When We Meet Again (3 page)

“No problem,” I said quickly. “I was trying to reach you because I received a painting from your gallery and I—”

“Yes, yes,” Nicola interrupted. “I am aware. But I am afraid there is not much I can tell you. Of course
The Girl in the Field with the Violet Sky
is a beautiful painting.”

“The painting has a name?”

“No, no, it is just what we are calling it. It arrived with very few details.”

“But who sent it to you?” I asked. “And why?”

“That’s what I am trying to tell you. I truly do not know. It arrived by courier with a typewritten note.”

“Do you still have it?”

She snorted. “Surely not. I recycle. But I can tell you what it said. It said that money had already been wired to the gallery, and that it should be more than enough to pay for the restoration and the shipping—which it was. The letter said that the painting had been kept for many years in a room that was too damp, and the sender was concerned that before the painting was sent on, it should be restored to perfect condition. The sender also included a sealed envelope and asked me to include it with the painting. Perhaps the sender included some information there.”

“No,” I said with a sigh, thinking of the cryptic note. “Do you know where the painting was sent from? Another gallery in Munich?”

“To be honest, one of my assistants processed the paperwork. So I have no knowledge of the painting’s origin.”

“Could I speak with the assistant?”

“Bettina? I’m afraid she quit a month ago.”

“Is there any way to get in touch with her?” I could hear the desperation in my own voice. “I’d just like to ask if she remembers anything about where the painting came from.”

Nicola sighed. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. She didn’t leave us on good terms.”

I could almost feel each possible lead slipping away, one by one. “Do you have any idea why the painting was sent to your gallery specifically?”

“Because I am one of the foremost restoration specialists in the world for this type of art, obviously.” I could tell by her clipped tone that I’d offended her. “And clearly the sender was aware of my gallery’s reputation.”

“And you don’t know who the painter is?”

She hesitated. “No. I do not.” There was something in her voice that told me she knew more than she was saying, but before I could ask anything else, she continued, “Now, Miss Emerson, it is imperative that I return to my customers. I just wanted to give you the courtesy of a return call. I hope you enjoy the painting. It is very beautiful. I was struck by the skill of the artist’s brushwork, and I must say, I enjoyed the restoration.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Do you know a lot about art?”

“No. Not really.”

“Then I’m afraid my technical explanations would be wasted. Things can’t really be explained properly over the phone anyhow. Please, enjoy the painting. Good day.” She hung up without another word, and I was left holding the phone and feeling even more confused than I’d felt the night before.

SEPTEMBER 1944

I
t was just after 7 a.m., and Peter Dahler stood alone in the middle of an endless sea of rolling green. If he squinted, he could imagine he was in a boat in the middle of Hackensee Lake, Franz beside him, his father manning the oars, his mother with her head tilted to the sky, warming herself under the rays of the sun. But those days were long gone.

The sky that lived in Peter’s childhood memories was a crisp, glacial blue, but here in the swampy farmland rolling toward Lake Okeechobee, the first light of morning would turn the sky a startling cobalt, then a velvety indigo, melting into a soft violet. During that first hour of dawn, the heavens would cast a shadow over the soaring sugarcane stalks, turning the infinite fields of cane water-blue as their long, gentle fingers rippled like waves in the breeze.

“You planning to work? Or you gonna gaze at the sky all morning, Dahler?” Harold’s voice wafted across the stalks, jarring Peter back to reality. He glanced over his shoulder and forced a smile at his favorite guard, the one willing to break the rules once in a while to give Peter a glimpse of the beautiful sunrise. Most days, the prisoners started work at nine, and from their encampment south of Okeechobee, there wasn’t much of a view. Their barracks were nestled in a tangle of trees on the edge of an overgrown swamp, a reminder, Peter supposed, that if they tried to run, there was nowhere to go. But Harold, who was the kind of person Peter might have been friends with under different circumstances, seemed to understand that sometimes a person who’s seen so much ugliness in the world needs a little beauty too.

