White Apples (29 page)

To their happy surprise it was charming inside the small family-run hotel, especially the view from their window, which looked down on a large meadow where sheep were grazing.

The hotel dining room was straight out of another, enchanted age. Garlands of bone-colored garlic and red onions hung from thick wooden beams and rafters. A six-foot-high fireplace burned pungent pine logs and warmed the uneven stone floor beneath their feet.

Ruth slipped off her rubber sandals and kept sliding her feet slowly back and forth across the floor. A friendly giant Irish wolfhound that belonged to the owner of the auberge greeted them and never left their side from the moment they entered the room. There were only two other couples in the restaurant the whole evening. Both ate quickly and left the Ettrichs there alone to feast on rack of lamb and fresh vegetables from the restaurant's garden.

Afterward they drank Calvados in giant brandy snifters because the weather outside had turned cold and just because it was Cal•vados, Saint-Exupéry's favorite drink. In his bag upstairs, Stan Et•trich had a copy of
Wind, Sand, and Stars,
which he read from to Ruth every night in bed before they went to sleep.

One of the windows in the dining room had been left open so they heard when the thunder came and it began to rain outside. A hard, driving rain that made them feel even luckier to be here. The owner of the auberge, delighted to have Americans staying at his
établissement
for the first time, insisted they try his crème brûlée for dessert. Neither of them had ever tasted the sweet before but after that it became Ruth's favorite.

They made love for a long time that night and nine months later Vincent was born. Both of them were sure he was conceived then and they even had a magical sign of it hours later.

Around three o'clock the next morning Stan awoke and went to the window. The rain had stopped and the light from the moon was an incredibly bright silver-gray. Although it was so late, every•thing down below was illuminated. He wanted to wake Ruth so she could see this silvery world too but he decided against it. Yet it was so beautiful that he knew he needed a longer look.

Quietly taking the chair from beneath the desk, he placed it next to the closed window. Naked, he sat on it with his elbows propped on the windowsill and watched the empty meadow against the pitch-black night sky. He thought about the grazing sheep they had seen down there earlier. With a start he realized the savory lamb they'd eaten for dinner had likely come from that flock. Even so, it had been a perfect evening and now this. He thought of how he would describe this scene to Ruth tomorrow morning. He loved words and loved telling his wife things, loved to watch her open interested face while she listened, wholly attentive to whatever he had to say.

He was thinking about this, thinking about the words he would use, when the dog and the deer ran onto the meadow together. It was the Irish wolfhound from the restaurant. The deer was some•what larger than the dog. Later they figured the deer was probably quite young and therefore not afraid to play with a dog nearly its size.

In years to come the Ettrichs asked people who knew about these things if they had ever read or heard of a dog and a deer playing together but everyone said no. Naturally that made what they witnessed even more special. Because that night in the meadow behind their auberge that's exactly what happened: These two large animals loped and darted, feinted and came to sliding stops together, the greatest pals in the world. They would freeze for a moment and then be off again in a burst, racing each other, racing away and then toward each other, playing some kind of mysterious tag and then dashing away full speed as if they were both on fire or being chased by wolves.

Stan went over to the bed and shook Ruth awake. She was a heavy sleeper and didn't appreciate being brought back to the surface in such a rough manner. She was about to tell him that when she saw the look of excited awe on his face and the urgency of his gesture for her to join him. Normally shy about her naked body, she got right up without covering herself and accompanied her nude husband to the window. That was Vincent's favorite imagined pic•ture of his parents—the two of them young and naked standing at that window, watching the mystical dance of the dog and the deer in the moonlit meadow.

Now he stood across the room from them while this was ac•tually unfolding. The sight of their two bare bodies standing at the window made him cry. Then a great idea came and it moved him quickly out of the room. His parents took no notice of him for even a second. He wanted to see them from down below. He wanted to stand in that meadow, look up at their window, and see them framed there. See these two beloved people and the looks on their faces as they watched the animals gambol nearby. On this magical night, he wanted to see them from every angle so that he could remember it all later.

