Double Star

By Bernard Thornton

This story is set in Germany at the start of the First World War and follows Klaus, a quiet astronomer of Jewish background, who spends his time with a telescope in an observatory on the edge of town. There he meets an independent young woman from a well-to-do background whose desire for a career of her own leads her to work on the laboratory’s microscope.

Their different backgrounds clash even as the world is changing around them. Ulla is forced to keep her work secret from her socially ambitious mother to whom status and the old ways are prized above all. Her father encourages Ulla to help him in his quest to find a cure for a deadly disease. However, he has a secret of his own which also threatens the stability of their family.

As their relationship grows and Ulla and Klaus share their scientific discoveries, unforeseen events force them to make choices which will have far-reaching consequences for both them and their families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685627379

Bernard Thornton

Bernard was born in Scotland to a Scottish father and a German mother.  He has lived in New Zealand for most of his life apart from travel to Germany, the UK and the USA.  He is a graduate of the University of Otago (Geography) and the Auckland University of Technology (Creative Writing).  His first novel, Schist, was published in New Zealand and he has had poetry published in various journals.  Bernard enjoys teaching, reading, photography and hiking.  He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand with his wife.

Book preview

Part One

1. The Long View

Early Summer, 1913

‘Dr. Mendelsohn, one moment, please.’

With stops and starts, he threads through the crowd.

‘I’ve a pleasant task for you,’ Professor Herzberg says. ‘Miss Tiefenbach wishes to see the telescope, and since this is your domain…’

But Mendelsohn doesn’t hear any more. Just looks at her. Shapely. With an alertness in the blue eyes. The auburn hair caught high in a bun. She smiles and nods at him. It is like being touched by the sun.

‘It is true,’ she says, ‘I want to see the telescope.’

He registers the difference between his director’s wish and her want. She hasn’t said please, but the quality of her directness allays any irritation he might have felt. Instead, he finds it an unexpected courtesy, as though from her first words she sought him out, not as agent but as person.

He doesn’t know whether to walk behind, beside, or in front of her.

‘I’m lost without you,’ she says, laughing, ‘so you lead the way.’

In the library, he can show her books that tell the story of the Observatory, but she has eyes only for the spiral staircase in the corner.

‘It’s narrow,’ he says. ‘Grip the railing.’

She brushes past him and starts to climb in the partial light, the hem of her skirt undulating over each tread. At the top, she waits for him, and he reaches past the white swell of her blouse to open the smaller door. She goes in and stands, waiting, turning to him, then moves with a sure rhythm among the glass-topped instrument cases. Moving and pausing, from one to the other, her gloved hand resting on each polished wooden frame.

‘They look like large shiny insects,’ she says.

He nods but doesn’t say anything.

When she is ready, he opens the little door in the far wall.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘it’ll be dark for a moment—I call it the Cupboard.’

In the interval before he can open the door into the Dome Room, it is pitch black. He hears the rustle of her skirts and breathes her fragrance. Next moment, they are standing beside the telescope, its great tube soaring upward, sunlight streaming through the South Window onto the curving brass. As she starts to move about, she raises her hand but hesitates above the tube, a question in her eyes.

He is ambushed by his awareness of her.

‘You may touch it, of course,’ he says. ‘It’s surprising how robust it is.’

He’ll be fine as long as he limits himself to the telescope.

‘Would you like to sit in the chair,’ he hears himself say. ‘To get a better sense of it.’

‘Please. I should love that.’

Her please is like fresh rain.

Before he can lift a hand, she slips the coat from her shoulders and lets it pool on the floor. Hitches her skirts and settles herself in the half circle of faded red leather. She leans forward and puts her hands up on both sides of the tube, to explore the levers of the instrument. Looks into the eyepiece.

‘The dome is moved back at night for observation,’ he says, to steady himself.

After some moments, she flings back and looks straight around at him.

‘It’s another world,’ she says. ‘You must let me come at night.’

He is aware of his clenched hands and releases them tentatively behind his back, certain she can see the movement of each finger.

