I didn’t linger but started to hurry after them, wishing to heaven that I had the car with me. But it would take longer to go back to the Schloss and fetch it than to walk into the village.
I’d never seen the inn where Willi lived, and I had to enquire the way.
“Entschuldigen Sie bitte, wie komme ich zum Gasthaus ‘Die Weisse Kuh?’ “
I asked a woman with a baby on her arm. I received a curious stare, but she pointed up a small side lane.
I climbed the hill, past little timber houses set above the road, their patches of terraced gardens bright with spring bulbs. After a couple of hundred yards the village seemed to peter out and I thought the woman must have misdirected me, or perhaps I’d misunderstood her. I was just about to give up and go back to ask again when I spotted a young cat crouched beside the road, looking like a baby tiger with its body striped black and yellow. The sight of it there, seeming very much on its home territory, prompted me to try just a little further.
And around the next bend I found “The White Cow.” It was low built with a steep-pitched roof, and fairly old, I guessed. Outside, half a dozen tables were set under a weeping ash tree with a rustic seat encircling its deep-ridged trunk. There was no sign of life, and I hesitated before going inside. I’d come rushing here on a wave of anger, but when I confronted Willi’s aunt or uncle, what was I going to say?
A woman appeared at an upstairs window, leaning out to water a hanging basket of yellow pansies. She smiled down at me invitingly, so I went through the little latticed porch into the main room. The dark-beamed ceiling was only inches above my head, with gleaming copper pots and pans suspended so that I had to stoop beneath them. The flagstone floor was scrubbed spotlessly clean, as were the tables and long wooden benches. Some antique Windsor chairs gleamed with polish, and I caught the tang of beeswax.
I heard footsteps on uncarpeted stairs, the click of a latch, and the woman came into the room.
“Bitte schön?’
She matched the inn in clean severity. Wearing a dark skirt and crisp white blouse, her greying hair was drawn back tightly in a knot. She’d been attractive once, I thought, but had lost her looks from years of hard work. Being a little cut off here from the main village she wouldn’t have seen me around, but I guessed she’d know me soon enough when I told her my name. I braced myself for yet another veiled, suspicious look.
I tried to start in German, knew I couldn’t go on, and abandoned it. “Please, do you speak English?”
She hesitated, then summoned unfamiliar words.
“Ja,
I speak a little.”
“Oh good. I wonder, is Willi at home?”
Her frown scored deep lines across her brow. “You know Willi?”
“Yes, I’ve met him a few times.” I hung back, then made myself continue. “You see, I’m Benedict Sherbrooke’s daughter.”
An understanding came, a mixing of fear and fury sprang into her eyes.
“Willi is not here,” she said. “You will kindly go away, Fraulein.”
“No please ... I do want to talk to him.”
“If you have met Willi, you should know that this is impossible. The boy would not hear you. He cannot speak.”
“Of course I know that. But Willi and I can make ourselves understood to one another.”
Fear darted again, more markedly. “How can that be?”
“I can draw and he can carve in wood. And ...” How could I begin to explain to her that special feeling of rapport between Willi and myself? “We get along very well,” I finished inadequately.
She was breathing deeply, pressing a hand to her breast.
“You must stay away from Willi. He is a quiet boy, he gets upset if people bother him.”
“He is easily frightened,” I agreed. “As he was a short while ago—by his father.”
Her face paled. “What do you know about Willi’s father?”
“I know that it’s Josef,” I said. “Herr Kreuder told me. I was in the chalet just now with Willi, and Josef came and ordered him away. The boy was clearly terrified. That’s why I’ve come here, to ask if you know where they’ve gone.”
“And what could you do, Fraulein? As you say, Josef is his father.”
“But you and your husband have brought Willi up since he was little. So what right has Josef to interfere?”
“He has the right of a father.”
“But surely he gave that up when you took charge of Willi?”
She said wearily, “I cannot argue with you. Willi does jobs for his father ... gathering wood and sawing it up for logs, and other tasks. If we protest, Josef might take Willi away from us.” Quite suddenly her hostility was gone. Now she was pleading with me, woman to woman. “Willi is my sister’s child, you know that? When Marta was dying, poor soul, I gave my promise to take care of her son. She had fear for him, left alone with her husband. It was Josef’s bad treatment of her which caused ...”
