The Strong City

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I do not understand it,” he said aloud, and helplessly. “Why should he speak to you, Franz? It is not natural.”

  “Perhaps he was impressed with my beauty,” replied his son, laughing.

  The door opened, and Franz glanced eagerly in its direction. But it was only Emmi, untying her apron. Her face was still hard and grim as she looked about her. But she merely said that Irmgard had insisted upon finishing by herself.

  She added, turning to Franz: “I presume you are pleased with yourself in displaying your disrespect for your mother, and your coarseness, to your cousin?”

  Egon sighed miserably. He had never accustomed himself to the bickering between his wife and his son. “Now, Emmi,” he murmured, depressed.

  But Franz smiled good-humoredly. “I was not disrespectful. Sit here, Mama. It is the only warm spot in this cave.”

  Emmi sat down, stiffly, on a chair far from the one Franz had indicated.

  “I am ashamed of you,” she said, bitterly.

  “That is nothing new, Mama.” Franz’s voice was light. He knew why his mother had brought Irmgard here, and was highly amused. “You did nothing to impress her that I would be a desirable husband, did you?”

  Emmi flushed. Her pale eyes sparkled with fury. She looked at Franz, who was grinning down at her. “No! Why should I? She is far too good for you.”

  Franz glanced again at the door, and dropped his voice. He became serious.

  “But what are we to do with her? You do not need help in the house. She must go out into service, of course.”

  “Ha! You are afraid her presence will be expensive here?”

  But Franz answered coolly: “Yes, that is true. After all, we must consider the money.”

  “It is always ‘money’ with you!” exclaimed Emmi, angrily.

  “And with you, dear Mama,” said Franz, in that same cool and insistent voice. “When have you been lavish with money?”

  “Now, Franz, that is very disrespectful,” said Egon, sadly. “You must not talk so to your mother.”

  Emmi turned to her husband almost savagely. “It is your fault, Egon! When I wished to thrash him when he was a child, you always interfered. This, then, is your doing.”

  “I detest brutality,” said Egon, faintly, and paling. “I loathe violence. Have we not had enough of it, in Germany?”

  “Mama still has the soul of a Prussian,” remarked Franz, smiling.

  He knew how this infuriated her. He was accustomed to her furious words in reply, and her incoherent denunciations. But he did not know how overwrought she was tonight, and so, he was not prepared for her leaping to her feet and striking him violently across his mouth. Her action was instinctive, and so was his grasping of her wrist, and his thrusting of her backwards. She was almost as tall as he, and mother and son, so alike in feature, in build and in coloring, glared malignantly at each other above their hands. An aura of violence quivered about them, like a red and fuming light. Their identical eyes glowed with hatred. They did not move or speak, only stood there, Emmi’s wrist still in Franz’s crushing grip. They were like two statues, held in turbulent immobility. Two drops of blood appeared on Franz’s lower lip. But their eyes grappled together like assailants. They looked deeply into each other, the savage man and the equally savage woman.

  Egon was so horrified, so sickened, that he rose to his feet, and had to grasp a chair to keep from falling. “Lieber Gott!” he cried, faintly.

  After a long and horrible moment or two, Franz flung his mother’s hand from him, with a gesture of contempt.

  “Do not do that again,” he said, in a low slow voice. “Never again.”

  Egon rubbed his hands, and almost wept. Emmi had fallen back. She still looked at her son, her eyes strained and distended, and filled with that red light. And he gazed back at her. In that moment, they both knew, something had happened between them which would never be healed, and never forgiven, even in death.

  “This should never have happened,” whispered Egon, closing his eyes.

  Franz turned away. He wiped his mouth. “It was not my doing,” he said, but his voice was hard as ice.

  There was no sound now in the kitchen. Franz suspected that Irmgard had heard the blow and the words which followed. So, when after a short but terrible interlude the door opened, he turned to it, curiously and watchfully. Irmgard entered. If she had heard, she revealed nothing. Her face, her manner, her movements, were full of dignity and great calmness.

