The House by the Lake (3 page)

“Are you sure you’re ready, darling?” Max said now, moving his thinning frame into the middle seat so that Anna could get in.

Ready? Anna wanted to chuckle at the very thought. Instead, she reached a hand out to cover Max’s own.

“You know me,” she quipped instead. “Always prepared.” She hoped her voice did not give a thing away.

At least she knew where she was going. In Germany. There was a direct train northeast to Siegel from Berlin. It took an hour and twenty minutes. Not too long.

“Excellent.” Max folded his arms, but he seemed a little shaky.

Anna looked out the window as they headed toward the airport. The brilliant sunlight sparkled on the bay. Would anyone remember her grandfather when she arrived in Siegel?

Once she had transferred in LA to the plane to Berlin, Anna couldn’t settle on any one train of thought. She tried and failed to concentrate on the smorgasbord of entertainment that the plane offered. Every time she attempted to focus on a film, her mind began to drift, returning again and again to the fairy-tale images of the Schloss.

By the time the train pulled to a heaving stop in Siegel, Anna was exhausted. As she descended from the train, she looked around the deserted platform. An old station building that looked to have been charming once was now decorated with aluminum-framed windows covered in dust. And yet, even though there was a sense of something old and beautiful clashing with the functional Soviet period, Anna felt a strong sense of history already, just being there. She couldn’t help but wonder about all the other trains that had stopped at this station—and how many of them had held her grandfather—and his family.

Anna had worked out her route before she left home and knew that it should take only a few minutes to wend her way through the small village to the main square. As she set off, she kept her eyes focused straight ahead and did her best to ignore the churning feelings in her stomach.

She was the only person who had alighted from the train. Her suitcase rattled in the silence as she dragged it up the street that led to the square. She passed a row of derelict-looking houses; long grass grew along the fronts of the old stone buildings. Next, she passed a small shop. An ancient sign over its closed front door flapped in the breeze. There was not a soul in sight. There were no cars, no traffic, no bakeries. No gas stations or houses that looked as if they held any form of life. Where was everyone?

Anna decided it was best to keep going, although the temptation to stop and stare was almost overwhelming. The wind picked up and the eerie silence that had permeated the late afternoon was replaced with odd, inexplicable creaks and groans. It was early spring, but the village held no promise of new life. It was as if the past was hanging on by its hinges and yet not even sure it belonged anymore. So what was going on? Anna did up the buttons on her black jacket with her free hand as she rounded a bend in the road that led to the square—the heart, presumably, of what had once been her grandfather’s village.

She stopped in front of the church. Oddly, the building appeared to have a new terracotta roof, and its walls looked freshly painted. It was a pretty church, with a round tower culminating in a point with a gold weathercock. Next to it was a general store with a light on inside. Anna took a few more steps. She stopped right in front of an old building just past the store.

Suddenly exhaustion hit her, causing her to sway and almost drop her luggage right there on the pavement. She had made it. She was here. She had been travelling for almost twenty-four hours to get to this place, this place that she had never been to before, had only learned of a few days ago. But while the village felt foreign, it also seemed familiar. Several wooden tables with long benches were lined up in the front courtyard of the ivy-covered stone building right in front of her. The freshly painted sign announced that she’d reached her destination—The Hotel Goldener Hahn. Anna took a few last heady steps and pushed open the wooden front door.

She found herself entering the restaurant, which was lined with more long tables and wooden chairs that looked as if they had danced straight out of a nursery rhyme. It was as if she had wandered into another Germany now—a traditional Germany full of stories and magic and all sorts of wonderful characters from childhood books. How many times had her grandfather strolled into this very place? Had he tasted his first beer here?

“Can I help you?” a girl asked in German. It seemed logical that she was dressed in a traditional folk costume; her light brown hair was swept back into a bun.

As the girl showed Anna up to her room, they passed a middle-aged couple coming down the stairs. Dressed in modern clothing and carrying a map, they looked perfectly normal, and from the right century too. Anna felt some of the tension that had built up in her shoulders dissipate.

