During the meal, Joseph Wall told their story. He and his wife had arrived in America from Poland thirty years earlier. Their first act as new immigrants was to undertake a bureaucratic metamorphosis, shrinking their name from Walinowski to Wall with a single stroke of a pen. Those last three syllables were lost forever, ghosts from their old life. Joseph and Reina had faced the future with their new name—simple, unforeign, monumental.
“That was the biggest mistake I ever made.” The doctor sighed and looked at Frederick. “If I may give you some advice. Learn the language, but don’t ever change your name. This is a land of immigrants. I don’t just mean you and me. I mean
everyone
. We all came here from somewhere. But who am I now? Who are my sons?
Wall
.” He shook his head. “It’s a good name, but it’s not ours.”
Frederick nodded, and just like that, we were doomed to our own polysyllabic heft of German nomenclature.
The following morning, the doctor watched as Jette climbed into the carriage that he had procured. Two horses waited patiently in their harness, eating sugar lumps out of the driver’s hand.
“How much is this going to cost?” asked Frederick anxiously. “Two horses is more than I can really—”
Joseph held up a hand. “I’ve borrowed them from a friend of mine. I explained the situation. He says you’re welcome to them. He won’t miss them for a few days.”
“But you don’t know us,” protested Frederick. “How do you know we’ll send them back?”
Joseph pointed at the driver. “
He’ll
come back, and he’ll bring the horses with him. Besides,” he said, “I do know you. I
was
you, once.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, and then shook hands.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” said Frederick.
“Live your life,” answered Joseph Wall. “Look after your wife and your new baby. Cherish your family. That will be thanks enough.”
“God bless the United States of America,” said Frederick solemnly, in Polish.
The doctor laughed. “Go,” he said. “Go to your new home, Frederick Meisenheimer. Go and be a good American.”
“A good American. Yes. That is what I shall be.” Frederick smiled at him. “I shall never forget you, I promise you that.”
“All right, then. Good. Don’t forget us.” The doctor’s hand landed in the middle of Frederick’s back. “But, go, please, before your wife has her baby right here on the street.”
With a final wave, Frederick climbed into the carriage. The driver shook the reins and the horses moved away.
Frederick turned to his wife. Jette lay limply against the cushions. She smiled weakly at him, her face cast into shadow by exhaustion. “I can feel every cobblestone we go over,” she said.
He held her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “With two horses, we’ll be in Rocheport before you know it.”
By then, of course, Frederick was getting used to making mistakes.
SIX
The carriage clattered westward, mile after mile. Frederick stared out the window at the fields of crops that stretched away to the horizon. Occasionally he saw men in the distance, solitary workers toiling beneath the sun. The land went on forever. Jette lay with her face turned to the wall. Every bump in the road, every uneven bounce of the wheel, made her wince. Frederick wished there was something he could do. He wanted the driver, a sour-faced man called Childs, to hurry the horses on to Rocheport, but he didn’t want Jette to suffer the discomfort that a speedier journey would cause. As it was, their progress was steady and unspectacular. At midday they stopped to rest the horses and eat the lunch that Reina Wall had packed for them. Childs preferred his own company, standing near the horses as he ate. My grandparents stared silently at Jette’s stomach, wondering how long they had.
That night they stayed in a small inn. Childs had declined Frederick’s invitation to join them for supper with a terse shake of his head. Frederick had seen him later in the tavern, alone at a table, staring silently into a glass of beer.
The next day they set off at dawn. As they traveled west, the quality of the roads deteriorated. The carriage shuddered as it jumped crevices and hurdled ridges. By the middle of the morning, Jette’s face was shining with perspiration. She lay with her eyes tightly shut, her belly cradled in her hands. Frederick stroked her forehead, promising that it would soon be over.
Halfway through the afternoon they felt the carriage slow to a standstill. Childs clambered down from his seat. His face appeared at the window, and he motioned that the horses needed water. Frederick opened the carriage door and looked out. They had stopped in a small town. Single-story buildings lined both sides of the street, a wooden sign hanging outside each one. Dirty-faced boys in torn shirts ran back and forth across the road. In front of one shop, boxes of fruits and vegetables were displayed on a long trestle table. Frederick watched a woman with a basket on her arm bend over and inspect some pears. The sign above the shop read
lebensmittel
.
