This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © Marleen Reichenberg
Translation copyright © 2015 Gerald Chapple
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as Novemberhimmel by Amazon Publishing in Germany in 2014. Translated from German by Gerald Chapple. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477830895
ISBN-10: 1477830898
Cover design by M.S. Corley
Contents
Start Reading
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
“True love is. . .
About the Author
About the Translator
True love begins when nothing is expected in return.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944)
From Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes)
Chapter 1
August 2012, Cannes, France
“Laura, you’ve got to come right now. Nick’s been in an accident.”
I stared in total confusion at my husband’s colleague Robert. When the doorbell rang, I’d expected the ever-cheerful postman and opened the door with a smile. It died when I saw Robert looking so serious. When I finally grasped what he was saying, an icy shudder of fear ran down my spine. The blood rushed into my ears and I felt dizzy.
Robert grabbed my shoulders. “Laura, take a deep breath and try to pull yourself together. He needs you.”
I felt a glimmer of hope. “He’s alive?”
“Yes, he’s alive, but his condition’s very serious. He’s been flown to the Central Hospital in Cannes. Get dressed—I’ll take you there.”
I stepped back into the house and took a deep breath. Get dressed. Of course I couldn’t leave the house in a bikini and a sarong, even if the outside temperature was in the nineties. I ran upstairs to the dressing room and blindly tore a summer dress off a hanger. I slipped it on, put on a pair of flat white sandals, and grabbed my purse and keys. I ran outside with snippets of Robert’s words hammering in my ears: He’s alive. He needs you. And I needed him, too. Nick had to live—or else everything we’d been through together over the last two years was all for nothing.
Why now, when everything finally seemed OK? We’d survived like two battle-scarred veterans who’d slipped into calm, restorative waters. And now this. I felt as though I’d been swamped by a new tidal wave. I was terrified for him, and for myself. I was afraid I would drown. I’d been on guard for almost two years, constantly expecting bad news—and now, just when I thought I could overcome my anxiety, fate struck once more.
Minutes later I sat in Robert’s black Mercedes as he raced downhill into town, tires squealing. I clenched my hands in my lap, saying silent prayers.
I could barely focus on Robert’s words as he described Nick’s accident. His car had fallen down a steep slope on the Moyenne Corniche and rolled over several times. The firemen had to cut Nick loose from the wreck before he was flown to the hospital.
“He didn’t have his ID on him, and so the police traced the car to the set. It was leased to the film company. I told them I’d get you to the hospital.”
“Why was he driving?” I asked. “I thought you were shooting the beach scene today?”
“We put it off until the afternoon because the sun was too bright. Nick was going to get a few sandwiches and cold drinks for the crew from a bar in Èze.” Robert scowled.
“Lisa, our producers’ assistant, was supposed to take care of lunch, but Nick insisted on going himself.”
What the hell had made him do that? But Robert couldn’t say. Of course, he didn’t understand my question’s deeper significance.
Thankfully, Robert accompanied me to the hospital’s reception desk. I only knew a little French, and I wouldn’t have been able to understand the nurse’s singsong reply to his inquiry about Nick even under normal circumstances. Robert nodded his understanding and guided me toward the elevator.
“We’re going up to the Trauma Unit. He’s being treated now.”
Again, I felt a hint of hope. I wasn’t too late. When we arrived in the Trauma Unit, we were directed to the waiting room. The doctor would update us as soon as he could. Robert steered me down the long, bright corridor, staying close to the wall to avoid the doctors and nurses running back and forth. They all wore green smocks and some had surgical masks. Several were pushing carts holding frightening-looking apparatuses and instruments. They passed through the double doors that opened and closed with a hiss. A doctor ran out of one of the rooms, shouting instructions over his shoulder. I stopped in front of the door and saw an examination table with a half-naked, blood-covered figure on it. Green smocks surrounded the table.
Robert pushed me gently on and he closed the door. “That wasn’t Nick.”
“How do you know?”
“The man had a snake tattoo on his left arm.”
I was suddenly relieved that Nick had never gotten a tattoo.
Robert guided me to a closed white door with “Salle d’attente” written on it in blue. Robert knocked cautiously and we went in. A man and a woman jumped up. When they saw we weren’t medics, they sank back onto their chairs. Neither responded to our muttered Bonjours. The man was maybe in his midtwenties. He clenched his fists and stared straight ahead with a vacant, worried look. Tears covered the plain facial features of the very young-looking, dark-haired woman. Her slumped figure radiated pure desperation. The man leaned over and gently put a hand on her shoulder. He asked her a question, but she just shook her head and turned away abruptly so his hand fell limply. She clutched a once-white teddy bear that was now covered with brown and red spots. The mischievous look on the animal’s face and its smiling sewn mouth didn’t go with his tattered appearance. I realized with a start that the spots were blood. The desperate mother looked in my direction but didn’t really see me. Her eyes gazed into space.
