The Strong City by Taylor Caldwell
“Irmgard, do not go. Do not be unreasonable. Try to understand.”
He stopped, for, with her hand on the door, she turned to him, and now she spoke quickly; her eyes glowing and sparkling:
“Yes, it is true you will get what you want. You will live in that frightful house. You will sleep in Ernestine Schmidt’s bed. I cannot tell you what you will think, but I know. You will understand, then. But then it will be too late. Nothing, when it is too late, can change. All your life, you will remember what I am telling you now. You will know then that you are a coward, that you are empty, that nothing you have gotten is worth anything. You will know that you are a thief, and worse. You will have your money. Perhaps it will satisfy you. In some way, I believe it will. You may be lonely, but I do not think so. You may be desperate, but—you will have your money.” Her voice took on a note of incredulity. “But I do not think you will have it otherwise, even when you know!”
“Even when I know,” he said, through grim pale lips.
Now the torment came back to her, overwhelming, desperate, deprived. She wanted to cry out: “Franz, do not leave me! It does not matter what you are, what you do, let me remain with you!”
Then she thought of Ernestine Schmidt. The thought was not to be endured. A horrible nausea struck at her, and her forehead suddenly glistened, and her stricken eyes wavered, fell. She felt her feet moving, felt cold air on her cheeks. She was out in the street.
She walked rapidly, stumbling, almost staggering. She had suffered before, but never with this devouring intensity, this shattering anguish, this sensation of being split apart. Tears ran down her blind face. She sobbed aloud. Passersby stared at her strangely. One or two spoke to her, but she was unconscious of this. She began to run, as though fleeing. She told herself: I am dying. She saw the deep snow now, and longed to hurl herself into it, pull its whiteness and forgetfulness over her. She saw that it was twilight now, and exhausted, paused at a windy corner. She fell against the brick wall, doubled up in physical agony. She wept, drawing slow anguished breaths.
A street lamp glittered on something on her wrist. She stopped her weeping, stared at Franz’s bracelet. A fever took hold of her. She wrenched at the bracelet, struggled with it. It came loose with a loud snap. She flung it far from her, convulsively. It fell into a snow-bank, and was lost.
She became calmer now. A hansom was passing. She waved to it, climbed heavily, blindly into the seat.
Emmi had worked hard and untiringly. She lit the lamps in the sitting-room. Egon was dozing before the fire, wrapped in his shawl. The frail moonlight lay on snowy window-sills. The whole world swam in blue translucent shadows. She could see the sleeping shrouded countryside, and could hear the rising winter wind. In the kitchen, Florence Tandy was washing the dishes of the Christmas dinner: Roast goose with sauerkraut, boiled beets and potatoes, and warm cheese-cake and coffee. Florence was singing in her tight hysterical voice, and clattering loudly. The poor creature, finding peace at last. Emmi could hear Hermann pumping water in the yard. The loud creaking filled her with content.
She threw fresh coal upon the fire. Egon did not stir. He was sleeping peacefully, smiling. She bent and touched his forehead lightly with her lips.
She heard the grating of wheels. Another visitor! She had had ten that day, shy plain countryfolk, the Amish people, coming in to greet and welcome her, and wish her a happy Christmas, speaking in their quaint and anachronistic German. She hurried to the door. But it was a city cab which stood outside, and the young woman approaching her, walking with such hasty disordered steps, was clad in city finery. The moonlight fell on her strange blind face, and Emmi saw it was Irmgard. She stood and waited, in stupefaction.
Irmgard came to her, and held out her hands. “Take me in,” she said, and her voice was hollow and faint. “Oh, take me in! Let me come home.”
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 1
The country was replete. The yellow haze of summer spread itself like radiant smoke over burnished hill and deep green valley. The first locusts were shrilling in the trees, accentuating the immense and fecund stillness. Leaf shadows fluttered over dusty roads. Field and pasture were golden or bright green, and under thick gnarled trees the cattle panted and slept. The sky was an incandescent arch, fuming with dazzling light. From the earth came the warm rich breath of fulfilled fertility, waiting for harvest. There was vitality in the radiant heat, the largeness of peace in the hot stillness.
