The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  He watched her in silence, as she put fresh coals on the fire, shook down ashes. She lit the lamp, for the kitchen had become dark. The light shone on her masses of light smooth hair, on her young pale cheek. Egon felt some tensity in her, some held control and wretchedness. He became mournful and abstracted.

  “It is hard for Franz, this death,” he murmured.

  Irmgard did not reply. But her hands trembled so violently that she dropped the spoon with which she was stirring the pot, and it clattered on the floor. The sound reminded Egon of something, and he said in a more resolute voice:

  “It will be good, then, for him to return with us to Germany.”

  “Do you think he will go?” asked Irmgard, pressing her lips together in an effort to restrain herself.

  Egon was startled, and a little frightened. “Surely, yes. We could not leave him, child. I could not be happy, thinking I might never see him again. I would rather remain here.”

  Irmgard turned to him with sudden vehemence, and exclaimed:

  “Whether Franz goes or not, Uncle Egon, you must go! You are not happy here. You are miserable. You are ill. America is too much for you.”

  He shook his head, smiling a little, in his melancholy. “No, it is we who are not enough for America. There is something here we have not found, not understood. That is our fault. Emmi came, expecting too much, expecting golden dreams and fulfillment. That is wrong. One must not expect Heaven to be waiting; one must make Heaven, join hands with those who are making it. As for myself,” and he sighed, “I was old, when I came. Much too old, child. Perhaps I was always too old. I have always loved the small, the little corner. There are no little corners in America. There is much space, too much for me.”

  He added, gazing steadily at the opposite dim wall: “I love communities. But America is too big for communities, for separate entities, for men who by nature must stay apart. It may be a paradox, but it is the little country which separates itself into little communities. The large country is like a sea, into which everything flows and becomes one. If it separates itself into rivers, pools, separate streams, then it is no longer a sea, it cannot exist as one. The ocean of America is vast. In it, all men become as one. It is a huge and colossal idea, but only by adhering to it, can America survive. Should it separate into communities, into smallnesses and factions, then the Idea upon which America was begotten, shall die, and there shall remain only warring and hating little States, dangerous within, and in danger from without.”

  Irmgard said nothing, but she listened, full of wonder that her uncle could speak so lengthily, he who had always been so silent and few of words. She saw that his thin old face had become lighted, as though reflecting a vision which he loved and reverenced, but of which he could not, however he strived, become a part.

  “My poor Emmi,” he said, with a sigh and a smile, “has never realized this. The hugeness of the Idea of America affronted, and repelled her, if she guessed it at all. She saw, in this wretched town, all of America. If its climate of mind or circumstance disgusted her, it was the mind or circumstance of all of this country. She tried, in her own heart, to make a community in America, not understanding that America is one, and its thousand aspects only one aspect. Coming from a continent which is finished, old and tired, she thought to find in America a continent which was also finished, but young and strong. When she sees today, she thinks it is all of the tomorrows, also. But for America, today is never tomorrow. The Idea shines like a sun over the changing aspects, the growth and the fury and the uproar which is America. Always, there is change, but the sun shines over the change. So long as Americans behold the sun, and love it, the changes mean nothing. The danger to America lies in those who, like Emmi, believe the sun is forever obscured.”

  “But Aunt Emmi believes that you hate America, Uncle Egon.” The girl stood before him, her spoon in her hand, and some rising excitement in her face.

  He shook his head. “What she believes is wrong. I—I have never been able to tell her. I do not know what it is in me today, that I talk so, and so freely, to you, my little love.” He smiled at her, with gentle tenderness, and she smiled back, her heart heaving in her breast.

  He shook his head again. “I do not hate America. I love the Idea. But I have come to realize that I am too small, too timid, too weak, for that Idea. It frightens me, because I am so inadequate. I love the small corner, the little fire. The wind and the open space of the mind of America is too much for me, too chilling, too vast. I must go back to my corner, and my fire, or I shall perish of cold, of loneliness, of desolation, on the wide endlessness of America. It is my fault. I have the European mind, which deals in little men, in little corners, in little walls and gardens, in small forests and thin shallow rivers.”

