5

All the village showed up for the wedding.

A circle of dirndled Bavarian girls danced gracefully around the maypole surrounded by a larger circle, a herd of clumping fellows in lederhosen, knee socks, and starched shirts. They hooted and grabbed the girls around their waists and twirled them about to the delight of the more demure guests, not yet drunk enough or carefree enough in their costumes to be dancing.

No one had asked the villagers directly, but as long as they wore their Trachten they felt they were entitled to come. It had always been that way when there was a festivity at Saint Hildegard’s Mill. Luckily Evangelika knew this and had a slew of the village women in to help with the preparations and the serving.

There were tables of rich and unusual foods. An entire pig, fruit oozing from every orifice, went round and round on the garden spit. Cosimo and Friedel the gardener had outdone themselves, having strewn flowers in garlands from tree to tree. Claire was kept busy shooting everything. The morning slipped away. All she had to do was turn and frame and she’d be looking through the lens at yet another sun-dappled Renoir.

The ceremony itself had been short and sweet. Now the real, more businesslike, business of celebration was underway.

Claire decided to fake advantage of the cool dark kitchen to reload. The sun was too high anyway. She stepped over the massive beams still used for steps and went in.

Temple Fortune sat in the place of honor, under Evangelika’s elbow, at the otherwise unpeopled table. They were changing scenes, he said. He’d slipped away. The sun was too high. “I was just thinking that,” she said, and they both smiled, remembering the last time they’d held each other’s eyes.

He was drinking a clear soup. “I have this bloody gastritis and I need something plain,” he said.

One thing Evangelika loved was an undernourished man.

“Will you join me?” he asked Claire.

“Oh no,” she said shyly.

“Please,” he said.

She lowered herself down across from him, keeping her spine straight. She must control herself near him.

Evangelika smacked an empty bowl before her, then eased in some ladlefuls of her magnificent broth. Temple leaned over the table with a spoon of grated cheese, which he sprinkled across the top. It melted in. He looked at her to ask if that was the right amount. But there was much more to that look.

The noise outside seemed far away. They ate their soup quietly. He wanted her to take a hunk of the crusty sunflower bread he’d torn off for her and dunk it in the fragrant soup.

Evangelika stood approvingly behind them, waiting, with her ladle on her hip.

Claire could not remember anything ever tasting better. He insisted she take a glass of beer. “Full of vitamins.” He smiled. “They don’t use preservatives here, you know, it’s food after all. And fresh.” Then, “I have a lovely kitchen at home,” he confided. “I enjoy cooking. It relaxes me.”

“Really,” Claire said. “I’m afraid I’ve fallen into the category of hurry up and get it on the table. I never meant to, but I’ve become that way.”

“That’s all right. As long as your art stays pure, as they say. I think it’s all right if you serve the occasional hamburger.”

“Oh you do, eh? I’d better not admit that my son lives on hamburgers and pizza.”

“Well. It must be nice at least to have a son.”

“I didn’t know you were so sulky, Temple.”

“Now you do.” They held their spoons in midair and regarded each other. “I’m sorry,” he said ducking his head “all of a sudden I don’t know if the story I’m working on is even the slightest bit interesting.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“Oh, you know.” He leaned back on two legs of his chair looking like an American cowboy with his jeans and his vest. “It started off this wonderfully symbolic story of a woman going through this metamorphosis—this experience—a second chance that goes awry. Ursula Braun wrote the story, you know. I saw it so clearly when I first read it. I loved it. It was so …” He held up the palms of his hands. “… so simple. Here’s a woman who has a second chance at love, at life, but fears she no longer can feel. Worries she has not the heart.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the writer.” Then, she thought, I do, on the other hand, know the feeling.

“What, really? She’s world-famous. The critics’ darling. But since you admitted you don’t know her, I’ll tell you something.” He lowered his voice. “I’d never heard of her either.”

They grinned at each other.

“I’m afraid I don’t keep up with all these literary geniuses. Puffin does. Great reader, Puff. He keeps me abreast. I’m afraid I’m too visual. Good for some things, bad for others.” He gazed at her wistfully.

“Puffin turned you on to the story, then?”

“Yaa. I’d be little more than a moron without Puffin. He’s too much. Went to all the best schools, did Puff. Knows it all.”

Claire’s eyes were drawn to the palms of his hands. She wanted to lean over and press her lips to their center.

“And now”—she heard his voice above her imagination—“now it all looks so complicated. So busy.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if my work is worthy of Ursula Braun’s story. You know, the writer took the title from the painting. Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. You know.”

“I didn’t. I knew the name of your film, but I didn’t know the source.”

“Oh, it’s lovely,” Temple said. “Full of angels and screeching supplicants. Sort of lewd.”

“Listen,” Claire said, “I’m sure once you get back to London and start editing—”

“Now,” Temple said worriedly, “I’m not even sure we were wise to shoot it here in Germany. We’ve lost so much of the spirit of it. The Italian atmosphere. The sharp lines of shadow and light. I was so happy at first. Even Puffin thought it would work.”

“It was originally meant for the South?”

“Well, yes, Florence.”

“Hmm. Well, all I can comment on is what I’ve seen you working on this past week. I mean, I shot a lot of your setups. I don’t usually like to use someone else’s perspectives, but they seemed clear. It seemed …” She searched her mind for the word that would soothe him, that would give him back the faith he’d lost in himself. She traced the worry lines across his forehead with her eyes, memorizing them. “Your angle … your work in general seemed to have integrity. A mystical integrity.”

“Now here’s a girl up on all the latest metaphysical jargon,” Temple scoffed, but the lines had disappeared. She’d done her job. He slurped his soup, happy again. “You know,” he said, “it’s funny. Here we are, bugs in a rug, wedding going on, middle of a murder investigation. Life’s still a funny old place, isn’t it?”

“If they could only decide it was murder. I mean, maybe it was suicide. I wish it were. They’re not sure, are they?”

“Ah. Why would a guy like Hans commit suicide?”

“You knew him, did you?”

“Not well at all. He struck me as content with his lot, though. You know, no-second-thoughts kind of chap. Can’t see him kicking it in. I think he fell.”

“Maybe,” Claire suggested, “he killed himself over Isolde. Getting married to Blacky.”

Evangelika smacked the dough she was kneading at the other end of the table. They’d forgotten she was even there. “Not likely,” she snorted, and they laughed.

“So what sort of films do you look at in America, Mrs. Benedetto?”

“Ah. You noticed I am married.”

“It was the first thing I noticed about you,” he said. “Well. The second.”

She smiled sadly. “Ah, Mr. Dougherty, ten years ago I went back to America, stayed upstairs in the bed in my mother’s house and watched ‘Kojak’ reruns late at night on a little black-and-white TV…. Now I’ve got a big color set and seventy-eight channels, and I still find myself up in bed late at night watching ‘Kojak’ reruns.”

