The Brumbach band was halfway through “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey.”
I lay spent atop Katharina’s broad chest. She twirled a lock of my hair with her fingers and sighed happily.
“Oh, Sandy... For so long, I have dreamed of a man who would love me for what I can do.”
“You are awesome, Kati. But I need to tell you something important.”
She looked perturbed. “What is it?”
“I can’t remember anything before today.”
She kissed me again and again, delighted.
“Oh, Liebchen! Neither can I! It is as if my life began when we met!”
She gave me a bone-bending hug.
“No, no, I mean literally!” I groaned. She stopped cuddling me, and I could breathe again. “My memory is a blank. I have amnesia.”
She put her fingers gingerly on either side of my head, worried.
“Oh, my poor little Sandy! I did damage you! Your poor head!”
“No, no, my head is fine. Well, maybe a centimeter narrower after that scissors hold, but...what I mean is, I must have lost my memory sometime last night. Before you ever touched me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Kati, I woke up in an alley this morning, and I don’t remember how I got there.”
“You had too much to drink?”
“Yes, but this is no hangover. I mean, it’s been hours, and I still don’t even know my own name.”
“It’s Sandy. You just told Papa.”
“That’s not my name. At least, I don’t think so. If it is, it would be one hell of a coincidence.”
“Liebchen, you are not making sense.”
“I only told your father ‘sand’ because that’s what I found in my pockets when I woke up. Really hot, like desert sand. See?”
I dragged my pants over and showed her my hip pocket. She gave me a curious smile and slipped her hand in—then yanked it out, tan grit coating her fingertips.
“Why are you walking around with this in your pockets? Are you crazy?”
“I don’t know, Kati. For all I know, I might be. That’s why I need to warn you.” I sure didn’t want to say this: “You shouldn’t fall in love with me.”
Upset, she lifted me off her, and sat upright.
“You didn’t think to tell me this before I...before we...?” She sputtered, unable to bring herself to say the words.
“You really didn’t give me a chance. Anyway, I’m convinced it’s temporary. I know the memories are there, but for some reason I just can’t reach them. All morning I was living this nightmare...until I saw you, Kati. And suddenly you were my dream come true. When you started kissing me, I didn’t want you to stop. Ever. I don’t want to lose you!”
Her pique softened.
“Am I that beautiful to you?” she pouted.
“Yes.”
“Even after I squeezed you?”
“I knew you wouldn’t really hurt me.”
“And when I threw you around like a doll?”
“You are, in every sense, irresistible.” I kissed her.
“Does this mean you are in love with me?”
“I want to say yes...except I don’t know what love feels like. I can’t remember if I was ever in love before.”
She heaved a disappointed sigh, looking away. I gently turned her face back to me.
“But I can’t imagine it feeling any better than I feel right now,” I said, and kissed her again.
She tugged the ring finger of my right hand.
“Well, at least you are not married.”
“That’s what I figured, but haven’t you got the wrong hand?”
She frowned, puzzled.
“Isn’t it third finger left hand?” I asked, holding up my empty left digit.
“Not in Germany. Maybe in your country.”
“I sure wish I knew what country that is.”
“You really don’t know anything about yourself?”
“I know this much: I speak German, but I think in English.”
“So your home must be England, or someplace in the British Empire. Or maybe the United States.”
“Oh, right. America,” I nodded. “Now that you mention it...maybe.”
“What else do you know about yourself?”
“Obviously, I am attracted to a strong woman.”
She pulled me back onto her for another kiss, then smiled. “Obviously.”
I kissed her hungrily, and not just because she tasted of beer and bratwurst.
“One other thing,” I added. “I was trained in some kind of self-defense, but apparently not very well.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Liebchen. No man has ever beaten me. You lasted longer than most. Whatever nation you are from, they must be a very determined people.”
“How do I sound to you? Do I have an accent?”
“No, your German is perfect. You gargle your r’s like a Bavarian. Just like us.”
I sighed, with a wry grin.
“Well...what country would you like me to be from?”
“America.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know, I just always wanted to go there. I have seen New York City in postcards. A dangerous place, but so wild and modern and exciting. Other Germans have warned me it’s no place to live, but I would love to visit.”
“You make it sound like a wonderful town. I wonder if I’ve ever been there.”
Suddenly, she pushed me off her and pulled her tights on.
“Put your pants on. The music just ended.”
