After the Train (4 page)

I
TOSS AND TURN
all night. When morning finally comes, the bedding looks like a squirrel’s nest or a dish of noodles. As I dress, I imagine the Stauffenbergs seeing my letter, recognizing me, being excited, and sending me the fare to come and join them. My summer will be spent in their castle getting to know my real family. When I finally come downstairs, I look at my mother and try to guess if Father has said anything to her about my discovery, but she looks just as she always has and warns me I’ll be late if I don’t hurry.

In the early morning as Father and I walk to the church together, the summer day is still cool. Mist covers the ground. As the sun warms the earth, the town gradually appears through the mist so that it looks as if
it has been newly made. As we walk along, I keep hoping Father will say something about my nightmare and the woman, but he doesn’t. Instead he uses the walk to work to tell me all his problems. Crucial construction material has not been delivered, and what has been delivered is not what was ordered. A workman is drinking on the job. Father is having an argument with the pastor of the church about how to place the pulpit. I guess that he is using a list of problems to evade what I really want him to talk about.

My job at St. Mary’s is to fill a cart with bricks and wheel it over to where Herr Schafer or one of the other bricklayers is working. After all the months shut up in the classroom, I thank my lucky stars that I am outside in a world of trees and sky and sun with not a desk in sight.

For an adult Herr Schafer is easy to be with, and I feel as if he is someone I have known for a long time. He dresses like the other workers, in an old shirt and trousers, but he does not look like them. For one thing, he wears old-fashioned rimless glasses, and for another, though he is an excellent workman, he has always a look of not being where he is. I remember Father telling me that Herr Schafer was a professor, and it’s not hard to imagine him at the head of a classroom. I think of
Herr Schmidt’s lectures and wonder what happened to Herr Schafer, as a Jew, during the war.

While the other workers gather at noon for their lunch—sausages, big hunks of cheese, and cold bottles of beer—Herr Schafer sits by himself with his lunch and a book. The other workers like to joke, and I see that they are uncomfortable telling their earthy jokes with me nearby; so I take my own book and lunch to where Herr Schafer is. Sitting next to him is like having a book in your hands and not being able to look inside. At last I ask him, “How did you come to be a bricklayer?”

He doesn’t answer my question but only says, “Nothing wrong with bricklaying. In his spare time the former British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was a bricklayer.” In a more serious voice he adds, “There aren’t many jobs and bricklaying is steady work. You have only to look around you at the buildings that have fallen apart from the bombs. All of Germany is like this, and the German people won’t put up with such messes. There will be work for us bricklayers for years to come.”

Still, I don’t believe Herr Schafer will spend the rest of his life laying bricks. The books he reads are thick and have many pages. As he turns the pages, he underlines heavily and sometimes mutters angrily as if the book were a person who is arguing with him.

In his bricklaying Herr Schafer is a perfectionist, which means I have a hard time. I dream of making my own contribution to the building of the church by laying neat rows of bricks that will be there for centuries, but all he will let me do is to carry the bricks and stack them near the spot where he wants them. Sometimes he finds fault with my work. “Peter, you have only to breathe on that pile of bricks you made and they will fall over in a heap. You must build the stack so that the bricks on the outer walls lean in slightly.” He is full of brickman’s language, as much trouble to me as Latin is. I have to learn the meaning of
closure
,
wythe
,
header
, and
stretcher courses
. I discover that a “rowlock sailor” is a brick that stands upright with its broad side facing out while a “soldier” is a brick standing upright with its narrow side facing out, as if all sailors were fat and all soldiers were thin. It’s my job to see that the bricks have just the right degree of moisture. After I stack them, I have to take one of the bricks and put drops of water on it. If I can still see the damp spot after a minute and a half goes by, all is well. If the damp spot disappears, I have to get pails of water and douse the bricks so they won’t absorb the moisture from the mortar and weaken the joints between the bricks.

Herr Schafer is a pleasure to watch. With a long
sweep of his trowel he can throw a mortar line along the tops of six or seven bricks and lay each brick level and plumb. Father knows all about his skill. “The architect has only an idea, Peter,” Father says. “His idea doesn’t exist until the workman brings it to life.”

