Fortunately, I managed to grab a free seat next to Uncle Matthias, so I didn’t have to sit across from David and Valerie.
Uncle Matthias leaned over to me during the first course and remarked softly, “Agathe told me that you went up to the attic yesterday to look at Arndt’s old stuff.”
I looked at him uncertainly. Hopefully, he didn’t have anything against my having done such a thing. “Yeah, I looked at the stuff in the old steamer trunk.”
“And did you find what you were looking for?”
“No, nothing of much interest.”
“Perhaps . . .” He paused, seeming to consider something. “In the basement storage room, next to the darkroom, there might be another box that could be of interest to you.”
“Thank you.” I smiled at my uncle, momentarily forgetting about David and his annoying ex-girlfriend. He was so standoffish toward me at dinner that if I hadn’t known for a fact that he had eagerly kissed me in the middle of his mother’s roses just a few hours before, I would have thought that he couldn’t care less about me.
Claws of despair dug deep into my heart and ripped out bloody pieces.
Elisa had to go. I couldn’t bear the sight of her a second longer. I’d given her ample warning and plenty of time to return to Berlin. But she had ignored all my messages. She mocked me.
Because I assumed that Elisa would go straight down to the cellar after dinner, I concealed myself in the alcove next to the stairway. The dark and narrow spot calmed me, wrapping around me like a warm blanket. I followed the outline of the bricks with my finger. I memorized their every edge; I tried to find the answer in the geometric patterns. But as I grew more attracted to their forms, their spell swept me up in a maelstrom I could no longer snap out of.
Excited about the tip from Uncle Matthias, I headed toward the cellar after dinner.
My head swirled with memories. David’s face appeared again and again in my mind’s eye. I could still feel his kiss on my lips. But his aloof politeness at dinner baffled me. How could he sit down calmly next to Valerie and act like nothing had happened?
I felt for the light switch in the semidark staircase. The cool cellar air wafted up as I waited for the ancient light to flicker on.
I was still thinking about David as I started down the stairs. Suddenly, I felt a blow on my lower back. As I lurched forward, I flailed around for something to hold on to as I tried desperately to keep my balance. Adrenaline surged through me, trying to activate my muscles, but to no avail. I screamed as I shot headfirst down the stairs.
Everything went black.
Someone turned me on to my shoulder and was calling out my name repeatedly in a panicked tone.
As I slowly came back to, I tried to open my eyes, but my lids were too heavy. A dull pain raged in my body and I groaned.
“Elisa!” The voice reverberated in my ear. “Are you hurt? Open your eyes!”
As though through a layer of cotton wool, I became aware of someone clattering down the stairs.
“Damn, what happened to Elisa?”
“I have no idea. I only heard a scream, and when I went to have a look, she was lying here.” The voices mixed together, and I couldn’t keep them straight. “She must have fallen down the stairs.”
When I finally managed to open my eyes, I found myself blinking into the horrified faces of Lukas and David, who knelt on the ground next to me. I was lying at the foot of the cellar steps and wondered how I’d gotten there.
“Elisa,” Lukas said gently, bending over me. “Do you think you broke anything?” The pain continued to worsen, robbing me of my breath. I clenched my teeth as I convulsed and shut my eyes again.
“How would she know?” David pushed his stepbrother aside and stroked me gently on the head. “Elisa, look at me.”
I tried to ignore the pain and keep my eyes open. David’s pale face was still blurry and I had difficulty recognizing his eyes.
“Can you tell us where it hurts?” Lukas—already the future doctor—took my wrist and felt for my pulse.
I nodded slowly as I tried to take stock of myself and locate the source of the pain. “My head”—I swallowed hard—“and my shoulder.”
“Anywhere else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good.” Lukas released my wrist and looked at his stepbrother. “We should try to get her upstairs.”
David nodded. He carefully slid his arms under the back of my knees and my torso. I experienced a wave of dizziness as I was lifted up with a jerk. I shut my eyes and slung my arms around his neck.
David squeezed me tight as he carried me up the stairs.
All chaos broke loose immediately. My uncle was visibly shocked and immediately called his general practitioner, who lived only a few minutes away. My aunt indicated for David to lay me down on the sofa in the living room. I sank into the cushions and stretched out my legs. My blurred vision began to improve and I could see normally again.
As David stood up to go, I held him tight. “Please stay.”
“Of course.” He perched on the armrest of the sofa and looked down at me grimly. “You really gave me a nasty shock, you know that?”
A bittersweet joy flashed through me. “Really?”
He didn’t have a chance to answer, because Kristina stormed into the room just then.
“What happened?” Her face pale, she kneeled down next to the sofa.
“Are you hurt?” She looked at David, who couldn’t take his eyes off of me. “David, what happened?”
I turned my head to Kristina and cleared my throat. “I must have fallen down the cellar stairs somehow.”
“Just like Lukas,” she whispered.
As I vehemently shook my head, a blazing pain shot through me. “No, I was alone when I fell.” I quickly looked at David, who sat numbly on the armrest.
“How can you even suggest such a thing?” he asked, his voice cutting accusingly through the silent room.