“You mean, your family’s show is...uh-oh!” I remembered her papa and the unfortunate chain. I yanked my Levi’s back on and buttoned them up as fast as I could, leaking sand on the tent floor.
Kati unlashed the tent flaps.
I had just pulled on my shirt when the flaps were flung open and Philippe Brumbach loomed in the opening, glaring at us.
“Katharina! What is he still doing here?”
“I was afraid I had injured him.”
“He looks well enough to me.” He glanced down at the floor, and noticed my stocking feet. “Where are his shoes?”
Kati already had them in her hand.
“I took them, Papa.” She set them outside the tent. “You know I like to keep my tent clean.”
He glanced down at the sand by my feet, and gave me the stink-eye.
“Well, if he’s all right, then it is time he said goodbye.”
“No, Papa, please...let him stay. I want him to have lunch with us,” said Katharina.
“Why?”
“I like him. Don’t you?”
“If I liked him twice as much as I do, I would still hate him. And he is leaving, now.”
“Papa, that is so impolite!”
Philippe ignored her and made for me. She stepped into her father’s path and put her fists on her hips.
“Get out of my way, Kati.”
“I want him to stay, Papa.”
He shook his head in disbelief.
“I will not lose a wrestling match to you, Kati.”
“Probably not...but can you imagine what it would be like if you did, Papa?”
Philippe snorted. But she’d called his bluff—he didn’t take another step just yet. At that point, Johanna Brumbach entered.
“What is going on in here?” She did a brisk scan of the tent. Including the sand at my feet.
“Sandy was not hurt, Mama,” Kati assured her.
“That’s good to hear. Why don’t you ask him to have lunch with us?”
“What?” barked Papa.
“Mama, did you know Sandy has no home?” asked Kati. “Last night the poor fellow slept in an alley!”
Johanna clucked her tongue.
“Do you know what you are saying?” exclaimed Philippe. “He literally came to us from the gutter!”
“It’s not his fault, Papa. He just needs a job.”
“I’ll write him a letter of recommendation,” said Papa.
“Can’t he work for us?” his daughter asked.
“Why, darling?” asked Johanna.
“Because I like him. I want to keep him!”
“Now, Kati, be sensible. He is not like that little tomcat you found in Vienna,” said Philippe.
“I’m not so sure,” said Johanna, glancing at my bare feet.
“We cannot take him with us,” said Philippe.
“I think we should, Papa,” said Johanna, giving her husband a knowing look. “We should keep him around...at least for nine months.”
Kati looked mortified. She pulled her mother aside and whispered urgently: “Mama, trust me. I know when is my time of the month.”
I heard that, as did Papa, who growled, “What does that mean?”
“It means we did not raise an idiot,” said Johanna. “But I still think we should keep this young man around.” Her eyes narrowed at me: “Just in case.”
“Mama is right,” said Kati. “Sandy could be a big help.”
“Another mouth to feed?” protested Philippe. My stomach gurgled. I hoped he didn’t hear it. “Eighteen mouths are not enough?”
“He could be part of the show!” insisted Kati.
I felt the need to speak up. “She’s right, sir! I mean, I’m no strongman...”
“Good thing you told me,” grimaced Papa. “So tell me what you can do.”
“Can you handle horses?” tried Mama.
“I can handle looking at them, but beyond that...”
“Do you play an instrument?”
“I doubt it.”
“Surely you can sing?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know any songs.”
“Everybody knows a song,” Kati coaxed me. “Wait, have you ever been...” (and here she used a word I was unfamiliar with) “Trapezkünstler?”
I shrugged, bewildered. Recalling that German was not my first language, she tried to help me out.
“How do you say it in English, um...‘aerial act’?”
“Huh?” I blurted. Why did the word ‘aerial’ give me such a jolt?
Kati cocked her head, puzzled. “I mean, have you ever been on the trapeze, or been an acrobat?”
“Uh...can’t say that I have. I just found out I’m afraid of heights.”
“Ach!” Philippe threw up his hands annoyed, and walked away.
“Oh, that can be conquered,” Kati assured me. “It just takes lots of practice.”
“So he is basically useless,” said Papa.
“Well, I can do stick fighting.”
“Ah! Could you handle a sword?” suggested Mama.
I nodded right away. I felt sure I could pick that up.
“Good, why don’t you swallow one?” groused Papa. “I think a lot of people would like to see that.”
“Papa.” Johanna didn’t need to yell it.
“And I will give you a hearty clap on the back,” he muttered.
His wife burned him with a look.
