“During my teen years it got ugly. There were threats, there were incidents, I had fights at school. Things grew so bad that he resigned his commission. Mother wasn’t happy about that. But he stood firm. He was like a rock around which waters boil and swirl. His convictions, that’s all he knew.”
Perhaps it wasn’t as romantic as the Bodensee heritage, but it was, I thought, more substantial. And I pictured the old gentleman with side whiskers.
During dinner Elizabeth sketched in broad strokes the general tenor of her personal war. “Officially the war began in ’39. For Austria it was 11 March 1938. I’ll never forget it. They marched in from the east, through the Neusiedlersee Pass, which was still snowed in. Not only did they march, they skiied and trucked in, they came by rail through the Tyrol to Salzburg, and fanned out into Vienna and the farming districts, Bergenland, Steiermakki, Karnten, and Niederösterreich.
“Everywhere our soft-spoken melodious German was replaced by harsh Northern dialect. What a distasteful sound!” She shuddered. “They took over everything, of course, the chemical plants, the nitrogen plant in Linz, electrical power, crude oil, natural gas—but they aren’t content with utilities—the National Bank of Austria is next, where, as you know, your father had a seat on the board. Fortunately, as it turned out, the commandant quartered on us was a career soldier, a gentleman of good family. It makes a difference. He saw to it that our larder remained full. We were not reduced to want, as so many of our friends and neighbors were. But our privacy was gone, our servants. We kept to our rooms while they had the run of the house.”
She paused for a sip of port. “Then of course you were called up. You remember the initial euphoria. But a year and a half, two years later, the war news began to be punctuated, perhaps I should say lacerated by news that didn’t fit. One heard things, a returned veteran, someone in hospital—delirious, of course, but . . . Here and there, it is rumored, a ship is sunk, and another—and then Russia . . . utterly defeated, we are told. Yet I heard a captain with the Hitler medal who had been at Stalingrad say our troops were starving, and winter would finish them. Nothing is official. It is all indirect. And from you, Erich, no more letters, nothing. But your father and I don’t speak of it. Even with his connections, we didn’t know are you alive or dead.”
Elizabeth turned to me. “It is terrible to lose a child, an only son. Believe me, it is as bad not to know. To hope one day, despair the next, snatch the mail out of the postman’s hands. It was then his father began to fail. I looked at him one day and saw an old man. But there—” She caught herself and turned back to Erich. “By a miracle you are returned to us.”
Erich responded with a deprecating wave of the hand that took in his missing leg.
“What is that?” she said almost angrily. “You are with us, here, alive, when so many aren’t.”
“I feel that way too,” I said, identifying with Elizabeth for the first time.
Erich was anxious to turn the conversation from himself. “The country,” he asked, “will it recover?”
“Of course. Certainly. But it is heartbreaking. Half the railroads are gone, and the bridges over the Danube blown, in fact all bridges and roads are pockmarked by shells or completely destroyed. Life in the cities is just beginning to crawl out from the ruins. But,” she said with resolution, “there are endless opportunities for someone with family, with connections, someone who was awarded the Iron Cross, someone like you, Erich.”
“Not someone like me,” Erich said firmly. “Someone who hasn’t grown attached to a vast new country, someone who hasn’t started a new life.”
Had he wanted to say, someone who hasn’t an aboriginal wife?
With a little laugh Elizabeth retreated. “Of course, you are quite right, my darling, to feel that way.” Then, turning to me, “Your country is so large, so pristine and unspoiled. You must forgive me being stupid on the subject. But I know so little of it, and even less about your people. I did not even know that they are referred to as First Nation people. You bring such an exotic strain to our family, my dear. I must inform myself, I must learn something of your background, your fascinating heritage.”
Erich intervened. “If you want to read up on Indians, fine. But Kathy can’t tell you anything. With her, background and heritage are two different things. She was raised by a white woman, Katherine Mary Flannigan, and her husband, a sergeant in the Mounties. Her brother and sister are of French extraction, and she didn’t know any Indians until she went to school.”