After a while, she gets down and moves about the circular room. At the South Window, she pauses and looks down and laughs. ‘So, this is where you observe the rest of the world from!’ she says.

If only he knew how to smile at such things.

At the East Window, she bends to look out. ‘Ah, the red roofs,’ she sighs.

‘Isn’t that the meaning of the town’s name—Rothenheim?’ he says.

She nods. ‘Yes, that’s right. Red Home, literally.’

She’s completely at home in this place, he thinks. But it’s not the same for him.

She turns and leans back against the curving wall beside the little table with a pile of his papers. ‘What are you working on?’ she asks.

He wants to answer simply so as not to put her off.

She sees his confusion. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says smiling. ‘My father says I’m always too direct. Impetuous is his word for me.’

Mendelsohn doesn’t mean to ignore her remark but he can no longer contain himself. Explanation upon explanation erupts into the startled silence. Out of clusters of sentences and equations emerges a narrative of two stars. It bristles with complexity and detail and, spurred on by an unapologetic ferocity, he’s aware that his presentation is not the popular version, and that his director would probably not give it his approval. But he can’t help it. Numbers, more often than words, group in sequence after sequence. March on like serried ranks of soldiers, the metalwork of their rifles glinting. He stops mid-sentence, afraid he has gone too far.

Undeterred, her face is turned up to his, the brow smooth. He hears her murmur, ‘It is the poetry of numbers.’

He can’t believe it.

‘Are these two stars drawn together by accident?’ she asks calmly.

He is still.

‘Well, are they?’ she says.

‘No. Not at all.’ He gathers himself. ‘Their two distinct orbital paths intersect.’

He sees she is intrigued.

‘Do they take leave of each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do they return?’

‘Yes. From time to time.’

‘How is this possible?’ she says.

‘Because they are attracted to one other.’

‘Is that always the case?’

‘It would seem so—with stars of this kind.’

Her eyes are shining: ‘It is a kind of dance.’

He hesitates.

‘But how beautiful that is!’ she says. She takes a breath. ‘Have they a name?’

‘Together they form what is known as a double star.’

‘Double star. A double star,’ she repeats it to herself. Then crosses to the window and glances down.

He comes and stands beside her. What has captured her attention?

The crowd is thinning. Carriages are coming and going between the gates and the front steps.

‘That’s my mother,’ she says, pointing. ‘She doesn’t know where I am—I’d quite forgotten her.’

He’s holding her coat in his hand. Suddenly pale, she sucks in her breath. Why? He glances down. It’s my hand—the scars, he realizes, trying to hide them with a fold of the coat.

‘Thank you,’ she says, taking it from him and tucking it without fuss under her arm. She smiles up at him. ‘Thank you for showing me the telescope. And the star talk—I loved it.’

He nods, and bows slightly.

‘I must go,’ she says. She lets her hand rest for a moment on the telescope, before moving toward the door. He shakes himself into action. They return to the instrument room, where he insists on going first on the stair. From the library, the passageway takes them back to the foyer.

He stops at the top of the front steps.

Starting down, she turns and says, ‘Goodbye then, Dr. Mendelsohn. One night, I hope…’

He raises his right hand in a sort of salute and watches as she goes down. Struck by her natural rhythm, he hears the sound of her strong stride on the paving stones as she crosses to the carriage, where the coachman stands waiting by the open door. The thick folds of her skirt glow in the late afternoon sunlight. Her mother is standing very erect beside the carriage. She has a stick and, as Miss Tiefenbach arrives, the older woman jerks about, repeatedly striking the ground. Her voice is raised but he can’t make out the words.

2. The Marketplace

Ulla climbs into the carriage, and sits down in the furthest corner, with her back to the direction of travel. She wants to be facing the dome, his words, his stars. What is happening to her?

Her mother is assisted in by the old coachman. She leans her stick against the seat, before arranging her skirts, then taking it up again. She sits opposite Ulla, a determined look on her face.

Ulla settles, and looks out the window. She’s already decided it all for me, long ago, she thinks.

