Winter Passing (11 page)

The late-night insomnia caught up with her in the morning as she slept in. Darby hurried down the marble stairs the next morning, sure that breakfast was over. As she hopped to the bottom, she heard her name spoken at the front desk. A man and woman stood at the counter, talking to the clerk.

“Professor Voss?” Darby asked.

The couple turned toward her, and she noticed their worried expressions.

“We almost came last night, but it was late.” The professor took a step toward her. “We have translated the letters.”

“What’s wrong?”

Let us go somewhere,” Professor Voss suggested, with a nod at the desk clerk who kept looking in their direction.

“We could go into the sitting room or somewhere else?”

“The sitting room will be fine.”

Darby led the way into the small, private lounge. She sat on the plaid couch, and Peter Voss and his wife sat across from her.

“Hello.” Darby extended her hand to the woman. “I’m Darby Evans, and I assume you are Frau Voss?”

“Forgive me—I behave rudely,” Professor Voss said.

“When Peter gets something inside his mind, manners and etiquette go away.” The woman was younger than the professor, not much older than Darby, with beautiful olive skin and dark hair. She smiled warmly, then she seemed to remember why they were there. “I am very pleased to meet you, Ms. Evans.”

“I am pleased to meet you, though call me Darby, please.”

“I am Katrine.”

Darby studied Professor Voss, whose restless hands moved as if they balanced an invisible Slinky. “You have me worried. What did you discover? Is it something terrible? Do I need to prepare myself?”

“It is good you are sitting down, as they say.” Peter Voss looked at his wife and back to Darby.

“Is it my grandmother? Is Grandma Celia really Tatianna Hoffman?”

“No, I believe in your grandmother.”

Darby felt a load lift from her shoulders.

The professor set a folder of papers on the coffee table between them. “The letters confirmed to both of us that your grandmother was Celia Müller. I have written the translations so you can see for yourself. I am going to give them to you in the order we read them.”

“Just tell her.” Katrine nudged him.

“No, let her read first.” Professor Voss handed Darby an envelope and a sheet of paper. The envelope was the letter addressed to Tatianna Hoffman. The paper was the translation. Confused, Darby looked at the Vosses, then read.

22 November 1939

My dearest Tatianna,

I write to a blank page and hope my words and heart will reach you. I know many others will read these words before you, but hope it will eventually find you, my dearest friend. I pray for you with my every breath. You gave me so much, but I hope not too much. The baby kicks furiously, especially at night, and often gets the hiccups. If not for this coming child, I would not want to go on. I fear for you all. How can one be separated from her best friend and her husband? I owe my life and my child’s life to you. I believe in my heart that we will all be together again.

There is a beautiful park here in New York and I imagine us here, pushing the baby carriage, and dreaming of all that the world has to offer us. I hope we will grow old together, still reading our books and telling our stories. I pray God will let it be so.

With all my heart,

C. Rachel

Darby didn’t speak as she set the paper down. She thought of her grandmother as a young girl with an aching heart, yet clinging to a hope that would never bring happiness. For Darby knew the rest of the story. Grandma was never reunited with her husband or best friend. She never shared her child with either.

“You gave me permission to share the story with Katrine,” Professor Voss said. “And we have spent most of the night translating and making our own hypothesis.”

“And what do you think of this?” Darby asked, bringing her mind back to the facts within the letter that would help find Tatianna.

“We discovered several things from this letter.” Peter Voss bent forward eagerly. “This line here, ‘You gave me so much, but I hope not too much.’ That indicates what we considered—that perhaps Tatianna gave her passport so Celia could escape, but Celia fears this could cause trouble for her friend. See, ‘I hope not too much.’”

“So this evidence gives us hope of finding Tatianna.”

“Read the next one and we will discuss that.” Professor Voss shifted in his seat.

Katrine put her hand on his arm. “Should she skip to the last? It has the real information.”

“No, she should read them as we did. This one your grandmother wrote to her husband, Gunther Müller.”

Darby took the paper.

3 April 1940

My Gunther,

I’ve waited for months and months now, but you have not come. We have a daughter. I named her Carole Marlene Müller.

I try not to believe the worst or let myself get down. I had such faith for the longest time, but now my faith wavers. You have not come. I’ve waited and waited. I see you on the street and call out, but it is not you. I know somewhere on this earth you are moving and breathing, or maybe you aren’t and your spirit longs to tell me. Have I not really listened?

