[...]
"And now listen to me. Okay?
Simply listen. I’ll tell you a story now." He let her go. They
sat down on a park bench, and Josh began to tell the
story.
"So, it was many years ago, as
the story was told, in a small peasant village in Transylvania,
that a hungry and very sad peasant went out onto his small
field. He intended to hang himself from the stout, strong oak
tree that stood there.
The peasant had suffered his
third failed harvest that year. He had a wife and five
children. He was at the end of his strength. The evening
before, they had finished the last of their bread. The pantry
was empty; there was nothing left to eat in the hut. Everything
was empty and the poor, hungry peasant saw dying as his only
way out. He knew that it wasn’t fine to leave his wife and
children behind. But he didn’t want to keep living this way.
And he considered that Friday a good day to die."
"Why a Friday?" Sandra
interjected the question.
"I said to listen! Not ask
questions, understood?" For a second Josh looked really angry
at her.
Sandra shut up immediately after
that look.
"The peasant took the rope that
he’d brought to the field and tossed it over the thickest
branch of the oak. Then he stood under this branch and began to
knot the noose that he meant to hang himself with. As he stood
under the branch, he heard someone cry out. It was a small
troll who had become tangled in the roots of the oak. He had
been stuck there for two days and hardly had enough strength
left to call for help. But because the peasant had accidentally
stepped on the little troll, he called out with the last of his
strength for help. Because he had called out so much and was so
wedged in, he had become visible and the peasant saw him quite
clearly trapped between the roots. The peasant was a
good-natured person who couldn’t hurt anyone. He forgot for the
moment that he intended to hang himself and helped the troll
out of the root trap. When he had freed him, the troll asked
him what he wanted to do at the oak. The peasant told him that
he intended to hang himself because he had nothing more to eat
and that he was sorry for his wife and children. But they would
also die of hunger in the next few days.
The troll took pity on him and
wanted to thank him for his help. So he said: ‘I will give you
a money blessing with which you may only do good things.
However, if ever you become lazy and idle, selfish or greedy,
then your money blessing will be no more. Moreover, you will
have a man-child who will inherit and continue this money
blessing when you are no longer living. As a sign that your boy
will receive this money blessing, you will find on the day of
his birth a gold coin at the food of his cradle. If you have
misused your money blessing, you will find no gold coin at his
birth. But…..peasant, I am not worried about you. So run home
now and take care of your family.’
The peasant had already started
to leave when the troll held firmly onto his coat and whispered
to him.
‘And because today is Friday, the
money blessing will always be especially great on Fridays in
memory of your aid to me. And now, go! But be careful not to
tell anyone! People are often evil and envy each other so
much.’
The peasant was overjoyed by what
the little troll had said, but didn’t quite comprehend it all.
Confused, he went back to his family.
Sad and hungry, they were all
sitting around the big wooden table which stood in the middle
of the sitting room.
‘I met a troll,’ he spoke into
the depressed silence. Not even his children responded to that.
They were so hungry they no longer had the strength to
speak.
Then he felt a heavy pressure in
his belly. The pressure and rumbling were quite
frightful.
‘I’m going out behind the house,’
he said quickly and hurried out to the thunder mug. Back then
people didn’t have such advanced restrooms. What happened next,
no one knows. In any event, the peasant came back from the
thunder mug with gold coins. Back in the sitting room he showed
the money to his wife and children. They were all so happy.
Because he still had the most strength, he quickly went into
town to buy food. At the town market he bought as much as he
could carry. Then the peasant’s family had a big
feast."
"A fairy tale. Oh, how nice. And
what does that have to do with you?" Sandra asked, when Josh
paused briefly.
"There’s more to it. Just
listen." Sandra nodded in agreement. What Josh was telling her
wasn’t so boring after all. Somehow, however, she didn’t quite
get the connection yet.
"The peasant still brought many
gold coins back from the thunder mug. Always a lot more on
Fridays. And, as a matter of fact, later he also had another
son. At his birth an especially large gold coin lay at the foot
of his cradle. Just as the troll had promised. This gift was
passed on from generation to generation. Everyone held true to
the troll’s admonishment not to fritter away the money, not to
be stingy with it or use it only for themselves, and so there
was a large gold coin lying at the foot of the cradle of each
first-born son. Because of this gift all children were born at
home. How should the family have kept the secret, if the money
crapper children had been brought into the world in a hospital?
And how do you think the hospital personnel would have reacted
if a large gold coin had been lying at the foot of the table in
the delivery room? Pure gold. Do you understand now,
Sandra?"
Sandra was suddenly quite upset.
