Love of Finished Years Read online

  ”Pray for your brother, Elsa. He cannot die. You remember how sick I got when he was born. Because of that I can bear no more children. For that reason, we all need Anton to live.”

  With a start and a cough, the baby woke up.

  Elsa understood her mother more clearly than if she had answered her pointed question. Tobias Schuller had his son after all these years. This had sparked the impulsive journey to the land of opportunity. If Anton were to die now, there was no telling how her father would respond.

  Elsa knew exactly when Anton died.

  She didn’t need to hear his breathing stop, to hear her mother begin to weep, or even to see him go limp in her arms. She would never forget the keen wave of death in that moment.

  They were swaying on the water again. The tall buildings grew larger as their barge approached the Battery. After more than a week on Ellis Island, they were finally allowed to enter the city.

  It was too late.

  Elsa rose from her seat and walked a short distance away. She didn’t want to hear her parents’ cries. She had grown to love her brother in his short life—how could she help but love him? Yet she also had so much cause to resent him. So while she was sad for his death, she didn’t cry.

  Anton’s death would affect them all. The loss of a loved one hurt, but this loss would run deeper. With Anton dead, her father no longer cared about America. Elsa was only just beginning to comprehend how her brother had been the only glue keeping the family from descending into chaos.

  Chapter Three

  A New Career

  New York was terrifying. Everything seemed strange, loud and ruthless. Cold towers loomed in the distance, higher than Elsa ever dreamed buildings could rise.

  Tenement owners greeted the barge at the Battery, loudly promising cheap and beautiful apartments. Tobias silently led his family through the gauntlet of salesmen. Elsa barely noticed the transaction that coldly and efficiently removed the baby’s body from their care. There was no time to grieve or even to say good-bye.

  Someone directed the family to Avenue B. That street, they had heard, was the center of Little Germany and very close to the address they had for Tobias’s Uncle.

  They walked east with their luggage, around the bottom of Manhattan Island, under the Brooklyn Bridge and the towering construction site that would become the Manhattan Bridge. Everything that surrounded them was moving at an alarming pace. Elsa smelled unknown foods and heard the sounds of unfamiliar industry all around her. The people looked strange. Every block or so, she transferred her suitcase from one hand to the other, but it barely seemed to help. She was exhausted when they reached the Lower East Side.

  Expecting to find a supportive neighborhood of German speakers, they were in for a harsh awakening. No German shops lined the streets. No trace of their language could be heard. Elsa recognized English and Yiddish, but there were other, surprising-sounding languages. At the address where Tobias expected to find his uncle, a gruff Jewish woman tried to send them away. He showed her a letter with Hans Schuller’s name and address. She shook her head at the name, but directed them to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church on 6th Street.

  It was there that they finally met a German—Pastor Reus—and learned of the sad state of Kleindeutschland. Elsa collapsed into the seat offered to her at the rectory, dropping her load.

  Pastor Reus explained that while there were still a number of vibrant, German-speaking blocks in the neighborhood, Germans had been rapidly leaving the area, moving across the river to Brooklyn or uptown to Yorkville. With great sadness, the minister told them about the disaster that had occurred the previous year, when over a thousand German Americans, mostly parishioners at St. Mark’s, died in a fire on the General Slocum steamboat on their way to a parish picnic on Long Island. In the year since the tragedy, hundreds of the surviving Germans had left the neighborhood. Their apartments were being filled by new immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, Italy, and Ireland.

  Pastor Reus remembered Hans Schuller and thought he had moved to Brooklyn about four years ago. Tobias thanked the pastor and told him they would forge on, but Pastor Reus encouraged them to stay in the neighborhood. Apartments were cheaper here, and work was supposedly plentiful. He accompanied them to the office of a local landowner, Mr. Andretti, and introduced them to the Italian in English, then returned to his church.

  Andretti led the way to his tenement building on 3rd Street, between First and Second Avenues. The fourth-floor apartment had two rooms, and there was a working toilet off the hall, to be shared with the other three apartments on that floor. The landlord communicated that their rent would be twelve dollars a month. Elsa didn’t know how to judge the value of this sum, and she could tell her father didn’t, either. But they had few options. The day was growing late, and the air felt like rain. They needed a place to stay. Tobias agreed to take the apartment.

  All they had were deutsche mark coins, but Andretti was kind enough to accept their money for the first month’s rent, and to calculate the exchange rate. What he took was almost half the money the Schullers had left from their trip. Elsa watched the transaction, assuming they were being cheated. But her father didn’t argue with the landlord. He didn’t know the words to question, even if he had known the true value of deutsche marks when converted to dollars.

  The landlord shut the door, leaving the four of them standing in their empty apartment. The walls were covered in cracked and yellowed wallpaper.

  “Na ja. Es ist gut,” said Nina with conviction, dropping her suitcase onto the warped floor boards.

  In the morning Tobias, Sonja, and Elsa went looking for work.

  The fall air was cool and filled with unfamiliar smells. Elsa’s senses were overwhelmed as she followed her father through the strange streets to the place Pastor Reus had told them to go to look for work.

