The Blackberry Bush (6 page)

“Shall we, then? Your mother will be home by suppertime,” Opa asks in English.

“But of course, Grandfather,” I reply in a perfect Seattle accent.

I’m relieved that Papa is in Berlin, Mutti is at work, and Johanna is on a class trip. That means I can relax and be myself for a couple of hours.

We head up the main staircase to the upper-floor landing. Opa reaches for the rope, which pulls down the ladder to the attic.

For an instant, a shudder runs through me, coming out of nowhere.

“Did you feel that, Opa? It felt the way a big car accident sounds.”

Opa stops on the ladder and thanks me for mentioning it. “My promptings are starting to come back,” he explains.

I understand. I’ve heard his stories for years.

“I had a dream or a vision yesterday,” he says. “And yes, Kati, come to think of it, I did just feel something. Something terrible has happened and, very sadly, there is nothing we can do about it.”

Opa looked down one more time before continuing up into the attic. “Remember, Kati, we are always in the presence of a God who speaks, but that voice is very, very subtle.”

Leaving that unnerving experience behind, we climb into the attic. It’s illuminated by natural sunbeams of light from four dormer windows, all of which are slightly cracked open on the bottom for ventilation.

I am
finally
tall enough to look out of them now. I used to have to stand on a box. My favorite view is out of the back right one. I can see the Rhine River freight boats plying up and down the river.

But no time for that now. We have a treasure to open.

The attic is full of all kinds of German postwar stuff. It’s also where Mutti hangs the clothes to dry.

There it is in the corner: Great-Grandfather Walter’s sea chest. It’s massive.

The family coat of arms is painted on the middle of the top cover. A heart with a crown of thorns encircling it, same as the shield on the front gate to our front yard. The Gothic script letters for
Dornbusch
adorn the bottom in a semicircle.

My family has a long story in the sea trade. I grew up hearing all about Seattle, Malaysia, Rotterdam, Alaska, Brazil, and lots of other places. But Papa doesn’t seem cut out for the business world. He works for the government, which used to be a bike ride down the river in Bonn before the capital moved to Berlin after the Wall came down. He and Mutti have not been happy together since he got transferred to the new capital.

Opa has brought a sturdy flashlight and a bottle of spray lubricant with him up the stairs. He shoots a puff of it into the old, rusty lock. He then reaches for the key in the pocket of his tweed jacket and places it in my hands to try.

After a little persuasion, the lock gives way, and we open its rusty jaws and lay it aside with a thud on the attic floor. Opa flips on the flashlight, and we start to look around inside the chest.

At the very top is an unfolded note addressed to Harald (Opa).

Harald,
Denk an uns mit Nachsicht (Bertold Brecht).
—Papa

Denk an uns mit Nachsicht,
which means “When you think about us, be lenient and gentle.”

These words seem to stir something in Opa, because his eyes look wet and his breathing gets funny. I’d like to ask him about his reaction, but I’m too impatient. I want to see what’s in the treasure chest.

Under the note on top of the contents are rows of now-worthless wood samples from all over the world: teak, Douglas fir, meranti, etc.

From a bag below that, we pull out what seems to be a tattered prisoner’s uniform and documents in Russian.

Opa Harald explains. “Kati, as you know, your great-grandfather spent years in forced labor in Russia, with countless other Germans after the War. I remember the day my mother and I met him at his homecoming in the little train station down in the village. I knew him better from pictures than from real life.

“He was properly dressed in a suit and hat. The suit was too big for him; he was very emaciated and thin. He was carrying flowers for Mother. He was a proud man, an officer, and he walked with perfect posture and a bit of a limp. First he gave me a handshake I will never forget. And then he kissed my mother’s hand. He looked away after doing that, which seemed odd.”

Opa was an only child. Opa’s father, Walter, and mother were never able to have more children because of all the terrible things that happened to his father in Russian captivity.

Next to that bag with Russian things lies a beautifully polished, Asian-looking, wooden box. We break the wrapping strap, which apparently made an airtight seal, and lift the lid to reveal shining classic wristwatches, all couched in plush, deep purple/blue felt crevices. Ziffer à Grande Complication 1924. Girard-Perregaux. IWC. Patek Philippe. Audemars Piguet. 8 Jours. Cartier. Universal Genève. Breitling. Zenith. A Lange und Söhne.

Opa pulls out his reading glasses to identify the tiny print on the watch faces. He mouths the names as he goes from timepiece to timepiece. He unhooks the Rolex from his wrist and exchanges it for the Ziffer. He doesn’t speak French very often, but a “
Magnifique!
” rolls off his lips in a whisper.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love watches. I feel like we have won the lottery. We lose track of time as we wind them and hold them up to our ears to hear the ticking.

Imagine adding these to the box in Opa’s study! Can anyone feel any richer?

We place the Asian watch chest on the floor. It’s never going back in the sea locker. Watches are made to be worn, not stored.

Next, a metal case the size of a large lunch box lies shoved below where the Asian box was. It’s very heavy. Opa lifts it (he’s very strong) and puts it on the floor. The rusty hinges protest as we open it.

