It was dusk when Steve and I left Vienna. A light rain had begun to fall, making the cobbles of the road shine like lumps of smooth black glass.
To mislead any possible pursuit, Steve drove via Triester Strasse toward the southern autobahn. He wanted to skirt around the city, joining the westerly route well past Pressbaum and the Villa Imwald.
“Once we get well clear of Vienna, it’ll be okay. They aren’t going to search the whole of Austria for you.”
He had brought a spare suitcase in his car for my few clothes, the new things that Klara had bought for me only that morning. We’d left stealthily while Klara was out presiding at some charitable committee or other. I’d propped a note on the hall table.
A million thanks for all your kindness. Steve and I have a plan which could solve my problem. It’s better we tell you nothing now, but I will explain it all later.
It seemed mean, sneaking off like that, but knowing Klara and Bruno, we guessed they’d insist on taking a hand, and we wanted to protect them from their own generosity.
We’d decided to make a start at Salzburg, where Max and I spent the first night, and Steve had phoned the same hotel to make a reservation for us.
“I know it’s going to hurt like hell, Jessica, but we’ve got to make this trip as near as possible identical with that holiday of yours.”
I nodded without speaking. I knew it was going to hurt, but not quite as much as Steve imagined. His own quiet self-assurance somehow came through to me, giving me an added strength. I felt that as long as Steve was there I’d be able to face the truth about Max without breaking down.
Dusk turned quickly to darkness, and the rain fell more heavily, spiking back into the beam of our headlamps. Steve drove hard, not talking much. Somewhere about the halfway mark we stopped at a cafe for coffee and a couple of sausages, meaty and filling. Steve eyed me across the glass-topped table.
“Dreading it?”
“No, not now. As a matter of fact, I’m even beginning to believe it might work.”
He grinned. “Good girl! I’ve got a hunch that we’re really on to something.”
When we ran into Salzburg it was late enough and wet enough for the streets to be quiet. Our hotel was a new international-style tower building, smart and very expensive. It had attentive service, good food, luxurious rooms—and not a sign anywhere of genuine Austrian charm.
At the reception desk the clerk murmured with the faintest whiff of a question in his voice “Adjoining rooms, sir?”
“Good,” said Steve absently. “That’s fine.”
Our bedrooms were on the second floor. With Max it had been a main suite right at the top. I was thankful for even this small difference. Yet wasn’t the aim and object of this trip to play back the record, to hear it all again, and help me remember?
It was only as I slipped off the cream duster coat that Klara had chosen for me that I thought of money. It hit me for the first time that this reenactment of a holiday was going to cost quite a lot. What I now had left in my handbag wouldn’t much more than cover the cost of one night.
Hastily I unlocked the communicating door and stepped through into the next room.
“Steve, I’ve suddenly realized ...” I stopped, embarrassed. He was changing, peeling off his shirt. “I’m awfully sorry. I just didn’t think....”
He grinned. “Don’t worry!”
He tossed the shirt onto the bed and came walking over to where I stood dithering in the doorway. His arms went around me, and he held me; not hard, but close enough to feel the warmth of his body, the hardness of his chest. He looked down at me with concern.
“You seem to be upset, darling. What’s the matter?”
“Steve, I don’t think I can do this, after all.”
For a second he went on gazing seriously at my face. Then, bending his head slowly, he kissed me on the lips. A firm kiss—not asking, just taking.
It was wonderful. And it was much too disturbing. I tried to pull away, but his arms held me pinned there.
“No, Steve....” I breathed faintly. “No!”
“I’m not going to apologize. I’ve quit saying I’m sorry all the time.”
“Please let me go, Steve. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Well, talk, then. I’m listening.” He didn’t slacken his hold on me.
I gave up and tried to relax. “I’ve just realized that I’ve got no money, Steve. Hardly any at all.”
“So what?”
“Well, this trip’s going to cost quite a bit. I can’t just let you . . .”
“I don’t see why not. We can sort it out later on.” He kissed me again, just a friendly peck on the nose. “Now, get yourself changed. Then we’ll go down and have something to eat.”
“But, Steve ...”
“Let’s go, girl!”
Later that night I tossed restlessly in bed, wide awake. Since Max had died this wasn’t a new experience for me. I’d often been sleepless, remembering. Max had taught me to want him, and my body couldn’t forget.
But Max was dead. And now, through disillusionment, my love for him was dead, too. And yet...
Tonight, who was it I longed for? A man lay in the bedroom next to mine, an unlocked door between us. Steve’s love for me was pledged and affirmed in every glance he gave me, every word. And I knew now that I was in love with him.
Was Max, the memory of Max as a lover, to come between us always?
* * * *
In the morning we took the road to St. Gilgen. With Max it had been sunshine all the way, and I’d been happy. With Steve the rain persisted, and the green mountain scenery was blanked out by haze. Another man, another world.
Steve said, “We won’t take it too fast. Think back and try to fix the first stop you made, whatever the reason.”
“It wasn’t just yet.” I unfolded a tourist map and traced out the road with my finger. “Here, a few miles farther on by the Fuschlsee. I remember getting out of the car on the road above the lake, and looking down. There’s a castle, I think.”
