Franz

Franz, the son of Fidelis Waldvogel and Eva Waldvogel, is a reserved boy whose fascination with flight gives him a language for feelings he cannot otherwise express. His devotion to airplanes culminates in an effort to take his gravely ill mother into the air, making the flight a rare shared adventure and an act of care. Later, a severe head injury leaves his future uncertain and brings Mazarine, his sweetheart, to his bedside, where their relationship crosses from youthful affection into the compromises and responsibilities of adult love.

Identity and Early Fascination

Franz is introduced through his attention to Pouty Mannheim’s war-surplus Jenny. Pouty works on the airplane’s engine and practices aerial maneuvers; Fidelis has allowed him to land in the flat field behind the house. Whenever the plane arrives, Franz throws off his apron and runs outside. While Pouty visits his father, Franz climbs into the cockpit, touches the controls, and studies the flight log. When the pilot prepares to leave, the boy acts out the role of ground crew, turning the propeller and calling the warning to stand clear.

The takeoff affects Franz with an intensity that surprises even him. He runs after the Jenny, shouting and throwing his cap as its wheels lift from the ground. The growing space between earth and aircraft produces a physical release he cannot put into words, in either his parents’ language or that of his schoolmates. Once the plane disappears, he stands still for several minutes, gathering himself before facing other people. The contrast between his outward reserve and the force of this response establishes flight not merely as a hobby but as an experience that disrupts his ordinary self-command.

Franz gives that fascination a durable place in his private world. He collects aviation accounts and pictures, filling the wall around his bed with aircraft, pilots, insignia, and homemade drawings and models. His collection ranges from a Fokker Eindekker and a French Nieuport 11 to a cardboard Sopwith Camel; the Albatros is his favorite. He also saves newspaper stories and handbills about barnstormers in a scrapbook Eva gave him. The assortment combines careful observation with a child’s imaginative play, while showing how thoroughly he has made flying part of his daily life.

Eva and the Flight

Eva becomes the person with whom Franz can talk most freely about airplanes. During her illness, she listens as he explains different aircraft and their advantages, differences, and peculiarities, information he has gathered from newspapers and magazines. Their conversations give him a rare audience for a subject that overwhelms him emotionally. When Eva asks what it is like above the clouds, Franz imagines that a person could step onto them and bounce. Her skeptical but proud response leads him to a sudden resolve: he must take her up in an airplane.

He announces the plan to Eva, whose wondering pleasure confirms his determination. Although Fidelis has forbidden Pouty to take Franz flying, Franz regards this outing as different because it has a noble purpose: his mother must experience the sky, and he must be there with her. The thought becomes urgent. Since he does not know when Pouty will next come by, Franz borrows Mazarine Shimek’s bicycle and rides to the barn where the plane is kept. He presses Pouty to agree, pleading and persisting while the pilot goes to fetch a tool.

When the airplane arrives, Franz tells Eva that her plane is there and helps her sit up and get ready. Delphine Watzka has been brought into the plan and keeps the other boys occupied so that Eva and Franz can get to the field. Eva tries to walk beside him, but Franz sweeps her up and carries her out. He carefully settles her in the seat behind the pilot. In that moment, Eva thinks of Johannes, who had been only a little older than Franz when she knew him, and wonders about the dead, heaven, and what their reunion might mean. The flight thus carries more than Franz’s excitement: for Eva, the journey also opens onto memories of a lost love and questions about the people she may meet again.

Franz’s effort is an act of initiative and tenderness, but the evidence does not present the flight as curing or reversing Eva’s illness. Its importance lies in the experience he makes possible and in the closeness between mother and son: he has listened to her question about the clouds, imagined an answer, and worked to bring her into the sky. The airplane that once released his own wordless excitement becomes a means of sharing that wonder with her.

Mazarine and the Years of Flight

Mazarine shares Franz’s interest in airplanes and supports his pursuit from the ground. She collects pictures of pilots and races for his scrapbook and accompanies him to the airfield. While he works with the men who keep or land their planes in the barn, she studies nearby, sometimes completing his homework when he is occupied. When she has finished, she walks around the barn looking critically at the aircraft until he is ready to leave. Their shared visits form the setting for a relationship that has become a courtship: they have been sweethearts for months. On the way home, they stop before the turnoff to the shop, hide her bicycle among weeds, and walk hand in hand beneath a pine tree.

Their connection is also expressed through the ordinary practical detail of their excursions. On one ride Franz sits behind Mazarine on her bicycle, holding the grips as she balances on the curved handlebars and places her feet on the front fender. Her interest in his aviation world is not simply a matter of watching him; she brings her own books and schoolwork, shares the trips, and contributes pictures to the collection that matters to him. The relationship grows alongside his fascination with flight, joining youthful affection to a sustained shared activity.

Injury, Uncertainty, and Change

Years later, Mazarine travels across the country with Delphine to visit Franz in a hospital ward. She carries her baby, and Delphine takes the child from her before Mazarine enters, giving her space to see Franz first. The scene marks a break between the Franz preserved in memory and the man she must now meet. Mazarine understands that seeing him will move her from the before into the after: she can no longer keep him as the uninjured boy or young man imagined in their earlier courtship.

Franz is asleep under medication when she reaches his bed. His head is bandaged and bruising is visible, but the eventual extent of his recovery is unknown; the doctor has not been able to say what will return. Mazarine holds his wrist, alternately tightening and loosening her grip as though she could pass him strength. She remains beside him, confronting a future that cannot yet be known. The passage does not establish a subsequent recovery or final outcome for Franz’s condition, and its emphasis is instead on the uncertainty that now defines their relationship.

Family Loss and Narrative Significance

Franz’s injury belongs to a sequence of losses that deeply affects Fidelis. On the voyage back from Europe, Fidelis remembers receiving the telegram about Franz’s injury and the letter about Emil’s death. He had torn up the papers in anger, and the news contributed to the heart disease that had already begun to weaken him. When Franz later returned home and faded from life in bewildered anger, Fidelis felt that part of himself had gone with his son. These recollections connect Franz’s suffering to the family’s grief while making clear that his father’s account of the illness and its effects is not a full medical explanation of Franz’s condition.

Across these episodes, flight changes meaning without losing its force. For the boy, the lifting airplane is an almost overwhelming release; for Eva, it offers a moment in which affection, memory, and thoughts of death converge; for Mazarine, the hospital visit replaces the idealized young man with a beloved person whose future is uncertain. Franz is therefore defined not only by his aviation collection or his childhood resolve, but by the relationships that gather around those pursuits. The Jenny’s departure from the field begins as a spectacle he can scarcely describe, becomes something he wants to share with his mother, and stands in contrast to the painful, unresolved passage into adult love that follows his injury.