The Blackberry Bush (5 page)

She’s not even looking at the book. This psalm is coming from a deep, deep place—perhaps from the patriarchs and matriarchs of her proud nation.

“
De afgrond roept tot den afgrond
(Deep calleth unto deep)…”

Something like crystal shatters in the back of Walter’s throat, and little pieces of emotional broken glass catch in his mouth.

In that very instant, this young woman outranks him, both emotionally and socially. Some people just have power over others. Walter chokes up and struggles for breath. He has to sit down. While she continues to sing forth, a wave of emotion rolls over Walter. All the seeming vanity of his pointless, non-heroic life rolls in hot tears down his cheeks. It is simply impossible to stay dry in any way tonight.

He gathers himself and automatically looks up and to the left. She has placed her perfectly manicured hand on his shoulder. Her concerned brown eyes match her resonant voice. “
Gaat het, meneer
(Are you okay, sir)?”

That face.

How can someone so young—at least ten years his junior—have such an “arrived” countenance? Here he is, the occupying soldier, and his heart defers to her instantly.

In a few minutes, he’s regained his composure—taking part in the church service with the rest of them. Walter leaves quickly after the blessing, wondering whether the Dutch black-robed minister would still bless him if he knew he’s German.

Rounding the corner into the neighborhood with broad sidewalks and massive leafy trees, he slows down and glances up at the moon that’s trying to break through the thickly clouded sky.

Hearing sudden footsteps next to him, Walter pivots, startled.

The woman’s eyes look up from under the brim of her hat. “I’m Cornelia. But everyone calls me Nellie. And your name, sir?”

She reaches out her elegant hand to him. Instinctively he bows and kisses it, as if a knight with a princess at court.

“Walter,
Gnädiges Fräulein
(graceful young lady),” he whispers politely after the kiss.

Her other hand shoots to her mouth as she steps back quickly.

A German.

11 September 2001
Oberwinter am Rhein, Germany
Just south of Bonn

Opa Harald

O
PA
H
ARALD SITS ALONE
at the kitchen table in the Dornbusch family home, turning an antique key over and over with his fingers. He has finally located the key to his father Walter’s sea chest.

Kati has been begging him for years to open it, but it isn’t in Harald’s nature to force or break things open. He always waits until the time is right. He likes working with a tailwind, not a headwind.

I promise, Kati, as soon as I find the key,
he has always told her
.

So now he has found the key. This afternoon they will open the lock and solve the mystery together.

Kati will soon come home from school, and they will have their customary, daily tea-and-debrief session at the kitchen table, looking out over the rolling farm fields to the west and beyond the blackberry thicket defining the boundary between their back garden and the cultivated fields behind the family home.

The Rhine River cuts a deep canyon through this rolling farmland region, and wine grapes are grown on the steep hillsides leading down to the river.

Opa Harald’s father, somewhat agitated for whatever reason, had given Harald the key to the chest many years ago and made him swear he wouldn’t open it until after Harald’s mother passed away. The years passed, and Harald had misplaced the key, probably during the move up the hill into the home Harald had built for the family.

He had been daydreaming yesterday morning at sunrise when a vision came to him....

He was very young in the dream, maybe eighteen. He and a fiery-eyed, fine-featured girl of perhaps ten years of age were sitting on canvas stools in front of a tent. Postcards were floating toward them, originating from behind them. The cards were emerging from a cabin window deep in the woods, then floating in a single-file line through the air on a gentle breath of wind. They would pick them out of the air in front of them and read them together.

Some of the postcards had scenes from California. Some seemed older and had vintage European photos and stamps.

All the messages they pulled out of the floating postcard row were handwritten and addressed to both of them:

You kept your promise. Thank you.
—Your father, Walter

God inside of me loves to dance.
—Janine

You know the girl who is reading these with you, but you’ve never met her.
—Nellie

It’s always the right time to do the right thing.
—Ruud

It must be possible to make cartwheels last forever.
—Joshua

I am so very sorry. So very sorry.
—Nellie

Pay attention to the direction of the river.
—Saahir

The key to my father’s sea chest is in the bottom left drawer in a small box in my workshop, where I put it years ago.

This last one was in Harald’s own handwriting
.

Funny thing, though. Each postcard vanished into thin air as soon as the next one was grasped....

The whistle of the teakettle shatters Harald’s delicate memory of yesterday’s vision.

Who are Janine, Nellie, Ruud, Joshua, and the others? The answers will come, Harald knows, as they always do, in time. Kati will be home shortly.

As Harald waits for the tea to steep, he feels a sense of deep thankfulness that the visions and dreams are returning.

When Harald was a child, the visions had been as plentiful as crisp autumn leaves raked up into big piles.

Can it have something to do with the fact that fall is around the corner again?
Harald thinks.
The air is already carrying a certain coolness about it.

Why do we lose touch, in the middle of our lives, with visions and dreams?
Harald muses.
Well, at least they are starting to come back. Perhaps it is because, in the middle of our lives, we work too hard and imagine too little.

