Several days later, Gaspar, Erzebet, and Walter sat at the kitchen table having breakfast, when Hilde opened the door and walked in with the baby wrapped in her arms. The emergency unit had dropped her off at the doorsteps. For the past days, Walter had heated the mother and daughter’s room continuously to generate a comfortable temperature for the moment they would arrive. The new parents agreed on the names Magda Lisel for the girl. From then on, the daily routine in the alternative country dwelling changed considerably.
A number of months before the exciting event, Walter’s parents asked him to come to Frankfurt and attend with them the funeral of Hannchen’s husband, Klaus. Walter knew Hannchen, one of Friedrich’s nieces, as well as her husband and little son. The Herzog family had visited before. Hannchen felt very close to Walter’s father, who appeared to be her only direct ancestor. Walter liked her a lot because of her age and beauty and admired where and how she lived. Klaus had been a successful businessperson who had founded his own private bank in Heidelberg. The family lived in a large mansion inside a park that surrounded the estate located in the Odenwald area, a very pretty, desirable piece of nature to live in. With no previous warning signs, Klaus had died suddenly of a heart attack.
After the funeral, Hannchen invited Walter to visit again because she wanted to give him something he could use—Klaus had left a lot of custom-made clothes that he might be able to wear. Walter took advantage of the invitation and went back to the Odenwald residence, leaving with several bags of the finest silk shirts, suits, jackets, trousers, and some accessories. His body being slimmer than Klaus’s and somewhat taller, the suits, jackets, and trouser needed to be altered. Walter went to Flederbach with items he liked and let a tailor do the alterations. As a result, he owned several suits of highest quality and many silk shirts in various colors, plus the appropriate ties to match.
The clothes came in handy when his new job as district agent for the health insurance company began. The first four weeks of training took place at the Frankfurt headquarters. When Walter’s training started, he looked around in the room and felt immediately misplaced. Between the other trainees in their designed and blow-dried haircuts and the large cars in the parking lot, he thought of himself as a foreigner. However, nobody else appeared to see him that way when he simply showed up in his new outfit, which seemed to do the work for him. He could see some sense in the services the company sold to their clients, which enabled him to participate in the sessions and continue with the training. During the weeks in Frankfurt, he stayed at the Westendstrasse apartment and sometimes went out with Gaspar or visited Irene, who had moved into a new apartment after her relationship with Gerhard ended.
The weekend days in Hohenhausen with Hilde and Magda had a special quality because he needed to catch up with what had been going on and get used to the little baby and the demands of the situation. Because of excellent weather, the small family dared to go on little excursions and visited friends nearby or Hilde’s parents.
After Walter successfully completed the month of instruction, he drove home with a metal index-card box that contained the client list of his district. He soon started to make appointments by phone or stopped by customers’ locations when he happened to be in their neighborhoods. He did not find the work difficult or demanding. The weekly meetings in some provincial restaurant, when agents had to report to the district manager or sometimes the director, were awkward when he had nothing to report, no deals closed.
As it developed, the dream of alternative living off the land took a dramatic turn into reality for the group of people and the couple with a child. Hilde, breastfeeding Magda around the clock, did not get a lot of sleep. Whenever Walter returned from his travels through the district, he took over duties as much as he could. The washing machine turned into a blessed apparatus and operated daily, sometimes twice, because little Magda only wore cotton diapers.
One day a white van drove slowly along the entire length of the property, and then backed up again to the spot where Walter stood near the fence, tending the dogs.
Two men got out of the vehicle and approached him. “Is this your house? We have to look around on your property; we are from the police in Flederbach.”
It turned out that they had come to search for a stolen garbage can—or so they said. “How much did you pay for the house?” they asked. “Is it yours? Are you from a music band?” They asked the questions while scrutinizing the barn and its contents of ancient hay with mildew and Gerhard’s old electric organ.
When Walter later talked to the neighbors about the incident, they laughed and shook their heads, saying, “This cannot be true.”
