Vintage (20 page)

Of course Bruno would like coffee. He smiled as she set a plate before him, and he breathed in the rich fruit and felt the acids tickle his nose, his mouth already beginning to water. This
reminded him of home, though Hilda's version of the open-faced cake featured a much more orderly arrangement of plum slices than his mother's, all of them uniform in size and hued purple like his bruised knuckles. His stomach grumbled. Hilda heard it and insisted that he eat a slice while she brought coffee on the stove to a boil.

He devoured it in three bites. He paused to admire the last piece of his slice only a moment, noting how the magenta juices had soaked into the crust, and smelling the hint of almond and something else he couldn't quite place.

Hilda didn't eat any herself, but she sat sipping coffee and watching him with pleasure as he gobbled his fourth slice, her hands folded in her lap, a sparkle in her eye, a pleased smile on her lips looking not unlike his mother's when she prepared something for him.

They chatted and he carefully steered the conversation toward the war, and it soon became clear that this was the correct Von Speck and he had found his next link in the chain he hoped would lead him to the elusive bottles. He felt the cork in his pocket as Hilda spoke, staring through the walls and across the years.

“Karl's family possessed a small farm on the Saale. That's where I stayed during the war. He was wounded when his car was struck by an artillery shell. I remember the day he came home. His leg was shattered and still hadn't healed. He was so thin. He had a cane, but still couldn't walk very far. The war was lost by then. We all knew it. We were hungry. The countryside was ruined. But he was optimistic. ‘When the war ends, we can start over,' he always told me . . .” Her voice trailed off. Bruno cleared his throat.

“I understand he was an administrator?”

“Yes. This is true.
Militärverwaltung
in
Frankreich
, in the
occupied zone. He wasn't a born soldier. He was older when he was drafted.”

“And did he have a specialty in agriculture . . . in vineyards?”

“Why, yes. That's why he was selected for this job. His family estate had vineyards and he knew quite a lot about how they were grown and how wine was made. He was in charge of exports of farm products. Of wine, specifically. Good wine was so hard to come by in those days.”

“And I understand that some of the wines, from his time in France, were shipped here, to Naumburg,” Bruno said, trying to keep his voice from wavering. His pulse pounded in his throat now.

Hilda's eyes pulled back from across the years to focus on Bruno now, as if to ask who this man was asking so earnestly about what had happened so long ago. Surely she could sense how anxious he was. She must be able to see the desperation. The greed, perhaps.

She studied him for a long time. Her eyes were brown and cool. He could tell that she'd once been beautiful. And proud.

“Yes, that's true,” she said, finally. “It came by train. They stored it in the cellars of his family's estate.

“Why there? Why not ship it to Berlin with the rest?”

Hilda bristled. “Karl was no thief, Mr. Tannenbaum. I always wanted to believe that he was keeping it safe. For what purpose, I don't know. Perhaps he meant to return it someday.”

“He
meant
to return it? What happened?”

“He died that summer. His leg became infected. There was no medicine. It had to be amputated. He did not survive the operation.” She dabbed her eyes now.

“I'm sorry,” Bruno said, reaching across the table and placing his hand over hers. The faraway stare had returned.

“The Russians came. The Von Speck estate was
redistributed
under the Communists. But that was just a way of saying that everything of value was packed up and sent east. The Von Specks became just the Specks. Our estate became a collective and basically ceased to exist. All the wine, including that which had come from France, was loaded on a truck along with everything else. Forty years of the GDR and we lost everything. Everything except our dignity.”

“And your family recipe for
phlaumenkuchen
. This is excellent,” Bruno said, forking his last bite into his mouth.

Hilda beamed at him. “Oh, it's just a little something.” She looked at him affectionately. “You know,” she said, almost as an afterthought, “you should check the council house. They were Communists, but they were still German, and you can be sure that they kept records. If you stay in the
altstadt
tonight, you'll be close to the Goldenen Ganz. You should be able to find Heinz Blau there. He's the watchman at the council house. If you buy him enough beer he might even let you in without the hassle of paperwork.” She grinned.

