Two

BAVARIA, 1903

Johann had worked on the clock for nearly a year. Each night after Rebecca fell asleep beside him, breathing her shallow, even breaths that deepened and slowed as she dreamt, he crept from the house and returned to the small room at the back of the barn that served as his workshop. There he labored until the stub of candle he had taken from the kitchen was gone, or sometimes when the candle was a bit longer and more resilient, until the first starlings began to call to each other over the hills, signaling daybreak. Then he would return to the cottage and slip beneath the sheets, pressing himself against Rebecca’s warmth and wrapping his hands around the growing roundness of her belly for an hour before rising again to tend to the livestock.

He had toiled all through the long bitter winter, his breath nearly freezing in the night air before him as he trudged to the barn through the hardened snow that covered the ground from October to April. As the spring rains came, turning the earth to a thick mud, he hastened his pace, trying to work longer, faster. The clock needed to be finished before planting season came and pulled him from his workshop for good.

Then the previous evening, Johann suddenly tightened the final screw and knew that he was done. So he stowed the clock beneath the floorboards and returned to the house. He crawled into bed, trying not to disturb Rebecca, but she reached for him sleepily, urging him to make love to her in the gentle way he had learned since her stomach had grown.

Afterward, as her body rose and fell beneath his embrace, he lay awake, envisioning his masterpiece. Set on a brass plate beneath a dome of thick lead glass, the clock was just twelve inches high. It had a hand-painted face, black numbers on ivory, which offered modest cover to the bare mechanism behind. Suspended below were four curved prongs, a rounded ball on the end of each. They rotated slowly 180 degrees to the right and then, seemingly moved by an invisible hand, stopped and spun slowly in the opposite direction. Every minute, the clock let out an obliging tick, an almost-sigh, as though pushing the long hand with great effort.

It would be sold to Augustus Hoffel, the richest man in town, to sit on the mantelpiece of the elegant Gasthaus he ran. Or so Johann hoped. He had shown Herr Hoffel the photograph nearly a year ago and the man had seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of the clock, offered to buy it then and there. Of course he hadn’t paid a deposit, nor given Johann the money he needed for the fine metal and other parts, and Johann had not dared to ask. Herr Hoffel was known as a man of repute, doing business on credit with merchants as far away as Regensburg. Who was Johann, a humble farmer, to ask for a down payment up front? So Johann had to wait two months to barter and scrape together the materials he needed before beginning. But the clock was finer than anything he had ever made or even seen, and he felt certain that Herr Hoffel would buy it on sight, giving him without negotiation his full price, the sum he needed to buy passage to America for himself and Rebecca.

Rebecca. He stroked her raven hair, splayed across the pillow, smiling to himself as he always did when thinking of his wife, even when she was lying just inches away. Rebecca was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and when they met, she had the eye of the rabbi’s son. Were it not for Johann, she would be living in a grand house with running water, a toilet inside. But against all odds and her parents’ virulent protestations, she had chosen him, the farmer who turned up each week at the kindergarten where she worked because she loved the children and not because she needed to, with his jokes and stories and whatever simple gift he could scrape together for a few pennies. He could not believe it when she accepted the proposal he had hardly dared to make. Rebecca’s parents, who had stopped somewhere just short of disowning her, reluctantly agreed to host the marriage ceremony in their home, but had been too embarrassed to invite their friends.

He reached down, touching her hand, feeling the calluses that had not been there when they met. Rebecca had proven to be stronger than her sheltered upbringing might have suggested. She had taken gamely to his simple life, moving into the cottage with the crude planked floors left to him by his deceased parents. Under her care, the two-room shelter became homier than it had ever been; flowered curtains now adorned the windows, and handmade pillows softened the wooden chairs. She took on without complaint, too, the tasks that filled the day of a farmer’s wife, learning to spin wool and clean and mend clothes until they were more thread than fabric, to churn butter and make meals with whatever was available, canning and storing what she could for the long winter months. She even worked beside him in the field, laughing and singing, until he insisted she stop out of fear for her condition.

Two years had passed since they stood beneath the canopy. Two years later and Johann still could not believe his good fortune that Rebecca had chosen him as her own. As he watched her sit before the cracked mirror each evening, combing her dark tresses in preparation for bed, he sometimes wondered if it was a dream, whether if he blinked he might wake up to find it all gone.

