Chapter 14 Eating the Bugs and Hearing the News
EATING THE BUGS AND HEARING THE NEWS
Silence for a moment, then Ben said, “Whoa.”
“This stuff is going to be dynamite,” Ashleigh said.
“Oma,” Alix said, “why didn’t I know all this?”
“There was no reason to tell you,” I said. “Contrary to what Americans believe, one is not actually required to share all the details of one’s past.”
Sebastian said, “True, but we appreciate you sharing that one.” Sebastian’s face tended to look serious in repose, and it was more serious than usual now.
“I’d like to hear the rest of it—what happened to all of them.
Your family and the servants, from what I’ve heard, probably didn’t come out of it so well. What about Dr. Becker and his family?”
“Sebastian’s great-grandparents were French Jews,” Alix said.
“I’m sorry,” I answered, my tongue practically tripping over the words. The fatigue of old age is most tiresome. My mind would still like to do so many things, but my body won’t oblige. “Did they survive?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “My grandfather was sent to Aryan friends in the free zone in the south of France and passed off as an orphaned relative. My great-grandparents were getting ready for a run to Switzerland, but my great-grandfather was a professor at the Sorbonne who’d been saying critical things about the Nazi regime for years at that point, and …
” He shrugged. “They didn’t make it. Put on a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. ”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, wishing I had better words.
“You mean they were—” Ben said.
“Oh,” Sebastian said, “your mom didn’t tell you, I guess. They didn’t actually make it to the camp. They died in a locked boxcar on the way. Suffocation, dehydration … bad way to go.”
“How do you know?” Ben asked.
“My father told me,” Sebastian said. “When he was sick. I never thought of telling your mom. I figured she already knew, or I didn’t want to think about it. Or both. He said he learned it from his father. I don’t know how he knew, though, since he was a kid at the time.”
“I imagine,” I said, “that somebody looked it up. The Nazis kept excellent records. Haven’t you wondered how such a small country managed to hold half the world in battle for more than five years? They were efficient. They were organized. Germans are good at that.”
“Well, I know I’m feeling extremely cheerful right now,” Alix said.
“And your grandmother’s probably feeling like she’s talked enough for one night,” Sebastian said. “Time to go, I think.”
“Now?” Ashleigh said. “When we don’t even know what happened next?”
“The story will keep,” I said. “It’s kept this long, after all.”
Ashleigh sighed. “OK, but will you promise to let me hear when you tell the rest?”
“Maybe you should hear it for us,” Ben said. “Because that’s some seriously depressing stuff.”
“Works for me,” Ashleigh said. “I’ll produce it and you can watch it. Or not.”
“I’ll tell the rest,” I said, “tomorrow, to whomever wants to hear. That’s the point of this journey, after all.”
“I thought the point was to find the tiara,” Ben said.
“I’ve come to believe,” I said, “that the reasons behind one’s actions can be mysterious even to oneself. Shall we go?”
I didn’t, in fact, “tell the rest tomorrow.” All the activity had caught up with me, it seemed, and when Alix phoned me at eight o’clock the next morning, I was forced to say, “I believe I may have overdone a bit. I find I need a quiet day.”
“This was way too much,” Alix instantly said. “Do you want me to stay with you? Or do you need a doctor?”
“No,” I said, knowing my tone was waspish, “I don’t. I’m as healthy as a ninety-four-year-old hemophilia carrier can possibly be. I want you to go enjoy yourself with your family, and come back to see me tonight.”
“Well,” Alix said dubiously, “I suppose that is why we allocated two weeks for this trip.”
“Exactly,” I said. “For the wait time. Well, this is our wait time.”
I didn’t even read more of Joe’s letters and my diary, but contented myself with A Tale of Two Cities.
The French Revolution may have been another chamber of horrors, but at least it wasn’t my chamber of horrors.
Also, the book featured a love story and acts of unselfish sacrifice, which are far more pleasant to contemplate than bombings and death camps.
Not everybody, though, was waiting patiently for the rest of the story.
I discovered that at dinner, because our party included only Alix, Sebastian, and Ben, Ashleigh having told Alix that she was busy working.
There was interesting history, I supposed, and thoroughly uncomfortable history, and I doubted that a “content creator’s” audience had a taste for much of the latter in their snack-sized video consumption.
Ashleigh would have realized that now, and that was fine. I wasn’t here for publicity.
