Other People’s Houses

by Lore Segal

  “Much she knows about that,” Paul said.

  Ilse said, “I was trying to tell her what you said this morning, how being an intellectual was like looking through spectacles. It’s funny—I understood everything while you were explaining it to me, but I couldn’t explain it to her. She says you’ve known Vienna and you’ll never be able to live without music and everything—no culture and no books.”

  “You can tell Renate from me that I have indeed known Vienna, and that we’re the victims of its culture and its books.” When Paul was excited, the muscles of his mouth seemed to become paralyzed so that the effort of speaking bared his irregular teeth, giving him a look that was almost cruel. Ilse clung to his arm, and he held on to her. Through his painful, tight lips he said, “It was my Vienna that turned on me. It was my books.”

  In the weeks that followed, the trainees weeded and waited for the yams to sprout.

  “Godlinger, you should cover your head. You’ll get sunstroke,” Paul said.

  Godlinger took out a handkerchief and put it on his bald head, which was turning a dangerously red color, as he walked beside Paul, making conversation, using his hoe like a walking stick. “When my American quota comes through, my brother and I are opening a fur store in Chicago—quite small, just the family. My wife always says, ‘Strangers don’t work for you; they work against you.’ You can leave some of the weeds,” he said impatiently, waiting for Paul, who had stooped to tear at a tough root with his hands. “A very smart businesswoman, my wife. She stayed in Vienna to wind up the business and will come straight to America.”

  In March, a group of twenty arrived from Switzerland. It included Michel’s huge, fat mother and his brother Robert with his wife and little daughter.

  “Any news? Hitler dead yet?” the Sosuans asked.

  “No news,” the “Swiss” answered.

  “If you happen to need any yams,” Farber said to Mr. Langley, who had brought his new trainees to the field that Jesús and his partner were clearing for them, “I have a bushel—pink, very good quality—I could let DORSA have cheap.”

  Mr. Langley’s face, under its tough outer skin, seemed to have fallen into a chaos of bewilderment. “Yams … I don’t know that we need any more yams.” Then he found firm ground. “Very enterprising of you, though, Farber. Very enterprising, indeed. If you go over to the office, I’ll tell Mr. Sommerfeld to settle up with you.”

  “Farber, Farber,” said Paul, “where did you get yams?”

  “From a yam farmer, Paul,” Farber said. “I tell you, Paul, there’s no product for which a good salesman can’t find a market, and no market for which a good salesman can’t find a product. Paul, look at Godlinger weeding.”

  Paul looked, and saw Godlinger, with his sleeves rolled up over his pink arms and a handkerchief tied under his chin, leaning on his hoe talking to Mr. Langley. As they came closer, they heard Godlinger saying, “My brother is in Chicago working in a big fur company, by name of Silverman—maybe you know it?” and Mr. Langley answering, “I’m from Texas myself,” in a pure Frankfurt accent.

  “Mr. Langley, one moment,” Paul said as Mr. Langley was swinging himself onto his horse. “Although I have had some farm training both in Vienna and England, my knowledge is necessarily limited, and in any case inapplicable to this new crop and unknown soil and season.” He spoke with the circuitous courtesy he had used in speaking to his professors at the Vienna University. “I would like to mention, sir, that we would all benefit from more formal instruction. How long, for instance, does it take the yam to sprout after planting?”

  Mr. Langley was shielding his eyes against the sun, looking toward Jesús and his partner, who were clearing the next field for a new group expected from Italy. He said, “How long it takes the yam plant to sprout, of course, depends, as you say, on the soil … the season.… I will talk to you about it when I come back from Puerto Plata. Two of my bulls are arriving from the States today.”

  “Mr. Langley, one other thing, sir,” Paul said, talking very fast as he felt Mr. Langley’s anxiety to get away from him. “What are the chances of bringing my parents to Sosua?”

  “Talk to Sommerfeld about a visa,” said Langley, as he set his horse in motion. “That’s his problem.”

  “Was singt der Schwane?” Farber asked Paul. “Come, Professor, you and Ilse always have your heads in your Spanish grammar. What’s that black singing?”

