Winter Passing

by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma

  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?

  Chapter Fifteen

  The morning grew warmer as the sun opened its eye over the crest of the mountain. Darby parked the car near the guesthouse but felt too eager for exploration to unload her luggage. She discovered quickly that Hallstatt took Mondays off. Many offices, shops, and restaurants were closed for the day. But those places could wait until tomorrow. Darby wanted to discover the streets and houses. She wondered which house her grandmother had been raised in. Why hadn’t she paid better attention to the details when given the chance?

  She assumed Brant wanted her to see a grave when he sent her there—a grave that matched the name of her grandmother’s grave in California. Darby had discovered that most cemeteries were found beside churches. So toward the church towers she went. The lower church with the tallest spire, the Evangelical church, had no cemetery. She found a road up the mountain and hoped it led to the other church she could see above the lake-level village.

  More people were on the streets now, walking dogs, carrying baskets. Darby found a stairway leading from the road. She began to ascend the steep stairs between tiny houses with miniature landscaped yards.

  She climbed until her legs ached. Suddenly she wondered why there would be a grave for Tatianna or Celia here. If Tatianna had died at Mauthausen, her body would not be buried here. Darby thought of her grandmother’s still and lifeless form. Even though the essence of Grandma Celia no longer remained, that body was still part of her grandmother and not easy to let go of, not easy to put into the ground. But bodies were not items of value for the Nazis—only waste to be disposed of.

  She continued up the switchbacked and winding passageways until she reached the Catholic church with its open gate to a cemetery. She’d never seen headstones like the ones in Europe. They were wood or black wrought iron with tall stands holding the nameplates and topped with small, arrow-shaped roofs. While grass covered the cemetery grounds at home, here gravel provided a walkway to the cement-bordered graves. Within the cement rectangles was dark soil with a profusion of colorful flowers planted inside. Darby wandered back and forth, looking at names and dates. Close to a concrete retaining wall, she peered out across the great expanse of sky overlooking the lake. Far below were the parking lot and market square.

  Which one would be her grandmother’s? Darby wondered. Few of the graves were older than ten or fifteen years. Perhaps she was in the wrong area. The cemete
ry was in two tiers up the mountain. On the upper tier, Darby heard a noise behind her and saw she was not alone. A woman sat in a small covered area beside a cylinder-shaped building only steps from the graves. Darby walked past, but the woman didn’t look up. Was that a cash register on the table beside her?

  “Excuse me, sprechen Sie Englisch?” Darby asked.

  “Nein.” The woman shrugged.

  “Uh, what—vas est—this?” She didn’t know if she had French or German in her mixed-up sentence. Darby pointed to the building.

  “Twenty schilling.”

  The woman shrugged again. Darby dug for the coins in her pocket and was handed a brochure. She hesitated as she looked at the photo on the paper and approached the door. Down the thick double doors were squared pictures of leering skulls with crossbones below. She recognized the symbol for Alpha and Omega above the door as she opened it. Darby peered inside and jumped in surprise. Hundreds of hollow eyes stared back. The heavy door closed her inside a windowless crypt. If she ever wanted to avoid shadows, this was not the place to be. The floodlights shining in the cold, dank room made shadows on the walls and especially within the eyes and open jaws of hundreds of human skulls. Three walls had long wooden tables packed with skulls, while beneath were the stacked and organized remains of the skeletons.

  Darby read the history with her back close to the exit. She remembered her grandmother telling of the Bein Haus but had forgotten it was in Hallstatt. She’d experienced many nightmares of this place, but the reality felt even more frightening than a nine-year-old child’s imagination. This was a place of the dead.

  The brochure told how residents had been exhumed from their tiny graveyard after ten to twelve years of peaceful rest. The remains were then bleached in the sun, painted, and placed for the rest of eternity inside the white karner bone house.

  Darby took a step forward to see the paintings across the skulls. They had each person’s name and date painted on the forehead along with vines, flowers, and other adornments. Some even had a snake weaving through an eye socket.

  A short gate kept her a few feet away, but Darby leaned close to look at one delicate painting of flowers and vines. The gaping eyes and jagged teeth looked back at her. This had actually been someone, just like herself. Breathing, thinking, with dreams for tomorrow. Now that person, an empty skull, stared at nothing.

  Darby felt a mixture of reverence and fear for these people whose once vibrant bodies slowly decayed into dust before the eyes of all who would come and see.

  There was laughter outside. The door opened with fresh light and air spilling inside as a chattering German-speaking family pointed and exclaimed before even making it into the crypt. Already the camera was out, with its flash warming. Darby walked out, relieved to be free from the hollow stares as the door closed behind her. It seemed a strange tourist site.

  She walked away from the woman with her cash register and the tourists enjoying their show. The gravel crunched beneath her feet as she trailed around the upper cemetery. She didn’t find the name of Celia Müller. So why else would Brant tell her to come to the cemetery?

