Under the Same Blue Sky (24 page)

At 3
A.M.
on April 6, 1917, Congress declared a state of war against
Germany and the Central Powers. My father left the newspaper in the kitchen where Anna, Tom, and I found it. My mother was already at the bakery. “What’s this?” Tom asked. A card had fluttered to the floor. Scrawled in pencil were two words:
Zu schmerzlich.

“Too much pain,” I translated. “Where is he?”

“Maybe in the workshop.”

“Let’s go. We have to find him.” Our shoes clattered down long corridors. He wasn’t in the workshop. On his bench lay one crudely etched tin of a man’s face, thin like my father’s. “Tom, I’m so afraid.”

“We’ll find him.” He whistled for Lilli, a piercing note I hear even now, answered by galloping paws. Tom held my father’s apron to her nose: “Find Johannes!” Perhaps he was asleep upstairs, or in the mirror gallery. But Lilli ignored the door leading back into the castle. My heart pounded. The bakery? Sometimes he’d stroll there in the morning, arriving as the first sweet rolls came out of the oven. Lilli took us outside, but not on the gravel drive to the gate.

“We’ll find him,” Tom repeated.
Zu schmerzlich.
Where would a man go to escape too much pain? Then I knew. Lilli must have known as well, for she was running past the rose garden.
A man could rest here and forget the world.
I’d brought my father to the meadow and he’d returned. To do what? To sit in peace and forget? Yes, yes, just this. Lilli reached the woodland path. Tom held my hand as we followed, faster and faster, through the greening brush. The path branched, left to the orchard, right to the meadow. Hope bloomed again. Lilli stopped and sniffed. But I knew. We plunged right.

If anything had blocked my view of the copper beech, I might have had another instant’s hope, but the great tree stood alone in a skirt of flowers and green. My father’s feet hovered over grass, an angel suspended.
Zu schmerzlich.
Too much pain. Not true. Not possible. I touched his hand. It was still warm.

Tom cut him down, pulled the rope away, and laid my father gently on the ground, his head in my lap. A thick bruise circled his neck. I pressed my hand to his heart. I was so far from the blue house. No tremor. Nothing. “Get the baron!” Tom was telling Lilli. He may have said other words to me I didn’t understand before he ran after her.

Now we were alone. It wasn’t grief I felt at first, only wonder. Alive, he was my father. Dead, he was one of millions: fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers. I touched his face, head, shoulders, arms, calling back the Johannes Renner who once held me, coached my reading, listened, walked with me, and first taught me how to draw a human face. How was
that
man now
this
man, unmoving in my lap? By his own hand, he’d rid himself of torment. His was a fatal healing touch. A breeze shook the crab apples, showering us with petals. I rocked with my own pain. I never truly understood this man or grasped the depth of his anguish. I didn’t read the signs.

Moving my hand over the motionless chest, I felt a lump in his pocket and reached in. One caramel. He must have known I’d find him first. In his despair, he’d thought of me. “The biggest and juiciest for my Hazel.” At my first gasping sob, birds flew up, squawking. I tore away the waxy paper and crammed the candy in my mouth. Warm tears trenched my cheeks; sweet juice ran down my throat, every drop a memory. No other fathers mattered now, no body stiffening, only this man who took me, fatherless, whose somber, loving kindness filled our flat, whose “Well then?” began my true education and gave me strength for my own journey. Sadness beyond sobbing, tears coursing down.

One by one, the birds returned. A robin scuffed the grass where Tom had cut the rope. That robin lived. The grass lived. I lived. But Johannes Renner was heavy in my arms. I brushed back the graying hair. When had his brow grown so furrowed, or this lace of wrinkles begun to circle his eyes? I hadn’t noticed. I would notice everything now, before other
hands took him away. Here was the blue work shirt, still crisp from my mother’s iron, the hands spotted with calluses, the belt notched tighter, the lips and fingertips turning gray. One silvered edge peeked from his trouser pocket. At my touch, a palm-sized tin slid out, showing a line of trees with the towers of Heidelberg above them. Had he gone home at last? I hugged him until my arms ached. “Enough,” I whispered in the chilling ear. “You’ve suffered enough.” But what about me? My pain had just begun. Hadn’t he thought of this, or of my mother’s pain? Or had he marched off like a soldier, not daring a look backward to the women who loved him, afraid to weaken his resolve.

