“Emily.” He paused and waited for me to look at him. “I want you to know that I think you’ve become someone extraordinary. And even if I can’t claim responsibility for raising you, I want you to know I’m very proud of you. And I’m proud of what you did tonight by talking to your old boyfriend.”
“Nick,” I said softly.
“Nick.” He repeated. “Well, you did the right thing, and it’s never too late for that.” He stood and yawned. “Now what do you say we both try to get some sleep? Who knows; tomorrow in Savannah, we may just crack this case wide open.”
I laughed through my tears. “You sound like Nancy Drew.”
“I was hoping for the Hardy Boys, but I’ll take it.” He smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, Emily. I’ll see you in the morning.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
* * *
1947–1950
After leaving his father’s house for the last time on that snowy evening in 1947, Peter stopped at Otto’s house and spent two hours with his best friend’s parents, apologizing for the role he’d played in their son’s death and trying in vain to accept their promises that they didn’t blame him. “You were the best friend he ever had,” Otto’s mother said, kissing Peter on the cheek as he left their house just past eight. “You will always be like a second son to us. We are glad you were there with Otto when he breathed his last breath. You must forgive yourself, dear. We don’t blame you at all.” That night, Peter slept fitfully at the station and took a train to Munich the next morning. He would disappear into the crowds and become a part of rebuilding his beloved Bavaria, all the while working to return to Margaret and to the child he longed to meet.
He wrote to her every day, always including the address to the apartment he shared in Munich with four other displaced former soldiers, three of whom had been POWs like him. They’d fought a different war than those who had survived until 1945 on the battlefields, and they bore a different type of guilt. Their lives had been comparatively easy. Though they were prisoners, they had been treated relatively well and had been an ocean away from danger. Their friends and brothers had risked death each day. Many had been lost. Others bore the eternal scar of fighting for the Nazis until the bitter end, many of them realizing only later—far too late—that part of what they’d been fighting for was unconscionable atrocity. How does a man live with that?
Peter’s letters to Margaret spoke of love, of hope, of his belief that one day, he would see her again. He explained everything—about how his letters to her had gone unanswered, how he feared she was dead, how his father had never forwarded her mail to him. He told her that he hadn’t known of their child until recently, and that now, he lived each day in the fervent belief that God would reunite them. I have to keep believing that despite everything, you’re still out there. I have to believe that you and our child are alive. If I stop believing, I will stop living. And if I stop living, how will I find my way back to you, my dearest Margaret?
Peter took odd jobs here and there, scraping by with the rest of Germany. His wages from America helped; he had earned eighty cents a day as a POW, and the money had been saved for him and forwarded on when he arrived home. Yet the funds would only stretch so far, and as the months ticked on, his savings were quickly becoming depleted. He went to every government office he could think of to try to expedite his American immigration papers. Once a month, he traveled by train to Bonn, where he visited the American embassy in the vain hope of finding someone who could help him locate Margaret and his child.
Day by day, his hope waned and Belle Creek felt farther and farther away, as if the continents themselves were drifting apart just to defeat him.
And then one day in late 1948, he stopped in to a beer hall near his apartment for a quick meal after work. He had just found a seat at a crowded table when he looked up to see someone familiar.
“Maus?” Peter asked, hardly daring to believe that he was once again in the same room with the man who’d been his dearest friend in Camp Belle Creek, the only other prisoner who’d known about Margaret. They’d been released from their camp in England at different times, and Peter hadn’t been able to track him down.
Maus turned, his face lighting up. “Peter Dahler? It can’t be!”
They embraced, pounding each other on the back.
“Where have you been?” Peter asked.
“I thought you would be living in America by now!” Maus said at the same time.
They pulled away from each other. “I’ve tried everything I can think of to get back there,” Peter said. “But it’s been impossible, Maus. The paperwork is so slow.”
“And Margaret? She is waiting for you?”
Peter felt a familiar hole opening up in the pit of his stomach. “I don’t know. I haven’t received a letter from her since 1946.” He told Maus the whole story, watching his friend’s eyes grow wider and wider as he mentioned the letter, the child he had out there somewhere, and the way he had walked away from his father once and for all.
“And so now what?” Maus asked. “What if you don’t find her?”
“I will find her,” Peter said. “I must.”
Maus looked away. “What if she’s not alive anymore, Peter?”
“She is.” Peter’s answer was firm and unequivocal. He’d thought a lot about it. “She is alive, or I would know. Do you understand that?”
“No, I don’t. But I believe you.”
Peter put a hand on Maus’s arm. “Thank you, my friend.”
“And what are you doing for work?”
“Whatever I can find. You know how difficult things are.”
Maus’s eyes lit up. “Peter! You must come work with me. I paint now. All the new buildings. We’re making Germany beautiful again. I’m on a painting crew, and we’re always looking for reliable workers. I will recommend you.”
“Really?”
Maus nodded. “The best part of the job? They don’t mind if we take the remainders home. I’ve purchased some brushes, Peter, and I’ve discovered a new passion.”