Emmi’s flower garden assaulted the eye with crimson, blue, white, pink, scarlet and purple. She had planted and nurtured hollyhocks against the white picket fence. Ivy climbed over the red walls of the house. Fowl clucked and scratched in the sandy dust of the barnyard, and young pigs grunted about their mothers in the sties. Hermann Schultz had repainted the barns and the silos, and they rose ruddy and bright, against the sky. From the kitchen came the sweet hot odor of cherry preserves, for Emmi was making jam of the last fruit. Florence Tandy, lean, curled as always, but clad in plain brown cotton and a check apron, was busily ladling the steaming sweetness into jars. Her face was dripping with sweat, and her smile was foolish. But her eyes were beaming with pride.
Emmi paused to wipe her face on her apron. Then she tasted the last batch critically. “You do not think it too sweet?” she asked, extending the wooden spoon to Florence, who sipped solemnly.
“No, Mrs. Stoessel. It is so good. I have never tasted such preserves.”
Emmi stirred the great iron pot on the black range. “My husband preferred cherries,” she said. Her thin flat face saddened, and her lip arched on a spasm of uncontrollable sorrow. She glanced through the windows. The long green woods hid her view of the cemetery, where Egon had lain since he had died on Christmas night. His grave was always heaped with garden flowers, which she carried to it at least twice a week. She had planted ivy, and now it was creeping over the plain white stone. A bending willow dripped its fronds over the earth, sheltering the grave tenderly. Hermann had made a bench for her, where she could sit and rest, and commune in her mind with Egon, feeling the flakes of sunlight on her head, the grass under her feet.
But the agony, after the first hour, had not been unbearable. She felt that he was at peace, that he would have chosen this place to die and to sleep. She felt that he had not gone from her at all. When she sat near his grave, he came to her. She was sure of that. She could feel his gentleness, his touch, and she could hear his voice. This was the earth he had loved. Sometimes she experienced a faint calm joy that he lay so near her home, and that, until the summer came, she could see the cemetery from her kitchen windows. What if he had died in the city, in the fog and the rain and the soot and the noise? What if he had gone to a grave in a crowded city cemetery, with factory chimneys in the distance, and the restless feet of the miserable breaking in on his rest? God had been good, at the last. He had died in his own home. Now he would never leave it. He was with her always.
Sometimes at night she broke into wild sobbing, which she stifled in her pillows. But there was healing in the day, and even in the moonlight. Egon pervaded the house, the fields, the hills, the valleys, and even the barns. She consulted him in her mind, even argued with him. Day by day, she was surer that he was with her, that he was overjoyed at the first flower, the first green thrusting of the wheat, the first budding of their own trees, the first breaking free of the winter-locked streams. “My roses bloomed today, Egon,” she would say, in her garden. “Here is a crimson one, and a white. You always preferred white roses, though I think they have little odor. Can you smell them?” She was sure that he did. She felt him at her elbow, smiling. When a bush stirred, she knew that he had touched it. She was no longer deprived, and the spasms of bitter open grief came more rarely as time passed. She took her chair in the evenings under the purple shadow of the trees, and there was always an extra chair for Egon. She would dream thoughtlessly, looking over her beloved land, knowing that Egon dreamed beside her. She had only to put out her hand to touch him.
She was certain that he loved little young Mrs. Barbour, and liked Reginald Barbour deeply, as she did. She would discuss the Amish folk with him, indulgently, kindly. Sometimes when she was a trifle malicious, she heard his voice: “Now Emmi, that is unkind.” And she would laugh lightly, shamefaced.
Hermann Schultz came into the kitchen, stamping his feet free of the dust, and Emmi scolded him, and whisked away an imaginary particle of mud. He was carrying two pails of cool water from the well. He placed them on the table. Emmi indicated a platterful of fresh cookies on another table, and he gratefully thrust a few in his mouth. His fair curling hair was wet with sweat, his simple good-humored face burned black with sun.
“Hermann, will you go out into the barn, and tell Mrs. Darmstadter to come in? She has been there too long.”