The minutes seemed to stretch endlessly as he lay awake. Finally, he dozed off. He slept fitfully, dreaming that he went to retrieve the clock the next morning and it had disappeared, the space beneath the floorboards empty. The vision faded, replaced by another, equally disturbing, of the clock falling from his hands and shattering into a thousand pieces on the ground.

He awakened, restless and drained, to the sound of the roosters crowing to a yet-unseen dawn. After washing at the basin with greater care than he otherwise would, he put on the clean brown work shirt and trousers that Rebecca had laid out. “I’m going, Liebchen,” he whispered to Rebecca, breathing in the powdery scent where her neck met her ear.

“Did you eat?” she mumbled.

“Yes,” he lied, tightening his suspenders. In truth, he had been so anxious he’d forgotten about the piece of Butterbrot she left for him each evening.

“Check the calf.” She was referring to the two-week-old that had struggled to learn to suckle. Rebecca had spent hours each day feeding the animal from a bottle with a gentleness and patience that made Johann’s heart swell.

At the doorway, he took one last look back at his wife and was flooded with longing. A twinge of anxiety rose in him unexpectedly and he fought the urge to return and kiss her good-bye once more.

Turning away reluctantly, he walked to the door, donning his boots with the cracked soles, the brimmed hat that had been his father’s. The smell of manure grew stronger as he made his way to the barn. There he noted that the calf slept soundly, nestled at its mother’s breast.

Then he walked to the clock shop at the back of the barn. It was nothing more than a large closet, a bench with some tools, a crude furnace for warmth. Johann’s father had started working there as a hobby, making clocks as a way to earn extra money in the harsh winter months. He taught Johann to help from the earliest years, first handing him bits of wood or letting him hold a piece in place while he fastened it. Later, Johann would make his first clumsy attempt at building his own clock, his skills growing over the years under his father’s wordless tutelage. And after his father died from an unfortunate kick by a horse, Johann continued to build clocks, the smell of the oil beneath the flickering lamplight a kind of mourning and tribute all at once. He sometimes imagined he heard his father working beside him still.

Then one day last summer when he was in town he met the American who showed him the drawing of the clock. He had gone to Teitelbaum’s, the lone mercantile shop in town, to see if the proprietor had any work for him, as he sometimes did when he had a clock that required a particularly difficult repair. Herr Teitelbaum did not pay him in cash; rather Johann bartered his skills for the coffee and other practical items they needed, and sometimes when the job was a bit more involved, some white sugar to satisfy Rebecca’s sweet tooth. There was a young man at the counter soliciting orders for various clocks and watches and other gift items from abroad that he hoped the shop might consider stocking.

“I’m afraid these are too dear for my customers,” Johann overheard Herr Teitelbaum say.

Dejected, the salesman started to put away the papers containing images of his wares and it was then that Johann had glimpsed the anniversary clock for the first time. “May I?” he asked. The salesman shrugged and slid the paper down the counter in his direction. As he studied the intricate mechanisms and fine glass dome, Johann was instantly captivated. He asked the man dozens of questions about the timepiece, memorizing his answers, before the man seemed to grow weary of the conversation and left.

For weeks afterward, the image of the clock stayed with him. Could he replicate it? It would be extremely difficult and time-consuming, but if it was possible, it would bring in the money they needed to leave. He summoned up his courage and approached Herr Hoffel, one of the few men in town with the resources to purchase the clock, and price was discussed and agreed upon. And so he had begun to work.

Johann pulled the clock from beneath the floorboards and set it on the workbench, appraising it anew. His hand traced the shape of the dome, hovering just above the glass as he resisted the urge to touch it and leave the smudge marks that would necessitate polishing it once more. He had built the clock from memory, adding his own modest touches where he dared to try and improve the end result. This was not the simple cuckoo clock that had been made in the region for centuries, with its basic wood design and crude mechanics. The anniversary clock, as the peddler called it, was a torsion model, intricately made and designed to run for more than a year before needing to be wound. Johann could not believe he’d actually been able to make it work.