Herr Schafer listens carefully to Father, but he doesn’t always agree with him. When he doesn’t, he says so. “Herr Schmidt, excuse me, but the pattern of bricks you’re suggesting for the part of the east wall we are repairing will be like a dog with no ears and no tail. If you look at the old pictures of the church, you’ll see there was a course of brick like so.” He sets the bricks on the floor of the church to show what he means. “You see how that gives the wall a pretty line?”

“Yes, yes, Herr Schafer, I agree. By all means let’s follow your suggestion.”

But sometimes Herr Schafer and Father get into an argument. Then Herr Schafer grows very quiet and aloof. Father gets authoritative and plays the boss. Though Father fumes a little, in the end it’s usually Father who gives in. Herr Schafer smiles again. Father laughs and teases him. “I suppose you’d go on strike like your thirteenth-century brethren.”

When I ask Herr Schafer what Father means, he says, “Seven hundred years ago the masons in France who
were laying the bricks and stones on French cathedrals were commanded by the bishops to cut their long hair and shave their beards. They refused and stopped working. The bishops gave in.”

After one such argument, Father says, “You see how Herr Schafer can tell the boss what must be done? That’s the thing about these Gothic cathedrals, Peter, that people don’t always realize. These churches are the first great monuments built by workmen who were their own masters. Just think of the pyramids—the slaves who built them carted stones under the scourge of the Egyptian lash. Thousands of workmen died to build the pyramids. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the great Gothic churches were built, men built with their hearts and minds as well as their backs. It was no longer just the master who decided what must be done. No, the workmen had a say. All the skill and imagination of the workmen was added to that of the master, and look what beauty came of men working freely!”

“How did that happen, Father?” I ask. I like the idea of the workman having a say, for Herr Schafer is my boss and I’m his employee.

“The monks in those days came from wealthy families. In the monasteries the monks spent all their time in prayer and had servants to wait upon them just as
they had in the homes where they were raised. Along came St. Benedict, who said his monks must do physical work as well as pray. ‘Idleness is the enemy of the soul,’ St. Benedict said. Suddenly labor was honorable and respected.

“There was something else. Everyone in the city or town where the church was going up felt a part of the building of the church. In the Middle Ages life was hard. The cathedral brought some beauty into people’s lives. It was a promise of what was to come in God’s kingdom. These churches have been called the Bible of the poor. People in those days could not read or write, and so the stories of the Bible were told in the sculptures and in the stained-glass windows.” After a moment Father says to me, “And not just the New Testament, Peter, but the Old Testament as well.”

On our walks to and from St. Mary’s, Father has begun to tell me about the building of the churches, so our walks are like chapters in a book. “Life in the Middle Ages, Peter, was brutish. Babies died in their mothers’ arms; there were famines and plagues that killed half the population of a town. In all that ugliness and misery the beauty of the church was a promise of what was to come in God’s kingdom; the promise of Heaven enabled people to endure their cruel world.”

With the steeples nearly finished, preparations are
being made for transporting the new bells to St. Mary’s. “Bells have always been important,” Father says. “In the Middle Ages they rang out to warn of storms that might threaten a harvest, and four nights of the year, when witches were said to be abroad, the bells sounded all night to keep them away.”

Because I have something to do with all the changes to St. Mary’s, I urge my parents to arrive at the service early on Sunday. I want to see the pleased looks on the faces of the parishioners as they examine the progress that has been made. Of course they haven’t counted the bricks I have moved about, but I have counted them. I am proud of the church and sure that God is as well. I like to think of him up there, a Herr Schafer with a long beard, checking off what has been accomplished that week.

Though hardly a day goes by without Herr Schafer correcting me about something, when he sees that I am truly trying to learn, he promises me, “By the end of the summer, I’ll have you laying bricks yourself.”

I cannot tell him that any day I expect a letter, perhaps with train tickets, urging me to come to the Stauffenberg family. I imagine their pleasure in the reunion, how they will welcome me with open arms. I see myself strolling about on the grounds of their great home. Though I try to put it out of my mind, I can’t
help being a little angry with Mother and Father for not returning me to my rightful parents after the war.

