The Search for Heinrich Schlögel

by Martha Baillie

  And: “4 ST. April 25, 16h 47, top of lane behind F’s orchard. Two singing, one whistling.”

  (ST: common starling or Sturnus vulgaris)

  Only now does it occur to me that Heinrich’s love of notebooks came from his father. So often, it is the most obvious that escapes us.

  A small map and a book—these are the most recent additions to my Schlögel archive. I own them. What giddy happiness! They could so easily have been sold to someone else, someone to whom the name Heinrich Schlögel means nothing. Instead, they sit on my table, mine to pick up and examine whenever I like.

  The person who listed them on eBay suspected that the book might be valuable but cared little about the map tucked inside. “1915 edition of Brehms Tierleben with reproductions of the extraordinary illustrations done by Gustav Mützel and the Specht brothers in 1876, illustrations praised by Darwin himself. Moderate-to-good condition. Several small stains, no missing pages. Also included a hand-drawn map (circa 1974? date partially erased) of several streets in unnamed German village or town, found inside book.”

  Mine! The very copy of Brehms Tierleben from which Heinrich so often copied passages, and, folded inside it, his sketch of what appears to be his route to school, with places of importance named, his handwriting almost legible. Each time I open Heinrich’s Tierleben and am confronted by the bright eye of a hedgehog, or, turning the pages cautiously, I come upon the finely engraved tip of a rabbit’s ear, I long to locate Heinrich, to meet him in person. I slip out his little map, unfold it, and turn it around, hoping to spot the detail that will tell me why Heinrich was destined to live such a peculiar life, subjected at the age of twenty to inexplicable experiences that set him irrevocably apart from most others. But the only certainty that is revealed to me is my desire to find him, to know him more intimately—as if knowledge of him could enable me to escape. From my failings or my parents’ failings? I very much want to meet Heinrich Schlögel and speak with him, if he is still alive.

  The whole town tilts in the direction of Lake Constance but does not reach the shore. The last houses stop, give way to fields at eight kilometers’ distance from the broad and beautiful body of water. On the shore of the lake stands a larger, more industrial and important town—Friedrichshafen, birthplace of the zeppelin.

  Barn #1: At the sharp bend where Moosstrasse becomes Friedhofstrasse, Heinrich pedaled faster and with all his strength, not because he was late for school but to avoid being ambushed by those of his classmates who enjoyed bullying as if it were a sport and who used the barn for their headquarters.

  The Field behind Schiller Schule: Here the traveling circus parked its trucks and trailers and set up its voluminous tents. During those three weeks that the circus remained in town, Gypsy children appeared in classrooms and were distrusted, but also prized. It was as if the class now possessed a python or tarantula, an exotic creature safe to stare at from a short distance. Heinrich, glancing over his shoulder, saw a delicate earlobe, a dark curl, a sharp nose above pretty lips, and redirected his attention to the floor, resisting the temptation to turn in his seat.

  Heinrich’s parents wrapped the Gypsies in silence, as did most bourgeois Tettnangers. To speak loudly against the Gypsies felt uncomfortable, as not too long ago, numerous dark-eyed strangers had been herded into trains and disposed of. Nonetheless, accusations slipped from the mouths of some: “Five shirts—that’s how many I hung out back to dry, and when I came from watering the garden only three shirts were left.” Farmers, when conversing with farmhands, allowed themselves, in such insignificant company, to remark, “The rake I leaned against the shed, it’s gone, and I won’t be seeing it again, so long as the circus . . .” Suspicions hopped and bit, like fleas.

  The Basement of Schiller Schule: Heinrich, after school, followed a long corridor past many closed doors until he came to a room that leaked music. Every week he attempted to learn how to play the flute but showed no aptitude, frustrating his teacher’s expectations. The shiny scar that stretched from Herr T.’s left ear to his chin, a gift from the trenches of the Second World War, became an anguished pink as he listened to Heinrich’s incompetent efforts. Not for Heinrich’s sake but for the sake of those students who possessed musical ability, egg cartons were nailed to the walls and suspended from the ceiling of the practice room, to improve acoustics.