  Emmi sat down near her husband, in silence. But he saw that tremors were shaking her lean body as though she were suffering from a chill. He was amazed at her composure, and understood what control lay behind it, for her face was ghastly.

  “Come in, child,” she said, in a quiet voice. “It will soon be warm in here.”

  Irmgard advanced into the room, and Franz, forgetting his mother, watched her come. Freya, he thought again, fascinated by that large beauty under the flickering gas-jets. She made the narrow coffin-like room, with its dismal furniture, shrink away into nothingness, as though it was ashamed of its meanness and ugliness. Yet, Franz thought, it was not only her physical beauty which did this. It was some heroic quality in herself, which rayed outward from her flesh. In her was the strength of impregnable hills and ramparts, the strength of vast landscapes.

  She looked at Franz impersonally, and he wondered if she had heard what had taken place in this room. He thought she looked at him as a painted portrait might look. She then bent towards Emmi with a slight smile, and also smiled at Egon. She sat down tranquilly, every movement full of composed splendor.

  “Is there something else I can do?” she asked.

  “No, my dear.” Emmi’s harsh voice trembled. She laid her rough hand for a moment on the girl’s hand. Egon smiled at her tremulously, though he was still quivering visibly. If the hot smell of violence was still in the room, the girl did not seem aware of it. Her profile, turned to Franz, was serene.

  He moved nearer to her, standing by the stove, and looking down at her quizzically.

  “And what do you think you will be able to do in America, cousin?” he asked.

  She looked at him, her brilliant green eyes unmoved and impersonal. “I shall work, certainly. That is why I have come. Tomorrow, I shall look for work.”

  Franz bit his lip. Had she heard everything that had been said in this room?

  “There is no hurry, Irmgard,” said Emmi. “I am lonely in the day. You shall keep me company.”

  Irmgard smiled at her affectionately. “That is very kind of you, aunt. But I am accustomed to work. I cannot live on your generosity. I never intended it.”

  Egon interposed in his gentle eager voice: “But you have worked so hard all your life, liebchen. You must rest a little. We want you, and we love you. This is your home, also.”

  Irmgard regarded him with quiet tenderness. “If you wish it to be my home, then it is my home, Uncle Egon. But that does not absolve me from working. I could not be happy in idleness.” She lifted her hands and looked at them. “I am accustomed to work,” she repeated.

  There was silence in the room. Franz said to himself: Does she really think, or is all this, her body and her tranquillity, only the evidence of deep stupidity, a peasant’s stupidity? He could not like her. He was irritated by her, and troubled. He thought again: A handsome cow. He repeated it to himself, viciously: A handsome cow. He looked up, to see that Irmgard was regarding him steadfastly. A flash of something deeply inimical passed between them, and his gorge rose. Truly a peasant, with peasant eyes!

  He knew now that she disliked him, felt only cold hostility for him, even contempt.

  It was Egon who broke the silence. “You will not find America like Germany, child,” he said, sadly, his faded eyes looking inward.

  “I did not expect to find it so,” replied Irmgard, in her deep voice. “But, I must live. I must compromise with, and accept, my new life. I knew things would be strange, and different. But what of it? It would be fooli
sh of me to be discontented.”

  “And you do not regret leaving Germany?” asked Emmi, aggressively.

  She turned her head to her aunt slowly. “Regret? It is silly to regret necessity. It is a waste of time.”

  The peasant’s philosophy, thought Franz. He put fresh coal upon the fire in the stove. Pastures are always pastures, to cattle, he reflected, no matter if they are strange pastures.

  He turned to his father, contemptuously dismissing the two women.

  “Have they laid off any men in the office?”

  Emmi, despite her rage and her bitterness and humiliation, immediately became interested, and looked at her husband anxiously.

  “Two or three clerks, I believe,” replied Egon, despondently.

  “Bookkeepers?” asked Emmi, leaning towards her husband.

  “Not yet, Emmi. But one never knows where the blow will fall next.”