“That’s not what I meant,” Kristina said, dodging David’s angry glare, and nestled up close to the tasseled pillow that lay under my head.
I laid my hand on David’s forearm to calm him down. I felt the tense muscles twitching under my touch.
“But that’s exactly how you meant it.” David suddenly radiated an icy coldness. “As soon as someone falls down the stairs, they immediately think it must have been my doing.” He shook my hand off and jumped up.
“David, wait!” Kristina called out. But David stormed out of the room.
Before I could rebuke Kristina, Aunt Helen came through the door, clearly irritated with us. “Do either of you know what’s come over David?” She looked down at me with a furrowed brow.
After a nasty side-glance at my cousin, I said I had no idea—I didn’t want to cause any more of a commotion than I already had.
My aunt eased down onto the armrest where David had just been sitting. She stroked me on the forehead, looking concerned. “The doctor is on his way. Are you feeling any better?”
“Yes. I think I’m just a little banged up.”
“I hope so,” she said and smiled at me. “I’ve sniffed enough hospital air in the last few days.”
Kristina turned to me. “Could I get you something to drink? Or anything else?”
I shook my head. I only wanted the headache to go away so that I could think clearly. Even though everything had happened so fast, I couldn’t let go of the sinister idea that there was something fishy about my fall. I’d gone down those steps countless times, ever since I was a child. I knew every step and would have been able to negotiate that staircase in my sleep. But all I could remember was turning the cellar light on, and then everything went black.
My uncle interrupted my attempt to reconstruct my accident when he entered the room with his general practitioner in tow. This was not the family’s l
ong-standing doctor, but my uncle’s favorite golf partner. Every Sunday provided them with an embittered struggle on the green, regardless of wind and weather.
Dr. Wolfgang Beck, wearing his signature colorful bow tie, greeted my aunt with a kiss on the hand and nodded to Kristina. He set his well-worn bag down next to the sofa and shooed Aunt Helen and Kristina away.
“Elisa, what were you doing?” he asked good-naturedly as he looked at me through his metal-rimmed glasses.
“It was my only chance of seeing you again,” I tried to joke. I had always liked my uncle’s friend, because he was one of the few people capable of putting my aunt in her place without her even being aware he was doing so.
“Well, I surely hope not.” He took a tiny flashlight out of his bag, shined it in my eyes, and nodded, evidently satisfied. Apparently, my pupils reacted normally to the light.
After a brief examination, he shut his bag again. “I believe you were lucky and avoided a concussion by a hair.”
Relieved, I exhaled. “I think I’m fit enough to play a round of golf with you and Uncle Matthias.” Dr. Beck opened his eyes wide with feigned horror.
“I doubt that. Maybe never again,” he threatened.
I grinned as I recalled my last performance with a golf club, during which I had given Dr. Beck an accidental black eye with my golf club. It had been a running joke in the family ever since.
My uncle walked over and slapped his friend on the back. “So what’s the diagnosis?”
Sighing, Dr. Beck got up. “Fortunately, your niece has a really thick skull and didn’t sustain a concussion. She’s got a few bruises that will be painful but are ultimately harmless.”
My uncle nodded in relief and briefly stroked my hair.
I shut my eyes. I yearned for some peace. I vaguely heard Uncle Matthias inviting his friend to join him for a glass of wine, and then I fell into a dreamless sleep.
As I entered the living room, I saw that Elisa lay on the sofa under a blanket and appeared to be sleeping. Someone must have lit a fire in the fireplace. I stared, spellbound, at the blazing flames, pleased by the spray of sparks that flew when a large log fell over.
Nothing captivated me the way fire did. Absolute destructive power paired with the greatest discovery ever to benefit mankind. I drank in the twisting smoke, losing myself in in the contemplation of form and color. Warm red, bright orange, and cold yellow danced in front of my eyes and melded together.
I stepped closer to the fireplace and stuck my hand out. Warmth penetrated my skin, sinking deep within me and dissolving the shell of ice that had formed around my heart. I turned toward the sofa that Elisa lay on.
Why couldn’t she just leave? I didn’t want to hurt her. But I had no choice. My pain drove me, never leaving me now. It had become my closest ally.
I walked over to Elisa and stuck out my hand. She was sleeping soundly. My hand trembled as I stroked her cheek. Her skin was soft to the touch.
It was as if I was saying good-bye to her. A farewell both to her and to the old me.
Sunday
I was disorientated for a moment when I opened my eyes. How had I gotten into bed? I’d been asleep on the sofa in front of the fireplace since the night before. I flung the blanket aside and saw that I was still wearing my jeans. How odd. Someone had apparently carried me to bed the night before. Had it been David?
A variety of emotions swirled through me as I thought about him. A tingling joy at the thought of our kiss, cold disenchantment at his aloofness at the dinner table, and unquestionable confidence when I went inside. Would I ever be able to make sense of him?
I had nearly forgotten this question—one that had preoccupied me for years—when I fell down the cellar stairs. Even with a pounding head and bruised body, I never completely lost sight of that burning question.
I crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom. I stiffly undressed and stood under the spray of the shower. I moved my tense and bruised body under the stream of hot water for a long time, savoring the water pressure on my naked skin.