  Paul listened to Jesús, who stepped rhythmically behind his machete, singing,

  “¿Dónde está Pedro?

  Ya no le veo.

  Ya me parece

  Que me tiene miedo.”

  Paul translated,

  “Where is Pedro?

  I don’t see him.

  It seems to me

  He’s afraid of me.”

  “Ask him—maybe he knows how long it takes yams to sprout,” Farber said.

  Paul spoke to the Dominican in the next field, and reported to Farber, “He says they would have come up two weeks ago if we hadn’t ripped off the leaves and shoots. But he saw us do it—I remember him standing and watching from the road. Why didn’t he say anything?”

  Jesús said, “They will come up a week sooner, a week later.”

  “Why doesn’t Langley tell us these things?” Paul cried, in a fury.

  “El Señor Langley no sabe nada,” Jesús said. “He doesn’t know anything. About bulls and cows he knows.”

  They returned to their work. Walking behind his machete, Jesús sang:

  “El Señor Langley

  El no sabe nada.

  Ya me parece

  Que él tiene miedo.”

  Mr. Langley’s two magnificent prize bulls arrived and were corralled. One never recovered from the seasickness of the crossing and died, but the other was put to work to improve the Sosua stock.

  The “Swiss” had planted Farber’s yams, and began weeding. The “English” continued to weed their yams, which had sprouted according to Jesús’ prediction, until Jesús spoke to them from the roadside. “No se necesita. The yam plant is hardy and kills its own weeds after the first weeks.”

  “Hey, Paul, let’s not tell the ‘Swiss,’” Farber said. “It might be bad for their morale to have nothing to do with themselves.”

  Meanwhile, the “English” joined the holidaying Batey people. Paul and Ilse spent the hot afternoons down on the beach; they studied their Spanish; they swam. Renate, Michel, Otto, and the young men at loose ends roughnecked in the mild breakers, or sat in the sun telling jokes and singing old student songs with new rude lyrics, or groused.

  “Sosua, ech,” they said. “I wish the American quota would start moving.”

  “That Langley,” they said, “with his phoney American accent. A Frankfurter is what he is.”

  They said, “That Sommerfeld, who does he think he is, making us paint the barracks? Doesn’t he have enough Schwarze to do it?”

  “Sommerfeld knows what he is doing. It took him less than a month to settle the ‘Germans’ in Laguna, to show the rich Americans and his bigwig Dominican friends what a high-powered administrator he is, but in the last eight months, not one single person has got settled.”

  “As soon as everyone is settled, Sommerfeld is out of a job. He’s not such a fool.”

  “Sommerfeld is certainly no fool,” Paul said, “though he does enjoy maneuvering and disposing of people. But think, what a job—settling three hundred urban Jews on virgin soil on a tropical island!”

  “You think too much, Professor,” someone said.

  “Paul, you want to be our representative in the settlers’ council?” Otto asked.

  “Thanks, but no. No politics for me.”

  “It’s hot,” someone said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Paul and Use watched the young people scramble up the rocky cliff path on which, presently, Godlinger came slithering down. Godlinger said, “I’ve been waiting at the administration building since morning, but Sommerfeld didn’t have time for
me today. I should try him tomorrow. Did you hear what the ‘Italians’ said about the new pogroms in Vienna? They said they are taking women now. I want Sommerfeld to bring my wife here.”

  “I went to see him last week about my parents,” Paul said. “He showed me a list two pages long of settlers who want visas for their relatives.”

  “He said I should try him tomorrow,” Godlinger said. He fell silent, sitting with his head on a pillow of sand, his handkerchief tied under his chin. His mouth fell open, and the corners of his lips drooped in a lonely way; he slept peacefully under the sun.

  The yam field was covered with a mass of green leaves and pinkish blossoms. Paul took Ilse to see the swelling tubers cracking the earth, and, because the evening was sweet, they walked on in the direction of the native village. Presently Use began to tremble. “There’s someone walking behind us.”

