Saga Of *Gelnhausen - 1. Chapter 1

"Gut morgen," the young day spoke without needlessness of human
syllable, and neither the new bottles nor steins - the beer glasses -
made a sound, cradled by fresh sawdust in wooden crates carried by
the cart rattling at a stolid walk over cobblestones cheeking skyward
in the narrow street finding its way through medieval lingering;
the cart-drawing horse lipping her bit, head bobbing in the
damp air as her master, seeing too many carts and people coming his
way, reined her leftward onto the pedestrian path of bricks following
the street winding with ancient purpose beside the cart, horse and
her master passing through the arched gate under the medieval tower,
its stucco lightly off-colored by moisture in the air;
the cart, horse and master steadily moving toward the bottom of
old town watched by white-stuccoed and brown-beamed angularity of
houses,
bells of the church to the north ringing 7 o`clock: "Gut morgen,
gut morgen, und gut morgen,"
the horse, beginning more to awaken, snorting, pricking up her
ears in idle curiosity over hundts sniffing along the street, a
squealing schwein or two escaping from backyard pens in an effort to
avoid promise of future carving into ham, bacon, and rendering into
lard;
the horse, ripened by age nicht im sehr gut health but still
willing of spirit, still able of bone, marrow, blood, heart and
muscle to perform her duties for her master wrapping his scarf more
tightly against the breeze rising from the previous night's
feathering of miniscule edelweiss-water-crystals of early March
embracing the open bosom of barren-branch-smoked hills to the east,
north and northwest;
the cart, horse and her master in their business of the week's
delivery of various glassware to private customers, to bier hauses,
apothecary shops and other places of commerce;
the master of horse gently tugging on the reins, though the
animal knew the stop - the morning's last - as well as her name,
while the master, equally by habit, called out, "Halten sie; gut,
ja," climbing down as Herr Jacob stepped from his apothecary
shop: "Gut morgen. So early, ja? You'll die an early death, mein
freunde,"
"Nein, nein," the craftsman replied, with the softness of urgent
focus,
"Nein? Ach, ja!" Herr Jacob chuckled, "But of the bottles you
have, das morgen, I'll take twenty of the usual sizes; you know
them,"
and the craftsman sorted his wares, carefully placing them in
Herr Jacob's box,
"Danke schoene, I'll credit them to your bill, mein freunde,"
the apothecary said,
"Ja, bitte schoene," the craftsman responded as he mounted his
cart: "Danke, und wiedersehn,"
"Wiedersehn," - and Herr Jacob scanned the mist-enshrouded
woods across the street before turning into his shop with his box,
now weightier with new and clinking bottles, into which he'd measure
the secrets of his herbs, other chemicals and compounds;
though, now, the other craftsman had turned his cart and
enlivened horse toward home and the shop behind the house, glancing
to the right across the square at the other church where yesterday
morning he'd attended service with his frau, two dochters and three
sohnes, the two youngest of whom, Jorg and Karl, at nine and eleven,
liked charging about the yard, house and street in front, pretending
to be knights brave and noble of the Great Barbarossa's crusade, or
tickled the air with giggles while trying to trick Hannah, their
older sister, too wise of years and experience,
instead, chasing them into the backyard and scolding them like a
younger version of her mutter because of chores Karl and Jorg needed
doing, and it was almost time for school;
though, at the moment, their fadder was intent upon further
matters of the day, unharnessing the cart and rubbing down, then
feeding the horse in the small stable before stepping next to it into
his shop and casting a quick look around, opening the door of the
furnace to check the temper of its flame;
ja, for it was time for his work of glassmaking, all he'd ever
known as with his forefathers for generations (and some of them born
in der glashaus);
his given name Hans, surnamed Gunkel, meaning distaff like
those used by masters of another craft to spin yarn, much, it seemed,
as time-threads were spun for weaving into the fabric of circumstance
for him,
and Hans feeling uncertain, whether happy or wary of fortune,
with survival wrung from flame through pores, though a steady
livelihood, it was true,
and, while his fellow-town folk always needed glasses, bottles
and other products of his skill, they never needed more enough soon
enough, and Gelnhausen was small;
too, his Magdalina was ill,
oh, the many trips to Herr Jacob's shop, ja, for medicine which
seemed to help so little, her chronic coughing never seeming to
improve despite the best of Herr Jacob and Herr Doktor Gutzman trying
first, this, then that, clucking in exasperation over less-than-
satisfactory results of their endeavors,
with Frau Elizabeth suffering in silence, pained the more to see
the grief it caused her husband to look into Magdalina's pale, thin
face, even more when he pondered the strange idea held by Frau Eva,
up the street, that "Der Teufel', the devil, was always watching him"
