Chapter 18 Return Home
RETURN HOME
We were eating lunch in the hotel’s more casual restaurant when Alix’s phone rang. She looked at the screen, then at me, and said, “It’s Dr. Bauer.”
“Take it,” I said. My heart had started beating too hard again; in fact, I felt a little faint.
Everybody else stopped eating and stared at Alix, except for Ben, who kept eating and stared at Alix.
He was having Currywurst and Pommes Frites again, and this time, I hadn’t had to tell him to use his fork to eat the French fries, or that the excellent and wonderfully spicy German mustard was the preferred condiment, and, no, the kitchen would not have ketchup. Ben was learning.
“Yes,” Alix said, a few seconds after her “Hello?” After a bit, we got, “Yes, we will. Thank you. We’ll see you soon.”
Ashleigh had pulled out her phone during the thirty-second conversation and was recording again. “What happened?” she and Ben asked together.
“They aren’t promising anything,” Alix said, “but they want you to take them around the palace, Oma, and go through what happened after the second bombing raid. Four o’clock, which I said ‘OK’ to, because that gives you a chance to have a rest before all that extra walking. Or we could get a wheelchair for you.”
“I’ll view it as my daily constitutional,” I said, “and remind myself that it’s strengthening my bones and giving me an appetite for dinner.”
“And wear your comfortable shoes that you don’t like,” Ben chimed in.
“Alas, yes,” I said. “I will indeed have to wear the hideous shoes.”
“But they say,” Alix went on, “that even if we find the tiara, we’ll still need to prove provenance before they’ll hand it over, and we’ll have to work with an expert for that, the same as the woman told us on the phone.
The hemophilia has to help, though. Hard to fake that kind of genetic luck.
The DNA testing seems like the simplest way, but … ”
“But,” I said, “it will take some convincing to get the government to agree to something so intrusive. Possibly even a legal case.”
“But you don’t have time for a legal case,” Ben said. “That could take years, and you’re really old.”
Alix said, “Oh, smooth.”
I had to laugh. “Well, yes. I could be dead by the time they decide, you’re right. If I am, though, or merely too gaga to care, Alix’s mother would be the heir. She could provide her own DNA, so we’d be in exactly the same spot.”
“Other than way poorer.” That was Ashleigh. “My parents are lawyers. That’s why I’m supposed to be in law school right now. Too bad history’s so much more interesting, because they have bucks.”
“German legal fees are more predictable than those in the U.S., from what I understand,” I said, “and generally lower. They’re regulated, you see.”
“What a surprise,” Alix muttered.
“Also,” I said, ignoring her—in some instances, after all, I do think German ways are superior—“the loser pays the winner’s costs and fees. Which isn’t ideal if we lose, but I don’t intend to lose. If that should somehow happen, though, I can afford it, or my estate can.”
“So Alix either gets a great inheritance,” Ashleigh said, “or, like, nothing.”
“Alix,” Alix said somewhat waspishly, “doesn’t need an inheritance.”
“Well, yeah,” Ben said, “since your parents live in a mansion in San Francisco, and, you know, there’s Sebastian.”
“Do you make a ton of money?” Ashleigh asked Sebastian with great interest. “You’re in the NFL, right?
Oh, man, I need to do a segment on you, too, and how you’re paying for this whole search extravaganza.
With some video of you playing football, whatever you do football-wise.
You must do something pretty good to afford all this.
Usually I’m wondering how I can get a few bites out of some story, and this time, there are so many bites.
This is, like, documentary territory.” Her eyes got a faraway look. “Totally.”
Ben said, “He’s a kicker—field goals and kickoffs, not a punter—and everything’s online, so you can just look it up.
I can save you the trouble, though. He kicked at eighty-seven percent last season and a hundred percent in the postseason, and his new contract is for $21. 1 million over the next three years.”
Sebastian looked at Ben. That was all, he just looked, but Ben said, “What? It’s all right there for anybody to see. Five-second Google search, dude.”
I’d never seen Alix cross with Ben. Her tone had definitely sharpened, though, when she said, “No. Not because of my parents’ money or Sebastian’s money. Because I can support myself. And why would you tell her how much Sebastian makes when you know how much he hates that?”
“But it’s for the channel!” Ben said. “It’ll help us get clicks! You need to hashtag Sebastian,” he told Ashleigh. “We’ll go viral in a whole different way then, because he’s hot right now.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say,” Ashleigh said.
Ben sighed. “I didn’t mean that. How would I even know, except for gross comments from girls online? Also at my school, which is disgusting. He’s twice as old as they are. Why are girls so weird? I meant he won the Super Bowl!”
“I didn’t win the Super Bowl,” Sebastian said.
“The team won the Super Bowl.” His tone was mild but firm, the same way Joe’s had often been, and I got a pang of pure loneliness at the realization.
“So,” he went on, in his usual Paterfamilias fashion, “we have a few hours. Let me sign for the check, Marguerite, and then I’ll be ready whenever you want an escort to your room. ”
Our next visit to the palace didn’t go exactly as I’d envisioned.
The four board members plus Dr. Bauer were waiting for us by the information desk this time. We were definitely moving up in the world, importance-wise, or maybe they were just curious. They were, after all, interested in antiquities, and both the parure and I fell into that category.
Dr. Eltschig said, “I’d like to approach this in chronological order, if you don’t mind, starting with the first raid of the evening. Perhaps you’ll show us the way to the cellar where your household sheltered.”
I said, “In other words, you wish to see whether I know the way to the cellar.”
