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= Woman in the Moon =

Mona Lisa Novel, or: Nocturne in Paris

by John Argo

Page 20.

“Dan Wilson was a good man.” Frau Jones leaned ever closer, folding her hands on the checkered table cloth around Hannah’s hands. “Child, Danny used to come in here and drink beer in the evenings. He looked so sad, and he drank too much, but nothing like Chetko. That was during the 1970s, when your father was younger than you are now. He was such a decent, devoted young man.” Suddenly she brightened, pursuing a different train of thought in her aged and overflowing memories. She turned to Frau Hagel. “Irma, would you do something for me?”

Ja, Tante, was denn? “Yes, Aunt. What then?”

Frau Jones spoke in fast, thick German, the local dialect that was hard to follow if you only knew a little High German or Hochdeutsch as Rob did. Hannah was at a loss. Everyone in a village like this was either Tante or Onkel, Uncle. The kids went to school together, and played in a roving band on the hills, in the woods, on the village streets, preparing to be the next generation of villager owners.

Ja, ja, Frau Hagel said as Frau Jones handed her a house key. Irma Hagel rose and left quickly.

“She will bring you something very surprising,” Frau Jones told the twins. “So in the meantime, my old eyes tell me maybe you are twins, eh?”

“Fraternal,” Rob and Hannah said in one breath.

Hannah opened her purse and took out a few snapshots. Rob did the same with his wallet. They sat and gurgled happily together over pictures of Dan and Nancy, of the twins when they were young, and the house in Salem with the lantern by the ivied entrance.

“How delightful,” Frau Jones said. “I am so glad to hear that Danny married again, to your beautiful mother, yes?”

They nodded. Hannah anticipated the next question. “They were very happy together for over thirty years. Mom’s name was Nancy Everol, from Oregon.”

“The U.S. state,” said Frau Jones.

“Yes. We are from the Portland area.”

“I love your country.”

“Thank you. We love yours too.”

“You must tell me all about your Dad, and his wives, including your mother, and about yourselves. I am so happy that everything turned out well for him. He was so sad when he lived her with Stana, and so young for so much tragedy. But we older Germans lived with terrible tragedy too, as did too many others. No making excuses but suffering is suffering. My brother died. I still miss him and love him today. He was just an ordinary boy, working as a Kellner, a waiter in this restaurant here for our parents, when they took him away to the Wehrmacht and he disappeared in Russia. We were rid of Hitler and his magpies, but that evil Chetko, he brought a special hell with him from Croatia.”

Rob and Hannah spent the next fifteen minutes telling the elderly woman all about themselves, their state of Oregon, and their current lives in Europe.

“Your dad Danny would be so proud of you both,” she said.

The door opened, and Irma Hagel walked in carrying the key—and a notebook. She slid in to the bench again beside Frau Jones, and handed her both objects.

Danke, Frau Jones said. Gut geschafft. “Thanks. Well done.” She placed both hands palms down on the notebook. “This belonged to your father.”

Hannah was stunned. What lay on the table before her was a notebook identical to that which her father had labeled Journal III. She bet that this one had an earlier number. She reached for it, and Frau Jones pushed it across the table to her. Peeking inside for a second, Hannah saw in the opening cover that her father had written the words Journal II. Rob leaned close to study it as well.

“This is yours now, children. I gladly hand it over to you. I feel I have waited forty years for this moment.” Frau Jones briefly cried. Then she began to explain as much as she knew, which was a lot, but not all of the story.

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