Winter Passing (5 page)

Darby remembered the letter from Brant Collins of the Austrian Holocaust Survivors’ Organization that she’d kept from everyone. “I know, but she didn’t ask me to continue that search. We had little time to talk before she passed away. Perhaps that was part of what she wanted and never asked.”

“Did Grandma tell you who Tatianna was?”

“No. She gave me no last name or any information—only that she was Grandma’s best friend. I hope the safe will have more information.”

“Whatever we find inside,” Carole said, putting a hand on Darby’s, “as I said earlier, you need to live for today, honey. Don’t get too wrapped up in yesterday that you miss out on that.”

“Can we please open the safe? The suspense is killing me.”

“Certainly.” Fred closed the folder.

“I have the keys.” Carole went to a desk drawer and took out two keys on a wire ring. “Here you go.”

Darby moved the safe over in front of her. It was heavier than it appeared. The key turned, and the lid opened easily. She peered inside and carefully removed papers and folders, lining them up on the table. Fred and Carole drew their chairs closer.

Darby took a rubber band from a pack of envelopes. The postmarks were from the late forties and early fifties—addressed to different people. One was addressed to Tatianna Hoffman.

“Now we know her last name.” Darby opened it. “Anyone know German?”

“Your Uncle Marc does, but he won’t be here until Christmas.” Carole reached for the letter. “I’m shocked Grandma would write something in her forbidden native tongue.”

“It’s written November 1945, perhaps before her vow?” Darby pointed to the date at the top. She examined the words that might hold all the answers she sought. “I think we need to find someone who can translate for us.”

“What else is there?” Fred asked. “Oh, I guess this isn’t any of my business and I should be going.”

“You can stay—please do.” Carole lifted his coffee cup. “I’ll fill you back up.”

“I have been staring at that safe with curiosity about killing me. If you both don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Darby said. She handed him a pile of papers wrapped in a plastic bag. “We’ll put you to work.”

“Thanks. This does feel like Christmas Eve.” And Celia was Santa Claus.

Darby flipped through several photographs. She didn’t recognize the faces, and nothing was written on their backs. The documents she found also were written in German.

“What is this?” Darby moved around the table beside Fred.

Carole returned with a coffee filter in hand and looked over their shoulders.

“It looks like travel documents—a passport would be my guess.”

“Look at the name.” Darby pointed to a line on top. “These are Tatianna Hoffman’s documents.”

“The issuing date says 1939.”

“So this is Tatianna.” Darby studied the black-and-white passport photo of the young woman. By her birthdate and the 1939 stamp, Darby knew the girl was about nineteen at the time. She was pretty with dark eyes and hair. There was no smile on her face, but humor glinted on the edges of her lips and within her eyes. Darby had seen that expression a dozen times when she’d taken a serious photo of a client and someone beyond the camera was trying to make the person laugh.

Carole bent in close. “Why would my mother have this person’s passport?”

“I don’t know.” Fred stroked his chin in thought. “Unless they came to the United States together. Perhaps some of these other papers will tell us that. Darby, here’s a letter addressed to you.”

Darby set down the passport of Tatianna Hoffman.

The letter wasn’t weathered by time like the other papers. Darby carefully opened the envelope, read it to herself, then aloud.

My dearest Darby,

I have given you a lifetime of stories and words I’m tempted to repeat, for I know these are my last words to you. The rest are already in your memory. But you don’t need a Sunday school lesson, and I’m far from perfect enough to give you a life map to follow. God has his own course for you. But my many prayers for my Darby-girl have helped with the boldness I’m about to express. I know I’m asking a lot of you. But sometimes the past cannot be buried. Sometimes the past must be put to rest for the future to be clear. I cannot tell you for certain what you must do; you must decide. There is so much right beyond my vision that I do not know. But I feel one thing so strongly, and so this I ask. Go to Austria.

I can see your shocked expression. I can really see your mother’s. Yes, Darby, go to Austria. I send you on a mission. What I hope I was able to ask before I died was that you give my closest friend, Tatianna Hoffman, her name back. That will make no sense until you get there. Then you will know. Also, if in your search you discover our family heirlooms, guard them well. Many have died because of them. I hoped to retrieve them myself, but I cannot ask you to take up that search, for I do not know the danger behind such an endeavor. But Tatianna deserves what I ask you to return to her—her name. Yet in all of this, I know you are going for more than the quest I send you on. I feel so deeply that God has something for you there. He wants you to find him again.

Take your time. Discover who you are. My heart goes on this journey. A journey we should all make.

Forever,

Celia Rachel Lange Müller

Darby set the letter on the table.