  In the month of February or else in early March, with military efficiency, Herr T. would march his students through town, some playing recorder, others flute or accordion or violin. The entire town came out to celebrate. Even the teenagers turned off their transistor radios and straggled into the square, singing under their breath the lyrics to “Miss American Pie.”3 The youngest children, dressed up as roosters, waved inflated pigs’ bladders from the ends of sticks and playfully beat passersby with their balloon-like weapons.

  The mayor appeared on the balcony of the town hall and tossed the town keys into the crowd of women gathered below, indicating that all order was now tipped on its head, that the women, dressed up as Hops Spiders and Hops Jesters, were now in charge and would remain so until Ash Wednesday.

  Every year without fail, the carnival came and went, the carved wooden masks—the Hops Jester, the Red Spider, and the Hops Pig—were removed from storage and worn through the streets; they were admired, then returned to cupboards and chests until the following chilly Lent, and so long as the crops grew well, the roads were maintained, electricity flowed, the priest said Mass, the buses ran on time, and one cow a week was slaughtered by the butcher, there was little need for anyone to change his or her ideas.

  The Butcher Shop: On a rise overlooking Kirchstrasse, a road made dangerous by the trucks that careened through Tettnang, stood the butcher shop. Heinrich’s parents warned him repeatedly to ride with caution along this stretch of his route to school. To arrive in time for the morning bell, which rang at seven thirty, he left home at seven o’clock. Every Monday, he briefly slowed to a halt and lingered outside the butcher shop’s holding pen, where a cow stood waiting for its life to end.

  All day, the animal’s distress swelled in the inner chamber of Heinrich’s ear. Bovine anxiety muffled the urgency of historical dates, the beauty of lyric poetry, and the elegance of mathematical calculations. On his way home from school, if the cow had not yet been slaughtered, Heinrich again brought his bicycle to a halt and stared into the animal’s eyes—these were liquid, a frantic liquid. He could do nothing to save the cow. Rather than speak words of hypocritical comfort, he pedaled away, and the cow continued tossing its distress from its large mouth. Heinrich rode until exhaustion eclipsed his knowledge of the cow’s suffering.

  I am tempted to say that Inge felt similarly about the weekly cow that waited for the butcher to lead it indoors to its death, but little documentation remains of the feelings that Inge experienced during her childhood and youth. The one letter that does exist, from which I have already quoted at length, occupies a position of prominence in my archive. I also possess evidence, in the form of a scrap of very old newspaper, that suggests Inge was, at one time, contrary to popular belief in Tettnang, both sly and daring.

  Barn #2: The steepest tobogganing hill overlooked the “little hole,” where the Italians and Turks lived. At the summit of this hill, Inge slipped inside a barn and became a thief. Where the tiny nails securing the leather seat of an old sleigh had loosened, a shred of newspaper protruded. It caught her eye. She poked at the brittle leather, and it cracked open. She reached in with her fingers, widening the opening as she delved. Old newspapers had been used as stuffing. She tore off a piece and read:

  Saturday, May 5, 1880. Family of savages from the Frozen North draws large crowds at the Berlin Zoo. On Tuesday last, the youngest Eskimo, a girl, six years of age, caught in her mouth and swallowed a raw fish tossed to her.

  Inge folded the scrap of newsprint and slid it into her pocket. She imagined donating her find to the collection of a famous museum. She could not, however, reveal her treasure to anyone, as sh
e’d damaged the seat of a sleigh and had stolen her discovery. Only Heinrich she trusted to keep silent. The bit of yellowed newspaper disappeared beneath her socks and underwear in a drawer of her dresser.

  The Hay Fields: Every year in late May, before the tall grass was cut and the hay sown, female deer stepped out from between the trees to give birth. The tall grass provided a soft bed for the newborn. The farmers purchased large and modern tractors. Seated high up, they could not see the fawns. When these awkward young animals, uncertain on their stick legs, failed to leap out of the mower’s path, the machine cut off their limbs. If the blades severed the limbs without killing the animal, the farmer shot the fawn or called in the town veterinarian, who brought his pistol and relieved the farmer of this act of mercy.

