Rivers

by Martin Michael Driessen

  He was often chided for remaining unmarried. The pastor had even spoken, through the latticework of the confessional, of a sacred duty. Mothers of eligible girls would broach the subject, and for a while the girls themselves did their very best, until they found a man elsewhere—then he could breathe easy, until new girls reached marrying age.

  He had half a dozen books, all of them by Jules Verne. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea had been the first. Julius had given it to him while he was still at the gymnasium. The title had confused him at first. No ocean, he thought, could possibly be twenty thousand leagues deep. He read it, year in, year out. Everything in it seemed of such inestimable value to him that it would suffice for an entire lifetime. The cover was blue and gold, in relief, like the pews in church. The illustrations were works of true wonder. One showed Captain Nemo, his arms folded, standing at a crystalline porthole and watching a gigantic octopus attack the Nautilus. On another, the caption (for there was always a sentence from the book underneath) read: “The Crew Attends an Underwater Funeral.” The incredible precision of the engraving boggled his mind. Not only were all the characters represented in typical attitudes, so that one would readily recognize them—the dramatically protruding beard of the seaman, the bald head of the anxious scientist—but every illustration consisted, right to the very edge, of a dense network of meticulously drawn lines, executed with a perfection that Konrad, who whittled and carved his figurines with the tip of his pocketknife, would never achieve.

  He read and reread his six books at the kitchen table by candlelight, after having slid aside his plate of mashed potatoes and bacon.

  Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar was the reason the little wooden goose he’d made during his first rafting journey in Kronach had no eyes. He was just about to burn tiny black eyes into the wood with a glowing ember when he recalled that the cruel Tartars had blinded Strogoff with white-hot steel, after which he could not bring himself to do it.

  By now the Main had become a familiar waterway. Konrad knew every mile and every vista. The hilltops and woods, here approaching and there receding from the riverbanks, the mouths of the tributaries, the bridges and the hillside vineyards, the grand plains, the fortresses, the wide bends, and the erratic way in which the stream meandered now northwest, now due south into the sun. The Main told a story he experienced time and again. Just like he read the Jules Verne books, he read and reread the Main.

  He stood tall, his legs firmly planted, his peavey in both hands in case it was needed. Where the Main was calm, he walked back and forth along the lashed-together logs that drifted downstream under his feet, and enjoyed the breeze that made his shirt flap. Although with each new journey his raft was another raft, it always reminded him of the previous one, just as a dog reminds you of the dogs you’d had before it.

  The Main was channeled now and flowed more slowly than it used to. It was a calm, dammed-up waterway that ran from east to west through the heart of Germany. It was no longer quite the same river he had dreamed of as a boy. But then again, when his old mother had started failing, he didn’t love her any less either.

  All that was left of those days was the brief spectacle when one passed the newly built dams and barrages, which invariably required a minute of steersmanship. But in between, nothing was the same anymore.

  What also irked him were the steam trains and the automobiles in ever greater numbers, as though to drive home the fact that the days of rafting were over. And he was irritated by the heavy chain at the bottom of the Main, which pulled steamboats and other ships upstream and which Konrad thought unnatural. The chain ran from Bamberg to Kitzingen. The captains never yielded to the rafts, but rather seemed to intentionally ram into them, like the barbaric vanguard of a new age.

  He found Evchen in a meadow not far from the village, and again she lay sleeping under a tree. He pitied her. She would never find a husband, now that she was getting older and was practically blind. She would spend her life tending geese in the fields around Wallreuth, and in the end she would have to rely on alms. The pastor preferred not to see her at Mass. Queer, racy stories about her made the rounds; they weren’t even real stories, as though she wasn’t worth them, but rather offhand insinuations from which Konrad concluded that she’d had just about all the men in the village.

  He lingered in the bushes and looked at her, his hand clutching the wooden figurine in his coat pocket. His smooth, eyeless wooden goose suited no one better than her.

