The Curator's Daughter

by Melanie Dobson

  Parents often brought their kids to remember alongside them, and that, to Ember, was the greatest tribute of all. These children would learn, she prayed, and not repeat the horror, this knowledge defeating any hatred in their hearts.

  As she moved through the lobby, toward the front entrance, she heard someone shout. While tourists might yell on the Mall or even the steps at the Lincoln Memorial, this museum was a reverent space to remember. Rarely did anyone, young or old, shout inside these somber walls.

  She paused, listening, but the sound had dissipated.

  Ahead was a string of doors, but when she reached out to open one, a policewoman stopped her. “Sorry, miss, you don’t want to go out there.”

  “But I—” Then she saw them through the windows. Men built like tanks marching down Fourteenth Street, their raised arms locked into fists, tongues loaded with hatred. They chanted in rapid fire, hurling verbal ammunition at the museum.

  Placards pumped up and down, the volley fire of mortars to reiterate their words. A protest against anyone who wasn’t like them.

  History, she feared, was on the verge of repeating itself.

  The policewoman eyed the badge around Ember’s neck. “You better use the side door.”

  The safe exit.

  But this was a public place, a memorial, for anyone to enter or exit as they pleased. She’d cowered plenty at the threats of a bully long ago. She wouldn’t cower anymore.

  Ember pushed open the door.

  “Don’t go—”

  But she was already outside. The men marched past her and the helmeted police, faces protected by shields, who’d gathered on the empty sidewalk to keep the protestors off the museum’s property.

  Anger blazed inside her. This was exactly what these men were trying to spark, she knew, but in the height of emotion, her voice demanded to be heard.

  One of the men shouted another obscenity, one directed at Ember.

  And she yelled back.

  A policeman turned and glared at Ember as if she were the problem. As if she were spewing hatred across this district.

  Her hands balled into fists as she stared back at the silver badge, the bulky Kevlar vest, of this man whose impossible job was to protect freedom, including the freedom of speech.

  These protestors were trying to fuel anger with their words. They wanted her and others to retaliate with their fists. They wanted to be the victims in this war of words.

  With the return fire of her own voice, she’d stepped up to play their game.

  Hands in her pockets, despair washed over her. Hopelessness. She wanted to stop the hostility, but how could she, in all of her research, stop those whose very identity was grounded in hate?

  She couldn’t fight on this sidewalk, with words or fists, but she wouldn’t flee either.

  Noah would have to wait this afternoon. Just a minute or two.

  She stood vigilantly like the police officers as the supremacists marched by. On guard.

  She wouldn’t confront nor would she cower. Like a rock that wouldn’t move, a stone to stumble over, she would continue digging up the stories.

  And she’d force all of them to remember.

  4

  HANNA

  NUREMBERG, GERMANY

  The skeleton of a stone spire rose above the eastern hills as if its ghostly bell might toll out across Nuremberg this afternoon, calling them all to prayer. Hanna’s taxi was about three kilometers away from the spire now, its tower a beacon to guide her home from the train station.

  Home.

  Four years had passed since she’d returned to this city that cradled her childhood memories. The hills that had stolen away her mother’s breath and eventually the life of her father as well.

  At least she still had her cousin to welcome her back. Every letter she’d received over the years from Luisa had begged Hanna to come home.

  A hastily packed suitcase was resting on the taxi seat beside her; the contents of trousers, blouses, and work boots had been all she’d needed for the past four years of fieldwork. And her journal and trowel—items she’d left in the cave before Kolman Strauss proposed.

  She remembered quite clearly the revelation that she was no longer employed with the Ahnenerbe, but the other details of that night were blurry from the bottle of wine—or was it two?—that she consumed in the aftermath. She had said no to him—hadn’t she?

  She’d meant to reiterate her refusal the next morning, after the haze of wine cleared from her head, but Kolman and the others were already gone. Only a driver had remained to escort her to Paris, and the man insisted that he didn’t know where her team had been sent.