Her room was laid out in a charming fashion. A wooden staircase separated her bedroom upstairs from a small private living room downstairs. A tiny bathroom with a pedestal basin completed the picture. She had a view of the village square.

She unpacked, hung her clothes in the wardrobe, took a shower, and lay down on her bed. She needed to take an afternoon nap, wanted this interminable day of travelling to end. And yet at the same time, she wanted to get up right now. Explore. Find out. But dinner would not be for at least four hours. She had to rest or she would collapse.

After fifteen minutes Anna knew that idea was hopeless. She couldn’t turn her mind off. How long had things been like this here? The place was starting to feel like her village too.

Anna lay where she was a few more moments. Walking through a couple of streets in Siegel had done it. Seeing the half-empty square. Anna’s past and present suddenly seemed to have melded like two parts of a broken cup.

For all these years she had lived thinking that she didn’t have a past. But she did. Suddenly, Max had given it to her. And here she was. The desire to see the Schloss was overwhelming. She wanted to be there now. She wanted to see the ghosts of her family, her lost family, the family she should have had, and this feeling was so intensely linked with her love for Max and her tiredness and the desolation of the whole place that she had to get up. She had to go to the palace now. She could not, would not, wait.

A middle-aged woman was on duty at the reception desk. A string of pearls sat flush against her black cashmere sweater. Her hair was neat and blond.

Anna introduced herself in English, hoping that the woman would understand. “I want to ask about the possibility of visiting Schloss Siegel. I tried to contact the owner before I left home, but—”

“You had no reply.” The woman began turning pages in her reservation book. She spoke English perfectly, but her words were clipped.

“That’s right.”

“That is not a surprise.”

Anna waited a beat. “Would it be possible to contact the owners? I have good reason to see them. A personal connection from the past.”

The woman looked up, her eyebrows arching in two perfect, black crescent moons.

There was nothing for it, but to plow on. “I have a connection to the family who lived there before the—”

“Russians came.” The woman rolled the
R.

“Yes.”

“The Albrechts.”

“That’s right.”

The woman folded her arms. “There are some walks in the vicinity of the hotel. I’m sure you’ll enjoy those. I have a map showing other local attractions.”

Anna chose her words with great care. “I’m so sorry, but I need to visit the Schloss. That is why I am here. I came all the way from San Francisco.”

The woman turned from Anna. She selected several glossy brochures and a map from the stand behind her desk, clicked her pen open, and with deliberate strokes, began drawing large red circles around the tourist attractions marked on the map. She handed them to Anna without a word, then turned to her computer and began typing.

“Thank you,” Anna said. Her words came out careful, deliberate.

The woman did not look up.

Two minutes later, Anna found herself back in the village square. She knew the way to the Schloss, had studied the map of the village online enough times to be able to make her way there without assistance. It seemed the only thing to do was to put one foot in front of the other and go find out for herself, even though she had no idea what to expect. She had done that before at various times in her life—of course she had.

Anna turned right and headed past the church, not giving in to the temptation to check whether the door was unlocked. Her ancestors had worshipped there. Had her great-grandparents married in this little church? But she needed to stay on track.

The street beyond the church would take her directly to Schloss Siegel. How many times had Max walked here when he was growing up?

Anna shook her head and focused on her surroundings. She passed several utilitarian-looking houses with steeply pitched roofs and small windows, which she assumed had been built after the Berlin Wall came down. A curl of smoke rose out of one of the chimneys, and the sound of someone chopping wood in a back garden reverberated in the air.

Anna kept going. After a few minutes, open country girdled the narrow road. The trees on either side of her were dotted with the odd leaf, but they were not replete, not yet. It was, after all, only March. Soon everything was quiet except for Anna’s footsteps on the road.

The road turned, and as Anna followed it, a series of what looked like old outbuildings—stables, perhaps—appeared on her right. Her heart plunged into a dive. She was getting closer to the Schloss.

