CHAPTER 27
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Tess dido be talked into sneaking across the border, and the very idea ressio aic jolt into our honeymoon. The closer we got to Czechoslovakia, the livelier the sex became. On the day ed our secret passage to the other side, she kept me in bed until mid-m. Her desires fed my own curiosity about my hiddeage. I o know where I had e from, who I had been. Every step along the way brought the sensation of returning home. The landscape looked familiar and dreamlike, as if the trees, lakes, and hills lay embedded, but long dormant, in my sehe architecture of stone and exposed timber was exactly as I had pictured, and at inns and cafes, the people we met bore familial traces in their sturdy bodies, fine chiseled features, clear blue eyes, and sweeping blonde hair. Their faces enticed me deeper into Bohemia. We decided to cross into the forbidden land at the village of Hohenberg, which sat on the German line.Si was first dedicated in 1222, the castle at the ter of town had beeroyed and rebuilt several times, most retly after World War II. On a sunny Saturday, Tess and I had the place to ourselves except for a young German family with small children who followed us from building to building. They caught up to us outside, he uneven white walls that ran along the citys rear border, a fortress against attack from the forest and the Eger River beyond.
"Pardon me," the mother said to Tess in English, "you are Ameri, right? Would you a photograph take? Of my family, on my camera?"
I bla being so easily reizable as Ameris. Tess smiled at me, took off her backpack, and laid it on the ground. The family of six arrahemselves at the base of one of the inal parapets. The children looked as if they could have been my brothers and sisters, and as they posed, the notion that I once art of such a family lingered and then receded iher. Tess took a few steps backward to squeeze them all into the frame, and the small children cried out, "Vorsicht, der Igel! Der Igel!" The boy, no more than five, ran straight at Tess with a mad expression in his blue eyes. He stopped at her feet, reached between her ao a small flower bed, and carefully scooped up something in his small hands.
"What do you have there?" Tess bent to meet his face.
He held out his hands and a hedgehog crawled out from his fingers. Everybody laughed at the minor drama of Tess nearly stepping on the prickly thing, but I could barely light a smoke due to the shakes. Igel. I had not heard that name in almost twenty years. All of them had names, not quite fotten. I reached out to touch Tess to help put them out of mind.
After the family left, we followed the map to hiking trails behind the castle. Along oh, we came across a miniature cave, and in front, signs of an encampment, what looked to me like an abandoned ring. I led us away quickly, headi and downhill through the black woods. Our trail spilled out to a two-lane road devoid of traffic. Around the bend, a sign saying EGER STEG poio a dirt road to the right, and we came upon mild rapids across a narrow river, no more than a wide but shallow stream. On the opposite bank lay the Czechoslovakian woods, and in the hills behind, Cheb. Not another soul was in sight, and perhaps because of the river or the rocks, no barbed-wire fence protected the border. Tess held my hand and we crossed.
The rocks above the waterline provided safe footing, but we had to watch our step. When we reached the Czech side, a thrill, sharp as a razor, went through me. Wed made it. Home, or as close to it as possible. At that instant, I was ready to vert—or revert—and lay claim to my identity. Tess and I had disguised ourselves as best we could that m, affeg a European indiffereo our hair and clothing, but I worried that others might see through the ruse. In hindsight, I should not have worried so, for 1968 was the year of the Prague Spring, that open window when Dubcek tried t "socialism with a human face" to the benighted Czechs and Slovaks. The Russian tanks would not roll in until August.
Tess loved the danger of our trespass and skulked along the leafy floor like an escaped prisoner. I tried to keep up with her, hold her hand, and assume an air of silent ing. After a mile or so on our hike, an itent sprinkle fell through the green leaves, and then a shan in ear. The raindrops hit the opy above and dripped down with a steady beat, but underh that rhythm, an irregular sound of footsteps became audible. It was too dark to make out any figures, but I heard them marg through the brush, cirg around, following us. I grabbed her arm and pushed on faster.
"Henry, do you hear that?" Tess s eyes darted about, and she turned her head from side to side. They kept on ing, and we began to run. She took one last look over her shoulder and screamed. Catg me by the elbow, Tess stopped our progress and wheeled me around to face our tormentors. They looked forlorn in the falling rain. Three cows, two brindles and one white, stared back at us, indifferently chewing their cuds.
Soaked, we fled the wet forest and found the road. We must have been a pitiable sight, for a farmers truck stopped, and the driver indicated with his meaty thumb that we could hitch a ride in the back. Tess shouted "Cheb?" to him through the rain, and when he nodded, we got in and rode atop a mountain of potatoes for a half-hour all the way to the quaint Czech village. I kept my eyes on the reg woods, the winding road, sure that we were being followed.