"Oh, my God! That’s crazy! But…..but if you are so rich, why
are you living on the street, as a bum? Why aren’t you at home
with your family?" She looked at Josh with anxiety in her
eyes.
****
"That’s not possible!" came out
of Isabel’s mouth. Her exclamation caused the man in the
neighboring seat to look at her with annoyance. She had
disturbed his reading the newspaper. But what she had just read
in this book was unbelievable. She had been there herself. She
had seen this old oak. With her own eyes! She had touched it,
more exactly hugged it and read the information sign that
related exactly this legend. She had overnighted in the old
peasant cottage. This guest house that Alexandru had driven her
to. That was the farm of the peasant in this book!
My God! She shuddered. It was all
genuine! This book. It was not a novel. No! No way it was! What
this Karen Knopf had written there was reality!
Isabel couldn’t remain in her
seat any longer. She had to get up. All this was just too much.
She tried to remain calm. Breathe deeply, she said to herself.
Slowly she slowed her breathing, but she couldn’t put her mind
at rest. Somehow there was something wrong with all this.
Perhaps she was slowly going crazy? That could happen. She had
had a lot of stress and little sleep recently since she had
been preparing for the purchase of an American company. Because
she didn’t want to buy a pig in a poke for three million
dollars, she had put a lot of time in research and
preparations. Due to the time difference, she had only been
able to conduct a lot of discussions at night. All that lack of
sleep could now be playing tricks on her mind. That wasn’t so
unusual. She unfastened her safety belt and jumped out of her
first-class seat. "Moving around will help," she murmured to
herself and walked around in the corridor near the restrooms.
In no event did she want to go into the second-class cabin
area. She didn’t want to meet Ben again before landing. Because
how could she explain where she had come from – if not from
first-class?
She did a few more loosening up
exercises in the aisle, stretched her arms and legs again, then
headed back to her comfortable seat. She needed to find out for
sure how the story continued. She hastily opened the book
again. Because she had stopped in mid-sentence, she read the
last paragraph once more.
****
"The peasant still brought many
gold coins back from the thunder mug. Always a lot more on
Fridays. And, as a matter of fact, later he also had another
son. At his birth an especially large gold coin lay at the foot
of his cradle. Just as the troll had promised. This gift was
passed on from generation to generation. Everyone held true to
the troll’s admonishment not to fritter away the money, not to
be stingy with it or use it only for themselves, and so there
was a large gold coin lying at the foot of the cradle of each
first-born son. Because of this gift all children were born at
home. How should the family have kept the secret, if the money
crapper children had been brought into the world in a hospital?
And how do you think the hospital personnel would have reacted
if a large gold coin had been lying at the foot of the table in
the delivery room? Pure gold. Do you understand now,
Sandra?"
Sandra was suddenly quite upset.
"Oh, my God! That’s crazy! But…..but if you are so rich, why
are you living on the street, as a bum? Why aren’t you at home
with your family?" She looked at Josh with anxiety in her
eyes.
"Or did they kick you out?"
Sandra bombarded him with questions. She found it all so
unbelievable. Perhaps he was only feeding her this nonsense to
impress her? Or to make himself look important? The more Sandra
pressed him for answers, the more Josh grew silent. Then he
stood up and walked a few steps away. He began to pace back and
forth in front of the park bench.
"You know, Sandra? – no, I’ll try
it another way. Can you imagine that being rich can also be a
burden? Quite a burden that weighs heavily day and night like a
sandbag fastened to your back. That presses down on you and
never lets you have air to breathe." Sandra sat on the park
bench and looked understanding.
"I believe I can understand that.
It’s like with my work," she said with sympathy.
"Yes, exactly, a good comparison.
You love your freedom too and would like to do what is
enjoyable for you. It doesn’t work, however, because you have
to work to earn money to cover living expenses. I had plenty of
money, but wasn’t allowed to squander it but not hoard it
either, and I had the obligation to do good things with it.
Wealth is loaded with burdens. And these burdens confined me
the way your work does."
"Was there a gold coin lying at
your cradle when you were born?" Sandra turned the conversation
in a slightly new direction. Josh said nothing. He just nodded
briefly.
"What happened with the gold
coin? And was it really made of pure gold like in the story you
told? I mean, such things don’t really happen, do they?" Sandra
was not yet truly convinced by Josh’s story.
"So, at my birth a gold coin lay
on the floor at my little bed, just like with all the other
first-born sons. Yes, it was of pure gold. And it was a
"Taler," just like a coin used in Germany and the Holy Roman
Empire about five hundred years ago. . ." Josh was catching his
breath to be able to talk more about the birth Taler when he
hesitated.
