The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 18-3

I purposely had not told Katharina I was

coming. I preferred to take care of business first, get my

interviews out of the way, and see what possibilities there were

for me in Chicago before seeing Katharina.

I spent the first day in Chicago walking

around the Loop area. The city had a population of about 1.2

million, about 40 percent of whom were immigrants—mostly German and

Irish. As I walked the downtown streets, I could sense the energy

of the city. As it was in 1893, it was still the epitome of

vitality and growth.

I visited the nine-story Marshall Field’s

Wholesale Store at the corner of Wabash and Washington Streets as

well as several other stores and shops. Then I stopped by the

Chicago Daily Tribune building at the corner of Dearborn and

Madison, hoping to see General Manager R. W. Patterson with whom I

had interviewed four years before. He was not in, so I left some

clippings of my work and my card. I wrote my hotel and room number

on it.

That evening, I had dinner at Schlogl’s

German Restaurant, 37 N. Wells Street, where Mallie and I had eaten

dinner with Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus. The place hadn’t

changed. Black-jacketed waiters scurried about, and the sound of

music drifted from a small stage where a string quartet played a

Mozart violin concerto.

The next morning, I began the first of three

interviews. I took copies of my reportorial work with the Denver

Sun, including my dispatches from the Far East. My first

meeting was with the editor of the Chicago Post. After that,

I interviewed with the editor of the Chicago Journal and

then met with the managing editor of the Chicago Star. They

were all ambiguous when it came to hiring me.

When I returned to my hotel later that

afternoon, I found a message from Mr. Patterson at the Daily

Tribune. He was inviting me to join him for dinner at Chapin

& Gore’s restaurant on Monroe Street that evening, if I wasn’t

busy.

Patterson was a little shorter than me and

about ten years older. His hair was parted in the middle, and he

sported a full mustache that covered his upper lip. He had a

distinguished career as a newspaperman, having served as the

Tribune’s Washington Correspondent.

“Mr. Battles,” he said standing as the

maître d’ escorted me to the table. “Nice to see you again.”

“Likewise… and thank you for making time to

see me.”

“I’m sorry I missed you the other day, but

it was probably for the best. I was able to look at the work you

left for me. Those pieces out of French Indochina are quite well

done, I must say.”

“Thank you.”

“I see you were in the Philippines. I am

sure you know that our relationship with Spain is fragile. In fact,

I think there will be a war. What do you think? What do people in

the Philippines think?”

“I wasn’t in the Philippines very long, but

I did meet Philippine nationalist Jose Rizal, who was executed by

the Spanish last year. From what I could tell, the Filipino people

are fed up with Spain and want their independence. I also learned

that Germany has some designs on the country.”

“Germany? I had no idea.”

“Yes, there were apparently some secret

plans Germany had for moving into the place once the Spanish were

expelled. I’ve actually seen some of the documents that were

smuggled out of Berlin.”

“Do you have those documents? I mean, could

they be published?”

“I don’t have them in my possession, but I

know who does. The question is will the person who has them allow

them to be translated and made public.”

“What do the people in the Philippines think

about the United States if there is actually a war with Spain?”

“I don’t think they would relish us being in

charge there anymore than their Spanish overlords.”

After dinner, Patterson and I agreed to meet

again before I left Chicago. I wasn’t sure if I would be offered a

post with the paper, but I felt more optimistic than I had with the

other papers with whom I had interviewed.

The next day, I took a hackney to Chicago’s

Lincoln Park area and found myself ringing the bell of the Messner

mansion. A severe-looking woman wearing a black and white maid’s

uniform answered the door.

“Ja?” she said, looking at me as though I

were some kind of door-to-door salesman.

I handed her my card and, in German, asked

for Katharina. The woman’s expression brightened a little when she

saw that I spoke German, and she ushered me into a front parlor

sitting room. The walls were covered with thick dark wood and

bookcases filled with books. I had just settled into one of the

room’s overstuffed chairs when I heard Katharina’s voice from

somewhere down the hallway.

“Oh my god. Is it possible?” she said as she

entered the room holding my card. “William Raglan Battles. At

last.”

I grinned, stood up, and walked toward her.

When I was about two feet away, she stopped and looked at me. Then

she rushed forward and put her arms around me.

“You left out Fitzroy,” I jibed.

“You are such a cad… Why did it take so long

for you to come to Chicago?” Then she put her hand on my mouth.

“Never mind, I know you had fatherly duties to perform in

Denver.”

We spent the rest of the evening catching

up. I met Katharina’s parents, who had been enlightened about their

daughter’s adventures in the Far East and my involvement in them.

Katharina’s father was a tall lean man approaching seventy. His

hair was gray, streaked with a few black strands, and he sported a

Vandyke beard.

Irmgard Messner was almost as tall as her

daughter was. She was a winsome woman—elegant, poised, and

confident. I could see right away from whom Katharina got her

stately bearing. She looked to be about the same age as my mother.

She had light auburn hair worn in a chignon with a bun at the nape

of the neck. Her cornflower blue eyes were wide set and flashed

when she laughed.

Both spoke English with thick German

accents, and of course, during dinner that evening, Katharina

insisted that I demonstrate my proficiency with the language, which

was minimal. I struggled through the evening, falling back on

English when German words failed me. My bad German grammar probably

hurt my hosts’ ears, and I apologized for that.