Like flowers in a spring garden, the houses and stores were painted in pale pastels, the old buildings in white and yelloe and verdigris. While many parts of Cheb seemed ageless, the buildings and landmarks struo chords in my memory. A black sedan with a red glass siren sat parked at a crazy angle before the town hall. To avoid the police, we walked in the opposite dire, hoping to find someone who could uand our fractured German. We shied away from the pink Hotel Hvezda, spooked by a severe poli outside who stared at us for a full thirty seds. Across the square, past the sculpture of the Savage Man, sat a ramshackle hotel he Oh?e e River. I had hoped and expected the landmarks ter memories of Gustav Ungerland, but nothing was familiar. My vaulted expectations, jured along the journey, proved too high a hope. It was as if I had never been there before, or as if childhood in Bohemia had never existed.
Inside a dark and smoky bar, we bribed the manager with Ameri dollars to let us dine on sausages and boiled potatoes, and a dank half-bottle of East German wine. After our meal, we were led up a crooked staircase to a tiny room with no more than a bed and a basin. I locked the door, and Tess and I lay on our backs in our jackets and boots ohreadbare covers, too teired, aed to move. Darkness slowly stole the light, and the silence was broken only by the sounds of our breathing and wild, rag hearts.
"What are we doing here?" she finally asked.
I sat up and began undressing. In my former life, I could have seen her in the dark as clearly as break of day, but now I relied on imagination. "Isnt it a kick? This town was once part of Germany, and before that of Bohemia?"
She took off her boots, slipped out of her jacket. I slid uhe woolen blas and coarse sheets as she undressed. Shivering and ess moved in close, rubbing a cold foot against my leg. "Im scared. Suppose the secret polie knog on the door?"
"Dont worry, baby," I told her in my best James Bond. "Ive got a lise to kill." I rolled over on top of her, and we did our best to live for the danger.
Waking late the m, we hurried over to the grand old Church of St. Nicholas, arriving late for a Mass in Czed Latin. he altar sat a few elderly women, rosaries draped in their folded hands, and sprinkled here, small families sat in clumps, dazed and wary as sheep. At the entranceway, two men in dark suits may have been watg us. I tried to sing along with the hymns, but I could only fake the words. While I did not uand the service, its rites and rituals mirrored those long-ago Masses with my mother—is above dles, rich vestments of the priests and pristiar boys, the rhythm of standing, kneeling, sitting, a secration heralded by the hells. Although I knew by then it was just?? a romantic folly, I could picture my former self done up in Sunday clothes beside her on the pew with my relut, sighing father and the twins squirming in their skirts. What struck me most of all was the an musi the loft above, casg like a river over rocks.
As the parishioners exited, they stopped to share a few words among themselves and to greet the wizened priest standing in the bright sunshine beyond the door. A blonde girl turo her nearly identical sister and poio us, whispered in his ear, and then they ran hand in hand from the church. Tess and I liaking in the elaborate statues of Mary and St. Nicholas flanking the entrance, and we were the final pair to leave the building. When Tess held out her hand to the priest, she found herself captured in his grasp and drawn closer.
"Thank you for ing," he said, then turo me, a strange look in his eyes, as if he knew my history. "And God bless you, my son."
Tess broke into a beatific grin. "Ylish is perfect. How did you know we are Ameris?"
He held her hand the whole time. "I was five years in New Orleans at the St. Louis Cathedral back when I was first ordained. Father Karel Hlinka. Youre here for the festival?"
"What festival?" Tess brighte the prospect.
"Pra?ké Jaro. The Prague Spring Iional Music Festival."
"Oh, no. We knew nothing about that." She leaned in and said in a low, fidential voice, "We snuck across the border."
Hlinka laughed, taking her remark as a joke, and she swiftly ged the subject, asking him about his Ameri experiend the cafe life of New Orleans. As they chatted and laughed, I went outside, stood in a er to light a cigarette, and sidered the blue smoke curling to the sky. The two blonde sisters had circled back, this time leading a group of other children gathered from the streets. Like a string of birds on a telephone wire, they stood just beyond the gates, a dozen heads peeking over the low wall. I could hear them babbling in Czech, a phrase that sounded like podvr?ené dítě popping up like the leitmotif of their chattering song. With a gla my wife, who was holding Father Hlinka in rapt attention, I started to walk over to the children, who scattered like pigeons when I came too close. They flew in again when I showed them my back, and ran off, laughing and screaming, when I turned around. When I stepped outside the gate, I found one girl c behind the wall. We spoke in German, and I told her not to be afraid.