  Hopkins & Co. served as the employment hub of the Lower East Side. Ignorant immigrants stood in wait outside the office, trying to look impressive. Only a few factory bosses came that day. From the scores of hopeful workers, only a few were chosen. With new ships arriving every day, the factories were well staffed. Elsa and the other two stood in confusion, not understanding how the process worked and unable to ask.

  Elsa didn’t pay much attention to the proceedings. Even when a boss walked down the line examining everyone, she didn’t expect anyone to notice her.

  A strong hand grabbed her arm. She jumped in fear. A strange man lifted her chin and gazed into her eyes. Then he turned and walked away, motioning for her to follow.

  She held back, looking up at her father for help, but he pushed her forward, waving her after the man. She had no choice but to go. He walked into the office and filled out the necessary paperwork with Hopkins, then left the employment office, heading north at a quick pace. Elsa followed, sometimes forced to run in order to keep up with his long strides. The man was very tall, and though his height made him appear to be thin, he was a big man. There was a solemn sternness about him. He never smiled, but neither did he seem cruel.

  Elsa stared at everything she passed and tried to keep a count of the blocks.

  The factory wasn’t far, for Hopkins had placed his office strategically. Elsa gazed at the ten-story monstrosity before her and cringed. She wished she could read the sign, so that she could tell what new trade she was about to learn. The man was already through the door. She hurried in after him.

  Inside the building, they entered an elevator. What a strange and frightening contraption! She jumped and clutched the railing as it lurched upward. Floors passed quickly against the iron grating.

  Once they stepped onto the open eighth floor, it took Elsa a few moments to understand that this was a clothing factory. The strange machines that twisted back and forth at the hands of the workers didn’t look like any sewing mechanisms she had seen. But the cutting and stitching tables solved the mystery for her.

  She smiled. She already knew how to sew. This was the perfect new career. Most importa
ntly, she had a job. Her father didn’t even have a job yet. She felt proud and mature.

  It was warm in the large room, despite the cool morning outside, and the fact that all the windows that broke the concrete walls were flung open. The bustle of machines and the women who operated them warmed the place up and kicked dust and cotton puffs into the air. The wood floor was strewn with scraps and thread.

  She followed the boss to a loom on the other side of the large open room. It was the only machine with a single worker. He said something unintelligible and pointed to her designated spot.

  The girl at the loom looked up and smiled cheerfully at her as the boss walked away.

  “Hi,” she said, immediately putting Elsa at ease. It was the first kind gesture she had received from an American.

  Elsa had never seen anyone like her before. She didn’t look like people in Germany, or like those she had seen in America thus far. Her skin was dark, and her hair was thick and black. She was the only person of her race in the factory.

  The girl asked Elsa something.

  “Deutschland,” she said, not knowing how else to communicate with the American girl.

  “Deutschland?”

  “Deutschland. Europa,” Elsa repeated, shaking her head. “America.”

  The girl laughed. Tapping herself, she said, “Beth.” Then more slowly, “I’m called Beth.”

  Elsa finally understood and identified herself the same way.

  Beth began to show Elsa how to work the loom. The process was complicated, and Elsa was soon confused. But Beth was a good teacher. She spoke constantly as she showed Elsa the job. Though Elsa couldn’t understand, she associated the words Beth used with the motions she made. Thus, the first English words she learned were “thread,” “weave,” “spindle,” and “loom.” It turned out she wouldn’t be sewing after all.

  Elsa liked Beth. She was pretty and seemed confident. Her face shone with warmth. She had a small frame. Elsa sensed that Beth was older than her, even though they were about the same size.

  Alone as she was, behind a barrier of language, now that she had a friend, Elsa began to feel excited about America.

  Leaving the factory that night, Elsa felt she might be able to succeed in this land. Her back ached and her fingers stung from ten hours on the loom, but she had a new skill and had already learned a few words of English.

  She walked back toward Hopkins & Co. by the light of the street lamps on the Avenue, wondering whether she would be able to find her way home. Her family hadn’t known where her job would be, or when to come look for her. It was only her second day in the city, and nothing was familiar.

  But she no longer felt like a child. She felt mighty, thinking about the wonderful person she had become. She was a screw in the vast machine of clothes-making. Beth had shown her, pointing to other parts of the factory, and even sometimes to their own garments, how the cloth they spun was cut and sewn into ladies’ blouses there in the same factory. She tried to imagine the ladies who would wear clothes made from the very cloth she had spun today. Her job was a simple step in the process, but she would perform it with joy.

  The streets teemed with activity and life. Workers like her made their way home, while others looked to be preparing to go to work at night. The tenements glowed with the light of family dinner tables. Beyond, to the west and to the south, tall buildings towered above the tenements, no longer seeming as ominous as when she’d seen them yesterday. Many were still rising, reaching ever higher into the sky with construction crews buzzing like ants on the top floors even at this late hour.

  Perhaps this was indeed the land of progress, industry and wealth, as her father had told them so many times on the ship. Elsa began to understand the draw—why so many had left satisfactory lives in Europe to be a part of it. Surely some great future awaited her, too. Once she learned the language and could go back to school to learn to read and write, she would be able to make a fine woman of herself. Today had been the first step.

