With Paul in charge of collecting the coal and finding new customers, the business began to prosper. He drove a full cart from the stores on the banks of the Isar to the house where Klaus and Hulbert-for that is what the mute assistant was called-were finishing their unloading. First he would rub the horses down and give them water in a bucket. Then he’d change the team and harness up the relief animals to the cart he had just brought.
Then he would give his companions a hand so they could dispatch the empty cart as quickly as possible. It was difficult to begin with, but as he got used to it and as his shoulders broadened, Paul was able to haul the enormous baskets around. Once he was done delivering coal at an estate, he’d gee up the horses and head back to the stores, humming happily as the others made their way to another house.
Ilse, meanwhile, had found some chores to do in the boardinghouse where they were lodged, and in exchange the landlady gave them a small discount on their rent-which was just as well, since Paul’s wage was barely enough for the two of them.
“I wish I could make it lower, Herr Reiner,” the landlady would say, “but it’s not like I really need a lot of help.”
Paul would nod. He knew that his mother wasn’t helping all that much. Other tenants in the boardinghouse had whispered that sometimes Ilse would stop, lost in thought halfway through sweeping a corridor or peeling a potato, holding on to the broom or the knife and staring into the void.
Concerned, Paul spoke to his mother, who denied it. When he insisted, Ilse ended up admitting that it was true in part.
“I may have been a little distracted lately. Too much going on in my head,” she said, stroking his face.
This will all pass eventually, thought Paul. We’ve been going through a lot.
However, he suspected there was something else to it, something that his mother was hiding. He was still determined to find out the truth about his father’s death, but he didn’t know where to begin. It would be impossible to approach the Schroeders, at least while they could rely on the support of the judge. They could have Paul thrown in prison at any moment, and that was a risk he couldn’t take, especially not with his mother in the state she was in.
At night the question gnawed at him. At least he could let his thoughts wander without worrying about waking his mother. They now slept in separate rooms, for the first time in his life. Paul had moved to one on the second floor, toward the rear of the building. It was smaller than Ilse’s, but at least he could enjoy his privacy.
“No girls in the room, Herr Reiner,” the landlady would say at least once a week. And Paul, who had the same imagination and the same needs as any healthy sixteen-year-old boy, found the time to let his thoughts wander in that direction.
Over the months that followed, Germany reinvented itself, just as the Reiners had done. A new government signed the Treaty of Versailles in late June 1919, signaling Germany’s acceptance of sole responsibility for the war and committing to colossal sums in economic reparation. On the streets, the humiliation to which the Allies were subjecting the country produced a buzz of peaceful indignation, but on the whole people breathed more easily for a time. In mid-August, a new constitution was ratified.
Paul began to feel that his life was falling back into some order. A precarious order, but order nonetheless. Gradually he began to forget the mystery surrounding his father’s death, whether because of the difficulty of the task, his fear of confronting it, or his growing obligation to take care of Ilse.
One day, however, in the middle of a morning rest-the very time of day when he’d gone to ask for work-Klaus pushed away his empty beer mug, balled up his sandwich wrapper, and brought the young man back down to earth.
“You seem like a smart kid, Paul. How come you’re not studying?”
“Just because of… life, the war, people,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“There’s nothing to be done about life or the war, but people.. . you can always strike back at people, Paul.” The coal man exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke from his pipe. “Are you the type to strike back?”
All of a sudden Paul felt frustrated and powerless. “And what if you know that someone’s struck you, but you don’t know who it is or what they’ve done?” he asked.
“Well, then you leave no stone unturned until you’ve found out.”