The coachman’s voice is followed by a jingle of harness. Ulla knows she is putting distance between where she is and where she longs to be. Leaning her head against the wooden frame of the carriage, she follows the receding flight of steps before the main entrance to the Observatory and catches a final glimpse of the dome, as the carriage passes out through the wrought-iron gates. It turns into the Sternweg, and picks up speed as it heads for town.

She glances once at her mother, who sits erect, hands planted on her silver-topped stick, glaring straight ahead. Without warning, her mother’s head snaps round. Ulla is suddenly aware she has her hands sunk deep in the large pockets of her cloak.

‘Unlady-like! Are you trying to hide something?’

She is. But she will not let it out into this world of her mother’s.

‘Look at me!’

At twenty years old, Ulla is no longer a schoolgirl. She turns her head slowly. Her mother’s chin juts, her lips pursed.

‘Where did you disappear to?’

‘I met the director, and he arranged a small tour for me.’ That ought to please her.

‘Were you with him for long?’ She tightens her lips.

‘No, just a minute or two, until he handed me over to Dr. Mendelsohn.’

‘Who is this man?’

‘An astronomer, Mother. He is in charge of the telescope. I had asked to see it.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘He took me to the top of the building, where the telescope is…’ Images start to move through her mind like a film in slow motion, frame by frame: the spiral stairs, the instrument room—she is about to mention the cupboard, when the remembered rustle of her skirts in the silence, and his tangible presence, invade her—‘and the telescope,’ she repeats.

‘Yes?’

Her fingers knot in her lap. ‘He showed me how it worked—how they draw back the dome to study the night sky.’

‘Well, all fairly straightforward—rather dull, don’t you think, Ursula?’

She should have seen the question as a trap for her, whether intended or not, she thought when she reflected on it later.

But instead: ‘No! Not for one moment. His work, which he described in detail to me…’ She feels heat rising in her face, knows she is going too far, but can’t stop. She is defending—what exactly, is not clear. But do it, she must. ‘Such words, Mother! Language! Passion! Things mathematical, then more words, interspersed—’ Then suddenly it comes to her, like the touch of ice on hot skin, the conviction: Do not mention the stars!

Ulla thrusts her hands deeper into her pockets, pressing them against her sides.

‘I didn’t know where you were,’ her mother repeats. ‘You shouldn’t have been away so long.’

‘I couldn’t come any sooner—it would’ve been rude.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘I was interested,’ she says quietly. She repeats the words, listening to herself as she says them. She glances up. Her mother has turned away. She is staring out the window as though Ulla doesn’t exist.

The coach slows for the Ringstrasse, then surges forward, followed by the arching pillars of the South Gate, as they pass through the wall into the old town and are among the houses again. It is as if a door that, a moment ago, stood wide open, has slammed shut. She has trouble breathing until the sensation passes. She remembers, as a little girl, when she managed to escape with Papa from the large picnic group, and hunt for plants in the shadowed woods and among the sun-soaked grass along the riverbank. Oh, the smell of it, still! Once out of sight, with her shoes and stockings off, the grass caressed her bare feet and the skin of her legs.

The carriage slows and turns left into the Barfüßerstrasse, named for the barefooted monks of centuries ago. How clever the monks were when they used to move thus, walking from their monastery, unhindered on the smooth cobbles, to attend their studies at the university, or to replenish their stocks of bread and cheese and wine in the marketplace.

They are almost at the square, when the coach slows again, and finally comes to a halt.

Mother is at once on her feet, leans forward, tapping her stick, and opens the hatch behind the coachman. ‘Why have we stopped?’ she asks. There’s a note of alarm in her voice. She looks out and sees a large crowd, growing by the minute, nudging their carriage and blocking the way. Her mother hates being pressed into the company of a mass of people. Ulla winds down the window. A leaf swirls into the carriage. A woman is standing on a box, with her back to the goose girl fountain. She isn’t much older than her. Too young to be doing this, surely. Yet she holds the attention of the crowd. She is smartly dressed, in a plain hat, a white, long-sleeved blouse with a high neck, and a long black skirt. The breeze is stiffening, gusting showers of spray in her direction, so that only fragments of what she says reaches Ulla, as she leans from the carriage window.

