A Cup of Sugar
The Kammerer cuckoo clock weathered each movement with tremendous resilience. In 1941 it lived in Ruma, Yugoslavia, with a family of German descent. Born in the 1800s, it traveled from Vienna to Krakow to Breslau to Ruma just before landing in Frankfurt am Mein. One day, this ancient time keeper’s significance would be revealed to Paula by a slight, once handsome Croatian/ German she would eventually marry.
The cuckoo bird timely and precise leaped forth at the hour of one, a precursor to Herr Shimmel, whose footsteps could be heard shuffling across the upper floor, and seconds before the church bells signaled the hour at hand. Herr Shimmel was a slight Jewish man with a snow-white beard that tapered to a point at the top of his navel. Jovial in demeanor, he was quick-witted and spry. Albeit slight, his gate was unmistakable as he clomped from the tenement house’s upper floor to the entrance leading into to the Schneider family home.
Paula used to look forward to his visits because he always ushered in laughter, which was paramount these days as the happier times seemed to be waning while the flames of war were being fanned.
Herr Shimmel had a distinct and bony knock. A pattern that sounded more like a code than a knock. Each Sunday since Paula was 8 years old, she looked forward to greeting him at the door, but it had been over a year since he joined the Sunday gathering. As was customary with the two of them, Paula would crack open the tenement door, and a closed palm accompanied by a whistle would protrude into the room ever so methodically. The liver-spotted palm would twist and turn with the movement of the whistle and then stop abruptly. As went the ritual, Paula touched the weary hand three times, and the palm would turn upward and slowly and deliberately open to reveal a gold-wrapped morsel that awaited her efforts. For many a Sunday, a scrumptious piece of chocolate imported directly from Switzerland was revealed. But the quest for Paula was never so simple. She would reach for the morsel, and the hand would clutch tight. Then open. Then clutch tight. Reach, clutch, reach clutch! Paula would scream with laughter as her sisters gathered in attendance at each event.
This year, there was a conflict in the Schneider household. “Open the door already, Paula,” Ottie said. “No, don’t,” Ellie whispered. Two years apart, Ottie and Ellie gained their own perspectives of a broader national movement that had become successful in excluding Jews from the national dialogue and rendering Jewish culture superfluous. They were on opposite sides of the Jewish question. Each had relationships with Jewish boys, but at what cost?
The palm opened; Paula grabbed the golden nugget and swiftly opened the door to reveal the aging tailor, just barely taller than little Paula. The last time she saw him, she was shorter than he.
“I smell something wonderful,” he said.
“Of course,” said Paula. “It’s Sunday! Eintopf with ham?”
“Oh, heavens, you know that I don’t eat ham,” he said as he bent back and looked up the stairs to see if his wife Irma was near. Occasionally, when gathered with the Schneider’s, he grabbed a tiny piece while no one was watching; or so he thought. Somehow, Paula would always catch him, catch his eye, and then he would give her an engaging wink. Paula never revealed the secret.
Paula opened the door despite Ellie. Paula was the youngest and didn’t like being bossed around by her elder sister. “Are you coming in, Herr Schimmel?” Paula’s father sauntered into the room, preceded by a plume of vanilla smoke from the final puff of his Bavarian pipe, which he only smoked at home, as smoking was banned in public by the Reich. “Hello, Herr Shimmel.”
“Herr Schneider. I’m sorry to bother you. My wife is baking challah, and I wondered if you might have a bit of sugar we could borrow? “I’m sorry. No sugar Herr Shimmel.”
“Are you coming in for supper, Herr Shimmel?” asked Paula with an air of hope.
“He can’t. Can you, sir?” said Otto.
“Yes, I can’t. I must get back to finding a bit of sugar. Thank you. “Paulinchen, it’s good to see you out of the hospital. I did come to visit, but I didn’t want to disturb.” With that, Herr Shimmel tipped his hat, turned, and walked back up the stairs.
Paula was confused. “I did come to visit?” No one spoke of this. Paula had spent several months in a hospital recovering from a painful procedure in which her legs were broken and reset. Much happened during that time, and in many ways, she felt abandoned by everyone. During her recovery, the relationship between the two men changed dramatically. Paula sensed an insensitivity and a curtness coming from her father. Like many Catholic Germans, Herr Schneider was conflicted. On the one hand, he was a devout Christian and enjoyed the Schimmel’s company; on the other, he was forced to tow the party line.
Paula watched as Herr Schimmel ascended the stairs. Frau Schimmel was on the landing cloaked in dejection as her man of twenty years drew near. Paula recoiled and closed the door. She knew there was sugar in the house. She called to her mother. “Mutte, do we have sugar?”
A thin voice came from the kitchen. “Of course, we have sugar, Paulina. Why do you ask?”
Paula looked at her father. His gaze from across the room was disconcerting. It was a look she had never seen before. His eyes nearly burning a hole in hers. Papa was such a gentle man. How could he create such a stare? After a moment, he turned his head and returned to the den to light another pipe. Her sister Ellie retreated to the kitchen to help Mutte finish the afternoon meal.