  Morning mist still hung above the grass, lighter than the gray smoke that rose from Wallreuth’s chimneys beyond the woods. A bend in the river glistened in the distance.

  Her bare feet were drab from mud, and her legs were spread. Her skirt was an apron of clay. He did not look at her legs, for it gave him the same uneasy feeling he’d had at the sight of his mother, who, old and doddering and in her last months, indifferent to propriety, would sit, spread-legged, on the edge of her bed or squatted above the chamber pot with her nightgown hitched up.

  Evchen’s hands lay resigned and reflective in her lap. She wore a ragged and weedy straw hat; from under it came two thick, braided tresses, blonder than the hair of most of the local women, and he noticed that she had once—last year, perhaps—woven daisies into them, but now all that was left were dead, gray stems and desiccated buds.

  He stepped out of the shrubs and carefully placed the little goose on her lap.

  Before he could retreat, she opened her eyes, maybe because the guard goose had seen him and let out a warning honk; they were immense, blue-gray eyes that looked straight at him.

  “Who’s there?” she asked. “Heinrich, Georg, Hannla, Fritze?”

  “It’s me. Konrad. I’ve brought you something.”

  She felt the figurine with her fingertips, bowed her head slightly, and then said something most strange.

  “Konradin,” she whispered, “where our bed was, there you will find broken flowers and grass.”

  “What?” he asked.

  She did not answer. The geese approached, hissing reproachfully.

  “I wanted to give you this before I left. See you later this summer, Evchen.”

  “No one will know of us, except you and I. And a silent little bird.”

  “What a funny girl you are. Farewell.”

  Konrad had been working for Durlacher for seven years now, and the company had grown a great deal since Julius became junior partner. They had bought up all Benning’s woodlands when he went bankrupt.

  It was a fine, sunny day. Julius sat on the crates, smoking a cigarette and updating his ledger. This time the trunks were huge, more than twenty-four meters long. Stacks of sawn planks were tied to the rafts, as well as bundles of thinner trunks for the vineyards at Escherndorf and Sommerach. They also transported woven baskets and crates of eggs and vats of Franconian beer, which would be brought to market along the way.

  It was Julius’s idea to use the rafts to haul cargo, to make them cost-effective. His bicycle, an Excelsior Kavalier, went along as well: sometimes he would ride ahead to promote his wares here and there, and if Konrad saw him on the shore surrounded by buyers, he knew he had to moor.

  A first lark hovered, unseen, high above the cornfields near Hetzfeld, singing joyously. The Excelsior Kavalier sparkled. Konrad imagined Julius as Columbus, and he himself at the helm of his flagship. Not that there was much left for him to discover on the Main: it eventually emptied into the Rhine, and the Rhine was the biggest, broadest river in the world; it flowed majestically past knightly fortresses and mighty mountains and was home, even to this day, to sirens whose enchanting song lured men like them to ruin. And then the Rhine left Germany, flowing to lands where they spoke another language; Schramm had told him that in the Low Countries, it branched into no fewer than eight rivers, each with its own name, on whose shores stood those fabulously wealthy Dutch cities, Haarlem, Herzogenbusch, Gouda, and Dort, all of their foundations built on Franconian tree trunks.

  “Julius!” Konr
ad called.

  Julius looked up.

  “The Lohr weir.”

  Julius nodded, closed his book, and climbed atop the stack of crates. He wore mid-calf, lace-up shoes, sturdy enough to maneuver safely on the raft but not too heavy for pedaling on the bicycle, and proper enough to wear during business negotiations. Konrad was always amazed by the extent of Julius’s wardrobe. He seemed to have a different outfit for every occasion, all of it as elegant as it was practical. A linen shirt with ironed pleats and a mole-fur vest for at the Stammtisch, the regulars’ table, at the Krone. A vulcanized cape in case of rain. In the winter, a long overcoat with a herringbone motif and lambskin hat and gloves. In autumn, if the temperature dropped even a few degrees, Konrad saw him in a different suit and with a different overcoat than the day before; sometimes he even suspected that Julius chose his wardrobe to befit the colors of the season. He had money enough, of course. But there was something elusive and esoteric about Julius. That was perhaps what bound them: they each had something that distinguished them from the others in Wallreuth. But that something also kept them from knowing each other.