He stumped out, pushing extra cookies into the pockets of his faded overalls. Sunlight lay in streaks over the scrubbed stone floor. The jam steamed. Florence stirred the pot. The golden light was changing over the country, becoming deeper, more intense, as the day sloped to the sunset. Now fingers of sunlight splashed on the walls, mingled with the brighter light of fire in the stove.
Emmi went to the kitchen door and waited anxiously for Irmgard.
“It is so hot,” she said, crossly, over her shoulder to Florence Tandy. “And she will work herself to exhaustion.”
Florence sighed sentimentally. “It is so hard for her,” she said. “So young to be widowed. And so cruel that her husband—” She blushed a little, and dropped her eyes modestly.
“The German Army has no heart,” Emmi muttered. “They will not even give her a pension, because he died of some sickness; in his bed. If he had died in war, it would have been more heroic.”
“And now, when she needs him so,” Florence murmured, with another sigh.
Emmi said nothing. Irmgard had emerged from the barn, her apron full of eggs. She came slowly across the dusty yard, walking heavily, picking her steps among the fowl. Her hair shone in the sun. Her face was pale and wet. But she smiled when she saw Emmi.
“You will kill yourself,” called the older woman, irately. But her eyes were full of anxiety. “It is not good to the child.”
Irmgard was speechless with weariness and heat. She came into the kitchen and put the eggs on the wooden table. Her large tall body was swollen and heavy with fecundity. Emmi scolded her, forced her to sit down, went into the cool pantry where stood the kettle of milk she had recently brought from the spring house. Irmgard sipped the milk gratefully, while Emmi stood over her, still scolding.
“There is so much to do, Aunt Emmi,” said Irmgard, with apology. Blue dents were about her colorless lips. But her expression was serene.
“Nonsense. There are two women here, besides you, and Hermann. And the neighbors help, when needed. This morning I caught you spading in the garden. And later, you insisted upon washing all these clothes. Are you trying to kill yourself?”
She pushed a damp lock of hair from Irmgard’s forehead with a rough but kind hand. She put her fingers under Irmgard’s chin, and forcibly lifted her head. She studied the pale, damp face severely.
“You would not have me sit in idleness, Aunt Emmi?” smiled the girl.
“There are other things. There is sewing, and mending. We need many quilts. And the baby’s clothing. Do you wish your son to be born naked?”
Florence Tandy blushed deeply, at the stove, at this immodesty. But Irmgard laughed. She counted on her fingers: “I have one dozen nightgowns, one dozen fine cambric dresses, many napkins, three coats, and several bonnets. There is to be only one child, Aunt Emmi, not three.”
My grandson, thought Emmi, with a sudden mysterious leaping in her chest. “I will not have my nephew dressed like a pauper,” she said, severely. “Today, there came some white silk for his christening gown, and some lace. We will consult together about it. In the meantime, you will please go to your room and rest for an hour.”
Irmgard climbed slowly and wearily up the wooden staircase to her room. She lay down on the narrow white bed, with its white fringed canopy. Her tired and burning eyes moved slowly over the wall-paper on which were strewn tiny roses and violets, and over the polished wooden floor with its circular rag carpet. A painted china bowl and pitcher stood on the wooden commode, which was covered with one of Emmi’s stiffest and best linens, dripping with handmade lace. A low rocker stood near the muslin-curtained window. The window itself framed the distant hills, and a sliver of green valley. Sunlight swept broadly into the room, mingling with the bright wind.
But Irmgard, now that she was alone, could let her thoughts show on her face. It became dark and grim, even fierce in its impotence. She pressed her hands harshly on her body. She hated this child she carried, as she hated its father. There was no love in her, no tenderness, only a passionate resistance and repudiation. It is not to be endured, she thought. But she must endure. She must endure to the end of her life. Always, there would be this child, looking at her with his father’s eyes, speaking to her with his father’s voice. She would hate him more then than she did now.