Ottie approached Paula. “You are so young, and much has happened since you were in the hospital. Be alert.”
Paula backed herself up against the chartreuse door and slivered to the floor. “Be alert to what?” she thought.
A year later, Paula was reading in the den as her father played a Wagner sonata on their Schimmel “small piano.” No relation to Herr Schimmel, the Schimmel small piano was just the right size for her father, who stood 5'4 and had rather small hands. She didn’t care much for Wagner, but it seemed to be the flavor of the times.
Paula heard a loud commotion coming from outside the tenement house. She cracked open the curtain to reveal a group of Nazis arguing outside. She had learned a great deal in that year. She came to fear the Nazis but also feared the Jews, for she heard from school children that they drained Christian boys’ and girls’ blood.
There was a loud knock on the front door, and her father answered. She could not hear what was said, but the screams that followed would haunt her well into her old age. The thumping of a body being dragged down a flight of stairs, the shrieking of a woman, and the guttural commands of a band of unsavory characters. The memory of peeking through the curtain to see Herr Schimmel being dragged down the street by his long flowing beard; the horror that followed would surface one night as she lay shriveled up in the darkness of the nursing home.
Paula is 86 now. Stefan comes to visit and sits at the edge of her bed. Hers is a life filled with tragedy. She lost her father, mother, and sisters all by the age of 38. Although she has three children and three grandchildren, she often feels alone. “Paula, are you awake?”
“I’m thinking of an old man being dragged down the street by a group of Nazis and then shot in the head,” she says.
Stefan knows all too well of the memories that surface in Paula’s times of distress. “Well, let’s think of something else; how about it?” Stefan often tries to cheer her up when she hits rock bottom. He can tell by her tone that she is in a deep hole, the same hole he claims he dragged her out of at the end of the war.
“He was a good man, you know. He only wanted a cup of sugar. Was that too much to ask? We had the sugar. Why was my dad so mean to him?”
“It was the war, Paula. What can you say?”
“I miss my dad.”
“I know.”
“Paula, I have a picture I want to show you. Sit up and take a look.”
“I just want to lay here a minute,” she says.
“I know you do, but I want to show you this picture,” he says.
“Can’t you just tell me about it?” she says.
“Now, what fun would that be, Paula?” From his trench coat, Stefan pulls out a tiny old black and white photo weathered by time. Paula struggles to sit up in bed; Stefan helps her.
She is losing her eyesight and often complains about how dark the room is, even when washed in sunlight. “Let me see it.” He hands her the photo. “What is it? I can’t see it,” she says.
“Take a good look. You can see it.” She tries to make it out as best she can. She pulls the photo close to her eye, cocks her head, squints a bit, and suddenly it becomes clear. It is a photo of the old Kammerer cuckoo clock in the den in her home in Frankfurt.
“Where did you find this? I haven’t seen this in years. It’s our old cuckoo clock. It disappeared after the war. But that’s not the same clock, is it?”
“It’s the same clock. “I have to tell you something,” Stefan says. “Something I’ve never told you.”
“You have a girlfriend!” Stefan laughs, and Paula follows suit. They rarely laugh together, and the moment is quite endearing.
“I’m sure if I had one, you would have found out about it by now,” Stefan says. They laugh again, and Stefan can feel her climbing ever so slightly out of that dark hole. “This is your clock, but it was my clock too,” he says.
“What do you mean, your clock?”
Stefan tells her how he traveled at the beginning of the war from Ruma to Breslau to Vienna looking for food and work. The clock was a family heirloom. The only item of value that he had. He carried it in an old rucksack he pulled off of a dead soldier. He planned to sell it if he became destitute. One afternoon in a Rathskeller in Frankfurt, a man with a long white beard pulled up a chair next to him. They struck up a conversation, and the man asked him what was in the rucksack. Stefan told him the story of how his family escaped the Nazis, loading their wagon with everything they owned before the bastards leveled the town. He showed the clock to the older man, and the man offered to buy it from him. He gave him a fair price, enough for him to afford room and board. As the story unfolded, Paula began to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“This is how you found me?” she says. “It was the cuckoo clock?”
“I followed him to his house, and I saw your beauty standing outside the door.”
“I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” Paula says. “Herr Schimmel traded us that clock.”
Paula lays back down in the same position she was in before Stefan’s arrival.
“Dankeschön, Stefan,” she says.
“Bitteschön mein Schatz. Bitteschön.”
She closes her eyes. Gutte Nacht, Herr Schimmel.
“Gutte Nacht,” Stefan whispers.
“Gutte Nacht.”
Juergen K. Tossmann is the producing artistic director of Bunbury Theatre Company in Louisville, Ky. Since 1991 he has produced over 200 plays for the company and serves as a playwright, director, and actor. Since the pandemic, he has taken to new forms of writing, including short stories and poetry.
