by Celia Hayes
There were few enough people in the streets of Albeck; only themselves, and once or twice someone looking out warily from a house window, as if they did not dare approach such a party of well-dressed strangers. There was not room enough for them to walk more than two and two. Liesel seemed to be without care or fear, chattering to Hansi with cheerful anticipation of a nice visit with his family, so Magda took Dolph’s elbow and walked ahead.
There was the church, a blunt stone tower and an onion-shaped dome of tarnished green copper, reaching farther into the sky than the tallest tree. “When I was a girl,” Magda whispered to her son, “I knew every stick and stone of this place.”
“That would have been easy enough,” Dolph smiled. “It isn’t all that large.”
Harry and Christian romped fearlessly ahead of them; the cheerful racket of their voices alleviated some of the brooding quiet of midday.
“I don’t remember it being all so quiet,” Magda ventured.
From behind her, Hansi said, “I suppose most are out in the fields . . . or mayhap most did as we did and immigrated to America, hey?”
“There is Hansi’s father’s house,” Magda whispered. “Just past the church, with the oak tree before.”
“Now I see where Vati had the notion to have a garden under the oak trees,” Dolph observed. “I guess that those must be Onkel Hansi’s brothers.”
He sounded doubtful, and Magda could hardly blame him. Although in true age they were only a few years older than Hansi, these two men sitting in the dooryard outside the Richter cottage farmhold appeared so very much older. One of them—she thought it must be Joachim, the oldest—had gotten very fat. Although they still resembled Hansi in something of their coloring and features, Magda found the differences to be marked, even shocking. Hansi, immaculately barbered, cheerful of countenance, dressed like a man of prosperous circumstances—appeared half their age. Even more surprising was the lack of real welcome on their faces, as Hansi crossed the road, sweeping Liesel along with him in his haste to greet them.
“Jürgen—Joachim! Here we are then, all of us! Well, not quite all of us, since I’ve only brought two of my girls! Such a to-do, I can’t tell you, the boys were all taken up with their own businesses and with young Marie just married! Did I tell you, I have three fine sons, five if you count my daughters’ menfolk! This is one of them: Peter Vining, married my oldest, little Annchen who was just a child when we came away! Don’t mind him, he’s an American but good old German stock, he speaks now like one of us! The little boys are his and Annchen’s! And you remember Margaretha, old Steinmetz’s oldest daughter?” He was exuberantly clasping first one brother’s hand, then the other, embracing them both, while Magda stood a little aside with the children.
“Welcome, Brother Hansi,” Joachim said, sounding anything but welcoming. “Something to see you back after all this time. Your last letters to Mother didn’t sound as if all those fine Verein plans had worked out very well for you at all!”
“Some of them worked out better than others.” Hansi smiled; buff, hearty Hansi—the jibe went sailing straight past. Or did it, Magda wondered? She looked between the brothers, covertly. No one ever looked much at a woman in widow-black, so she felt secure in doing this. She observed Hansi, sucking in his comparatively smaller gut as he noted the spread of Joachim’s own. Really, Hansi’s brother looked like an inflated bladder on legs. She took a certain vengeful pleasure in that. Hansi was a good, honest man; he did not deserve being the object of this jealousy and malice. The years sat well and comfortably on him, whereas Joachim’s cheeks were hazed by gray stubble, and the knuckles and fingernails of the hand that he held out to Liesel were ingrained with grime so deeply embedded that it could never quite be washed away.
“Welcome, welcome!” Joachim said, turning his attention to the others, although something in his gloating expression belied his words. “Come in, come in . . .although there are so many with you Brother Hansi—perhaps we shall be more comfortable in the garden, under the trees!” There were benches and rustic chairs enough, under the trees; Magda, remembering how small the Richters’ cottage had been, thought it all for the better. Joachim’s eyes lit with recognition, but there was still that avid, gloating look on his face, as he said to Magda, “You . . . I remember, you were the plain one, with all the brains. Margaretha, wasn’t it? And who is this fancy-boy then?”
“My son, Rudolph,” Magda answered quietly. She found Joachim repellant.
