Do come Back Sometime

The real estate ad featured sunbeams breaking through patchy gray-blue clouds with white, lacy rims. As they meet the firs’ branches, the fir needles glisten and one can almost hear the birds’ morning trills. I was intrigued. I clicked to see more images. A view across the valley to a meadow on the other side made my heart stop. I know this view. I know the grass growing on this hill and where to find the first spring primroses. I know the tracks the fox leaves there after the first snow, and I remember my footprints following these tracks when I was not even ten yet. 

The old man who had lived on the property I knew as Mertel. One day, when my grandmother and I walked down to his house, we found him dead in his garden. Asleep forever he sat at his wooden garden table underneath his apple tree. An apple had tragically landed on the table in front of his head. He was wearing his threadbare forest green woolen cardigan. His snow white head rested on his crossed arms. Strange how I could still tell he was dead. 

 Additional images from the real estate ad catapulted me back into my childhood. The house with its large covered wooden porch conjured up memories of  my grandfather and old Mertel sitting and smoking cigars that stank so bad, I was sure they smoked them to keep mosquitoes and children away. But it wasn’t until I noticed a Czech cut crystal bowl, clear, except for a blood-red rim, sitting on the window sill in one of the images of the interior of the house, that I was startled. The candy dish, I was certain, belonged to the old Knoch widow who had owned the tannery on the other side of the river in what had become East Germany. Much lore had been told about her and her mysterious disappearance and my brother and I had our own story to add to it. 

We were six and eight and it was in the early 60s when we decided to get to the bottom of a rumor according to which she still lived in her villa overlooking the river and the town of Hirschberg where her factory was located. She had lost possession when the river became the border between East and West Germany. Shortly after the war ended, she disappeared and was never seen again - except by us, my brother and I. We had broken into her villa and she had caught us and invited us for tea and cookies. Upon parting she gave us a coin each which we later identified as a Reichsmark. I still remember her parting words, “Do come back sometime when the sun illuminates the crystal bowl.” This very bowl had sat on her window sill and this very bowl now sat in Mertel’s old house on its window sill. 

I decided it was quite pretentious of me to think it was there for me to see and tried to put it away from my thoughts. But I could not. “Do come back sometime…” 

It takes about 16 hours to get from San Francisco to Tiefengrun. That’s because the closest airport is a good three hour drive away. I did not bother to make an appointment with the realtor. The widow Knoch’s property and Mertel’s property border each other, and there is easy access from the fields behind the houses, and I somehow felt that by breaking in I kept up with tradition. 

Still a bit jet lagged I parked the rental car at the side of the road and walked along the edge of the field. I walked by the fence in the back of my grandparents’ house, past Sneider’s fence and got to Mertel’s back fence of the property. It wasn’t in any shape that would keep anyone out, and I entered. The plum tree was studded with red, juicy plums and I filled my jacket pockets. 

It’s true; some things just don't ever change. The key to the back door hung on its rusty nail inside the now empty and termite ridden rabbit shed. It felt cold and heavy. I suddenly felt like a kid again as I climbed the back steps and inserted the seemingly huge key into the seemingly huge old lock. My heart pounded and I found myself reaching for the hand of my brother like I did back then when we entered the villa. But I was alone this time with just a pocket full of plums and my get-away car parked at the county road. I turned the key, pressed the cold metal door handle and slowly opened the door which creaked a lot louder than it had fifty years ago.

Slowly I tip-toed toward the living room, childhood memories playing like videos of my grandmother bringing the old man food she’d made, the half dozen cats launching on his couch and chairs, and my grandmother and Mertel’s small talk about the weather. 

I sat down on a chair. I let the memories play and found that it calmed me. I was in no hurry. As my childhood visions retreated to the background, I began to be able to focus on my surroundings. 

A few historic photos hung on the walls. Photos of the view across the river and photos of Mertel and his wife whom I never knew. 

