I TOSS AND TURN all night. When morning finally comes, the bedding looks like a squirrel’s nest or a dish of noodles. As I dress, I imagine the Stauffenbergs seeing my letter, recognizing me, being excited, and sending me the fare to come and join them. My summer will be spent in their castle getting to know my real family. When I finally come downstairs, I look at my mother and try to guess if Father has said anything to her about my discovery, but she looks just as she always has and warns me I’ll be late if I don’t hurry.
In the early morning as Father and I walk to the church together, the summer day is still cool. Mist covers the ground. As the sun warms the earth, the town gradually appears through the mist so that it looks as if it has been newly made. As we walk along, I keep hoping Father will say something about my nightmare and the woman, but he doesn’t. Instead he uses the walk to work to tell me all his problems. Crucial construction material has not been delivered, and what has been delivered is not what was ordered. A workman is drinking on the job. Father is having an argument with the pastor of the church about how to place the pulpit. I guess that he is using a list of problems to evade what I really want him to talk about.
My job at St. Mary’s is to fill a cart with bricks and wheel it over to where Herr Schafer or one of the other bricklayers is working. After all the months shut up in the classroom, I thank my lucky stars that I am outside in a world of trees and sky and sun with not a desk in sight.
For an adult Herr Schafer is easy to be with, and I feel as if he is someone I have known for a long time. He dresses like the other workers, in an old shirt and trousers, but he does not look like them. For one thing, he wears old-fashioned rimless glasses, and for another, though he is an excellent workman, he has always a look of not being where he is. I remember Father telling me that Herr Schafer was a professor, and it’s not hard to imagine him at the head of a classroom. I think of Herr Schmidt’s lectures and wonder what happened to Herr Schafer, as a Jew, during the war.
While the other workers gather at noon for their lunch—sausages, big hunks of cheese, and cold bottles of beer—Herr Schafer sits by himself with his lunch and a book. The other workers like to joke, and I see that they are uncomfortable telling their earthy jokes with me nearby; so I take my own book and lunch to where Herr Schafer is. Sitting next to him is like having a book in your hands and not being able to look inside. At last I ask him, “How did you come to be a bricklayer?”
He doesn’t answer my question but only says, “Nothing wrong with bricklaying. In his spare time the former British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was a bricklayer.” In a more serious voice he adds, “There aren’t many jobs and bricklaying is steady work. You have only to look around you at the buildings that have fallen apart from the bombs. All of Germany is like this, and the German people won’t put up with such messes. There will be work for us bricklayers for years to come.”
Still, I don’t believe Herr Schafer will spend the rest of his life laying bricks. The books he reads are thick and have many pages. As he turns the pages, he underlines heavily and sometimes mutters angrily as if the book were a person who is arguing with him.
In his bricklaying Herr Schafer is a perfectionist, which means I have a hard time. I dream of making my own contribution to the building of the church by laying neat rows of bricks that will be there for centuries, but all he will let me do is to carry the bricks and stack them near the spot where he wants them. Sometimes he finds fault with my work. “Peter, you have only to breathe on that pile of bricks you made and they will fall over in a heap. You must build the stack so that the bricks on the outer walls lean in slightly.” He is full of brickman’s language, as much trouble to me as Latin is. I have to learn the meaning of closure, wythe, header, and stretcher courses. I discover that a “rowlock sailor” is a brick that stands upright with its broad side facing out while a “soldier” is a brick standing upright with its narrow side facing out, as if all sailors were fat and all soldiers were thin. It’s my job to see that the bricks have just the right degree of moisture. After I stack them, I have to take one of the bricks and put drops of water on it. If I can still see the damp spot after a minute and a half goes by, all is well. If the damp spot disappears, I have to get pails of water and douse the bricks so they won’t absorb the moisture from the mortar and weaken the joints between the bricks.
Herr Schafer is a pleasure to watch. With a long sweep of his trowel he can throw a mortar line along the tops of six or seven bricks and lay each brick level and plumb. Father knows all about his skill. “The architect has only an idea, Peter,” Father says. “His idea doesn’t exist until the workman brings it to life.”
Herr Schafer listens carefully to Father, but he doesn’t always agree with him. When he doesn’t, he says so. “Herr Schmidt, excuse me, but the pattern of bricks you’re suggesting for the part of the east wall we are repairing will be like a dog with no ears and no tail. If you look at the old pictures of the church, you’ll see there was a course of brick like so.” He sets the bricks on the floor of the church to show what he means. “You see how that gives the wall a pretty line?”
“Yes, yes, Herr Schafer, I agree. By all means let’s follow your suggestion.”
But sometimes Herr Schafer and Father get into an argument. Then Herr Schafer grows very quiet and aloof. Father gets authoritative and plays the boss. Though Father fumes a little, in the end it’s usually Father who gives in. Herr Schafer smiles again. Father laughs and teases him. “I suppose you’d go on strike like your thirteenth-century brethren.”
