The Bride of Texas, page 56
She blushed. “Well, German,” she admitted. “Fritz isn’t good with languages.”
“Jawohl,” nodded the colonel complacently.
“So my husband told them he didn’t understand them, and he quoted something to the butcher from his informant’s report,” Ursula said, raising her coffee cup. The glass egg on her finger glittered and Ursula noticed the sergeant’s glance. “You see,” she smiled, “my jewels brought you luck. Of course, mein lieber Mann, I don’t know if it still is luck —?” The sergeant turned red and Ursula quickly touched his sleeve with her bejewelled hand. “Aren’t you sweet? Wie damals, like back then … but that’s so long ago. Today it is just eine Legende, a — legend?”
“I —” The sergeant’s voice cracked. “I’m married now. And I love her. Very much!” He felt like a wretched sinner, but he had had to come here.
And Ursula said, “I also married again, for love. That doesn’t — or should we forget about it all?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Forgetting would be impossible.”
“Na, siehst du, you see?” she said. “Let us remember, and be glad of our good fortune. You survived the war, I survived —” She stopped and looked at him. “It was by a hair, though, you know?”
He knew. The old nightmares flashed through his mind.
“But back to my husband. In his official capacity, I mean,” said Ursula. “He quoted what the butcher had said publicly about the emperor on June 6 of ’63, the day you celebrate your heretic, John Huss. And then he said to the butcher and the cigar-maker, ‘And now, gentlemen’ — pretending not to understand — ‘you presume to restore your allegiance to the Hapsburg line?’ The two of them looked at each other and the one who makes cigars, I forget his name, said, ‘If it’s about that speech he made, your honour, Mr. Talafous just said that to help out his business.’
“Did they actually intend to go back to Austria?” asked the sergeant, amazed.
Ursula laughed.
“Of course not. They just wanted to become subjects of our most merciful Emperor and King Franz Josef here in America. Then they could claim the status of naturalized aliens, and President Lincoln’s conscription order wouldn’t apply to them. They came to this country for economic reasons, and as economic émigrés, the cigar-maker said, they had no involvement in American internal political disputes.”
The sergeant didn’t say anything. Images of war flashed through his head. His fellow soldiers, Houska, Kakuska, Paidr.… Then he closed his eyes, opened them again, and asked:
“Did your husband restore their status as subjects?”
“He sent their request to Vienna,” said Ursula. “There was no precedent. Vienna didn’t know what to do with it, and in the meantime another thirty or more of your countrymen applied for the same thing, some of them from as far away as Minneapolis.”
“So they got conscripted?”
“Vienna finally decided that if the applicants paid a stamp tax proportionate to their income, from five to fifty gulden, they’d be restored as imperial subjects. So the two of them bought the stamps — each of them paid the fifty gulden, I think, and most of the others did too. Business was brisk at the consulate.” Ursula laughed. “But the Chicago sheriff got wind of it, and all the newly restored imperial subjects were notified that if they were citizens of the United States before their status as imperial subjects was restored, military service was compulsory for them both in Austria and in America. There was a huge outcry, and you can imagine the crowd that rushed the consulate.”
Now the sergeant laughed. “Who was Austria at war with?”
“Denmark,” said Ursula. “It was a brief war, so there was no danger there. But in Chicago the pot was boiling. The Copperheads were revolting and the Union suffered a big defeat at Chancellorsville. Lincoln needed soldiers.”
“So they had to go after all!”
“Most of them paid for substitutes,” said Ursula.
“At least they gave something for the Union cause,” said the sergeant. “And the other fifty gulden for Austria, that must have stuck in their craw all right. After all, what worried them most was losing money. Their problem was more greed than fear.”
“I don’t think so, mein lieber Mann,” said Ursula. “You know better than most that there was reason to fear.”
The rain rattled down on the lanterns. The sergeant turned and sat back down at the table but he wasn’t listening to the conversation. He was hearing Cyril, and where was he now?
She wasn’t an old woman, forty perhaps, and rather pretty — a stout, tanned villager — but her eyes reminded Cyril of the Madwoman of Cachtice, who killed young women and bathed in their blood. Behind her, her new husband was pounding something flat on his anvil, and the woman stood leaning on a pitchfork.