He covered the clock with a small blanket and set out walking from the barn. The journey into town was not insignificant and any other day he might have taken the wagon, but he did not want to risk jostling the clock, trying to hold it steady as he drove. Anyway, it was a fine morning in the no-man’s-land between winter and spring, with the still-damp earth giving off a sweet smell and a gentle breeze clearing the fog.

As he ascended the hill, his eyes traveled across the rolling green earth, broken only by a stone monastery perched high in the distance. Then he looked back at the fields that fanned out below. The small but fertile plot of land, a few hectares in the lush valley nourished by the nearby river Main, had been owned by his family for generations. It would soon be time to till the soil. He would plant despite the fact that they would not be here for the harvest, hoping the promise of a late-summer bounty would raise the sale price of the land.

He shifted the clock to his other arm and looked down, concentrating on his footsteps and taking care not to stumble as the path that dropped into the forest narrowed and grew uneven. Sunlight crept through the pines, drying the needles on the ground to a brittle carpet that crackled beneath his feet.

His thoughts returned to Rebecca. The pregnancy had not come easily. Each month since their wedding there had been a hushed expectation, hope followed by disappointment. There were conversations, held only late at night in low voices though they lived alone, for who really spoke of such things at all, much less in the light of day? Whispers about what might be wrong, certain foods a woman might eat or salves she could apply that were rumored to help. But after the first year they had stopped hoping and accepted without recrimination that if God had not seen fit to bless them with a child, then the love they had for each other would be enough.

Then one morning when he least expected it, Rebecca rushed into the barn as he milked the cows and wordlessly took his hand and pressed it to her midsection, smiling broadly. He thought that his heart would burst. They had about five months, Rebecca said, and so he redoubled his efforts on the clock. He wanted them to go before it became too difficult or unsafe for her to travel, so their child could be born in America, in the comfort and safety his precious wife deserved.

The decision to leave had not been a simple one. It was more than just the farm: Johann generally felt as though he belonged here, considered himself first and foremost German—felt that way, at least, until the outside world reminded him otherwise every so often. The latest incident had come last winter, word of a Jewish merchant in a village to the east murdered by neighbors he had lived among all of his life who were convinced he was hoarding wheat in order to drive up prices. The man was shot, his house burned with his family still inside.

Things were worse in the countries around them. He’d seen it in the eyes of the poor haunted immigrants from the Pale who passed through town on their way to the cities looking for work, heard the whispered stories of pogroms that had decimated their lives in an instant. The violence wasn’t just limited to the east—in Paris, a Jewish military officer was hung not a decade earlier, despite evidence of his innocence. And as much as Johann hated to admit it, Bavaria, stubbornly provincial and still steeped in its Catholic traditions decades after unification, was fertile ground for Jew hating. No, something told him that the time to get out was now. His son (he did not know why he always pictured the child as a boy) would not be raised with the shadow that caused Johann to wake with every scratch in the night, reaching for the knife that he hid under the mattress. And in America, Rebecca would be safe.

So he had planned their route—a train to one of the North Sea ports, then a ship to America. Going by wagon to the coast would have been cheaper, but Rebecca’s belly was growing every day. Time was of the essence.

He had of course told Rebecca immediately of his plan. She was bright and strong-willed and would not have permitted him to do otherwise, even if he had been that sort of husband. He had discussed it only in the most hypothetical of terms, not wanting to get her hopes up in case something went wrong. He had worried that she would object to leaving her parents before their only grandchild was born. But she simply smiled. “Whither thou goest, I will go,” she said, quoting the Book of Ruth, eyes shining as she reaffirmed the promise she made on their wedding day to cast her lot in with his. She cleverly pointed out that they should sail to Baltimore, where the entry requirements were reputed to be less stringent than the busier New York port. She had a cousin there who might be willing to help. They agreed to tell no one of their plan, knowing that her parents would be enraged, and that their need to depart would signal desperation to sell and bring a lower price for the land.

He reached the end of the forest about twenty minutes later, and the thinning trees gave way to a wide, rising plateau. In the distance to the south, Johann glimpsed the alpine peaks, snowcapped and breathtaking, ringed by a wreath of clouds. Though he had seen the view his whole life, it still filled him with awe. He had never been as far as the mountains, of course. He’d had romantic notions of taking Rebecca there for a weekend after their wedding, but there had always been fields to be planted, clocks to be made. Now he felt a sense of tugging sadness that he would never go. He would travel many times farther, but in the opposite direction, and the mountains would always remain just out of reach in his mind.

