The Locked Door

                 The Locked Door

Hans tried to recall the dream. One image stood out: a square encircled upon the facade of a stone building. An elderly architect had taken el-shaped fragments and placed them on a building in the form of a mandala. In the dream, Hans sought to rearrange the fragments. Before he could successfully complete his alteration, he had awakened.   

As he sat an hour later at a table of the Hotel Zum Engel, Hans attempted to recall his reconstruction of the architect’s false construction. All he came up with were a few letters. The engagements of the day precluded any more rearrangement of those angles or further examination of the dream. 

Later, he sat at a café outdoor table admiring the world’s largest cuckoo clock, a creation of the grandfather after whom Hans had been named. He was distracted an old man with thin, gray hair combed straight back and a black patch over his left eye.  The man sat in a wheelchair at the other end of the cafe scrutinizing the square. 

Hans noticed the man’s attention focused upon a building across the square from the cuckoo clock and was stunned. At the base of the building, between two staircases ascending in an arc to the bank’s entrance, was the circled square of his dream. Hans paid the bill and crossed the square to have a closer look.

Feeling a slight ridge midway across each side of the square, he found it was constructed of four right angles of porphyry stone. He turned and was struck by the sight of the old man staring intently at him. For a brief moment he felt as though he were again dreaming.

Hours later, Hans stood in the office of the firm responsible for constructing the cuckoo clock in Kaiser-Friedrich Square.

“Ah, Herr Dr. Urhmacher. I have some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been able to trace half a dozen projects to which your grandfather was assigned. Here is a list.”

 “I see the Volksbankhaus in Kaiser-Friedrich Square is on this list.”

“Yes, the Volksbankhaus is across the square from the cuckoo clock you asked about yesterday.”

“And, if I read this correctly, my grandfather worked at the bank two years before the conclusion of the war? Do you know if my grandfather went there to repair a clock?”

“I can easily find out if we have recorded that information on our new computer system.”

The young man typed in a few letters on a keyboard. 

“Ah, yes. Here it is, the order, but it does not specify what the work was for, but only that it was executed precisely to the directions.”

“Of course.”

“Why not simply visit the bank and see if it has a clock, the repair of which would have required the craft of your grandfather.”

“I will; I will also visit all the places cited here. Meanwhile, do you know anything about the history of the building in which the bank is located?”

 “I’m afraid I don’t; however, I know someone who might be able to help with you that. Fraulein Ursula Kensa knows more about the architecture of the city than anyone else in Wiesbaden. She works at the Stadt Archiv and speaks excellent English.  I’m certain she can help you.”

Hans sat in a soft leather chair in Archiv lobby. When the homely receptionist returned, Hans was delighted to see walking behind her a comely young woman, who asked him to join her in her office. Hans spelled out his interest in the architecture of the bank and asked whether or not the archives might have photographs of it taken during the war. 

 “My grandfather, a clockmaker who built the large cuckoo clock downtown, also did work for the bank at that time. What it was I don’t know nor does anyone at the bank. Photographs might help me find out.”

“I will be happy to research what the archives have, but it will take some time. Could you return tomorrow after noon.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps right after lunch.”

“I’ll be here at 2:00.

“I will see you then.”

The next morning Hans tried again to recover the right angles of his dream and interpret the meaning of his attempt to rearrange them. As he moved between reflection upon the object of his fantasy and observation of the pattern across the square, he was again struck by the presence of the old man with the black patch, whose scrutiny once again took in Hans. Later that evening Ursula sat before him at a table in the Zum Engel. He had persuaded her to join him for dinner at the Hotel and one of the best kitchens in all of Hesse.

“I know about the man with the eye patch. People call him the warden because he sits at the same table every day and watches over the square”

 “I had the impression he was studying me.”

“Oh, I can assure you he has not singled you out. I have on occasion felt the object of his stare myself.”

“You would be the object of any man’s gaze in any place at any time.”

He was not certain her smile registered appreciation of his less than subtle flattery or polite toleration. Still, it was a beautiful, youthful smile.

She had not been successful in her research.  His observation, that the absence of any photographs from during the war years seemed most unusual, was followed by her reminder that not too many photographs were taken or filed away during the war unless they were shot and stored by the occupying forces. She suggested he try the Stars and Stripes office in nearby Darmstadt. Between the conclusion of their dinner and the arrival of their coffee, Hans gave in to an impulse.

“Miss Kensa, –-“

“Please call me Ursula. Miss Kensa makes me feel older than I wish to be. Perhaps, you wish I were older?”

“No, Ursula, I like you just as you are.”

Her smile this time was unequivocal. 

“Ursula, do you dream?”

“All the time.”

 “Have you ever had a dream that seemed both familiar and uncanny?”

“Several times.”

