‘The Ash of History’

There was a prince named Rudolf, symbol of the baroque gaudiness that was Vienna in the nineteenth century, who put a bullet through his brain after killing his seventeen-year-old mistress. Rudolf Habsburg, heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The name rings with sorrow.

Not long ago, in this town, this quilted procession of cookie-cutter homes and plastic lawns, a man named Karl Holmes put a bullet through his brain after killing his seventeen-year-old daughter. Were they lovers? I don’t know.

My wife brought me the awful news, brought it like she brings me everything — like freshly baked muffins, nestled in a woven basket and checkered cloth. Theodora has been my wife for twelve years. Everything she brings me in freshly baked.

“Karl Holmes is dead, dear,” she whispered to me as if it were part of a seduction. Theodora was born in Thessaloniki, in Greece, and inherited the sensuality linked to the Balkans. Her movement through life is tied to sex, although she tries to hide it.

I was grading history papers, and in front of me, a student — I checked the name, Ellen Bragdonich, one of the better ones — had written, “The scourge of Nazism can be traced to the nineteenth century, with its lack of insight into the human condition, its ‘noble’ racism, and its belief that white Europeans were the guardians of the world.” Ellen would get an ‘A’ just for that sentence, I decided. My grandfather died in the Battle of the Bulge. Theodora’s died resisting the Nazi occupation of Thessaloniki in April of 1941.

I didn’t know Karl well; ours is a small town, but not small enough so everyone knows everyone else. He was a local celebrity — champion discus thrower and star wide receiver in high school, brilliant in a small-town way. Karl had gone off to Portland to study law; he returned to Grant Meadows to practice it, and the townspeople loved him for it. Karl epitomized small-town American life. Now he was dead. The circumstances, I didn’t know yet.

“Suicide,” said Theodora.

“He killed himself?” I said, incredulous. In Grant Meadows, no one ever killed themselves. Suicide is a dirty word.

“And his daughter, Katherine. She was seventeen.”

I knew Katherine Holmes. She was, if possible, even more of a celebrity than her father. She carried the pungent taint of being her mother’s killer; at least, it was unspoken sentiment around town. Diane Holmes had been a frail woman, all elbows and knees and blotchy skin, hardly attractive, but mesmerizing in an eerie way. The townspeople hadn’t loved her, but they had been fascinated by her. Katherine was a breech baby; Diane hadn’t survived the birth, which kept her in labor for almost forty hours. Katherine turned out to be a special girl, full of a desire to escape the town and turn the world on its ear. She played hockey, hated cheerleading, and drove boys mad with lust with her long blonde hair and pert figure. At seventeen, she was just becoming a woman, and everyone knew she would be formidable out in the real world.

Her death meant more to me than her father’s.

“Horrible,” was all I could say. It was the correct thing to say, I felt, even though exactly what I felt I couldn’t put into words. “Horrible” came out by rote.

Theodora sat down next to me on the floor. Looking down at her, I saw her strange beauty: slick black hair with curious cowlicks in front which she wore proudly, dull eyes with a touch of mischief in them, an almost sallow face that lit up whenever her emotions got the better of her, which was often. It was blistering red right now. Tears like small jellyfish escaped from her lashes and smeared her cheeks. “You maggot,” she said abruptly, as if surprised the insult came from her. “A girl is dead. I never cared for Karl, that’s true, but Katherine was beautiful. Say ‘horrible’ like you mean it, Mr. Foley.”

I hate when she calls me that. It’s so dispassionate, so impersonal, that I always wince. She grabbed my wrist.

“I’m sorry, Douglas. It was a bad time to tell you, I know, with the finals and all that. But it was just on the news, and I …”

I took her head in my hands. “She was beautiful. A beautiful human being. The world is darker tonight.” And we both cried, although we had barely know Karl Holmes or his daughter.