Where do I send this letter? Who is still there? What has happened to our home in Salzburg and my childhood home in Hallstatt? I will write this letter a hundred times, but know I will never send it. It is for your eyes alone. But I will send letters to others, and I will search until I know for certain. I will seek every address I can remember, for I must find you. I do not believe I can endure this life without your love. I do not want to try.

We need you, Gunther. Carole and I need you. Find us, please, my love.

Forever I give my heart to you,

Celia

Darby stared at the letter and read it again. This was Grandma Celia—separated from her closest friend and husband and in a new, unfamiliar country, sending letters with hopes of finding answers and a link to her life. The girl who wrote these letters had died before Darby was even born. Darby had never had the chance to know her.

She glanced up to concerned expressions. Tears pooled around her eyes as the professor stood and walked to the window. Katrine patted her knee.

“It’s like I’m reading the words of a stranger. I had no idea what she felt or how badly she hurt.”

“Children never do,” Katrine said softly. “I never knew my parents’ love until we had our own daughter.”

Darby nodded and looked at the last letter. She could see the anticipation in Katrine’s eyes but almost didn’t want to read it. Darby was surprised to see the letter was written not by Grandma Celia, but
to
her instead.

6 January 1942

Celia,

By miracle, I am able to send this letter. I have terrible news. Tatianna is dead. She died at a labor camp near Linz. Also, I am deeply sorry to tell you, Gunther is also killed. He did not make it across the Sudetenland border in time, though I do not have all the details. I am so sorry to give you this news. But please, you must not send any more letters. Others have said you have written them also. Are you so foolish not to know there are eyes everywhere? A letter from America will obviously be read. I have been questioned twice and have only escaped suspicion because of my friendship with a Nazi officer.

I understand your desire to find Tatianna and Gunther, but you put us in danger by such foolishness. I ask you not to write me again unless this war someday ends. I have created safety for myself. I may even marry my Nazi friend. I know that must disgust you, but you escaped from this place, and I must look out for myself. If I hear any more actual information about Gunther, I will attempt to write the details. Know that I am sorry to give you such terrible news.

—I

“Who wrote this one?” Darby asked.

“We do not know. There was no signature or name on the envelope, just that ‘I.’”

Darby set the letter in her lap. “Tatianna is dead.”

“Yes.” Professor Voss returned to sit across from her.

Sickness rose in Darby’s stomach. “I guess that ends our search.”

“We will not find answers from Tatianna, yet, in a way, we can,” Katrine said, trying to sound hopeful.

“What do you mean?”

“These letters give us good information. We can seek Tatianna’s family and look for records of her death. What do you know about Gunther and his family?”

“Very little. Rarely did I hear any information about my grandfather. My mother had searched for him when she was a young woman. She hoped he’d somehow escaped the war, and I think Grandma Celia even had hidden hopes for the search. It was painful for both of them to find nothing. I know his name, and that they met in Hallstatt one summer and fell quickly in love. I believe he was an orphan or adopted. My grandmother once told me her aunt wasn’t happy to have someone without a family past.”

Professor Voss folded his arms. “That does not provide much information. What kind of a search did your mother conduct for her father?”

“I’m not sure, but I can find out. It looks like I need a list to remember all the questions for my mother.”

“Your mother will answer them?”

“I hope.”

“There is something else that Katrine noticed and we found very interesting.” Professor Voss pointed to a sentence in the last letter. “The writer in this letter says Tatianna was killed in a labor camp. Brant told you that Celia Müller died at Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The camp is located near Linz. During the war, the public was told that people were sent to labor camps, which were often labor death camps. If we know Celia Müller escaped to America, but Tatianna Hoffman died in a labor camp, then . . .”

“Tatianna Hoffman died with the name Celia Müller.” Darby said the words, but it took a moment for them to fully reach her mind. Could it be? “The letter said that Tatianna died in a camp near Linz. That must be it! That must be what my grandmother meant. She knew from this letter that Tatianna had died and perhaps she knew Tatianna was thought to be her. So that’s what she meant about giving Tatianna her name back.”

“Yes, yes,” Professor Voss said, sitting beside his wife again. “Either Tatianna gave Celia the papers and then, because she had none to prove who she was, she was arrested as Celia, or perhaps they switched papers.”

