Michener, James A.

by Texas

  As he approached the castle, a stubby stone building whose outer walls dated back to the 1300s, he took a deep breath, surveyed his children's dress, and tugged at the bell cord. After a few moments a bailiff opened the big brass-studded door, and looked down his nose as the intruders entered an anteroom whose walls were made of unfinished rock and whose floor was paved with massive slabs of polished stone.

  A door opened, and into the waiting room came the Grafin, as she was called in deference to her family position before marriage. She had once been a great lady, but now her sixty-year-old face was painted like a girl's, and she wobbled as she swept forward, faced Franziska, and imperiously extended her right arm.

  Franziska did not know what to do, nor did Ludwig, but after a moment of their agonizing indecision the bailiff pinched the girl painfully on the arm and whispered hoarsely so that even the Grafin could hear: 'You're supposed to kiss the hem of her dress.' This Franziska was most eager to do, but as she bent forward the bailiff pushed her heavily on the shoulder, whispering again: 'Stupid, you must kneel,' and in his roughness he forced the child down onto the stone pavement, from where she grasped the hem of the great lady's gown and brought it to her lips, as all women in Grenzler were obligated to do when presented to this august personage.

  But that was not the end of the affair, for when Ludwig saw the burly bailiff smiting his daughter, as it were, he lost his temper, slapped the man's hand away, and said impulsively: 'Do not strike my daughter.'

  The Grafin, who was embarrassed by nothing, saved the day. With a tinkling laugh that drew attractive wrinkles across her heavily powdered face, she said: 'He wasn't striking her. Simply teaching her how to respect her betters.' And she stalked off, to be seen no more.

  The bailiff then led them out of the reception hall and into the

  throne room, a vaulted affair with rock walls and on a dais a heavy chair occupied by an imposing ruler. Margrave Hilmar of Grenzler was in his seventies, a big man with a red, puffy face, white hair and bushy muttonchop sideburns; for almost fifty years he had dominated this castle and the surrounding lands. As a youth he had been to Heidelberg, had lived for a while at the court of Bavaria, and had risen to the minor rank of colonel in the army of one petty German state or another. He enjoyed reading and had developed an affinity for the clarity of Schiller, whom he considered vastly superior to Goethe, who tried to encompass too much in his poems. He had dabbled in astronomy and had even purchased a small telescope with which he entertained his guests, for it was just powerful enough to show the moons of Jupiter, a sight which he still considered unbelievable.

  He was in some ways an enlightened monarch, but his territory was so small and in recent years so poor that he could accomplish little. He believed that the stringent measures advocated by Prince Metternich had saved Europe from turmoil, and he would have been astounded had one of his subjects told him that Metternich was one of the sorriest forces ever to hit the Continent. Each year that the Austrian's reactionary policies prevailed, principalities like Grenzler fell deeper into despair. There are many things in this world worse than an orderly revolution that turns tables upside-down for a while, for in such violent periods men still eat and marry and think great thoughts and rearrange their prejudices and launch new ventures; and one of the worst alternatives is a deadly hand of repression which inhibits all forward motion and stifles all adventure. Ludwig Allerkamp and his son were about to experience the soured and withered fruit that grew upon the tree cultivated by Metternich.

  'Excellency, my son Theo comes before you seeking permission to many.'

  As Ludwig prepared to assure the Margrave that his son had found a proper girl in one of the ruler's subjects, the daughter of a well-regarded family, the Margrave raised his hand to stop discussion, and when there was silence he asked the two questions which at that time ruled Germany: 'Has he a house into which he can take his proposed bride? No? Then he cannot marry.' And when this was settled he asked: 'Has he a job which pays a living wage? No? Then certainly he cannot marry.'

  Ignoring the father, the ruler turned to face the son: 'This is a harsh decision I must render, but throughout Germany the rules are the same. No house, no job, no wedding.' Before either of the Allerkamps could protest, he added, in an almost fatherly tone:

  'But we can hope that as the years pass, conditions will relax. Maybe you'll find work. Maybe a house will fall vacant. People die, you know. When that happens, come back and I shall gladly grant you permission.'

  Now, hurting inside, Ludwig pushed his daughter forward and said, pleadingly: 'My wife and I wish that an exception could be made for this child. She should be in school, learning her numbers and music and—'

  The Margrave nipped this line of nonsense quickly: 'In this land we do not educate ordinary young women.' He would discuss the matter no further.

  So Ludwig, almost crushed by now, launched his third futile plea: 'Excellency, I work long hours in your library, taking charge of accounts, seeking new works for your inspection, rebinding your most valued editions, and many other duties. I do most urgently request a larger salary from you, most urgently.'

  Now the Margrave really hardened, because this was an attack on his generosity. In his own mind he had never really needed Allerkamp's assistance and had employed him in one trivial capacity or another merely because he was educated and pleasing to talk with; however, in recent months he had detected in his librarian's comments slight traces of instability.

  'If you are unhappy with the terms of your employment, Allerkamp, it can be terminated.'

  'Oh, no!' Ludwig cried with obvious terror. 'Oh, please, Excellency!' He groveled, and both he and his children knew he was groveling.

  The Margrave seemed to enjoy it, for he pressed on: 'I can think of six young men in this town who would be most happy . . .'

  'Please!' Ludwig begged, and the interview ended. But as the bailiff was leading the Allerkamps from the castle, Ludwig suddenly told his children to return home without him, ran back to the throne room, and threw himself upon the mercy of the Margrave: 'Excellency, I beg you, allow us to emigrate.'

  As soon as that fearful word emigrate was spoken, the slouching Margrave stiffened, his hands gripped the griffin armrests, and he rose to an impressive standing position. 'Never speak to me of leaving Grenzler. We need you here.'

  Ludwig, realizing that once broached, this vital subject had to be pursued logically regardless of how angry the Margrave might become, forged ahead: 'Excellency, I have four children, and only one house to leave one of them when I die. What are my other three to do if they can find nowhere to live, no place to work?'

  'God will provide in His own mysterious way.'

  'But if you would allow us to go to America, as you did Hugo Metzdorf . . .'

  'Worst mistake I ever made. We need men like him working here.'

  'But if my sons can find no work . . .'

  'Allerkamp!' the old man shouted in real irritation over being goaded into revealing his true reasoning. 'Grenzler, and Germany, need your three sons. We could be at war with France tomorrow, or with Russia, or with that unreliable fellow in Vienna. We never know when we shall be attacked.'

  'But if my sons can't marry, if they can't work . . .'

  'They can do the noblest work allotted man, fight for their homeland.'

  'Their country orders them to fight for it but will not allow them to live?'

  'Talk like that will get you into grave trouble.'

  'But Metzdorf writes from Texas . . .'

  The mention of this short, memorable word Texas infuriated the Margrave, because there circulated throughout Germany in these years many enthusiastic accounts of travel in the western portions of the United States, with special emphasis on the advantages of settling in Texas. Most impressive was a book which the Margrave had acquired in 1829 for his own library: Gottfried Duden's Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America. Even the Margrave had been so excited by its roseate evidenc
e and reasonable arguments that he had in his first flush of enthusiasm committed the error of allowing a dozen of his Grenzler families to emigrate, but when he realized that he was losing valuable manpower, he called a halt.

  There was another impetus to emigration, perhaps the most insidious and long-lasting of all: thousands of young Germans had been beguiled in recent decades by an American book that had enjoyed not only public acceptance but also circulation among the knowing, who read it, savored it, dreamed about it, and discussed it with their friends. It was James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which extolled the frontier and gave a flashing, exciting portrait of life among the Indians. In a score of cities and a hundred small towns young men referred to themselves as Uncas or Leatherstocking or, especially, Hawkeye. The Cooper novels evoked a powerful dream world, but letters from Germans who were actually living in Texas made that dream such an attractive possibility that thousands of young people in the little states sought to emigrate. When denied official permission, they formed a slow, clandestine movement of escape, peopled by those whose

  hope of a good life in Germany had been killed by repression and hunger. Quietly, without even informing their rulers or obtaining proper certification, they began drifting toward the port cities of Bremen and Hamburg, dozens at first, then hundreds, and finally, thousands.

  It was this seepage of young men who might be needed to fill uniforms that infuriated the princes, and now the Margrave thundered: Tou mentioned the Metzdorf I allowed to emigrate. Let me tell you, Allerkamp, the police are fully aware that he keeps sending seditious letters to someone here in Grenz, and they also know that the letters circulate, exciting people to go to Texas. The police keep a careful record of everyone who reads those letters, and they stand in the gateway to prison. And if you're not careful . . .' With this gratuitous advice the Margrave dismissed his librarian, and when Ludwig left the castle he carried with him the harsh realities of life in a German state, which he reviewed as he walked across the causeway over the moat: The Margrave cannot provide his men with homes or jobs, but he clings to them for manpower in case of war. How immoral.

  He was pondering this irony when he passed the bookshop of his neighbor Alois Metzdorf, and since they were in related businesses, he stuck his head in the door and asked: 'What's the news?' Something in the way he did this, perhaps the obvious hesitancy of his stopping, alerted Metzdorf: 'What's the matter, Ludwig?' and although Allerkamp was still in the street, he started to talk. With confidences he would never before have shared with the bookseller, he told of his disastrous meeting with the Margrave, and when he was through, Metzdorf said: 'I have a letter you should read. It comes from my brother Hugo in Texas,' and he pulled the bookbinder into his shop, while a policeman far up the street took note of this latest visitor.

  'What an exciting letter!' And when he passed it along, Allerkamp's hands almost trembled as he turned the flimsy pages covered with small, precise gothic script, and his breathing almost stopped as he focused on particular paragraphs which arrested his attention:

  No matter what they tell you, Alois, rattlesnakes leave an area which is well tended. 1 have not seen one in six months. And mosquitoes which are so dreadful along the shore of the sea do not molest us here . . .

  I assure you that there are a million wild horses to be caught and tamed if one has the patience, but we buy ours from Mexicans, who are superb at this skill . . .

  Melons, squash, beans, potatoes, cabbages of immense size, rutabagas, beets, celery, onions, radishes, peaches, pears and corn, we have them all in abundance. Venison, beef, mutton, pork we enjoy every week, but fish we do not have as yet . .

  We do not bother with a church or the ministrations of a clergyman because we have such strong memories of their having been the agents of the Margrave back home, but we do go to the English minister for our marriages, which should always be entered into with God's blessing. In daily life we are our own priests . . .

  Land is available in vast quantities, millions of unclaimed acres. It is waiting for you when you come . . .

  Night after night we go to bed exhausted from hard, manly work. Bohnert who was a poet in Grenzler builds furniture, the best in this area. Hoexter who wanted to be a professor in Germany is a farmer in Texas. Your friend Schmeltzer who trained to be an engineer is a grower of sheep and cattle, and a good one. And I who was to be a professor am a farmer of more than five hundred hectares. How the great wheel of the world changes in its revolutions.

  I will tell you one thing, Old Friend. Sometimes at night my heart breaks in longing for Grenz, the good food, the singing, the winter fires, prayer in the church. And if you join us, as I pray you will, your heart will break too in its hunger for the old ways, especially in December and January when there is no snow on the ground. But there is a greater consolation. Here you will be free. No Margrave, no thundering minister, no conscripting officer from the regiment. You will be free, and, Alois, that makes all the difference . . .

  Carefully Allerkamp refolded the letter and handed it back to Metzdorf: 'Powerful statement. He certainly seems to be happy in Texas.'

  'Every letter, he begs me to join him. I don't think Hugo would deceive me.'

  Allerkamp reached out and tapped the letter: 'So you accept what he says?'

  Metzdorf looked about his shop and whispered: 'Every word. My brother would never deceive me.' Ludwig nodded, for the two men wanted to believe that a refuge like Texas existed.

  'But,' Allerkamp warned, 'he says nothing reassuring about the Indians.'