“Jette,” he whispered. “The grocer’s sign is in German.” When she did not reply, Frederick looked around. Swamped by the sudden bliss of stillness, she had fallen asleep. Frederick climbed down from the carriage. At that moment a man walked by, singing softly to himself in German.
It is hard to imagine the effect on my grandfather of hearing the familiar cadences of his native tongue at that particular moment. For the last two days he had been brooding about being hoodwinked by the Polish barman. Not even Joseph Wall’s kindness had been able to soften the sting of his humiliation, and with that humiliation came a new, unfamiliar suspicion of those around him—now he saw a rapacious glint in the eye of every native, an unscrupulous trick lurking up every foreign sleeve. So when he stepped out onto that street, he was vulnerable to the faintest echo of home. He hurried after the man. “Excuse me,” he called out in German.
The man stopped and turned to look at him.
“Forgive me for interrupting you,” began Frederick. “My name is Frederick Meisenheimer. My wife and I have just arrived in this country.”
The man studied Frederick. He was well over six and a half feet tall. A scar ran across his right cheek, casting his face in a shadow of violence. The bruised ribbons of torn tissue had grafted themselves back together in an uneven crest of ugliness, a scabbed exclamation mark. His hands were calloused slabs of leathered flesh. Long, thick fingers were interrupted by knuckles the size of walnuts.
“Where are you from?” asked the man, also in German.
“Hanover.”
“And what brings you here?”
“We’re just passing through,” said Frederick. He pointed behind him. “The horses need water.”
The man nodded. “Where are you headed?”
Before Frederick could answer, there was a loud scream from inside the carriage.
H
ours later, Frederick was pacing up and down a corridor, listening to Jette’s labor from behind a closed door. The man Frederick had spoken to earlier that day sat nearby, calmly smoking a cigarette. His name was Johann Kliever. They were in his house.
“I don’t like this,” said Frederick, for the seventh time.
Kliever stretched his long legs out in front of him and studied his boots, which were caked in yellow dust. “He’s a good doctor,” he said simply.
After their conversation on the street had been interrupted, Frederick and Kliever had carried Jette from the carriage to the bed where she now lay. Childs had refused to help, complaining instead about the mess caused by Jette’s broken waters. The doctor had appeared at the house a few minutes later. Since then, the bedroom door had remained shut.
Another howl of agony echoed through the house. Soon afterward the doctor, Mathias Becker, appeared in the corridor. He was a short, rotund man with an anxious manner about him. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his face was red.
“Herr Meisenheimer?” he said in German, wiping his hands on a towel as he spoke.
Frederick stepped forward. “Yes?”
“Your wife’s labor is progressing, but slowly. The baby seems determined to take its time.”
“Can I see her?” asked Frederick eagerly.
“You will have to do more than that.” The doctor looked at his watch. “I must go home, at least for a while. A tired physician is of no use to your wife, I can assure you. I will return in the morning. If anything happens in the meantime, Kliever knows where to find me. I can be here in five minutes.”
“I see,” said Frederick.
“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “I doubt much will happen for a while yet. She may even sleep a little. Encourage her to do so. She will need all her strength tomorrow.” He shook Frederick’s hand. “I will see you in the morning, and then we will meet this new baby of yours.” With a brief nod he turned and went down the stairs.
Frederick opened the bedroom door. The curtains had been drawn against the night that was closing in. Jette lay on a narrow bed in the middle of the room. Her eyes were closed. The only other furniture was a wooden chest of drawers, on top of which sat a large terra-cotta angel.
“Jette?”
On hearing his voice, Jette’s eyes opened. Frederick squatted down beside her. He could see the exhaustion and fright in her face.
“Where have you been?” she whispered.
Frederick reached for her hand. “I was outside all along.”
“If you leave me again, I’ll kill you,” she told him.
“But there was nothing I could—”
Frederick’s reply froze in his throat as Jette’s face contorted into a mask of pain. A low sob escaped her. The scream that followed knocked the world off its axis, obliterating reason. Shocked beyond words, Frederick watched the contraction pass.
“I won’t ever leave you,” he said.
They clung to each other then, not saying a word.
As the night drew on, Jette’s contractions became worse. They had a terrible rhythm all of their own, a ghastly pulse of agony.