“Frau Speck,” Bruno said with a conspiratorial wink, “it's quite a pleasant surprise to find that your talents not only encompass the baking of tarts, but extend to investigative journalism as well. By any chance do you happen to have more coffee?”

While wine holds the mystery and magic of weather and geography, beer, too, has something to offer. Beer is instant community, a reason to congregate. Whether it's Martin Luther in his backyard sipping home brew and philosophizing the origins of a new religion with Philipp Melanchthon or a North Side Chicago watering hole where union workers are planning a strike action around mugs of cheap German-style lager, beer has served to loosen tongues, free minds, incite revolutions and fuel a billion amorous encounters since the dawn of history.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
“
100
Y
EARS OF
W
INDY
C
ITY
B
EER,
”
C
HICAGO
S
UN-
T
IMES

T
he Goldenen Ganz, or Golden Goose, was a classic German
ratskeller
, a bar located below street level near or under the town hall. Truly institutionalized drinking. It was a comfortable, warm, humid cave, and Bruno saw its glow and heard singing as he walked across the cobbles of the marketplace. A cold wind
whipped across the stones as he descended the stairs below street level and submerged into the warmth of inebriated companionship.

There were long rows of tables, a heavy wooden bar and thick timbers across the ceiling. A fire glowed in one corner and a group of men with red faces and suspenders were playing cards and drinking from half-liter mugs, occasionally bursting into song. Bruno took a seat at the bar. The bartender was a woman with a smoker's voice and a friendly wink. Hilda's plum tart had primed Bruno's appetite, and he now ordered the German equivalent of pub grub. His French friends disparaged German restaurants, but Bruno knew this was unfair, especially if you sought your cuisine at food stands, in butcher shops or in courthouse basements.

He ordered a plate of fried potatoes and a locally made knackwurst, or “crack sausage,” which featured fatty veal and ground pork with garlic and spices overstuffed into a plump casing accompanied by a side of vinegar-soaked red cabbage. When he took a bite of the knackwurst, the skin popped and juices ran as soon as his teeth pierced the casing. The potatoes were crisp, butter-browned on the outside, and perfectly threaded with sautéed onions and a dusting of fresh parsley. Bruno wondered if there was a combination of comfort food anywhere in the world so well balanced and suited to the weary traveler. Perhaps only the Italian beef combo sandwich from Chicago's South Side could approach this.

With a half liter of
schwarzbier
at hand, Bruno immersed himself in the details of the meal. It relied on contrasts: the tang of vinegar in the cabbage against the soft pulp of the potatoes followed by the crunch and pop of flavor from the caraway and anise seeds. The pork sausage melted in his mouth, leaving a crunchy ring of the casing for the last swallow. This, in
combination with the beer, lit the furnace inside him, and somewhere along the way he transformed from bone-tired traveler into a man on a mission. He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be looking for someone. The crowd at the corner table began to thin, men putting on wool caps and hoisting coats over their shoulders. Bruno frantically asked the bartender for Heinz. She laughed and pointed to a man in the very corner of the last table. “He's always the last to surrender the breach,” she said with a chuckle. “Perhaps you'll be the one to walk him home tonight to spare me the trouble?”

Heinz was just getting revved up, occupying the cornermost seat with a clay bottle of Sliwowitz, the Polish word for “fire water,” or, more accurately, “you will regret this tomorrow.”

Buno pushed his plate away and asked for a shot glass, heading to the corner to join the revelry, trying to think of some excuse for needing to see the archives in the morning without tipping his hand, not wanting to leave any more clues for either Thomas or the Russian stormtrooper.

But as it turned out, Bruno needed no excuse. He and Heinz were soon fast friends, arms around one another, singing
Ein Prosit! Ein Prosit!
and every other German drinking song Bruno could think of until they were the only two left in the
ratskeller
.

Heinz slouched soused on a bench, crowding Bruno next to the wall now, reaching for the Sliwowitz with an unsteady hand, his eyes growing ever more distant and glassy as he drank. Bruno tried to navigate toward the subject of the archives.