She broke off. But she couldn’t be allowed to leave it there.
“Finish what you were going to say,” I insisted.
She gave me a timid glance, then she touched her forehead with two fingers as Sigrid had once done. “Poor Willi is ... confused. Is that the right English word?”
“Yes,” I said grimly, touched by cold fingers of horror. “Are you saying Josef mistreated the boy and damaged his brain in some way?”
She shook her head. “No, not the boy. His mother. My sister.”
“When she was pregnant, you mean? Oh no.”
“Ja,
it was so. Josef has always been ... how do you say it?” She raised her clenched fist to demonstrate, and I suggested, “A violent man?”
“]a,
that is right. He is a violent man, when he has taken much drink.”
I felt capable of violence myself. Poor pathetic Willi, condemned to a mere half-life because of a brutal father.
“Was nothing done—I mean, about Josef?”
She spread her hands. “What could be done? My husband and I knew what had happened, but my sister never permitted us to speak out against Josef.”
“Because she was too afraid, you mean? Does Josef ever ill treat the boy?” When she hesitated, I asked, “You understand?”
“Ja, ich verstehe.
He makes Willi do some work for him ... I have told you that. But he does not beat him. My husband would not allow. But if we go too far, he may take Willi from us. He has the legal right.”
A wall clock with a swinging brass pendulum stirred and chimed a quarter hour, then ticked on in the silence.
I said, “Willi is very clever with his hands. He carves pieces of wood.” I sketched a mime of it in the air. “Very good.”
Her tired, dry-skinned face broke into a smile. She was proud of her nephew’s talent, I realised.
“Your father also tells of this,” she said. “He showed Willi how to carve. He gave him
das Messer ...
the knife he uses.”
“He obviously cared very much about Willi and wanted to help him. And now that my father is dead I would like to try and help Willi, too. I shall only be in Switzerland a few days longer, I’m afraid, but I’m anxious to do whatever I can.”
“No, you must not. That would not be good.”
“But Willi likes me, I know he does. Besides, there are things he wants to tell me.”
“What things?”
I’d gone too far, I saw. Willi had told me that he’d been a witness to the drowning of my father and Valencienne Kreuder, and I guessed that I was the only person with whom he’d shared this secret. I realised that I must not divulge it. To do so might be dangerous, until I had learned from him the identity of that second man.
So I backpedalled with Willi’s aunt, saying with a shrug, “Oh, nothing special. I mean ... Willi enjoys showing me his carvings, and I like to give him pleasure.”
I heard a vehicle draw up outside. The tiger-cub cat came streaking through the open door and leapt the five feet to the broad wooden mantel above the open hearth, crouching with smouldering yellow eyes, its tufted ears flattened. The woman lifted it down and tried to stroke away its anger.
“This is Willi’s best friend,” she told me. “He loves Otto. Leave things as they are, Fraulein, leave the boy alone.”
Heavy footsteps crunched outside. A big man stooped to enter through the low doorway. It was Josef.
“Where is Willi?” I asked him sharply. “
Wo
ist Willi?”
He strode over to me, halting a bare three feet away, and as I looked up into his brutish face I couldn’t help feeling nervous, remembering what Raimund had told me about the man. Josef took positive pleasure from upsetting people.
“
Wo
ist Willi?”
I demanded again, somehow raking my courage back.
His lips parted in a sneer before he turned away from me without a word and jerked his head at his sister-in-law. Setting the cat down, she meekly followed him into an inner room, pausing a moment to look back at me. Her unhappy eyes begged me to leave.
They began to argue at once, Josef shouting and bullying her. The woman answered him steadily, but her voice was timid. I knew without any doubt that I was the cause of their quarrel.
For a minute or two I tried to listen, but I could scarcely make out a single word of their guttural dialect. So I went to the door to see if Willi was anywhere around. The battered truck stood empty, the driver’s door left open. I walked as far as the corner of the inn building, but there was no sign of him. Reluctantly I went back inside, to demonstrate to Josef that he hadn’t succeeded in scaring me away.
Josef still ranted and raged, and I wished the woman’s husband would come. I wondered if I ought to intervene to give her some moral support, but I had a feeling this was the last thing she wanted me to do.