When I ask Herr Schafer what Father means, he says, “Seven hundred years ago the masons in France who were laying the bricks and stones on French cathedrals were commanded by the bishops to cut their long hair and shave their beards. They refused and stopped working. The bishops gave in.”
After one such argument, Father says, “You see how Herr Schafer can tell the boss what must be done? That’s the thing about these Gothic cathedrals, Peter, that people don’t always realize. These churches are the first great monuments built by workmen who were their own masters. Just think of the pyramids—the slaves who built them carted stones under the scourge of the Egyptian lash. Thousands of workmen died to build the pyramids. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the great Gothic churches were built, men built with their hearts and minds as well as their backs. It was no longer just the master who decided what must be done. No, the workmen had a say. All the skill and imagination of the workmen was added to that of the master, and look what beauty came of men working freely!”
“How did that happen, Father?” I ask. I like the idea of the workman having a say, for Herr Schafer is my boss and I’m his employee.
“The monks in those days came from wealthy families. In the monasteries the monks spent all their time in prayer and had servants to wait upon them just as they had in the homes where they were raised. Along came St. Benedict, who said his monks must do physical work as well as pray. ‘Idleness is the enemy of the soul,’ St. Benedict said. Suddenly labor was honorable and respected.
“There was something else. Everyone in the city or town where the church was going up felt a part of the building of the church. In the Middle Ages life was hard. The cathedral brought some beauty into people’s lives. It was a promise of what was to come in God’s kingdom. These churches have been called the Bible of the poor. People in those days could not read or write, and so the stories of the Bible were told in the sculptures and in the stained-glass windows.” After a moment Father says to me, “And not just the New Testament, Peter, but the Old Testament as well.”
On our walks to and from St. Mary’s, Father has begun to tell me about the building of the churches, so our walks are like chapters in a book. “Life in the Middle Ages, Peter, was brutish. Babies died in their mothers’ arms; there were famines and plagues that killed half the population of a town. In all that ugliness and misery the beauty of the church was a promise of what was to come in God’s kingdom; the promise of Heaven enabled people to endure their cruel world.”
With the steeples nearly finished, preparations are being made for transporting the new bells to St. Mary’s. “Bells have always been important,” Father says. “In the Middle Ages they rang out to warn of storms that might threaten a harvest, and four nights of the year, when witches were said to be abroad, the bells sounded all night to keep them away.”
Because I have something to do with all the changes to St. Mary’s, I urge my parents to arrive at the service early on Sunday. I want to see the pleased looks on the faces of the parishioners as they examine the progress that has been made. Of course they haven’t counted the bricks I have moved about, but I have counted them. I am proud of the church and sure that God is as well. I like to think of him up there, a Herr Schafer with a long beard, checking off what has been accomplished that week.
Though hardly a day goes by without Herr Schafer correcting me about something, when he sees that I am truly trying to learn, he promises me, “By the end of the summer, I’ll have you laying bricks yourself.”
I cannot tell him that any day I expect a letter, perhaps with train tickets, urging me to come to the Stauffenberg family. I imagine their pleasure in the reunion, how they will welcome me with open arms. I see myself strolling about on the grounds of their great home. Though I try to put it out of my mind, I can’t help being a little angry with Mother and Father for not returning me to my rightful parents after the war.
Each day Mother places Father’s mail on a little tray in his study. When he arrives home, after giving mother a kiss on the forehead, he goes to his study and examines his mail. Since we have the same name, Peter Liebig, I think that is where I will find my letter. I make an excuse to Father for not walking home with him. “I’ve got soccer practice with Kurt and Hans,” I say. Then I take a shortcut to our house, quickly go over Father’s letters, and leave before he gets there. Three days go by, and then I find the letter. It is the second one in the tray.
Dear Peter Liebig,
I am an attorney for the Stauffenberg family, who have asked me to reply to your letter. Yours is not the first letter of its kind that the Stauffenberg family have received. I inform you as I informed the others that after the war’s end, happily all the children of the Stauffenbergs were reunited with their family.
Yours very truly,
Karl Schneider
Attorney-at-Law
Will I ever find out who I am? I don’t really belong to anyone. No one wants me. Well, maybe that’s not true. I’m sure my parents love me, but what about my real parents? I know it could be worse, and I think of Gustav and what happened to his parents and how he is really alone. I guess I was counting too much on the letter. After I get over my disappointment, I tell myself that I am a snob because I daydreamed about being a part of a famous hero’s aristocratic family. I turned my back on my own mother and father, although they have done everything for me, showing me love and affection every day. I feel guilty, but I am also miserable, because I still don’t know who I am. If I’m not a Stauffenberg, who am I? What if I find out something I don’t want to know?