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Return to Dresden
This page intentionally left blank
Return to Dresden

MARIA RITTER

U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S O F M I S S I S S I P P I Jackson
 www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member

of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright © 2004 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

li 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hitter, Maria.
Return to Dresden / Maria Hitter,
p. cm.
ISBN 1-57806-596-8 (alk. paper)
1. Hitter, Maria. 2. Dresden (Germany)—Biography.
3. German Americans—Biography. 4. World War, 1939-1945—
Psychological aspects. 5. Forced migration—Germany—Dresden.
6. Refugees—Germany (East). I. Title.
D811.R5732004
940.53'432142'092—dc22 2003012683

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

To my children, Peter and Lisa, and their families
This page intentionally left blank
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story
or tell a story about them.—ISAK DINESEN
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
xi

Introduction
A Small Voice
XV

Prologue
The Mitzvah
xxiii

CHAPTER ONE
On the Road Home
3

CHAPTER TWO
Through the Night (1949)
22

CHAPTER THREE
Out of the Deep (1945)
50

CHAPTER FOUR
The Open Window
96

• ix •
 x Contents

CHAPTER FIVE
The Day the Man Came (1947)
117

CHAPTER SIX
Blessed Is the Man
140

CHAPTER SEVEN
A Piece of Home (1949)
162

CHAPTER EIGHT
Over the Ashes
202

Epilogue
The Mitzvah
209
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a host of angels to raise a story from the ruins of memory. After
the lifting of remnants and the sorting of treasures from the rubble
comes the mending of brokenness through tears. The shared tears
become the connecting thread of a new tapestry.
By now the new weave has its own story. After several years
of uncovering and searching, I look back with gratitude to those
persons who stood by me, offering tender encouragement, sharing
sound advice, and asking questions that would resonate with elements
of their own stories. Foremost was my daughter, Lisa, who simply
wanted to learn more about the grandfather she never knew. Her
innocent question would require a complex and arduous answer that
would address the vicissitudes of her ancestors as well as those of the
German people during one of the most horrid periods of human his-
tory. I am deeply grateful to her for her probing curiosity and all the
practical help she provided during the process of searching and writ-
ing. My son, Peter, came to the rescue when the computer crashed and
the manuscript seemed all but lost. My son-in-law, Stewart Pickard,
envisioned potential readers in this country who would want to hear
more about World War II and its detrimental effects on the lives of all
survivors. From early on, my daughter-in-law, Julia Ritter, helped me
to understand the literary concepts and leitmotivs emerging from the
text (such as the silencing of the child), and suggested techniques
for storytelling; it was in a coffee shop in New York that she listened,
with acceptance and empathy, to my first timid reading of the border-
crossing story.

xi •
 xii Acknowledgments

Over the years, my writing became a family project in the truest

sense. Each of my three brothers offered help by pasting our history
together from joint memories. In 1998, Klaus Schnadelbach was our
companion as we traveled to locations in the former East Germany
and in Poland; together with his wife, Elisabeth, he collected maps and
valuable family pictures, and transcribed Grandfather Schnadelbach's
diary. Klaus also gave me a tiny brooch with a picture of our mother as
a little girl, one of the few family treasures that survived the Dresden
bombing. With his excellent memory, Herbert Schnadelbach recalled
many names and dates as well as exact geographic locations, and thus
provided a reliable sequence of events. Gerhard Schnadelbach shared
with me our mother's collection of letters and her dream diary. I am so
grateful for their contributions and their hospitality during my visits to
Germany. My cousins Inge Alrutz and Gudrun Hilse shared letters and
pictures, and Maria Mannarino put Grandmother's house key into my
hand as a gift and a mandate.
A long list of readers and listeners responded with encouragement,
insisting that I share my story with other people besides my family.
They include Angela Moskovis, Marcus Dowd, Irmgard Frey, Hanna
Sack, Ursula Sack, Janet Young, Marky Reynolds, Bob and Linda
Shephard, Brigitte Thewalt, Heidi Frey, and Anna Schnadelbach. Marty
and David Peck's interest in my writing led to a connection for publish-
ing. Dr.Warren Poland offered a moving and personal response, assur-
ing me that my story would speak for itself. At a writer's conference in
January of 1999 in San Diego, California, Tom Miller saw in my writing
the importance of the subject matter and handed me a green light to go
on. Hana Lane helped me to develop a multilayered design for a book.
A warm thank-you to each one of them!
A special word of gratitude goes to the men and women of the
United Methodist Church in La Jolla, California, who gathered for
several presentations and became the first witnesses to my story.
Among them were Sandy and Peter McCreight, Susan Russell, Ann
Harnden, D. Ann and Darrell Fannestil, Jill Tregoning, Marvin Burdg,
 Acknowledgments xiii

Rita Bell, Brenda and Tom Lester, Patsy and George Leopold, Denise
and Gene Blickenstaff, Martha and Paul Jagger, Jean and Mark Trotter,
and Florence and Roger Wiggans, just to name a few. Reading and sto-
rytelling led the way to a reconciling dialogue.
With the help of my psychoanalyst, Dr. Phyllis Tyson, I recon-
structed the perception of my childhood in a safe and reflective way,
and began to understand how surviving with unresolved trauma had
organized my living. Her gift of compassionate listening and probing
for previously unspoken emotions associated with painful memories
formed the core of a healing dialogue. The voice of the child in the text
is a tribute to Dr. Tyson's witnessing. The adult voice in the text is a
tribute to the analytic process. I shared the cold ashes with her first, and
I wish to express my deep gratitude.
The story can be read thanks to the diligent efforts of the staff of
the University Press of Mississippi, especially Craig Gill, editor-in-
chief, who understood the human voice in the face of war and tragedy.
Anne Stascavage, editor, and Carol Cox, copy editor, respectfully pro-
vided excellent editorial help. The book turned out to be a truly collab-
orative work, and I am most grateful to all who contributed.
Finally, unending words of thanks to my husband and best friend,
Winfried, who held my hand when we walked the streets of Dresden,
Breslau, Damsdorf, and Bad Bergzabern. He listened and read, offered
ideas and corrections, and, most of all, he put a plate of food in front of
me when I was tired from the journey. A shared meal is really good!
This page intentionally left blank
 I NTROD UCTION

A Small Voice
"We certainly received what we deserved," my grandfather said after
the war, and I believed him. The look on his face as he stared out the
window spoke of bitterness and solemn resignation in the face of God's
punishment and pity for us all.
When the fighting in Germany finally stopped in May of 1945,1
did not know that the war would never be over for many of us sur-
vivors. We were fortunate to be alive, but we were burdened with the
immense trauma of loss. Little did I understand that living with physi-
cal and emotional scars is cosdy. It would require a lifetime to recover,
to salvage the remnants of a demolished past, and to weave them into a
redeeming future.
As part of a nation of perpetrators we also entered a conspiracy of
silence even about our own pain. Everyone around us had experienced
a lifetime of tragedies; our own were nothing special. The total cost of
human lives on all sides of the firing line added up to these incompre-
hensible numbers: forty-five million deaths, including twenty million
Russians, six million Jews, and millions of unaccounted-for civilians. It
was easier not to remind ourselves of this satanic history and to move
on—pondering it was too ghasdy. Like many other Germans, we hid
under the ruins of a noxious national glory forever wrapped in shame,
hoping that time would wipe away all tears, hounding memories, and
nagging guilt. New life would surely cover the graves and the wounds,
and surely the rise and fall of such a misguided nation would never
be repeated.

xv
 xvi Introduction: A Small Voice

Survival precedes the reflection of one's history. After the war no

one took time to talk to me about what horrors I had seen or how fright-
ened I was. It was just not done. I figured that the adults thought I was
too young to comprehend anything that I had seen but not understood.
Instead, my mother worried about where the next loaf of bread would
come from each day, or hurried out the door to see that the correct
amount of Brikett (coal) rations was being dumped through the cellar
window to heat the kitchen. At night we sat around the table praying,
heads bowed, eyes shut, and hands folded, asking for God to speak to
us. I looked at my bitten fingernails instead and tried to listen for God's
voice. All I heard was my own small voice. God was silent. On Sundays
we went to church and prayed for the forgiveness of our sins and the
strength to trust in God. We also gave thanks for being alive; we were
the lucky ones who seemed to have received special protection. I did not
know why us and why not my grandmother Wunderlich, my aunt
Liddy, my uncle Karl, Frau Wolf, and all the others. Most urgently we
prayed for our father to come home from the Russian front.
When I was five, I overheard the hushed voices of the grown-ups
in Grandfather's kitchen in Leipzig. They talked about the Russian sol-
diers in town and their brutality toward women. I worried about my
mother leaving the house, especially at night, and did not feel relieved
until she finally slipped into our bed. The silence protected us like a
heavy blanket, warming at the moment yet concealing the dark of
memories and truths. No one wanted to remember the horrifying
moments, especially not my mother. It was over for the moment and
we were alive.
I joined this massive chorus of silence, hoping for a lasting peace
to wipe out all reminders of the German dilemma. One family story
among thousands was not worth mentioning. Our neighbors had
shared the same experiences, some much worse; so I felt I no longer
had a voice.
These were some of the childhood conclusions I carried into my
adult years and took along with my luggage when I immigrated to the
 Introduction: A Small Voice xvii

United States in 1966. Although years passed like a refreshing breeze

and I had a comfortable life in peace, nagging images and reminders
of homelessness revisited in dreams and fretful sleep.
When my mother died a few months before her eightieth birthday
in 1983,1 said good-bye to her forever and lost the living connection
to my past. There would be no more times to ask her about her family
or to validate my early memories. No quiet talks to help me under-
stand the difficulties of her life during the Hitler years. No answers to
burning questions about the collapse of human decency and the rise of
evil and destructive forces in a nation with a culture so rich in litera-
ture and music, science and industry. With my mother's death the final
silence had fallen over me.
Over the years new facts regarding death counts were published.
More horrifying stories of Holocaust survivors emerged, constant
reminders of suffering and cruelty. Of the just under nineteen million
Germans in central, southeastern, and eastern Europe who experienced
mass deportation between 1945 and 1950, only eleven million lived
to see their destination. According to a census in September of 1950,
they included Baltic Germans, Lithuanian Germans, East Prussians,
Danzigers, West Prussians, Pomeranians, Lower and Upper Silesians,
Sudeten Germans, Capathian Germans, and Germans from Hungary,
Yugoslavia, Rumania, and the Soviet Union. "Approximately four mil-
lion were forced to stay in their countries of origin, and roughly three
million met their death at the end of the war and immediately after-
wards" (Deutschland: Magazine on Politics, Culture, Business and Science,
Diooiy F, No. 2, April 1993, £5, pp. 26—27).
They perished on the way to somewhere. The truth crushed my
need to speak and ask even more. In response to all this, I held my
breath. There were no words—just more silence in shame. "We cer-
tainly received what we deserved."
I belonged to this exodus. When I was born in 1941 in Breslau,
Silesia, World War II had been raging for two years. In 1943 our
family history as refugees began. In 1945, after an odyssey of terror,
 xviii Introduction: A Small Voice

my mother, my three older brothers, and I finally found a temporary

shelter in the Soviet-occupied section of Germany. After four years
of cramped living and Hungersnot (famine) in my grandfather's flat,
we fled the Communists by crossing the border to West Germany in
search of freedom.
Why talk about it now over fifty years later? Why explore memo-
ries and feelings associated with trauma in my own family? Why
revisit the remnants of a painful and shameful past?
Stories of liberating heroes are always sung with pride on the win-
ners' side. Yes, there are hearts on both sides grateful for their courage
and sacrifice. However, the stories of people left behind in the ashes and
in covered graves on the defeated side are rarely mentioned. The Allied
forces destroyed our cities, our churches, our homes, our farms and
crops, our families and our fateful illusions in order to save us. After
the defeat of the Hitler regime in 1945, they stayed to resurrect us. As
restoration and rebuilding began, including the Marshall Plan and the
program of denazification of the German people, documentaries of
concentration camps surfaced and captured the facts of a systematic
elimination of six million Jews and other unwanted persons. These pic-
tures would be forever imprinted in my mind, a reminder of the evil
orders of the Fiihrer, Adolf Hitler, and his henchmen—my people.
At this time of inflated pride, hate, and prejudice, a time of war,
defeat, and rejection, no one answered my cautious questions for
explanations of the disasters around us. Teachers and parents alike
remained silent and I stopped asking. I concluded that guilt and shame
were fitting punishment for having been part of a nation that sub-
scribed to evil and destruction. With the passing years, I felt I had no
right to talk about my story, considering the plight of victims with
more traumatic experiences.
The experiences of the Holocaust survivors are rightfully heard
and continue to emerge from the dark corners of their memories. As
time went on, other wars were being fought. From all over the world
pictures emerged of refugees walking away from their homes and their
 Introduction: A Small Voice xix

