Chapter Twenty Eight – The Rascal Who Loved a Lady

Seiji – Hannover - July 1999

Even though it didn't look like much, the paperwork was slow to go through because it was simply so interesting. There were several books of company accounts; rows and rows of Deutschmarks and Pfennigs – we put those aside, they were boring. Several files of correspondence, these were amazing: letters discussing different woods, cloth, glass beads for eyes, stuffing, paint. All sorts of old communications with suppliers. There was even a series of letters with Mercedes Benz, the car factory dated 1924 in which they had sent Steuben some plans and photographs of their trucks, apparently so Steuben could make wooden toy copies. I put the correspondence files aside – fascinating though they were you could easily get sucked into the past and waste several days in there.

The sales invoices were interesting, boxes of toy soldiers or dolls sold to such and such a shop in Munich or Cologne and a couple to Vienna. Franz Steuben's empire had been dead for fifty years, yet that morning in the unlikely surroundings of a computer games developers office in Hannover, it came alive again and I could almost hear the whir of their machines, sewing together dolls dresses or the rattle of their woodwork shop turning the wheels of toy trains on their lathes. I thought back to the kinds of people who may have worked there, ordinary artisans like me, young men probably doing the simple tasks before growing more skilled and moving on to perhaps designing toys themselves.

But it was the eight fat cloth bound pattern books that were the most interesting. These big files contained designs and pre-production artwork for a whole range of toys: wooden ships, cars and tanks, model yachts for boys to sail on the village pond, toy soldiers and of course, the dolls. The company seemed to have made endless varieties of doll. Baby and girl dolls were common but the sheer range of products just stunned me. Some were stuffed toys for small kids to cuddle in bed while others seemed to be aimed at collectors – there was one long series of Napoleonic soldiers dressed in bright uniforms of red, blue and green. Dashing hussars, garish lancers and several types of infantrymen. But it was the animals that Steuben had specialized in. I was flicking through a long series of farm animals when I noticed it was quiet across the table. Then the silence was broken by a sniff, the sound of a runny nose.

I looked up. Shizuku had her white gloved hand flat on a page, she was moving it slowly across an image, almost stroking it. I could see a grey dressed figure there. It had a brown head with ears sticking up. Before I got up and went around the table, before I even moved, I knew who he was. She had found him.

"Move your hand, I can't see him."

She lay her hand to one side. And there he was. The Baron. The picture was beautiful, some very skilled artist had drawn him and painted him in water colours. He was almost exactly like ours, the same grey tail coat, the same top hat and cane, that same raffish, dandy like air about him. An air of confidence, the attitude of a well heeled confident young man walking in the park on a sunny day. The lady cats all turning to look at him. Shizuku sniffed again.

"Doesn't he look lovely? So smart. If I was a young cat girl, I'd marry him."
"Amazing, he's exactly the same."

I went to the shelf by the coffee machine and opened the metal carry case and lifted him out. I stood him on the table next to the pattern book and our eyes moved between the doll and the image of the doll. There was no mistaking it, not only was the water colour painting the original design for the doll but it was exactly the same. I could see only one difference, the picture depicted small feet and the doll was mounted on a wooden base. Our doll had bigger feet, slightly over scale size and no base. I preferred the production figure to the design figure, the lack of a base made it seem more real, like a real cat but magically frozen.

Suddenly Shizuku was weeping.

"Hey. Hey there, what's the matter? Don't cry."

I bent down and put my arms around her.

"I'm so glad I found him. This makes it all worth while."
"Sssshhh, there's no need to cry over it."
"I'm just so happy. I had got so stupidly worked up about this. Going all round Germany, spending hours and hours on the internet, bringing you into this private obsession of mine when you're really not interested."
"Whoa, hey now. That's not true. Who said I'm not interested?"
"Well the Baron has always been my obsession."
"Shizuku, don't think I'm not interested. This is a fascinating search. Yes, at first I didn't understand your interest and I underestimated the strength of it and, well, maybe there's parts of it I still don't get – you were always much closer to Luisa than me. But the last few days have been fun – well mostly fun. You said it years ago. These two dolls are grandpa's gift to us, a message he wanted us to have, to make sure we understood. It's love. That's his message. And we are love, aren't we? So of course I'm interested."

She was still seated, I was behind her. She turned her head and tilted it back, looking up at me. Her eyes were wet.