“Why can’t Sandy and I do what we did today?” asked Kati.
“And what exactly did you do today?” roared Papa.
“Philippe, that’s enough!” snapped Johanna. “What do you mean, Kati?”
“I could pick him up and throw him around like I did when I won the match. You heard how the people loved it. He’s light enough. What are you, Sandy, about seventy-five kilos?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
Katharina grasped my belt. “Hold still, I want to try something.”
The next second, she muscled me up to her shoulder. Then summoning all her strength, she thrust me skyward and locked her arm. She was lifting me above her with one hand.
“I think you are closer to eighty,” she grunted. But she kept me up there all the same, displaying me to Mama and Papa. “People would pay to see this, ja?”
Mama nodded approvingly, but Papa folded his arms.
“Stick to your wrestling. It’s over quickly and we find a new volunteer at every show. No need to feed any of them.”
At that awkward moment, my stomach gurgled loudly.
Kati looked up at me with concern.
“Sandy, how long has it been since your last meal?”
“I don’t remember.”
Papa shot me another suspicious look.
“I mean, I don’t remember ever feeling so hungry,” I elaborated. “I must have missed breakfast.”
“Well, you’re not going to miss lunch,” said Mama. “Come, Kati, help me with the stew.”
Kati set me down and followed her mother out of the tent toward a cook fire tended by her brothers.
I started to follow Kati, but Papa put out his massive paw to stop me.
“You stay. Mama, you will bring food for Sandy and me.” She waved and kept walking.
Philippe pushed me a step back with one large finger. “You will eat here. You are not joining my family. Not yet, anyway.”
I sensed that arguing with him was inadvisable.
As he and I watched, Kati’s younger brothers set a wide plank across two barrels to form a family picnic table, and two more planks across two pairs of kegs, making benches.
“It seemed like you did a good business today,” I said pleasantly.
Philippe crossed those burly arms and glowered at me silently. I tried another tack.
“I haven’t seen a newspaper in days. What’s going on in the world?”
“I only read the papers when it is about me, or my family. And there is absolutely no news there,” he concluded with emphasis.
“Fair enough,” I nodded. We waited in silence for the food. This time he definitely heard me gurgle.
Kati brought back two bowls of stew and two bottles of beer. She handed me one of each, and sat down beside me in the tent. Philippe scowled.
“I told Mama to bring his meal. And where is mine?”
“She is busy, Papa. She said to tell you your food is on the table, getting cold.”
I was trying to figure out the wire frame that clamped a ceramic stopper on my beer.
“Let me help you, Sandy.” She popped it off with one thumb. I clinked my bottle top against hers, which amused her no end.
“Aren’t you going to eat with your family?” her father asked.
“That would be rude to Sandy,” said Kati. “If he must eat apart from them, so will I.”
Papa fumed, but his appetite won out. Before leaving, he tied both flaps of her tent open, and cinched the knots with such force that I feared he’d rip the fabric. Then he stalked over to where the rest of the family was eating their lunch. He sat down at the table, still watching us like a hawk. Or a German eagle.
“I don’t think your father likes me,” I observed.
She clucked her tongue. “He still thinks of me as a child.”
“Well, I suppose if I were in his boots...”
She giggled at the image. “You would step right out of them.” Then she shook her head. “Papa thinks I am like him and Mama. There is a reason they have eighteen mouths to feed. That will not be my life.”
“No marriage or kids for you?” I asked.
“Someday, certainly. But not before I become everything I wish to be.”
“And what is that? I mean, besides incredibly strong?”
“Stronger.”
I hardly had an answer for that. She patted my leg with a knowing smile.
While we ate, Kati shifted her gaze to a spot across the square, where the townsfolk now gathered to watch a detachment of soldiers in blue uniforms, each with a helmet topped with a spike.
They were performing some rhythmic exercise done with a rifle—setting it on the ground, then putting it on one shoulder, then the other, then down again, then up and flipping the rifle left and right and twirling it around, to the beat of a military band.
Was I remembering that the Germans had quite a martial tradition? For some reason, the idea gave me the willies.
“What is that they’re doing?” I wondered.
“The manual of arms,” Kati said. “It is how you train a soldier. Right shoulder arms, left shoulder arms, present arms...I have always loved to watch it.”
“I thought you hated guns.”
She looked surprised. “Me? Where ever did you get that idea?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking of someone else.”