“Heinz, I'm working on a story about lost wine. Do you know Hilda Von Speck?”

“Of course. To Hilda!” They hoisted the liquor and toasted.

Bruno hoped that he could remain conscious. “She told me that some of his wine disappeared after the war . . .”

“The Communists,” Heinz mumbled, wavering on the edge of sentience.

“Tell me more . . .”

“For all those years, we were their puppets.” Heinz was practicing his broken, inebriated English now. He squeezed Bruno's shoulder—Bruno's status as an American elevated him in the old man's eyes. Living in the Soviet-controlled GDR and having relatives in the West made Heinz understand how much better people were treated on the other side of the Iron Curtain. He retained none of the nostalgia for communism sometimes found among the older generation in the former East Germany. “And what do we have to show for it? Forty years of looking over the wall while they prospered. You talk of the Von Speck estate. Their wines were wonderful. I remember my father bringing out a bottle at Christmas. It was special. The wines from the Rheingau . . . those we drank every day. But the Saale-Unstrut wines, they were special. They tasted like they belonged here. You have to drink a wine where it is grown to truly appreciate it. We've made wine here for more than a thousand years! But does anyone outside of Sachsen-Anhalt know about us? For so long we were cut off from the outside world. Because of them.”

“It's not right,” Bruno said, shaking his head.

“The bloody Communists!” Heinz pounded the table.

“Bloody Communists!” Bruno said, imitating Heinz. The glasses rattled. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruno saw the bartender roll her eyes and smile as she wiped off the counter. It was a speech, he suspected, she heard frequently.

“They ruined everything. They took over the wine production and set up collectives. The old family names were removed. Nobody took pride in what they made. They dumped it all into
the same tanks. They amused us with parades and Olympic medals. Did you know that our little state of Thüringen has won more gold medals than any other place on earth? And why did they do this? So that we were distracted and they could rob us blind. And to think, I was drafted in 1945 at fifteen years of age to fight on the eastern front. So many of the boys froze to their rifles. They didn't even have bullets, but they died pointing them east anyway. I lost fingers to the cold.”

Heinz held up his left hand, which featured three stubs that only reached to the second knuckle.

“We were told that we had to defend the Fatherland against the Soviets. That we must die for this. And then what happens? We became Soviet dogs! The Communists sold us out. The Russians came and took everything. Our potatoes. Our cabbages. Apples, strawberries, cucumbers. Our animals. They cut down our trees. Everything was loaded on trains and trucks and shipped east. If you want to know what happened to the Von Speck wine, there is your answer.”

Bruno, seeing his chance, leaned close to Heinz and talked low, glancing around the room. “Do you keep records?”

Heinz leaned back in disbelief. For a moment, Bruno thought that he'd made a mistake.

“Records?” Heinz shouted. “Of course we kept records!”

“Do you think you could help me find them?”

“Will you write about this tragedy, about the thieving Communists, in your story?”

“Of course.”

Heinz stood suddenly and began fumbling with an enormous ring of keys, jabbing the air with his finger and insisting, in his broken English, that he was now on a grave mission. “We go there now. Right now! Come, come!”

They stumbled across the empty
marktplatz,
Bruno hefting his suitcase in one hand and propping up Heinz with his other arm. They listed to one side and then tacked back onto course. Heinz sang a Hans Albers song:
Silbern klingt und springt die Heuer, heut' speel ick dat feine Oos!
Bruno knew the tune and he whistled along.

Whether it was from the alcohol or the drunken Heniz on his arm, Bruno was too preoccupied to notice the dark shape slipping along the edge of the marketplace, slowly pacing them.

The
rathaus,
a steep-roofed four-story building, squatted solidly on the end of the square. Every window bore a box of red flowers, shivering joylessly in the dark. The two men cut through an alley around to the back of the building and stopped at an overthick wooden door with massive iron hinges. Heinz fumbled with his keys until he found one that was up to the task, an iron affair that was as thick and long as his middle finger.