Under the Same Blue Sky (30 page)

When they turned away, I whispered to Walter, “Come by the castle whenever you want.”

“Maybe.”

T
HE BARON ARRANGED
our cabins on a hospital ship steaming across the Atlantic to collect the dead and wounded. Kurt drove us to the ship in a car piled with supplies that Anna and my mother had packed for us. We’d get a car in Antwerp, the baron said. We might even, he suggested wryly, need a second one for the sauerkraut.

We were barely out of the harbor when I managed to corner a Red Cross nurse to ask if a pilot reported missing in action might in fact be among the wounded. “No,” she explained, as if to a child. “Then he’d be on our wounded lists.”

“But what if he was so wounded he couldn’t identify himself?”

“We can read their names on medals around their necks. So he’d be on our lists.”

“And if he was a prisoner?”

“Then he’d be on our prisoner list,” she said less patiently. “I’m sorry, miss, but I’m on duty now.”

“The lists aren’t perfect,” I suggested to the baron at dinner. “Or someone could have read a tag wrong.” Tom could be in a hospital, healing, or with a jubilant band of prisoners just released.

“Yes, that’s possible.” He was pale and complained of a headache. “I’m sorry, Hazel. I’m going to lie down. I dislike ocean travel.” He didn’t leave his cabin all evening and didn’t appear at breakfast.

Wandering alone that morning, I met a Chinese sailor who spent his free hours constructing elaborate flowers out of cord. Sam had been a houseboy in San Francisco before running away to sea. “My boss say I only to understand orders, not talk, always be silent. But everything she say, I say to myself. So I learn English.” Proving this stolen fluency, he told Chinese folktales as his fingers twisted, looped, and tied obedient cord into a full-blown rose. “Nice American lady, this is for you.”

“Thank you, Sam, but are you well? You look flushed.”

He shrugged. “Little fever. But I drink tea and don’t worry. I’m strong.”

I didn’t see Sam the next day. “He’s sick,” another sailor said. “Good thing it’s a hospital ship.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You heard the ditty, miss: ‘I had a little bird. Its name was Enza. I opened up the window, and in-flu-enza.’” Yes, I’d heard reports of influenza racing through army camps and larger cities. It had even passed lightly over Dogwood; both my mother and Anna had been briefly sick, but nobody in town was seriously ill. Our wholesome air and situation
protected us, Mayor Woodruff claimed. Influenza news hovered in the far back pages of newspapers. With peace coming, why worry about sick people in distant places? “Tell Sam I hope he feels better.”

“Can’t tell him nothing, miss. He’s quarantined, spitting blood.” Sam had been slightly flushed the day before, just that. Could influenza chase down ships? Should I have tried a healing touch at least? But what would he have thought of a Western woman pressing a hand to his brow? And what about the baron? No, no, he was merely seasick, he insisted when I visited him. And tired. Of course he was tired. The war had exhausted us all. I was tired myself and mildly dizzy, perhaps a little seasick, too.

That evening at sunset, Sam was buried at sea with the first mate, also dead of influenza. I panicked for the baron, now feverish and attended by a private nurse. Sam’s knotted rose was in my pocket. And here was his body, wrapped and weighted in sailcloth, the ship stopped under a violet sky, the chaplain reading scriptures, the bugler playing taps. Two boards tipped; the bodies slid feetfirst into dark waves. Two splashes. The ship seemed to buck, pushed up by the mass of their bodies? My head spun. Coughing, I gripped a post.

“Are you sick, miss?” said a voice nearby. “Orderly, get this one to the infirmary.”

“No!” But they were already carrying me through a dark passage.

I
AWOKE ON
a narrow bed in a line of beds separated by white curtains. “The Baron von Richthofen?” I asked a passing nurse, her face covered by gauze. They all wore masks, I noticed, as if their mouths were gone.

“He’s in another ward.” Where? I struggled to sit. “No, no, miss. Lie back.” So hot. Was this my breath, so loud and wheezing? And what held down my body, making me so weak?

“Do I have influenza?”

“Yes.”

“Will we get better?”

“I hope so. You’ve lasted three days. That’s a good sign.” Her eyes were smudges. “We haven’t had more than two hours’ break in days,” she admitted. The nurses had begged the captain for sailors to help in the wards. “He refused. I can’t blame him.” Coughing racked my chest, as terrible as bronchitis. My body ached.
I need a healing touch,
I thought.