A few minutes later the land dropped off again, sloping gently downward. Below sat a sea of clustered red rooftops, a lone gray steeple rising from their midst. A wide plume of smoke, yet to be blown away by the fresh spring winds, seemed to hover over the town like a flock of birds.

Johann navigated the descent carefully, relaxing slightly as the road grew broader, turning from dirt to cobblestone. He crossed the wooden bridge over the small stream by the mill that signaled the edge of the town. Then he paused, studying the two- and three-story buildings that lined the street, their whitewashed fronts stained with the winter coal dust. He shook his head. It was considered a sign of prestige to live in the wood-latticed houses, but the idea of having neighbors so close on all sides made it hard for him to breathe.

The town had done better than its tiny size might have predicted, the beneficiary of geography that made it the last outpost after leaving Munich before heading over the border for points south in Austria. It was a place visited out of necessity rather than choice, frequented by merchants making their way to and from Vienna, wealthy holiday-goers pressing onward to hike and breathe the restorative alpine air. This weekday morning, the streets were crowded with wagons and men on foot, loading supplies.

The Gasthaus sat just east of the square, set back from the shops on either side, the centerpiece of the nicest street in town. Laborers stayed at the dingy boardinghouse by the depot, but the wealthiest visitors all made their way to Hoffel’s, with its dozen or so bedrooms and stately garden beneath.

Johann walked up the steps, taking care to kick the dried mud from his boots before entering. “Entschuldigen Sie bitte,” he managed, excusing himself to the young woman in the vestibule, whom he recognized as one of the Hoffel daughters. She looked up from the register she’d been studying with annoyance. She was clad in a yellow silk dress he dearly wished he could afford for Rebecca, but she had a hawkish nose and harsh chin that no amount of money could soften. “Ist hier Herr Hoffel?” The girl eyed him incredulously, as though the notion he might have business with her father was unfathomable, then disappeared without speaking.

He peered around the dining room at the cloth-covered tables, not daring to sit on the finely upholstered chairs. The mantelpiece above the stone fireplace was crowded with porcelain figurines clad in the traditional Bavarian dirndl and lederhosen. A savory smell, fresh roast and Kartoffeln cooking for the midday meal, tickled his nose and caused his stomach to rumble. It would be nearly lunchtime when he returned home and he hoped Rebecca might have warmed some of the dumplings from last night’s supper for him.

A moment later Herr Hoffel burst into the dining room. “Johann!”

“Guten Morgen, Herr Hoffel,” he managed as the older man wiped his hands on his pants, not daring to reciprocate with the same familiarity. Johann set the clock on the table where Herr Hoffel indicated, then stood motionless as the portly innkeeper studied the clock, trying not to cringe as he ran his fat fingers across the glass, smudging the pristine surface.

Herr Hoffel pulled at his graying beard, not speaking for several minutes. “Hmm,” he said finally, equal parts murmur and snort. Johann held his breath. “It is nice.”

Johann bristled inwardly at the word. Nice described the cheaply made clocks that sat in the department store windows, one the same as the next. His stomach twisted. Was Herr Hoffel being coy, acting unimpressed as a bargaining technique? Johann wished again that he had asked for a deposit up front or even a higher price, but he had not known how dear the parts would be, how long it would take. No, he could not afford to negotiate, to go any lower than what he had asked, and still cover the money they needed for their passage.

“The face is porcelain,” he offered, but Herr Hoffel’s expression did not change. The man was not haggling over the price, Johann realized suddenly. He simply did not have the eye to appreciate the workmanship, the difference between this treasure and the cheaply made clocks produced by the factories for the department stores. To him, it was just another commodity, like the cloths that covered his tables or the meat he purchased from the butcher for that night’s stew.

“When we spoke last year, you said a hundred marks,” Johann offered, reminding the innkeeper of his promise.

