Lukas - 3. Chapter 3

“Later on, when the ship had left port and we were sailing away, Rena and I talked about it.”

“Yes, I remember that” she responded from her chair next to him, looking at her brother.

“You were really down, Hansl. Opa and Oma were dealing with the ticket agent, and I looked back from the line and saw what happened. After you ran up and joined us we had to keep up with Oma and Opa and Fexl and with all the tumult of leaving the port we didn’t get a chance to think about anything but getting on the boat and finding our room. Then, later on, as the sea was pretty calm, we sat on a bench near the bow, watching the water and the clouds go by.”

“I felt like I was so clueless, so stupid. I just had no idea.” Hans said, shaking his head.

“The first thing I realized,” he continued, “Is that he was really looking out for me the entire time, and again, I suspected absolutely nothing.”

“When I thought he was indifferent to me when talking to The Bully in the desk in front of me, he was getting between that kid and me, keeping him away. He didn’t need to stand behind the guy, but did, and in retrospect, it was awkward how he stood there - his own desk was over on the other side of the classroom. But he made sure to position himself right between us. Or, I should really say, right in front of me.”

“And I also remember the many times that when there was a threatening crowd around my desk that he would just happen to call out for everyone to join him for soccer practice, and as a popular jock, the weaker dumber one would naturally follow along behind him.

“This isn’t to mention him leaving me the math notes or blowing the chess match. And probably things that I’m not even aware of.”

“I tried to lighten things up, saying that such a good-looking nice guy was wasted on you,” Aunt Rena added. But Hans didn’t react.

Hans didn’t mention how The Jock seemed to be shaking when he wrapped his hands around The Jock’s waist to measure him for the suit. For a guy that appeared eternally self-assured and confident, he seemed to suddenly be sweating and anxious. At the time, Hans thought that maybe he wasn’t confident in Han’s ability to measure accurately and felt just a bit insulted.

Hans now felt differently about this interaction but kept this observation to himself.

“You know where I was most wrong?” Hans asked, looking at his son.

“Where?” Lukas asked.

“I thought that I was a meaningless cypher to him, that he never thought about me at all. But truth be told, I don’t think that he ever stopped thinking about me. Not that I’m anything special. But I was special to him. And I realize now that he would have done anything for me. I think that he loved me.”

“Did you think that because of the kiss?” Lukas asked.

“Well, the kiss meant he was a homosexual, of course, but did THAT mean that he loved me? No, of course not!” he said emphatically, answering his own question.

“Do you know what told me that he loved me? It wasn’t because he tried to kiss me. Kissing is easy.” Hans said and folded his hands in front of himself in the way he did when he was confident, and sometimes, Lukas thought, most stubborn and sure of himself.

“It was when he carried buckets of my stinking shit upstairs from the basement. When he hid me and Opa in his house. When he was able to somehow get himself on a train with us, at great risk, to make sure that we got to Hamburg. That’s love. The other stuff, that’s sex maybe, but it’s certainly not love.”

Lukas let the words sink in until he asked his dad, “Was his name Severin? I’ve only known that my name comes from a family friend back in Vienna.”

Hans shook his head and responded. “Yes. Severin Wagner. Severin, your middle name.”

“Your mother and I had a deal,” he continued. “I would work and she would run our family. And run it she did. She was the best mother and wife that a man could ever want,” he said, wiping his eye.

“But she knew that story. I agreed that she would run the house and be the master of our daily lives, and it was the best decision I ever made. But the one thing that I insisted on was that we reserve the middle name of Severin for a son. And she agreed.”

“It was the last demand that she ever allowed me,” he said to laughs around the room.

                                 ***

His Dad went on to tell them how he had searched for Severin after the war. By this time, he had become an American citizen on his 21st birthday and was on his way to boot camp three days later. Because of his language skills, he was recruited to Camp Ritchie, which trained bi-lingual and other skilled service members for intelligence, interrogation and other specialized occupations for the war effort.

After doing favors for some of the ‘brass,’ as he called the more senior military officers, he was allowed to take a jeep for one week to head the 250 miles or so to Vienna from his base in Munich.

The devastation there wasn’t nearly as bad as in the big German cities, but he found Severin’s more-or-less intact house occupied by a refugee family from a more damaged part of town. Only a few soldiers had yet returned to Vienna from prison camps, and the ones who had returned didn’t know anything, or at least claimed that they didn’t.

With his network of Camp Ritchie friends, he searched the fragmented and incomplete rosters of the various prison camps, including those in the British and French zones. But the hunt came up cold each time.

He was almost too scared to think about Severin being captured by the Russians, but there was really no way to even ask that question. There was also the very real possibility that he was dead, like millions of others.

After Hans came home to the states, he still wrote letters, both to the government and to former neighbors, but the government had no information and the neighbors’ letters were returned as address unknown or he heard nothing at all. After a while there seemed to be no point left in trying.

