We find a shallow cove to the north of Hallstatt, pedaling our rental boat to the place our innkeeper recommended we swim. A stream runs into the lake here, icy water pouring down from the mountains, smoothing out the bed of rocks for a respite in the summer’s heat.
I dip my toes into the creek and then recline on the backseat of the pedal boat, the fractured rays of sun trickling down through the leaves as Ella and Josh splash in the water. Birds sing in the forest, and as Ella and Josh wander upstream, jumping from stone to stone, I enjoy the rise and fall of the birdsong, a gentle current like the one that rocks the boat.
I miss my family, but something about this place breathes a gentle contentment inside of me. Peace. I don’t miss being home, not like I thought I would. Perhaps it’s because of Ella and her dad. I’m away and yet I’ve found a bit of home here with the two of them.
After our visit to the cemetery yesterday, Josh helped Sigmund Stadler carry his mother down the steps and to the office of a doctor in Hallstatt. Sigmund texted Josh last night to say his mother was awake again, but we haven’t heard anything else. So we wait and I worry about this elderly woman who climbed all those steps to care for the graves of her mother and the woman she called a friend.
Dozens of questions continue whirling through my head as I rest in the warmth this afternoon. I want to ask Annika about the listings in her book, about the photograph of Max, about what has happened in these decades since the war. And most of all, I want to ask her about Luzia Weiss.
The story from her Bambi book flutters into my mind, the journey of a deer who longed to be with others and yet learned as a young fawn that to survive, he must live in fear. And that he must spend most of his time alone so no one would hurt him, including Faline.
What a sad life, I’m starting to think, to live alone because you’re afraid.
Because I’m afraid.
I want to enjoy the stories of others, but I don’t want to live solely in their pages any longer. I want to embrace my future, my own story, without fear.
Last night after Josh and Ella settled into their room, I wrote the last paragraphs of my blog about Felix Salten. It seemed fitting to finish the post here in the country he once loved, eighty years after he ran away.
Abstand is a German term that means building an intentional space between an individual and the world around him. In order to protect his life, Felix Salten had to lay a brick wall between himself and the country he loved. He never returned to Austria. Like the roe deer he created on paper, Salten spent his final years roaming until his death on October 8, 1945, months after the Soviet Army liberated Vienna from the Nazis.
Perhaps Salten described his journey best in one of his last books—Bambi’s Children:
One-Eye spoke in his oiliest tones. “You’re very famous, now. The whole forest speaks of you as though you were already a legend. I should be honored that you speak to me at all.”
“If it’s an honor,” Bambi told him, “it’s very unwillingly bestowed. What I did, I did because I had to.”
“It was heroic of you,” said One-Eye with sly flattery.
Bambi shook his head. “Is it heroic to do what necessity demands?” He wheeled and disappeared.
Necessity demanded that Salten disappear from Austria, but he left behind a treasure trove of stories for children and their parents to remember what might be lost today if we don’t stand against the evil in our midst.
I reach for my phone and snap a selfie. Me, Calisandra Randall, relaxing in a pedal boat. I text it to Brie, knowing she might go into shock when she sees it.
Ella squeals on my right. Josh has lifted her up, cradling her under her arms as her legs dangle in the water, swinging her from side to side. This is what fathers are supposed to do, I think. Make their children laugh, secure in their arms.
The jet lag weighs down my eyes, and I doze before being awakened by someone pouring cold water over my feet. Ella—laughing as she scoops up the water in her hands, reviving me.
When I look over at Josh, he shrugs. “I couldn’t stop her.”
“Because she’s bigger than you?”
“Her willpower is certainly stronger.”
Ella grabs a stick and throws it into the water, watching the current steal it.
“Go away,” I murmur to Josh, closing my eyes again.
“Oh no,” he says, climbing into one of the bucket seats up front. “No more sleeping, or you’ll be up all night.”
And it occurs to me that I was sleeping, soundly, on a plastic bench seat, surrounded by noise. The time difference has me a bit upside down, but upside down never improved my sleep before. Josh and Ella—they aren’t wearing me out like most people do. Instead, I am utterly content when I’m with them.