Later there was someone nearby, lifting my head, wiping my mouth. “Mother?”

“No. I’m a nurse. Try to sleep.”

I slept. I woke. “No blood in the sputum yet,” a man’s voice was saying. “That’s good.” The baron had been moved back to his cabin, I was told. They took me to a different ward, much quieter. “You’re with the lucky ones,” a nurse said. I was fed, washed, and woke without fever. Someone sat near me. I craned my neck and saw the baron masked and reading. His eyes were clear and back erect.

“You’re alive.” My voice was hoarse; each word grated.

“Quite.” He closed his book. “As you are.”

“How long was I sick?”

“Four days. We’ll be in Antwerp soon. We’ll find influenza there, but apparently surviving one attack gives some immunity.” Every sailor taken on in Boston had died, he said, ten more after Sam, three nurses and a doctor, all gasping for air as bloody sputum filled their lungs. “First the war and now influenza from China to Africa, and all across Europe. Eskimos are dying and cannibals in the South Pacific.”

“The newspapers didn’t say it was so bad.”

“No, of course not. They didn’t want civilians worried. But everyone knows about it now. There are mass graves in Philadelphia.” I jerked up. He gently pressed me down. “Dogwood’s safe so far. They let me telegraph the mayor.”

“Pittsburgh?”

“Very bad.”
Luisa. Uncle Willy. Tante Elise. All my friends
. “Rest now. The next part will be difficult.”

W
E DOCKED IN
Antwerp and entered a wasteland. In the cold rain, we passed fields of rubble. Tom was right: war takes color from the earth, leaving only mud, dust, charred wood, bone, and the ghastly gray of death. From houses with broken windows came coughing, coughing, coughing. A farm wagon dumped bodies in foxholes, convenient for graves. Walking skeletons surrounded us. Returning soldiers and desperate civilians stripped and looted where they could. We bought a battered Peugeot from a man who’d lost his family in the last days of war. “Where am I going now?” he said. “What kind of peace is this?”

Moving east into Prussia, threading rutted roads, we bought what food we could to supplement Anna’s rations and share along the road. Lines of refugees shuffled on, walking, limping, pushing laden bicycles or wagons, leading bony horses, every face a blank of sorrow. Was Tom somewhere on these roads?

We gave as many rides as the Peugeot could bear. “We’re going home,” some said, or simply “away from here.” Everywhere land was scored by trenches and scooped by bombs. Everywhere we saw black sentinel trees, endless coils of barbed wire, and nothing moving in the fields but vultures, dogs, rats, and wolves.

When we came upon an American unit, I left the baron in the car, calling him “my driver.” The soldiers suggested routes that might be passable. I asked about Tom. “A pilot missing in action?” repeated a lanky sergeant. “Behind enemy lines?” He glanced at my face. “Well, don’t give up, miss. Takes a while to get things sorted out.”

How could all this be “sorted out”? A giant hand had shaken the earth, flinging men across Europe, knocking down cities like blocks,
scattering families. We passed nuns shepherding children to an orphanage that might receive them or might already be destroyed. We gave a potato to each child. They were instantly devoured, like pebbles dropped in a well of need.

When we ran out of gasoline, a passing British convoy gave us more. “It’s good to travel with an ally,” the baron said. One-legged men on benches and weary women examined us. We were close to his old home now, the baron said. Perhaps these people remembered him, or perhaps we were only notable in seeming unscathed by war. The bakery was gone. “Russians did it,” an old man told the baron. “Or Poles. Or one of ours. There’s no bread anyway.”

“How do you eat?” The old man shrugged. We gave him the last of our potatoes. Pale eyes under bushy gray brows studied the baron. The baron studied him as well, peeling back years. “Ensel the butcher?”

The old man nodded. “And you are one of the von Richthofens? Erich died heroically, we heard. So you are—?”

“Georg, the oldest son.”

The man jerked back, raising a wrinkled hand. “No, no. Don’t play tricks on me.” He reeled into one of the gaping doorways.

“The war does strange things,” I said finally.

“It does. Let’s go. The castle is just ahead.”

A wrought-iron gate hung open. A line of stumps stood where chestnut trees had been cut, probably for firewood. “There’s our cemetery.” He led me to a clearing with ranks of marble headstones overgrown by weeds. “Men like my father came here two hundred years ago, sent by Frederick the Great to civilize the ‘vile Polish apes,’ who of course hated my ancestors. Now the Poles will take back what’s theirs.”

