by Audrey Braun
The whistle startles me. There’s no turning back. I’m on my way toward my past and future at once. The train shoots out of the dark to reveal half-timbered houses in the distance, church spires, rolling hills in ten shades of green. The Swiss Alps soar in the background, rugged and white, ancient grandparents standing watch over the hills. The houses, the land, the mountains would have looked like this for centuries. Annaliese and Sonja would have witnessed the very same scene.
I reread both of their letters. I study the city map, and read the letters yet again. By the time the train pulls into the Hauptbahnof, their voices and stories are woven inside me like braided strands of my own DNA. I’ve arrived in a place I’ve never been with a familiarity of home.
The doors slide open and I buzz with energy from so many sources as I wind my way through the streets of Zürich.
The digital sign in a USB bank window flashes fifteen degrees Celsius. I double it and add thirty to get sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The sun peeks in and out of clouds.
My leg has stiffened from so many hours sitting, and it aches as I cross the Bahnhofbrücke over the Limmat River to the east side. I stroll south along the water’s edge. The Strassenbahn rumbles past every few minutes. According to my map, I’m staring at the financial district across the river. I wonder if Annaliese and Sonja lived on that side of the river or this. I picture Annaliese standing where I stand now, looking out onto the same medieval streets, her eyes lost in the ornate details of arches, shutters, buttresses, the weathered copper spire of the church. But Annaliese had been spit on. Annaliese had been raped. These beautiful medieval streets might have stood for something else. And what a horrible tragedy that is. To have such beauty represent something so heinous.
I glance around, jet-lagged and half-conscious of the fact that I’m searching for the Metzgerei Annaliese mentioned in her letter.
Bicycles line the sidewalks. The trees show only the first signs of spring, but the sidewalk cafés spill into the streets with people dressed in colorful scarves. Everyone strikes me as professional, as if whatever they do, no matter what it is, they do it well. Some hold cigarettes, most a coffee in one hand while gesturing with the other. Throngs of people browse shop windows, and I realize I don’t see anyone going inside. A sign in the window of a women’s boutique explains why. It’s a holiday. Everything except restaurants and cafés is closed. That includes the banks.
The uneven cobbles throw my balance. A muscle on one side is overworked. I turn back for the sidewalk along the river until I come upon an Internet café.
White, spare, stainless steel, and honey wood, the café is exactly like something at home in Portland’s Pearl District. I e-mail Oliver first, knowing he’ll get it immediately on his phone. I keep it short. He’ll have enough to deal with after having just arrived at the home of complete strangers. I apologize for not being there. Tell him I’ve been delayed but am safe. Has he heard from his father? I send all of my love.
Five minutes later—
Got here two hours ago. Seth seems pretty cool. His wife Julia made me a hamburger on the grill outside. Did you know Seth had a music room set up in his house? A drum set and everything. We were just getting ready to play. We even like some of the same bands. He says hi. When are you coming? Dad has been texting and calling NONSTOP. He says he called the police.
I can’t shake the strangeness that Oliver is with Seth in Minneapolis. If someone told me that this was even a remote possibility I would have considered him insane.
He’s bluffing, I write back. Under no circumstances will he call the police. Ignore completely. Be there as soon as I can. A few more days. I’m sorry. Tell Seth I’m sorry, too. And, Oliver, thank you for trusting me. I love you more than you will ever know.
A minute later comes, I love you, too, Mom.
I sit with that for a minute, soaking inside it like a warm bath, letting it coat me, solidify around me. Whatever happens from here on out I will carry this like armor into a fight.
I send an e-mail to Willow letting her know I’ve arrived on a bank holiday and won’t be able to find out anything until tomorrow. I ask if there’s anything new on her end.
Minutes later—
I’m so glad to hear you arrived in one piece! You won’t believe it. Got news on your beau, Benicio. Big news. He showed up an hour ago. In fact, he’s asleep right now in your old room! You weren’t kidding when you said he was good looking. My God, even with the bruises you can still tell. Anyway, when I told him where you’d gone I thought he was going to faint. Seriously. He had to sit with his head between his knees, drink a glass of water, the whole deal. He was exhausted, though not nearly in as bad of shape as you were when you came crawling in. But more than that he was broken-hearted. You could see it in his eyes. I nearly cried just watching the fact dawn on him that he had missed you by just a few hours.
That’s all I have. PLEASE keep me posted on EVERYTHING. I know we’ve only known each other a short while, but I swear you’re like someone I’ve known my whole life. Corny, I know. But true.
xo,
Willow
I choke back the walnut-sized lump in my throat and wipe my eyes before anyone might see. I touch my runny nose to my sleeve.
I’m overcome with confusion and fatigue. I’m overcome with relief. It rushes in on a river so deep I’m sure that if I close my eyes I won’t open them again for days. I’m certain Benicio has lied to me. Was the heartbreak Willow saw just another acting job?
I step out into the bustling street, into the smell of fresh-baked bread and coffee, wet stone, a trace of cigarettes. It’s pleasant. Foreign. Inviting. Somewhere a half-timbered pension with a crisp white featherbed is waiting for me. An old woman is going to make me a boiled egg and fresh Brötchen with marmalade for breakfast. “Herlizchen Willkommen,” she’s going to say. She’s going to tell me all about the history of the place, going back for generations, all about the people who have lived there, all the people who have stayed.