For this brief moment, a chapter in the greater story, I feel as if I’m part of their little family.
“I’m used to staying up all night,” I say.
Josh stretches out on the front seat, extending his long legs and water sandals to the opposite side of the boat. “Mind if I join you?”
I push up to my elbows. “Are you giving me a choice?”
“Not really.” He pulls his ball cap over his eyes and sunglasses.
“If I don’t get to sleep, then neither do you.”
“I’m just resting my eyes.” He doesn’t rest them for long, though. I watch him open the storage compartment between the seats and check his phone.
“Nothing yet?”
“No. I keep hoping Sigmund will call with another update.”
“I didn’t mean to scare her.”
“I can only imagine she’s spent a lifetime being afraid.”
It’s a common bond between us, this fear.
“After the war,” he says, “about twelve thousand Nazis were detained near here at a place called Camp Orr. They created a group called the Spider to resurrect the Austrian Nazi Party and annex Austria back into Germany.”
I shiver at this thought. “Thank God they didn’t succeed.”
“Many people here thought the Nazis would take over their country again one day. After what they lived through, it must have been a terrifying thought.”
“The fear didn’t go away,” I say. “Perhaps it never went away for Annika.”
Josh glances toward Ella; she is quite content now building a fortress with stones and leaves on the riverbank. “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.’”
I peek up over his shoulder to see if he’s reading the verse from his phone, but the phone’s no longer in his hand. “You’ve memorized it?”
“I clung to it for years.”
When I close my eyes again, it’s not to sleep. It’s a wall of sorts, blocking him out, and yet I see the picture of his wife in my mind, the photograph he had hanging in his office. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to watch her suffer and not to be able to take away her pain.
“How did you do that?” I ask, opening my eyes slowly.
He turns toward me now, propping his feet up on the bucket seat. “What?”
“How did you let Grace go?”
“She’ll never be completely gone, not from my heart at least, but she’s with her Father now, and I know . . .” His voice cracks, confidence melting in his love. “I know that He’s taking good care of her.”
God as a father is not the picture that I want to see. At least not as my father. But a father like Josh . . . I can see God in him. In men like Ethan and others at church who care well for their children.
“I’m sorry that your dad didn’t love you like he should have, Callie.”
“No apology necessary.”
“That’s not how God meant for it to be.”
I rub away the knot trying to worm its way into my left shoulder. “It seems that so much in our world is not what God meant for it to be.”
“I think we can cling to the goodness we see in the world. To the beauty in these lakes and the laughter of those kids who come every Saturday to hear your stories.”
Goodness, the heart and soul of a father. I like that picture, knowing God’s character isn’t reflected in every dad of this world.
Ella throws a stone into the stream and giggles when it hits the water.
“Does she remind you of your wife?” I ask quietly so Ella doesn’t hear.
“In her laughter and her grand outpouring of love, but Ella is branching out with graceful new limbs of her own. She seems unbreakable, but I’m afraid I’ll say something to hurt her. . . .”
“What would Grace have told you?”
He thinks for a moment. “To be gentle.”
“Gentle and strong,” I say.
When he smiles at me, a strange feeling creeps into my heart. A tectonic shift. Josh and I—I think we might make a good team.
“I’m hungry,” Ella calls from the bank.
Josh is still smiling when he offers me his hand. “Should we break out the sandwiches?”
He helps me climb over the edge of the boat, and we sit on a log by the shore. Leaves rustle around us, and someone paddles a canoe around our boat, heading upstream. When Josh’s phone rings, he pulls it out of his pocket and wanders toward the trees, just far enough away that we can’t hear the conversation while Ella and I unwrap the brown paper from our sandwiches and begin eating the turkey and cheddar cheese on sourdough bread.
“I like it here.” Ella wipes mustard off her face with the back of her hand.
“Me too.”
“My mom wouldn’t let Dad dive in this lake.”
“Did he tell you that?”
She shrugs. “I hear things.”
“I bet you have amazing ears.”
She tugs on one of her earlobes. “Like a moth.”