"What is it?" Sandra looked at
Josh who was staring down the path in the park. Then he turned
his head to the side as if he heard something.
"What is it then?" Sandra asked
again.
"Someone was in the bushes there.
Somebody was in the bushes, here behind the park bench, and he
was listening to us."
"What?" Sandra looked around. She
saw no one.
"I think you’re seeing ghosts.
You were just looking for a reason not to keep telling the
story, right?"
"Bull. If I tell you something,
then it’s true. There was someone. I’m certain." Josh didn’t
feel like talking any more about his family, especially not
when some unknown person was listening in on him.
"Come on, let’s go," he decided
loudly and pulled Sandra up from the park bench. They walked
silently next to each other. Sandra avoided touching Josh. She
had fallen in love with him; that she knew. But whether he had
the same feelings for her, she didn’t know. Therefore she’d
rather suffer than admit anything to him. She’d already
accumulated enough bad experiences. Either he would soon let
her know some way or other that he liked her too or nothing
would come of it all. Until then she intended to simply wait.
Although that was already very hard for her to do. He was
walking so close to her. It would have been easy to arrange an
apparently accidental touch. And this story. It had been nice,
but surely made up completely. He was a bum. Nothing about that
changed the fact that he had spent the weekend at her place.
Who knows how long he had already been living on the street?
You had plenty of time there to think up stories like that. He
was Josh Grey! What a piece of nonsense! He had definitely
thought that one up too. He didn’t have any ID on him. So he
could calmly put something accross on her. She couldn’t prove
anything to the contrary. Everybody knows that the Grey family
is rich. That’s as widely known as the fact that there’s a
queen in England. Now she was sorry that those cheap tabloid
papers were never part of her reading material. People who read
such stuff about the rich and beautiful, knew most everything
about them. She passed over or willfully ignored this kind of
reading material. It was now giving her cause for regret. She
also didn’t know anyone she could ask about such
people.
Sandra chewed on her lower lip.
It really was too bad that she couldn’t check out Josh’s story.
And then the matter of the mysterious eavesdropper. What a
made-up piece of nonsense. He was already suffering from mild
delusions.
****
"And what did you find out?"
Gordon expected results. He was used to people working
conscientiously for him. For that he paid richly. He knew it
was always a matter of pay whenever employees began to give
notice internally. In the long run that led to problems, such
as theft of company property, divulging confidential
information and other things. For that reason Gordon paid his
associates well. Very well, even. It was worth it to him. His
law office was not near the top for no reason at all, even
though there were countless law offices in New York. The fact
of being old and well-established didn’t of itself suffice any
longer these days. You had to be up-to-date, always be familiar
with the latest judgments, have good clients who sometimes
brought spectacular cases with them and, of course, have very
good and loyal associates.
"According to hospital documents
his name is Peter, not Josh, as you said."
"Peter – a-hah." Gordon didn’t
seem to be so easily convinced.
"And what else?" he continued to
ask.
"He’s a bum and lives in the
subway. A young girl had rescued him at the last minute from
the subway shaft..."
"I know all of that already. It
was Jana. Tell me what I haven’t heard already on the news,
please." Gordon tapped the desk impatiently with his
fingers.
"Okay. So, he slept off his buzz
on the platform. Then he was taken to the hospital – as Peter
Potter. He simply ran away from there. A young woman paid
everything for him. Presently he’s living at her place. As you
said, he seems to have no definite place to live. A homeless
person, so to say."
"Have the two known each other
for a while?" Gordon questioned his associate
further.
"I don’t think so. The two seem
to have gotten to know each other at the hospital. Perhaps he
buttered her up so she’d take on his expenses?"
"Good." Gordon pressed his lips
together and wrinkled his forehead. He always did that when he
was contemplating something intensely. "And he had nothing with
him? A tote bag or a neck pouch?"
"So far I haven’t seen anything
of the sort. He had nothing with him at the hospital. And when
he’s been seen with the young woman, he hasn’t had a tote bag
with him. I can take a closer look."
Gordon gave a nod of consent.
"Then report to me in three days. Good luck.
Good-bye."
He was sure that this hobo was
Josh Grey. He leaned back in his leather chair and let his
memories take charge. They wandered back to the past, precisely
to May 31 st , twelve years ago…
****
The party was well underway.
Again, Josh had invited anyone who had standing or a prominent
name as well as several social climbers, film stars and runway
models. All assembled on the Greys’ yacht, which was anchored
in New York Harbor.