  He added, after a moment, meditatively: “I see it so clearly, now. Franz must stay in America.” His face saddened. “He does not believe in the Idea. But he does understand the vastness of this country. He will never be one with the Idea. But who knows if his children will not? One must understand, not only the physical largeness of America, but the largeness of the Idea. The real American understands so.”

  He continued, almost in a whisper, and the light stronger on his face:

  “What a glory shall be America’s, if she remembers!”

  “And you will return to Germany, without Franz?” Irmgard asked, after a moment.

  Egon hesitated. “How can I say what my heart will speak, when the moment arrives? In talking to you, little love, my mind clarifies. I said, a time ago, that he must return with us. Now I think: What of his children? How can I suggest that he deprive them of the Idea of America? Is this not wicked?”

  He added, sadly: “It is wicked. If he wishes to remain, then perhaps, I shall remain, too. I am an old man. I love my son. I understand him, and do not hate him for the understanding. Emmi does not understand, and so, she hates him. Ah, yes,” he mourned, “she hates him. Yet, with the hatred, and without the understanding, she loves him. He is her only child. She will think: Perhaps if I had remained, at the last I might have helped him. I cannot take that comfort from her.”

  The grief of renunciation dimmed his old tired eyes, but his expression was resolute. “Perhaps,” he said, after a little silence, and with some whimsicality, “I can find some little sheltered corner in America, where I can do no harm to her. After all, I am old. I shall have no other children, whom I could teach to love the little corners, so dangerous to America.”

  He suddenly became completely aware of Irmgard, of her strange look, trembling lips and tear-filled eyes. Alarmed, he extended his hand to her, and took her own.

  “My child, what is it?”

  To his increased alarm, and pain, she knelt down beside him and put her head on his shoulder. She did not sob nor exclaim. She merely knelt there, in an attitude of extreme abandonment and suffering, her arms hanging slackly at her sides. He put his old arms about her, held her closely to him. He asked no more questions. He understood this wordless anguish, this silent misery, without knowing the cause. It was enough for him that she endured some hidden agony.

  He whispered: “Little love, all things pass. The sorrow of today is not even the memory of tomorrow.”

  “There are some things that cannot be forgotten,” she replied, her mouth muffled against his shoulder. “Nor forgiven.”

  He sighed, and his arms pressed more tightly about her. He looked over her head, and the lids of his eyes moistened.

  “The French say, Irmgard, that to understand all is to forgive all. What men do, they do by their own nature. They are impelled by mysterious forces in themselves. It is for us, who understand, to pity. If some one has injured, or hurt you, he does so because he is not strong enough to resist his own nature. Those who resist are strong, and full of understanding. Those who cannot resist are empty, victims of themselves, and they suffer greatly, knowing their weakness.”

  “Empty,” murmured Irmgard. She lifted her head and regarded her uncle str
angely. “I have said that: he is empty. But he fills his emptiness with tragedy for others.”

  A look of hopelessness and utter desolation settled on her young face, pinching it, making it appear cold and lifeless. Egon touched her cheek, as though his touch might bring back its faint color.

  “I do not know who this ‘he’ is. You need not tell me now. But you must forgive, and try to understand. And who knows but what he is misunderstood, and maligned? One must have faith. One must try to believe.”

  She said nothing, but her mouth softened a little.

  “It is true,” she said, after a long silence. “One must have faith—”

  “And even if the worst is true,” broke in Egon, eagerly, “one must still have faith. One must still understand. The injurer is as much his own victim as you are. Surely, you can feel pity for him?”

  He yearned over her, wishing he might remove sorrow and pain from this young, clear life. “I do not know how any one can have injured you, child. You, who are so without meanness and littleness, like your dear mother. You have been here so short a time. I do not ask for your confidences. That would be impudent. But suffering, it has always been said, is part of living. The suffering is worse, when inflicted by one who is loved. The blows of strangers are hard, but the hand of a loved one is harder. But one cannot destroy the loving heart, which must still have faith, and endure everything.”

  She was silent, but her eyes were fixed on his with a mysterious desolation. Yet, he was heartened by the knowledge that she had listened, and comprehended, and that he had given her some courage.

  Then she said again: “One must have faith. Even if the faith is misplaced, then, as you have said, one must have compassion.”

  She rose then, completely composed, and poured his soup into a white bowl. Egon thought of her mother, Hertha, moving in the farm kitchen, pouring milk into white mugs, with morning sunlight on her hair and quiet sweet face. It was only a flash of memory, but all at once he was overwhelmed in a wave of nostalgia, in a passion for long low meadows and the cry of a thrush in the lavender evening. It seemed to him that his very soul moaned in this nostalgia, which was less a sickness for Germany than a loneliness and urging of the spirit for some mysterious land known only to it, and not to his flesh. There was a parching thirst in him for peace and twilight, for dim hills against a fading sky, for a river that ran as livid as quicksilver through dark and lonely earth. His mind felt fevered for winds heavy with the scent of harvests, for trees bending and lashing in midnight gales under an enormous white moon.

  It is not the Fatherland for which I am yearning, he thought. It is for death.

  He drank the soup which Irmgard gave him, and he smiled at her. But his eyes were cloudy with his somber yearning, and though he spoke to her, and she answered, he did not know what he was saying, nor what her answers were. His whole being was absorbed and washed in his thirst and his hunger. He was conscious of a weighted feeling about his heart, like remembered sorrow. And yet, with the sorrow, there was mingled a strange faint joy, as of anticipation.

  At times, when he had thought of immortality, he had turned away from the thought with weariness and distress and repulsion. Was man condemned to carry himself, his laden personality, his dustiness and tiredness, throughout all eternity? His own thoughts, his own memories, would be an insupportable burden, darkening his vision, crushing down his soul. He would be like a footsore and aching traveller through gigantic landscapes, unable to see, unable to enjoy, because of the burden on his shoulders, the burden of himself. That would be hell, not the privilege of heaven. With all his consciousness; he longed only for escape, for acquiescence, for the darkening of memory. Man at the end, he thought, is sick of himself. God cannot be so cruel as to condemn him to wander eternally through consciousness, with himself as his own companion. God, too, must be weary of being. Was there some refuge in space and time where the soul could rest, could wash off the stains of memory in some pools of Lethe, and emerge, clean and shining, awakening to new adventures and brighter dreams?

  He thought so, now, huddling before the stove in the kitchen on Mulberry Street. This was the reason for the strange joy, the sudden heart-lifting anticipation.

  The front door opened and Emmi, wrapped in her gray shawl, appeared. The rain had beaded the shawl with sparkling drops. Between its fold, her face was no less gray. Her clenched lips were surrounded by a large bluish circle, and her eyes were dulled and appeared to be turned inward on something too terrible for speech. Nevertheless, she bent and kissed Egon briefly, inquired as to his eyes, and turned to Irmgard. When she spoke to the girl, she dropped her eyes, and her voice was dull:

  “Franz has not returned?”

  “No,” said Irmgard, faintly. Emmi’s eyes lifted and asked a question. Irmgard shook her head with a slight motion. At the mention of Franz’s name, Egon said sadly:

  “This is a sorrowful day for Franz. He will return soon, Emmi?”

  Emmi removed her shawl, folded it carefully and precisely, and laid it away in a drawer. “I left him at the cemetery,” she said, in a toneless voice. “There were some last things to be done, I believe. I brought Mrs. Harrow home.”

  “What is the poor creature to do now?” asked Egon, in distress.

  “There—there is some money,” said Emmi.

  “That is good,” sighed Egon.

  Emmi placed a clean cloth on the table, inspected the kettle of soup, shook up the fire vigorously. She moved with greater speed than usual, as though she wished to outstrip her thoughts. “You will remain?” she asked Irmgard, in her cold, preoccupied voice, and the words were a command.