“Whew.” Fred was the first to speak. “Celia is full of surprises today.”

Carole sat at the table with the coffee filter still in her hand. “It looks like I’m going to Austria,” Darby said. Her mother didn’t look her way.

We have a problem.” Richter stretched back against the chair and put his feet on the table. He exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke into the night sky.

Ingrid wrapped her sweater tighter and half sat on the porch railing.

“We waited too long with the old man,” Richter said.

“There’s still Brant.” She turned toward him. “I know Gunther told him something. We need to find out exactly what that is.”

“And how do you suppose we’ll find anything out?”

“We’ll watch for an opportunity.”

“Waiting gets us nowhere, and I’m not a man of patience. We need action.”

“No, we must wait. Then we act.”

“What if Brant doesn’t know anything?”

“Brant may not be our last chance.”

Richter’s feet hit the ground as he faced Ingrid. “Another person who knows something?”

“Perhaps. Be patient. We’ll know what to do soon enough.”

“I’m leaving, on a jet plane.”

The tune hummed from Darby’s lips as she rolled her clothing into neat stacks and put them into her suitcase. As a child, she’d mapped her path through the Alps from Vienna to Switzerland. As an adult, she’d long since put the map away and left the dreams behind. Reality didn’t leave room for fairy tales. But the plane tickets, round-trip with three weeks between arrival and departure dates, were proof that Darby was at last going to Austria.

She carried her luggage toward the front door, pausing by Grandma’s room. Neither she nor her mother was ready to start boxing things up—it could wait. They had made the bed with Grandma’s white embroidered bedspread and dusted the dresser with its perfume bottles and jewelry boxes. Everything appeared normal, as if Grandma Celia had simply gone to the store or was in the backyard with her flowers. Darby hated the images that told her differently—the headstone that had arrived and the newspaper obituary on the refrigerator, the one with its possibly wrong birthplace.

When Carole had set the safe key on the kitchen table a few weeks before, Darby had been sure the shadows she felt every night would finally be vanquished by truth. But that didn’t happen. The documents, papers, and photographs only resurrected greater secrets. And with them came two paths—bury the past and concentrate on the present, or seek the answers from yesterday.

When faced with this decision at different stages of her childhood, Darby had turned away from the past. She had her own life of volleyball tryouts, new makeup, hairstyles, “What are we doing this weekend?” and “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Only once did Darby look toward the questions that sometimes arose.

She’d watched the TV miniseries
War and Remembrance
on her bedroom television. Before Darby’s eyes, the beautiful character Natalie, played by Jane Seymour, was reduced to a starving animal with fear alive in her eyes. Natalie endured a concentration camp. Darby knew that word. Part of her family had died in places like the one shown on the screen. Finally she asked her mother about it. But Carole was angry she’d stayed up late for the entire week, even grounding Darby from her bedroom television—that act alone showed something more in her mother’s anger. Darby was rarely grounded and never from the TV. Grandma Celia took her aside and told her it was good she now understood what family members had endured, but they would not speak of it again. Only the Austria of Grandma Celia’s childhood was told. The good, adventurous stories, not the terrifying ones that marched in time with Nazi boots. And so Darby discarded her questions, her curiosity abated. Something terrible had happened, but she didn’t want to know, didn’t need to know. She wasn’t any different than her friends. Tammy Dodd’s dad had fought in Vietnam. Michelle Ingalls had a grandpa who died in Korea.

In high school, Darby had received a
C-
on the Holocaust unit of history, though she usually received As and Bs. She’d forged her mother’s name on the report card and also performed her one and only act of skipping school the day her class watched a documentary with real footage of a concentration camp. Years later, when a friend invited her to watch
Schindler’s List
, Darby had other plans. It wasn’t exactly that she was avoiding the subject. But after the intense reaction from her mother and the silence of her grandmother over a television miniseries and simple questions, Darby had received the unconscious message that looking back was not good—until Grandma Celia’s letter.

So she picked up her luggage and said good-bye to Grandma’s empty room. She was leaving on a jet plane. And though Darby knew she’d be back in three weeks, the next line in the song kept echoing through her thoughts: “Don’t know when I’ll be back again.”

San Francisco International Airport was like a city in itself. She had to carefully follow the right exits and get in the correct lanes without being run over by a shuttle bus or taxi. Her mother gave advice as they looked for a parking place close to the international terminal and Lufthansa Airlines.

