Mohr

by Frederick Reuss

  Mohr smiled. He crossed to the other end of the room, glanced out the windows into the autumn canopy. “You spent all the money, didn’t you?” His voice was quiet. But the effect could not have been any worse if he’d shouted.

  Humiliated and angry, she knelt on the hearth, pulled a handful of twigs from the kindling basket, snapping and breaking, piling them up to make a fire.

  “Don’t you like it, Papa?” Eva asked. The twist of uncertainty in her voice brought Käthe to tears. She averted her face, busied herself. “Now you don’t have to go away to work anymore,” Eva went on. “You can stay with us and work here.” Mohr picked her up, kissed her on the cheek. He sat down on hearth beside Käthe, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, pressing hard with thumb and forefinger. There were deep black circles under his eyes. His fingers were stained yellow from his incessant smoking. He seemed more preoccupied and worn out than she’d ever seen him. She would later remember being conscious of having known exactly what was coming next.

  “I thought you would be happy,” she said.

  “How can I be happy?”

  Käthe stood up. “Yes, I spent the money. I spent all of it!” Her anger transformed into indignation. She took Eva by the hand, and stood over Mohr. “I did it so you would have a place to work.”

  Mohr stared into the empty hearth. “I have to leave,” he said dryly.

  The whole day lay ahead of them, and yet it was already over. She had planned it so differently. They would harvest the last flowers together, walk to Kaffee Angermaier afterward for tea with rum. If they weren’t too tired, they’d hike back up to the cabin and have Abendbrot in front of the fire. If only she’d known then what she knew now, could have seen what was now so plain to see. Mohr never said, “I’m a Jew. I have to go.” He never said, “I have no future here.” Even with all the horrible new laws being passed, and violent Nazi propaganda, he never talked about being a Jew at all. Or having to flee because of it. It was almost as if he were denying that such a thing could happen, while submitting to it inwardly. Instead, he talked about a self that had been buried and grown over by years of pointless striving. He was through with all of it, with pretension and all things literary.

  “We came here to get away from the city,” he said on the way back down to the house. “But look at me. I’ve gone and become a city person! I have to find a new element. No more illusions. No self-deception.”

  And Käthe said, “Of course. But that doesn’t mean you have to leave.” She wanted him to find what he had to find, had always wanted that, had always told him so. “Maybe if you go back to doctoring, the poetry will improve,” she said, trying humor.

  He didn’t laugh, but nodded, as if the same thought had occurred to him. “Why do I always go off on these wild tangents? Find the longest detours?”

  They were back on the bridle path. She took his arm and for a little while they walked together the way they’d done in the early years: talking, gesticulating, so that from a distance they seemed to be arguing. Eva raced ahead. The little cabin up on the slope of the Wallberg had already become moot.

  He never said, “Thank you for trying.”

  She never said, “I’ll go with you, wherever you want to go.”

  Back at the house he showed her his ticket. To Shanghai. One way.

  SHE DESCENDS THE muddy embankment, leaning on the stick for support, and approaches the front door. The padlock is missing. The evidence of tampering is alarming, even though she had anticipated it. Hunters, woodcutters, wanderers—any number of people could have made use of the place. She makes a quick circuit of the house, alarmed once again to find a small pile of wood stored under the eaves. The shutters are closed. Water drips from the roof in a steady flow, soaking the ground all along the stonework foundation, which has settled at an incline. From the side, the little cabin seems to lean into the hill.

  The door swings open easily.

  “Hello?” she calls into the darkened hut, then strides across the floor and quickly throws open the shutters. Light streams through the dirty panes. She is happy to see all the glass intact and breathes in the musty air, recalling smells from childhood, the shed at the back of the garden, hiding places, mouse droppings, spider webs. The old sofa is still right where she had set it in front of the fireplace. In the hearth, a pile of ash and a few charred pieces of wood. Anxiety gives way to cozy childhood memories: tucked away, she would imagine living hidden forever in some cranny like a mouse or a bird or a fox. She wishes she’d brought Eva along; she had considered it, but chose not to, uncertain of the effect upon Eva of seeing her mother brooding in the ruins. There has been enough weeping around the house. It seems right to protect her from the growing dread that things everywhere are in a very bad way and getting worse; that they are facing a gathering danger.

