Epilogue #2
While I wait, I sip my coffee and will myself to eat the sweet pastry and its almond filling slowly. I take tiny bites to make it last longer, savoring each mouthful. I watch my own hands tremble at the thought of what is to come.
I open my handbag and there, tucked between my purse and the folded, off-white square of Walter’s handkerchief, which, after all these years I still carry with me as though it is a lucky charm, is the envelope containing the response to that first letter I sent to England over a year ago.
I needn’t take it out. I’ve memorized its contents.
I leave the letter where it is and instead find my lipstick and mirror.
I reapply the pink sheen to my lips, snap the mirror shut, and place both back in the bag.
The café door swings open and the room fills with newcomers. An elderly woman with gray hair tightly wound into a bun on the top of her head comes in first. She is slight, with bright brown eyes and a long, narrow face, and instantly I know it’s her. Anna.
Tucked beneath her arm is a book, the colors of its textured cover in faded, geometric patterns. It’s as much as I can do not to cry out at the sight of it. I swallow down the lump in my throat.
Behind her is a slightly built, middle-aged man. His face is open and pleasant, and his light brown hair is flecked with gray at the temples and cut short. He glances around and I catch the light blue eyes and high cheekbones. My heart skips.
My son.
I might have passed him on the street and not known he was mine.
All those missed years. My throat tightens and my eyes well up.
Will I ever know him now? Properly know him?
Will he ever call me Mutti and come to me when he has a problem?
Unlikely. A lifetime of memories have been stolen from me, but he is alive, and he looks well and happy.
That is all a mother could ultimately want for her child.
He meets my eyes and we gaze at each other.
I can’t read his expression, and no doubt he cannot read mine, either.
We are strangers, my Stanley and me. Everyone here, the café, the clink of china cup against saucer, the smell of freshly ground coffee, the background chatter—it all fades away.
It is just us. I have dreamed of the moment I would be reunited with my son for fifty-six years.
That it is happening, right here, now, is too vast to take in.
I’m numb, almost, with the shock of it. We are really here, in the same country, standing in the same room.
This man, searching my eyes, just a few short feet away.
What can he think of me, a daughter of the Reich, who abandoned him as a baby.
I’m shaking with fear and emotion. But then he dips his chin into a nod and smiles, warm and unjudging, and I feel a rush of gratitude.
We will be okay, Stanley and me. It may take some time, but we will be okay.
He stands to one side to enable a boy of around fifteen to come through the door. Long-legged and already taller than his father, awkward in his own body and hiding behind a curtain of dark hair.
My grandson?
Now a girl, presumably the boy’s older sister.
She glances around the café and her enormous blue eyes meet my gaze.
My breath catches in my throat. The resemblance is extraordinary.
She wears a big floppy sweater over ripped jeans and her long, dark curls bounce over her shoulders.
It is as though I am looking at my seventeen-year-old self.
Strange to think that at her age, I had already given birth to Stanley.
I wish there was one more figure to come through that door. But there are no more. I think of the letter, written in an unfamiliar hand in my handbag, the contents of which are imprinted in my mind.
My dear Hetty,
I am writing this hasty response to catch the next post, so you do not have to wait a moment longer for a reply to your wonderful letter.
I shall send you another, longer and more detailed, in the next day or so.
I send this with mixed emotions—firstly of joy to find you are indeed alive.
Walter never gave up hope of trying to find you, after the war.
He spent years making fruitless inquiries, and only found dead ends.
But then communication with East Germany became almost impossible for an outsider.
We feared you had not survived the war. To find out you are alive and well is indescribably wonderful.
And so now for the bad news. I am so sorry to have to tell you; Walter passed away three years ago, very suddenly, of a heart attack.
Walter, as well you know, was the best of men.
During the war, he played his part in fighting the Nazis.
Suffice to say here that he was extremely brave.
He ran a successful hat business until his dying day.
He diversified away from furs as the world rather turned away from such material, into the couture world of ladies’ hats!
He was always charming and the ladies, of course, loved him.
But he was a good husband and we—Stanley, the cousins, and our own children (we have three)—remain devastated to have lost a wonderful husband, father, and uncle, and I hate to have to tell you such sad news by letter.
But, Stanley, your remarkable son, is alive and well.
He is a successful lawyer, married, and has two children of his own—teenagers now, one boy, one girl.
I have been lucky to have been part of his life—he is a joy.
It is inconceivable that you should not visit.
We will make arrangements. Stanley has done well in life and we shall pay for your trip over.
You are welcome to stay for as long as you like. I will write again soon.
Yours,
Anna
Anna approaches my table and I stand. For a moment we stare at each other, blue eyes searching brown. There is no hint of hatred, only sadness. Understanding, perhaps. But there is something else, too. A glimmer I can read because it is this which has kept me going through the darkest of times.
Hope.
And Anna, the woman I have never met until now, who has haunted my dreams for half a lifetime, comes forward and enfolds me in the warmest of embraces.