The Ludwig Conspiracy(139)
Zöller nodded and held his stomach. He seemed to be in great pain. “Luise Manstein showed Paul a letter authenticated by a notary, in which . . . in which Theodor left the diary to Maria after his death. Marot fell at the front in France in 1916, as an army doctor of distinction. From then on, the book officially belonged to the former Oberammergau maidservant and her descendants.”
“But Professor Liebermann didn’t give Luise Manstein the book?” Steven asked.
“My God, no!” Zöller laughed, a rattling laugh. When he wiped his mouth a moment later, bright blood showed on the back of his hand again. “Paul was quick to realize that the woman isn’t exactly all there. She became more and more insistent. She set her thugs on him. All the same, the diary really did belong to her family. Then Paul remembered the family tree that Luise Manstein had shown him. He asked to see it again and secretly made a copy.” Zöller paused for a moment to get his breath back again.
“With its help he . . . he succeeded in tracing a second branch of the family,” he finally went on. “You see, my friend Paul was hoping that there was another descendant, someone to whom he could entrust that valuable book with a clear conscience. And guess what, he did find such a descendant. He, too, like all members of the family, initially bore his great-great-grandmother Maria’s surname, which was also the surname of her son, Leopold.” Groaning, Uncle Lu took a deep breath and looked Steven intently in the eyes. “Herr Lukas—the maidservant’s name was Maria . . . Berlinger.”
Steven felt dizzy and had to lean against the wall of the throne room for support. He saw his parents in front of him, the dusty little street lined with Fords, Buicks, and Chevys with the paint chipping off; the decrepit elevator that took them up to their tiny apartment in Boston; the nameplate on the door with the handsomely curved letters that, at the time, he couldn’t yet decipher.
GEORGE W. AND KAREN BERLINGER
“Berlinger?” he whispered. “But that’s . . .”
Zöller elaborately searched his jacket and finally brought out a folded document with spots of blood on it. “I have the complete family tree here with me, Herr Lukas. Kindly take a quick look at it.”
Zöller pushed the document over to him. Steven put the diary to one side and reached for it as if it were radioactive. Slowly, he unfolded the sheet of paper. It showed a family tree of the kind he had often seen in old books, except that he knew the names listed on this one. Taken together, they added up to a kind of formula, with the answer, as in an arithmetical calculation, at the bottom right.
It was his own name.
The brightly colored Chinese lanterns shining in my grandparents’ garden, the crackling flames in the library, the book with its pages fluttering on the floorboards in the wind . . . the girl with the blond braids who wants to scratch my eyes out, her burning dress . . .
“Do you understand, Steven?” Zöller asked. “Ludwig’s son, Leopold, had two sons, one of whom emigrated to the United States. That son, Anton Berlinger, is your grandfather. You are a direct descendant of Ludwig the Second, just as Luise is. She is your cousin.” He coughed again, and blood spilled from the corners of his mouth as he went on. “Paul wanted to get in touch to find out more about you, Steven. When events began moving thick and fast, he hid the diary in your bookshop.”
Zöller sighed and let out a loud, halting breath. “I have done some research in the States and even engaged a private detective, because I couldn’t believe what Paul said. And then, suddenly, there you were standing at my door asking me for help . . .” Uncle Lu laughed quietly. “At first I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being taken in by a fraud and a murderer. But it’s all true.”
All at once, Steven felt as if he were behind a wall of opaque glass. He vaguely saw Sara opening her mouth, obviously saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear her. Slowly, he slipped to the floor, clutching the family tree like a child holding his teddy bear as if it were the last thing that could still save him from the all-destroying fire . . . from the stifling, billowing, nightmarish clouds of smoke that slowly withdrew, and showed him, at last, all that he had suppressed for so long.
The book took him back to his childhood. Suddenly he could remember everything . . .
. . . A SEA OF LEGS before him, women’s legs under long ball gowns, men’s legs in black front-pleated evening pants, hands patting Steven on the head, someone pushing a plate of wobbly green dessert over to him. They all speak the same kind of clipped English as his mother, very different from his father’s soft English. It sounds like wood breaking in the forest, the same as in the scary fairy tales that Mama is always telling him.