As anxious as I was, my heart ached for her. The two parents looked so young and so worried about their child. I didn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl, but judging by the toy, the child must have been very young.
Robert and I sat down near the window, some distance away from the couple. We didn’t want to bother them. The young mother ignored the man, who must have been her husband. I instinctively wondered if she blamed him for harming their child. What a melodramatic idea—and irrelevant. When something bad happens, it really doesn’t matter who or what caused it. You just have to accept the conse
quences and learn to live with them or else go crazy. It wouldn’t be any different for me if the worst were to happen. How does the saying go that really nails it—“Hope is the last thing to die”? And I’m a past master in hoping.
Suddenly the door opened and a tall, lean doctor with steel-gray hair walked in. The four of us automatically stood up, as if pulled by invisible threads. We stared at him with questioning eyes. He took off his surgical mask with a weary gesture. The resignation in his eyes stabbed the pit of my stomach like a dagger. I was both profoundly relieved and deeply ashamed when he moved toward the young couple and silently shook his head. When the young woman screamed, I felt a painful ache in my chest combine with the burning sensation in my guts. Tears poured down both parents’ faces, and the man caught hold of his wife just before she fell to the floor. He and the doctor whispered something between them and supported the young woman as they left the room, her heart-rending sobs never abating.
After they left, I noticed the little blood-covered bear lying under the young mother’s chair. Robert’s ashen face showed the scene had upset him as much as it had me. He looked at me blankly when I got up and picked up the teddy bear.
“This must have been the last thing their child was holding before dying. The parents will need this,” I tried to explain, my voice breaking. “To put it with their son or daughter.”
I’d become an expert in imagining how much devastation the death of a loved one could cause, and how a person would react to it.
Robert took the teddy bear from me and left the room. When he returned, I was pleased to learn that he’d given it to the couple personally. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything more. No matter, because at that moment two doctors came through the door. An icy hand clutched my heart. After watching the awful experience of the young parents, I was braced for the worst.
One of the doctors was a gaunt woman with short brown hair flecked with gray. She offered me her hand briskly.
“Madame Vanderstätt? Je suis Catherine Damiez.”
She introduced her colleague, who just came up to her shoulder, and I assumed they had treated Nick after his accident.
She spoke with urgency. I only understood individual French words and whispered one of the few French sentences I’d mastered, “Je ne comprends,” looking to Robert for help.
She turned to Robert as she continued, stopping now and then for him to translate. Nick had been wedged into the car and had severe internal injuries, broken bones, and a ruptured spleen and liver. A bone had pierced his left lung, and they’d had to restart his heart several times. He was now in the operating room. Dr. Damiez said the operation would take at least twelve hours. She was unflinchingly straightforward. Robert translated with a sorrowful face.
“His condition is extremely critical. He’s lost a lot of blood. The doctors don’t know whether his weakened body can take the anesthetic and the long operation. But they’ll give it their best shot.”
I vehemently refused the doctors’ suggestion that I go home and wait for word from the hospital. I wanted to be near Nick. I knew it was irrational, but I felt that my presence would give him strength. Whenever he felt awful, he needed me with him to get better. Up until now, that had always worked.
I reassured Robert that he could leave me alone. I could tell he was torn between staying with me and the need to get back to work. In the end, Dr. Damiez decided for him. She said a few words to him in French, and he looked relieved.
“Laura, they have a couple of people in the hospital who speak German and can translate if you have questions or need anything,” Robert explained. “Just go to the nursing station. I’ll come back the minute we’re finished.”
He put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “Chin up, girl, Nick’s tough. He’s made it this far and will make it the rest of the way.”
The doctors left me by myself. Only the uniform ticking of the clock on the wall opposite where I sat interrupted the quiet in the waiting room. The sound had a soothing effect on me. It reminded me of a regular heartbeat, and I tried with all my strength to imagine it was Nick’s heart that kept on beating, strong and unwavering. Hour after hour went by. I curled up in my chair and tried to keep Nick alive purely by my strength of will, fervent prayers, and positive thoughts.
Late in the afternoon, a sympathetic nurse brought me a carafe of water, a cup of coffee, and a plate laden with little French pastries. I thanked her but couldn’t get anything down besides a little water. The gaily decorated cakes looked like they’d been made for a party. The sight of them was jarring. I was stiff from sitting, so I stood up and looked out the large window—it had a safety lock and could only be opened a crack. That seemed logical to me. Given the tragedies that played out in this room, I imagined that the seventh-floor window could easily seduce people into jumping to the heavily traveled four-lane street below.
