The Great Perhaps (13 page)

Or an airplane that could fly to the moon? Perhaps an aircraft made entirely of helium gas? Or a zeppelin that could fly as fast as a rocket ship?
Henry sketches another idea in his notebook, outlining the shape of a compact-looking airship, then glances up at the gloominess of the recreation room. He has been wheeled here against his will by the nursing staff, abandoned to the worthlessness of Arts and Crafts. It is Friday, October 22. Only seven days left. Henry looks around the room, nodding with surety. A blond volunteer, a young woman with a lisp, is showing the residents how to knit. She holds a bundle of yarn in one hand and two long silver needles in the other. When she kneels beside Henry, offering him a collection of blue yarn, he shakes his head, reminding himself of the seven solemn words he has allotted himself today. Without uttering a sound, he wheels himself off toward the corner of the room, where he begins to summon his few remaining memories. From his pocket, he retrieves a small metal airplane, a toy from his childhood, an object no bigger than his hand. He stares at its wings, at its hollow cockpit, the sounds of its propellers echoing within his head. Oh, so very long ago, he thought he would fly. Sadly, he sets the toy down in his lap and then snatches up his notebook. One by one, he scribbles impressions from his nearly forgotten past down on the blank pages, tearing the pages out from the small notebook, slipping each one into an envelope, watching as they glow and then fade.

A
S A BOY,
Henry would lie in bed, terrified of the dark, unable to utter a single sound. Most of the time he would squint in the faint light from his windows reading
Adventure
comics or the latest issue of
The Airship Brigade.
If he was too frightened to do that, he would crawl into his younger brother Timothy’s bed, waiting to hear the soft-throated songs of the birds echoing in the dawn, their whistles signaling the start of each morning. Then, as the sun had just begun to climb, Henry would hear his father, staggering about the tiny kitchen, the sound of the coffeepot slowly rumbling.

Henry’s father Len was a tailor who owned a small shop near Lawrence and Lincoln Avenue with his younger brother Felix, their family name,
CASPER
, painted in gold letters on the glass window. Henry always fell silent when he was frightened, uncertain, or unsure, but he loved the noise of his father’s shop: the sewing machines as they whirred; the steam press as it gasped; his father’s voice, loud and brusque. Standing at his father’s elbow, he would watch Len’s tiny fingers as he worked a single thread through a long silver needle, shortening the cuff of a sleeve or taking in the hem of a serge pant leg. His father, tall, wide-shouldered, and dark-eyed, had been born with unbelievably small hands, which were a blessing in his chosen profession, though back in Nuremberg, where he had been born, they were a source of great embarrassment for him.

What Henry loved best about the tailor shop, which he and Timothy would visit each day, were the sheets of brown butcher paper his father would give him to sketch on, and also the loud static of the worn-out radio echoing along the counter, and most of all, his father’s grand stories—tales of the Brave Little Tailor and of old giants and of beautiful German fairies—which Len told with pins held in the corner of his mouth. As the little yellow clock on the wall approached four o’clock, Henry’s father would stand, leaving his work at his sewing machine for a moment, and switch on the old honey-colored RCA radio. He would then light a cigarette, staring out the front window of the shop, as the announcer recited the grim news from London and Europe. Then he would switch the radio back off, return to his stool, and begin telling a story; the sound of his booming, excited voice was the exact opposite of the silent, dreaded night, a silence that gathered in the cobwebbed corners of Henry’s tiny room each evening. Staring down at his sons, watching the sun slowly beginning to set, Len would wink at them both and begin to speak:

“Once upon a time, my boys, all the birds decided they would like one master. One of them would be made king. A meeting of the birds was called. They flew from the forests and the meadows and all the fields. And, yes, all of the birds came: the little sparrow, the robin, the owl, the finch, the eagle. The woodpecker came, too, and the vulture, and every other kind of bird, too many for us to name. And there was great noise from so many birds, every kind of song and whistle you can think. Then, after all the talking and the singing, it was decided that the one bird who was the bravest, the one who could fly the very highest, would be made the king.”

Henry and his younger brother stared up into their father’s face as he told them the story of the King of All Birds. His father, with his dark, expressive eyes, could be surprisingly meek, his extraordinarily small fingers deftly stitching the most minute seams, his voice becoming a whisper full of melancholy and splendid dreams.

