In part two of this episodic psychological thriller, Nicole Jeffords. convinced that healer, Victor Goodlove, who disappeared ten years earlier is buried under her studio, continues her search for him, contacting old patients all over Austin and dis...
A few words about Sighisoara. The old part of the town, which is where we stayed, is a medieval citadel built in the 12th century by Saxon colonists. It is also the birthplace of Vlad III the Impaler, known to the world as Dracula.
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Cars are not allowed through the gates of the citadel unless the owners live there and have permits. The place is jampacked with tourists — narrow, winding, cobblestoned streets filled with people from all over the world come to see the old churches and buildings, and of course the house where Count Dracula was born.
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We thought we were staying in a five star hotel, but in reality it was a bed and breakfast, very nice except that our room was on street level and people could see right into our windows. No air conditioning and it was hot — 100 degrees, weather we thought we'd left behind in Texas.
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Hotel Fronius
At night we had to keep our windows closed and locked for fear of intruders. The advantage was that Eddie lived just down the street in a little two bedroom house he'd bought and renovated a few years before. On our first day he and his sister, Laura, who was staying with him, took us around the town. We were exhausted after an early morning flight. We wandered around a little and then sat down at a cafe in the square where a band was playing, mostly brass instruments, tuba and trombone. The result was the sort of Oompah music I associate with prewar Germany, folksy and evocative, stirring chilling memories and old defeats in the blood.
Both Laura and I cringed at the music, immediately associating it with the wartorn history of our family. We were still, in our sixties, trying to piece together what had happened to family members, some murdered in concentration camps, some escaped to Canada and the US, some just plain disappeared, poof, as if they'd never existed. (I was to discover that Eric Schindler, whom I'd met at Roy's funeral, claimed to be from one of those disappeared lines.)
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Laura
Laura currently lives in France, just a few miles outside Strasbourg, where she's embroiled in a court case over her father's will. (Fred died at the age of ninety-five in February, 2016; the nieces of his second wife have made false claims on the estate, and since they are locals connected to the police, and powerful notaire, Laura's life there is uncomfortable, perhaps not even particularly safe.) Nervous already, Laura, who speaks in a soft, low voice, grabbed my wrists and said, "Let's get out of here." She simply couldn't stand the folksy, Germanic seesawing of the trombones. And then, in an even lower voice, she said: "Nicky, that woman over there is staring at you."
