When We Meet Again Page 13

  “Peter,” she murmured, her lips leaving his. He felt at once like a starving man. He wanted more of her touch, the softness of her lips on his. But then she put a slender hand on the flat plane of his stomach, just above his waist, and his whole body tingled. She looked him in the eye and then slowly knelt down on the blanket, beckoning for him to follow.

  “Margaret?” he whispered as he knelt beside her. He didn’t want to assume anything, didn’t want to take advantage of her in any way. He yearned for her in a way he hadn’t known was possible, but he was a gentleman.

  “I’m yours,” she said, interrupting his train of thought. And in case there was any doubt, she pulled her red dress over her head in one swift movement, and Peter stared in awe at her beautiful, perfect, naked body, which seemed to glow in the silver moonlight. “I’m all yours, Peter,” she whispered.

  “And I am yours.” He laid her down gently, and then he took his time running first his hands and then his lips over every inch of Margaret’s body. He wanted to know all of her. And when he finally gazed into her eyes and slid inside of her, he felt her tense around him as she cried out, and it was like heaven itself was embracing him.

  When it was over, he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her against him. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time in silence.

  “That was my first time,” Margaret finally said shyly.

  Peter smiled and pushed a tendril of her hair behind her ear. “Mine too.”

  “I never knew love could feel like this,” Margaret murmured. “It is gentle and fierce, forgiving and demanding, and once it finds you, it lives in your heart forever.”

  “A quote from Emerson?” Peter guessed.

  “No. My words, this time. You make me a poet.”

  Peter kissed her. “If only we could stay in this moment forever.”

  “But we can’t,” Margaret said, “so let’s make the most of every second now.”

  In the darkness, they made love twice more, talking and laughing and holding each other until the first rays of the violet dawn began to pierce the sky along the eastern horizon. Never before had Peter been so sad to see morning come. “I must go, Margaret,” he whispered, his heart heavy with regret.

  “Just stay a moment more.” She kissed him, long and hard, and although he knew that every second after daylight put him in danger, he didn’t care. Nothing else mattered but her.

  It was May 9, 1945, and the war was officially over. But for Peter, the journey had just begun.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  Do you think Peter Dahler himself could have been the artist behind the painting?” I asked my father as we headed out into the afternoon air to follow Nicola’s directions to the competing gallery where Bettina worked.

  “I don’t know,” my father said. “You said there was no indication that he was an artist in anything Jeremiah or the letters said. I tend to think that someone with that kind of talent doesn’t just stumble upon it late in life. Surely he would have always been sketching.”

  I nodded. I had the same feeling. “So what about Wyeth and Gaertner? Do you think the artist who painted Grandma Margaret is somehow affiliated with them? Maybe Peter Dahler was friends with one of their pupils.”

  My father shrugged. “I don’t know enough about art to make an educated guess, I’m afraid. After we visit with Bettina, maybe we can look them up and see if that gives us any ideas.” He waved his iPhone in the air. “Although if both Gaertner and Wyeth were American painters, their pupils must have studied in the States, right? It makes me wonder how the painting found its way to a gallery in Munich.”

  “None of it makes any sense,” I agreed.

  We found the Galerie Bergen easily; it was marked by a huge white sign with purple lettering over a storefront with floor-to-ceiling windows. We headed inside, and my father asked the man who greeted us if Bettina was in. They exchanged a few words in German, and then the man strode away, returning a few minutes later with a small, slender woman in her twenties with a close-cropped dark pixie cut. She introduced herself in German as Bettina Schöffmann, and my father asked in German if she spoke English.

  She glanced at me. “Only a little,” she said with a thick accent. “Not well.”

  My father nodded and turned to me. “Mind if I speak to her in German and translate for you?”

  “Sure, go ahead.” The decision to travel with him suddenly seemed a little less foolish.

  My father asked Bettina something in seemingly fluid German, and she smiled and looked briefly at me before replying.

  “She says you look just like the woman in the painting,” my father translated. “She says it’s like the painting coming to life before her eyes.”

  “Please tell her thank you.”

  My father translated my words and then asked Bettina something else. They went back and forth in German for a few minutes, and I was just getting antsy when I heard Bettina clearly say, “Atlanta, Georgia.” My father drew a sharp breath and looked at me before responding.

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  He said something else to Bettina in German, and then he turned to me. “She says that the painting arrived from a gallery in Atlanta. The Ponce Gallery.”

  I blinked at him. “The Ponce? In Atlanta?”

  He nodded. “She called the gallery to ask about it, since the instructions seemed so strange to her, but the curator there said he had received an anonymous typewritten note, along with the sealed one that was forwarded to you, asking for the painting to be restored specifically by the Galerie Schubert-Balck and sent on to you.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “So it traveled all the way across the ocean and back? And it came from the city I grew up in?”

  My father nodded solemnly.

  “The plot thickens,” I murmured as my father turned back to Bettina and resumed their conversation. After a few minutes, she turned to me.

  “I wish you good luck,” she said slowly and formally. “I hope you—” She stopped and trailed off, then she said something to my father in German.

