Under the Same Blue Sky (16 page)

“Is there an Anna who works here?”

“Yes, the cook, but it’s her day off.”

“I see.” So close, and now shut off. I wanted to see the mirrored halls
today
.

“I was just a child then, but I can tell you a little,” Tom offered.

“Mrs. Henderson didn’t have a good opinion of Margit Brandt.”

“No, I don’t imagine she would.”

“Tell me about my father.” Was his memory as dark and distasteful?

“His name was Emil.” One of the names in her letters. One of many. “He had your eyes and hair. He was the baron’s master cabinetmaker, a genius with wood. I was just a kid, but he taught me about working with grains, joining, carving, and finishing each kind of wood.” Tom glanced at me. “That’s not what you want to know, is it? You want to know about Emil and Margit?”

“Yes.”

“I think they were happy at first. I know the baron was annoyed at how much time they spent together. Then they had a fight, and Emil left Dogwood before you were born.”

“He didn’t come back or write?”

“No.”

Not to see or ask about me or leave me any trace of him. “Do you know where he went, or if he’s alive?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“And my mother?”

“Just that she died in New York. Maybe the baron knows more.” We were circling the castle.

“Tom, could you ask the baron if he’ll see me now? Just for a few minutes. Or tomorrow, if he’s feeling better.”

“He’ll say no, I’m afraid. These attacks can last for days.”

“Tell him,” I added recklessly, “that sometimes I can help headaches.” The little ease I gave my father as a child, perhaps I could still do this. And perhaps—who knows—the touch might come back.

“He’s tried every pill and powder and gone to the best doctors. But I’ll ask. Stay here with Lilli.” He disappeared through a doorway half hidden by ivy. I waited on a stone bench. Without orders from her master, Lilli wandered away. Breezes scuttled dry leaves across the lawn. Rosebushes bared their thorns. Cold seeped from the bench into my legs. If there was any good to be discovered about Margit, it would likely come from the baron. But if he wouldn’t receive me now, why would he promise tomorrow? If I came back in a week, he could easily be having another attack. Or he could simply decline an interview.

Tom appeared, astonished. “He’ll see you for ten minutes since you came so far. Speak softly and don’t move much. Motion makes him ill. The room’s very dark; he can’t stand light.”

“I understand.”

Tom led me to the great front arch, three times my height, of thick wood braced in iron as if to keep out barbarian hordes. The handle was a finely rendered wolf head. When it was turned, the door swung open with the faintest whisper, revealing a paneled hall larger than our flat,
circled by marble statues of Greek gods. So many. We could be in a museum. I stopped, frozen like a statue myself.

“This way, Hazel, he’s waiting,” Tom said, shepherding me up a lustrous grand stairway. “Emil made this. He turned the wood.” My father? Each step was a marvel. Exquisitely carved vines circled the newels; every baluster invited a lingering touch. “On sunny days, the stained glass windows—”

“Make a rainbow light. I remember.” My mother walked up and down these stairs. Perhaps she carried me. I stopped, tracing a vine. Tom cleared his throat slightly and I hurried on. We reached a wide hallway, paneled in wood and hung with tapestries. There was no sound but our footsteps.

“How many people live here?”

“Only three: Anna, the baron, and me. The gardeners and the inside help come from Dogwood. The housemaids work at night; they wear felt shoes and are to be very quiet. I used to think magic elves cleaned the castle. Quiet now. Here’s the library.” A leaping stag was carved into the door. “Emil’s last project,” Tom whispered. “The baron wanted another for his office, but Emil left before the wood was even ordered.” So Margit made trouble even over doors. The stag was magnificent, artfully shaped in the swirling grain. A long neck swelled to sleek flanks and a perfect arch of rump. The antlers swept back and up, graceful and fierce. Touching them, I felt a velvet warmth. Had Emil won Margit with his art? Did she want the hand that worked this wonder? But even this art wasn’t enough. As Mrs. Henderson said, nothing satisfied her for long.

Tom knocked softly, mouthed “good luck,” and opened the door for me. I stepped into gloom. A Persian carpet silenced my tread, as if my body had lost all substance. In a shadow within shadows, I made out a tall, slender man in a wing chair with a cloth pressed against his eyes.

“Hazel Renner who was Hilde Brandt?” said a voice in heavily accented German.

“Yes, Baron von Richthofen.”

