What a morning it was! First the light streaming into his room at the Storchen, then having coffee and a little breakfast in the cafe on the Limmat. Simple things had never seemed so complex, or was it the other way around? Jack was as powerless to stop what would happen next as he had been that fateful day William Burns impregnated Alice Stronach.
And standing in front of the Hotel zum Storchen--on the same cobblestones where Jack had stood when he'd called, "Bis morgen!" to her, in the Weinplatz--was that supermodel of medication, Dr. Anna-Elisabeth Krauer-Poppe. Once again, she was wearing something smashing; Jack could understand why she wore the lab coat in Kilchberg, just to tone herself down.
&nbs
p; They walked uphill on the tiny streets to St. Peter; one day he would know the names of these streets by heart, Jack was thinking. Schlusselgasse, opposite the Veltliner Keller, and Weggengasse--he would hear them in his head, like music.
"It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?" Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked him. She was nice about it, when she saw that he couldn't speak. "St. Peter has the largest clock in Europe--a four-sided clock on its tower," she told him, making small talk as they walked. "Would you like a tissue?" she asked, reaching into her purse. Jack shook his head.
The sun would dry the tears on his face, he wanted to tell her, but the words wouldn't come. Jack kept clearing his throat.
By the blue-gray church, there was a small, paved square with lots of trees; there were plants in the window boxes of the surrounding shops and houses. Some construction workers were renovating what looked like an apartment building. The building was across the square from the church, and the workers were standing on the scaffolding--working away. A hammer was banging; two men were doing something complicated with a flexible saw. A fourth man was fitting pipes--to build more scaffolding, probably.
It was the pipefitter who first spotted Dr. Krauer-Poppe and waved to her. The three other workers turned to look at her; two of them applauded, one whistled.
"I guess they know you," Jack said to Anna-Elisabeth, relieved that he had found his voice. "Or are they just like construction workers everywhere?"
"You'll see," she told him. "These workers are a little different."
It seemed strange that there were people going into the church and it was not yet eight on a weekday morning. Was there some kind of mass? Jack asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe. No, the Kirche St. Peter was a Protestant church, she assured him. There was no mass--only a service every Sunday.
"We can't keep them away," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. "St. Peter is open to the public."
More people were walking up the broad, flat stairs to the church; they looked like locals, not tourists. Jack saw men in business suits, like the banker his dad had surprised in the men's room at the Kronenhalle; he saw women with young children, and whole families. There were even teenagers.
"They all come to hear him play?" Jack asked Anna-Elisabeth.
"How can we stop them?" she asked. "Isn't it what sells books and movies? What you call word of mouth, I think."
The Kirche St. Peter was packed; there was standing room only. "You're not going to sit down, anyway," Dr. Krauer-Poppe told Jack. "And you're going to leave, just before your father finishes. William doesn't want you to see the end of it--not the first time."
"The end of what?" Jack asked her. "Why would I leave before he finishes?"
"Please trust me," Anna-Elisabeth said. "Klaus--Dr. Horvath--will take you outside. He knows the right moment." She covered her face with her hands again. "We all know it," she said, with her face hidden.
The stone floor of the church was polished gray marble. There were blond wooden chairs instead of pews, but the chairs stood in lines as straight as pews. The congregation faced front, with their backs to the organ--as if there were going to be an actual service, with a sermon and everything. Jack wondered why the audience didn't turn their chairs around, so they could at least see the organist they had come to hear--so faithfully, as he now understood it.
The organ was on the second floor, to the rear of the church--above the congregation. The organ bench--what little Jack could see of it--appeared to face away from the altar. The organist looked only at the silver organ pipes, framed in wood, which towered above him.
How austere, Jack was thinking. The organist turns his back to the congregation, and vice versa!
A black urn of flowers stood beneath the elevated wooden pulpit. Above the altar was an inscription.
Matth. IV. 10.
Du solt anbatten
Den Herren deinen Gott
Und Ihm allein
dienen.
It was a kind of old-fashioned German. Jack had to ask Dr. Krauer-Poppe for a translation. " 'You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve,' " she told him.
"I guess my dad is what you'd call a true believer," Jack said.
"William never proselytizes," Anna-Elisabeth said. "He can believe what he wants. He never tells me or anyone else what to believe."