A House of Tailors Read online

  Next to the stone wall that kept the river inside its boundaries lay an abandoned skiff. I had used it many times. As the river began to capture the rosy sunrise, I slid into the skiff and began to pole my way across. I knew Elise would be waiting for me.

  I glanced back at the cathedral that towered over our town. Soldiers were there, our own German soldiers, in the bell tower, using that height to watch the fort on the French side. Soldiers in such a holy place!

  I thought about going back, but Elise wanted my dress pattern as much as I wanted the new French design for a hat that she had promised me.

  I saw her waving and nudged the skiff onto the landing. “A little wet, this pattern,” I said apologetically.

  “You must go right back,” she said, handing me the hat pattern, made of thin paper with its cuts and arrows, and directions in French.

  We hugged for one quick moment; then I was on my way back. I could see myself wearing the most elegant hat in Breisach on Christmas morning.

  And then I thought . . . there was something I could do for Katharina. I took a breath. I could make the hat for her.

  Mama had a saying: As much as you hate sewing, Dina, that’s how much the needle and thread love you.

  I knew it was true. We all knew. For some reason, my stitches were straight and true, my seams almost invisible. I could cut into the fabric almost without using a pattern. Yes, as hard as it would be to give up making it for myself, Katharina would have that hat. I’d keep it a secret until the very last moment.

  Even as I thought it, I had to swallow. I comforted myself with the thought of the hat I had made earlier, my beautiful hat that I had copied from a picture of one worn by Elizabeth of Austria.

  Frau Ottlinger coveted that hat. But even Mama shook her head. “It is Dina’s, and it is not for sale.”

  But the new hat, even more wonderful, I would surely give to Katharina.

  So busy was I daydreaming, I didn’t look up until the skiff bumped into our side of the river. I barely heard the heavy boots sliding down the bank toward me, and by that time it was too late.

  It was one of our own soldiers! His rough hand covered my mouth. He was so close I could smell the onions on his rank breath. I fought him, feeling my hair caught in the buttons of his tunic. “French spy,” he said.

  I couldn’t shake my head, couldn’t answer. He stepped back and I was pulled along with him, up the riverbank to the street, where König stood guard over a poor dead mouse.

  three

  I could feel the mud against the heels of my shoes as the soldier dragged me along the river promenade.

  How could this be happening?

  The windows of my house were across the way. If I had one second to scream, my family would be at those windows, Mama and Katharina, Franz and Friedrich, and in the next second, they’d be outside to help me. If only Papa were alive. He’d make short work of this soldier.

  I did see Frau Ottlinger in her window several doors down, handkerchief to her mouth, just staring as I was pulled along.

  I tried to raise my arm to plead for her help, but then we were past her window, and she had seemed frozen.

  We went along the narrow path near the bridge, and I could feel the soldier’s grip loosen. I pulled forward, strands of my hair ripping from my scalp, and turned to make my escape.

  But I had gone only a few steps when I ran full tilt into another soldier: the same brass buttons, the same blue tunic. But this one had a stiff mustache and beard, and mean narrow eyes, and he raised me high up, my feet in the air.

  “A spy,” the first soldier said. “I saw her pole across the river from the tower. I saw her exchange—” He held out his hand for the pattern that was tucked in my sleeve.

  “You see,” he said, smoothing out the paper on the top of a stone. “French writing, arrows for direction . . .”

  “Her?” asked the other one. “Her?” He looked at Papa’s trousers as he set me down in front of him, so close I was only an inch away from that terrible face, those accusing eyes.

  My heart was pounding, the pulse in my throat beating so fast and so loudly I felt as I had that time years before when I had leaned too far over the edge of the bridge and fallen into the river. The sound of the water had filled my ears, a giant underwater echo. With my hair covering my face and my clothing weighing me down, I had gone deep below the surface. It had seemed forever until Papa had pulled me out, gasping and vomiting water.