A week later, police in uniform arrived from town with an arrest warrant for Gerhard. He happened to be present at the time. When he reviewed the warrant, it turned out be for an unpaid parking ticket of ten deutsche mark, an amount that had meanwhile increased to thirty because of the fees. Gerhard had to borrow the cash from Hilde, and then the police drove him in the green cop car to the post office, where he paid the parking ticket and the officers released him. It seemed as if someone had put pressure on the strangers from the big city.
At the time in Germany, an urban guerilla group by the name of Bewegung 2. Juni, which had been active since the early seventies, was once again using kidnapping and bank robbery as methods for revenge and an outlet for their frustrations with the German government. Police were on high alert and checked everybody and anything, which may have been a reason for these bizarre occurrences at the house.
Walter visited addresses and people out of his metal customer container. He sold upgrades for health insurances to farmers and selfemployed physicians. He drove across his district in the white Citroën 2CV throughout the summer, wearing lightweight suits that did half the work for him, because he looked handsome and dapper wearing them with his short haircut.
On the farm, Hilde took on an additional mission besides being a mother: cultivation and maintenance of the garden. Initially crops of strawberries, peas, lettuce, radishes, and herbs supplemented and enriched the meals in the kitchen. The team completed the fencing job to secure the garden and then expanded their work by cutting thin spruces in the wood with permission of their neighbor. The estate’s inventory also included an old tractor with a long tractor-trailer, which enabled them to transport full-grown spruce trees from the forest two miles away to the meadow next to the house and garden. Gerhard and Walter removed the branches and used the trunks as horizontal bars between poles for the long part of the meadow.
Everybody had pots and planters on their windowsills for months, where they cultivated first sprouts and then young, vulnerable plants. Walter and Gerhard planted hemp seed, hoping one day to be able to smoke their own weed. Hilde took care of some more precious vegetable plants that needed warmth. The hobby gardeners encountered all kinds of complications that could prevent a successful harvest. From snails to bugs, and from dogs to mice and spiders, all occurrences posed new challenges to overcome. At the same time, they made for an exciting time for everybody involved, which developed a feeling of family, community, and unity.
Hilde’s and especially Magda’s arrival in the house, improved their contact and relationships with the rest of the village. Particularly, their connection with their immediate two neighbor families turned from friendly to friendship and intimacy. Everybody knew each other, and the kids did not hesitate to visit. It became routine that Walter and Hilde went to the neighbors for knitting evenings. He began a project of his own design. After initial help from Hilde, Walter worked at it for months. It became a cardigan made from lamb’s wool in natural color, which looked like a coat of mail, and when completed reached almost to his knees.
The basic intention of Hohenhausen did not change with arrival of a child and a reduced active group but its appearance did. The crew inspected the stable at the end of the barn, which had several partitions, and with advice from neighbors and other information, bought two goats and two sheep. One neighbor had said they would not have to cut the grass of the large meadow anymore because the animals would take care of it. Throughout summer and into fall, everybody in the house stayed busy with various projects.
Walter visited his customers, attended the weekly meeting with the health insurance people, and once a month went to Frankfurt to the headquarters for an update seminar. Gerhard continued with his job as a traveling salesman, while Hilde thrived in her roles as mother and farmer woman. They also heard about other groups in the farther vicinity of the county they resided in.
When Christmas arrived, Hilde went once again to her parents with Magda and her new blue Citroën 2CV. Gerhard had a date with Irene, who felt alone in Frankfurt. Gaspar and Erzebet came to the country to spend the days with Walter and look after the animals. Erzebet discovered a bond with the goats. She also prepared wonderfully tasting dishes from the preserved delicacies of the garden. For Walter, this friendship generated joy—to be with two friends in a warm place and with good food and be able to talk about anything or nothing at all.
Gaspar had brought the most recent book by the Peruvian-born, American author Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan. While they sat around in the kitchen, he read from the book aloud, and then Walter and he began to translate the text into German. It provided a lot of fun and insight because they discussed the text as they translated. The message in the book had meaning to both men. They would have tried peyote right then and there, especially with a guide as experienced as the character Don Juan. Both of them could not understand how unwise Castaneda had acted during and after his experiences with the drug. On the farm, it became habit to translate chapters of the author’s books, and back in Frankfurt, Gaspar obtained a small peyote specimen at the farmers’ market.