Herr Hoffel whistled through his teeth, pushing stale air through his pipe-stained mustache. “Ja, ja,” he replied, but his tone was more protest than agreement. “I had no idea it would take so long, though.” Neither had he, Johann conceded to himself. He had not known that it would take months to save for the materials, or that the work would be so painstaking. “Business is slow,” Herr Hoffel continued, gesturing around as if to persuade Johann that the empty dining room at mid-morning was indicative of a lack of boarders. “And Frau Hoffel bought these during our last trip to Munich.” He waved in the direction of the mantel, where the row of figurines stared down.

Anger rose within Johann. Comparing his masterpiece to those trinkets was an insult. He fought the urge to pick up the clock and walk from the inn. “I suppose I could still take it, but I couldn’t afford to pay more than forty for it.”

Forty. Johann’s stomach dropped. Forty, though more than he otherwise might see in months, would barely get them to Rotterdam. Herr Hoffel rubbed at a mark on the floor with his foot and suddenly it seemed to Johann that all of his dreams were being ground to dust beneath the innkeeper’s boot. His dream for a better life for Rebecca and their child could not possibly come true now.

Looking out through the thick-paned glass of the front window to the street, Johann’s vision burned white. The older man was playing him, using his wealth and power to take advantage. But what other choice did he have than to accept the meager offer? Herr Hoffel was the only man in town with the money to buy the clock. But then he turned back to the table and as he looked at the work of art into which he’d poured his sweat and soul, Johann’s spine stiffened. He would not part with it for a figure so far short of its worth. He would take the clock to the city, try to sell it to one of the merchants there, before he would let Herr Hoffel steal it from him at such a price.

Unless, of course, Herr Hoffel could be swayed. He took a deep breath, prepared to try again. “Herr Hoffel, forty is less than half our agreed price,” he began, struggling not to stammer. The innkeeper’s eyes widened in fury at the unexpected challenge, but Johann had gone too far to stop now. “I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly …”

“That clock is extraordinary.” A voice behind him interrupted the exchange. Johann and the innkeeper turned toward it. A man whom Johann did not recognize from town stood behind them. “May I?”

Johann and the innkeeper stepped back, parting to allow the stranger access to the clock. Older than Herr Hoffel, the man had a wide girth that bespoke muscle in his earlier years and a mass of silver-gray beard that seemed to swallow his face. His eyes were a curious pale blue that Johann had seen only once before in the eggshells of a robin’s nest, formed in the eaves of the barn.

“Which clockmaker?” the man asked. His German, Johann could tell, was not quite native to the region but from the north, somewhere urban and cosmopolitan.

“Me,” Johann blurted. “That is, I made it myself.”

The stranger considered Johann for several seconds, not speaking, and Johann realized he had been expecting the name of one of the finer clockmaking houses. An odd expression crossed the man’s face, as if he doubted the truth of Johann’s words. Then he reached out, grazing the top of the clock with considerably more care than Herr Hoffel had done. Though his clothes were dusty from the road, his nails were trimmed and a band of solid gold marked the fourth finger of his right hand. But beneath were calluses that no amount of grooming could mask. Not a laborer’s hands, but hands that had known honest work. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the man murmured, more to himself than to the others.

“It’s called an anniversary clock,” Johann offered, the confidence and strength in his voice growing. “A new design from America. It only needs to be wound about every four hundred days.”

“How much?” the stranger asked.

Johann hesitated, resisting the temptation to raise his original price, lest Herr Hoffel think he was gouging his guests. “One hundred.”

“Now wait a minute,” Herr Hoffel interjected, his interest piqued by the competition.

The stranger turned to him. “Are you buying it?”

“I don’t—” Herr Hoffel faltered. “That is, the price—”

“The question is a simple one: yes or no?” Anger flicked across Herr Hoffel’s face at the audacity of the stranger using such a tone with him in his own inn, and for a moment Johann thought he would confront the man. But travelers were Hoffel’s stock in trade and word got around—an innkeeper reputed as rude would soon find his rooms empty.

“One hundred, then,” Herr Hoffel said, reaching for the till.

But the stranger was not finished. “One ten.” His eyes glinted, a seasoned trader bargaining for wares.

“One fifteen,” Herr Hoffel replied evenly. To him, the clock was still just a commodity. “Not a penny more.”

The stranger delivered the final blow. “One twenty.” A hand squeezed Johann’s throat, making it impossible to breathe. Did the man really mean to pay him such a sum?

