Mohr

by Frederick Reuss

“What makes you think I am your friend?”

  Mohr flushes. “What makes you think you are not?” He gets into the car and pulls the door shut. Agnes is already walking away as he rolls down the window. Once again, he feels foolish, empty-headed, tangled up in things, his powers gone. He used to think that life here would improve him, that he would grow, and in growing that Käthe and Eva would be inspired, and when they were at last reunited they would all grow together again, and—Germany be damned—their new life here would be richer and he would rejoin the human race, not as a refugee and a has-been but as a free and independent man. Instead, all he feels is lost, without a compass; all he wants is to believe that things could not have turned out other than the way they have, that it’s not his fault he’s stuck here, all alone. What happened? Once upon a time he expected only good of himself. He believed in the purity of his heart and all his intentions. But something happened. He was mistaken. No good has come out of anything he has done. Nothing good at all.

  On the way home the car gets caught in a parade along Avenue Edouard VII—blue-jacketed sailors and soldiers marching down the avenue bearing banners, drums and horns echoing. His thoughts flitter. Rent, driver, bills, refrigerator, food, cigarettes. Käthe.

  Wolfsgrub

  Frau Mohr!”

  Käthe stops scything. How long has Seethaler been calling her? He’s down by the house, waving. Sweat drips down her grass-flecked arms. Her blouse clings to her back. She’s been mowing a corner of the upper meadow all morning. It’s a job she enjoys. It helps ease her lower-back pain. Mohr always said exercise was the best antidote to pain. Kircher, the local doctor, vehemently disagrees, but his advice—rest and more rest—neither is viable nor has helped her much. Only since resuming outdoor work has she begun to feel better. Her growing strength is compounded by a sense of accomplishment. This year, she won’t have to buy hay for half the winter. In a few days, Daibler will come by with his new machine and bale what she’s cut. Minna and Ziggy can graze the upper meadow through the fall.

  Seethaler has been digging all morning. With any luck he’ll be finished by evening and she’ll have full use of the kitchen again. People are always telling her to update the plumbing in the house, but even if she could afford to, she’s used to the simplicity here, likes living in the twilight of a previous age. The old farmhouse is her only refuge from the half-idea of modernity. In the larger scheme of things, she’s only here temporarily—its current guest.

  A breeze blows. She puts down the scythe, rewraps her braid, feeling the wind on the back of her neck, a brief shiver of pleasure. Suddenly there are screams coming from the house. She races down the hill; just as she reaches the bottom, Eva and her friends, Lisa and Ursula, burst out the front door and race off, shrieking with laughter.

  “Stop!”

  Surprised, the children come to a stop.

  “What are you doing?”

  The girls glance around, sheepish, except for Eva, who is trying to keep from laughing.

  Seethaler appears, holding his shovel.

  “What happened?”

  Lisa and Ursula exchange guilty looks but defer to Eva, whose eyes sparkle with mischief.

  “Come here.” She takes Eva by the hand. “You’re covered in black. Let me look at you.”

  The girls edge forward, lips pursed tightly.

  “You’ve been playing with the stove.”

  “No, Mama,” Eva says.

  “Why are you covered in soot? I’ve told you not to play with the stove.”

  “We weren’t lighting it, Mama.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie, Eva.”

  “I promise, Mama. We weren’t lighting the stove.”

  “Then why are you covered in soot?”

  As Eva opens her mouth to speak, a banging erupts inside the house. “Who’s in the house?”

  The girls defer again to Eva. “Martin.”

  “Martin?”

  The girls nod.

  Käthe starts toward the house.

  “Wait, Mama! We’ll get him!” The girls race ahead and disappear inside.

  Käthe glances at Seethaler, who is calmly leaning on his shovel. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Seethaler nods.

  She finds Eva opening the brass door of the big ceramic stove. Martin is shrieking, stuffed into the vent chamber. She sweeps the trio of girls aside, takes firm hold of the little boy’s kicking legs, and pulls the terrified four-year-old out of the stove by his feet. The child is covered with soot from head to toe. “Whose idea was this?”