  She found her way home without difficulty and marched proudly upstairs, thinking of the sixty cents she had earned.

  The apartment was beginning to look like a home. Nina had purchased two beds, bedding and basic cookware. After also buying a few days’ worth of food, they had hardly any money left.

  The mood upstairs was glum. Neither Tobias nor Sonja had been as successful as Elsa. They had left Hopkins & Co. at noon to return home. After the few tasks of putting the flat in order, they’d had nothing left to do but brood on their loss.

  But Elsa felt proud. If only for today, she was supporting the family. Her sixty cents a day would pay for rent and buy food. It would allow them to survive. Maybe, though her father had lost his son, he would be proud of his daughter who worked like a man. She hoped so.

  Yet as the days turned into weeks, Elsa could feel her father distancing himself from her, as well as from her mother and Sonja. Elsa knew how hard he’d taken Anton’s death. It was hard on her mother as well. But Nina coped through her love for her daughters, while Tobias silently pushed his family away.

  Elsa remained the only worker in the family for almost a week before Sonja was hired by a cannery. It was another week before Tobias finally got a job at the construction site for the new Manhattan Bridge. Elsa tried to understand how demoralizing those early days were for her father . . . not only to have his son die but also to watch his daughters go off to work while he sat idle.

  Tobias’s spirits seemed to improve during his first weeks of work, but soon he became depressed and distant again. He complained that the work was harder than any he’d done before, that he wasn’t built for the strain of construction labor. The rains had started, and soon the snows would come. He came home with hands chafed from grasping wet cables hour after hour, day after day.

  As winter cast its darkness over New York, so too, did Tobias pull a cloud of darkness over his family. Elsa grew to wish for some sign of emotion in her father, even anger. Nothing was worse than to be treated as if she weren’t there.

  The combination of Tobias’s, Sonja’s and Elsa’s wages equaled almost seventy dollars a month. They calculated that after rent, food, clothes and other expenses, they could save about twenty dollars a month. This sum in their minds quickly grew into the dream of one day buying their own home.

  Saving money, however, proved difficult. By the second month, they were already in Andretti’s debt. By the time the debt was cleared, it was winter. Food was more expensive in winter, and they needed warmer coats. Tobias needed costly leather gloves to survive his work out in the elements.

  Then they discovered how badly they needed coal. They hadn’t budgeted for coal. During the winters in Germany, wood was plentiful. In recent years Elsa had accompanied her father as they took their cart to the forest to gather wood for the fire. The thought of buying things to burn seemed absurd to her. Tobias clearly felt the same way, for he resisted purchasing it as long as he could. But try as Elsa might not to complain, the cold meals were tedious, and it became unbearable to pass a night in their flat without a fire. In the end, it was her mother who went out to buy coal and the first warming fire in their tenement apartment was burning when Tobias came home from work that evening.

  By the time spring came, they had hardly saved a penny.

  Chapter Four

  Shattered Hopes

  There was a particular evening late in March when Elsa finally felt that winter was over. Standing outside the factory, she glimpsed a hint of light still shining in the sky. How she looked forward to spring.

  Sonja’s job at the cannery was farther from the apartment than hers. Elsa waited each night in front of the clothing factory to walk home with her sister. During the first few months, she always thought Sonja looked exhausted when she trudged into view. Elsa doubted her sister’s work was harder than her own. It was the loneliness of the career, not the difficulty of the work that bowed Sonja’s back. But today, when she saw Sonja coming, Elsa noticed that her posture had cha
nged. She had developed an attitude of complacent endurance.

  “Do you know if we have saved any money yet?” Elsa asked as she fell into stride beside her sister.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “I thought . . . now that Mother is working too, perhaps Father will let us go to school.”

  Their mother had begun to sew at a clothier’s shop run by a German family out of a nearby tenement. She only worked a few days per week, when a large order came in.

  “Give up your dream of school,” said Sonja. “It will only make you unhappy.”

  “You did not used to think that way.”

  “Things have changed. Give up your fantasy of school. It is all we can do just to survive.”

  “Remember all those things we talked about on the ship? All those dreams we had?”

  “America is not what I thought it would be. You need to learn that, too.”

  Her words crushed Elsa. She said nothing else for the remainder of the walk, but occasionally looked over at her sister’s face. Who was this girl who only a few months ago had dreamed of the little house in the country? Had she really lost hope in America so quickly?

  Elsa felt betrayed. Sonja was the one who was supposed to forge the way for them both. Elsa knew she wouldn’t have the courage to go and ask her father about school alone.

  Elsa cried silently that night, turned away from Sonja on the small bed they shared. She arrived at work the next morning weary and sad.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Beth.

  Elsa explained her dilemma in the simple, halting English Beth had taught her.

  Beth listened as Elsa related her problem, her hands continuing the rapid motion of weaving. When they spoke they seldom looked at each other. The foreman made frequent passes through the rows of looms to make sure the children remained focused.