When We Meet Again

by Kristin Harmel

  “Need a nap at the hotel or anything?” my dad asked as our taxi driver accelerated onto the highway heading for Munich.

  His concern rubbed me the wrong way, somehow, but I forced myself to take a deep breath before responding. “No, I’m good.” As we drew closer to the city, the pine trees and apartment buildings of the suburbs gave way to the magical-looking outskirts of a Bavarian city with creamy Gothic architecture and brick-colored roofs set against an impossibly blue sky.

  “That’s the Frauenkirche,” my dad said, pointing to a pair of twin clock towers topped by bulbous green domes. The towers seemed to dwarf the rest of the buildings. “The main cathedral of Munich. The church was built in the Gothic style during the 1400s, but the domes were added on later, in the 1520s, in a completely different architectural style.”

  “You sound like a travel show.”

  “I used to travel here occasionally on business. I’ve picked up some things here and there.” He smiled at me.

  “How nice for you,” I said, but he didn’t seem to register my sarcasm, and after silence fell over us, I wasn’t even sure how I’d meant the words as a dig.

  Our hotel was on a side street near the city center, and after we’d checked into rooms down the hall from each other and changed out of our travel clothes, we met in the lobby. My father was already deep in conversation with the concierge when I walked up.

  He turned around holding a map. “I asked for a taxi to the address you have for Franz Dahler, but the concierge tells me we’re only about fifteen minutes away on foot. Feel like walking?”

  I nodded, and with the help of the tourist map and the GPS on my father’s iPhone, we wound our way in silence down a few side streets until we emerged in the Marienplatz, Munich’s central square. For a moment, we both simply stopped and stared.

  It was gorgeous and unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was laid out in a rectangular shape, with cafés and shops spilling into the bustling central area. In the middle was a tall column with a gold statue of the Virgin Mary on top. The buildings around the square were a charming mix of historic and modern. The Gothic-looking building with the soaring clock tower that seemed to anchor the square was breathtaking.

  “Look,” my dad said, nudging me and pointing. There was a crowd gathered around, and as bells chimed the hour, the Glockenspiel beneath the clock tower began to move. First, on the top level, there was a procession of figurines carrying horns, swords, and flags. Then, two sword-toting figures on horseback appeared, rotating in opposite directions. “That was supposed to be the wedding of Duke Wilhelm the Fifth, complete with knights jousting,” my dad whispered, just as the lower half of the Glockenspiel began to rotate. “The second part is a dance called the Schäfflertanz, which first took place during a plague in the 1500s to demonstrate loyalty to the duke despite hard times.”

  We stayed to watch as a bunch of male figurines danced and twirled around the bottom half of the tower. It was charming and magical and reminded me of an old-fashioned carousel. “That was kind of amazing,” I said as the music ended. There was a smattering of applause from the tourists gathered in the square.

  “I’m glad we got to see it,” my dad said, and I felt a surge of guilt for enjoying myself with him. What would my mother think? As the crowds began to disperse, he pointed off to the right and led me in a weaving zigzag through the crowd until we were in the midst of a sprawling, bustling farmers’ market. We were surrounded by stalls that overflowed with everything I could imagine: fruits and vegetables in every color, meats, fish, cheeses, spices, flowers, and clothing. There was a beer garden, alive with people, in the center of the mass of booths, and the market’s edges were dotted with more established-looking shops and restaurants.

  “This is the Viktualienmarkt,” my dad said as he gestured for me to follow him. “The city’s main farmers’ market. It’s been here for a couple hundred years.” I didn’t say anything, and he consulted the map again as we wove through the maze of booths, the scents of yeast, sausage, and spices heavy in the air. My stomach rumbled, and I realized I’d been so intent on hitting the ground running that I hadn’t eaten since the croissant and coffee we’d been served on the plane just before landing.

  We turned down a side street, leaving the bustling market behind. A block later, my dad stopped in front of a seven-story apartment building. The windows were in neat rows across the painted beige exterior and the burnt-orange roof was punctuated by narrow chimneys and small, windowed alcoves.

  “I think this is it,” he said. We leaned in to look at the listing of names beside the front door’s buzzer, and he whispered, “Yes,” at the same time I spotted the last name Dahler beside apartment 5B. We exchanged looks, and he pushed the buzzer.

  But no one answered. My father frowned and tried again, but once again, we were greeted with silence.

  “I guess we should have known,” I said. “This was too easy.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he’s just out. Hey, maybe we walked right by him in the market.”

  We agreed we’d head to the gallery that had mailed the painting to me. I was hopeful that the owner would be more forthcoming in person. After all, we’d flown thousands of miles to get here. Surely this would garner us at least a bit of sympathy.

  After scrolling through his phone with a furrowed brow, my father pulled up his map app and punched in the address of the Galerie Schubert-Balck.

  “It’s a fifteen-minute walk sort of in the direction of our hotel,” he said. “You still okay walking?”