Each day Mother places Father’s mail on a little tray in his study. When he arrives home, after giving mother a kiss on the forehead, he goes to his study and examines his mail. Since we have the same name, Peter Liebig, I think that is where I will find my letter. I make an excuse to Father for not walking home with him. “I’ve got soccer practice with Kurt and Hans,” I say. Then I take a shortcut to our house, quickly go over Father’s letters, and leave before he gets there. Three days go by, and then I find the letter. It is the second one in the tray.

Will I ever find out who I am? I don’t really belong to anyone. No one wants me. Well, maybe that’s not true. I’m sure my parents love me, but what about my real parents? I know it could be worse, and I think of Gustav and what happened to his parents and how he is really alone. I guess I was counting too much on the letter. After I get over my disappointment, I tell myself that I am a snob because I daydreamed about being a part of a famous hero’s aristocratic family. I turned my back on my own mother and father, although they have done everything for me, showing me love and affection every day. I feel guilty, but I am also miserable, because I still don’t know who I am. If I’m not a Stauffenberg, who am I? What if I find out something I don’t want to know?

I
T’S HARD TO KEEP
my mind on my work. When the bricks I piled up topple over into a heap, Herr Schafer says, “What’s this sloppiness, Peter? You must have your mind on some girl.” I feel my face grow red. I am glad to be busy. I work to the sound of Herr Brandt testing the organ, the deep tones of the music filling the church as if the music were water and the church a thirsty basin. Reiner Nordstrom is applying gold leaf to his decorations. The leaf is real gold and so thin that if you touch it, it flies apart, the bits of gold floating in the air. Herr Nordstrom applies it with a special brush and then burnishes it until it shines. The steeples reach a little farther into the air, landmarks now, because once again you can see them from a distance.

I hadn’t planned to confess my worries to Herr Schafer, but we have grown close. Our lunches, taken together, always end in a discussion of something or other. It took a while before I saw that he launches these talks as a way of getting me to think. Whatever position I take, he takes the opposite. The Socratic method, he calls it. I know he was a philosopher, but our arguments are seldom about life-shaking issues.

“Which is more important in your sandwich, Peter, the liverwurst or the pickles?”

“The liverwurst.”

“Would you eat the liverwurst without the pickles?”

“No way—the pickles hide the taste of the liverwurst. Mother says the liverwurst we get from the butcher shop is probably made from stray cats.”

“Would you eat the pickles without the liverwurst?”

“Sure—I love pickles, especially the pickles Mother makes.”

“If you would eat the pickles without the liverwurst, but not the liverwurst without the pickles, perhaps you need to rethink which is the more important of the two.”

Then Herr Schafer has a good laugh.

Having found out there is a mystery about myself,
I begin to wonder if other people have secrets, so I ask him, “Weren’t you a professor at Heidelberg University?”

“Yes, Peter. My days in Heidelberg were the happiest of my life, first as a student and then as a professor. Heidelberg is a student’s dream. There is a romantic ruined castle standing on a hill. A peaceful river wanders through the town, and beside the river is the Philosophenweg, the philosophers’ path, where great men like Goethe once wandered. There are cafés where students and professors talk and argue by the hour. To be a part of so great a university was all I wanted from life.”

“But you couldn’t have learned to lay bricks at the university,” I said.

“No, Peter. That is not where I learned to lay bricks.” He is quiet for a minute, as if he is deciding whether or not he can confide in me. He must decide he can, for he says, “The Nazis came along. They decreed Jews could not teach at universities. When I could no longer teach, it was misery to see my colleagues and students every day and know I could have nothing to do with them. Besides, I knew danger was coming and I wanted to be near my family. I went back to Hamburg, where I had grown up. My family lived in a pleasant flat near the Inner Alster, a pretty lake in the middle of town.
From the shores of the lake you could see the spires of five churches and the town hall. We were Reform Jews and went each sabbath to the synagogue, but we did not take our faith too seriously. We had many friends who were not Jewish. My father had been a successful lawyer. A year before, he had suffered a heart attack and had to retire. My mother was a curator at the fine arts museum. She had studied art in Paris and was an expert in her field of Chinese porcelain.