  “We were just playing a game,” Eva stammers.

  The girls are now all on the verge of tears. The little boy’s face is smeared with soot and mucus. “Bring me a basin and towel.” The girls vanish instantly.

  “They said they would leave the door open,” Martin sobs. “And they closed it!”

  Käthe strokes the boy’s hair. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “It was daaaark.”

  “What they did was cruel, and they are going to be punished.”

  This seems to comfort Martin, and when the girls return with the basin and the washcloth, Käthe orders them to apologize. The girls begin crying again. “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  “It was only a joke,” Eva mutters.

  “Do you see anybody laughing?” Käthe finishes wiping the boy’s face and arms. “Now, how on earth did you fit inside that tiny space? You’re a regular Houdini!”

  Martin glances at his tormentors, wiping away tears, shifting nervously.

  “What a trick!” Käthe waves an arm. “Like magic. Simsalabim!”

  Martin smiles.

  “You must have rubber bones!” She wrings out the washcloth and turns to the girls. “Now, take Martin home and tell his mother what you did. Tell her you are sorry and that I said you must wash his clothes.”

  The girls glance at one another with a mixture of skepticism and relief. “Should we bring the clothes back here with us?” Eva wants to know.

  “Of course. Unless she asks you to wash them there. Tell her she will have them back spotless.”

  The girls become excited by this new project and lead ever-compliant Martin away. Käthe sees them to the front gate, then goes around to the side of the house, where Seethaler is squatting over the narrow trench he has dug. “No broken bones?”

  “Just the usual mischief.”

  Seethaler points into the ditch. “Ceramic.”

  The trench is nearly an arm’s length deep. Seethaler leans down, dips his hand into the puddling water, and removes a shard of broken pipe. “Collapsed all the way to the tank.”

  “How did it collapse?”

  Seethaler leans back on his haunches. His mustache is damp and flecked with bits of mud. “Roots get inside, crack it. It’s old.”

  “Can you replace it?”

  “Of course. With cast iron, too.” He reaches into the trench, tugs out a handful of mucky black vegetation, tosses it aside.

  “How old do you think it is?”

  “It doesn’t matter once the roots get down into them and they begin to crack.”

  “How long will it take?”

  Seethaler reaches for his shovel and stands up. “As soon as I can get the pipe. That’s the hardest part these days.”

  “And how much will it cost?”

  “Was kostet dännn därrrr ganzä Bärg?” Seethaler laughs. He thrusts the shovel into the mound of upturned dirt, then paces off the distance from the opening of the tank. At the kitchen window he turns and repeats the line from Mohr’s play, sweeping his arm in mock theater. Käthe can’t help smiling at his silliness. Platingruben in Tulpen had been a big hit. It had been commissioned directly by the Ganghofer-Thoma-Bühne, a community drama group. The line—How much for the whole mountain?—had become a running joke, locally.

  Seethaler slaps his thigh. “The part about the stockings. Remember that?”


  “How can I forget?”

  Seethaler launches into an impersonation. “‘Stockings? Why, they’re for catching trout, I tell you! Zum Forellenfangen! They swim like the devil—zack zack— right into the things!’”

  Käthe begins to laugh. He’s got it down perfectly. The crusty old mountain yokel confronted for the first time by a pair of women’s stockings. Zum Forellenfangen! For catching trout! After the play completed its run, a clothing store in Egern had put a sign up on a stocking display as a joke. Zum Forellenfangen! Now a new sign in the window reads: Kaufe nicht bei Juden. Don’t buy from Jews. Last year the store had been Aryanized. The Jewish owner, Leo Wolf, had emigrated with his family to Canada.

  “It’s Grauvogel, isn’t it?” Seethaler says. “The spitting image.”