“Uhuh! And after that?”
“We went to Wolfgangsee, and on to the White Horse Inn. We had lunch there. Then we came back around the lake to St. Gilgen and stayed the night.”
“Right,” said Steve. “Every single step, remember! If you forget anything, we’ll retrace our steps. We must be thorough.”
At Fuschlsee the rain seemed heavier. I directed Steve to the little promontory where Max and I had stopped one bright and shining morning long ages ago. We walked back a few -yards to where the view had been best. Today there was nothing to see, just gray drifts of rain. Steve took my hand—as Max had done. But nothing else was the same. I didn’t want it to be.
“Did Max leave you here at all?” Steve asked. “I mean, for more than the odd minute?”
I shook my head. “We just stood here, and ...”
“And what?”
Max had kissed me, that was what. I could recall it vividly, even feel his lips, the taste of him. For once my need was more urgent than his, and Max had teased me. “Don’t be so impatient, my darling!” I could hear his voice saying it.
How could I speak of that to Steve? I gave a little shiver, and the wind and the rain provided an explanation. “We just looked at the view,” I said. “But there isn’t one today. Let’s get back to the car.”
We lunched, as Max and I had done, at the famous White Horse Inn. There were quite a few holiday-makers even this late in the season, staring out at the weather and grumbling. Today there were no white sails dancing upon clear sparkling water. Today we could hardly see the water at all, and where we could, near to the bank, it looked thick and oily.
Pushed by some impulse I couldn’t understand, I said, “There’s a mountain railway from here. They say you get a fantastic view from the top in clear weather.”
“Didn’t you go up, then?”
“I wanted to, but for some reason Max wasn’t keen, I don’t know why—they’ve got a hotel up there with a cafe and everything. ...” I stopped, because suddenly I did know why Max had been so dead against the idea. It would have looked absurd—and too conspicuous—to be encumbered with his angler’s carryall on a barren mountaintop.
He had carted that bag around with him, it struck me now, on other improbable occasions. In fact, throughout most of our holiday that fishing gear could hardly have been out of his sight. Even stopping en route for lunch or a casual drink, Max had always worked it so he could keep a close eye on the car. Such precautions weren’t his usual style.
But later, during our last few days, he had stopped bothering, as if his capricious enthusiasm for angling had finally wilted. I’d been so unsurprised at the time that I hardly even registered the fact.
Now I remembered, and understood.
Excitedly, but with a dragging weight of pain, I put my thoughts to Steve.
He sat up alertly. “You mean, if we can pin down the exact point Max lost interest in his fishing gear, we don’t need to bother with the places you went to before?”
“That’s right. It cuts down the range of possibilities enormously.’’
The whole project seemed so clear to me now, so obvious. The task of recovering the hidden scrolls looked almost like child’s play.
Steve asked, “Whereabouts were you when Max had this change of heart?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, and stopped short. I just didn’t know the answer. The two parts of the holiday were now clear in my mind—the before and the after. But as for the precise moment when the switch had occurred, fog seemed to be blurring my memory.
Steve was very patient. “Let’s work forward a day at a time and see if you can think of anything that helps. You said that from here you went back and stayed the night at St. Gilgen. Right?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t have any trouble remembering that night. A quiet room in a pretty lakeside hotel. Max and me. And in the morning a leisurely breakfast on the terrace, everything fresh with dew and the sun glittering across the mountain-circled lake. We ate delicious alpine-strawberry conserve with our rolls, and Max had teased me about looking so sleepy.
“We must get to bed earlier tonight, darling.”
My mind went jumping forward, one day, two days.
“We stayed at Bad Aussee,” I told Steve, “and did a trip to some lakes. I remember the guide telling us a story about some of Hitler’s treasure chests being hidden in one of them.”
“There’s no reason why it should have meant anything special to Max, though. A lot of stories like that go floating around.”
“I know. But the point is, Max still had his fishing kit with him all that day. I remember he spent a few minutes practicing casting from a jetty....” I sighed. “I suppose he had to make some sort of show for my benefit.”
Steve nodded. “We’re making progress. What did you do after that?”
“We stayed at the same place for another day. Max was very impressed with the remoteness of some of the country around there.” I frowned, concentrating. “But he was still taking good care of the carryall when we left Bad Aussee; I’m sure of that.”
“Where did you head for then?”
Suddenly, there it was in my mind in stereoscopic detail; at the end of a road that had whittled itself down to just a track. A tiny Gasthaus buried deep in a fold of the pine-clad mountains. And Max and I the only guests. I asked myself if it could really have been the heaven I remembered, and knew at once that it had been so. I wanted to cry.
I said to Steve, “It was a small inn, rather isolated. We made it our headquarters for several days while we explored the district on foot.”
“That doesn’t sound like Max—walking.”
“He thoroughly enjoyed it. At least, he seemed to at the time.”
