From Ashes Into Light: A Novel

by Gudrun Mouw

  I have made a friend, however. It’s my cousin Peter. He is six years older than me. He holds a steady job, works hard, and has almost saved enough money for a car. His mother is one of my father’s sisters, who has always been good to us, even in the early days when my mother and I came to Munich, bereft and penniless. He looks after us, just as his mother did, but he doesn’t take us to the usual tourist places—statues, cathedrals, plazas, the opera house, the English Garden, or the local castle. Instead, he organizes family visits to the Oktoberfest and to the city’s dance halls and beer cellars. He knows where to buy the best sausages and he takes us to those places where strangers hook their arms together, swinging side to side, singing traditional songs, where the famous Bavarian friendliness feels real.

  Peter and I sit on a bench in the city square near my school and hold our partly eaten lunches in our laps. Peter looks puzzled. “What’s wrong? You’ve hardly eaten a thing.”

  I look down at my bread and don’t know how to answer him. He takes my hand. He speaks in a voice so low it’s almost as if he doesn’t want to say it. “Does it have to do with Uncle Hans?” I nod yes.

  “I knew it. I shouldn’t say this. He’s my mother’s only remaining brother and he is your father, but I don’t like him.”

  “Please…” I plead. Can we really talk about this?

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.” I wipe at tears threatening to roll to my chin. I turn my face away and Peter squeezes my hand.

  “You don’t need to say any more.”

  We sit quietly between two elms, and I notice how Peter’s shirt collar at the back of his neck is partly crumpled, as if he had tried, but not completely managed, to tuck it underneath his coat. I find this endearing. People across the square are having lunch at an outdoor café. Umbrellas that shaded the tables in summer are now folded. Nearby, a church clock strikes the quarter hour. A streetcar halts, doors slide open, and people rush out as others squeeze in.

  I begin to float, watch myself sitting next to Peter, my head bent slightly towards him, my hair tied up, the back of my neck exposed. I see myself sitting solidly on the bench, yet at the same time I am floating. My body feels weightless. The breeze whispers: remember this moment. Do not forget the good in your life. Peter touches my shoulder and brings me back. I jump.

  “Be brave,” he urges and his kindness stirs up difficult emotions. We finish eating in silence, throw the lunch remains in a trash can next to the bench, and walk towards a stone arch on the far side of the broad avenue. The arch looms taller as we stroll closer. We can no longer take in the whole, only its stone parts—wide bases, round pedestals, and flutes on the lower right and left columns. Stretching our necks, Peter and I see the top of the bell arch curving up to a deep, blue sky.

  “It’s so huge up close like this,” I say, “it’s almost overwhelming.”

  “We can back off. Do you want to?” I shake my head no.

  “But…” I hesitate. “Sometimes I see myself from a distance, like when we were sitting on the bench. And there are other strange things.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I have trouble describing what I want to say in German.”

  “I know.”

  A leaf scrapes across the cement path in front of us. A breeze hurries the leaf along, red and yellow and brown; it blows towards an unknown destination. The leaf has nothing it needs to do, no secrets to keep, no filial demands, nothing to protect. “I’d like to be that leaf,” I say, “then I wouldn’t mind where I went. Papa’s talking about going back to America.”

  “Damn. I wish…” Peter shakes his head and stops himself.

  “I’ve been sad lately, but you have been a good friend.” I don’t know how to say that my father is raping me while my mother is at work. And that a seething anger is making me more and more withdrawn, that the sadness is a cover, and, as it is, barely acceptable to the world that expects the young to be happy and pliable. “You have been so very good for me,” I say, willing my lunch hour not to end on a tragic note. “Let’s go through the arch and see what’s on the other side.” I want to brush away the darkness.