“Sorry,” Peter said, his English rolling off his tongue as naturally as if he’d been born with it, albeit with the tendrils of an accent. “I will work. I want to thank you again for bringing me out here this early.”

“It’s nothing.” Harold turned his attention back to the horizon. Peter wondered if he was thinking about what lay east, across the ocean: the terrible war that neither of them were a part of. Peter had been captured on the battlefield; Harold, some ten years his senior, had been assigned to a military police unit and kept stateside to guard prisoners while his friends shipped off to defend the country. Now, they were both stuck here. “I like mornings like this too,” Harold said after a moment. “Just don’t let the foreman catch you slacking off, you hear?”

“Right, yes, of course.” Peter smiled another apology and hoisted his cane knife over his shoulder, turning east again. He would work facing the sunrise so that he could watch the sky turning all its brilliant colors. As the sun ascended, the day would get hotter, the mosquitoes would swarm with a constant, gentle buzz, and the humidity would grow thick enough to choke on. But for now, the world was perfect.

In Holzkirchen, the small Bavarian town where Peter had been raised, it had been the sunsets that sometimes looked like this, although the colors had presented themselves in reverse: first the milky blue, then the violet, then the deeper indigo, and finally cobalt, blackening like oil as they faded into the thin line where the earth met the heavens. It seemed strange to Peter that the colors that had heralded the end of a day in Germany were the same ones that announced the coming of a new one here, across the ocean. His ending had become his beginning.

Peter easily found the line of demarcation between yesterday’s work and today’s. In a few hours, he’d be elbow to elbow with a dozen other prisoners, so he treasured this time alone, and he appreciated that Harold wasn’t hovering. He let himself imagine for a moment that it was because Harold trusted him, but of course that wasn’t it. As much as Harold showed kindness, he knew well that Peter was still the enemy.

Peter lowered the cane knife, grasping its wooden handle and feeling the heft of it in his hands. He’d never seen one before arriving in Florida. It resembled a
Buschmesser,
a machete, but the blade was shorter and thinner, perfect for slashing through the towering sugarcane stalks. The knives had hooked tips, which helped the workers to pick up the felled crop, but still, the men had to bend time and time again to scoop up the cane, hauling it to wagons nearby. At the end of each day, they were all aching and coated in the sticky syrup that oozed all around them.

The dawn sky grew lighter as Peter fell into the rhythm of his labor. As his knife slashed against the base of stalk after stalk, he began to play a familiar game: calling to mind a memory from home with each swipe of the blade.

Swoosh:
His mother’s hands as she kneaded bread.

Thwack:
His father reading the paper in the morning, his knuckles white around a cup of coffee.

Swoosh:
Franz, trying on Peter’s field cap the day before he left for the front, laughing because it was still too big for his head.

Thwack:
All three of them framed in the doorway, the sun setting behind their small cottage, waving as Peter walked away for the last time.

There were bad memories too: the way his parents used to scream at each other sometimes when they thought the boys were asleep; the nights when there wasn’t enough food on the table; the way his father’s face darkened when Peter dared speak out against his political beliefs; the morning the Kleinmanns, who ran the butcher shop down the street, were dragged out of their home by the SS and shoved into the back of a truck, never to be seen again.

But mostly, Peter felt nostalgia for the land he hadn’t seen in four years. And on mornings like this one, with the sky awash in beauty, he felt particularly close to home.

Home.
Heimat.
That was the word on Peter’s tongue when he first saw her.

She was walking from the east, the first in a line of four local laborers who emerged from the sugarcane sea onto the main path. She was wearing a red cotton dress, frayed and tattered at the edges, and the way she was bathed in the morning light, set against the purpling dawn, made her look like someone who didn’t belong here: a film star, perhaps, or an angel. Her long, brown hair danced behind her on the morning breeze, and the way she moved was both gentle and strong at the same time. Peter was rendered immobile, his cane knife paused almost comically in the air.