  Now there was no Papa to save me. One soldier stood in back of me and the other in front. “It’s a pattern for a hat,” I told him, trying to catch my breath. “I’m not a spy, not French. I am as German as you are.”

  “She watches to see our movements,” one told the other. “How many we are, where we are going.”

  “We were just exchanging patterns.” I was babbling now. A shopkeeper came along the path, and when he saw the soldiers he hesitated, then backed away.

  The soldiers didn’t believe me. And even to my own ears my story sounded strange. Who would cross the river to the French side while we were at war?

  Who but a spy? Or someone like me!

  I could hear Mama’s voice in my ear. If you hadn’t sneaked out . . .

  If.

  And at that moment, the pattern was caught by the wind. It sailed over the stone wall and into the river. It floated on the ripples and sank just beneath the surface of the water.

  A third soldier came toward us. This one was a little younger than the others, maybe Katharina’s age. He had a small fencing scar on his cheek and his eyes were as blue as the sky overhead.

  “Please,” I began.

  “A spy,” the first one said at once. “She’ll have to be tried, but the outcome . . .”

  “Shot,” said the other.

  “Oh no,” said the blue-eyed soldier. “You must be wrong. She’s just a girl.”

  “Trousers,” said the first. “What girl would ever—”

  Behind us came the noise of a cannon. It was muffled and must have been close to Wolfgantzen, but it was enough to make the first two soldiers turn like a pair of geese to see what was happening.

  When they did, I ran. Ran faster than I ever had before, trying to decide which way to go. The shops were to my right, still closed and locked, and I’d have to go to the end of this street before I could get to the next. But to my left was the narrow road climbing to the Kaiserstuhl, a volcanic outcrop that hovered high over Breisach.

  I passed the statue in the square with the fountain trickling water and began to climb the hill. The two soldiers were behind me, one of them shouting, “Sooner or later we’ll find you, and when we do, you will be charged.” Only the third, the one with the clear blue eyes, said, “Let her go. A girl, only a girl.”

  It was a steep path, but no one knew it better than I. Its rocks, its tree roots waited for the unwary, and the soldiers were unwary. Here I had luck. Often I climbed the narrow path that wound around the hill.

  I left them far behind.

  By the time they decided to give up I was in a sheltered corner of rock, bending with my hands on my knees to breathe normally once more.

  I stayed for hours looking down on the river with its boats and barges, a bright ribbon spooling through the countries of Europe, wending its way to the sea. What would Mama and Katharina be thinking? I wondered. How worried they must be!

  And I? More frightened than I had ever been in my life. Sooner or later they would find me.

  It was almost dark before I crept down that long twisting path, heart leaping at every sound. At the last turn, I could see Katharina below me, pulling her shawl close around her shoulders, rushing back and forth in the narrow streets like a little hen, searching for me.

  Dear Katharina.

  I navigated the rest of the way as quickly as I could, not daring to call out to her, trying to make myself invisible as I crossed the square.

  And then she was in back of me, almost pushing me into the house, whispering frantically.
“Frau Ottlinger saw you and the soldiers and ran to tell us. I’ve been wandering around all day looking for you.”

  four

  The heavy drapes in the sewing room were tightly drawn. Covered with dried mud, I sat in front of the table, my face filthy. Surrounded by the forms and the shelves filled with spools of thread and packets of ribbon, Mama and Katharina paced . . . from the window to the sewing machine to the chairs against the walls. Katharina clenched her hands tightly together as she and Mama tried to decide what to do about me.

  Friedrich and Franz sat on the bottom step in the hall peering in at me, probably glad they had stayed home in bed this morning.

  This morning! Such a long time ago.

  I kept whispering how sorry I was in between Mama’s “If only . . .” and Katharina’s “You could have been shot by our own soldiers!”

  Soon Frau Ottlinger slipped in the front door. Usually dressed so carefully, now she looked disheveled, her hair poking up as she ran her fingers through it. “Dina,” she said. “What have you done?”