“Looked too young for a husband,” Joachim laughed, greasily, “but then you never know. Sit—sit, sit! So you did marry, after all. Quite surprise all around, I’m sure! So who was the lucky chap—anyone from Albeck?”
“No,” Magda answered, giving a Dolph’s elbow a warning squeeze.
“Looks like you had bad luck with him anyway,” Joachim observed. “Eternal mourning, just like the Widow of Windsor Palace, eh? Well, at least you had a chance to do a couple of turns around the paddock.” Joachim winked, suggestively, while Magda stared straight over his head. Really, she thought; Hansi might be crude on occasion, but he was jolly with his remarks. Joachim was just crude, and cruel with it, although she was hard-put to tell if he was being deliberately boorish. “And this is Annchen . . . little Annchen! How you have grown!”
Joachim reached out, almost as if he would pinch her cheek as if she was still a little girl, but Anna deftly caught his hand. “Onkel Joachim,” she exclaimed, “why, so I have! Nothing gets past you, does it?” She smiled with sweet venom, adding, “This is my husband, Peter—he was a nephew of Auntie Magda’s husband.”
“Keeps it all in the family then!” It seemed to Magda that Joachim leered very unpleasantly at them all. She could tell from the tension in her son that he disliked this man, this place very intensely. But he had disciplined his face to that bland expression that she knew so well. Still, she prayed that his visit would be short. “Sit, sit, I beg you!” Joachim cried, and when they had obeyed, sitting all in a row like birds on a branch, he sank back into his own chair and regarded them with one of those expressions that Magda could not fathom.
“You look well,” Joachim remarked at last. “Better than I had expected, once we heard of your return. What did I say, Jürgen—here they are, coming back again! Back to Albeck! Here we thought, well, must not have done so good for themselves after all!” What to say to that? Magda wondered. What kind of notion about their lives in Texas did his brothers get from Hansi’s infrequent letters?
Finally Hansi said, “This is just a visit, Joachim, not to stay for good.”
His brothers looked immeasurably relieved by this reply and Peter whispered in English, “Cuz, something tells me that they aren’t really that pleased to see the old boy. They’re acting as if he has come to borrow money.”
Anna’s lips moved in one of Hansi’s favorite oaths; she whispered in the same language, “What nonsense! Papa used to send money to Oma Richter all the time; not much but what he could. She would write and tell him how mean and cheeseparing Onkel Joachim was, once he inherited everything from Opa Richter. He couldn’t send money during the war, of course, and Oma Richter died then. She was the only one who wrote, ever.”
A woman emerged from the front door of the cottage, bearing a tray with some jugs and plates upon it. She placed them on the little table, and cast a resigned look upon them all. She also looked grey and careworn. The years had treated her with as little consideration as it had Hansi’s brothers.
“That must be his wife, I suppose,” Dolph whispered.
Magda said, “Yes . . . he was wed to a cousin of ours, Mathilde—at least I suppose it must be she. She was a little older than I and never good friends.” She raised her voice a little, saying with affection and good cheer, “My dear Mathilde, how well you look! Don’t you remember us? It has been such a long time, and we are much changed. I am Magda, Liesel’s sister.”
“Aye, I remember well enough.” Mathilde used a corner of her apron to brush some fallen leav
es off one of the chair seats, “You were the one supposed to wed our Hansi, not your flibbertigibbet sister.” She vanished into the house again, leaving Magda startled out of all countenance; what was it to Mathilde who her husband’s younger brother had married?
“M’wife and her sister wanted to see what had become of their father’s house,” Hansi said, by way of explanation. “And we wished to show the children a little of where we came from.”
“Come back to see of there’s any crumbs to be snatched out of our father’s inheritance, you mean,” Jürgen spoke for the first time. Oh, that was open malice, rather than the sniveling backstabbing kind. Joachim had the grace to at least look a little embarrassed.
Hansi exclaimed, “Oh for the love of God, what made you think such a thing?!”
“You’d lost the land, didn’t you?” Now that she thought on it, Magda remembered that Jürgen was the one for really nasty schoolhouse pranks. That manner of boy, that manner of a man, she thought. Jürgen was all but gloating; that made her skin crawl. “All that land you went haring off to Texas for, believing all those fine stories. But one of those letters you wrote to Mother was all about how you were thrown off the land and all your stock and property confiscated. And we read of the war in the newspapers,” Jürgen added with what seemed to be an indecent degree of satisfaction. “Of how the Confederate government then ran rough-shod over your rights.”
