lingered several steps behind. She returned his greeting in the same high, musical accent she had Felix’s.
“Is the gasthaus open?”
“Of course,” she said, and she unclasped her hands to usher them in.
There was a heavy, brothy aroma in the air. Felix glanced at the empty dining room that was off to the left of the entrance.
“Fine day earlier,” she said.
“It’ll return,” said Felix.
How easily it had come out, he thought; how he didn’t even have to think about the reflexive reply he had heard so often from his grandparents.
“Kommen sie,” she said.
The stube even had a kachelofen, and it had been lighted. An old man was seated at a table, a walking stick beside him. He turned and smiled at Felix.
“Well, look what the day brings us,” he said.
“Gruss, Herr Hartmann,” said Felix. “A nice surprise to find you up here.”
He saw that the woman was eyeing Speckbauer.
“Wunderbar,” said Speckbauer and rubbed his hands briskly.
“Did I smell soup?”
There were playing cards spread out over the gingham cloth at the booth where Willi Hartmann sat.
“You are rambling, Felix, is it? Up for the air?”
“Actually not. My friend here is new to the area. He asked if I would show him the sights.”
“Marvellous,” said Speckbauer to Hartmann. “Splendid countryside.”
Hartmann looked from Speckbauer to Felix and back.
“It is that, sir.”
“May I buy you a krugl of beer, Herr Hartmann?”
“No, no, Felix. Ach, how like your father to have said that! No, thank you. I need but the one glass of beer to get wipsi now.”
Then he offered a weak smile.
“There are no prizes for old age, my friends. I should finish my game and go home for a nap.”
“Home is close then?” Speckabuer asked.
“Herr Hartmann lives in the same village as my grandparents,” said Felix. “St. Kristoff.”
“Six hundred and twenty years,” said Hartmann, with a wink.
“Not all mine of course. My family.”
Speckbauer trailed the woman to the bar.
“Soup and a bun would be great,” Felix heard him say. “Is that possible?”
She smiled, and this time Felix saw gold to both sides of her mouth.
“I am the boss,” she said. “So if it’s possible, I will tell you.”
Hartmann moved in on the bench and motioned to Felix.
“Sit,” he said. “Sit. A nice service for your dad, wasn’t it? A good turnout, eh? Respect. Some things don’t change, even in this flyaway world.”
He eyed Speckbauer talking to the woman at the bar.
“My niece is married, you should tell him. Liesl, who runs the place.”
Felix smiled.
“I don’t think he’s up in the hills looking for a wife.”
Hartmann moved his leg again and grimaced. Liesl called out from the bar.
“Soup and jausen for you too, sir?”
Felix shook his head. He asked for beer instead.
Speckbauer returned to the booth. He leaned in to shake hands with Hartmann and then he slid into the bench opposite. He looked at the cards, the half-empty beer glasses.
“Am I taking someone’s place?”
“Macht nichts,” said Hartmann, with a small wave.
“My chauffeur — he’s in the klo.”
Hartmann’s eyes stayed on Speckbauer for several moments.
“You take your wild card-playing to teach them up here, Herr Hartmann?” Felix said.
“Little teaching they need up here,” Himmelfarb replied. “No.
I go on my rounds here. I am like the priest, you know? My niece married in here years ago. Her husband may own this place, but she is the boss, let me tell you. That’s the Hartmanns for you.”
“And what does the husband work at?” Speckbauer asked.
“This and that,” said Hartmann easily, as though he had been expecting it. “Takes care of the place, he’s handy. There are contracts for the woods, of course. There’s always something, isn’t there? Not like old times, I must say. Your opa could tell you about those, eh, Felix?”
Opa Kimmel, he meant, Felix realized. The eminence grise, was that the expression? The conversation lapsed. Felix looked around the room. It had been kept up, and it was clean, but it had a jaded feel to it. Maybe it was more a hobby, or a custom to keep it open, just to cover costs.
Footsteps and a cough came from the hall. A man appeared in the doorway, pausing when he saw the arrivals to nod.
“Servus alles.”
Felix returned the greeting, followed by Speckbauer.
The man was in his thirties, with tousled red-blond hair and two days’ growth of rust-coloured beard under the crinkly eyes.
There was an easygoing look to him, and he was more than amply padded.
“My chauffeur,” said Hartmann. “Fuchs, Anton Fuchs.”
“Toni,” said Fuchs shaking hands, his eye almost disappearing with his smile. He sat in slowly beside Speckbauer.
“I was telling Felix how I can’t win at cards here at all, Toni. In all the years I have tried.”
“No one can,” said Fuchs. His eyes almost disappeared with another smile again. “Liesl can beat anyone.”
“I hear my name taken in vain,” she called out, as she came through a doorway with a tray. She laid a platter of cold meats, and a half-dozen buns next to a bowl of thick yellowy soup. She raised the empty beer glass.
“Mahzeit,” she said. “Your health.”
Hartmann shook his head. Liesl stood back from the table with her hands on her hips.
“That’s not going to change,” said Hartmann, and he gathered the cards. “You have all the luck meant for me, Liesl.”
Fuchs chortled and had another drink from his glass. For a moment Felix thought of Hartmann’s artificial leg. Had he not considered himself lucky to have survived at all?
His eyes strayed to Hartmann’s wrinkled hands, shaking a little, as he packed away the cards.
“This is the best,” said Speckbauer, and spooned in more soup.
It only helped to make the quiet seem even stronger behind the ting of his spoon and the swallows.
“The work goes well, Felix?”
“So-so,” Felix said. “There is always something.”
“Oh come on now. Your dad would have been so proud of you, to see you in uniform there. So proud.”
He turned to Fuchs.
“Felix’s opa and I, we were kids together. I knew Felix’s father too. May God be good to him, as I know He is.”
“Family?” said Fuchs, his smile almost closing the heavy-lidded eyes again.
“Kimmel,” said Felix. “We started out in St. Kristoff.”
“The Kimmels followed us there,” said Hartmann. “Us Hartmanns. They knew a good thing up here in the hills. “ Hartmann stopped shuffling the cards, and put his head back.
“‘In the green wood is my home Beside the stream no more to roam.’”
Speckbauer held his spoon away from his mouth.