countries in times of war: Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo—

the list goes on and on. The horror of war reveals itself over and over on
people's faces and bodies: the empty look, the frozen eyes, the wounds
untended; hungry children hang onto their parents, people are run-
ning. It is the replay of a gruesome reality, brought on by human con-
flict, hate, and the attempt of a few individuals to seize power through
domination—an unending human tragedy, a never-ending story, as if
no learning from past mistakes has ever occurred.
But each survivor needs to speak and be heard. The voice of each
person tells of horror, torture, and rage, while the listeners respond
with time and empathy. Adults and children alike need a heartful lis-
tener in order to heal through remembering and speaking. The utter-
ance and the cries of the survivors build a bridge for the listener
because receiving and hearing lead to the discovery and acceptance of
our humanity. This process may even hold the promise of a frank dia-
logue between survivor victim and survivor perpetrator so that the
suffering may finally be shared and unburdened.
This book is the story of my childhood, a small voice telling of
trauma, loss, silencing, and homecoming in the face of a diabolic his-
tory and its aftermath. In order to come to grips with my past as a
German born during World War II, I had to find out what marks this
horrible history had left on my family and on me. First, I needed to
reconstruct the events by gathering the facts pertaining to war and
violence and to explore my own memories without a blink. Second, I
revisited the past by collecting memories, listening to the stories of oth-
ers, and tracing painful reminders at the actual geographic locations.
Third, and most important, I wanted to reclaim any associated emo-
tions disconnected from these memories. On this path, I could seek
healing in the survival through confrontation, acceptance, and integra-
tion. The ashes must be shared. An experience shared with other war
compatriots is a healed experience.
During the last few years, I found my voice through the process
of spontaneous writing. Family letters, pictures, and diaries helped fill
 xx Introduction: A Small Voice

the holes in my story. Image memories found fragmented language,

while feelings took on another voice in poetry and music. Dreams and
flashbacks, panic and fearful moments drove the journey. The old still
pictures are interwoven with current impressions and reflections, and
what emerges is a reconstructed, subjective autobiography. A reclaimed,
personal history is a reconciled history, and no longer leaves one adrift
through the night.
Each section in the book struggles with the burden of the political
events during the Nazi regime and asks nagging questions as to what
my parents might have known or how they might have subscribed to
Hitler's ideology. In the end, I found no vindication for their vision or
blindness, for their political conformity within their family and church
denomination, or for a country that blindly and aggressively lived out
an evil course of events.
I recently received my grandmother's rusty house key, which one
of my mother's sisters had found in the ashes of Dresden in the after-
math of the firestorm bombing in February 1945. My cousin Maria
gave it to me. With this key in my hand, I received a mandate and a
permission to open up the door to the past.
The central person in my story is my mother, who led the way in
the flight from Silesia, through the fires of Dresden and the postwar
famine, and eventually across the border to the western part of
Germany. Her story is the painful one, one of a broken heart held
together by emotional scars. Her belief had a stubborn quality to it.
She insisted on a merciful God, on being blessed in spite of hardship.
Her prayer was like the one Jacob shouted during a night of wrestling,
as told in Genesis 33: "I will not let you go, God, unless you bless me!"
It was this insistence on her faith, as well as her motherly courage, that
brought us four children to safety, and ultimately set us on a free path.
She envisioned a freedom that could provide us with a chance to cre-
ate life anew and leave the pain behind.
However, living in America, six thousand miles away from
Germany, was like walking with a long, dark shadow. How was I to
 Introduction: A Small Voice xxi

live with it? Other people could notice it easily, given my German
accent, my name, my age. I, nevertheless, strode eagerly ahead while
dragging the shadow, sometimes pretending it was not there anymore.
I just wanted to move on with life, leaving memories and losses behind.
But I was to discover, like every other survivor, that each one of us
has to cope with the aftermath of trauma at some time during our lives,
sooner or later, maybe alone, maybe with others, but definitely recog-
nizing disturbing facts and seeking the presence of associated emotions.
The permanent marks our history has left on us must be examined if
we are to understand who we are now; otherwise, the shadows of the
past will not vanish.
There is a way to clear the rubble of destruction and to find color-
ful remnants of life in the gray layers of the ashes. A new tapestry can
be woven from threads of mercy and hope. The gray charcoal blends in
with the yellows and the greens, the reds and the blues, the colors of the
seasons of life. The journey of recovery, foremost, remains a universal
one. This book is an effort to create a witness for healing and living.
This page intentionally left blank
 PROLO CUE

The Mitzvah

"Here is your mitzvah," she said, bending down to her purse while dig-
ging out a wrinkled dollar bill. Her therapy session over, the young
Jewish woman was slowly getting up from her comfortable chair in my
office.
"It's a bubba meint^e, you know, an old wives' tale." A smile brushed
over her face; she had not noticed that I had no idea what she was talk-
ing about. "I'll send you on a mission with this dollar!" By now she had
straightened the wrinkles in the bill and put it in my hand. When she
became aware of my puzzled look and my silence, she went on, "It's a
teaching—so it says in the Talmud—to do a mission, a kind act to fur-
ther God's will when you go on a trip. You are on a holy mission from
now on—you are a shlichah mitivah, a mitzvah messenger. If you give
this dollar to a needy person this summer in Germany, then your trip
will be blessed!"
With that explanation and a smile, she left my office.
I paused a while, staring at the dollar bill—a mitzvah ... a mission,
and with it a blessing and protection to come my way? I quickly wrote
down the word "mitzvah" on my note pad so I could look it up in the
dictionary when I got home. (I would later learn from Leo Rosten's
The Joys of Yiddish that mitzvoth are regarded as profound obligations,
inescapable burdens, yet they must be performed not from a sense of
duty but with a "joyous heart.")

xxm
 xxiv Prologue: TheMit^vah

It would just take giving away this dollar, handed to me by a

Jewish woman, to someone in need in Germany? "In Germany/' she
had said. That simple? Did she know what she was saying?
Didn't she know how many million bodies lie between her, a
Jewish woman, and me, her German-born therapist? Surely she could
not have forgotten; neither had 1.1 would never forget. The history of
the Holocaust can never be forgotten. The stories of human suffering
would be told from one generation to the next. I could feel my throat
getting dry the more I thought about it.
... cannot think about it any more, too painful, too shameful. My mind
goes back to my first visit ever to the concentration camp in Dachau, near
Munich, in 1996. My oldest brother, Klaus, lives nearby. The people there
dont like to be reminded of their town's evil reputation; the place is tainted
for good.
"Actually, Dachau is an idyllic town, famous for its artists in
times past—charming and quaint. The Americans like to travel here
but only to visit the concentration camp. They never see the rest of
the town—too bad!" my brother commented, his lips tightly pressed
together to keep other words from slipping out.
Why had we not visited this ghastly place before? Our parents did
not urge us to visit this part of the German past and our teachers did
not take us on a history class outing. Couldn't we have searched for the
truth after we completed our school years? We could have traveled to
Dachau, and to other concentration camp sites, but we stayed away.
Did we also fall under the spell of avoidance by not seeing, not hearing,
not feeling? Did we, too, continue to live without confronting the ugly
past, trying to avoid shame, rage, and guilt? To visit here would have
been to shudder.
I had no other answers to these haunting questions, but after so
many years, my time to be a witness had come.
On a clear day in August, my husband, Winfried, and I walked
with trepidation through the open gate into the camp. The watch-
tower was still standing, the walls and the fence intact. The concrete
 Prologue: TkeMit^vak xxv

foundations still mark the outline of the barracks on the open grounds.
As a German-American, I had arrived at this place of endless human
suffering to see the painful reminders for myself, to feel their horrify-
ing impact. I had to face my own shame burdened by the knowledge
that my parents had been a part of this dark moment in German his-
tory. They had witnessed Hitler's striving for power, his military con-
quest and domination of most of Europe, and his voracity in pursuing
his grandiose goals as the Fiihrer of a superior race; the vicious aim of
his claim and pursuit included the elimination of the Jewish people.
I stared at the enormous wrought-iron memorial, symbolizing
a twisted, barbed-wire fence. It was beginning to sting. The spikes
would be haunting me forever and now seemed to scream questions at
me: Did your parents know? If they knew, why didn't they do some-
thing to stop it?
Not too long before, one Sunday morning, the South African
bishop Desmond Tutu had been interviewed on television by Bill
Moyers about his efforts on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
which brings healing to the ethnic factions of his people regarding their
crimes committed toward each other. Bishop Tutu said that one has to
look the beast straight in the eye in order to begin the healing process.
I remembered his words well and realized for the first time the deep
truth in them. My beast was right here in front of my eyes and I
blinked. It was too hard to look straight at it, too horrible to see, too
frightening to feel. He had also said in that conversation that people are
a glorious creation with the capacity to do good as well as evil. Right
now, I could only see the evil part and it made me shiver.
Our silent walk through the KZ (concentration camp) led us to the
museum that housed a pictorial guide from the beginnings of the Nazi
regime to the bitter end in 1945.1 passed through the halls in a daze.
The pictures of the German people screaming and jubilating in
response to Hitler's mandates contrasted with the silent faces of human
suffering. But why was there no accompanying text in English? So
many foreign visitors enter this place. The German text stung my eyes.
 xxvi Prologue: TheMit^vah

While walking from picture to picture, I could hear the steps of

a young woman visitor who was coughing every few minutes. Her
scratchy rasp reverberated in the empty halls, a reminder of the illness
and the distress that once filled this place. Every time she coughed,
I winced. I wished that she would go away, but she took her time to
look and read; her coughing seemed like an echo to my painful search
into the past.
"I didn't know that besides the Jews so many priests and other
clergy lost their lives here," Winfried said slowly, pointing at a chart
accounting for the pastors and priests who perished during the Nazi
years at Dachau. He is a member of the clergy himself, and this cate-
gory of murdered prisoners touched his heart. A total of 2,720 clergy
had been imprisoned, with 1,034 killed, 868 Polish Catholic priests
among them. I clinched my teeth as numbness took over.
We walked in silence, the crunching of loose gravel under our
shoes. I needed to take it in and sort out my feelings later. This visit was
about learning and fact finding. So I stood in front of the crematorium,
saw the open oven doors, entered the rooms once used for killing...
The statue of an old man, a prisoner, stood on a pedestal. The
inscription beneath read:

Den Toten %ur Ehre

Den Lebenden ^ur Mahnung
(In honor of the dead, an admonition for the living)

We were here to pay tribute to those who perished in this place and
to take their fate as an admonition, a mandate. I was grateful for these
words in the middle of my anxious reflection, so full of images of suf-
fering. I became even more aware that during these horrible times
my family had lived in Germany: my grandparents, my uncles, aunts,
and cousins. How could I honor them or have respect for them?
I walked silently toward the memorial chapels sharing the same
ground but separated by walls and by different faith traditions. The
 Prologue: TkeMitfvah xxvii

Jewish memorial had been built of stone in the form of a cistern with an
opening to the sky. Soft light came floating down on the cold stone—to
a place of death with an open sky as the only source of hope. Walking
into the cistern brought chills to my back: the rough stones, the prison
walls, the filtered light in the darkness ...
Outside the compound, a prayer chapel had been erected, main-
tained by the Carmelite nuns. I entered quietly and sat down on a
brown, wooden bench with nothing to say to God, nothing, absolutely
nothing—just silence in and around me. I could not think of a prayer
to utter. Even "Our Father" seemed an unfitting address. So I just
looked straight ahead. I had nothing to bring either; my hands were
empty, my jaw locked. No words could express the heaviness of the
moment. I wanted to hide; I was ashamed. I had come to a place where
I could be held accountable for the sins of my parents' generation in a
world of perpetrators and victims alike. What would I be able to utter
anyway after so many years had passed? Too late for many of them to
speak or defend themselves ...
Some white candles were flickering on a pillar. The black smoke
of a burning wick was rising toward the ceiling, only to disappear in
the air.
I realized at that moment that my parents had taken their answers
to my questions to their graves many years ago. Therefore, I would
have to go on my own journey to revisit the past and find my place
in it. Their journey was going to be mine from now on. In order to
accomplish this, I would need help in finding their traces, in uncover-
ing my own faded memories and, most of all, in lifting the silence of
the child within me so she could speak out. Who would listen to the
remnants, recognize the images, respond to the tears? What if all she
could do was scream?

