Herr Miihlstein must have thought he was alone, bent over his table to perform some delicate task in only his undershirt and shorts. With a small brush he blacked the neck of a violin, pausing every few strokes to sharpen the bristles between his lips. Jake should have left the man alone, but he was fascinated by the attic. Beside Miihlstein’s tools and worktable there were projects of all kinds scattered about. Plaster models. Tangles of copper wire bent and joined to look like flowers. Papier-maché dolls hung on string from the ceiling. Sheets of corkboard had been installed on the walls of the dormer where they lived, where crosshatched prints from the ladies’ section of the paper were pinned, popular songs and cartoons. Bits of English primers too.
It was Anna, Miihlstein’s third daughter, who dipped into these arts to decorate the scrupulous attic. She was too sick to go to school. This is what she did instead.
Jake leaned further up the stairs and caused a riser to squeak. Miihlstein noticed him then. “Come and see,” Miihlstein said, smiling as he set down his work. He waved Jake to a sofa. On the table a portable burner was heating a teakettle.
“It’s hot,” Miihlstein said.
Jake regretted coming up. It was warm outside. Spring came too late, then burned off too soon, and it was near sweltering in the dormer. He’d wanted to invite the father out to the porch to enjoy the evening and a beer, but now was stuck as Miihlstein poured tea from the kettle.
Miihlstein was peculiarly formal about serving, his elbows held high, still in his underclothes. “There’s no cream,” he apologized, pouring his own tea. He reclined then, crossed one leg over the other, and nodded to drink. His glasses kept fogging over. Jake was embarrassed for the man, but he took the tea and sat back to watch it steam. His hands were sore from pushing the wheelbarrow. He had to palm the dainty cup from the bottom.
When Jake asked Miihlstein if he liked it here in Omaha, Miihlstein said it was suitable. Although it troubled him that he couldn’t find an opera house. “There isn’t an opera house,” Jake explained. “Just small theaters. The big ones you see downtown, those are movie palaces.”
“No? When I agreed to come, they told me there was an opera house.”
“There used to be something, a prairie one, but it burned up. They rebuilt it,” Jake said with some hope, “but now they’re going to tear that down too because it’s old-fashioned. I’m sure that’s what they were talking about, whoever told you that.”
Miihlstein asked if Jake was from Omaha. Jake said where he was from. “But still Nebraska, yeah?” Miihlstein asked. “That’s close to here?”
“A day away, depending.”
A drunk feeling covered Jake’s mind, so he set his cup back on the table.
“Is that brandy in the tea?” he asked.
“Wine.”
Both of them laughed.
“I don’t know you,” Jake said.
“No. We aren’t acquainted.”
“I don’t even know your given name, Herr Miihlstein. Yeah? Where are your trousers? I’d like to know.”
“It’s hot. I can’t take the tea otherways.”
Miihlstein glanced away, apparently more annoyed than embarrassed. Jake waited for him to say something more about it, but he didn’t, just bounced his foot. His legs furred over with hair.
“Where exactly are you from?” Jake asked. “I heard it different ways from your kids just now. Vienna? Lviv? Warsaw?”
“We’re getting serious now,” Miihlstein laughed.
He coached his kids to be coy like this too, Jake realized, as a way to protect themselves.
“We were in New York,” Miihlstein said. “Before that, Europe.”
“Yeah? Was your wife with you then?”
“She wasn’t in New York. Is that it you’re asking? She died before.”
Jake said he was sorry to hear that. He asked if the kids got into trouble much, not having their mother around. Something Jake knew about, of course, his own mother having died when he was a boy. Lucky Jake.
Miihlstein sat back and looked to the rafters. “Ah. It’s complicated. There are many ways to think about the feelings on the children’s mother. There’s what science has to say. What Freud said of mothers. Jung and the collective memory. Symphonies in the key of D minor.”
“It isn’t everything,” Jake interrupted. “Not having a mother.”
Jake and Miihlstein sat back to watch each other. It was only when Jake lifted his teacup from the table to drink that he remembered Miihlstein was in shorts and undershirt, and how this made his glasses and mustache look funny.
“Tell me about your mother,” Miihlstein said.
Jake took his time to remember her. “She pushed me off her lap to fluff her skirts when it was hot. There was a hook-shaped scar on her knee. She’d cut it on a broken soap dish. She wrote all the time. In diaries, journals, on whatever was handy. Her hair turned blond in the summer. I was there when she died. A little older than Karel, but not by much. I don’t know what else to tell. Twelve years isn’t very long to have your mother.”
It surprised Jake to say all that. He hadn’t said more than fifty words on the subject since she’d died, and he hadn’t mentioned her at all after he pummeled that boy who defamed her.
“Can I trust you?” Miihlstein asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you a liar? Is that the right word I’m saying? You’re a liar?”
“I’m not.”
Miihlstein frowned. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Would you keep track of my boy?”
“Karel? How do you mean?”
“Keep him out of trouble. Do you understand? There’s these lousy boys he runs with from his school. Your mother died. So you understand.”
“You can trust me,” Jake said. He knew he was making a mistake. “I’ll take care of Karel.”
“Good.” Miihlstein refilled their cups. He sat back to sip, recrossed his legs. “I feel better. You are a good person, Jakob. A decent one, is that right? This is something, I feel, people must say to you often. Yeah?”
Karel’s shoes were still up the wire. He could see them from the dormer window. “Let Maria buy you new ones,” Anna pleaded with him. But Karel didn’t want new shoes, he wanted his current ones to not be hanging above the street. His sisters teased him for being a stubborn brat, but he’d have rather walked barefoot than have an old woman bail him out of trouble. “There’s nothing spoiled about bare feet,” he said. Maria agreed. If Karel wanted to ruin his feet, that was up to him.
His feet suffered from his preference. The soles cut by rocks and broken glass. The skin blistered, black and dry, the nails of his big toes gone ingrown. On the porch in the evening, his feet looked even worse than Jake’s.