The Wooden Shepherdess (18 page)

Emma hadn't bargained for Baron and Baroness making so early a start, and a splash of coffee nervously spilled on the stove-top filled the kitchen with instant aroma. “Gretl!” she called, “Dear God be quicker can't you with heating that milk, and take the rolls out of the oven, and—
Gretl!
” she screamed, with both hands plucking the curlers out of her hair: “Where on earth have you put that English marmalade specially kept for the Baron?”

By now she could hear the guests descending, and rushed to the stairs just in time to snatch out of their sight little sleepy Ernst without any breeches at all. But it wasn't till Baron and Baroness finally left that she got back sufficient poise to send Liese and Lotte back up to their room like scalded cats, for Liese to properly brush her hair this time and Lotte to put on stockings which matched.

“How many days till Christmas?” Liese and Lotte argued it hotly, dawdling along to school with their arms round each other's necks—each one saying the other one ought to go back to infant school if she didn't know how to count. Then they heard the town-hall bell, let go of each other and started to run leaving Ernst behind to be late for his different school alone.

“Little” Ernst.... In fact he was rather large for a six-year-old, slightly running to fat; but with big brown eyes which looked at you straight. At school he was one who suffered more often than most from what the children called “head-nuts”: a rap on the skull with bony knuckles in passing, which Lehrer Faber used as a cure for little boys dreaming. For Ernst was given to dreaming in school, and to filling his slate with dragons instead of sums.

*

Still, Christmas came to the Krebelmanns' house in the end whoever was right; and what Ernst had asked from the Christus Kind was a violin of his own. But his father couldn't stand noise, and the boy was anyhow much too young: so the Christus Kind had made a mistake on purpose and what he got was a clockwork train. He was so disappointed he secretly hammered it flat (if he couldn't get strings, at least he could get percussion).

Christmas came to the Castle; and there the table was spread with silver and china and beautiful tulip-shaped glasses, white ones for drinking beer and dark blue ones that were filled with berries and flowers; and everyone laughed and joked till the meal was over.

Then came the time for the presents. Behind closed doors Walther was playing “Stille Natcht, Heilige Nacht” on the Steinway, and all the others stood in a line outside singing the melody—Trudl's treble voice and Adèle's contralto and Franz's tenor and Uncle Otto's bass, while Irma managed a thin clear descant (the tears running down her face, as they always did when she sang). Even the twins stopped turning somersaults over the sofa; and only Mitzi was absent.

At last the doors were opened. The children held their breath and gasped at the tree with its star on top, and the tinsel “angels'-hair” wound in-and-out of candles that glittered on all the presents in shiny wrappings; and nobody wanted to move.

Christmas came to the Convent, too; and Mitzi found that nuns knew how to be gayer than ever anyone was at home—the air seemed humming with happiness.

Now it was 1924 at last: New Year's Day, and then the Feast of Epiphany. One more week, and Mitzi might have a visit.... But Adèle was torn in two about whether or not to go, for now both twins had mumps and Irma seemed to be sickening. Still (thought the mother, divided), Mitzi was bound to be homesick and counting the days: it seemed too cruel to disappoint her by stopping at home.

But Walther refused point-blank to come: he said he had “too much business to do.” Neither could Franz, for he'd gone off skiing to Innsbruck; and Otto had had to take his leg to Munich, to have its chafing socket adjusted. So Adèle would have to spend a night at the Krebelmanns' house alone; and Emma Krebelmann frankly bored her.... Of course, she
might
take Schmidtchen.... Indeed with a Hospital Sister installed in the house, and the two already at daggers-drawn, it might be as well to keep old Schmidtchen out of the sick-room awhile.

When the Krebelmanns learned that Freifrau von Kessen would once again honor their house with her presence (but this time without the Freiherr and only Fráulein Schmidt in attendance), Emma began to grumble. It seemed to her once too often. But Gustav insisted. Indeed he was shocked: such un-Christian thoughts were unheard-of (it isn't the rich that a Christian ever leaves out in the cold). So Liese and Lotte were bidden to share a bed to allow this funny old Fräulein Schmidst to share their room (there were plenty of rooms, but it saved a stove); and once the convent visit was over, Adèle retired again to that creaking bed—but this time facing the charging elephant all alone. Yet she couldn't sleep; and indeed she wished she had never come, for the child had seemed so remote when she saw her mother—had made so little pretense that the visit gave her pleasure, but seemed to be counting the minutes till time was up and her visitor had to go.