“If you believe some Negro witch more than you do a white woman,” she said to Cyril, “then —” He looked into those eyes, and he had to look away.
“She didn’t say you never brought her there, she just said she couldn’t remember. She said she’s getting forgetful.”
“She certainly is. Head like a sieve,” said the woman. He didn’t believe her. Eyes like that were not to be believed. “Young Ribordeaux paid me and he paid me well. I’m not in the habit of taking money and not delivering.”
Cyril realized she was laughing at him. What did she care about his tea-rose? About whether she arrived or got lost along the way? If the girl ran away, how could anyone fault a blacksmith’s wife? If she sold her — everything could be fixed to hide the truth. And who could prove anything against her today? Her eyes showed — what? That she was capable of anything. The anvil rang like a bell in the courtyard. Was it sounding an alarm?
“Mrs. Smith,” he said. “Look here, if she ran away from you along the way —”
Rain drummed down on the lantern lids.
“No,” said Josef. “Miss Rosemary didn’t go back to England with Mr. Carson. She got married.”
“Married,” Cyril repeated absently. He suddenly felt a longing to see the girl with the face of a pretty pony, her red dress like a red butterfly. Another world. “She and her husband — are they still running the Carson plantation?”
“Oh, no,” said Josef. “She married some Yankee captain. I heard they have a business in Indiana. But she came to ask after you before she left, to find out if you came home safe from the war.”
“She did?” whispered Cyril.
“Yes. And she sends you her regards.”
Little tin drums. Burning snow.
“She ran away from you, more likely,” the woman said maliciously. “You’re telling me some brother of hers in Chicago wants to find her?”
“That’s right!” Cyril replied, irritated. The woman’s nasty eyes stared right through him. “And even if it weren’t, it’s none of your business.”
“Well, if you say so,” she said scornfully. “All right, then. Tell her brother that Columbia was full of good-looking house-nigger boys. Pretty as pictures. And you know what they say,” she said mockingly. “Birds of a feather.…”
Cyril felt weak. It isn’t possible, is it, that such mean eyes could —
“Of course,” said the blacksmith’s wife, “I’m just guessing what probably happened.”
The big Negro opened the frosted-glass door wide. The rain was still coming down and the lamps clattered like little tin drums. He shut the door again and looked around the restaurant. Mr. Ohrenzug joined the table. He was wearing a formal set of tails with the Slavonic linden cockade sewn beneath his heart like a medal, and he put Shake’s book down on the table in front of him. The famous lady author caught their attention again. She walked past their table with the pretty Negro girl, and they had their arms around each other’s waists.
“I read one of her novels. It was called She Played It Safe,” said Bozenka, quoting the title in English. The sergeant thought his wife pronounced it as if she’d been born in America. He felt proud, and then a memory flashed through his mind: a sad, tragic memory, but funny all the same. He remembered Shake asking, “Who speaks English best, the doctor, your old lady, or you?” and poor Kakuska.… Apparently the doctor’s English had been at fault, or else Bozenka had made immense progress when they opened the English school in Manitowoc and she got a wonderful teacher, Miss Woodford, who spoke no Czech but lent her books, turning her into an ardent wintertime reader, since in spring, summer, and fall she was too busy on the farm.
“Some sort of foolishness,” said Padecky.
“I’ll have you know it’s not,” objected Bozenka. “Read it, Mr. Padecky, I’ll lend it to you.”
“Not interested,” snapped Padecky.
Molly Schroeder retorted pointedly, “You would be if you knew how to read.”
Padecky’s temper rose. “What do you mean, Molly? You trying to say I don’t know English? My English is plenty good enough for that kind of nonsense.”
“That’s not what I said,” replied Molly sweetly. “But you still can’t read anything but Gothic script.”
Padecky grabbed the book from the table in front of Mr. Ohrenzug, opened it, put his finger on the first line on the page, and opened his mouth. Then he gradually turned purple; he snapped the book shut and shoved it across the table, where it came to rest against the beer stein in front of the sergeant. Kapsa picked it up.
