Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (17 page)

Felix looked at Arthur, who shook his head.

“Karolina’s cooking.”

“Oh my word,” said Felix. “Then shouldn’t you eat something first?”

Franza snorted with laughter and poked Felix in the ribs.

“Come on, now, there are women out there who can cook! Look at me. You’re just unlucky!”

“True.” Felix nodded in agreement. “You can bake, roast, cook—just about anything. A real gem.” He gave Arthur a look of sympathy. “Well, kid, would you like my sandwich?”

Arthur frowned briefly. “I think she’s making a
. . .
soufflé. It sounded
. . .
” He thought for a moment. “I’m not exactly sure.”

“There you are.” Felix pushed his plate toward Arthur. “You don’t have to know all the details. And you don’t have to put up with everything.”

Franza smiled, closed her eyes, and let her thoughts wander. Business as usual. Death to one side, marriage to the other, and banter here. And then there were the people who suddenly found themselves
. . .
alone. When they had been
. . .
together for an age. Here they were, laughing and fooling around, although there was really nothing in their work to laugh about. Perhaps that’s why they did it. Perhaps that’s why they had to laugh, to keep their spirits up. They never knew on which side they stood, which way the pendulum would swing.

“There’s a diary,” Franza said suddenly, opening her eyes. “Gertrud kept a diary back then. Frau Brendler knew about it. Have we found one?”

“No,” Felix said. “Not that I know of.”

“Do people throw diaries away?”

“Not usually,” Felix replied. “Angelika still has all hers.”

“So do I,” Franza said. “Hidden away in a drawer. I could never throw them away. They contain all my love stories from my past.”

“Hm,” said Arthur. “I’m sure they’re fascinating—but what are you getting at?”

“That we should search again. Search thoroughly.”

35

Lilli stared at the words until they swam before her eyes. She kept going back to them, again and again. The words that flowed over the pages of the diary wouldn’t let her go, held her under their spell. Sometimes they jumped here, sometimes there. Sometimes they sounded full of happiness, sometimes optimism, before falling into despair.

“I don’t want to continue my studies,” Lilli had finally told her grandfather that day when they’d met for lunch downtown. “I don’t want to work in your law firm.”

He had nodded, taking in what she said. He simply accepted the situation. He had finally come to recognize that some things were inevitable.

“I’ve made a mistake,” he said and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I’ve made a big mistake.”

She didn’t ask what. A mistake. She didn’t ask what he meant, whether it was about Gertrud or Hanna or even herself. She didn’t want to know. She had suspected and discovered too much over the last few weeks and months. She didn’t want to know any more.

“Maybe
. . .
” he began. She realized with astonishment that his voice was cracking. “Maybe, one day, your grandmother and I can—”

He broke off.
An old man,
she thought in amazement.
He’s turned into an old, old man.

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe.”

He looked at her gratefully.

She thought of the letter lying in the desk back home, right at the bottom of a drawer beneath her papers, all the other letters that had meant something in her life. She thought how it had lain there for a long time, and that she still hadn’t opened it and so she still didn’t know with any certainty what she had suspected for a long time. The letter had arrived shortly before she flew to England. She remembered how her heart had begun to beat faster. She started to open the envelope slowly, carefully, and felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. Suddenly, something caused her to hesitate, and she put the letter back down on the table. It lay there for three days until it was time to set off for the airport. When she heard the doorbell and Gertrud’s voice—“Lilli, darling, I’m here! Time to go!”—she finally picked the envelope back up, the paper seeming to burn her fingers, and put it in the drawer. Right at the bottom beneath the other papers. Beneath the important letters. No, she didn’t want to know what was in it. She still didn’t want to look the truth in the face. Whatever the truth was.

“Here,” she’d said to her mother, once they were out on the garden path. “Here’s my key. Will you look after it for me?”

“Of course,” Gertrud said and tucked it away. “I’ll come by every two weeks to make sure everything’s in order.”

“That’d be great,” Lilli said. “Thanks, Mama!”

Then she had flown to London. And then she’d returned, to find the letter still lying there where she had put it, right at the bottom of the drawer, untouched, unopened, unread.

36

Kristin was at the door.

The sudden ring of the doorbell had shocked Tonio to the core. He’d staggered backward and had to brace himself against the wall. So they had found him so quickly? So soon? It was incredible. Absolutely incredible.

As if in a trance, he felt all the blood in his body rush to his heart, and his heart began to pound and pound, his veins threatening to burst. Tonio held his breath and pressed his hand to his mouth, but the bell continued to ring. He expected to hear a cry of “Police!” and “Open up! We know you’re in there! The house is surrounded! You don’t have a chance! Give in now! There’s no escape!” as he’d heard so often in the films.

And then someone did begin to shout. Loudly, impatiently. Loud enough to be heard throughout the whole building.