Despite my early childhood experience, I am really unsure about my belief in ghosts. They mostly seem like figments of people’s imagination or literary vehicles to make the narrator more important. But I could not shake the feeling that I was here because of the old Koch widow. I thought it silly in a way, as she would now be very close to 100 years old. But why did this crystal bowl intrigue me and lure me back all the way to Germany? Just what did I expect to find? 

I still can’t answer those questions. But the bowl was located exactly where it had been depicted in the real estate ad: On the living room window that faced to greet the afternoon sun. Tea time. 

Then suddenly as the sun came past the birch tree, it turned the bowl into a prism and lit up the old dusty living room. I sat in awe mesmerized by its rainbow beams. And maybe that’s why I did not notice the front door being opened. 

“Was machen Sie hier?” (What are you doing here?) a lady suddenly stood in front of me and addressed me sternly. 

My words locked in my throat, but I was finally able to stammer something about wanting to have a look at the property, followed by a slightly more coherent explanation of how I’d spent quite a lot of time here as a child. Her frown line softened a little and I felt I’d wardened off her call to the police for a bit.

“What’s your name?” she wanted to know.

I gave her my maiden name figuring she would be able to place me easier as my grandfather’s name was embossed in bold big letters on his house just two doors down. It worked and some of the tenseness left her body. Still, she was a bit upset about my ways. I could tell by the way she began walking around the room and the clack,clack of her high heels on the wooden floor.

It was a bit awkward trying to come up with some small talk that would also give me the information I was looking for. 

“So who owns this place currently?” I asked.

The clack clacking stopped, she turned to me and explained that after old Mertel had died, his daughter inherited the property, but except for using it for a vacation house, she really did not. Then, she continued, a member of the Knoch family had bought it. 

I think the blood drained from my face. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You look a bit spooked.”

“Yes, yes,” I assured her, “it’s just that I didn’t know that any of the Knochs were still around.”

“One of them is standing right in front of you!” she replied laughingly. 

I was stunned. I had not realized until now the likeness between the Knoch widow and this woman and it made me joyful and a bit spooked at the same time. 

“I met the old Knoch widow once,” my mouth spilled forth.

The woman was silent, paced the floor with her clack clacking heels and finally came to a stop in front of the crystal bowl. When she turned to look at me, she had completely changed into the woman my brother and I had met at the villa where the bowl had been. 

“I think we should sit down for some tea,” she smiled. “A lot of time has passed.”

There was black tea in the kitchen and a tin of butter cookies. There were also more questions than answers in my head. I just didn’t know where to start and I didn’t know how to ask them. She made it easy. 

“My aunt was found to be secretly living in the villa in 1967. She had been suffering from severe anxiety caused by the war and its aftermath. She hid in the villa, but some neighbors had a feeling she was there. We got her into care and she lived to a ripe old age of 90.” 

“Did you get to talk to her much?” I wanted to know. 

The woman explained that her aunt did not talk much about the time she had spent there hiding away from people and the world. “But there is one story she kept coming back to,” she continued as her voice softened and her speech slowed. “She kept talking about these two siblings that had visited her. She gave me this bowl,” she motioned toward the window, “and said to put it in a window sill so it would catch the afternoon light because that’s how the kids would know to come back to see her.” She paused and walked over to the bowl, picked it up gently and brought it over to the table where we were sitting. 

We both sat in silence for a few minutes. While I was still trying to process all this, she interrupted my train of thought with a joyful laugh.

“And if nothing else, my aunt said, it would make a great bowl for the red plums from Mertel’s garden!”

I pulled the plums from my pockets and without a word, I gently placed them in the bowl. They were perfect together with the blood red rim.

“You must know that I was one of those two children who visited her,” I quietly added. 

“I thought so,” she responded. “You ought to take the bowl.”

I nodded and managed a humble thanks. She rose, headed toward the door then turned around one last time.

“Do come back some time,” she said in parting.