  The newspaper clipping started it. It was a lie. Of course it was. A grave, evil lie. It shook her, but Käthe’s instincts told her exactly what to make of it. The newspapers carried such pieces every day: stories of Jews, communists, subversives, asocials, prostitutes, and common criminals. The whole country is dripping with malice. Whoever had sent the clipping had done her a favor—she isn’t safely tucked away out in the countryside. The machinery is grinding and grinding away. Her only defense is to remain absolutely quiet. Invisible.

  The day after the clipping arrived, she’d written a letter to Heinrich George, who had recently been appointed director of the Volkstheater in Berlin. At one time, they’d been good friends. Of all the friends from Mohr’s early theater days, Heinrich George was now the most prominent. A careerist like Otto, but the film star version.

  Dear Heinrich,

  Six weeks ago I received a cable that Mohr died in Shanghai of a heart attack. I am devastated. Please do me a favor. If it should ever come up in your circles, or if anyone should ask, would you please put in a good word for Mohr, his qualities as a human being, a person? And may I use your name as a reference? I can’t imagine it will come to that, but wouldn’t want to do it without your permission. Please do me the favor of replying to this letter. Perhaps it’s for the better that I feel I must write to ask you for favors this way. Otherwise, I might not have been able to bring myself to tell you that your old friend is no longer. As far as how I am doing—surely that must be obvious. You must know all too well.

  The answer she received—and it had come immediately—had been more painful than no answer at all.

  Dear Käthe,

  Am at your service. Write when you want to come with your things to Wannsee.

  Go to Wannsee? With her things? Tent to tent like chattel? There was no shelter anywhere; and especially not in the old friendships.

  She inspects the cabin. Her footsteps fall on the wooden planks with a pleasant sound. She notices further signs that it is being used. The stone hearth has been swept with a broom. A rag hangs from a nail on the wall. In the basin she finds a tin can, fairly new. A row of candle stubs in hardened pools of wax stands on the wooden plank that she put up herself as a bookshelf. She takes off her wet cape, hangs it on a nail to drip. The crack of a branch outside.

  A man appears in the doorway.

  “Frau Mohr.”

  “Oh Gott, oh Gott!” she exhales, hand fluttering, and steps back. Seethaler stands in the door holding his armful of wood. “What are you doing here?”

  He indicates the pile of wood under his arm. “I came to make a fire. I’ll go if you like,” he says.

  “No, no. You startled me. Come in.”

  Seethaler enters, stepping gingerly over to the hearth. He puts down his load of wood, takes off his hat, and turns. “Shall I…?”

  “Please. Go ahead. Make a fire.”

  He puts his hat back on, squats, and sets to work.

  “Do you come here often to make fires?”

  “Not to make fires, Frau Mohr.” He turns to her earnestly. “To get away from people.” He pulls some scraps of newspaper from his coat pocket, wads and shoves them under the
kindling pile.

  “I never come up here,” Käthe says.

  Seethaler produces a packet of matches, lights the newspaper, watches the flames spread. “I was very sorry to hear about Dr. Mohr,” he says without looking up. “It’s so sad.”

  She is still uncomfortable accepting condolences, and watches Seethaler feed the growing fire, twig by twig, stick by stick. He is entirely absorbed. “You can’t imagine how sad it is,” she says at last. Seethaler breaks a large stick over his knee and lays it on the fire. Käthe goes to stand by the window. The rain has stopped. The green canopy is dense and seems impenetrable in the mist. “How long have you been coming up here?”

