Elizabeth Peters - Trojan Gold

We had reached my room. I unlocked the door.

“I wonder how big it is,” Tony mused.

“Bigger than a breadbox,” I offered. “Are you coming in?”

“I have my own room, thank you. Friedl was more than happy to accommodate me.”

He was infuriatingly calm about being exiled from my tempting proximity. In fact, there was a swagger in his step and a certain swing to his shoulders as he walked away….

“Tony,” I said gently.

“What?”

“I have a feeling Ann would rate Friedl as a succubus, too.”

Tony’s smile was the sublime quintessence of smugness. “Why don’t I ask her? I told her I’d call today. So if you’ll excuse me for, say, half an hour—maybe an hour…” He disappeared into his room, leaving me to contemplate his closed door and the shame of my evil imagination.

We decided to drive to Garmisch for dinner. Actually it was I who decided; Tony was in favor of sticking around the hotel, in hopes of God knows what—another attempt on my life, perhaps. I wanted to get away. The town was preying on my nerves—not that it wasn’t a nice town, but it was so small. Too small for the three of us—especially when John was one of the three.

Since it was still early, we poked around the shops for a while, and Tony, who was still smarting from what he considered my treacherous behavior, got his revenge by carrying out an act of atrocity from which I had dissuaded him on several previous occasions. He bought a pair of lederhosen.

Lederhosen are those short leather pants. Let me repeat the word “short.” They do not come to the knee, or just above the knee, or to mid-thigh; they are, not to belabor the point, short . On Tony they were a cross between a visual obscenity and a bad joke; he had to buy the largest pair in the shop in order to cover the essentials, and they were so big around the waist there was room inside for two of him. He said it didn’t matter, the suspenders would hold them up.

The suspenders, brightly embroidered with objects such as edelweiss, were part of the costume, which also included knee socks and one of those silly little hats with a feather or an ostrich plume or a Gamsbart (chamois beard) tucked into the band. Tony’s had a white ostrich feather. When attired in the complete ensemble, he looked exactly like Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater in a German edition of Mother Goose I had bought for one of my nieces.

He wanted me to try on dirndls—so we’d match, I suppose. I actually love those cute little outfits; the astute reader has probably realized that my nasty remarks about the waitresses were prompted by pure jealousy. A dirndl looks as absurd on me as the lederhosen looked on Tony, if not as indecent. I tried on a few, to shut him up; when I saw him in a whispered conference with the shopkeeper, I realized he was planning to buy me one for a Christmas present. I also realized I didn’t have anything for him, so we cruised a few more stores and I took mental notes on the items Tony admired.

We stowed his parcel in the car. By mat time it was dark, and the town was aglitter with thousands of Christmas bulbs strung from storefronts and lampposts. Snow crunched underfoot, the air was redolent with the smell of pine branches and wood fires; the colorful ski jackets and caps glowed like neon—raspberry, turquoise, hot pink—and the sound of carols poured from every door. It was very pretty and festive, and all I could think of was John’s advice: Look out for familiar faces. Between the ski masks and the scarves and the caps pulled low over ears and foreheads, it would have been difficult to recognize my own mother. The season and the setting could not have been more convenient for someone who preferred to pass unrecognized.

We hadn’t gone a block from the car before I saw a familiar face. He was as swathed in scarves as all the others; I recognized him by the globular red nose that flashed on and off.

He saw me at the same time. Dropping the arm of the woman who was with him, he came pelting toward me, arms extended, nose glowing. “Vicky! Adored and most elongated of womanly pulchritude”—he made it all one word, which you can do in German, if you aren’t particular about syntax. “You changed your mind! You came!”

He flung his arms around me and burrowed his face into my chest.

It was merely a token gesture, since I was wearing three layers of clothing and my parka had a zipper that closed it tighter than a chastity girdle, but Tony decided to take offense. Twisting a hand in the back of Dieter’s collar, he removed him.

“She came, and I came with her,” he said, biting off the words so that his breath made irritated white puffs in the cold air, like a dragon hiccuping. “Cut it out, Dieter.”

“I saw you,” Dieter admitted. “I hoped you were only a figment of my imagination and that if I ignored you, you would dissolve into air. Where is my nose?”

He fumbled at his face. “Here,” I said, handing it back to him. “Must you, Dieter?”

“Yes. Yes, yes, I must, or go mad with longing….” He began pounding on his chest.

I indicated the woman who stood some distance away, her arms folded and her foot tapping. “Isn’t that Elise?”

“It was Elise,” Dieter admitted. “No doubt it still is Elise. You see, when you turned me down, Vicky, I had to find another companion. Don’t tell Elise I asked you first. She would not like to be second choice.”

Elise did not come rushing to greet us. “Look who I have found,” Dieter cried, presenting us like trophies.

“Yes,” said Elise. “Quite a coincidence that we should all be here again.”

“It certainly is,” said Tony.

“Why do you stand looking hard at one another like two strange dogs?” Dieter asked curiously. “That is no way for old friends to behave. Let us all kiss one another.”

Whereupon he flung his arms around Tony and stood on tiptoe, his lips pursed. Torn between amusement and disgust, Tony finally succumbed to laughter; he pushed Dieter away and reached for Elise. “Good idea, old buddy.”

He had to lift Elise clean off her feet to kiss her; when he put her down she was looking a lot more amiable. Giggling, she linked arms with Tony and leaned against him. “We were about to have dinner. You will join us, won’t you?”

There was no way of getting out of it without rudeness, even if we had wanted to, which neither of us did. The coincidences were falling as thick as the leaves in Vallombrosa.

But as the meal progressed and everyone mellowed with wine and food, I began to wonder whether this particular coincidence might not be legitimate. Dieter was a keen skier, and Garmisch was one of the most popular winter-sports areas in Germany. Elise’s presence surprised me a little, but there again, Dieter’s explanation made sense. They had certainly been friendly the year before; now that her marriage was kaput, she would be looking for entertainment.

I wondered whether Schmidt would approve of her new hairstyle. It was jet-black instead of pink, and arranged in the wispy, wind-blown style fashionable that year. She had lost weight, which in her case was not becoming. The hollows under her cheekbones were as deep as scars, and her wrists looked brittle as dry twigs. She laughed a lot.

Tony wasn’t buying the coincidence, but he didn’t make much progress in his subtle attempt to elicit information. One of his problems was that he had no idea what we were supposed to be looking for; it could have been a painting or a piece of sculpture, a rare coin or an entire frescoed ceiling. He twitched at the mention of Tintoretto and started at Saint Stephen’s Crown. It was the most entertaining aspect of the evening, a lot funnier than Dieter’s dreadful jokes.

During the course of the usual shoptalk and professional gossip, I had a chance to inquire after Rosa and Jan. Elise’s comments about Rosa were surprisingly catty, even for her; from what she said, I got the impression that a professional feud was brewing, probably over some earth-shaking issue such as whether a painting was by Rembrandt or by one of his students. Dieter professed to know nothing about her; since their fields of expertise were so different, they would not ordinarily meet professionally, and—as Dieter candidly and crudely remarked—Rosa had nothing else to attract a man of his tastes.