Peter just looked at him.
Maus laughed. “Come with me. I will show you.”
They left together and wove through the area near the market until they were deeper into the city center. Maus stopped in front of a building on Sebastiansplatz, used his key to open the front door, and led Peter up four flights of stairs. He opened the door to an apartment at the end of the hall, flipped on the light, and gestured inside. “See for yourself, my friend.”
Peter could feel his heart thudding more quickly as he stepped over the threshold. Inside, the walls were covered with painted images. He recognized a footbridge over the Isar and the twin towers of the Frauenkirche. He saw the sandy expanse of an African battlefield and the exterior of one of America’s Victory ships, the vessels that had carried German POWs to their temporary homes in the States.
“These are quite good!” Peter exclaimed. “You painted them yourself?”
Maus shrugged. “It is a hobby of mine. But I can’t afford canvas or watercolor paper. The walls make a fine surface to paint on. When I get bored, I just paint over the images and start again.” Smiling, Maus led Peter into the kitchen, where all the walls were painted to look like a vast sugarcane field. For a moment, Peter stopped breathing, for he recognized on one wall the barracks of Camp Belle Creek and on the opposite wall, three familiar houses on the horizon. One was Margaret’s.
“Maus,” he whispered, turning to his friend in awe. “You have brought back the past.”
Maus smiled. “It is the magic of a paintbrush, Peter. Anything you can remember, you can re-create. You’re limited only by your imagination.”
“Will you teach me how?”
“I’ll certainly try.”
Peter stared at the walls again. “You know, you are very talented. I think you will be famous someday.”
Maus chuckled. “Famous? Wouldn’t that be nice? Right now, I am just concerned about having money for my next me
al.”
* * *
By the beginning of 1949, Peter was living with Maus, paying a percentage of the rent and sleeping on the sofa. Each day, they painted the interiors of the new buildings going up around town; at night, they worked by lamplight, painting and repainting the walls of their apartment with landscapes, still lifes, and anything else they could imagine. Peter had discovered that he, too, had a talent for bringing the world alive with a paintbrush. Imagine that, Peter thought. Two friends with a similar skill, finding themselves together again on the other side of the world. It could only be fate.
The living room was Peter’s canvas, the bedroom was Maus’s, and together, they collaborated time and time again on the kitchen, making each other laugh with the fantastical ideas they would come up with. One day, it might be the inside of a volcano—or what they imagined the inside of a volcano would look like, anyhow. Another day, they might paint the walls with a cityscape of Munich, as seen from the clouds. Or the contrasting whites and grays at the top of one of the peaks of the Alps. Or a garden meadow full of flowers. They critiqued each other’s work, discussed ways that they might become better, and even began to craft their own paintbrushes when the ones they found at the store were too broad and rough.
“You are very talented, Dahler. Perhaps we will both be famous one day, yes?” Maus said one spring evening as twilight filtered through the kitchen window and they worked side by side on a painting of the Viktualienmarkt, a challenge issued by Peter because he wanted Maus’s help in developing his own techniques for painting people. Peter’s figures often came out looking stiff and unnatural, while Maus’s seemed to spring whole and lifelike from the walls.
“I don’t want to be famous,” Peter murmured. “I just want to find Margaret.”
Maus nodded, his jaw twitching. “Then come. I will paint her for you.”
Peter followed Maus into the living room, where Peter had, the day before, filled the walls with a clumsy street scene from the Marienplatz. Maus looked around for a moment before selecting a spot on the wall just in front of the Gothic-looking Neues Rathaus, with its Glockenspiel open to chime the hour. He began to paint swiftly, his fingers flying, the paint shades gradually coming together to form the hue of Margaret’s skin, the rich sheen of her brown hair. When he was done, he turned to Peter. “What do you think?”
Peter stared, transfixed. It was as if Maus had transported Margaret from across the Atlantic to the central square of Munich. It was beautiful and impossible, and it brought tears to Peter’s eyes.
But there was something else. Peter leaned in and looked closely at the brushwork, at the intricate way that Maus had crafted her mouth, at the way he had so perfectly captured the exact angle that Margaret always held her head when she was deep in thought, at the twinkle he had somehow created in her eye. It was Margaret through and through, but it was Margaret the way Peter himself saw her, and that could only mean one thing. “You cared about her too,” Peter said softly, realization dawning.
Maus looked away. “She is yours, Peter. She only ever had eyes for you.”
“But you have feelings for her.”
Maus was silent for a long time. “And yet she never looked at me the way she looked at you. I would never try to win her from you, Peter. You must know that.”
“But how? You hardly ever talked to her.”
Maus thought about this. “Sometimes you can tell, even from afar, when someone is extraordinary. But I will only ever care for her in the confines of my own heart. I’m sorry, but I cannot change my feelings.”
Peter closed his eyes for a moment. A strange kind of sadness overwhelmed him. He loved Margaret, but his love had been returned in equal measure—at least for a little while. Maus would never have that. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” he finally said.
