Frederick nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “I have missed singing.”
“You’re good at it. Don’t ever stop.” The major removed his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. He pushed them back onto his nose and winked at Frederick. “
Che bella vita
, eh?” The men shook hands warmly.
What a beautiful life.
Frederick found an empty pew, pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil from his kit bag, and wrote his daily letter home in the flickering candlelight. When he had finished, he folded the letter and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He stretched out along the hard wooden bench, and was soon asleep, borne into peaceful oblivion on the crest of all those rediscovered melodies.
The following morning Daniel Jinks led the unit back into the forest to continue their journey eastward. By mid-morning they reached the decimated remains of a small village. The townsfolk had fled months ago; the place had been used as a supply point for munitions and supplies for enemy troops to the west. The retreating Germans had destroyed as much of the place as they could. Frederick picked his way through the charred, cratered landscape that remained. He was in an irrepressible mood: music’s flame had been reignited inside him, and he vowed to follow the pianist’s advice. He wouldn’t ever stop singing. Not again. He had spent the morning working his way with relish through the repertoire he had abandoned. As the unit made their way through the village, Frederick was singing the finale of
Così Fan Tutte
, gamely playing all the principal characters at once. He was not paying attention to the job at hand, and his overcoat got caught on one of the coiled lines of barbed wire that crossed his path. Still singing, he stopped and tried to pull himself free. His tugging only made matters worse, ensnaring the material more. Realizing that he was going no farther, he bent down to extricate his coat.
Such a big man, out in the open, momentarily still: Frederick was still singing when the hidden German sniper drew a bead on the back of his head. The sharp crack echoed through the empty streets.
P
eter Kropp had been the postmaster in Beatrice for more years than anyone, himself included, could count. He had been enjoying a quiet retirement until his successor was conscripted in 1917. With the post office standing empty, Kropp was pressed back into service. He had been delighted to be back in his old job, until the telegrams began to arrive.
Now he walked somberly through the town, his hat held against his chest and his head cast down.
Jette had been standing at the window of the sitting room, gazing out at the street. When she saw the old postmaster hesitate at the gate, her world slipped silently into the long shadow of heartbreak. And then she was hurrying down the path to intercept the bad news, wanting to keep it out of the house. She wordlessly took the envelope from Peter Kropp’s unsteady hand. A cold wind swept down the street. Jette’s fingers curled tightly around the yellow square of paper as she dropped to her knees.
FOURTEEN
On the evening of Peter Kropp’s visit, when there were no more tears left to shed, Jette took Frederick’s letters down from the mantelpiece. She fumbled with the first envelope, the paper stiff after months over the fireplace. Frederick’s handwriting was uneven, jagging sharply across the page. He had been writing on the train to Kansas City. My grandmother sat in an armchair by the fire and began to read.
As the night wore on, the sweet, funny man she had loved so dearly disappeared before her eyes. The early letters were full of tentative explanations and gentle pleas for understanding. But soon Frederick’s new world had crowded in. His tone became more brittle, less willing to consider alternative views. Jette had read on in sadness as she watched the army sink its teeth into him. He filed reports of drills, mess hall politics, and military exercises. His letters became excruciatingly dull. Frederick was no longer interested in anything except the conflict that awaited him. He was eager to baptize his love for America in the blood of strangers. As she read, it felt as if Frederick were being killed all over again, each new letter a fresh bullet.
Her grief was too immense to hold on to. After so long without Frederick, waiting for precisely this news, she could only reflect numbly that today was really no different from yesterday. She was still alone. The yellow telegraph had announced a different fatality—the death of hope.
That evening, Jette returned to the Nick-Nack and served drinks and smiled, just as she always did. She listened to the men sing their songs. She told nobody what had happened.
For days she grimly batted away the news. The most dangerous time was in the mornings, just after she awoke. In those first unguarded moments of consciousness, truth lurked, ready to pounce. It’s impossible to know how long Jette would have continued to bob along in this limbo of deferred grief had it not been for the letters.
As it turned out, Jette had been wrong to fear the day when the postman approached with empty hands. Frederick’s missives from Europe took weeks to make the long journey home, but news of his death had traveled faster, by official communiqué and telegram. And so after he died, Frederick’s letters continued to arrive, a second slow creep toward the sniper’s gun.
At first Jette was grateful; here was proof that nothing had really changed. Now, though, she tore open each envelope as soon as it arrived. Frederick was writing from northern France, just behind the front, waiting for his turn to fight. He wrote the date at the top of each letter. It was this slow countdown to the silence that she knew was coming that finally pulled Jette out of her denial. His words were strictly finite now.
The last letter arrived. Frederick never posted it; it had been found in the pocket of his tunic by Daniel Jinks, the carpenter from Joplin, who had sent it on himself. Jette opened the envelope, scarcely able to breathe. There was the date: October 13, 1918.