  “Since you mentioned it to me last summer.” He excuses himself and goes outside. A few moments later he returns with several split logs. “I keep a little supply around the side. It stays dry under the eaves.” He stacks the wood on the floor beside the hearth, then selects a fresh log from the pile and carefully lays it on the bed of coals. The room is silent but for the crackling from the hearth. When the log has caught, he turns to her. “Why would you want to tear this place down, Frau Mohr? It would be a shame to demolish it.”

  “Do you come here often?”

  Seethaler leans against the mantel. “Would you be angry if I said yes?”

  “Why should I be angry?”

  He shrugs, produces a pipe from the pocket of his coat, and fills it with tobacco. “May I speak personally?”

  She turns to the window to look outside again.

  Seethaler lights his pipe. “Did you want to tear it down because it reminds you of your husband?”

  “Yes,” she says flatly.

  He shakes his head, puffing on his pipe. “I have very fond memories of Dr. Mohr.” He picks up a stick from the hearth. “Remember the winter he taught us to ski? Me, Franz Schwartz, and Ali Limmer. Remember Ali?” He begins poking the fire. Käthe nods, watches the logs kindle. She’s known Theo Seethaler since he was a boy, and has nothing to fear from him. Feeling suddenly exhausted, she sits down on the sofa.

  “Do you still want to tear it down?” Seethaler asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think it would be a big mistake, Frau Mohr. Especially now.” He continues poking the fire with the stick, his back turned to her. “Jewish families are losing their shops, their homes, being pushed out into the street.” He scrapes the glowing ember from the tip of the stick, then rekindles the smoking end in the fire, absorbed.

  “What does that have to do with me?” Käthe says, flushing. She feels heat rising into her cheeks, her ears. Even as she forms the words, she feels a pang of complicity, of guilt. In adopting this strange new grammar of disassociation, she realizes she is implicated in a vast and virulent corruption. The look on Seethaler’s face tells her that he understands this. He puts his pipe to his lips, begins to puff, eyes unfocused. “I know what you’re thinking, Theo,” she says, regaining her composure. “Don’t worry; nobody is going to take Wolfsgrub from me. I am not a Jew.”

  In spite of the heat radiating into the room from the fire, she is suddenly chilled and begins to shiver. Sitting is uncomfortable. She gets up, fetches her cape. It is still waterlogged. She shivers again, feeling the full weight of the sentences she has just uttered. They have cost her something. She feels naked and vulnerable, wants only to be alone now, back inside her house.

  “What about Eva?”

  “What about her?” Tears begin to well as she looks squarely back at Seethaler. She brushes her cheek with the back of her hand.

  Seethaler looks away, inspects the tip of the stick, then holds it in the fire. “Remember last summer? When I told you that I was also an outsider? You pretended not to know what I was talking about.”

  Käthe draws the rain-heavy loden over her shoulders.

  “I am still an outsider, Frau Mohr. And this place you built up here—it’s the one place that I can come and feel completely—myself.”

  “Yes. I’ve seen how you have marked it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your little bit of self-expression. I saw it coming up.”

  Seethaler shakes his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “On the tree.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  She pushes the door open to leave.

  “Wait, Frau Mohr,” Seethaler says. “If it ever becomes necessary…”

  She turns, waits for him to finish.

  “If you should ever need to send Eva up here, I will look after her for you.”

  The rain has stopped but the forest is soaked and gray and dripping. She has managed to outrun this particular thought until now. Over weeks, months, years, she has driven it to the furthest corner of her mind. But it has been there all along. Coming up through the forest, she was glad to have lost the way. If she can get lost along so familiar a path, so can anybody. There is a higher symbolism in the thought, one that she has allowed herself to contemplate, while averting her attention from the basic truth; in this there is also a symbol and a warning. There are warnings popping up everywhere and yet, today, if she has purposefully lost her way—she is glad for the little self-deception.

  A strange mix of fear and shame makes it impossible to look at him now. She doesn’t want to know the expression on his face. Standing there on the threshold of the little cabin in her soaking loden, she feels like some species of rodent scurrying along the forest floor searching for places to bury her food and deposit her young. “Thank you, Theo,” she says quietly, and steps out the door.