                                 ***

Lukas’ imagination, however, was piqued. Maybe he could try? If he ever found this guy, his dad would be so happy.

But that was crazy, he told himself. As his dad had mentioned, millions of German soldiers were killed in the war, especially during the last, desperate months. And, as his dad mentioned to him later, a lot of the ones who did survive were damaged people. They had been changed, and usually for the worse. And maybe this guy went back into the closet. In that case, the last person that Severin would ever want to hear from would be Hans Richter.

There was, however, one other thing in Lukas’ life that might give him the chance to find out.

About a month later, as the summer was in full swing, Lukas approached his father.

“Hey dad,” he said after dinner as they were cleaning up, “what would you think if I took some time off, maybe deferred my first year of law school?”

His dad kept moving plates into the dishwasher but looked up at his son. “Why would you want to do that?”

Lukas looked down at his dad. “You know, I kind of feel like I’ve been on the hamster wheel for the last few years, especially with the law school application process and just all the work to get grades, recommendations, all of that stuff.”

“And…” his father asked.

“To be honest, the gay part has been hard. I’m so grateful for everyone and all, I really am. But going through all that on top of school, and everything else…I feel burned out, Dad. I’m a little worried that If I start school again so soon that I’ll just run out of gas during the first year.”

“I had no idea you felt that way, Luka,” his dad responded, turning toward his son. “You seemed to have energy for so much stuff. But I have to say it would be hard to keep up the pace of what you’ve been doing. And that’s not including having to go through everything with coming out.”

“Do you have a plan for what you would do?” he then asked.

“I don’t think I could veg for year, so I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Yes?” his father replied, finally standing up from loading the dishwasher.

“Well, I did have one idea,” he said before pausing. “And you might think that this is crazy. But I’ve thought a lot about your friend from school, Severin, and I was thinking of maybe going to Europe to, um… look for him, or at least figure out what ever happened to him. I think it would get my mind off of things but still give me some purpose.”

“I know it’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. You tried at what might have been the best time to search. But I wouldn’t mind spending some time on that task myself. I know I’m probably not the best candidate to do this…”

“Not the best candidate? Just because you’ve never been to Austria, not even to Europe and you don’t read, write or speak German,” his father interrupted, chuckling. It was a reaction that wasn’t all that encouraging, but it didn’t slam the door shut, either.

“Well, I know it’s a stretch, but I just wanted to throw it out there to see what you thought of it. In any case, I really would like to defer admission and take a year off. I just need the break.”

“That part we can agree on, Luka. Why don’t we at least assume that you’re going to do that and you can think more about what you could get out of that year. And I also agree that you’ve got to do something productive.”

                                 ***

After what seemed like mountains of paperwork and calls to New York, Lukas was able to obtain his deferral, giving him the respite that he needed. If he had been fired-up and enthusiastic about law school, he might have tried to power through and get done with it. But his other concern, brewing doubts about a career in law, would be something else that he’d try to deal with in the next year.

The more he thought of it, he didn’t doubt that the idea of looking for Severin seemed ridiculous, and must have seemed even more so to his dad, who did, of course, have the ideal combination of language skills, connections and some access to the administrative arms of the allied powers to help in a search. But after visiting the library and talking more with his dad, it became clearer how difficult it was to track anyone down after the war, even a solder with a presumed military paper trail.

“Luka,” his father said to him one day after dinner as they sat at the table. There were no relatives around. It was a weekday evening and Lukas had prepared dinner for the two of them after this dad returned from his rounds at the hospital. “You know, I don’t think that there is anything there to find in looking for Severin. As I’ve mentioned, there’s a good chance that he’s dead, or if he’s not dead, he could be…changed.”

“And on top of that, there’s always the small chance that I’m wrong about him being a homosexual. But even if I’m right, there’s a chance that he’s gone ‘back in the closet,’ as they say, and wouldn’t want to admit any connection,” he continued.

“Yeah, I think that you’re probably correct on all counts, dad,” Lukas responded. “But maybe I treat it like a myth, I look for the ‘Holy Grail,’ as the medieval legends say. Maybe I never find him, but I do, you know, find out other things along the way.”

His Dad looked down at his empty plate, then up at his son, turned his head in the quizzical look that his dad sometimes had when he was thinking hard on something.

“You know, that’s an interesting way of thinking about it. It kind of gives you a principle and a goal that you believe in. You’ll work hard at it, but even if you’re not successful, you’ll maybe have learned something. Especially about yourself.”

                                 ***

By late July, Lukas found himself 4,000 miles away in Vienna, registering at a pension in the First ‘Gemeindebezirk,’ or District. It was all of the area inside the Ring, the circular boulevard around the heart of the city that was created in the 19th century after the removal of the former city fortifications. His dad encouraged him to be as central as possible, even though it was rather expensive, but he found a modest accommodation that worked fine for an undemanding young, single, college graduate traveling alone. The day after arrival he quickly enrolled in a language class.