But it wasn’t a harsh police officer’s voice, it was a voice he knew. It was Kristin’s voice. As soon as he recognized the fact, a new feeling struck him—surprise, a pleasant surprise even. He had yearned for nothing more fervently during those recent nights than to have her there, his comfort, his hope. He’d yearned to rely on her support in this desperate situation.

“Are you there?” she called. “Tonio! Are you there?”

Breathe deeply,
he told himself.
Breathe deeply.
And he did, until he was at last able to push himself away from the wall and open the door. There she was, Kristin, head held high, hands on hips.

“You idiot,” she said. “You stupid idiot! You dump my things outside the door and just take off! Are you crazy?”

“But that’s what you wanted,” he said, slowly coming back to his senses. “You wanted me to put your things outside the door.”

She raised her eyebrows, shook her head, and snorted loudly. “Men! Impossible! Men!”

Silence fell for a moment, two.

“Are you going to let me in?” Her voice was suddenly gentle and a little shaky.

“Yes. Of course. Yes.”

He stepped back and she entered.

He showed her the way. She moved tentatively, step by step, sensing she was entering new territory and taking due caution.

Later they sat at the kitchen table with two glasses of water in front of them. They looked at one another, twilight spreading through the room and muting the light.

“How did you find me?” he asked, thinking it must have been the power of his mind—he’d called to her and suddenly she was there.

“You don’t seriously believe that I didn’t write down the lawyer’s name?” she said with a slightly shamefaced grin.

“Aha,” he said. “So?”

She shrugged. “So what?”

“Well, there’s a way to go between the name of a lawyer and the address of an apartment.” He shifted his arm to the middle of the table and hoped she would do the same.

“You think so?” She leaned her head back against the wall and looked at him through sleepy, half-closed eyes.

He nodded.

“I don’t,” she said with a smile.

Tonio leaned forward.

“He actually gave the address to you?” He tried to imagine what the man had asked for in return. “Is he allowed to do that? Isn’t that covered by lawyer-client privilege?”

She shrugged. “A lawyer is just a person with a sensitive soul.”

He was stunned. “You little sneak! What did you do?”

Her smile grew mysterious. “You don’t need to know everything.”

OK,
he thought,
she has a point. I don’t need to know everything, I really don’t. The main thing is, she’s here.

Sex,
he thought.
Feel a bit of life first and then we’ll figure out what to do. Or maybe not.

“You clever thing, you,” he said.

“Aren’t I?” she replied.

“Sex. With you. Now.”

He felt desire for her like never before, despite all the dreadful things that had happened. He sensed she felt it too, his desire, his arousal, creeping toward her across the table and settling on her skin, into her eyes, her thoughts, and feelings. She wanted it, wanted it so much. She had him now, had him at last.

“No. Something to eat. Hungry.”

“Hungry. Yes. Right.”

Hungry for her. For the truth. Whatever the truth was. For her. For the truth. For life. For her. In that sequence. In that order of priority.

“Red wine,” she said. “Risotto and crispy fried fish. Caramel sauce. Cake. Chocolate. Then
. . .
you. And me.”

“Yes to all those.”

He stretched across the table, touching the ends of her hair, entwining his fingers with hers.

“Hungry,” she said. “Very hungry.”

“Yes,” he said, wondering how he could ever have seen her as a thousand-euro bill.

37

I could call her,
Lilli thought, poking small pieces of strudel around the plate with her fork before finally putting one in her mouth. It tasted of apple, cinnamon, sugar, and butter; it tasted the way it had in Franza’s house, tasted of the scent wafting from the oven as they’d talked. Talked about childhood, about strangeness, about Gertrud, about Hanna.

No, not about Hanna.

Lilli wished she’d talked about Hanna. Hanna was claiming ever more space in her thoughts, the more she delved into the book, the more Gertrud’s diary revealed to her.

Where would she say she got it from? That would have interested Franza, Lilli was sure of it. But she had no intention of saying anything about the diary. It weighed so heavily on her conscience that she kept it locked away—from herself and, even more, from the others.

Sometimes she longed to go into an expensive upmarket shop and pocket a perfume, a damned, cursed perfume, and then take it and pour it down the toilet before taking off. Maybe, maybe one day someone would notice, some filthy store detective, and finally get on her trail, track her down, and catch her. The dreadful events would be drowned out by the terrible news that Lilli was a thief. Perhaps death would then lose a little of its sting. Perhaps Gertrud’s death and everything that went with it would be subsumed a little then. Perhaps it would be easier to grasp, perhaps it would no longer be
themostdreadfulthingintheworld.

But it was
themostdreadfulthingintheworld
, and nothing—nothing—could drown that out, however much Lilli wished it. The images had burned themselves into her retina—the onion, the knife, the blood, the jelly jars, the shards of glass, the sickly smell of boiled-down damsons, of sugar and a dash of brandy—and Gertrud in the middle of it all. Lilli knew all those things would forever be associated in her mind.