A rickety barbed wire fence protected the outbuildings from the road, while grass and weeds spread to the edges of the old buildings. The windows on the top floors were boarded up with graying wooden planks and crossed with diagonal boards. A bright yellow sign was attached to one of the windows. Anna could not read German, but its message was clear.

She drew her arms around herself and continued on until she reached the entrance gates to Schloss Siegel.

CHAPTER THREE

Lake Geneva, 1934

Marthe had all the waiters dancing to her tune. A gaggle of young men was leading the ex-demimondaine to the best table by the water. If anyone had asked Isabelle why this sort of thing happened every time she went anywhere with her grandmother, she would have said that it was not only due to Marthe’s natural charisma, but also because her grandmother still had what it took.

The morning was perfect for a boat trip—the air was clear and the steady buzz of crickets was punctuated with the odd call of a bird. The tables on the terrace were laid with fresh white linen for breakfast. Coffee scented the air.

Isabelle had woken after a delicious sleep. As she had drifted off the night before, her thoughts had swirled pleasantly around Max. Even though she had talked with him for only a few minutes, she had felt both safe and excited at the same time.

This morning, she had dressed with extra care. Her white day dress was just the thing for a summer’s day on the lake. She had pinned her straw hat so that it sat at exactly the right angle, showing off her glossy, dark curls to perfection.

Marthe took advantage of the many eager waiters who hovered around her at breakfast, bossing them about and insisting on having a range of patisseries that would make the Ritz in Paris proud. As Isabelle settled herself back in one of the cushioned wicker chairs and tucked her legs under the tablecloth, she felt the promise of the gorgeous day ahead even more keenly.

Max’s party wasn’t at breakfast yet. This wasn’t a surprise. Marthe had always been an early riser, and even though Isabelle often felt like sleeping late, her grandmother insisted that she not become a slouch.

“I met another guest last night,” Isabelle said.

“You were talking to a young man.” Marthe broke open a croissant, buttered it, and took a sip of her coffee.

“I thought you were too busy talking to those ladies to notice,” Isabelle laughed.

“I see everything,” Marthe said. “And what I do not notice, I work out on my own.”

Isabelle laid her knife down on the porcelain plate. “This . . . family invited me to go out on the lake with them today. In a boat.”

“I would imagine it would involve a boat if you were going out on the lake,” Marthe said. “I do hope you’re not swimming. But I only saw you talking to a young man, not the entire family.”

“He is travelling with his family.”

“But we do not know them.”

Isabelle exhaled. “I thought you said that you didn’t want me to stagnate,” she said, keeping her voice low. Marthe was always full of contradictions. She would change her mind when it suited her, depending on the circumstances. One minute she would want to go out; the next, she would decide to stay in the apartment to read a book. Her vagaries—her whims—had become famous.

“I didn’t mean that I wanted you to skip off for the entire day with the first group of strangers you came upon. Can you not have lunch with them tomorrow instead? That way I can observe them through my lorgnette.”

“What, while you pick them over with those women you met last night? And analyze them endlessly?”

“Old women have to have some entertainment,” Marthe said. “And what is better than the antics of the young?”

“Then you’d be wise to invest in a telescope this morning,” Isabelle muttered. “You will look ridiculous enough from the shore.”

“I’m not sure that it is the right thing to simply accept this young man’s invitation so easily. I do have my standards, you know.”

Isabelle raised a brow, then instantly regretted it. Her grandmother was the love of her life. She had taken Isabelle in after her father’s death, when Isabelle’s mother’s family had rejected her, denouncing their little granddaughter as the spawn of a courtesan’s son. Isabelle would stain their perfect middle-class reputation if they were to have anything to do with her. Marthe had scoffed at their petty politics. And she had done what she always did. Worked it out and survived.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Isabelle said.

“I am confident in Paris. Everyone knows everyone there. All I am asking is that you get to know these people a little better before going off for the day. What if you and the young man were left unchaperoned? What then?”

