The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  “I had to stay in my position,” he said.

  “You had a choice. You chose to stay.”

  Oskar walked over to the hat rack by the front door and took his tweed fedora off the top hook. He smoothed the small brown feather on its right side and placed the hat on his head. “You’re right, Marina, I did have a choice, or at least it appeared so at the time.” He opened the front door. “But our choices are not always what they seem to others.” Then he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  That wasn’t the last time her mother and Opa had fought. Lara usually left the room when it looked like they were getting angry with each other. After that day, however, Marina stopped calling Opa “Vati”; she called him “Oskar” instead. Also after that day, Lara got her uniform. Once the weather became cooler, she received a jacket, a light-brown tailored blazer fitted close to the body, the most stylish piece of clothing she owned. She wore it whenever possible, though technically she was only supposed to wear it to Sorority meetings.

  Lara sighed into the blackberry foliage, remembering that jacket. It was impossibly small now, and there was no reason to buy a new one because they had moved away from Berlin. She knew Meerfeld used to have a Sorority chapter that some of the Blumental girls attended earlier in the war, but she didn’t know if they still met, and it all seemed less important than it used to.

  She turned her attention back to the magazine, flipping the pages slowly, taking her time. Finally, Lara arrived at page eighty-one, where the article about Princess Elizabeth began on the right-hand side of the centerfold. Glancing briefly at the facing left-hand page, Lara inhaled sharply, appalled. There, directly across from a half-page photograph of Elizabeth playing the piano in an ornate music room, was a full-page advertisement for Modess sanitary napkins. What disrespect for royalty, what flagrant disregard for Elizabeth’s innocence and sensitivity! Lara quickly folded back the magazine along its spine so that Elizabeth would not have to look at the ad. Only then could she comfortably read the article.

  Her nickname was “Betts,” and because she was being groomed for queendom, she had her own private tutor, Crawfie, who taught her every subject from English literature to world history, including (and this was apparently a first for an English monarch) American history after 1776. Her birthday was April 21, which meant that she had been eighteen for almost three months now. Her father gave her a pearl each year for her birthday. Plus, this year, since she was coming of age, she would get her own lady-in-waiting. Lara imagined the luxury: having someone whose job it was to do what you asked them to. She could put the lady-in-waiting in charge of hanging the laundry or cleaning out the henhouse.

  Much to Lara’s disappointment, the princess was said to have no sense of fashion. She was probably just too sheltered, Lara thought. What she needed was a close friend to go shopping with. Lara could easily help the princess make good use of her large annual income to spruce up her clothing. And at eighteen, Lara remembered from the various English fashion magazines she had read, Elizabeth should be having a debutante ball this year. Lara fantasized about helping the princess find the perfect ball gown, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. Silver-sequined bodices, lace sleeves, long alabaster-white satin trains—these images wafted through Lara’s mind until she read, in the next paragraph, that there would be no ball this year because of the war. Instead, the princess would entertain guests at a small dance at her country house. Lara felt anguished on the princess’s behalf.

  “Lara!” Sofia was calling from the back porch. “Lara, come have lunch, Opa’s here!” Lara’s heart leaped. Lunch she could wait for, but her opa? No. She closed the magazine, returned it to its envelope, and crawled out of the blackberries as quickly as she could. Running uphill through grass that definitely needed to be cut (something else Lara could assign to her lady-in-waiting), she thought of all the things she had to tell her opa: about Elizabeth’s studies, the sacrifice of her debutante ball, and her preparations to be queen. It did not matter to her where Opa had been or who he had been with or what he had done. What mattered was that he was home.

  – Sixteen –

  Edith looked out the French doors to the backyard, where Oskar was standing on the stone terrace with Sofia, who was running in circles around him and dodging his tickles. Lara was sprinting up the hill, her blond hair freed from its ponytail and swinging wildly around her. She arrived panting, and Oskar caught her in a giant hug. Edith watched Lara bury her face in Oskar’s woolen vest, pushing herself into his body, confirming his solidity.