Tonight, I was eating soup with bread and a bit of cheese—a much more reasonable meal for a person of my age than the extravaganza of yesterday.
Perhaps I’d become so fatigued because I’d given my stomach too much work to do.
A thoroughly depressing thought, is it not, that one must allocate energy for digestion?
It was asparagus soup, though, and Milbenk?se eaten with fresh rye bread and butter, so I was perfectly happy.
Ben was beside me, happily consuming Rinderrouladen and Kartoffelklosse—rolled beef stuffed with bacon, onion, and pickles and served with red wine gravy, together with potato dumplings and more braised red cabbage.
How that boy could eat! Between bites, he was telling me about their day trip to Berlin and “like, way more Nazi experiences than I wanted.” Apparently his meal wasn’t quite caloric enough, because he asked, “Can I taste some of your cheese?”
“Of course,” I said, and when he would have reached for it, “but let me prepare it for you.” I maneuvered a small slice of cheese onto a section of rye bread with knife and fork and used the utensils to place the tidbit on his plate.
“You do things really differently,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said.
He picked up the bread and cheese in his hand, sniffed at it, looked dubious, and took a bite.
A few seconds went by before he finally pronounced, “I kind of like it. It’s strong, but sort of nutty.
I’m used to, like, cheddar and jack and mozzarella and things like that. This tastes way more complicated.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s due to the cheese mites.”
He paused with the second bite halfway to his mouth and said, “What?” Looking as horrified as if I’d offered him dolphin steak, or perhaps fried spiders.
“Cheese mites,” I said. “It’s a traditional Saxon delicacy. One takes Quark—you remember Quark?”
“I should,” Ben said, “since you keep telling me about it. Yoghurt, but better. Well, better because you can make cheesecake out of it, but that’s about all it’s got going for it.”
“Ben,” Sebastian said warningly.
I waved a hand. “One rolls the Quark into balls, seasons them, places them in a wooden box, and covers them with a layer of live cheese mites, which one feeds on rye flour so they don’t consume the cheese. They’re left for three months to a year, and voilà— Milbenk?se.”
Ben looked at once revolted and fascinated. “If the mites eat the flour, what’s the point?”
“Their excretions,” I explained, “ripen the cheese and deepen its flavor.”
Ben set the bread and cheese back on his plate. Carefully, as if they might explode. “That’s about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, “and I’m a fifteen-year-old guy.”
“Yeah, no thank you,” Alix said. “I don’t really want to eat cheese that mites have pooped in, even if they’re gone.”
“Oh, they aren’t gone,” I said. “The rind still contains the mites.”
“But you’re …” Ben swallowed. “Eating the rind.”
“Yes,” I said. “To enjoy the flavor. Here’s a fact you may find interesting. Only one firm is allowed to make Milbenk?se, and it requires a special exemption from the food safety office, as the ordinances don’t explicitly permit live cheese mites or their digestive juices as additives.”
“All right,” Alix said. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that.”
“I wish I could pretend I didn’t hear it,” Ben said. “I have mites in my stomach now.”
Alix’s phone chimed—how do young people ever concentrate, with those pings and rings and vibrations interrupting them all day and night? She looked at it and said, “Ashleigh’s here. Finally. But stuck at the front desk, because she’s wearing a T-shirt. Seriously?”
“Occasionally,” I said, “people prefer to dine with companions unencumbered by baseball caps, flip-flops, cargo shorts, and stained T-shirts. Odd, but there you are.”
Alix said, “Ah, there’s nothing like the comfort of a familiar refrain. Hang on. I’m going to get my good sweater for her. Good thing I have it, or we’d be raiding Oma’s wardrobe. Oh—if you’re tired of paying for her, Sebastian, I’ll do it. We’re feeding Ashleigh a fair amount, I realize.”
Sebastian said, “I think I’m good for a few more meals. Go on before your food gets too cold.”
Barely five minutes later, Ashleigh was sitting down with us. Or maybe “sitting” is the wrong word, as she was all but hopping up and down in her seat.
“Guys,” she said. “Guys. You’ll never believe it.”
“Should I leave while you tell?” I asked.
“What?” She blinked rapidly at me.
“As you’re telling the guys,” I said.
“Oh, ha-ha,” she said. “You guys—we’ve gone viral!”