He didn’t laugh. He sat there with his face in his hands, his thoughtful expression filling her with longing.

There was a rustling, hurried change out in the yard. The musicians began their Mozart.

Reluctantly, Temple took his leave. His eyes stayed on her until the door shut with a thud.

Claire decided to go up to the bell tower and get some shots from there. Every time she’d tried to get up there, some forensics person was either scraping stone, or Isolde’s twinkle lights were being hung. One thing or another. And to be honest to herself, she had to admit she was apprehensive. She didn’t mind going up now, in the daylight, though. It was almost a pleasure, a cleansing. She took the white-washed steps of the tower, laying to rest the awful time she’d come up in the daylight, when she’d seen Hans’s body. Never mind. This was a new time, the beginning of a new time for them all. She went up swiftly. There was nothing there. The guardrail was so low, Hans might well have slipped. She leaned over. Christ, it was a long way down.

She got up and felt the bell. She ran her fingers around the inside. There were no niches other than the rim. No little hiding spots she could find. Well, obviously. All those years. Had they been there, someone surely would have found them.

She couldn’t get a picture of Hans, couldn’t get a handle on his life, his personality. There was something missing. She couldn’t hate him. Couldn’t like him. And yet Isolde had liked him, cared about him enough to make love to him. There must have been something lovable about him.

She went down the stairs, wanting to see his room. There was no one around. Unable to resist, she poked her head into Cosimo’s room. It was a small room, chaotic and churned up with plants and snippings of plants in glasses on the sills. There were birdcages, open. No doubt Cosimo would let out anything caged. There were cookies, Butterkekse and Bahlsen Cookies in wrappers all over the room, just in case of famine, no doubt. It was very much like her own son’s room. Busy little molecules of dust churning happily about in tall wedges of sunlight. An upright piano was half buried in handwritten sheet music. Comic books and classics were shoved into overloaded bookcases. She went back out and walked toward Hans’s.

She stood outside his room. Open. All the rooms were open and the windows open too. Symbolic, she supposed. What better time, she thought, and went in.

The room was as one would expect: big furniture, very German. Strong, unyielding furniture, crisply clean windows with white starched curtains. She looked around absently, lifting the blotter on his desk. That was where she always stuck her important papers. There was a list. The reason it caught her eye was that it was old, like Iris’s scrap-books, like her own parents’ wartime mementos. It was a list of names. Clients. Guests of the Mill, addresses to the side. Third from the bottom—her heart almost stopped at the sight—was written “Iris von Lillienfeld” in old German script, with an English address. Just below it, subsequent addresses had been penciled in, then scratched out. The last read “Richmond Hill.” Claire slipped the paper into her waistband.

She went into the family room, closed the door just a bit, and went straight to the clock. With her back to the door, she took our her deluxe eyeglasses repair kit she’d picked up at the supermarket cash register back in Queens. Carefully she turned the clock over. It really was a superb little screwdriver. She got the screws open and the gold plate off in no time at all. She had a vision of herself discovering the diamonds, the brilliant stones trickling out like the sands of time come loose. She got the buckle open. She turned the clock. She looked. Empty. Just the tick-tock back and forth of the ingenious inner workings. Just then, she heard the floorboards behind her creak. She turned halfway and leaped in fright, almost tipping the clock to the floor. She caught it with one hand and stood face-to-face with Fräulein Bibi Wintner. “Ho!” she grasped her chest with the other hand. “You scared the life out of me! I thought it was a ghost!” She laughed.

Fräulein Wintner looked at the clock in Claire’s hand.

“Ah,” Claire said, her face going red, “I was just admiring the clock. Some clock, eh? I mean the works. They don’t make them like that anymore, do they?”

Fräulein Wintner squinted meanly at her. She carried a basket of Stella’s hand-embroidered towels. Fresh lavender had been tucked in between every other towel.

Fräulein Wintner was dressed for the wedding, looking, Claire thought, a little more Viennese mother-of-the-bride than German housekeeper, but then, why not? She wore an awfully glittery, if well-cut, suit. There was nothing resembling a Tracht about it, which Claire suspected was the very idea. Temple Fortune would have to cut each scene she marched into, wouldn’t he?

But why, Claire wondered, would she dislike Temple Fortune? She rested the elegant clock on its side and demonstrated the way she was putting the gold plate neatly back on. She shook her head philosophically as she spoke. “I know this must look sort of silly. Everyone downstairs and me up here poking through this old clock. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I was looking for.” She chuckled ineffectively.

Fräulein Wintner retained her grim demeanor. “I would advise you to say nothing,” she finally interrupted Claire’s babbling.

“Oh, look, I know this looks awkward but I—”

“You will remain here until I return with the Polizei. Now we know for sure who’s been doing the stealing.”

“Oh, no, you misunderstand.” Claire laughed. “What, you thought I was trying to steal the clock? Uh! No! No, you see I was looking at the way it was made, see. A friend of mine has a broken one at home and I was just having a look to see how it was ma—”

Fräulein Wintner had turned and left her standing there. As she left, Claire heard her mutter “Dreckige kleine Jüdin!” (Dirty little Jew!) So it was true. The first thing that went wrong dredged up the same quick conclusion, did it? Lovely. Then Fräulein Wintner was gone.

Claire heard the heavy door lock click into place. Was it possible? She’d locked her in! Claire’s first thought was that Johnny would kill her. Oh, God. This was all she needed. She had to get out. She went and tried the door. Locked nice and tight, all right. What a fix. Oh, boy. She walked around in a frantic circle. She spotted the phone. She picked it up and got an open dial tone. Delighted, she dialed her sister Carmela’s number. It was early morning in New York.

“Hello.” Carmela had on her Bette Davis voice. This meant she was working and/or smoking.

“It’s me.”

“Ooh. Innocent abroad. Homesick?”

“No. Yes. How’s Dharma?”

“Central Park Zoo with Andrew.”

“Good, give her my love. Carmela, could we be Jewish?”

“Why, because our name is Breslinsky with a y?”

“I knew you were the one to ask.”

“Claire, you know this.”

“I do?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No!”

“Tch. Daddy changed it back from Breslin to Breslinsky before he met Mommy. It’s supposed to be Breslinski—with an i. They’d dropped it to sound more American.”

“So he just spelled it wrong?”

“No, he looked in the phone book to make sure he spelled it right. Only he looked in the Kew Gardens phone book. So there were tons of Breslinskys: Abe to Zepheriah—all Jewish. By the time Aunt Kadja yelled at him, he already had his driver’s license and insurance and all that with the red tape. He just left it as it was.”

“Gotcha. Oh, and listen. One more thing. You know the book, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time?”

“Painting,” Carmela said. “Angiolo Bronzino. Sixteenth century. Upsetting.”

“Also a book,” Claire said. “Recent. Ursula Braun.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Big critical success, award-winner. Well, anyway. That’s the film they’re making here. Temple Fortune.”