‘…it is now we must act…’

‘Keep your head in, stupid girl!’

The crowd is mostly women of all ages, with the figure of a man dotted here and there.

‘Sisters…’

The speaker brandishes a pamphlet in her hand. The breeze threatens to take her hat. She snatches it off and holds it in her other fist.

Ulla turns and, seeing that her mother is distracted—something has frightened the horses—she slips her left hand from her pocket, slides it up to grip the handle nearest to her, and in a moment has her foot upon the step, and is on the cobbles with the door secure again behind her.

She strains to hear.

‘…Germany is being ripped open…no longer the single voice of the Old Class…our voices must be heard…’

The speaker shakes the pamphlet above her head. ‘…the old shackles of custom and tradition…we must step into…a voice in the workplace…’ She pauses. ‘This is 1913…the 20th century…things are changing…and we must be part of this change!’ Her voice rises.

Applause. And Ulla is aware of many excited voices about her.

The crowd is starting to break up and disperse across the cobbled expanse of the marketplace, in the direction of the Weenderstrasse. Suddenly ahead, she catches a glimpse of a tall woman in a nun’s habit. It’s Sister Maria—head of nursing in Papa’s hospital—the last person she would’ve expected to see in such a gathering. She feels tired and, for the first time, is aware of clouds building in the air above the square, of the dust drifting from where the market is still in full swing. She glances up at the large face of the clock on the town hall. Its ornate black hands stand at four o’clock.

She has to move to avoid a stack of grain sacks and boxes of vegetables, and passes close to a cattle pen. A pungent odor catches in her throat, as the voice of the auctioneer booms out his garbled ritual of transaction.

‘One hundred! A hundred, for this fine cow!’

A fellow with a crooked nose nudges his companion.

‘A good breeder, that ’un, eh?’

‘Nah! Now, this one here.’ He stares at Ulla, and winks. ‘Good bones and plenty room between the hips, I’d say.’ She shudders, and looks away.

She is close to the large dark body of the cow. It swings its head behind the rough wood of the railings. She is annoyed at herself for shrinking. The large eyes are profoundly sad.

She thrusts her left arm between the wooden rails to stroke the creature, grazing her hand on its makeshift prison.

3. Status at Stake

When Erika looks around again, her daughter is no longer in the carriage. This is the second time in the same day! It will have to stop. She leans forward and looks out the window, scanning the crowd. But there is no sign of Ursula. It’s useless to persist. Erika sits up, erect again. The girl was so preoccupied, she thinks. Odd how she hadn’t wanted to reveal any detail regarding her little tour. What had really happened?

All she had been wanting to do was to offer some sound advice, yet her daughter stubbornly refuses it. How she could have done with some guidance at the time of her father’s death—but there had been no one to turn to. Erika feels a thickness in her throat as she reflects. ‘He ought not to have treated me like that!’ She pictures the scene in the drawing room of her family home, all those years ago. There had been just the two of them present—her and her brother, Friedrich. They’d buried their father that morning, and the heaviness of the ceremony was still with her. What aggravated things was the fact that Friedrich had spent virtually the whole afternoon closeted with their long-standing family lawyer in Papa’s study, reading and discussing his will. It had been an exhausting day. Why wasn’t she there? Perhaps that was why, when Friedrich wanted to talk to her about it, she had felt only hurt and resentfulness. After all, she’d spent every waking moment growing up in this family, on the estate of her forebears, the von Meyers, with its great house and extensive lands. And to have had it all threatened in this way, in an instant, was more than she could bear.

‘Well, that’s all sorted out, now,’ Friedrich had said, sitting down in his father’s chair opposite her. His tone seemed so final, it had scared her. ‘What does all mean?’ she got out eventually.

‘I was with Jacob this afternoon—as you know, he’s been our family lawyer for as long as I can remember. Papa’s will states that, on his death, the entire management and control of the estate passes into my hands.’ He’d passed a copy of the will to her, and she’d read those words with her own eyes.