She swallowed and swallowed, letting the tears flow, fervently hoping that sooner or later she would cry it all out. But that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

She had taken the diary for herself when that cursed night gradually drew to a close and she had gone up to her parents’ bedroom, because
. . .
because
. . .

She didn’t know why she’d gone there. Impulse. Intuition. Perhaps she’d thought she would see her, see Gertrud there, her scent still clinging to her clothes, the pillows, just a little, a little
. . .
and so it was.

Lilli had entered the bedroom and stopped as if struck by lightning. The bedclothes were rumpled, clothes lay around on the chairs, books on the bedside tables. Lilli carefully ran a hand over them. Yes, Gertrud could still be sensed here, in all her things. Yes, she was still there, like a breath of air, like a brightness, like dappled leaves.

Lilli had suddenly had the feeling she was penetrating an inner order that was fragile as glass and shimmering like shadows.

Her actions became slow and gentle so as not to disturb anything, not to move anything, not to chase Gertrud away. She’d sat down hesitantly on the bed, on Gertrud’s side, and it occurred to her that she had never lain there, never snuggled up to Gertrud in this bed. She’d been far too old for that when they moved to this house.

Now,
she’d thought.
Now’s the time.
She’d lain between the sheets, snuggled in, breathed in the scent that still permeated the pillows. She’d thought of Gertrud lying downstairs in the kitchen in a pool of her own blood, in the jelly, by the onion, by the knife.

When Lilli eventually awoke from her daze and rose from the bed, she’d seen it. It was lying there. On the floor. Bound in red leather, tied up with a blue ribbon, its colors faded. Lilli had picked the book up, and her heart had begun to thump as she felt, as she knew
. . .

She’d untied the ribbon, opened the book, and begun to read.

I have a sister now,
Gertrud had written in a child’s handwriting on the first page.
A sister is for life.
My sister is called Hanna.

Lilli had felt the cover in her hands, felt its firmness, and known she was entering a secret world, known it could be dangerous and that the dreadful reality could get worse, as unimaginable as that seemed.

She’d quickly closed the book and started to put it back.
Put it down,
her inner voice whispered.
Don’t read it, don’t do it.

But she’d had to read it. She couldn’t do anything else. She opened the book again.
I have a sister now. A sister is for life. My sister is called Hanna. She arrived like lightning. Her hair is like carrots. Her mother is a ghost. If you lift her arm, it falls back down. Her skin is like the white paper we have in the kitchen.

It had slowly grown lighter outside. Morning was on its way. Lilli closed the book, opened the window, and looked out. The garden, the trees, the damsons, jelly in the kitchen. All so familiar. Only three days ago she had been helping Gertrud cook them. The smell, the heat, Gertrud bending over the oven, sweaty and tired but strangely happy.

Forgive me, Gertrud,
Lilli thought now.
Forgive me, Mama. I love you. I always loved you, but you became such a stranger, so distant, like a glass doll sometimes. You were like the curtains when you washed and hung them out in the garden to dry. I ran into the curtains, felt them flapping around me, slapping their wetness into my face. And that’s how it was with you sometimes, Mama. You slapped my face with your panic at losing me. I didn’t know why, but it made me afraid, afraidafraidafraid. Now . . . I know a lot, but still not everything.

Franza,
Lilli thought as she bent over the apple strudel.
You can’t help me, either, Franza. No one can. You have to help yourself. Always. Perhaps it’s the smell of apples. Perhaps that’s what I’ve always missed, apples mixed with butter and cinnamon. Perhaps. Perhaps it was also the smell of damsons, mixed with sugar and cinnamon, and I didn’t recognize it . . . No more, no more smell of damsons, no, no more.

Eventually she’d left the house, stumbling out past the kitchen and out to her car, the red book in her pocket. Back into town, by the Danube, she’d begun to run, hurrying through the early morning—a shadow seeking herself somewhere in the world.

As she’d leaned out over the water and seen the glittering outline of her face reflected in the pale morning moonlight, the contents of her stomach had risen up, a forceful fountain shot from her body and spattered into the water, shattering her face into a thousand wavelets.

Later, in her apartment, the voice on the answering machine had made her shudder. The voice and the sentence that had driven her from the apartment almost three hours before, out of town and to her parents’ house, to Gertrud.

She’d fled again from the voice, from the sentence, from the red book, fled into the bathroom and under the shower. She’d forgotten time and space as the water ran hot down her body and her head fell back, dragged down by the weight of her hair. All was full of steam. Eyes closed, Lilli had crouched under the shower, arms wrapped around her body as if to protect herself against life’s evils, against all the dreadful knowledge, every dreadful idea. When she’d finally emerged, it was as though she was waking from a deep sleep.

She’d rubbed her softened skin dry, wound her hair in a towel, and gone out to the phone. Gertrud’s voice was still on the answering machine, distorted by fear, distorted by her own terror.

“I’ve done something dreadful, Lilli. Come over, come to me, Lilli, my love. I’ve done something dreadful.”