Lost Cause

by John Wilson

  I watched, enthralled. We all did. I know I had never felt particularly close to Grandfather, but it was weird seeing and hearing him almost from beyond the grave.

  “I’m not sure why I have to be wearing makeup,” he said to someone off camera. “This is my will, not some late-night talk show…and it’s certainly not a live taping.” The figure off camera laughed, and I found myself smiling. That was the sort of black humor I enjoyed.

  “Good morning…or afternoon, boys,” he began, turning to face the camera and us. “If you’re watching this, I must be dead, although on this fine afternoon I feel very much alive.” Grandfather looked exactly as I remembered him, wearing his trademark black beret and the sweater I remembered Mom knitting him a couple of winters ago.

  “I want to start off by saying that I don’t want you to be sad. I had a good life and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. That said, I still hope that you are at least a little sad and that you miss having me around. After all, I was one spectacular grandpa!”

  A chuckle rose from the group, and I had to admit that I did miss him, now that I could only see him on TV.

  “And you were simply the best grandsons a man could ever have. I want you to know that of all the joys in my life, you were among my greatest. From the first time I met each of you to the last moments I spent with you”—Grandfather smiled slightly—“and of course I don’t know what those last moments were, but I know they were wonderful, I want to thank you all for being part of my life. A very big, special, wonderful, warm part of my life.”

  It was soppy and sentimental. I knew that, but it didn’t stop a tear forming in the corner of my eye as I watched the old man reach forward and take a sip of water from the glass on the desk in front of him. His hand shook ever so slightly. Was he nervous? He never struck me as someone who felt fear.

  “I wanted to record this rather than have my lawyer read it out to you.” A smile turned the corners of my grandfather’s lips up. “Hello, Johnnie.”

  “Hello, Davie,” the lawyer replied with a matching smile.

  Grandfather glanced off screen. “I hope you appreciate that twenty-year-old bottle of Scotch I left you. And you better not have had more than one snort of it before the reading of my will.” He looked back at us and winked.

  The lawyer held up two fingers.

  “But knowing you the way I do, I suspect you would have had two.”

  The lawyer looked embarrassed. “He did know me well.”

  I shook my head to try and get rid of the feeling of weirdness. Here was my dead grandfather talking to us and his lawyer in this room and also to the same lawyer who was at the recording of the message. It was eerie.

  “I just thought I wanted—needed—to say goodbye to all of you in person. Or at least as in person as this allows.

  “Life is an interesting journey, one that seldom takes you where you think you might be going. Certainly, I never expected that I was going to ever become an old man. In fact, there were more than a few times when I was a boy that I didn’t believe I was going to live to see another day, never mind live long enough to grow old.

  “But I did live a long and wonderful life. I was blessed to meet the love of my life, your grandmother Vera. It’s so sad that she passed on before any of you had a chance to meet her. I know people never speak ill of the dead—and I’m counting on you all to keep up that tradition with me—but your grandmother was simply the most perfect woman in the world. Her only flaw, as far as I can see, was being foolish enough to marry me.”

  As Grandfather talked on about how proud he was of his daughters—our mothers—and how he had loved coming to all our school plays and soccer games, my mind began to wander. Something he’d said in the video was nagging at me. My brow furrowed in concentration. He’d often talked about his time as a pilot in the Second World War, but I’d never heard him refer to almost dying as a boy. What did it all mean? I didn’t know any stories from before his time as a pilot. What had he done when he was younger that made him think he was going to die? It was a mystery.

  The flickering image on the screen drew me back to Grandfather and his story. Mom had guilted me into coming today, but wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away now.

  Grandfather was finishing off his account of how much joy we had brought him. “You boys, you wonderful, incredible, lovely boys, have been such a blessing…seven blessings…”

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed DJ tense up. Then I realized why. There were six grandsons, not seven. Was the old man’s brain not as sharp as he thought? His voice caught and he covered it by taking a long sip of water.

  “But I didn’t bring you here simply to tell you how much I loved you all,” he went on eventually. “Being part of your lives was one of the greatest achievements of my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but being there for all your big moments meant that I couldn’t be elsewhere. I’ve done a lot, but it doesn’t seem that time is going to permit me the luxury of doing everything I wished for. So, I have some requests, some last requests.”

  The six of us looked at each other, but everyone was as confused as I was.

  “In the possession of my lawyer are some envelopes. One for each of you.”

  Six heads swung around, as if programmed, to look at the lawyer. He smiled and waved a fan of manila envelopes at us.

  Grandfather reclaimed our attention. “Each of these requests, these tasks, has been specifically selected for you to fulfill. All of the things you will need to complete your task will be provided—money, tickets, guides. Everything.

  “I am not asking any of you to do anything stupid or unnecessarily reckless—certainly nothing as stupid or reckless as I did at your ages.”

  There it was again, a reference to mysterious things he had done as a boy. What was going on?

