Chapter 9
THE DEMENTIA PATIENT ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN
I’m afraid I became disgusted after that last diary entry—I’d remembered myself as being much more realistic and nobly concerned for the fate of my fellows—and put the exercise books and letters aside.
After that, I fell asleep once again over A Tale of Two Cities.
Poor Mr. Dickens, with so unsatisfactory an audience for his brilliant efforts!
At nine the next morning, Ashleigh appeared, punctual to the minute, her squirrel-face alight with expectation.
She dropped her rucksack on a chair, took a look around the dining-room of my suite, where we were gathered, and said, “So this is how the other half lives. Breakfast, too. Excellent.” Then she sat herself down, set up her phone before her, pushed the red button to record, and stated the date, time, and participants with utmost seriousness—well, as serious as a squirrel ever gets—like a police detective on a television program.
She bounced a little in her seat and said, “Oh. Notebook,” like no possible police detective, pulled it out of her rather grubby rucksack together with a well-chewed pen made of blue plastic, and said expectantly, “So. Who’s making the call? ”
“I am,” Alix said, “but letting Oma do the talking. I’ll put the phone on speaker so we all get it.”
“You don’t mind if I record, do you?” Ashleigh asked. “This is very exciting.”
The woman answered our call politely enough.
I’d thought about what to say, and spoke in English for the benefit of the others, beginning with, “Good morning. My name is Marguerite von Sachsen Stark”—you see how the name difficulty is cropping up again, because as I’ve noted, that is not the name on my passport—“and I’m here in Dresden for the first time since the bombing in 1945, for the purpose of recovering a lost item that had to be left behind when I evacuated.
I believe I may know where the item is, but I’ll need access to the hiding place, and, of course, permission to take my property away with me if it’s still there.
If it isn’t there, I have another idea where it may possibly be, but again, I would need help to retrieve it. ”
The woman said, “I see. Can you prove that the item belongs to you?”
“I think so,” I said. “I hope so.”
“Do you have paperwork?” the woman asked. “Documents showing that your family purchased the item?”
“No,” I said. “I evacuated, as I said, with very little time, and my home sustained major damage. But I have the … the lineage, as it was an item passed down from my mother and her mother before her, and so on.”
“And you have,” the woman said, “your birth certificate, passport from the time, et cetera?”
“Well, not everything,” I said. “I left in rather a hurry, as I mentioned, and there were certain elements of … of concealment. Of my identity.”
“You’re aware,” the woman said, “that this office is for cultural artifacts that were appropriated by the Soviets or the government of the DDR? If your property was taken by the German authorities, that’s a different office.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m aware. You see, it may have been taken by the Soviets.
The other valuable items my family owned were taken by the Soviets and then returned, but as I said, this one was hidden.
” I was feeling a bit hot around the neck and chest now.
“Or it may have been stolen. Recently. Recently stolen. That’s another possibility, and I need permission to ask those questions and have them answered. ”
The woman paused for so long that I said, “Hello?”
“Yes,” she said. “So the item may be, (A), still hidden, and I presume you don’t have access to its hiding place, but you do know where it is.
Or, (B), it was taken by the Soviets and possibly returned.
Or again, (C), it was taken by the Soviets, returned, and then stolen.
What reason do you have to believe it may have been stolen?
” Her tone had become a bit too patient.
“Let me explain,” I said, trying to sound like a confident, businesslike woman addressing a knotty problem that she fully expected to solve, and not a dementia patient.
How I wished one’s voice didn’t alter with age.
It’s much easier to sound confident and businesslike, not to mention serious and credible, when one doesn’t also sound ancient.
“There was recently a large burglary of other objects in the building, and many of those objects are still missing. My item may be among them.”
“Was this burglary reported to the police?’ Her tone was now more skeptical than ever.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” That was Alix, of course. “Look. This is Alix Glucksburg-Thompkins. I’m Mrs. Stark’s granddaughter. Her father was the King of Saxony, uh …” She made a “come to me” gesture, a sort of circling motion with her hand, and I said, “Pardon?”
She said, “His name, Oma. I don’t remember his name.”
“Anton August Georg von Sachsen,” I said, “although, of course, he was no longer the King in any governmental sense. The missing item, however, belonged to my mother, Alberta Victoria Alexandrina von Sachsen, who was born Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. The missing item is an heirloom of her house.”