***

It was finals week at Deschutes College, Grant Meadows’s claim to fame. My class, I’m told, is popular on campus. I teach Western Civilization to freshmen, but that’s not the class for which I’m famous. I also teach a course titled “Fascism and the Rise of Nazi Germany,” which attracts a large number of students each semester. My belief is that the kids want to be educated about the history of Italy and especially Germany in the Twenties and Thirties so that they can realize what drives human beings to the depths of depravity, but my colleagues tell me otherwise. Theodora summed it up best: “They like your stories, Douglas.” My father, a poet of minor fame, always told me that I had a gift of storytelling, but I could never force my thoughts into coherent narrative form. In the classroom, I can ramble, and my tangents are common and lengthy. “That’s what attracts them,” Theodora said. “You make history alive. You enthrall and captivate. That’s why I quit. I couldn’t do that anymore.” I then have to remind her that moving up to dean of Liberal Arts in not quitting.

Monday of finals week, I held a review session for my students, but reviewing fifteen weeks of fascism and terror politics didn’t appeal to me. Karl Holmes did.

“How many of you knew Karl Holmes?”

Some did. “How many know he killed himself and his daughter this weekend?”

All of them raised their hands.

“Suicide,” I murmured, and the students leaned slightly forward to hear, “is a personal act made spectacularly public. Karl Holmes is a murderer. Yet we feel sad. Why?”

I strode from behind my desk and sat on it, trying for familiarity. If any teacher ever tells you they do thing unconsciously, they’re lying. Teachers are first and foremost educators, true, but they are also manipulators. They want the audience on their side.

“Quick, anyone, name the most influential suicide in history.”

Heads turned; mouths opened and confused noises came out.

“Cleopatra,” said a student sitting in the back.

“Please,” I retorted. “Spectacular, yes, but committing suicide after your dreams of glory are in ruins hardly qualifies. Anyone else?”

“Jesus,” said another, a short blob of a girl in a plaid vest and pants.

“Interesting,” I conceded. “He had foreknowledge, so it could be called a suicide. Giving yourself up for death, martyrdom, treads a fine line. But no. Jesus was most definitely crucified. No suicide.”

They lapsed into silence. Admittedly, there have not been many famous suicides in world history. I clicked my tongue disapprovingly.

“We have spoken of him,” I said. “Rudolf Habsburg.”

Whenever I see vacuous expressions in the faces of my students, I’m reminded of how, for some of them, this is only a History requirement, and they have no real interest in this subject. But even my better students looked skeptical.

I walked up the aisle separating the two halves of the classroom. I enjoy wandering around the room to get a grip on what the students are really seeing and hearing. I walked to the top of the room, and seventy necks craned backward to follow.

“You’re thinking, if you’re thinking about it at all, why Rudolf Habsburg? A spoiled prince, shut out of power, coddled by a doting but distant father, a figurehead, really, unable to say what he thought or do what he wanted. Just another spoiled prince. But still.

“Kevin, why Rudolf Habsburg?” I wheeled on one of my students, a bright sophomore theater major who had impressed me by writing a mid-term paper, ambitious in scope although somewhat lacking in good research, on the Italian unification and the imperialistic yearnings of the fledgling state that allowed Mussolini to gain power. Kevin was a daring young man. I wanted to see if he could make any sort of connection.

He looked puzzled; I was beginning to think he would give up. One thing I had learned about him during the semester, however, was that he was stubborn. He would rather make something up than admit he didn’t know. Luckily for him, he usually came pretty close to the mark.

“Well, for this class, I guess, eighteen eighty-nine. He killed himself in eighteen eighty-nine, and Hitler was born in eighteen eighty-nine.”

“Go on.”

“He was heir to the throne. The Austrian crown. The guy who was killed in nineteen fourteen was heir to the throne. He replaced Rudolf, right?”

“Franz Ferdinand.”

“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, World War Two was really just a continuation of World War One, right? And that Austrian guy’s murder started World War One.”

“Kevin is absolutely correct. Rudolf’s suicide set in motion a whole series of events. Granted, ‘what-if’ is always a dangerous game to play with history. What if the Christians had lost the battle of Poitiers? What if Suleiman hadn’t been stopped at the gates of Vienna? What if, heck, I don’t know, the Vikings had stayed in Newfoundland? Billions of possibilities. But here is one that fascinates, because it still resonates today.

“Death always resonates. This murder-suicide this weekend resonates. We think many things, or nothing at all. We ultimately fail to make any sort of connection. Nothing prepares us for this.”

Ellen Bragdonich raised her hand. I nodded in her direction. “But can’t we imagine it, Professor Foley? I mean, isn’t that the essence of fiction? Imagining things? You show us Triumph of the Will and ask us to imagine the Nuremberg rallies of the nineteen-thirties. You read us the diaries of the White Rose students and ask us to imagine their resistance. Can’t we do the same here?”