There was a moment of hesitation. Would Herr Hoffel bid again in spite of himself? But the innkeeper’s shoulders slumped in defeat. The stranger reached into his jacket and pulled out a billfold, producing one hundred twenty marks. “You could have asked several times that,” he said, as he handed the money to Johann. “Never undersell yourself.”

Johann’s eyes darted to Herr Hoffel, wondering if he would protest, but the innkeeper shrugged and turned to the counter, busying himself with the ledger. Without another word, the stranger picked up the clock and carried it carefully from the room. Johann watched, feeling as though a part of himself was leaving too.

“Who was that?” he asked the innkeeper.

Herr Hoffel did not look up. “Just a boarder. Checked in last night, leaving today. Name is Rosenberg. Don’t know where he’s from. Hamburg maybe, or Berlin.”

Johann was seized with the urge to run after the stranger, find out where the man would be taking his clock. But it didn’t matter—he had his money. Without speaking further, he walked from the inn onto the street, making his way through the wagons and merchants.

Out of sight of the hotel, he opened his hand, half fearing that the bills would have disintegrated into dust, a figment of his imagination. But they were still there, one hundred and twenty marks, more money than he had ever seen at one time. It was enough to buy better passage on the ship, to get Rebecca out of steerage and into a real room where she could rest peacefully and look at the water. She would never let him spend it on that of course; despite her upbringing, she was exceedingly frugal and would insist that they save the money, pointing out the additional expenses they might encounter along the way, the unknown cost of living in America. They could argue about that on the train. He tucked the money back into his pocket and glanced furtively in each direction as if he expected to be accused of some wrongdoing, then hurried onto the road that led out of town before the stranger could change his mind and come after him.

An hour later he emerged on the far side of the forest. The sun was high in the late-morning sky now, warming the grass. He thought of the clock. Where was the man taking it? He imagined a home with a mantelpiece, tried to envision the people who would look at and admire it and take from it the cadence of their day. A piece of himself, going places he would never see.

As Johann reached the final hill, his gait grew light. He and Rebecca could move to America, away from the ghosts that haunted him here, from the hatred that seemed to lurk around every corner. He climbed the gentle slope, his stomach knotting with anticipation as it always did just before he saw his wife. Rebecca would be up, refreshed from sleep, hanging wash or working in the garden. Perhaps he would lure her from her morning chores back to the bed, celebrate by making love to her once more.

He reached the crest, surveying the house and gardens nestled in the dell below, but Rebecca was nowhere to be seen. In the house, surely. Maybe she had even begun to pack.

He opened the door to the cottage, smelling the smoke from the previous night’s fire that still lingered in the air. Rebecca had been up for some time, he could tell, from the way the freshly polished table gleamed, and from the basket of folded wash that had not been on the chair when he left. “Liebchen,” he called, but only the echo of his own voice rang back at him. He walked through to the bedroom, which was empty and still, the duvet pulled tight and neat. His heart skipped a little in a way he could not quite understand as he retraced his steps through the cottage and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He made his way around the back of the house to the barn, where she must be watering the mule. “Rebecca, you’ll never guess what—”

It was not until he reached the fence that he saw her, lying on the muddy ground of the chicken coop, body twisted, legs folded awkwardly in the wrong direction beneath her. A scream he did not recognize came from his throat as he tore open the gate and raced to her side, kneeling.

When he lifted her onto his lap, he first saw the blood, great puddles of it seeping through the back of her dress, mixing with the dirt. Had she fallen and hurt herself or had something broken inside her that caused her to collapse? “Rebecca …” He shook her as if to wake her from deep sleep, and her eyes rolled upward and her mouth opened, a fine thread of spittle running from cheek to chin. He lowered his hand but even before it reached her belly, he knew that it would be still, the gentle kicks he’d felt in recent weeks now gone.

He should not have left her alone, he berated himself. If he’d been here, he could have helped her, or perhaps prevented whatever had befallen her altogether. A great sob of grief tore through him then and he lay down on the sodden earth beside her as though it were their marriage bed, burying his nose in her sun-warmed hair, pressing against the growing coolness of her cheek. He followed her lifeless gaze to the sky as though searching for answers, wondering what to do.