Necessary Lies(89)

In the morning, in Berchtesgaden, I walked alone in the streets, just walked and thought of how intertwined our lives were. It was beginning to rain, but I could still make out the shapes of the mountains. Then I thought of what you told me about this letter you got from a priest, about the boat ride on K?nigssee William took many years ago. It was like a sign, a thread I had to follow.

So I took a boat to K?nigssee, in the rain, past the white foam of waterfalls drowning in the lake. The boat was almost empty and I sat in the back, watching the waves. The young attendant came by, smiling, and asked if I were all right where I was. The drizzle was getting through, he said, and the seat around me was wet already. I said I was fine, but he lowered a see-through plastic cover, to protect me from the rain.

At St. Bartholom? peninsula, I wandered inside the old chapel with its red onion-shaped domes. When I left the chapel the rain got worse, so I decided to go back. I joined the line-up, which wound around a wooden shed, mostly young families with children, joking, trying to keep warm. A little boy in a pointed Bavarian hat, a little troll, tried to charm me. He hid behind his father, and then poked his head out and smiled. “I’m a real mountain climber,” he said. “See my tooth,” he said and opened his mouth wide to show me the empty space, “I lost it yesterday.” Kids in yellow raincoats, rubber boots were running around, screaming and laughing. An elderly woman in front of me was writing her name on the wooden beam of the shed.

The boats arrived, one by one, silently. “Berchtesgaden,” “Obersalzberg,” “K?nigssee,” filling up quickly. I got a seat across from another family, parents with three children, the youngest around two. The father’s hair was wet and curly, and, with his right arm, he was holding the little one who was standing on his lap. The child was leaning backwards and was trying to smack the father over the head, and the father ducked. Every time he missed, the little boy burst out laughing. There was no echo, no flügelhorn…

You said you came here looking for an epiphany. Will that do? Urs.

“Julia brought us these,” K?the says, when the nurse leaves closing the door behind her, pointing to a bouquet of yellow daffodils on the table. “She said you would like them, too.”

“I have something for you, from Berlin,” Anna says and takes out the present Frau Strauss has given her. The parcel contains a beautiful edition of Goethe’s Faust, leather bound, with gilded pages. K?the opens it and leafs through it.

“You liked Ulrike, nein?” she asks.

“Yes,” Anna says. “I liked her very much.”

“We were always good friends, in Breslau and in Berlin,” K?the says. “I don’t know what I would have done without her. She helped me a lot.”

“I’ve also brought these,” Anna says, handing her the photographs Frau Strauss gave her in Berlin, and the ones she herself took of the Herzmanns’ Breslau house. “You and Ulrike, William, Moni, Frau Strauss’s daughter,” she says as she gives the pictures to K?the one by one. But it is only when K?the sees the snapshot of her old house, that Anna can see she is truly moved. She looks at it for a long time, and then points to the sharp endings of spikes in the iron gate.

“The gate,” she says. “Willi liked to swing on it. Back and forth. Back and forth. I told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. I was afraid he would hurt himself.”

Anna is waiting for K?the to say more, but her mother-in-law is silent again. So it is Anna who speaks instead. The house is in a good shape, she says, well cared for. She has been inside. Admired the view of the back garden. The evergreens have grown tall — the hostas are especially beautiful. The street couldn’t have changed that much, either. Karlovitz was not bombed, like other Breslau districts. There were no empty places, no signs of ruins.

K?the has closed her eyes. She is listening.

“Frau Strauss asked me to tell you that you did the right thing—leaving. She said that you would know what she meant.”

Outside the window another scrawny black squirrel digs into the ground, his whole body shaking from the effort. They are hungry now, rooting for last year’s acorns, the ones they buried. Silly, they never know where to dig, ruining the lawn. Through the window, Anna sees patches of bare earth and tufts of upturned grass.

No echo, no flügelhom … Anna murmurs to herself. No, this is not much of an epiphany. Once, when she first fell in love with William, she prayed that with him she would be better, that she would understand more. Now, she can only wait. Wait for the sound of the elevator stopping at the floor and for the sound of Julia’s fast, determined steps along the corridor. Until then she will watch how the darkness gathers outside the window, how the retreating light transfigures the spreading crown of the oak tree in the yard.

K?the is clearing her throat. The picture of the Breslau house is still in her hand.

“I want to ask you something, Annchen” her hoarse voice breaks the silence. “Willi, he turned out all right, nein”

“Yes,” Anna says, softly. “Yes. Willi turned out all right.”

THE END





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS



I would like to thank Canada Council for financial support that assissted me in writing this book.

My specials thanks go to Christopher Reynolds, Shaena Lambert, Barbara Lambert, Lilian Nattel, Ruth Beissel, Jutta Spengemann, Leanore Lieblein, Florence Rosberg, Piotr and Anna Wróbel for their insights and generous comments that kept me going.