I thought of Karl Holmes placing the barrel to his daughter’s head and pulling the trigger; I thought of him holding the gun in his mouth. “Imagination only takes us so far, Ellen. We can feel the intoxication of Nazism, because we’ve been to pep rallies in high school, or attended football games, those sorts of things, and Nazi ceremonies were, to a large extent, pep rallies, full of flash and devoid of substance. The White Rose — all of us at one time or another have rebelled against authority, not to compare Nazism to your parents, but still, the foundation is there. But can you imagine murdering your child? Killing yourself?”

They couldn’t. I shifted gears and explained that Rudolf Habsburg remains the most influential suicide in history, for many reasons. Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire, was a glittering and gaudy piece of paste jewelry, ignorant of the forces that it had helped put in motion. The Dual Monarchy of Austria and Hungary, a kingdom and empire ruled by one person, was an anachronism in a world of rising nationalism; Austria had ceased to be a world power after its humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1866; its culture was still trapped in a baroque age that was dead elsewhere in Europe. In this atmosphere, in these surroundings, the liberal Rudolf committed suicide. His death was a spectacular example of the malignancy of the European dream at the end of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth, leading ultimately to Mussolini and Hitler. He was a hero to the Austrians, a golden figure, but completely isolated. He was trapped in a social structure that allowed him no freedom, even though everyone envied him for his position as heir. When he died, the innocence of Europe was shattered.

“Suicide,” I concluded, “forces us to examine our own lives. And we don’t always like what we see.”

***

After class Theodora and I attended a service for Karl Holmes and his daughter. Afterward, Reverend Itzel invited a group of us to his home for a party, although “party” is perhaps too festive a word. “Gathering,” maybe.

The reverend is a member of Grant Meadows’s oldest family, and lives in a palatial mansion on the hills south of town. He is a genuinely good man, and shares his wealth generously, but still manages to maintain an opulent lifestyle. His family built the house in 1901, and subsequent members expanded it over the years, so that it sprawls among the trees, labyrinthine and almost menacing. Reverend Itzel and his wife, Monica, are like parodies of people, crinkly and kindly, a bit dazed and ethereal, yet shrewd in their own way. Monica Itzel loves baking, and she had single-handedly catered the get-together after the funeral, providing cake and sundries for about fifty people. Theodora and I were invited because Reverend Itzel finds us interesting.

Suicide casts a different shade on mourners than a less unusual death. I watched the people in the Itzels’ spacious sitting room, clumped together like seaweed, unwilling to speak of Karl and Katherine, yet unwilling to pretend completely that they were there for some other reason. It was as if the townspeople could not decide whether to mourn or not. I mentioned this to Theodora, who told me to stop thinking and grieve.

“You and I are not from here. We have lived in places that could drive a man to suicide,” she said. “I don’t understand why Karl did it, but I can understand why someone could despair for the world. Many of these people can’t imagine doing something like this, and it’s a terrible sin in their minds. They discuss and condemn, which is their way of remembering. We grieve.”

I admit I am not as emotional as my wife. She feels life around her, more than anyone I’ve ever met, and life imprints itself on her with more force than it does me. The death of Karl and Katherine Holmes depressed me, but on an intellectual level, because of finals and the precedent of Rudolf Habsburg. A weak parallel, maybe, but I think all suicides can be connected somehow. Theodora doesn’t care about parallels; I wouldn’t love her if she did. To her, a man and girl are dead, and that is a tragedy. She refuses to watch the news, because images of starving Ethiopian children or dead Bosnian woman make her weep. At the opposite end of the spectrum, her lovemaking is far more passionate than mine, because she loves just for the complete emotional experience, and I’m always thinking. She is extreme, but genuine; she cried at the funeral, and she cried again at the Itzels’, and every tear was wrenched from deep inside her.

