Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(63)



Until he became tethered to the world once more, this time by the furry yoke that wreathed around his feet, barking to alert him of the danger.

“You’re a damn fool to come out in the rain,” snarled Dirk to Otto von Blotto. He picked him up to return him to the household. Resentment at being importuned was a slender reason to live, but it was better than nothing.





76.


As he headed for Meersburg for the first time since he’d left, he began to think about those siblings, Kurt and Ethelinda von Koenig as they had once been, way back then. During his summer at the von Koenig lakeside estate, all those years ago, Dirk remembered seeing Kurt at a distance, because Kurt had been joined at the hip with Felix. But Dirk couldn’t recall if Ethelinda, née von Koenig, had even been in residence at the family home during that bright season of youth. Perhaps she’d been visiting friends or cousins elsewhere. He wasn’t aware of her existence until he met her as a married woman in Munich.

He had no desire to run into the kitchen miss over whom he’d made such a spectacular romantic failure. He doubted he’d recognize her, and indeed it took him a while to recall her name. Hannelore, it came to him, with the feeling of a scarf being knotted too tightly around his neck. Hannelore. She would be a matron now. A matron with an adult child.

His route from Munich to Meersburg took him through Memmingen and then Lindau, toasted golden towns set in the rolling nap of the Alpenvorland. When it stretched itself out in languor, Bavaria seemed to Dirk, somehow, tamed. Well, he’d traveled half the world since he was stupid enough to be young. The wild forests of his youth—perhaps they no longer existed. The world was too strictly regulated now. The idea of ever being able to find his way back to that waldhütte where he had been raised—to the extent he had been raised—was as impossible as Nastaran’s need to return to her lost childhood in Persia. It couldn’t happen.

Idle thoughts for a tedious journey. No value could attach to revisiting his youth, even if he could manage it somehow.

Still, the notion returned, and he had to throw it down repeatedly, like bread crumbs in some old tale—hoping the wild thrushes would eat them up. Despite those romantic stories that had become so popular—even Felix’s little boys adored the sweetened renditions of Grimm as served up by stern Frau Gouvernante—sometimes one wandered into the woods because the ominous woods were safer than home was.

In the intervening years, Meersburg had grown, yet it opened its familiar prospects to him with a grudging heart. It seemed busier than he recalled. A gloss of foreign tongues spoke of a strengthening economy. Naturally, he’d never been invited to the von Koenig Meersburg quarters during the time he had lived with the Pfeiffers, both during Nastaran’s life and in those years afterward. But he was able to locate it easily enough. He stood looking through the iron gate at the shallow forecourt of the Kurt von Koenig manse. Maybe the brother would be in residence and maybe not, but either way, Dirk hoped to avoid Hannelore. Surely she’d been sent packing with a nice residual, but maybe she’d been taken in with her son. Lived here as a retainer of some sort.

Dirk was performing this duty for Ethelinda but really for Felix. Steady now. Some impulse Dirk hadn’t felt in years prompted him to utter a silent prayer as he pulled the bell cord. The fact of a prayer made him think of Pfarrer Johannes. Dirk had left his village church with a message for the Bishop of Meersburg and had never returned . . . What a layabout he’d been! What a bad son.

A doorman powdered in the old manner ushered Dirk into a chamber crowded with pots of straggly geraniums brought in from the early frost. A glass of beer was offered; Herr von Koenig was at home but occupied. But before long the head of the family arrived, stout as any Bavarian burgher, his thinning hair the color of melted marzipan.

“I served briefly at your family estate one summer,” said Dirk, wanting only to be honorable and not to engage beyond what was necessary. “As I’ve come recently to befriend your sister in Munich, I’ve been deputized to deliver a packet of documents to you following the death of her husband.”

“My old friend Felix,” said Kurt. “My former friend. Former in both senses, as there is no hope of reconciliation now.”

“I wasn’t asked to await a reply,” said Dirk, standing. “I’ll confirm to Frau Stahlbaum that you have received the parcel. Thank you for receiving me.”

“Sit down. Wait. A reply may be in order, whether one was requested or not.” Kurt waved a fat hand distractedly, unfolding handwritten documents. He flipped pages, humming to himself. Some were letters. “If you were thinking of marrying the Widow Stahlbaum, you’ll get neither support nor protest from me about it. We aren’t much involved in each other’s lives now.”

“I understand that.” Dirk managed to sound sniffy and also to avoid addressing the issue.

“She thinks I wronged Felix somehow.”

“I don’t enjoy such personal standing with the family that I could comment.”

“I’m not pushing my life story upon you, sir. Just explaining the circumstances. This is an interesting letter. Have you looked at it?”

“Certainly not. May I be excused now?”

“You’ve come all the way from Munich on family business. It would be improper of me not to offer a meal.”

“Thank you; it would be improper of me to accept. I’m an incidental messenger.”

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