"Why is everyone running away and laughing?"
"She told us there was a devil in the church."
"But I am not a devil .. .just an Ameri."
"She said you are from the woods. A fairy."
Beyond the towns streets, the old forest bristled with life. "There are no such things as fairies."
The girl stood up and faced me, hands on her hips. "I dont believe you," she said, and turo race off to her panions. I stood there watg her go, my mind twisted in knots, worried that I had made a mistake. But we had e too far for me to be frightened by mere children or the threat of the police. In a way, they were no different from other people. Suspi was a sed skin for me, and I felt perfectly capable of hiding the facts from everyone.
Tess bouhrough the gates and found me on the sidewalk. "How would you like a private tour, baby?"
Father Hlinka was at her side. "Frau Day tells me that you are a musi, a poser. You must try out the pipe an here. Best in Cheb."
In the loft high above the church, I sat at the keyboard, the empty pews stretg out before me, the gilt altar, the enormous crucifix, and played like a man possessed. To work the fool pedals ahe right tone from the massive an, I had to rod throw my weight against the mae, but once I figured out its plexities of stops and bellows and was in the flow of the music, it became a kind of dance. I performed a simple piece from the Berceuse by Louis Vierne, and for the first time in years felt myself again. While I laying, I became a thing apart, not aware of anyone or anything else but the music, whifused me like hot id fell over me like wondrous strange snow. Father Hlinka and Tess sat in the gallery with me, watg my hands move, my head bob, and listeo the music.
Wheired of the violent sound, Tess kissed my cheek and wandered dowaircase to look over the rest of the church. Aloh the priest, I quickly broached the reason for my visit to Cheb. I told him of my researto family history and how the librarian ba Frankfurt had advised me to check the church records, for there was little hope of getting access to the tral gover archives.
"Its a surprise for her," I said. "I want to trace Tess’s family tree, and the missing link is her grandfather, Gustav Ungerland. If I could just find his birthday or any information about him, I will make up a family history for her."
"That sounds like a wonderful thing to do. e baorrow. Ill dig through the archives, and you play the musie."
"But you t tell my wife."
He winked, and we were co-spirators.
Over dinner, I told Tess about the musical half of Father Hlinkas offer, and she was happy for me to have the ce to go back to the an loft. On Monday afternoon, she sat below in the middle pew, listening for the first hour or so, but the off on her own. After she left, Father Hlinka whispered, "I have something for you." He crooked his finger, beio follow him into a small alcove off the loft. I suspected that he had found some record of the Ungerlands, and my anticipation grew when the priest lifted a woodeo the top of a rickety desk. He blew dust off the lid and, grinning like an elf, opehe box.
Instead of the churents I had expected, I saw music. Score after score of music for the an, and not just on hymns, but symphonic masterworks that gave life and preseo the instrument—a raft of Handel, Mahlers Resurre, Liszts Battle of the Huns, the Fantasie Symphonique by Francois-Joseph Fétis, and a pair an-only solos by Guilmant. There were pieces by Gigout, Langlais, es, and Poulencs certan, Strings, and Timpani. Record albums of Aaron Coplands First Symphony, Barbers Toccata Festiva, Rheinberger, Franck, and a bakers dozen of Bach. I was stunned and inspired. To simply listen to it all—not to menti my hand at the grand keyboard—would take months or even years, and we had but a few hours. I wao stuff my pockets with loot, fill my head with song.
"My only vid passion," Hlinka said to me. "Enjoy. We are not so different, you and I. Strange creatures with rare loves. Only you, my friend, you play, and I but listen."
I played all day for Father Hlinka, who ied old parish ledgers of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. I dazzled him with indesd extravagance, leaning into the extra octave of bass, and hammered out the mad finale from Joseph Jongens Symphonie certante. A ge came over me at that keyboard, and I began to hear positions of my own ierludes. The music stirred memories that existed beyond the town, and on that glorious afternoon I experimented with variations and was so carried away that I fot about Father Hlinka until he retury-ha five oclock. Frustrated by his own failure to find any records of the Ungerlands, he called his peers at St. Wenceslas, and they got in touch with the archivists of the aba. Bartholomew and St. Klara churches to help scour through the records.
I was running out of time. Despite the relative freedom, we were still in danger of being asked for our papers, and we had no visa for Czechoslovakia. Tess had plained over breakfast that the police were spying on her when she visited the Black Tower, followi the art ter on the Ru?ov? kope?ek. Schoolchildren poi her oreets. I saw them, too, running in the shadows, hiding in dark ers. On Wednesday m, she groused about spending so much of our honeymoon alone.
