560
PARTISAN REVIEW
picture her wearing her sober but substantial plum silk dress and the
scrolled heirloom locket only brought out on state occasions, her
black hair drawn back tightly like the painted hair of a wooden doll.
I see her climbing, with determined steps, up the steep, stony road,
past the garrison, past the church-the bells chiming insouciantly-to
the baroque portals of the palace. What happened behind those doors
is hazy, but the result is known. The interview with the King was
a failure, Bertha's quick tongue was of no avail. It is possible that
my great-grandfather's judgment was faulty; had Bertha been rosy
and dimpled, perhaps, her plea would not have been in vain, and
the history of the Kupermann family would have been different. At
any rate, Bertha's descent was more rapid than her ascent. I like
to imagine the momentum of her flight, like that of the proverbial
witch on the broomstick, to have caused a great wind, that swept
the whole Kupermann family across the sea- here, to these back
streets of Brooklyn.
John was quiet; was he seeing Ludwigsburg too? But he soon
interrupted the silence. "Brooklyn is an awfully big city, isn't it?"
he said.
When we arrived at the main office door, John went off on
an escorted tour, and I was left with time to idle until his return. I
wandered across the courtyard toward the unused stable. From here
I could see the office building on the left, outwardly unchanged since
my grandfather's day- an unpretentious two-story building with an
old-fashioned stoop leading up to a modest wood door. But, attached
to the office, like a streamlined aluminum trailer hitched to a sturdy
coach, was the "extension"- a marvel of glass and metal. On my
right, where the old houses should have been, was the bottling plant.
In between, the street was paved with cobblestones, all the way to
the stable, but I had heard that formerly the brewery yard was
floored in dirt, except for a cobbled stretch in front of the office
building and the homes. Every night, a great wooden gate was shut
to divide the yard from the residential section. The gate is gone now,
and it has been years since any member of the family lived here. Even
the alley of linden trees, planted nostalgically by my grandmother,
has disappeared, but for some reason the ancient stable still stands–
dark and vacant.
It
now looks more like a disreputable jail, although
once it proudly housed three hundred and fifty massive brewery
horses.