  “It was only a pattern,” I began.

  “That soldier,” she said. “He swears that you are a spy.” She fanned her face with her hand. “I told him you didn’t live in Breisach, that I had never seen you before.”

  “Suppose the soldiers come here?” Friedrich asked.

  There was silence. “How can we keep her hidden?” Mama said at last, and began to cry.

  Katharina seized the Uncle’s letter and looked at Mama.

  “Oh, Katharina,” Mama said.

  “It can’t be helped,” she answered.

  I looked from one to the other, then reached out to Katharina. “What are you thinking?”

  “You will go to America instead of me.”

  Frau Ottlinger nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s the thing to do. Of course.”

  I shook my head. “Do you think I would do that to you? Never.”

  Katharina knelt down next to me, smoothing my hair, then pressing my hands in hers. “We can’t take a chance. You must leave before they find you.”

  Mama was already nodding, and before I could say a word they were scurrying around, pulling out the old trunk, rushing past each other on the stairs with folded clothing and Mama’s best shawl. Mama thrust a sturdy skirt into my hand: “To wear on the trip.”

  And Frau Ottlinger hurried home to ask her husband to drive me to Freiburg within an hour.

  Freiburg. To my grandmother’s house.

  “You’ll stay there until the passage is arranged.” Mama sighed. “From there to Hamburg and then a ship.”

  If I had been brave, I would have given myself up to the soldiers. Instead, I bowed my head over the skirt, my tears dripping on the cloth, ashamed of what I had done.

  For the first time I realized how much I loved this house and the river. How terrible it would be never to hear Friedrich and Franz laughing and playing on the stairs. And Mama!

  But the worst was Katharina. How could I leave and know I would never see her again? How had I not thought about this before?

  Katharina bent over the trunk, her eyes on the ceiling. “Soft fabrics to bring for Barbara’s baby, and ribbons.” She reached up, pulling yards of pink silk off the shelf.

  I changed my clothes and then sat there, numb, looking around at the room I would never see again, and then at my brothers. They’d grow up, become men, and I wouldn’t be there to see them. How well would they remember me . . . their sister who left when they were so young?

  And then the hour was gone. The trunk was filled and closed, waiting in the hall. Mama cupped my face in her hands. “Will you write every week?” she asked.

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “I’m not much of a letter writer,” she said, “but I’ll try. And I’ll think of you every day for the rest of my life. Know that, Dina.”

  My brothers, solemn for once, stood on the step, looking the way they had when Papa died.

  I said goodbye to Katharina in the hallway. She emptied her pocket. “Take this,” she said, handing me her treasure, a small envelope of buttons Papa had carved the year before he died.

  At the last moment, I ran up the stairs to get my Sunday hat. I brought it down to Katharina. “I want you to have this.” How bitter I felt. I loved this hat, but because I was greedy to make an even better one, I had deprived Katharina of her right to go to America. Now she would be the one to stay, and I to leave.

  She held it in her hands, turning it, looking down at it. “You are the best of us, Dina.”

  I closed my eyes. “I won’t have to sew again,” I said, trying to smile. “Not in America.”

  And then we were holding each other, hugging each other, until Friedrich said, “Herr Ottlinger is here.”

  We broke apart and I went down the front steps without looking back.

  Brooklyn, New York

  1871

  five

  I angled for a place near the railing of the ferry, stepping around packages of every shape I could imagine and through knots of people, practicing my English: “I beg you parrdon.”

  They paid no attention. All of them were talking and pointing to the shore, so close we could almost reach out and touch it. I felt as if I could almost grasp a chunk of soil in my hand.

  Was I the only one alone? I glanced at a family over my shoulder, two children clutching their mother’s skirt and another in his father’s strong arms, his small fingers tangled in the man’s beard.

  I stood there shivering, tucking my hands into my sleeves. Who knew what had happened to my gloves on this long journey? But never mind. It was almost over.