“It makes perfect sense.” Darby stared upward, her eyes trailing the coffered ceiling. Relief pulsed through her—finally she knew what her grandmother’s allusive words meant. Yet at the same time Darby felt sorrow for a woman she didn’t know, a woman who had not only saved her grandmother, but provided Darby’s life as well. And still there was the question: How could she give Tatianna her name back if the woman was dead?

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Darby said.

“We knew you would want to know. I am curious about the writer of the last letter.”

Darby picked up the paper. “Yes, it would help to know who it was. Obviously, a woman.”

“Your grandmother was never reunited with anyone from Austria?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I’ll check with my Uncle Marc about that one.” Darby looked at the three letters. “I wish there was more actual information in the letters. Names, places, exact events.”

“Understand that your grandmother knew every word would be looked at and could possibly be endangering someone’s life. She had to write with very limited information.”

“There are still many unanswered questions, but we know so much more now.” Darby’s mind was racing over the information.

“We will do a bit of investigating of our own, right, Katrine? Perhaps we can find some information about the Lange inheritance—if you would like, of course.”

“Yes, we want to help very much,” Katrine said. “I can do some Internet research while Peter looks through the university library. Are you staying in Salzburg?”

“Actually, I plan to go to Hallstatt in the morning. Will I be able to look at birth certificates and things like that?”

“Try the administration office in Hallstatt,” Peter said. “I wonder how accessible the information will be since you are an American with no proof yet about your grandmother. And then there is the language barrier. I have classes tomorrow and a conference to prepare for, but—”

“Professor Voss—”

“You must call me Peter, please.”

“Peter, then. I can take this trip myself. I brought along a handy German phrase book that I need to try out anyway. You have helped so much and I know you both have your own work. Thank you, both of you. I feel much stronger simply knowing the two of you believe my story.”

“We are on your side, yes,” Katrine said. “I feel we are already friends.”

Darby looked at her beaming brown eyes and shy smile and knew she did have a friend, not thousands of miles away, but sitting a few feet from her.

“Call if you need help, with anything.” They shook hands.

“Thank you, both.”

Darby held the letters and translations to her chest as she watched the couple leave the hotel. The answers were close; she could feel it. She’d leave in the morning for Hallstatt, then Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Were the answers simply waiting to be found?

The highway was a ribbon twisting gently through sharp peaked mountains that sprouted straight from the valley floor. Darby had never seen such a beautiful place. It reminded her of northwestern Montana, where her close friend had moved after college. Darby had flown up to Columbia Falls for Tristie’s wedding and found herself struggling to attend the indoor wedding obligations of bridal showers and rehearsals while feeling the lure of green, rolling valleys beneath the jagged mountain tops of Glacier National Park. The Salzkammergut Lake District of Austria looked similar, but as if the single Flathead Valley had magnified and multiplied into many mountains and valleys in every direction, growing quaint European villages on their edges. What her eyes discovered seemed unreal, like a fairy-tale world come alive. The ranges of mountains looked like blue giants sleeping in haphazard mounds on carpets of green.

The rent-a-car topped a hill to the sight of a sprawling lake with a tall church tower silhouetted against the deep blue waters. Darby instantly pulled off the road and hopped out of the car. Perhaps it was simply a Hollywood painted backdrop, not really an Austrian village with a lake reflecting sky, clouds, and mountains. Her camera waited inside her car, but Darby again didn’t retrieve it. Her breath frosty in the cold air, she clicked shot after shot into heart and soul instead. Bare trees with a handful of clinging autumn foliage framed crystal waters with jagged, whitecapped mountains rising above. The mountainside burned with sienna reds and yellows. Darby knew she could never gather the images into a two-dimensional photograph. Usually, that would pose a challenge and she’d search filters and angles to get the best shot. But as on the rest of this trip thus far, she kept the moment for herself and felt no desire to capture and share it with others. Grandma Celia had been right. Darby did hide behind the lens she manipulated to shape her world. Only in the last month had Darby been unable to keep her life in a tidy framed photograph. Suddenly, all her images were shattered.

Standing before an Austrian lake with nothing left to blind her vision, Darby could almost see God and not fear a world beyond her making. In college, the religion du jour was her belief. She’d moved from Christian to atheist her first year. But out in the wilds of the mountains, she’d found belief in God again. The wonders and amazing design of the natural world, how every part fit together, were proof of a greater hand. Just as the winds and rain could not carve a da Vinci sculpture, despite a million years trying, so Darby knew the intricate weaving of life and land did not happen by accident. The sight before her was like an outdoor cathedral inhabited by the God of creation. But was it all made by the God of her youth? Was the same God who designed the land she loved available to her as an individual?