“That is quite all right, Mr. Battles,” Mrs.

Messner said. “German is a difficult language to master, and I dare

say not many Germans have done it. Did you say your mother is

German?”

“Second generation… Her parents were from

Germany, but she was born in eastern Illinois.”

“What was her family name?”

“Kluge… Hannelore Kluge.”

“Oh, I love that name… Hannelore. I almost

gave Katharina that name.”

“Now that would have been a

propitious coincidence,” Katharina said.

The four of us talked for another hour, and

then Katharina walked me to the door.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

“How about a grand tour of Chicago?”

“Absolutely. I will come to your hotel about

ten o’clock. In the meantime, take this with you.” She pulled me

close and kissed me full on the mouth. It was a long lingering kiss

that I hadn’t experienced since Katharina and I said good-bye in

Saigon.

For the next several days, Katharina and I

toured just about every area of Chicago, even going as far as

Milwaukee on the train and then taking a Lake Michigan boat back to

Chicago. It was during one of these trips that Katharina and I

became intimate. In those days, a lady didn’t visit the hotel room

of a man unless she was his wife. So Katharina arranged for us to

spend an afternoon and evening at the Lincoln Park home of a female

friend who was out of town for the next few weeks.

I will not go into the details of that

long-awaited physical merger, but suffice it to say it was for us

both an exhausting but satisfying several hours of pure pleasure,

punctuated by a breather for a bottle or two of wine and a little

dinner. Making love to Katharina was intoxicating, and it awoke

sensations and emotions in me that I hadn’t felt in years.

Katharina confided that she experienced the same passionate

sensations as I did. Most important, after that delightful

afternoon was the tacit confirmation that we were definitely

destined to be together one way or another.

It had been almost four years since my

Mallie had passed away, but I still felt guilty feeling the way I

did about Katharina. In some way, I believed I was being

unfaithful. Of course, I wasn’t—unless it was to Mallie’s memory.

My mother might have put it best after I told her of the struggle I

was having reconciling my memories of Mallie and the love I was

beginning to feel for Katharina.

As she often did, she reverted to the German

she learned while growing up, “Liebe und Verstand gehen selten Hand

in Hand,” she said. Loosely translated, it meant that love and

reason seldom go together.

“You are thinking too much about the past

and not enough about the future,” she continued. “You have your

whole life ahead of you and so does Anna Marie. That is where your

focus belongs.”

She was right, of course. She usually was.

But try as I might to think about the future, guilt still nagged at

me.

When Katharina and I weren’t touring or

spending time at our secret abode, we spent our time at the Messner

home where I got to know her mother and father better. In fact, my

relationship with Katharina’s parents had blossomed nicely, and I

felt a definite kinship with them both. I am sure they also

detected that the relationship between Katharina and me had moved

into a much more intimate stage.

On a couple of occasions, the four of us

went to the Germania Club housed in a substantial

Romanesque/Neoclassical building at the corner of Clark Street and

Grant near Lincoln Park. Across the street was Zum Roten Stern, one

of the city’s best German restaurants. The menu included dishes

such as apple pancakes, Hoppel-Poppel (scrambled eggs,

frankfurters, mushrooms, and onions), Hasenpfeffer (rabbit stew),

Konigsberger Klops (German meatballs), and Wiener Schnitzel a la

Holstein (breaded veal served with a sunny-side up egg and

anchovies).

The Germania Club’s members were prominent

Germans and a good number of Chicago’s political and business

elites. Katharina’s father was one of the club’s most renowned

members. In fact, he had taken Katharina’s husband there on several

occasions to meet with prominent German American businessmen and

discuss German plans for colonial expansion.

Not once during my visit did we ever discuss

the tragic details of Baron von Schreiber’s death and Katharina’s

part in it. It was a verboten topic in the Messner household,

Katharina said. However, sitting in the large living room where the

baron died, I found myself visualizing how it played out. I could

almost see Manfred lying half-unconscious on the floor with the

baron standing over him, holding a fireplace poker. Then I could

envisage Katharina shooting the baron and his lifeless body lying

on the floor with blood oozing from three bullet holes. Once,

Katharina seemed to sense that I was recreating the altercation in

my mind. We were alone in the room, and she stood up from her chair

and walked to a spot in the room.

“I was here,” she said. “My husband was over

there, and Manfred was lying at his feet near where you are

sitting. After I shot him, my husband collapsed right here.” She

walked to a spot on the floor and stood there for a moment. I felt

a bit embarrassed. Was I so obvious?

“You don’t need to reenact the event,” I

said uneasily.

“I’m not, but I can tell it is weighing on

your mind. You needn’t look for any bloodstains either. The

carpeting was replaced. And that’s too bad. It was a lovely

Oriental carpet.”

“Sorry. I didn’t think I was that

transparent.”

“Don’t be silly, William. Now you know, and

you won’t have to imagine how it all unfolded each time you come in

here.”

She walked over to me, took my hand, and

pulled me up from my chair. Then she put her arms around me and

said softly, “It does haunt me sometimes, and I find myself

regretting what happened. But then I think if it hadn’t happened, I

would still be in a malicious, heartless marriage, I would not have

taken that ship to Asia, and I never would have met you.”