  “People say that, but I know for a fact Mohr didn’t have anyone specific in mind when he wrote it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Everybody thinks its old Grauvogel, and that’s all that counts.” He laughs, swipes his forehead with a sweaty forearm, pulls the shovel from the mound of dirt. Then, as if seized by a sudden change of heart, he thrusts the shovel back into the ground and turns to Käthe. “Dr. Mohr is never coming back, is he?”

  The question catches her by surprise. She brushes back a strand of hair.

  “He’s still in China, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right.”

  Seethaler plunges the shovel into the dirt and pulls it out and plunges it in again. Käthe resists the urge to say anything more, or to appease his creeping embarrassment. She wants him to know that she is bearing her husband’s absence just painfully enough to make the subject off limits. To him and anyone else. Mohr must not become a topic of local gossip. Best of all would be for him to be forgotten completely. She glances into the trench. “How much do you need for the job?”

  “Was kostet dännn därrrr ganzä Bärg?” Seethaler repeats, as if granting the change of topic.

  She obliges him with a slight smile. “Take as much time as you like,” she tells him. “I’ll be in the stalls.”

  She has put off cleaning Minna’s stall all morning. The cow has been grazing in the upper meadow since sunrise. She is close to the end of her productive years and Käthe has already decided not to replace her, and to start getting milk from Berghammer.

  Midday sunlight pours through the open doors of the barn, narrow slivers of light filter through gaps in the siding. She takes down a shovel and a large metal pail. How will she manage this new domain, this secret life? How will she maintain the distance she must now keep—from friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, people she’s never once felt oppressed by? She has become the custodian of a secret. It’s frightening.

  When the stall is finished, she sits down to eat an apple on an old stump that serves as a doorstop for the barn. Particles of straw and dust float through the open doors on beams of light. In the distance, she can hear the girls returning from Martin’s. She owes Otto a letter, and a birthday card to Tante Elisabeth, who is turning seventy-five. The old woman still lives in the Heilwigstrasse house. After the war, the house was sold with the stipulation that Elisabeth would keep the upstairs floor for herself. Käthe has always felt sorry for the old woman. She admires her strength, her independence, but also wonders if love—the capacity for it—can be eroded by loneliness. When Mohr left, he took something of her away with him. Maybe that was what he took—her capacity for love, and the rest of her that remains here is incomplete, has no relation to what was before. She bites into the apple, chews slowly, deliberately. No. If Tante Elisabeth has remained alone all her life, it isn’t because she couldn’t love.

  Finishing the apple, she drops the core into the pail, and stands up. As she is emptying the pail onto the compost heap, Seethaler appears.

  “Should be about two weeks,” he says, pulling a rag from his rear pocket.

  “Two weeks? Is that the soonest?”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  Another two weeks using the outside privy and hauling dirty water. At least it’s not the middle of winter. “How much will it cost?”

  Seethaler occupies himself with getting the dirt off his hands. He smiles, stuffs the rag back into the pocket of his trousers. “Nothing, Frau Mohr. I’ll do it for nothing.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Yes yes yes. I won’t take any money from you, Frau Mohr.”

  “I can’t have you doing it for nothing.” Käthe turns to leave, swinging the pail for emphasis.

  “Wait,” Seethaler calls. “I am not a plumber, Frau Mohr. I am an engineer.” He pulls the rag from his pocket once again. She has no idea what the man is getting at. Seethaler rubs his hands vigorously with the cloth. “My father became sick and I had to come back home to help him with the business.”

  “All the more reason why I must insist on paying for the work.”

  “May I sit?” Without waiting for an answer, he sits down on the chopping block next to the woodpile. “I never thought I’d be stuck back here. I went to school so that I could have a career, something my father could only dream of.” He continues working the rag between his hands. “And here I am. Right back where I started.”

  “Is your father’s health improving?”

  “As much as it ever will. That’s not the point. The problem is finding work. I can’t leave now because I don’t have a job to go back to.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. It’s just how things worked out.”

  Käthe’s unease begins to dissipate. “I must still insist on paying you.”

