all smashed down again? For it will be, if you insist on being on top. It’s like children, like my Franz Joseph with his bricks. Build it up, knock it down—and so it goes on. Twice already! Do you want it a third time? No. Of course you don’t. Then think what you’re doing, think where you’re going, and think whom you’re following.”

  He sat down to a roar of applause. “Good old Joseph!” thundered those of his mates who were dubious of any new party. Old Joseph talked simply, without Peter’s flow of words, but he talked sense. Joseph himself was astonished. What had made him get up like that? He could see that Peter was annoyed and astonished. It was talking to that Frenchman that had done it. He saw that man’s point of view too. That man had seen his. They had talked astonishingly easily.

  Coming out of work Peter said to Joseph, “You talked a lot of bosh today. What’s the good of sticking to that old stuff? The world is moving and we must move with it. We’ve been kept back long enough—too long. Up and get cracking, that’s my motto! Drive out all these Allies and their petty squabbles and let’s manage our own country. We’ve waited long enough!”

  “We lost the war,” said Joseph quietly. “We must expect what we get.”

  “Did we?” jeered Peter. “Well, there’s always the next round.”

  His words shocked Joseph. Hadn’t Peter’s wife and children been killed in the last round, as he called it? Did the man want another war? Didn’t the last mean anything to him? Couldn’t he see that in the event of another war Germans could be fighting Germans if the East remained isolated from the West as it was at present? His sister’s boys, first cousins to his own, would be on the opposite side. That was why so many people were opposed to the Peace Treaty.

  Peter meanwhile was looking at Joseph with a new thoughtful air. Joseph was getting queer. There was no doubt of it. But he was well liked. He spoke very seldom—but he meant what he said. Peter determined to work on his friend. He was glib, and his brain worked faster than Joseph’s. He and Joseph had endured some appalling hardships together in the campaigns. They had almost starved, almost died from thirst, almost frozen. They had come through it all and in the last, and to Joseph most terrible time of all when they had been in a wire pen, Joseph had been the one who had carried Peter through. Joseph was a good pal. Hadn’t he proved that a hundred times?

  “No ill feelings, old chap?” he said, seeing Joseph’s glum face.

  “Of course not,” said Joseph in astonishment. And it was true—Joseph had an affinity with this man which precluded any kind of ill feeling or affront. Whereas he felt hate for most people and things at the moment, for Peter, proved comrade of those terrible times, he felt nothing but affection, even love. That Peter did not think as he did either personally or politically, puzzled, but did not offend him.

  When he got home that evening he was gentler to Moe. He still hated her, but it was difficult not to like her at the same time as he hated her. She was in one of her softer, more unusual, moods. The children were laughing a lot—they had a number of family jokes and were bantering and teasing each other good-naturedly. He thought suddenly of what good evenings they had had before all this trouble blew up. Father Lange’s words of this morning came back to him. He would have to take some firm decisions. Things would be even worse for a time before they were better. It was no use putting it all off any longer. He got up immediately after the meal, and went to the beer garden by the river. Not to drink, but just to get some peace in which to think things out. He had taken to slipping into the summerhouse after the children were in bed. He would smoke his pipe there and enjoy the acacia.

  He had three urgent problems, as he saw it. First, Moe. Then Hank. Then Krista. If he were honest with himself and put the problems in their order of importance to himself he would have to place Krista first. When he discovered this he was horrified. The girl who was not his real daughter mattered more to him than his wife or his son. The discovery of this was a shock. Did he still love Moe? Had he ever loved her? Was she right when she had thrown those bitter words at him, “You have no love in you. You never loved me—never!” That was the only excuse she had made for her conduct.

  He watched the barges passing by. They were going, many of them to other lands. When he himself had been away all those years he had longed for his fatherland so much that it had become an ache, an agony. For the Rhine in particular, for the Cathedral with the twin spires, for the narrow, chatter-filled Hohestrasse on Saturday nights when one could scarcely move for the crowds of shoppers; for the Schildergasse, for all those small streets and squares which had been a familiar part of home over the years. But when at last he had got back there for good, the whole place had changed and lost its magic for him. The appalling devastation was partly the reason for this, but not the whole reason. He had changed too. It had taken him a long time to discover this.

  Those other countries in which he had seen devastation, hunger, and misery—had himself helped to create them—in what way did they differ? People were the same—exactly the same as his own. They ate, slept, loved and died just as these here did. Why then hadn’t he cared? Why? Because he hadn’t given time to think about it? Or because he just blindly obeyed orders to ravage and destroy? The sight of his own land, his own town, lying in ruins, moved him as those others never had. He got back to this every time he tried to think out the problems of his own family. Somehow these things seemed far more important. But Father Lange had reproved him. Set his house in order before trying to puzzle out the affairs of nations, he had said sternly. But couldn’t the man see that the two things were tied up together? Governments ought to provide houses. What was the use of his trying to keep his family together and control them when the hostile tenants in the requisitioned house made life impossible with their endless complaints and gossip? He hated the wave of building all around him not only because it seemed a senseless section of the vicious circle, but because he himself needed a home quickly and urgently before it was too late. He didn’t want it for show, or just to boast about its possession. He wanted it for shelter, for some kind of privacy in which to tackle the problem of the children. Was it so much to ask of one’s country to whom he had given so many years?

  The beer garden was filling up, the drinkers becoming happy and beginning to sing as they waved their beer mugs. “Come and join us,” they called to Joseph. One or two of them travelled every day with him in the tram, but they never dared acknowledge him in the village because of their wives who loathed the bunker family. But they themselves did not dislike Joseph when they saw him alone like this. The poor devil looked unhappy. They were sorry for him.

  Joseph was pleased
at their attempts at cordiality, but he saw Krista coming in the gate looking for him. He noticed the looks of the men on her, saw one of them catch at her dress as she brushed past seeking for him. He got up, calling to her. She had been sent to ask him to come back. They had decided to have a concert. Wouldn’t he come and help them? It took Krista all her powers of persuasion to get Joseph to accompany her. They didn’t want him, he insisted. He had no place there. They could get on very well without him. But at last he gave in to her and followed her out of the place. As they went up the cobbled street old women and men sat in the open doorways of the ugly houses in the evening sun. Krista could feel their comments burning into her back as she passed each house with Joseph lagging behind her. He came reluctantly and heavily. She sensed that. He had wanted to stay alone thrashing out his problems. Going back with her to the whole family only meant putting it off again.

  She noticed that all the spring seemed to have gone out of his walk. He walked slowly, like an old man. And he was only fifty. Long before they reached the house they could hear the singing. It was a song which Joseph did not like, from last year’s Carnival, called “Forbidden Fruit”.

  Joseph stopped dead. “It’s no wonder the neighbours complain,” he growled. “They’re all out of tune.” He began hurrying his steps now and it was Krista who had to run to keep up with him.

  “It’s appalling!” he went on. “Out of time as well.”

  XIX

  IT HAD been a still and lovely evening. Moe had been sitting with them under the acacia tree. She was in one of her best moods, gay, affectionate, soft and almost sentimental. Supper was over, but the table was still uncleared because of Joseph, in case he might like something when he came in. The air was sweet and languorous with the scent of the acacia and the last lilac. With their stomachs full from an abundant meal the boys were all affable tonight; even Hank and Katie were singing and laughing with the others.