The Safety Net (25 page)
“Like yourself.”
“That’s right, we were in the army together too—only my brother Herbert refused to serve.”
Sometimes he also drove to the Zelgers’ to give Veronica’s mother a hand in the garden. He would weed, clip the hedges, help pick apples and pears, plums, red currants, and blackberries, dig potatoes, and when they worked together at the far end of the garden, burning potato stalks, she would come close to him and whisper: “Have you had any news of her?” And he would tell her what he had heard from his mother, Sabine, or Herbert: Mary, Queen of Heaven, and all that—and that Holger was fine. Mrs. Zelger, whom he still called Mama, had
aged, become quiet and very shy, frail beyond her years. She couldn’t be more than in her mid-fifties and had only this one child, Veronica; on several occasions she had been victimized by the media, had talked to newspaper and TV reporters about the criminal nature of banks and the cowardice of the Church; since then she had scarcely allowed anyone into the house. Zelger had given up his practice; at some time or other his enamel doctor’s plate had been smashed with rocks, and he had refused to replace it. After all, he had been a doctor here in Hetzigrath for more than thirty years, they should have known him and not smashed his plate and smeared threats all over the walls.
He would come hobbling out into the garden, leaning on his cane, pipe in mouth, mumbling: “Who’s supposed to eat all the jam, Paula? Who’s supposed to eat all the potatoes? There are no more refugees to give them to. Believe me, Rolf, if she knew where Veronica is she would send her some blackberry jam.”
“Yes, I would—and for the boy, too, and even for him, for Heinrich. Even prisoners get fed, jam too, even murderers are given jam. I would do it, I’d send them all some jam.”
Then they would sit down for a cup of coffee and some cake, and if Holger was along he would be given money for ice cream. Old Dr. Zelger would smoke his pipe, muttering to himself, refusing to agree that “the days of hostility are over,” that no one in Hetzigrath bore a grudge against him, but no, he said: “Now
I
bear the grudge and will to the end of my days. To hell with their sympathy, their grudges, their confidence, or their suspicion. Night after night I’ve got out of bed for them, for every little twinge and every confinement, I’ve never refused my services, for thirty years and not even in those dreadful postwar years when it was dangerous to walk on the streets at night—and then they suddenly throw rocks through your windows, smash up your doctor’s plate, smear up your walls—and no one, not a single person, came to us during that time to apologize or just to say a few kind words; not one. And the priest, who’s been here just as long as I have, turned aside to avoid the embarrassment of having to greet me on
the street—simply turned on his heel and went off in another direction, the yellow bastard. Yes, Paula—don’t look at me like that when I call a priest a yellow bastard, that’s what he is. No, my dear, no—and why all that? Because you’ve got a daughter who suddenly veers off and turns to crime—and there they are with all their own criminals in this stinking, dirty, Catholic hole: thieves and murderers, rapists, incest and abortion and fraud—how many of these swine have violated their daughters and their daughters-in-law, and how many times did I have to testify to save fathers from jail and kids from reform school? How many times? Sometimes, Rolf, I get terrorist notions myself, especially toward these yellow-bellied priests: refused to greet me anymore, just imagine, the first who should have come to us.”
