Brother Fish (36 page)

‘Not all there?' one of the FBI men suggested. ‘You know . . . ?' He brought his forefinger up to the side of his head and wiggled it.

The minister of religion hesitated before replying, ‘Yes . . . perhaps, but I'd prefer to say harmless. Yes, that's more the case, completely harmless.'

Pastor Stennholz then told them that while he well understood the need for vigilance and was aware that national security was of primary importance, he felt that the Kraus family were above reproach, and while Otto might be a little domineering this was to be expected from a Prussian.

‘Prussian!' both officers chorused, suddenly alerted.

‘Prussian' and now ‘domineering' were both key words. When asked if he could illustrate Otto Kraus's domineering nature, the minister made example of his refusal to allow his sons to take up a baseball scholarship to attend college. The case against Otto Kraus was suddenly mounting. Denying his twin sons the opportunity to go to college was positively un-American behaviour, particularly as they'd excelled at baseball, the most American of sports.

‘I often think that the poor woman could do with a little relief away from him,' the Lutheran minister now said lightly. ‘The boys too – the army will do them the world of good.'

‘Has he ever expressed any political opinions?' they asked Pastor Stennholz.

‘No, never. Well, not to me, anyways.' He appeared to be thinking, then added, ‘Which is strange, as he was a sergeant in the Great War – on the other side, of course. He certainly takes pride in his Prussian background, and still wears his waxed military moustache.'

‘Pride in his Prussian background, on
their
side, domineering, waxed military moustache, un-American denial of college and baseball scholarship, don't encourage visitors.' It was all the FBI officers needed to hear, and shortly afterwards they concluded the interview with the Lutheran minister.

Approaching the farm they saw the words ‘KRAUS TOMATOES' painted in large letters on the barn roof. They immediately concluded that, as the farm fell directly under the flight path of aircraft leaving Teterboro Airport, this blatant identification of the property was clearly intended for invading enemy aircraft. The noose about Otto's neck was about to choke him.

The interview with Otto and Frau Kraus went badly from the start. Otto had risen from his bed and insisted on standing to rigid attention behind his chair while the two FBI officers questioning him sat at the dining-room table. Otto's great gut had burst through the two lower buttons on his pyjama jacket and his fly gaped slightly to reveal a very small, uncircumcised appendage resting in a nest of greying pubic hair. Frau Kraus was either too terrified or too embarrassed in the presence of the two officers to bring his visibly nesting penis to her husband's attention. With every question asked, Otto would stiffen further to attention and shout, ‘
Ja
, sir!' before proceeding to answer. When a question was directed at Frau Kraus he would immediately answer for her, spitting out the answer as if he was a sergeant in the army being questioned by two superior officers. Every once in a while he'd suddenly grip his stomach and double over. With his teeth clamped together, hissing with the pain of the cramps, he refused to complain or explain. When the spasm finally passed he immediately resumed his rigid position.

The FBI men took this display of courage in the face of pain to be an attempt to seek their sympathy. Frau Kraus had previously brought coffee without asking and the two cups she'd placed silently beside them now grew cold and remained untouched. The FBI had a policy of not accepting gestures of hospitality from enemy aliens as they were clearly intended by the perpetrator as an attempt to lessen the tension generated by the interview. Ignoring Otto's stomach cramps was yet another demonstration of their professionalism. When, during one of the cramps, they finally managed to address Frau Kraus on her own they asked, ‘The music you were playing, Mrs Kraus . . . it's German, isn't it?'

Frau Kraus, looking confused, answered in her customary ‘This ist Cow. This ist Goat' manner, delivering her reply in three distinct statements. ‘I polish. Herr Wagner. Myn husbant like zis music.'

The FBI men looked at each other in surprise. The Lutheran minister had failed to tell them Frau Kraus was Polish. ‘You Polish?' one of them asked.

Frau Kraus nodded. ‘I polish.'

This put an entirely different complexion on things. Germany had invaded Poland and crushed it mercilessly, just as Otto had crushed his unfortunate Polish wife, humiliating her by forcing the poor, unfortunate woman to race about the room with his triumphant, all-conquering German music blaring at her from the gramophone.