O
NCE, WHEN
H
ENRY
was four years old, the tailor shop was completely overrun with moths—moths: the dreaded pestilence of all thrifty, honest tailors everywhere. It had happened almost overnight—a widow by the name of Ansel had brought in a winter coat to be altered and two weeks later, the small brown insects fluttered about in clouds of feathery dust, while their offspring did serious harm to a number of furs, shirts, jackets, and trousers. Len, however, refused to kill a single one, scaring them from the inside sleeves of a rabbit-fur coat, urging them through the open tailor shop door. Chasing a particularly large, brown-specked intruder into one of the shop’s corners, Len called Henry to his side and pointed, whispering in his storytelling voice: “
Nachtfalter.
”

Henry blinked, unsure of the word.

“A moth. We called them
motte
, in Nuremberg. They are magic creatures, did you know?”

Henry shook his head. His younger brother, Timothy, crept up quietly beside him. Len, their father, gently cupped his hands, capturing the moth in the prison of his fingers.

“They’re messengers. They carry the souls of the dead, these do. At night, when everyone is sleeping, they do their work. They are the messengers. That is why you mustn’t ever harm them. They are very important. Very special.”

Henry took a step closer, staring down at the delicate insect, its gigantic wings flapping slowly.

“They tell us when someone will be sick or if a war is coming, and how long the winter will be, and how fierce, too. When they are worms, when they have the hair, you can look at them and know by how black their hair is how bad the winter will be.”

The moth crept suspiciously over the knuckle of Len’s small thumb.

“We are like this moth, Henry, no? They can do lovely things like tell the future and carry the souls, and they can do bad things, too, like eat up all our thread. Now they give us trouble. Look at this mess.”

Henry turned then and saw his uncle Felix smashing a moth against the wall with the sole of his shoe. Henry’s father began to shout until Uncle Felix slipped the shoe back on his foot. The next few days were spent chasing the moths from their hiding spots, Henry cupping them in his hand, against his chest, watching them take flight, nervously flapping their dusky wings in search of starlight.

P
ERHAPS THE APPEARANCE
of the moths did mean trouble. Each afternoon following their arrival, some fellow German business owner would stop in the little tailor shop for a coffee: Mr. Kratz, who smelled of formaldehyde and who owned the funeral home down the street, a man who often needed suits and dresses altered for his recently departed customers, or Mr. Himmler, who owned a porcelain shop but grew tired of the lonely stares of his plates and dolls. Nearly every afternoon, someone would stop by and share a cigarette with Henry’s father and discuss the terrible situation in Germany.

I
N
A
PRIL
1932, only a week or two after the incidence of the moths, Henry sat in the little tailor shop drawing a picture of a man riding a bicycle with metal wings like a bird. At the counter, Mr. Kratz, in a dark brown suit, whispered to Henry’s father and uncle the latest news.

“They have passed a new law to stop these brownshirts from marching. I am proud to see them showing some spine.”

“It won’t do any good,” Henry’s father, Len, said. “If the people are mad enough to march, a law won’t stop it.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Mr. Kratz answered, his polite way of disagreeing. “They do not need any more trouble. What they need is work, I think. Let them put those men to work so that they can make money for their families. They need to be more patient with Herr Bruening.”

“It’s hard to be so patient when your children can’t eat,” Henry’s father said. “My heart goes out to them.”

Henry lifted his head from his drawing and looked at his father’s face, which was stern and long and sad. Quickly, he drew the same expression on the minuscule man riding the flying bicycle, then a great black cloud gathering over him.

A
T THE COUNTER
of the tailor shop each morning, Henry’s father would read the
Chicago Sun
searching for news from Nuremberg. In the late afternoon, Mr. Kratz would come in to share a cigarette with Henry’s father, and ask him what he had read or heard.

“Nothing,” Len would say. “And you?”

“Bloody Sunday. Three hundred wounded in Prussia,” Mr. Kratz whispered. “My cousin has sent me a telegram saying it is very bad. They are killing communists now, with the police’s help. I read a newspaper report from England saying the same.”

“We must wait for the new elections in August,” Henry’s father said. “We must not get excited until we know what is happening there.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Mr. Kratz said. “I am afraid those elections will be a fraud.”

“We must wait,” Henry’s father said, poking the eye of a needle with the end of a piece of thread. “We will know soon enough.”

O
N
J
ULY
31
OF
that same year, 1932, their waiting came to a dreadful end. Mr. Kratz hurried into the little tailor shop with a telegram from his cousin in Nuremberg, the bright yellow paper still trembling in his hand.