"Kiss me."

I did.

She wiped her nose and went back to looking at that lovely painting.

"I just can't believe we've found him, oh, I feel so good about this."

Down in the bottom right hand corner the painting had been signed and dated. The artist's name was Hans and the date was "Juli 1926". That surprised us. We'd been expecting a date in the mid to late 1930s, but the Baron had been designed ten years earlier.

A bright light suddenly came on in my head,

"We can check the order books from 1926 onwards! We can find out which shops ordered these dolls from his factory. Where they were sold."

She stood up, pushing her chair back, and turned to me.

"Yes! That's fantastic! Oh, come here," she grabbed me and kissed me again, "Mm, you clever, wonderful man. What would I do without you?"

I went to the pile of order books and began flipping through them, looking for the one that started in 1926. We were both excited now, bouncing around the room like a couple of kids. This was fun, suddenly we were making real progress at last.

"Wait," she said, "dolls."
"Hm?"
"Dolls."
"Yes?"
"Dolls. Baka! Dolls, dolls, dolls. Two of them!"
"Dolls! Yes, the Baroness!"
"She must be here."

She turned the page of the pattern book. The water colour paintings were fixed to a type of heavy duty board. This was punched through in four places near the spine of the folio volume and four black cloth ribbons held them to the books' binding making a crude hinge. On the back of the Baron's board was faded writing in a thin spidery hand – quite a lot of writing.

But it was the next page we looked at. Because there she was. We had never seen her like this. To me the Baroness had always been in a white brides dress, the dress grandpa made for her. Shizuku had seen her for a few days as a ruin, worn and broken in Anna-Marie's shop but I couldn't remember back to the one time I'd see her like that, the night she had packed her up and sent her to Japan. But looking now at that second picture I realized what we had been missing, what grandpa had been missing for fifty years.

The restoration he had done was excellent but if this painting was as faithful to the original doll as we now knew the painting of the Baron was to him, then grandpa had failed to quite catch the essence of the doll. I think he had used too much stuffing in the head – our Baroness was quite round-faced, chubby in a cute way which made her look young and a little playful. But the lady cat we looked at in the painting was a real lady. She was just completely charming, her face was slim, something like a Siamese cat, pointed elegant features with a rather refined look to her. She was a lady of taste, a noblewoman, a cat from the highest ranks of society, a cat princess. Beside her the Baron looked quite a character, alone he looked like a dashing young beau, but placed beside her he took on a whole different character. He seemed to be a man out of his league, a rough diamond, a man aiming too high in society, courting a woman beyond his means. But he was clearly a man of style, a man of daring and wit, a handsome ruffian. I had always imagined him to be the Baron and a lady had married him and taken the title of Baroness from him. But that evidently wasn't the case. She was a lady of pure blood, a Baroness and he was a social climbing adventurer, and he'd pulled off the most daring social match of the cat world and won his girl. It was because she was a Baroness that he took the title of Baron. It was amazing that a doll maker might do this. Individually the two dolls were well made, but only if a person bought the pair would they see and understand the artisans joke. He was probably a poor man, something of a rascal, a hopeful rascal possibly. Perhaps he had one good suit and would wear it on Sundays and go walking in the park and give the elegant ladies the eye, swinging his cane, raising his hat and charming them with his wit and guile. Some poor workman who had a dream of meeting a girl from a better family had done this, in his toys he had met and married the girl of his dream and maybe Shizuku and I were the only people now alive to see his joke, feel his dream, to understand the lovestruck motivation of some factory artisan from three quarters of a century ago.

I looked from the cat lady's face to the girl beside me. Neither of us had said a word but I could see that she had made the same connection. Shizuku had one hand raised, covering her open mouth.

"Oh, my God, he's in love with her isn't he?"
"He is. And he's way out of his league."
"But she's fallen under his spell."
"He must be quite a charmer, to catch her eye."
"I think her father despises him, he's low class."
"But she's smitten, she sees past the class conventions and sees the heart of the man."
"I think they might elope together, run away and secretly marry."
"I hope so."
"My God, the man has written a whole fairy tale in two toys."