“Mmm. Heard of him! Yummy.”

“Gotta go,” Claire said.

“See if Mr. Fortune needs any good American scripts.”

“Love you.”

She hung up the phone and looked around her opulent space. Wait. She remembered there was a balcony. She’d seen Puffin Hedges coming in from it the other night when they’d all been in here. She found it behind the Spanische Wand, an elegant old screen like the ones used primarily by saloon girls in Westerns to dress behind. The balcony door behind it was wide open. Relief! She sauntered out onto the balcony and breathed deeply the air of freedom. She even aimed her camera, still around her neck, at the crowd below and zoomed in on them. After a few what she suspected were magnificent shots of Mara Morgen in her fancy aubergine costume (looking for all the world like the character she was supposed to be), Claire raised a distressed hand and waved to the film crew.

Yes, yes, they waved back when they saw her and moved quickly on to their next shot off in the distance. They didn’t have much time to get all this superb atmosphere, and they were making good use of it.

Claire waved to the crowd closer to the Mill, but they were so drunk they didn’t even notice her.

She called to Friedel the gardener, standing on the sidelines and dancing with no one; but the small orchestra Blacky had hired was just under her, and she realized that her frantic wavings were not much different from the expressions of the rest of the revelers below, who were dancing and carrying on in their own sort of desperate merrymaking. Claire sighed unhappily. She peered over the side to see if she might climb down. It was a straight drop. Unfortunately, the bougainvillea vines were temporary, springing from great clay pots that could be transported indoors during the cold winters. There was no strength there. The wisteria vines she wouldn’t have minded shimmying down, but they were attached to the next balcony, the one next to Cosimo’s room. She waved her arms again. Blacky, far off and dancing with Isolde, saw her and, misunderstanding, waved heartily back. He seemed deliriously happy. She would have to wait till the end of the song. Unfortunately, the oompah-pah band in the center of the garden picked up the slack at the last beat of the song and dived right into “The Blue Danube” waltz.

She waved harder. Blacky bowed politely and whisked his Isolde into the air and around and around.

The police! Forget upsetting Johnny. Blacky would never forgive her for bringing the police to his wedding. She thought what to do. She couldn’t very well hang over the balcony. At the very best they would say she was drunk, and there she would be, trying to cause havoc at her ex-boyfriend’s wedding. She might also fall. She saw Temple Fortune in the distance. He was working on the long shot, with Mara and the festivities of the Mill in the background. Claire aimed her long lens at him off in the distance. He was too far away to capture in focus, just out of her range, but the figure of him leaning tenderly over Mara’s glamorous form gave her a lurch of jealousy. Mara’s romantic costume fluttered like a dream in the wind. She put the camera down. Someone was just beneath Claire. She tried to yell at him, but he didn’t even hear her. Claire sank to the floor, giving up. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with self-pity. She ought to be more upset by this business with Fräulein Wintner, but seeing Temple Fortune so attentive toward Mara left her weak. You’d think she was a teenager. She knew she ought to be more worried about her husband home alone, but she wasn’t. She was glad to be away. She almost hoped he wasn’t alone. Lord knew, they had reached the point where instead of greeting each other with joy or even with the searching eyes of the concerned mate, they each performed their solitary little dances of exhaustion at the injustice of routine—their routine. With their eyes glazing over, they’d shake their heads and sigh. “Oh God,” they would say. “Oh God”—and look away to the window or wall or the next unavoidable chore that wouldn’t be there but for each other. She tried to help, but she couldn’t change.

She realized, finally, how much power Temple Fortune was beginning to have over her emotions. She was surprised to notice herself trembling.

There was an open vin d’Alsace on the wrought-iron-and-glass table. It sat respectfully in shards of melting ice. Claire picked it up. Gewürztraminer 1988. From Ribeauvillé. Hmmm. No glass. No need to be fancy. She tipped it into a translucent teacup. Heaven. She had another. Was this Blacky and Isolde’s wedding-celebration bottle? She would have liked to share it with Temple Fortune.

She wouldn’t let him know, let anyone know, how he made her feel. What good would it possibly do? As far as she knew, he felt nothing with which to compare and justify her ardor. He was hungry to devour her body, of that she was pretty sure. But so, she imagined, would he be hungry for other flesh, all sorts of young and ambitious and available flesh. She would be no end-all for him. She was nobody special. She was no longer young. Only a fool would imagine he would care for her in the grand sense. Only a fool. She put her head down on the sturdy walls of the expensive yellow Scotch broom planter (someone at least had money) and allowed her growing-older, worn-out heart finally to let go by screaming fiercely.

In mid-anguish, she spotted a little boy across on the other balcony. He was a stout little fellow, a bit older than her own Anthony. She knew immediately what he was up to. He was secretly gobbling a great horde of forbidden food. What did he have there? She could just make out his tremendous bowl of Schlagsahne and fresh strawberries, no doubt swiped from the kitchen.

She shrugged convivially. He shrugged back. Nothing like a kid to commiserate. Children suffer daily and come unhinged as often. “I’m locked in,” she called to him. “Ich bin eingesperrt.”

“Ach,” he mouthed, having heard her between beats, clucked sympathetically, then resumed eating his whipped cream and strawberries as they continued to regard each other from each other’s balconies. She let him have a few more husky bites, then waved him over. He imagined she meant to share her balcony and his strawberries and cream. This idea seemed to appeal to him, misery loving company, and he got off, brushed his lederhosen solidly off, then disappeared.

Claire ran to the locked door. She pressed her ear up to the wood. Nothing. He’d gone away. She looked around her, despairing, when she heard him out there, fiddling with the lock.

“Geht nicht,” he announced. “It’s locked good.”

“You speak English,” she said. “What a clever boy.”

“I go to the American school,” he explained condescendingly through the heavy door.

“I see,” Claire called back. “You’re Dirk, aren’t you? Isolde’s boy.”

“That’s right,” he said.

Her heart went out to him. She hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. He wouldn’t remember her. Immediately she understood his craving for comforting food. This couldn’t be an easy day for him. “Dirk,” she said, “I wonder if you would do me a great favor?”

“Sure,” he said to show off his American.

“There will be a lady coming along soon with a ring of keys and maybe a policeman or two. When she comes, I want you to tell her I’ve escaped. Could you do that? Would you?”

“Natürlich,” he said, and sat down on the floor to wait. Before long, Fräulein Wintner came scrambling down the hallway, her elbows out, her tempo up. There were no policemen with her, but young Dirk knew who she was. She had the keys, and she smacked of authority.

“Da war jemand drin.” He pointed to the door. Someone was in there.

“Ich weiss,” she said. I know. She turned her back on him, dissmissively.

“Ja, sie ist weggelaufen,” he said. She ran away.