  I nodded, still unsettled by how comfortable I was feeling with him, and we made our way back through the Viktualienmarkt and off to the right—east, I thought. We took a wrong turn down a side street at the end of our walk, so it took us a few extra minutes to find the gallery, which was tucked into the basement of a large industrial building. A black sign with small white lettering marked the entrance to the Galerie Schubert-Balck, with an arrow pointing down. We followed the narrow staircase to a black wooden door, which was painted with stout white letters that said in English, ENTER PLEASE.

  My father pushed the door open and held it for me. We walked together down a dim hallway, turned a corner, and emerged into a brightly lit room with stark white walls, each of which featured three small, evenly spaced paintings in frames. The space felt clean, airy, and modern.

  A woman with flowing jet-black hair, dressed in a white linen blouse and white linen pants, emerged from a door to our left, saying something in rapid German. My father turned and replied with a few German sentences of his own, gesturing to me. The woman turned and studied me.

  “Ah, you are the owner of The Girl in the Field with the Violet Sky? You did not need to come all this way. I told you what I knew on the telephone.” She looked me up and down and extended her hand. “I am Nicola Schubert. I own the gallery with my partner, Torsten.”

  “Emily,” I said, shaking her hand. “And this is Victor Emerson. My father. We think the woman in the painting is my grandmother.” I paused and added, “My father’s mother.”

  Nicola studied us for a moment before nodding and gesturing for us to follow her. “Come to my office, and I will explain what I know, but I’m afraid it is very little. I fear that your trip here is perhaps, how do I say it, wasted time.”

  “I hope not,” I murmured as she led us down a long, narrow hall into a small office. There was a bookshelf on one side of the room and a huge painting of a naked, dark-haired woman surrounded by three white rabbits behind her desk.

  “That one is a Lothar Faust,” she said, following my gaze. “Well, in reality, it is a Faust print. An original would be destroyed by the sunlight, of course.” She nodded to the window to the left of her desk that spilled a pool of light into the room from the street above. “We have been trying to obtain the original on loan for an exhibition this autumn about twentieth-century realism. But where are my manners? Please, have a seat.”

  We settled into the two chairs in front of her desk, and
she sat down facing us. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, twentieth-century realism. You see, I’m very much a supporter of the style. In fact, I’m quite well known in art communities as an expert.” She paused and smiled. “I believe this is why the painting you mention was sent to me for restoration. It’s obviously a fine example of realism, and I am known as someone who has a specialty in the restoration of works like these.

  “The brushwork in your painting was very skilled,” Nicola continued, gesturing to the print behind her. “You see how, even though this is not an original, you can tell that Faust used broad, distinct strokes? It’s what makes the painting feel so dynamic, so warm. Please, lean in closer to see.”

  My father and I both sat forward in our chairs to look more closely at the image behind her desk. I didn’t know much about art, so I couldn’t really make out what she was talking about. But I nodded wisely and sat back in my chair. My father caught my eye and shrugged as he leaned back too.

  “So you see? But in the painting that I sent to you, The Girl in the Field with the Violet Sky, the brushwork was different. Very emotional. You could feel the artist’s pain.”

  “His pain?”

  “Ah, you doubt me. But when you develop an eye for art, you can see the emotion, the same way one develops an ear for music and can hear anguish or elation in a trumpet’s song or a violin’s wail.” She sat back in her chair and seemed to be puzzling something over for a moment. My father and I exchanged looks as she added, “At first, the painting reminded me very much of an early Wyeth or maybe an early Gaertner.”

  “Who?” The names rang a bell, but I couldn’t immediately place either one.

  She didn’t even bother to pretend she wasn’t rolling her eyes. “Andrew Wyeth and Ralph Gaertner, of course. Two of the best-known artists of the twentieth century. Their paintings were simply transcendent.”

  “So you’re saying the artist might be one of those two men?”

  “No, no, of course not,” she snapped. “Wyeth painted subjects in a much different kind of landscape, mostly in the northeast region of your country. And his use of shading was entirely different. As for Gaertner, he categorically refused to paint faces. He said once in an interview that to paint a face was too intimate; it was like baring a person’s soul to the world without their permission. And of course the painting that arrived here, the painting that I restored, showed a woman’s face in such detail that I could almost imagine I knew her myself.” She tilted her head to the side and studied me for a moment. “In fact, she looked just like you, didn’t she?”

  “Emily always resembled her grandmother,” my father said softly, and I smiled slightly, knowing he’d meant it as a compliment.

  Nicola nodded. “In any case, the best suggestion I can make is that the painter of The Girl in the Field with the Violet Sky might have been a pupil of either Wyeth or Gaertner. I know that Gaertner in particular mentored several young artists over the years. But both men, you see, lived their entire professional lives in your country, so I’m afraid that perhaps the answers you seek are on your side of the ocean, not mine.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. I felt like I’d run out of steam, and I could read the same feelings on my father’s face. We were talking to an art expert who’d worked on the painting at the heart of our mystery, but it felt like we’d come away with more questions than we’d arrived with. This was beginning to feel like an entirely wasted trip. I gave it one last shot. “You haven’t heard of a man named Peter Dahler, have you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. He is an artist?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Or any realist painter with our last name? Emerson?” It was an even bigger shot in the dark.