Magda could not but think of how she had always been welcome at the Browns’ ramshackle cabin in the early days of her marriage; how Mrs. Brown, sloven and slatternly, had always made much of her as a guest, even if all she had to offer was cool water in a battered tin cup. She could recall, also, how Porfirio’s family spared no effort in making her warmly welcome at his rambling but windowless mud-brick home in San Antonio; neither of them with any other thought but the comfort of their guests. “Rather bitter herbs and friendship,” she recalled Pastor Altmueller saying often, “than a stalled ox and hatred within!” And this, she saw to her confusion and discomfiture, was not honest welcome and affection. This was bitter envy, a grievance all the more bitter for there being no reason for it. Why on earth should Hansi’s brothers offer such grudging hospitality? This was a cold welcome indeed, in a place that she and Hansi and Liesel had expected to find warmer—at least warmer than the professional welcome of a place like the Stephanienbad towards the family of a very rich man. She sat in the shade of the oak tree in the garden of Hansi’s father’s cottage wishing that they had not come; wishing that they had rather kept Albeck in their memory, captured in amber and drowsing under the summer sun, mellow and golden, untarnished by the passage of time.
Meanwhile, Hansi laughed uproariously. “Oh, Jürgen, always grasping the wrong end of the stick! No, ‘twas not my land that was taken! That was m’brother-in-law’s property! And it was returned after the war, as soon as the Federals began putting things to right again! Young Rudolph here made a show-place out of it—he has the finest stud-farm in all of Texas.”
“Save for Captain King at the Santa Gertrudis,” Dolph murmured. “You have to be honest, Onkel—Captain King is years ahead of me!”
“Lost m’land!” Hansi was chuckling to himself. “Ah, that is a rich jest! No, nothing like that at all—in fact, I own more of it than ever before!” And buff, hearty Hansi had just the faintest touch of steel in his glance, the deft edge of a stiletto as he added, “I went into cattle, you know. Whatever property Father left to you, that was honestly yours as the eldest, Joachim. I’ve no claim on any of that. No need for it, either.” And he shrugged broadly and smiled. “All I came here looking for was the chance to show my grandsons where I grew up and mayhap a bit of hospitality?”
“Eh, you always were a cheeky beggar,” Joachim grumbled, “always with your hand out asking for more.”
Dolph looked sideways at his mother, his eyebrows raised in disbelieving arches—Onkel Hansi? Asking for more? Magda pressed her lips together and shook her head warningly at her son. He and Peter exchanged puzzled looks while Anna’s hand sought her husband’s. Hansi either paid for anything he wanted, or he just took; there was no asking with his hand out to anyone.
“How well does he even know Onkel Hansi?” Dolph whispered in English.
Magda answered, “Not well at all, I think!” There was a feeling in the air like a thunderstorm, Magda thought; almost like the greenish tinge to the sky when sudden pale flickers of lightning flash behind the clouds. All of it was centered on Hansi and his two brothers, glowering with sullen resentment . . . that’s what it was, resentment and envy. With a shiver, Magda recalled J.P. Waldrip, the look in his mismatched eyes on those few times he had visited Carl Becker’s holding and looked around at what had been built with such care. Joachim and Jürgen, Mathilde, all looked at them in the same way. They don’t know, Magda realized, they don’t know about the cattle, or the store, or they put aside whatever Hansi wrote about such things. They thought we were coming back as beggars! Cannot they see our clothes? Or were they so set upon our failure they cannot see anything else?
“I’ve worked like a dog for everything I have,” Hansi meanwhile was saying, still with enough of an amiable expression that anyone would take his reply for an affectionate jest.
“I’m sure you have, little brother,” Joachim said, “but still . . .you should have stayed here with the family, instead of putting credence in all those wild tales of riches! We could have used your help, especially after Father died, couldn’t we, Jürgen?”
Jürgen sucked on the end of his pipe and replied, “Aye, so we could, Brother. But some of us felt an obligation to our own blood.”