  The raft pitched into the rapids, expertly steered by Konrad; a few passersby stopped on the bank, undoubtedly hoping for some mishap to gawk at. But with Konrad, nothing ever went wrong. The raft glided into the frothing depths and partially disappeared underwater. Julius ducked elegantly under the arch of the bridge, as self-assured as a preacher on his pulpit; then it was Konrad’s turn to duck and then right himself to keep his raft on course for the remainder of the rapids, until a few seconds later all was calm again.

  Julius stepped off the stack of crates, his feet still dry, and waved to him as he sat back down, opening the ledger to the spot he’d marked with his finger.

  More passed between the two young men on this trip than Konrad had expected.

  At Ludwigsbad, where he had cycled ahead, Julius awaited him not in the company of farmers or tradesmen purchasing planks or baskets, which they had in good supply, but of a young lady. Konrad did not think her particularly attractive or even hale, but she was undeniably elegantly dressed, and upon being introduced to her, it was clear that, for the first time in his life, he was in the company of nobility. Her name was Thekla von Wiedenhausen.

  Julius informed him that she would join them on the raft for a short distance. In Volkach they would catch the steamboat back. He would leave his bicycle in Ludwigsbad so that the rafts could continue on their way without losing any time, and he would soon catch up with them.

  This was a calm stretch of the Main, and the journey went without incident. Julius sat with his companion on the stack of crates at the front of the raft, and Konrad stayed at the back, so as not to overhear their conversation. Julius pointed out landmarks—the Klingenberg, the Vogelsberg—and she listened and occasionally held on to her hat when a breeze passed. The hat had a sky-blue ribbon that fluttered charmingly. She sat up very straight, and Konrad had plenty of time to take her in. From the back, his impression of her improved considerably. The summer outfit with its tailored jacket was very flattering indeed. The wide white skirts made it look like a swan had alighted on the crates to watch over the Wallreuth eggs.

  Julius, too, sat upright in a somewhat studied attitude. Konrad imagined he was witnessing the first meeting between Julius Durlacher and his future bride. It was about time, for Julius was, like him, still a bachelor.

  In Volkach, Julius announced he would take his lady friend for a walk up the hill to the famous pilgrimage church of Maria im Weingarten. He might therefore only join up with Konrad the following day, as Julius never slept on the raft but in the same set of inns his father had always frequented when traveling on business.

  Konrad lay on his back and gazed up at the stars. The night sky was cloudless and nearly black. The stars were not his friends: for him, they had always symbolized changelessness, and what did not change was not good for him. As things stood, all that changed was himself, simply because he was getting older, which was no great achievement, it happened to everyone. Up until now, he felt, he hadn’t accomplished much. He had been born, just like Napoleon, Beethoven, and Jules Verne, but that was where the similarities ended.

  He slept fitfully, and awoke at every movement in the vicinity of the raft, no matter how small. If an owl flew over, he heard it. If the wind picked up or changed direction, he noticed it. If the monotone gurgle and slosh of the water underneath him was interrupted, even for a second, he would stay awake until he figured out what had caused it. Even a shooting star made him open his eyes, though it was usually gone by the time he looked.

  And so he noticed a distant light that approached along the riverbank. It wobbled and weaved erratically. He knew right away that this will-o’-the-wisp was the carbide lamp of Julius’s Excelsior.

  Julius was drunk. He tossed his bicycle into the bushes and teetered onto the raft. I hope he doesn’t break an ankle, Konrad thought.

  “Your lamp,” he said, because it was still burning, and needlessly lit up the shrubs.

  “Forget it,” Julius muttered, sitting down beside him.

  Konrad pulled his blanket closer around him, so as not to catch a chill.

  “What did you think of her?” Julius asked. “Thekla, I mean.”