He sighs.
Dreams and visions are fragile and subtle things. The harsh midday sun of anxiety and stress can burn them out entirely. They need gentle cultivation.

That’s why, Harald is convinced, it has taken him so long to remember where he’d put the key. But today, sure enough, the antique key that he again flips over and over with his fingers on the table was found exactly where the postcard said it would be. Harald is tempted to open it first without Kati, just to take a peek, but he musters all the discipline he can to wait for her. Harald has always been good at patience.

Last evening, when he kissed Kati good night on the forehead, he’d promised: “Tomorrow we open the sea chest together, after school.”

Awakened from the memory of last night’s tuck-in by Kati’s approaching steps, Harald turns toward the front door and takes a mental photo of his granddaughter as she comes through the door and breaks into her only-for-grandfather smile.

She has gotten so very tall, almost as tall as he is. She is still almost painfully lean—a little too nervous in personality to have a good appetite. Having lived through the War himself and all its hardships, it is hard for him to watch her pick at her food and just push it around the plate.

Kati has braces on her teeth, hardly an upgrade on her somewhat homely face, dominated by that nose of hers.

Her skin is as pale as the day she was born, and her hard-to-tame short black hair has broken free of this morning’s attempts to groom it.

But to Harald, she is beautiful. She is his beloved granddaughter.

Kati

I
GLANCE AT MY BIG
G
LASHÜTTE WRISTWATCH
as I approach the front door. I have been waiting all day for the hands of this watch to come to these precise places.

Today we open the sea chest!

Ola, Opa
! There’s the teapot and the Deventer cake sitting ready on the table. It’s the only time of the day I’m actually hungry.

Opa wants our customary teatime first before opening the treasure chest. I’m going to tell him that I feel better inside today. Having something to look forward to makes me feel less agitated. Most days, I’m like a washing machine that never turns off. I can adjust the buttons, water, soap, etc., but there is no on/off switch. I just agitate and agitate....

Mutti is more and more dissatisfied with me every month. Apparently I am not what she had in mind for a daughter. It’s not that I won’t do what she says. I simply can’t. How on earth am I supposed to become beautiful, popular, and good at school? I’m doing the very best I can, and it’s not working at all.

Papa is always away in Berlin, and when he comes home, he’s very uncomfortable around me. I can tell Mutti has talked him into trying to work on me.

I’ve started to lie to Mutti. I made up several friends to tell her about that she would like, and they don’t even exist. I also pretend to her that I’m popular. But I see people’s eyes at school. Very few of them seem glad to see me. When I get nervous, I look at my watch. It’s hard to like eye contact when the other eyes aren’t looking very warmly at you.

I also run my hands through my hair a lot when I’m agitated. I can’t stop doing it. I hate my hair. Mutti still makes me cut it so I can be safe working with Opa’s tools. Nothing makes me angrier. I try hard to look like a girl, but I really don’t. I despise looking like this.

School is getting harder. Our math teacher draws more and more equations on the whiteboard. To me, it’s all a game some person with no sense of humor made up. What’s a number anyway? Seriously. Show me one. They aren’t real.

Johanna, my big sister, is away on a class trip. She’s beautiful, so her life is easy. She doesn’t have to play games.

As for me, life is a game I keep losing. “Remember that you are a Dornbusch!” Mutti says to me with her strong Dutch accent almost every week. (She also pronounces
Zinfandel
wine as “ZEENfandel” and drinks way too much of it.)

I have no friends up here on the hill. The girls my age feel like they are ten years older than I am, since they are all good at things that I’m not. Only the village girls down the hill want to play with me, and Mutti hates it when I do. She calls them “common.” That sounds wrong somehow. Why would anyone want to rank people all the time?

Opa walked in on me while I was agitating in his study last week. I had taken out his precision compass and had drawn thirty-six perfect circles around a sketch of myself. Each circle was precisely one millimeter bigger than the one inside of it. I can sharpen the lead with sandpaper to make a perfect point.

I had tried about seven times to draw a face that I like but had to erase each one. I had almost rubbed through the paper where my face was supposed to be.

I don’t even know what I want my face to look like. Just different. Please, different.

Opa walked up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Kati, always remember this: be an egg and not a bubble. Eggs carry potential of new life. I’ll tell you what that means someday, my darling princess.”

He always says “darling princess” in English. Almost everything sounds better in any other language besides German. German is so guttural. I like English best. Even better, it’s one of the few things I’m good at.

Some days, I wish I
were
a bubble. I could float up, pop, and vanish. Then the agitation would end.

Other days, like today, being different doesn’t bother me as much. Not when I have Opa and teatime to look forward to.

I always drink tea with milk, the English way. Opa says that fine china and silver should always be used and not stored. I noticed that he glanced at my priceless Glashütte watch when he said that.

So here I am telling Opa everything about my day. Why don’t I have to lie to Opa? He always says, “There’s nothing, Kati, that you could do to make me love you less, and nothing you can do to make me love you more. I just love you.”

He says that to Johanna too, but she doesn’t need to hear it. People already like her, so when Opa says it, it’s extra. I, on the other hand, need to hear it over and over.