“Friends told my parents to leave Germany, but even after I had been expelled from the university, my parents said that leaving would be running away. Then it was decreed that if you were Jewish, you could not work at the museum, and Mother was separated forever from her beloved porcelains. At last my parents saw the danger ahead. By then it was too late to leave.

“One evening we were at dinner. My mother prided herself on her cooking. She was artistic in everything she did. It was my birthday, and she had baked a cake for me. She had been saving eggs and had some chocolate given to her by a friend at the museum who, in spite of the danger, remained close to my parents. With the precious ingredients so hard to get during the war, she had made my favorite chocolate cake, a S
chokoladentorte
. We all sat for a moment admiring it. Just as Mother
raised the knife to cut the cake, the doorbell rang. We thought it might be a friend who lived nearby and by some magic had guessed Mother had made one of her famous cakes. Father started to get up, but to spare him, for he was quite weak then and every movement was an effort, I hurried to the door.

“Before I could get there, the door was battered down and six Gestapo officers rushed into the room. They had a paper with our names on it. “We give you five minutes to pack,” they announced, as if they were doing us a great favor.

“Mother ran to Father, who was white as the tablecloth. He shook his head. “Never mind me. Go and get what we need, my dear. Take warm clothes and good shoes.” So I knew he had been thinking this time might come. Mother and I ran upstairs. I helped her throw some clothes into a suitcase and I did the same. They were shouting at us to hurry, but Mother ran back to her room to snatch a picture of the three of us together taken on a picnic when I was still a boy and Father a healthy man.

“When we got downstairs, I saw that the torte had been eaten and the officers in their pristine uniforms and shiny boots had rings of chocolate around their mouths. To this day I cannot touch chocolate.”

I can hardly bring myself to ask, but I have to. “What happened to your parents?”

“There were trucks outside. One for the young and healthy, and one for the sick and elderly. When I insisted on going with my parents, I was knocked down and shoved into the truck for the healthy. Later I learned that my parents were sent to Auschwitz, where they were killed almost at once.

“I was sent to a work camp, where they taught me how to make bricks. Like the Jews enslaved in Egypt, I made bricks for the enemy.”

After a very long silence I ask, “Herr Schafer, why do you stay in Germany? You could go to another country and teach in its universities.”

“Jews have lived in Germany for a thousand years, Peter. The Nazis took everything from me, but they could not take my country. It is not theirs to take.”

“Why aren’t you teaching here in Germany, then?”

“There aren’t that many teaching positions. The universities are just getting back on their feet. Anyhow, I need to see the world a little more clearly before I go back to teaching students what they ought to think.”

What I heard from Herr Schmidt were lectures. What I hear from Herr Schafer is real. “How can people be so evil?” I ask.

“There are some Jews, Peter, who believe that in every generation there are only thirty-six righteous people in the whole world and no one knows who they are. Without those thirty-six the world could not exist. For myself, I think there are many, many more. The difficulty, Peter, is that we often do not recognize evil. Evil can begin with a word.”

Because Herr Schafer has been so frank with me, I believe I can talk with him about my worries. We are having our lunch on a bench in the shade of a tree. We look at the people moving about in the bright July afternoon as if we are watching a play on a lighted stage. In the distance someone is pushing a lawn mower, and I can smell the newly cut grass. In the trees, squirrels are hopping restlessly from branch to branch.

“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask.

“Of course, but keep in mind, Peter, that we tell secrets grudgingly—that is why they are secrets. If you tell me something you have been careful to keep to yourself, you may regret it and then you might become angry with me for hearing that secret. Think carefully before you tell a secret; and Peter, I must reserve the right to break my promise of secrecy if I feel it is for your welfare.”

His solemn words nearly silence me, but I have
already determined that I will tell him. I open my mouth and the words tumble out. “It started because of Herr Schmidt at my school telling us about what happened to the Jewish people, people like you and your parents. My father was in the army and I got to worrying about what he did during the war, so I snooped around the house. I read letters Father had written to Mother.” When I see Herr Schafer frown, I blush with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have, but I had to know.” I blurt out the contents of the letters to him. “The really strange thing is that there is this picture of a woman and I recognize her.” I tell him of my nightmares. “Father tells me I can’t know the truth just yet. He promised to tell me who I am, but I’m not sure now I want to find out. I think maybe I’d just rather be me.”

