“How would you like to go up to the Alm with Berghammer?”
“What for?”
“An adventure. Up in the mountains.”
“With you?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Too much work to do.”
Eva becomes serious, sits on the arm of the chair.
“It’s lovely up there. Children to play with. Berghammer is going up to buy some calves. You can keep him company on the way. Then you can look after his calves for him. He’ll need someone to look after them until it’s time to bring them down.”
“What about you, Mama?”
“I’ll come up as soon as I’m done with all my work here.”
Eva crams a pigtail in her mouth. “When?”
“Think of all the fun you’ll have. You’ll learn how to make cheese. Kräuterkäse,” she ventures, afraid she’s taken the wrong tack, that Eva will begin to resist, stiffen and stiffen until she has no choice but to order her away. “Think it over.” She tugs the pigtail from Eva’s mouth. “Okay, let’s go swimming.”
They pedal down to the lake. The beach is empty except for an elderly couple walking their stiff little dog on a leash. Käthe spreads out the blanket and sits down. As Eva tempts herself into the icy water, she mends an old cotton blouse. Coming down to the lake feels less comfortable with each passing season. Rottach is more crowded than ever, with swastikas on every lamp post, in storefronts. Juden sind hier nicht erwünscht. The sign is posted everywhere, so many it almost seems normal.
She divides her attention between Eva and sewing. Another winter gone and she is just now beginning to shake off some of the grief that has blanketed her, a feeling of constant pressure at the temples and a constriction at the core of her heart. Her awareness of time seems altered, more connected to mood than to the progress of days or the changing seasons. She remembers being overcome by a similar feeling when her father, then again when her mother died: a feeling of being adrift. Their time on earth together had ended. It was over. She felt let loose in the world, flitting about, not bound by anything. Now, again, she is overcome. But her grief is different this time. It is extravagant and physical, connected with her limbs, her organs, her sex.
The church bell rings twelve o’clock. She stuffs her sewing back into the basket, stands, and calls to Eva, who takes her time coming out of the water. Käthe calls to her again, distracted by the growing numbers of Kurgäste and tourists out for their lunchtime stroll, the occasional familiar face—Grüss Gott, Guten Tag, Servus. Käthe feels a steadily growing and uncomfortable self-consciousness. What is causing it? Too much focus? Or disconnection. Is she merely floating? Aimless and adrift? No! She is facing life. All its hardness.
She towels off and helps Eva back into her clothes. Sensing her mother’s sudden impatience, Eva asks, “What’s the matter, Mama? Are we going someplace?”
“No. We’re not going anyplace.” She is about to add that they have no place to go, but manages to hold her tongue.
Shops and businesses are closed for the midday rest. Doors are locked, shutters rolled down. There is very little traffic on the main road. At Hotel Tegernsee the tables are out on the lawn and lunch is under way for the wander-jacketed, crisply clad tourists. Käthe pedals by all of it with her eyes fixed on the road straight ahead. At Saint Laurentius, she turns abruptly into the churchyard. Eva rolls up behind and they park their bicycles against the wall. They enter the church holding hands. It is empty inside. Narrow shafts of light stream in through old, heavily leaded glass. A renovation is under way, and both of the marble rococo side altars are covered by scaffolding.
“What are we doing, Mama?” Eva asks. Her voice echoes loudly, and Käthe presses a finger to her lips, then makes directly for the bank of votive candles set in an alcove to the left. Eva resists, tugs her mother’s hand. Footsteps echo. They enter the small enclosure. Käthe points to the flickering banks of red glass. “We’re going to light some candles.”
“Why?”
Käthe takes two tapers from the dispenser, drops a few coins into the collection box.
“I thought we were Lutherans, Mama.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re doing it for our own reasons.” She lights the tapers. “For Papa,” she whispers, and begins to light candles, one after another, gesturing for Eva to do the same. When the entire bank of red glass is lit they stand back, smiling with pride at the beautiful spectacle. Mohr would have happily approved, as he approved of all the local idols set in shrines along highways, footpaths, in farmers’ fields high up the mountains.