“Damn foolishness,” Padecky growled, but then he added softly and uncertainly, “I left my spectacles at home.”
The sergeant brought the book up to his eyes. The Negro opened the door for someone to the sound of little tin drums.
At first the sergeant failed to notice the glitter at the young woman’s throat. His attention was on the warmth coming from the cardboard box in his pocket containing the forget-me-not earrings he had come to Chicago to buy. They were genuine, imported from Bohemia, and he had paid all of two dollars for them in Mr. Pancner’s shop on Dearborn. So he didn’t really register the beautiful gleam at the young woman’s throat as he hurried along Lake Street towards the train station, eager to see the forget-me-nots in the tiny ears of his newborn daughter, Terezka. But in the light pouring out of the restaurant window a splendid stone glittered at the stranger’s throat —
He spun around. The girl in the fancy cloak and her companion in the derby hat were just turning to enter the restaurant.
He hesitated, and looked down. His shoes were still shiny from the honest efforts of a shoeshine boy at the train station when he had arrived. He was wearing his Sunday suit and, though his hat wasn’t new, it was still quite dapper. He took a deep breath and followed them through the revolving door into the restaurant. He watched the waiter help the girl off with her cloak and take her companion’s derby. They sat down at a table, the gold light from the long bar shining on them from the left. He walked over to the bar, sat on a bar stool, and glanced at himself in the bar mirror that doubled the size of the already spacious restaurant. He was presentable. He even had a tie tack in his cravat that Vojta Houska had made from a Rebel belt buckle back in the hospital where they’d been treated for the Kansas quickstep. She was wearing a dress that revealed a lovely alabaster throat, but he could see only the gold chain. He glanced at her companion and was so startled that he didn’t hear the bartender saying, “What’ll it be, sir?”
Seated opposite the girl was Hauptmann von Hanzlitschek.
“What’ll it be, sir?
“Pardon?”
“What will you have?”
“Oh,” he said. “Bourbon. With ice.”
He stared at von Hanzlitschek until his heart slowed down again. It couldn’t possibly be the Hauptmann, even if he’d risen from the dead. Today he would be in his fifties, perhaps even his sixties. He had been fifteen years older than Ursula. Then he remembered a park, a tiny girl, a pug dog, a lace bonnet, then a slap and a howling miniature of the Hauptmann. The young woman’s companion could only be that miniature, now grown up. Even the moustache was smaller, more American, and he wasn’t wearing a monocle. But he sat straight as a candle, as if he had a corset on, and he was smoking a slim cigar. Ursula’s son.
He turned to the bartender.
The bartender shrugged his shoulders. “But his lady friend is Miss Faber,” he said. “Eberhart Faber, don’t you know?”
“Faber?” he repeated absently.
“Pencils.” The bartender’s eyes fell on his tie tack. “You a veteran?”
The sergeant nodded.
“Twenty-first Michigan,” said the bartender, offering his hand over the bar.
“Thirteenth United States.”
“I see,” said the barman. The sergeant shook the proffered hand.
“You said Miss Faber?”
“Her uncle has a pencil factory in New York. Her father heads the branch here in Chicago.”
The girl rose, turned. A flash like a canister exploding.
“Did you stay in the army?” asked the barman.
The sergeant didn’t reply. The bartender followed his stare. He said, “Nice, isn’t she?”
But the sergeant wasn’t staring at the girl. He was staring at what she had around her neck.
Diamonds, like a nest of crystal eggs.
The bartender kept trying to engage him in conversation, but the sergeant sat there like a pillar of salt. The bartender gave up and poured him another drink. “This one’s on the house, buddy,” he said. “Because we won.”
A whirlwind was howling inside the sergeant’s head. Madam Sosniowski hadn’t known for sure. And diplomats get transferred. Ursula’s necklace, stolen by Fircut — now on the neck of the niece of a pencil magnate.… The sergeant’s head was spinning.