I suppressed an impulse to tell her about the blanket ceremony and that I had married one of those exotic creatures known as First Nation people.
Erich must have felt uncomfortable too, for he declared we should leave the anthropology for another day. To another day also was left the question of his fealty. Was it, as his mother implied, to Austria?
Elizabeth continued to fill in the picture, emphasizing the very large hole Erich’s defection made. His father, physically and mentally impaired, was no longer capable of attending to family interests. She herself, as she pointed out, was not a businesswoman. Yet she hesitated to rely on lawyers when so much was at stake.
Several days later, while Elizabeth was shopping, Erich and I had one of our private talks. “What would you think,” he asked, “of going back briefly, for a fortnight or two? Just to straighten out the affairs of the estate, collect the proper documents, and put our claim for reparations before the new regime? Tidy things up, leave them in good hands?”
“It would certainly help Elizabeth out.”
“How would you feel about it?” he persisted.
I countered this with “How would you feel about it?”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“I think you do.”
“If it’s that old obsession of yours about being Indian—”
“Erich, I am Indian. Your mother chooses to say ‘exotic.’ What about your friends, relatives, neighbors? The society your mother moves in? How will they see me, and how will they feel about me?”
“I fought on Hitler’s side, simply because I am Austrian. Do you think that I or my family or friends have taken on any of his madness? That we believe in the special purity of the Aryan bloodline? Come on, Kathy.”
Put like that it did sound stupid.
From then on it was assumed we were returning and would vacation in Austria. It did seem a marvelous opportunity, too good to miss. Especially as Elizabeth made it plain she was underwriting the entire trip.
I thought that perhaps, woman to woman, I would look for the right moment and confide some of my hesitation to her. That moment came as we walked through the Bio Exposition. I thought this exhibit was something she would enjoy. It was the second largest botanical garden in the world and housed, according to the brochure, twenty-six thousand different plant species. We passed thick rubbery stalks bursting with unlikely blooms and banked layers of savannah grasses where herds of papier-mâché elephant herds grazed, and came to a stop before delicate fan-shaped leaves with veins like those on our own hands. A zebra with a glass eye watched as I came out with it, asking if she thought that, once we got to Austria, I would fit in.
“Of course.” And she gave me an impetuous hug. “Naturally you’ll need a few things,” she added.
My heart sank. There was nothing in our budget for clothes.
With wonderful intuition she guessed the problem. “There’s a family fund that takes care of such necessities,” she said, “so please, not to give it another thought.”
But I did think about it and worry about it. Finally I asked Erich.
“Mother’s right,” he said. “There is a fund for such contingencies.”
“Then it’s all right,” I asked, only half convinced, “to go shopping with her and let her buy me things?”
“You’re my wife, aren’t you?” And he dismissed the subject by kissing the tip of my nose.
Elizabeth had a list. From my feet to my head I was to be outf
itted. We took a cab to St. Catherine Street. Next door to Eaton’s department store we purchased a lovely pair of gray suede shoes with French heels. Inside Eaton’s we looked at stylish suits and coats before settling on a black caracul. I refrained from looking at the price tag. Blouses and dresses went over my head in a small airless cubicle. I paraded them before Elizabeth for her approval.
On to Morgan’s and then Simpson’s. I liked a dirndl skirt cut on the bias, but Elizabeth dismissed it, insisting it did nothing for me—whatever that meant. I think it meant that I was totally lacking in taste, sophistication, and elegance.
When I thought we were through, we had merely stopped for what she called tea and I called lunch. She dragged me past a Kik stand, where you could get an economy cola, two glasses for a nickel. I found myself instead in the Ritz-Carlton having brunch in the Oval Room. I would have much preferred a quick sandwich at Ma Heller’s. Elizabeth, I saw, was at home among sugar tongs and, in the evening I suppose, candle snuffers. While we waited for our shrimp canapes and watercress rolls, Elizabeth described shopping in Berlin. “I’m talking of the old days, of course. Tauentzienstrasse, corner of Kurfürstendamm. Marvelous shops, especially for jewelry.”