Back outside Eva says, “We’re still Lutherans, right, Mama?”
“We’re much more than that.”
“What else are we?”
“A good question,” Käthe says, standing astride her old bicycle. She pushes off, giddy from their little adventure. A small flock of pigeons is feeding on bread crumbs that have been scattered on the cobblestones in front of the church. “We’re free-thinking pacifists,” she calls to Eva over her shoulder, feeling a rush of pleasure as they ride directly through and scatter the birds. “What else are we?” Eva wants to know when they are back out on the road. Käthe glances over her shoulder as they approach the bend. “Frightened,” she shouts, then signals for Eva to fall in behind her.
Eva follows close behind. A car honks its horn and speeds around. “Are you sad, Mama?” Eva calls.
Käthe tucks her elbows in and begins to pedal harder.
“I am, too,” Eva shouts after her.
Rounding the last bend, Käthe slows, then pulls to the side of the road. A car is parked at the front gate. It is the same car that passed them minutes earlier.
Eva pulls up alongside. “What’s the matter now, Mama?”
Käthe points to the car and Eva says, “Uncle Otto is back!”
“It isn’t Uncle Otto.”
“Who is it?”
Käthe takes a deep breath.
“Who is it, Mama?”
“Somebody from China.” She puts her foot on the top pedal, but can’t make herself press down or push forward.
Eva squints, then angles her bicycle so that their front wheels are exactly parallel. “Is it somebody who knew Papa?”
They are in the shade of a tall hedge. A feeling of shelter, something to lean against—or vanish into. Just across the road a wide field opens to a panoramic view of the valley and the mountains. All her waiting is concentrated now in the silhouette of that automobile parked at the front gate like some huge black bird, swooped down from on high.
“Is it somebody who knew Papa?”
Käthe’s heart begins to pound. All she can think of now is Mohr’s dream of landing high up on the meadow, running down to the house in those huge woodcutter’s boots. Everything has come to pass, is now behind her, done with forever—the way she one day simply put aside the violin and never returned to it.
A figure appears at the gate. The trunk of the car is open and a man is fetching items from it. Suitcases and a trunk. They watch him make several trips. As he prepares to depart he tips his cap and waves.
“Who is he waving to?” Eva wants to know.
Käthe doesn’t answer. The car backs up, turns around. Eva waves as it speeds by, leaves them in a wake of dust and fumes. Another image flares, the memory of a cold April day. Mohr is smiling, wearing a multipocketed English tweed coat, fedora cocked jauntily to the side. She is petting Wutzi, wearing city clothes. Eva is in her baby carriage. It is one of the few photographs that doesn’t leave her feeling taunted by tricks of shadow and light, feeling that what has been captured is the illusion of a life she never really led.
A MAN IS sitting on the bench by the front door, dressed in a simple black coat and tie. Suitcases and a steamer trunk are stacked beside him. As they dismount and lean their bicycles against the fence, he stands up, drops his cigarette on the ground.
“Captain Brehm?”
“Käthe Mohr.” He grips her ha
nd warmly, and then turns to Eva. “And I know who you are, too,” he says without the slightest trace of affectation. “You are Eva. I recognize you from the photos.”
Emboldened by the kindliness in his voice, Eva says, “You’re not Chinese.”
The remark dissolves any vestiges of formality. “No.” Brehm laughs. “Just an old ostfriesischer sea captain.”
“The one who sent us all the packages from Papa?”
“The same.” Brehm smiles. He isn’t at all the typical naval type Käthe had been expecting, and is not, thank god, wearing a uniform or Party pins or insignia. He is tall and blond with light blue eyes, slightly stoop-shouldered and angular, but in a round, softened way; a man who enjoys and is comfortable with his position in life, but does not take it for granted. It’s easy to imagine him sitting at a table on board his ship, reading cables, charting course, giving commands.
