Under the Same Blue Sky (19 page)

“I’m sorry, but we can’t visit Dogwood,” my mother wrote. “Your
father’s afraid something bad will happen to the store if we leave. Thank you for the pictures of the castle. We’re glad you found good work.” Yes, they were happy for me, but what anguish surrounded that happiness? I saw my father seeing distant trenches; I saw my mother’s anxious watching, longing for her old Johannes. Come when you can, I wrote back. Come any time. I promised to visit them soon. At least we could have a picnic, walk up to Sunnyside, or watch the Keystone Cops. There must be some distraction.

The next morning, Tom stopped by the tower office to say that the baron had returned very early and gone straight to the library, asking not to be disturbed.

“One of his headaches?”

“Yes, but something else, I think. I’ve never seen him like this before.” Hours passed. In the vast castle, we spoke in whispers. Even Lilli seemed distressed, refusing food. Finally Tom knocked at the library door and asked if the baron needed his powders. No answer.

“
You
try, Hazel,” Anna concluded at sunset. “He hasn’t eaten all day. He hasn’t even asked for water.”

“But you know him better.”

“Exactly. He’s not used to you.” Over my protests, she and Tom shepherded me upstairs with a bowl of ice water, a flannel cloth, and a vial of headache powders. Curled outside the library, Lilli scrambled to her feet at our approach. We knocked. No answer. Anna opened the door wide enough to gently push me in.

CHAPTER 11

A Constable in Pittsburgh

T
he baron was deathly immobile in his darkened room. “Baron,” I whispered, “it’s Hazel. They—we’re worried about you.” The bowed head turned slightly as I set down the bowl, towel, and powders. He was holding a white envelope. Others lay scattered at his feet.

“Should I pick them up for you, Baron?” The chin declined a fraction. I knelt to gather the envelopes. They were all from the baron to Friedrich Stein at various German military addresses. Each had been steamed open; each had a letter inside. Why do people return letters that have been so carefully tended and kept? In anger or—I looked up at the baron’s stricken face—in death. Someone in his fighter squadron, perhaps the baron’s own cousin Manfred, had gathered and returned Friedrich’s letters after he’d been killed in action.

I hadn’t grasped the depth of the baron’s ties to Friedrich. I’d thought they’d merely worked well together, complemented and enjoyed each other. No, they loved each other deeply. How could I not have seen this? Once again, I hadn’t read signs. Friedrich’s leaving was an agony, and now he was dead. “I’m so sorry, Baron.” A tiny
ping
hit
the envelope on his lap. He didn’t turn away. This supremely private man had let me see him cry.

Another’s grief calls up the desperate, futile urge to do or say something, to busy oneself on the mourner’s behalf. “Would you like some water, Baron?” No answer. I wedged a glass in his hand. It didn’t move. Not to seem hovering, I stepped back. He was deathly still, as if the soul had drained away, leaving the solid body behind. An idea shot through me. I had Tom bring Friedrich’s chair from the tower office and set it near the baron.

The barest murmur: “That was
his
.”

“Yes. Would you like to sit in it? Come.” He hoisted himself up, took a wooden step, slowly bent into the tapestry seat, and folded forward, head in hands. “Would you like to be alone?” A slight shaking of the head. The pendulum clock had been stopped. “He was shot down?” A nod. “It must have been quick. He couldn’t have suffered.”

Now a sharp retort: “Quick? Falling from the sky, flesh burning?” Of course. Why offer absurd condolence? Hot and burning myself, I stood by, miserably helpless. “This was our room. He was here. Once.” Haunted eyes turned to me.

“Should I—draw him here?” The slightest nod. But how? I’d never seen an image of Friedrich or heard anyone describe him. I drew two men talking in shadows. At first my pencil’s passage over rough paper seemed to soothe him.

Then he murmured: “Why move art around? Why bother anymore?”

“Because art is important. We’re keeping it safe.”

“For what? Europe will be filled with cadavers. Who’ll be left to look at art or make it?”

“Stop talking that way!” My normal voice was startling in the quiet room. He raised dark-ringed eyes to mine. I crossed the gap between
us and pressed the damp flannel to his brow. He leaned back. We didn’t move. Precisely now, his work
had
to matter. A man can’t live in a darkened room. An idea bloomed. Unlikely, but worth trying. “Baron, do you remember John Constable’s landscape of Normandy, the one you’re shipping to Pittsburgh?” A pale hand waved off the matter. “No, it
is
important. Mr. Carnegie’s agent expects it soon, and I’d like to visit my parents. We could take the train and deliver it ourselves.”