  “Your parents may be worried, but I have no doubts. Just as I have no doubts that you will all become fine young men. I am sad that I will not be there to watch you all grow into the incredible men I know you will become. But I don’t need to be there to know that will happen. I am so certain of that. As certain as I am that I will be there with you as you complete my last requests, as you continue your life journeys.”

  The air in the room felt heavy with silence. We were barely breathing. Grandfather lifted his glass. “A final toast,” he said, “to the best grandsons a man could ever have.” He tipped back the glass, drained it, replaced it on the table and stared at us. “I love you all so much. Good luck.”

  The screen went black, and we all let out the breath we hadn’t realized we had been holding. The lawyer switched off the TV. “In my hands are the seven envelopes. One for each grandson.”

  “You mean six.” DJ spoke the thought that was in all our minds. “There are only six of us.”

  “Well,” the lawyer said, a slight smile playing around his eyes, “as I said, there is a most interesting twist. There is a seventh grandson.”

  After the adults filed back in, stared at us oddly and settled themselves, the lawyer explained to them what had gone on and replayed Grandfather’s DVD. My mom and her sisters were sobbing by the end. The lawyer gave them a moment to calm down, and then he’d repeated the bombshell about the seventh grandson.

  It didn’t come as such a shock for Mom and the others. Grandfather had told them that they had an unknown half sister and another nephew. He had also asked them to keep it from us boys.

  Apparently, Grandfather had been quite the lad, and the result had been a fifth daughter named Suzanne, who had then had a son called Rennie Charbonneau. This kid was the same age as DJ and me, but Grandfather had only discovered his existence a few months ago from reading an obituary in the newspaper.

  I couldn’t help smiling as I wondered how many cousins or half cousins I might have scattered across the world. This meeting had definitely been worth coming to. It had given me a much greater sense of Grandfather as a person, and it had also given me a quest and a real mystery to solve. I looked d
own at the envelope in my hand.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Mom was standing beside me.

  I shook my head. “I’ll wait till I get home.”

  I looked around the room. The meeting appeared to have broken up. DJ was standing looking at his envelope, and several of my cousins were in huddles with their parents, talking quietly. I hefted my envelope. It was light, not much in it. I was eager to know what my task was, but I was also enjoying the anticipation, the not knowing, the mystery. Grandfather had mentioned tickets, money and guides. Perhaps my summer wasn’t going to be as disappointing and boring as I had thought.

  Steve,

  I hope you came to the will reading and are examining the contents of this envelope with an open mind. I know we have not always seen eye to eye. We are, after all, separated by two generations and the world I grew up in was very different from the one that you know. I hope that this will not be a handicap to our friendship, even if that friendship will be a bit one-sided now!

  Rosa Luxemburg, a heroine of mine when I was your age, once said something to the effect that freedom only meant something if it was freedom for those who think differently. I think something similar applies to friendship. Being friends with those who are the same as you, have the same interests and beliefs, is easy. The problem is that you miss much of the richness that makes us human. Seek out the odd and unusual, the novel ideas of those who think differently from you.

  Sorry, I seem to be preaching. I don’t mean to, it’s just that I wanted my letter to you to be as long as the ones to your brother and your cousins. This letter will be short for two reasons.

  1) I know how much you dislike sentimental stuff, so I won’t go into any details about how cute you were when you and your brother first came into this world! I suspect that, deep down, you are as sentimental as the rest of us, but that you keep it hidden. Probably a good characteristic when you become a scientist, which seem to me to be where your interests lie.

  2) Your task is very simply explained, although it may not be as easy as you imagine to carry out. I could certainly give you more information and point you in certain directions, but this is your task, not mine. You must find your own way, make your own decisions and come to your own conclusions. I know how much you love mystery novels, so I am going to give you a real-life mystery to solve.

  Some time ago, a letter from Spain came for me. It had found me through an organization of which I am a member. It was from someone I had known many years before, and it had been mailed from an address I hadn’t thought about in more than seven decades.

  The address was from a time in my life that was full of importance, danger, love and a sense of being a part of something that would change the world. Of course, the world didn’t change, at least not in the way that I hoped, but that time was so important to me that I sometimes think I have spent my life since then trying to recapture it.

  That is your task, to recapture that time. I can’t tell you how to do it. All I can do is give you clues to set you on a path that, I hope, will solve the mystery of the letter. I gave you a clue in the dvd, and to that I can add the address where the letter came from. I will not show you the letter itself; it contained a lot of personal stuff that would be of little interest to you, but it did say that there was something of mine at that address. At first, I intended to go to the address myself, but I delayed. I suppose I’m frightened to go back to that time when life was so vibrant that I almost thought I would explode with the passion of it all. In fact, it was such an intense time that I have never talked about it with anyone. If you discover what I think you will, you will be the only person who knows about this part of my life.