Darby had been there a few times to pick up friends, but she preferred the smaller airports in Redding and Sacramento for any trips that required air travel. The farthest she’d gone was New Mexico for a photography conference and Montana to visit a friend. Darby suddenly wondered about her old friend Tristie Grant in Columbia Falls, Montana. She’d received a nice sympathy card from the Grant family, and though distance in both miles and lifestyles had pulled their friendship apart, Darby knew she could always call her college friend and have a ready ear to listen. If only someone like Tristie was traveling with her, then perhaps the knot in her stomach wouldn’t be growing so quickly.

Darby’s mother listed everything to beware of as they entered the airport. Darby tried not to laugh as her mother handed her a list of “be carefuls.”

“Mom, did you write my name on my socks and underwear too?”

“I should have,” Carole said as they stopped at the baggage check-in.

“I can handle it from here. Thanks for coming down with me, Mom.”

Carole hugged Darby. “Okay, this is it, then.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ve never traveled. I’ll call when I get there.”

Darby wanted to make a quick escape. Good-byes were hard enough without long hugs and her mother dabbing her eyes on a tissue.

“I’m praying for you and still trying to believe this is somehow the right thing. But I’m just going to leave now. Call me.”

Darby hugged her mother one more time. “See you later, Mom.”

As she left Carole behind, Darby began to feel the doubts growing. The last time she’d allowed any of her old Europe dreams was with her ex-boyfriend, Derek Hunt. He was an avid cyclist and wanted them to ride across the countryside. They’d made plans, checked airfares, and studied maps, but it never happened. None of the dreams she’d had with him ever happened. Life became cameras, good lights and flashes, appointments, and faces on 8 x 10s. Now she’d volunteered to rip herself away from what had become familiar—even safe. Why was she doing this again?

The doubts turned to pricks of fear after she boarded the plane and stowed her luggage in the overhead bin. She was really doing this, really going to Austria. But it didn’t feel like a magical and grand adventure. Suddenly Darby felt like she was clinging to the side of the swimming pool, and her fingers were being pried away. Would she sink or would she swim?

As the plane taxied away from familiar land, Darby wasn’t quite sure.

I’m alone. Alone, alone,
Darby’s mind whispered as she followed a crowd of people toward the baggage area in Salzburg, Austria. For the first time, she understood being a stranger in a strange land. Sure, she took wealthy executives on backpacking expeditions, but that somehow seemed safer—back in the good old United States.

She paused in the smoky terminal, which bustled with noise and movement. She felt trapped, surrounded by people speaking different languages, and uncertain in a country she knew little about, beyond Grandma’s alpine trails and the smell of the trees. Would she get lost in the airport or once she stepped outside? Where exactly was customs, and would they rifle through her belongings like in the movies? Had she forgotten anything?

Darby touched her passport in the front zipper pocket of her purse for the third time since they landed. The line around the luggage wheel was packed. Finally, her two black suitcases arrived, and she squeezed in to grab them. Along with her camera case, carry-on duffel, and purse, it was a job organizing and carting everything toward the next checkpoint. Darby’s eyes burned, and suddenly she was thankful for California’s strict no-smoking laws. The customs sign was the next stop, and she moved to the Non-EU line for non-European citizens. She slid her passport to the young man behind a glass window.

“I’m sorry. Your passport is not valid,” the customs officer stated.

“What?”

“You have not signed your name,” he said with a large smile. He set a pen in front of her.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, not finding his humor funny. She quickly signed her name and watched him stamp a blank page. Darby continued through, realizing she’d just survived her first customs.

People hurried around her, some toward families for excited reunions. Other people waited near walls, eyes searching the crowd, with names written on papers. She thought of the six thousand miles separating her from anyone who would race to enter her arms.

The Austria of Grandma Celia’s romantic and adventurous stories was not the Austria she entered. Though she allowed little time to give it a fair chance, Darby felt a foreboding, down to her bones.
Get on the next flight to the United States, back to English and baseball and apple pie—back to home,
her mind said frantically. Why had she come in the first place? All her reasons were instantly blurred by the desire to go home.

Darby continued to follow lines of people and signs toward the airport exit. Rain poured upon the historic city of Salzburg. Taxis waited outside the airport doors, so Darby hopped into one and gave the driver the name of her hotel. Angry clouds and an annoying drizzle made it hard to see beyond the windows as the car shot from the parking space. But once she was in the taxi, she had no interest in the city except for surviving the ride. The cab lurched forward, then slammed on its brakes behind a truck, narrowly missing it, then jerked forward again. It reminded her of the New York cab stories, something she’d never cared to experience. The driver was friendly enough, greeting her with a hearty “
Grüß Gott
.” She wasn’t sure what that meant but said it back anyway.

“Zee,” he said, pointing to a tall church.