The next bourbon was no longer on the house. Nor was the one after that. He was drinking for courage. When von Hanzlitschek rose and the waiter placed the fancy cloak around Miss Faber’s lovely neck, the sergeant slipped down from the barstool, waved the couple through the revolving door ahead of him, and then pretended to look surprised. “Excuse me, aren’t you Mr. von Hanzlitschek?”
Von Hanzlitschek looked at the sergeant suspiciously, not recognizing him. How could he? He had been a tearful ball of rage in a sailor suit at the time —
“Yes?” von Hanzlitschek replied tentatively.
“You’re the living image,” said the sergeant, “of your father. I served under” — von Hanzlitschek was now staring at him intently — “served with your father many years ago, in Austria.”
“Ah,” said von Hanzlitschek, “In Helldorf? Or in Viertal?”
“In Viertal,” said the sergeant quickly. “I was — a sergeant back then,” he said, wondering how much von Hanzlitschek knew about his father’s demise. But the young man smiled, his hard Austrian eyes softening, and he shook the sergeant’s hand.
“Sergeant —” Kapsa started to introduce himself, and stopped. Then he translated his name into German. “— Tasche.”
“Tasche?”
“That’s right,” said Sergeant Kapsa. “What are you doing in Chicago?”
He gave his head another shake. He was back in The Witches’ Kitchen. Meanwhile, the famous lady author and her companion had made their way over to the doorman and the companion was introducing him to the author. The sergeant opened Mr. Ohrenzug’s book. On the title page, in an alphabet the sergeant couldn’t read, in a language he didn’t know, it said, The English Language for Émigrés from Russia. He looked at Padecky, smiled to himself, then he shut the book and put it back down in front of Mr. Ohrenzug.
“Who’s that fellow, Mr. Ohrenzug?” asked Molly.
“You mean the nigger?” asked Mr. Ohrenzug.
Padecky said, “Nigger, German, Babylonian, as long as he’s wearing trousers.” Molly decided to ignore him.
“That’s Jasmine’s hubby,” said Mr. Ohrenzug. “I hired him as a waiter back in the old place on Dearborn, but he had two left hands so I put him to washing dishes. That was even worse. Fortunately that woman of his —” Mr. Ohrenzug hesitated and looked around at the ladies present. “Are any of you from Chicago?”
The three women exchanged glances. “No,” Ruzena Houska said, and shook her head. “We’re the closest and we have a farm south of Manitowoc.”
“What was fortunate about his woman?” asked Molly Schroeder eagerly.
“Well,” said Mr. Ohrenzug, “she opened a — place of her own. So she hired him. I just kept his mother on. He offered to help out today because of the gala opening, so I put him at the door with orders only to bow. He knows how to bow. That’s what he does at his wife’s place, at her — restaurant. Even so, he slipped once already and broke the glass in the door. It’ll cost me at least twenty bucks to fix. It’s special glass.”
The famous author was laughing heartily at something the doorman had said, her red locks swinging over her iridescent shoulders. “He’s a talker,” said Mr. Ohrenzug, “but that’s all he’s good at. The truth is that before Jasmine gave him a job in her place, he was what you might call my silent partner.”
“Why silent?” asked Molly.
“Mrs. Schroeder!” Mr. Ohrenzug sounded surprised to have to explain. “In Chicago it’s bad enough being a Jew. If a Jew is known to be in business with a nigger —”
“Where did he get the capital, Mr. Ohrenzug?” asked Shake. “Compensation, so to speak, for years of slavery somewhere in the South?”
“Just let me finish,” said Mr. Ohrenzug. “He invested, so to speak, his mother into the business.” And he proceeded to tell how he’d wanted to get rid of him, after the débâcle at the door and the damaged dishes, but it turned out that he wasn’t totally useless, though the one skill he had was useless in the restaurant business. Mr. Ohrenzug had actually hired him as a tag-along with his mother. She’d moved from the South to Chicago with him after the war and soon became famous as a cook, but when Mr. Ohrenzug fired her son she started scorching the sauces. She said that her son knew black magic and that he’d put a spell on her as revenge for getting fired. There was nothing left for Mr. Ohrenzug to do but take him on as a silent partner. And then the spell-caster’s wife had opened her own establishment.