The pension wasn’t in the 4th district, where his father grew up, but his dad felt that Lukas needed to be near public resources like libraries and transportation rather than the old neighborhood itself. Besides, he had learned later that Severin’s family had moved during the war and that his own apartment block had been bombed and the building destroyed.

He would give himself until October 1 to find out what he could and then return to America.

As a first step, he looked in the Vienna phone book. Wagner was not exactly a rare surname in the German-speaking world, so the book was full of them, and there were quite a few S Wagners, and even some Severin Wagners. With the help of a sympathetic language school tutor, he contacted the ‘Severin Wagners’ that were listed. It wasn’t completely unknown to be asked this kind of question in post-war Europe, so they usually didn’t get the quick disconnect that one would have expected in the United States.

“Sorry, not me. I wasn’t even born then.”

“My late husband was in the war, but he was from Linz.”

“That’s not me. I didn’t move here until the 1960s.”

“No, not me, I’m 81, too old to be the person that you’ve looking for.”

“I’m not from Vienna, but there are a lot of us here, I even saw one on TV once,” another replied, chuckling.

The last one was intriguing, but really didn’t seem to mean anything. The tutor didn’t know of any famous local TV personalities with that name, it could have been just another random Severin Wagner who was at the scene of a traffic accident.

While spending most of the days on his search, he also took it as an opportunity to check out the local gay nightlife, if in the most tentative way. Not yet feeling confident, he didn’t approach anyone at his language school, but he knew the word ‘schwul’ meant gay and scoured free newspaper racks for something that maybe had the word.

He finally found an area with a few bars, that ironically enough was not too far from his dad’s old neighborhood. Lukas didn’t drink much, and the bars seemed intimidating to him in any case. But he did find some dance clubs and tried one out on a Saturday night.

He hadn’t yet even been to a club in the United States, but he had been to straight clubs and he was struck how similar it seemed, except that it was of course almost all guys dancing with each other. Even the music was pretty much the same, but maybe with more Donna Summer. He was completely naïve about his own good looks and so was surprised at how many guys approached him. He just thought that they were all just being friendly, though some perhaps a little too much so, as they often said something to him softly in German as while he gently pushed their probing hands off his chest or off his ass.

At least half of them did speak some English, one of them very well, so he did strike up a conversation with that guy. Lukas told him that he was taking some time off from school and was here for a few months, checking out the city. He didn’t mention anything about his dad living there, or the other reason for his visit, which would inevitably raise sensitive questions about why his family left in the 1930s and the inevitable conclusions that they would draw from it. A break from school was good enough.

The guy turned out to be very helpful and confirmed to him that he had found the right neighborhood. His name was Max, and he was a veritable fount of knowledge about Gay Vienna, as he was probably a couple of years older than Lukas but had been out since ‘I was a baby,’ he said to him.

“I see that you have met some of the predators here,” Max told him.

Lukas laughed. “Well, I guess you could call them that. I just thought that they were being welcoming and friendly, kind of local Austrian hospitality. ‘Ein herzlich Willkomen,’ (A Hearty Welcome) as I think you say here.”

Max spit out his drink and coughed, violently patting his own chest. He smiled after a sputtering recovery. “I guess you could call it that. But be careful that you could get, how to you say in English, ‘too much of a good thing, yes!” as they both laughed.

It was nice getting to know at least one gay guy here, making friends was always a good thing but he never contemplated getting into a relationship since he had no intention of staying in the country. He missed his whole family, especially his dad and dedicated Sunday evenings to writing letters and postcards to everyone. And once every few weeks, they scheduled a phone call where he could talk to everyone.

The calls always ended with a progress report on the hunt, and it was always the same.

“Well, I know that he existed from a source besides yourself,” Lukas began. “Today, I went to what I the think was the National Archives office to see what I could find and one of the folks from the language school came as a friendly guide. Everybody speaks too fast for me, but I’m getting to be able to read things. I found the name of a Severin Wagner from the district that you mentioned, same age, drafted in 1939 and sent almost immediately to I guess what in English we would call Boot Camp.”

“That’s interesting, in the sense that he clearly didn’t volunteer,” his dad replied.

“Yes, I’m not quite sure I understood the documents correctly, but it was likely that he was forced in, but so were lots of guys.”

“Was there anything after that?”

“Yes, there was one more thing, it was just a fragment, and partially burned but it gave a unit number that he was assigned to around the spring of 1945, assuming it’s the same Severin Wagner. But it had the same military ID number.”

“That’s’ something! his dad replied. Tell me what it is. They have a lot of German records here in the States and maybe I can figure it out.”