  She’d written Kolman a letter on her train ride into Germany, declining his offer of marriage. Then she’d delivered it straight to the headquarters office in Berlin, so they could forward her message to him. The sparks between them were just a distraction. She’d had sparks before, with an American man, and that relationship ended in disaster.

  The taxi driver turned sharply onto Bayernstrasse, each windowsill underscored with boxes of spring flowers. But the medieval structures ebbed quickly into modern office buildings, the walls poured from cement. The softness of window blossoms hardened into a crisp red that dripped from the lanky buildings like blood, each flag stamped with a swastika.

  In all of her travels, she’d never seen so many flags lined up like this except those that striped the sky red on Unter den Linden, the parade route in Berlin.

  She leaned her head back, closing her eyes for a moment, rubbing her hands together as if her trowel might reappear.

  What had the Cathars buried in that chamber?

  The question had haunted her for the last week. She’d tried to return to Montségur without Kolman and the others, but the one soldier remaining at the vineyard had refused to take her anyplace except Paris.

  Had Kolman returned to the cave without her? He’d fling safety off a sinking ship if he must to unearth the find of the century, give Himmler the power he craved. If Kolman fanned his supervisor’s fame, he would secure a top position with the SS as well. And Kolman would do just about anything to please Himmler.

  At least Hanna no longer had to concern herself with Himmler or the SS.

  Paul and Luisa should have received her telegram yesterday. Tonight she’d settle into her old room, and tomorrow she’d begin her work at the museum.

  Ahead was Grosser Dutzendteich—the great pond—and beyond it, a forest of branches that seemed to extend all the way to the former Czechoslovakia and into Poland. At the sight, her childhood memories with Luisa flooded back, the two of them paddling across Grosser Dutzendteich on rented boats whenever they visited the Nuremberg Zoo. On the other side of the lake were her favorite animals—the sea elephants and kangaroos and a monkey named Charlie.

  Funny, how she’d later met a real Charlie at the university. Affe—monkey—she’d called him in their earlier months as friends, before her heart had gone rogue.

  Her nose smudged the window as she remembered those years gone by when it was just her and Luisa watching the animals they’d loved. Soon she would see the wall around the zoo with the sign announcing their newest tenant—a gorilla or ostrich or elephant—to draw residents back for a visit.

  But the wall never appeared nor the famous billboard. Instead the entire zoo had been cleared into a huge field like the nearby Nazi Party Rally Grounds, and in the distance was a giant stadium.

  “What happened to the zoo?” she asked, her nose pressed firmly against the window as if, by remembering, she could make all of the animals and their cages reappear.

  The driver glanced curiously in the rearview mirror, pockmarks knobbed across his thin face. He was probably twenty, not much younger than she’d been when she first met Charlie Ward. “How long has it been since you’ve visited?”

  “Four years.”

  “A lot has changed in four years,” he said.

  A lot had certainly changed for her and for Germany as a whole.
A tornado had roared through their parliament, breaking apart the concrete blocks of their society, sending the pieces flying in different directions.

  No one knew when or where it was all going to land.

  Just for one moment, why couldn’t they settle the winds? Cherish their heritage together instead of launching each piece back into the storm? For just a moment, she wished everything would be still again.

  “Did Nuremberg close its zoo?”

  The driver straightened his cap. “Apparently the Nazis needed the space more than the animals, but the mayor wouldn’t let them close it altogether.”

  Disdain pierced his explanation, but these days, no one dared to critique Hitler or his hierarchy. Once-vocal criticism had burrowed far under the weight of National Socialism.

  But the Nazis’ obsession with Nuremberg made sense. Most politicians were fond of the city’s former position in the First Reich—the Holy Roman Empire—and the richness from the German Renaissance. The history of its independence and elite culture.

  “Where did they send the animals?” she asked.