Curled up on a pew in that whitewashed church deep in the Argonne Forest, my grandfather handed Jette the key that would set her free. He did not write of his first day of engagement with the enemy—that long-anticipated confrontation. Instead he told her about the impromptu recital in the church with the kind pianist from Missouri. The music had woken up old memories and lifted his eyes beyond the bleak horizon of war. For the first time in months, he talked about coming home. Promises, crazy, impossible promises, spilled off the page, a glorious hymn to the future. Frederick was dreaming again. His last words to her were full of hope, of joy, of life.
Jette held the letter tightly in her hands. The man she had loved so dearly had returned to bid her a final farewell.
It was November 11, 1918, the day the Armistice was signed. The war had been won.
N
ow Jette could mourn properly.
She decided that there would be no funeral. She knew the crowd from the Nick-Nack would turn any memorial service into a mordant celebration, and she did not want that. Her husband was dead, his body abandoned in an unknown field on the other side of the world. The children had lost their father. They would stumble on, a lopsided trio, one corner of their perfect square gone forever. There was nothing to celebrate.
Instead she performed a little ceremony of her own devising. She built a fire in the backyard and burned all of Frederick’s letters, except the last one. She held each piece of paper over the flames in turn, watching his words slowly disintegrate. She planted a young apple tree in the yard and sprinkled the ashes of the letters in the soil around the sapling. Frederick’s words would enrich the ground he loved so much: new roots in America.
That afternoon, as the new apple tree swayed in the wind, she kissed her children’s heads and told them that their father was dead. Joseph buried his face in the folds of her dress. Rosa covered her ears with her fists. The three of them clung to each other and sank to the floor.
Later that day Joseph stumbled to Frau Bloomberg’s house. When she opened the door and saw his face, no words were needed. She knelt down on the doorstep and opened her arms. He clung to her, his shoulders heaving in wordless grief. Riva Bloomberg gently pried his fingers from around her neck. “Joseph,” she whispered. “Come with me.” She stood up and led him down the corridor to the music room.
Joseph looked away from the piano. “I won’t sing,” he said. “Not without him here.”
“But he
is
here,” said Riva Bloomberg. She gently placed her hand on Joseph’s chest. “He’s in here. Your father is part of you, and he always will be. If you sing, he’ll hear you. I promise.” She sat down on the piano stool and waited with her hands folded on her lap.
Joseph stood there for an age.
In the end, all his hard work did not go to waste. The recital took place, exactly as he had planned it, except that the songs were no longer songs of welcome, but a final good-bye. His voice, sweet and lovely, filled the empty room.
T
hat evening, the mood in the Nick-Nack was ecstatic. People were celebrating. The Armistice had been signed. Victory was secured. The singing grew louder as the night went on. Jette stood behind the bar and listened. Toward the end of the evening, after a particularly boisterous rendition of “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” she climbed up onto the counter and clapped her hands for attention.
“Gentlemen, please!”
A sea of happy faces turned toward her.
“Our beautiful hostess!” called out a drunken voice.
“How about a victory dance?” shouted another. The crowd laughed.
Jette waited for the noise to die down. “You are all celebrating tonight,” she began. There was a cheer. “You want to honor the men who have fought for this country.”
There was a low rumble of approval. “American heroes!” called a voice from the back of the room.
Jette’s eyes were dry as she looked around the room. “Well, I have news about one American hero.” She took a deep breath and relinquished her secret. “My husband is not coming home. He was killed by enemy fire in France.”
In the stunned silence that followed, she climbed down from the bar, straightened her dress, and walked out the back door of the tavern. Not one person moved as she went.
Alone in the deserted alleyway, Jette slumped against the wall. Her chest tightened in a vise of melancholy. As she fought for breath, one of her legs gave way beneath her, and she stumbled forward into the darkness. She collapsed onto her knees, her body felled by tears.
A memory drifted back to her. During those long walks through the streets and gardens of Hanover, Frederick would tell her the plots of the operas he loved so much. There had been talking statues, deals with the Devil, megalomaniacal dwarves. She had laughed at the improbability of it all. But she reserved her greatest scorn for the absurd heroines who threw themselves about in twittering fits of melodrama, forever threatening to kill themselves for love. But whoever really died of a broken heart? she had asked him with a smile. Oh, he had replied, entirely serious, you’d be surprised.
So he was right all along
, she thought. Grief began to smother her.
Then she heard the singing from the other side of the tavern door.
Jette propped herself up on one elbow and listened. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was seeping into the cold night air—but there was none of the usual celebratory pomp. Instead the men were singing softly in tribute to Frederick, their voices joined in gentle unison. When they reached the end of the fourth verse, there was a long silence. Jette gazed up into the starless sky. She wondered where she would ever get the strength to pick herself up.