During their next call a few weeks later, his dad sounded somber after Lukas shared his regular update, which had virtually no new information.

“I found out about that unit that Severin was in,” his dad said.

“And?”

“It was what was called a ‘Strafbataillon,’ a kind of punishment unit. They were filled with prisoners, mostly petty criminals, military malcontents, people thought of as politically unreliable and therefore quite expendable. They were ‘cannon fodder,’ as they would say in the American army.

“How would he have gotten into one?”

“I can’t imagine him as a thief or crook, but I can see him as someone who wasn’t exactly a good Nazi. But it’s hard to tell. There were lots of ways to get into one of these units: you could even get there just if your commanding officer took a particular dislike to you,” he added. “Or maybe even a homosexual, if someone wanted to seriously harass you.”

“But it gives me even less hope that he’s still alive. Especially in the East, they were sent into impossible situations, like as rear-guard units to protect the ‘true’ soldiers who were on the retreat while pointing guns at them to make sure that they stayed behind. So, it just makes it even less likely that he survived.”

Lukas sighed. “Well, I’ve only got a couple weeks left. I’ll dig up as much as I can. But I should probably go ahead and make my plane reservation now.”

“That sounds good, son. We can’t wait to see you,” his father answered.

Lukas had exhausted every avenue that he, and his dad, could think of. Going through military and civilian archives to trace him or even his parents, looking through old newspapers in microfilms and visiting archives throughout the city. He even stopped in Severin’s old neighborhood but virtually no one was remaining from the pre-war time.

During his last week in town with his self-imposed deadline of October 1 approaching, he had one far-fetched thought. It was not likely to shed light on anything, but he did enjoy visiting the National Library, a colossal pile inside the Ring and not far from his Pension. It would be the last library that he would visit, and its appearance and character were completely appropriate for the importance of the event.

He remembered that his dad described Severin’s invention of a tunnel boring machine. He had heard that the Austrians were especially adept at this, as they and the Swiss had a great need for tunnels in their mountainous countries and even exported their expertise around the world.

He went to the Business desk, and, as usual, found a librarian who spoke perfect English, and he explained that he was looking for the directors and officers of companies in Austria that did tunnel boring.

“I have a colleague who is more familiar with this area, let me fetch her, if you don’t mind, please,” the librarian responded.

She returned with an older woman, probably a contemporary of his father. “You’re looking for the administration of the larger tunnel boring companies, correct?” she asked.

“Yes, please. If you have any kind of direct information I can go through and look for the names, but I just need a place to start.’

“I am in charge of the industrial section of the collection so I think that I can help you. There are three large companies in Austria. These are the Annual Reports, as I think you call them, of the three companies. You can take them to any table in the reading room here,” she said, nodding to the cavernous space behind him, “but nowhere else in the library. And can we collect your library card, please?” she asked.

The card was one of his first investments when he came to town, and it was a ritual that he was used to.

He scanned the first report, but no names appeared familiar, same as the second one, which was very heavy. This final report was his last chance, and his eyes opened wider when he saw the name of the Company.

‘Wagner Tunnelvortriebmaschine,’ or WTVM. Is this just a coincidence, he asked himself? After all, the name Wagner is all over the place here.

He looked the names of the officers of the company and translated the title as, “Severin Wagner, President and Founder.’

This was the closest that he had ever come to any solid information. There was picture of him on the page with a sort of President’s Report, and he looked roughly the same age as his dad. But that didn’t really mean anything as he had no idea what he looked like, though the guy wasn’t the roly-poly type that seemed to be typical for business leaders in the German-speaking world.

He approached the business librarian who fortunately, was still talking to the first librarian that he had met.

“Excuse me,” he said, “Is there a way to get more information on this person Severin Wagner, President of WTVM?”

“Hmmm…” she responded, her hand covering her mouth, eyes trained on the book, deep in thought.” It seemed like she stood there for a long time before she looked up at him and said, “just a moment” and turned and walked to the back room.

About 5 minutes later, she returned with what looked like a small exhibition catalog. “This catalogue is from a government trade show a few years ago and was published in English for foreigners. It has the histories of many of these companies and most are very old, 19th century. But WTVM is one of the ‘newer’ stars, which means it was post-war, you might find what you’re looking for here.

“Vielen Dank! (many thanks!) Lukas replied in German before quickly turning around and taking the book back to the table.

There were about 100 pages, so lots of information to sort through. But he finally found the page he was looking for: “WTVM was founded by Severin Wagner, a transplanted German who came to Vienna in 1938 with his railroad manager father. He always had an interest in mechanical contraptions and created the basic ideas for their current machine while still in High School. An avid soccer player and fan and also a hiker…’

He was shaking in the chair as stared at the page. He could hardly contain himself as he ran to the copy machine, placed that page on the glass frame, put in the coin with his trembling hand, and pressed the button.