The woman in my office had looked at me with her warm smile

and had wished me a good trip. She had stepped over a human abyss
heaped with immeasurable pain, rivers of tears, never-ending grief,
 xxviii Prologue: TheMit^yah

and the dark silence of prejudice and hate, covered by the uttered
memories of the living bearing open wounds and filled with the silent
screams of the dead in the deep.
But the woman had stepped over it. Her hand had reached for
mine so that she could pass on the dollar. She had given me a blessing
with it. All I could do was thank her, accept it, and go on my journey
to Germany. I was on my way.
Return to Dresden
This page intentionally left blank
 C HAFTER ONE

On the Road Home

The traffic was flowing smoothly on the autobahn that Sunday morn-
ing in August of 1998, as we left Munich, Germany, heading north.
The late summer heat had scorched the harvested fields, which were
covered with cropped stalks on a sandy, yellow soil. I was caught by
the soft countryside, the villages crowded along the roads and nestled
into the hills and woods. The ornamented church steeples pointed
toward the hazy sky. Deep ringing bells still announced the faithful liv-
ing nearby and honored the dead buried in their churchyards.
"It's good to travel on a Sunday morning," my brother Klaus com-
mented as he read the map in front of him. "The trucks are not allowed
to be on the road, and the returning vacationers are not there either."
Winfried's foot rested steadily on the gas pedal, his eyes fixed on
the road. No speed limit on this stretch of the autobahn, a paradise for
a California driver.
My backseat window framed the town of Bayreuth on the left. The
Festspielhaus loomed on the hill; its huge arch towered over the city
below. It had been built in 1872, without air conditioning, of course.
Richard Wagner, the builder and composer, had designed it in a way to
create the purest acoustics and to produce the best blend of sound ever.
Never mind the heat of summer and the sweat of performers and
guests alike. Every year from then on, the music had been bold and
beguiling, no matter how much the critics squabbled in the newspapers

3
 4 Return to Dresden

about the avant-garde productions on stage, about the language, the

voices, the divas, and the conductors.
The Richard Wagner Festival was in full swing at this time of the
summer, with the opera Die Meistersinger on today's program. I have
long admired this majestic piece of soaring love and celebration of
German history and the country's honorable guilds. The popular over-
ture of the opera, with its famous brass themes, started playing in my
head. This masterpiece is not without controversy. Richard Wagner's
anti-Semitism has been clearly documented. His image of a Jew is con-
veyed in the role of the klutzy Beckmesser, who unsuccessfully woos
a maiden only to become the laughingstock of all the citizens in
Nuremberg. This year the production had a revised text in order to take
the anti-Semitic sting out. The music, remaining intact with all its color-
ful depth and layered emotions, is impossible for me to dismiss as back-
ground music; it speaks directly to my feelings. My second brother,
Herbert, and his wife, Ursa, would be at today's performance—how
lucky for them!
The town still has a bitter taste for many people. Wagner's music
had been glorified by the Hitler regime and used as a leitmotif for
German superiority, power, and victory. The majestic brass tunes,
especially the overture from Die Meistersinger, were used as back-
ground music in the concentration camps. Therefore, Wagner's music
is still hated today by many Jewish survivors.
During the postwar years, my music instruction at school and at
home had taken a mysterious course. Wagner's music was rarely men-
tioned then. It was ignored at home for years because of its connection
with the glory and torture of the Hitler years and the known friendship
between Hitler and the Wagner family in Bayreuth. The other reason
Wagner's music was shunned had to do with the "perverted" content
of his stories, which stood in harsh contrast to my religious upbringing
and family values. As a child, I did not understand it all but felt that
something about the music was disreputable. So I ignored the music
too, as instructed, and with it the stories of human tragedy—of lust for
 On the Road Home 5

power, of greed, love, betrayal, and redemption—that were depicted

in the operas. Only later did I learn why the music was tarnished, and
about the denazification process after the war, even in the small town
we lived in, the effort to cleanse our thinking. It was my brother Herbert
who made me aware during my teen years of the tragic figure of
Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, his role of scapegoat in his society.
Herbert showed me the musical score of the opera one day, pointing
out the compositional details in Beckmesser's serenade and speaking of
the human tragedy in the portrayal. The laughingstock turned into a
person in need of compassion. Slowly, over many years, did I learn to
separate the music from the political abuse?
Winfried and I had tried to order tickets to this month-long festi-
val for years, only to be turned down again this year. I guess it was
not our turn yet to be inducted into the society of true Wagnerian dis-
ciples. Well, maybe next year, I thought. We could come back here if
we would finally be so lucky as to have tickets; we would follow the
fanfares on the balcony announcing the start of the opera, and then
step inside the Festspielhaus.
"We will soon be crossing the old border between West and East
Germany," Klaus said as we headed toward a stretch of open fields.
"Not much left to see anymore. They tore down all the fences and
walls as soon as possible after the Berlin wall came down in 1989. To
the right, you can still see some deserted barrack buildings and some
cement slabs. That's where the border control took place."
"It is still hard to believe that all this is gone now," I responded.
"But how do people get along with each other now?"
"There is quite some tension between the different parts of
Germany. The price is enormous to restore the land. And the attitude
of the people ... well, that's another matter. Forty years of imprison-
ment in your own country leaves a lot of emotions and strange reac-
tions on both sides of the border. Even now, there is long-standing
jealous anger on both sides, flinches of entitlement, and pockets of
hopelessness due to the high rate of unemployment in this area. Many
 6 Return to Dresden

elderly people are totally confused, their hearts full of complaints and
bitterness."
I could see their faces, just like the ones in Leipzig where I had lived as
a child. Their backs were bent under the heavy load of silence, their ashen
faces staring to the ground as they walked by our house. Everyone carried a
handbag or a sack in which to bring home some meagerfood rationing . . .
"What about the young people?" I wanted to know.
"For most of them, the transition was easier. Unfortunately,
some of the teens have banded in gangs and march to the tune of the
Fuhrer with shaved heads, flags and all. It is a small group, the neo-
Nazis, their actions are horrifying to us."
The soft green meadows, the rolling hills, and the patches of forest
eased the pictures in my mind of border guards with their rifles, of dark
windows in buildings, gates, the senseless waiting, and the flutters in
my stomach when I was asked for my passport at a previous visit to the
area and a border crossing many years ago; all that was gone by now,
just reminders outside and memories on the inside.
My thoughts wandered back to the incredible events that started
with the ending of an era, the opening of a wall.
On November 9,1989, the Berlin wall came crumbling down. We
lived in Redondo Beach, California, at the time, and the event was cov-
ered live on television. We saw thousands of people celebrating in the
streets of Berlin, standing on top of the wall, hacking holes with picks
and hammers, screaming and crying, bewildered and euphoric. They
were breaking down the barriers between East and West Germany,
destroying a wall that had separated families, friends, and neighbors,
that was part of the long, painful history of the country. Huge crowds
stood at the Brandenburg Gate, watching and reaching out to each
other. Within hours the roadway broke open. Men, women, and chil-
dren walked to the other side of the same city. No more shooting and
hunting down the ones that tried to flee, who had risked their lives for
the price of freedom. I realized then that I truly never expected this to
happen during my lifetime. After 1961, when the wall was erected in
 On the Road Home 7

Berlin and the rest of the borders were even more tightly secured, we
were told by our schoolteachers to accept the separation of the two
sections of Germany and to stop praying and hoping for any reunifica-
tion. Over the next months we accepted the political reality of the time
and I stopped praying. I thought that this final division was another
price Germany had to pay for the sins of our fathers during the Nazi
regime—a painful punishment of separation, loss, and oppression.
But then, the wall did come down. The country that was left
behind by the Russians had been trashed, polluted, and economically
exploited—ready to be thrown away. But now with the exodus of the
occupying force, the broken wall also opened a chance for me to revisit
without fear the places of my childhood and those of my parents. A
wall within me was coming down, too, bringing light to dormant mem-
ories and allowing me access to the history of my country, which had
been shrouded in darkness for so many years. I, too, had to step over
the rubble of a toppled wall to go to the other side and see.
The day the Berlin wall came down, I called Klaus to hear from
him firsthand what was going on back home. "The wall is coming
down. Is that true?"
"We can't believe it either," he replied.
"We are sitting by the television to get the latest. Aren't you
worried about bloodshed?" I asked.
"Of course, but nothing has happened so far. The local police
have apparently joined in the movement of liberation from the Com-
munist regime. It is incredible! We are stunned."
I was curious about the reactions of the people to these unexpected
developments in Berlin. He tried to describe the wonder of relief all
around the country, the surprise on people's faces as they shook their
heads in disbelief. What would a united Germany look like? Who
would pay for the repair of an exploited country?
"The people on the street were already complaining about the
money that would be needed," he said. "But you should see the eupho-
ria around us. People from all over the country drove to the borders.
 8 Return to Dresden

They wanted to see for themselves what was happening." There was
a long pause. Then with a trembling voice he added, "You know, the
war is over, it is finally over."
We both cried quietly on the phone. I was shocked because I
couldn't remember ever having known him to cry. I tried hard to hold
my tears in, to no avail. I knew what he meant. We cried for our parents
and their incomplete lives, their losses and hardships, and out of relief
after so many years of longing for peace. Our parents had witnessed
two world wars; my grandfather fought in World War I and then lived
through World War II. None of them had lived long enough to experi-
ence this special day in our history. I knew then that I was going to go
back to Germany one day and trace their paths. If they could not be
there to claim an end to war then I was going to do it for them. I was
on my way.

Winfried hit the brakes of the Renault for another, by now familiar,
Stau, a traffic jam on the right side of the road. Another construction
site was in full swing with open pipes heaped along the shoulders; the
hot smell of asphalt seeped through the windows.
The villages we passed on the autobahn took on a brighter look.
Houses had been freshly painted, covered with new, red roof tiles; even
small gardens were groomed with care. I could see the white lace cur-
tains behind scrubbed and shiny windows. Fluffy down comforters, or
Federbetten, as we called them, decorated open windows like big, white
clouds. By now, we had entered the eastern section of Germany. Here,
the recently repaired autobahn showed fewer stretches of the old,
bumpy, noisy road. Years of neglect slowly disappeared in the black,
shiny asphalt, and Winfried gladly stepped on the gas pedal.
"It was amazing," Klaus went on. "As soon as the country
opened to the West, people started to plant flowers in their front yards
and placed flower boxes outside their windows. You should have seen
the neglect in the towns before the wall came down, nobody cared
about anything. Everything looked gray and shabby. Of course, the
 On the Road Home 9

supermarkets moved into towns, the merchants rushed in to make a

quick buck!" He laughed. I liked the way he emphasized the harsh
"k" sound of "buck".
"What about all these new cars?" Winfried wanted to know more,
and was ever scanning all vehicles in sight, old and new. I smiled at his
favorite leisure activity while he was driving; he was eager to identify
the current German cars, or, better, all cars in sight. He was like a kid
in a candy store, surprised and open-eyed.
"Most of the Trabis are gone by now. They were atrocious and
stank to no end. Everyone, of course, wanted a western car after the
Wende [reunification]." The two men began to chat about cars, models
and gasoline prices.
We were on our way not only to the former East Germany and to
Poland, but also to other places where my family had lived during and
after the war. We had planned this trip for some time, my curiosity
about our family history and my personal story being the leading force.
For this adventure, I had asked Klaus, the oldest of my siblings, to join
us; he would have the most vivid memories. As a geodesist, he possessed
the necessary skills to decipher German as well as Polish maps and to
lead the way into unfamiliar territory. I felt quite sure of his ability to
guide and was hoping to connect our memories and family stories with
current on-site impressions. It was an opportunity to finally revisit the
location of our border crossing into the West in 1949. Our itinerary
would include a visit to Dresden, the beautiful city finally growing out
of the ashes. We hoped to enter Poland and the city of my birth, Breslau.
Before the end of World War II, this region of Poland had belonged to
Germany and was called Schlesien. Breslau had been renamed Wroclaw
after the war. We also had plans to drive into the countryside of
Schlesien, to a village named Damsdorf, about fifty kilometers south-
east of Breslau, where we had been evacuated in 1944. I was uneasy
about what we would find in the various locations. What if there was
nothing left to see, no connecting memories to be found? No traces of
our family life? What if my memories had concocted it all, scars and
 IQ Return to Dresden

wounds? This is the summer of 1998, and my history of trauma goes

back over fifty years to a time of war. Time had marched on; maybe
by now it should have healed old wounds. Maybe the silence covered
it for good.
I had sent a copy of my writing to Klaus a couple of months ear-
lier. I knew his English language skills were good enough for him to
understand my written text, its meaning and the outpouring of my feel-
ings. My story is his story, too. I waited for his comments, but he said
little except how amazed he was at how much material I had collected.
"It is impressive/' he had said briefly when we had arrived in Miinchen
a few days ago.
The men's conversation about cars, gasoline, and maps had
ceased, and Klaus turned around to look at me. "Maybe tonight, after
we get to the hotel, we'll sit down and go through the text together.
I made some comments. It might be helpful to do it before we get
to the various locations."
I nodded. I was eager to hear what he had to say. I wondered
about his response to our history, about his feelings and the effects of
the war years on his life.
"How about stopping in Naumburg and visiting the cathedral?"
Klaus looked up from his map as we were moving along with the
traffic. He pointed toward the right when the steeples of the cathe-
dral came into full view. "I remember visiting here as a boy from
Leipzig. I hear that the cathedral is quite a sight again."
Winfried, glad for a break, jumped at the opportunity to visit one
more cathedral on the way. I smiled at his eagerness to enter any
house of worship on our trips, his seeking of the majestic as well as
the humbleness in faith, and, most of all, his wanting to find a spiri-
tual home on the way to somewhere.
Once off the autobahn, we enjoyed a closer view of the small
towns and villages along the country road made of cobblestones. The
hollow rattle of tires made it hard to keep up any lengthy conversation
in the car.
 On the Road Home 11