32
A man in the tourist booth at the train station books me a room in a pension near Hagen Pharmaceuticals, or rather TOHI. He points me to the right train, smiles when the doors close, and waves when I pull away. I’m so weary, so lost in a fog of delirium that just before I step onto the train I turn and say to him in German, “Do you know who I am?” Wissen Sie wer ich bin? Die Urenkelin von Annaliese Hagen. The great-granddaughter of Annaliese Hagen.
I struggle against the rhythm of the train luring me into sleep. I picture Benicio in the bed I left only hours before. Blood rushes to my head and chest, keeping me awake. The longer I imagine him sprawled across the sheet, his head on my pillow, his hand reaching through my hair, the more the blood pools deep and heavy between my legs.
I didn’t expect it to feel like that.
Like what?
I think you know.
A man in a blue uniform startles me by thrusting a hole puncher in my face.
The train ticket. Of course. I scramble for the ticket in the pocket of the pea coat. He punches it and moves on.
I push Benicio from my thoughts as the tidy, ornate, picture-perfect streets give way to green spaces and hills and then the glassy blue water of Zürichsee.
The cool, clean air is exactly what I need when I step off the train. The pension is a kilometer up the road from the stop. I raise the collar of the pea coat and walk, or rather limp along the river, passing quiet farms, sheep, vineyards, and long stretches of green until I spot the house atop a small hill lined with crops that slope away from the house on all sides. A lane splits through the squares of green to the front; another lane leads away in back. The house is white stone with double rows of a dozen windows along the side. Red shutters clap open beside each one. The roof is thatched. A smoke stack emits a wispy trail of smoke. In the distance the snowy peaks of the Alps. I can’t help but be reminded of stark-lessoned fairy tales.
I sleep like buried treasure. In the morning I’m delighted to find the boiled e
ggs and Brötchen with orange marmalade and fresh coffee waiting in the small dining room exactly as I imagined. The table is set for one. Apparently I’m the only guest.
“Guten Morgen!” someone booms from the kitchen. It’s not Frau Freymann, the woman who checked me in the evening before, but a man, a large man, with a freshly shaven face, white cropped hair and pale blue eyes. He introduces himself as Frau Freymann’s brother. The resemblance is striking.
“Zwillinge,” he says as I stare. Twins.
I nod. It’s clear he’s answered this stare a thousand times.
“Bitte,” he says, gesturing to the chair behind the place setting.
I take a seat, and to my surprise, Herr Freymann takes a seat across from me. We begin the first real conversation I’ve had in German in nearly twenty years. Speaking comes slowly to me, but I understand most of what he says about the farm and lake, and when I don’t, I ask him to repeat it. He seems to like this about me. The fact that I’m not afraid to ask. He tells me I have Mut. Courage. You have no idea, I want to say. “Danke,” I say.
I finally ask about Hagen Pharmaceuticals.
He appears puzzled. Everyone knows of it, he says. They still call it by the Hagen name even though it’s changed twice from the original.
He points up the road. “Fünf Kilometers,” he says. It isn’t far. He suggests I take one of the bikes they have for guests.
Then comes the question. “Warum?” Why? Why do I want to go there?
In that moment Frau Freymann comes through the kitchen and sits at the table across from her brother. She’s overheard the question and wants to know, too.
I glance back and forth between their faces, the male version morphing into the female and back again. It’s distracting. I’m trying to keep my story straight. Trying to tell it in English would be difficult enough, let alone German.
I’m a Hagen, I explain.
By the looks of their identically raised eyebrows I’m either not making any sense, or they don’t believe me, or they understand me completely and they believe me but they’re anxious to tell me something.
It’s the latter. They ask if I know of the “Hagen Haus.”
I shake my head.
A museum. The house Annaliese and Walter lived in is now a museum put together by the children’s children of Annaliese’s brothers and sisters. They’re the only ones left. The closest in line with Annaliese. Or so they thought.
I have so many questions. Where do they live? What’s the family name?
“Seifert,” Frau Freymann says. Annaliese’s maiden name. Annaliese’s brothers had many children who in turn had plenty of their own. They’re everywhere. They’re her neighbors.
I want to run outside and knock on doors, introduce myself, and search their faces for my own. But the banks have already opened, and I need to catch the train back into town. There’s a nine-hour time difference between Switzerland and the West Coast of the States. Not a very big window to work with.
I stand and shake Frau and Herr Freymann’s hands. The twins even smell the same. Cherry soap and starched shirts, a trace of garden soil. Their faces are flushed and their grins large and loose, revealing the slight difference in their smiles with Herr Freymann’s chipped front tooth.
They laugh and pat my back and appear to be nearly as delighted by the discovery as I am.
The cheer and lightheartedness stay with me on the train.
33
There are two e-mails from Willow. The first—
Where are you staying? Please send address.
xo,
Willow
I quickly fire off the address of Pension Freymann. If anything should happen to me someone needs to know where I am, or in the least, where I’ve been.
