Keeper of the Mill

by Mary Anne Kelly

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged, perplexed. “I just heard that there was trouble there. Hans had a sort of unhappy childhood, I gather. No father, more or less. Adam von Grünwald was a sort of bad-tempered cripple after his stroke.”

  Claire watched Blacky’s cheek twitch. He’d grown up without a father himself. Almost everyone his age in Germany had.

  “And,” he continued unself-consciously, “the mother was a simpleton. Hans’s mother, I mean. Kunigunde.”

  “Really? Really simple or pleasantly simple?”

  “Two steps above moron. Sat all day out there in her garden with her roses.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Drooling.”

  “Tch. You love to annihilate.”

  “Well, how should I know? Anyway, between the no father and just as well as no mother, he had not much ability to be the social prince. He just sort of festered here.”

  “Sad.”

  “Yes. He loved money, though. It took the place of family, I imagine. That’s one thing that went right for him.”

  “He was good with money, then?”

  “To put it mildly. It wasn’t him, though, really. It was the Mill itself. And timing. Saint Hildegard’s was always a functioning watermill. You know, for grain. They made bread, Brötchen in the village. Little breads. Not those wishy-washy little American things you call rolls. The plump, delicious crisp ones Bavaria is so famous for. Saint Hildegard’s region always was known for tasty Brötchen. There was always a want for more. And of course Saint Hildegard’s is so physically splendid. Every artist who was any good at all was welcome to come to the Mill and run up a bill. Pure method to his madness, naturally. They wound up paying up with paintings and sculptures that eventually surpassed in value any bill they’d run up for food and drink. He has a wonderful old cook.”

  “He did love his children, though.”

  “Oh, yes. One felt he loved them, in his way. He only didn’t quite know how. He hardly paid them any attention. They pretty much floundered around as well, just the way the father had done, living at the Mill, going to the village school. What sort of life can that have been?”

  “I can’t say it sounds completely horrible.”

  Blacky stirred what was left of his muesli thoughtfully. The area was filling up with Sicilians and astrologers, models and exchange students. “It’s the dog I feel sorry for,” Blacky said.

  “Me too. Whatever happened to their mother?” Claire asked.

  “She died of cancer. Ovarian, I think. About fourteen years ago. He made her life a misery, they say. In the end he wore her out. Their mother was rumored to be a Jew. Did you know? Even though she was blond. People forget how dark Adam was. Cosimo is a throwback. He could certainly be Jewish. He looks Jewish. With that nose.”

  “Really. Well, it’s not like being an alien.”

  “It is if you live in Munich. Of course, it’s advantageous taxwise. Postwar Germans are so energetically repentant.”

  “Are you saying they shouldn’t be?”

  “I’m saying that they are. One dares not wonder, nowadays, if the Jews don’t whine about the war too much. It’s illegal. Still, a lot of people do.”

  “Oh, God. Where’s my waitress?”

  “Had enough?”

  “Of you, yes.”

  “Come on, stay. I’ll change the subject.”

  “I’m not going to fight World War Two with second-generation Nazis,” Claire sputtered. “Not all over again!”

  He laughed and laughed. When he wheezed to a halt he reached across and covered her hand with his. “Oh, come on, stay. I’ll be good. Now stop counting out your pathetic little mound of marks. I say, you still are a feisty little Yank. Do they all jump to conclusions the way you do where you come from? Or is it a female thing? I’m only voicing out loud what everybody thinks and doesn’t say.”

  “Interesting how the only time I hear that one is in Germany. And I was just starting to forget all the things I couldn’t stand about you.”

  “You’d better not.” He smiled. Blacky’s eyes glittered with some remembered passion. He lit yet another of his poignant cigarettes.

  “I used to do that, too,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Light a cigarette just as I was about to feel something …”

  “Oh, I love my ciggies,” he defended his red box, patting it.

  “Yeah, I did too. They were my best ‘chums,’ cutesy names for pals that held my hand and stopped me crying anytime I was just about to feel something. When I actually got pregnant and had to stop, I cried and laughed for months. I felt all those things because there was no little ‘chum’ there to stop me.”

  “Oh, God forbid. I’d better keep on smoking then. That sounds dreadful.”

  “Just warning you, Blacky. If you have any idea about hanging out with me, I won’t stop. I am vigilant.”

  “I can take anything for two weeks.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “How do you know how long I’ll be staying?”

  “You said so the other day.”

  “I did?”

  “Say, are you paranoid?”

  “I guess,” she said, wondering for the first time why she’d spent so many years in this café, this congress of losers. Now, wait a minute. They weren’t necessarily losers. They just weren’t Germans.

  “There he is!” Blacky swatted the air.

  Claire looked out over the sea of faces and came to rest on Puffin Hedges standing at the periphery of the tables, scanning the sea of faces himself.

  “Puffin Hedges,” Claire said.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here,” Blacky said. “To meet him.”

  “Oh,” she said. “He’s well named, isn’t he?” Claire said as Puffin sidestepped his way through the tables.

  “What? Puffin? I should say so.”

  Puffin caught sight of them, wrinkled his forehead happily upward at Claire’s being there too, held an invisible telephone in his hand and a finger aside of his nose to indicate the one minute it would take him to make a phone call, and then he disappeared into the café.

  Claire wondered if it would be Temple Fortune he would telephone. Well, of course it would be. Whom else? They were butter and bread. Would Puffin be a good little man and mention she was there?

  “Hello,” Puffin said, and sat down.

  “That was quick,” Blacky said.

  “He’s already left,” Puffin said. He ordered Pernod.

  “Why can’t you order Birnenschnapps or Bacardi like every other alcoholic snob in the city?” Blacky turned his eyes to Claire. “So affected.” He shook his head. “And where’s Fortune?”

  “Off to London,” Puffin said primly.

  Claire’s heart took a spill. “Oh?” she said. “I thought the film wasn’t finished.”

  “We’re not done,” Puffin sighed. “We’re lamenting the ruin, as it were. Not really. Well, we are, but that’s not why he’s gone. We still have to shoot the ‘rightful heir gets his due’ shots. And Mara’s close-ups. That won’t take long. No, Temple’s off to dine the Empress Dowager and rattle her burly pearls above our soup.”

  “Pearls after swine?” Blacky said.

  “Yes,” Puffin said. “These shoes are killing me. Killing. My poor tortured tootsies.” He looked pleadingly at Claire and patted his pockets. “I say, you don’t think the help at the Mill nicks stuff, do you? Can’t find my money clip.”

  “Well, we wish him luck,” Blacky said, ignoring his ridiculous question.

  “Will he need it?” Claire said, wanting, really, to ask when he’d be back. And who was this Empress Dowager?

  “We all need luck, Claire,” Puffin said, “but we know what you mean, don’t we, ducky? Temple needs no more than his charm to move many a feminine mountain. Anyway, we’ll know Monday night.”

  Monday? Claire lamented. This was only Friday. She envisioned the suddenly long and dreary weekend ahead. How would she spend it?

 
In almost immediate reply, the sun shone brilliantly through. Left and right, people sat up straight. Disappointed faces changed and even creased with hope. In that one dramatic moment Claire could see the days she’d first arrived in Munich, the uncharacteristically sunny, leisurely days and the holiday atmosphere that had accompanied them. The reason she’d stayed. Even the nights had been soft and navy-blue and starlit, never going black. Everyone was young and making lots of money, zipping off to Ibiza and returning just as happily to the whirlwind of beer gardens and the river’s playful edges. Claire smiled to herself at the memory. She had lived here for ten years. This faraway glockenspiel town was part of her life. Whatever happened to her, or didn’t, she had happened to this. And she was part and parcel of it, as it was of her. When everything was at the end, if she had the luxury of looking back, this privilege would always be hers.

  “In my horoscope,” Blacky read from the Abend Zeitung, “it says that life’s sorrows are not its misfortunes but its fears.”

  “Is that what you’ve come to in your old age, dear?” Puffin said. “Directing life from horoscopal dictates? How desolate.”

  “Not desolate at all. The older I get, the more I rely upon the wisdom of the sorcerers. Pass me the sugar.”

  Puffin puttered the bowl across, relinquishing its pudgy shininess grudgingly.

  “Guess what happened just before I left the Mill.”

  “What?” they both said, ready for anything.

  “Father Metz—you remember Father Metz, the cumbersome priest with the unfortunate teeth?”

  “We know who you mean.” Blacky nudged him impatiently.

  A plan began to formulate in Claire’s mind. She would shoot Stella, send the slides to Zoli, the model agency in New York, and by the time Stella was primed and dined and made a star—for there was no doubt in Claire’s mind she would become a star—Claire would have her stuff ready and sell it to Jupiter Dodd and She She magazine. She would have helped herself and Stella. Stella would surely go for the idea. She would when she found out how much money a top model made. Enough, certainly, to keep the Mill open. And that would be what she wanted. Wouldn’t it?

  “I don’t like priests,” Puffin was saying. “They’re unnatural.”

  “We all know what you like,” Blacky sniffed, “and that might be considered unnatural by some.”

  “You don’t know anything. But proceed,” Puffin urged, unoffended.

  “It was your story,” Claire reminded him.

  “Oh. So here we have this priest, standing at the back gate all done up like the bellhop of death, purple stole and what-have-you. I walk up, I say, ‘What’s up?’ Friendly, mind you, passing the time, as the two of us are face-to-face, but he doesn’t answer. He just stands there gaping into eternity.”

  Claire laughed at Puffin’s suddenly excellent cockney accent.

  “He was saying his office.” She sipped her coffee knowingly. “They don’t all answer when they’re at that.”

  “No, he wasn’t. So listen. Now I’m riled. Now I’ve got to have my ‘Hi hello an’ ’ow do ya do,’ you know what I mean? So I say, ‘Think it’s going to clear up, parson?’”

  “They don’t call them parsons, the Catholics,” Blacky scoffed.

  “Whatever. Know what he says? He goes …” Here Puffin turned his cheek in a vaudevillian aside and recited in the priest’s own reedy voice:

  “‘A tree

  has been felled.

  Its leaves

  are still alive

  its fruits

  are still ripening

  and birds

  are still on its branches.

  A tree

  has been felled.’”

  “Why, that’s very nice,” Claire said.

  “That’s Rainer Maria Rilke.” Blacky shimmied about in his seat, proud of his Germans. “Now there’s a fine tragic picture.” Puffin was nothing if not entertaining.

  “Thank you. So I say to him, ‘That’s lovely, parson. What’s it mean?’ And he looks at me like he just woke up and he says, ‘We’ve just buried Herr von Grünwald. Hans. It’s over now,’ he says.”

  “Buried him?” Claire said.

  “That was quick,” Blacky said.

  “That’s exactly what I said.” Puffin smacked the table, and Blacky’s sausage jumped from its plate.

  “What about the wake?” Claire said.

  “If there had been one, you would have slept right through it,” Puffin said to her in his normal accent.

  “People don’t do that sort of thing nowadays,” Blacky said. “I was thinking more of an inquiry. And what did he mean by ‘Its fruits are still ripening’?”

  “Of course they do too have wakes,” Claire protested. “The family needs that time to grieve before they give up the body. It’s traditional. And the fruits are the children, living on, you know.”

  “One gathers it still is traditional,” Puffin sniffed, “in the colonies.”

  “What do you mean, inquiry? There were no suspicious circumstances. He fell,” Claire said.

  Puffin and Blacky said nothing.

  “Unless you two know something I don’t.”

  Blacky plucked at the coagulated Hollandaise with his fork. “It’s a curious business.”

  “At least no one’s sorry he’s gone.” Puffin sighed. “I think I will have some lunch. How’s that Leberkäs mit Kartoffelsalat, I wonder?”

  “I feel so sorry for the young girl.” Claire shook her head sadly. “She seems so desperately unhappy.”

  “Yes, poor thing.” Puffin clicked his tongue. “All that money and no desire to spend it.”

  “At least now she won’t have to marry whoever it is her father wanted her to,” Blacky said.