  He nodded ahead to the ghostly tower. “The mayor built a new Tiergarten on Schmausenbuck for everyone to enjoy. Even Hitler made an appearance for the grand opening.”

  Hanna’s father had begun supporting Hitler after one of his Jewish employees embezzled thousands of Reichsmarks from the toy factory’s accounts. Vater also thought Deutschland needed a leader who could fight back against the disparaging terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and it seemed as if Hitler was the only politician willing to do it.

  Luisa, on the other hand, had deemed the man crazy for his hateful rhetoric about the enemy who he said lived among them. Many thought the Nazi Party was uniting their land, but her cousin only saw the divisions.

  While Hanna wasn’t fond of Hitler’s forceful entry into politics or his cruel words, she was pleased that he and Himmler wanted to revive their nation, putting all the broken pieces back together again on the strength of their shared heritage.

  “I’m surprised Hitler came back to Nuremberg for a zoo.”

  “It seems he is fond of our town.”

  “Indeed.” Her mind flashed again to the crevices and mossy trees across the Schmausenbuck, to the abandoned mine shafts in the hills. The place was beautiful but hardly safe for children and animals to be frolicking about. Not even the town youth ventured out that far unless they were camping, and then they pitched their tents up by the abandoned abbey, not by the quarry or old hunting lodge now owned by the Tillich family. “The mountain doesn’t seem to be the best place for animals or their visitors.”

  “The zoo is actually at the bottom of the mountain. Mayor Liebel thought the animals would be protected there.”

  “Protected from what?”

  The driver shrugged.

  As they drove farther east, the city’s modern buildings turned into neat cottages and eventually the cottages faded into a grove of alder trees. A new sign hung at the base of the mountain, one that announced the grand opening of the zoo with the toothy grin of a billboard gorilla waving at her.

  Perhaps she and Luisa could visit this new zoo together.

  The driver rounded a corner, heading into the hills, and she saw another sign for the zoo’s entrance. The lane on their right led to a ridge of sandstone that overlooked the city.

  She leaned forward. “Turn after the sign.”

  An arbor of gnarled vines arched over the dirt lane. Wind and rain had partnered with a host of ancient miners to etch steep cliffs into this forest, the crevices carved into stone from a quarry that dated back to the Middle Ages.

  If only she could roam as she’d done as a child, digging up roots in search of buried treasure and crawling with her lamp into the mine shafts. When Luisa arrived, they’d explored every meter of the abbey’s ruins above the lodge and then the surrounding hills. The land had evolved over the centuries, roots sprouting up into a raging green to overtake all that had been stripped away. But the chasms still ran deep in these ragged hills. Nothing except a drastic act of God would ever fill those in.

  The taxi driver slowed at the intersection and glanced up the winding road built for wagons and carriages. It was hardly wide enough for an automobile, but her dad used to drive his roadster under this mantle of leaves, the top rolled back so she could bat the low-lying branches.

  She took a deep breath. “Left please.”

  He glanced at her in the mirror. “Are you certain?”

  “Of course.”

  The driver slowed his car as if he were afraid a gorilla might spring from the underwood. “I used to think these hills were haunted.”

  “No haunts out here,” she said. At least none they could see.

  He accelerated the taxicab. “I’ve lived in Nuremberg my entire life, but I never knew about a house in these hills . . .”

  Perhaps she shouldn’t guide this man all the way to her home. Not that she was frightened of him—she knew how to defend herself—but an undercurrent rumbled beneath the newly formed unity in their country. She didn’t know many Jewish people, but she’d been warned that the Jews were trying to rise up and overthrow the state. She didn’t need anyone trying to organize a coup back here, especially if they thought she lived alone.

  The driver paused beside an ancient water fountain, the stone sculpted into the face of a lion. When she was a girl, she’d been terrified of the trees and mystical monsters and even this fountain, pedaling her bicycle like a pinwheel whenever she passed. Luisa used to laugh at her, thinking it was all a game, but Hanna never thought it was funny.