"Just one more day," I pleaded. "Theres nothing quite like the sound in that church."
"Okay, but Im staying in today. Wouldnt you rather go back to bed?"
When I arrived at the loft late that afternoon, I was surprised to find the priest waiting for me at the pipe an. "You must let me tell your wife." He grinned. "We have found him. Or at least I think this must be her grandfather. The dates are somewhat off, but how many Gustav Ungerlands there be?"
He handed me a grainy photocopy of the passenger list from the German ship Albert, departing 20 May 1851 from Bremen to Baltimore, Maryland. The names and ages were written in a fine hand:
212 Abram Ungerland42Musikant Eger Boheme
213 Clara Ungerland40""
214 Friedrich "14""
215 Josef "6""
216 Gustav "?""
217 Anna "9""
"Wont she be delighted? What a fine wedding gift."
I could not begin to answer his questions. The names evoked a rush of memory. Josef, my brother—Wo in der Welt bist du? Anna, the one who died in the crossing, the absent child who broke my mothers heart. My mother, Clara. My father, Abram, the musi. o go along with my dreams.
"I know you said he was here in 1859, but sometimes the past is a mystery. But I think 1851 is right for Herr Ungerland, not 1859," said Father Hlinka. "History fades over time."
For a moment, the six came alive. Of course I did not remember Eger or Cheb. I was a baby, not yet one year old, when we came to America. There was a house, a parlor, a piano. I was taken from there and not from this place.
"No records in the churches, but I thought we should try emigration archives, no? Wont Mrs. Day be thrilled? I ot wait to see her face."
I folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket. "Of course, Father, yes, you should be the oo tell her. We should celebrate ... tonight if you like."
The pleasure of his smile almost made me regret lying to him, and I was equally heartbroken to leave the magnifit an behind. But I hurried from St. Nicholass, the history in my pocket against my heart. When I found Tess, I made up a story about the poliiffing around the church for two Ameris,.９９lｉｂ. and we slipped away, retrag our steps to the border.
When we reached the forest he river crossing, I was shocked to see a young boy, perhaps as old as seven, standing by himself beside a large tree. He did not take notice of us, but remained quite still, as if hiding from someone. I could only imagine what might be in pursuit, and part of me wao rescue him. We were nearly upon him before he flinched, and putting a fio his lips, the child begged us to be quiet.
"Do you speak German?" Tess whispered in that language.
"<cite>?９9ｌiｂ.</cite>;Yes, quiet please. They are after me."
I looked from tree to tree, anticipating a rush of gelings.
"Who is after you?"
"Versteckspiel," he hissed, and hearing him, a young girl burst from the green background to chase and tag him on the shoulder. Wheher children emerged from their hideaways, I realized they were playing a simple game of hide-and-seek. But as I looked from boy to girl, from face to face, I could not help but remember how easily they could alter their appearaess thought them cute and wao linger awhile, but I hurried her onward. At the river, I hopped from stoo stone, f the water as quickly as I could. Tess was takiime, frustrated and ahat I had not waited for her.
"Henry, Henry, what are you running from?"
"Hurry, Tess. Theyre after us."
She labored to jump to the rock. "Who?"
"Them," I said, a back to pull her from the other side.
After our honeymoon trip, life rapidly grew too plicated to tinue my resear the Ungerlands or to find another pipe an. We had one last busy semester of school, and as graduation drew near, our versations turo new possibilities. Tess lay ihtub, tendrils of steam curling up from the hot water. I leaned on the edge of the hamper, ostensibly reading a draft of a new score, but actually for the sheer pleasure of watg her soak.
"Henry, Ive good news. The job with the ty looks like it will e through."
"Thats great," I said, and turhe page and hummed a few bars. "What is it, exactly, that youll be doing?"
"Casework at first. People e in with their troubles, I take them down, and then we make all the right referrals."
"Well. I have an interview at that new middle school." I put down the position and stared at her half-submerged naked form. "Theyre looking for a band director and music teacher for seventh ah grades. Its a pretty good gig and will leave me time to pose."
"Things are w out for us, baby."
She was right, and that was the moment I decided. My life was ing together. Against all odds ae the interruption caused by my father s death, I would finish school, and a new career was about to start. A beautiful young woman lounged in my bathtub.
"What are you smiling about, Henry?"
I started unbuttoning my shirt. "Move over, Tess, Ive got something to whisper in your ear."
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