“What?” Ben asked. “Sick.”
I said, “Somebody’s ill?”
“No, Oma,” Alix said. “You know what ‘viral’ means. It means something’s blown up online.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, I’ve heard of that. I was misled by the ‘sick’ comment.”
“Sick means great,” Ben informed me kindly. “Like, ‘Wow! How cool!’ Sick. Get it?”
“Yes,” I said, “although I believe I’ll refrain from adding that to my vocabulary. My old-lady friends would be very confused. What’s blown up, exactly?” I asked Ashleigh.
“You,” she said. “I’ve only posted the first few bites—that’s what I call them, ‘bites,’ like ‘bite-sized’—just the first stuff about the missing tiara and your family’s royal history and all, and a teaser about the bombing, and …
” She threw up her hands, puffed out her cheeks, and made a “bomb” noise, then stopped and said, “Whoops. Rethinking that reference. But the first video’s had—” She clicked on her phone and did some more seat-jumping.
“Over sixty thousand views. Today. And it’s still going up like crazy.
It’s the jewelry, is what it is, and the mystery.
I’m going to go back after this and edit some more—oh, by the way, I did record you in the palace yesterday, Mrs. Stark.
I know the lady said not to, but why does she get to say?
You were the one talking! I put the audio against pictures of the jewelry and …
whatever you call all that stuff in the vaults.
Bling. Stuff. Whatever. And video of the palace, too. ”
“I thought that wasn’t allowed, “Sebastian said mildly. “For commercial use.”
“So let them come after me,” Ashleigh said.
“By the time they do, I’ll be on to something else, and anyway, I’ve hardly made any money yet, so how is it commercial?
I really need to work more on the bombing story from last night—there’s actually a lot of material online, pictures of the aftermath, you know?
—but I realized I hadn’t eaten since morning and I was really hungry, plus I wanted to tell you guys—uh, you people—so … ”
“Have you slept?” I asked. Her hair was sticking up in various places, although nowadays, who knows? That could be a style. She was pale, though, and looking rather feverish.
“Not really,” she said. “I’ll crash after I do a couple more bites. Each one is a lot of work, but you can’t stop once you get attention. You don’t know how precious attention is. It’s, like, the most important currency now, and I’ve finally got it!”
Ben said, “Maybe I could help. I’m pretty good at computer stuff.”
“Seriously?” She blinked at him.
“Sure,” Ben said. “What else do I have to do besides eat German food with bugs in it and look at diamonds and hear about Nazis?”
“Awesome,” Ashleigh said, and did that palm-slapping thing with him that people do. Popularized by athletes, apparently. The United States might not have royalty, but athletes and film stars certainly fill that niche.
Sebastian, while all this was happening, had raised a hand for the waiter.
Now, said waiter came over and handed Ashleigh a menu with as much formality as if she’d been a princess herself.
She said, “Thanks. I’m starved. I need something that doesn’t take lots of time to cook, like a sandwich or something. ”
“Or maybe Bouillabaisse,” Sebastian said, “if you like seafood.”
“Is that good?” Ashleigh asked.
“Well, if you’re French,” Sebastian said. “Fish, shellfish … a mix of things in a stew, whatever’s freshest. In a place like this, it’ll be a banger.”
“Shellfish,” Ben said. “Prawns, I bet. Why is it always prawns? Bugs again. Gross.”
“Great,” Ashleigh said, ignoring him. “Bwee-ya—whatever—works for me.” Upon which Sebastian raised a hand again and ordered it.
My conscience should be twinging at all this extravagance, but I was unable to muster even a flutter. For a man who’d traveled through life not only single but alone, Sebastian seemed to me to enjoy being the Paterfamilias. I recognized the signs. I’m German, as you know.
Ashleigh said, “Soup, wine, hopefully dessert—are we having dessert? I’d feel guilty about spending your money, except that I’m your official videographer—and then Ben and I will get to work.
Man, this is so great. My dad isn’t going to be able to say anything now about how I’m wasting my potential, because here I am realizing it.
Mrs. Stark—Princess Marguerite, I should say—I am going to make you famous. You just wait and see.”
“I’ve been famous,” I said, “more or less. It’s overrated.”
“You can say that again,” Sebastian said. Athletes, as I’ve mentioned.
“We’ll tell the story, though,” I said, “to people who may need a cautionary tale. That will work for me.”