  After leaving Breisach, I had stayed in Freiburg at my grandmother’s house. I had waited there for days until my cousin Karl could take me as far as Hamburg, where they had arranged passage for me. I had crossed that ocean alone on a miserable ship; fifty-seven days it had taken!

  Now there was only this last bit, the ferry from Castle Garden to the dock. I had gotten through all of it. I was a world away from home and my family.

  Again I was reminded of something I had thought of so many times: Katharina guiding me across the great stone bridge over the Rhine, holding my hand. I must have been only four or five years old. She had hoisted me up so that I could see a passing barge that left a smooth white V in the river, and we waved to the pilot in his ribboned hat and striped jersey.

  “Someday, Dina,” she had said, “I will sail on a ship a hundred times the size of that barge and go to America. I will walk along Madison Square and have dinner in the Fifth Avenue Hotel like in the picture over our bed.”

  I could see her in a hat with ribbons blowing in the breeze. “I will go to America, too,” I had said.

  Oh, Katharina.

  Leaning against the railing now, I saw buildings on each side of the water. They weren’t nearly as grand as the ones that lined the river at home, I thought uneasily. There were no castles, no great bridges.

  I closed my eyes, remembering that storm that had come up out of nowhere on the trip.

  That Friday morning the waves had been flat, and it seemed we were skating across a huge pond. By afternoon, it was as if a madman stirred the ocean with a giant spoon, creating waves that were high enough to cover the ship.

  And the wind! That gigantic wind. Trunks slid and people screamed, but I couldn’t hear them, only saw their open mouths. It was the wind I heard, circling over us, around us, a hundred times louder than the train that thundered down the tracks along my river.

  With Papa’s Bible in both hands, I promised God that if I lived through this storm, if I ever put my two feet on land, I’d never eat a morsel of food or wet my mouth with a drop of water on Good Friday again. I would keep that promise; I knew I would, even if I lived to be an old woman.

  Now in back of me on the ferry was a family from Frankfurt. I caught bits of their conversation, their long wait on the stairs, shivering with cold and fear, to see the doctor at Castle Garden, the examination of their
eyes when he rolled back the lids with a buttonhook.

  A buttonhook!

  I never wanted to think of that examination again. How the doctors had poked and prodded while I stood there, almost numb with embarrassment, wondering if they were going to chalk my coat with an X and send me straight back across the ocean.

  But I didn’t want to think about where I had come from, either, Mama standing in the doorway, one hand to her throat, tears streaming down her cheeks. The boys. Katharina. I felt a choking in my throat.

  I wiped my eyes with one hand, wondering why the thought of coming to America had so excited me in the first place.

  The ferry was close now, and people’s faces on the dock became distinct, some of them smiling, some looking anxious as they waved to us.

  I searched those faces, remembering the Uncle as I had seen him years before. But there were so many people packed together in a mass, and so much noise. Some of the voices spoke German. “Here, Glenda, look here!” “Peter. Darling . . . I’m over here.”

  The boat hit the dock with a screech and an enormous crash, and I nearly lost my balance. I straightened my hat . . . and there below me was the Uncle, looking older than I remembered. He was tall and straight, his hair gray now under his hat, his beard trimmed, his scarf blowing against his cheek.

  At that moment the gangplanks were lowered, and people began to stream off the ferry like the beans Mama funneled from their canvas bag into her pot.

  The Uncle motioned to me to wait.

  I could do that, couldn’t I? Wait for one minute while everyone else raced down to the dock, waving their arms, or pushing trunks and wicker baskets? I could wait to see this rich land, the Uncle’s beautiful house, Barbara, his wife.

  The Uncle had written Mama that he worked for a woman with so much money that when meat was ordered, the butcher stood on the scale with the side of beef and charged for both weights.

  Suddenly I was wild with excitement. I raised my hand to wave, thinking of the needles that had stabbed my fingers every day since I was four, the hours in front of that sewing machine, running up seams, turning collars, binding blankets and sheets.