Blue Moon

By JD Martin

When the expatriate finally solves this mystery and meets the illegitimate daughter of the artist, he becomes caught up in the woman's quest to find her mother, who went missing during a daylight bombing attack on Munich in WWII. Reluctantly, he realizes he was destined to become involved with these characters in his effort to bring them together.

Blue Moon is more than a story about war. It reveals the every day joy and pathos of people: lovers and friends caught in the morass of wartime terror, ordinary people trying to live life, to love and be loved, to stay alive in the worst of circumstances. It proposes what it might have been like to try to survive while the gates of Hell were open and the worst of its aggregation were milling about. In the end it’s about a love child’s love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JD Martin
• Release date: Dec 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311091284

JD Martin

JD Martin spent 43 years in the cockpit and retired in 1999 after an airline career spanning 31 years. As a DC-10 captain, he arrived in Munich in June of 1992 and moved there in 1996. A USAF pilot for over nine years, Jim was a bomber pilot, flight instructor, and flight commander with the German Air Force training Luftwaffe pilots in Texas. An ardent history buff, Jim has found historic places in Europe rich with material for his novels.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A bomb went off near my home not long ago – dropped from an American B-17 Flying Fortress on a sunny summer day in 1944 during the latter stages of the war against Nazi Germany. It turned up in an excavation site and contained a delayed action chemical detonator. The rusted bomb was deemed too unstable to be defused or moved, so the fire department specialists risking their lives to save the rest of us had to conduct a controlled explosion. Unexploded bombs—Blindegängers—are found in most cities in Germany and with alarming regularity all around Munich, the generally tranquil capital of Bavaria, the city where it all began for Hitler’s Nazi regime. The bomb made one hell of a boom and shot a fireball so high in the sky it was seen for miles around. Pavement trembled; windows blew in; fires ignited on nearby buildings. One bomb! One of thousands that shook the foundations of historic Munich and put the Fear of God in the inhabitants huddled in cellars or collective bunkers.

I never cease to wonder what it was like to walk outside into swirling dust and acrid, choking smoke, to see nearby buildings destroyed, wrecked and burning, to know there would be neighbors you'd never meet again at the local butcher or baker. But now I know what it must have sounded like – on a very small scale. And I also know where some of those poor souls who died when all hell came crashing down on them were laid to rest.

At first, I wasn’t sure Munich was a place where I could live. Language seemed an insurmountable barrier, but we agreed to give it a try, to see if we liked it well enough to stay, to put down roots. Me, Henderson Parry Weaver, a retired American, and my wife, Karoline von Gerolstein, a supple branch of Swabian gentility grafted to Bavarian hardwood. It didn't take us long to decide that Medieval—stuck in the 15th century—Munich with its Gothic and Baroque architecture, the Renaissance-styled Florence on the Isar River, a film, arts and culture center, was the place where we’d remain.

It was not without its baggage. An aura of Nazi perfusion lingers in the misty, moist air, and a darkly conservative shadow of that period lurks down every twisting, cobbled alley. Hitler’s house, a mansion really, is now a police precinct. Eva Braun’s villa is nearby, a modest, boxy place protected by high stone walls and gnarly bushes. Göring’s little love-nest also hides behind a facade of stone and brush. Himmler's boyhood home is not far from our apartment close to Rotkreuzplatz, sheltered in the shadow of a modern church. But what about their nameless neighbors, obscure in history’s relentless rush? People whose lives were inexorably bound to the criminals whose names are forever on our lips, names we remember and despise.

Munich is a city with a past that reads like a great novel, a city brought back to life after a terrible war, revived to serve as a reminder—but of what?

CHAPTER ONE

One of the charms of Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is its seductive fascination. But beyond Marienplatz, the medieval city square teeming with tangled knots of camera-clad tourists, beyond its famous beer halls with jocular, leather-clad singers, beyond the gilt and glitter of baroque churches, Munich is home to ghosts.

Beyond the city, well-defined towns and villages dot rolling meadows hemmed by towering forests. Distant villages: clots of red roofs clustered to The Church where behind a rusting gate, inside a walled churchyard, lie beautiful, flower-filled gardens of eternal peace. Quaint collections of local secrets: loves, joys and sorrows – a metamorphosis of spirits – bound in death, as they were in life.