The answer came there and then.
The men inside began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”
again. This time, though, all restraint had vanished. The usual lusty bellowing had returned, more spirited than ever, fueled by the euphoria of victory. America had won! To the victor the spoils!
Jette thought of her grandfather, directing his troops to slaughter from the safety of his ridiculous balloon. She realized then that nothing would ever change. Men would repeat the same stupid mistakes again and again, slowly wiping themselves off the planet. She clambered to her feet, her grief eclipsed by fury, and made herself listen to the revelry inside the Nick-Nack. She wanted the sound of the celebration scratched into her memory, an indelible scar.
Men would never curb their lust for blood. Even Frederick—sweet, gentle Frederick—had been hypnotized by all that violence. As Jette listened, she knew that the idiots in the Nick-Nack’s choir had learned nothing, and never would.
So then: the salvation of the human race lay in the hands of women.
Mothers would not send their children off to die.
T
he following morning, Jette made a placard out of a large piece of wood. On it she painted the phrase:
SAVE OUR CHILDREN. NO MORE WAR.
While the paint dried, she dressed in widow’s mourning. She kissed her children and walked slowly toward the main square, holding her handmade sign in front of her. She made quite a spectacle, this towering vision in black. People peered quizzically at her as she passed. In front of the courthouse steps lay the debris from the previous day’s victory celebrations, a tattered landscape of red, white, and blue. Jette began to march slowly around the building. Before long, every window of the courthouse was filled with curious spectators. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk to watch her progress. She ignored them all.
Halfway through the morning, Nancy Ott fell into step next to her. Her family ran the grocery store on Main Street—the store whose German sign Frederick had noticed moments before Jette’s waters broke. Nancy Ott sat next to the till, where she rang up purchases and dealt in prurient, low-grade gossip. Jette had shopped there for years. Over the course of their long acquaintance the two women had never quite become friends, but the relationship had always been cordial. Now, though, the shopkeeper was scowling ferociously.
“Have you no shame?” she hissed.
Jette continued walking, looking straight ahead.
“Think of your poor husband, Jette. He must be turning in his grave, may God rest his soul.” Nancy Ott was struggling to keep pace with Jette’s long strides. “This is an insult to everything he fought for.”
“I loved my husband very much,” Jette replied calmly. “I miss him with all of my heart. He was a good man, and a brave man, too. But he was also an idiot. He chose to go to war, and he got himself killed. Now my children must grow up without a father, and I must go to the end of my days a lonely woman.”
“But the war is won.”
“Well, forgive me if I don’t share your joy. It won’t bring Frederick back.”
“This display of yours won’t bring him back either,” snapped Nancy Ott.
“That’s true,” agreed Jette. “But it might save others. And that is no insult to his memory, whatever you may think. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” With that she quickened her pace a fraction, and effortlessly left the older woman trailing in her wake.
“You’re no longer welcome in my store,” called Nancy Ott in fury.
Jette disappeared around the corner of the courthouse without looking back.
“
Traitor
,”
cried Nancy Ott.
At midday Jette returned home. It was November 12, 1918—perhaps not the most obvious day to wear a sign saying
no more war
, but to her it made perfect sense. The first day of a new peace was precisely the time to begin her campaign. The sacrifices of the fallen were already fading from people’s memories, obscured by the complacency of victory. Jette knew it would not be long before the same mistakes would be repeated.
My grandmother might have understood what she was doing, but nobody else did. Word spread quickly through the town that she had lost her mind to grief. Wives shook their heads in sympathy. Men grumbled that mourning should take place in private. The whole spectacle, it was agreed, was in shocking taste.
That night at the Nick-Nack, the atmosphere could not have been more different from the celebrations of the previous evening. Jette’s presence behind the bar smothered good cheer like a wet blanket on a small flame. By then everyone had heard about her confrontation with Nancy Ott, and the sinister menace of the old woman’s final insult had grown with every whispered echo on the lips of others. People looked away as they ordered their drinks, words of condolence caught in their throats.
By chance William Henry Harris had been booked to play that evening, but the little pianist only added to the somber mood. Rather than his usual up-tempo selections, he just played mournful tunes. At the end of his set, he left the piano and walked to the middle of the stage. He looked out across the room and waited patiently for silence. Finally the room fell quiet, all eyes on the dapper pianist who, up until that point, had never uttered a word in all the years he had been playing there.
“I ain’t no poet,” he began. “I say what I have to say with my fingers, not with words. I got one more song, though, and I want to dedicate it to Mr. Frederick Meisenheimer. We never did have that much to say to each other, him and me, but he was a good man. He loved this music, and he loved this bar, and he loved this country.” The pianist sat down at the keyboard. “The national anthem,” he announced.