A peculiar feeling comes over me. Somehow I know that the second e-mail isn’t from Willow before I even open it. It was sent from Willow’s account last night, not long after I signed off.
Celia,
I can’t tell you what these days have been like for me, not knowing if you were dead or alive, not knowing if I would ever see you again. The pain of missing you has been constant. It never stops. It never goes away. I can barely stand to be in this room knowing you were just here. I can barely stand to NOT be in it, too. Knowing your body was right where mine is now brings a whole new torment.
But you’re alive! This is enough to make it bearable. Willow explained some of what has happened, but she seems to be keeping the most important facts to herself. That’s fine. She wants to protect you. I can’t argue with that.
There is so much I need to tell you. Things I should have said before. Things I wasn’t completely honest about. Just know this—if it’s possible to fall in love with someone the second you lay eyes on them, then that is what happened to me with you. I fell harder than I ever knew was possible. If you don’t believe me, just look at my damaged face.
B
My heart and mind splinter into a million pieces. I shut the computer down and wander out onto the sidewalk. Things I wasn’t completely honest about.
I’m not paying attention to where I’m going and run straight into a teenage girl.
“Entschuldigung,” I say. Excuse me.
“Macht nichts,” the girl utters—it doesn’t matter. She heads on her way. It doesn’t matter. He lied to me. It doesn’t matter. My feet chug against the cobbles. It. Does. Not. Matter.
There are too many things that need my attention for me to think about this now. I stuff Benicio down and vow to keep him there for as long as I can. I need to be strong. I think of Sonja weeping in the courtroom as she tries to fight for what’s hers. It made me look weak, she said in her letter. I will not look weak.
I buy a scarf. Blue-sage, extra long, and surprisingly inexpensive for such soft wool. I wrap it twice around my neck. Looking like the Swiss woman I am, I set out across the Münsterbrücke where I drop down into the medieval streets in search of The Bank of Switzerland.
The Fraumünster church towers above me. The golden clock face on the spire reads shortly after ten. For a moment I stand mesmerized by the stained glass of the church, the blue so striking it feels like a living thing, reaching out, warming the skin on my face.
The lanes are narrow and the sun can’t always reach through. People come and go in all directions. No one seems to take notice of me. And yet I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched.
I stop for one small errand at the store Herr Freymann told me about. I stuff my purchases in the backpack and am on my way.
Grand double doors of ancient carved wood make up the entrance to the bank. Like stepping into the hall of an old castle, the ceiling towers several floors high. Glassy marble squeaks beneath my shoes. The acoustics are so tight it’s as if everyone converses in whispers.
I’m standing on the same marble floor Annaliese and Sonja stood before me, surrounded by the same gray-blue walls of stone. I imagine Annaliese daydreaming past the tall, thin windows, devising chemical formulas above the teller’s heads as she waits to get her money.
The longer I stand there, the more the place takes on the feel of a Protestant church. Simple and opulent, beautiful and plaintive. On closer examination I notice cracks in the grandeur, the frayed edge of a mural, an electrical outlet that’s come loose, small chips in the marble floor where the sections meet at my feet.
A young man in a sharp blue suit cuts toward me and asks if I need help. He shows me to his desk in the open floor plan of the room.
The chair smells of fine leather, its back thick and stiff, and I feel too small for the size of it. The man—did he say his name?—looks and smells freshly scrubbed, dipped in cologne. His mahogany desk is obviously handmade, well made. An antique.
He writes down the information from my passport. He studies the paperwork from my mother and types something into his computer. After a moment a change comes over him. His shoulders seem to lift. His eyes, I’m sure, appear to concentrate harder on the screen.
; “Did you find the account?” I ask in German.
“Moment Bitte,” he replies; the smile on his face from earlier has been replaced with a mouth that’s all business.
And then the smile suddenly returns as he stands and asks me to wait, just a moment. He will be right back.
My heart begins to race. Has Jonathon done something? Is there still some missing piece I’m not getting? Or am I simply reliving Annaliese’s nightmare? Are they going to make me wait just to amuse themselves? I squeeze my backpack to my chest, stare through the tall thin windows, and wait.
In the dense bubble of quiet, jet lag begins to unfold like a thick, heavy gel inside my brain, a weary burn in my eyes.
After what seems like ten minutes, the man returns with an elegant-looking woman wearing a creamy pantsuit over a silky blue blouse. Her makeup is tastefully done. Her blond hair is fastened neatly at the nape of her neck. She holds out her hand for me to shake.
“I apologize for the wait.” She speaks English. “Erika Zubriggen. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Donnelly.”
“Celia. Please. You can call me Celia.”
“Would you like to come with me?” Erika asks.
“Is there a problem?” My tired brain struggles to make sense of what’s happening. My hands are suddenly fists. I’m prepared to stand my ground.
“Not at all,” Erika says. “It’s just you’ve come to the wrong bank. Well. Not exactly the wrong bank. What I mean is you’ve come to the wrong, what is the word, branch, yes, I think that’s it, the wrong branch of the bank.”