Perhaps feeling attention upon her, she turned in Peter’s direction, and their eyes met. She didn’t blink, and neither did he. Instead, they held each other’s gaze for a long moment, both of them motionless, as if life had simply frozen in place. Or maybe, Peter would think as he replayed it in his head later, it was his imagination. Maybe she hadn’t stopped at all. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed him.

But she had. He knew she had. She finally looked away and began walking again, leading the others, who seemed younger than she. He watched her as she paused to let them go ahead of her, into another maze of sugarcane. And then, just when he thought he would lose her forever, she turned, looking over her shoulder for just a moment. Their eyes met again, and it was enough to make Peter feel buoyant and hopeful as she walked on, vanishing into the field.

He dreamt of her that night, the girl in the red dress. It was strange, actually—not just the fact that he was seeing her in his dreams, but also the idea that for the first time in almost a year and a half, his slumber was sweet and peaceful rather than restless and troubled. Since that terrible night in the African desert, the night his best friend, Otto, had died in his arms, he hadn’t slept without dreaming fitfully of blood and death.

Peter had been part of the
Afrika Korps
, and though he’d heard terrible things about the conditions for Hitler’s armies marching across Europe, he couldn’t imagine things being much worse than they were for him and his fellow soldiers. The sand was everywhere, endless, stinging, vicious, and there were some days when Peter couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a sip of water. They had followed General Rommel there, but then Rommel had returned abruptly to Germany in March of 1943, saying he needed to convince the führer of the severity of the situation on the African front. But he hadn’t returned, and everything had deteriorated. General von Arnim and the Italian, General Messe, had taken over Rommel’s command, and it hadn’t taken long for Peter to understand that the men didn’t know what they were doing.

Otto had died there, and Peter could never forgive the forces that had conspired to make such a tragedy occur. Otto had grown up just down the lane from Peter’s family, and the two had been like brothers since they were three years old. They’d been just a month apart in age, and even with the German economy collapsing around them, they’d used their imaginations to conjure an embarrassment of riches when they were boys. They were always hunting treasure, imagining themselves to be great adventurers at sea, and they had made a pact when they were ten years old that one day, they would explore the world together. They’d only been eleven when Hitler had begun his rise to power, and they’d been alone in their dislike of the man, whom they both secretly agreed resembled a rodentlike pirate named Ratte from a chapter book they had read the previous summer. But it seemed that all Germany was in love with Hitler, especially the families of both boys, and so they had to escape to their tree house in the woods in order to whisper made-up tales of the dastardly Pirate Ratte who had fooled the country into believing he was their savior.

A decade later, no longer boys but men, Otto and Peter found themselves in a sandy, arid alternate universe, fighting for a cause they didn’t believe in. “You know, Peter,” Otto had said with a smile the night he died, “this isn’t what I meant when we were children and I said we should explore the world.”

Peter had laughed, despite his hunger, despite his thirst, despite the fact that death lurked everywhere in this endless desert. “You were not dreaming of fighting a war in Africa?”

“I rather think we should go to America when this thing is over,” Otto replied.

Peter raised an eyebrow. “America, you say? But they hate us. They have come all the way across an ocean to wage a war against us.”

“Can you blame them?” Otto grumbled. “No matter. After the war, you and I will be great ambassadors for Germany. We will show them that not all Germans are like the rat pirate.”

Peter laughed, thinking that his friend’s words were absurd. America! He couldn’t imagine. “You have always been a big dreamer, my friend. Now get some sleep, or we will never be up to the march tomorrow.”

Two hours later, something jarred Peter out of a deep slumber. He immediately sprang from his bedroll into a crouching position, ready to fight an invisible enemy. But the night was silent, and after a long moment of holding his breath, Peter looked up toward the sky and realized instantly what had awoken him. The blackness was alive with dozens of dancing pinpoints of brilliant light. “
Mein Gott,
” he murmured to himself, sinking back down into a squat. It was important to stay low to the ground here, for one never knew when the enemy was lurking. “A miracle.”

And though the scientific side of his brain realized that the dazzling streaks across the darkness were the result of a meteor shower, the romantic in him knew it was much more than that. Here, in the middle of hell, he was seeing heaven.