“You could not be more wrong! When I was a little girl, I saw a soldier doing this. I was so thrilled, I told him I wanted to be a soldier when I grow up, so I could handle a rifle like that. He laughed and told me only a man can be a soldier. He rather broke my heart. I thought it is so unfair that only a man gets to play with a gun. I thought someday, I will play with one.”
“A gun, or a man?”
She laughed heartily at that.
I kept wolfing down the stew, which was excellent. Then I noticed she was giving me the once-over, with a funny smile.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing. But...don’t eat so fast, Liebchen. It is not good to eat and eat until you are full.”
“You worried I might get fat?”
She went back to watching the soldiers’ display, shrugging, “No. But I might want you to lose about five kilos.”
I wasn’t quite following that, but it felt so good to have food in me that I just kept eating. But slower.
The rest of the afternoon I spent helping the Brumbach family wash their cookware, gather firewood and basically clean up their campsite. I was determined to show Kati’s parents I could earn my keep.
As the light faded, I painfully stubbed my toe on something hidden in the grass of the greensward. I yelped, then bent down and felt something cold and smooth. I picked it up, with some effort—it was an iron cannonball. Thirty pounds if it was an ounce.
Katharina came up beside me and took it off my hands. “Poor Sandy! Did you hurt yourself?”
“Nah, I just –” I cried out again as I stepped on another one in the grass, and lost my balance. Kati caught me and put me upright again.
“Careful, there’s one more there.”
She picked it up, now nestling three iron balls.
“You planning to lay siege to a fort?” I asked.
“No,” she giggled, “We use these for ballast, to balance the wagon.”
“Oh, I thought maybe you were going to juggle them.”
Now she really laughed, delighted at the idea. “I bet you I can!”
“I wouldn’t bet against you,” I said.
She balanced one in the crook of her arm, and held the other two in her palms. She shifted them back and forth as she tossed them, her chubby arms bulging with power.
She dropped the third one on her first and second tries, but the third time, she actually began juggling all three of those cannonballs.
“What do you think?” she said.
“I think you get more gorgeous with every feat,” I said.
She let the balls drop—THUD-THUD-THUD! I jumped back to keep my toes from being crushed, but she pulled me to her and hugged me tight.
“Ah, so you like that,” she smiled.
I nodded.
She held my face in her hands. “You inspire me so much, Sandy. I think together we could create a wonderful act. Don’t you?”
“I do,” I said, and she pressed her lips to mine again. Her arms encircled me and I no longer felt the earth beneath my feet.
I had no idea if my memory was ever going to return, but after the events of this whirlwind day, I doubted if my previous life could have been anywhere near this sweet. I could happily spend the rest of my life with Kati, touring Europe as she performed her astounding feats of strength.
Our blissful kissing continued.
But there must be something in me that is always expecting disaster. After God knows how long, I opened one eye and I scanned the darkening square.
“Where is your father, anyway?”
“He’s at the beer garden. And tonight, he is taking us to a new show in town. They call it Kientopp.”
I’d never heard the word, in German or English.
“What is it?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never been. It doesn’t matter. I will slip away while he and Mama are busy with the children. Meet me in my tent at eight.”
Then she resumed kissing me. As if I needed further convincing!
“Katharina!” bellowed Philippe, off in the distance.
She set me down.
“Coming, Papa!” She held up eight fingers to me, and winked. Then turned and hurried off into the crowd.
That evening I helped Mama and the Brumbach girls with dinner, though Johanna kept assuring me it was “women’s work.” I noticed Kati sorrowfully shaking her head at that sentiment. I was so looking forward to meeting her later that I actually forgot to eat anything.
Afterward, Philippe made it clear I was not invited to Kientopp, and if I wished to make myself useful, I had better keep an eye on the wagon and the horses.
It took forever till that loud-bonging clock finally struck eight. I stole through the twilight gloom to Kati’s tent. There was a note pinned to the closed flap:
Leibchen, meet me in the wagon.
Poor Kati, I guessed her schooling had been pretty hit-and-miss traveling the European countryside. Well, it wasn’t her prowess at spelling that drew me to her.
Worried that one of the Brumbachs might see it, I took down the note and pocketed it, then hurried over to the wagon. I tiptoed up the steps, tapped on the door…and it swung open.
The wagon was empty. The interior was dim. I closed the door, and decided against lighting one of the kerosene lamps dangling from the ceiling. I sat in the dark, waiting for my beloved amazon.
It had only been a minute when there came a soft knock at the door. I opened it, ready to embrace Kati. But it was not her.