The sound of fog horns drifting up from the lake made Johann feel good. Thank goodness the apples are all in the cellar, he thought, and the geraniums, too. For days he had stood on a ladder picking apples. Every year as All Saints’ Day approached, Mother was embarrassed that her trees were still full of apples while the trees in front of the next house down the hill had long since been picked, to say nothing of the thousands and thousands of other trees in and around the village. “It upsets our guests,” she said, “that apparently we can’t find the time to pick our own apples.” Josef had homework to do and scales to practice, Father couldn’t stand on a ladder that long, Niklaus was too old, and Grandfather even older. Johann said if Niklaus put the ladder up for him, he’d pick the apples. “This is what we’ve come to,” Mother said. Johann definitely couldn’t back down now. He promised to hold on tight to a branch with one hand while he picked apples with the other.
“And then the branch will break,” Mother said.
“I’ll only use big branches,” Johann replied. And then for a week he’d stood in the trees. The higher up the ladder he had to go, the louder his heart pounded. But from the second day on, he knew nothing could happen to him. He felt at home in the trees. He picked the shiny red Prince Ludwig apples one after another and slid them carefully, so they wouldn’t get bruised, into the picking bag slung over his shoulder. He had even rigged up the bag by himself, just like he’d seen his uncle do in Kümmertsweiler: you put one apple in the corner of the bag and tie it off with a rope, then run the rope up through a hole near the mouth of the bag and then back down to the tied-off apple in the corner. Then you have a double length of rope between the mouth and the bottom. You can slip your head between the rope and the bag and hang it over your shoulder so the mouth is right at the level of your chest and you can slide one apple after another into it. Johann knew he would have more trouble rigging such a thing up than Ludwig or Paul or Adolf, so it was especially important to prove that he could do it, too. Johann enjoyed it when people passing by in the street called up to him to be careful not to fall. He liked it even more when they shouted that he was too little for a job like that. If some time passed without anyone calling to Johann from the street to say that picking apples was something they would never have expected him to be able to do, he realized that he looked forward to hearing it again. Standing so many hours on the ladder and reaching for all those apples and sliding them into the bag so nothing happened to them were things he could do only if people were watching. So he was glad when Herr Schlegel the builder called to him, “Hold on like a sailor to his girl! My respects!” When Frau Schorer the cobbler’s wife called to him, “Your mother must be so proud of you.” When Hagens’ Fritz shouted that the way down was faster than the way up. When Taubenberger the postman stopped and said more to himself than to Johann that Johann was a devil of a fellow. When Helmer’s Hermine called, “One climbs higher for a black cherry than a red.” Or when Herr Grübel, walking along beside his cows, called up in his silvery singsong, “Were I a little bird with little wings, I’d fly to you.” It was understandable that Frau Fürst, her lips stitched shut by pain and her eyes full of arrested tears, said nothing as she passed. Adolf came by at least once a day, of course, and criticized the varieties Johann was harvesting. Didn’t they have a Boskoop tree? he asked. And no Champagne Reinettes either? Not even Cardinal von Galens? No, just Welschisners, Gravensteins, Teuringers, and Prince Ludwigs, Johann replied. Those were his favorite kinds. What he thought was that when his grandfather planted this orchard twenty-five or thirty years ago, he should have remembered to plant some Boskoops, Champagne Reinettes, and Cardinal von Galens, too. When three or four of them hiked to Nonnenhorn through the harvested orchards on a November Saturday to swap Karl May novels with the canon, nobody bothered to raise a finger to pick an overlooked Welschisner, but they would use sticks to knock down a Boskoop. Bruggers had only Boskoops, Champagne Reinettes, and Cardinal von Galens.
Fortunately, the trees were emptied by the time everyone went to church on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days. Mother told Johann she was happy now.
Mother had to twist Father’s arm to get him to go to church with the veterans’ association the following Sunday and march with the group to the war memorial after the service. Grandfather said it was a disgrace for his son not to march along with everyone else for the fifty-year anniversary of the Veterans’ and Military Association Grandfather belonged to. And Father himself a member, and a combat veteran, too—a decorated one, in fact. Eighteen seventy-two and 1932—how much more of an occasion did he need, for heaven’s sake? And Grandfather to be specially honored that day, too, said Mother. After all, Grandfather had been the association’s first flag-bearer, and that Sunday they were consecrating a new flag. The newspaper would probably report that his son hadn’t been among the marchers, said Grandfather. “Next thing you know, we’ll have to sell the place,” said Mother, “and you can stand by the front door with a pistol in your hand like Brem the carpenter to scare off the people who want to have a look at our goods and chattels before they’re sold off at auction.” Johann liked saying hello to Herr Brem most of all. When Brem the carpenter charged Herr Lachenmeyer fifty pfennigs for sharpening his crosscut saw, Herr Lachenmeyer had said that was too much. Herr Brem took the saw, ran it twice across a big stone, and said, “No charge, then.”