“Was?” she cried. “Entwichen?” She opened the lock with the key and threw open the door. In they went. She looked about. Sure enough, no one was there! Fräulein Wintner looked to the child for affirmation. He stood there, cream on his face, and pointed down the hallway to the stairs. Fräulein Wintner ran out and down the hall, leaving the door ajar. Claire ran from behind the screen. “Thanks, Dirk,” she said to the boy. They slapped each other a high five, and Claire ran down the hallway, free.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs and the gaiety of the crowd, she calmed down. And after all, it was Fräulein Wintner’s word against her own. Who was Fräulein Wintner, after all, but an employee of the house. Still, Claire had a feeling that here, as in all small villages, the one who’d put more time in was more apt to be believed. She ought, really, to make herself scarce. The reveling dancers made a good cover as they practically swept her away toward the gardens at the side of the house. From there she just picked her way across the field in the direction of the pottery.

The grass was high out here and uncut to allow the strewn wildflowers to flourish. The heat of the day rested heavily now in a low smoggy dew you couldn’t feel closer to the Mill, where it was burned off by the tumultuous goings-on. A figure darted away in the distance. It was Temple. No, no, it couldn’t be. What would he be doing here, with the film crew around the other end? Her heart called out. (Is that you I see, soft between the fruit trees?) She was a jerk. She laughed at herself. A wind stirred up. Blossoms came down like a perfect snow. She shivered and looked back to see if she was being followed when her foot trod clumsily on someone else’s. A bark of fear sprang out of her. It was a man and woman on the ground; they rolled over and he held her with beer-sodden eyes. He was flushed and intent, she was very groggy, but they managed a sporty “Grüss Gott,” and a nod as though this were all the casual norm. Claire stumbled politely on. She didn’t look back but heard them carry on the concentrated thud-thud-thud of their devotions the minute they realized she’d moved off.

The pottery was a dense white cement building partially submerged in the ground. It looked like an ivy-covered, converted bomb shelter in the middle of the orchard. The kiln, in the grass, a steel, drumlike oven, was still warm from an earlier fire. Sawdust was matted to the grass together with fruit-tree blossoms. She thought she would gather her bearings and rest against the pottery door and was surprised when it eased open. There was Stella, turning away at her wheel.

“Hello,” Claire said. “Not at the wedding?”

She realized Stella hadn’t heard her. She was in an almost trance-like state.

“Hello,” she said again, and Stella looked up. She smoothed the folds of the cotton apron across her long lap and gave a wistful smile. The wheel stopped. She was done. She got up and stretched, catlike, comfortable on her own turf.

“No.” She shook her head softly as Claire repeated her question. “I wouldn’t be at that wedding. Why should I?”

“How do you mean? May I sit down?” She stood awkwardly before a broken stool.

“No, come, sit over here.” She pointed to her gathering of great pillows in the colors of stones on the floor. “This is better. May I offer you a cup of tea?”

“I’d love some. There’s nothing I’d like more.”

“I’ve green tea. Do you like it?”

“Yes, please.”

Claire lowered herself down onto the pillows, feeling a mite stiffer than she had in the days when pillows on the floor were normal for her. “Nice here,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t go into a sneezing fit from the thick grog dust. “Not so noisy.”

“No.” Stella stood, her back to her, rinsing her hands with water that had been left cooling near her hot plate. “One needs peace if one is to work.”

“I can’t stay,” Claire assured her. “I mean, I won’t trouble you for long. I’ve got to get back to work, too. I’m working for Temple Fortune now.” Did she sound as smug as she heard herself? Was she that desperate to hear any word about him?

“I’m only glad,” Stella said, “it’s not me.”

“Not you what?”

“Not me being married. To Blacky.”

“Oh, you mean glad not to be married at all or just not married to Blacky?”

“My father wanted me to marry him. For a while he was terribly insistent, so much so that I had to go away. It was last year at this time. I went to Japan. On a pilgrimage to Kasama, for the pottery fair.” She smiled at Claire. “Another potters’ town. It was fantastisch! I was to be apprenticed to a Master Potter.” Her face shone, then it dropped. “My father needed me home, though. At least he said he did. Well, you must know why my father wanted me to marry Doktor von Osterwald. He thought he’d keep me busy. Doktor von Osterwald does have a way of keeping one busy”—here she paused, and they both laughed at the appropriate interval—“and he figured he would look after Cosimo.”

“Blacky will do that anyway, won’t he?”

“Until the first major dispute, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Blacky and Cosimo don’t see eye to eye on issues concerning day-to-day living.”

“But surely Blacky will make an exception for someone as extraordinary as Cosimo.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Your pottery is exquisite.” Claire looked around, happy to have the opportunity to be with Stella. She was so unusual. “It’s so simple and plain,” she exclaimed, “yet there’s something about it. I can’t explain. It’s like you.”

All the unfinished biscuit-colored pots sat about on shelves and on the floor. Stella was just doing a teapot. “That one’s beautiful,” Claire said.

Stella smiled at her with that smile Claire was beginning to recognize as her superior smile. The aren’t-you-nonsensical-but-sweet smile. It was almost chilling.

“No, really …” Claire refused to be dismissed for valuing what she knew was good.

“Yes, I can see they give you pleasure,” Stella relented. “I am glad. So many people find them too plain. Too simple. Like me, as you say.” Bright tears shone in her eyes. “Perhaps you are a kindred spirit.”

Claire’s heart went the other way. “Yes,” she said, wishing that she, too, could cry, “I hope I am.”

“Isn’t it strange,” Stella said, “how the enormity of death and birth puts everyone on an equal footing, if only for a little while. Perfect strangers exchange private matters and”—she laughed, her teeth big and white—“other strangers.”

“What were you saying about Blacky?”

“Oh, Doktor von Osterwald. As I said, just that I’m glad I didn’t have to marry him.”

“You make it sound like prison.”

“Yes, well, for me it would be. I wouldn’t be a good wife. I wouldn’t want to be. Not everyone is called to the married state, as I’m sure you know. Not that Doktor von Osterwald wouldn’t be a wonderful husband if one wanted a husband.”

Was she feeling her out? “Not to change the subject, but do you happen to know that bird? The one with the white body and the black head, with indigo and green on the tail and the wings. Do you know it?”

Stella shrugged. “I can’t bear those filthy things. Always coming into the house. Diebische Elster!” She shuddered. “It’s my brother who knows all that.”

“Is he pleased about Blacky and Isolde keeping him on?”

“Pleased? I wouldn’t say pleased. Why should he be? Imagine if it were you …”

“Yes, I see what you mean. Still… things could … be worse.”

“Oh, things could always be worse.” Two vertical lines troubled the space between Stella’s gray eyes. “I’m afraid I like everything to be calm and simple. I don’t like unnecessary agitation. I don’t even like necessary agitation.”

“Is that why you chose raku as an art form?”