“
Baron
is quite sufficient. Stand there. Please.” He pointed to the palest slice of light leaking through nearly drawn curtains. The cloth must have moved, for I glimpsed the whites of his eyes as he regarded me top to toe. I stood still as a marble statue. “You want to know about Margit?” I could make out wide gold cuff links and a heavy ring.

“Yes, Baron.”

The whites disappeared. “She was a lovely woman, even her detractors admitted. However, she had a difficult character and created problems. Do you, Miss Renner?” How to answer? “An unfair question, forgive me. You speak German?”

“Yes. Would you prefer—?”

“Not particularly. I find English more restful. The mind works strangely, does it not?”

“Yes.” In the schoolyard once in Galway, three boys cornered a rabbit that sat motionless until I made them let it go. I was the rabbit now. Perhaps he sensed this.

“Would you take some wine?” His ring glittered toward a decanter and crystal goblets set on a nearby table. A lady never drinks alone, my mother said, but the query felt like a command.

“Some for you as well, Baron?”

“Now? No.” As if this should be obvious. “And then sit please.” So despite my mother, I poured a little red wine and took a chair some paces from his own. “So, the Renners raised you in Pittsburgh. They loved you and so forth.”

“Yes.” Had anyone ever loved this man “and so forth”?

“Good.” He pressed the cloth to his eyes with a muffled groan.

“If you’d rather wait—”

“No, you’re here now, and there’s not much to say. My cook, Anna, was fond of you and was distressed when you didn’t come back from New York. Margit said only that a sister had taken you. However, she quite carelessly left behind letters with this sister’s address. I had contacts in Pittsburgh determine that your situation was satisfactory. Anna was relieved.”

“I see.” So we’d been watched. He seemed to feel this was his right.

“Your father’s hardware store does well, I presume.”

“It does, thank you.”

“Pittsburgh is also doing well, selling arms to the Allies.”

“To
both
sides.”

“To both sides then.”

In the few minutes I’d been granted, did we have to speak of war? “Emil—” I began, but the baron groaned. When I half rose, he held up an arresting hand.

“It will pass.”

“Would you rather be alone?”

“No. At the moment you are—distracting.” No way to answer this. “And German.”

“Yes.”

“So you may understand what Tom can’t. I’m torn asunder by this war. My homeland bleeds. America has made me rich, given me a home. Yet I’m an enemy here. As you are, Miss Renner?” I nodded, thinking of broken glass at our store and mocking couples calling me
fräulein
. His forehead glistened. “When the last soldier lies rotting in a French field, who’ll farm for Germany? Who’ll paint, and write, and compose our music?” A white hand flicked toward bookcases and a grand piano looming in the corner. “Who’ll be our new Hegel, Goethe, Bach, Wagner, or von Beethoven? Who?”

“I don’t know, Baron.”

“Rinse this for me. Please.” He held out the flannel cloth. Coming closer to take it, I nearly gasped at my first clear sight of his face. Like Michelangelo’s
David
, his beauty ensnared the eye. Only a master’s hand could shape the smoothly arched brow over deep wide eyes, fine straight nose, square chin, lightly cleft, full and shapely mouth, and lush chestnut waves of hair faintly streaked with silver. He must have been stared at all his life. He cleared his throat. “Miss Renner, you must understand that a person’s physiognomy, however appealing to the observer, is an artifact of nature, a confluence of heredity. If I were grotesquely deformed, would you not feign indifference to this fact?”

“Yes, of course.” Chastened, I rinsed the cloth in cool water and wrung it out, trying to imagine an ordinary-appearing man approaching middle age, to think only of the pain he was enduring. “Baron, my father had headaches and sometimes I could ease them.”

“You had the touch, as they say.” Did he see me flinch? “You may try. Nothing else has helped. The pain is here.” Elegantly manicured hands indicated his temples. Yes, the blue house was far away. I hesitated before touching his beauty, as I had before touching Edna’s warty face. Then I took a long breath and began. No tremor ran down my arm, but I copied the steady, circling pressure that once helped my father. “Remarkably better.” Relief and fear. What would he expect of me next? How long before I disappointed him? “No, don’t stop. Distract me. Talk, but softly.”

Of course I couldn’t speak of Galway. “What should I talk about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” So I described how I discovered the secret of my birth. He said nothing but “Go on.” I spoke of my father’s anguish as the war continued, how he counted the dead and beat out his tins.