Josef stood next to Father, Johann next to Mother. That meant that Josef was also against Father marching. Johann wanted Father to march. He wanted to see Father wearing the Iron Cross and Bavarian Order of Merit with crossed swords. In the winter, Johann sometimes took his father’s army things out of the big armoire on the second floor: the bright-as-new 8 mm pistol with magazine, the rusty revolver, the cap with a cockade and gleaming visor, the sergeant’s epaulettes, and the gloves now gone a dull white. Johann outfitted himself with these things. He also got out the long, gently curving saber that was almost as tall as he was, together with its glittering pendant, and stood in front of the mirror. His father wanted nothing more to do with military things.
“And he’s from the 20th, too,” said Grandfather, “like most of our members.” Father said he hadn’t attended a reunion of the 20th Infantry Regiment since the end of the war.
“But they’re going to honor your father,” said Mother.
No more was said after that. Elsa came in to say the itinerant photographer was there with the pictures: three pictures, three marks apiece.
Mina came into the office behind Elsa and said, “He must be nuts.”
“Pay him and bring me the pictures,” said Mother. “Nine marks, Johann. You could have had a new pair of winter boots for that.” Mina said she was really sorry she’d lost all her money and now couldn’t buy a picture of Johann.
Johann replied at once, “I’ll give you one.” Everybody laughed. Elsa put the three pictures on the table and everyone bent over to have a look. Right away Johann could see that he hadn’t closed his mouth completely. His two incisors were getting bigger every day and they showed. In front of the mirror, he often tried out various ways to hold his lips so those gigantic teeth wouldn’t show.
Mina said, “Don’t he look sharp standing there! I’m ready for anything, that’s how he looks.” She liked the way his outstretched arms were holding the handlebar. “As good as any prince,” she said. “His bike’s his steed! Say something, ma’am, or Johann’ll think you don’t like the pictures.”
His mother nodded and said, “Put them away now.”
Johann went over to the highboy but waited until the others had left the office to lower the writing surface, remove the mirror insert, and put the pictures into the secret compartment. To do that, he had to lift the two hinged lids covered in green felt and slide the pictures into the invisible interior. His father had shown him where the secret compartment was. Johann used it mainly for things he needed to keep hidden from Josef. Every time the uncle they called Cousin came to visit from the Allgäu in his Ford, h
e brought each boy a bar of chocolate. Josef ate his up the same day he got it. For Johann, getting chocolate was at least as marvelous as eating it. Every second or third day he would break off the tiniest little piece and his bar would last for weeks. Unless it fell into Josef’s hands. When the shouting of the resultant arguments got to be too loud, Father finally took Johann into the office and showed him how to pull out the mirror insert by the little shiny black columns to the right and left of the mirror. Then you could lift the two hinged, felt-covered lids that concealed the secret compartment. Johann had to promise not to show anyone where the secret compartment was. Not even Adolf, thought Johann, when Father said that. He didn’t have to show it to Adolf, but at least he had to tell him that he had a secret compartment now. Whenever Adolf got a present, he couldn’t wait to tell Johann about it. Every time, he would come dashing up the hill, rush in calling, Johann, Johann!, grab Johann by the arm, drag him along down the street at a run past the Linden Tree, then a right turn and immediately left again by the fire station to Bruggers’ house, in the back door and straight to whatever Adolf had just gotten that he absolutely had to show Johann. Usually he had nothing more to say about it, couldn’t even speak for sheer joy and excitement, just hopped around as if the floor was bouncing beneath his feet and whipped his hands through the air so his fingers slapped against each other. Johann knew he was supposed to say something about the wonderful locomotive that was pulling some cars around in a tight circle so fast you were afraid the centrifugal force would hurl it off the track. But that’s exactly what didn’t happen. It zoomed around and around. You couldn’t say anything to Adolf until it came to a stop. Whether it was a new Märklin model train set or just a harmonica (Adolf called it a mouth organ) he’d gotten, he was always bursting with joy. But he needed Johann to make it complete. Of course, Adolf was luckier than Johann: he was an only child and got all the presents himself, and even many more than Johann and Josef put together. Herr Brugger was a livestock dealer, and every week he drove his Mercedes to places as far away as Dornbirn or Kempten or Ravensburg or Stockach, not to mention Lindau, Tettnang, and Friedrichshafen. And he always brought back presents—known in the Brugger household as souvenirs—for Adolf. If it was something to lick or to eat, Adolf shared licks or bites with Johann. Johann just couldn’t get over it: he and Adolf would run over to Bruggers’ and up to Adolf’s room on the third floor. There’s an orange on the nightstand, and Adolf peels it with great ceremony and gives Johann half. Not a section less than half. Not once had Johann’s family ever had an orange.