The personnel bustled around to
serve champagne and canapés to the people putting themselves on
display for each other. The mood was good, the musicians were
giving their best effort and in a few dark corners the junkies
were snorting coke. It was the usual kind of party that Josh
invited people to. The men were showing off their conquests,
who themselves were showing a lot of skin, and engaging in
apparently important discussions. The women were playing at
mutual cat sniping and bombarded each other with envious looks
and cynical commentaries. And somewhere among this, Josh
circulated through with his girlfriend Grace. She didn’t fit in
with those women who need to snatch up respect and consent with
biting words backed by little to no substance. Her father was a
diplomat, her mother a physician. She had studied law and knew
exactly what she wanted. For certain, not to be another of his
many short and shallow affairs. Josh had had to struggle a long
time to win her. Finally he had accomplished that. Now they had
only been together for five months. But he still wasn’t certain
if now she was supposed to become his companion for life. But
what did anyone know for certain in life? He preferred to enjoy
it in full measure. He was rich and his money multiplied daily
almost by itself. Still. He had declared war on his
fate.
"Would you like me to serve in
the large dining room?" Gordon was interrupted by Juanita.
Startled, he winced. He had been properly absorbed in his
memories. The music and the babble of voices still rang in his
ears.
"Excuse me, what did you just
ask?" Slowly his consciousness returned him to the
present.
"Shall I serve supper in the
large dining room?" Juanita repeated the question.
"Yes, yes. Go on and set the
table in the large dining room." Gordon stroked his graying
hair. He didn’t intend to color it. He was adamant about it.
Besides, he looked more interesting that way. And it made a
more serious impression. His clients attributed more experience
and maturity to him because of these gray hairs.
He stood up. When Juanita had
already asked about setting the table, then it was high time to
get to the large dining room. By the time he got there, the
food would already be on the table.
****
"You still haven’t told me,
what’s the matter with your family? Did they all die, or what’s
wrong? Now tell me already." Sandra was getting on Josh’s
nerves big time. Since the alleged snooper incident in the
park, Josh had gone silent. The day had started off so nicely.
Now Josh seemed determined to thoroughly ruin the end of the
day for her. Sandra was now in a bad mood. In a huff she opened
the apartment door. After supper she sat down demonstratively
in front of the tv. If he wanted to remain silent, then let
him. She could do that too. That’s how they spent a quiet
evening. In the middle of the night, Sandra was awakened by a
rustling noise and a loud click. Now it was quiet again. She
lifted her head briefly, heard nothing else and decided to go
back to sleep. The next morning she knew what she had heard.
Josh had disappeared from her apartment. He hadn’t even left
behind a good-bye letter or a thank-you note. Sandra ranted and
raved at the no longer present Josh. She was angered, sad and
disappointed at the same time. How could he do something like
this to her? After the few minutes in which her
anger-rage-sadness slowly lost its intensity and was
dissolving, she was able to think clearly again. He was a bum.
No doubt he had been happy to sleep and eat well for one
weekend. But supposedly he hadn’t felt at ease here. Probably
he’d be sitting on the park bench at the subway entrance.
Perhaps it was best that way? How could she have had feelings
for a bum? Although he could tell wonderful stories. And he had
a sense of humor. But that was all in the past.
It could all happen so fast. You
got to know someone and it was already over with. Yes, that was
how life was. She sighed briefly, opened the balcony door and
breathed in the fresh morning air. It was Monday. She could go
back to bed. Or go to work. It wasn’t too late yet. She’d even
arrive on time if she’d get ready now. She needed only three
seconds to make up her mind.
****
"Jana!"
"I’m already here, Papa." With a
hasty step or two she was at the car. Gordon wanted to drive
her to school. Just like every morning when a business trip
didn’t get in the way. Both of them usually kept quiet during
the trip there. Today was an exception.
"Tell me, Jana, you’ve already
told me what happened. But could you tell me anything about
this street person?" Gordon looked in the rearview mirror with
curiosity. His daughter wouldn’t lie to him. He was sure about
that. Why shouldn’t she tell him the truth? She certainly knew
nothing about the past, about the "yacht parties," about Grace
and her earlier life and about the immeasurable wealth of the
Grey family.
"His name is Josh. Not a street
person. He had really good manners."
Gordon felt his suspicions
confirmed. He had sensed as much. His memory hadn’t forsaken
him. The photo on the news had only been the trigger. Now he
had one hundred per cent certainty from Jana. It WAS Josh, his
old fellow student. He had found him again. After twelve years.
He’d had to wait this long. He’d almost already given up hope.
Inside Gordon was celebrating. Now he could finally silence him
forever. [...]