Otto was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the police station at Somerville where the same sheriff he'd bribed in order to get Jimmy a driver's licence booked him on suspicion, fingerprinted him and drove him out to the county jail where he was incarcerated. He would be held in a cell prior to passage being arranged on a prison train to the new camp for enemy aliens at Crystal City, Texas. But Otto never made it to Crystal City. He died at approximately two a.m. of a severe stomach haemorrhage while handcuffed to a bunk in the hospital carriage on the prison train somewhere between Little Rock and Texarkana.

A hurried and carelessly conducted post mortem showed the presence of arsenic in Otto's stomach, the coroner's finding being that Otto Wilhelm Kraus, suspected of being a German spy recruited in America, having been apprehended by the FBI and incarcerated, committed suicide by the self-administration of a poison identified as arsenic.

By peacetime standards this wouldn't be regarded as a very plausible explanation, but in the prevailing climate of enemy-alien hysteria it was readily accepted and made for excellent propaganda. Otto's face appeared in newspapers all over the US, where his waxed moustache turned up at the corners and centre parting showing two little winglets of hair resting on the crown of his balding head gave him every appearance of a comic-book German general in the previous war. Americans seemed oblivious to the parody his image represented, and the Department of Justice couldn't have hoped for a better story and more precise profile of ‘the enemy in our midst'. In the end, the prize-winning tomato farmer, ex-sergeant in the Kaiser's army, was inadvertently to prove of great patriotic service to his adopted country.

Many of the members of Pastor Stennholz's congregation were quick to point out that they'd suspected Otto all along. That he'd given himself away in a hundred small ways, always trying to ingratiate himself. Apart from a good deal of self-congratulation for their sagacity, they also pointed to the fact that the FBI had acted with great probity and even some bureaucratic sensitivity. Realising that Frau Kraus was the innocent victim of a cruel and despotic Nazi spy, they had allowed the dear, sweet, hardworking Christian woman to remain in her American home and to enjoy the life of an American woman safe in the land of the free. All in all, the outcome was a fine example of justice tempered with mercy.

Frau Kraus attended Otto's funeral with only Pastor Stennholz and Jimmy at her side. Jimmy, in fact, not quite literally at her side. He'd driven her in the Dodge truck to the cemetery and now stood in the freezing cold outside the gates while the minister and Frau Kraus, wearing a black woollen coat and scarf, black gloves and her polished Sunday boots and on her head her extra-terrible spider's-body hat with protruding cherry eyes and antennae, got through the funeral proceedings dry-eyed. Fresh flowers at this inclement time of the year were prohibitively expensive so Frau Kraus had fashioned a black paper rose with a picture-wire stem wrapped around with green crinkle paper. As she placed it on the coffin Pastor Stennholz thought he saw her smile and distinctly say, ‘
Danke, meine saubere Frau
.'

The following Sunday, after attending church worship, several of the women in the congregation came up to Frau Kraus to wish her well and were surprised and delighted when they were rewarded with the first smile they'd ever witnessed coming from her scrubbed-potato face.

Jimmy had been in the Kraus family employ just over a year, during which time he'd received no wages, although he'd been the beneficiary of two pairs of worn denim dungarees and an old woollen overcoat that had belonged to one of the twins. Otto had also been forced to buy him a pair of work boots for the winter, as his feet were already too large for a pair discarded by the family.

Alone now with the hated Frau Kraus, Jimmy at last summoned up sufficient courage to run away at the earliest opportunity, though he sensibly told himself it was winter and he'd have to wait until the warmer weather arrived. On the night following the funeral it was bitterly cold when he entered the washhouse for his evening meal only to find Frau Kraus waiting for him. She carried a worn towel and a bar of soap. Jimmy hesitated, starting to back out when she pointed to the washtub and commanded, ‘
Wasche
!'

Jimmy took the soap and towel and approached the wash tub to find that it contained several inches of hot water. His mind was in total confusion as he watched the steam rising up to the windowpanes to be converted to droplets that immediately froze, turning to translucent pimples stuck to the inside of the window. As he scooped water onto his bewildered face, he went through a multitude of what, why, how and what-for transitions.