When I finally began to feel human again, I turned the water off. Wrapped in a thick towel, I stood in front of the steamed-up mirror. I cleared a small patch from the mirror and studied my face. I had a pretty bump on my forehead that would soon shine in every color.
As I ran my fingers over it, I reflected on the evening’s events again. I wasn’t so clumsy that I’d fall down a staircase. I’d gone down the cellar stairs hundreds of times. But I didn’t trust my own memories anymore.
At a lavish Sunday breakfast—at which David was notably absent—everyone asked about my condition at some length. Afterward, I withdrew to my room. Why hadn’t he been there? Was it because of the kiss? Or because of Kristina’s remark after my fall? I was growing weary of only being able to think about David.
A frantic knock on my door gave me a start.
At my halfhearted “Come in,” the door opened and a tall stack of boxes appeared in the doorway. “Quick, grab them!” It sounded like Lukas’s strained voice coming from behind the boxes.
Perplexed, I took the top box from the pile. “What’s all this?”
With the last of his strength, my cousin set down the dusty boxes in the middle of the room and grinned at me proudly. “These are all of Uncle Arndt’s things. Agathe told me that you were looking for them.”
“Really?” I set the box that I still held next to the others.
“Yup, I searched through the entire cellar last night.”
I could hardly wait to open the first box. It was filled with heaps of diaries and souvenirs from all the exotic trips my father had taken.
I smiled gratefully at Lukas, who had kneeled down beside me. “Thank you for tracking these down. They’re exactly what I was hoping to find.”
My cousin took a black wooden mask from another box, held it in front of his face, and jumped up. As he improvised a strange rain dance around me, he let out a wild yell. It hurt to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself—it was just too funny. Lukas always could distract me from my dark thoughts.
I leafed through a pile of photos that must have been taken when my parents first met. Lukas crouched down next to me, breathing heavy, and looked over my shoulder at something. “Look, that was in Italy, at the Roman Forum.” He pointed at a picture where my mother sat between the two Westphal brothers on the steps. All three of them were tan and beaming into the camera. I could feel the shimmering heat of the ruins that day.
The next picture showed my mother in the middle of a fruit plantation. She didn’t seem to be aware that she was being photographed. With her eyes closed, oblivious to everything around her, she held her nose up to an orange that hung from a branch. The light filtering through the leaves reflected on her face, making her look unbelievably young.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. My mother hadn’t been so happy and carefree in much too long. My father’s death had changed her into a completely different person.
Lukas took the pile out of my hands and continued to flip through the photos. The next picture must have been taken in Central America, because they showed several old Mayan sites of worship in the background.
As we looked at one picture after another, we grew more and more absorbed by the magnificence of the ruins. My father visited sites where the surrounding nature was reclaiming the land bit by bit. Tree roots pushed up between rocks and a layer of velvety moss covered vast surfaces. In another photo, my mother fed a small monkey. In the next picture, the little rascal had grown braver—it showed the upper half of his body stuck, headfirst, into the bag in search of more treats.
Lukas and I laughed as we came to the end of the photos. In the next box, we found clothes placed in a plastic bag.
“I think these must have belonged to Aunt Hannah,” Lukas said, pulling out a light-blue cotton dress.
“I spent ages looking
for that in Berlin!” I snatched the dress, jumped up, and disappeared into the bathroom.
“Please, not a fashion show!” chimed my exasperated cousin through the closed door, as I undressed and slipped the dress on. A sharp pain shot through me—my bruised body evidently did not approve of my actions. But I clenched my teeth, closed the clasp, and smoothed the fabric over my thighs. Because my mother and I had roughly the same figure, the dress fit like a glove.
As I stepped out of the bathroom, Lukas looked at me in surprise.
“So, what do you think?” I asked.
“It’s totally uncanny.”
“What?”
Instead of answering me, Lukas began digging around in one of the boxes that we’d already looked through.
“Here’s the one!” he said and held a photo under my nose.
It was a picture of my mother on the dance floor at a wedding reception. She laughed playfully at the camera; her cheeks were sunburned, and her short brown hair was windblown. She was wearing the light-blue dress I’d slipped on. It was as if I were looking in a mirror.
Lukas jumped up and bowed chivalrously before me. “May I have this dance, my lady?”
“Better not.” I laughed. “Don’t you remember that you almost crippled me that one time at dancing school?”
We laughed at the memory. Aunt Helen had signed us up, because she was of the opinion that it was important to know how to dance. To our chagrin, Kristina had broken her foot, so only Lukas and I had to take to the floor every Thursday that winter. Unfortunately, we were both hopelessly awkward, much to the exasperation of our dance instructor—who became a ballerina a year later. An indignant knocking on the door interrupted our silly trip down memory lane, and Uncle Justus stuck his head in.
“May I ask why you are making such a racket? Matthias really needs his rest!” But at the sight of me, he broke off his tirade.
This was a rare occasion—not only was he speechless, but expressionless as well. Lukas didn’t seem to catch it, because he went right back to digging through my father’s things. He turned toward the door with a grin.
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