Stella’s eyes sparkled immediately with interest. “Yes, you’re right. Although it is, in fact, extremely sophisticated. The word ‘raku’ originally meant ‘pleasure’ or ‘enjoyment.’ Do you know, in the traditional Zen tea ceremony, or chano-yu, the wares are made of this pottery. They are kept in special padded boxes.” She pulled a plain but exquisitely made wood box from the shelf. “My brother made this box for me,” she said proudly. She removed one bowl. The dappled light from the window played across its lustrous finish. Stella held it carefully, lovingly. “The Tea Master selects which bowls are to be used. This is based on subtle aesthetic consideration and, of course, tradition. Westerners most usually have a hard time comprehending the subtle aesthetic considerations of it.” She moved the bowl across her cheek. “Raku started in Kyoto, Japan.” She spoke as she went about her preparations, taking great care with each movement. “It was first done by an immigrant Korean potter about 1525, and then continued by her son. It’s a quite unpredictable firing process, at about one thousand degrees Celsius.” She held up one smoky black, lopsided piece. “After I take it from my kiln, I reduce it in sawdust. The glazed pieces frequently have a crackle to the luster. You never know exactly what you are going to get.” She got up and trod swiftly about the place, searching for a particular piece to show Claire, then held one up: a simple curved plate dripping matted shades of green.

“Oh, I love it,” Claire exclaimed. “It reminds me of blades of young grass.”

“Yes, that is the beauty of raku. Every piece is open to interpretation. It’s very exciting to watch. The firing method is swift. Sometimes they are unglazed, those are the rich black and smoky grays, and these”—she held one up—“are the glazed. Very often they are crackled. I love the crackle,” she said intently, the way a young girl would have confided she loved a man.

“I do too,” Claire said.

“As you see, my typical work turns a creamy and jade-like green blush. This is because of the copper-carbonate element in the earth nearby. Wooden tools, handmade wooden tools, are often used by raku potters. I use my fingers. Only my hands. I like this. The hands have a sympathy for the clay that instruments do not.”

“Hm,” said Claire. She touched the rim of a drying pot and Stella flinched. “I’m sorry,” Claire said.

“It’s just that they’re not dry yet, not set…”

“Stella. Did your father ever talk to you about his father, Adam von Grünwald?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“My father never spoke to me about anything. He didn’t really know how to communicate. My mother did, though.”

“Did she?”

“Yes, she told me stories about how when they were young and the war was on, they had to live on tulip bulbs and sugar beets and berries. It must have been awful. You had to be sure to boil the tulip bulbs a certain way, else you got poisoned.”

“Did your mother ever tell you stories about Adam before he married your grandmother? Kunigunde?”

Stella stopped pouring the water over the cups and watched Claire carefully. “No. Never. Why?”

“Nothing really. I just thought perhaps …”

“There was one thing.”

“Yes?”

“One thing that might interest you … Evangelika used to talk about a Jewish woman who enchanted my grandfather before he married.”

“Evangelika told you about this?”

“Yes. Often. I never knew my grandfather, Adam. Cosimo looks like him. Dark. Oh, he was famous around these parts. The local people loved him, they say. Kept a woman in the attic. He died before I was born. And my grandmother, she used to laugh about it, but, you know, even as a small child, you pick things up, you intuit the pain in someone’s eyes as they speak. Well, I remember my grandmother saying he was more loyal to the promise he’d made a dead Jew than a living wife.”

Claire instantly sat up.

Stella said, “You know those creaking noises you hear at night in the Mill?”

“I’m glad you hear them, too.”

“Evangelika always says it is Kunigunde. She says she can’t settle in until the treasure finds its way out of hiding.”

It occurred to Claire that Evangelika might well have been at the Mill when Iris was.

“My grandmother was a simple woman,” Stella continued. “She came from the village and never left it. She … well… the fact that she was simple did not stop her from being powerful. All those prayers she said from morning to night. She was quite a formidable force, you see.”

“Did your grandmother ever tell you what that promise was?”

“No.” Stella sadly turned and touched her dry mouth with her fingers. “No, she never did. Sometimes I wish she had. I think it would have helped me. The mystery of things is what children have trouble with. I think they can deal with anything that is forthright and explained to them. Even death. Especially death.” She wrung her hands with pathetic agitation. Remembering, Claire imagined, Hans’s miserable end.

“Stella,” she said gently, “I have a story to tell you. It began long ago, in the village of Diessen. There was a young and beautiful girl. Her name was Iris von Lillienfeld …”

The wind outside grew stronger and the light more dim as Claire told her tale. By the time she finished, she realized they’d both been lost on her journey.

Stella had stopped the preparations of her tea ceremony. Politely, she sat back on her slender, young girl’s heels, intrigued by the idea of the grandfather she’d never known but heard so much about. His love story. But by the time she finished, Claire realized Stella was not going to be aghast at what had happened long ago. She’d listened politely enough for a while, with appropriate cluckings of commiseration, but soon she went back to preparing their tea. Her main focus was still obviously on what she was doing. This was not the reaction Claire had expected. Stella didn’t deny having heard tales of treasure at the Mill; she simply shrugged and said she’d always taken them for legend.

There were three jade-like bowls on the wiped-clean board Stella used as a table. “Do you know what we have here?” she said, placing her fingertips together and getting on with what interested her, as though everything Claire had just said had nothing to do with her. It was as though she’d been impatient for the story to be done so she could get on with hers. “Now,” Stella said pointedly at the first opportunity, “this is your choice. The symbol for delving into the universe.”

“So, what do you mean?” Claire asked. “A riddle in three parts?”

“You must choose your own bowl.” Stella knelt before her and crossed her arms on her knees.

“May I?”

“Ah, you may.”

“I feel like ‘Simon says.’ Okay. So. Let’s see. I’ll probably choose this one. In the middle. The one with the glaze looking like a crane taking off. Would you like to know why?”

“No.”

“No? Don’t you care?” she joked.

“Do you want me to dissuade you from your choice?”

“Perhaps,” Claire said, imagining how pretty it would look on the baker’s rack in her own kitchen.

“Remember, your reasons are the mixture of subtle traditions and aesthetic considerations which are peculiar only to you,” Stella reminded her.

“Well, I thought the middle way would appeal to you. Avoiding extremes. As in Buddhistic thought. And, I suppose, I’d like to please you. But then you are a fervent Catholic and have no use perhaps for Buddhistic thought?”

“I see no conflict in Christian dogma and Buddhistic teachings. Buddhism is a way of life. A practice, not a religion. Truth, after all, is truth. And you, after all, are the Master.”

Claire didn’t know what she meant. She found herself sitting in a suddenly antagonistic atmosphere. Which she herself might be producing. She was waiting for a response to her story of Iris, and she was getting symbols. She could see now what Blacky had meant about Stella making you cuckoo.

“So, I am the Master. You mean me as in ‘me,’ or me as in ‘one’?”

“Oh, you as in ‘you.’ Of course. You are the master of your destiny, aren’t you?”

