Chapter 5: I Walk The Line

Mark’s little daughter Feli waved us goodbye after we had delivered her to the kindergarten. Jenny took my hand and we turned to walk to her school.

“What’s it with the little one calling you ‘mama’?” I asked the question that I had pondered the whole time I had been sitting outside in the early morning hours. “You told me she calls both you and Nadja ‘mama’, but I don’t think I quite understand why?”

“I sort of stole her,” Jenny told me with a giggle. “Not really, of course, but I have spent the most time with her, what with dad and auntie Nadja away for competitions all the time. And as dad likes to say, Feli is a community project anyway.”

“I think you’ve lost me there,” I admitted, looking at her slightly confused.

“Dad and auntie Nadja are her biological parents,” she explained. “But she has some medical condition that makes her unable to breast-feed, so my mom became Feli’s wet nurse. And since our folks are so often away, most of the time I took care of her, or mommy Meri did. We are all one big family.”

“Sounds like heaven,” I admitted. “I’ve never had a family, other than dad.”

Jenny chuckled. “It’s fantastic most of the time, alright, but sometimes having five mother hens clucking over you can be a bit much, especially when they are all home at the same time.”

The director of the school was nothing like I had imagined her. She certainly wasn’t anything like that living fossil back in Pasadena, who was very adept at teaching us about the founding fathers, because she looked like she had actually been around when the Declaration of Independence was signed. The head mistress of Jenny’s school was actually a quite attractive lady, probably in her late thirties.

“Well, considering that Jenny clutches you like a prized possession, you must be Matt,” she greeted me when we entered her office.

“Do I have an image that precedes me?” I asked somewhat bemused, deliberately speaking German to let her know that I didn’t come unprepared.

“Oh, Jenny might have mentioned you a few thousand times,” she said with obvious amusement. “And after reading the article in the local paper this morning, mentioning you as one of three kids who get to acquire their racing licenses early, I already gathered that you have arrived somewhat early.”

“The question is: what do we do about that?” I asked. “Do I start school tomorrow? What books do I need?”

“The plan doesn’t change,” the lady explained to us, shaking her head. “You will join the new term in September, just as originally planned. We do however have recent positive experience with Jenny being home-schooled when she was away, so you are of course free to keep yourself in the loop. Perhaps, in that regard, your early arrival can make things easier for you.”

“Doreen would make a good teacher, actually,” Jenny supplied. “And since I’m visiting classes I can just bring the material home.”

“A good plan,” the director lady agreed. “I’m sure the stereotypes about the American education system are wildly exaggerated, but it will be quite a change for you, Matt.”

I heaved a sigh. “Unfortunately not all is exaggerated. Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t roaming the streets at night, licking shop windows, but the teaching is so America-centric, many people hardly know that there is a world beyond our borders. Most of what I know about Europe didn’t come from school lessons, but because of studying our family history. Heck, there are people who hardly know what World War I was, and if they know, most think Germany started it. We hardly learned anything about it.”

“Just out of interest as a history teacher,” the director said. “You think otherwise?”

Jenny gave the director a confused look, but I saw it for what it was. I had just told her that I taught myself much of the history knowledge I had. She wanted to check that I hadn’t learned from some questionable sources. After all, the history of both world wars was also subject to a lot of revisionism. I decided to take this as an impromptu oral history test and rattled off the facts.

“Strictly speaking, they all started it,” I explained. “Every major power in Europe was spoiling for a fight as the rapid rise of the German Empire after 1871 had spooked the British and the French in particular. In practical terms the war was started by Austria-Hungary. After the assassination of heir-presumptive Archduke Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo in June 1914, Austria-Hungary imposed a harsh ultimatum on Serbia, with the promise of full support by their ally - the German Empire. When Serbia didn’t acquiesce, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, which caused Serbia’s main ally, the Russian Empire, to declare war on Austria-Hungary, which then forced Germany to declare war on Russia, due to their alliance pact with Austria-Hungary.”