The following summer began brilliantly, with hot weather. Everybody placed plenty of seeds of their likings in pots and other containers and waited to see what would come out of them. Another extensive and possibly final project stood pending on everyone’s mind. Necessary measurements were obtained and noted, calls to suppliers made, the money counted, and the course of action discussed. They planned to take out the kitchen wall into the small bedroom in front of Gerhard’s room, then remove the framework panels facing the garden and replace them with double-glass panes. It would create more light and a sense of spaciousness. Gerhard received a reasonable quote from a glass-processing factory in the district and submitted the dimensions of all sections.
When the team knew how long the glass factory needed to produce this custom order, they broadcasted an invitation to all friends in the city to participate in the much-anticipated event. On a weekend when most individuals were available, a crowd of ten gathered at the house, marked their spaces for where to sleep later, and went to work.
In the crowd was an old friend from early Westendstrasse time, accompanied by another friend. Markus, a law student, had been a longtime pal before Hilde and Walter went to India. He participated in countless sessions in Frankfurt. Markus arrived with Dagmar, whom he had met recently. She had short, blond hair and very blue eyes and looked intensely at Walter when they were introduced to each other.
She said, “You know, Walter, I may be related to you.”
Surprised, he asked why, and she explained that in her ancestry was another Herzog, who had been born in the same area where Walter’s father came from.
“We have to investigate someday,” Walter said, and then everybody organized tools to use and went to work.
The troop of weekend workers achieved the panel demolition and removal of the kitchen wall and debris by Sunday afternoon. Then they all got together and enjoyed a last drink before heading back into the city. Dagmar left her phone number with Walter for future reference.
Because of the fantastic weather, the house crew did not need to cover the gaps in the framework immediately. They appreciated the feeling of open air for a while before Walter and Gerhard protected the wall with strong plastic foil.
Many appeared during the summer. Lisa and Friedrich Herzog arrived one a Sunday with the trunk full of supplies from the warehouse in Frankfurt’s harbor. Even Lisa appeared to relax a bit and smiled here and there while carrying Magda in her arms. Friedrich asked a series of questions about the ongoing construction and Walter’s work status, but did not show any further concern. Walter recognized just the opposite. For the first time in his life, he thought his father was proud of him. Friedrich seemed satisfied, perhaps relieved with what he saw and patted Walter’s shoulder—something he had never done before.
This encounter happened to be the last time they would see each other.
A few weeks later, Lisa called the farm and told Walter, “Your father passed away last night. I now have to arrange the funeral.”
Friedrich left this world during sleep, lying in his separate, small bedroom, which Lisa had made him sleep in because of his never-ending snoring at night. She said she heard two deep breaths, almost like moaning, and then there had been silence. Later when she looked into Friedrich’s bedroom, she found him dead. After the phone call, Walter realized that he felt nothing exceptional when he heard the news from his mother, only surprise, acceptance, and the realization that he did not own any black clothes for the funeral.
Lisa’s father had purchased a family lot in Frankfurt’s main cemetery, where she decided to bury her husband. Walter arrived in a blue suit at the cemetery chapel. The space was filled with people Walter did not recognize. He sat next to his mother and listened to a nondenominational sermonizer who delivered a general passage speech that sounded accurate and fitting for the occasion. The closed casket lay on a pedestal, surrounded by flowers and foliage. At the end of the sermon, when music began to play, to Walter’s surprise, the casket lowered magically into the floor and disappeared; it almost triggered a grin on his face, but he controlled the urge.
Lisa Herzog told her son to pick up his father’s car, a Peugeot 204. She did not want to deal with it and told him to do with it whatever he wanted. For a moment, he thought about keeping it for himself, but then decided against it. When Markus heard about it, he called and asked whether Walter would sell it to him, and they came to an agreement.