  “No one who paints in this style.”

  We thanked her and stood to leave. “Wait,” I said. “What about your assistant? The person you said received the painting? She might remember where it was from. Can I talk to her?”

  Her expression tightened. “Bettina? As I mentioned on the phone, she left us a month ago.”

  “Can you tell me how to reach her?”

  Nicola frowned and seemed to be thinking my request over. “Very well,” she said after a long pause. “I do not see the harm. She defected to the Galerie Bergen three blocks from here. They seem to think she has some talent as a restoration artist, but in truth, she wasn’t ready. I wanted to fully train her before promoting her, and they just wanted to put her subpar skills to work immediately. Good riddance to her, I say.” She pursed her lips and scribbled something on a piece of paper. “The address of the gallery. Turn right out the door, walk two blocks, go left, and proceed one block. You’ll see how inferior their gallery is to ours.”

  “Thank you,” I said, clutching the address in my hand.

  Nicola walked us to the door of the gallery. “On your next visit to Munich, you must return to see my collection in more detail. And if you find the artist who painted The Violet Sky, you will call me, yes?”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Well, then, I wish you luck.” She smiled. “Or as we say in German, Viel Glück.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  MAY 1945

  The year 1945 arrived on a Monday morning cold, damp, and gray. There were rumors around the POW camp that the war would soon be over, that Hitler was close to surrendering, that Germany would soon fall.

  The Red Army and the Allies were advancing, and within the first month of 1945, a five-week major German offensive into Ardennes had failed. “This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory,” Winston Churchill had said to the British House of Commons upon Germany’s defeat, a quote that was wafted across the airwaves and repeated again and again among the guards and the prisoners. The tide had turned, and everyone knew it.

  For Peter, knowing that the end of the war was near was both exhilarating and terrifying. Of course he longed to be free, to build a life for himself. He yearned for a time when he would no longer have to toil in someone else’s fields under the watchful eye of an armed guard. He missed his mother, his books, the streets of his hometown, the gentle familiarity of hearing German spoken all around him.

  But going home would mean leaving Margaret, and that, to Peter, was almost impossible to fathom. He had fallen in love with her, and there was no going back. Sometimes, the earth simply shifts on its axis, and there’s nothing one can do but move along with it. Peter knew that his life would never again be complete without her, and he would do everything in his power to make sure he spent the rest of his days by her side.

  He knew that she, too, felt the same way. They had whispered promises to each other and dreamed about the future each time they were alone. Their stolen moments were few and far between, though. The guards were never far away, and although Peter was sure that Harold realized there was something between Peter and Margaret, it couldn’t be spoken aloud. Nor could another guard be allowed to find out—they’d transfer Peter to another camp and away from Margaret forever.

  But more than his own possible fate, Peter worried about what would become of Margaret if news of their budding relationship were to spread. Peter couldn’t get the image of Jeremiah, beaten and bloodied, out of his mind. He couldn’t stand to imagine what kind of retribution might be taken against Margaret if people in this town viewed her as a traitor to the American cause.

  Since that day in Margaret’s house—the day she had said she loved him—something seismic had shifted. Peter was no longer simply in love with her from afar, fearing she would never feel the same way. He knew now that he had a chance, a real chance. He just had to hold out until the end of the war. Then he could return to Belle Creek a free man. He could give her the life he dreamed of.

  And so while he waited for that day to come, he courted her the best way he knew how. He walked as closely as he could to the edge of her family farm on the mornings when he was assigned to fields in her vicinit
y. On the other mornings, he kept an eye out for her, sometimes asking people whether they’d seen Jeremiah, because he knew Margaret was often with the boy; he was fully recovered from his ordeal, but she was still watching over him. When Peter was fortunate enough to encounter her, he’d wait until she was alone, so as not to get her in trouble, and then he’d tell her an anecdote he’d rehearsed all night. She was like a sponge, he thought, soaking in everything. He loved seeing her wide eyes and her easy smile as he shared stories of Germany, of the homeland he loved, of the days before the war, of a culture so different from anything she’d ever known.

  And he loved hearing of her memories too. He loved her tales about childhood on the edge of Florida’s wild Everglades, her stories of life on a bean farm. He liked hearing of the films she’d watched, the books she’d read, the meals she and her sister had learned to cook at their mother’s knee. He loved hearing what her life was like, because the more he knew, the more he could imagine himself a part of it.

  “I never thought I’d meet someone like you,” she told him late one afternoon in early April, when she’d found an excuse to creep to the edge of the field the prisoners had been working that day. She’d worn her brown dress, the one that allowed her to blend into the terrain, and she’d squatted down in a cluster of overgrown cane just across the narrow canal. Maus knew she was there, but he moved away to give Peter the space to talk with her. “To think that my life could ever be bigger than this town used to seem so far-fetched to me.”

  The words made Peter’s heart ache. “But your world has always been bigger, Margaret,” he said. “You know the world because you have read about it in books, just like I always did.”