It was useless to tell herself, as Emmi had so often pleadingly told her, that the child was coming by no will of his own, that she and Franz had guiltily summoned him into a world that would never be too kind to him. Emmi had spoken no word of prudish and horrified reproach. But she had pleaded for the child. Irmgard knew that she wanted this child of her son with hidden but immense love. It was this love that so filled her voice when she spoke to the silent girl, urging consideration and tenderness. “The little one!” she would exclaim. “You must be all things to him, both father and mother and friend. He would not come if he had the choice. You have forced the choice upon him. Do not let him suffer for your folly. For it was folly to give yourself to Franz. Had it been another man, there could be excuse.”
She was not appalled at the coming of a child without a legal father. Some large respect for life was in her, and she was scornful of small man-made formalities. This child was fulfilment and beauty and strength, and it was flesh of her flesh. Only that made Irmgard forgivable. The detestable fact of the child’s paternity was something to be resolutely ignored. Sometimes she felt that Irmgard had betrayed this innocent by giving him such a father. Yet, had Franz not been the father, the child would not be her grandson. The Teutonic love of kin and children was strong in her.
“There was none in my family, nor in Egon’s, like Franz,” she would say, consideringly. “Therefore, we need not fear that such another as Franz shall be born to you.”
She knew that Irmgard cried violently when alone. She gave her no unwholesome sympathy. She urged only that the girl love the child. “It will be good to have a little one here,” she said. “Egon will love him, and I shall teach him to love Egon. There will be a special garden for him, and he will learn to hoe and spade. He will follow Hermann with the cows, and get the good milk. He will grow up on the land, tall and good and strong. He will be a joy to me in my old age.”
But Irmgard’s face would remain unmoved and white, her eyes bitter and heavy with hatred.
“There will be no army here, to take and destroy him, and beat the kind humanity from his body,” Emmi would go on. “Some day, perhaps, he might find the dream in America, which is so hidden. For surely there is a dream.”
She had been hopeless about the dream. But with the coming of every child, the dream surely brightened in the earth, like waiting gold. The dream which men had buried and forgotten, but which certainly waited for the use of other unborn men.
“Perhaps it will be a girl,” Irmgard once taunted her, wishing her aunt to endure a little of what she was enduring.
But Emmi shook her head firmly. “No, it shall be a son. Egon has told me.” She paused. “We shall call him Siegfried, after Egon’s father, who was a lovely man.”
Sometimes Irmgard found Emmi’s wholesome and healthy acceptance of the child, and her sensible plans for it, impossible to endure. Her voice and
She had run to Emmi, that bright Christmas day, distraught, looking only for shelter and refuge, for a quiet place where she could hide her agony and desolation. Egon’s death, that night, was a mournful diversion, and the comforting of Emmi made the girl’s own grief less desperate and overwhelming. Later, when she discovered that she was bearing Franz’s child, she forgot everything but her private rage and loathing, her sorrow and anguish, her impotent torture. Had Emmi expressed severity, anger and disgust, she would have found in this counter-irritant some alleviation for the rawness in herself. But Emmi, after the first outraged shock, which aroused her from her apathy of grief, took on renewed life and vigor. Irmgard suspected that in this coming child Emmi felt not only deep love and tenderness, but a new opportunity to find the dream she had dreamt all her life. This was a new page on which she would write. She upbraided Irmgard only for her indifference and unfeeling hatred for the child.
She refused to believe that Irmgard’s heart and whole life were broken. Was not she, herself, Franz’s mother? Had she not borne him, suffered for him, loved him? Yet, when she finally understood completely what he was, she had removed him from her flesh and her soul, and he was no longer her son. Why should Irmgard weep, Irmgard who had known him only a little while, who had lain with him briefly, who had seen him only a few short times? It was sentimentality. But out of this foolish sentimentality, by the grace and the wisdom of life and God, there would come a new spirit.
She refused to acknowledge Irmgard’s humiliation and abandonment, her frustrated passion, her loneliness and pain, her terrible love from which she could not shake herself free. She refused to believe, or know, that this love was like the fangs of a savage animal, set in the girl’s flesh. When Irmgard, infrequently, burst out into wild cries of hatred for Franz, Emmi felt that this wholesome hatred would burn away any last traces of noxious passion. She did not know that the cries were the cries of anguish, longing, desolation and grief.