During his next visit to Frankfurt for the sales meeting, Walter called Dagmar, and they met for dinner in a Spanish restaurant. She worked in an advertising agency and appeared happy to see him. He appreciated the opportunity to meet someone who seemed interested in him. Walter felt immediate intimacy with her—something in her features and expressions, the way she talked and was open with him attracted him, as did her body. The clarity in her eyes and her fast mind made it easy for him to enjoy the dinner with her. Later, it felt natural to accept Dagmar’s invitation to come and see her apartment.
She rented a one-bedroom apartment near downtown. The living room walls were covered with colorful pictures and family portraits. They talked about their families and tried to establish a connection between them but could not isolate any.
Sitting on Dagmar’s sofa with a glass of red wine, they suddenly began kissing each other passionately. Dagmar moved a leg over Walter’s. It encouraged him to place his hand on her upper thigh, covered by pantyhose. She moved over, on top of his lap, and he put his right hand through the pantyhose elastic to reach her sensitive parts. She groaned while removing his belt and trying to unzip his zipper, which did not work. They had to interrupt the session, got up from the sofa, and both undressed quickly. The exposed bodies embraced while standing and slowly went down on the carpet. When the couple recovered again, they took a shower together and went to bed, where they made love in a more refined way.
The next day, Walter drove back to Hohenhausen to tend to the load of Magda diapers, chop more wood for the kitchen stove, and shop groceries in Flederbach. Hilde had found out where the other alternative communities in their vicinity were. The following weekend, the small family loaded a Citroën with the baby carriage and food and made their way south over country roads. They drove through beautifully green valleys, deep woods, and small villages. From her notes, Hilde gave Walter driving instructions to their first stop.
A structure on a hill within a flat valley stood almost invisible because of the bushes and trees around it, and the couple had to make a few U-turns and detours before they advanced up the hill toward a building. The unique house had been built decades ago by a man guided by anthroposophy. He used solid basalt pieces and placed them in an octagon shape, held together by cement.
Here they met for the first time Egon, Andrea, and her two children, Katja and Lukas. They had no running water or electricity. They had to fetch every drop at a nearby well or in the village. When it turned dark, Egon and Andrea lighted candles and usually went to sleep early. As it turned out, both of them were multitalented individuals who used their abilities for whatever was possible at a given time. From playing music in the city streets to selling natural material by mail, this team had no income other than what they produced themselves. The two couples exchanged a lot of information. Egon knew many people in the alternative country scene all the way to the Odenwald area. He also mentioned a community that worked as a music group with acoustic instruments, performing their own songs.
After a few hours, Walter and Hilde, with Magda sleeping in the back of the car, went toward their second destination, the Neudorfer Hof. Completely isolated in the forest between two villages, this property could be reached via a winding road from which a dirt road branched off and led along a huge clearing with a meadow. The couple slowly drove toward the forester’s house. They noticed a number of people busy with something on part of the meadow, which had been converted into a field. Hilde sat on a bench in front of the house and let Magda suck a substantial quantity of liquid food from her tits.
A man and woman, both with long, blond hair, came up the few steps onto the narrow veranda where Walter and Hilde waited, and the man said with a smile, “Hi, my name is Kurt, nice to meet you. And who are you?”
The woman with a very long mane and one pigtail introduced herself as Ulrike. After the formalities and explanations, Kurt invited them into the house for a cup of coffee. He told the visitors that Ulrike and he rented the property from the local prince and owner of the woods in this particular area. He had been an art student at the renowned Staedel Institute Frankfurt and dropped out to do art in and with nature. About eight to ten people lived in the house and on the property at that time. They kept many goats, some sheep, and two horses, as well as a large peacock. On the field that Hilde and Walter had noticed, people were planting various kinds of vegetables during their first summer on the land. The commune had lived in the former forester’s building for about eight months. Adjacent to the barn and stable, which were attached to the house, were some additional utility rooms, one of which contained two large ovens built into the wall. One of the group members, Knut, had begun experimenting with baking bread in the ovens.
Walter sensed honest kindheartedness in the hosts. He asked if they could come back some other time to talk more and invited Kurt and Ulrike to Hohenhausen.