as though through a window, since "Hans was a glassmaker,"
"Always, always watching" as if with a curse,
while other friends comforted Hans and Elizabeth by insisting
that "Frau Eva had always been a little crazy mit the head since
losing her husband fifteen years earlier,"
always muttering strange, even mysterious things as she tottered
about the streets with a broom, and with possessed fury sweeping the
doorsteps of houses not her own;
Ja, maybe she was a little crazy, or maybe she was Der Teufel's
fraulein - there was a thought! - which Hans hadn't time to consider
as he worked, scarcely daring to indulge conscious pride or pleasure
in his mastery of transforming his knowledge, his life into the
transitory glow of viscous heat which he molded and remolded with the
shapes, curves, the lines and muscular character of his hands through
his tools,
occasionally pausing to straighten his back and give it some
relief while wondering where Willem was - his son no longer in school
at seventeen because his help was needed in the shop - without Hans
allowing himself the luxury of pondering where his eldest was before
bending to his work once more;
the atmosphere and very attitude of his shop alive with ever-
present flame, in his furnace, in his determination to transmute
daemons of heat into a worthy living, first, for his family, then for
himself - relieved when Willem's shadow fell across the door: "Ich
bin hier, papa,"
"Ja, gut. I checked the furnace twenty minutes ago, but do it
again,"
and Willem leaned down, peering into the heat as though into his
future, taking shovel in hand and stoking it until his father
said, "It is enough, mein sohne,"
Willem then laying the shovel aside, standing ready and watchful
of the moments when papa needed him to hold this and that, to hand
him this or that tool by way of long-practiced communication passing
back and forth like an unspoken code of stern affection threading
through many generations, from father to the eldest fruit of loins;
"Ja, Willem was ein gut boy, by god's holy grace,"
perhaps a miracle because "if a father committed any sin, wasn't he
at risk of Der Teufel taking his eldest, like the angel of death the
night before the Exodus in Egypt as told by sacred writ?"
though Hans wasn't sure about all that, not being theologically
learned, while often pursued by strange, veiled dreams in which he
heard dark hints never explained by his grandpa, Samuel, before
Samuel died when Hans was twelve and old enough to be troubled by,
but not understand mysterious matters surrounding Samuel's gross
gross mutter, Anna Elizabetha, maiden-named Steinberger,
and Hans sensing ominous shadows of suggestion when walking past
old Herr Heinrich and Herr Gunther drinking in front of the tavern,
never sure he cared to know whether or not they referred to him
when muttering "gypsy" and "Juden", much like the two times a year
earlier he'd overheard Samuel and grandma Gertl furtively discussing
Samuel's gross papa, nicknamed "ein schwarzkopf": Ja, "he of the
dark head,"
all of which Hans tried, but was never able to put entirely
from mind, a perturbation of spirit which flamed anew when it seemed
Frau Eva tried cursing him and his family with her evil notions about
the devil "always watching him";
But maybe there was escape, at least for Willem,
"Ja, he sometimes made mistakes, but he was still a boy, and
wouldn't the mistakes of youth be overlooked, if not forgiven, as
long as Willem only occasionally was misled before siring children?"
"Ja, Gott im himmel be willing!"
"Besides, he loved his sisters, brothers, mother and obeyed his
parents,"
"And why should he suffer because of Hungarian gypsies in his
family's past, whose sin had been seeking improved circumstances in
Germany so many years ago"? as Hans had long deduced,
and down the corridors of memory, he could feel the
darkness: "Gypsy!"
even more could sense the anathema in Herr Gunther's and
Heinrich's mutterings: "Juden! – Juden! – Juden!"
the word falling upon his inner sensibilities with a leaden thud
as though by blows from Der Teufel's hammer, ja, the Evil One,
staring at him through the window of his craft,
with Hans making bold to accost the darkness: "Mein Gott, why
the hatred?
"Just because "Ein Schwarzkopf" and Mother Anna Elizabetha had
ancestry from different lands, with different religions, languages,
cultures, customs and traditions?
"Should his children be denied the rewards of guileless, hard
and fruitful labor because of that, of simple differences?"
"Nein!": the thought compelled the craftsman with
furious determination as he heated, re-heated, twisted, turned and
spun the various shapes of molten flame into inspirations such as
never seen by Willem, marveling: "Ja, papa, ja, sehr gut, sehr
schoene!"
"Danke, danke", and Hans gave his son a softened look such as
Willem hadn't seen in recent times, before his father returned to
laboring with a passion sweeping his son along by the power of that
unspoken code -
- and then came an unfurling of the craftsman's brow:
One day three weeks earlier, he'd made a
delivery at The Wild Boar Inn when he'd seen a discarded newspaper
lying on a table and read -

*Gelnhausen, one of the author's ancestral towns, not far from Frankfurt, Germany