  Emmi was gravely alarmed. If the mills shut down, and Franz and Egon were dismissed, her last solace would be gone. The bankbooks would cease to grow. Her alarm increased.

  “What is wrong? Can nothing be done to save the mills?”

  No one answered her. She momentarily forgot her fury against her son, and turned to him impatiently. “Times are not bad. What is the matter with the mills?”

  He answered her indifferently, but looked at his father: “Schmidt has not kept up with new inventions. He makes steel in the same old way. He knows nothing. What was good twenty years ago is good enough for him now. Or, perhaps it is not his fault. The newer methods are taken by the larger and newer mills. But even the newer mills have not solved the problems of the mould. Even they must count on waste and inadequacies.”

  Irmgard turned her head slowly to her cousin and regarded him with her odd steadfast look. The red reflection of the burning fire in the stove, coming through the isinglass windows, carved her face in scarlet light and shadow. He thought that she had the aspect of a remote and placid statue.

  “You are very interested in the mills? You love your work?”

  He laughed. “No. I am not interested in the way you mean, nor do I like it. But it is the thing I began, and the thing I now understand. I want only one thing from it, only one thing from the sweat and labor.”

  “Yes? And what is that?”

  “Money.”

  They looked at each other in another sudden silence. Franz could not read those calm features, which he now decided had no expression at all.

  Emmi, whose deep and long-seated disappointment in her son could not keep her quiet even after her humiliation, exclaimed: “It is always money, with Franz! He cares for nothing else.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment, coldly. “And, in America, what else is there but money?”

  But Emmi did not answer him. She turned to her niece. She was highly excited, and the rough color scarred her flat cheeks. Her eyes jumped in their sockets. She laughed with peculiar hysteria.

  “You see, Irmgard? In Europe, men are not so concerned with money. They regard family, learning, accomplishments, honors, as much more important. The mere man with much money is despised—”

  “That is your fantasy,” interjected Franz. But his mother ignored him. Her smile was taut and wild as she continued to say to Irmgard:

  “But in America, the people have no family background, no learning, no accomplishments, and no great honors. Therefore, they solace themselves with getting money, whether they earn it or steal it.”

  Franz interrupted her again, looking at his cousin, whose expression was inscrutable:

  “My mother puts it too baldly. It is not money for money’s sake, that Americans desire. The money means power to them. They are not a military nation, and so do not get power by conquest. They do not rely on a dead past to give them honors, and their accomplishments are purely industrial. But they share with all of us the desire for power. Money in America is power. Without that power, your hypothetical family, accomplishments and honors mean nothing at all. Perhaps it is wrong. But it is a fact, and I have always believed in accepting facts and dealing with them on their own terms.”

  Emmi still looked at her niece with that wild and piteous smile:

  “You see? There is nothing here, but this struggle for money. If you have it, you live. If you do not have it, you die. How can one endure in such an atmosphere, where learning and dignity are despised because they do not create money? Worse even than that, is the condition of the working people in America. You have not yet seen, Irmgard! But I shall take you among our neighbors, and it will sicken you. I have seen such things!”

  Irmgard smiled at her aunt with grave sympathy.

  But Franz said, with smiling contempt: “My dear mother believes that the industrialists should have a tender regard for their workmen, that they should pay them what she calls ‘adequate’ wages, though what adequate wages are she is not too certain, herself. She believes that there should be some sort of insurance for unemployment, sickness and accident. A paternalistic form of life, with each employer anxiously coddling his employees. She will not see that industry is the same as any other barter. Do we expect our shop-keepers, who give us goods for money, to demand that we pay their doctors’ bills and protect them from bad times? Men barter their time for money. Those who buy their labor have no more responsibility for them. If a man is unable to sell his labor, it is unfortunate. But it is no one’s fault. That is realistic.”

  Emmi turned to him with savage fury. “Men are more than goods, and barter. I have tried to teach you that. To put them in the same class with goods is immoral. There are intangible things to be considered: conduct, humanity, mercy, justice and decency. Are men bales of cotton and machinery and goods? To think so is barbarism. To think so is cruelty, and chaos.”