  Back Garden: At dusk the hedgehogs rustled in the foliage and Heinrich would set out a bowl of milk. The sharp-nosed, prickly animals investigated. They added this new and delicious liquid to their diet of garden snails. Neither they nor Heinrich knew that cow’s milk is not good for hedgehogs. He held his breath and observed their pleasure.

  Pellets of blue, slug-killing poison, strewn among rows of plants in the well-tended vegetable gardens that bordered the Schlögels’ backyard, endangered the hedgehogs. Karl, Heinrich’s father, did not set out poison. He refused to participate in the incidental killing of birds and hedgehogs. He set out glasses of beer in which the Helix aspersa and Theba pisana, the most common and destructive of garden snails, drowned.

  1 When I lifted the book from its packaging, turned to the title page, and read the inscription, “Für Heinrich zu seinem 14. Geburtstag. Von Inge,” I sat down quickly, my heart pounding. The used- and rare-books store in Munich, Antiquariat Axel Grass, had sent me not just any copy of Old Firehand but Heinrich’s own.

  2 Can I prove that he did not complain? I’ve traveled to Tettnang more than once and spoken with people who knew him—the farmer who hired him to pick hops, the music teacher (now retired) who gave up on him, and the town butcher. In assessing all testimonies offered to me, I’ve relied on my intuition and logic. To determine the truth about someone else’s life is a grave responsibility.

  3 Don McLean, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills & Nash—it was from the lyrics of American singers that I first learned English. Perhaps the same was true for Heinrich?

  2

  The Necessity of Work

  This morning, I and several dozen others hurrying to our jobs glided on the escalator down to the subway platform, where we all stood waiting for a train to hurtle into the station. We waited for the rush of air, the sound and suck of it; then out of the station into the dark into the light into more dark we plunged, a segment of our day tubular and buried. In the cold white light of the swaying train I opened my briefcase and read from the diary of the British explorer Samuel Hearne, who, in the late eighteenth century, was hired to travel overland from Fort Prince of Wales on Hudson’s Bay to the Arctic Ocean. Hearne was Heinrich’s hero.

  . . . when perceiving bad weather at hand, we began to look out for shelter among the rocks, as we had done the four preceding nights, having neither tents nor tentpoles with us . . .

  In the time it took me to read to the end of the paragraph, Heinrich was possibly entering or leaving one of Toronto’s many subway stations, riding in a train identical to the one carrying me to work. Or was he boarding a bus in a large European city?

  You are a dreamer, I reproached myself. Don’t make yourself ridiculous by imagining you’ll succeed in meeting Heinrich Schlögel. You are living in an age of ecological crisis, how dare you devote your free time, what little you have, to researching the life of a young man whose picture caught your attention in the newspaper? Think instead of the potato fields.

  I felt a rush of grief and shame. One thousand three hundred and sixteen acres of Ontario’s best potato fields are to be quarried for gravel, if Highland Companies is allowed to carry out its plan. Over the past several years it has been buying up farms in Melancthon township a short drive northwest of Toronto, not disclosing until now its intended use of the land. They will dig a pit one and a half times the depth of Niagara Falls. Last Saturday, October 13, 2012, in Melancthon, yet another protest was held, hundreds gathered, and I was not with them. How was I occupied? With scouring my archive, frustrated at not being able to lay my hands immediately on the article about honeybees that I am quite certain Heinrich Schlögel slipped into his bicycle pannier one afternoon long ago—an article I euphorically discovered, last summer, in a mound of papers sold to me by one of Heinrich’s aunts for an exorbitant price.4

  What can I state with confidence? That Karl Schlögel taught history at the gymnasium where both Inge and Heinrich were enrolled and that it was the only gymnasium in Tettnang.

  Evenings, Karl listened to the radio, marked students’ (for the most part inadequate) papers, went quickly over his lesson plans, then retreated into the writings of those thinkers he admired most, Goethe, Kant, and Schiller. To Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education he returned regularly. There, he could count on finding solace.

  In Schiller’s mind there was no room for doubt that only the experience of art and beauty can offer true freedom, since whenever we leap into political action, the liberty we pursue is destined to founder. We must approach freedom quietly, eye it obliquely.