In a corner we found his father’s grave, crudely marked with a wooden plaque. The baron’s polished boot edged aside a clot of dirt,
revealing the coffin. “So shallow. I wonder who buried him.” Another wooden marker had been jabbed in the sod:

E
RICH
W
ILHELM VON
R
ICHTHOFEN
1872–1918
D
IED FOR THE
F
ATHERLAND

“Apparently the body wasn’t returned. And they didn’t care to write: ‘Died drunk, with his pants down.’ The honor of the von Richthofens, honor above all,” the baron said bitterly. It was only when we turned to go that our eyes caught an older marble headstone, elegantly carved. I grasped his arm. He blinked, as if the words were a mirage. He touched them. They were real enough:

G
EORG
H
EINRICH VON
R
ICHTHOFEN
1869–1890
D
IED AT SEA

No wonder Ensel the butcher had turned away; he thought he’d seen a ghost. “So they buried me. So much easier. So many awkward questions avoided if Erich was the only heir. I wonder how elegant my funeral was.” He stood at attention, his own honor guard.

“Should we go see your mother?” I asked finally.

“Yes. Even if I’m dead.”

CHAPTER 19

Wasteland

D
ogwood’s castle outshone its Prussian parent. A slate-gray sky and bare trees added to the gloom, but neglect was everywhere. Ragged ivy crawled up walls and curtained windows. Great vases by the entryway had fallen over and shattered. Garden walls had crumbled. Only one of many chimneys emitted a trail of smoke. “Mein Königsberg,” the baron murmured, his face so filled with memory, regret, and private pain that I turned away.

He took out a polished key. He’d kept it all these years. We pushed open the heavy door and entered a dusty chamber. High wooden walls bristled with mounted heads of wild boar, deer, and elk. I turned and found myself face-to-face with a bear’s head, the mouth open to show gleaming teeth. I jumped back. The baron managed a smile. “That was the point, of course, to declare the von Richthofen men as hunters. All others are the hunted.”

“Some of these trophies were yours?”

“Yes, I was an excellent shot. With a gun in hand, I made my father proud.” Our footsteps echoed. “Now we’re hunted by creditors, it seems.” Clean squares on faded walls showed where paintings had
been removed. Marble pedestals stood without busts; china cabinets were empty; light patches on wood floors once had fine carpeting. From a distant room came rattles and thuds. He smiled. “That’s Lotte, the noisiest cook in Prussia. She’d be old now. I loved her kitchen. She always had apples for me.”

Echoes followed our footsteps like ghosts as we drew near the kitchen and quietly entered. A coal stove barely warmed the cavernous room. There were no apples. Sausage hooks dangled free. The flour barrel was nearly empty, as were rows of pantry shelves. Still, with the slightest trick of the eye, I could imagine a young baron with cheeks red from the cold, looking for treats in a warm and fragrant place. A solid woman with steel-gray braids banged a wooden spoon around an iron pot. The few bobbing dumplings must have taken most of the flour. “Lotte, it’s Georg. I’ve come home.”

She jumped and spun, eyes wild. “Go away! Go!” She raised the spoon and then another in a cross. “Georg died at sea. We had a funeral.”

“I’m sure you did. I saw my grave. But ‘death at sea’ gave Erich my birthright, didn’t it? A clever fiction, since, as you see, I’m quite alive.”

She edged toward his proffered arm and touched it tentatively, gripped his shoulder, and finally clapped work-reddened hands to his cheeks, as she must have done to his boyhood self. “Georg, Georg, yes you’re alive. No wonder the old baron acted so strangely at the funeral, hurrying it along. And here you are, a grown man and still so handsome.” She touched his temples. “Just a little gray. Where did you go—after you didn’t die?”

“To New Jersey. I built a castle called Mein Königsberg. I deal in fine art.”

“Ah, you were always the clever one, the determined one.” She noticed me. “And this is your lovely—”

“Fräulein Renner.”

“I see. Well, welcome to Mein Königsberg, fräulein, That is, to the
ruins
of Mein Königsberg.”

“Thank you, Lotte.”

The strangeness of our presence in her barren kitchen struck her now: “Did you come for your inheritance? There’s nothing here but debts and nobody left in Prussia but old men, orphans, cripples, and thieves. You can’t defend the castle and there’s the fräulein to think of.”

“I’m here for the baroness, Lotte. I’m taking her to America.”