A Tale of Two Cities

Next page, skimming, top to bottom, left to right. Remember the budget after this summer. Maybe this old map of Italy, maybe that one of the African colonies. Perhaps the one of South America would fit in that space near the window display. It was a normal start to her day when the small bell over the door signaled with its familiar clang the arrival of a potential client. With one hand on the pages and another mindlessly twisting a lock of her silver hair, Eleanor was busy perusing the catalog of some Danish merchant based out of central Europe. So busy, in fact, that she barely noticed the figure peeking around the makeshift stand as the shrill peals of the bell continued to echo throughout the shop. 

She spun around on her stool and braced her hands against the glass top counter to stand to her feet. Her eyes met his across the sun-soaked Spanish air, and as the faint rays pierced the shadows of the late morning, she could not help but notice his gaze. Struck by a vague familiarity, Eleanor all at once felt as though she knew him. Was it from school? University? Surely she’d remember a name to go along with those eyes.

Gathering herself from the brief attempts to place him, Eleanor greeted the gentleman with her usual warm welcome. “Good morning, sir. Welcome to our shop. Please let me know if there’s anything I can help you find.” That long-learned custom of introducing herself, making known her availability, and leaving the customers to look around the shop had served her well, but something inside made her linger for a moment longer than she otherwise would. 

“Good morning, Eleanor,” the man said. She froze. I knew it. I knew I recognized him, her inner voice cried out, but she was still unsure who he was. Doing her best to string together a reply, she stammered. “I- I’m- I’m sorry, sir. Have we met?” If he was surprised by the fact that she hadn’t placed him, he’d had abundant practice concealing it. “We have, in a manner of speaking,” the gentleman replied, “My name is Konrad. Konrad Hansen.” 

Eleanor stared at him for a few moments before she realized her inaction. “I apologize, Mr. Hansen, but I cannot for the life of me -” Konrad continued, “That’s perfectly understandable. You and I were both in Hungary following the revolution. I wasn’t sure you’d recall my name or my face, but I’d hoped you’d remember this.” As he removed his hand from his jacket pocket, Konrad proceeded, “I believe we were both there with the Red Cross. I worked as a communications assistant on the eastern bank, in Buda, and, if you are the Eleanor that I have been looking for, then you worked in triage on the western bank, in Pest.”

The polaroid was old and wrinkled, with the corners long since rounded off, no doubt from nearly four decades of handling. In the simple black and white photo, a team of medical volunteers from all over Europe were lined up. Dusty and bedraggled from tending to countless victims of the Soviet Union, Eleanor took no time in pointing out her own face, then, turning her attention to a handsome young man on the opposite side of the photo and a few rows below hers, to Konrad’s. “I haven’t seen this photo,” she began, but she paused to catch her breath. “Konrad, I haven’t seen this photo in years. I remember when it was taken.” All of the familiar feelings - the longing, the mutual interests, the anticipation, the worry, the doubt, the hope - they all came back to her, wave after wave. “We’d barely been there a few days, and I was already overwhelmed. And then I met you.” 

Her head moved slowly back and forth in solemn disbelief. Could this really be the same young man I fell for so long ago? The notion was dizzying. As Eleanor half-sat, half-collapsed back into her stool, a thousand and one memories coursed through her mind. “It can’t be,” she murmured under her breath, barely audible, “It simply cannot be. Those damned Soviets cut off communications, and I just knew I’d never see you again. How on earth did you find me here? How did you even manage to get out of Hungary in the first place?” 

Konrad smiled at Eleanor’s words. “Do you remember Elliot, one of the other radiomen in my group?” he asked. “He was the one who would carry our letters across the Danube each week. He and I were both on one of the first trains out of the city following the breakdown in communications.” Eleanor nodded slowly, following his every word. “After we arrived safely in Geneva, I asked our department head if there was any information on the young triage nurse named Eleanor from across the river. She didn’t have anything but a name, so I had to get creative.”

Eleanor was beside herself. “Wait, wait. All you had was my name, and nothing else to go on, and somehow today, 37 years later, you walk into my shop with that photo in your hand? But how?” Konrad blushed slightly, and laughed at the nature of the story he was about to tell. “That’s not exactly all I had to go on,” he said. Konrad reached for her hands, “You once mentioned in a letter that your dream was to own an antique shop, and I remember telling you I’d always wondered what kinds of interesting little trinkets were out there, waiting to be discovered. You invited me on this adventure but made me promise that it would end up being ‘somewhere warm and near the coast’.” Eleanor nodded and marveled at the details he’d remembered for so long. 