  Edith had had a similar instinct when Oskar put his arms around her in the kitchen an hour ago. Having wished him near her so many times in the past six months, she found it hard to believe that his embrace was not a fantasy that would evaporate at any minute.

  “I’m so sorry,” he had whispered into her hair. “What happened yesterday, the flags, it was all my fault.” He gripped her more tightly. “I’m so grateful nothing happened to anyone. To you.” Edith didn’t say anything. Not because she was angry. She didn’t blame Oskar for Captain Rodemann’s outburst. Rather, she too was grateful. To have him back, to have him holding her, to have him declare that he still needed her. When he let go and stood back to look at her, Edith could see that his hair, which used to be somewhat gray, had gone completely white, and his eyes were set in even deeper, darker hollows. Otherwise, he looked just as handsome and well-dressed as always, his rectangular spectacles perched on the bump in his nose, his pipe stem peeking out from behind the carefully triangulated white handkerchief in his jacket pocket, and his brown socks bridging the gap between cuffed trousers and laced black leather shoes.

  Now on the porch, Oskar took a long look at Lara. “Ho ho, young lady, where have you been? Let’s see, from the purple stain on your dress, I’m going to guess . . . the blackberries! Are they ripe yet? Did you bring me any to eat?” Lara shook her head, smiling. Oskar noticed the envelope she was clutching in her right hand. “Ah, I see you got my package! Was it the right issue? I assumed so, from the cover.”

  Lara nodded, and her words gushed forth as if he had opened a spigot. “Oh, Opa! It is so perfect! Even better than perfect, it’s perfect-plus! Pluperfect! I’ve never seen so many pictures of Elizabeth in one place at a time, and such a long story too. It tells me so much about her life. Do you know she plays piano? And she sings. Not very well, apparently, but that’s okay, because she’s a princess. And she gets pearls for her birthday, on a necklace, one pearl each year, from her father. Of course he can give her pearls, he’s the king of England, so he has lots of them. Probably he could give her rubies or emeralds if she wanted them, but I suppose she likes pearls best. I like pearls too, they’re smooth and creamy, like her skin—”

  Oskar turned to the house and, seeing Edith, put a large hand over Lara’s mouth, muffling her midsentence. “Whoa there, Lara, here’s your oma, come with important news from the kitchen.” Edith had been waiting for a break in Lara’s monologue. As she lingered, she’d worked to remove her apron. “Here, my dear, let me rid you of those shackles of domesticity and perfect your transformation into the queen we all know you to be.” Oskar untied the bow at the back, folded the apron into a neat square, and handed it to his wife. “Lara has been telling me how royalty lives in England, but I sense we are about to experience a princely luncheon right here on the Continent!”

  “Ah yes,” Edith said, recognizing the shift in Oskar’s tone. Her husband was so good at deflecting reality with fairy tales and fantasies, just as they had during the last war, building their dream home in their letters, partly to solidify their connection to each other, partly to avoid the grim truths of the day.

  “The chef serves only princely meals in this kitchen,” Edith announced. “Today’s highlights are princely potatoes from the royal garden and princely trout from the royal fisherfolk who live next door, and who have kindly agreed to join the royal family for this afternoon feast.”

  “Trout again?” Lara and Sofia
groaned simultaneously.

  “Not just any trout,” Oskar said in a low, conspiratorial voice. The girls perked up; a story was imminent. “These are rainbow trout. And do you know why they call them rainbow trout?” Lara and Sofia shook their heads.

  Edith waved them all inside before Oskar could continue. “Brother Grimm, could you tell your story in the dining room, where, I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear, a much larger audience awaits?”