“That madman has taken over!” he shouted. “My cousin has asked if we can find him a place to stay.”

“That madman is the only man who is saying what needs to be said,” Henry’s father replied, standing beside the sewing machine. “If it comes to force to save the lives of a man’s family, then that’s what it takes.”

Mr. Kratz only blinked, then stared down at the telegram again.

“But Mr. Casper, surely you see what is happening. There is blood on Hitler’s hands already. What will become of a country with a leader such as that?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Kratz. All I know is that I have this little shop. If I didn’t have it, I couldn’t keep my children healthy. I have a wife who is ill and a family to take care of. I do not know what I would do if I could not work. No, I do not agree with their ways, but we are not there. I think a man who puts his hand out to help another man is a hero.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the old man said. “A man who calls out for blood so soon does not seem like the man to help anyone. I’m afraid he cares very little for the families you mention. I’m afraid this is only the ugly face of greed. I have seen it before, in Bismarck, and here, in this country. It is the root of all man’s troubles, wanting more than he needs. Mark my words, Mr. Casper. That man is no hero at all.”

Henry’s father nodded.

“Your garment for the Lunt funeral will be ready by the end of the day, Mr. Kratz. Maybe around four.”

Mr. Kratz nodded, stubbing out his cigarette.

“Then I will come for it at that time, Mr. Casper.”

On his way out, the old man, his white hair slicked with pomade, a white flower in his lapel, stopped and looked down at Henry, busy at work, drawing steadily on his brown butcher paper in silence. The old man leaned down and smiled, patting the boy on his head, saying:

“Henry here is the wisest. One day he’ll draw himself a flying machine and find a way to climb aboard and then he’ll float away from us all.” Then the old man gave the glass door a soft push and disappeared into the humid air.

W
ITH HIS LITTLE
white flower reeking of formaldehyde, it was poor old Mr. Kratz who could not help but be right. By the beginning of December 1941, the world had changed terribly: Europe was a battleground of red and silver flames, while back in the States, the RCA radio sitting on the counter of the little tailor shop buzzed with the static of an inevitable war. Len, Henry’s father, stared at the radio gravely, as it brought news of the Axis armies marching brutally across the Continent.

Henry, now thirteen, though not nearly as tall or as imposing as his father, worked in the shop every day after school: sweeping up, working at the counter when needed, making deliveries on his bicycle. Timothy, Henry’s young brother, had no interest in the family business and stayed in the small tenement to care for Bluma, their mother, who lay prostrate in bed, muttering her vespers in German. That winter, she had lost another pregnancy, her third. Henry did not know how he should behave around her. He preferred the electric noise of the shop to the grim echo of her prayers reverberating about the graying apartment.

“Be careful with these garments,” his father warned, as the boy set off on his bicycle. “This fabric is delicate. It is important that you do not pop the stitches.”

Henry, older now, with his dark brown hair and hazel eyes, nodded, placed the packages—wrapped in the brown butcher paper—in the basket of his bicycle, and pedaled off. The boy often pretended that the garments were actually top-secret confidential messages being passed from one spy to another. As he rode along Lincoln Avenue to the first address on his list, he imagined he was being followed. The boy favored circuitous routes when he played the game, doubling back on his own path, crisscrossing from one delivery to another by the most complicated directions possible. There were his regular deliveries, all Germans: some were elderly resident aliens—who spoke in gruff tones and did not tip him at all. Others were younger, stylish, American-born Germans—who, receiving their tightly wrapped garments, sometimes offered him a nickel or a piece of hard candy. Then there was Mr. Miner, who seemed only as old as Henry’s eldest brother, Harold, who, for all his hard work and study in high school was now only a grocery clerk. He no longer lived at home, and was hoping to one day become an assistant manager at the supermarket. Mr. Miner was the same age but wore expensive, terrifically cut black suits, his black hair pomaded and well trimmed. To Henry, he was as handsome and glamorous as a movie star, certainly as rugged as Clark Gable. Mr. Miner came into the little tailor shop nearly once a week with a different garment—a pair of slacks, a new suit coat, a jacket. Carefully, Henry’s father measured the dapper young man’s arms, waist, and chest with the yellow ruled ribbon, making the appropriate chalk marks on the fabric. Some two or three days later, Henry would pedal down Western Avenue to the small apartment Mr. Miner kept above an insurance office. A record would be playing inside the apartment when Mr. Miner would answer the door, something loud and brassy, like Jimmy Dorsey or Glenn Miller.