“This war will have its way with us. Water, please.” I found a pitcher by the wine and poured him a glass. He drank and regarded me again. “You wanted to learn more about Margit Brandt.”

“Yes.”

“She was difficult, as I said. I would not have kept her so long if not for certain skills.”

“Skills?”

“Laying out gardens, not the work, but the envisioning of them. She was quite unschooled in design but had a surprisingly fine eye for interiors and the placement of art. Her dalliances in town hardly concerned me, but the servants disliked her, and she distracted Emil, whose skill I needed.”

“Then he left.”

“Then he left, which was infuriating.” What about his leaving Margit? Of no concern, apparently. “Emil was an artist in wood but jealous, quick to anger, and given to gambling. He left debts in town and work undone here. Your parents had gifts, Miss Renner, but their lives were careless. At first, Margit seemed softened by the prospect of motherhood.” So she wanted me, or wanted a child at least. “However, the reality was less enticing. Your care largely fell to Anna.”

“I see.”

“Then Margit found another solution for you and one for herself in leaving Dogwood. As you have no doubt learned, she died soon after in New York.”

“Tom said that you might know more.”

“I don’t. I only knew that she died because she’d given this as her last address.”

“You didn’t ask—”

He sighed. “Miss Renner, you are very young. One does not search out particulars of a departed employee whose service has been, on the whole, problematic.” No, I supposed one does not. “I sent on to Pittsburgh some drawings she’d left here along with the news of her death. Your aunt and uncle, apparently, also chose not to investigate. Or couldn’t. So the trail, as they say, is quite cold.”

“I see.”

“You saw her drawings, I presume, before this journey?”

“Yes.”

“They showed talent, however raw and undisciplined, like much about her. I regret that this little story is so incomplete and in some ways tawdry.” Yes, it was tawdry. And yet, Margit had talent. She’d linked herself with an artist. She’d been happy at first with the idea of motherhood.

The baron closed his eyes. “My pain is eased. I thank you for this, Miss Renner. However, I’d like to be alone now.”

“Of course, but could I see the rest of Mein Königsberg?” Perhaps I could find signs of her that weren’t tawdry?

“I can’t oblige, obviously. Have Tom show you around. You’re lodging in town?”

“Yes.”

“Then good evening, Miss Renner. I hope your journey was helpful. If you stop by tomorrow, Anna would like to see you. Now please excuse me.” He must have somehow signaled Tom, for in retracing my steps, I soon encountered Lilli, closely followed by her master.

“You were there for an hour,” he said in wonderment.

“Apparently I was distracting.”

Tom laughed, patting Lilli’s head. “Distracting. What do you think, girl? Is Hazel distracting? So far, the only other person he could bear during these attacks was Friedrich.”

“Who was he?”

Tom hesitated. “His—assistant. You’d like to look around?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Come.” The castle was huge, yes, but more astonishing were the galleries filled with paintings by Corot, Turner, Constable, van Dyck,
Dürer, Breughel, Goya, Cézanne, and Monet, all exquisitely framed. A Gauguin and a Rubens lay on a long table.
This
was a dream, a fable.

“The baron owns all these?”

“Not all of them. He’s a dealer in paintings, sculpture, coins, crystal, and books. Some of this he’s selling for Europeans who need ready cash. Some he’s storing until the war ends.”

“It must be amazing to live here and see all these treasures every day.”

“It is, yes, but the baron is very precise. You can’t make mistakes.” Tom bent over a Corot landscape. “You see where this frame was repaired, here on the gilt?”

I looked hard and saw only a smooth wash of pale gold. “No. It seems perfect.”

Friedrich did it. He was an upholsterer before he came here, but his repairs were magical. The baron bought this oil from a French collector who needed cash. The baron gets a commission which he uses to support all this.” A sweeping arm engulfed the gallery, the castle, gardens, himself, and the “elves” that cleaned at night.

“Where did the baron come from?”

“Prussia.”

“Why did he leave?”

“I don’t know. Come.” In fact, the baron’s past meant little to me now. The greater the mass of an object, I’d told my students in Galway, the more it tugs on you, as the Earth’s gravity tugs us to her. I moved slowly through each room, stunned by the gravity of this splendor that was tugging me in. Imagine living here, walking daily in these rooms. And Margit wasn’t happy here? With her “surprisingly fine eye,” she didn’t want to stay?