  Seethaler glances up the hill in the direction of the grazing cows. “May I speak personally for a moment?”

  “I thought you already were.”

  He leans to one side and stuffs the rag into his pocket. “I have always admired you and Dr. Mohr. The way you live here.”

  She looks at him, puzzled.

  “I mean, as outsiders.”

  “We’re hardly outsiders! We’ve lived here in this house for nearly twenty years.”

  “That’s what I mean. You live here, but you are also outsiders, and have all your connections.”

  “Connections?” Once again, she becomes uneasy. “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  “Dr. Mohr was always away traveling. Now he is in China. Those are all connections.”

  What is the man going on about? “If you want to call being halfway around the world a connection, I won’t argue.”

  “And the visitors that have come here to see you,” Seethaler continues. “Heinrich George. Elizabeth Bergner. You think people didn’t notice when film stars came to visit?”

  Käthe laughs. “That was years ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter. People remember. Look, Frau Mohr. I swore I would never come back here except to visit. I had a job in the city, a good job. Now here I am, stuck right back in the middle of nowhere! As Dr. Mohr would have said, ‘What a swindle.’” He shakes his head. “‘What a swindle, to search for life on the back roads when there are only highways.’”

  The sudden earnestness is embarrassing. Käthe swings the pail.

  “I’m not just some yokel, Frau Mohr. I’ve read your husband’s books.”

  “Then you would also know that he hates highways.” She smiles, trying to think of a way to extricate herself. The trio of girls appears at the far end of the garden. Käthe calls, “Eva! Go and fetch Minna down from the field.” She watches the girls start uphill toward the pasture, wishing for a quick end to the conversation.

  “I will not take money from you, Frau Mohr,” Seethaler says with finality.

  Käthe turns to him sharply. “Theo Seethaler, please, just tell me how much for the job so I can get back to my work.”

  “Then pay for the pipe,” Seethaler says, backing off. “I won’t charge you to put it in.”

  She flushes, wanting to get rid of him and return to work. “Name your price and I will pay it.”

  Seethale
r smiles as if he has won something and goes off to gather his tools. “I will send the bill next week.”

  Käthe is shaken, and considers calling the job off, hiring someone else. What does he want? What is he trying to prove? The last thing she can afford now is to draw attention. People remember, he said. What she wants is for them to forget. She returns to the stall and tries to busy herself, waiting for him to leave. Oh, Mohr! The time has come. I am so tired of waiting.

  “Mama! You’re crying!” Eva leads Minna into the barn. Käthe sets the broom aside and opens the door to Minna’s stall. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  “Just a little dust.” She wipes her eyes.

  Eva puts Minna into the stall and closes the gate. Käthe is overwhelmed by a strange sense of disembodiment, as if she has lost her power of self, is merely observing it from an uncertain distance.

  “Lisa says Minna’s nose is too dry,” Eva says. “Feel it, Mama.”

  Käthe places a hand on the cow’s nose and lingers for a moment, feeling the animal’s breath in her cupped palm. She strokes Minna’s head, pats the broad white patch between her eyes, struggling to regain equilibrium. “Yes, she’s fine.”

  “I knew it,” Eva shouts to her friends loitering in the doorway, waiting for her to rejoin their game. “Mama says she’s fine.”

  The girls run back outside together. Käthe sits down on the chopping block just inside the barn door. She feels distances and distances, a long ribbon drawing apart inside her of empty distances, and remains in the barn with Minna until Seethaler drives away in his truck.

  “WHY DO PEOPLE sleep?” Eva wants to know.

  Käthe turns out the light and opens the windows. Eva insists on keeping the windows of her room shut until the lights are out. To keep out bugs, she says. But the house is full of crickets and little moths and other flying insects. How many times has she explained that it really makes no difference whether the windows are open or closed? She sits on the end of the bed. Why do people sleep? A good question. She squeezes her daughter’s feet underneath the covers. “I think it must be so that we can dream.”

  “You can have dreams without being asleep.”