A gentle breeze stirred her hair. Days earlier Darby had never seen this land; now it was hers. With an immediate sense of belonging, she knew this. From Salzburg to the Salzkammergut Lake District of mountains, lakes, and villages, Darby had found a home.

The drive from Salzburg to Hallstatt didn’t take much over an hour, but at every turn a new lake and fairy-tale village appeared. At the Bad Ischl exit, she glanced ahead to see a town along a crystal river with a backdrop of another range of white-capped mountains. The “Bad” meant “bath,” meaning that this was a spa town. This village held the famous summer villa of Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth. Darby determined to return and explore the city where Herbert Lange might have helped the Empress Sissi after her riding fall. The Kaiservilla where Herbert had supposedly received the sapphire brooch was the same palace from which Franz Joseph had declared war on Serbia in 1914, commencing World War I. Although Darby was drawn to these facts, today she was going to Hallstatt.

She passed the town of Au, wondering how to pronounce such a name. She tried to practice a few variations aloud until the car rounded a bend and rose to a view of another lake ahead. Hallstattersee—Hallstatt Lake—mirrored in its calm waters the tall peaks that surrounded its shores. A sharp turn pointed one way to Hallstatt, the other to Gosau. As she followed left to Hallstatt, she remembered Brant telling her how he’d spent his summers in Gosau and Hallstatt Lake.

Darby caught sight of a church steeple on the edge of the lake before it disappeared as the road hugged the mountainside and entered a long tunnel. A sign announced
Hallstatt
as the car exited the tunnel, but the town didn’t look the same as her first glimpse before the tunnel. Darby slowed and peered back to see little Hallstatt clinging between the mountain she’d driven through and the lake that stretched toward another range of mountains.

She whipped the car around, pausing on the shoulder. If any of the sights of the day appeared unreal, Hallstatt appeared much more so. Wisps of smoke rose from lines of houses and buildings dressed with thick autumn trees and bushes. A light fog danced inches above the black lake, though everything else was crystal clear. A narrow steeple pointed heavenward from the lakeshore and another rounded steeple jutted upward higher on the mountain. Hallstatt, a modest storybook village that could be missed in a blink, had a history dating back to ancient times. Grandma Celia had told Darby how this tiny village that clutched the side of a mountain for centuries had been a mecca of trade during the Celtic age.

Darby opened the door, stepped out, and rested an elbow on top of the car. She stared, finding every detail her grandmother had described in the stories of her childhood. Upward, she could see a tram to the salt mine where Celia’s brother had worked. The tram now took tourists straight up a thousand feet to the oldest salt mine in the world, which continued to produce forty-five hundred years later.

She was there, at the setting of evening stories. The place that was interchanged with Snow White’s woods and Hansel and Gretel’s adventures. Darby had entered imagination and found it as magical as her mind could envision.

Darby finally returned inside the car to search for a place to park. A gate barred the street that took her toward the towering steeple and city center. She turned the car around several times before finding a place, then finally parked, grabbed her brown leather jacket, and left the car.

Seestraß was a paved road that wandered along the lakeside. Darby walked along, feeling the ground was almost holy, not only because of the tiny village’s alluring beauty, but at the thought that this was the place where Grandma’s stories had been created. Right on these very sidewalks, her grandmother’s feet had trod. She’d spent her summers swimming and boating on that lake, climbing the surrounding mountains in all seasons, skiing to the south in the winter, weaving her hopes and dreams, and falling in love with her future husband.

Darby zipped her coat and put her hands in her pockets. The air felt colder beside the deep lake than it had in Salzburg. A man walking his dog nodded as he passed. A gathering of black waterfowl dove near the shore. She looked up the mountain and remembered her grandmother telling her about the houses built on different levels up the steep mountainside. Somewhere, hidden in the trees, were the connecting walkways where Grandma Celia and her friends once played hide-and-seek.