I sat down, it was almost too bittersweet to bear. Years ago I had been stunned by the discovery of the intentions of a stonemason who had carved some cherub figures for an Italian fountain. Now here was a man doing the same thing, telling a story to people he'd never know. A story about himself and a lady he secretly loved. In his dreams they were together, but what of reality? I could guess but I didn't want to, it could only be a sad ending. It was only in his toy-making that this lovestruck man had found his girl. It was so sad. I stood up again and the two of us were suddenly hugging once more. I held her tight and realized what lucky people we were.

-oOo-

The Baroness painting was also dated "Juli 1926" and signed "Lotte" a female artist. The faint script on the backs of the pictures was impossible to read as our German was so limited. While I flicked through the 1926 order book Shizuku spent the rest of the morning copy typing very carefully all the written material. I reached the end without any reference to "Katze" which I knew to be the German word. I started on the 1927 book, and ploughed through most of that. I'd got to October and was seeing double, lots of trucks and cars, Noah's Ark animal sets and soldiers, but not a single "Katze". Nothing. My eyes went to the trolley again. I could see the 1928 order book but quite frankly I was running out of steam now.

Shizuku finished transcribing the writing. She went to the phone and dialled. She asked Lisette if there was any chance of something to eat and mineral water to drink. She also enquired if it would be possible to have colour photocopies of the pattern book paintings done. She went back to the table and sat looking at the painting of the Baroness.

"Sandwiches alright?"
"Mm, fine."
"Find anything?"
"Not yet. Do you want to stay until I finish this one?"
"How long will it t…"
"Sorry?"

I looked up. She was looking at the Baroness painting, she flipped the card over and looked at the Baron, then back to the Baroness. Flip, back again.

"What is it?"
"Seiji, come here."

I went over.

"Look at the signatures, the dates."

Flip, flip. Flip, flip. She swung the top picture over the bottom one, then up again. Back. Up.

"See anything?"

Yes, I did.

"It's the same signature, the same style of writing. Look at the "J" of "Juli" and how the "7" has a curved corner, not an angle.
"I agree. But if it's the same artist why do they sign themselves "Hans" on one picture and "Lotte" on the other?"

I was as confused as her. She was right, it didn't make sense but there was no explanation either.

"Did you get anything from the notes on the back?"
"Not much. I think it was manufacturing instructions, materials and so on, but I can't be sure. I need to get it properly translated."

Hans and Lotte. Hm, I'm sure I'd seen that somewhere just now.

"Shizuku. I've just had an idea. Come here."

I went back to the 1927 order book, it had been in the spring. I'm sure I'd seen it. I flipped through it quickly. Shizuku stood beside me, she leaned down on the table, on her elbows. I couldn't move through the old book too fast in case I damaged the pages. And then suddenly there it was. June 1927, the tenth:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donnerstag 6-10-27.
Hans/Lotte Zwei paare (Nr.1/2) – Alberts Spielwaren, Kurfürstendamm 80, Berlin.
Hans/Lotte Drei paare (Nr.3/4/5) – Zuckerbruder, Kaufingerstrasse 27, Munchen.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We both looked at the entry. I marked it with a slip of note paper and went on. In the next hour I went through that whole book twice and found no more Hans/Lotte entries. Not one. Shizuku went back through the 1926 order book from July to the end of the year. Nothing.

"It's their names isn't it?" I hardly dared suggest it.

She was leaning on the table, head in her hands, mind dulled with the effort of looking at old book entries. She'd not moved or spoken for five minutes. I had come to pretty much this conclusion a while ago but was afraid to say anything in case it raised false hopes.

"I think you're right. I think this order shows two sets of them being sent to Berlin and three sets of them to Munich. And from what we've seen only five sets were ever sold."
"Amazing. I wonder why?"
"No idea. Perhaps the notes on the backs of the pictures will give us a clue."
"Hans and Lotte."
"Are those common names in German?"
"No idea, but maybe, maybe names that children might know from early reading books perhaps?"
"Hm. I still prefer 'Baron' and 'Baroness' myself," she looked at me.
"So where does 'Humbert von Jikkingen' come in then?"
"No idea. You should know, it's what your grandpa called him."
"He'd called him that ever since I'd known him. It never occurred to me to ask."
"Perhaps it was a name he made up."
"Or maybe they both made it up when they were in Munich and he told Luisa stories about him."
"Hm. We'll never know."

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15 - 16 January 2007

For author notes about chapter 28 see my forum (click on my pen name)