Back in their house, a routine established itself between Hilde and Walter: Hilde occasionally went upstairs to Walter’s room, or he would spend a night in the mother and child’s room. There had been subtle, permeating changes to their relationship since they had moved to the country and Magda had arrived. From a refined and regulated partnership, it had evolved into an enterprise that Walter sometimes did not feel so comfortable with any more. Their interactions revolved all around what, how, and when to do things. They made justifications and compromises to achieve accord in the house. Their occasional sex reflected the external condition between them—a mechanical act without much passion or love. Therefore, to Walter’s disbelief, Hilde told him she was pregnant again. There was never any hesitation about having the baby.
At this point Walter could no longer express what he really felt for Hilde. He began to enjoy being away from the house. Meet up with Dagmar for a few days to have satisfactory sex and be appreciated—until Dagmar asked why he did not move in with her. That was not what he wanted, and he felt increasingly guilty. Walter talked about his job becoming more difficult in relation to production. He confessed that he had been fed up with it for a while but intended to hang in and do it as long as it lasted. Then he met with the director for a frank conversation. They separated with mutual understanding and respect, because interestingly enough, the director had talked about his life, saying he had been a member of the Masonic Lodge for a long time and the insurance business took only some interest in his life. Walter went back to the unemployment office to register, feeling relieved, as if he had done his duty and could enjoy life again.
It had been evident to the whole team that they could not prevent Fritzi from becoming pregnant again, and nobody thought about spaying her. Instead, Hilde arranged a planned conception with a purebred, longhaired, large Afghan male dog. The impregnation took place at the proper time, with the dog and his owner visiting the farm. It was an immediate success. Two months later Fritzi gave birth to her second healthy litter of five. The adolescent males and females now looked like traditional Afghan dogs, and the question arose about what to do with them.
Walter had the idea to take one female to Frankfurt and show her around to friends and interested people. As usual, he stayed in the Westendstrasse apartment. On a Sunday, he went to Grueneburgpark with the dog to let her run and to go for a walk himself. As he enjoyed her running on the big main meadow in the typical fast pace of greyhounds, he walked by a bench on which an attractive woman in a beautiful summer dress and a little girl sat.
“Can I pet the dog?” asked the perhaps five-year-old in a fresh voice, and the woman asked, “What is it—an Afghan?”
Walter stopped in front of the park bench. He explained that the mother came from Afghanistan and called the dog to come over to the bench so the girl could pet her.
The woman, in designer dress, looked extremely neat and cultivated. She said, “Please sit down for a moment and let them play. Agnes likes dogs so much. My name is Manuela. What is yours?”
Walter sat next to her on the bench, and they began talking about traveling, country living, and work. She mentioned that she had been a model but was currently not working and that she lived across the park. With her hand, she pointed to the nearby Gruenburgweg.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asked very openly.
Walter said he had no plans.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner? You can bring the dog along if you like.”
Walter accepted the invitation of this gorgeous, young woman. Certainly surprised by it, he looked forward to meeting this woman and took a shower before he left for the ten-minute walk to her apartment. He rang the bell for the condominium on the first floor of a beautiful, old, renovated Westend apartment house. The buzzer sounded almost immediately. Agnes waited at the apartment door. She instantly took the dog in her arms, and the two began running around the large apartment until Manuela called her to sit at the dinner table.
She had prepared various delicious dishes and set a tasteful dinner table. The three sat down and enjoyed lively conversations with occasional interruptions from dog and child activities. When they finished, the grownups drank espresso, and Manuela told her daughter to get ready for bed. The dog rested in the living room on a large, thick carpet, and Walter sat on a modern corner couch while waiting for Manuela to return from her daughter’s room.
When she came back, she had changed into a light, colorful negligee of delicate material that revealed her long, beautiful legs. She walked through the room to light a candle on the mantelpiece and then approached the sofa on which Walter sat. Her robe slipped off her shoulders as if by its own doing, and he could see her flawless, tall body, including the stunning breasts that showed no sign of giving in to the law of gravity. They were pear-shaped, and while Walter caressed both of them, he could feel their firmness. He had risen from the sofa and was kissing her softly on the neck, while his right hand fondled the hidden treasure inside the black slip she still wore.
