Under the Same Blue Sky (17 page)

The baron had furnished the castle over time, Tom explained,
churning profits into stained glass, carpets, bookcases, furniture, and walnut wainscoting. “This was added just before you were born,” he said, opening a door to a sight so unexpected and yet familiar that I gasped: a gallery of mirrored walls. “As soon as you could walk, you’d find your way here.” Rows on rows of reflected Toms, Hazels, and Lillis stretched left and right, before and behind us. Deep in the infinite reflections was there still a tiny Hilde? “We were playing tag here once before a dinner party,” Tom was saying. “The footmen made us leave. They said we might have broken a mirror.”

“Footmen? There were footmen?”

“Dogwood men, really. Sometimes he’d dress them in red jackets.”

“With gold braid?”

“Yes.”

“Were there musicians and a grand table set with crystal?”

“Yes, for banquets.”

So it
was
here, everything I remembered. No dreams but memories. Here, too, was confirmation that I’d been given away like a dress she didn’t like.
Don’t think of this.
“Does he still have banquets?”

“No, not since before Christmas, when Friedrich left.”

“Where did he go?”

Tom’s glance strayed out the dark windows. “To fly for Germany with the baron’s cousin, Manfred. They’ll down a lot of Allies.” As we left the mirrored galley, the rows of us dissolved one by one.

“And Friedrich—?”

Lilli turned her head. “It’s the baron’s silent whistle. Normal ones pain him. I’m sorry, Hazel, I have to go. But come for breakfast to see Anna. Will you do that?” He reached for me as if we were still children in a great house and then dropped his arm. “It’s amazing, after all this time, you here, all grown up. Distracting, as the baron said.” Lilli
whimpered. “I have to go. Can you let yourself out? Go left at the end of this hall, then straight.”

I found the great door and walked back to Dogwood, churned between Margit’s tawdry story and all the castle’s marvels. At the boardinghouse, I picked at veal stew and baked beans as a salesman for Happy Days washing machines described his wares to an insurance agent who stopped the pitch by asking what brought me to Dogwood.

“I’m—visiting old friends.”

“Give them my card, miss,” the salesman interrupted. “Life’s better with Happy Days machines.” I excused myself, leaving my stew for the agent, who’d been eyeing it.

“Excuse me, Miss Renner, did you meet the baron?” the cook asked as I passed the kitchen. “I was at the drugstore this afternoon. Ginny Henderson said you were going to the castle.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He was very cordial, but I’m tired now, ma’am, and going to sleep.”

I didn’t sleep. Wind puffed through trees outside my window, bobbing branches. I pictured the morning: I’d go back to the castle and meet Anna. She’d exclaim over how I’d grown. Likely she’d have her own poor opinion of Margit. Perhaps I’d see Tom and Lilli again: his smile and the bushy flag of her tail. Suppose I found work in town? What was I thinking? Would women whose men had known Margit welcome me? Mrs. Henderson hadn’t. Would men she’d enjoyed and cast off be glad to meet her daughter? My mother’s spirit did linger in the castle, not wholly for the worse. She might have helped shape the mirror gallery, or inspired the great stairway. She might have wandered in the galleries, dreaming on the landscapes.

Could I build a better, different Hazel there? I’d be no Friedrich, but
I might be somehow useful to the baron, disappointing nobody, disturbing nobody. I could be a better Margit. My blood began here. If the healing touch returned, this time I’d speak with those who might help me understand and guide the gift. If it never returned, surely it was a tangible good to save great art from war.

Wind whipped harder outside. In Pittsburgh, my dear, practical friend Luisa would bat away every part of my plan. She’d point out that the baron might not receive me again. Even Tom hadn’t voiced the slightest option of my staying at the castle. I was simply invited to meet Anna and ease her old concerns. But night can breed boldness. I would come out of my trench and claim this piece of Dogwood that once was mine.

CHAPTER 10

Rembrandt’s Lady

A
different gardener opened the gate for me. “Anna’s in the kitchen,” he said gruffly. “Side door.” Then he was gone, slipping behind a hedge. Light snow frosted the gravel and dusted trees. The castle loomed, cold and unwelcoming. At least the kitchen windows glowed. The man silhouetted inside was surely Tom. Lilli barked; the door flew open and a dumpling-soft woman with gray curls burst into the cold, arms outstretched.

“Hilde, you came back!”