“Well, sure. But that didn’t sound like what you meant. You mean, like the choice is mine?”

Stella wagged her head back and forth, setting Claire to wonder again if it was she who was the insane one and not her brother. But then, Stella usually didn’t talk much. She used instead her gift of intent listening. “Help me out here,” Claire finally said.

“Choose the goblet,” Stella urged, “from which only the poor can drink.”

“Don’t you mean only the pure?”

“It is the same.”

“Oh.” Her mind went immediately to the decision of whether or not to shoot cigarette advertisements. She looked again at the middle bowl. The other two bowls swam evocatively on each side. One said “mortgage” and the other “private school tuition.” If she didn’t shoot the ads, someone else would just come along and do it. Surely once your motives were no longer pure, that was it. They were not going to turn around and become pure because you wanted them to. You couldn’t change what already happened. Or did we remake ourselves? Could we? Was that what life was all about? Reinventing ourselves?

“Why do you hesitate?” Stella watched her from a remote place. There were dabbles of the last gold light on her face. She looked like a leopard.

“I feel like I’m throwing my changes,” Claire said. “You know, I Ching.”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“It’s sort of like reading your fortune.”

“You don’t need hocus-pocus to choose your fortune.”

“No,” Claire admitted. “I suppose you don’t. Tell me, what are you thinking?”

“I was just remembering. In The Red Shoes, where the fellow says, ‘It is much more disheartening to have to steal… than to be stolen from.’”

Outside, the wind stopped running to the west and the sounds of the party drew near.

Claire chose the middle bowl.

By the time she left the pottery and walked back toward the Mill, it was too late for Claire to get any shots. She wouldn’t use artificial light. She didn’t like to and she almost never did.

She picked her way across the tall grass. The wind stopped suddenly, and the evening was low and purple and still. Any minute it was going to rain. She hurried, shivering, wanting her sweater, going the long way around the meadow to the Mill, past the little chapel, and ran upstairs to her room. Her sweater was in the closet, neatly hung, not left crumpled on the bed where she’d left it. German orderliness was so reassuring. She went down the stairs. The oompah-pah band outside was in full swing. She crossed her arms in front of her and listened for a minute. Everyone was outside. She might just sit in the dining room for a while. Just sit and do nothing. She leaned over and peeked in. There were a few locals in there, enjoying the fire. A woman at the booth table, a man on each side. Both men, intent, had a hand up the front of her blouse. The woman met Claire’s eyes. She smiled. It was a brutish, feral smile. “Be careful,” Iris’s words came back and alerted her. “Something festers there.”

Claire turned and fled.

* * *

A great ruckus rose from the front of the Mill. Claire joined the throng. The lads of the village had stolen the wood carving at the tip of the next village’s maypole and were putting it up on theirs. There was a tremendous seething rivalry about maypole Spitzen, or tips, these being a wood cutting of a local theme or nursery rhyme the villagers had grown up with and come to think of as their own. They stole each other’s as a matter of course, and the captured Spitze was guarded at the top of the pole with their own until the guard was let down and the connivery would begin again. This was a perfect moment to slip into the house, with everyone’s attention on the cavorting around the maypole.

There was that bird, she saw as she checked out each window for the lurking Fräulein Wintner. Was he at her window? Yes, it was hers. The bird’s beak glinted, as though it had a silver tooth. She watched him as he took off, glided across the lawn and landed softly on the Roman Bridge. A magpie! That was it.

She would go to see old Father Metz. She wanted to give him her traveler’s checks anyway, might as well be now. Make it a done deal. But first she should probably show her face at the festivities. She’d shot plenty of film, too much, probably, but it might be construed as deliberately sullen if she didn’t show up at all as a celebrant.

Puffin Hedges stood on the other side of the Kastanianbaum, the great chestnut tree, where Claire was warily avoiding Fräulein Wintner and any bevy of Polizei she’d convinced that Claire was guilty.

Puffin offered her a cigarette in greeting, then lit his own with a shrug when she declined. “Quite a show,” he said. “Good for us, though, we got all the background we need. And all at the happy couple’s expense.”

“Yeah, I wish them luck.”

“Luck”—Puffin winked—“is something that comes and goes. Like the tide. The trick is,” he added, “to make one’s move when the luck is there.”

“Yeah, well. I wish them movement when the luck is there, then.”

He struck an angler’s pose. “I mean, good luck has more to do with restraint than action, don’t you think? Holding back and waiting for the right moment.”

“There’s no denying that,” she said, restraining herself from asking where Temple Fortune was. Instinct told her sidekicks spent too much time giving account of where their major partner was. Everyone liked to be enjoyed for themselves, after all. And Puffin was in a philosophical mood. Instead she asked for Cosimo. “I haven’t seen him anywhere. Have you? I thought he was going to play during the ceremony. I was looking forward to it.”

“As I know Cosimo, he does what he wants to do and when he wants to do it. He is not restricted by the confines of social behavior, is he?”

“No.”

“Got the best of both worlds, if you ask me. Everyone thinks he’s crackers, don’t they? But he’s got it made. He can do whatever he likes.”

“Yes, still, it can’t be easy, being so sensitive. And don’t forget, he’s just lost his father.”

“Pfh. If anything, that would please him. The old keeper of the Mill kept a tight ship, he did. Died just in time, if you ask me.”

His bitterness surprised her. “It’s very still,” she remarked.

“Rain any minute,” Puffin agreed.

“So where will you be off to next?” she asked.

“What, us? Well, let’s see. Home, for the editing—London. The San Sebastian Film Festival opens in Spain in September.” He chewed his poor thumbnail. “Of course we can’t make Cannes. That’s on now, and we can’t wait till next spring again. It’s too long.”

“Can’t you do both?”

“No. You can’t have both. If we enter San Sebastian, we are ineligible for Cannes”—his eyes twitched—“and we are married to this film. For better or for worse.”

And so she knew, all at once, that Temple Fortune must be frightened, maybe terrified. It was everything on the line here. All or nothing. Now or never.

“How come you never married, Puffin?” she changed the subject.

“Me?” He laughed with fond self-derision, then had a sneezing fit. “I can’t take the spring,” he wheezed.

“Oh, I know,” she sympathized. “My season’s the fall. I can’t go out at all.”

He found his handkerchief and finally mopped his bright red nose to a stop.

“Ah,” he sighed, glad to get back to the grand subject of himself. “No, not me. I never did. Had plenty of pets, Lord knows.” He shrugged. “No one ever really fit the bill, know what I mean? I guess it was Mum stopped me more often than not.”

Claire smiled obligingly, appreciating his cockney bit, then realized he wasn’t “doing” the cockney accent but, rather, falling back into it. It had never occurred to her that Puffin wasn’t the high-born fellow he pretended to be. Ah, well, where was the harm?