  I have instructed my lawyer, Johnnie, to mail a letter to the address, informing them of my demise and of your arrival. They cannot get in touch with you except through Johnnie, and without solving the mystery, what would you say to them in a letter? Suffice it to say that the people at that address will be expecting you and, I hope, will be your guides on your quest.

  Steve, you are young, and passion is your preserve, so I pass this task on to you. Solve the mystery and, I hope, discover a little of the passion I felt in those longago days.

  Good luck and always remember that I love you.

  Grandfather

  THREE

  I read Grandfather’s letter through one more time and tipped the contents of the envelope out onto my bed. There was a scrap of paper with two handwritten verses of poetry on it:

  They clung like birds to the long expresses that lurch

  Through unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;

  They floated over oceans;

  They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

  The stars are dead. The animals will not look.

  We are left alone with our day, and time is short, and

  History to the defeated

  May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

  A second piece of paper had an address on it:

  Maria Dolores Calderon Garcia

  Carrer de la Portaferrissa, 71

  08002 Barcelona

  España

  Folded in the second piece of paper was a small tarnished key. It was old-fashioned and too small to be a door key. Nothing written on the paper gave a clue as to its use.

  The final two things in the envelope made my heart race. The first was a note from Grandfather telling me that the lawyer had instructions to buy me a return airline ticket to Barcelona. The second was a bank card with my name on it and paperwork showing a balance of $2,000 on the card. All it needed was my signature. Suddenly my lost cause wasn’t so lost after all. Europe was possible this summer.

  I hadn’t planned on going to Barcelona, but I hadn’t been anywhere in Europe, so one place was as good as another to begin. There were only two problems: the language and Mom. I couldn’t speak Spanish. But I liked languages, so I could probably pick up a few key phrases before I went. Mom would be tougher. Would she allow me to head off to a foreign country on my own?

  I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it. Right now I just wanted to savor the possibilities. I took a deep breath. “Thank you, Grandfather,” I murmured. I let the documents slip out of my grasp onto the bed beside me. That’s when a black-and-white photograph slid out from behind the paperwork.

  It was the size of a postcard, faded and grainy. To one side, two figures stood in a doorway beneath an intricately carved lintel. The figures were tough to make out but were obviously a boy and a girl, about my age. He wore heavy boots, gray pants with an open-neck shirt tucked into them, and a short leather jacket. He was bareheaded and his dark hair was thick, parted in the middle and swept back above his ears.

  The girl was dressed in what looked like mechanics’ overalls. She wore a broad dark scarf tied around her neck and a peaked cap. Her hair was dark, shoulder length and tucked behind her ears. I didn’t recognize either of them, but they looked happy. Both were grinning broadly at the camera.

  My gaze drifted to the lintel, where a crown sat above a shield bearing nine vertical lines. On each side, carved vegetation spread out and down to surround the doorway.

  A wall stretched away to the left, bare except for a crudely painted hammer and sickle and words that were out of focus but looked like Mac and Pap.

  The photograph was obviously old. I turned it over, looking for a date and the identity of the people, but there was only something written in Spanish: El fascismo será destruido.

  I spread the contents of the envelope in an arc across the bed: the letter, the scrap of poetry, the address, the key, the note about the ticket, the bank card and the photograph. I put the note and the bank card to one side. They were practical things to help me solve the mystery, but they weren’t clues. There were five clues. No, six. In the letter Grandfather had said there had been a clue in the DVD.

  I closed my eyes and replayed Grandfather’s message in my mind. It was a straightforward message to the six—no,
seven—of us. Where was the clue? I ran through it once more.

  My eyes flew open in sudden realization. The only bit of the DVD that hadn’t made sense to me—Grandfather had talked about the times he had thought he was going to die as a boy. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but I did remember wondering what he had done before the war. Could that be the time when the mysterious events had happened?

  I picked up the letter and scanned it. There: an address I hadn’t thought about in more than seven decades. That would put the importance of the address in the late 1930s, before the Second World War broke out in 1939. My grandfather’s mystery had something to do with Barcelona in the years before the Second World War.

  I felt ridiculously happy. I was going to Europe this summer, and I had already made progress on my task. What other clues could I decipher?

  I moved over to my desk and pulled out a sheet of paper from the printer. Systematically I went through the items from the envelope, jotting down what I thought might be clues. I put a question mark beside the things I was doubtful about. I put a line through the clues I thought I had already understood.

  The letter

  Rosa Luxemburg?

  DVD

  More than seven decades ago

  The poetry fragments

  “They clung like birds”

  “The stars are dead”

  The address

  Maria Dolores Calderon Garcia

  Carrer de la Portaferrissa, 71

  08002 Barcelona

  España

  The key

  What does it open?

  The photograph

  Identity of the people?

  Location and date of the photograph?

  Meaning of the writing on the wall?

  I sat back and scanned my list. Even assuming I hadn’t missed anything important, it didn’t mean much. Still, I had nowhere else to go. I took a second sheet of paper and wrote down what I had worked out so far.