Cold, ice laden rain beat down. An unfriendly gesture threatening to deter me from my daily stroll. Who would notice my absence? In Munich, where I live, Friedhöfe are quiet places to walk—and to think. They are grand formal graveyards: mausoleums, forests of trees and greenery, well tended graves sprouting flowers of every description. Behind their insuperable walls rest shadowy figures from history, surviving time beneath landscaped botanical facades. Bereft of tourists. One gets a sense of absolution in these places. Forgiveness. God’s forgiveness, perhaps, not mankind’s. It’s difficult to forgive what happened here and more difficult to understand why.

The first time I set foot in Nordfriedhof, northern-most of Munich’s compass-point cemeteries, I entered a spirit world with its subtle, strangely diabolical fascination. Quiet. Serene. A place where major players wrested from the bloody events of 20th-century Germany will spend eternity. That’s what I find intriguing – living in a place with a dramatic history.

Three days of chilling drizzle had dulled my spirit, and when interminable church bells spoke the noontime hour the temperature had turned noticeably colder. By the time I reached the main entrance on this dreary afternoon in late October, the slurry of rain mixed with sleet hissing from my umbrella had turned to fine, hard snow pellets, what older Bavarians call Schneegriesel. Gloomy shards of the overcast sagged discretely into fog, diffusing the pallid light from towering cast-iron street lamps bordering the gated archway of the cemetery entrance and I imagined the glaring, red-haired creature Thomas Mann described to begin Death in Venice. On ever-shortening autumn days, gray skies accentuate the starkness and gravel paths are sodden with dark, shadowy pools. The outside world fades into its distant, quiet reality. By winter Nordfriedhof is stark and barren, sterile and full of death.

Long rows of weathered stones speak history. Tablets tell a life story: Doctor, Actor, Professor, General—The Hero of Narvik, Widow of a Master Baker. I find myself searching out those who died during the Second World War, curious about what happened in Munich during those harrowing nights and days. How did most of these people, as the dates attest, manage to survive? How did anyone manage a meaningful semblance of life?

Wandering to a section I’d never noticed before, I was confronted with an unusually large area bordered on three sides by a thick, low hedge. Pegged near the center of this lonely, forlorn rectangle were two stone monuments, and I walked hesitantly across slippery, slush-covered grass to read their chiseled inscriptions. One stone indicated 79 Opfer, victims, the other, 45. Mass graves.

Stumbling in a shallow depression, I explored it with my foot, brushing away ice and snow pellets from a small granite block engraved with a single name and a date: Schwarz - 20.09.42.

There were many others. Long rows of subtle depressions dimpled the thin coating of icy snow, each with a granite block containing only a last name and a date.

Later, when my wife returned home from the elementary school where she teaches, I told her about the area I’d found and asked her to go there with me to see it.

"These are the Luftangriffsopfer, she said, victims of the air raids."

Why weren’t they buried in the normal part of the cemetery? And why are there no headstones, only these little blocks?

No idea, she said with a shrug. Maybe they had no one left. Whole families were killed, women and children. The authorities just buried them.

Something compelling drew me here, I told her, something more than just morbid curiosity.

In the farthest corner we discovered a tall, blackened bronze memorial: a stylized bomb falling on anguished, skeletal corpses. And the granite blocks were actually thick, brown porcelain tiles with the names burned in. These people, and others like them buried in cemeteries scattered around the city, had no one to tell their story. Some of the small, square, porcelain tablets had only the date of death and the word Unbekannt—Unknown.

How sad this place is, Karoline said, taking my hand while we crossed the expanse. We’ll never know who they were, she said. But at least they have a marker. And we do know one thing about them. she said. They all died a violent death.

As we passed one of the "Opfer" markers I stopped and touched it.

I heard them weeping, I murmured when we were in the car. I heard, ‛Why do they call me Unknown? I had a name!’

Some day, I said, giving her a quick side glance, there'll be a stone with my chiseled name: Henderson Weaver. And nothing but a pair of dates delineating my reality.

CHAPTER TWO

For three years Captain Henderson Parry Weaver commuted to New York from Munich, counting the days until he would fly his last flight. More than any other, Parry wanted his final trip to arrive on time. As it turned out, events on that July evening were beyond his control.

Boston and New York airports were a mess. Thunderstorms had swept through, swinging the wind around, causing lengthy flight delays. Once flights were airborne, air traffic controllers herded streams of converging planes as they sorted out flights headed toward oceanic entry points off the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland.