As the luncheon progressed, the various items we had purchased were gone over. “I thought you looked very smart in the Worth.”
“The Worth?”
“Yes, yes,” she said with a touch of impatience, “the suit we decided on, the Suez rose designed by Worth.”
I remembered gazing at myself in the large store mirror with its gilt frame. Who was that slim, dark girl? She wasn’t me. I was sure of that. She was the girl Erich and Elizabeth planned to bring back to Austria, to introduce to high-bred relatives and friends as Erich’s wife. Perhaps that’s who the girl in the glass was—Erich’s wife. The Suez rose suit was very becoming to her, it somehow minimized the copper tone of her skin.
I tried to focus on what Elizabeth was saying. “And I thought the periwinkle blue exceedingly becoming. Schiaparelli is for you, Liebchen, long simple lines. Yes, definitely, he had you in mind.”
How charming she was, how generous. A fortune had been spent on me. The coat alone was a year’s wages. How fairy-tale it seemed, misty, charming, and totally devoid of reality. But that girl in the looking glass, that Kathy that I would turn into, belonged to the periwinkle blue and the Suez rose. I saw her beside Elizabeth, acknowledging introductions, shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries. She was wearing the white kid gloves we had just purchased. They came to the elbows and closed with tiny seed pearl buttons. What if—?
With a start I came to myself.
The excursion did not end with the shopping. Elizabeth must see the French quarter. Old habit held me and a world of what-ifs. . . . What if Kathy Forquet von Kerll captured all hearts in her furs and her chiffons and her gray suede shoes? Erich was proud as he offered an arm and escorted her onto the floor of the grand ballroom. I could almost hear the strains of a Viennese waltz.
Coming out of Duprez Freres we passed by a touristy window in which a dark-colored mannikin was decked out in deerskin dress and moccasins with quillwork. She had a feather in her hair. Elizabeth stopped and stared.
The packages were delivered the following day. That evening we had a grand showing. I modeled item after item. Erich watched silently. I began to feel apprehensive. I had allowed his mother to spend too much. But at the end of the show he kissed me. “You’ll knock them for a loop,” he said. He loved picking up slang. To Elizabeth he said more formally, “You did well, Mother.”
He considered the money well spent. It seemed I was dichotomized into two persons. The old Kathy, brought up by Katherine Mary Flannigan, and the new me, the one about to step from the mirror and take her place in a what-if world. I hung my wardrobe carefully in the chiffonier, but I didn’t throw out the boxes. Instead, I folded the tissue paper into them and placed them on the highest shelf, which they occupied with my wolf talisman.
That says it all, I thought. Could they continue to reside side by side as they appeared to be doing?
The end of Elizabeth’s visit was approaching. She had what she had come for. She had crossed the North Atlantic to bring us back with her. And we were going.
To make myself believe it, I went around after work to tell Egg. She looked up from her desk, and her face fulfilled its laugh lines. She was happy to see me and incredulous when I told her about a vacation in Austria.
“Such things don’t happen to people I know,” she said.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
She nodded that it was, but simultaneously made the sign of the cross over me.
I didn’t phone Mama Kathy. I don’t know why, except that she’d worry that I was visiting a country we had been at war with only months ago. Mama Kathy never worried about herself, it was just her kids. “Someday you’ll know,” she’d say.
I would write her, as I’d finally written of our marriage and our intention to visit. By return post she had answered with love and congratulations, but added that a civil ceremony such as I described seemed inadequate to her. It would be no trouble to arrange to repeat our vows in church with family present.
I spoke to Erich, and he was in agreement, he would be happy to do it. In large things and in small Mama was meticulous. One of the small, I explained to Erich, was saving foreign stamps. She used to save them for Georges. But I’m sure the habit was still with her, and she’d find some ten-year-old somewhere. . . .
In token of her farewell to Montreal Elizabeth decided we must have a suitable dinner, “at one of the better French restaurants.” She had been reading the Divertissement section in Le Devoir. “The Chez Queux on Jacques-Cartier in the old French quarter sounds interesting. It says here, ‘built on the fortifications of the original town.’ According to this account, the chef has served the royal houses of France.”