The famous cathedral of Naumburg soon came into full view. Its
two main towers announced the Romanesque and early Gothic history
with narrow arched windows and massive stone walls. Spooky gar-
goyles bent down sharply, suspended from rain gutters, openmouthed,
fanged, and winged, to keep the evil spirits away. We entered the dimly
lit cathedral. Few people were visiting inside this Sunday afternoon.
"It is now a museum," the woman at the entrance hall said as she
took our money. "Services are only held occasionally."
The enormous, cruciform basilica with its vaulted roof, originally
built in 1213, had gone through major alterations, some completed as
late as the nineteenth century. Hollow and empty, it received us—the
remnants of a house of worship, its symbols of altar and cross in unat-
tended spaces. Our steps echoed as we entered the west choir lined
with the old, dark, wooden choir stalls. There they stood, carved in
limestone, the life-size statues of the founders of the cathedral, twelve
figures in all—the most famous pairs being Uta and Ekkehard,
Reglindis and Hermann. I recognized their faces from pictures in our
home during the years when we lived in Leipzig around 1947. My aunt
Hanni had been so fond of them and kept postcards of their portraits
around. Their frozen smiles seemed forever edged in stone. Uta's gen-
tle face was draped by her cold cloth, her crown so delicately restive
on her head. These statues came from a different world: a world of
pride and celebration of the human spirit, of generosity and beauty, of
minstrels' poetry, noble conquest, religious reverence, and the power
of the church institution. How silently they stood in this enormous
hall, still guarding what they had stood for centuries ago.
Today, the cathedral belonged to those founders again, the statues
standing alone in the absence of God. The house of God was now a
museum. Although years of neglect and dust blanketed this cathedral,
the founders as well as the cold walls had withstood the last forty years
of Communist occupation behind the iron curtain, with little money
available for "the ever-needed repairs," as the attendant said when we
entered. I, too, felt strangely cold and empty as I walked through the
 12 Return to Dresden

archway toward the nave that housed the sarcophaguses of knights

and kings. A large wooden door led to the cloister garth. It seemed the
soul of a people had departed from this place a long time ago, leaving
the cold statues waiting for a new breath of life, maybe for a happier
time, when the halls would again be filled with music echoing from the
balconies. Maybe they were longing for brightly lit candles, for the
mystery of sacrament to be celebrated around the altar, and especially
for people's smiling faces. Did this poverty of spirit reflect the years
of spiritual oppression, silencing the church forever?
Outside in the cloister yard, the thick wall of the cathedral framed
a large patch of green grass. The late afternoon sunshine marked the
stone walkways with sharp, gray shadows.
"y<z, I remember our trip to the cathedral in 1947 or so," Klaus
said. "We walked from the train station. I never forgot about it. An
outing with the train during those days was quite an event."
Klaus smiled as he followed his thoughts, and we finally headed
toward the cafe outside the cathedral compound and sat down at one
of the tables. At this time in the afternoon he enjoyed a good cup of
strong coffee with several spoons of sugar. I had ordered a piece of
Apfelkuchen with my tea. My thoughts went back to a time when, after
the war, the conditories had nothing to exhibit but empty shelves. I
looked at Klaus as he stirred his black coffee with a spoon, and I was
glad for him that he could connect his memories of hardship with
good friends and laughter way back in 1947. My memories remained
so dark, and my feelings seemed to be stuck in my throat. I wanted
the courage to experience both.
That night, we stopped in Quedlinburg. To our surprise, we
found the inner city greatly restored to its original, medieval look.
Many half-timbered houses were freshly painted. A narrow cobble-
stone street led up to the Schlossberg with the Renaissance castle where
a panoramic view opened up before us. Red, tiled roofs covered the
town, laid out like a poorly fitting jigsaw puzzle. Carefully tended
roses in front gardens and flower boxes bursting with geraniums
 On the Road Home 13

decorated the white houses. What an abundance of flowers! Dust

hung in the heavy summer air.
"Quedlinburg is becoming a museum town/' the locals told us.
The people were not sure if their efforts to restore every part of the
city to its original shape and color would be in the best interest of all its
citizens. Old maps had been consulted, discovered paint was being
matched and wrought iron skillfully restored; masonry had become an
art form again. The city council had argued about the idea of return-
ing a city to the look it had in prewar years, but finally welcomed cur-
rent job opportunities in their hometown. Could a city forget the long
years of dilapidation and neglect just by making repairs? The city was
mending fast now. People wanted to move on with their lives, their
dreams, and their hopes.
We settled in at the hotel Zur Goldenen Sonne in the historic section
of town. The cobblestone street, cleanly swept, seemed as noisy and
bumpy as ever. Our windows opened up toward a plaza with a bub-
bling water fountain, now a gathering place in the evening for the
young people in town. They stood about in small groups, sitting or
leaning on their bikes, laughing, calling out to each other by name.
The restaurant on the first floor of the hotel was decorated with
cozy booths and checkered tablecloths. It served traditional regional
food, which quickly sank in my stomach with a heaviness that would
rule out any further sightseeing that night: roasted potatoes mixed with
onions, sausage, and mushrooms, all of it well soaked in pan fat, to be
washed down with the local beer. The smell of onions simmering in fat
drifted like a heavy cloud throughout the dining room.
Klaus pulled my manuscript from his black briefcase as he sipped
on the dark brew with its rich white foam floating on top. I could
hardly wait for his response.
"You know what is so amazing about your writing," he started
slowly, "is that your outpouring was triggered by a crisis in Winfried's
congregation a few years back, right? I was amazed how this experi-
ence stirred up so many memories of our past."
 14 Return to Dresden

I did not want to think about this painful time in Winfried's church
when it looked as though some congregants wanted a change of clergy,
which would have meant another relocation. I did not want to remem-
ber that difficult time right now. Maybe I could think about it later.
Klaus looked up briefly and waited. So I said, "You are right. I reached
a point in my life where I could not see myself moving one more
time—maybe to be run out of town again—not being wanted in that
community anymore. Just like being a refugee again, you know, in
Raschau or Damsdorf." He nodded but did not respond, his hand
reaching for the stein of dark, foamy beer.
"After Winfried and I left Germany in 1966," I went on, " I did not
want to think much about our dreadful past during and after the war
anymore. With our exodus all the war memories were left six thou-
sand miles behind, so I thought. We had made a new beginning. We
now lived in a free country. In addition, we moved five more times.
Then came these trigger experiences a few years ago that did open the
floodgates to my early memory so intensely, and my search began for
my place in the history of my family and my country."
He listened attentively, his eyes fixed on the papers in front of
him. Winfried had gone up to his room to enjoy a quiet evening of
reading. He knew it would be best to leave us alone for this conver-
sation. My brother and I were spending time together. It was like
coming home.
"But that's what it takes, a crisis of similar proportions and
repeated emotional themes to fully bring back the original trauma with
a flood of familiar fears and reactions." I wanted to sound professional;
it was easier to keep a distance from my emotions that way. So I went
on, trying to invite him into the subject of emotional triggers and
flashbacks. "I wonder how you dealt with all this family trauma. You
were the oldest of us four, you carried so many more responsibilities,
and you have so many more memories, right?"
He shrugged his shoulders. His slim lips tightened even more.
"I've never spent too much time thinking about it." He stopped briefly.
"You know, we all went through those years. It wasn't so different
 On the Road Home i5

from what other people went through. We didn't have to talk about it
because we all were together." He smiled.
"But after the war did our mother talk much about the war years?"
"Not really. I am not sure why, maybe we did not ask her, either."
I knew why—because of the many years of the silent anniversaries of
our flight to Dresden, the bombing on February 13, our father's death
date in April, our escape to somewhere else. She did not talk because
of her choked tears and her unending grief-—too many losses of family
members, of homes, and friends, too much to feel by herself. Maybe she
was too scared to open up old wounds without a listener—her memories
were too raw and powerful. Over the years, it had been hard for our mother
to hold in such an overwhelming sense of fear and grief. She had several
breaking points when her despair began to flow. I wanted to forget about
those. I felt guilty that I could not be of much help to her during her later
years. I did not know how to comfort her either. Maybe nobody could. All
she said was that we were spared and protected, "bewahr? ; she did not
say what for, or why. I figured it meant we were spared from dying. In her
sadness she wanted to be grateful; in her bitterness she was glad to see us
children alive.
"You know," Klaus went on, "I really had a pretty good child-
hood." He smiled. "We played a lot, and I enjoyed school. Even in
Leipzig in 1947,1 liked my teacher, took piano lessons, and played out-
side with my friends. Oh, by the way, you are right, we boys sat in one
of the ruins unattended, on a balcony, and smoked vine leaves. We
even tried to clear a whole floor of rubble out of that house with shov-
els, but the adults wouldn't allow us to play there. I guess it was too
dangerous." His eyes sparkled as he looked at me. "I took the streetcar
by myself to church activities or to my piano lessons. Of course, we
did not have much to eat, especially in 1947, but das war halt so—that's
how it was."
He kept repeating this last phrase throughout our conversation
whenever he needed to shield his feelings and sort of summarize his
thoughts. "I don't have much to say to your memories about the bor-
der crossing because I was not there, but we will drive into the area
 16 Return to Dresden

tomorrow morning. The maps will help us to find the river. I have
my own story of crossing the border."
I nodded. I knew his story, too, and had already included it in my
text. I was waiting for his story, but instead he continued, "Did you
know that I am not the oldest among us children, and you were not
the youngest either? Our parents actually had six children."
I looked straight at him. "She never spoke to me about those
experiences."
"She had one miscarriage in 1933, one year before my birth,"
Klaus went on, "and another one in 1943, during the war years, two
years after you were born."
I had only recently read about these losses in one of my father's
letters written in 1945. He had tried to comfort my mother at the time
after our dreadful flight to Dresden, writing to her that a baby might
not have survived the ordeal. I, however, had survived.
"You know, our parents believed in angels," he said quietly.
"They called them Himmelsfreunde^ heavenly friends, who would
protect us during those years of family separation. Mother wrote to
our father in 1943 or so, when I was eight or nine years old, that I had
seen an angel sitting on our brother Gerhard's bed one night. This
heavenly visitor was white, sort of without color. Another time, I saw
a little boy in our flat in Breslau. Mother told me afterwards that this
was really my little brother that was never born. I believed her. I was
so sure that angels really existed; it was a proof for me that there are
angels among us. Our father must have been very comforted by their
presence in our home while he was absent, fighting in the war. It was
such a difficult time."
He touched his chin and looked down on my manuscript in front
of him. As the oldest of us, having been born in 1934, he was the one
whose help I needed with my burning question. So I burst out, "How
much did our parents know about the war and the atrocities committed
by the Nazis? Do you know how much they were aware of what was
going on in the government, the party, the ... ?"
 On the Road Home 17