Familiar lights of Eastern Canada slipped under the port wing. Petite cities of Nova Scotia—Yarmouth and Halifax, Sydney with its soft amber lights, and soon after, the dim outline of Prince Edward Island rimmed by coastal village lights like a necklace of satin pearls. Then, until Avalon Peninsula on Newfoundland, nothing was below except the unseen rolling black of the North Atlantic.

A soft hiss surrounded the cockpit as the jet split the night air. Cooling fans in the navigation systems sang a high-pitched chorus; otherwise, it was quiet. Numbers glowed faintly on dials and gauges. High above, a midsummer sky evolved on a palette of ever-deepening indigo. But even at midnight the northern sky did not become completely dark, not at the end of July, not so far north as the pewter-thread contrails tracing Parry’s route across the clear night sky.

A fine sliver of molten sun skated along a lavender horizon that gradually faded into pale shades of orange. Later, beyond Baffin Bay, beyond tundra and ice on the polar curve, fleeting rays would betray the birth of a new day. West of Ireland this prolonged twilight would brighten, and morning would burst from the sea: a blinding, flaming incandescence.

First, he had to get there.

Air Traffic Control reassigned the flight-track, their route across the Atlantic. Parry took it as the final insult. The new track took him to 50 degrees latitude, 60 miles farther north, to Vixun, a virtual navigation fix in the sky 100 miles southeast of Gander, Newfoundland. It meant more miles to fly. More minutes late.

Above, below, and well off in the distance, navigation lights winked eastward as a vast air convoy plowed through the night toward Europe. Gander Center issued new radio frequencies and told him to make a position report upon passing 50º West Longitude.

The flight crossed ‘fifty-fifty,’ turned to the outbound course, and Pete, Parry’s copilot, made the oceanic position report.

At exactly 48º West Longitude, Parry pushed the GPS Hold Position button, recorded the coordinates, plotted the position on the navigation chart, and confirmed they were on course. About this time, bright blips crept down the radar screen: a ragged line of thunderstorms straddled the track ahead.

To the south a solid line of storms was brewing: the reason why the flight was diverted 60 miles to the north.

Ever cross the Atlantic on a ship, Parry? asked Pete, cupping his hands to his eyes as he peered through the windshield.

Nope. Closest I ever got was watching submarine movies. I can’t even imagine how it must have been. Shit. I mean, not knowing, and wolf-packs everywhere. You ever read much about the Nazi submarines? We’re not much different, you know. We fly above the surface and they flew below it.

Yeah, said Pete. On stormy nights like this they probably buttoned-up and rode it out submerged. I’ll bet it was a hell of a lot smoother than we’re gonna be.

I don’t know—not many survived. Three-quarters of the U-boat fleet is down there somewhere—rusting tombs.

Pete reminded him that Nazi submarines were called Iron Coffins.

While they talked, radio conversations about bumps filled the airwaves.

"Anybody got a smooth ride?" Random voices in a variety of accents. Judging by the chatter, a tormented sky churned in the distance. Ahead, pilots were reporting varying amounts of turbulence.

Doesn’t sound encouraging. . . . Parry said, reaching up to push the blue-lighted switch marked Seatbelt. Time to sit ‘em down.

With a soft ding seatbelt signs in the cabin were illuminated.

"Vell, Mein Kapitain, Pete said with a reasonably authentic Mel Brooks accent, there sits the wolf-pack."

Adjusting the radar, Parry considered the possibilities. Storm cells sat in close rank in the distance off to the right. One elongated cell about six miles in length sat directly across their flight path. According to the radar, it was sitting just over the 50º North, 40º West, turning point. Parry set the range knob on the radar to 50 miles.

Anybody east of forty on Track Victor with a ride report? Pete asked in the blind—not bothering to use their call sign.

Yeah, Delta 36. We got hammered going through on the south side at three-seven-oh.

United 58 Heavy encountered moderate turbulence on the north side at Flight Level three-five-zero. Adiabatic temperature rose two degrees and moderate turbulence lasted about, ah . . . four minutes with, ah . . . almost six minutes of light chop before and after.

Pete grunted and gave Parry a quick side-glance. Don’tcha just love those long-winded professors from the University of the Air?