  Konrad paused while considering his answer. He did not know what feelings Julius might have for her. He didn’t find her pretty, but on the other hand, her manner when she’d been on the raft had made a good impression.

  “I thought she was . . . elegant.”

  “She is. But that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, then?” Konrad asked.

  Julius chuckled and stood up to go get the carbide lamp from his bicycle after all. He tripped and nearly fell between the raft and the bank. Something was going on with him, a conflict, but Konrad could not put his finger on it. He’d gone to fetch the lamp because it was senseless to let it burn, but something else was at play, something mercurial.

  Another falling star—but he looked too late to make a wish.

  Julius sat back down next to him and set the lamp aside.

  There was something about Julius’s face. It was regular and well formed, you might call it handsome, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. It was slightly round and diffuse. It was not the face of a man who knew where he belonged. It was half-peasant, half-gentleman. Maybe even half-man, half-woman.

  “I took her up to the Maria im Weingarten,” Julius said. “But that was just a ruse, and we both knew it.”

  Konrad said nothing. If Julius had something to tell, that was up to him, but it was not for Konrad to ask.

  Julius was still for a while, as if waiting for a reaction.

  “I had her,” he said after some time. And when Konrad still did not respond, he offered details. “You know what, status and breeding don’t mean a thing. A woman is a woman. The only difference is that with a ‘lady,’ there’s a lot more underwear to sort out. D’you have any idea what all she had on under those skirts?”

  Konrad did not know, and did not want to. What he did know, from the very start, was that Julius was lying.

  He had not slept with Thekla von Wiedenhausen, and what he now told Konrad was perhaps his way of dealing with the disappointment. At the stammtisch in the tavern, Konrad had heard plenty of men boast of their conquests, and somehow he always knew whether it was the truth or just bravado. Green as he was, he never took part himself.

  Julius laughed and laid a hand on Konrad’s blanket. “Well, that’s human nature for you . . . we are what we are. Doesn’t it ever get to you? Unmarried and alone on the Main for months at a time?”

  “No,” Konrad answered.

  Julius quickly withdrew his hand.

  “Oh . . . Well, I’m bushed. Not much chance of me finding lodgings in Volkach at this time of night.”

  “Here, take my blanket,” Konrad said, getting up. “It’ll be getting light in an hour, and we have to push off on time.”

&nbs
p; Julius did not answer. He lay motionless on his back, half on Konrad’s sack of straw and half in the gap between two trunks. His eyes were open, but he appeared not to see anything.

  The next day, on the way to Würzburg, Julius was somber and moody. He drank too much last night, Konrad thought, and isn’t used to sleeping in the open. Maybe that was it. Julius sat, sulking, hour after hour, on the stack of crates, facing backward.

  “Don’t stand up,” Konrad warned. “Bridge.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, man,” Julius said hoarsely, and added, once under the shadow of the stone arch, “I know better than you, you hick.”

  “Yes, Mr. Durlacher,” Konrad replied, which was the most brazen thing he had ever said.

  “You know, I’ve got a good mind to sack you,” Julius said.

  Just after the bridge came a narrow bend, one of the few moments the rafter had to take control of steering the craft. Konrad walked to the bow, toward Julius, his peavey raised.

  “Don’t you dare!” Julius shouted as he got up.

  “What?” Konrad yelled back as he rammed the pike into the riverbed next to the outermost trunk, grasped it with both hands high above his head, and dangled from it. The water frothed in protest as the raft glided past the pike, which acted as a wedge, and swung sideways through the inside bend. As Jules Verne’s Robur the Conqueror said: “Give me a lever and I will move the world.”

  He became a hero on his twenty-third birthday.

  The Great War was raging, and Julius fought as a reserve lieutenant in France.

  Konrad had not volunteered, as fighting was not in his nature, and besides, men were needed to keep the logging business going in support of the war effort. Women could be put to work at the grenade and ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt, even half-blind ones like Evchen, who had been assigned there. But they couldn’t chop down trees and drive timber.