Marthe’s overprotectiveness was hardly surprising. She had been desperate at Isabelle’s age, living in poverty and working as a seamstress in the airless confines of Paris’s ramshackle garment district. Marthe had already borne two children to two different men by the time she was twenty. She lived in a shabby tenement building and sewed buttons for a living while leaving her two babies in the care of her landlady, a harsh woman who she suspected did not look after them at all. Remarkably, her life had been turned around by one chance encounter.

“I can’t think what would happen! Nothing, I imagine,” Isabelle said. Something distracted her and she turned, relieved at the diversion from the conversation with her grandmother.

A young woman had appeared on the terrace. She seemed to be floating toward the table next to them. Three waiters hovered around her.

Marthe had competition.

“An apparition,” Marthe said, picking up her lorgnette.

“She appears to be alone, and surviving,” Isabelle almost growled in return.

“I noticed.”

The girl spoke to the waiters, ordered juice.

“American,” Marthe said.

“Grand-mère, if you are going to spend the entire summer worrying about foreigners, then we may as well return to Paris.”

“Paris is full of Parisians,” Marthe said. “I’m bored with them all.”

Isabelle turned her gaze to the blond girl at the next table. She was tall, effortlessly elegant, and the pale pink dress that she wore showed off her complexion to perfection. She was stunning; there was no doubt of that. American or not.

“Hello there! I saw you last night!” the girl called out in English, looking at Isabelle. “Talking to that divine German, Max Albrecht. You know him? What a family. German aristocracy. They own half of Prussia or something. Did you realize?”

Marthe set her coffee cup down with great care and stared at the girl.

“Virginia Brooke,” the girl continued, turning to Marthe. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself before I spoke to you. But that hardly matters these days.” She did not look sorry at all.

“Well,” Marthe said, rolling out the English that she had studied during her days as a top courtesan. “You are most welcome to talk to us. It’s quite diverting for this time of the morning.”

Isabelle felt something close to relief. Marthe was not going to create a scene. “I am Isabelle de Florian,” she said. “And this is my grandmother, Madame de Florian.” How comforting to be able to say those words without fear of a cringed response, a tightening of someone’s shoulders, a polite nod, and then a goodbye.

Virginia Brooke clearly had no idea who they were. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you.” There was a pause. “I think we could even be friends. “

Marthe bustled about with her napkin. She was ruffled. Isabelle had to bite her lip to stop herself from giggling.

Virginia Brooke didn’t seem to notice any of this—and if she did, she ignored it. “I couldn’t help overhearing you just now—I was listening to your darling French conversation while I came to sit down. I heard that you wanted to go out on the lake with Max and his family. You really will be safe, you know.”

“Oh?” Marthe asked.

Isabelle pressed her lips together.

“Yes. You know, if you’d prefer, Madame de Florian, I could always go with Isabelle. As a chaperone.”

“I see!” Marthe looked appalled.

But Virginia just gazed calmly at the older woman.

“Are you travelling alone, Miss Brooke?” Marthe asked.

“Oh, quite alone. But I’ve met the most interesting people,” Virginia said. “I’m from Boston. On the escape.”

Marthe seemed to consider this.

Isabelle stayed quiet. She was itching, just itching to go out for the day with the Albrecht party, but she was intrigued by Virginia. On the escape? From what?

“Have you been invited to go out with the Germans, Miss Brooke?” Marthe asked, giving Virginia one of her best stares.

“Oh, heavens. That doesn’t matter. I’ll just tell them I want to come. And do call me Virginia, please.”

Marthe put her napkin down. “Well then. Perhaps once you have ‘talked to them,’ you could send us a message and we’ll see.”

“Well, look! Here they are right now!” Virginia indicated the group with her coffee cup.

Max wore a pale suit, almost the same color as Isabelle’s dress. He caught Isabelle’s eye at exactly the same moment she looked at him. She stared back down at her plate, but she couldn’t stop a smile from forming on her lips.