They were already in the chop, pilot slang for light turbulence that nibbled at the airplane.

What do you think, Pete, hammered or moderated?

Pete adjusted the radar to scan above, then below their altitude. The thunderstorm ahead was roughly forty miles off the nose. On the radar screen, two tiny yellow spots, perhaps indicating hailstones, stood away from the north side of the main cell. Lightning illuminated the clouds against a dark horizon as Parry rolled the airplane into a gentle turn and selected an off-course heading—30 degrees to the right.

I think we’ll opt for hammered, he said. But it looks like there’s a soft spot between the storm cells. Tapping a finger on the radar screen where the yellow spots were, he added, I wish we had another option, but this sure looks like hail spitting out the other side.

Pete turned off the white strobe navigation lights.

Picking up the interphone handset, and with a resigned sigh, Parry pushed the All-Call button to inform the flight attendants.

Tuck everybody in and stow the loose equipment, he said. We’re in for a few minutes of Wild West Rodeo up ahead.

Pete fastened his shoulder harness and checked several times to make sure they locked.

What the hell are you doing? Parry said, the irritation clear in his voice.

Just want to make sure I’m securely attached to the airplane when the fun starts.

Flicking an index finger toward the yellow spots, now grown larger, Parry said, You want to go through here? Into this shit? I’m not interested in making my last landing squinting through a fucking shattered windshield.

Whatever you wanna do, Parry, Pete said.

Parry knew what he meant: The captain isn’t always right, but he’s always The Captain.

Parry pulled his seatbelt tighter. You got a better idea?

No, Pete said, you’re right. We can skate through there, but it’ll be rough either way.

Well, we’re committed now, Parry murmured as a kernel of doubt sprouted in a dark recess of his mind. Reaching over his shoulders, he pulled the ends of the shoulder harness down and snapped them in the seatbelt buckle.

Gonna be black as a well-digger’s muck in there, Pete said, turning on the engine ignition switches before peering again through his windshield.

Humor is an interesting coping mechanism. Parry knew exactly what Pete meant and it broke the tension. Officially, humor was legislated out of the cockpit by Federal Air Regulations. Not that anybody noticed.

Lightning was continuously stabbing out from cells to their right, and the main storm, now moving off to their left, had just lit up solidly for the first time. Dizzying sweeps of the red rotating beacons flashed ahead of the nose, signaling entry into the clouds. Jagged fingers of Saint Elmo’s fire, cloud-induced static electricity looking like something from a science fiction laboratory, flickered and danced in the windshield corners. Static hissed and buzzed from the radio receivers. Seconds later the aircraft plowed into the wake of the storm and the plane shuddered.

Then it bucked violently.

A sudden updraft hit like an express elevator. Airspeed dwindled. The automatic throttles drove forward to maximum engine rpm.

Oh, shit, Pete, here we go! Holding the control wheel lightly, Parry let the autopilot return the nose to the horizon. Airspeed crept dangerously low. The altimeter needle wound upward. The airliner shook and rattled in the heavy turbulence. It was an unnerving test of man and machine.

On the plane’s nose, twin coronas of Saint Elmo’s fire, looking like two Roman candles, spewed a V of fiery incandescence that rendered the radios, shrieking and screeching with static, unusable.

This is when you really feel alone, Parry said, aware of the fatherly presence in his voice. Damn radio is the only link we have out here.

A few seconds later the plane began to sink, feeling weightless. The auto-throttles reduced power on the engines to keep the speed from increasing and the autopilot attempted to hold the nose level. Red lights on the instrument panel flashed, Altitude-Altitude-Altitude, and a warning horn began a nerve-wracking beeping as the plane bottomed out four hundred feet low. Engaging the pitch-control thumb-wheel, Parry began a slow climb back to the assigned altitude. About this time they felt high-speed Mach buffet, a vibration caused when airflow somewhere on the plane approaches supersonic.

One of the rare moments when fly’n isn’t fun, Parry said, mostly for his own amusement. Reexamining his decisions, he wondered if he had made some tragic mistake. It was only a minor comfort to him that hailstones hadn’t shattered the windshields.

Suddenly the cockpit lit up with a blinding flash as the corona on the nose exploded like a lightning bolt. It sounded as if the plane was fired from a cannon.

Jesus! exclaimed Pete, involuntarily putting his hands on the copilot’s control wheel.