  In the gymnasium, when Karl wrote on the blackboard, small objects often flew behind his head from one side of the classroom to the other, so that he had to stop and instill fear in his students all over again, while outside the window pigeons soared across a gray flatness that passed for sky.

  Karl would comment over dinner, “Even the common pigeon is better off than I am. For man, the only route to freedom is thought, but my students are not interested in thinking. Long before they arrive in my classroom, they’ve been taught to fear using their minds. Fear is everywhere. If I were to encourage them to ask questions, serious questions, smoke detectors would go off in the offices of the administration.”

  And what about my questions? Heinrich wondered. Just that evening, he had asked his father, “If you like birds so much, why don’t you use binoculars?”

  “I do not own a pair of binoculars because I choose not to,” replied Karl.

  Behind this unyielding answer, decisive in its evasions, Heinrich sensed the war. What had his father seen, possibly thanks to a pair of binoculars, at the age of sixteen—barely more than Heinrich’s present age, but caught in the final, disastrous months of a war that had consumed his youth? Whenever Heinrich’s War File became too unwieldy, stuffed with ragged questions, and silences protruding at odd angles, Heinrich would empty it, leaving inside only one frustrated cry, his own “I was not there. I do not care.”5

  When Heinrich woke at night, needing to urinate, he’d stop for a moment in the dark hall, on his way to the bathroom, and observe the light slipping out from under his sister’s door. Inge, he knew, was seated at her desk, studying. He stood in his bare feet, in the obscurity of the hallway, and coveted her unwavering sense of direction, her singular passion. Her dictionary open in front of her, Inge was copying out words and their meanings. She was creating columns of verbs, columns of nouns, columns of adjectives. Her talent for learning languages (English and Hungarian so far) had earned her a reputation. She did not want a reputation. Both students and teachers admired her skills. Heinrich had no doubt that Inge possessed heroism. She claimed she possessed nothing but the ability to ignore what did not interest her.

  Though Heinrich knew he could neither change the world nor equal Inge as a student, he resolved nonetheless to train his mind. He sat in his bedroom and listened to his mind spin like the propeller of a plane, spitting shredded ideas into the atmosphere. There was nobody to remove the blocks from in front of his wheels. He did not dare call out for assistance. Heroes did not call out. He sat in the cockpit, immobilized for hours, the whir of his own stupidity filling his ears, and felt painfully conscious that the very plane in which he sat belonged
to some vanished era.

  “You’re a romantic,” said his mother, Helene, stepping into his room. She placed her hand tenderly on his shoulder and he aimed the nose of his plane straight for the ground. Any second, the engine would explode in flames.

  No object in my Schlögel archive, not even Heinrich’s spinning top (given to him by his mother on his fifth birthday?), for which I paid more than I should have when I saw it in a box of old toys at the Bähnlesfest flea market in Tettnang, can provide me with an accurate measure of the love his mother did or did not feel for him.

  I lifted the spinning top out of the box because my hand felt drawn to it. I turned it over, hoping to see his initials. There were none. Possibly this top, which now occupies a place of honor in my archive, never belonged to Heinrich Schlögel, yet I had to have it; my heart insisted that this toy used to delight Heinrich, my fingers itched for it, and I bargained poorly and spent more than was reasonable. It is painted a robin’s-egg blue with a canary-yellow stripe around its middle, and it spins for minutes at a time before toppling. Perhaps in a month or two I’ll pass Heinrich Schlögel as I am crossing at a busy intersection, or I’ll enter a cinema and sit down beside him. It’s intolerable to have to rely on chance.

  In the one picture of Helene Schlögel that I have successfully acquired for the archive, she’s wearing a straw hat that almost completely obscures her face. Perhaps the photographer snapped it by accident or was already inebriated at noon (the sun is high), or he or she simply wanted to finish the roll of film. Perhaps Helene refused to look up when the photographer asked her to. Perhaps the snapshot has survived precisely because it was abandoned, never put in an album with the others.

  In her garden, Helene sat, inhaling the words of Krishnamurti. Protected by a wide-brimmed straw hat, she read: