Authors: Lynn Austin
“Are you against all wars, young man?” Papa asked. “Because the Scriptures are filled with battles fought in the Almighty’s name, you know.”
“That’s true, sir. But when it finally comes, this war will be fought in the name of greed, not justice. Christ always put the needs of people ahead of governments and institutions. Hatred and violence aren’t acceptable among His followers. He said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.’”
Kurt rested his hand on Friedrich’s shoulder. “If the Kaiser approves the new enlistment scheme, you won’t have a choice. You and I will both be included in the draft, married or not.”
Friedrich lowered his head. “Yes, I know.”
My brother Emil, who was only seventeen, seemed excited by the prospect. “We could be shipped to China . . . the African colonies . . . anywhere!”
“Your religious convictions won’t mean a thing to the Kaiser,” Papa said. “You’ll either serve in his army or go to jail.”
“I will never serve in his army.”
I dropped the box of matches I was holding. “Is that true, Friedrich? Would they force you to choose between joining the army and going to jail?”
The men turned to me in surprise, as if seeing me for the first time.
“Yes, it’s true,” he said as he bent to retrieve the matches.
“But . . . but you’re a schoolteacher, not a soldier.”
“Louise,” he said quietly, “let me help you with those candles.” He struck
a match and began lighting them, easily reaching the highest ones on top. I watched him as if he were a stranger.
Papa cleared his throat. “Listen now, the Kaiser’s grand plans have fizzled and died many times before. There’s no need to start worrying about something that might never happen. It’s Christmas, after all.”
His words broke the tension, and a few minutes later the men were laughing and helping Friedrich with the candles as if nothing in their lives would ever change. But I knew that my own life had changed. I gazed at all the men I loved, gathered around the glimmering tree, and felt as if I were watching them from a great distance.
When the last candle was lit, Papa retrieved the little silver bell from the mantel. “All right, stand back,” he said with a broad grin. “I wouldn’t want anyone trampled to death.”
At the sound of the bell, the children flooded into the parlor with shrieks of excitement, followed soon afterward by the mothers and grandmothers. The youngsters squirmed restlessly as Papa read the familiar Christmas story from the family Bible, then ripped into their presents at last. Mama had made rag dolls and new mittens for the girls. Papa and Emil had carved toy boats and spinning tops out of wood scraps for the boys. From the village store came a silver baby’s rattle, a doll-sized tea set, and a shiny red coaster sleigh.
Friedrich smiled his shy smile as he handed me a beautifully wrapped present. “This is for you. Merry Christmas.”
Beneath the wrappings, in a box from a fancy shop in Stuttgart, lay a sterling silver hand mirror. Engraved on the back, amid swirls of flowers and leaves, were my new initials, L. S. The sight of them jolted me, reminding me that I was no longer Louise Fischer but Louise Schroder. I belonged to Friedrich.
“Do you like it?” He smiled as he tenderly brushed a wisp of hair off my forehead. His caress would have seemed natural in the privacy of our own home, but it embarrassed me here in Papa’s house. The other men never made such intimate gestures. In fact, as I glanced around the room, all the men sat at stiff, safe distances from their wives. The gifts they gave them were practical things like a new shawl or a pair of gloves, not something as extravagant and personal as a silver hand mirror.
“It’s . . . beautiful,” I murmured. I felt the heat rush to my cheeks. I didn’t know how to tell him that I was pleased with his gift in front of my family. I wished that Friedrich and I could treasure it all by ourselves instead of exposing it to everyone’s scrutiny. An odd sensation shivered through me as I
felt myself more a part of Friedrich’s life than my family’s. Then it passed as Mama and Oma stood to return to the kitchen. I quickly excused myself to help with the food.
Christmas dinner was a boisterous affair with everyone crowded around the dining room table, passing platters of roast goose and smoked pork, bowls of creamy potatoes and sauerkraut, and dishes of pickled onions and
blutwurst
and herring. By the time we had eaten our fill, dusk had fallen. The other women and I hurried to wash the dishes before the Christmas Eve church service, while the men wrapped themselves in their warmest clothes to do their chores and harness the sleighs.
The little stone church in the village looked the same as it had every Christmas Eve of my life. The candles, the carols, the story of the baby born in a cattle stall, all reinforced the comforting belief that my life was part of an unbroken tradition that would never change.
“
All is calm . . . all is bright
,” we sang. There would be no military draft, no war. I would live my life exactly as all the other women in my family had. Tonight and every night until I was as old as Oma I would sleep beside my husband in peace.
When the service ended, Friedrich and I said good-night to my family and walked the short distance home from church to our cottage in the village. It was cold inside our house, with the cast-iron stove left unattended all day. I kept my jacket and cape on, shivering as I waited for Friedrich to shake out the ashes and add coal and kindling to restart the fire. His lean hands were quick and competent in their work, his mind intent on his labor. I watched him and felt a thrill of happiness that I belonged to him, with him. I carried his child.
When he finished he turned to me, brushing the soot from his hands. “You’re cold. Come stand closer. The fire should catch in a minute.” He wrapped his arms around me to warm me.
Suddenly a knot of resin in the firewood popped like a gunshot, shattering my happiness as I remembered the threat of war. I lifted my head from Friedrich’s shoulder to gaze up at him.
“Friedrich . . . what you and Papa and Kurt were talking about today in the parlor . . . When might the military draft happen? When will you know for sure?”
“I’m so sorry you had to hear that, Louise. It may never happen, and then we’ve worried you for nothing.” He tried to draw me close again but I pushed away. I knew better than to question my husband, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“What will you do if you’re drafted?”
The wood inside the stove crackled and snapped as it caught fire. Bright flames flickered behind the grate. Friedrich took a long time to answer. When he spoke, his words were slow and careful, his eyes sorrowful.
“I could never aim a gun and kill a man just to help the Kaiser win a chunk of someone else’s land. Maybe if we were attacked I could fight back, but even then . . . even then the Bible says we must love our enemies.”
“But Papa said they would send you to jail if you don’t go. You’d lose your job and they’d never let you teach again if you had a criminal record. And the baby-”
“Louise . . . Louise . . . that isn’t going to happen.” He gathered my icy hands in his and held them against his chest. I could feel his heart pounding strong and steady beneath them, and I began to cry.
Friedrich came undone at the sight of my tears. He stood beside me, wringing his hands. I could tell that he wanted to hold me, to console me, but he hesitated, unsure what to do. I had never wept in front of him before.
“Louise, don’t cry . . . I’m so sorry . . . please don’t cry. I don’t want to go to jail, but . . . if the teachings of Christ ever come into conflict with the laws of men, I have to obey God.”
His reasoning seemed so strange to me. The men in my family rose before dawn to do their chores, not to read the Bible by lamplight. Never in my life had I seen Papa on his knees in prayer as I often saw Friedrich. My brother Kurt was a deacon in the village church and he didn’t want to serve in the Kaiser’s armay either, but he would choose that alternative before going to jail.
“I don’t understand,” I said, weeping.
“I know you don’t, I see that now, and I wish I could find a way to explain it without upsetting you.” He pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and handed it to me awkwardly. “Here, use this. It’s clean.”
I quickly dried my eyes and blew my nose, embarrassed that I had become so emotional in front of him. “I’m sorry . . . it must be my condition. And it’s been a long day. . . .” As I battled to control my emotions, Friedrich drew a deep breath.
“Louise, God has blessed my life in every possible way—providing me with an education, giving me a good job, sending you into my life. I know He’s going to continue to provide what’s best for us and for our baby. We have to trust Him and not worry about tomorrow. We’re in His hands.”
Friedrich always talked so strangely, so intimately about God, as if the Almighty spoke to him the way He spoke to people in the Bible. I believed
in God, of course. I had attended church with my family all my life. But Friedrich’s faith was different, somehow. It was one more thing about him that I didn’t understand.
The fire had finally begun to heat the small room. I unfastened my cape and went to hang it on the peg by the door. Friedrich hurried to help me with it, then laid his hands on my shoulders and made me face him again.
“Louise, I don’t want you to worry any more about the draft. Promise?” He was so concerned for me, so distraught, that I allowed him to take me into his arms again. I wanted so much to trust him, to have unquestioning faith in my husband, but that was such a difficult thing to do.
“All right, Friedrich,” I lied. “I promise I won’t worry.”
TWO
By the end of February I had convinced myself that nothing would change after all. Friedrich and I would always live in this village by the river, our duties and routines as comfortable as old shoes. He would dash off to school each morning, eager to teach his students, and I would walk the three blocks to the village square on market days to shop with the other women. The only change was my name and social status; Herr Schultz the grocer,
Frau
Braun the baker, Reverend Lahr and his wife, and all the other townspeople who had known me from childhood now greeted me as Frau Schroder, the young schoolteacher’s wife. Because of Friedrich, I was highly respected in all the shops as I made my rounds, gathering goods and gossip.
While I may have had little knowledge of the larger world and its problems, I knew all of the other villagers’joys and struggles intimately—who was up- and-coming and who was down on their luck; who was expecting a baby, and whose husband drank too much; who was ailing, who was needy, who was dying.
The village itself never changed. The brick and stone
Rathaus
on the village square, the tidy shops that supplied all our needs, the narrow row houses with their steep roofs and gables, all had an air of permanence that I loved. Even the towering church spires, like the ancient beech and pine trees beneath them, seemed deeply rooted in the soil of my homeland. Flowing through all of our lives was the river, its course wide and steady and deep. And if its level sometimes changed with drought or flood, it was only to remind us that “joy and sorrow come and go like the ebb and flow.”
For two months I kept my promise not to worry, forgetting all about the threat of war, until I happened to meet my sister Runa while shopping in the village one morning.
“Is your house in as big an uproar as ours is?” she asked.
“Why would we be in an uproar?”
“Well, because of the news. You know, the Kaiser’s new draft plan?”
It was a beautiful, clear morning, the snow crisp and clean on the shrubs and pine boughs, but I suddenly felt as if the sun had died. I pulled my sister into the caf6 to talk, but I was much too upset to eat the apple strudel we ordered.
“Friedrich hasn’t said a word about it,” I told her.
“Maybe he hasn’t heard the news yet. Ernst only told me about it yesterday. Under the new plan, even married men with families will have to serve two years in the army.”
“But why? Is there going to be a war?”
“No, of course not.” She waved her hand as if to dismiss my fear. Her voice had an overly patient tone, my wise older sister explaining why I needn’t fear the monsters under the bed. “Ernst said that General von Schlieffen wants to build a bigger army, that’s all. Just as a precaution.”
“What’s Ernst going to do?”
“I think he’d ratherjoin the army than the navy,” she said, misunderstanding. “But he says he won’t have to decide until his draft notice comes.” Ernst would serve his country. There was no question of his going to jail.
I wanted to question Friedrich about the news the moment he walked through the door after school, but of course I didn’t dare. Nor could I ruin our meal by raising the subject during dinner. If we had been married for a few years, he might have sensed that something was wrong, but we were still so new to each other, so unsure of what went through each other’s mind.
After dinner I curled in my chair beside the fire with my feet tucked beneath me, listening to the angry February wind as it circled our tiny cottage. How could I talk to Friedrich without revealing that I had broken my promise not to worry? I finished another row of knitting and smoothed the gray, woolen sock flat on my lap.
“I’ll need your foot when you get a minute,” I told him. He looked up from the bookshelf he was building and grinned.
“Why? Did you forget what Limburger cheese smells like?”
I couldn’t help laughing as I held up the unfinished sock. Before we were married, I never would have imagined that a man as quiet and serious as he was could make me laugh. I smiled as I watched him work, his sandy hair bright in the lamplight. He had his vest unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up, a fine layer of sawdust on his beard and forearms.
Usually he sat at our little wooden table in the evenings, frowning slightly as he corrected papers or looked over his lessons, and I would study his lean hands and long fingers as he scrawled with his fountain pen or turned the
pages of his books. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about him—his likes and dislikes, the way his eyelashes drooped when he was tired, the way the muscles of his back moved as he stretched his broad shoulders when his work was finally finished. Watching him labor over the simple wooden bookshelf these past few evenings, I’d learned that he wasn’t very handy with tools and lumber. After each evening’s work, I had to dig the splinters out of his fingers and doctor all his nicks and scrapes with iodine.