So Johann had to at least tell Adolf that he had a secret compartment. It was rare enough for him to have anything Adolf didn’t have. Johann led Adolf into the office and said, “I have a secret compartment in that highboy over there.” Adolf gave a snort of laughter the way he always did when he knew something better than you. “That’s not a highboy,” he said. “It’s a secretary.” And straightaway he made Johann run down the hill with him to Bruggers’ and had to show him what a highboy was as well as what a secretary was. At the Bruggers’, a highboy was a glass-fronted cabinet with fancy trim on top. Johann felt miserable when he got home. He stood in misery before the red cherry cabinet with its two rather thick, shiny, black-lacquered pillars that framed the entire piece of furniture. At the top, an ornate drawer and then the hinged writing surface behind which was the mirror you could remove by the two small columns, and behind that, the green felt lids under which lay his secret compartment. The removable mirror was his tabernacle.
So the whole thing was only a secretary. But at least Bruggers’ secretary was made of dark wood and not as beautiful by a long shot as the one in Johann’s office, made of light, gleaming cherry. The one they called a highboy. Every time somebody at home mentioned the highboy, he remembered that it was only a secretary. Adolf had made it clear that a highboy was something more than just a secretary. It had been one of those moments when Johann felt that he needed to defend himself. Put on his armor and defend himself. You couldn’t just accept that from one second to the next, a highboy turned out to be just a secretary. Like a prince, Mina had said. He felt the three photographs were his armor. They meant more to him than a new pair of shoes.
Once the photographs were put away, the mirror reinserted, and the writing surface closed, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his father that this wasn’t a highboy, it was just a secretary.
On Sunday, Grandfather marched in the first rank and Father in the last. He was wearing his two medals. The band marched at the head of the column. Johann, Ludwig, Paul, Guido, Berni, Helmut One, and Helmut Two trotted along beside the band. Adolf wasn’t there. He didn’t even show up when they marched past Bruggers’ house with the music blaring.
Since the band always practiced in the spare room on Friday evenings, Johann knew everything they were playing and sang along under his breath with the march melodies. In the church, the sacristan had placed a coffin draped with a white flag bearing the Iron Cross in front of the high altar. Around the coffin was a miniature military cemetery of moss with many little white crosses and an equal number of little white candles. A man in a tailcoat with a lot of medals on his chest rose from the first pew, walked to the front, and genuflected. Then he turned and gazed composedly at all the flags and people in the church. Although times had never been so bad, he said, there were still twenty-one flags assembled here in honor of the new flag of the Veterans’ and Military Association. Ludwig, who was sitting next to Johann in the pew, whispered to him that the man in the tailcoat was his godfather Zürn, a retired senior postal inspector.
“Lives in Lindau,” whispered Ludwig. “Writes down everything about the village.”