“No.”

Say it, say his name
. “You and Friedrich worked hard to get that oil out of France. You said yourself that John Constable paints peace. Art must go on. You said that, too.”

“You take it.”

“If you talk to Mr. Carnegie’s agent, he might be interested in other pieces. And it would be good for you to—”

“No. Leave me alone.”

“But—”

He waved me away. I left. Tom and Anna were waiting in the kitchen. “Friedrich?” Anna said.

I nodded. “Shot down.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Anna. “And the baron?” I shook my head. “Will he eat?”

“I don’t think so. I thought we might take a painting to Pittsburgh.”

“What did he say?”

“To leave him alone.”

“Shot down,” Tom repeated. He whistled softly for Lilli. She came and without any order, put her head on his thigh. His large square hand dug into her fur.

I brought a breakfast tray to the library and retrieved it at noon, untouched. The baron did not leave the room that day or the next. He issued no work orders. Silence seeped like smoke under the library door
and drifted through the castle. Even in the kitchen, we consulted in whispers. Lilli curled in corners, refusing food.

“In town, they think he’s dying,” reported Polly, a young housemaid lately hired. “I told them he’s sad ’cause his friend died. They say he deserves it.”

“Clean the west gallery next,” said Anna tartly. “Then the hall of mirrors.”

The next morning I found a note on my desk, evidently left at night, saying that he’d inspect the Constable in the library. If its condition was satisfactory, we would take it to Pittsburgh by train. I was to review “his” procedures for transporting large oils.

Anna was ecstatic. Tom and I brought the Constable to the library, where the baron meticulously examined the canvas and ornate frame. But his shoulders were sloped and his voice toneless, a man gauged out by sorrow. Friedrich’s chair seemed both empty and full. “When will we leave for Pittsburgh, sir?”

“Friday. Telegraph the agent.” And to Tom: “Prepare a crate and padding.” Then he waved us away. Each morning, there were new instructions on my desk. In a flurry of special delivery letters, telephone calls, and telegrams, constantly reviewing Friedrich’s notes, I arranged the baron’s hotel and special handling for the crate, set a meeting with Carnegie’s agent, prepared an invoice, and told my parents to expect me.

He was silent as Tom drove us to the station. I might have been transporting
two
oils. He sat immobile on the train, refusing the dining car and barely glancing at rolling hills that Constable would have loved. Halfway across Pennsylvania, he did concede: “We went to Chicago once by train.” A little later, waving slightly toward the window: “Prussia looked like this around the military academy.”

“How long were you there?”

“Too long. The officers get in your bones; they shape you. See?” He
pointed to his legs, precisely parallel, feet flat on the floor. “They make marionettes to send other marionettes to war.” This was his longest speech in days. He rubbed his bezel ring and returned to his silence. What would Mr. Carnegie’s agent think of this shell of a man?

But when the conductor passed, calling “Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh,” the baron snapped to attention like a soldier to a bugle call. He straightened his jacket, smoothed his hair, and escorted me from the train. As we entered the station’s bustle, a milling crowd gave us space. One man whispered to his neighbor: “Must be some Brit for the munitions plant.”

Languid porters scurried at his crisp commands and pocketed discreet tips. He rejected the first cart; they brought another and carefully edged Tom’s wooden crate out of the freight car. The truck I’d ordered was waiting, as well as a Packard and driver to the Carnegie Institute. I’d hoped to go with him, to see offices behind the galleries and meet the agent, but when the baron stepped ahead of me at the Packard’s open door, I understood he meant to go alone.

“Thank you. All the arrangements were very well done. I appreciate your help, as always.” His first direct praise of my work. Disappointment flew away, and I was glad for every recopied letter and twice-checked invoice, every late evening’s work, and tedious care with the packing. Here was the prize of his people’s loyalty: the slight smile, the warming blue of wide eyes, and quiet pride in having pleased him. “Miss Renner, may I have the pleasure of calling on your parents tomorrow?” Calling on us? A baron in our walk-up? Surely his “contacts” had described the simplicity of our flat. It could easily fit in his kitchen. A light rain was falling. The driver coughed slightly, impatient to go.

“They’d be delighted, I’m sure.” Anna’s last instruction to me had been: “Try to make him eat.” He’d turned toward the Packard door. “Perhaps you’ll come for dinner, Baron. My mother is an excellent cook. We eat at seven.”