  “She hopes we find what we’re looking for,” my father translated, and Bettina nodded.

  “Thank you for your help,” I told her.

  “You are welcome,” she said. “The painting, it is very beautiful. Is painted with love.”

  My father and I thanked her again and left the gallery. My father’s face was scrunched in concentration, and as soon as we rounded the corner, he pulled out his iPhone and began typing.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “I’m looking up Ralph Gaertner. If I’m remembering right, I’m pretty sure he was from Atlanta.”

  My heartbeat picked up. I kept pace with my father as he hurried along, reading rapidly as we walked back toward the river.

  “What does it say?” I finally asked eagerly.

  “Well, Ralph Gaertner did spend most of his career in Atlanta.” He turned the phone around and showed me an image of a painting. In it, a woman stood on a cliff beside a lighthouse, her hair wafting in the breeze beside her, her hand shielding her eyes as she looked out at the ocean. Over the deep blue water, the sky was purple at the edges—either sunrise or sunset, it appeared. The woman’s face was in the shadows, though you could tell she was strong and beautiful.

  “That’s a Gaertner? It’s pretty. But it doesn’t really look like our painting, does it?”

  “I don’t know. I can see what Nicola Schubert was saying about the similarities.”

  I gave him a skeptical look. He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Look,” he said, “I’m the first one to admit that I know next to nothing about art—I had one art history class in college, and that’s about it. But you have to admit, the sky sort of looks similar to the painting you received, doesn’t it? It’s darker here, but it has the same purple shades, and the same sort of dreamy quality to it, don’t you think? It adds a bit of credence to the idea that Gaertner taught our artist.�
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  I took the phone from him and studied it more closely. The sky in the painting was deep and layered. The title of the painting was East, so I assumed the colors were supposed to be those of a sunrise from somewhere on the Atlantic coast of the United States. My father was right about the dreamy feel to the wispy, color-saturated sky.

  I handed the phone back to my dad, who pocketed it. “It’s a long shot, but maybe there’s a link between Gaertner and Peter Dahler,” I said. “Want to try Franz Dahler again?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  As my father and I strolled back over the river, I marveled at how the late-afternoon sun cast the sky in a deep shade of blue as it dipped lower in the sky. The rooftops of Munich seemed to glow in the honeyed light.

  We buzzed Franz Dahler’s apartment, and again, there was no answer. We tried twice more before turning away. “What if he’s out of town or something?” I asked as we emerged back into the Viktualienmarkt. “Or what if he’s dead?”

  “That’s not very optimistic.”

  I could feel myself bristling. His words felt like a criticism. “If he’s Peter Dahler’s brother, he’d be in his nineties. People in their nineties die.”

  “Look, don’t give up yet. If we’re meant to find him, we will. I’m a big believer that in life, things happen the way they’re supposed to.”

  I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. Since when was my father a philosopher? “Yeah, well, forgive me if I don’t share the same opinion. In my life, it’s more like if something can go wrong, it will.”

  My dad was silent for a moment. “Or maybe the tide is turning, Emily. I’d like to think that’s true.”

  “I’m sure you would. But it’s not that easy.”

  We were quiet as we wove our way back through the bustling farmers’ market. My father consulted his iPhone again as we walked and led us down a side street to the right. “How’s your appetite? I know it’s only five thirty, but I could eat. There’s a place a block or two away that’s recommended on TripAdvisor.”

  “I’m starving,” I replied. “Lead the way.” I followed him down another small lane to a restaurant on the corner with a big sign outside that said GASTHOF MEYERHANS. To the left of the building, there was a tree-shaded area, dotted with tables and trimmed with tiny white lights. A sign bearing a blue Löwenbräu logo announced that it was the restaurant’s Biergarten. The restaurant itself looked old-fashioned and charming, with window boxes overflowing with flowers, antique shutters, and a gabled arch over the front door.

  Inside, a cheerful blond waitress chatted with my father in German and showed us to a small table in the nearly empty restaurant’s back corner. The dark-paneled walls and the exposed wood beams of the ceiling reminded me a bit of a cellar, but the windows let in enough light that the room seemed to glow. Three gray-haired men, all wearing suspenders, were clustered around a table against the opposite wall, each of them clutching the handle of a giant beer stein.

  My father followed my gaze and smiled. “When in Rome,” he said. He scanned the beer list and asked if I felt like a drink. I nodded, and he helped me decipher the beer offerings, then he flagged our waitress down and ordered a Hacker-Pschorr Münchener Gold for himself and a Hofbräu München Original for me.

  “You speak German really well,” I said as she hurried away to get our order. It felt strange to compliment him; I was much more accustomed to carrying around a chip on my shoulder. “I never knew.”

  He shrugged. “I took it in college for a few years. My accent is terrible.”

  “But you’re fluent?”

  “Mostly. I brush up every now and again.”

  The waitress returned a moment later with two giant glass beer steins. She plunked one down in front of me and the other in front of my father, splashing a bit of beer on the table in the process. She asked him something in German, and he replied with a smile. She nodded and walked away.