  Franz turned away, making a contemptuous mouth. He glanced at his cousin fleetingly, as though to say: “You see how absurd she is.”

  Irmgard looked at her hands and said quietly: “I have always found life cruel. I have tried to find out why it should be so, but still I do not know.” Then she lifted her head with a quick movement, and said to Franz:

  “Why do you want money so?”

  The green flash of her eyes startled him, and again he was confused and uncertain about her. This made his flippancy, when he answered, more obvious than ever:

  “Why? I have told you: it means power. And I want power because it will protect me from other men. I have no illusions about mankind. It is everything that is foul and contemptible, mean and vulgar, vicious and degenerate. Only money can protect one against his fellow men.”

  Emmi regarded her niece significantly, but Irmgard, to her sadness, saw that the older woman’s eyes were filled with burning tears.

  Emmi said, in a shaking voice: “You see that my son believes nothing of what I have tried to teach him, and for which I made such sacrifices. A man who despises others is a suspicious character, himself.”

  Irmgard hesitated, then she said very quietly: “In many ways, I must agree with Franz. People are hateful and treacherous, selfish and greedy. They prefer lies to truth, and cruelty to kindness. I have often wondered why God endured the world to exist. It is full of wickedness and enemies. No man ever lived who had a friend. I have seen nothing but slyness and avarice, betrayal and lies. My father used to say that this is because existence has compelled men to be so, and circumstance. I do not believe it. Men make circumstance. The world is what it is because men wish it to be so, and prefer it that way.”

  Her beautiful face darkened. A pinched and shadowy look appeared about her nostrils and her large mouth. Her green eyes sparkled with anger and contempt.

  Emmi was so taken aback by these strange words that she could say nothing. The silence was broken by Franz’s sudden hard laugh.

  He left the room and went into the kitchen. When he had gone, Irmgard put her hand on her aunt’s arm, almost urgently, and tried to see that pale averted face.

  “Do not think I approve of cruelty and selfishnes
s. I do not. But, who can change them? They exist. We can do nothing.”

  But Emmi’s arm was stiff and unresponsive under that warm hand. She kept her face averted, as though she repudiated this girl from whom she had hoped so much. Irmgard, distressed, turned to Egon, and said: “Uncle. What do you think?”

  The old man lifted his head and regarded her with intense sadness.

  He said: “I have lived a long time, liebchen, and I have not yet found life endurable.”

  After awhile Franz returned to the room with a pitcher of beer and some glasses. He poured the foaming liquid, and of fered it to his mother and his father. Egon accepted, but Emmi, who loved beer, refused, not in words, but in the turning aside of her head. Irmgard took a glass and held it in her hands, as though she were unconscious of having it.

  Franz drank deeply. He stood near the stove, tall, broad, smiling derisively. He looked at Irmgard:

  “Unser Amerika!” he said.

  Emmi sat like an image of grief, her indomitable shoulders bent, her head fallen on her meagre chest.

  CHAPTER 10

  Franz sat alone, smoking a last pipe. His parents had gone to bed. Irmgard had retired to her room. The stove had lost its earlier cherry-colored belly, and the room was becoming cold. Before she had left, Emmi had prudently turned out all the gas jets but one, but this filled the room with vague uncertain shadows. The rain had stopped, but the wind rattled the narrow slices of windows. It had begun to snow fitfully. Franz was encased in the silence of the sleeping flat, the sleeping street. Even when a passing train, behind the building, howled like a lonely wolf, the sound seemed to infuse itself into the silence rather than invade it.

  Franz propped his feet on the ledge of the stove and tilted back his chair. He glanced about the room impassively, though he hated its ugliness and starkness. The horsehair seats gleamed darkly in the gaslight. The portraits on the walls were blurs. He rubbed his cold feet against the stove and was rewarded only by a faint warmth. The gaslight hissed. From somewhere came a child’s dim sharp cry, and then silence again. Hail was mingling with the first snow, and its rattling against the windows increased the desolation of the night.