  “Maybe she’ll marry me,” Puffin said.

  “There’s a thought,” Blacky said, “then you won’t have to send Temple off to wine and dine rich widows who might refinance and co-produce for you.

  “Poor Temple Fortune,” Claire said.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t mind,” Blacky said.

  “He does this one,” Puffin said. “She’s stout as a house and old as the lamppost and smells of Arpège. A lot of Arpège.”

  “But I would think there would be plenty of backing for good films right now,” Claire, appeased, said. “I mean, aren’t there? It is a good film, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, it’s a good film all right. Temple wouldn’t do something that wasn’t good. There only isn’t such a great market for ‘good’ films that don’t have a gimmick. Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time not only doesn’t have a gimmick, it also doesn’t have a shoot-out or a car chase. It’s, you know, personal crisis; one of those things. The fellow wants what he deserves. The girl deserves better than she’s got.”

  “What happens exactly?” Claire pulled her sweater over her head. “To the girl.”

  Puffin had a way of pursing his lips before he answered. “She is numb, the girl. She gets the chance to love.”

  “Good for her,” Claire said.

  “But only at risk to all she holds dear.” Puffin winked.

  “Uh-oh,” Claire said.

  “And our star looks like something the cat dragged in. And we still have the last close-ups to shoot.”

  “Now, now … meow, meow,” Blacky said.

  “Well, it’s true. You only have to look at her. She’s a ruin.”

  “Perhaps if she were able to rest for a few days,” Claire suggested, remembering the resiliency of her own models when left to recuperate on their own for a day or two in a foreign country. Women needed time to recover from jet lag and lunar stress. It was amazing what a little time and good faith could remedy.

  “Tch”—Puffin waved his hand in disgust—“she’s had time. We’ve put off doing the close-ups time and time again. She still looks like hell.”

  All at once the Alps lit up and seemed nearby.

  “Tell you what I ought to do,” Blacky ruminated, “take a drive out to Diessen, that potters�
� town that’s so pretty. Isolde said that’s where they’re having the potters’ festival. You know, that little village on the Ammersee, where Stella goes. Everyone will be there. I might as well go. Now the weather’s gone nice.”

  “Diessen?” Claire’s eyes lit up. That was where Iris von Lillienfeld’s story had begun. “I’d love to see Diessen. May I come along?”

  “Excellent idea,” Puffin joined in enthusiastically. “I must have salt water. Is it salt or sweet?”

  “It’s sweet, I think,” Claire said, not knowing at all.

  “Bloody hell. My car’s in the shop,” Blacky said.

  “Don’t go dodgy on us,” Puffin said. “Take it out.”

  “I’m having the tires rotated. It’s got to be done.”

  “Lame excuse,” Puffin accused. “What about you?” He turned to Claire.

  “I’d be happy to drive,” she said. “But it will have to be someone else’s car. I haven’t got one. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Who belongs to that old Mercedes in the drive at the Mill?”

  “Oh, that. That’s old Father Metz’s jalopy. He uses it to get back and forth. It never goes anyway.”

  “It goes,” Puffin corrected, “it just doesn’t start. If he doesn’t park it on the hill, he has to have somebody give him a push, that’s all.”

  “We could park it on a hill,” Blacky supposed.

  “What makes you think he would lend us his car?” Puffin said.

  “He would if I said I’d like to buy it,” Claire heard herself say. “We could be taking him out for a test run.”

  “Him?” Blacky said disapprovingly. “Cars are shes. She’s a good old girl. She’s on her last legs. Everyone knows that.”

  “Oh, this one is definitely a fellow. A sort of Otto von Auto, if I know my old buggers,” Claire insisted, dying, for some reason, to get behind the wheel.

  “Exquisite idea,” Blacky decided. “We could have a picnic. Get away for a bit.”

  “He might really not want to sell,” Claire thought out loud.

  “Yes, he would.” Blacky peeled an Israeli orange and passed it around. “He would jump. He wants a nice, new, blue for Our Lady Audi, with seat belts. Something that starts up in winter.”

  “I’ll bet all he needs is a nice new starter,” Claire said.