As the shampoo was concluding, Nanni’s voice rang from downstairs to say that she was leaving the butter inside the door.
“Tell her to wait!” Mohr sputtered from the tub.
Käthe ran downstairs and called to Nanni, “Dr. Mohr is leaving today! He wants to say good-bye!”
Nanni hung her woolen cardigan on the hook inside the door and waited in the kitchen. She was the eldest of the Berghammer girls, simpleminded, good-hearted, and she adored Mohr.
“Is that Nanni I hear?” Mohr called down the stairs. “You were going to let me go without saying good-bye?” He came into the kitchen, hair tousled, still shiny and wet. He put a hand on Nanni’s shoulder and gave her a friendly shake, then hugged her. Nanni blushed, and when he released her she drew back and punched him with her fist.
“Ouch!” Mohr gripped his arm. Nanni was momentarily uncertain; then Mohr laughed, snatched her back, and hugged her tightly once again.
“Papa is going to China,” Eva announced from the doorway.
Nanni glanced about. “Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s there,” Mohr said.
“Where?” Nanni inquired after a short pause.
Mohr reached into his trousers pocket and took out an imaginary compass, held it in the flat of his hand. “Well, let’s see.” He turned and pointed. “It’s over there.”
“That’s the stove!” Nanni objected.
“He means that’s the way you have to go,” Eva said.
“If my compass is correct,” Mohr said, slipping the imaginary instrument into his pocket.
KÄTHE SLICES THE bread, and begins to set the table as Mohr entertains Nanni and Eva with one of his nonsense stories. His manner is a little forced, but only Käthe would notice. She passes in and out of the kitchen three times with the breakfast tray, pausing to listen. Mohr leans against the stove, fills the room with his presence. He cleans his glasses on his shirt, twists them back onto his ears, combs his wet hair with his fingers, all the while expanding on a complicated tale of a lost school of Mexican dancing fish and a band of robbers.
She can’t listen, nor can she bring herself to interrupt. She goes into the next room to wait at the breakfast table. Through the closed door she can hear Mohr’s voice, the giggles of Eva and Nanni. Is this last little burst of storytelling meant to be remembered? One final thing left behind?
She pours herself a cup of coffee and stares through the windows at the frost-covered meadow that slopes up steeply behind the house, every blade of grass stiff and glistening with ice. Yesterday it was still warm, and they were all outside in shirtsleeves. The temperature dropped sharply overnight. Several times she was awakened by gusts of wind rattling the windows.
After Nanni leaves—with tearful promises of letters, though she can neither read nor write—they come in and sit down to breakfast. Mohr’s spark fades, a silence falls. Butter and marmalade, coffee and milk, eggs in little cups, late-October air, woolen sweaters, the crackle and pop of wood in the stove. All at once, he puts down his knife, looks up, and says, “I won’t be pushed out. I’d rather just leave.”
Käthe puts her hands in her lap and waits for him to continue. Eva meticulously dips little pieces of bread into her egg, licks off the yolk. Mohr cleans his glasses once again.
“Can I sit in the front of the taxi?” Eva asks.
“You can sit on the roof if you like.” Mohr pinches her cheek. The resemblance between father and daughter is remarkable. Dark hair, light hazel eyes, sharp, square jawline, and an impatient, impulsive nature prone to veer in all directions at once. Eva has grown several centimeters in just the last few months. Käthe can see the lineaments of the future woman emerging, not in fragments but whole, and not a Westphal but a Mohr.
The telephone rings. Mohr rises to answer but changes his mind and sits down again.
“Aren’t you going to answer, Papa?”
Mohr shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk.”
The bell clangs several more times and then falls silent. For the past week, calls have been coming in from friends and acquaintances. His story, The Diamond Heart, had been serialized a year ago in a Hamburg daily. The editor, Jahn, had telephoned the other day to say good-bye and they had talked for over an hour. The last call, and the one he had least wanted to take, had come from his sister, Hedwig. A letter had preceded it in which she tried to argue that he should allow himself to be baptized, as she and her husband had done—many years ago. After handing it to Käthe to read, he tore the letter to pieces.
“A little severe, don’t you think?” she said.
“Not nearly as severe as her stupidity.” He glanced at the strewn bits of paper and flushed. She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. The redness in his face dissolved. When she began to gather up the scraps from the floor, he made as if to help, then stopped himself and left the room.
That Mohr was a Jew had never been an issue of any significance between them until these last few years; no more than her Hamburg Protestant origins. If anything, they both considered themselves refugees of the horrible and confining Bürgertum they had both been brought up in—of which Hedwig’s letter was such an unwelcome reminder.
Yesterday, up on the roof, she’d tried one last time to engage him. He was replacing some broken tiles and she climbed up to take in the view and keep him company. It was a sunny day and the slopes of the Wall-berg stood out clearly and in full autumn color. As she made her way gingerly across the gently pitched rooftop, it felt as though they’d always been together here, and would always remain so. She sat next to him on the roof ridge, tucked her skirt up. It was pleasantly warm. He slid a new tile into place and hit it with the hammer. It broke. He turned to her with a strange smile and said, “Voilà! The world resolves itself in twos.” After a short pause he said, “We should keep that in mind.”
“Keep what in mind?”
“That we can be apart and not apart. Together and not together.”
“You think that sort of talk makes things any easier? Why don’t you try to see things a little more simply?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing simple about anything.”
She watched as he fitted in the next tile. It was not a job he was familiar with. The last time the roof had needed repairing, they’d hired somebody; but Mohr had insisted on doing this job by himself, and worked as if he knew just what he was doing. “Why China, Max?”
He didn’t answer, and continued working.
“Why not someplace closer? Like Prague? Or Vienna?”
Mohr stopped and leaned back on his haunches. She knew he understood what she meant. He tapped the edge of the tile into place with the rubber hammer. There was nothing she could think of to say, so she kept him company up there until he was finished. Strangely, she wasn’t frustrated or impatient. Not at all. It was nice to sit quietly together. Theo Seethaler appeared in the yard below.
“What are you doing back here?” Mohr called.
“I came to say good-bye.”
Mohr tossed his tools down into the yard. Käthe sensed that there was something he still wanted to tell her, and also that he was glad for this sudden distraction. Seethaler held the base of the ladder as she descended, talking the whole time about having had to leave school to come home and help his father, who had fallen ill. The boy—no longer a boy,