Behind her remoteness the child had looked so happy.... Yes; but how could one ever have guessed that darling Mitzi would truly be happier there in that gloomy place than at home? Or was that bluff, and in fact she couldn't forgive the mother who'd let them put her in there? No, for her happiness looked so serene it could never have been assumed....

Still, it was hard to believe that once-on-a-time one ever had been her Mother.

*

Mitzi lay awake too. Her Mother had told her that Uncle Otto was gone to Munich because of his leg.... She recalled his parade-ground bark as he'd read her aloud that bit out of Thomas à Kempis—as if “passing out of one's self” were an order as simple as “Halt! Form fours!”

But that air, which
everything
breathed.... Who was she, to have ever supposed it was meant for a Mitzi to fly in? Her Uncle Otto was just a typical breather who never attempted to soar: yet surely a better Religious than she was, because his religion was humbler and simpler—made fewer demands on the Lord.... For the Universe wasn't a twosome of Mitzi and Mitzi's Maker, He'd millions of other Christians to care for. His infinite kindness and goodness had seen her through one particular difficult patch, that was all.

She was now quite resigned to facing the darkness ahead with the confidence born of no longer expecting to see
any
dazzling light.

Walther said “business” kept him from visiting Mitzi, when really he couldn't face seeing his daughter behind those bars. Yet “business” was partly true, as “bars” reminded him: Toni Arco's letter from Landsberg Fortress had lain on his desk for a week. Toni wanted his help, and something had got to be done....

Set on its little hill in its charming bower of tress, Landsberg hardly looked like a fortress: more like a very select sanitarium. “Fortress-confinement” was strictly intended for Gentlemen, ones who had merely burned their political fingers somehow and lived as guests of the garrison rather then prisoners. “Landsberg was never meant as a common clink,” wrote Toni, “for dumping the criminal rabble they've started sending here now.”

Sharing his sylvan retreat with this gutter-mob gave him a pain in the neck. Even walking alone in the frosty garden the young Count couldn't avoid them: bare knees lobster-red from the cold in the shortest of leather shorts, bull-throats bulging from open shirts with floral braces or Tyrolese jackets and bursting with raucous song.... Of course he'd complained to the Governor: still, couldn't Walther perhaps do something about it? Pull some string, and get this riff-raff removed to where they really belonged?

Walther sighed. He would pull what strings he could.... But Mr. Justice-Minister Gürtner was no friend of Walther's and partial to this particular rabble. Poor dear Toni, his nose must be right out of joint. Just four years ago, when Toni had burned
his
political fingers (though all he had done was shooting the Communist tyrant Eisner dead), Landsberg had felt so proud of him, made him their guest-of honor.... However, today they had Hitler and all his pards from the Munich Putsch in the place and no doubt they made it abundantly clear to Toni who was the White-headed Boy of Landberg now.

When Franz gets back we must send him to comfort Toni. Meanwhile one could only counsel patience: these clowns were merely there on remand, next month they'd be sent to Munich and tried for their part in that clownish Ludendorff Putsch. Then Hitler himself would be almost certainly run out of town and deported to Austria, being an alien. Once he was over the frontier, Hitler'd be Austria's trouble; and gossip said the Vienna police had a warrant out for him—cheating his sister out of their father's pension, as well as dodging the call-up....

Walther had got thus far when Otto rang up from Munich. The doctors had found that it wasn't merely his artificial leg which needed attention: the pain and ulcers he suffered were due to his shattered hip-joint shedding fragments of bone, and called for the surgeon's knife. They said it had better be done at once —that same afternoon....

It seemed the very last straw to Walther, thus to be left on his own in such difficult times. For it meant he would now have to do all the paper-work normally left to his brother; and as for finding the papers, among those mountains of stuff all over Otto's office how could he hope to discover where anything was?