  A wooden stairway inclined above the last village house. Darby pulled out the town map and found that the stairway led in a series of switchbacks to the waterfall and onward high above to the salt-mine entrance. Partway up the stairs, she found a wooden bench. Darby gasped at the view. The village, churches, and cemetery were below, and she could see for miles across the lake to different mountain peaks, another village to the south, and a small castle on the opposite shore. Darby sat on the bench and gathered the view inside. As yet, Hallstatt hadn’t offered any clues, but she felt a change within her, a touch of a deeper peace that she hadn’t known in a long time. Her life had once been characterized by horizons, exploration, and tomorrows. Somehow along the way, it was consumed into work. But she’d seen a gentleness in certain people that didn’t disappear with busyness—Grandma Celia, for one. And suddenly, Darby knew that was what she wanted most. Instead of her imagined life, she wanted the real thing.

  She watched wood smoke rise from chimneys and wisps of fog lift from the silent water like morning spirits greeting the afternoon. Perhaps there was nothing about Tatianna in this place. Perhaps she had come here instead to find some of what her grandmother had possessed. Wasn’t this where it must have been born and grown in her? But how could Darby bottle it up and take these feelings with her?

  There was a noise she’d heard for some time but only now wondered about. Rhythmic movement—the scrape, scrape of rake against a concrete sidewalk—brought her eyes toward an old man raking leaves in his miniature yard at the bottom of the stairs below her. He didn’t see her above. His back was hunched with the burden of years, but he pressed on against the wet, autumn scatterings of the night before.

  Darby guessed he was older than her grandmother, due to his worn body. She wondered about his life. Had he lived in Hallstatt through the war? Suddenly she saw a story in every person older than seventy. What were you doing during the war? Were you victim or predator or bystander? Did you save someone? Did you kill someone? What story can you tell?

  How she wished she could ask. Yet how could she approach someone and pose such questions out of the blue? Most likely, the old man didn’t even speak English. Head of white, hands beaten by time, eyes turned downward toward his task, he was a mystery to her. He had a story. In ten to fifteen years at the very most, he’d be gone and his story with him. In that time or less, all their stories would be gone. Someone else would rake the leaves.

  The sleepy town yawned and stretched below her. Then the sound of a distant chain saw interrupted the silence. No other noise reminded Darby of autumn more than that high-pitched sputter. Lawn mowers were spring, and chain saws were autumn.

  Finally she stood and brushed off the back of her pants. Her face stung in the cold air. She had come for a purpose—one other than to find an elusive peace. She might not find any answers here, but she at least had to try.

  Darby returned to the village center and found the “I” sign that meant information office.

  “Guten Morgen,” she said to the woman behind the counter. “I need some information. You speak English?”

  “Ja. How may I serve you?” The short, full-figured woman examined Darby from behind spectacles. “Do you have a map of the town?”

  “Yes, I got one in Salzburg.”

  “There many tourist sites in the town and in the area. What you looking to do?”

  “My grandmother lived here as a child and young woman. I was hoping to find records. Birth and death certificates? Is there an administration office?

  “Ja. The municipal offices would be helpful for you. They located here.” She pointed on the map with a plump, manicured finger. “Just across from here.”

  “They are closed today, correct?”

  “Ja. Tomorrow, they open.”

  “Do you have any information about Hallstatt during or before World War II?”

  “Uh. No, I do not. Perhaps municipal offices help, or museum.”

  “What about the cemetery? There isn’t one for Protestants, only Catholics?”

  “Hallstatt has one cemetery for all people. The first level you enter is Catholics’ area; the upper level is Protestant.”

  “What about someone who was Jewish or with Jewish heritage, but she was perhaps Protestant?”

  “I do not know. Maybe buried somewhere else or else in Protestant section. I help with tours, not much of history.”

  “Okay,” Darby said. At least she knew there wasn’t a cemetery she’d missed.

  “There many activities available still in October in Hallstatt. I can arrange reservations for hotels and boating. Or you may go to salt mine.”

  “Thank you very much. I’ll come back if I need anything. Danke.”

  She turned back
to Gasthaus Gerringer to unload her luggage and settle in.

  For a second, she heard the scrape, scrape of the rake that had followed her down the mountain. It reminded her to stay focused. Some stories would fade away if not captured in time.

  Darby carried her luggage into the dark dining area. The walls were cozy with cedar siding, and antlers hung above the fireplace. Sophie Gerringer appeared from a hallway around a corner.

  “Are you enjoying our village? This first time, ja?” Sophie smiled as she stepped behind the front desk. Darby liked the sparkle of blue in the woman’s eyes. Her dark hair was in a wild, full style that framed her clear skin.

  “Yes, this is my first time, but my family is from here.”

  “Your family from Hallstatt?” Sophie Gerringer looked at her in surprise. “This like a pilgrimage for you to learn more about them?”

  “Yes,” Darby said in thought. “In a way it is.”

  “I live here only for last three year. My grandmother live in Hallstatt since she was a child. She maybe knew your family.”

  “And your grandmother lives here, right now?”

  “Ja.”

  “Could I ask her about my family?”

  “Oh.” Sophie stopped. “I not know. She is my grandmother but do not like foreigners much, especially not like Americans. This was American Occupation after war, you know? Maybe my mother could help instead?”

  “I’d like to talk to either of them. Do you know why your grandmother doesn’t like Americans?”

  “She not tell us. I do not ask. But we take her to city for summers when many tourist here. She not nice to American or British tourist.”

  “My grandmother was eighty when she died, just last month.”

  “My grandmother age eighty-four. Ja, she must have known your grandmother and family.”

  Darby heard footsteps from a room down the hall. A woman walked out, but she wasn’t old enough to be the grandmother.