Fire and Steel, Volume 3 Page 8

  “He’s family, so it’s at least a concern for us. Third, my business is expanding enough that I am finding it more and more challenging to keep up with it.”

  “That’s not a problem. That’s a blessing.”

  Hans ignored her. “And problem four, I need to get a larger garage so I can work on two trucks at the same time and greatly increase my efficiency.”

  Her face darkened at the last one. “May I respond now?”

  “Not until you hear my proposed solutions,” Hans chirped happily, clearly enjoying himself.

  Emilee gritted her teeth but motioned for him to continue.

  “So, after I called Fritzie, I called your Onkel Artur. And I made four proposals to him. The first thing I proposed is probably under way as we speak. He was going to try to leave the hospital early and go to your home to talk to your mother and Ernst. If they agree, the Fromme house will be put up for sale by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Emilee leaped to her feet. “Sell our house? You can’t do that.”

  “I’m not doing it, your family is. And why not? It is your mother’s house now. She can do with it as she sees fit.”

  “But why? Where will they live?”

  “Ah, that is proposal number two. As it happens, there’s a small house for sale no more than a five-minute walk from here. It has three bedrooms, a sitting room, and a den, as well as a somewhat spacious kitchen.” A huge grin broke out. “And it has a garage attached to the house. A garage big enough to hold a small- to medium-­sized truck.”

  Flabbergasted, Emilee dropped back down onto the sofa. “Here? You’re proposing that they buy a house here?”

  “Ja, ja! A couple of days ago, I stopped and inquired about it. It needs some fixing up, but the price is only twenty thousand marks, which is two thousand marks less than what Artur is going to ask for your mother’s house. He thinks some of his doctor friends would jump at the chance to buy it.”

  All she could think of to say was a weak, “And you haven’t said anything about this house to me?”

  “No. At that point, I was just curious. I wasn’t thinking about it for your family.” He rushed on. “The owner has been trying to sell it for several months with no success. He has a job offer in Stuttgart that starts the first of the year. He has to sell or he can’t move. Like I said, he’s asking for twenty thousand marks, but I think he’d be delighted to get eighteen for it. Artur thinks your house is worth twenty-five thousand marks, but he’s going to suggest they price it at twenty-two thousand so it will sell quickly. So with that, your mother would still make four thousand marks. Four thousand, Emilee! Think of that.”

  “But. . . .” She was having a hard time finding words. “Mama won’t leave her home. And she can’t be packing up the house and moving.” But even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t true. When Emilee married and moved five hundred miles away from her mother, it had been a major blow to Frieda, and it was probably contributing to her accelerated decline. To be five minutes away? And more to the point, to be the Oma who lived just around the corner from her granddaughter? Oh, she would come. In a heartbeat.

  “All right, Sergeant Eckhardt,” Emilee said grudgingly. “Go on.”

  Obviously enjoying this, Hans nodded. “The moment it sells, Artur will hire a moving company to pack up your family’s things and ship them down here by train. I’ll borrow one of Fritzie’s trucks and we’ll move them in. And Onkel Artur will accompany your family down here—he is quite determined to see his grand-­goddaughter—and that way, if your mother does have any problems, Artur will be right there with her.”

  Tears filled Emilee’s eyes. “You and Artur would do all of that?” she whispered.

  “Hang on,” Hans said, grinning broadly now, “we’ve solved only problems one and four.”

  Emilee shook her head in a daze. “I can’t even remember what the other two were.”

  “Number two is find Ernst a job. So guess who is opening a new restaurant here in Munich and is looking for someone who knows about meat and who could wash dishes and work as all-around handyman?”

  Emilee clapped her hands in delight. “Fritzie? You asked Fritzie if he’d give Ernst a job?”

  Hans sobered. “I did. And Fritzie was delighted. He’ll take him the day after he moves down.”

  The tears welled up and spilled over. “Oh, Hans! This is like a dream. Have you told Ernst that?”

