Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

His long-winded answer coaxed only a brittle bark from her. Not the deep, gobbling horse-laugh that had been her trademark for decades in those parts. Recording local history, he explained. Tracking their cultural heritage. A scientific inventory. Oh, these promising young men! Once he had been her favorite grandnephew, but he was a child no more.

She made her way laboriously down to the cellar to get a bottle and decant it in good time.

Wine to praise the Lord. Cider is for thirst and for closing a deal with the farmers. Remember that, Gussie.

Yes, Father, she had said. She was a good child.

She cut bread, set the table. From her kitchen window she could see the foothills of the Alps. It was spring, and behind the worn green of last year’s growth on the firs, the grayish-brown face of the cliff was visible. Its shadowy trenches were full of dark water now from the snow that had melted only a few days ago. Father had always called the rushing of the spring brooks his personal symphony of fate, and then Mother would laugh holes in his enthusiasm and pull him quickly back to reality. Water had monetary value, and a merchant had enough to do without getting lost in romantic fancies.

She crosshatched the butter and, hands trembling, cut slices of smoked pork that were much too thick. Would he be very hungry? Students always used to be hungry. All men were. Astonishing amounts of food were consumed at the legendary feasts at her office. But those feasts were good for her deals with the livestock traders and the traveling salesmen. People didn’t do business like that anymore. Today, an illuminated Spar supermarket sign hung over the door of her former office, and the many farm children who used to turn up every day in front of the round glass candy jars had become gray-haired adults who tried vainly to revive dead traditions against the will of an uncomprehending youth — adults who had succeeded brilliantly in forgetting the parts they played in building up Hitler’s Reich.

Since then, the countryside had changed, too. A half-million fruit trees had disappeared to free large swaths of land for new highways. It was a countryside cut into pieces so that people could move through it quickly, get ahead, get away. It was only in the dark valleys that the tempo had stayed the same. Making them reservations for childhood memories, the territory of fatherly dreams:

Gussie, tell me the capacity of the mill in April after a long winter, in a dry July. What’s the right mixture of metals for a swing knife, a saw, a thin blade, a thicker one? How much profit is left when you have to pay an ironsmith, an apprentice, a temporary worker, when you’ve sold this many scythes, knives, and shovels?

They were arithmetic games, played to the backdrop of running water, the clack-clack of the mill wheel’s paddles.

Pay attention, girl.

Yes, Father.

She grinned bitterly. Her mother had never understood why Augusta and her father were so fond of the mill noise, never realized that it was a kind of private room, a hidden stage for dreams and illusions. Mother, with her murderous talent to hurt with words.

When she ordered the felling of the cider-apple trees, her mother cried. It was not because Hitler wanted the cider gardens to disappear, as she justified it then, but to get back at her mother, who liked to compare their spreading splendor in spring to a priest’s feast-day robes, a panorama of blossoms to honor God that transformed itself into cold hard cash in the fall. Every felled tree a future loss.

She glanced at the beautiful plates on the table and went to look for the right glasses. There weren’t many pieces left from her wedding service. Oh, Karl! Did her nephew have any image at all of his great-uncle? What had his parents told him? Family lies, she hoped. She shook her head gruffly. What was the point of grubbing around in the past? The forest forge would divulge no secrets, and in her memories Karl’s face was just a pale yellow blur, indistinguishable under the clear eddies.