From the many times he had heard the story, he knew the animals stayed in the meadow for almost fifteen minutes and that his parents had watched them the whole time. So there really was no need for him to hurry downstairs but he did anyway. The steep creaky staircase, the wildly dissimilar patterns of wallpaper on the different walls, the great pungent smells that came at him from every direction—old wood, pipe smoke, soup. He kept thinking, I must remember these things; I can't forget them. But a moment contains so many fragile things. It's a wonder we are able to keep any of them alive later.

There was a large brass bell on the front door which made it a task for him to open and close the door without waking that bell. For a short funny time Ettrich felt like a kid sneaking out of the house without his parents knowing. But the reality was he was sneak•ing out so he could look at his parents from a different angle.

A cobblestone path led to the street. Then he had to walk around to the back of the auberge to reach the meadow.

Hurrying along, he tried to watch where he was going while taking in as much of the surroundings as he could. Remember this, he kept thinking. Look at this and this and try not to forget any of it.

He rounded the building and saw a low stone wall between the meadow and the auberge's large garden. The vegetables in the gar•den were blooming and the eerie thing was that all of them were either black or blue-white under the uncanny light of the moon.

Now Ettrich could actually hear the animals. Their paws pound•ing the ground, their heavy breathing as they ran close by as part of the large circle they were apparently making. It reminded him of the sounds of a horse race—the

feet galloping by, the fast chug•ging hard breath. He stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, watching them. The dog jumped in the air and slammed its head into the deer's flank. The deer grunted but did not stop or turn. It was winning their race and was not going to be distracted by its opponent's tricks. Racing past, they were so beautiful together that Ettrich forgot everything else and just watched, enthralled.

When they were gone he climbed over the stone wall and out into the meadow. The grass was heavy with rain and dew. His pant legs were quickly soaked and he felt them wet against his bare legs. He inhaled the fecund, deep-natural smell of the soaked world around him.

Fall often begins at night and that is why few notice its entrance. A weather change, or rain like the one that had just fallen was much colder than a summer rain, or it stayed cold on the ground long into the morning. The clouds that brought it are not black with

August thunderstorms but the bruised purple that carries snow later on in the year. Although it was still summer, Ettrich could sense fall in the air that night. It made him feel like he was the only person on earth to know.

He walked out into the meadow about thirty feet. Turning around, he looked up at the building and searched for them. There they were. He could see his young parents standing on the other side of their closed window looking down. His father was behind his mother. At this distance her slim beautiful body was now the color of ivory. Both of her hands were pressed to the glass as if she were trying to push open the window and get closer to the racing animals. Ettrich wanted to hold that picture of his parents, that moment. He wanted to kiss them and take them both so deep inside himself that they would be safe there forever.

Still looking at the window, he heard the dog bark out in the field somewhere. Taking several steps back, Ettrich almost tripped over something on the ground. Assuming it was a large stone, he looked down. To his great surprise it was a wooden box. What was that doing out here? Bending over to pick it up, he read the writing on top of the box: "Hotel Sacher, Vienna."

He stopped moving. His mind went blank and the only word he could manage was a slow
"Whaaat?"
Because it was the cake box

Isabelle had brought from Vienna. He was sure of that. Here in a French field forty years ago, below the room where he had been recently conceived, was a box he had last seen this morning in his apartment.

He did not touch it. He wanted to but something in his gut said leave it alone—get away from it. They had found him. They were here. Did that mean they had found Isabelle and the baby too?

He straightened up but too quickly. He lost his balance and staggered. Throwing his arms out, he tried to right himself. He had to get out of here now. His first thought was to go to Isabelle and see if she was safe. But what if they didn't know where she was and his going would lead them to her?

