Читать книгу The Forbidden Stone - Tony Abbott, Tony Abbott - Страница 17

Berlin was gray. It was cold. It was raining.

When the kids pushed out of the enormous arrival terminal the next morning in search of a taxi, the air hit them heavily with diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke and the odor of strong coffee.

Becca took a shallow breath. “I read that Europe smells like this.”

Roald nodded. “It takes me back. I wish we weren’t here for this reason.”

“One cab left,” Wade called out, hurrying with Darrell to a small car with a short man standing next to it.

No one spoke as the taxi zigzagged out of the airport complex and raced onto the highway toward the city. They passed several clusters of identical high rises surrounded by small parks of bare trees.

“Not too attractive,” Lily said.

Roald explained that much of Berlin had been rebuilt after the Second World War with a sense of function rather than style. The sober buildings made Berlin seem that much more cold and sad.

The cab exited the highway and entered rain-slicked streets by the railroad and after that a series of cobblestone roads in what Becca guessed was an older part of the city.

Pulling to an abrupt stop before a tall set of iron gates, they arrived at the cemetery just before eleven thirty. They got out, hoisting their carry-on bags over their shoulders.

Inside the grounds stood a soot-stained church-like building that looked as if it had been there for centuries but which Lily’s tablet said was a “mere hundred and fifty years old.”

Beyond the chapel, the graves and markers stretched away into several heavily wooded acres.

Wade pointed across the park. “People are gathering over there.” His words were strangely muffled in the cold air. “There’s a path.”

Many of the gravestones were placed in orderly rows stretching away from the path. Others with faded words and numbers seemed to have grown right out of the ground. Some stones had rain-soaked stuffed animals placed among the wreaths.

Children’s graves.

One well-worn trail slithered between the trees like a snake, ending at four tall unadorned stone blocks, two of which were inscribed with names Becca knew well: Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, the brothers who had collected folk tales in the middle of the nineteenth century. Lily snapped a picture before hurrying on.

As they crossed the grass and threaded through a stand of tall trees, Becca breathed in a scent of pine needles and tried to steady herself. She felt almost light-headed.

What was it about graveyards?

What was it? She knew exactly what it was.

When her younger sister, Maggie, had fallen ill two years ago, Becca had been terrified of losing her. She cried herself to sleep more nights than she could remember and had begun to dream of places like this—avenues of stone, the murmuring of small voices—and didn’t stop dreaming about them until her sister was fully recovered and out of danger. Some of her fear she hid from her parents, who were struggling in their own way with a possible unbearable loss. Maggie was fine now, and yet …

Lily touched her on the arm. “There they are.”

A small group of mourners clustered under the boughs of several towering beech trees. Nearby stood a sad old mausoleum overgrown with vines. The name carved into the stone over its doors was all but unreadable. A crumbling sundial stood at an angle in front of it. Time. Death. Tombs. Loss.

Melville’s words came back to her. Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost …

Something moved. Beyond the old tomb a handful of men in overalls stood among the trees, groundskeepers, probably waiting for the service to be over. Maggie’s face hovered in her mind, but Becca whooshed it away with a rapid shake of her head. No. She’s fine. This funeral is not for her. This is for Heinrich Vogel. An old man. Wade’s uncle.

“I don’t recognize anyone here,” Dr. Kaplan whispered. “I guess all of his old professor friends are gone now, but I expected …” He removed his glasses, wiped his cheeks. “I expected to see another student or two.”

Becca patted his arm, remembering the email. You are the last.

Roald and the boys advanced. Lily hung back. “I know this isn’t right,” she whispered, sliding her bag off her shoulder and pulling her phone out. “I mean, I know it’s a funeral, but I want to get this.”

“Lily, I don’t know …”

But she took a slow video of the mourners as the priest began.

“Guten Morgen, liebe Freunde …”

Becca’s grandmother Heidi had taught her a good bit of German, though making out conversations was always tougher than reading. People spoke so quickly and always talked on and on, moving forward, never going back, like you could do if you were reading a book.

We are something, something here … friend … scientist … teacher … his life of “Gelehrsamkeit” … scholarship …

Becca’s mind drifted. Ever since her sister’s recovery, she had been drawn to cemeteries, even though they frightened her. Maybe it was a kind of gratitude that she hadn’t had to visit her sister in one. But an actual service was sad and she didn’t need to be more sad. She rubbed her eyes, realized once more that she hadn’t slept for many hours and wondered when they would have a chance to rest.

… final rest … soul’s long journey …

No, no. Please don’t go there. Blinking her eyelashes apart she gazed beyond the tilted sundial to a tomb with a broken column sticking up from it. Next to that leaned a stone with a weeping angel sitting on top. Loss and grief no matter where she looked …

A man appeared at the edge of the wooded path to their left. He walked slowly toward the mourners, then stopped midway, his eyes moving over her and the Kaplans.

Becca turned to see Lily still filming. “That guy over there stopped coming when he saw your camera.”

Darrell stepped back to them. “You saw that, too? Here come his friends.”

Two other men joined the first. One was a heavyset man with a chiseled face, wearing a slick black suit. The other was pale, smaller, and hunched over like a bent wire. The pale man spoke to the other two, who both stepped behind a tomb at the same time, as if they were connected.

Becca watched the pale man pick his way carefully over the wet grass to the gravesite and stand close-by. His hands were folded, his head down. During a pause in the priest’s words, the man raised his eyes to Becca, then to Roald and Wade, then lowered his face. She felt a weird tingle crawl up her back, as if in that instant he had looked directly through her. His glasses were thick and his posture twisted, although he was not an old man. His left temple bore a nasty V-shaped bruise, stippled with dots. It looked recent.

“Amen …”

The priest dribbled holy water on the casket from a small silver vessel, murmured a final blessing, and it was over. The sky seemed to darken at the same moment. The chill rain came down harder.

The crowd dispersed quickly, some to cars, others on foot on the paths and sidewalks toward the exits. Several people hailed taxis on the street. Soon the cemetery was empty except for them, the workers, and the three men by the weeping angel, still eyeing them.

She stepped toward Wade and his father. “Uncle Roald, those guys are watching us.” By the time Roald lifted his head, slid his glasses back on, and turned to look, the men had gone.