AFTER SCHOOL I’ve taken to stopping at the redbrick church of St. Mary’s, where Father is employed as an architect. Before the war he had been known for the churches he designed and built. In 1948, three years after the war’s end, when I was only six, Father was hired by the city of Rolfen to help rebuild St. Mary’s Church. We left our home in Swabia and traveled across Germany to the northern town of Rolfen. As I grew older and thought about the move, it seemed strange to me that Father and Mother traveled so far when there are hundreds of churches to rebuild in southern Germany, where we had lived. Once I pointed that out to Father, but he only said, “St. Mary’s is a very famous church, and it’s a privilege to help in its rebuilding.” Today Father has promised to let me climb to the top of one of the steeples with him, the one that is nearly finished.
St. Mary’s Evangelical Lutheran Church was built seven hundred years ago. Much of the church was destroyed by the bombing during the war, but when all the rebuilding is finished, the church’s twin steeples will once again reach 125 meters into the sky. People who have lived in the town all their lives have been acting as if the vacant space left by the two tumbled steeples is as real as the steeples themselves were. In their stubbornness, they have been refusing to admit that the steeples were no longer there. When first I learned to find my way around the city, the directions I was given always used St. Mary’s Church as the starting point. “It’s two blocks over from St. Mary’s,” people would say, or “It’s just around the corner from St. Mary’s”—as if the absent steeples were still there to point the way.
In southern Germany, where we had come from, the churches were filled with statues and every kind of religious painting, but here in Rolfen St. Mary’s is nearly bare, leaving you to imagine your own picture of God. When the church is filled with organ music and with the singing of the choir, it’s like a cool drink of water when you’re thirsty. Mother and Father attend services at St. Mary’s every Sunday. Usually I go along with them.
There are Sundays when I want to sleep in, my feather bed a downy nest of softness and warmth. I have a dream I don’t want to let go of or a thought I want to chase. My bed is a safe boat on a great sea. To climb out of it is a risk I don’t want to take. I want nothing to do with the business of washing and putting on my starched shirt, whose collar bites at my neck. I don’t want to listen to Pastor Heuer warn us against the evils of the world. To him that means dancing and movies.
I make excuses, complaining of a sore throat or a headache. Mother becomes cross and insists I must get ready for church, but Father shakes his head and says, “It won’t hurt him to miss church once in a while.” Mother gets angry and there’s an argument. It’s the only time I see them quarrel with each other. It seems odd to me that in the matter of whether or not I go to church Father lets me do as I wish, when he’s strict about everything else.
When I get to St. Mary’s, I look into the small room where the church’s great bells lie. When the church was bombed by the English and Americans on Palm Sunday, 1942, the bells fell to the ground and have remained there, lying on their sides like wounded soldiers. There was an argument in the town after the war. Some said the new bells should be cast from the old, that the new bells should have some of the old bells in them; but others said the injured bells were a reminder and must remain. “A reminder of what?” I asked Father, but he only said, “For everyone the memories are different, but for all they are sad. Nearby in Hamburg more than fifty churches were destroyed by bombs, and thousands of people in that city and here in Rolfen were killed. People can’t bring back their loved ones, but they can rebuild their churches.”
Today Father is eager to show me the progress they’re making. “Peter,” he says, “you can’t know what comfort it gives me to see the church being restored. It’s as if our country has been given a second chance. It’s God’s forgiveness.”
From my visits to the church I have become friends with the workmen. “Guten Abend, Peter,” they call out when they see me. They know I am the son of der Meister, the boss. They like Father, for he is often up on the scaffolding or down on his knees helping the workmen, as if he could not wait a moment longer for a brick to be laid or another stroke of the paintbrush, as if he were suffocating and knew he couldn’t breathe again until the day the church is made whole.