"That's hard to say. I really don't know what they actually knew.
The reason being that every spoken word in or outside the home had
potentially dangerous consequences. Under Hitler everyone was afraid
to speak openly to their neighbors, even to members of their own fam-
ily. You could be reported for being an enemy of the state, and deported
to a labor camp—killed! Remember, even in Leipzig after the war, we
still were reminded not to tell anybody what we thought, had, and ate."
I nodded, thinking of Frau Lehmann, an old woman in Leipzig
who lived by herself next to our grandfather's flat.
"Don't blabber things out to anyone," Mother would say to us.
"And you little ones always did." Klaus chuckled.
"/a, I know."
Even now, I felt a bit guilty for wanting to share stories with Frau
Lehmann or my friend Karin across the courtyard where we had lived.
Back then I did not understand why we had to keep secrets. Frau
Lehmann was an old, kind woman. She was always nice to me and
I enjoyed my visits in her small flat.
The fear of spies in your own neighborhood and the presence of the
Gestapo silenced all of them, including our parents. It was intended also
to silence me. Fear silenced my heart and would do so for many years.
"When you have a chance," he went on, "read Father's last let-
ters written in early 1945. Gerhard has them. He took them along
after Mother's death."
He paused for a while. Then he said quietly, "It is very clear that all
our father wanted was to come home to us, to our mother, and to us
children. He was never a member of the Nazi Party, but he shared the
conviction of needing to protect his family and the German nation from
the Russians. He called them die Bolchevisten, the Bolshevists. Father
may not have been fully aware of the German atrocities, but, for sure,
he knew of the Russian soldiers' violence: the murders, rapes, and total
destruction wherever they went. And by 1944, the Russians moved
west like a rapid tidal wave. At the end, he was stuck somewhere in
Croatia between the Russian front and Tito's partisans. Just stuck."
 18 Return to Dresden

We both fell silent; no words were necessary. I had to take a deep

breath to go on.
So why talk about it? That's how it was—we 'lived through it. Das
war halt so.
He quietly took another sip from his beer. The white foam had
fizzled. The waitress came by to check on us, since we had been sit-
ting at our table for such a long time. Klaus ordered another beer.
"You know, with very few exceptions, by 1934 most people in
Germany had bought the official party line, the drive for a domination
of Europe, the image of power and Vaterland, which included hating
the Jews. They were identified as the poison in society and needed to
be purged efficiently. Hitler radiated such strength and confidence in
speech and presentation, it seemed as if he spoke to each individual, to
each family, when he addressed the nation. The economy had recovered
from the depth of depression and nobody argued with that. A global
isolation of a people had been created by an infrastructure of ever-
present fear. There was no telecommunication, as we know it today. I
know our father feared the Gestapo, too." I wanted to know more, but
he went on, "You want to know how I feel about all this?" He shrugged
his shoulders. "Oh well, das war halt so? he said again. "It was a horri-
ble time for all of us ... but das hob ich schon gegessen"
I guess he was trying to tell me that he had swallowed it all up:
memories, trauma, and losses. It was over, thank God! His memories
were gone? No, he knew how to leave the past behind. We had sur-
vived and he lived in the present. Why hang on to my dark and bitter
feelings? Why hang on to my nagging questions of who knew what,
and how much, and when?
He could not say much more about himself and how our history
might have shaped his life and our family. So I pressed on, "Didn't
your children ever ask you about your experiences as a boy during
those years?"
"No, not really. They don't seem to be interested in the past. They
feel the whole mess has nothing to do with them. They don't feel
 On the Road Home 19

responsible for 'the sins of our fathers'. My son is angry at the incon-
venience brought on by the reunification of Germany. So many polit-
ical challenges are associated with our current economic downtime,
the job crunch, and the entitlement attitude of the people. No, he likes
to live life and does not look back. What about your children?" He
looked at me.
"One day not too long ago my daughter started asking me ques-
tions about our past. She must have felt that for years I held my memo-
ries inside. Our son lives and works in New York. His Jewish law
colleagues have openly asked him, have identified his German heritage
by looking at his name and asking him questions about his parents. So
he had to start dealing with it. One of his colleagues is a World War II
buff. Their awareness of being German by family background con-
nects them with their families' history with Hitler. This fact cannot be
avoided in the United States given the Jewish community and their
unending grief following the Holocaust. Lately though, there seems to
be an urgency and a willingness to break the silence on so many more
fronts. Some fifty-plus years later, it is time to hear from all survivors,
including us war orphans."
We pored over the text in front of us, page after page. He had
made additions and corrections; even some spelling errors did not
escape him.
Tomorrow we would retrace our family's journey during the war
years. We would actually revisit the various sites—only this time with-
out the imminent danger of the past looming around us. My brother,
both strange and familiar, seemed to be taking me by the hand again.
He was still the big brother, the one leading with little opportunity to
feel much.
Sleep that night came in restless waves. I slipped into pictures of
border fences, fields, and shadows, as trees and train tracks blended in
with my fitful sleep. Why did I worry? The soldiers were long gone.
What about the land mines in the sand strips left behind? What about
being alone again out there in the middle of nowhere? Would we ever
 2o Return to Dresden

find the river, the old border crossing area past Oschersleben? The
end of the train tracks?
Grandfather, fortunately, had written down the name of this town
on the postcard he sent to us in 1949. I had forgotten exactly where
Mother and I crossed the border to the West. Thanks to Grandfather
and his postcard, we could trace the route one more time. How impor-
tant it had become; it was now a reassuring guide. I still kept waking
and slipping in and out of sleep. I saw the images of Dresden, the city
with its famous silhouette ... the river Elbe, the riverbanks...
Wintergartenstrasse 31... Grandmother's grave ... the ashes ... the
bones, the key. We would go to the place of my birth, to Breslau, in
Poland, then to the countryside of the bitter winter of 1945...
Where are you, all you 'who have lived and died here? "Our Father
who art in heaven." Apiece of my soul has been left here too with you, an
aching void never ever to be filled... To be left alone .. . "Thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven . . ." Would I meet you all somewhere
during the next few days?. . . "Give us this day our daily bread, "just
bread. . . like back in 1943 when Mother was desperate . . .
The hot summer night offered no relief, no refreshing breeze to
move the sheer curtains into a flutter ... "Anddeliver us from evil ..."
How many times have you prayed these lines too, all you who have lived
and died? Uneasy sleep floated on murky reflections.

The early dawn chased away shredded dreams and fragments of

prayer. The sound of cars passing outside our hotel window, their
tires hitting the cobblestone roads, wakened us to a new day.
We headed north, going through the city of Halberstadt, marked
by its enormous church buildings in need of repairs. Even the bright
morning could not hide the potholes on the road, the neglected houses,
and the construction sites everywhere. In Oschersleben, we turned
toward Gunsleben, our first destination.
We entered a quiet, small town. Plain-looking, whitewashed
houses lined the main street. Our car rattled even more on the old stone
 On the Road Home 21

road, the dull sound of the tires making it impossible to talk. This
Monday morning, no one walked along the sidewalks, not even the
ever-busy housewives rushing to prepare Mittagessen. An empty
silence welcomed us to the past. How different it all looks now, I
thought. White lace curtains had returned to the homes, framing shiny
windows. Brightly painted doors were no longer hiding lives in dark-
ness. White paint had replaced the gray plaster hardened by harsh
winters and neglect over the years.
The road led us straight ahead to the train tracks. The old red-
and-white rusty-hinged gate bar stood erect, not having been used in
years. I got my first glimpse of the deserted building on the right side
of the street, the old train station. Now abandoned, it was partially
boarded up by loose wires, posts, and fences. A covered wooden stair-
case still accessible from the street side was locked tight. Stalky weeds
crowned by shredded, yellow flowers grew all around the building.
Obviously, no one had tended the place in years. The old platform
where passengers would board and exit trains was still partially visible,
but the rusty, dull tracks hadn't welcomed any travelers for a very long
time. More shaggy weeds covered up the harshness of the neglected
site. Young, stalky trees crowded in on the back door of the building.
I climbed up the stairs to the back entrance to look inside. The whole
place had been transformed into a residential site. Empty, wallpapered
rooms replaced the old waiting area,... the brown benches we sat on,
waiting for the guide to take us across the border so many years ago . . .
The useless train station had been abandoned. No need for trains
anyway, the tracks ended here, the switch tower still standing farther
down to the west. . . This was the place where Mother and I had arrived
late at night in September of1949. She had said, "The train stops here.
We will have to walk from now on." I sat on the hard bench with my knap-
sack; only a dim light on the ceiling outlined the dimensions of the room,
maybe to keep our escape from being discovered. . . I cannot remember
much of the outside of the building. Of course, it was dark then . . . I need
to go back to Leipzig and start my story there . . .
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Title: A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CAPILLARY

CRIME, AND OTHER STORIES ***
APPEARANCE OF MANDEL’S STUDIO THE MORNING AFTER HIS DEATH.

A CAPILLARY CRIME
AND OTHER STORIES

BY
F. D. M I L L E T

ILLUSTRATED
 NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
1892

Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.

——
All rights reserved.
 CONTENTS.

PAGE
A CAPILLARY CRIME 3
YATIL 87
TEDESCO’S RUBINA 129
MEDUSA’S HEAD 165
THE FOURTH WAITS 191
THE BUSH 269
 A CAPILLARY CRIME