“Well, I wish I could have found you sooner, but the simple truth is that when I left Geneva and went back home, my life took a different direction.” It was Konrad’s turn to feel the sudden onset of his emotions. Tears formed as he explained that, upon returning to Copenhagen, he’d taken a job with his brother at a local bank, met someone, fallen in love, and had a family. “My wife, Claudia, was a wonderful woman, Eleanor,” Konrad shared. He gently wiped tears from his face. “This last March would have been our thirtieth anniversary, but she passed away about two years ago from cancer, and I’ve been trying to find myself ever since. I-” He stopped, gathered himself, cleared his throat, and looked back up at her. “I know this is unfair of me to just walk in like this. I apologize if it’s just-” “No Konrad,” she interrupted, “Not at all. Not in the slightest.” 

Without knowing exactly what she was doing, Eleanor hurried around the counter and embraced Konrad. He turned to face her and accepted her gesture, with his heavy arms wrapping around her shoulders. Resting his chin on her forehead, he took a deep breath. “I didn’t know what to do, but for some reason, all I could think about was your face.” 

“I am so, so sorry, Konrad,” Eleanor offered, doubting the effectiveness of her words in these circumstances. The two shared the embrace for a few moments longer before Eleanor let go with a deep sigh. “I cannot imagine how difficult that must have been. You said you also had a family? Does that mean children, too?” Konrad hesitated for a moment. “Yes, two boys - men now - who are both still back in Copenhagen with families of their own now.”

A smile returned to her face, as she returned to her spot behind the counter and considered all of the information she’d received in the last few minutes. Such an incredible surprise, such an unexpected reunion, and she was still totally and utterly beside herself. “Okay, but how is it, then, that you finally found me - you must tell me. I still don’t understand!” 

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Konrad quietly replied, as he collected himself and went on. “Well, after we buried Claudia, I had an honest conversation with my boys, and I explained that I felt I was ready for a fresh start.” Eleanor, floating in this moment and soaking up every bit of what he had come to share, did not break her gaze. “I told them that I needed a change. That it was time for me to go out and explore, and I told them about you, Eleanor, and our dream.” 

Her heartbeat quickened and she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she balanced the emotions of loss and rediscovery all at once. Tears of her own began to form, but Konrad was quick to wipe them away before they rolled down her cheeks. She let him without hesitation. There was something so warm and refreshing about his presence. All of those long days, all of the pain and turmoil back in Budapest, the young and innocent love they shared during those bleak months, the plans they’d made without the faintest notion of what the next day would hold, and all of it was flooding back in an instant in the most remarkably unforeseen way. 

When he felt it was right, Konrad continued. “So they agreed, both of my boys, that it was a good idea. I planned the retirement, organized my finances, sold off my flat, my car, and most of our things, and moved to a new city to start a new life, all the while planning on searching for my Eleanor.” He paused, looking around the shop, taking it in for the first time. His eyes had not left Eleanor since the moment that bell rang at his entrance. 

“Konrad, I am so glad to see you - please, please believe me - and I am thrilled that you have found me,” she let out. “I really, truly am. This whole thing is just so amazing to me, but I still don’t quite understand. This whole time, you’ve shared what happened to you after Budapest, your family, and leaving for a new city, but you aren’t here in Málaga, are you? I mean, how on earth have you found me? I still don’t understand. I am truly thrilled that you have, but I don’t see how that’s even possible, after all this time?”

A coy smile crept into the corners of Konrad’s mouth as he looked into her eyes without a word. He drew in a long, deep breath, filling his lungs with the air around him inside Eleanor’s shop, straightened up, and shifted his eyes to the desktop behind her. She followed his eyes to the stacks of magazines and invoices where the catalog from the Danish merchant had been left open. 

Konrad’s focus returned to her face as he whispered, “My dear Eleanor, I returned to the place where we met to see if by chance you’d made good on our dream. All this while you’ve been asking how I found you, but the truth is,” he beamed as he reached back into his jacket pocket, taking out a wrinkled catalog request form with her name at the top, “It would appear you’re the one who found me.”