While Father is the architect overseeing the rebuilding, he always says it is the workmen who are the important ones, and the workmen are quick to agree. Each one feels it is his special skill that is making the difference. Herr Brandt is working away at repairing the organ. “Young man,” he tells me, “the organ is the soul of the church. Just think, when Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer who ever lived, was a young man, it is said he walked a great distance just for the pleasure of playing the organ in St. Mary’s Church.”
Reiner Nordstrom, one of the stone workers, is repairing a stone carving of the Last Supper. “Look closely at the carving, Peter,” he says. “See the little mouse gnawing away at the roots of the oak tree? The oak tree is the ancient symbol of Rolfen.”
On our way up the scaffolding that covers the steeple like a wooden net, we pass David Schafer, who is inspecting some brickwork. Herr Schafer is a large, stocky man with a cap of black curling hair, sad eyes that turn down at the corners, and a watchful look, so that every time he sees you there is a moment before he relaxes into friendship. He is one of a handful of Jewish people who have come to live in Rolfen from East Germany. Today after the usual second of hesitation he greets us warmly. “Wie geht’s, Peter? You have a fine day for your climb, but watch your footing.” Then Herr Schafer says, “If you are very quiet, Peter, I’ll show you something special.”
Up, up we go on the scaffolding that hugs the church, Herr Schafer leading the way. I’m not exactly afraid of heights, but there’s something about being high up in the air that makes you terrified you’re going to fall and at the same time makes you want to take off into the air. As we near the bell tower, he pauses and, putting his finger on his lips for silence, points inside the tower where new bells will soon ring out. He is pointing to a nest and, on the nest, a large bird that stares at us as if daring us to trouble it. “A falcon,” he whispers.
I whisper back, “She isn’t bothered by all the work that’s going on?”
“No, no. She puts up with us. She knows it is her territory and we are only intruders. Now I must get back to work. I’ll leave the sky to the two of you. Auf Wiedersehen.”
The scaffolding continues up the part of the steeple already repaired. Each tile covers a section of the neighboring tile, so the steeple roof looks like the scales on a giant reptile’s tail. I don’t dare to look down. Each step feels as if I am putting my foot into air. At last we come to the place where the work has stopped. There the scaffolding has a platform where tile will be stacked, ready for the workmen. Father helps me to find my balance, and I settle down on the platform next to him.
Seeing Herr Schafer makes me think of the lecture we had in class. I ask Father, “Why would Jewish people want to live in Germany after what happened to them here?”
“You know the word Heimat,” Papa says, “‘homeland.’ And you know the word Heimweh, ‘homesickness.’ You had it when we moved here from Swabia. You were lonesome for what was familiar to you. It is the same for Jews who grew up in Germany. There was a time when the Jewish people were at home and happy in Germany. Many have good memories of their childhood; it is hard to give that up. The language as well, Peter; it’s a comfort when each word is familiar and will do just what you want it to. Jews hope things will be better now in Germany. The sad thing, Peter, is that when I hired Herr Schafer, I saw on his resume he had once taught philosophy at the university in Heidelberg.”
“Why would a professor be laying bricks?” I ask.
Father says, “You know yourself that thousands, like your friend Kurt, have escaped to Rolfen from East Germany looking for a better life away from the Communists. Unfortunately there are no jobs here for professors. Schafer was lucky to get a job at all.”
“But where did he learn to be such an expert bricklayer?”
“He’s a resourceful man,” Father says, in a voice he uses when he doesn’t want to speak of something. He changes the subject. “You said you wanted a job this summer, Peter. Herr Schafer could use a helper. You wouldn’t be laying the bricks—that’s work for an expert—but you have a strong back and you could help in moving the bricks. What do you say?”
“Sure.” I am excited at the idea of working on the church. I see myself getting up each morning and walking to work with my father. When the church is finished, I can say I had a part in it.
“I’ll talk with Herr Schafer,” Father said. “Now, what do you think of the view?”