Lilli came first, then Tom, Kurt, and the baron, panting. They’d brought a linen sheet. That was wise, I thought, for I was shivering. Instead they wrapped my father. “We’ll take him now,” they said, as they lifted the body out of my arms and carried him away. Anna and Tilda met us on the path and walked beside me, one on each side, holding tight.

Kurt offered to drive me to the bakery, but I wanted to walk. “She’s in the back,” said Mrs. McClellan, barely looking up from the bread she was slicing. My mother had just taken a tray of hot cinnamon rolls from the oven. Even now, cinnamon is my scent of sorrow.

“Hazel, what a nice surprise!” When she saw my face hers went pale. “What happened? Is he—?”

“Yes. I found him.” Her tray crashed down, scattering rolls across the floor. I kicked them aside to reach her.

“How?” she whispered. I touched my neck. She gripped the table. The gold of her wedding ring gleamed through a dusting of flour. I told her about the note. “Johannes, Johannes,” she groaned, “you had so much pain.” She laid her head on my chest, shoulders heaving.

Mrs. McClellan found us thus. “Your father?” she mouthed. I
nodded. She untied my mother’s apron and gently brushed flour off her dress. “Go now, Katarina. Let Hazel take you home.”

“The rolls.”

“Never mind the rolls.”

It was past nine. The streets were filled with people speaking of war, loudly comparing when they’d first seen it coming, how quickly we’d win it, and what our boys would show the Kaiser. My mother and I walked slowly through groups that parted as we passed. Two boys on skates curved to a stop, watching us. “What’s wrong with them? Don’t they read the papers?” one asked the other.

Anna was at the castle gate, tying on a black ribbon. She folded my mother in her arms: “Katarina, my dear.”

Her face was a mask, her voice flat. “There’s so much to do.”

“Mother, don’t think about that.”

“Hazel,” said Anna firmly, “some things must be done, however you feel.”

I wanted to curl in my bed and cry. But as I learned in the next hours, the ministrations after death brought their peculiar solace. First there was the washing and dressing of my father’s body before he stiffened. Then they’d dye my mother’s lavender dress black. We’d need a casket. “Tom could make one,” I suggested.

“Yes,” my mother agreed. “That would be best.”

The families in Germany must be informed, a difficult task now that we were at war. “The baron will find a way,” I said.

“Telegrams to Uncle Willy and Tante Elise,” my mother added, “Pastor Peterson, the Schmidts, the Hesses, and the Schwartzbaums.” This pale, composed woman was not my mother who cried over sentimental songs and shook at thunderstorms. “We have to make the funeral food.”

Anna hesitated before “of course.” Why? There would be a funeral. Didn’t that go without saying?

It didn’t. The baron pulled me aside. “I just called Pastor Birke. He says he can’t perform one or bury your father in the churchyard.”

“Why not? My father was Lutheran all his life, baptized—”

“I know, Hazel, but he took his own life, which in church doctrine is murder.”

“What? He suffered and then he couldn’t suffer any more. He wasn’t a murderer. He
has
to have a funeral. He was my father.” At the word
father,
I choked, unable to speak.

The baron waited. “It is a gift to be able to mourn such a man,” he said finally. I believe Birke is wrong, but it’s his church and the choice is his. I can find you a pastor from New York or Philadelphia who’s willing to give the service.”

“No. My father died here. This was his last church. Pastor Birke
has
to understand.”

“He may understand, but he won’t change his mind.”

“Then I’ll have to change his mind for him. If he can at least do the church service, could we bury him here, in the meadow where we found him?”

“Yes, of course. But I suggest that you prepare yourself before speaking with Birke.” The baron handed me a copy of
Tischreden,
Martin Luther’s collected sayings. I spent an hour with the tome, gathered some of my father’s tins, and went to the church.

Pastor Birke was in the sanctuary with the sexton, who backed away as I approached, as if I carried my father’s sin. “My deepest sympathy to you and your mother, Hazel,” the pastor began. “However, I deeply regret, as I explained to the Baron von Richthofen—”

“Yes, he told me your church does not generally perform funeral services for suicides.”

“Actually, never that I know of since our founding in 1782.”

“Pastor, you are familiar with Martin Luther’s thoughts on the subject?” I read from the
Tischreden:
”I don’t have the opinion that suicides are certainly to be damned. My reason is that they do not wish to kill themselves but are overcome by the power of the devil.” I closed the book. “In his case, Pastor, would you not agree that the ‘devil’ which overcame my father was this war?”