  The living and dining areas of the Eberhardt home shared a single large room downstairs that had been designed to accommodate two or three Mercedes sedans. Edith had domesticated this cavernous space through judicious placement of sofas, armchairs, throw rugs, and lamps. She had hung a low candlelight chandelier over the mahogany dining room table, more for atmosphere than illumination. Today, even though it was midday, Edith had lit all its yellow beeswax candles, and the faces of the family and their guests were now gathered in the glow. She had set the table with her wedding china, the cream-colored Rosenthal that she had dragged south, fearing the vicissitudes of Allied bombings over Berlin. A large vase in the center of the table held the bouquet that Sofia had gathered from half a dozen different garden flowers: leafy fuchsia and dark red roses, shoots of pale pink hydrangeas and tall blue delphiniums.

  Edith was glad that Erich had decided to stay on for an extra day, and that he had accepted her invitation to join them. One more stitch toward mending the rift between them. Erich was sitting across from Marina, who sat next to Myra Breckenmüller in front of the tile oven that provided heat for the room. She noticed that her daughter had chosen to wear her hair down today. No doubt it was Erich’s presence, not Oskar’s, that inspired this change. Edith bit her tongue on a comment from that familiar space of fear and anger, a place she had firmly decided not to revisit. She took her place at the head of the table, opposite Oskar, while Lara quickly took the chair next to Rosie, leaving Sofia to sit between Karl and Myra Breckenmüller.

  “Is Opa telling a story? What is it about?” Rosie asked.

  “Yes, Oskar, tell your story while we start passing around the food,” Edith said. Though his stories tended to ramble, today she was happy to indulge him. Oskar in storytelling mode was Oskar at his best.

  “Karl, would you do the honors of serving the fish?” She passed a steaming oval platter to her guest.

  Oskar snapped his folded napkin in the air and placed it in his lap with a flourish. “Well, it’s the story of how the rainbow trout got its name, a story you too must know, right, Karl?”

  Recognizing that his was a supporting role, Karl kept his head down as he meticulously placed fish fillets on the plates passed over to him. “Oh no, Oskar, I don’t know any fish stories. The fish never talk to me, you see,” he said. “Given our respective roles, we’re not really on speaking terms.”

  “Opa, Herr Breckenmüller is a fisherman!” Sofia reminded Oskar.

  “Right, right, stupid me,” Oskar said, shoveling potatoes onto his plate. “So, I was explaining about the rainbow trout, which we have the distinct honor of tasting today. You all know how when it rains and there’s still some sunshine around, sometimes we get a rainbow, right?” There were nods all around the table. Pleased with everyone’s full attention, Oskar continued. “But”—he pierced the air with his knife—“this was not always so. Long ago, there was no such thing as color. There was just black and white.” He paused to let the magnitude of a colorless world sink in, then he picked up a forkful of carrots and held them before his face as if admiring their complete and unequivocal orangeness before putting them in his mouth. “It was pretty dull. One day a fish—a trout, to be exact—just happened to be jumping around the water for fun during a rainstorm. And just as he finished making the arc of his jump, leaving behind a spray of water droplets”—Oskar swung the potato impaled on his fork through the air to illustrate—“a flash of lightning came down from the sky and hit all those little drops of water! Guess what happened?”

  “Ka-pow!” Rosie shouted, smashing her fork into the carrots on her plate. Edith frowned.

  “Right! An explosion! And right over our very own lake, it began to rain down colors of every kind—red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple . . .”

  “Pink!” Rosie shouted, jumping up.

  “Yes, pink, of course, and turquoise and brown—in fact, every color imaginable, and all of a sudden the world was transformed by colors. And from that day forward all the trout like the one hit by lightning were known as rainbow trout.”

  “And everyone celebrated all the colors as equally beautiful,” Marina added.

  “But pink was the best,” Rosie said.

  “No, blue!” Sofia insisted.

  “There wasn’t a best color,” Marina told them. “They were all just different.”

  Oskar looked up at Marina, amusement from his storytelling success still lighting his eyes. “I did not know this story had a moral, my dear,” he said.

  In an instant, Marina bristled at the nerve Oskar unwittingly touched. “Don’t you believe in morals anymore?” she asked pointedly. Total quiet descended upon the table. Edith saw Oskar flinch, from either anger or hurt. Marina looked down at her plate as if regretting her words, but Edith knew her daughter was too proud to apologize. Fortunately, Lara came to the rescue.