N EAR the summit of the hill in the Quartier Montmartre, Paris, is a little
street in which the grass grows between the paving-stones, as in the
avenues of some dead old Italian city. Tall buildings border it for about
one third its length, and the walls of tiny gardens, belonging to houses on
adjacent streets, occupy the rest of its extent. It is a populous thoroughfare,
but no wheels pass through it, for the very good reason that near the upper
end it suddenly takes a short turn, and shoots up the hill at an incline too
steep for a horse to climb. The regular morning refuse cart, and on rare
occasions a public carriage, venture a short distance into the lower part of
the street, and even these, on wet, slippery days, do not pass the door of the
first house. Scarcely two minutes’ walk from the busy exterior boulevards,
this little corner of the great city is as quiet as a village nearly all day long.
Early in the morning the sidewalks clatter with the shoes of workmen
hurrying down to their work, children scamper along playing hide-and-seek
in the doorways on their way to school, and then follows a long silence,
broken only by the glazier with his shrill cry, “Vi-i-i-tri-er!” or the farmer
with his “À la crème, fromage à la crème!” In the late summer afternoons
the women bring their babies out and sit on the doorsteps, as the Italians do,
gossiping across the street, and watching the urchins pitch sous against the
curb-stone, or draw schoolboy hieroglyphics on the garden walls. There is a
musical quiet in this little street. Birds sing merrily in the stunted trees of
the shady gardens, the familiar calls of hens and chickens and the shrill
crows of the cock come from every enclosure, and all the while is heard the
deep and continuous note of the rumble of the city down below. At night the
street is lighted by two lanterns swung on ropes between opposite houses;
and the flickering, dim light, sending uncertain shadows upon the blank
walls and the towering façades, gives the place a weird and fantastic aspect.
Montmartre is full of these curious highways. Quite distinct from the rest
of the city by reason of its elevated position, few or no modern
improvements have changed its character, and a large extent of it remains
to-day much the same as it was fifty years ago.
It is perhaps the cheapest quarter of the city. Rents are low, and the
necessities and commodities of life are proportionately cheaper than in
other parts of the town. This fact, and the situation the quarter affords for
unobstructed view of the sky, have always attracted artists, and many cosy
studios are hidden away in the maze of housetops there. On the little street I
have just described are several large windows indicating unmistakably the
profession of those occupying the apartments.
Late one dark and stormy evening a gate creaked and an automatic bell
sounded at the entrance to one of the little gardens halfway up the street. A
young woman came out into the light of the swinging lantern, and hurried
down the sidewalk. Her unnaturally quick and spasmodic movements
showed she was anxious to get away from the neighborhood as quickly as
possible. Her instinctive avoidance of the bad places in the sidewalk gave
evidence of her familiarity with the locality. In a few moments she had left
the tortuous narrow side street that led down the hill, and stood upon the
brilliantly lighted boulevard. Pausing for an instant only, she rapidly
crossed the street, and soon stood beside the fountain in the Place Pigalle.
Here she watched for a moment the surface of the water, ruffled by the
gusts of wind and beaten by the fierce rain-drops. Suddenly she turned and
hurried away down the Rue Pigalle, across to the Rue Blanche, and was
shortly lost in the crowd that was pouring out of the doorway of the skating-
rink.
The little street on the hill remained deserted and desolate. The lights in
the windows went out one by one. The wind gusts swayed the lanterns to
and fro, creaking the rusty pulleys and rattling the glass in the iron frames.
Now and then a gate was blown backward and forward with a dull sound, a
shutter slammed, and between the surges of the wind could be heard the
spirting of the stream from the spouts and the rush of the water in the
gutters. Towards midnight a single workman staggered up the street from
the cheap cabaret kept in the wood-and-charcoal shop on the corner. A little
later a sergent de ville, wrapped in a cloak, passed slowly up the sidewalk,
until he came to a spot where the asphalt was worn away, and there was a
great pool of muddy water. There he stopped, turned around, and strode
down the street again. The melancholy music of the storm went on.
Suddenly, towards morning, there was a dull, prolonged report like the
sound of a distant blast of rocks. The great studio window over the little
garden flashed red for an instant, then grew black again, and all was still.
Away up on the opposite side of the street a window was opened, a head
thrust out, and, meeting the drenching rain, was quickly withdrawn. A hand
and bare arm were pushed through the half-open window, feeling for the
fastening of the shutter. In an adjoining house a light was seen in the
window, and it continued to burn. Then the mournful music of the tempest
went on as before.
Shortly after daybreak the same young woman who had fled so hastily
the evening before, slowly and with difficulty mounted the hill. Her clothes
were saturated with the rain, and clung to her form as the violent wind
caught her and sent her staggering along. Her bonnet was out of shape and
beaten down around her ears, and her dark hair was matted on her forehead.
Her face was haggard, and her eyes were large and full of a strange gleam.
She was evidently of Southern birth, for her features had the sculpturesque
regularity of the Italian, and her skin, though pallid and bloodless, was still
deep in tone. She hesitated at the garden gate for a while, then opened it,
entered, and shut it behind her, the automatic bell tinkling loudly. No one
appearing at the door, she opened and shut the gate again to ring the bell. A
second and third time she rang in the same way, and without any response
from the house. At last, hearing no sound, she crossed the garden, tried the
house door, and, finding it unlocked, opened it and went in. Shortly
afterwards a frightened cry was heard in the studio, and a moment later the
girl came out of the house, her haggard face white with fear. Clutching her
hands together with a nervous motion, she hastened down the street. A half-
hour later a femme de ménage opened the gate, passed through the garden,
and tried her key in the door. Finding it unlocked, she simply said, “Perhaps
he’s gone out,” and went into the kitchen and began to prepare breakfast.
Before the water boiled the gate opened sharply, and three persons entered;
first, the martial figure of a sergent de ville; second, a tall, blond young man
in a brown velveteen coat and waistcoat and light trousers; and, lastly, the
girl, still trembling and panting. The sergent carefully locked the gate on the
inside, taking the key with him, and, followed by the young man, entered
the house, paused in the kitchen for a few rapid words with the femme de
ménage, and then went up into the studio. The girl crouched down upon the
stone step by the gate and hid her face.
The studio was of irregular shape, having curious projections and
corners, and one third of the ceiling lower than the rest. The alcove formed
by this drop in the ceiling was about the size of an ordinary bedchamber.
The drawn curtain of the large side window shut out so much of the dim
daylight that the whole studio was in twilight. In the farther corner of the
deep alcove was a low divan, filling the recess between a quaint staircase
which led into the attic and the wall opposite the window. This divan served
as a bed, and on it, half covered with the bedclothes, lay a man, stretched on
his back, with his face turned towards the window. The left arm hung over
the edge of the divan, and the hand, turned inertly under the wrist, rested on
the floor. There was the unmistakable pallor of death on the face, visible
even in the uncertain gloom. The sergent quickly lowered the curtain,
letting in a flood of cold, gray light. Then great blood-stains were seen on
the pillow, and on the neck and shoulders of the shirt. Beside the bed stood,
like a grim guard of the dead body, the rigid and angular figure of a manikin
dressed in Turkish costume. Between the manikin and the window lay on
the floor a large flint-lock pistol. Near the window stood an easel, with a
large canvas turned away from the light.
The two men paused in the middle of the studio, and looked at the
spectacle without speaking. Then the young man rushed to the divan, and
caught the arm that hung over the side, but dropped it instantly again.
“Touch nothing. Do not touch a single object,” commanded the sergent,
sternly. Then he approached the body himself, put his hand on the face, and
said, “He is dead.” Taking the young man by the arm, he led him out of the
room, carefully locking the door behind him. In the kitchen he wrote a few
words on a leaf torn from his note-book, gave it to the femme de ménage
with a hasty direction, checked her avalanche of questions with a single,
significant gesture, led the way into the garden, unlocked the gate, and half
pushed her into the street.
He stood quietly watching the crouching figure of the young girl for
some time, then stooping over her, raised her, half forcibly, half gently, to
her feet, and pointed out that the place where she sat was wet and muddy.
Then he made a few commonplace remarks about the weather. In a short
time the femme de ménage returned, breathless, accompanied by two more
officers, one of them a lieutenant.
It was curious to see the instantaneous transformation of the little street
when the femme de ménage and the two policemen entered the gate.
Windows were opened and heads thrust out on all sides. It was impossible
to say where the people came from, but in a very short time the street was
blocked with a crowd that gathered around the gate. Those on the sidewalk
struggled to get a peep through the gate, while those in the street stared
fixedly at the studio window. One or two tried to force the gate open, but a
sergent de ville, posted inside, pushed the bolts in place. The femme de
ménage, who had managed to get a glimpse of the scene in the studio, sat
weeping dramatically at the kitchen window.
The lieutenant and the sergent who first came went from one room to
another, examining everything with care, to see if there had been a robbery.
In the studio they scrutinized every inch of the room, even to the dust-
covered stairway that led to the little attic over the alcove. Then, after a
hasty examination of the corpse, they mounted the stairway that led from
the entry to the roof, and searched for fresh scratches on the lead-covered
promenade there. Apparently satisfied with the completeness of their
search, they remained awhile there, looking at the slated roof, and at the
hawthorn-tree which stretched two or three strong branches almost up to the
iron railing of the balcony.
The lieutenant then, with great deliberation, took down in his note-book
the exact situation in the studio, measuring carefully the distance of the
pistol from the body, noting the angle of the wound (for the ball had gone
through the head just over the ear), taking account of many things that
would have escaped the attention of the ordinary observer. When this was
finished, he sent away one of the sergents, who shortly returned with two
men bearing a stretcher, or rather a rusty black bier. The men were
conducted to the studio, and there, with business-like haste, they placed the
body on the bier, strapped it firmly there, covered it with a soiled and much-
worn black cloth, and with the aid of the officers carried it down the stairs
and out of the house into the garden. The girl, who had remained standing
where the sergent had placed her, sank down again on the stone steps at the
sight of the black bier and its burden, and hid her face in her hands. There
was a momentary gleam of something like satisfaction in the eye of the
sergent who stood beside her.
The lieutenant, who had remained to put seals on the door of the studio,
on the door which led out upon the promenade, and upon all the windows of
the upper stories, came out of the house, followed by the young man in the
velveteen coat, and the weeping femme de ménage. The lieutenant had a
bundle in his arms a foot and a half long, done up in a newspaper. He gave
the sergent at the gate a brief order, then went out into the street, clearing
the sidewalk of the crowd. The body was next borne out, and the young
man and the two women, followed by one of the sergents, presented
themselves to the eyes of the curious multitude. Without delay the two
bearers marched off down the street at a rapid pace, the heavy burden
shaking with the rhythm of their step. The little procession of officers and
prisoners, accompanied by the whole of the great crowd, followed the bier
to the prefecture. There a preliminary examination of the two women and
the young man was held, and they were all detained as witnesses. The body
was carried to the morgue.
It would be tedious to describe in detail the different processes of law
which to our Anglo-Saxon eyes appear but empty and useless indignities
heaped upon the defenceless dead. Neither would it be an attractive task to
give a minute account of the meagre funeral ceremonies which the friends
of the dead artist conducted, after they had succeeded in getting possession
of the body for burial. The grave was dug in the cemetery of Montmartre,
and the few simple tributes of friendship placed on the mound were lost
among the flashing filigree emblems and gaudy wreaths which adorned the
surrounding tombstones.
The theories which were advanced by the three officers who had
examined the premises were distinguished by some invention and ingenuity.
From carefully collected information concerning the intimate life and whole
history of the three persons kept as witnesses, the officers constructed each
his separate romance about the motives for the crime and the manner in
which it was committed. The lieutenant had quite a voluminous biography
of each character.
Concerning Charles Mandel, the dead artist, it was found that he was a
native of Styria, in Austria; that his parents and all his relatives were
exceedingly poor; that he had worked his way up from a place as a farmer’s
boy to a position as attendant in the baths at Gastein, and thence he had
found his way to Munich, and to the School of Fine Arts there. He had
taken a good rank in the Academy, and after several years’ study, supporting
himself meanwhile on a small government subsidy and by the sale of pen-
and-ink sketches, he began to paint pictures. When he had saved money
enough he came to Paris, where he had lived about eighteen months. His
character was unimpeachable. He lived quietly, and rarely went out of the
quarter; was never seen at the balls in the old windmill on the summit of
Montmartre, nor did he frequent the Élisée Montmartre, the skating rink,
the Cirque Fernando, nor any other place of amusement in the
neighborhood. The little Café du Rat Mort, in the Place Pigalle, was the
only café he visited, and in this he was accustomed to pass an hour or two
every evening in company with his friend, the sculptor Paul Benner. He was
not known to have any enemies, there was no suspicion that he was
connected with the Internationalists, and the only reason he had been
remarked at all as an individual was because he spoke French badly, and
always conversed in German with his friend Benner.
The information concerning the latter was a great deal more accurate and
precise. A great deal of it, however, was irrelevant. He was born in
Strasburg, in 1849, and began the study of his profession there. He came to
Paris when he was twenty years old, and entered the Académie des Beaux
Arts. After he had finished the course he set up his studio in Montmartre,
and had already exhibited successful works in three salons. He had a great
many friends in the city, and was well spoken of by all who knew him. The
only thing that could possibly be urged against him was the fact that he
seemed very little disturbed at the idea of being a Prussian subject. But he
was consistently cosmopolitan, as his intimate friendship with the Austrian
and his equally close relations with fellow-students in the Beaux Arts
abundantly proved.
The inquiries about the girl were, judging from the frequent gaps in the
history as written in the lieutenant’s note-book, conducted with difficulty,
and with only partial success. She was a Corsican, and was generally called
Rose Blanche, the translation of her Corsican name, Rosina Bianchi. By the
artists she was facetiously called La Rose Blanche, partly because of her
hair and complexion, which were of the darkest Southern hue, and partly
for the sake of the grammatical harmony of the name thus altered. Nothing
in particular was found out about her early life. She herself declared she
was born in a small village in the mountains of Corsica, and that her father,
mother, and several brothers and sisters were still living there. She had
come to Paris as a model just before the siege, having first begun to pose in
Marseilles, whither she had gone from Corsica to live with an aunt. This
aunt had married a crockery merchant, and was a respectable member of the
community. From her was gleaned some notion of the family. It was of
genuine Corsican stock, and they all had the violent passions which are the
common characteristic of that people. Rosina, while in Marseilles, had been
quiet and proper enough except when she had been, as her aunt described,
un peu toquee. At long intervals it seems that she became highly sensitive
and excitable. She would on these occasions fly into a mad rage at a trifle,
and when she grew calmer would sob and weep for a while, and end by
remaining sullen and morose for hours, sometimes for days. Her aunt had
opposed her going to Paris, prophesying all sorts of evil. She had never seen
her since her departure, and had only heard from her twice or three times
since she had left Marseilles.
There was scarcely a better-known model in Paris than La Rose Blanche.
She was not one of those choice favorites who are engaged for months and
sometimes for a year in advance at double prices, but she was in great
demand, especially among sculptors. Her head was Italian enough to serve
as a model for the costume pictures of the Campagna peasants, but she was
much more picturesque as a Spanish girl, and her employment among the
painters was chiefly with those who painted Spanish or Eastern subjects.
The sculptors found in her form a certain girlishness which had not
disappeared with age, and although she was twenty-five years old, she had
the lithe, slender figure of a girl of seventeen. There was something of the
faun in the accents of her limbs, and she was active, wiry, and muscular.
The artists connected the peculiarities of her figure with the characteristics
of her disposition, and often said to her, “What a hand and arm for a
stiletto!” “Yes,” she would answer, with a glittering eye; “and it isn’t afraid
to hold one either!” Every one had noticed her violent temper, and some of
those who were best acquainted with her confessed to the feeling that it was
like playing with gunpowder to have much to do with her. When she was in
good spirits, she was soft-mannered and amiable; but when roused in the
least, she became like a fury. She had frequently posed in the ateliers, and
then she had been treated with great respect by the students. For the past
year she had served often as a model for Benner in the execution of his
statue “Diana surprised at her Bath,” and when she was not at work with
him was generally in Mandel’s studio, where she posed for a figure in a
picture from the history of Hungary, an event in one of the Turkish
invasions. With the exception of the report of her eccentricities of temper,
nothing had counted against her. Even this was partly counterbalanced by
the testimony of many to whom she had been both kind and useful. As far
as her moral character went, some had said, with an expressive shrug of the
shoulders, “She’s a model, and like all the rest of them.” Others had
declared that she was undoubtedly honest and virtuous. No one knew
anything—at least no one confessed to any positive knowledge—of her
suspected transgressions.
 The poor femme de ménage, whose life had been hitherto without an
event worth the attention of the police, did not escape the most rigid
scrutiny. Her history was sifted out as carefully as that of the other three.
She was married to a second husband, and the mother of a boy of eighteen,
who was salesman in one of the large dry-goods shops. Her husband,
besides the duties of concierge in the house where they lived—an
occupation which paid for the rent of the rooms they occupied—managed to
make a trifle at his trade of tailor, repairing and turning old garments, and
on rare occasions making a new coat or a pair of trousers for an old
customer. He was also employed as a supernumerary in the Grand Opera, a
duty which obliged him to attend the theatre often, to the serious
interruption of his home occupations. He could not well give up the place in
the theatre, for his salary was just enough, with the rest he earned, to make
both ends meet. The wife was obliged to be at home so much, to fill her
husband’s place in the care of the great house, that she could only manage
to do very little outside work. The families in the house were all working
people, and consequently could not afford the luxury of assistance in the
kitchen. She therefore found a place as femme de ménage with some family
in the vicinity. For some time she had been in the employ of the dead artist,
and was particularly satisfied with the place, first because she could choose
her own hours, and then because she had very little to do, and was paid as
much as if she took care of a family—twenty francs a month. One
circumstance excited the suspicion of the police. She had been gone nearly
the whole afternoon of the day before the murder. When she returned at
dark her husband noticed that she was heated and confused, and asked her
where she had been. She refused to tell him, painfully trying to make the
refusal palatable by jokes. And the police with little difficulty found out
exactly what she had been doing for the three or four hours in question. She
had been to the Cemetery of Montmartre. She had been seen by the keepers
there busy near a grave on the third side avenue to the left, about a quarter
way up the slope. They had observed her digging up the two small
flowering shrubs she had planted there years before, and had constantly
tended. These shrubs she had wrapped up in an old colored shirt, and had
carried them away. Further, a neighbor of the dead artist in the little street
on Montmartre deposed that late in the afternoon of the day before the
tragedy she had seen the femme de ménage enter the gate of the studio
garden, bearing an irregular-shaped bundle of considerable size. The police,
on visiting the garden, found the two shrubs described by the keepers of the
cemetery freshly planted in the little central plot.
Then for the first time they questioned the femme de ménage herself, and
she confessed, with an abundance of tears, that her only daughter had died
five years previous, and that she had been buried in the Cimetière
Montmartre, and the grave had been purchased for the period of five years.
The term was to expire within a few days, and the poor woman, unable to
pay for a further lease of ground, was obliged to give up her claim to the
grave. She could not bear to lose the shrubs, for they were souvenirs of her
dead child, who cultivated them when very small plants in flower-pots on