In the distance, the sea sparkled a deep blue. As I watched, a bright-red sports car swerved much too fast around a corner in the large hospital complex and stopped, tires squealing. I immediately recognized the car’s make and model, and it seemed to be a sign. My knees grew weak, and I dropped onto the nearest chair. My thoughts flew back to the night I’d seen another car just like it—the night I met Nick for the very first time.
Chapter 2
The night was pitch-black. Dense clouds covered the full moon and the stars, and I felt like I was under a black cloth. My headlights cast a beam on the narrow, curvy, potholed road, snaking through the thick forest. Tall fir trees loomed in the shadows; their knotted trunks stood out against the darkness. I was glad to be in a warm car and wanted to get the woods behind me as soon as possible. I hadn’t realized that this stretch of road was so creepy at night. But even if it wasn’t the most comfortable, it was the shortest way to the highway to Munich.
I was tired and wanted to get home to bed quickly, but I still had a good hour’s drive ahead of me. I forced myself not to go over thirty miles an hour. I didn’t want to get stuck in one of the deep potholes in the crumbling pavement. I’d grown up in the area here around Chiemsee and knew every road and secret path through the woods and fields. You had to expect some animal—a marten, hare, fox, or deer—to suddenly jump in front of your car and cause you to make a risky, reflexive swerve. It had never happened to me, but my father had strongly impressed upon me never to brake sharply or jerk the wheel. Instead, he told me to hold the wheel tightly and simply concentrate on not hitting the nearest tree or winding up in the ditch. Still, I had serious doubts whether I’d have the nerve and cold-bloodedness to do all that in an emergency.
Although I grew up on a farm, I was delicately strung and felt a practically pathological empathy for the world’s powerless creatures. As a child I spent sleepless nights when classmates had been unjustly treated by their teachers or parents, and I was always particularly nice to the kids who were bullied. Every time another barn cat was run over in front of our farm, I bawled over its lifeless little body.
I would unfailingly rescue chicks that fell out of their nests and try to nurse them back to health. I was only successful in a single case. That little swallow was almost ready to fly—and after I fed it insects for two days, it was fledged. Despite my best efforts, all the other fledglings I tried to save breathed their last in my homemade nests and received a dignified burial along the border of our herb garden. I consoled myself with the thought that at least they hadn’t wound up in the claws of our cats but were allowed to pass away in peace. I also suffered terribly if I witnessed Mama slaughtering a chicken, or if the cattle truck came to the barnyard to ship the unfortunate cattle or pigs off to the slaughterhouse.
The only person in my family who understood me was my mother. As a bred-in-the-bone country girl, she admittedly had a pragmatic attitude toward the life and death of animals, but she could also understand my sentimental impulses. Whenever my father and siblings shook their heads over my “s
appiness,” she’d put a loving arm around me and explain, “The child is just sensitive.”
Her understanding did reach its limits when I turned fifteen and declared I was a vegetarian, requesting only meatless dishes. Even now, ten years later, I had to smile at the way she’d put her hands on her hips and set me straight in her strong Bavarian dialect: “So, listen, girl, by the Jesus! I think you’ve got a hole in your head. Enough of that baloney! You’ll darn well eat what’s put on the table, and if you don’t like it you can lump it!” And even then she put up with my preference to eat only side dishes while she kept on cooking hearty Bavarian meals. And as she correctly predicted, it didn’t take long before I lost my appetite for eating only spaetzle, potatoes, dumplings, rice, and vegetables, while the others enjoyed Sunday schnitzels, steaks, and roasts. I reverted to my old eating habits a few days later.
Mom was a dyed-in-the-wool Upper Bavarian, born and raised in Chieming. She was energetic, practical, hands-on, and in perpetual motion. She married my father right after leaving school and brought my sister, Anna; me; and my brother, Peter, into the world at regular four-year intervals. She managed the household and the farm while educating us a little. Mama never had the opportunity to go to university or out into the big, wide world, but her healthy common sense and ability to put herself in other people’s shoes made up for it. She possessed what many so-called intelligent, highly qualified people lack: an education of the heart. Added to all this, she had a conviviality and joie de vivre that won many people over.
She’d been in top form that day—my brother’s wedding day.
Peter married Helen, his long-time girlfriend, whom the whole family loved. Almost the entire village turned out for the big, boisterous celebration. Anna and I wrote and performed a song about our little brother, with many verses on the highlights and embarrassments in Peter’s life. The refrain was “Peter, the little kid.” Mama accompanied us on the accordion to the tune of “Men Are Pigs,” garnering huge applause when she sang her racy solos.
November Sky Page 1