  We walk beneath blue sky. Old statues and towers, fountains, and cobblestones distinguish the plaza as an ancient gathering place. Peter and I, without words, stroll happily in each other’s company beneath steeples and medieval sculptures. Bells peal. Streetcars chime. Crisp, fall air flutters bright banners along the narrow walkways, and the smell of freshly baked soft pretzels drifts around the corner. The city bustles in the midst of one of its favorite holidays, singing, it seems to Friede, as though to extol hope—streets not yet thick with exhaust, not yet overcrowded with voices of the jaded and the sour.

  A man wearing a frayed sailor jacket sits on a stool next to the walkway, chewing the wooden end of his paint brush and gazing at the work on the easel before him. The white canvas shines; shades of blue are splashed along the top. Barely sketched gray, brown, and rust-red lines hint of steep roofs and frescoed buildings. Flying yellow and green flags bring attention to the middle of the picture, yet the painting still has a transcendent, transparent look.

  Peter and I stop to admire the art, and the painter acknowledges us with a wink. His ocean-deep eyes twinkle, his red cheeks fold in, and his smile reveals a gap in his upper front teeth. “Young love,” he chortles. He hands Peter a card. “Come visit my studio, the two of you. If I were to brush the light you are radiating onto my canvas, I could die a blissful man.”

  I smile briefly and pull on Peter’s arm. I need to get back. Peter knows this and says, “Thank you so much. We will certainly consider this.”

  If this sweet man knew the truth, I think. He looks like one of the images I saw in the two mirrors at my aunt’s place. Does that mean he is here to teach me something? If I could say it out loud, I would say: The last thing I want is a lover.

  Somehow Peter understands I am wounded and what I need most is a friend to help me heal myself. I give the artist a wider smile before we leave. I am glad he saw what he saw, even though he didn’t interpret things correctly. Yes, Peter brings me back to light. He reminds me of what can be.

  Friede

  The Bodensee

  The school year over, my father, mother, and I drive to the Bodensee. My mother and I will stay for the summer. My father plans to return to the United States to get settled first before we join him. Across the ocean American youth shimmy and twist, but here I am sitting in the back seat pressed among the luggage, menstrual blood seeping through my favorite pedal pushers.

  “How was it by the lake last summer?” my father asks me from the front seat.

  “It was nice,” I say without too much enthusiasm for fear of drawing ire.

  “”What do you mean, nice?” Suspicion gathers in his voice. “Who did you spend time with?”

  “Just family.”

  “Really?” He sounds doubtful.

  My mother intervenes. “It’s true, Hans.” I am grateful he doesn’t pursue the subject for now. Looking out the window at trees and foothills and green meadows, the city has receded, and I think of Peter, knowing it is unlikely we will see each other again for a long time. We didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. When I asked my mother about it, she shook her head and told me she had heard from Peter’s mother that he and my father nearly had a fistfight, and my father didn’t want me to see Peter again.

  My father’s constant suspicions and jealousy have been churning inside me like a machine that I have not been able to figure out, until we are in Munich at the going away gathering with my father’s favorite family members. There I heard someone say, “Oh, that politician is such a hypocrite.” I looked up the word in my German/English dictionary and clarity suddenly came into my mind. My father probably accused Peter of something we never did, something that my father, on the other hand, seems to think is his right to do.

  One day I was criticized by my British-trained English teacher for using the word “become” in what he c
onsidered a wrong way. He often accused my English of being “too American.” He said that people couldn’t become something else. I didn’t understand. I came home to study the day’s lesson, to see if I could understand the problem, but then my father came home unexpectedly. He was supposed to be making his afternoon sales calls and my mother was still at work.

  He pulled me into my parents’ bedroom without a word. He pulled off my slacks and panties, even as I tried to squirm away, and he began his hypocritical assault. After the usual grunts and other noises, he left the house. I remained staring at the wardrobe, beyond anger, beyond despair, beyond grief, until I could get up. Remembering this now my insides cramp and I tell myself this is one more thing no one talks about.

  My father says in a low voice that he thinks I can’t hear in the back seat of the car, “Keep a close eye on Elfriede. She is at that point where she is likely to get in trouble with some boy.” My mother doesn’t answer.