  “She wanted to know if we’re ready to order,” he explained. “I told her we needed a minute with the menu.”

  I looked at my huge beer and then at the unintelligible food descriptions, feeling suddenly overwhelmed.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll translate,” my father said, and though it felt strange to rely on him for anything, I knew I didn’t have much of a choice. Ten minutes later, I had ordered a Schlachtplatte—a platter of Bavarian sausages, potatoes, and sauerkraut—and he had ordered Nürnberger sausages with a side of Käsespätzle, which he explained were German egg noodles with onions and cheese. We toasted, and we each took a giant sip of beer. I wasn’t usually a beer drinker, but after traipsing around Munich for a few hours, the Hofbräu was incredibly refreshing.

  While we waited for our food, my father called up the Wikipedia article on Ralph Gaertner again and began to read the brief biography of the artist aloud.

  “Ralph Gaertner, born February 10, 1921, died just this February. He was a realist painter,” he began. “He was one of the most well-known American artists of the 1960s and 1970s, helping to shape the resurgence of realism in the United States.”

  “He only died earlier this year?” I asked, feeling strangely crushed. After all, there was no real proof that he was in any way connected to my grandmother or to the painting we’d received. Still, it felt like another possible lead vanishing. What if we could have reached him, and he could have pointed us in the right direction? Now we’d never know.

  My father nodded and looked back at his phone. “It says he was born in Germany, and that he moved to the United States in the 1950s, eventually settling in Atlanta.” He read a bit more and added, “Gaertner was known for his vibrant skyscapes. Every one of his paintings featured a signature image: a woman in the shadows, with her back to the artist. Sometimes, the woman—known simply as the Gaertner Angel—was in the foreground. Sometimes, she was in the background, in the middle of a crowd. He refused to discuss the significance of the imagery, and art critics have long speculated that the familiar feminine silhouette was meant to represent the everywoman. Some say she’s supposed to represent justice, and others say she’s supposed to be a humanization of the Statue of Liberty, to honor his experience as an immigrant. But one thing always remained constant: Gaertner never painted her face. ‘It’s too intimate,’ he told Newsweek in a 1995 interview. ‘Painting a person’s face and revealing it to the world is like a form of robbery.’ ”

  My father looked up at me and frowned. “So that seems to support what Nicola Schubert told us. The painting you have definitely couldn’t be a Gaertner, because it features the woman’s face.”

  “But it also includes a beautiful sky,” I argued. “And doesn’t it say Gaertner’s known for that?”

  “Maybe that’s why Nicola thought of Gaertner when she saw the painting.” My father scanned the Wikipedia entry in silence for a moment. “There isn’t much here about his background. It says he favored watercolor, drybrush, and egg tempera, much like Andrew Wyeth, who was a contemporary of his.” He read some more and looked up. “Emily, I don’t know. I can see the similarities between Gaertner’s style and the style of whoever painted our painting. But would he encourage his pupils to paint faces if he didn’t believe in it?”

  “Maybe,” I say slowly. But I had to admit that my father was right. We were almost back to square one.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” my father said, and I realized I’d been staring into space for the last few minutes.

  “I was just wondering if we’ve run out of leads.” I took a sip of my beer. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here.”

  “But we do have a lead. Bettina mentioned the Ponce Gallery in Atlanta.”

  “I guess.”

  “Besides, I’m glad we came,” he said after a pause. “It’s giving us a chance to reconnect a bit.”

  The words rubbed me the wrong way. “We’re not really reconnecting, though, are we?” I said, hating myself a little when I saw hurt flicker across my father’s face for a second. “I mean, I appreciate you being h
ere with me, and I appreciate you springing for the tickets. But don’t make this into more than it is.”

  “Emily,” he said after a pause, “this is the most we’ve talked to each other in years. That has to mean something.”

  “I think you’re reading too much into it.” I clenched my hands into fists in my lap. “It’s not like I’m going to give you the silent treatment while we work on something together. This is about Grandma Margaret, not you and me.”

  “I just want to believe that maybe there’s a day in the future when you’ll think about opening the door a crack. I can’t begin to make things up to you until you start to let me in.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but we were interrupted by the arrival of our food, delivered by our waitress and an equally cheerful-looking waiter with a thick mustache and beard. Our plates were heaped so high it was almost comical; I couldn’t imagine eating that much sausage and sauerkraut in a lifetime. But my stomach growled, and I dug in.

  The food was savory and incredible, and for a few minutes, we ate without talking. My dad was the one to break the silence between us.

  “You know I love you, Emily,” he said. “Always have, always will.”

  I didn’t reply right away. There was a lump in my throat that had no business being there. I had to remind myself that the words meant nothing if he didn’t have the strength of character to do right by me. And for so much of his life, he hadn’t. “Yeah, well, forgive me if I have trouble believing you. You used to tell me you loved me when I was a kid too, but it was awfully easy for you to vanish when it became convenient for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Biggest mistake I ever made.”

  “I know you want me to believe that,” I said finally. “But you can’t erase the past.”