the balcony. The mother had dug them up in the cemetery, and transplanted
them in the garden of the house where she worked, having no garden-plot
of her own. She intended the next day to tell the artist what she had done,
and to get his permission to let the shrubs flourish there. She had refused to
explain her absence to her husband because the girl had been dead a year
when she married him, and he had sometimes reproached her for spending
her time in the cemetery. As it was not his child, he could not be expected to
care for it; and the poor mother, not having the courage to ask for money to
renew the lease of the grave, kept her own counsel about the matter.
The examination of the witnesses, and the investigation of their personal
history, threw but little light upon the exact state of the relations which
existed between the painter and La Rose Blanche. The neighbors had
overheard at various times loud talking in the studio, and occasionally some
violent language that sounded very much like a quarrel. One or two of the
shrewd ones, especially an old woman who sold vegetables from a little
hand-cart on the corner, volunteered their opinion that the model was in
love with the artist. The withered and blear-eyed old huckster gave as
reason for her opinion that the model had generally stayed long after
painting hours, and was unusually prompt in the morning. But there was
quite as much proof that Mandel did not care for the model as that she was
enamoured of him. He never watched for her in the morning, never came to
the door with her; treated her always, as far as was noticed by any one who
had seen them together, as if on the most formal terms with her. In the Café
du Rat Mort it was found that La Rose Blanche had often come in during
the evening, sometimes in fine costume and elaborate toilet, and had placed
herself at the table where Mandel and Benner sat. The latter always
appeared glad to see her, and joked and chatted with her, while Mandel was
evidently annoyed by her presence, and did not try very hard to conceal his
feelings.
An almost inquisitorial examination of Benner elicited the fact that his
friend had confided to him that the model tormented him with her
attentions, and so thrust herself upon him that he was at a loss what to do
about it. He had thought seriously of giving up the picture he was at work
on, so that she might have no excuse for coming to his studio. The same
examination drew out the confession that he was in love with La Rose
Blanche himself, and had been for some time.
Now the most plausible theory of the three officers was apparently well
enough supported by the fact to warrant a most careful investigation. This
theory was based chiefly on the common French axiom that a woman is at
the bottom of every piece of mischief. The strongest suspicion pointed
towards La Rose Blanche, and no motive but that of jealousy could be
assigned for the deed. It was necessary, then, to find some cause for
jealousy before this theory could be accepted. Mandel was, as the study of
his character had proved to the officers, of a quiet and peaceable
disposition, and not in the habit of frequenting society. Although, like most
young men, he spent part of his time in the café, he was more disposed to
stay at home than to join in any time-killing amusement. After the most
diligent search, the officers only succeeded in finding one girl besides La
Rose Blanche who had been at all on friendly terms with the artist. She was
a model who had posed for a picture he painted while he occupied a studio
in Rue Monsieur le Prince, in the Latin Quarter. But it was also found out
that La Rose Blanche had never seen Mandel until long after the picture
was finished and the model dismissed. In this way the investigation went on
with all possible ingenuity and most wearisome deliberation. No effort was
more fruitful than the one just described. Every clue which promised to lead
to the slightest knowledge of the life of the artist or the character of the
model was followed out persistently, doggedly, and often even cruelly. Thus
months passed.
Benner had been discharged from custody after his first long and trying
examination. Unable to work, he wandered around the city in an aimless
way. He could not help having a faint yet agonizing glimmer of hope that he
might meet with a solution of the mystery of his friend’s death. This
solution would, he was sure, prove La Rose Blanche innocent. His
unfinished statue in the clay, moistened only at irregular intervals, cracked
and shrunk, and gradually fell to pieces. Dust settled in his studio, and his
modelling tools rusted where they lay. At first he had tried to work, and,
summoning another model, he had uncovered the clay. But he only spoiled
what he touched, and after a short time he threw down his tools and walked
away.
La Rose Blanche languished in the house of detention. Benner gradually
began to lose courage, and perhaps even his faith wavered a little. When he
learned that in the course of the examination the sleepy concierge of the
house where the model lived had testified that she was absent all night at
the time of the tragedy, Benner felt convinced that circumstances had
combined to convict the girl. Her explanation had been most unsatisfactory.
She had quarrelled with the artist because he told her he was annoyed by
her. She did not remember what she said or did; she only knew that she left
the house in a great passion, and walked the streets all night in the rain. Her
passion gave way to her affection for the artist, and as soon as it was light
she went to the studio to ask him to forgive her. She found him dead.
It was the apathy of La Rose Blanche quite as much as her inability to
prove herself innocent that caused the increasing uneasiness in Benner’s
mind. Not that he believed her for a moment guilty, but he knew that she
was convicting herself with fatal rapidity. He, knowing her character, could
understand how she could walk the streets all night in the storm. He, in the
warmth of his passion for her, had often fought with the weather for the
relief the struggle afforded him. Love-madness is nothing new, and the
model’s actions were only one phase of it. At the little Café du Rat Mort,
Benner now spent all his evenings, and on some days part of the afternoon.
He grew to be one of the fixtures of the establishment. The habitués of the
place had ceased to talk about him, and no longer pointed him out to the
new-comers as the friend of the dead artist. The self-consciousness, which
in the beginning was painful to him, gradually wore away, and he almost
forgot himself at times in connection with the tragedy, and only kept
constantly a dull sense of waiting—waiting for he knew not what. Evening
after evening he sat at the little corner table of the front room of the café,
smoking cigarettes, playing with the curious long-handled spoons, and
occasionally sipping coffee or a glass of beer. The two tables between his
seat and the window on the street changed occupants many times during the
evening, and the newspapers grew sticky, fumbled, and worn at the hands of
the frequent readers. The opposite side of this room of the café was filled by
a long counter, covered on top with shining zinc, and divided into several
compartments, on the highest of which stood the water carafes and a filter.
Behind this counter sat Madame Lépic, the wife of the proprietor, placidly
knitting from morning until midnight. When the street door opened she
raised her eyes and greeted the comer with a hospitable smile; then her face
resumed its normal expression of contentment. By carefully watching her it
could be discovered that she had a habit of quickly glancing out from under
her eyebrows and taking in the whole interior of the café in a flash of her
dark little eye. Just beyond the end of the counter a partition, wainscoted as
high as a man’s shoulder and with glass above, divided the café into two
rooms. From where she sat Madame Lépic could overlook the four tables in
the inner room as well as the three in the front. Her habit of constant
watchfulness was cultivated, of course, by the necessity of keeping run of
the two tired-looking waiters, who, like the rest of their class, had the
weakness of being tempted by the abundance of money which passed
through their hands. The police had already approached Madame Lépic, and
she had given her testimony in regard to the actions of the model with the
two young men. The police would not have been Parisian if they had not
engaged madame to keep an eye on Benner. If he had not been too much
occupied with his own thoughts, he might have detected her watching him
constantly and persistently, even after he had ceased to be interesting in the
eyes of the old habitués of the café.
It was a long four months after that terrible morning when Benner sat,
late one afternoon, in the café brooding as usual. Before him on the stained
marble slab stood a glass of water, a tall goblet and long spoon with twisted
handle, and a porcelain match-holder half full of matches. Bent over the
table, Benner was absent-mindedly arranging bits of matches on the slab,
something in the shape of a guillotine. There were few people in the café.
The click of the dominoes in the back room, an occasional word from one
of the players, and the snap, snap, of Madame Lépic’s needles alone broke
the quiet of the interior. As Benner sat watching the outline of the guillotine
he had formed of broken matches, he saw one of the corner pieces
straighten out, and thus destroy the symmetry of the arrangement. This was
a piece which had been bent at right angles and only half broken off.
Without paying particular attention to the occurrence, he took up the bit,
threw it on the floor, and put another one, similarly broken, in its place. In a
few moments this straightened out also, and this time the movement
attracted Benner’s curiosity. Throwing it aside, he replaced it by a fresh
piece, and this repeated the movement of the first two. Now his curiosity
was excited in earnest, and his face and figure expressed such unusual
interest that the sharp glitter was visible under Madame Lépic’s eyebrows,
and her knitting went on only spasmodically. A fourth, fifth, and sixth piece
was put in place on the corner of the little guillotine, and as the last one was
moving in the same way as the first one did, Benner perceived that the
water spilled on the table trickled down to where the broken match was
placed. He took another match, as if to break it, but before the brittle wood
snapped, his face lit up with a sudden expression of surprise and joy, and he
started to his feet so violently as to nearly throw the marble slab from the
iron legs. The click of the dominoes ceased, faces were seen at the glass of
the partition, and Madame Lépic fairly stared, forgetting for once her rôle of
disinterested knitter.
Without stopping to pay, without seeming to see anybody or anything,
Benner strode nervously and quickly out of the café. When he was gone,
Madame Lépic touched her bell, one of the drowsy waiters came, received a
whispered order, and went out of the front door hatless. A few moments
later, even before Benner had disappeared along the boulevard in the
direction of his studio, a neatly dressed man came out of the police station
near the café and walked in the same direction, the sculptor had taken. After
Benner had entered the porte-cochère of the great building where his studio
was, the police agent went into the concierge’s little office near the door,
and sat there as if he were at home. In a few moments a nervous step was
heard on the asphalt of the court-yard, and the agent had only time to
withdraw into the gloom of the corner behind the stove when Benner passed
out again, looking neither to the right nor the left. He was evidently much
excited, and clutched rather than held a small parcel in his hand. The agent
followed him a short distance behind, and, meeting a sergent de ville,
paused to say a word to him. As Benner climbed on the top of an Odéon
omnibus, the agent took a seat inside. Benner had not reached the interior
boulevard before his studio was searched.
It was now nearly six o’clock, and the omnibus was crowded all the way
across the city. As soon as the foot of the Rue des Beaux Arts was reached,
Benner hurriedly descended, without waiting to stop the omnibus, and ran
to the Academy. Here he sought the concierge, asked him a few questions,
and then walked quickly away to the east side of the Luxembourg Gardens,
where he rang the bell at the door of a house. He asked the servant who
answered the bell if Professor Brunin was at home, and was evidently
chagrined at being told he was absent and would not return for an hour or
two. Entering the nearest café, he called for pen and paper, and wrote three
pages rapidly, but legibly. By this time he had grown calmer in mind, not
losing, however, the physical spring which his first excitement had induced.
When his letter was finished he put it in an envelope, addressed it, and left
it at the professor’s house. This done, he walked rapidly across the
Luxembourg Gardens to the Odéon, took an omnibus, accompanied as
before by the agent, and at the end of the route, in the Place Pigalle, he
descended, hastened to his studio, and did not come out again that evening.
The great window was lighted all night long, and the agent in the entry
could hear sawing, hammering, and filing at intervals, as he listened at the
door every hour or two.
The gray morning broke, and Benner was still at his work. As the
daylight dimmed the light of the lamp, he seemed not to notice it, but
continued bent over his table, where various blocks, pieces of sheet brass,
and a few tools were scattered promiscuously about. A piece of brown paper
lay on the floor with what appeared to be a glove. On the corner of the table
was a rude imitation of a human hand made of wood, hinged so that the
fingers would move. This was not of recent construction; but on a small
drawing-board, over which Benner was leaning, was fixed a curious piece
of mechanism which he was adjusting, having apparently just put it in
working order. He had joined together five pieces of oak-wood, about three
quarters of an inch wide and half an inch thick, arranged according to their
length. The joints had been cut in the shape of quarter-circles, like the
middle hinge of a carpenter’s rule. After these were fitted to each other, a
sawcut was made in each one, and a piece of sheet brass inserted which
joined the concave to the convex end. Two rivets on one end and one on the
other, serving as a pivot, completed the hinge. The joints were so arranged
that, when opened to the greatest extent, the five pieces composing the
whole made a straight line. The longest piece of wood was fastened at the
middle and outer end by screws, which held it firmly to the drawing-board.
The shortest piece, on the opposite end of the line, had attached to it on the
under side a pointed bit of brass like an index. As morning broke, Benner
was engaged in fixing a bit of an ivory metre measure, which is marked to
millimetres, underneath this index point. After this scale was securely
fastened in its place the mechanism was evidently completed, for he
straightened up, looked at his work from a distance, then bent over it again,
and gently tried the joints, watching with some satisfaction the index as it
moved along the scale. While preoccupied with this study, a sudden knock
at the door caused him to start like a guilty man. He threw open the door
almost tragically. It was only the concierge, who brought him a letter. He
tore it open, and read it and re-read it with eagerness; then went to the table
and carefully measured several times the whole length of the mechanism,
from the inner screw of the longest piece to the end of the shortest. He then
began to calculate and to cipher on the edge of the drawing-board. The
letter read as follows:
“Monsieur,—En fait de renseignements sur la dilatation du bois je ne
connais que ceux donnés par M. Reynaud dans son traité d’architecture,
vol. i., pages 84 à 87 de la 2ᵉ êdition.
“Il en résulte que:
“1. Les bois verts se dilatent beaucoup plus que ceux purgés de sève.
“2. Que le chêne se dilate tantôt plus tantôt moins que le sapin, mais plus
que le noyer.
“3. Que dans les conditions ordinaires, c’est à dire, avec les variations
hygrométriques de l’air seulement, le coefficient de dilatation atteint au plus
0.018, d’où résulte qu’une planche de 0.20 deviendrait 0.2036.
“4. Qu’en plongeant dans l’eau pendant longtemps une planche
primitivement très sèche, le coefficient de dilatation peut atteindre 0.0375,
ce que donnerait pour la planche de 0.20, 0.2075.
“Peut-être vous trouverez d’autres renseignements dans le traité de
charpente du Colonel Emy, ou dans celui de menuiserie de Roubo.
“Recevez, Monsieur, l’assurance de mes sentiments distingués.
P. Brunin.
A few days later there was gathered in a small room in the prefecture
quite a knot of advocates and police officers. They were soon joined by
Benner himself, accompanied by a short, stout gentleman with eye-glasses.
Besides the ordinary furniture of the room, there was a wash-tub, a pail of
water, a manikin, and the drawing-board with the mechanism on it. The
entrance of the judge put a stop to the buzz of conversation, and when he
took a seat on the low platform the rest of the company placed themselves
on the benches in front. The judge, after a few preliminary remarks on the
subject of the mystery of Montmartre, said that there had lately been
developed such a new and surprising theory to account for the death of the
artist that he had consented to give a hearing to the explanation of the
theory. Benner then arose and made the following statement: “In the Café
du Rat Mort, a few days ago, I noticed a peculiar movement in a broken
match as it lay on the table before me. At first my curiosity was excited
only to a moderate degree, but shortly this inexplicable motion interested
me so that I experimented until I found the cause of it. At the same moment
there flashed into my mind what I had learned long ago at school about
capillary force, and the solution of the mystery of my friend’s death was at
once plain to me. Hurrying to my studio, I cut off the hand of my manikin,
and carried it to the Academy of Fine Arts to show it to Professor Brunin, of
the Architectural Department, and ask his assistance. Finding him neither
there nor at his house, I wrote him a note and left it for him. All that night I
worked constructing a working model of a manikin’s finger, and the next
morning I received a letter from Professor Brunin which gave me the data I
was in search of—the facts in regard to the expansion of wood when
moistened. I should read that letter here, but Professor Brunin is present,
and will explain the phenomenon. My theory is very simple. My friend
Charles Mandel was shot by his own manikin. There are witnesses enough
to prove that the pistol had been loaded for a long time, and that Mandel
had often tried in vain to draw the charge. It is also well known that the
pistol was cocked when it was in the manikin’s belt, for on the half-
completed picture it was so painted by Mandel on the last day of his life.
Furthermore, the position of the right index finger of the manikin can also
be plainly seen in the picture; for the artist, not having a model to hold the
weapon, had roughly rubbed in the angular fingers of the lay figure,
preparatory to finishing the hand from life. The pistol then, being loaded
and cocked, needed but the pressure of the finger to discharge it. That
pressure was given by the rain on the night of the death of my friend. The
lieutenant will find, on reference to his note-book, that on the morning
when he examined the studio there had been quite a serious leak in the
ceiling, and that the water had fallen directly on the manikin. He will find
also in his notes the exact position of the manikin in reference to the divan
on which the corpse lay. Now, it is clear that when the wrist of the manikin
was bent, and the index finger was placed on the trigger of the pistol, only a
very slight motion of the whole was necessary to give the pressure required
to fire a pistol. The weapon was braced against the inside of the thumb of
the hand, and thus held firmly there as it stuck in the belt ready to be drawn
and fired. When the water first fell from the ceiling, it soaked the covering
of the wrist and hand, and swelled the wrist joint so that it became
absolutely immovable. Next the moisture extended to the tip of the fingers,
the hand being held somewhat downward. In the manikin we have here, the
exact construction of the fingers and the movement of the joints of the hand
and wrist can be plainly seen. In my working model I have imitated the
mechanism of one finger, so arranging it that the least deflection of the
finger from the straight line will be measured on a scale of millimetres. The
joints are so constructed that any elongation of the pieces of wood will
curve the line of joints away from the straight line which I have drawn on
the board. I propose to experiment with this model so as to make it perfectly
plain that my friend’s death was accidental. If the experiment were tried on
the manikin, and with a flint-lock pistol, it would doubtless fail ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred. In the accident which caused my friend’s death
everything happened to be perfectly adjusted. If my model works, of course
the manikin might have worked in exactly the same way.”
The lieutenant gave his explanation of the position in which the body
was found, and added that he had calculated at the time that the shot must
have been fired from the direction of the manikin, and from about the
height of its waist. He found in his notes the statement that the roof had
leaked, and the manikin was wet. Furthermore, the pistol was found just
where the recoil would have thrown it backward out of the manikin’s hand.
He ended by declaring that the theory just advanced was new to him then,
and that he was convinced of its probability by the manner in which it
harmonized with the conditions of the tragedy.
The professor proceeded next to give a full account of the expansion of
wood by moisture, and went into the study of the whole phenomenon of
capillary force. He was somewhat verbose in his statement, probably
because he, like other regular lecturers, had been accustomed to spread a
very little fact over a great deal of time. His closing argument in favor of
the theory set forth by Benner was this: “In the ancient quarries wedges of
wood were driven into holes in the rock, water was poured on the wedges,
and the wood, expanding, split the solid mass. Capillary force is irresistible.
It was this force which caused the deplorable accident which Mr. Benner
has so ingeniously and logically explained.”
At the command of the judge the sculptor proceeded with his
experiment. He simply fastened the drawing-board with the mechanism to
the bottom of the inside of the tub by means of screws. When it was in
place it was covered by about an inch of water. The lieutenant then recorded
on his note-book the time of day and the position of the index, and every
one present made mental note of it. It was necessary, in order to give the
wood sufficient time to swell, to leave it in the water for four or five hours.
Consequently the judge adjourned the sitting until the afternoon at four
o’clock. The room was locked and put in charge of the lieutenant and two
men.
When the same company assembled at the appointed hour the door was
opened by the lieutenant, and the judge, with genuine human curiosity,
stepped up to the tub, looked into it, and gave an exclamation of surprise.
The others approached and looked in. The lieutenant announced, almost
triumphantly, that the index had moved seven millimetres—enough to have
fired a cannon. The judge turned to the excited company and said, simply,
“Messieurs, it was a capillary crime.”
 A FADED SCAPULAR

