The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (34 page)

“I checked my work with my most
critical eye. They will see nothing unusual,” his father answered.

The Party train pulled away from
the station after ten o’clock that night and the sigh of relief was palpable throughout
the village. Lights remained on in the homes until well after midnight, with
quiet toasts and cautious words of congratulation. The looters would move down
the line, on to the next place. Bernkastel had passed the test.

However, the news grew worse in
the coming months. America had joined the war effort against them—everyone knew
that already—and the bombings escalated. Many of the larger cities were ravaged
and people fled when they could to the small towns and the countryside. Most,
though, had no option. It was a matter of holding onto their sanity while
pretending to carry on with daily life—work, school, meals, trying to stay
healthy enough to simply make it through another week, another month.

The reports came of Nazi
victories throughout Europe and Nik’s father muttered at the dinner table about
how he suspected they were hearing a highly edited version of the events. The
few people who had escaped Trier and Koblenz and made their way along the river
hinted at far worse things than the newspapers reported. Hitler had an entire
department of propaganda, Grandfather said. Don’t trust a word they say. Yet
the photos of the massive rallies were impressive and the Führer seemed a
kindly man who patted the heads of little children and gave out sweets.

“I am tired of the whole thing,”
Nik’s mother said one Sunday morning. “We cringe in our homes, waiting for
events that do not happen, afraid of what—that another trainload of soldiers
will come and search us again? We have nothing they want.”

She had made Nik’s favorite
pancakes and set a plate before him.

“I suggest we have an outing. I
will make us a picnic lunch and we can walk along the river path toward
Andel
. A change of scenery will be good for us all.”

The boys immediately cheered the
idea, even though their grandfather seemed less than enthusiastic.

“Come along. All of us shall put
on our best boots and make the walk.”

Their best boots were hardly good
ones, but something about a new activity brought all their spirits up. The
sweet-smelling spring morning gave them a clear sky, and the budding greens and
unfurling leaves on the Riesling vines cheered them. The boys raced ahead on
the footpath.

“What’s this, father?” shouted
Fritz. He pointed to something in the water.

Nikolaus had trailed behind,
caught up in watching a small red squirrel. He saw his two brothers hovering at
the edge of the riverbank, his parents catching up to them and Grandfather
bending over, as eager as any child to see the odd thing sticking half out of
the water. Fritz reached out to touch it and the thing shifted in the water.

Then it exploded.

Nik felt himself flying through
the air and for one moment a thrill rushed through him. Flying! Then everything
went black.

*
* *

“Tell us about your hometown,
Dad,” Krystle begged. She crossed one bell-bottom-clad leg over the other and
leaned back in her seat. Johann was driving, taking the exit to the E42.

Nikolaus ran a hand through his
hair. When had it become so sparse? And gray—he refused to think about it. When
he began to speak he was ten years old once more.

“I used to run about all over the
village,” he said. “My favorite thing was the statue of the bears. I hope it is
still there …”

Forty years since he had visited
Bernkastel or Kues. The days in hospital came back only as dim memories,
flashes of scenes really, no more. Nurses in white, sympathetic glances. Poor
little boy, lost his entire family … Where shall he go? A blond woman coming to
visit. Swiss-German. He didn’t want to see her. Wanted
mutter
and
vater
.
Tears from the nurses when he asked about them. The Swiss lady came back, this
time with a husband. “We will be your new parents,” she said, but the concept
was unreal. He was sent with them anyway, sent to live in Lucerne, and
eventually he came to enjoy their home, and almost to actually love them.

And now, now these two sitting
beside him in the train were his own. Modern children—young adults, he reminded
himself—who hopped trains all over Europe, stayed in hostels with other kids
like themselves and spoke four languages. Thirty years of marriage to their
mother and yet he had never brought any of them to Bernkastel. Not until
Christina died—four months ago. He could not believe it—and Krystal and Johann
whispered behind his back far too often, conspiring to get him out of the
house, back to pleasanter memories. So, here they were, slowing as the highway
became
Gestade
and then
Schanzstrasse
.

“Watch for the old stone gate. It
will take us directly into the Marktplatz. Go slowly now.”

“Right, Dad, I have it,” Johann
said, taking the turn. A café with umbrellas at outdoor tables sat where the
church rectory used to be.

“There! See to the right. That’s
the Doktor Fountain, in honor of the famous doctor whose medicinal wine saved
the prince!”

Nikolaus could hear the
excitement in his own voice and he caught the satisfied glance between his son
and daughter. Coming here had been the right thing to do, they were thinking.
He sat back grumpily for a moment, until another sight caught his eye—the
statue of the bears.

“Find a place to park. We’ll walk
now. I shall tell you the story my mother always told me at bedtime.”

Johann stopped the small blue BMW
at a spot along the curb and they got out. Nikolaus stretched, feeling the
creak in his joints. His career as an accountant, a desk job in Zurich, had not
exactly kept him in shape for running through the cobbled streets of his
childhood home.
Ach
, no one would
expect him to run about these days anyway. With the hip that had never healed
quite correctly and a weak heart, he had been suited for nothing more strenuous
than a desk job, and his damaged hearing bothered no one as he worked in his
narrow world of numbers and balances. He had become quite content with his
life.

They paused at the bear statue
and he recounted the story of the lost woman and her children and how the bears
had saved their lives. Down a tiny side street he showed off the place they
called the Pointed House and Krystal snapped a picture of it. Only ten feet
wide at the street level, the funny little place had two additional floors
above, each a little wider than the other.

“It’s like a wedding cake upside
down,” his daughter commented with a laugh.

“Except for the very pointed
roof, yes you are right.”