Call the flight attendants and tell ‘em it was only Saint— Parry was interrupted by the harsh ring of the pilot-call chimes.

Pete answered the interphone and began reassuring the cabin crew. Seconds later, with one final bump of turbulence, the plane burst from the wall of clouds and abruptly all was calm.

How’s that, folks? Pete said cheerfully. Smooth enough for ya?

Glancing up through his windshield, Parry was comforted to note stars were above him . . . and not below.

The GPS pointer slewed to the next waypoint. The autopilot rolled the plane into a gentle bank, and rolled it out on heading toward 50 degrees North, 30 degrees West. Altitude and airspeed were back on target. Radio static was gone. Somewhere behind them, on the same track and altitude, another nervous pilot was asking for a ride report.

Shitty ride south-side at three-three-oh, Pete said, sounding overly cheerful. Only lasted a couple minutes, though.

To some of us it seemed like an eternity, Parry mumbled, programming an on-course intercept into the navigation computer.

Neither of them had the presence of mind to note the GPS coordinates when they passed the storm at 40 degrees West so Parry estimated the time at the position. Pete made a position report to Gander using the high-frequency radio.

Enjoy your retirement, Captain, came the reply.

Parry keyed his microphone switch, wondering how they knew.

So long, Gander. Been good to know ya.

Crossing 30 degrees West Longitude, mid-point of oceanic airspace, Pete transmitted a position report to Shanwick, the HF radio operator at Shanwick Oceanic Center in Ireland.

High frequency, HF, is an unbelievably hellish radio technology left over from the 1930’s and 40’s—old time radio at its worst. Across an expansive sky, faceless voices jumble together on a busy party line, oftentimes spewing garbled, unintelligible numbers as distant falsetto echoes build and fade. Radio operators at Shanwick Center, located in a village near Shannon, Ireland, were much appreciated by those who flew the North Atlantic. On stormy, turbulent nights those calm voices with friendly Irish brogues reached out reassuringly.

Surely, Parry often thought, guardian angels sit at those long-range radio consoles.

Ireland, the radio operators at Ballygirreen, County Clare, and the European Continent were still beyond a distant horizon when a crimson moon slipped from unseen waves. Rising like a warning, the moon softened into a translucent creamy sphere, suspended majestically above the ocean’s surface, sending sparkling bits reflecting off the shimmering sea like an endless string of computer code. Parry remarked to Pete that it looked like a nautical equivalent of Boolean Algebra: zeros and ones. Full moon, he added absently, folding the navigation chart and sliding it into a space beside the glare shield above the instrument panel.

Blue Moon, uttered Pete, filling in the flight log for the position report. Pretty rare.

Bombers Moon, Parry retorted, conjuring up the huge formations of British Lancaster bombers droning across Germany on clear, moonlit nights long ago, and like him, headed toward Munich in the heart of the continent. Munich: where Adolf Hitler and his Nazi horde began their ill-fated European conquest. Munich: capital of conservative Bavaria, where Parry had chosen to retire.

Gazing at the moon’s reflections sparkling off the sea, he did not yet understand what had happened. According to plan, this flight, the last of his pilot career, would terminate shortly after sunrise broke over the North Atlantic. Before departing, he had told friends that this was, . . . my final flight into tomorrow. But, he wondered, absorbing the unfolding sky, is there ever a tomorrow? Or is it only a complex, interconnected, forever lengthening time we call now?

Relax, Parry, Pete said, interrupting the melancholy. Retirement is one of the few things in this business we don’t have to train for.

It took Parry about a week to realize he no longer had to get out of bed in the dark and commute to New York for his next series of flights. He and Karoline packed their car and drove to the south of France, then up along the Atlantic coast to Lorient and Brest in the far west of Brittany.

Travel must be in your blood, Karoline said as they sat atop a wind-swept cliff overlooking the Atlantic, because my idea of relaxation is to sit on a sunny beach in Italy.

CHAPTER THREE

November weather turned unusually warm. On days when Karoline came home from school early in the afternoon they took advantage of the mild temperature to walk in nearby mountains. Parry’s long-awaited retirement evolved into an extended vacation. Gradually the days grew shorter and household routines replaced the euphoria. But November’s weather remained mild, raising their hopes for a pleasant, temperate winter.

One morning a letter arrived soliciting Christmas support for SOS Kinderdorf.