In the calm between contractions, Frederick and Jette tried to sleep. At about three o’clock in the morning, Frederick was drifting in and out of exhausted slumber when Jette’s hand landed on his shoulder. He struggled to his feet. Jette’s mouth was stretched open in a silent scream. When the pain subsided, her eyes met his. “The baby’s coming,” she whispered.
“But it’s not—The doctor said—He’s not—”
Jette grunted, a noise whose quiet ferocity was more unnerving than the howls that had gone before. Her eyes narrowed, then closed. Another grunt. Then a whole series of them, short, harsh, utterly terrifying.
“Wake Kliever,” she gasped. “Tell him to fetch—”
She got no further, silenced by another wave of pain. A minute later, Frederick was back by her side. Down the corridor, Kliever was pulling on his trousers. Jette’s chest rose and fell violently, breath rasping in and out of her. The noise filled the room. Frederick suddenly understood that there would be no time to wait for the doctor. He went to the end of the bed and peered nervously between Jette’s open legs.
“Frederick,” moaned Jette. “Stop staring and come here.”
Abashed, Frederick scuttled around to her side. It occurred to him that he had never seen her so determined, so afraid, or so beautiful.
“What is it?” she hissed through clenched teeth. “What’s wrong?”
He bent down toward her. “I was just thinking how beautiful you looked.”
The punch was impressive, both accurate and strong. Jette’s fist caught her husband squarely on the jaw. It was an absolute peach of a shot, and it propelled him backward into the chest of drawers. The impact sent the terra-cotta angel crashing to the ground. Frederick lay sprawled across the floor, his jaw stinging. Before he had the chance to wonder what he had done to deserve such a mighty wallop, Jette let out a last cry, filled with a world of agony and hope, and her body went limp. Then the room filled with a high-pitched mewl.
It was the first note of millions that my father would sing.
D
r. Becker arrived a few minutes after the birth. He had gently taken the child out of Frederick’s trembling hands and cut his umbilical cord. After a brief inspection he declared him healthy, if a little on the small side. After the sun had risen and the first day of my father’s life had begun in earnest, Jette lay propped up in her bed, the new baby in her arms. Kliever and his wife gathered around to inspect the child. Frederick stood next to Jette, gazing in awe at the tiny sleeping bundle of creased flesh. One hand rested on his wife’s shoulder. The other gingerly rubbed his chin. The terra-cotta angel was lying forgotten on the bedroom floor. One of its wings had broken off when it hit the ground. It lay a few inches away from the rest of the body, alone and dislocated, a misshapen heart.
“A beautiful baby boy,” Anna Kliever said, smiling.
Kliever nodded approvingly. “What will you call him?”
Jette thought about Joseph and Reina Wall, and wondered what would have happened without their kind and timely intervention. She reached up and felt for Frederick’s hand. Her fingers closed around his. “We’ll call him Joseph,” she said.
Just then there was a knock on the bedroom door. Dr. Becker and Childs stood side by side in the corridor. Becker beckoned Frederick out of the bedroom.
“Herr Meisenheimer,” began the doctor. “How is your new family?”
Frederick blinked through his exhaustion. “Tired,” he said.
“Splendid,” said Becker. He looked at his shoes for a moment. “Mr. Childs here has been asking when you will be able to continue your journey. He tells me that he is required to return to St. Louis in two days.”
“I see.”
“Your son is very small and weak, Herr Meisenheimer. He must be properly looked after.” The doctor paused. “If I could insist upon it, I would have you all stay here, for several days at least. Your wife needs to recover from her labor, and your son is too young for the rigors of a long journey.”
Frederick nodded. “Yes. I understand.”
“If you do as I suggest, Mr. Childs can return to St. Louis today.”
The driver’s small, bloodshot eyes shifted between the men as he listened to them speak in German, a sullen scowl of incomprehension on his thin lips. Frederick sighed. “Well, then, I suppose we should wish him a safe journey home.”
Dr. Becker nodded, and turned and spoke to Childs in English. The driver listened in silence, and then walked away without giving them another glance.
The two men stood alone in the corridor for a moment.
“Doctor?” said Frederick.
“Yes, Herr Meisenheimer?”
“Where are we?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, what is the name of this town?”
A smile spread across the doctor’s face. “Didn’t you know? You’re in Beatrice, Missouri.”