“He must be very old,” Erich commented drily, “pre-Revolution.”
Elizabeth ignored this. “And the same architect designed the palace of justice, the chapel of the Sacred Heart, and the church on Rue Bonsecours. We absolutely must dine there.”
Later in the afternoon she slipped Erich money. That and the shopping expedition made me wonder if the family estate was in as desperate a condition as she depicted. But I dismissed the idea. Why else would she have made the crossing?
I dressed for the occasion in my elegant suit and felt like an Austrian aristocrat, until I saw a real one. Elizabeth took your breath away in a vaguely patterned, creamy material that gave the effect of sculpting her.
Erich’s eyes passed from me to her. He bowed low but refrained from heel clicking, which he knew I detested. “What a privilege to escort two such beauties.”
Snow White and Rose Red, I thought bitterly to myself.
AS OUR CAB pulled up to the restaurant, a liveried attendant sprang for the door. A fringed canopy led downstairs to an underground palace. The maitre d’ hurried to precede us through subdued lighting in which sparkled the crystal of chandeliers and goblets. I glimpsed elegantly folded serviettes lying on the laps of ladies who had been appareled in the boutiques I’d come to know. Flowers drooped toward a central fountain. I felt I was in a play or an opera.
Exchanging a few words with Erich in French, the maitre d’ left, sending a sous-chef to our table. An enormously large bill of fare was placed in my hands. I saw immediately that my French was not up to the challenge of these dishes. I planned to say, “I’ll have the same.”
Erich and the sous-chef embarked on a lengthy discussion of the menu. I looked it over more carefully, and translated prix du marche to mean “price on request.” Good heavens! They didn’t print the price.
Another conversation flowed around me, this one triangular as Erich enlarged the discussion to include his mother. He turned to me. “It’s between the entrecôte grillée aux trois poivres flambée au cognac, grilled steak in cognac sauce, or the Chateaubriand et sa suite, Chateaubriand for two with . .
. with accompaniments.”
“Accompaniments?”
“Soup, salad, appetizers.”
“What are you having? Give it to me in plain English.”
He laughed. “Filet mignon and potato pancakes in whiskey.”
“Share the Chateaubriand with me,” Elizabeth suggested.
I nodded, while Erich ordered from the wine list. A different waiter had appeared for this ritual. Kir Royals were decided on, to be followed by a Pinot noir Ramsey, and a Bordeaux la Grange Clairet. I was disturbed as I watched yet another waiter dutifully scribbling our preferences, a servant to the wines. But I had misjudged the profligacy of the establishment. Behind him, dinner napkin over his arm, was a second in command. His job was to listen, to smile, to nod approval, and, of course, the manual part of his job description, when the glasses arrived to set them on the table. I felt sad sitting there in Nile pink—no, no, Suez. It was Suez pink. At any rate I felt sad that a man should be a servant to a glass. But it seemed that if its contents had been pressed in the correct year the vintage was worth many times what he was.
The potage was served, bisque de crustace tuile parmesan, the salade d’endives au roquefort, avec noix. My champagne flute was removed and a wine goblet placed in front of me. A lightly smoked salmon in brandy marinade followed spiced duckling. I observed Erich carefully to see which of the array of forks he chose.
Elizabeth’s color was heightened becomingly. They were speaking in English in deference to me, but of people and things I knew nothing of. “You remember Franz Werfel, he did many fine biographies. I read shortly before I came that he died. He was a Jew, you know. He escaped Hitler and fled to the United States.”
“Yes, we played chess once. He beat me.”
Then she was saying, “We lost the Scharnhorst early, so you would know about that. And the battleship Gneisenau in November of ’39. And the merchant cruiser Rawalpindi in the North Sea. Each sinking was a blow to your father. Especially losing the pocket battleship Deutschland and the Admiral Graf Spee. Captain Langedorff’s father was an old friend. You may remember him.”
The Search for Joyful Page 25