“I didn’t know moths had such good hearing.”
Josh puts one leg over the log as he joins us. “Did you hear what I just said?”
Ella scrunches up her nose. “I wasn’t listening to you.”
He looks at me. “That was Sigmund.”
“Is Annika okay?”
He nods. “The doctor said her body is in good working order, though apparently Annika said that no ninety-seven-year-old’s body works all that well.”
I smile. “It sounds like she is better.”
“Sigmund asked us to come to the castle for brunch tomorrow. His mother would like to hear your story and share a bit of hers, though she doesn’t want to talk about lost treasure from the war.”
“That puts a damper on your search.”
“On our search,” he says. “But I want to learn about Luzia too.”
Ella balls up the brown paper that was wrapped around her sandwich. “C’mon, Dad!” she says, tugging on his hand.
When he stands up, she rushes into the water again, but before he follows her, he offers his hand to me as well. “Come play with us.”
I hesitate, looking down at his offering, a palm spread open. I could sit here and mull over my thoughts alone, or I could join them in their laughter.
“Please, Callie.”
Ella hops back up to the shore. “Team Nemeth!” she exclaims, a smile lighting her face.
“Team Nemeth,” I say before taking Josh’s hand.
The three of us splash and laugh, throw twigs and rocks. And as we play, the world seems to right itself again.
When Josh knocks on the castle door, the muscles in my neck fold and ripple down my body. I’m not entirely sure why I’m shaking—we are invited guests this time.
Ella is chattering beside me about glass castles and fairy tales, and I think about what Annika must have been like when she was seven and then a few years after, living on this estate when the Nazis marched into her country. I can’t imagine all that she must have seen.
I’ve dreamed about Annika Knopf this past month, wondered about her story. Though I pray Annika is innocent of any crime, perhaps she is ashamed to tell us what happened when she was younger, if she stole items from her Jewish neighbors. But even if she won’t talk about the treasure, I hope she’ll tell us how her path intersects with Luzia’s journey.
Sigmund answers the door and welcomes us into the house that is now his son’s summer home. As we walk through the grand hall, tiled with marble the color of cream, he assures us that his own home in Salzburg is quite modest, as if he’s ashamed of the grandeur here.
“Would you like some lemonade?” he asks Ella.
“Yes, please.”
“There’s a playground out back, where two of my great-grandchildren are currently swinging.” He turns to Josh. “May she play with them?”
Josh hesitates, and I understand. He won’t always be able to cushion her, but for now, he must.
“Is there a place we could sit outside and talk?” I ask.
“Of course.” Sigmund waves us farther into the house. “We have a veranda, and my mother would love nothing more than to enjoy the lake from there while you talk.”
Josh tells Ella that she can join the other children.
We follow Sigmund through the foyer, around a white-painted staircase that winds up to the second floor, and past two closed doors. The third one is open, Annika waiting for us inside.
Her chair is backed up against the dark paneling that rounds the library. Sigmund cradles his mother’s arm as she stands to greet us and then escorts her outside through French doors.
I clutch my handbag, folded under my arm, as we follow them. Inside my purse is Bambi with Annika’s list, the photograph of Max and Luzia, and the photocopy from Charlotte’s magic balloon book.
Sigmund helps his mother sit on one of the cushioned patio chairs clustered around a glass table, though it seems to me that she doesn’t need much help at all.
“How long did you live here?” I ask Annika as we join her at the table.
“My husband and I cared for this place for more than twenty years. Hermann injured his arm before the war began, which was an unexpected blessing in that he couldn’t fight in the Wehrmacht, but the Nazis wouldn’t let him—wouldn’t let us—remain on his family’s farm. Because my father had been the caretaker on this estate, they assigned us the role of caring for this property while it was a camp.”
She says the words as if she’s rehearsed them many times, as if they’ve been embroidered into her core for years, frayed and worn.
“Why were you looking for me?” she asks.
I glance at Josh before pulling Bambi out of my handbag and scooting it across the table. “It started with this.”