She glances at the pile of luggage, recognizes three of the cases. Her immediate sense is that they should not be opened but stored away. Upstairs, in the attic. It comes as a surprise that she should not want to open them. It isn’t lack of curiosity, but their sudden presence leaves her feeling odd, uneasy, as if she should want to ask the captain: Where is he? Or want to know which road they’d come by. The steamer trunk, with its locks and buckles, is pasted with foreign stickers and Chinese writing. But even as her curiosity is aroused, it is overshadowed by apprehension.
Brehm offers to bring the bags inside.
“Leave them,” she says, and tells Eva to show the captain around while she prepares tea.
From the kitchen she can hear Eva’s excited voice, first from the stalls, then over by the fence where Minna is grazing, then a little farther off, over by the woodshed. Through the sitting-room window, she watches Brehm, in shirtsleeves, allowing Eva to pull him along by the hand. The sight of it puts her at ease, conjures memories of her own childhood, where everything seemed light and bright and clear and happy. Fruit juice and glass dishes piled high with beautiful sandwiches and cakes. Nobody pinched with secrets, everything in order. No quarrels, antipathies, catastrophes. No rich or poor, no rumors of pitiful orphans.
She arranges the tray and carries it outside. This is not a time to be too careful, too remote, too private, too weary, too grief-stricken. It pains her to calculate, to be so precise about it. She gives Brehm’s cargo a wide berth, and sets the tray down on the table. From May until September, she and Eva eat outside, under the eaves. The mountains are tinted with the scarlet and orange of sunset. The lower slopes of the Wallberg are unusually green this year, the result of a wet spring and the culling of blighted larches last autumn. She has been preparing herself for too long to dissolve now into mawkish grief. She wants the captain to feel easy, to answer her questions, and not feel he must spare her, or hold anything back. She doesn’t want him to think of her as some gothic, National Socialist Hausfrau, stupidly proud of her sacrifices and her grief. She simply wants to trust him, and take him into her trust—not just as someone who had been a friend of Mohr’s, but as her only link to an outside world she no longer recognizes, and which frightens her.
“Was it really a heart attack?”
All sit silently as she fills the teacups. Bread is sliced and butter and plates are passed. “I don’t know where to begin,” the captain says at last. “I wasn’t there, so I can only tell you what Miss Simson told me.”
“Who?”
“Agnes Simson, a nurse from the hospital. She was the one who packed his things for me to bring to you.” Brehm breaks off and looks up. Eva is listening intently, her eyes going back and forth between her mother and the captain. “She was with him when he died.”
“He died in the hospital?”
Brehm shakes his head. “No. He was at home.”
“But the nurse was with him?”
The captain nods. “They were bringing a sick Chinese general into the hospital for treatment. There had been heavy fighting all over the city all day long. Wounded were pouring into the hospital. At some point during the afternoon, Mohr fainted and was taken into the superintendent’s office, where a bed was set up for him. Some time later he asked to be taken home. The nurse accompanied him.”
Käthe is impatient now, and wants details. “They let him leave the hospital? Didn’t anybody realize how ill he was?”
“It seems strange. But the place was in chaos.” Brehm slides his hands between his knees, shrugs with a helpless look. “I can only tell you what Miss Simson told me.” He continues with the story, lighting a cigarette. His tone is apologetic and he sticks to the barest essentials: how the nurse brought Mohr home. How she and Wong helped him to his bed and remained with him. How he drifted in and out of sleep. How everything in the apartment was very quiet and still—though in the rest of the city, war was raging. The captain repeats this last detail several times. “By evening they knew,” Brehm says.
“Knew what?”
“There was nothing that could be done. He died that night.”
A short silence, then Käthe stands up. “Excuse us,” she tells the captain, and leads Eva away by the hand.
They walk down to the flower field, through the fence that has been knocked down in several places by cows scratching against the posts. She hasn’t planted this year, and the field is overgrown with grass. The pond is swollen to full capacity. In the last rays of daylight, their shadows on the ground are like tall reeds growing at the edge of the water. She glances back at the house. There it is: part of the surrounding landscape, not merely an image or a shadow but something real, something whole. There is no filling the void in her heart. It is not loss, but a simple absence.