“It seems only prudent,” Dr. Eltschig said.
“Follow me, then,” I said.
I took them down corridors and through doors that Dr. Bauer unlocked.
I stopped dead, though, when I reached the morning room and the breakfast parlor beside it.
They had no furnishings now, and the beautiful old chandeliers and wall sconces were gone, but the view out the huge windows was the same: east to the Semperoper, which was once again whole, as if a film had been run backward.
“Are you lost?” Herr Eltschig asked politely. He didn’t say, “Ah-ha!”, but he probably thought it.
“No,” I said. “These were the two rooms we used during the day, there at the end of the war, when the fuel shortage made heating difficult. The plaster ornamentation on the ceiling is gone. It wasn’t nearly as elaborate as the ceilings of the state apartments, just the usual rosettes and medallions, with certain features picked out in gold, but I loved it better.
It was so pretty and delicate, meant for a lady’s use.
The marble of the fireplace surround is cracked, also. ”
“Yes,” Dr. Eltschig said. “Which way now?”
I walked out of the room at the other end and into a passage, where I pulled open a well-camouflaged door built into the wall.
“Stairs to the kitchen. Convenient, as you see, to the breakfast parlor as well as the dining rooms, both the smaller family dining room we used to use and the grand one in the state apartments. I assume it’s safe down there? ”
“Yes,” Dr. Eltschig said. “Restoration started from the bottom up. The interior of the top floors has barely been touched, other than replacing windows and ceilings and removing debris. Here; the light switch has been modernized.” He flipped it on, and the simple stairs with their red runner were before me.
I nodded and took a firm hold on the banister. I was getting that lightheaded feeling again.
Sebastian said, “Wait.” Urgently. I paused, and he said, “Let me go down first. That way, if you trip, you’ll fall on me.”
“Very wise,” I said. Why should I be anxious now, just descending to the kitchen? What was there to fear here?
Fourteen steps. I counted them in my head as I’d been doing since I was three, and at the bottom, it was there.
The enormous rectangular kitchen table, built for a staff of two dozen, and against one wall, still resplendent in its shining glory, the cream-colored Aga range.
There were even some chairs, and they looked like the same ones.
“The table survived,” I said. “It was covered with rubble the last time I saw it.”
“We estimate,” Dr. Bauer said, “that it and the chairs date back to the palace’s origins. Oak becomes stronger as it dries. There are some chips and gouges in the wood, but that’s all. Half of the chairs were destroyed, though.”
I said, “And the Aga, too. Does it still work?”
“It isn’t hooked up to a gas source,” Dr. Bauer said, “and would need to be thoroughly checked out and restored, of course, if we decided to add a ‘downstairs’ element to the museum.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” I said. “Upstairs, Downstairs. I always find that the most interesting. The kitchens, and the attics. A whole separate life that people who see only the grand rooms don’t even envisage.”
“Huh?” Ben asked.
“It was a television series,” I told him, “featuring a noble family who lived upstairs and their domestic staff, who were the ‘downstairs’ element. Kitchens in great houses were always in a half-basement, as is this one. It was cooler in summer, for one thing, and an Aga stays on all the time, which means it warms the room. Tradesmen could easily come in from the area—the gated-off bit above, a few steps down from street level—to deliver their wares discreetly.”
I spoke absently, for I’d wandered over to the stove.
“Our cook had heard of the Aga, and asked Mother to buy it. It was a monstrously heavy thing to ship, like one of Augustus II’s extravagances, and I can’t imagine how they got it inside, but she was a very good cook, and Mother always said a good cook was worth her weight in gold.
Or, in this case, cast iron. Three hobs, as you see, for pots, as well as the boiling plate, here, that could hold the largest copper, and the simmering plate for cooking slowly.
And below, the five ovens for various sorts of roasting, simmering, baking, and warming.
I baked the household bread myself at the end, when one couldn’t buy good bread at the bakeries anymore, because there wasn’t enough flour and they had to use fillers instead.
Frau Heffinger, the cook, said that she was glad to leave it to me.
She was tall, you see, and kneading dough on the table was hard on her back. ”
I turned the handle of the baking oven and peered inside, and despite everything, got a pang for those long-gone days.
“We were fortunate to still have flour. Smuggled in by my father’s valet’s brother, who lived on a farm in the country, along with milk, meat, butter, eggs, root vegetables …
I’m afraid we were rather profligate, though I didn’t understand that at the time.
” I closed the oven door and turned away with reluctance.
It was time for the part of the tour I least wanted to relive, but it had been my choice to come.
“The scullery is back there.” I gestured.
“If I were actually Lotte, I wouldn’t want to see that again.
Two enormous sinks, and how much washing-up she did in them, all day long!
Her hands were always red and chapped. But you don’t care about that.
Here, we’ll go the other way, down this passage. This is the way to the cellars.”
Again, a new switch for the light instead of the old-fashioned round thing with its button. Again, Sebastian walking ahead of me down the stone steps. And again, my heart taking up a rhythm best suited for signaling some urgent message.
Through the door, and there it was. Stone floor, brick walls.
I walked across the expanse of stone and opened a door.
“The coal-store was here,” I said. “That may have contributed to the death of those sheltered here, I learned later. The fumes, you see, would have been toxic, especially if the ceiling had been penetrated and the coal were smoldering at all. The air didn’t seem bad when I got here, but—"
“The ceiling was not, in fact, penetrated,” Dr. Eltschig said. “And there was no sign of fire.”
“Ah,” I said. “It was merely the lack of oxygen, then, that killed them.”