Inside, wrapped in thick paper tubes like little silos, are gold Krugerrands. A small fortune. There is a yellowed envelope with a note:

Harald,
Für deine Enkelkinder
(for your grandchildren).
—Papa

“Kati,” Opa insists, “this is for you and Johanna from my father, but as hard as it is, I want you to put it out of your mind and promise me you’ll never tell anyone. Not Johanna. Not your parents. I will take care of it for you and give it to you when the time is right. If something happens to me, you’ll know where to find this box, and I know you’ll do the right thing with it. Let’s put it back and try to forget about it. It’s not good for young people to have a lot of money they didn’t earn.”

He takes one of the Krugerrands and rotates it in his fingers. “Kati,” he says, “life is like a coin with two sides—destiny and random chance. The truth is, each side flows out of the other. Quantum stuff. And life spins and spins.”

Sometimes Opa says the strangest things, but I trust him. Reluctantly, I restack the surprisingly heavy gold coins into the metal box and hand it back to Opa.
This will be impossible to forget, Opa
, I think.
What you’re asking can’t be done.

And then I reach for what I think is the last bag in the bottom right corner.

Another note from Great-grandfather Walter on top:

I could never bring myself to throw them away.

And again, the same Bertold Brecht quote that was on the first letter we found inside the sea chest: “When you think about us, be lenient and gentle.”

Two bundles of letters, several hundred in each batch, are neatly tied with string. One is labeled
Nellie.
The other is labeled
Walter.
The dates range from 1944 to 1979. The addresses are unfamiliar post-office boxes in Rotterdam-Hillegersberg, Rotterdam-Ommoord, Oberwinter, and a military address in Russia.

In the middle of the
Nellie
stack I pull out an old black and white portrait of what appears to be a woman in her fifties. She is so elegant, almost royal, that she takes my breath away.

Why can’t I look anything like this?
I wonder.

Upon closer inspection, I see that the woman (Nellie?) has a curious gap in her right eyebrow and a rather large scar at the base of her left jaw.

Written in sparkly white ink at a 45-degree angle in the bottom right corner of the photograph are the words
Für Immer und Ewig
(for always and eternally).

No names are included. Odd.

Opa Harald’s eyes gleam as they meet mine. “We’ve found these for a reason, Kati. And today is the right day to find them. This should surprise me, but it doesn’t. It just completes a story for me that was missing a few chapters. I think we are about to discover that our lives are a little bigger than we thought they were.”

But for now, with many unanswered questions, I glance at my Glashütte timepiece and realize Mutti will be home in minutes. Where did all the time go?

Sure enough, Mutti’s frantic, panicked voice shouts up from downstairs, evaporating the mysterious gravity of the letters and replacing it with something much more ominous.

“Something terrible has happened in New York. Kati! Papa! Come quickly!”

Opa Harald

T
HE INSTANT HE SEES THE NAME
N
ELLIE
on the letters, a chill runs up Opa Harald’s spine. He remembers the name from the postcard vision and then the words
I am so very sorry....

Then Harald sees his own name, in cursive fountain-pen-ink letters, on the top letter from Nellie to his father:

Pledge to me, Walter, that you will never tell your wife or little Harald about us. I refuse to destroy your family. Maybe after we are both gone and forgotten, Harald and his little brother or sister (I wonder which it will be?) will meet.

Harald’s brow creases.
A sister? I’ve never had a…

Angelo

K
ati, Opa, and Mutti will stare, transfixed, at the television for hours into the night.

It’s September 11, 2001.

It will be many years before the world truly regains its balance again.

But in the weeks to come Harald and Kati will make many trips to the attic. They will take their time reading all of the letters out loud to each other, in chronological order. It will be their secret and their adventure into the past.

For Kati, especially, this is a deeply vitalized season in her life. For weeks on end, she always has something, another letter, to look forward to.

As each letter reveals more and more about Nellie’s and Walter’s lives, this backstory will begin to intrude into the present, connecting the seemingly random encounters in a startling way....

1943
World War II
The Port of Rotterdam
German-occupied Holland

O
N A BRILLIANTLY SUNNY DAY
, Nellie, in sunglasses, a simple white shirt, and khaki shorts, rides along the great river on her classic brown Gazelle bike. Her shiny, dark hair is so thick the wind doesn’t whip it around much. Her heart is pounding, and she’s not sure she can survive any kind of conversation. She’s hoping no one talks to her. But she has to pull over, stop on the paved bike path, and stand with her hands on the handlebars to try just to breathe.

She and Walter kissed at the North Sea beach in Scheveningen on Saturday.

She is coming off of a broken engagement with Ruud, the grandson of the prewar prime minister. To make it worse, Walter is married and has a son back in Germany.

For the first time she realizes that she may not survive this war. Literally.

The social stigma for dating an occupying German is infinitely brutal, and adultery, which she feels powerless to avoid, is a moral felony. Standing astraddle her bike, shame and fear thunder into her heart.

Adultery
, Nellie thinks,
isn’t simply wrong because you get caught. It’s plain wrong. I am about to, for the first time in my life, do something intentionally evil for which there is no excuse. This is not a mistake—it’s deliberate. I am about to betray my nation. And I am about to betray a woman I have never met. She has every right to scratch my eyes out. And their son…

A double curse. Collaboration with the enemy and home wrecking.

Lost in her thoughts, Nellie lets go of the bike handlebars, and the bike collapses beneath her. She gets tangled in the bike, trying to avoid its falling, and trips awkwardly to the right onto the path, skinning both hands and her right knee.

Freeing herself from the fallen bike, she crawls away from it.

On her hands and knees on the concrete, she bursts into tears. But she has to see Walter. Now.