Faye Kellerman - Street Dreams

Her speech had the singsong inflections of those who spoke Nordic languages.

“Anyway, Marta will return soon. Ah, the kettle boils. I’ll be back.”

After she left, Rina whispered, “How old is she?”

“Eighty-four or -five. Maybe even closer to ninety.”

“The woman has energy.”

“So does your mother. They must have grown them strong in the Old Country.”

Rina tapped her toe. Neither she nor Peter had sat down. Anika came back with a tray. “Sit, sit. Please.”

Decker sat. The sofa was as uncomfortable as it looked, with its stiff back and no lumbar support. By using pillows, Rina managed to ease herself into a decent position. Anika poured tea, then perched on the edge of a chair, her spine ramrod straight.

Maybe discomfort was a cultural thing.

Rina sipped tea. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“Thank you for contacting us. I must say I was very shocked. Who thinks to hear from seventy-year-old ghosts? That’s how long it has been since your mother I’ve seen.”

“I can understand how surprised you must have felt.”

“Very.” She poured herself a mug of tea and sipped slowly. “It brought back memories very hidden. I don’t remember your grandmother’s death individually, but the deaths as a group I remember. I think that they scared my mother. Soon after your mother moves away, we move… to Hamburg.”

“You told me you married an Englishman,” Decker said. “How’d that happen?”

“ Ach, such a long and traurig story.”

“ ‘ Traurig ’ is sad,” Rina said.

Decker said, “I didn’t mean to pry.”

Anika smiled. “But you didn’t. I wrote to you in my e-mail that I married an Englishman.” She thought a moment. “The people are all dead. I’ll tell it to you. In Hamburg, I met my husband when I was seventeen.”

“The Englishman,” Rina said.

“No, no, a German man. We got married. It was not happily ever after like the Bruders Grimm. Right after the wedding, it is 1933 and Germany elects Hitler, who brings us into war. No excuses, Germany deserved what it got because our parents elected the demagogue.”

She shook her head.

“If you asked any German people after World War Two if they voted for Hitler, they all say no. No, no, no, we didn’t vote for him. Nobody voted for him! No one knows how he got power!”

She waved her hand disgustedly in the air.

“My husband was drafted and captured as a POW. He was a staatsbeamte -a civil servant-but because his title contained the word ‘ staats, ’ the English thought he was some important state official. In a camp, they put him with others that had staats in their title. They played cards and talked philosophy the entire time. Meanwhile, from him I don’t hear… maybe a year. I am young and stupid, and after the British invaded the North, I get younger and stupider and fall for an Englishman because he wears the winning uniform. I blame my parents. If they had not moved, I would have probably fallen in love with an American soldier. I would have been better off.”

Rina smiled and nodded, but Decker shrugged confusion.

“Toward the end of the war,” Rina explained, “Germany was being blitzed from three fronts: the British in the North, the Russians in the East, and the Americans in the South. That’s why the Russians liberated Auschwitz and the Americans liberated Dachau. So she’s saying that if she had stayed in Munich, which is in the South, she would have met an American.”

“Ah, I see,” Decker said.

Anika sighed. “I get a divorce from my poor German husband, who can’t believe that his young wife runs off with the enemy.” A sigh. “I hurt Hans very bad. Later, I hear a very nice girl he remarries. They have four children. He is very happy… much happier than me. Serves me right. Where was I in the story?”

“You just divorced your German husband,” Decker reminded her.

“Ah, yes. I marry Cyril Emerson and moved to a small town in Devonshire. You can think how much the English working class loves a German girl. I was miserable. So then we move back to Hamburg, and he is miserable. Finally, we reach a compromise. Hamburg is not so far from Denmark. So we move to Copenhagen and we’re both miserable. Still, we live in Denmark for thirty years. I birth two sons who move to America. So at fifty-six, I divorce Cyril, return to the name Lubke, and off to America I move. To St. Louis because Marta is living there.”

“How did Marta wind up in St. Louis?”

“Her husband was an executive in Anheuser-Busch. Marta loves St. Louis. I don’t like St. Louis. It is searing hot in the summer and bitter cold in the winter. Snow is nice, but the city has no mountains except the Ozarks… very sorry mountains. Ten years ago, I came to Solvang for a visit. After being in Copenhagen so long, it was very familiar for me. I loved the cooler temperature. I love the real mountains. Here, a home I found. Twice a year, I visit Marta. Twice a year, Marta visits me. She gets the good deal.”

Rina laughed. “I think so.”

“Would you like more tea?”

“I’d love some more tea,” Rina said.

Anika picked up the teapot and disappeared into the kitchen.

Rina held in a laugh. “What a character!”

“She has a personality,” Decker said.

She came back several minutes later with scalding hot tea. “Ah, the steam, the aroma… only thing English do well is tea.” She poured three refills. “I try to think back that far, Mrs. Decker, to the time of the deaths. It was a very peculiar time.”

“How so?” Rina asked.

“All of Germany was imploding. Munich was no exception. The city was in terrible chaos, and the deaths made even more chaos. München held much militaristic presence, of uniforms and armies and parades. It was the birth home of the Nazis, yes, but they were not the only political party. There were many and every group has its own flag, its own identity. Every party is color coded. Brown for Nazis, the Social Democrats are green, Communists are red or black shirt with red bow ties. Then there are the royalists. The Bavarian monarchs were expelled by the Communists in 1918, but many relatives remained and dressed in old Bayerischen royal uniform for every parade on every occasion. There were always demonstrations in Konigsplatz… in every public square. I go to a school in Turkenstrasse-”

“My mother’s schule, ” Rina said.

“Yes, your mother’s schule, too. Next door was the seat of the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter. We used to see the Brown Shirts goose-step. A few times Hitler, too. It was all part of the show. Looking back as an adult, I was very frightened, I think, because these groups used to come to the schule and talk. They ask about our parents-what they did, who they knew, what newspapers were at home. The newspapers in Europe are different than newspapers in America. They are political-party papers, so by asking about the newspapers, the groups know the parents’ party affiliation. So when the deaths happen, like your grandmother, Mrs. Decker, the talk is that maybe your Omah was on the wrong side politically.”

“Do you think her murder was political?”

“After the first one is found, everyone says that yes, it must be political. Everything in Munich was political. There were several other murders of young women that were political, one very famous-a farm girl named Amalie Sandmeyer who was murdered by the Fememord, a very secret right-wing group. Everyone is afraid of the Fememord. ”

“Why was Amalie Sandmeyer murdered?” Decker asked. “Was she a spy?”

“On the contrary. She was a working girl and was too naive to realize what was happening. Weapons at the time were illegal in München. If you find weapons from World War One, to the police you must bring them. But all the groups have secret caches. Amalie found a secret cache of weapons, and like the dumb good girl she was, she reported it to authorities. The problem was she found a Nazi cache and the police had many members in the National Socialist German Workers Party. Everyone knew her murder was political.”