you promise me one thing.” Mohr draws her onto his lap, whispers into her ear. Eva slides off his lap and picks up the camera again.
“Promise,” she says.
“Promise what?”
Eva glances at her father. “Can I tell?”
“Of course,” he says emphatically.
“That we will come to China soon.”
“Sooner than soon,” Mohr corrects.
“Of course we will.” Käthe’s voice sounds weary. How many times can she repeat such a promise? It isn’t empty, just hopelessly abstract and distant, like China itself.
They sit for Eva’s photograph. Mohr makes a funny face, which causes Eva to laugh. She takes a second one, and this time nobody laughs. Käthe has felt observed by Mohr all morning, lost in her own quiet nowhere, counting down the hours until Zibert comes to drive them all to the train station. The breakfast plates on the table are empty; a few cold sips of coffee remain at the bottom of each cup. They are waiting, but the wait is already over.
All this determined cheerfulness isn’t easy. Eva had come downstairs crying. Mohr swept her up in his arms and they went to the hen-house to fetch some eggs; then he took her upstairs and drew his bath. Käthe watched as Eva stood over him in the bathtub. He sank slowly under the surface of the water, wetted his hair. Then he resurfaced, brandishing an egg. “Voilà, Mademoiselle! Bitte schön!” He handed the egg to Eva with a grin and bowed, offering the crown of his head. Tap tap tap, the egg was broken, and Eva stepped back giggling while he massaged the gooey mess into his scalp, singing, “Eeenie beenie suplameenie deevi dahvi domineenie.”
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,