She felt a tightness in her stomach. ‘I should have been present at such an important meeting—one that will surely determine our lives for years to come. And after all, it concerns the whole family. Why wasn’t I notified?’

‘Jacob felt your domain has been the household and its management—he said you would readily understand—the rest is my business.’

His use of the past tense sent a chill of apprehension through her. ‘Has been…’ she echoed. ‘Is, surely, you mean.’

‘Well, yes. At least, up until now.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘You know that I have been courting Elisabeth von Keller for more than a year now. We plan to marry in the spring. A date has not been set yet.’

‘And what position will I have in the house in which I have grown up, and assumed our poor mother’s place ever since her untimely death?’

‘Elisabeth will be head of the household, by right of course as my spouse, and take over the running of its affairs—’

‘And I?’

‘Oh, I’m sure with your experience you can be of great assistance to her—she will be eternally grateful, I’m sure.’

Erika remembers the sinking feeling in her stomach. Over time, she would become little more than a maid in her own house. She looked about the large drawing room where she had spent so many hours surrounded by her family. With her mother gone, and no other woman to confide in, it had been a struggle. And now this. Her position usurped, however rightfully, by another woman. She imagined that, over time, once Elisabeth’s immediate need of her support lessened, she would become little better than a paid servant, constantly at the beck and call of others. The future rose up before her, a bleak and empty prospect.

‘You can stay, of course,’ she heard her brother say. ‘No one is pushing you out—there will always be a place for you here.’

‘Yes…but very much as second fiddle,’ she had said, her voice rising shrilly.

Erika shudders at the memory of that conversation, and smooths a crinkle in her skirt. How her brother’s words had filled her with a fear of losing control. Only one thing had seemed more daunting than his plans for her—the prospect of leaving.

Then one morning, a few days after the unsettling conversation with her brother, she woke with a feeling of nausea and severe pain in her stomach. She rang for her maid.

‘Greta, a hot drink with molasses in it—it may help to settle my insides.’

‘At once, mistress.’

When Greta returned, Erika saw the look of shock register on her face for a moment. ‘What is it, Greta?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I…’

‘No, say what you think.’

‘Your face, mistress, it’s so flushed.’

‘Come closer. Feel my forehead.’

Greta put her tray down on the nightstand.

‘How is it?’

‘I fear you have a temperature. It’s very warm.’

Erika winced. ‘Yes. I feel it here now.’ She touched low down on her right-hand side. ‘Phew!’ The pain was constant now, and severe. Her lips compressed in a firm line.

‘I should call the doctor, mistress.’

Erika shut her eyes against the pain. ‘Yes, thank you, Greta,’ she said, as tears threatened.

The time seemed interminable, before Erika heard the door open and Greta held it open for the doctor. Erika had a moment of misgiving, for it was not her usual doctor.

‘I’m sorry Doctor Joseph is unable to come this morning—he is ill—so I come in his place. My name is Alfred Tiefenbach. I hope you don’t mind.’ It was a concerned voice.

It occurred to her that there was no Doctor, and the unusual inclusion of a Christian name, on their first meeting. ‘I’m just glad someone has come so promptly,’ she said. She heard him put down his bag.

‘Where is it sore?’ he asks.

‘My stomach, Herr Doctor.’

‘Here?’ he said, placing the fingertips on her stomach.

A groan escaped her, despite the gentle touch.

His hand moved to the right side, and lower down.

‘Ohh!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘What is it, Herr Doctor?’

‘It would appear to be your appendix.’

‘Will I be all right?’

‘Yes. If we attend to it at once,’ he said. ‘I will give you something for the pain.’ He placed his hand on her brow. ‘You have a fever too.’

He turned to Greta.

‘Please phone the Mariahilf at once, Miss,’ he said. ‘Tell them we are coming. We should operate at once—I will take Miss von Meyer in my own carriage.’

He approached the bed. ‘Have I your permission to carry you down, Miss von Meyer?’

She