“Come in, come in, mein Amerikanisch friend!” Herr König scurried around the counter waving a book in his hand. “Wait until you see what I have found for you!”
Nick paused just inside the shop as the jeweler took another customer by the arm and led her to the door.
“Come back in an hour, Frau Putzkammer,” he told her. “I will have your watch cleaned and ready by then.”
“But — ” Frau Putzkammer didn’t seem ready to leave, but she didn’t have much choice. Herr König slammed the door behind her with a jingle of bells before he locked it and flipped the sign in the window from Geöffnet to Geschlossen. What was this all about?
“Now, I told you I would find out about this church for you, did I not?” Herr König was almost breathless at his detective work. “So here it is. In Berlin!”
He held the book open and nailed a page with his finger. Nick tried to read it, but —
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to read that for me. My German — ”
“Ah, ja. I keep forgetting.” He pulled his jeweler’s glasses over his eyes, as if preparing to clean Frau Putzkammer’s watch. “I shall translate for you: The history of the Reconciliation Church ran not straight-lined, but breaks experiences. Thusly, with the jahr 1894 Empress Auguste Victoria participated in inauguration place of worship donated of their, which offered one thousand humans seats. The empress — ”
“Wait a minute, Herr König!” Nick held up his hands. “Excuse me.”
Herr König looked up as if Nick had just interrupted the performance of a symphony.
“I’m sorry.” Nick didn’t quite know how to say it. “But I’m not following a word of what you’re saying. Are you sure that’s English?”
“What?” Herr König paused for a minute to reread his book, then flipped up his glasses. “Of course it’s English. Only sounding a little bit like the German, perhaps. Translation is — not always so easy.”
“Yeah, I’m finding that out. Why don’t you just tell me what it says, without — I mean, you don’t have to read the whole thing.”
“Hmm.” Herr König looked at Nick as if he thought Nick were cheating. The building, the first years, the war years — more than Nick wanted to know. But still he listened politely. Finally he had a chance to ask a question.
“So this church was right on the line between East and West Berlin, and it was already called the Church of Bringing Back Together? That’s pretty cool.”
“Ja.” Herr König nodded. “Cool, as you say. Unfortunately, it was damaged by Allied bombings during the war.”
“Oh.” Nick wasn’t sure if he was supposed to apologize for that sort of thing, or not. “That’s not so good.”
“I said damaged, not destroyed. Many other buildings were destroyed, turned into piles of bricks. Not this one. It was beautiful, the steeple so tall. Some damages, ja, but it was repaired some years later and used again as it had been.”
“That’s good.”
“Ja, except for one problem.” He jabbed at his book and read — or translated — once more. “It says here that a ‘Minister Hildebrandt tried 1960 to energize building and add community center. But before this could happen the East German government created other facts.’ ”
“Facts?” Once more, Nick felt lost.
“They built the wall in 1961.”
“That’s not so good. But I knew that. Did that mean people couldn’t use it anymore?”
“They tried, but it was no good. And so in 1985 — four years ago — the government finished what the Americans and the British had started.” He closed the book and put it aside. “They tore it down.”
“Oh.” Nick turned away. “I guess that pretty much ends the story. Maybe I’ll find someplace else to take Fred’s cup.”
“Nein, nein. But here I am forgetting to tell you the best part of what I have learned!”
“The church is history. What else is there to tell?”
Herr König opened the book once more, this time to the end, to a part that looked to Nick like an index. He pointed at a name and address as if it meant something important, along with one of those German words that seemed to go on and on, out the door and around the block. “See here?”
“Uh — ” Nick squinted at the printing, trying to make out any familiar words. And there! “Isn’t that the start of our church word? Vers . . .”
“Versöhnungskircheerinnerungsgesellschaft. Which means, The Reconciliation Church Remembrance Society. ‘Dedicated to the Future of East-West Relations, Not the Past.’ Well, at least that sounds — forward-thinking, no? And look here: This is the name of the society’s president and her office address. It appears she’s a social worker of some kind, works for the Ministry of Church Affairs, or some such agency.”
“No kidding? So all I have to do is talk my folks into taking me to Berlin, and we can give this to — ”
“Frau Sabine Stumpff.”
“Frau Stump, okay. Maybe you could write that down for me?”
“Didn’t I tell you I would find out?” Herr König beamed as if he had just cracked the mystery of the century. He went to the door, pulled back the lock, and turned the sign back over with a flourish and a bow. “I only wish I could have had the chance to buy that chalice myself.”
The American boy tried to make sense out of his tourist guidebook, but all he understood were the little black-and-white photos.
“Wish they’d make these things in English sometimes,” he mumbled, “for all us non-German types.” Oh, well. He was the foreigner here, and he’d better get used to it. His father would be stationed here for a few years, at least, before they could get back to the States. He wasn’t sure he would call that “bad” news, exactly. But the good news was that after eight weeks he could recognize a number of German words, thanks to Herr König’s help.
Ja meant yes and nein meant no, of course. Everybody knew that from watching old World War 2 movies on TV. Okay meant okay, which seemed pretty convenient, and then there were bitte, danke, and bitte, again. Please, thank you, and “don’t mention it.”
So far, so good. If he only knew that much when he started at the American Academy in the fall, he’d do okay. But a couple other phrases might come in handy. He studied his dog-eared little copy of How to Speak German in Thirty Days and tried out a phrase.
“Ikh fer-shtay-e nikht!” He looked up from his book with a smile. “Did I say that right?”
His mother looked over at his dad, who had lifted the top off a frying pan for a sniff of pork chops. He breathed in deeply but shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said, replacing the lid. “Although — that sounds an awful lot like ‘I don’t understand.’ I think I’ve heard that one a lot around the base.”
“Bingo!” And possibly some of the best words he could learn. Even so, Nick graduated to the next page, stumbling through the foreign words one at a time. “Gehen wir nach Berlin?”
His parents both stared at him blankly this time. Not a clue.
“That just means, ‘Are we going to Berlin?’ Pretty good, huh?”
“Oh, I get it.” His dad chuckled.
But it was supposed to be a hint, Dad. Nick waited with an expectant expression, and his mom stepped in.
“I think he’s trying to tell you something, dear.” She picked up his uniform jacket and hung it in the little hall closet. “Since we’ve been here nearly two months and we haven’t seen anything more than the street between here and the base.”
“We all knew it was going to be tough these first few weeks.” Mark Wilder — Master Sergeant Wilder — plunked down in an easy chair and propped his stocking feet up on the coffee table. “It’s not a vacation, even if it is summer. This is my job now.”
“But not twenty-four hours a day.” She stood at the kitchen entry, hands on her hips. And Nick held off from adding to the argument. He’d run out of German words. And his mom was doing just fine on her own.
“You know how much it means to him, dear.” When she started talking like that, she could sweet-talk a camel out of its hump. “With his friend’s — er, artifact, and all. And it would be an interesting trip for all three of us, don’t you think?”
Nick did his best not to smile. But Dad would lose this one, no doubt about it.