“Not Hilde. I told you. She’s Hazel now,” Tom called from inside.

“Of course, my dear, come in where it’s warm. You’ve had breakfast?” The encircling warmth felt like home.

“Yes, at Twin Oaks.”

“Hah! That’s not breakfast.
Now
you’ll eat. Let me look at you, all grown up. Do you remember your Anna?”

“Yes, I think so.” And I did dimly recall a kind, attending face that could not have been my mother’s.

“
Here’s
breakfast,” Anna declared, marching me to a sideboard laden with breads, butter, honey, cheeses, liverwurst, salami, sausages,
blackberry and cherry jam, oatmeal, boiled eggs, pickles, herring, fresh and dried fruits. Then she bustled to the oven, pulling out a tray of sweet buns. “Tom’s favorite,” she said over her shoulder.

“Anna’s, too,” Tom commented to his newspaper. “Sit down, Lilli.” She sat.

“The baron kept you for an hour, even with his headache! Amazing.” After setting down the sweet rolls, she studied me as if I were a fresh sweet roll myself. “I can see her in your hair and eyes. And you have Emil’s chin. Not their character, I hope.”

Tom cleared his throat, rattling the
New York Tribune.
“Verdun is becoming a death machine,” he announced. “An air war, that’s what the Allies need. Quick and fast.”

“Stop it. That’s what Friedrich said,” Anna snapped. “Then all you get is young men dying on land, sea,
and
sky. Meanwhile the baron sits in the dark, like a body without a soul. Friedrich should have stayed. One pilot more or less for the Kaiser, what good does that do?”

I gathered this was a familiar debate. “Friedrich felt he had to go. And besides,” Tom continued wistfully, “imagine flying free, like a knight in the air.”

“Shot on the ground or in the air, dead is dead, young man. But never mind that. Hilde’s here. Tell me—” A buzzer and two flashes of light from a bank of bulbs made both their heads swivel. Even Lilli looked up. Tom and Anna turned to me, astonished, as if I’d caused this marvel.

“What is it?”

“He’s in his office,” Anna explained. “The attacks
never
end so soon. And he wants breakfast. That’s his sign, two flashes.”

“Let me take it to him.”

“Tom always does; he brings breakfast and gets the day’s orders. Stay here for a bit, after all these years.”

“Let Hazel take it,” said Tom. “I’ll get my orders soon enough.” Grumbling, Anna set a Spartan meal on a heavy silver tray: black coffee, toast, butter, a pot of jam, and an apple sliced in eighths.

“Lilli will show you the way,” said Tom.

“Really?”

“Trust her,” he said cheerfully.

“Don’t spill the coffee, not even a drop,” Anna warned.

“Just keep telling her to find the baron,” Tom repeated. “Anna, you can talk to me.”

“Talk to
you
? What’s special about that?” A dishrag hurled across the room brought a rolling laugh from both of them. The castle kitchen was a warm and easy place. It hadn’t suited Margit Brandt, but it might suit me. The first step was to create work for myself.

“Find Baron,” I told Lilli. She assumed her task with eager purpose, darting down a hallway, stopping, turning, waiting, mounting another grand staircase, and waiting at the landing as I carefully ascended. Anna had set the silver tray with a white linen cloth that would betray the slightest spill. I followed Lilli down another hallway toward a wide, plain door. Was this the one that Emil hadn’t carved? But another issue was more pressing: how to knock while holding a tray. Surely one does not kick for entry to a baron’s office. I needn’t have worried, for a niche by the door held a small inlaid table, exactly the size of my tray. The sight of it chilled me. What would it be like to work for a man so exact? I could still retreat: deliver the tray and a polite pleasantry, spend some happy hours with Anna and Tom, and go home on the afternoon train. No, as my parents had remade themselves on East Ohio Street, here was the place where I’d remake Hazel Renner. I set down the tray and knocked. Lilli trotted off.

“Come in, Tom.”

I entered. The baron didn’t look up. An identical inlaid table stood
next to his desk. When I set down the tray, he turned, perplexed. “Miss Renner?”

“Yes, sir, I brought your breakfast.”

His Adonis-perfection was even more stunning in the wash of morning sun.
Don’t stare.
But how could I not? He was exquisitely dressed in a fine woolen jacket, necktie knotted with military precision over a snowy linen shirt pressed smooth as an icy lake. Close as we were, he seemed strangely distant, as if behind glass. “You’ll excuse me. These attacks blur the memory. You came asking about your mother.” I nodded. “You were helpful in reducing my pain, for which I am grateful.”