“It was a laugh, you know,” he talked away, hardly noticing her response anyway, “every time I brought some little girl home, Mum always would say just the right thing to put me off. It was like she would come and go and me ma would say, ‘Wasn’t she lovely,’ and ‘Such a nice young lady,’ and then she’d top it off with, ‘Isn’t it a shame about that mole on the tip of her nose? That’ll get nice and big now, the older she gets, you see if it doesn’t. Nice girl, though, isn’t she? Lovely. Why don’t you take her out more often?’ And you know, whenever I would look at that girl again, what was it I would see? Not a lovely girl as I had brought home to tea, but the mole at the tip of her nose. Heh. It was always the same, this one had ‘an awfully small head’ and that one had ‘such a nice pair of hands, wasn’t it a pity they were too big for her fine body.’ Funny, that.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Don’t go feeling sorry for me now.” He nicked her with his elbow.

“Good heavens! I wouldn’t think of it,” she lied. “You’ve clearly got one of the more desirous lives, haven’t you. I mean, look at you, making films, enjoying the good life. Going about the world, playing tennis and backgammon.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he agreed with her, squinting suavely into the boisterous crowd. “Taking in the high life in Bavaria.”

“You know,” she said, “I have a feeling you’re a little bit like me. More an observer than a participant. We’re both in the visual-arts end, aren’t we?”

“Well, I’m a writer myself,” Puffin admitted.

“Are you now? Now, see, I never would have known that if you hadn’t told me. I thought you were assistant directing as well as producing.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you know, the way you set everything up. Well, I don’t know. I just thought…”

“My, no.” He laughed. “We’ll leave all that to the experts now, won’t we. No, no, I deal in publicity, then a little of this and a little of that. I write a column, you know, when I feel like it.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Oh, yeah, sure. When I have the time. Not your everyday stuff. More thoughtful pieces. Not like a gossip column or anything. I despise that sort of thing.”

So Claire knew that he never did write. She had so many friends who “could” write if they had the time. Her sister, Carmela, who was always busy, produced an unbelievably consistent supply of work. Poor Puffin. He was so brilliant, so shrewd and perceptive, she could imagine he despised himself most of all. He looked urgently at his magnificent watch as though that were the issue here, this time business. “I hope Temple gets back to see this.”

Claire turned to see Blacky smashing his fist into someone’s face. Someone else who’d gone, she supposed, too far with Isolde at last, and this time Blacky felt justified sticking it to him.

Blacky was a compact man. The other was the smaller, but Blacky was that much drunker, so it evened out fine. They were each giving the other a run for the money, swinging away. Claire couldn’t help worrying about Blacky’s fine caps. She remembered when he had them put in, with the new dentist on Prinzregentenplatz. Of course, they might have been replaced a few times since then. Blacky loved a good brawl, no hard feelings once it was over. As a matter of fact, he became quite good friends with everyone he’d ever had a go at, as far as she could recall.

The crowd let up in delighted horror as the other fellow landed a crasher in Blacky’s gut.

“Where on earth is Isolde?” Claire scanned the party with no luck. She ought to be here. She could stop this nonsense.

Blacky took a great sock in the jaw and went sprawling past Claire. The crowd on the side of the Mill sent up a cheer.

She stepped back into the shadow of the chestnut tree. “Well,” she said, “I hope everything works out. For you and Temple.”

“Temple will always make out.” He took a sip from his Birnenschnapps and perched the glass on a stump. He rocked back and forth on his very big feet. “Even as we speak…”

“I’m sorry?”

Puffin looked to the front room of the Mill, to the upstairs suite assigned to Temple. The curtains were shut. All the others around the second floor were open, as she had found them and left them.

Puffin smirked. “They often finish up a day of business with a friendly ‘chat.’”

She’d walked right past their room. “How good of you to share that with me,” she said, stung.

He bowed. “Didn’t know you cared.”

“Oh, you knew very well.”

Puffin wobbled his head with lighthearted smugness.

“Just tell me one thing.” She steadied herself on the dipping branches. “Why did you make me think he hates her?”

“He does, love. He does.” He cocked one wispy eyebrow up. “Sometimes that makes it all the more exciting, eh? Hold on! What’s this? The coppers!”

Sure enough, two uniformed policemen shouldered their way through the throng.

Claire slipped urgently away. Puffin was still talking to her when she disappeared, retracing her steps across the meadow, where she felt the first drops of rain. She put her camera in her vest. This time she would go to the Rectory. No one would find her there. She could leave her traveler’s checks for Father Metz in his box. Sanctuary, that was what she needed. Damn, she would have thought knowing Temple and Mara were still intimate would throw a bucket of water on her feelings for him. They ought to have. She was too grown up for this sort of hysteria, these devastating paralyzations of emotion. It was too much. She ought to be glad for Temple that his relationship was in functioning order. Yet all it did was dismay her. Some perverse longing in her for him refused to believe he didn’t want her the same way, that they weren’t physically meant for each other. She wasn’t used to being a dreamer about men. This was a pipe dream. She would be better off getting away from this place entirely. For the first time in a long time she wanted a cigarette herself. Always, before, romantic love had been the beginning, but this, this left her wanting to drag the man into the bushes and tear his quiet subtlety violently off. It was so violent an attraction. And after all, even if it was fulfilled, it would only end in the gloomy pyre of self-retribution.

There was a pay phone on the road. She asked the operator to put in a collect call to Iris von Lillienfeld and told her the number in New York.

Iris picked up right away and accepted the charges.

“Iris, it’s Claire.”

“Claire! I’ve tried to reach you all yesterday afternoon!”

“Iris, there’s a time change. They don’t answer the phone here after eleven. It’s not that sort of place. They just shut the phone off.”

“I know the kind of place that is!” Iris said angrily, always upset at any indication of frailty on her part. “Let me talk!”

“I found a photograph of you, Iris. Here. When you were young.” Claire fumbled around in her bag to find the photograph.

“Ah, yes. Believe it or not, even I was young once. How did I look? Good?”

“Gorgeous!”

“Huh! You don’t have to tell me that. That’s one thing you don’t forget!”

“I thought I put it in my purse. One second. Damn. I’m so unorganized. Hang on. Ah, here it is. Saint Hildegard’s Mill is covered in snow. It’s all lit up with snow and sunshine. When I saw it, my first thought was that I should have come in winter, that’s how beautiful it makes everything look. Like a big vanilla cream cake. You know, the way it looks just after it’s snowed for days and then the sun comes out and it absolutely blazes with light. The photographer must have been as taken with the scene as well because there were two pages of the Mill in that snow scene. So anyway, there I am enjoying the Mill in days gone by and all of a sudden my eyes zoom in on who do you think?”

“Me?”

“Yes. I’m sure it’s you.” Not only had it looked like Iris, Claire had a feeling she’d even seen that hat Iris had had on. It was black and had a veil. She stood behind a woman on a sled, an old-fashioned, basket-like sled with swirled front runners.