I’d expected some sort of emotional reaction. Tears. Laughter. A gasp of surprise or even shock. I may never know if Annika found the items recorded inside these pages—or what, if anything, she did with them—but I’d expected something to commemorate the reunion of a long-lost book with its owner.
Instead, she just stares at it, and I’m disappointed, I admit. Even without the potential of finding treasure, I’d hoped it would be a homecoming, of sorts, this gift from her mother long ago, traveling around the world before it returned here.
Annika’s mind seems sharp, but perhaps she’s forgotten this season of her life. Or blocked it out.
I open the book and show her the first listing. Annika rubs her hand across the corner of the paper as if it’s some sort of talisman to help her remember. “She knew . . .”
Sigmund leans over the book, scanning the line with her.
“What did she know?” Josh asks.
Annika looks up at him before turning to me. “How did you find this book?”
“It seemed to find me,” I tell her. “The children of a man named Max Dornbach sold it in an estate sale, and my sister purchased it for me.”
Recognition glints in her eyes, followed by a flood of fear. I want to reassure her, not cause any more pain. I show her the inscription at the beginning of the book and then skip ahead to the newspaper clipping of Max.
“I think the book was trying to find its way home,” I say.
“Max is gone?”
I nod. “He died three years ago.”
Annika traces the edge of the torn clipping. “I never knew if he survived the war.”
And so I tell her what I know about his home in Idaho, about his clinic for animals and the daughter who adored him as much as Sigmund clearly adores his mom. As I tell her these things, a tear slips down her cheek.
“My uncle met you, after the war,” Josh says, trying not to cross over the established no-treasure-talk line. “He and his men were searching for items that the Nazis dumped in the lake. We thought you might have been writing down some of these items in your book.”
“Neither Hermann nor I wanted the Allied soldiers to search the estate,” Annika says, her fingers still on the edge of the book. “The Nazis did dump things in our lake, but I don’t know where they hid any treasure. People have searched for generations and have found nothing hidden on the estate except bones in a pet cemetery.”
Josh sits back in his chair, his gaze focused on his daughter leaning back in her swing as if her toes might really touch the sky. “What were you recording?”
“I never wrote in this book.”
I glance over at Josh, wishing I could decipher his eyes. Is Annika lying to us, or did someone else use her book to record stolen items?
From my handbag, I take out the full newspaper clip of Max and Luzia dancing and slide it across the table. She stares down at the couple from so long ago, wiping away her tears. “So you know of Luzia Weiss through the newspaper piece?”
I shake my head. “I’ve known about Luzia for most of my life.”
“But how?”
I retrieve the photocopy of Luzia’s name inside the Hatschi Bratschi story. “From another children’s book.”
This time Annika’s eyes grow wide. Instead of touching the photocopy, her body lists to the left. I reach for her shoulder, ready to catch her in case she tumbles again, but she doesn’t faint this time.
Slowly she reaches out and takes this paper, clutching it to her chest. The way she curls over it reminds me of Charlotte.
“Where did you find this?” she demands.
“I’m not certain,” I say slowly, “but I think the book was with Luzia’s daughter.”
“Her daughter?”
“During the war, someone took my friend—Charlotte—to an orphanage near Lyon, France. Her paperwork was lost, but this remained.”
“Marta,” she whispers.
I glance over at Sigmund, but he is focused on his mother. “Would you like to rest?” he asks.
“No,” she insists. “I must find out.”
I lean toward her. “How did you know Charlotte’s mother?”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. I see more tears building in her eyes before they spill over and flood her cheeks.
“Luzia wasn’t your friend’s mother.” We all wait quietly for her to continue. “I believe Charlotte was Marta—Luzia’s sister. Our mother—she died during the war.”
“Your mother?”
She looks back at the lake as she releases my hand. “I wasn’t born with the name Annika Knopf.”
Sigmund’s face doesn’t change. Whatever she has to say, it seems he already knows.
His mother lowers the paper to her lap. “Once upon a time, many years ago, my name was Luzia Weiss.”
Now Josh reaches for my hand. If she is Luzia, then—
“What happened to Annika?” I ask.