But worse was to come. Three days later a call came through from the eminent surgeon himself. He wasn't too happy about his patient: the operation had been successful, but Colonel von Kessen's temperature raged and he might be threatened with septicemia. Walther of course was aghast: did this mean (he asked) that his brother's convalescence was likely to prove a prolonged one? On that the professor hummed and hawed, but the upshot was that he wanted Walther or one of the family there on the spot.

Walther himself couldn't possibly go. But Franz had got back just then from the mountains; and so, instead of visiting Toni in prison, he found himself sent post-haste to visit his uncle in hospital.

*

There Franz learned from the nurses the secret reason behind the surgeon's alarm, which couldn't be put in a telephone call. Delirious half the time, the Colonel-Baron was talking—or rather, shouting; and shouting all sorts of things which shouldn't be overheard about caches of Great War weapons the Allied Commission had failed to unearth, about people who called themselves “Sondergruppe Something” and German officers training somewhere abroad.... They had shut the babbling Colonel away in a room by himself; but his voice was awfully strong—and just suppose some informer went to the French!

So Franz sat down by his uncle's bed to listen with care; and his blood ran cold. To begin with, “Special-group R” was clearly no wildcat private affair as the nurses supposed, but a highly secret Bendlerstrasse Department—concerned not only with cadres of German officers secretly sent to the Bolshevik Army for training but German armament factories building on Russian soil: with a Junkers factory somewhere near Moscow secretly turning out German army aircraft (which, under the Treaty, Germany wasn't allowed to build herself); and all over Russia German factories turning out German poison-gas, German shells. One even caught whiffs of a pigeon-hole plan for a joint Russo-German pincer-movement on Poland, to wipe their common enemy right off the map and restore their old common frontier. As well as von Seeckt (the Commander-in-Chief), such names as General Schleicher came in; and Radek, and Trotsky....

Von Seeckt
in league with Trotsky—the Archangel Michael in league with Satan himself? Yet that (thought Franz) was these simple soldiers all over: too keen on repairing Germany's body to spare one thought for Germany's soul. Franz had long been aware of the kind of thing his uncle was up to but not its extent; and his hair stood on end at all this high-level stuff.... Uncle Otto had got to be silenced. He asked the Sister point-blank how soon the Colonel was going to die; but she shrugged her shoulders. He went to the surgeon next, telling him bluntly his patient's ravings endangered the Reich and demanding some sedative drug. But the surgeon shook his head. He said he was well aware of the tenor of Colonel von Kessen's febrile delusions but waved that aside, since a doctor could only prescribe on purely medical grounds. After which he conceded the case was indeed a proper one for sedation and mentioned that this had already been tried; but he said that the Colonel's resistance to sedative drugs was abnormal.

“Then what about something stronger—Good Lord!” asked Franz, enraged by this Hippocratic hypocrisy: “Knock-out drops, to keep him under for good?”

The surgeon looked at the angry young fellow in silence: nor was it easy to tell what the Great Man was thinking, because of his hooded eyes and a face criss-crossed with dueling scars. But then he went on to explain that the latest treatment for sepsis was something he called “ozone,” a variant kind of oxygen formed by electric discharges. You bubbled it through the wound; and he'd heard of numerous cases where obstinate festering wounds had improved. The machine was a bit too noisy for use in a public ward, but the sterilizing effect of this extra unstable oxygen atom released from what was in fact no more than an oversize oxygen molecule....

Weeping tears of rage, Franz hurried back to the patient's room. There he found an electric cable already plugged into the wall and pink rubber tubes running under the bed-clothes. Then they switched the contraption on; and the normal hospital smell of carbolic and ether was drowned in the smell of electric sparks. But surely the coil must be wrongly adjusted to make such a clatter? The noise was frightful, preventing you hearing one single sentence the patient uttered....

Franz wasn't an absolute fool, though always a little slow in the uptake.

When the mercury dropped, the delirium ceased and the patient began to get better, the surgeon hid his surprise that the novel treatment had worked. Soon Otto began to complain that the ozone tickled him bubbling through his flesh. There were outraged tears in his voice, for the German Officer fully prepared for pain or death still can't endure being tickled—it's not in the Code, nor catered for in his training. So Otto was moved to the “bath-ward” (another latest idea) where he sat in a bath of running hot water without any surgical dressings at all, drinking down gallons of beer and eating enormous steaks with the sweat pouring off his face.