He hesitated before bowing slightly. “With pleasure. Assure your mother that nothing out of the ordinary is needed.” I was about to give him our address when he interrupted: “Renner’s Hardware, on East Ohio Street. At seven tomorrow.” The heavy door closed behind him.

I made my way home. So little time had passed, but I felt myself a stranger, remembering just in time to remove my muddy shoes before mounting the steps to our flat. The kitchen smelled of
butterplätzchen
and
apfelkuchen
. Tulips filled our prize Wallendorfer vase. My mother fluttered and fussed over me, yet the air had thickened in our flat. At closing time for the store, she warned: “You can hear in how he climbs the stairs if someone talked about Huns today. So much upsets him now. You’ll see.”

Apparently it was a quiet day; we heard my father’s customary quick, even step. Yet his smile was tentative, testing my shoulders before a quick embrace, sitting slowly in his chair as if it might splinter with his weight, reflecting carefully on the simplest question about Uncle Willy and Tante Elise or business at the store. When I asked about the neighbor boys, he stiffened. “They call little Herman the ‘Kaiser’s rat.’”

“I’ll talk to them.”

“You can’t. They won’t listen.”

“Shall we eat?” my mother interrupted. “Everything’s ready.”

At dinner, dishing out potatoes: “Do you know what they’re eating in Berlin?”
Say something. Do something,
my mother’s eyes cried.

“The baron asked to call on us. I invited him for dinner tomorrow. He doesn’t expect—”

Our big spoon clattered in the potato pan. “Baron von Richthofen is coming
here
? For dinner? Hazel, how could you?”

“He wants to meet you and Father. Everything you make is fit for a prince, let alone a baron. His cook’s
apfelkuchen
isn’t half as good as yours.”

She had to smile. “He’s from Prussia?”

“Yes, near Königsberg.”

“So meatballs with herring and white sauce with capers and potatoes. I could make
faworki,
their fried biscuits.”

“He’s related to Manfred von Richthofen the pilot?” my father interrupted.

“A cousin.”

“Every Allied pilot wants to down him. We’re losing our best men on land, at sea, in the air.” He closed his eyes. “Excuse me, a headache.”

I cooled my hands on our ice block and pressed them to his temples, making the slow circles that once helped. He covered my hands with his. “Hazel, it’s so good to have you home. But I keep seeing bodies, thousands dead for each yard of miserable earth. And the
earth,
have you seen pictures after battles? Shredded, pitted, littered with bodies, nothing living.” I pressed harder, praying for a tremor. Nothing. Nothing for those I loved the most. Still, I held my hands to his head, cooled them, rubbed, and cooled them again. “Thank you,” he said finally. “Let’s finish dinner.”

We had veal for dinner, more tender than Anna’s, or perhaps it was the home taste I’d missed. I told them about Lilli, the gardens, the new gazebo, and how Tom packed marble busts for shipping—easy subjects far from war. When the dishes were washed and dried, I brought out my father’s tin plates and tools. “Suppose you make a beautiful landscape and I’ll draw one. We’ll show how the earth can be.” We worked all evening, while my mother prepared sugared mounds of
faworki
.

The baron’s crisp knock sounded precisely at seven the next evening. My mother hurried to open the door. For once her natural hospitality failed. She stepped back. I hadn’t warned her, but how could even “he’s a very handsome man” have suggested such preternatural beauty?

I stood for introductions, but he had already bowed to my mother and presented a bouquet of yellow roses. He congratulated my parents on their daughter whose services he had the “honor and pleasure” to employ. Dazzled, they couldn’t have noted the curve of his shoulders.

He never betrayed the slightest notice of the plainness of our flat. He admired the “vista” from our front window and exclaimed over my father’s tin of the Neckar River flowing past Heidelberg. We showed him others: women gathered by a well, a street musician, lovers on a stone street, a woodland path. “Peace was so long ago,” he said.

“Dinner’s ready,” my mother announced. She moved us to the table, set with our best linens and dishes, and filled our plates with roasted potatoes and meatballs in creamy sauce. At his first mouthful, the baron sighed. “
Königsberger klopse,
the pride of Prussia. I’ve never tasted finer.” He ate slowly, with such clear pleasure that my mother blushed. We did not speak of war, but of Heidelberg and a walking tour of Germany the baron recalled in fond and avid detail. The halves of my lives folded together. Our bonds of custom and culture bridged the great gap of wealth. Everything American that marked us as foreigners was far away. My father joked as he once did, and my mother recited a poem by Goethe, solemn as a schoolgirl. I shared one of the patter songs we invented in Galway about Europe’s great rivers. How easy we all were then.