Читать книгу A Piece of Me - Beatrix Ost - Страница 17

SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED on the neighbors’ farm in the last days of the war. The young German workers who were all off in the military were replaced with forced laborers from the conquered countries in the east. The forced laborers on Herr Grub’s farm were not happy. He did not pay them as much as his own Bavarian crew, and on top of that, he gave them less to eat. In a rage, someone had bestially killed him.

Naturally there was talk. Would the trouble spread? Umer, our coach­man, said with conviction that it couldn’t happen on this farm. No, not here on Herr Ost’s place. He treats everyone fairly.

A few days after the murder of Herr Grub, a Bavarian policeman sent by the Americans came bicycling up the tree-lined avenue. He stopped in our courtyard.

Where is Herr Fritz Ost? I have a warrant for his arrest.

What? What is this all about? my mother demanded.

Illicit slaughter, the policeman stated slowly with an air of sure authority.

How was it possible that someone had the power to order Fritz Ost off the estate? True, since the end of the war, slaughtering was controlled by the American authorities. But who could have blown the whistle on our farm? Surely one of our forced laborers. A Pole, the dirty bastard.

My father was enraged, but then his mood shifted. What could they possibly hang on him? He loftily ordered the horses harnessed up. My mother prepared his leather overnight case. He mounted the carriage. Umer sat on the box, my father next to him, puffing on his beloved Virginia cigar. The policeman climbed on his bicycle and led the way, pedaling in front. The carriage rolled lackadaisically behind. So they went, all the way to Ismanning Jail.

My mother and I waved until the group was lost in the distance, a cloud of smoke trailing behind my father’s cap. Away from us, becoming smaller and smaller, like a toy from Anita’s play farm, with its small carriage an exact replica of a real life-sized one. And that tiny bicycle policeman.

I stood in the courtyard and bawled because I didn’t really understand what had happened. No one had had time to explain.

At first even my mother seemed confused, but then something changed. She lit up. I saw it written on her determined face. That calmed me.

She stormed to the telephone and called her friend Eugene, a lawyer in Munich. Adi called Eugene her spiritual anchor. Before she married Fritz, Eugene had fallen in hopeless, undying love with her. He loved her still.

You have to get him out of there right now! Only you can do it! she wheedled. We can’t get along without him here. All these people, the forced laborers, only Fritz can deal with them.

Then she stopped and listened. After a few minutes, her features grew calm. She even smiled. He must have said he’d help her in any way he could.

At the end of the conversation, my mother said: All right, tomorrow I will go get him.

And that she did. They had not been able to prove anything. The proof had long since been turned into sausage and eaten as schnitzel.

The next day I sat on a stone, waiting until the carriage curved once again through the gate into the courtyard. This time my mother held the reins and my father sat next to her. We were so glad he was back; without him we would have had to invent our own rules.

At Goldachhof Fritz established the agenda; so be it, Adi confirmed. This pattern was irrevocable. Best to give in; it simplified things. There were no ifs, ands, or buts with him.

Fritz was the authority figure, the Almighty. He gave his orders in a clear, loud voice. They practically showered down from his towering figure, or they came from the tip of his cane, when he pointed out unacceptable situations. Bitingly clever, he was. Just, cool-headed, transparent blue like ice, but furious when something went wrong, when an order was not carried out well or promptly.

Imposingly tall and slender, he always held himself upright, rather stiffly. Military upbringing. A bit of it would do anyone good, he said, although he hated the military. There are quite a few useful things you only learn through drills. He always had a goal in mind, always looked directly and alertly at whatever he was naming, or the person he was addressing. Eye contact.

Yes, my father had regal manners. He was as just as he was strict. He loved order, and logic, and courage, consistent thinking. He himself was the largest of larger-than-life characters, with his stern face, the attentive look, observing everything. Everyone’s knees knocked in his presence. But no one who felt at home in his own skin needed to defend himself when something did not suit my father. You could argue well with him. Those with a guilty conscience had a hard time. That he could smell. He had a nose for it.

Respect and love are quite close together. Umer was very respectful but not at all subservient. On the frequent occasions when my father was nervous, Umer did not let it irritate him at all. With complete composure he laid the reins and girdles around the horses’ bellies and the bits into their mouths, scurried around the carriage, tightened the wagon shaft.

Growing impatient, my father called out: Umer, hurry up!

Can only do slowly, are nervous animals, he said. That calmed my father, since he knew Umer was clever.

You’re right, you’re right, I’m always taking off, just like the horses. We’ll make it up by letting them gallop on the straightaway.

Umer he never called an idiot, a word that otherwise lay happily on his tongue. Umer knew his craft, and my father knew it. Between the two there was room for a real love.

Fritz also has a great sense of humor, my mother pointed out. Come on, Fritzl, where’s your humor? she sometimes had to remind him.

Earlier it sat more lightly on him. Before the war his nerves were better, my mother said. She wanted everyone to like him, her Fritz, to include in their image of him the young Fritzl only she knew. Often she functioned as the softened echo of his harsh order, when she repeated in her own words something everyone had understood perfectly well. Then she took his arm and looked laughingly at whatever or whomever had caused his fury to well up. Adi always wanted peace, while Fritz never ceased to stew. Somehow he needed conflict as fuel. His nerves, my mother said.

Because of Father’s bad nerves, it was always my mother who drove the car. In the office hung a big photo of our neighbor, race-car driver Hans Stuck, sitting in his white car, my father next to him. Both were wrapped in white dusters, with caps and racing goggles parked on their foreheads. They looked like twins.

We looked at the picture, Uli and I. Who is at the wheel? he asked.

Hans Stuck! You know Father can’t drive. He’s the passenger.

It was also my mother who was allowed to drive into Munich in Hans Stuck’s little white racing car, with Hans on the passenger side. Upon their arrival in town the car would be surrounded with gawkers, not just because of the famous race-car driver, but also because of my mother. Back then a woman at the wheel was an unusual sight.

Stuck was inevitable fodder for neighborhood dinner gossip. Mrs. Stuck could no longer bear seeing only the legs of her husband. When Hans was not at the racetrack, he spent almost all of his time under his car. Because of the love affair with his car, and because of the whispering about other affairs, she finally left him. Adi did not understand how one could leave one’s husband. In her picture of things every man needed a woman at his side, preferably a strong one. That was just the way it was. Otherwise, people would be built differently.