  Paul looked around. “It’s Jesús, Ilselein. Jesús, cómo está? I’ve taken my wife to see the yams pushing up.” Paul fell into step with the Dominican, wanting to practice his Spanish. “How long does it take for the yams to achieve their full size?”

  “Five months, they get very, very big,” Jesús said. “But if I were the señor, I would harvest them now. Once they show above the ground they are apt to be stolen. Good night to you and to the señora.” Jesús raised his hat to them, and pulled ahead so that they could see his back outlined against the dying brightness from the sea. His pockets bulged, unmistakably yam-shaped.

  In May, Erich Marchfeld, a Viennese doctor for whom DORSA had furnished a makeshift hospital, pronounced Ilse pregnant. She was happy and nervous. Paul was very tender with her. He procured an extra pillow for her feet from the DORSA office; he drew diagrams for her on a piece of paper, to explain the growing of her womb and why it was making her feel ill.

  The prospect of the infant in the “Badekabine” and the realization that there was no effective training program in Sosua persuaded Paul to begin application for a homestead. Michel and Otto came in with him. Michel was especially eager, for Renate had promised to marry him as soon as he was settled, saying, “What’s the use of moving into the barracks and then moving again!” Otto kept making up hilarious lists of what they would need, and Paul found himself both chairman of the group and advocate for the realities. In the second week of June, the “Steiner Group,” as they came to be known, carried their requisitions to the DORSA office. They were asking for five cows and one horse per family, one mule for the group, plus chickens, pigs and a two-wheeled cart, a tool shed for equipment, a place to store fertilizers, seeds, and crops, a milking shed, and three houses.

  “And a thoroughly workmanlike list,” said Director Sommerfeld, He was an elderly American of Polish extraction, a small, ugly man with a large head, furrowed like a bloodhound’s, with moist little eyes and moist drooping lips. The three men stood before his desk in the carpeted front office. It was very sunny and still. Paul watched the director check the items one by one with his pencil. When Sommerfeld looked up, he said, “We’re putting up a couple of houses in Bella Vista,” and Paul felt ill with excitement and misgiving to think that he might be about to farm his own farm. “But I see,” continued the director, “that you are asking for a three-house homestead.”

  “We have talked this over, sir,” Paul said. “Michel has the care of his mother, but Otto could live with my wife and me for the present.”

  Director Sommerfeld nodded his great head and made a note in the margin. “And then who says we can’t build a third house, eh?” he said, and raised his face, transformed by a smile of very great charm.

  Paul said, “Sir, I would also like to mention that I have some farm experience—six weeks’ training on a Hachscharah in Vienna and almost a year’s farm work in England—though I’m very much aware that this is a mere beginning.”

  “A beginning—very well put. That’s what we are all trying to accomplish here, my friends,” the director said. “A bitter, bitter beginning. Let me talk this over with Mr. Langley, see what the situation is as regards livestock, and I will let you know. Good-by, gentlemen.”

  The three men made him little bows and turned toward the door, which had been opened from the outside to admit a burro carrying a man called Halsmann, from the Laguna settlement. He rode up to the director’s desk, upon which he upturned a basket of tomatoes, shouting, “A present from me to DORSA! It has taken me five months to raise a tomato crop, which the DORSA kitchen won’t buy because it gets tomatoes from the DORSA colmado, which gets tomatoes from Puerto Plata.” He pulled his burro’s head around as if he were setting an Arab stallion into a gallop and trotted the little animal out through the lobby and the front door. The Steiner Group had got to its knees after the rolling tomatoes, but Paul says he looked up surreptitiously and saw Director Sommerfeld, not at all discomfited, looking out of the window after the burro and rider with the open-mouthed interest of a child.

  In July, Paul decided to remind Sommerfeld about the visa for his parents—afraid equally of making a nuisance of himself and of letting himself be forgotten. He went to the administration building, where he found Godlinger already sitting in the lobby. Shortly, Sommerfeld came through on his way to his office, and he said, “Godlinger, you are becoming a fixture here. I have no time for you today. I’m expecting Señor Rodriguez, the representative of our so-called benefactor, from Ciudad Trujillo. Paul Steiner, my friend!” he cried in the pleasantest fashion to my astonished uncle. “And how is our little mother-to-be? We must see about that homestead for you people, before the arrival of the son and heir!”