Do you know anything about this place? Parry asked, intrigued by the letters: SOS.

Karoline said it was a world-wide organization to help abandoned, destitute and orphaned children.

Wherever they got my name, he said, removing the folder and dropping the envelope in the trash, they put me down as Parry.

It’s what you tell everyone to call you, she said, a questioning expression widening across her broad German face.

Thank my mother. She thought Parry tripped off the tongue better than ‛Henderson.’

Then why did she name you Henderson?

An old family name. Welsh. Her family. She gave me the nickname ‛Parry,’ and it stuck.

A few days later, just by chance, they walked past SOS Kinderdorf’s Munich headquarters, and Karoline told him about the thousands of children who became orphans during WW II.

"Many were ‛Kinder der Liebe’, she said, Love Children. They got special birthrights from the Nazi government when they were born to unmarried women, usually because the fathers didn’t survive to become husbands. With a touch of irony in her voice, she said, War orphans. Children who survived the war only to be blamed for it."

In mid-December a vengeful, icy winter storm descended over Bavaria, holding the land in its grip like a terrifying page from the Brothers Grimm. Within days Munich was headed for a storybook White Christmas as snowflakes began falling in earnest and temperatures plummeted.

Flurries added an air of fantasy to the festive, holiday atmosphere at the Christmas Market in Sendlinger Tor Platz, the medieval southwest gate of Munich, where Parry and Karoline gathered with friends to drink spiced wine and suffer the indignities of the cold. The square, like many others dotting the city, was filled with rustic wooden kiosks decorated with colored lights and pine bough garlands. At either end of Sendlinger Tor Platz, purveyors of crêpes and wurst filled the evening air with irresistible aromas. A charcoal-heated copper kettle close by the ancient gate radiated an Old World charm along with the warmth of steaming, spicy Glühwein, literally, glow-wine.

Christmas Eve found sidewalks covered with three inches of fresh, crystalline powder that spoke in shrill staccato bursts to Volk hurrying to midnight mass along Schwere-Reiter Strasse, Cavalry Street. The crunching snow sounded to Parry like saddle leather, and the irony made him smile. The sound melded with a spirited cacophony of bells from neighborhood churches. Saint Benno’s, haunt of Munich’s patron, sang with a clear melodious sound, joined by tiny Saint Barbara’s, formerly a military chapel. Farther north, staid, matronly Saint Theresa’s, with unusually ornate double-stacked onion domes atop a tall rectangular tower, rang out the same deep resonant tones that guaranteed the hours.

Snow continued throughout the next week, over New Year’s, and well into the next year. Soggy skies hung gray and dreary day after day: tiresome, wearying – the unwanted lingering guest. Then one morning the overcast had miraculously cleared.

Oh, Parry . . . look, blue sky! It’s gorgeous today. Karoline pulled the bedroom window blinds up and stood looking out.

Are you sure you want to stand there naked? he asked dryly.

The blinds came crashing down on their partly roused cat, Snooks, stretched out on the warm marble windowsill over the radiator.

Let’s go somewhere today, or? Karoline said, putting on Parry’s bathrobe before trying to console the squirming cat, who appeared to want no part of it. I wouldn’t mind driving over to Dachau when I come home from school this afternoon.

Okay, he said. We can walk in the palace garden.

That afternoon, at a traffic light on Dachauer Strasse, they waited while a streetcar screeched around the corner heading toward Westfriedhof – West Cemetery. Parry glanced at the long block of buildings, known as Borstei, bordering the right side of the street. They had lived there when they first moved to Munich. Across the intersection, he could see Dachauer Strasse was about to be torn up to extend the subway line. On the diagonal corner, parts of a giant rotary tunneling-machine sat lining the street. Snow-clogged, rusted pieces bathed in pale, buttery, winter-afternoon sunlight.

It’s really going to snarl traffic when they have to cut through here, he said. Old Borstei is going to be a noisy place. As an afterthought, he added, I wonder if it was ever bombed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dachau commands a magnificent view of the Alps. Founded centuries ago on a hilltop northwest of Munich, it might have remained an obscure pristine village—a celebrated artist colony. But that was not its destiny. Few people are unaware of its existence, this infamous, sinister place, poster child for the atrocities committed by the Nazis during their brutal twelve-year grip on Germany.

