Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(60)
The parlors, with one broad door and a lot of small windows with shutters, looked out to the west toward the smaller island of Hiddensj?, in the Danish, or Hiddensee as the locals called it. If Sebastian and Günther climbed on the desk in the corner of the parlor and peered through the high window, they could spy the small stretch of open Baltic Sea that divided Hiddensee from a northerly hangnail of a promontory that curled around from Rügen.
Dirk chose a room at the top of the house, facing the north. Though he had misgivings about the force of the wind through the casements—misgivings that proved well founded on the first cold night—he concluded that the view of islands in light was worth the bother of shivering. Instantly he fell in love with one break, where water met sky. No intervening land to disturb the sense of everness. The pale dash of horizon between homeland and Hiddensee. Such, perhaps, is to be expected of one born in the steeps of Alpine vales. Claustrophobia becomes a characteristic of childhood.
Dirk would come to adore Meritor—the name that young Sebastian concocted out of meer and tor—sea-gate. The vivid broom bucking in the wind was lively and silly. And even on stormy days, the countryside near the ocean possessed more light than the brightest Munich days. Only when the fog bellied in, as it liked to do of a summer morning, did the house hunch to its stone knees and seem to be thwarted.
That first visit, Dirk found his way down the cliffs with Felix and the boys and the wretched Otto von Blotto. They meandered along the shore. The dog growled at every strand of seaweed he came across. The boys collected rocks and shells, and threw them seaward, trying, they said, to build a bridge of stone between Hiddensee and Rügen.
“Meritor was repurposed as a hotel, a sort of seehotel, I think,” said Felix. “But it failed. Until the roads are improved, it remains too far for the summer traveler.”
“It is lovely, but is it sensible to fall in love with a place so far from Munich?”
“Au contraire, I find it usefully distant from Munich concerns, all those eyes and opinions. My hope is that by next year we might live here all summer. People are starting to do this sort of thing, you know.”
“I should be sorry to see so little of you and your family for such a length of time.”
“You’d come, of course. That’s the idea.”
Dirk laughed. They linked arms against the wind. “You’re mad. I have a small shop. I can’t afford to close it for a season.”
“You can bring your tools and paints and grommets, your adzes and awls, and work here all summer. I’ll arrange a workbench for you. The boys will promise not to pester you.”
“The boys are never a bother. But it’s out of the question. I shall come to visit from time to time. Let that be enough between us.”
Sebastian had found a stone shaped like a butter roll. With ferocious noise Otto von Blotto was trying to scare a dead fish back to life. Günther was paying no attention to either of them, dashing toward the teasing waves, dancing away before getting his toes soaked. Gulls came in from Sweden with all the Scandinavian news. The light seemed to have a long up-swung curl to it at horizon level, some trick of atmospherics.
They sat to admire the view. It was blindingly blue today. Then Felix shifted his seat to a rock behind Dirk, and clamped his knees about Dirk’s shoulders. As if Dirk were a ’cello. “I’ll change your mind,” said Felix. “Give me time.”
“Take all the time you need. My mind is a capricious beast, and you may not find it where you expect.”
“Haven’t I already learned that.”
They sat without speaking. The boys waved, and their father waved back. Dirk’s hands were clenched tightly, one packed into the other.
When they stood and prepared to turn back, they clung closer together. “Boys,” shouted Felix. “The wind is a monster. Keep back from those tidal pools or the North Wind will push you in, and your mother will have my head on a salver.”
“You’re right to worry,” said Dirk before he could stop himself. Nastaran at the edge of the jetty at midnight. He pushed past this. “What good boys. Do they always obey you so well?”
“Rarely. As soon as this new situation becomes commonplace to them, they will begin to break the rules. The nature of boys. I hope you will look after them, Dirk.”
“I—?”
“I mean, should anything ever happen to me.”
“Like what? Your getting abducted by a sea monster?” Dirk gave Felix a sudden shove with his shoulder, knocking Felix off balance. His knee went out and he sat down in the wet, pebbly sand. “Yes, the world is a treacherous place, Felix.”
“You reprobate. I’ll get you.” And they chased each other as far as the boys, and a little ahead. Meritor came into view around the curve of the bluff. From here they could see the castellated roofline facing the sea. Perhaps the place had housed cannon at some point.
“This is a perfect place for you to work,” said Felix as they began to scale the bluff. Otto von Blotto was in his arms, as the incline was too steep for stumpy legs. “Look at the lovely openness of it. It just calls . . . to be filled with invention. No?”
Dirk paused for breath at a turn in the path. Felix was right about that. A row of narrow trees, too slender to serve as a real breakfront, made an open lattice against the shimmery spangle. But the shoreline was otherwise spare of flora—only tall needle-y grasses, low shrubs contorted into the shapes of flame by the ceaseless wind.