Darby barely glanced away from the road. The cabbie spoke what she thought was a history of the city, but his broken English was beyond her distinguishing except for a Mozart reference. She remembered that this cold, wet city had birthed the talent of the great musician, and probably every corner shop would have Mozart memorabilia as a marketing scheme to prove it.

“Here, your hotel.” The cab came to a hard stop. He hopped outside and opened her door. “Eighty schilling,
bitte
, uh, please.”

“Schillings?” How could she have been so stupid? Of course, she couldn’t pay in United States dollars. She’d meant to change some currency at the airport, but with the bustle of customs and getting her luggage and finding the exit, she’d forgotten. “I’m so sorry, I don’t have—”

The cabbie’s expression changed, becoming thunderous. “I have money, but it’s American dollars.”

“No, no American dollars,” he said, his face stern. “Eighty schilling, or you has euros?”

“No, I don’t have euros or schillings. Is there a bank or exchange or something?”

“There, you get schilling or euro.” He pointed to what appeared to be an ATM machine at the end of the block. Darby hurried toward it, checking behind her to make sure her luggage didn’t disappear from where the cabbie was stacking it at the doorway of the Salzburg Cozy Hotels International. The green-and-yellow cubby was an ATM. An English version helped, but how much should she get out? She punched in three thousand schillings since cab fare was eighty. With a few pushes of the button, Darby had Osterreich schillings from her United States bank, hoping she hadn’t just drained her account.

“
Danke
,” the cabbie said before hopping into the car and speeding off.

Darby wiped a wet strand of hair from her eyes as she picked up her bags on the hotel doorstep and walked inside. A young woman dressed in the traditional Austrian
dirndl
greeted her at the front desk. “
Grüß Gott
.”

“
Grüß Gott
,” Darby replied. “I have a reservation. My name is Darby Evans.”

“Yes, here you are. Breakfast is included, you know. Your room is number 14.” The woman smiled and handed Darby the room key and some papers. “Payment is when you check out, and please let us know if you need anything or if your room is not to your approval.”

“Thank you,” Darby said, relieved that the woman’s voice reminded her of the soft German accent Grandma Celia had tried to hide. It calmed her frazzled emotions—a little.

She balanced her luggage and peered around for a hallway to the first-floor rooms. The simple yet elegant lobby was connected to a restaurant and sitting room.

“You can take the lift to your room, if you like,” the woman continued.

Darby noticed the elevator, or “lift,” the woman pointed toward. Aware of the woman watching her, she thanked her again and entered the elevator. The doors closed, and Darby examined the buttons. When she pushed the 1 button, the door opened without the lift moving. She was still in the lobby. The woman saw her and smiled.

The doors closed again. Rechecking the room number on the card, Darby guessed that the first floor must actually be what was considered second floor in the United States. As the elevator rose, Darby realized how much she’d been assuming during what should have been a simple journey from airport to hotel. Europe was much different from what she’d expected, in the littlest ways that made her feel uncomfortable and shaken.
If today has been a challenge, how will I ever get any information from this trip?

Darby hauled her luggage up several marble stairs, its weight seeming to increase with every step. She found room 14, yes, on the second floor. The room in the old building was neat and simple. There was no flowery wallpaper or brass fixtures like the Cozy Hotels she had stayed at in the United States. It was low on fluff, but high on efficiency. A white down comforter lay folded sideways at the bottom of the bed atop crisp, white sheets. A small mint sat in the crease of an extremely fluffy-looking pillow. She dropped her belongings in the entry, locked the door, and flopped across the inviting bed. “Safe at last.”

Streaks of dull sunshine filtered through the blinds as Darby’s head sank into the down pillow. She hadn’t slept on the plane. Too many thoughts had swirled inside her head. Every time her eyes closed, she’d thought of the enormous gravitational force pulling hard on the jumbo plane with the cold Atlantic waters waiting to swallow them up. She’d listened to every word of the flight attendant’s instructions—even checking for that life preserver under her seat. The person next to her mocked her inexperience with his smile. But Darby figured she’d be the one laughing when he sank to the bottom of the Atlantic while she floated.

The ten-hour flight from San Francisco had felt longer than she had anticipated. The book of essays a friend gave her,
A Dose of Medicine for Travelers
, had quickly bored her. She had already received
A Dose of Medicine for Single Women
and
A Dose of Medicine for Photographers.
There was only so much medicine a reader could take. Darby planned to read
The Lonely Planet Austria
guidebook she’d bought to be prepared for her arrival in Salzburg. But the international flight allowed only one carry-on bag, and she had accidentally checked in the bag with her in-case-your-luggage-gets-lost outfit and her travel guide.

