Page 70 of Hell to Pay
I felt sixteen again, walking along the orderly sidewalks under the trees—planted since 1945, of course, but grown tall—with bicycles zipping past me on the street, cobbled only at the edges now, for they’d paved over the driving area. Sensible, but a loss all the same. Flower baskets hung from every ornamental lamppost, colored awnings shaded shop windows, and every café had its little tables set out in front, festive patio umbrellas blocking the sun and planter boxes offering more greenery, and sometimes flowers, too, as if there weren’t enough flowers in the world to satisfy Bavaria’s taste for them.
“Does it look the same, Oma?” Alix said.
“Yes,” I said, “and no. It was much more drab then, much of the paint was peeling, and there were no flowers at all. The armies were readying for battle, or already engaged in it—theWehrmacht,but also the SS and theVolkssturm—the People’s Army, the line of last defense. Many residents had fled in fear of the battle to come, and many shopkeepers had boarded over their windows—if they could lay their hands on boards, that is. Everything was hard to come by at that point, even if it wasn’t rationed. One made do with what one had. All the same, it looked good to us. It wasn’t destroyed, you see.”
Another turn onto a tiny cobbled side street too narrow for cars to pass, and …
There!
“The sign is the same,” I said. “Repainted, but the same. The smell is the same, too.”
How many kinds of bread there were, sitting so fat and crusty and deliciously browned behind the plate-glass window! What an embarrassment of riches!
Alix said, “Oma. Is this?—”
“Yes,” I said. “This is the place. Oh, my.” I was having a little trouble breathing, and my hand was on my heart.
Sebastian said, “Would you like to sit down? It looks like they make coffee in here, too, and there’s a table free. Coffee and a roll, maybe?”
“No,” I said. “I’d like to go inside.”
The shop was still small, still spotlessly clean. The floor was still made of slate and would be cool underfoot, but the walls were painted a lovely pale mint, and baskets of flowers hung in the corners. Mostly, though, there was the display case, at least twice as large as I remembered it, and on the racks behind, loaf after loaf of crusty bread. Brötchen, of course, which the youngest member of the family might go out each morning to collect for breakfast, clutching a handful of coins—or was that true anymore? They would all pay by card now, probably. Wheat-rye bread, too, sourdough farmer’s bread, bread made with pumpkin seeds, with sunflower seeds. Soft pretzels with their scattering of rock salt, so delicious with spicy mustard.
And potato bread. Potato bread, they still had.
There was a small queue still, at noon, and I joined it. I don’t know why. Ben said, “I thought bakeries had, like, cupcakes and pastries and things.” He sounded disappointed.
“They may,” I said, “but many still specialize in bread. For the other, you would visit aKonditorei,a pastry shop. In Germany, you see, at least in those days, shopkeepers specialized. There would be many small shops on a street like this, and theHausfrauwould have her special relationship with the owner of each, hoping he would set aside the choicest piece of cod for her, or perhaps a bunch of just-harvested asparagus. There was the grocer, of course, but also the fruit and vegetable shop, where the assistant would carefully choose your peaches or pears, and you mustn’t touch; the butcher’s shop, where you would explain carefully to the butcherexactly what you sought, and he would give you exactly that and trim it for you, too; the fishmonger’s; theKonditorei,with its indulgent cakes and pastries forKaffee und Kuchen—oh, the Quark cheesecakes! How delicious! That was before the war, of course. And, naturally, theBäkereifor bread. Germans eat a great deal of bread, you see, at least they used to. The person who said that bread is the staff of life must have been German, I think.”
The woman ahead of us turned away, her loaf of bread tucked into her string bag—so they still used those, too! I was face-to-face with the assistant, a slightly plump woman in her early thirties with blue eyes and a kind face. She wore an apron made to look like a dirndl, the Bavarian costume, in pink and blue, no doubt for the tourist trade, and asked, in German, how she could help.
I was so overcome, I couldn’t answer for the moment.
Alix said, “Oma. Are you all right?”
“Oh! Yes.” I laughed, then switched to German. “I used to live here,” I told the young woman. “In this house, that is, at the end of the war. And bake here, too. What I would have given to have all these types of flour!”
A jingle of brass bells at the door. Were they still the same ones? I said, “I’ll let you serve your customers. I suppose I just wanted to stand here for a minute.”
The woman said, “Just a moment, please,” and went into the back of the shop. Into the kitchen. Was anything about that still the same? Probably not.
She came out again and said, “My father, Herr Adelberg. This is—” She looked at me expectantly.
The man was perhaps sixty-five and sturdy, wearing a spotless white apron. He said, “From the war, you said?”
“Yes,” I said, stepping aside so the other customer could make his purchases and feeling really rather silly to be so overcome by a place and a name. “I’m Marguerite GlücksburgStark. Or Daisy Glücksburg, as I was then.” I put out a hand. It seemed only polite. “I think I knew your father.”
“But of course,” he said, his face wreathed in smiles. Some bakers are grumpy sorts, but I haven’t met many. “Fräulein Glücksburg. Of course. He will want to see you. Will you step upstairs with me?”
“He’s still—” I began, then stopped. It’s rather tiresome to have people being constantly surprised that one is still alive.
“Oh, yes,” Herr Adelberg said. “Still alive, and all there, too, and still living over the shop. Come.” He lifted the hinged counter—how many times I’d done that!—and beckoned us through.
“My family,” I said, deciding not to specify “my videographer” as well. This was, after all, a personal pilgrimage.
“Come, then,” Herr Adelberg said. “Come and meet my father.”
At the base of the steep stairway, which turned back on itself, Herr Adelberg stopped, his hand on the worn round knob at the top of the newel post, and asked, “Are you all right to walk up? I’ve offered Father a modern flat with an elevator, but he says the stairs are good for him, and that he’s comfortable here. Well, I suppose when you’ve lived in the same place all your life?—”