Having washed and dried his face and hands, he waited. ‘
Komm
!' Frau Kraus demanded and, turning on her heels, opened the door to a short passageway that led to the kitchen. Jimmy, afraid he'd heard incorrectly, hesitated. Then, to his surprise, Frau Kraus turned and smiled and with a friendly nod of the head beckoned him to follow her. He hesitated again at the closed door at the far end of the passageway, reluctant to go any further. ‘Take off za coat, also za boots,' Frau Kraus instructed, pointing to several coat hooks on the wall immediately outside the kitchen door.

Jimmy's overcoat was somewhat the worse for wear and very dirty, as he was forced to wear it while at work. Under it, directly against his skin, he wore a filthy chocolate-brown cardigan he'd found wrapped around a tractor part in the barn. It was full of holes but had been knitted by hand in heavy cable stitch from coarse wool, and he greatly treasured it for its warmth.

Jimmy first removed his boots and placed them against the wall, then his coat, which he hung on one of the hooks. His socks, with the toes and heels worn through, had come from the orphanage, and he now felt cold from the cement floor rising up through the wool on his feet. Shivering, he clasped his arms across his chest against the cold.

Frau Kraus opened the kitchen door and Jimmy was met with a blast of warm air. ‘
Komm
,' she beckoned again, and he entered a large kitchen with a fire blazing in a hearth at one end, the recipient of the wood he'd chopped and stacked behind the house during the summer. Frau Kraus closed the door behind him and, sensing Jimmy's acute embarrassment at finding himself alone with her inside the house, she smiled and pointed to the scrubbed pine table that he now saw was set for two. ‘Sit!' she commanded, indicating one of the places.

Jimmy had yet to say a word, but now he cleared his throat. ‘I cain't, ma'am. I ain't allowed.'

‘
Ja, ja,
sit!' Frau Kraus called impatiently, as she moved to the refrigerator behind him.

Jimmy sat down slowly, his eyes fixed on the cutlery laid out on the table in front of him. He hadn't used a knife and fork in a year and he felt a slight panic at the idea of taking them up again. His knees trembled under the table and he realised that his hands were shaking. He heard a soft clunk as the handle of the refrigerator door locked into place and shortly afterwards Frau Kraus appeared holding a stein of beer, which she proceeded to place in front of him. Then, speaking in German she said, ‘
Danke, meine saubere Frau.
' To Jimmy's surprise she proceeded to giggle, which soon turned to laughter and then to convulsive, hysterical mirth until she was forced to sit on the bench beside Jimmy holding onto the side of the table, her huge frame shaking, jowls wobbling, tears running down her fat cheeks, her laughter seemingly completely beyond her control.

Jimmy sat rigid with fear, unable to decide what to do next. Frau Kraus had obviously gone mad. He thought about making a run for it, but by the time he'd put his boots and coat back on she'd be onto him. Carrying them out into the snow with him was the next option, but then what? Mixed with her laughter he could hear the wind howling in the kitchen chimney as the snowstorm outside gathered momentum. Then, as suddenly as her laughter had begun it stopped, and Frau Kraus rose from the table. Bringing the edge of her apron up to her face she wiped away the tears and moved towards the stove. Jimmy watched fearfully as she took up a pair of oven mittens and, opening the oven door, removed two plates piled with meat, roast potatoes, boiled cabbage and onion. She moved back to the table and placed the plates down, one in front of Jimmy and the other at the second place setting. She returned to the stove and brought back a large jug of gravy and, without asking him, poured a generous amount over his food. While she may have been plumb crazy, Frau Kraus still knew how to feed a growing boy.

Jimmy, who'd been working hard all day, always looked forward to his dinner. Now, despite his present predicament and anxiety, he began to eat ravenously, expecting at any moment to be told to leave. ‘You drink now za beer,' Frau Kraus said at one stage. Jimmy had never before tasted beer and he took a tentative mouthful and reacted immediately, the foul-tasting liquid hardly in his mouth before he sent it spraying over the table. Jimmy was mortified and jumped up, ready to run for his life. ‘Sorry, ma'am, I ain't meant it!' he cried, distressed. But Frau Kraus was laughing. ‘You like milk?' Rising, she wiped the beer-splashed table clean with her napkin, removed the stein and commanded Jimmy to sit, whereupon she fetched him a glass of milk.