He would dig out the photo album and show Veronica as a First Communicant, such a sweet little thing in white, a candle in her hand and flowers in her hair; the priest beside her at the tea table, helping himself to some whipped cream. “Look at him, grinning, helping himself to your whipped cream! What kind of people are they? Are we supposed to have the plague? And what if we did? No sir, even if his appendix were hanging out of his navel he wouldn’t get so much as a pill from me. And do you realize, Rolf, that we’d be close to starvation if it weren’t for your mother? I never saved any money, all I have is the house with its mortgage, that’s it, and if I could I’d send her a lot more than blackberry jam. Have we become untouchables because our child has turned to crime? So what? How many of that lot came to me to have their SS tattoos removed? If it weren’t for your mother—she’s the only one I accept it from. I’d accept it from your father, too.…”
And occasionally he would drive on to see old Beverloh, who would let him in suspiciously, without so much as a muttered greeting, and lead him upstairs without a word into the attic of the tiny house to show him Heinrich’s old room. They used to call it the cubbyhole, ten feet square with sloping walls and
two attic windows, and the old man would point scornfully to the books still on the shelf: Thomas More and Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Mann, “and all those other Thomases,” folders, rulers, pens and pencils neatly arranged on the folding table screwed to the foot end of the bed; the blotter was still lying there, and the transparent pencil sharpener still contained the curly shavings; an open package of cigarettes, a butt in the ashtray, on the wall the framed Ph.D. diploma, a crucifix, Raphael’s Madonna: an eerie reliquary complete with first lieutenant’s shoulder boards. “Heinrich really did well in the artillery—he was their best man on ballistics, they wanted him for the general staff,” and the wizened, sour old man even accepted an arm as he hobbled down the stairs, saying at the door: “He always said, The world will hear of me one day—and now it’s hearing of him.…”
And since it was almost on his way, requiring only a very small detour, he would decide to drive on to Tolmshoven. He and the boy would walk past the security officers to see the grandparents, who were so overcome that they almost burst into tears, and his father would immediately take the boy by the hand, walk with him through the corridors, onto balconies; he loved holding children’s hands, his father. Rolf remembered his father’s hand holding his own childish hand when they went for walks in the fields around Iffenhoven; he always had two children by the hand, was happy, would switch around, sometimes himself and Herbert, then Herbert and Sabine, later also Veronica—but he couldn’t remember whether Heinrich Beverloh had shown up in the family at an age when he could still be taken by the hand. The best thing for Father would probably have been to restrict himself to children’s hands and art history, not the paper and certainly not the manor. That was a few sizes too pretentious, too formal—he could no longer simply walk away, a child by the hand, through fields and woods, and forget about the lousy paper. And Käthe couldn’t do all her own cooking anymore, her own canning, behave as would have been natural in Eickelhof. The old man had fallen
victim to a childhood dream and a childhood trauma.
It was really touching to see his parents’ delight when he happened to turn up, to see how Käthe started right away to fuss around in her tiny kitchen, producing one of her incomparable soups, making pancakes for the boy—always in a somewhat strained rivalry with the big kitchen downstairs that they called the conference kitchen. Father there too, happy as a lark, forever taking his package of cigarettes out of his pocket and putting it back again. What a blessing he never talked about the war, never mentioned it, not even in connection with his obvious cigarette trauma; fortunately also never carried on about the “old days,” about the poverty of his childhood, the poverty of his student days, merely asking now and again, and somewhat anxiously, whether they couldn’t ask Katharina’s parents over, since they were living in the village; they were too diffident, Father and Käthe, didn’t feel the least bit—as Käthe put it—like “lords of the manor,” but nevertheless lived in it. Father had known Luise Kommertz, Katharina’s mother, when she was a child, a little girl, when they played “bounce ball” in the Kommertz yard.
Holger loved going to the manor, where there were ancient cellars with old bits of armor lying around, and the tower with its battlements, pagoda-shaped summerhouses on the grounds, and parts of old cannons and stone cannonballs.
Of late there had always been tears, at least moisture in Father’s eyes when they said goodbye, yet it was only eighteen kilometers to Hubreichen, twenty to Cologne and Herbert, and seventeen to Blorr and Sabine. Of late Käthe, too, had been inclined to moist eyes.
And of course, once he was in Tolmshoven, he had also to visit Katharina’s parents, word got around right away when he was there, “Rolf, who had been such a nice boy, so devout,” who, all on his own, without Papa’s help, had almost been made a bank executive, if he hadn’t—if only he hadn’t—set fire to cars and thrown rocks. Old buddies would emerge from farmyards
and sheds, men he had played football with, shared altar-boy duties. They would clap him on the shoulder, run their hands over him in imitation of frisking police, and ask in astonishment: “Tell us now, where d’you keep all that dynamite and the hand grenades?” And Holger was admired, sometimes being “a true Schröter,” the next time “a true Tolm,” and given candles and greetings to his mother by nice, head-shaking young women who used to sing in the church choir with Katharina, and then of course the boy wanted to throw stones into the Hellerbach, the village stream. The dogs chained up in the Kommertz yard were quite vicious, Holger didn’t like walking past them. And more hellos and tears even before they left, and more coffee, and tins were brought out and crisp little cookies distributed, and of course Holger had to go with Grandpa to his workroom, where all kinds of outlandish things were welded together. There old Schröter would sit, heaping abuse on the Communists, who had killed his brother, and almost more on Adenauer, who had betrayed everything, every damn thing, sold it all for a mess of pottage. “And just look at that mess, my boy—is it to your liking? I wouldn’t think so, otherwise you wouldn’t have … oh well, it’s gone but not forgotten.”