“That she cares for you and not me?” When Maus laughed, the sound was bitter. “That isn’t something to apologize for, Peter. One day, I will meet someone else, and perhaps I will find with her what you found with Margaret.”
Peter felt uneasy. “Maus, I—”
“I don’t paint her, Peter,” he said. “Not often, anyhow. When I see her face like this, she haunts me. In time, it will fade. All right, my friend?”
Peter nodded. “Life is terribly unfair sometimes, is it not?”
Maus smiled, but Peter could see the sadness in his eyes. “Or maybe it’s all part of some greater plan we don’t yet understand.”
* * *
It was Maus who had the idea in the fall of 1949. “Perhaps we can contact Harold, and he will sponsor our applications for citizenship.”
“The guard from Camp Belle Creek?” Peter asked.
“Yes! He liked us, didn’t he? He wasn’t like the rest of the guards. He saw us as people, not prisoners. Perhaps he could help us.”
“Yes, it’s worth a try.”
They didn’t have an address for Harold, but they remembered his last name, so they sent their letter simply to Belle Creek, Florida, hoping that the postmaster there would know how to find the Decker household.
Two months later, just before Christmas, they received a reply from Harold’s wife, who wrote:
Harold told me so much about the two of you. He really valued the time you spent together. He said it was unfortunate that war had to put you on separate sides of the line, because in other circumstances, he would have counted the two of you as friends. I’m sorry to tell you that Harold died of a heart attack last year, but I know he would have wanted to help you. So I have contacted my local congressman—I live in Georgia now—and I am doing all I can to sponsor your immigration to America. I wish you the very best.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” Peter said after they’d read the letter. “He was only in his forties.”
Maus nodded. “But tough times do strange things to people, do they not? His country was at war, and he had to bear the weight of being left at home. Perhaps it was the guilt that ate at him.”
Peter sighed. “All of us have lost so much.”
With Maus’s input, Peter wrote a letter back to Jackie, Harold’s wife, sending their condolences and thanking her for any effort she was making on their behalf. He also asked if she knew anything about Margaret and her child. After they sealed and sent the envelope, they went to church to light candles for Harold—and for Margaret and the baby.
And then, they waited. There was little else to do. Peter continued to visit the same government offices again and again, and he made his journey to Bonn each month just in case, but he was frustrated at every turn. He wrote letters to Margaret’s parents and sister, and he also tried to send letters to Jeremiah through the Belle Creek postmaster. No response ever came, and as the days slid by, Peter became more and more obsessed with the canvas of the living room wall. If he could learn to paint Margaret, he could bring her to him.
So while Maus continued to stretch the boundaries of what he could do with a paintbrush, Peter’s focus changed. He no longer cared about the backgrounds, the flowers, the skies, the buildings. He only wanted to bring Margaret back, to make her come alive on his walls, to imagine her by his side once more.
But try as he might, he couldn’t quite capture her. There was always something off about her eyes, about the curve of her brow, about the way her hair fell. Peter feared it meant he was forgetting her, so each night, he desperately tried again and again.
“It is not so much the seeing her that matters,” Maus told him one night. “It is the feeling. You have to feel the things you paint in your soul, or they won’t come through to your paintbrush. You are worrying so much about the lines and the shapes, but those aren’t the things that make Margaret. The things that make her are the things you loved about her heart. Think of that, and she will come alive.”
And within a month, she did. Peter had to learn to see with his heart instead of his eyes. Then, and only then, did everything change. His brushes seemed to have minds of their own, and he was merely the conduit as they ca
ptured Margaret’s expression lines, her eyes, the tilt of her head, the perfect sheen of her hair. He felt like a conductor directing a symphony orchestra, harnessing all the notes into something that was beyond beautiful. But once he was able to paint Margaret, he found that it hurt to look at her, so each night, he would render her face, and each morning, in the harsh light of dawn, he would paint over it, trying not to sob as he did so.
In June of 1950, their immigration papers finally came through, and Peter and Maus set off for a new life of freedom in the land where they had once been prisoners.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
Savannah was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t believe that in all the years I’d lived in Orlando, just a four-and-a-half-hour drive away, I’d never ventured to the moss-draped historic city. But as we got off I-16 and wove our way through the downtown area, I caught glimpses of the river, the soaring mansions, and the beautiful, shady squares, many of which were anchored by grand fountains.
“The city’s supposed to be haunted, you know,” my father said as we turned off Bay Street onto Abercorn and wove our way around what my father identified as Reynolds Square. He’d been making easy, lighthearted conversation all morning, and I appreciated the obvious attempt to distract me. And since if I thought about Nick, I’d probably burst into tears, I played along.
“Think that means the spirit of Ralph Gaertner is hanging out here, waiting to point us in the right direction?”
My father laughed. “Maybe. I’ll keep an eye out for ghosts with paintbrushes.”
The sign for the Schwab Gallery loomed ahead of us a moment later, and I pointed out a parking spot on the side of the road.
When We Meet Again Page 19
