At least, they can kill the hope that flickers inside it, stamp it out. Those books begin to define their readers.
“This store is a refuge,” I finish, “for a young person’s body and mind.”
The boy and his friend rush around me, fleeing for the door, and another child, about two years younger, taps my arm tentatively, asking me if we haveThe Humming Room. I direct him straight to the section for middle grade.
When the store clears again, the telephone rings, and I rush toward the front counter.
“Magic Balloon Bookshop,” I answer. “This is Callie.”
“Callie Randall?” a man asks.
“How can I help you?”
“This is Josh Nemeth, from Ohio State,” he says as if I’m supposed to know who he is.
“Did you order a book?” I watch Inkspot skulk around the perimeter of the room, checking to see if the kids are gone.
“I’m calling about the book you found. The one owned by Annika Knopf.”
I lean against the back wall, surprised. “I just posted that.”
“I have an alert set up,” he explains. “I’ve been searching for information about an Annika from Austria for years.”
I want to reunite this book with its owner, not someone else searching for her. “I don’t know that she’s from Austria—”
“But the book is printed there?”
“Yes, in Salzburg,” I say, reopening my iPad.
“My uncle met a woman named Annika near Salzburg, after the war,” he says. “He never told me her last name.”
Google leads me straight to Dr. Nemeth’s biography on the OSU website. He’s an assistant professor, researching and teaching modern European history.
After skimming Dr. Nemeth’s bio, I study the photograph. He’sa nice-looking man in a rugged sort of way, reminding me of Ryan Gosling inLa La Landwith his stubble beard and a melancholic look in his eyes as if he’s thousands of miles away. In Austria, perhaps.
“Why exactly are you trying to find Annika?”
“She told my uncle a story, a long time ago...” He pauses. “My uncle’s gone now, but I’d like to find Annika or her family, so they can tell me the ending.”
And I want to know as well, Annika’s story, but first I need to make sure we are talking about the same person. “Her mother wrote about a castle in the inscription.”
“If it’s the same Annika, the castle would be Schloss Schwansee.”
Goose bumps trail down my arms. It must be the same woman.
“It’s on the banks of a lake called Hallstatt,” he says.
Dozens of images replace Dr. Nemeth’s profile on my screen. Bluish-green mountains surrounding a pristine lake, medieval houses in a village called Hallstatt hugging the shore. And there’s an ancient castle on the opposite side of the water, no name listed, but it’s near a village called Obertraun.
Poetic descriptions accompany the photographs. Sun-painted mountains. Jagged cliffs. Ghostly fog creeping across the jeweled lake. What would it be like to see a place like this, hike around an alpine lake instead of perusing it from my computer screen?
“This list inside... What exactly did it say?” he asks.
“It’s written in German.” I’m not ready to tell him about anything that Charlotte translated. “We bought the book from a seller in Idaho.”
“Where did the seller get it?” His voice has changed, tightened, with this question, and I wonder if he’s intrigued or angry.
“I emailed her today and asked that very same question.”