“Thank you.”

“I presume Tom showed you Mein Königsberg and you met Anna, who must have been glad to see you.” He pronounced “glad” carefully, as if testing its sense. When I asserted that all this had indeed happened, he began attentively buttering his toast, clearly a sign that I should discreetly withdraw.

Say it. Step forward.
“Baron, I would like to assist you in your work here.”

If Lilli had spoken, he could not have looked more astonished. The silver butter knife hung in the air; sunlight glinted on its edge. “Assist me? You seem like a pleasant, well-brought-up young lady, but what makes you think yourself capable? You have experience in my work?”

Friedrich began as an upholsterer, I might have noted. “Perhaps I can’t do everything or even part of what—your former assistant did, but there is much that I
can
do, or learn to do.” The beautiful face hadn’t moved. “I appreciate art.” This sounded ridiculous.

“You appreciate art.” The words rattled like dry stones. “Meaning what, precisely?”

My voice slid up and down as I spoke of my hours in the Carnegie Institute, the sculptures I’d sketched, landscapes I’d studied, my
drawings in Galway, the faces of children and how I’d chosen pen, pastels, or pencil according to the nature of each child.

When I’d finished, when my throat went dry, he precisely positioned a cup and saucer on the tray. “Miss Renner, I am a dealer in fine art. Perhaps Tom told you this? I arrange importation and consignment of valuable objects to collectors. I don’t see how sketching children prepares you to assist me. If you taught school, why not return to that worthy enterprise?”

“Because—it’s impossible now.”

“Why?”

“I can’t say, sir. I mean, I can’t tell you.” Of all that I had said, this fact seemed to intrigue him most. I pushed on, a soldier advancing. “I would not be costly.” Scanning the neat stacks of documents, indexes, and maps, I hazarded: “I could file for you, write letters, make copies, help Tom in some way, and then, at the end of the war, you could find someone more experienced, from Europe perhaps.”

“The end of the war,” he repeated, turning away, his profile a pale relief against the wooden paneling. “And when might that be?”

“Soon, I hope.”

“
Soon
would be advantageous. And this assistance you offer without experience would not be costly, you say.”

“No. I would like to learn the—business of peace.” A fine brow arched up in inquiry. “Helen Keller spoke of it, sir. She said many are involved in the business of war, but few attend the business of peace. To preserve art is part of the business of peace, I believe.”

“And you want to pursue this ‘business’ here, in Mein Königsberg?”

“Yes. Here.”

“I see. Your ministrations did save me some hours of pain, for which I am in your debt.” He studied the paper before him so long and intently that I wondered if another “attack” had begun. He squared the
paper on an ink blotter. “Well then, we will see if you are suited. Take a seat, Miss Renner.” There were two other desks in the office, one marble-topped like his, with an elegant antique chair, upholstered in tapestry. Perhaps it was Friedrich’s. The other was oak, with a sturdy, rush-bottomed chair. I sat there. Nothing happened. Was this the first test, how long I could endure silence? Finally the baron crossed the gulf between us and set a file on the desk as gently as if it were a holy relic. “Begin here, with—my assistant’s records of a collection we bought and dispersed. Let me know when you’ve reviewed them.”

Pages of script in a meticulous hand described a group of Albrecht Dürer engravings, listing the provenance, history, and specifics of each, auction bids, and correspondence. “FW” neatly inked in every corner must be Friedrich’s initials. The file included envelopes ordered by date, steamed open, not slit. No wonder the baron found my presumption astounding. Who could work to this standard? But I wouldn’t retreat now.

I closed the ledger and cleared my throat. “What would you like me to do next, Baron?”

He pushed back his chair. With precise economy, he selected a folio and came to my desk. His posture and pace, the very precision of his gait, bore a military economy of gesture, a relentless, unspoken force. I couldn’t move, trapped between terror and fascination. “I’d like to sample your writing skills, Miss Renner, and test your eye, since, as you say, you ‘appreciate art.’ That established, we could proceed to the more typical aspects of potential employment: filing, copying, and so forth.” I nodded, afraid my neck would crack from strain. “Good.” He set the folio on my desk and opened it to reveal a print of an oil painting depicting an older, clearly wealthy woman with a seventeenth-century headdress gazing out from a darkened space. “The artist is?”