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Page 18.
 They walked into a small building, whose single door admitted them to a little hall dimly illumined by plain yellowish leaded glass windows in steel frames. It was chilly in here, and smelled vaguely of flowers and chemicals. The atmosphere gave Hannah the creeps. It inspired a mixture of reverence and downright fear.
“There is probably an official register in here,” Jack said. “Ah, look on the wall.” There, painted in a dark red brush-script in antique script, were lists of names and birth-death dates. The script was neither traditional Germanic nor modern, but a sort of flowing, artistic imitation of Medieval illumined cursive. Jack concluded: “Past inhabitants of this village.”
The three of them looked, but could find no Chetko.
“There is a Stanislava,” Jack said, pointing.
“Oh, my, god,” Hannah intoned. She read out loud: “Stanislava Bautz-Chetko, 1955-2015 . She was about sixty when she died just a few years ago.”
How sad this all is, Hannah thought. “No wonder Dad was a wreck.”
“I’m feeling like a wreck right now too,” Rob whispered.
Jack spoke quietly. “She died relatively young. Must have been cancer. Suicide. Who knows. We’ll find out more. I’m curious now.” He traced a finger up and down the list of villagers’ names, which dated as far back as 1920. “There are probably people buried on this hill dating back thousands of years,” Jack said. “This is just modern cemetery lore from the post-World War Two recovery. A new world. Look.” He found another name with Bautz in it. “Anna Maria Bautz-Chetko, 1925 to 1995. I’ll lay odds that is the mother of this Stana. So where is her husband, Klara’s father?”
They searched the wall of names in vain. No sign of a Chetko with probably an Eastern European first name. “We’ll try the tavern next,” Jack said. Then his features lit up. “Look. There is another name under Stanislava’s. I almost missed it.” He ran a fingertip along a faint, indented name in smaller print. “Klara Bautz-Chetko W. I would guess that the initial stand for Wilson.”
Hannah felt faint. Rob grabbed her elbow to support her, as well as steady himself.
“Our little sister,” Hannah whispered. Klara’s dates were given as simply one year, 1979.
“We weren’t born yet,” Rob whispered, and his voice echoed faintly in that cold chamber.
Jack shook his head gravely, amazed at the meanspiritedness. “They wouldn’t even allow your father’s name in here. They must have really hated him. But that was the baby’s name. Klara Wilson, when you get right down to the unalterable facts.”
“Claire Wilson,” Hannah whispered, and her voice echoed aroud her.
When they stepped back into the cemetery outside, the light had grown a bit darker, more somber. A wind blew, throwing around shreds and fragments of last autumn’s dead leaves.
Jack waited by the gate, while Rob and Hannah made a tour of the small cemetery. The center had been denuded of gravestones, leaving only rows of tall weeds where the graves still lay in their low, crumbling dark stone borders grown over with moss. The place could have stood empty for centuries as far as maintenance was concerned, or the strange absence of maintenance. It was almost as if the villagers in their neat houses did not want to come here, except to bury each other, and then quickly leave back to their normal living, breathing, blood-pumping days of light and conversation.
Hannah plucked at Rob’s sleeve. “I could swear I feel eyes on us.”
He nodded. “Maybe someone noticed us coming up here, and decided to keep an eye on us strangers.”
Hannah looked around. “But who, and where? I don’t see anyone.”
“All gone,” Jack said from afar. “Nobody paid the fee, and the markers went to the stone breakers down in the valley.” He was beginning to seem uneasy and impatient. “Come on, let’s go Zum Forst.”
They stepped out through the gate, glad to be back in the world of the living.
The sunlight appeared brighter and softer, the air warmer, the light wind balmy. No leaves blowing around.
As they headed back to Jack’s van, he said: “I saw someone watching us from far away in the trees. A woman with sunglasses. A bit odd, I’d say. Didn’t say anything, no facial expression, just kept her hands in the pockets of her raincoat and stared our way from behind those black shades. Seemed to have a faint glow behind her, but I am sure I was seeing things.”
Nobody said it, but the thought hung in the air, as memories sometimes do, floating smoke not anchored either to heaven or earth:
Claire Wilson.
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