He would show Holger everything, couplings and connections, screw threads, fiddle around on a contraption made of old war material, and it really was a bit eerie the way he repeatedly stressed that from his shed he could take “perfect aim, and I mean perfect, at your other grandpa’s window, absolutely perfect, especially the bathroom window”—no, he didn’t feel at ease at the Schröters’, Luise too pious, pietistic you might say, old Schröter forever carrying on about his old dream of the “left Center”—and in the end, when he had fulfilled all his duties, he felt positively homesick for Hubreichen, the high-walled vicarage garden, the red-enamel milk pitcher, their garden, the fruit trees, the stove, and playing with his young son, for Katharina, who, though she could account for the strained atmosphere in her old home, wouldn’t deny it. “You must put yourself in their place, understand that bitterness of the leftist
Catholics toward the gains the rightist Catholics have made toward their triumphal march. They, the leftist Catholics, have always had to limp behind, footsore, bitter, frustrated, they could never feel happy, had no reason to. And now: just look at that mess.”
He was a bit scared by this nostalgia for Hubreichen, for cottage and garden, for being alone with Katharina and the boy, for that sense of security behind the great woodpile that he kept replenishing; and the daily ritual ending with the evening walk to pick up the milk, the generous titch added by old Mrs. Hermes. Yes, he was scared by this nostalgia for a sense of security that might have been understandable when he came out of the slammer and was being hounded by the Zummerling mob, who had even tried to rouse the village people against himself and the priest. But now, four years later, with Holger already three years old, now he should be wanting to get away from Hubreichen—and he didn’t. Was he to—did he want to—spend the rest of his life in Hubreichen, restrict his delight in planning and calculating to the garden, to salvaging old lumber, to picking the crops and playing with his son? Possibly become some sort of unpaid, unofficial adviser to the villagers, a person to be rewarded with some fresh-killed meat, a basket of eggs?
He found himself shocked by the routine that had developed from going for the milk: opening the door, placing the milk on the counter, kissing Katharina’s cheek, taking off the boy’s jacket, warming his hands at the stove, looking into the saucepan that today happened to smell of meat: stew with vegetables and mushrooms, checking to see whether the open bottle of wine would be enough for the evening or whether he should open a new one, closing the shutters, hooking them from the inside, testing the soil in the geranium window boxes. Outside it was damp and foggy, which absolved him from his evening walk. He was relieved to hear that Dolores wouldn’t be coming for the Spanish lesson, she was organizing some demonstration or other for Chile or Bolivia, had said over the phone that she
was satisfied with their Spanish, on principle spoke only Spanish with them now, ending up with
“Venceremos.”
Where? Who?
They were both startled by a knock on the door and glanced up in alarm, they had been looking forward to an evening of speaking Spanish and listening to music and were surprised when Sabine came in with Kit and the young security officer they were sometimes seeing these days at the manor—in the corridors, the park, the courtyard. Sabine with luggage, that had never happened before: a suitcase, an overnight case, a bag of knitting, Kit carrying two dolls and her ragged old cloth lion from which she never parted. Sabine, her manner appealing, almost embarrassed: “I know it’s a bad time to come—but I must see you, talk to you, and—I don’t mind sleeping with Kit in the little room.…” It was a good opportunity once again to admire Katharina’s unfailing openhearted warmth; not for a fraction of a second did her face show surprise or dismay. “Come on in and have supper with us! There’s something good tonight, and it’ll be very good for Holger to play with Kit for a change, instead of with us. Come on in! But I wonder—your security—and you know I don’t mean to be facetious …”
“I’m being guarded,” said Sabine with a smile. “Mr. Hendler—you’ve met him, haven’t you?—was kind enough to come with me, in Mother’s car—I’ve left my old bus at Erwin’s—on Mr. Holzpuke’s instructions Mr. Hendler has taken over my security.…”