  THE SPRING THAT began too early is now in peak bloom. The hills are thick with new growth, the meadows covered in wildflowers. It is the time of short nights and sweet grass. Minna has been out to pasture for most of the week. This morning, Eva and Rosi went to the top of the meadow to fetch her down. Her milk now has the flavor of the season.

  Käthe pushes open the door of the barn and chases Ziggy, the goat, out into the yard. She is still tired, drained of energy. Instead of washing out the stalls, which is what she’d planned for the morning, she pulls up the dusty old armchair and sits down to rest. She’d been unable to sleep all night, thinking about Marie Berghammer’s offer, and can’t make up her mind. “She won’t be the only young girl,” Marie had said. “There are three families up there, two with girls Eva’s age.”

  Send Eva up into the mountains for the entire summer? It sounded good as Marie had explained it. Anything to get her out of sight for a while. Hitler isn’t going away. Neither is Frau von Stockhausen or Bund Deutscher Mädchen. A troop of girls in ugly brown jackets and black ties. Every Saturday they march up the footpath at the edge of the meadow and into the forest, singing and carrying on. Yesterday, Eva was out in the yard when they marched by. All waved, and Eva, who was feeding the chickens, waved back. Von Stockhausen called her over to the fence. Käthe watched from inside, wanting to let it pass, but then thought better and went out to join the little gathering at the fence. Von Stockhausen had been around for years. A big-bosomed Nazi, married to some baron who years back had run for local office and lost. They spent their summers on the lake near Weissach, had no children. “Why don’t you let the child in BDM?” she wanted to know.

  “No time,” Käthe answered in her best Bavarian. “No money.” She wiped her hands on her apron. Eva glanced over at her mother, unsure. Rarely did Käthe speak Bayrisch, and when she did it was usually to tell a funny story. A few more words were exchanged, then von Stockhausen commanded her troop to resume their walk. As they set off she turned back and said, “We’ll speak about it later.”

  “Why can’t I join?” Eva wanted to know when they’d returned inside the house.

  “Because I don’t want you to.” She took her daughter into the kitchen, gave her a freshly baked biscuit. “All that marching around in those silly uniforms.”

  “I think they’re nice.”

  She could think of no way to explain, so she simply dug in.
“We in this family do not like marching or uniforms. Your father was in the last war and when we were married we said that we were finished with uniforms and marching around.”

  Later that evening she went next door to talk to Marie.

  “Send her up to the Alm for the summer,” Marie suggested right away. “Stefan is going up to look at some new calves. Eva can go with him, and stay there for the summer.”

  “All summer? I can’t send her away all summer.”

  Marie shrugged. “She’ll have other children to play with. Fresh air, sunshine.”

  The idea made sense. Of course, she would prefer to take Eva up there herself, but it was a full day’s walk, across the border into Austria. Two days there and back—and she couldn’t leave just now. Not until the captain came.

  The second telegram had arrived in mid-April.

  Coming soon. Schedule uncertain. Brehm.

  “Let’s go swimming, Mama!” Eva races through the open doors of the barn, hops onto the arm of the chair. “Fräulein Kraus is sick again.”

  “Again? She must be in love.”

  “She said she would take me and Lisa and Ursula to Tölz to the cinema. Can I go, Mama? Please?”

  “You just said she was sick.”

  “When she’s better. She promised. Can I go? Please?”

  Eva frees herself, jumps up. Light streams through the doors of the barn, sparkling clouds of dust and pollen. Käthe settles back into the bumpy armchair, lifts her face to the sun. She listens as Eva tells all about a balloon that has fallen into Daibler’s outhouse toilet.

  “Did it fall or was it put down there?”

  Eva evades the question and prattles on about trying to fish it out of the pit. “It’s still down there, Mama. Want to come and look?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “But it’s still got air in it! Come see! We can look at it and then go swimming!”

  Käthe laughs, shakes her head. “It’s too cold for swimming.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s hot!”