Mama and Papa were otherwise preoccupied. Infighting. Game playing. Not a day passed without accusations. Arguments.
Eva, naked. The boys shouldn’t have seen her naked. Fritz held her tight, too tight. The boys shouldn’t have seen that or them necking. So life went on and with as much pretense and folly as ever.
Often the flat seemed cold. Too cold. And they would keep the windows shut. A woman with her figure Eva should’ve known her assets. Sometimes she became too comfortable. Didn’t she know what she was doing?
Sometimes Fritz transformed the shabbiness of the flat with flowers. But who were the flowers for? He felt that he had to forgive Pauline. And for what? The coldness, from being half there. But wasn’t he the one who was fiddling with the help? Their fussing became more of a problem. Here again the flowers were supposed to help.
Fritz’s voice scared them, though it would shut them up. Barked at his sons. Even during infancy, they seemed to him to scream on purpose. And they were supposed to be seen and not heard? And, and, and? Fritz and Pauline didn’t know what to do; so they largely left it up to Eva. Fritz required them to call him “sir.” “Yes, sir!” “No, sir! About face!”
Fritz would yell at them. Pauline would feed them chocolates. Eva gave them love, but that was never enough.
Papa, blemishes and all, he insisted that they mind him. Papa, they thought he was someone other than their father. Opa, not Papa. He never got on the floor to play with them. Papa needed to do a better job at home.
Papa! Attention!
Yes, sir!
Boys, take Eva your dirty diapers.
“Niki took my candy.”
“Karl!”
They rarely saw their mother. She would disappear during the day and generally wouldn’t return until after they were put to bed at night. Where did she go? Called it her Christian duty. Called it that. Did she ever grow tired of it? Tired of charity work? How many years did she give of herself? Sacrificed to be fulfilled. Christian duty that called for action. Even before the war ended social workers like her were seen in and around Vienna.
“Pauline?”
Silence.
“Pauline, where were you?”
Silence.
Pauline, could never have been a saint. No matter how hard she tried, she could never have been.
Eva on the other hand. Relieved by Eva of the burdens of child rearing, Fritz and Pauline counted their blessings. Hail Mary Mother of God, what do you mean she was a Jew? How could they tell that she was a Jew? Naked Jew! How about that?
How could they be sure that no one saw them? What about the boys? What about them?
“Please be less rigid with the boys,” Pauline pleaded. Eva was loyal. She tried to do her best. She even deserved applause. Couldn’t expect perfection. Perfection had many faces. Shown restraint. Held captured. On a tight leash, the boys couldn’t get very far. Oh, but they had wonderful toys. Ya, but when did they get to play with them? Karl and Niki ran wild when they got the chance.
The flat became the boys’ prison. Only on sunny days did the rooms escape the darkness of dungeons. The hellions would try to get out. They would run around and scream, and there was no one around to prove that there were cracks in Eva’s armor.
How as toddlers they certainly weren’t angels but ate up the slightest attention. So they didn’t crawl before they walked. Their smiles brought frowns; and their laughs, sharp looks. Did they deserve all of those spankings? They just acted out more. The fact that the boys never gained the attention that they wanted only made them act out more. However, the more they acted out in one way, the more their father pushed them in the other direction. He didn’t have any patience with them.
Meanwhile Fritz would return home to discover that he’d been liberated by his wife, or so it seemed when he discovered that she was gone again. He had to have seen it. And the young maid who they hired and was certainly there in his wife’s place had to have seen it too. And also the little children who were already in bed, and then were asleep and were never heard. And the neighbors below them, and who felt it was their business to keep track of everything; and the couple across the hall, and so forth. And it seemed as if it also went for everyone living then on Stoudgasse.
Pauline had her own key. Fritz would watch her come and go. As a product of the age, the Pauline he knew couldn’t be blamed. To Fritz women were a mystery, and were never understood, and would never be. By nature they were erotic creatures; and in his mind they couldn’t always help themselves.
Randy Ford