Darby’s next airplane mistake was the two cups of coffee she’d drunk, then regretted when four times she had to hobble over three people to go to the bathroom. Later, she’d attempted to sleep right when turbulence began to jar the plane nearly into pieces—though more experienced travelers continued to sip drinks and tap on laptops. Right then Darby connected with the ominous feeling that had lingered the entire day. She made a plane switch in London and finally arrived in Austria. The flights distanced both time and miles. She had flown into the next day. While home prepared for bed, Austria was grumbling for lunch.

“If you want to beat jet lag, you have to stay awake, stay awake!” Clarise, her business partner, had instructed. “Get on your current time schedule, no matter how tired you become. Get on their schedule, get your work done, and get back to the studio.”

Clarise’s reminder opened her eyes. She dragged herself from the embrace of the down pillow and comforter. Her shirt stuck to her back and felt like she’d worn it for a month. Her hands cried out against the millions of germs they carried—airport germs, taxi germs, doorknob germs.

She went to the blue-and-white-tiled bathroom and washed her hands. What had happened to her childhood hours dreaming of Europe—hours that took more time than adult hours, for they held her hopes along with her dreams? That little girl had planned to explore every nook and cranny. She’d rent a moped and putt around, because at ten years of age, the idea of a driver’s license was more frightening than traveling to Europe. Grandma Celia’s Austrian stories had coincided with Darby’s first viewing of her favorite movie,
The Wizard of Oz.
Darby would change the few letters in her name to spell “Dorothy” as she imagined herself flying away to the magical land of Oz, the place somewhere over the rainbow where all her dreams would come true. Europe became that magical place with castles beside every alpine lake and kings and queens who would bow to her highness.

“You aren’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy,” she told herself. With all the hubbub at the airport, the fright of getting to the hotel, and not being able to speak the language, Darby could almost believe this Oz was the habitation of the Wicked Witch—not of the West, but of the East.

She walked to the window and opened the shade. Beneath her, a muddy river flowed under a bridge and past tall church spires. The water’s surface was pecked with raindrops. Up the mountain, the Hohensalzburg fortress stared at her as if she were an intruder invading the land. When would she be brave enough to venture beyond the hotel window? Not today. Weariness sank into her bones. Her shoulders ached from hauling her luggage from airport to hotel. A headache formed on the rim of her temples and moved outward. No matter what Clarise said about the jet-lag cure, she needed rest. After all, there were lions, tigers, bears, and witches to face in this land far from home.

Brant unlocked his door and met the familiar musty scent of his third-story apartment. Late October brought a deeper cold to the corners of every room, forecasting the coming winter even earlier than the leaves on the surrounding mountains donned their autumn coats. Brant awoke each morning to stale air and came home to it every night, even though he’d bought plants that were now dead and several room deodorizers. These mixed scents only made the smell worse. He had promised himself a year ago he’d look for a new place. But with most of his life spent at the office, he hadn’t taken the time.

Brant tossed his briefcase onto the leather couch and scoped out the refrigerator. Nearly empty racks reminded him, as they had every day that week, that he needed to go grocery shopping. He picked up the end of a salami stick and a lone apple, smelled the cheese in deli wrap, left it there, and headed back for the couch.

After a day of noise, the stillness of the apartment echoed in his ears. Every other sound—the rustle of leather as he rested his head, the hum of the furnace, the evening sounds of the city behind the single-paned windows—intensified the vacancy of the room. Usually Brant felt unnerved by silence. He’d turn on the TV or some music. But tonight he needed the quiet to think.

For three years now, he’d juggled double careers. His technology advisory company had helped at least thirty Austrian companies make advancements into the age of technology, enabling them to compete with dominant European markets. And his work with the Austrian Holocaust Survivors’ network had helped numerous families, in many ways—except for the Aldrich fiasco. His work was important; essential—wasn’t it? At the end of the October evening, nothing of his work felt important, let alone essential. The financial world dipped up and down, often crumbling even strong businesses. And the Holocaust survivors—they were at the eve of an ending era. In the near future, not one would remain alive to tell the story. And Brant grieved that his work moved too slowly to help the majority of them.

But tonight something else added to his musing. Richter and Ingrid. Since Brant had spent the weekend boxing up Gunther’s things a month earlier, Richter had decided they were now friends. He came down from Munich to Salzburg nearly every week and invited Brant to lunch or a soccer game. It felt obvious to Brant that nothing had changed between them, no sudden bonding had occurred. He didn’t feel Richter liked him any more than before, so why the continued charade? Brant suspected the two were up to something—yet since the Aldrich fraud perhaps he’d become too suspicious. He’d keep his eyes open until this all blew over. Then maybe he’d get back to normal life—whatever that was or whatever that needed to become.