But my mind was on school, on my second review session tomorrow and the final the next day. Maybe I was callous, maybe I’m an asshole, but I didn’t want to be at the Itzels’; to me, it would just be a way for a few members of our community to assuage their guilt about the murder-suicide. No one had ever really accepted Katherine, even though they knew she wasn’t to blame for her mother’s death. It made me angry, because if you don’t mourn, you’re heartless, but if you never treated the dead with respect yet weep when they’re dead, what does that make you? Even Reverend Itzel, who cared greatly for Katherine, seized the opportunity to play the martyr. I bumped into him at the buffet table and noticed the whiskey in his hand. “Are there drinks here?” I asked.

“Only for the chosen few,” he said, smiling grimly. He led me into the library and took a bottle from a drawer in a massive oak desk. On the bookshelf at the back of the room were rocks glasses. He swept one up and poured. “Ice is out there,” he said as he handed it to me.

“You don’t normally drink, Harold,” I said.

“Drowning my sorrows, I suppose. None of us can atone for our sins without the Lord’s help. At times like these, even I feel somewhat abandoned.”

“You were the kindest one to Katherine. Like a grandfather. Karl … who can know what drove him to this? You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“You’re right, Doug. Guilt … it shouldn’t be such a driving force of our emotions. You don’t appear to be feeling the effects.”

I couldn’t decide if he was being sarcastic. “I didn’t know them well enough. Karl was … I don’t know, and Katherine was … a bit of an angel. I drained my glass. “That sounds stupid.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Just accurate.”

***

My students, for the most part, are intelligent and curious people. I try to teach them a history that breathes into their own lives, because too many people today feel divorced from history. History for them is the Nixon resignation, Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, the Challenger explosion, the Gulf War. A tiny slice of history, important, but just the inevitable conclusion of thousands of years of evolution. No one can understand the Gulf War unless they first understand the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Balfour Declaration, the Suez Crisis. How can people appreciate the Nixon debacle unless they view the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Gilded Age, Andrew Johnson? I show my students the intricacies involved in charting the movements of an age. Maybe they learn less about World War II, or the Reichstag fire, or Kristallnacht, than they would in other similar classes with different teachers. But I would bet that nowhere else would they view Hitler’s rise to power as a logical extension of his failures as an artist. This is what history means to me.

After the funeral, I was ready to forget Karl and Katherine Holmes, if only until after the final. I went into the next day’s review session determined to answer questions about the Beer Hall Putsch, President Hindenburg, Franco, Mussolini’s thugs, and the British appeasement policy. And there was Ellen Bragdonich, with her hand raised.

“You were at the funeral yesterday, Professor Foley,” she said. “What did you think of Reverend Itzel’s sermon?”

“I thought we were all keen on reviewing for the final. It is tomorrow, after all.”

“Please. We all know what we’re doing; those who don’t should have dropped this course already.” One thing I like about Ellen, and many others hate, is her brutal arrogance. She’s intelligent, and she knows it. Another thing I like, in conjunction with that, is her willingness to learn when she doesn’t know. She will go far.

I nodded, scanned the room to note objections, and said I would talk for only a few minutes about her question. The event was obviously on everyone’s mind, and Nazi Germany seemed far in the past.

I asked them what they thought of Karl and Katherine Holmes and their deaths. A student named Jeremy said, “I don’t like thinking about death, Mr. Foley. I didn’t go to the funeral. I didn’t know Mr. Holmes, or his daughter.”

“And your point is, Jeremy?”

He was the kind of student who always fell apart under scrutiny, but this time, he struggled to articulate his thoughts. “Well, like you were saying yesterday. Imagination. I can imagine death, the aloneness of it. I don’t believe in God. I believe in an afterlife, however, but it’s a closet. A dark, dank, stuffy, cramped closet. That’s where we go when we die.”

I had a vision of Jeremy’s afterlife, and felt claustrophobic. Quickly, I asked for responses to his theories. I got dozens, all differing. The class was on the point of degenerating into a raucous verbal bloodbath, but I rapped the desk loudly and brought it to a stop.

“Theories of heaven and hell belong in theology class, not here,” I warned. “Today, we are asking ourselves about the murder-suicide. And our reactions to it. Jeremy doesn’t like it, because it reminds him of his closet at the end of existence. But what I’m concerned about is what kind of impact it will have on history, this being a history class and all that.”