  The girl sliced some bread, washed the coffee pot. Egon rubbed his hands before the warmth of the fire-box. There was no sound in the kitchen but the crackling of the coals, the clinking of tableware, and the bubbling of the soup. Then Egon, speaking gently, and with hesitation, took Emmi’s apron-corner in his hand.

  “My love, I have been thinking. You spoke this morning of returning to Germany. I have changed my mind.”

  “That is impossible,” said Emmi, loudly, pausing with a fork in her hand, and looking down at him with a grim face.

  Egon shook his head. “No, Liebchen. I have decided. Franz will not return with us. We should worry about him. I see now that it is not the Fatherland for which I have been longing. It is only for peace and quietness, some pleasant corner. We can find it here.” He hesitated again, and then went on, pleadingly: “Some quiet corner. In the country. We have a little money. I am tired,” he added, simply. “I could endure no journey again.”

  Emmi was silent. She still looked down at him, and now her leaden features worked. He could not know her thoughts. But in some way he knew that some hard inflexibility in her softened, that she experienced some overpowering relief. Nevertheless, because of the rigidity of her nature, which had already set itself in the mould of self-sacrifice and renunciation, she could not readily readjust herself.

  “We shall talk of this later,” she said, surlily.

  “I should miss you, Aunt Emmi,” Irmgard remarked, looking at her aunt with pleading. “You cannot leave me here alone.”

  “I thought you might return with us,” said Emmi, avoiding the girl’s eyes.

  “I? Oh, never! Never.” Irmgard’s voice was oddly vehement.

  “I thought of buying your farm,” went on Emmi, implacably. But a faint color had come back into her granite lips.

  “My farm?” Irmgard was completely surprised. “Did I not tell you? It was confiscated for debts. I had only enough left to pay my passage. There is no farm now.” She was silent a moment, then resumed, in a quieter voice. “And I am glad. I can never return. I cannot ever return, to anything.”

  Then it was that Emmi’s eyes lifted and fixed themselves with peculiar intensity upon the girl’s face. There was surprise in her expression, as though she were saying to herself: This is one like me! And now her manner became gentler.

  “Sometimes one has to
return, against one’s will. For the benefit of some one very much loved.”

  And, sometimes, thought Irmgard, one must remain, because of some one very much loved. But she did not answer Emmi.

  Egon had lived a long time with his wife, and though he could rarely enter into her emotions, or participate in her ideas, he nevertheless understood her, and was acutely sensitive to her moods and her sufferings. Now it came to him sharply that she was tormented, that despite her calm exterior, she was seething with despair and misery, that she was enduring some tragedy. He could not deceive himself that these were the result of his decision to remain in America. He was both puzzled and terrified. He kept glancing at her with his tired eyes, and when she sometimes approached him in her duties, he wanted to put out his hands to her. He saw what she was enduring in the taut line of her jaw, in the drawn flesh about her lips and eyes. They had had a little daughter, before Franz’s birth, and the child had died in her infancy. Emmi had worn a look like this for many years after that death.

  I am imagining, thought Egon. She is just distressed over today’s events. He forced himself to believe this. There was no other explanation.

  “You have done too much today, Liebchen,” he said, lovingly, touching her garments as she passed him.

  “Too much,” she agreed, and he wondered at the bitterness in her voice.

  He glanced at Irmgard, but the girl’s face was averted. She was kneeling near a chest of drawers, from which she was abstracting some napkins. Egon sighed. He pressed closer to the stove, as though suddenly cold.

  “Where is Franz? Should he not be here now?”

  Emmi did not answer. The cords of her throat tightened. But Irmgard looked swiftly at her uncle, and with gentleness.

  “He may be with Mrs. Harrow. There is so much to be done.”

  “More than a lifetime!” cried Emmi, suddenly, her composure breaking. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, a stark figure of tragedy, unable to control herself. Her features were contorted, and she stared before her blindly.