Any reservation he may have had about sharing his dream and his feelings about the meaning of it vanished. When their dinner was concluded, he invited her to walk with him along the Main to the point where it joined the Rhine. Along the way, he described the dream in as much detail as he could recall.

“That is most revealing, Herr Urhmacher. What are you smiling at?”

“That you find my dream revealing. What does it tell you?”

“I’ve known enough art professors to know each believes he has the key to the meaning of particular works. That you should dream of a figure on the façade of a Wiesbaden building is not so strange; the circle squared or the square circled, is a common symbol of wholeness and integrity. Your trying to rearrange the figure implies both your discovery of a flaw in his interpretation and your desire to correct it.”

He smiled again.

“Now, what are you smiling at?”

“I came up with that interpretation when I awoke from the dream.”

“See?”

“But even then I felt that reading was not quite complete. And now, after having felt the edges of the Volksbankhaus mandala, I’m convinced my dream expresses something more, something other.”

“What do you mean, felt the edges of its sides?”

“Come; I’ll show you.”

A half hour later, they stood before the Volksbankhaus staring at the porphyry stone lit up by the full moon. He took her hand and gently guided it along all four sides of the square. She almost gasped her response.

“It has a break at the center of each line.”

“Yes.”

“It’s composed of four right angles?”

“Yes.”

“Like those in your dream? And you are certain your grandfather did some work on the building, but not on a clock. That is uncanny.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I’m not certain, but there’s definitely something mysterious about this, and I intend to find out what it is.”

He could see her face suddenly change from perplexity to anxiety. He turned and saw before the moon-reflecting windows of the cafe the silhouette of someone in a wheelchair. The warden quickly turned and made his way around the corner of the square.

Two weeks later Hans and Ursula were along the Neckar headed to Rotenberg. 

“How could we not have seen the fragments of a swastika in that old photograph?”

“Maybe neither wanted to see it.”

“You mean we were in denial.”

“It’s not unusual for consciousness to deny what unconsciousness would communicate.”

“Someone changed the variation, the swastika, to the archetype, the mandala. But why?” asked Hans.

“The Nazis were in power in early 1943; the bank had the swastika commissioned to draw favor with the ruling party. The change took place early in 1945, when the Allies were at the doorstep. What institution would want to be discovered with a swastika on its façade? The question is not why; but who?”

Ursula and Hans went to the stonemason shop which had serviced the bank on both occasions. There they told a change of ownership had led to the loss of records. The woman who ran the office, however, pointed out, if there were anybody in Wiesbaden who could help them, it was one of the former masons of the shop, Herr Heinrich Lutwack.

“Lutwack?” asked Ursula.

“Yes, Heinrick Lutwack! The warden!”

Hans and Ursula agreed they had no choice but to address him with the question to which they thought they knew the answer but still felt the need to have it confirmed. They sought him out on a still relatively mild late fall afternoon in his customary place outside the café.

“In 1943 Herr Miller asked me to use the slab of porphyry stone from Italy to inscribe the swastika on the marble slate there from the beginning in 1923. In 1945, when the Allies crossed the Rhine and, not being a man to waste anything, he asked me to dismantle the swastika and use the stone to create a new design.”

“And so you substituted a more positive mandala for what had become a most negative one?”

“Yes.”

“But why did you stare at me and spy on us in the square?” asked Hans.

“I was afraid you might do exactly what you are doing: drawing the attention of Wiesbaden to its association with Nazism during the war. I did not want old wounds exposed again.”

Although the mystery behind the ridges had been cleared up, what Han’s dream meant or why he had it had not. Ursula attributed it to the coincidence of he and the warden’s drawing upon the same symbol. Although Hans himself was predisposed to such conclusion, it did not satisfy his suspicion his dream had more meaning. And so he and Ursula drove along the calm Neckar to visit Hans’ Uncle Oskar in Oberammergau.

 “My brother’s congenital heart condition kept him out of the war, but unfortunately shortened his life. While he was here, he built and mended many wonderful clocks in many churches.”

“Uncle Oskar, apparently, my grandfather worked for the Wiesbadener during the war, but as far as I could tell it was not on a clock.”

“We clockmakers are called to build or fix other machines, even safes.”

“Why a safe?”

“To make certain it opens at a correct time.”

 “So, it might have been a safe he was working on for the Volksbankhaus in 1943.”

“1943?”

“Yes. Does that ring a bell?”

“Yes, it does for a very strange reason. Hans was working on something different that year and was quite excited about it during the family reunion on New Year’s Eve. 

 “Stationed in Stuttgart, I was able to join the family, and I remember Hans being excited by his work in Wiesbaden and hinting it was no ordinary clock work. 