  “If you would be so good, sir,” Paul said. “But what I’ve come about today is to ask if there is any further opening for bringing my parents out of Austria.”

  “And my wife,” said Godlinger.

  “Tell me, Godlinger, you were a furrier in Vienna, were you not?”

  “Yes, Director—‘Godlinger Furs.’ Maybe you have heard the name. On the Ringstrasse. I manufactured; my wife was in the shop. I have a brother in the business in Chicago.”

  “And you would like to join him there, would you not?”

  Godlinger’s face opened up with joy. “Oh, Mr. Sommerfeld, if that could be made possible …”

  “And I suppose, Godlinger, you consider that for a furrier it is a waste of his time training to be a farmer! I suppose, with your mind on your fortunes in the U.S.A., you have no interest in Sosua. I would like to know, Godlinger, why you suppose that DORSA should take any interest in anything about you? If I had it in my power—which, however, I have not—to bring over anybody’s relatives, I should bring over Steiner’s here, who puts in a day’s work in the field instead of sitting in the DORSA lobby. Rodriguez! My good friend!” cried Sommerfeld. He turned his charming smile on the tall, elegant Dominican who stood in the front door. “Walk in, walk in, and welcome to Sosua. I want you to meet two of our settlers, Godlinger and Steiner, who have been talking to me about getting visas for their relatives who are still in Germany—one of the subjects I want to persuade you to take up with the President, our good and great benefactor.” He took his visitor by the elbow and propelled him into his office.

  In the evening, the two men, nursing a magnum of champagne, were seen driving in the DORSA jeep to Puerto Plata, where they spent the night. Within the week after Señor Rodriguez’ return to the capital, came letters from the President’s office, granting certain privileges, including the return of two truckloads of lumber that had been extorted from the construction department, and thirty visas for the relatives of Sosua settlers. These Director Sommerfeld distributed according to a system known only to himself. None was given to either Godlinger or Paul, and only one to Halsmann of the Laguna Settlement, though he had both his own and his wife’s parents to provide for. The Laguna people told of the hysterical weeping that came nightly from Halsmann’s clapboard house.

  In the second week of August, a batch of Red Cross letters arrived. Farber saw Paul reading the familiar twenty-five-wor
d form and asked, “Hitler dead yet?”

  “No, but my parents were alive as of May twenty-eighth,” Paul said. They were sitting at Bockmann’s. Bockmann had started selling coffee and his wife’s cake on the grass behind his house.

  Dr. Marchfeld came over and said, “I’ve got Max Godlinger in my hospital. He’s had news that his wife has been deported, and he’s cracked up completely. He keeps saying he didn’t put in enough work in the fields.”

  “Lieber Gott,” Paul said, “I think I can explain that.…”

  That week Sosua had its first suicide; one of the young men hanged himself in his room in the bachelor barracks and started the Sosua cemetery on the hill behind Bella Vista.

  On the first of September, Michel Brauner heard through his brother Robert’s little daughter, Susi, who had it from Hansi Neumann at school, that the Neumanns were to get the Bella Vista homestead. The Steiner Group went to the office to see Director Sommerfeld.

  “What do you want from me?” Sommerfeld said. “You asked for a three-house homestead. Bella Vista has only two houses.”

  “But we talked about that, sir,” Paul said. “You remember, we said we could do with two houses? You made a note.”

  “What note? Where? I don’t see any note! Here on your list it says three houses. You can see for yourself. You are too big a group for the Bella Vista homestead.”

  “Sir, how about those houses going up in Barosa?”

  “You’re too small a group for the Barosa homestead. I’m settling the whole Swiss group as a unit.”

  “But they came after us,” said Michel. “That’s not fair!”

  Sommerfeld was studying their list again. “I have a note here that Steiner trained for six weeks in Vienna,” he said.

  “On a Hachscharah, sir.”

  “And that makes you an expert, I suppose.”

  “And a year he worked in England,” Otto said, aghast.