Darby passed a restaurant and several wooden docks, then approached the heart of the town. She wondered about this place that had lived a thousand generations. Darby had always associated the Celts with Ireland. In her guidebook, she’d been surprised to discover the Celts had settled throughout Europe. She was further surprised to discover that this tiny village had a large place in history. An entire epoch of the history of mankind had been named after it during the Iron Age. The British Museum had a wing dedicated to the Hallstatt Age. Though the Celts were the first to find precious salt there and establish a community, they were by far not the last. Salt, the gold of a past era, was later discovered by the conquering Romans.

Darby had read in her brochures how Hallstatt was thronged in its summer warmth by herds of tourists. Thankfully, today she found the streets empty.

She propped her elbows on a cold railing and watched a white ferryboat move slowly across the lake. It had to be the ferry that picked up train passengers from the station on the other side. Darby watched the white
Stefanie
with its bubbling wake, wondering how often her grandmother had done the same.

“Your grandfather drove the ferryboat one summer,” Grandma Celia had told her in one of the rare moments she’d mentioned him. “He wanted to be an archaeologist like my father and had come to work a summer in Hallstatt to pay for university and to see the work in the village. I think he also hoped to meet my father, which he did, of course.” Her grandmother had smiled like a schoolgirl.

Back and forth, back and forth across the lake—they’d discovered one another. What a wonderful companion her grandmother must have made during those trips.

“My father knew we couldn’t get into trouble with me riding the ferry with Gunther. What he didn’t know was that it provided the opportunity for us to know each other well in a very short time. All we could do was talk. But when the last ferry took people across, we always managed a little time alone.”

Darby perused the waters of her heritage. But, she reminded herself, this journey had not been simply to see Grandmother’s hometown. She was seeking answers here. She allowed herself some chilly time on the lakeside road, imagining Grandma Celia taking her hand and showing her sights. Then Darby returned to her mission. She followed the narrow straße as it turned away from the lake and into a gathering of straight-fronted houses and shops, then through a dark roadway between towering buildings and into the village center. The pale buildings of pink, yellow, and blue surrounded the cobblestone square with a tall statue of the Crucifixion in the center. Red and pink geraniums billowed from window boxes and green vines climbed several storefronts, despite the coming winter. Above the buildings a waterfall rumbled down the mountain and disappeared from view.

Darby spotted the Gasthaus Gerringer sign on the corner. She opened the door of the plain stucco building to find the rustic room greeting her with the snap of a warm, crackling fire. The neat breakfast area had fresh flowers on each table, and she noticed a long wooden desk with keys hanging on the wall behind it. Darby felt like she’d intruded into someone’s private home without knocking, even though she’d called for reservations. She jingled the bell on the counter and heard footsteps from above. A moment later, a woman appeared on the staircase in front of her.

“Hello! You must be Ms. Evans—the American.” Darby was taken aback by the bubbly woman in her late thirties, who shook Darby’s hand with enthusiasm.

“Very nice to have you. My name is Sophie Gerringer—please call me Sophie. You are our only guest so far today. Would you like to see your room?”

“I left my car and luggage down the road. I didn’t know how to get through the gate.”

“I should have told you on telephone. You need resident card, and I give you one. You may park just few buildings down.”

“Good. And you live here also?”

“
Ja
—yes. My mother, grandmother, and I live on the first floor and we have our guestrooms upstairs. Of course, breakfast provided for you. Please, let me show your room and make sure it acceptable.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

“Come,” Sophie said, smiling. “Let me show you.”

Darby walked beside the woman up the wide, wooden staircase. She noticed a tangle of fishing poles in a corner and snow skis in another as they stepped into a hall. Sophie chattered about the weather all the way up in good English.

“And here we are. Your room.”

Darby stopped before entering. It was exactly what she’d envisioned. The hardwood floor creaked beneath her feet as she entered. Red-and-white checkered curtains covered the doorway and windows that looked out toward the lake. The antique bed, soft and inviting, had a fluffy pillow and down comforter folded Austrian style, sideways at the bottom. The hand-carved headboard matched an antique vanity and armoire arranged in the corners. Sophie opened the curtains, then the French door. The balcony hung over a garden area and gave a magnificent view of the lake and mountain on the opposite shore.

“It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.” She walked onto the balcony.

Sophie spoke softly. “Come down when you are ready, and I will give you key and parking pass.”

“Thank you.” Darby listened as Sophie’s footsteps echoed away. Again she was alone with the stories of the past, stories linked closely with the answers she sought.

“Well, Grandma, I’m really here,” she whispered, looking toward the black lake. But would this place of ancient lives and histories hold the answers she needed?