Ettrich moved a few steps to the left, stopped, and then moved right. Panicked and confused, he reflexively looked up. For a mo•ment he caught a last glimpse of his parents at their window. This time who they were did not register on him.

Bruno was disappointed that Vincent hadn't opened the cake box. Like a magnificent picnic organized by a master chef, he had carefully prepared the contents of that box for maximum effect. But then that cretin just ran away, leaving Bruno's handiwork untouched and unappreciated. Oh well.

He walked over and picked it up. Holding it close to his head he shook it, thinking fondly about what was inside. Something in there rattled, something hard and metallic. Perhaps he could use it later. Yes. Perhaps he could find a perfect time and circumstance to use the box again where Vincent would have to open it. He slipped it under his arm and started across the meadow. While he was walking he looked up at the Ettrichs' window. Earlier he had seen the animals running around the field. He knew the whole story and found it vaguely interesting but nothing more. If it were up to him, he would have done something vicious to ruin the oh so charm•ing Ettrich family fairy tale forever. Like stab one of the animals as they pranced by, set fire to the auberge, or lightly poison the cou•ple's croissants the next morning. Give them both memorable cases of food poisoning. But Bruno was not able to lay a finger on the past.

Chaos cannot touch or alter history because it is fixed. The present and the future are fair game for muddle and mess, but the past is permanent. What was
is,
forever.

No, to achieve his goal Bruno knew he must somehow lure Ettrich and Isabelle back to the present. Then he could get them. Walking across the wet meadow, he was already thinking of ways to do it. Now came the fun part.

Isabel³e did not know how she felt about seeing her grandmother again. On the one hand it was a marvelous thing. Grandma was exactly as she remembered her and so many of the little details about her that Isabelle cherished and had held on to so tightly in her memory were there and alive again.

But there was also something in the experience that felt wrong, something that kept Isabelle from embracing it one

hundred percent. She wondered what it was, what ineffable force held her back from living fully in this encounter. "Do you remember Peter Jordan?" The old woman was sitting at the table next to her bed, drinking chamomile tea

from a delicate cup made out of Augarten porcelain. "No, Grandma, who was that?"

"He was a friend of ours from the country. He painted portraits of animals. One circus that came to town had an old camel. It was very sick and they thought it was going to die, so they asked if he would like to have it. He took it and the animal lived another five years. It was the strangest thing to go over to their house and see a camel sitting in the backyard. He never did much... might even have been blind in one eye."

"Peter Jordan or the camel?"

"The camel. Peter died a few days after my eighty-third birth•day. He came to the party. Would you like to meet him?"

"What do you mean?" Isabelle knew that at the end of her life, her grandmother had been a little dotty in the head. "What do you think I mean? Would you like to meet Peter?"

"But you just said he was dead, Grandma."

"So am I, dear. What difference does that make?"

Isabelle sat down slowly on the other chair at the table. "You know that you're dead?" "Of course. He's a very interesting man. I'm sure you would like him."

"Grandma, I don't want to meet Peter Jordan. I want to talk about what you just said."

"What, that I'm dead? What's there to talk about? You already know that." She poured herself more tea. Her hands shook but that had always been. The pot made a small clinking sound when it touched the rim of the cup. When she was done pouring she low•ered the pot carefully to the table. As always, she put her hands around it an instant to steal its heat. She saw Isabelle looking at her thin, age-spotted hands. "When I was a girl I could never have done this. I was so sensitive to heat and cold. I couldn't even eat ice cream because it tortured my teeth. Now look at me. I'm like a lizard taking the sun."

Isabelle, who loved her grandmother almost more than any per•son on earth, wanted to shake her now. "Grandma, talk to me about this. Don't talk about lizards. You know you're dead but haven't said anything about it to me since I got here?"

The old woman took a long sip of her hot tea before answering.

Smoke came up from the cup as she breathed into it. Making a sour face she said, "Isabelle, you knew I was dead when you came here. What are you so surprised about?"