His eyes followed the lane he had
traveled hundreds of times. The shops were different now, with fashions that
focused on blue jeans and vividly colored blouses, others featuring electronic
things he would have never imagined as a boy. He began to follow the familiar
way, taking in the structures which had not changed much, the little details
that had—flower baskets now, electric street lamps, clusters of tourists. He
allowed his feet to take him to his old memories, to ignore his analytical
side.

The lane widened into an
intersection now constricted by cars. Across the way a sight made his breath
catch.

“It is still a jewelry shop,” he
marveled. “And above …” His eyes rose to the apartment.

The building was painted a
different color now and there was a new iron gate at the bottom of the stairs,
with a mailbox and a name—Werner. No
Schenkes
had
lived here in a very long time. The jewelry shop was, of course, not the same
one. That one had been owned by Jews—the
Goldsteins
,
he seemed to remember. As a child he wondered why they went away so suddenly.
As an adult, unfortunately, he was fairly certain that he knew. It was the
national shame now, learning what had been happening right under their noses,
and most of the citizens having no idea of it—being clueless, his children
would say.

An image of a Nazi soldier came
to him, a man who lived here in Bernkastel surely not far from his own home,
although as he recalled he’d only seen the man around town a few times and
never knew where he lived. There was once, in the Marktplatz, the soldier with a
wife and children. He was a man, like any other, not a monster. Nikolaus
believed that now, although he had experienced mixed feelings about it over the
years. Some of them truly had been monsters.

That same soldier, Nikolaus
remembered, had been the one who dropped a cloth-wrapped parcel into the waste
bin at the old train station. Trains had not stopped in Bernkastel for more
than twenty years now but the big old, grand dame of a building was still
there—he’d spotted the distinctive roofline just before they made the turn— He
digressed.

He’d been thinking about the
soldier and the package. Little Nik had grabbed that package and run for home
with his treasure. The heart-pounding excitement of discovery, the thrill of
owning something all his own, a treasure not to be shared with his brothers.
Hiding it in his clothing trunk under the bed …
gut
Gott
,
he had not thought of that in
decades. That carved box—a few times it had warmed and changed appearance when
he handled it. Fascinating to a small boy, magical. It had been his most prized
possession. And yet, what had happened to it?

“Dad? What are you thinking?”
Krystal asked.

“
Ach
, just old memories.” His voice sounded faraway, even to him.

“Let’s get some lunch. I smell
bratwurst.” She took his arm and he allowed himself to be steered away.

In the café, he speared the
sausage with his fork, savored the flavors of that and the sauerkraut together.
Each town and each region in Germany had its own specialties when it came to
sausages, beer and, here in the Mosel valley, the wines; these evoked the pangs
of childhood even more vividly than had their walk through the streets. There
was truly nothing like the food from one’s home village. He took a sip of his
wine and a vision popped into his head.

That wine cellar. He saw himself,
aged ten, mixing mortar, his father and grandfather handling the bricks. The
anxious owner hovering about in fear that the Nazis would catch them as they
created a hidden chamber.

“We have to go. There is one more
place in town I must see.” He tossed his napkin on top of his half-finished
plate.

“Almost done,” Johann said,
quickly downing his last two bites of the bratwurst.

Nikolaus tapped his foot, then
reminded himself this was silly. If that wall was still there, it had been
standing more than forty years and would be there in another fifteen minutes.
The wine cellar and tunnel might not be there at all.

As it turned out, they were. The
arched doorway with the carvings was the same, although he suspected the wood
had been sanded and refinished a few times over the years. The tunnel walls
still dripped with water.

“My grandfather bought the winery
after the war,” the new owner explained. “Unfortunately, the sons of the
previous owner were killed in the war and he could no longer manage it on his
own. Our family has cared for it, going on three generations now. We are quite
proud of our Riesling, especially this year’s vintage.” He led them into a
large room where chairs sat before a long table. “Here, have a taste.”

Nikolaus looked around. The
tasting room sat beside the aging-chamber he remembered, the dimly lit place
where gigantic casks had towered over him. Now they were not quite as tall as
he, but two rows of them lay on their sides, as always.

“What of the hidden room at the
back?” he asked. “There were some very old wines stored there.”

The young man who had escorted
them seemed puzzled.

“May I?” Without waiting for an
answer Nikolaus started walking the aisle between the casks, making his way in
the gloom. The others followed.

The chamber came to an end at a
bricked wall. Nikolaus placed his hands on it.

“There is a room beyond this
wall,” he said. “My father and grandfather closed it in when the Nazis were on
their way. The room was used to store the most valuable of the wines and the
owner knew they would be looted.”

He turned toward the vintner with
tears in his eyes. “I, myself, helped with the job and I placed something of
great importance to me inside, just before the wall went up. A small wooden
box.”

The man appeared to hear nothing
beyond ‘valuable wines.’ He rushed to the tasting room and picked up a
telephone. Within minutes two men arrived with sledge hammers and pry bars;
they were introduced as cousins of their host. Nikolaus and his family stood
aside as the smashing began. A small hole opened; bricks were pried away, a
light shone inside. Exclamations of excitement at the racks of bottles inside.

“Is the wooden box—?” Nik felt a
childlike thrill.

A person-sized hole was made and
the host went in with his flashlight. He returned with two wine bottles tucked
under his arms, a carved wooden box in his hands. The box looked darker than
Nikolaus remembered, nearly black.

Nikolaus reached out for his treasure,
marveling that it had been there. He carried it to the tasting room, noting
that the stain on the wood now appeared brown. While his attention was on the
box, the other men were examining the labels on their wine.

“We must open one bottle,” said the
man who had brought Nikolaus’s family here. “To celebrate our luck that you
came here today.” He reached for his corkscrew.

One taste told them that the wine
had turned. Disappointment showed on every face.

“I am sorry,” Nikolaus said. “I
suppose it has been too long.”