“When I asked him what it was, he said, ‘Oskar, if we live long enough and you meet me in Kaiser-Friedrich Square fifty-six years from this moment, we will both find out.’”

Hans stared at Ursula, who questioned Uncle Oskar.

 “Uncle Oskar, is there any limit to the size of a safe for which a clockmaker could pre-set the time of its opening.”

“Well, there are always limits.”

“Could you set the time of the opening of a safe or a vault, say, half the size of this room?”

 “With the proper tools, materials, and precise balance, yes.”

“Precise balance?”

“Well, one could set the time of the opening according to the physical dimensions and environment of the vault at the time of the setting, but if a change in either dimension or environment were to occur, such a vault might not open when expected.”

Hans and Ursula stared at one another.

By the time they returned to Wiesbaden, they had decided upon a course of action. Their biggest concerns were questions arising in response to Uncle Oskar’s revelations. If there were something in a vault behind the circled square, did its opening depend upon the swastika’s being in place? Having been involved in both the original and subsequent designs on the slate, did the warden, like Hans’ grandfather, know of a vault behind the design? Did he know what it contained?

Hans painted a canvas facsimile of the base of the bank with the circled square, intending to set it before the original to give them a cover behind which they could work. They tested it one night before the critical evening and found it would take an acute eye to see past the false façade.

They arrived at ten o’clock New Year’s Eve and found the square relatively deserted. They set up their screen unnoticed, dislodged the porphyry right angles, and repositioned them about fifteen minutes before midnight. Their work was covered by noisy celebrations about the Kurhaus and along the streets.

As the church bells tolled in the new millennium and the furor of rejoicing on that threshold increased in volume, Hans and Ursula stood before the marble waiting breathlessly. 

Nothing happened. 

Disappointed, they stood silent and deflated before Hans whispered.

“Oh, no!”

“What’s the matter?”

“I just remembered. It’s only in the popular mind the new millennium has begun. Technically, it doesn’t start until next year, until January 1, 2001.”

 “But, Uncle Oskar quoted your grandfather saying on November 31, 1943, ‘fifty-six years,’ from then and not fifty seven years.”

“That’s right. Grandfather must have programmed it to open after sunrise. What’s the usual hour of business opening in Wiesbaden?”

“The ninth hour.”

“What do you want to do, stay here all night or go home and come back at daybreak.”

Ursula smiled in response to Hans’ reference to her apartment as home.

“It’s getting colder; I don’t think anything will happen for the next few hours. In fact, I’m certain nothing will happen; Herr Lutwack is nowhere to be seen.”

When they returned at eight, the square was empty and the screen still in place. An hour later, the bells in the  of the city churches summoned people to mass. There was a click of something falling into place. As the bells continued, the rumbling of a great weight rolling followed. The façade began to slowly, agonizingly, move toward Hans and Ursula. They stepped away and knocked over the screen. 

From across the square the warden set his chair in motion toward the opening, where daylight passing into the vault revealed six wooden crates within. Hans and Urula entered with flashlights turned on. Nailed one crate was a parchment reading, “Für die Leute des Wiesbaden.”

Hans and Ursula looked excitedly at each other seconds before the latter nodded. Hans took up the crowbar and pried open the side of the crate facing them. 

The warden arrived and, standing and supporting himself by gripping his chair, saw what was taking place inside. Hans worked from the top down; Ursula from the bottom up. Before he had completely cleared the top of the crate, Hans was elated by his first glimpse of curved bronze within and his intuition of what the statue was. 

Entirely clear of crumpled paper and reflecting the light of the morning sun, a life-size, bronze version of the larger, young Hebrew warrior had once seen in Florence glistened. Ursula clung to Hans, and both reveled in their discovery with the sheer joy of a couple who had recovered a child thought lost forever.

Hans saw the shadow move across the statue before he heard the sound of the slate rolling back into place. He quickly let go of Ursula, turned, leaped, and managed to thrust his body against the marble door the warden was straining to close.

By the time Hans managed to roll back the slate, causing the warden to fall, four parishioners milled around the prone old man and helped him back into his wheelchair. Seeing the porphyry swastika on the gray marble and having rescued someone they thought a helpless old cripple, they began to move toward Hans. Ursula emerged and showed them the parchment proclaiming their ownership of what was inside and by explaining why the old man had lain on the ground. As she calmed the now growing crowd, two policemen came arrived on the scene.

Ursula showed the parchment to the officers, pointed sympathetically to the warden, and politely directed their attention to the open vault. Hans turned his attention in the same direction still left with unanswered questions.

Still, he did not mind. After all, he thought, a sabbatical was a sort of a quest, and the key to any quest was to ask the right questions or even discover the right questions. Perhaps, that is why, under the circumstances, he was most conscious of the one question he would pose later that night, to which only one young woman in Wiesbaden knew the answer.