The senior postal inspector, ret., was wearing so many medals it looked like his chest wasn’t quite broad enough and he’d had to hang some ribbons and crosses on top of one another. His mouth was topped by a white mustache, and the beard below it tapered almost to a point. Just like Herr Minn, thought Johann, except that the points of the senior postal inspector’s mustache turned much farther up into his face than Herr Minn’s, even higher than Grandfather’s. The points of the retired senior postal inspector’s mustache reached almost to the corners of his eyes. And now, announced the senior postal inspector, he would read the speech that Schmid’s Thusnelda had delivered back in 1886. In 1886, the association, founded in 1872, had been able to consecrate its first flag, a flag donated by the young unmarried women of the parish’s four congregations. It gave him great pleasure to announce that present among them here today were both the very first flag bearer and Schmid’s Thusnelda—now the widow of Customs Official Drossbach and a resident of Munich—who had returned to her birthplace especially for the occasion. He pointed to Grandfather on the men’s side and to where the former Schmid’s Thusnelda, now the widow of Customs Official Drossbach, was sitting on the women’s side. Johann didn’t need to turn around to know that his grandfather would be sitting there as though he hadn’t heard that he was being talked about. You could see how the widow of Customs Official Drossbach literally swelled up among all the other women and girls around her. The senior postal inspector said that back in 1886, they had fired a fourteen-gun salute in honor of the new flag before a crowd of three thousand. Today, in conformity with the sad state of the times—not even a one-gun salute. He said that Germany today was poor and miserable, as miserable and poor as she had ever been in her entire history. Then he read the speech. Even if Johann was unable to pay attention to every word, he still could feel how beautiful it must have been here in the church and in the whole world back in 1886. Then the new flag bearer with the new flag came down the center aisle. The senior postal inspector, ret., bowed before the flag and returned to his seat. Father Dillmann, dressed in a cope that enveloped him like ceremonial armor, consecrated the new flag with incense, a sprinkling of holy water, and a prayer. The choir sang “Blessed Are the Dead.” Then a girl (“Spiegel’s Emma from Nonnenhorn,” Ludwig whispered to Johann) pin
ned a ribbon onto the flag and proclaimed in a loud voice, “In the name of the unmarried women and girls.” And shoemaker Gierer’s Hedwig—Johann knew her, of course, since she lived right across the street from him—pinned another ribbon onto the new flag and said in an even louder voice, “The dedicatory ribbon with the commemorative coins from the wars of 1866, 1870 to ’71, and 1914 to 1918.” After the blessing of the flag came the Mass. Father Dillmann preached. My soul for God. My body for the Fatherland. My heart for my friend and comrade. Seventy-one sons, brothers, and fathers lost by the parish: seventy-one crosses, seventy-one candles. Again Johann noticed that during a sermon, his thoughts wandered. He began counting to see if there were really seventy-one crosses and candles arranged on the moss around the draped coffin. There were. Sacristan Höscheler hadn’t miscounted. In front of the coffin, a Sacred Heart statue. Johann knew what was written on its base and couldn’t resist saying it: I shall raise ye from the dead on Judgment Day. He whispered it to Ludwig, who made a face as if he already knew that. Afterwards, they marched to the war memorial, this time with no music except for the drums. The Hitler people in their brown uniforms were already there. In the village, they were known as the Nazi-Sozis. Herr Brugger was the SA leader. They wore caps with chinstraps that made it look like there was a windstorm, and the chinstraps were there to keep the caps from flying off their heads. In their jackboots and stiff, flared breeches, they looked like they could do whatever they wanted to. Next to Herr Brugger stood Herr Minn, the boat builder. Minn’s boatyard was way out on the edge of town, almost in Reutenen instead of Wasserburg, but there was no big tip to be expected after you’d pulled the handcart with eight or ten hundredweight sacks out to the Minns’. Even so, Herr Minn was the friendliest man Johann knew. As soon as you pulled the handcart up in front of the house, Herr Minn’s son emerged from the boatbuilding shed, grabbed the sacks, and carried them into the cellar. He wouldn’t allow Johann, Josef, or Niklaus to help. The first time you heard Herr Minn’s son speak, you couldn’t understand a word he was saying. But then you did understand after all, every word, although he covered everything he said with sh sounds. The Minns were Lutherans. Herr Minn was the local group leader of the Nazi-Sozi Party. Johann knew every one of the ten or twelve men in brown uniforms: Loser’s Gebhard, looking as if he’d already been crying today; Brem the carpenter, with his eyes just barely peeking out over his mustache; Herr Brugger, the ivory toothpick now conspicuously absent from the corner of his mouth; at the end of the brown column, Schulze Max, former escape artist and trumpeter with the Sarrasani Circus and now a fisherman’s helper; Herr Häckelsmiller and Fräulein Agnes and Adolf. Herr Häckelsmiller worked as a railroad lineman; Fräulein Agnes was the sacristan and acolyte for the Lutheran services they held in the school building. Her cottage was as small as that of her neighbor Häckelsmiller, and full of cats she had to protect from Dulle, a journeyman carpenter who had washed up in Wasserburg and became a fisherman’s helper, though he preferred to chase cats. Fräulein Agnes had been the first to join the new party and pinned her party badge onto whatever she was wearing, summer and winter. People said it was she who had converted Herr Häckelsmiller. Frau Häckelsmiller, who was even smaller than her husband, never missed Mass and spent several hours every day praying in the church. For her husband, people said. Because he wore that party badge. Standing beside Fräulein Agnes: Adolf. His ski cap, windbreaker, and knickerbockers looked like a uniform too.
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