That had been its special delight for me. For Max, my city-loving husband, to find such pleasure in the simple things. Four whole days spent just rambling, with homely picnic lunches of sausage and cheese and rough black bread, and a bottle of beer apiece. We’d swum in the tiny lakes and lazed in the sunshine. And when the sun began to drop behind the mountain peaks, we’d wandered back to our lamplit refuge, where our smiling hosts had a good substantial supper ready. Afterward we’d spent a couple of hours drinking lager beer in company with two or three local men who had tramped in from farther down the valley, dressed in their leather breeches and feathered hats. Again and again we had listened to the proud story of how the Emperor Franz Josef himself had shot the fine stag whose antlers spread above the stove.
And then, early, we’d made our way upstairs to the tiny room and its vast soft bed. “You could get lost in this, my darling,” Max had murmured on a smothered laugh from deep in his throat. “That’s why I’m holding you so close.*’
Four days. Four nights.
I’d been sad when it came to an end. At breakfast following the most perfect day of all, Max had announced abruptly, “We’d better be heading back to civilization again.”
“Oh, no, Max, not yet. Please let’s stay here a bit longer.”
I remembered the way he’d smiled at me, fondly, ready to humor my whims. “How long?”
I’d suggested as long as I’d dared. “Two more days—couldn’t we? It’s so lovely here, and it’s not as if we had anything special planned.”
There had been laughing exasperation in his voice. “All right, then—two more days.”
But I’d not been able to stick it out. Suddenly he was the old Max again, restless and edgy without bright lights and slick-talking people. After just one more night—an unhappy night when we’d lain apart in the great wide bed—I gave in. First thing in the morning, I’d said, “Maybe we’ve been here long enough, after all. I’m ready to move on, darling, whenever you like.”
The relief on his face made the sacrifice worthwhile. We had started off within the hour, heading back to Salzburg, and then on to Linz, covering the tourist haunts as we came across them, and hardly using our legs anymore. No longer was it just the two of us together in a lovely mountain wilderness.
But Max had been happy, and that made me happy, too. . . .
“Jessica.” I felt Steve’s hand on my forearm, bringing me back to the present.
“Sorry, I ... I was trying to think.”
“Did anything special happen while you were up there in the wilds?”
It sounded like a macabre joke. But I knew what Steve meant. I said slowly, “Max was still keeping the carryall with him all the time. We must have covered miles and miles, but it went everywhere with us.” I remembered pulling his leg about it once—and only once. Max had been short with me, and I couldn’t bear that. If a subject made him touchy, then it was barred. I’d never risk upsetting him.
My brain was too full of tormenting images for reasoned thought. I had to struggle, screwing up my mind in concentration. Then suddenly I was out in clear hard daylight, and I knew.
I had a vivid mental picture of the brown canvas carryall lying where Max had hastily flung it down, its top unzipped and a rod end spilling out. That day I was the one who’d remembered it as we started walking back.
But now that I was sure, I still hung back from telling Steve. To return to that very spot, that secret paradise Could I bring myself to do it?
I had to.
“I know where it was Max hid the scrolls,” I burst out.
Steve jumped. “You do! Tell me….”
“It was at a place we found when we were walking. A tiny lake. I went to sleep. . . .”
“And that was when he did it?”
“Yes . . . yes, that was it. After I woke up ...” I choked, because it hurt me so, touching the memory of that time. “After I woke up, he ... he wasn’t interested in the fishing gear anymore,”
Steve opened up the map, spreading it across the table.
“This little place you stayed at—we’ll get up there right away. Perhaps I’d better ring them.”
I smiled, a sad smile. “There’s no phone, Steve. No electricity. You could hardly even call it a road.”
“We’ll just have to take a chance, then.”
Max and I had taken a chance. The little Gasthaus had looked so deserted, basking gently in the afternoon sunshine, that we were half-afraid it was abandoned. But our welcome had been full of charm, the innkeeper’s plump wife clucking her tongue with pleasure.
I said to Steve, “I expect they’ll be able to put us up, especially at this time of year.”
We got moving right away. At Ischl we stopped for necessary equipment—a knapsack, a large-scale map, a flashlight, shoes fit for walking rough mountain paths. With a prudent eye on the weather, we bought rainwear, too.
By the time our shopping was done, we needed a breather. Dumping everything in the car, we strolled down to the esplanade beside the river. It was still raining slightly, so we couldn’t sit outside on the cafe terrace. That was a lucky break.
I was sipping good hot coffee when through the window I spotted a chubby figure strolling along under the trees. A familiar figure!
I clutched Steve’s sleeve. “Look who’s going by. It’s Otto Kolbinger!”
“Hell.” Frown lines scored his forehead. “Thank the Lord he hasn’t seen us yet. We’ve still got a chance.”
“But it’s just coincidence, Steve—surely?”
He shook his head. “No, he’s after us, all right.”
“How can you be so certain? There must be a hundred things that might bring Otto here. I mean, his job in television. ... Or he might even be on holiday.”
Steve was craning his neck to see farther along the road. “You might be able to explain Otto away, but I’m afraid he isn’t alone….”
“Who is it?” I gasped on a rising tide of fear. Then, “Oh,my God, he’s just met up with Leopold Hellweg. It means they’re right on our tail.”