  He shook his head. “No, but Onkel Artur will tell him when he goes to see them.”

  Emilee got up and came to him, throwing her arms around him and kissing him over and over. Finally he pulled free. “Frau Eckhardt, you forget yourself. Not that I object, but please. Let me finish first.”

  She plopped down on his lap. “Yes, Schatzi. Please continue.”

  “I told Fritzie that once they open and get fully established, Ernst will be able to work only part time for him.”

  “But . . . why? He needs full-time work.”

  “I know, and he’ll have it for a while, but in a few months, he’s going to be taking on another part-time job. As an apprentice.”

  “A butcher’s apprentice?”

  “No, a truck mechanic’s apprentice.”

  Again Emilee’s mouth fell open as she just stared at her husband. “I don’t understand. For you?”

  “Ja.”

  “But Ernst is not a mechanic!” she exclaimed. “That will never work. For one thing, he’ll think you’re giving him charity, and he won’t take it. He’s too proud for that.”

  “True. So for a time we’ll call him a mechanic assistant and pay him wages. But it’s not charity, Emilee. It’s the solution to problem number three. My business is expanding, and I need help. There are always relatively simple tasks that I do that I could quickly teach him to do. Like changing the oil. Or replacing spark plugs. That would free me up to work on the more complex problems. Then as time goes on, I can teach him the other stuff. Maybe sometime in the future he and I could open up a real garage together, with four or five or six bays. Work on trucks and automobiles both. As full partners in the business.” Another grin came, this one bigger than the first. “If I may ever so humbly say so, I think it is an absolutely brilliant idea.”

  Emilee was thunderstruck. “You’d really do all of this for my family?”

  “I think they’re called our family now. And yes. I like Ernst. He’s as solid as a rock. This is selfish on my part too.”

  Emilee stood and then reached out and took Hans’s hand, pulling him up. She threw her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. “Thank you, my dearest Hans,” she said, her voice husky. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She kissed him then and it was filled with joy and love and astonishment.

  He kissed her back and then pulled free. “So you don’t object to my getting the second garage?”

  She kissed him again, this time softly and tenderly. “Not at all, my dear. Not at all.” Then she snuggled in tightly against him. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have myself a really good cry.”

  December 15, 1919, 6:25 p.m.—Grohl residence, Albertstrasse 72, Milbertshofen District, Munich

  Hans Otto Eckhardt stood back in one corner of his aunt’s and uncle’s spacious living room, sipping a stein of beer and watching the people who filled the room. They were in a festive mood, aided by the kegs of beer that Wolfie had bought earlier in the day. The buzz of conversation was constant. Fritzie Kharkov called out to Hans, motioning for him to come join him and Uncle Anatoly and Liliya, who were talking with Ernst, Emilee’s older brother. Hans lifted his stein in acknowledgment and smiled but didn’t move. For the moment, he was content to stand back and watch. This was the culmination of his “grand plan” that had started the day he had presented his four proposals to Emilee, and he was savoring how it had all come to fruition.

  As it turned out, some things di
dn’t work out quite as neatly as Hans had envisioned them. What Frieda Fromme and Ernst had thought they could do in three or four days—sort, pack up, deep-clean the house—took more like two weeks.

  That triggered another small crisis. Heinz-Albert, whose mental age was around twelve, first received the news of the move with great excitement. But as the process of cleaning and sorting got under way, he grew more and more agitated. Though he didn’t keep his room particularly neat, he did like things in their exact place. So when his family started to pack his things away, he got upset and even combative. Everyone understood that this was a natural reaction to all the upheaval and turmoil they were going through, but it created a huge emotional drain on the family, and especially on his mother.

  Next, the owner of the house for sale around the corner from Hans’s and Emilee’s flat proved to be not quite so desperate to sell as Hans had predicted. When Hans, acting for his mother-in-law, offered him eighteen thousand marks for it, the owner laughed in his face. He was asking twenty, and he would get twenty, or he wouldn’t move. Hans was sure that he was bluffing and recommended they wait him out. But as each day passed, Emilee grew ever more anxious that he was serious and that someone would come along and buy it out from under them.