“You mean, work for you as an unpaid laborer for all of my life?” That was the final straw. The amiability dropped off Hansi’s countenance. He had a dangerous growl in his voice and Liesel squeaked in dismay. “Just because I worked so for Father, didn’t mean I wanted to do also for you.” And at that moment, Hansi’s temper snapped. “Wouldn’t be nice, Joachim,” he snarled through clenched teeth, “to act as if we were old enough to be out of small-clothes? I’ve been away for thirty years; don’t you think you ought to say something like ‘Well, speak of the devil, isn’t that our little brother Hansi?’ You probably did say the ‘speak of the devil’ part! What about saying something like, “Well, well, what have you been doing with yourself, Hansi?! Is that your family, Hansi? Oh, tell me about the cattle business, Hansi, what is that like?”
“I think,” Dolph murmured quietly to his mother and cousins, “that I will take Lottie and Grete to the coaches and tell them that we are nearly ready to depart. Something tells me that this sentimental visit will not last very much longer.”
“Good idea, Cuz,” Peter agreed, adding irreverently, “oh, Ma’am Becker; if you could only pick your relatives the way you can choose your friends and your spouse, how much less awkward that would make the world!”
Dolph nodded an abrupt courtesy to his uncles and strode back along the way they had come. Lottie and Grete opened their parasols, fleeing with him. No, the girls were not enjoying this at all, and Magda didn’t blame them in the least.
Meanwhile, Hansi’s voice was rising as his temper got the better of him. “How about, ‘Well, Hansi, tell us about what it was like in Texas! Well, how did you get along with those wild Indians?!’ Or how about, ‘Glad you didn’t drown on the boat going over, Hansi!’ Better yet, tell me about what it has been like here! Tell me about what you have been doing with yourselves all this time! Not bloody much, by the look of it! Thirty years and neither one of you have taken a step to better yourselves, better this place! I swear to God almighty, is that still the same leaky patch to the roof that has left a smear of mold all the way down the wall? So the roof still leaks and you have done nothing about it but complain?” He stood up so abruptly, his chair skidded backwards with the force of it. “Well this is the nub of it, Joachim, Jürgen—so listen good. I will not repeat myself. I did not return here to beg of your charity. I do not come back
to beg of anything at all. I thought to show my grandsons the town where I lived when I was a child, the house I was born in, nothing more. Instead I find that my brothers are so set on gloating over me, so certain that I have been a failure—”
Abruptly he stopped, as suddenly as if he had run into a wall in the dark. “That’s it,” he added softly, “that’s what it is. Not that we have failed, taking our lives into our own hands and venturing into the world, and come crawling back to beg charity from you. But that we have not. And you—that is what you cannot endure.” He stared down at his brothers, breathing as hard as if he had just run a footrace. Joachim tried to rise, but Hansi pushed him, a hand on his chest, so firmly that he sat down with a jolt. Jürgen made a movement to rise, but Hansi glared him down. “No, sit and listen, the both of you. This I will only say once. I own three cattle ranches—the largest is the size of Bavaria. I also own four general stores, the least of which brings in an income of . . . how much yearly, Magda?”
He snapped his fingers impatiently and Magda said, “Twenty thousand dollars yearly . . . gross, not profits.”
“I pay regular wages to about four hundred and twenty men the year around,” Hansi continued. “They drive my wagons or tend my cattle and horses. There are half again as many hired in the trail season, when we send herds north. Two months ago, I dined with the Governor of Texas and his family; an amiable chap, very obliging. If I complained to him that my ass itched, he would dispatch one of his flunkies to scratch it for me. I own a mansion of twenty rooms in San Antonio; it would have solid gold doorknobs on it if I wished. My wife’s boudoir is as big as my father’s whole damned house and when I pleasure her in bed, we do it on silk sheets. Yes, I’m as rich as one of those damned Firsts.”
He looked contemptuously at his brothers. “At least you have enough pride not to abase yourselves by begging for any of it. Good day to you both—and go to hell.” He patted Liesel’s hand—she had been clutching at his arm. “Lise, my dear, I think we should depart. Goodbye, Joachim . . . Jürgen. You should have enough grievances now about your rich American kin to keep you grumbling for years.”