  “Mutti learns all about morals from Pastor Johann,” Lara said. “They have tea together almost every day.” It was the perfect statement. It deflected her mother’s barb, setting it in a more innocuous context. Edith wondered when her eldest granddaughter had become a diplomat, but then Lara was as eager as Edith to prevent arguments between Marina and Oskar. She was old enough to remember the fractious meals around the dinner table in Berlin before Oskar and Marina achieved their fragile détente.

  “Is that right?” Oskar asked. “Daily conversations with the local pastor?” He fumbled with the napkin on his lap as he spoke. From the tone of forced curiosity in his voice, Edith could tell he was trying to put Marina’s comment behind him. Clearing his throat, he placed his napkin on the table and stood up. “Well, then, a toast.” He raised his water glass toward Marina. “To Pastor Johann, for keeping us on the straight and narrow.” Marina heard the forgiveness in her father’s voice and looked up at him. Whatever had risen between them was put to rest. “To the rainbow trout, for being so tasty with hollandaise sauce,” Oskar continued. “To my extraordinary neighbors, Myra and Karl; my cherished friend and son, Erich; and of course, my beloved family of women, who reinvent beauty with each generation.” Edith blushed while Lara beamed. “And to the miracle that permits everyone dear to me in life to sit around one table at one time for one moment.” Oskar paused and shut his eyes. “May it be one of many.”

  “Prost!” Glasses clinked all around the table. Although the candles in the chandelier were getting quite low, they seemed to be emitting more light. Edith looked around at the faces of everyone surrounding the table, faces on which shadows had been softened and creases of worry smoothed by the buttery glow of the burning beeswax. Their outlines blurred and shimmered, holding them in this moment, fusing them more permanently together in some enduring space.

  “So tell me,” Oskar demanded, breaking her reverie. “What’s new in Blumental?”

  “They almost killed the bürgermeister yesterday!” Rosie announced. “And he peed his pants!” She looked at Sofia and they both giggled.

  “Rosie!” Marina chided. “Don’t repeat that.”

  “But it’s true!”

  “Yes, it’s true, but it’s embarrassing to Herr Munter, and you know, he was very scared,” Marina said.

  “I’m sure I would pee my pants if I thought I was going to be hanged,” Karl said.

  “Well, issues of incontinence aside,” Edith said, “Erich was the hero and saved the day. He even rode in on a horse.”

  “A horse? Didn’t you leave Fürchtesgaden in a car?” Oskar asked.

  “I did, but modern transportation failed me. I had to commandeer a more reli
able means of transit, which thankfully was nibbling on a patch of clover right next to the road.”

  “It was the beautifulest horse ever, Opa!” Rosie pronounced.

  “And I haven’t had a chance to thank you, General,” Myra Breckenmüller said, reaching across Sofia for her husband’s hand. “I’m not sure what Karl would have done if . . .”

  “Karl?” Confused, Oskar looked at his friend, who was staring into the napkin on his lap.

  “It was my knot around Hans Munter’s neck,” Karl said.

  “Captain Rodemann thought the bürgermeister was a traitor,” Myra explained. “I suppose it was all based on orders from the Führer about civilian disobedience.”

  Marina, who had been helping Edith clear the table, came into the room carrying two steaming bowls. “That Captain Rodemann can go to hell, with his damn barricades and machine-gun fire in the streets. It’s a miracle no one was killed,” she said, setting the bowls on the table with more force than was necessary. Grimacing, Myra passed them down to Sofia and Karl. “Such arrogance and idiocy! He’s like a little boy who drowns kittens for fun.”

  At the mention of the word kitten, Sofia scrambled out of her seat, stepped over Karl, and stood on the bench next to Oskar’s chair. She cupped his chin in her two small hands and turned his face toward hers. “Opa, Irene has kittens. Can we have one?”