Claire pressed against the telephone and held the photograph out into the weakening light. Against, in fact, the same view of the Mill today. Yes, it had to be Iris. The woman in the photograph was on the other side of the life spectrum, but those fierce eyebrows against white skin and delicate mouth were so peculiar to her.

And Iris, an old and lonely woman in a tattered velvet chair in New York, was suddenly transported to the exact moment Claire described so many years ago.

It was one of those storms that had gone on for days and days. Adam’s mother, ill for so long (ever since Iris herself had gotten well), finally felt strong enough to allow them to take her outdoors.

Iris felt doubly responsible for the old woman’s illness. She’d brought the influenza with her when she’d arrived at Saint Hildegard’s. Or perhaps she’d caught it there herself, she, so exhausted and devastated by what had happened to her family. Still, she had felt responsible at least for weakening the old woman with the strain of having a Jew under her roof. She’d heard Adam and the old woman arguing about her even as the old woman had lain ill. Iris had come with the bedpan but hesitated to enter with so personal an item, and then she was stuck because she heard it was she they were arguing about. Adam wouldn’t hear of Iris’s being sent away.

“Let her go to Paris,” the mother said. “They’re still giving the Jews visas to Paris. At least she will be safe there.”

“They let them go to Paris just to see how much money they’re trying to take out of the country, and then they arrest them,” Adam insisted. “And if she would get to Paris undeterred, they’d make her come back as soon as her visa was up. You know they would. And it’s just too dangerous to cross the border. Mutti. How good she has been to you since you have been ill! All through your fever she nursed you. No one will object to her staying on as your nurse.”

“Yes, they will, and they do.” Frau von Grünwald had banged her cane on the floor. “Just today I overheard the servants muttering about Iris taking work from the local girls. They called her an outsider, a stranger from another village, but all it takes is underlying animosity these days, Adam. You know what can happen. These are jealous and ignorant people. You must not forget that. I know that you love the villagers and you believe they love you because they have watched you grow and have been here your whole life, but you mark my words, they will betray you the moment it becomes advantageous to them. They don’t like her for her soft hands and cultivated accent. If they knew she was a Jew! Mein Gott!”

“Mutti, I’m not going to send her away. I shall go with her if you force me.”

“What? You say such a thing to me? You would let this girl drive a wedge between us, you and me?”

Iris had heard no more. Adam had certainly run and hushed his mother with one of his all-encompassing, affectionate hugs. He couldn’t bear to inflict pain on those he loved. And he loved his mother.

Saint Hildegard’s Mill stood hushed and still. Only the chimneys poked through. The voice of Adam, young and jubilant, crossed the years and the black-and-white picture as he adjusted the aperture of his 1913 Zeiss-Ikon camera.

Iris had wheeled his mother out of doors and put her on the sled. This was the first time she had been outside since she’d gotten ill. They blinked and pulled their hats down over their eyes in the blazing light. They’d been indoors so long, it was almost unbearably bright. So many things had been going on in Munich, unspeakable things; no one had wanted to go out. But this storm had stopped the world, somehow, and placed it in a time unrelated to the terrible present. After Adam’s crisp young voice, there was no sound. Only the clear white, untrod snow in every direction. A magpie on the fence was the only sharp dark place. There was a row of trees. The branches were so weighed down with snow, they arched and brushed the drifts along the ground. Frau von Grünwald smiled, coughed, smiled again. “Stop!” She waved at Adam with her mittened fist. “Wait until I’m at least ready!”

But Adam hardly heard. All he saw was the sweet face of Iris, who was standing alongside, patiently waiting for him to focus, patiently waiting for the moment he would look into her knowing eyes. It was difficult for both of them not to smile.

How beautiful she is, was all he could think.

How beautiful I feel when he looks at me, she thought, feeling the glistening moment so intently, she knew even then she would never forget it.

She lurched back to Claire and the present. “Claire, what’s going on? I got a copy of the Süddeutsche over in Ridgewood. It says Hans von Grünwald of Saint Hildegard’s Mill is dead! From a fall, it said.”

“Yes, it’s true, Iris. Just after I arrived. I didn’t want to upset you, but—”

“Listen to me, Claire. Don’t do that. Don’t protect me. Do you understand? I do not need protection from you, all right?” She was totally agitated. “I am worried for you …”

“All right, all right. Anyway, the reason I called … to be honest, I just don’t know where to start looking for the diamonds. I … I thought it would be easier. I don’t know, I thought I’d have some sort of clue, you know, make some sense out of the past once I got here, but it’s so confounding!”

It began to drizzle. She tried to fit herself under the telephone awning, but part of her stuck out. “The truth is, I’m afraid I’ll never find the darn treasure.”

“I know, dear.” Iris spoke more gently. “I know. That’s because there is none. At least not yet.”

“Iris, what are you talking about? What not yet?”

“I mean I will let you know what the treasure really is when you find it for yourself.”

“What the hell is this? What are you playing at?”

“There is no treasure, dear. At least not the kind you thought it would be.”

“Iris, I am standing here in the damp. It’s going to pour any minute. I’ve left my family to fend for themselves—”

“It’s about time they fended for themselves a bit, too. The way you spoil them! It’s offensive. I thought you were a suffragette!”

“You mean a feminist!” Claire shouted.

“Feminist,” Iris agreed.

“I am,” Claire choked. “I think I’m going to cry,” she whined, knowing that even now she couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her. If only she could.

“Oh, don’t cry. It’s fun. Aren’t you having fun?”

“I was until I found out I’m being duped. You mean you sent me all this way under false pretenses?”

“Certainly …” The line went fuzzy. Then Iris’s harsh, laryngitic voice tuned back in with a blast of clarity. “… till I got rid of this verdammte arthritis. Such a terrible thing, to be cursed with arthritis. You cannot know because you are young. I don’t complain about it, but believe you me, I could. Plenty of days I can just about barely make it out from the bed. Young people don’t understand. That’s why I always say, Claire, enjoy your life while you still can.”

Claire waited impatiently while Iris went on for a while about her arthritis. Then she said, “Iris, I’m hanging up now. I just want to tell you I’m furious with you and your tricks. I can’t believe you would do this to me. I can’t believe it. Are you serious? Do you mean to tell me there never was a treasure? There never were diamonds?”

“Well, that was years ago. Sometimes we old folks forget the way things really were, you know.”

“I’m hanging up,” she said, and did. She stood there getting wetter and wetter. She had the strangest feeling that Iris hadn’t lied before, but that she was lying now.

Her bag, wedged between the phone and the post, fell with a thud, and the contents spewed all over the wet ground. “Shit,” she said and bent down to collect the lot. The photograph of the snowy Mill, propped up against the outdoor phone, melted and shimmered in the spring rain. Claire ran off, crablike, without looking back, almost knowing, as she did, she had forgotten something.