  As the driver crept forward again, she glimpsed the convent’s tower before it vanished behind the trees.

  “Actually—” she tapped the man’s shoulder—“I’ll get out here.”

  The sun was falling behind the hills, but it didn’t worry her. She opened the door and lugged her suitcase onto the packed dirt.

  “I can’t leave you alone out here,” he said. “It will be dark soon.”

  She flashed a smile. “I thrive in the dark.”

  He gave her a strange look before glancing over her shoulder. “Where exactly do you live?”

  “In a cave.” She pressed ten Reichsmarks into his hand. “With the other gorillas.”

  A nervous laugh escaped his lips. “Ma’am—”

  “That’s a secret, just between us.”

  Instead of responding, he locked his door.

  “We all live in a castle.” She smiled. “With a scientist named Frankenstein.”

  He reversed the car so quickly that his fender bumped into one of the trees, trimming the metal with moss. Then dust trailed him as he sped from the hauntings in this place, leaving her alone. He’d be too frightened, she hoped, to return.

  Cool water puddled in her hand as she cupped it below the lion’s mouth. A long sip of water, the sweet essence of spring. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been afraid of this lion if she’d realized it was offering her life.

  The dirt lane hooked around a coppice of trees before climbing to the top of this old mining road. Rising above the trees, a hundred meters up into the forest, was the former bell tower that would have trilled its song grandly before the Reformation.

  Instead of taking the road, she chose a shorter route, lugging her suitcase up a root-strewn path until the forest opened up again into a meadow with tall grasses as high as her knee. The meadow tumbled down an embankment, a welcome mat for the former timber-framed convent turned Jagdhütte—a royal hunting lodge.

  Hanna dropped her suitcase on the drive and scanned the windows for light, but the curtains were all closed. Two chimneys anchored the three-storied home, and leaded windows adorned the steep pitch of roof. She knew every corner of this lodge with its restored kitchen and great hall on the ground floor, the four large bedrooms on the next level. Her grandfather’s attic workshop that crowned the remaining books and portraits from medieval years. To the right of the house were a bicycle shed and an empty garage
that once housed her father’s car.

  Before she left for university, she’d peeled back the layers of history for this house, savoring each one. In the fifteenth century, the building had been a residence for Saint Katharine’s cloister, the meadow outside a peaceful place for grazing and gardening. In the dark hours, when she was younger, Hanna thought she could hear the swish of skirts in the corridors, the voices of nuns chanting their songs, praying for her after her mother died.

  Before the Reformation, Nuremberg’s elite would pilgrimage up past this convent, to the hillside abbey named after Saint Katharine of Alexandria, and light candles, their prayers penetrating the thin veil that separated heaven from earth. Then men like Luther and Philipp Melanchthon began speaking out against the abuses in the Catholic church in the 1500s, and monasteries across Germany closed their doors. After the nuns finally left this place, a local patrician with the extravagant name of Hieronymus restored their residence into a lodge so he and his parties could hunt red deer, wolves, and wild boar in the surrounding forest.

  After another century of neglect, her grandfather purchased the property in 1890 and renovated the lodge into a home. The place, Vater once said, reminded her grandfather of the dollhouses that Tillich Toy Factory designed, the antique furniture similar to what his carpenters would have built. The lodge and meadow and treed hills beyond had been a retreat from the factory noise and wood dust and smell of turpentine.

  Hanna searched the front windows one more time before picking up her suitcase. The telegram should have arrived by this morning, but when she pounded on the knocker, no one answered.

  In the hours that she’d contemplated her homecoming, she’d never considered that the Gruenewalds wouldn’t be here. Even with the world changing around them, in her mind, this lodge and its occupants always stayed the same.

  “Luisa?” she called as she walked around the building, to the garden out back. “Schatzi?”

  Neither her cousin nor the golden cat they’d found a decade ago responded, and the garden patch that Luisa had tended for most of Hanna’s life was riddled with weeds.