Luzi glanced between the two of them, her eyes wide. “What casket?”
And Annika began to explain the tradition of old.
CHAPTER 34
Sophie meets me in the lobby of the gold-and-white baroque-style building in Minoritenplatz that houses the state archives. She’s a slight wisp of a woman, drowning in her black pants and baggy blouse, but she doesn’t need stature to command respect. She seems to be an institution of her own in this place that records the institutions from Austria’s history.
Light filters around the edges of the heavy drapes in the reading room, across dozens of tables with cylinder lamps and researchers huddled over mounds of boxed materials and stuffed manila folders. Sophie motions to a table with two folders, and we sit across from each other.
“Why do you want to find Luzia Weiss?” she asks, and I hear the concern in her voice, as if she’s not quite certain that she wants to pass along the information in these files.
Her hands link together, a chain of sorts across the top of the folders, and I begin to tell her the tale of two books and their owners, stories that didn’t end between the covers. About Annika and her list of heirlooms, Josh’s uncle Leo and what Annika told him about the treasure. I tell her about Charlotte and the orphanage in France, about the name I suspect to be her mother’s. And I tell her that I want to know the endings, whether happy or sad.
Besides Brie, Sophie is the first person I tell about the possible connection between Charlotte and Luzia. It’s sacred, I think, this story of theirs, but I’ll never know for certain what happened unless someone in Austria helps me.
“This Frau Stadler...,” Sophie says slowly. “Why do you think she found treasure on the estate?”
“What else would she be record—” I stop.
“Perhaps she took things from the homes of Jewish people who’d already been sent away.”
I take off my glasses and set them on the table. Annika, in my mind, is a hero, but what if she was really the perpetrator of a crime? What if she and Hermann stole heirlooms from the Nazis’ collection or even from her Jewish neighbors after they were gone? Frau Stadler could have been trying to steer Josh’s uncleaway fromsome sort of treasure instead of to it.
“People were prosecuted across Austria and Germany after the war for keeping things that had belonged to people killed in the camps.”
“What if, in some way, they were trying to help?”
“After the war, no one in Austria would have believed them,” she says. “Help was a rare commodity back then.”
I glance down at the folders again. “What’s in the files?”
“A memorandum,” she says as she opens the first folder. “It mentions a Luzi Weiss from Vienna.”
I skim the typed document from across the table, but it’s all in German.
“It’s written by a Gestapo agent,” Sophie explains. “AKriminalassistentby the name of Ernst Schmid. He’s lost track of Luzi, it seems, and he’s inquiring about her whereabouts.”
The warmth in this room doesn’t stop my shiver. “Why was a Gestapo agent searching for her?”
Instead of answering my question, Sophie turns the memo around, and I see Luzi’s name in the midst of the writing.
Is this the same person as Luzia Weiss from the article? And Luzia Weiss from Charlotte’s book? I don’t know that either woman is related to Charlotte, but seeing Luzi’s name in print here, even recorded by the Gestapo agent, gives me hope.
Perhaps Luzia hid with Charlotte in France while Ernst Schmid was looking for her.
The other folder contains a second memo and a newspaper photograph of a young Luzia playing with an ensemble. This caption saysLuzi Weiss, but it’s clearly the same woman who danced with Max at the ball.
“The Gestapo reported that they found a Luzi Weiss.” Sophie inches another paper across the table to me.
My glasses are on again, and I’m trying desperately to decipher the words. “Where did they find her?”
“Hiding inside a castle on Hallstättersee.”
I suck in air so loudly that several researchers turn to look atme.
“They arrested her in April of 1939.” She points down at the paper, and I see the name of the lake clearly, no need for translation.
Where was Max Dornbach when they arrested the woman he seemed to love?