Herr Schafer is staring closely at me. “You believe that this woman might be your mother?”

“Yes, I believe she gave me to Mother. It’s just like my nightmares—the woman giving me up.”

Slowly, as if he isn’t sure of how his words will come out, Herr Schafer says, “Peter, have you wondered why the woman had to leave her child and why your parents made such a secret of it?”

“At first I thought I might have been one of the children that they took away from Claus von Schauffenberg
and his family. I even wrote to the family, but they got all their children back. Maybe my real mother was sick or poor.”

“Poor people, even sick people, seldom give their children away, Peter. And wouldn’t she have kept in touch with your mother; wouldn’t she want to know what happened to you? I wonder that you haven’t thought of people who were facing death for themselves and for their children as well.”

Herr Shafer is looking at me in a strange way. It has never occurred to me that I might be Jewish. In my daydreams I have been the son of a hero like Stauffenberg, someone rich and maybe famous. I remember the crying woman and the look of misery on her face. Of course she could be Jewish. I have heard stories of Jewish children who were saved by someone taking them in and hiding them. St. Mary’s Church stands only a short distance away. I look at the church. It is one thing for Herr Shafer to work there, but I belong there. I remember how Mother has wanted me to go to church and Father has never insisted. I can barely get the words out. “You think I might be Jewish?”

“Certainly it is a possibility. How would you feel about that?”

What would it be like to be Jewish? What would
Kurt and Hans say? There is St. Mary’s, which I am so proud of. What if it’s no longer my church? Once when I was little, I had been sailing a toy boat on the canal. The string attached to the boat broke. Before I could stretch out my hand to rescue it, the boat sailed away. Now, like that boat, my world is slipping away, the string that holds it together broken.

Herr Schafer must see the look of shock on my face, for at once he puts an arm around me. “
Ach
, Peter,” he says. “I should never have suggested such a thing. It’s my own sad experience that puts that thought into my head. I want to believe that someone has reached out to save a child as I wish someone had reached out to save my family. I’m sure there is a simple answer. Now it’s time to get back to work.”

Reluctantly I follow him back to St. Mary’s and begin piling bricks on the pallet, thankful for the mindless work that leaves me to think my thoughts, which now are like tangled snakes I can’t unravel, and am not even sure I want to. I like and admire Herr Schafer, but he is the only Jewish person I really know. Right after the war the city had no Jews; then a handful of Jewish families like his returned to the city. No one gives them trouble, but I have seen people stare at them and whisper after their passing. Complications pile up in my
head faster than the bricks pile up on the pallet. Though he has tried to make little of his suggestion, I believe it at once. It all fits. There was Mother’s letter to Father suggesting she had done something dangerous. There is Father’s reluctance to make me go to church. There is Father’s silence.

When the workday is over, Father is waiting for me. Reluctantly I walk along with him, hanging back so he will know I am angry and wish I weren’t there. We walk in silence that is much louder than talk would be. When we reach the small park where Herr Schafer and I had our lunch, Father says, “Let’s stop here a minute, Peter.” The park is deserted. The kids who usually play there have gone home to supper, to homes where, when they walk through the door, they will be certain who their mothers and fathers are. This morning I saw the fledgling falcons teetering on the edge of their nest. Even the birds have homes.

Father puts his hand on my shoulder. “Peter, I am sorry that I put off giving you an answer, but I needed the time to think how I would tell your mother. These last days I have been wondering what to say to her. I know she doesn’t want to talk about it, that she thinks it is better to put it behind us. But it isn’t fair to you. Tonight I promise I will tell her.”

Of course I know who Father means when he says “your mother.” Now for the first time I realize my mother might be someone quite different. I ask myself,
Who is my mother and where is she?
It’s not just a quiet question but a silent shout. I have to know at once.

“Father,” I insist, “can’t you at least tell me who my mother is?”

“Peter, if I could tell you I would. The truth is, I don’t know.”