  * * *

  At the home of my grandparents a farewell dinner is about to begin. My father is scheduled to leave for America the following morning.

  Tante Emma and Uncle Richert arrive from next door with their baby, but Grandfather Pulver hasn’t finished getting ready. He comes out of the bathroom with one side of his face darkened by gray and black stubble. I guide him back, hand him the razor, but he stands holding it as though he doesn’t know what to do next. Still, he is good-natured in his confusion. He observes as I demonstrate shaving motions on my face and he finishes what he started. I think, here is a man who has lost two of his children, his land, his home, his health, and still he is a good man.

  After dinner, while we wait for dessert, my Aunt Emma nurses her baby on the couch; a shawl covers mother and child. I sit down on the floor nearby and take up a magazine, but don’t really feel like reading. Forgetting my father’s presence across the room behind me, I lean my head towards the seat of the armchair at my back, stretch my arms overhead, and yawn.

  Emma smiles. “You look like a cat,” she tells me. “You have such a lovely body. Why do you hide it?” I hunch forward, embarrassed. Emma continues, “See what I mean?”

  I raise my shoulders and let them fall. Emma laughs. I can only imagine the squall gathering on my father’s brow as he clears his throat loudly.

  However, I am feeling defiant. Against a storm brewing, I watch with love how my fourteen-month-old cousin caresses his mother’s body as he nurses. They look so beautiful together, mother beaming down at her baby boy. I lean forward. I have a powerful impulse to untie the ribbon in my long hair, to run, to skip, to leap, imagining what it would be like if Aunt Emma, the baby, and I were strolling along the beach. I see myself free, liberated, hair flying in the breeze, wearing the bikini my aunt has often said would look good on me. In my fantasy we squish sand between our toes, splash and kick the water any way we want. We twirl little Fritz in a circle. We squeal, screech, and laugh. I smile at my aunt and look at her with gratitude, the way I never look at my father anymore.

  Then I see someone who looks like me, standing hand-in-hand with a bigger and taller woman who wears a crucifix and says, “Ruth, I wish you well.” There are shots. Then this Ruth, who looks to be only a little older than I am, with a transparent body of light, reaches towards me and says, “Thank you for not giving up.”

  I hear a loud scraping. My reverie ends abruptly. My father scrapes his chair against the floor again and, as he approaches me, I see that he is beside himself. He cannot contain his fury. He leans into me and slaps me along my ear, hissing, “Wipe that smirk off your face, slut!”

  My ear becomes an echo chamber. I recognize shock on my aunt’s face, which is also my own shock. Though I have become used to his outbursts, this is more blatant than usual. No one says anything. Who will speak up in a country that still calls itself the Fatherland?

  * * *

  It is near the end of summer when I meet a young man on the beach. He asks my mother if he can take me on a boat ride.

  My mother does not look up from the newspaper. She shakes her head. The young man says, “A cola then?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Marta,” my Aunt Emma complains, “let her have a little fun.”

  My mother defends herself. “You don’t understand. I’m not unsympathetic. It’s Hans. He is very strict about such things. If he ever finds out…”

  “Well, don’t tell him.”

  I sit under a large umbrella with the young man as we sip our sodas. He reminds me a little of Peter; they are both older, but Peter is more confident. The young man smiles at me awkwardly. He rubs his hand over a blond, damp cowlick at the top of his head. Charter boats sport white flags behind him. Across the blue lake, the Alps rise up, craggy and tall and silent. The young man wants to know about America and I answer his questions without elaboration. He seems nice enough, but what is the point? We are leaving soon.

  Still, his eyes are so open and blue they startle me. Like sky without clouds, they appear endlessly spacious. He asks, “Do you like it in the United States?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is school like there?”

  “More casual. How do I say in German? The teachers seem easier.” I cross then uncross my legs. I am nervous, unsure of myself. I pluck at my bathing suit straps and lift the suit up higher on my chest. The idea of romance, which I’ve read about in novels, doesn’t appeal to me.