She put her hand in front of her mouth. “My daughter—we have to be discreet.”
Even a cushion could not muffle all her sounds. The dog got up from the floor and licked Walter’s back while he drove into her and finished with a loud exhale and then laughter.
Back in Hohenhausen, he relaxed from his escapade in the big city by going for a walk in the woods with Fritzi and Flecki. Hohenhausen incorporated wide-open spaces as well as deep forest. Recently, there had been reports of killed chickens and unrest in specific henhouses in the village. Rumors spread in the village that the two dogs, or at least one of them, had been involved, that he had been seen roaming around, doing no good. An official complaint had never come to any of the group members’ attention. As the three walked now, Walter enjoyed the cooler weather of the countryside, compared to the sweltering, humid heat in Frankfurt.
They strolled on a path through densely overgrown shrubs in the shadows of the deciduous trees. The dogs and he heard twigs breaking and something running away quickly. Immediately, both pooches leaped to a fast dash, barking madly.
Walter screamed, “Stop, come back, Fritzi, Flecki!” But he knew they would not; they never did when chasing something.
He ran through the brush as fast as he could, hearing only one dog barking distantly and a snarling sound. As he approached a somewhat open space going downhill, he recognized Fritzi in the distance, scampering in a circle and barking. Flecki stood with his head down close over something, brandishing it. When Walter came closer, he did not trust his eyes because he had never seen such an egregious scene in real life.
Flecki, his teeth sunken into the neck of a young roebuck that made guttural sounds. The poor animal was jerking its feet while lying on the side. A ghastly sight. Walter’s brain raced, thinking what to do. He impulsively looked around, noticed a midsize broken branch, snatched it, and hit the roebuck once, twice, three times on the head, until it did not move anymore. Then he yelled at Flecki, who growled at him but ran away quickly, hiding in the bushes, with Fritzi behind him disappearing into the woods.
When Walter arrived dog-less and breathless back at the house, he quickly explained to Gerhard what happened. They concocted a plan, put a blanket into the back of the Citroën and drove slowly in the direction of the disaster, as far as they could. They walked with the blanket to the scene and wrapped the animal, then carried it to the car and drove back home. The whole team sat around the kitchen table, feverishly wondering what to do with the deer. Hilde had the idea to contact Kurt, who had mentioned that a guy he knew worked as a butcher. The plan’s resolution included skinning and gutting the animal and filleting it as soon as possible, and later eating it. After Hilde talked to Kurt, she contacted Sheik, who agreed to come to Hohenhausen the next day with his knife set and do the task.
When he arrived, Walter thought, Well, this guy truly found his proper line of work. A very dark, long mane covered his head, and he had four-day-old stubble. He appeared to miss an eye patch, an effect caused by drooping eyelids and his habit of avoiding looking directly at people. Somewhat morosely, he demanded help to hang the animal from the stable door with strings and nails. Then he began his work like a surgeon, and all present were impressed with how skillfully he opened the cadaver, separated the thick skin from the flesh, and then pulled the whole shebang down and off the naked deer. Walter got paper and pen to write down Sheik’s instructions for treating the hide for further use.
The team decided to have a party the next weekend and meanwhile handled various animal parts differently to conserve them until then. Gaspar and Erzebet arrived a day earlier because Erzebet wanted to prepare a few specialties. She and Hilde shared the task of cooking the deer meat; multiple recipes were available. Ulrike and Kurt came with another member of the Neudorfer Hof group, as well as the butcher Sheik and his friend, and Egon and Andrea with her two children from their outpost.
All guests settled at the large, old, wooden kitchen table alongside the antique bench with its storage compartments underneath and a backrest. Walter felt very satisfied to see that. He had not expected that an event so rich and festive would arise from the brutal hunting accident in the forest. The party was a success and an opportunity to get more acquainted with each other, to share experiences an