Unlike Hester Prynne, who bore her badge of scarlet with virtuousness and resignation, Dachau agonizes over its perceived immorality and the world’s condemnation of its sins.

Dachauer Strasse, just before it exits Munich, zippers traffic to one lane as it dips under a railroad overpass. Near this perpetual traffic jam a few weeks before Christmas, construction workers excavating a razed building’s foundation discovered an unexploded thousand-pound bomb—a Blindgänger. Unexploded munitions were frequently dug up in Munich, grisly reminders of a not-so-distant terror-filled past.

I wonder how many more explosives are still buried under sidewalks, streets and gardens around the city, mused Parry.

Too many, Karoline said coolly, checking her lipstick in the sun-visor mirror.

Beyond the city limits, the highway rose on a long viaduct over the railroad freight yard.

Look, Parry, you can see the Alps!

This morning I heard a radio traffic report that it was foggy out here, he said.

Yes, but usually on cold, damp mornings when the sky is clear, like today, Karoline said. We don’t have many of those days in winter! That’s why people fly from here to sunshine, or?

She often ended a sentence this way, meaning . . . don’t you agree?

While she was day-dreaming about the sun, Parry followed a silver Mercedes onto the exit ramp where a yellow sign with a glistening black arrow ominously declared: Dachau.

The off-ramp ended at a T intersection. To the right lay the Nazis’ notorious prototype concentration camp, built in 1933 to contain the usual suspects: political prisoners and, later, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and forced laborers from all over Europe.

He turned left, following ancient cobbles winding toward the Zentrum, the town’s center, and found a parking spot on the main square by City Hall.

I don’t know how you do that, Karoline grumbled as they started along the walk toward the medieval village fountain. "I can never find a parking space so close to the Zentrum—if at all."

That’s because you don’t believe. When I know where I want to park, I expect to find a parking place.

Well, you have it worked out to a science, she said, shaking her head. I can’t do it.

Ah, but you see, you already do. You think you can’t and you don’t. I think I can and I do. It’s the same thing! We create our own destiny.

Looking askance, she put her arm around his and gave a tug.

Climbing the steep, ice-laced cobblestone street to the former castle was difficult, and after walking through deserted royal gardens, Parry stopped at a spot overlooking the south ramparts which had a splendid view of the distant Alps.

The mountains make a fitting backdrop to the glinting steeples of Munich’s prayer palaces, he said, feigning fatuous irony. Suitably inspired, they wandered down to find the bakery they had discovered around a corner and up a narrow street.

"Kaffee und Kuchen at four in the afternoon is one of my favorite German pastimes," he mused, picking a plump raisin from a generous slice of apple cake buried under a dollop of whipped cream.

On their way back to the car they turned the corner at Hindenburgstrasse, and Parry stopped to browse the window of a one-hour photo shop. A used Lexicon, twenty-nine numbered books, and an old watercolor in a plain oak frame, sat among new and used photographic equipment.

This doesn’t seem to be the kind of place to sell those things, does it?

They’re family things, Karoline said. Heirlooms. We have a set of those books packed away somewhere.

Frame’s not much, but the watercolor kinda intrigues me. I don’t know why, but I like it.

You just like mountains, Karoline replied, turning and strolling away.

But why would those things be in there? Parry asked, hurrying after her. In an antique shop maybe, but not in a one-hour photo shop!

Why don’t you ask?

They’re closed. He took her arm. Come on, let’s go home.

That picture looked almost enchanted, he said when they had joined stop-and-go traffic.

Enchanted? You mean like, ‘New Mexico: Land of Enchantment’?

Okay, then, how about whimsical—or magical? The old church and those tippity houses on the hilltop have . . . well . . . a certain charm. And what about the church? It’s not occupying the high ground. It’s got to mean something.

Hmm, she said, "if you examined it that carefully, you’re telling me you really like it. Why? It’s just another quaint mountain village. My Oma had one like that . . . everybody’s grandmother had one hanging on a wall somewhere."

But it. . . . Parry glanced to the rear-view mirror and then to Karoline. Have you ever felt you’ve been somewhere before? That it feels eerily familiar?

Of course, she said. Everyone has. It doesn’t mean you have been, though. Or?

The next Saturday Karoline hurried to finish house cleaning. Parry called the photo shop. The man had, Parry thought, told him the shop would be open until three o’clock.

Are you sure?