“But it won’t have any effect on history, Professor Foley,” said Leo Gantenbein, a disagreeable student who was, nevertheless, extremely bright. “At least, not on history at large. Maybe to the people in this town” — he was from Seattle and regarded small-town America with a great deal of scorn — “it will be something of a benchmark, but the world will just move on. People die every day, millions of them, leaving no discernible traces. Karl Holmes and his daughter are just two more of them.”

I clucked disapprovingly, and saw Leo puff up like a lizard, ready to defend himself. Instead of attacking him, however, I asked, “I hope someone will be able to tell me why I disagree with Leo’s assessment.”

Kevin blurted out, “Because you believe in that everyone-has-an-effect-on-life bullshit. Sir,” he added meekly.

The class laughed.

“And you disagree?” I said.

“I’m with Leo,” he answered. “It’s a tragedy, and the people here will remember it, but the world goes on. Your pal Habsburg. His death meant something, not only to his contemporaries, but also to future generations. Karl Holmes was a small celebrity here, but no one else ever heard of him. Less so his daughter.”

“I see we have some nihilistic types here,” I said. “Doesn’t anyone have vision? Can’t anyone see beyond this town, this moment in history? I’ve spoken of death resonating. These deaths, like all others, will resonate. Whether you know it or not. All of you will remember it, and it will have some effect on you. Trust me.”

***

At dinner that night, Theodora was strangely subdued. I decided it was because of the funeral and the loss, so I didn’t pursue it. As we ate, however, I found I couldn’t keep silent under her microscopic gaze. She sat, chewing her lettuce slowly, eyes fixated on my chin, and I felt somewhat diminished. I fail to weep for a man and girl I hardly know, and I am a bastard. not that Theodora would ever say that. The initial shock had been enough to move me to tears, but I was unable to continue a feigned sadness. I said this to Theodora, which was not smart. She just shook her head, told me I didn’t understand, and left the table. I sat uneasily, tapping my fork against the plate, hoping she would return. She didn’t. Finally, I got up, resolved to let her cool off, and went out into the streets. The sky was dark, and the wind held a hint of snow, teasing and twisting the night. The streetlights shed orange cones onto the deserted blacktop, and I walked in silence. I thought of playing devil’s advocate to my students, telling them Karl and Katherine’s deaths meant something, and then to Theodora, implying it meant little. “You are a bastard,” I said aloud. But I still didn’t return to my house.

***

Today Ellen Bragdonich came to see me. It’s been three weeks since the final; a new semester starts tomorrow; a time to cleanse away the memories, good or bad, of last autumn. She earned the highest grade on the final and my sincere accolades; of all my students, she was the one I thought actually understood everything I was trying to say. Today she knocked on my door and peeked her head in. After exchanging pleasantries and some inane chatter about the Christmas holiday, she held up her final. “Thanks,” she said, which I dismissed by saying it was all her effort. I asked why she had come to see me, because it was obviously not to talk about the final.

“It’s what you said. About the murder-suicide. You know.”

“I do.”

“People are already mythologizing it. Karl Holmes was a white supremacist; Katherine was a whore; the usual bullshit. Professor Foley, why do people do that? After they died, they were canonized. Now, they’re demonized.”

“Or still lauded. I heard Katherine killed Karl because he was raping her, and then killed herself because she couldn’t forgive herself. Twisted.”

“You talked about Rudolf Habsburg. His death affected European history. But this event is resonating in a different way, a sick way.”

“We can’t predict the future.”

“I had a feeling you were going to say that. I gotta go, Professor Foley. Would you mind if I dropped by now and then?”

“Of course not. Good luck, Ellen.”

***

Tonight I’m sitting in my dark study, waiting for my wife. Theodora was meeting with some of her friends from the college, and will be home soon. I watch the dim light filter in from outside, the ring of ice on the windows, the shallow crust of snow on the lawn. When Rudolf died, an era came to an end. No one will ever know the answers to the questions that plagued him. No one will ever know why Karl Holmes snapped. We’re left with memories, which are always false.

Theodora opens the front door and comments loudly on the darkness. I didn’t hear her pull up, and it takes a few seconds before I realize she’s standing in front of me. Her anger toward me has softened over the holidays, but I can still see her disappointment in me. I stand unsteadily and take her hand. “Forgive me?” I whisper.

She kisses me tenderly on the mouth, and death slips quietly from my mind.

**********

[I’ve always been fascinated by Rudolf Habsburg. So sue me.]