“Leave it to me.” Virginia stood up, went straight over to the German party, kissed Nadja on the cheek, and began chatting with the group.

Max looked at Isabelle again, raised an eyebrow. Isabelle smiled back. Two minutes later, Virginia made her way toward them.

“It’s all sorted,” she said. “We’ll meet at half past ten here on the landing. The motorboat will pick us up at ten forty-five and take us to a picnic spot farther up the lake. They’re going to explore some village or other. The hotel is supplying luncheon and we will all be there. It’s done.” Virginia sat down and toasted Marthe with her coffee cup.

“I see,” Marthe said. “Well then.” She studied the Albrechts, who were laughing now. It seemed that one of the twins was pulling some sort of antic.

Marthe tilted her head to one side. “I can see that I would look churlish if I were to stop you from going.”

“She’ll have a ball.” Virginia smiled.

Marthe stood up and Isabelle followed her, but Virginia caught her eye as she left, and something kindled between them. Isabelle stopped herself from turning around again. It was a surprise to feel a connection to someone she hardly knew. Not to mention someone so foreign. But she found herself drawn to this confident young woman. Perhaps she did not need to know why.

“She’s the perfect motor sailor.” Max stood behind Isabelle as she gazed at the boat two hours later from the dock. The boat’s hull was painted white, with a row of portholes and a wooden cabin above it. Her varnish was polished to a sheen. Uniformed crew had placed a small walkway up against the shore, and Virginia was already halfway across it.

“She is beautiful.” Isabelle smiled. She was so very aware of Max right behind her. “Do you think they’ll put up the sails?” She turned to him.

“I hope so,” he said, his voice quiet, deep. “Shall we?” He extended his hand to help her step off the landing onto the wooden plank.

“I think we shall.” Isabelle smiled, and she placed her fingers in his palm.

Siegel, 2010

Traces of stubborn black paint peeked through the rust that covered the wrought iron entrance gates to Schloss Siegel. But the vivid coppery-brown tarnish could not hide the elaborate scrolls and swirls that must have once gleamed. Anna ran her fingers over one of the patterns. The immediate problem was not the rust, but the enormous padlock that bound the gates tight.

Beyond this, a driveway was bordered on the right by forest and on the left with the patchy remains of a lawn, scattered with tall tufts of grass that swayed in the silence. Nothing else was visible.

Anna folded her arms across her chest.

The gates were too high to climb. Perhaps there was another entrance somewhere else.

Anna decided to explore a bit more and turned left to follow the thick stone wall that extended beyond the gates. The wall was higher than Anna’s head, and a layer of rusted barbed wire ran along the top of it.

There was a grassy path, easily wide enough for Anna to walk along, between the wall and the road. If she had to make a circuit of the entire property in order to find a way in, then she would do so. She continued for several minutes, admiring the tops of tall trees that were just visible above the old stone. Anna listened but could detect no sounds coming from the other side of the wall.

She breathed away a shudder that ran through her insides. The afternoon was darkening a little, and the place felt even more alone. But at the same time, Anna was drawn to it. Something else had kicked in, a sense of . . . what was it? Home?

She turned right after several hundred feet, following the impenetrable wall until the road stopped at another pair of gates. These were not as elaborate as the previous ones—in fact, they looked as though they belonged on a humble farm.

Anna saw another set of outbuildings to her left. A small, derelict house—its windows boarded up and weeds grasping its walls—stood just beyond them. Although these buildings had not been on Max’s map, they appeared to be part of the estate. Washhouses, perhaps? Had a caretaker once lived in that house?

Anna walked up to the simple set of farm gates and craned her neck to see over them. She could just glimpse a bank of trees, a sloped lawn, and . . . she caught her breath.

There it was.

She was looking at one side of the palace, which was still breathtaking despite its age and the abuse of multiple wars and governments and upheaval and changes of ownership. The sight of the old Schloss, sitting there like some steadfast shipwreck, caused Anna’s heart to falter. The wall was peppered with bullet holes as though pocked by some foul disease.