  There were other homes for sale in Milbertshofen District, but the next closest was several blocks away, and none of them had a garage big enough to take a medium-sized truck. Finally, they both made concessions. Hans agreed to a price of nineteen thousand five hundred marks if the owner agreed to give them occupancy by December fifteenth rather than December thirty-first and if he left the stove and icebox in the kitchen and two small potbelly coal stoves in each bedroom. Though it irked Hans to be bested in the bargaining game, they signed the papers, and everyone, including Onkel Artur, agreed that the compromise was a good one.

  On the other hand, some things had worked out even better than he had hoped. Most of that was due directly to Artur’s intervention. Three days after he and Hans had initially talked, Artur called to say that he had decided to purchase the Fromme home as a personal investment and turn it into a permanent rental property. This not only got Frieda the full asking price, but it did so immediately and negated the need for her taking out an interim loan. With the extra money, she was also able to buy some new furniture, remodel what had been the wife’s sewing room into a bedroom for Heinz-Albert, and still have some cash to put in the bank. Frieda was so relieved and thrilled that Artur later called the move the best medicine for congestive heart failure that he had ever come across.

  The Heinz-Albert problem was also solved, largely thanks to Onkel Artur. As soon as the bank papers were signed, Artur packed Frieda and Heinz-Albert on a train and accompanied them on the long ride to Munich. He was almost as excited to see the baby and fulfill his role as grand-godfather as Frieda was to see her first grandchild. Heinz-Albert settled quickly into his new home, and, to everyone’s surprise, he took his role as Alisa’s new uncle very seriously and spent several hours each day with her, freeing some of Emilee’s time up for other things.

  On the morning of the thirteenth of December, a moving company showed up at the Fromme residence in Pasewalk. They packed all of the family’s belongings into large wooden crates and trucked them down to the train station. Artur, back from Munich, bid good-bye to Ernst, who boarded the train and headed south for Munich.

  Early this morning, Hans and Wolfie had gone to the soon-to-open Bayerische Biergarten—Fritzie had kept the same restaurant name he had used in Berlin—where they climbed into the cab of the larger of Fritzie’s two trucks and headed for the train station. After introducing Ernst to his new employer, the three men loaded the crates from Pasewalk onto Fritzie’s trucks and headed for the new Fromme home.

  Hans’s mother and his three sisters had come up from Graswang the night before, leaving Hans’s father and his sisters’ husbands behind to milk the cows and watch the children. So while Fritzie, Anatoly, Hans, Wolfie, and Ernst emptied the truck and carried things into Frieda’s new home, the women, including Emilee, Paula, and Liliya Kharkov, unpacked everything and put it away about as fast as the men could bring it in. Five or six hours later, it looked as though people had been living there for months. And then everyone trooped back to Paula’s and Wolfie’s home for supper and a welcome-­to-Munich party for the Frommes.

  Now, as Hans looked around the room, a deep satisfaction had come over him. It had worked. Incredibly, it had all worked. And the thing that made him the happiest was to see Emilee and her mother sitting on the sofa holding hands, both of them watching the party going on around them and looking very, very happy.

  10:47 p.m.—Eckhardt residence

  Hans gently tucked the blankets in around the baby and then turned off the light and climbed into bed beside Emilee. She immediately scooted closer to him and reached down and took his hand.

  “Thank you, Hans,” she murmured. “I still can scarcely believe it.”

  “I can’t believe it all finally came together.”

  “Nor can I. And all in under three weeks. It’s astonishing.”

  “We did it,” Hans sighed

  “Not quite. You did it, Hans. You. And I love you so much for doing it all for my family.”

  “Well, we owe a lot of it to Onkel Artur. And I was quite surprised to see that Mother, Ilse, Heidi, and Anna came up to help too.”