The cat had chosen a stool pushed under one of the tables as a safe retreat. Its long pointed tail hung straight down, flicking with silent anger. Hesitantly I stretched out my hand, wondering if I could coax it to make friends. To my delight the animal rubbed its neck against my fingertips and began a slow, rasping purr, and when I went to pick it up it made no objection. I held the little cat in my arms, stroking its soft fur and letting it nuzzle against my chin.
The altercation in the other room finished abruptly and Josef came out with an arrogant swagger. Ignoring me, he stood in the doorway looking out and started to light a smelly pipe. The cat leapt from my arms and streaked out past him.
The woman, who had followed him out of the room, gave me a beseeching look.
“Please go now, Fraulein. There is no use you remaining.”
“I want to see Willi,” I said stubbornly.
“He is not here.” She threw a glance at Josef’s back. “And you must not try to see him any more, I beg you.”
“Because
he
says so?” I asked bitterly. “Why should I take any notice of what
he
wants?”
Whether Josef understood English I had no way of knowing, but I hoped so. I hoped he could understand my utter contempt for him.
“As long as Willi wants to see
me,”
I
added, “I shall see him as often as I please.”
She looked defeated and I felt sorry for her. But I felt sorrier still for Willi, and I was gripped by a fierce hatred for his father. He blocked my exit standing there—as he intended.
Steeling myself, I walked up to him and said firmly, “I want to pass. Please get out of my way.”
He glared at me defiantly and for a moment I was afraid he would refuse to budge, but I suppose his discretion won me my victory. I was a guest at the Schloss Rietswil, and he depended on the Kreuders for his employment. He lumbered to one side, enough for me to slip by.
I crossed the paved yard under the weeping ash tree and turned into the lane. In a few seconds I had rounded the bend and was out of that loathsome man’s sight. Only then did I let myself pause, and I was ashamed to find that my legs were trembling. Angrily, I wondered how I had ever allowed myself to become involved in a petty battle of wills with the Kreuders’ oafish gardener.
Black clouds were massing across the western sky and the daylight was rapidly failing. Ten minutes later, walking back to the Schloss between sloping vineyards, I caught sight of Willi coming towards me on the road, humping a bundle of brushwood. I called to him, uselessly, and ran forward to meet him. He halted, but he looked as if he wanted to bolt.
“Willi, we’ve got to finish our talk.”
In those last glimmers of daylight I saw his eyes glint with fear. He was afraid of me now, afraid of being seen with me. I had to get him away from here, to a place where we could be alone. And if we were to communicate, where there was light enough for us to see each other. The chalet wasn’t far away. I gestured to Willi to put down his bundle and come with me. But he refused to move, even when I clutched his arm and began to pull him.
“Willi, I’ve got to know about that other man.” I knew it was senseless, but I couldn’t check the instinct to express myself in words.
I kept a firm grip on his arm, afraid that if I let go for an instant he might slip away. Somehow I had to convince him all over again that I was his friend, that I meant him no harm. On a sudden impulse I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
“Please, Willi, come with me,” I begged, thinking the thought so hard that I hoped it would reach through to him by some kind of telepathy.
And indeed it seemed to work. Standing quite still, his body tense and rigid, he suddenly heaved the load of brushwood off his shoulder. There was no room to dump it just where we were standing for a high, ivy-clad wall bordered the roadway. But a few yards along was an opening where once there had been a gate, and Willi went and dropped his bundle there.
“Oh, good boy,” I breathed. “Come, quickly ...”
A moment later, as we were walking on, I heard the sound of a car coming around the long curve ahead. Its headlights, full on, caught us in their glare as we stood to one side to give it room. The engine was revving hard and the car seemed to be coming much too close for comfort. Catching Willi’s hand I dragged him back against the stone wall, but I knew it was no use. The car hurtled towards us at headlong speed, skimming the wall with only inches to spare. Horrified, I stared around frantically, and in the blazing headlights I saw the gap where Willi had tossed his bundle of brushwood. With only seconds between life and death, I found the strength to thrust Willi towards this one safe spot. I felt him resist, then he suddenly yielded and we tumbled together in a heap. The car roared past and vanished into the darkness.