He pressed his hands together, clearly troubled. “You understand, Hazel, that I am responsible for the congregation of this church and the message our actions convey? To perform the funeral is to condone the act of taking a God-given life. Doing this may encourage others to follow his path.”

I looked into the limpid blue eyes until they blinked. “Would you be condoning the
act
or showing Christian compassion for the
man
? This is what my father wrote before he took his life, when he knew his countries were at war.” I held out the card.

“
Zu schmerzlich,
” the pastor read. “Yes, I know of his pain.”

“Do you know how deeply he took upon himself the pain of those dead from this war? He honored their lives.” I spread out tins on the pew. “These are men he knew: Karl, Thomas, Georg, Heinrich, Peter, Wilhelm, Otto, Hans. There are boxes more, friends and strangers. My father mourned them all. You saw him on the church bench. He looked for comfort; he ached for consolation. He came to Dogwood to find peace when Pittsburgh became an arsenal of war.” I took a breath. “This war ripped him in two. Can’t the mind be tormented like the body? Do you deny Christian burial to the sick?”

“Of course not, but I can’t encourage others in despair to doubt in the Lord. And what is suicide but absolute doubt?”

My voice echoed in great space. “Of course he doubted! After one million casualties in the Battle of the Somme,
who wouldn’t doubt? Who wouldn’t despair? Can’t he have rest at last?” The pastor was silent. “You know that I was adopted by the Renners when my first mother couldn’t keep me? Shall I tell you what kind of father Johannes Renner was?”

“It’s not necessary, Hazel.”

“It is necessary for me. If you deny his funeral here, I’ll give his eulogy now.” I did. The pastor didn’t interrupt as I spoke of our talks in his shop, the credit and aid he gave to so many in our neighborhood, his love for my mother, the many skills he brought to the baron’s work, even the caramel he left for me at his passing. Then I stood. “Baron von Richthofen has offered to bring in a pastor from New York or Philadelphia. We can have a funeral at the castle and bury him on the grounds, but for the little while that he was in Dogwood, my father was in your care, at your church, and it would give my mother great comfort to have you perform the last rites for him.”

“I will pray on it.”

“Thank you, Pastor.” I left him in the sanctuary, head bowed, and walked out into the lawns bright with daffodils and speckled with robins. Everywhere tiny plumes of leaves unfurled. How could my father be gone on such a day? Halfway down the street, I heard the heavy tread of one unused to running. Pastor Birke’s black jacket flapped at his sides like wings.

“Hazel,” he panted. “You know I can’t require the choir to sing.”

“I understand. But you will perform the service?”

“Yes.” He leaned against a tree, breathing heavily. He was a good man. In my anger I hadn’t seen that or counted what this change of heart would cost him.

“Thank you, Pastor. I understand that some in your church may be angry.”

“Indeed.” He smiled slightly. “Some will be
exceedingly
angry and
not reticent in telling me so.” However,” he drew himself up, “
I
am the pastor of this church. It occurred to me that your father was Dogwood’s first casualty of this war. He will not be the last, I fear. I’ll call on your mother this afternoon. You’ll need a coffin. Shall I send over one of the Harris brothers? They have a good selection, reasonably priced.”

“Tom will make one for us. My father would have preferred that, I believe.”

“Of course.” We determined that the funeral would be in two days to give Uncle Willy and Tante Elise time to come from Pittsburgh. Then, with a slight bow, he returned to the church.

“Well done, Hazel,” the baron said at my news. “He’s risking an angry congregation. Your father is ready, if you’d like to see him.”

The body had been washed, dressed, and laid out in the small dining room. “We had to pull the collar up to hide his bruises,” Anna explained. “Stay with him as long as you like. I’m helping your mother with the funeral dress.”

She led me to a chair and I sat. Was this my father’s ashen face? This stiff, somberly dressed form couldn’t be the man I held in the meadow. I thought of bodies in No Man’s Land, blown apart, eaten by animals. Men like my father. Other women’s fathers. Once he had judged how many blocks of East Ohio Street would be filled with the dead. Now he was part of that paving. I got up so quickly that the chair toppled loudly on the wooden floor, bringing Anna at a run, her hands dyed black from rinse water.