  'Ah!' Metzdorf cried. 'He said that in his last letter,' and he produced an earlier, well-thumbed epistle in which Hugo had said explicitly:

  I know you must be apprehensive about the Red Indians. They have long since left these parts, and I myself in all this time have seen only

  three or four who came here to trade. They were much like the Poles we saw that day in Grenz, different in speech, different in coloring and appearance, but ordinary men otherwise. 1 myself have traded with them and thought nothing of it

  After studying this letter, Allerkamp started toward the door, wildly excited by the visions of Texas both epistles had reawakened, but before he could leave, Metzdorf said quietly: 'I have this new book from Paris, and I want you to read it.' And he took from a hiding place beneath his counter a small, unimpressive book which had been smuggled across many borders: Poems by Hein-rich Heine, the Jewish exile. It was not a crime to have a book by this unpleasant man, but copies were confiscated when found and persons who had read them were noted by the police.

  Allerkamp, like most Germans of his type—men who had been to university as had their fathers and grandfathers—adhered mainly to the great poetry of Goethe and Schiller, whom they revered, and few had any acquaintance with the renegade Heine, but they had heard rumors that he was an impassioned poet with much to say, so that they were naturally inquisitive as to his message. Also, the fact that he was Jewish lent his poetry an added aura of mystery, for such men knew few Jews and were alternately repelled by them and fascinated.

  'Listen to what he says about us:

  'And when I reached St. Gotthard Pass I could hear Germany snoring, Asleep down below in the loving care Of her thirty-six rulers.'

  'Do the police know you have this book?' Allerkamp asked. 'No, no, but I want you to read it. Heine has a lot to say to us.' 'Will you try to join your brother in America?' Metzdorf made no reply. He simply forced the book into his

  friend's hands and led him to the door. When Ludwig left the

  shop he looked up and down the main street, but the policeman

  was gone.

  That evening Ludwig Allerkamp assembled his family and said gravely: 'Franziska, fetch the Bible.'

  The quiet little girl, her two pigtails bobbing beside her ears, went to the bedroom, where she lifted the heavy brassbound Bible and carried it to her father. He opened it to Psalms, from which he read regularly to his brood, and asked each member of the />
  family to place a hand upon the sacred book. This was a curious, meaningful act, for in recent years he had grown increasingly impatient with the church, which sided always with the government and invariably against the interests of its parishioners. In fact, Ludwig Allerkamp, like most Germans who were contemplating emigration, had begun to drift away from the stern Lutheran-ism of his youth, for he found the church repressive and unresponsive. Yet still, in any moment of crisis, he turned instinctively to the Bible.

  'Swear that you will repeat what we are about to say to no one, absolutely no one.'

  Six right hands shared the open pages of Psalms. Six voices took the oath.

  'The question before this meeting of the Allerkamp family— shall we, with or without permission, leave Germany and go to Texas?'

  No one responded. Each member of the family visualized such evidence as she or he had heard and each weighed the awful consequences of the decision to be made. Thekla the mother recalled the two earlier Metzdorf letters she had read telling of life on the prairie, and all that she had heard reassured her that only in some such refuge could her four children find freedom. She was prepared to brave the dangers of the ocean crossing, the mosquitoes and the rattlesnakes, if only she and her offspring could build good new lives, and all negative considerations were abolished, even her fear of Indians. Her eldest son, Theo, who so desperately wanted to marry but who had been sentenced perhaps to perpetual bachelorhood by the stern laws of Germany, was eager to do anything to escape. He would emigrate tomorrow and would say so when invited to speak. Brother Ernst, aged eighteen, had for some years imagined himself to be Uncas, striding through primeval forests, and was most eager to undertake such adventure. Brother Emil, sixteen, was prepared to go anywhere, and the more Indians, pirates and gold-seekers en route the better.

  That left Father Ludwig and Franziska, and their preferences were more tentative than those of their kinfolk. Ludwig loved Germany and even though prevented from entering his chosen profession of teaching in some university, he felt a burning desire to stay and witness the unfolding of German history. He felt his homeland to be on the verge of great accomplishments; perhaps a unification of the hundred petty states, perhaps a release from the strictures of Metternich's oppression, perhaps a bursting forth of the German spirit into brave new worlds of industrial expansion and revitalized universities. He was extremely optimistic where