  “And Fritzie, and Anatoly, and Liliya, and Wolfie and Paula.” Emilee went up on one elbow so she was looking down at Hans. Her head bent and she kissed him softly. “And you, Hans, started it all, and now it’s done.”

  He grinned. “I did have my own selfish motives, you know. And it worked. The Eckhardt Truck Repair Shop now has two separate garage bays.”

  She poked him. “That was sneaky of you, but I’m glad for you.”

  “Gut. And I’m glad that you have your mother close to you.”

  “Ja,” she said softly. “I’ve never seen her so happy. And Ernst? Mama said he’s like a new man. He was pretty worried about losing his job.”

  “He’s a good man,” Hans said. Then he chuckled.

  “What?”

  “You know that Bavaria has a reputation for having the prettiest girls in all of Germany,” he said. “Perhaps we can find him some little Fraulein in a Dirndl that will win his heart.”

  “I would love that,” Emilee laughed, “but he’s six foot four, you know. I’m not sure little is the best choice of words.”

  They fell silent, both lost in their own thoughts. After almost a minute, Emilee turned on her side to face him. “I was reading in my Bible this morning while you went to the train station to get Mama’s things.”

  “Oh?” he said, a little taken aback by this abrupt change in the conversation.

  “Yes. And I found a verse that I hadn’t ever really noticed before. It was in the book of Acts. The Apostle Peter was talking to some people about Jesus.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Just five simple words, but it summed up the whole of Jesus’s life perfectly. He said that Jesus went about doing good.”

  “Hmm,” Hans murmured, not sure what else she expected him to say.

  But to his surprise, she said nothing more. She seemed lost in her thoughts. So after another few moments, he went up on one elbow and leaned down and kissed her. “Good night, my love.”

  “Good night, Schatzi.” She squeezed his hand.

  Hans lay back and closed his eyes. Emilee said nothing more. Then about five minutes later, when his eyes were getting very heavy, she spoke again.

  “Hans, I know you’re very tired, but there’s something I want to say.”

  “All right,” he mumbled, turning to face her. “Say on.”

  “I watched you tonight, standing off by yourself in the corner, watching the people, and wondered what you were thinking.”

  “I . . . I was
thinking about how pleased I was that things have worked out as they did.”

  Emilee went on swiftly. “And then a strange thing happened. I thought of Monika von Schiller.”

  Hans sat up. “Von Schiller’s wife? Why in the world did you think of her?”

  “I would love to write to her and tell her about all this and—”

  “Don’t you dare!” Hans exclaimed. “That’s a closed book in my life.”

  “I know, I know. And I won’t. But I’d love to tell her about the good you did today. And the good you did when you gave Jakob and Anna Litszer that money. And told Georg to start a college fund.”

  “He was a good boy. He did a lot for me. That was little enough repayment.”

  “I know. But I remember seeing the wonder in his eyes.” There was a sudden tightness in Emilee’s throat. “It was the same look that I saw in my mother’s eyes tonight as she held baby Lisa. And it was the same look I saw on Ernst’s face as he and Fritzie talked about his new job.”

  In the darkness, Emilee reached out and found Hans’s cheek and then traced the line of his twin scars with a fingertip. “I’m not saying you are perfect, Hans. Far from it. Nor am I. But here is what I am trying to say. I don’t know if a university education is ever going to be in your future. And I’m not sure that anything very spectacular will ever come from this ragtag group who call themselves the German Workers’ Party, or from Adolf Hitler and his grand schemes and dreams. And that’s all right. At this moment you are going about doing good, and it hit me tonight how deeply significant that is.”

  Emilee’s voice caught in her throat and tears began to fall. “And I want you to know that I love you for who you are, Hans. I love your goodness as my husband. I love your goodness as a father to Alisa. And I love it that you lie there on your back beneath a truck while you’re changing the oil and come up with solutions for getting my family down here. Thank you, my dearest Hans. Thank you for the good man you are and the good things you do.”

  She lay back, taking his hand again and moving closer to him.