Seen from atop the scaffolding, the town of Rolfen is like a picture in a book. There is the river and the canal that circles the town, turning the whole city into a moated castle. There is the gate, with its two round five-hundred-year-old towers. There is the main street, with its elegant merchant homes and the Shippers Society building topped by the golden sailboat, for Rolfen has been a trading port for a thousand years. There is the Rathaus, the town hall, which, like St. Mary’s, was built seven hundred years ago and is as fine as any town hall in the world. And there is the school where Mother teaches kindergarten. This is Mother’s fourth year of teaching, and when I walk down a street with her, it is never long before some little kid runs up to her and pulls at her sleeve and says, “Mrs. Liebig, Mrs. Liebig, remember me?” and she gives him a hug and he gives her a blissful look.
There are also the ruins where bombs fell and where repairs have yet to be made; but today, as I look from up so high, they are hidden away.
Sitting in the clouds next to Father, just the two of us, I feel I have his whole attention. Away from everything, I have to ask the question that has been troubling me. I can’t put Herr Schmidt’s lecture out of my head. I know Father was in the German army. I wonder if he was part of the SA, the brownshirted shock troops, the men who sent millions of Jews to their death in brutal and cruel ways. I’m afraid to ask, afraid to learn the truth. He looks like the same father I have always known, neither short nor tall, with thinning blond hair streaked with gray. As usual the wire frames of his glasses have bits of tape where the frames bite into his ears. Under his suit he is wearing the tan wool cardigan that Mother knitted for him from wool she unraveled from an old sweater she found in a used clothing shop. I can’t picture Father in a uniform. But I have to ask.
Right away I’m sorry. Father looks like I have struck him. “No, Peter. Never. I was a soldier in the German army like millions of other German men. As an architect I was ordered to construct barracks. I had nothing to do with what happened to the Jews. Did I guess what was going on? Yes. Did I try to stop it? No. It might have meant death for me, and I was a coward. Others took that chance, but I didn’t. In that I am guilty.” He is silent for a moment. I can see he longs to tell me something that will make me feel better about him, and at last he says, “There was one time when I had to make a hard choice and I made it. It’s a thing that gives me great comfort.”
I have to say, “Herr Schmidt told us we are all guilty because of what Germany did to the Jews. But I was only a little child. How can I be guilty?”
“Herr Schmidt should confine himself to scolding those who had a hand in the evil. He would find more than enough people to blame. There is no need for him to accuse children.” He gave me a long look. “Most of all you, Peter.”
“But Father, why did no one try to stop Hitler?”
“When a man is as powerful as Hitler was, it takes great courage to oppose him, but there were such men. In Swabia we lived not far from the home of Claus von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg and some of his friends risked their lives to try to put an end to Hitler. But Peter, this is no place or time to think of such things. Let us keep silent on the subject.”
So there was a time when Father had to make a choice, perhaps a choice of life or death for someone. He made the right choice, but a choice he doesn’t want to talk about. Parents are mysteries you keep unraveling like the old sweater Mother took apart. Bit by bit, day by day, you discover more and more about them. I have taken my parents for granted, but Herr Schmidt’s class is making me look at them in a new way, and now Father’s insistence on silence makes me more curious than ever. I wonder what his secret is.
“Peter, only look around you,” Father is saying. “We are on top of the world. How do you like it up here? It is easy to play God, nicht?”
It’s true. Thinking of how little everything below us looks, I ask, “Father, do you think perhaps God so high up doesn’t know about all of our small problems?”
“He is like the falcon with its sharp eye that misses nothing. Have you a problem for God, Peter?”
I shake my head no.
Father looks relieved. We sit there together, kings of all we see. “Father, if you were ruling the world, what would you change?”
“I’d make everyone’s heart a little bigger, with a little more room for all. And you, Peter, what would you change?”
“I’d do away with all algebra tests.”
Father laughs, and with one last look at the toy city beneath us, we climb down the scaffolding under the sharp eye of the falcon.