Mohr’s death is stuck in an impossibly abstract realm, is too distant, not even a shadow on the ground. There are local legends of people who disappeared into the mountains; men and women swallowed by crevasses or buried in avalanches, who never came home. But disappearing into a landscape, and vanishing from it are two different things. There are no final proportions. Without a body to lower into the ground, there is nothing to prevent you from dreaming him running down to the house from high up in the meadow—forever.
“Are we going to China?” Eva asks.
Käthe puts a hand on the gate post and shakes it. It has become loose. “No.” She opens the gate and waves for Eva to follow. They walk together down the overgrown beds.
“Are we going to stay here?”
“I think we have to.”
“Can we keep bees?”
“Bees?” She can’t help smiling at the child’s surprising capacity for oddness. “Yes, of course. Anything you like.” They continue through the fallow beds. When they return to the house, Brehm is still sitting at the table where they left him. He is now smoking a pipe. Before him is a large yellow envelope. Käthe glances at it, then goes inside to put more water on. Eva stays with the captain, eats bread and marmalade, asks questions about his ship.
Käthe refills the teapot and returns outside. The captain puts his pipe aside, reaches for the envelope. He clears a space at the end of the table, and spreads out a large nautical chart printed on thick muslin. Käthe and Eva examine the strange document. It is covered with lines and dotted with numbers. In the lower right corner is written Deutsche Bucht. The legend is decorated with the German eagle and the swastika.
“What is it?”
“The coast off Helgoland,” the captain says, then points to a small X, next to which is written, “Max Mohr.” Eva presses in for a closer look.
Käthe’s heart pounds. “You … you buried him . . . at sea?”
“His ashes.”
“Why?”
The captain steps to the table edge, traces his fingers on the chart, then looks at her. “I’m sorry. I had hoped not to upset you.”
“But why?” she repeats.
“Because I had to.”
“You had to?” Her temples begin to pulse. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you bring him here? To me?”
“
I intended to, Frau Mohr, believe me. But I couldn’t. It’s complicated. I was prevented.”
“What prevented you?”
The captain clears his throat. “The law.”
“What law?”
The captain clears his throat again. “Against importation of remains.”
“A law against importing remains?”
“Jewish remains.” His voice trails off in embarrassment, then he continues, “A customs inspector on board. Somehow he knew that I had the urn containing your husband’s remains. Don’t ask me how. He ordered an inspection. There was nothing I could do.”
She stares down at the chart. This time she can see more than a confusing pattern of lines and numbers. Now she sees the North Sea coastline, the estuaries of the Weser, and the Elbe, and the familiar names of towns and cities, places she had been as a child: Cuxhaven, Scharhörn, Langeoog, Spiekeroog. She points to the black X and asks, “Where is that?”
Brehm is now standing directly beside her. He recites the exact location in degrees and minutes.
“Is it far?” Eva suddenly wants to know. She has been quietly following the conversation.
“Not as far as China.”
“Is it deep?”
Käthe glances at her daughter, whose eyes are trained on the map. Twelve years wise, able to ask the perfect question.
The captain points to a figure. “Twenty-six meters.”
Eva takes this in, then asks, “Are there mountains down there?”
Käthe is happy to yield all questions now, and sits down. The captain describes the coastal seabed, pointing with chewed fingernails, his bony wrist jutting from the sleeve of his jacket. Only half-listening, she holds her teacup, thinking of the early years: waiting for Mohr in a Kurfürstendamm café with no money in her purse but wearing a new hat. A man outside selling coal briquettes from a cart. The rush of pleasure she felt when he finally arrived, beaming, in his pocket, payment for his play. She sees him chopping wood, swinging the axe straight over his head, splitting logs with loud crack after crack; or sitting in the meadow wearing an old cap; or on skis, pointing the way with his pole, and telling some long-winded tale about the days long, long ago, when there were several moons circling the earth and people were forgetful and the climate was completely different from what it is today.
Mohr Page 25