“And this item is where, you believe?” The woman’s voice was, if anything, flatter than ever. She was clearly leaning toward “dementia patient.”
“In the Residenzschloss in Dresden,” I said.
“Where I lived with my parents until the bombing. Even if it was found originally, it may still have been taken in the recent jewel theft. It was an emerald and diamond tiara, you see, and rather fine. The thieves took only the most valuable and portable items, the ones with the highest concentration of precious stones, and the tiara would have been among them. Or a Russian soldier may have found it long ago and looted it. Entirely possible as well. There isn’t as much possibility it will have been looted by a German civilian prior to the Russians’ arrival, as the police were shooting looters and everyone knew it, but that could have happened, given the temptation, and after the Russians came, who knows? ”
“And you have proof,” the woman said, “of your identity. As a member of the royal family.”
“Of course,” I said. “Well, not of my full name, because of the circumstances, except for—”
“Without proof of your identity,” the woman said, “it will be very difficult to establish provenance. My understanding was that all occupants of the Residenzschloss died in the bombing.” She didn’t say, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop pretending to be Anastasia, heir to the throne of the Romanovs.
We’ve all seen how that film ends,” but she definitely thought it.
“I can, however,” she added, “send you a list of experts you may wish to consult if you decide to pursue this matter.”
“Of course she wants to pursue this matter!” That was Alix again. “The tiara is hers! It’s not a charm bracelet. It’s a diamond and emerald tiara, and a frigging heirloom!”
“If it belonged to the House of Saxony,” the woman said frostily, “presumably it would be in the museum there, the Grünes Gewolbe, located in the Residenzschloss. And it would belong there.”
“Thank you,” I said, knowing my tone had turned equally frosty. “I know the name and location of my family’s museum. The tiara is not currently on display there.”
“That wouldn’t be a case,” the woman said, “of the Gestapo or the USSR seizing a family’s personal property from a private home, so you may face difficulties.”
“But—” Alix began.
“Thank you,” I said. “Please do send us that list of experts, and if you can explain the process one goes through to have property returned, that will be most helpful.”
“I can send the paperwork you need,” the woman said.
Of course she could. This was Germany, after all.
There was always paperwork, and it would always be in Ordnung.
One could say much about the Germans, but one could never deny that they—we—were organized.
I’d often wished for a bit more of that quality in my adopted country after I’d become a realtor.
By the time Alix pushed the button to hang up, she and Ben were quivering with indignation, Ashleigh was quivering with interest, and Sebastian was looking thoughtful. Alix said, “I can’t decide if she thought you were a lunatic or a thief. What the heck?”
“I believe,” I said, “that Alzheimer’s is probably being discussed in her office at this moment.
Never mind. If you’ll print out that list of experts she sent us—there must be a way to print in a hotel like this—we can talk to them.
Print out the other paperwork as well. It will be good to be able to refer to the process. ”
“How can you be so calm?” Alix demanded.
“We talked about Step One,” I said. “We’ve taken Step One. Now we go on to Step Two.”
“Wait,” Ben said. “I don’t get it.”
“None of us gets it,” Alix said. “We’ll know more once we find out what kind of documentation they want.”
“No,” Ben said. “I mean, this isn’t Step One at all, is it?”
“What?” Alix said. “Of course it’s Step One. We talked about it. Step One.”
“We did talk about it,” Ashleigh said. “Step One: talk to Berlin. Step Two: talk to an expert about proving provenance.”
I asked, “What are you thinking, Ben?” He was surely no less perceptive than I’d been at his age. Based on what I’d read last night, he was probably more so. He’d already faced great difficulties, after all, whereas I’d still been oblivious to them.
“Well, what matters most is whether the tiara is here, right?” Ben asked.
“If it’s not here, there’s kinda no point.
You could fill out forms and talk to some expert, I guess, but if it’s not here, that means it got stolen by somebody, either back in nineteen-forty-whatever or during that burglary, and that’s a whole different deal. I mean, how would you even find it?”
“Gee,” Ashleigh said, “you’re quite the optimist.”
“No,” Ben said, flushing but going stubbornly on.
“See, if it is here, and if we can find that out, we can sort of … focus. We figure out what you have to give them to prove it’s yours, they either say yes or no, and you’re done.
You’re not searching all over then, you already know.
So shouldn’t we start there? With finding out? ”