Adelsverein - The Gathering - The Book Locker

Adelsverein: The Gathering
upstairs, and their children had run out to chase chickens in the yard.
Here were their roots set, generations deep. Although Magda was not
truly one of them by blood, she had still lived here for nearly all of
her life as Vati’s much-loved oldest daughter.
“So it would,” and Vati’s eyes looked grave behind his glasses,
as he opened the door into the farmhouse kitchen. “We could hardly
take it all with us.” They stepped into the little entry and from there
into the warmth of the kitchen, scoured as clean as a new pin, full of
the smell of food cooking and the yeasty scent of bread on the rise,
“Christian, my heart, my hands are all over flour!” exclaimed
Magda’s mother from beside the trough of dough. “You are early.”
Hannah Vogel Steinmetz did not look like either of her daughters: she
was a plump little wren of a woman, brown-haired and rosy. Vati
kissed her on the lips with a good enthusiastic smack before he was
swarmed by his sons, Friedrich and Johann and granddaughter Anna,
with joyous shouts of “Vati! Opa!” and a treble chorus of questions
and accounts of what had been going on over the last few days.
The boys were twins of the age of seven, as alike as two peas for
looks, having Vati’s grey eyes and Mutti’s fair to light brown hair, but
very different in nature. Johann was serious and shy, Friedrich a
daring scamp. It baffled Magda when people claimed they couldn’t
tell the boys apart. Friedrich’s face was rounder, and he was the
outgoing, happy-go-lucky adventurer. Johann’s face was thinner; he
was the more timid and serious one. Magda didn’t think much of
people who didn’t notice those elemental differences. Weren’t they
looking closely enough; how could they not see something so simple?
Their niece Anna had serious dark brown eyes like her father,
Hansi Richter, her mother Liesel’s dimples and brown curls too short
and wispy to be woven into plaits. A solemn-faced little mite, she
could on occasion be brought to laugh, a happy little trilling sound
almost like a bird. All the younger children addressed Magda as
‘Auntie Magda’, since she was so very much older than they. Now
Magda set Vati’s box of tools in the cupboard by the door and put the
emigrant pamphlet into the pocket of her apron, for later.
“Children!” Hannah chided them, “Boys, you must behave!”
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