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Page 36.
 Days passed, and Hannah didn’t look at Journal II. Rob had Journal III with him in Frankfurt, which was the easily knowable summary of Dan Wilson’s life with Nancy Everol, with whom he had brought the twins Rob and Hannah into the world.
During her evening studies, Hannah might pick up her magnifying glass and try to make sense of the erratic notes her Dad had made in Journal II, a sort of scattershot mosaic of moments and events in a very dark time in Heidelberg and Verlorenau, lasting not quite three years. That was a standard period of enlistment in the United States Army in the post-Vietnam era U.S. Army. Frau Jones had related salient points from Dan’s stay. Hannah found it heartbreaking to open the yellowing, dried up pages and see her father’s cryptic entries written in a variety of ballpoint pens.
And then…
She came back with her magnifying glass to hover over those opening pages. While the window stood lightly open, and the curtains stirred in a mild summer night breeze, Hannah studied the inside of the front cover (card stock, nothing remarkable, even stained yellow with some droplets of tears, or beers, or long ago coffee). Those were the Cold War years. That had been Dan Wilson’s war. He and well over a million U.S. service members, joining a million West German troops and another million or more Allies including Canadians, Danes, Belgians, you name it… held the line against the Warsaw Pact and the Stalinist empire. Heidelberg had been, according to one of Dad’s stray notes, only about twelve minutes away from reach by Soviet fighter-bombers stationed in East Germany or Poland. Luckily, the trigger had never been pulled.
Something odd about that penciled name and address: Claudette Vervain, 45 Rue de la Belle Ferronière, Paris 75012. For some reason, it looked different than the rest of the writing. It was the only entry in pencil, for one thing. It was a very hard lead that came across fine and faint. Almost as if a woman had written it. Was it possible that Claudette Vervain had written her name and address for him? But why? At this point, he had left her for Stana Chetko in Verlorenau, Heidelberg.
A page or two into the notebook, she found another puzzling entry. Its title, underscored for emphasis, was Bridge of Regret. It was written in his firm, flowing blue ink from an ordinary stick pen, maybe a Bic or the like. The writing was different from that in pencil, which started more and more to look like the writing of a woman as Hannah studied the journal.
What was this about a Bridge of Regret?
It said Pont des Arts—Bridge of Regret, Paris 75001. Now she knew there had been a real bridge where Dan and Claudette last saw each other during that heart-rending, tearful goodbye. It was the Pont des Arts, the Bridge of the Arts, considered by many to be the most beautiful in Paris. It was a passerelle, a foot bridge for pedestrians, not a traffic bridge. It straddled the First Arrondissement on the Right Bank, and the Seventh Arrondissement on the Left Bank. This passerelle led straight to the entrance portal of the Palace du Louvre on Quai du François Mitterand.
The date of that sad moment was even there: September 25, 1977.
Farewell, my love. This is the most painful moment of my life, and yet the happiest. I suffer great pain as I leave you on the bridge. Your look will haunt me for the rest of my life. Your face is filled with pain, and your eyes are stunned with disbelief that I would leave you for another woman who is pregnant with my child. I could have done like so many men, French or otherwise, and simply lied and left you hanging to figure things out in pain and loneliness. I am too honest, and I don’t want you to suffer. I want you to move on, to find a man more suited to your passion and education. Go on, discover the greatest secret of Leonardo that we dreamed of uncovering. You are close, and you will be famous. I was not meant to be on that journey with you. Fate has a different journey outlined for me, which I will find out when I return to Heidelberg. A piece of my heart and soul stays here with you, but I have betrayed you and don’t deserve any kindness or fond memories from you. I love you with all my heart, as much as my heart is torn for those other loves in Germany. Goodbye, my love, and best of luck in your quest to solve the riddle of the Smiling Woman. May you smile also.
It was a paragraph of thoughts, rambling, rather than an actual letter to someone, so Dan Wilson, a young soldier age about 27, had not signed it. At some point not long after, with a date simply indicated by the month in autumn 1977, Dan Wilson had added the next entry.
October 1977: wedding date at beginning of November. Stana starting to show. Inlaws awful as always. Chetko an asshole. I can’t wait to ETS and take her home to Portland with the baby so we can start a new life together, away from this dark and horrible village.
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