W E are seldom able to trace our individual superstitions to any definite

cause, nor can we often account for the peculiar sensations developed
in us by the inexplicable and mysterious incidents in our experience.
Much of the timidity of childhood may be traced to early training in the
nursery, and sometimes the moral effects of this weakness cannot be
eradicated through a lifetime of severe self-control and mental suffering.
The complicated disorders of the imagination which arise from superstitious
fears can frequently be accounted for only by inherited characteristics, by
peculiar sensitiveness to impressions, and by an overpowering and perhaps
abnormally active imagination. I am sure I am confessing to no unusual
characteristic when I say that I have felt from childhood a certain sentiment
or sensation in regard to material things which I can trace to no early
experience, to the influence of no literature, and to no possible source, in
fact, but that of inherited disposition.
The sentiment I refer to is this: whatever has belonged to or has been
used by any person seems to me to have received some special quality,
which, though often invisible and still oftener indefinable, still exists in a
more or less strong degree, according to the amount of the impressionable
power, if I may call it so, which distinguished the possessor. I am aware that
this sentiment may be stigmatized as of the school-girl order; that it is,
indeed, of the same kind and class with that which leads an otherwise
honest person to steal a rag from a famous battle flag, a leaf from an
historical laurel wreath, or even to cut a signature or a title-page from a
precious volume; but with me the feeling has never taken this turn, else I
should not have confessed to the possession of it. Whatever may be said or
believed, however, I must refer to it in more or less comprehensible terms,
because it may explain the conditions, although it will not unveil the causes,
of the incidents I am about to describe with all honesty and frankness.
Nearly twenty years ago I made my first visit to Rome, long before it
became the centre of the commercial and political activity of Italy, and
while it was yet unspoiled for the antiquarian, the student, the artist, and the
traveller. Never shall I forget the first few hours I spent wandering
aimlessly through the streets—so far as I then knew, a total stranger in the
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