  * * *

  My mother and I have taken our seats on the train at the station. We are going to Bremerhaven to meet our ship; we will cross the Atlantic once again. The train starts to move, lurching and rumbling. Grandmother Pulver stands outside looking up to the window. She pushes her face forward, unable to reach the pane. Tears roll down Omi’s round cheeks. Her brown eyes plead, her lips move. “Friede, Friede.” They form other words I am not able to understand. A painful sensation tugs at my throat. I try to open the window, but it remains stuck. I try again without success. Still, I call through the glass, “Goodbye! Goodbye!” The train pulls us towards the coast and I panic. I want to run away from some unknown, terrible fate, then watch, astonished, as Grandmother Pulver begins to run faster and faster as the train gathers speed.

  The old woman, dear Omi, seems determined against all reason to keep up. Her legs move as though her life depends on being able to keep up with the train. She runs as though there is nothing more important than this, for the rest of her life, dashing along the train until her loved ones are out of sight.

  I see my mother waving blindly at the space where Omi’s face disappears. My mother clutches at the center of her chest with the other hand. She weeps, and her weeping creates a silence between us that lasts until we reach the coast. As I watch my mother grieving I swallow lump after lump, but the tight feeling won’t go away. The train rolls on and becomes a mystery I am not able to solve for a long time. The train moves forward relentlessly and, in my mind, my grandmother keeps on running.

  Friede

  California

  We are waiting at the San Martin airport for my father to arrive. Our plane from New York came early, and I’ve asked my mother so many questions about where we are going that she gave me my father’s latest letter to read:

  Dear Marta,

  The city of San Martin appeals to me. It is a city not too big, too small, too hot, or too cold, sunny and dry half the year, so I have heard, and, best of all, located just over the mountain from a tourist beach town called El Paraiso.

  It didn’t take long to find a job. I was able to promote myself as an experienced pastry man with European training.

  I found us a place to live. A pleasant apartment, which I furnished from a second-hand store all in pink, beige, and browns because I thought you would like that best. I have not left anything out. I hope you and Elfriede will appreciate that.

  Yes, everything goes very well. No one knows us here, and we begin, as the Americans say, with a clean slate. My confections, cakes, and many-layered specialties have all come out to perfe
ction. My custom orders are bold with blue, yellow, and red flowers, green vines decorating creamy surfaces. The delicate frostings are delicious. The owner where I work boasts to customers that I once served Wilhelm II, who told me, “I have never tasted such wonderful desserts in my life!”

  * * *

  I cannot go on reading. How often have I heard him repeat this story? I hardly ever ate more than a bite of my father’s sweets, but once, before Germany, he caught me splurging on a pie at a friend’s house the morning after I had spent the night.

  He had arrived to pick me up there earlier than the time agreed. My friend’s mother, Mrs. Howe, the lazy cow, he always called her, had beckoned him inside graciously. She wore a lavender peignoir set. She hadn’t expected him so early. Her arms lay bare. I saw he was angered over how her cleavage spilled out but he tried not to let it show. Mrs. Howe apologized. “Sorry, I was just about to get dressed. I didn’t see the girls getting leftover pie out of the refrigerator from last night’s dessert. I’m afraid it’s not a very healthy way to start the day.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Howe. There are places in the world where sweets are not uncommon in the morning. We do not do this at our home, of course, but girls will be girls.” He spoke with his heavy accent, smiling way beyond a natural smile. My father started to narrate, in detail, what it had been like as a pastry apprentice in a luxurious inn where breakfasts were so delicious, but then he hesitated. Doubt crossed his face. He noticed that Mrs. Howe didn’t seem altogether receptive. He glanced at me as if to say, have you been talking about me?

  Under Mrs. Howe’s scrutiny, my father erased the frown that threatened his face. Pulling himself erect, he appeared taller than his five-feet-ten inches. He stood just inside the door and said to me, “Well, I see you like sweets after all.” His voice sounded pleasant on the surface, but to me false.