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, but already twenty—made no attempt to hide his disappointment. Mohr came down right behind her, jumped from the ladder several rungs before the bottom. He marched into the middle of the yard to survey his work. “Perfect!” He lit a cigarette, and pointed to the roof. “You can’t even tell they’re new.”
Seethaler helped Mohr carry the ladder and tools to the barn. Käthe went inside to take down the wash from the upstairs balcony. The low slant of the sun cast everything in a golden light. They returned from the barn, and Mohr invited Seethaler to sit with him on the bench. She folded clothes and listened as they talked. There was something sweet in the trust the local boys placed in Mohr, the way they telegraphed so much of themselves in conversations about ski bindings or bicycle racing. Seethaler was clearly upset about having to help in the family plumbing business.
“So, you prefer life in the big city,” Mohr said.
“Don’t you?”
Mohr didn’t answer right away, then he said, “If being comfortable means having your fat behind padded, then I guess the city’s the place. But upholstery costs money.”
Seethaler laughed. “It’s better than being stuck out here.”
“What is it that you like better in the city?” Mohr asked.
“Everything.”
“Go back, then. People who want money should stay in the city. It’s the people who want to get away from money who should come here.”
She heard him stand up and go around to the side of the house. A moment later he walked out into the yard carrying a wooden chair. He set the chair down on the grass, flashed a grin, then took a few steps back, rubbing his palms together—one, two, three—and with a loud yell leaped over the chair and landed on his feet on the other side.
Eva appeared at the top of the meadow where she and Lisa had been playing, and the two of them ran down to join the game. Mohr beckoned to Seethaler and stood aside, hands on hips, beaming. “Come on down,” he shouted up to the balcony.
“I can see just fine from here,” Käthe called back.
Seethaler failed to clear the chair and fell in a heap. He insisted on a second try, and when he failed, Mohr urged him to take his time and try again. When he failed a third time, Mohr lifted him up from the ground and took him inside for a farewell schnaps.
In those last autumn days and weeks, they were conscious of marking time. It grew cooler; the trees blazed with colors and dropped their leaves. They slept late, took their time around the house, went on longer and longer afternoon walks. They prepared the house for winter, split and stacked wood, filled the cellar with beets and onions and potatoes. At night, after Eva went to sleep and Mohr went upstairs to his attic room to work, Käthe would read or knit by the stove. If the calm that had settled on her was comforting, the clarity of it was frightening. She would look up from her knitting or her book, acutely conscious of the passing moment.
On one of their last walks together, Mohr told her how anxious he was to get going. It was painful to hear. “How can you say that?”
“I’m going to start a new life for us in China.”
“But everything’s being uprooted, torn apart.”
Mohr shook his head. “Plants have roots. The world is big and we’re still young and life is long.”
Did he really think he could escape the problems of the day just like that?
They were on the footpath that led across the valley toward Kaffee Angermaier, the inn where the Lawrences had stayed when they’d come to visit just a few years earlier. Lorenzo’s death had contributed much to Mohr’s crisis. It wasn’t merely the loss of a friend but a feeling of irrelevance, of time wasted. The famous Englishman had cut a wide and deep swath in the short period of their friendship. He had always been harsh in his judgment of Mohr’s work. A strong and mutual affection compensated for the harshness, but even that became complicated as Lawrence’s health deteriorated. Mohr saw his friend’s long, drawn-out illness and death as a sign. He said he needed to find a new direction. Käthe watched the change come over him gradually, and for a time felt a tinge of resentment toward Lawrence. There is something awful in making a legacy of a friendship, but that was what Lawrence had left Mohr with in the end.
They stopped walking. “What do you call this?” Käthe asked, trembling. “What is this, if it isn’t home? Our home?”
Mohr dug his hands into his pockets and looked at her with a slightly shamed look. “I don’t know what to call it anymore. I don’t think I even recognize it.” He turned slowly, hands in his pockets, as if taking in the entire panorama of the valley, hatless, hair tousled in the breeze. The fields were plowed up on all sides and smelled strongly of newly spread manure. She tried to imagine what lay ahead in the years to come—when they were reunited in China. Would they live in a big, modern apartment? Go riding in the countryside, learn Chinese and English, and be healthy? Eva could take singing lessons. They would go to concerts.
But China was so far away, another world entirely.
EVA IS WATCHING her mother. Käthe bites into
