LITMIR.BIZ

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       Chapter Five

      “So how do you prepare for your first interview with your subject?” asked Isabel the next morning.

      After dragging himself out of bed, Mac needed coffee, not questions. He noticed a soft hissing sound coming from the espresso machine. “So that magic cappuccino you made me yesterday—was that a one-time event or can I get another?”

      “Depends on how you ask.”

      “Please. Begging here. Charge me anything you like. Put it on my tab.”

      “I might just do that.” She didn’t smile, but her eyes were light as she ground some coffee beans into a one-shot filter.

      Mac inhaled the aroma and watched her expertly pull the shot and then steam the milk with a wand. He liked watching her work, each movement economical, efficient. He liked watching her, period. What the hell? If he was going to be stuck in paradise for a while, he might as well enjoy the view.

      “You and Grandfather can have coffee on the patio, and then get to work on your project. It’s quiet out there until the workmen arrive. After that, he can show you more of Bella Vista.”

      “Thanks. Will you and Tess be joining us?”

      She hesitated, glanced back over her shoulder at him. “It’s Grandfather’s story.”

      “You’re part of it. Just figured you might want to hear what he has to say.”

      “Oh. Well, I suppose....”

      “Sure we do,” said Tess, coming into the kitchen. She was wearing some crazy headpiece, a white net thing with a big fake flower made of feathers. Noticing his stare, she said, “Do you like my fascinator?”

      It looked weirdly similar to Isabel’s beekeeping veil. “Your what?”

      “My fascinator. I’m trying out different looks for the wedding.” She turned her head this way and that. Tess was a pretty woman—and who didn’t like a redhead—but the lopsided headgear didn’t do much for her.

      “I never give fashion advice before I’ve had my morning coffee,” he said.

      Isabel set a perfect bowl-shaped cup of cappuccino in front of him. “Good answer.”

      “Bless you,” he said, savoring the first creamy sip.

      Tess picked up a painted serving tray. “Let me help you carry.”

      “Thanks.” Isabel held the door leading out to the patio. Mac followed with his coffee and his cane, and a satchel of files and photographs he’d stayed up late studying last night. Magnus sat at a wrought iron and tile table with his coffee, the two cats swirling around his ankles. “Grandfather, is it all right if we join you for a bit?”

      “Of course. Particularly since you’ve brought sustenance.” He eyed the tray of food.

      It looked like a food magazine layout, featuring a variety of cheeses with fresh berries on brightly painted Italian pottery, and a tiny glass container of honey with the smallest spoon he’d ever seen.

      Isabel laced a thread of honey across the cheeses. “These are my favorite honey and cheese pairings. Comté, Appenzeller and ricotta. I had my first honey harvest last summer—a small one. That’s when I realized I needed expert help with my beekeeping.”

      “Sorry I wasn’t your guy,” said Mac.

      “Please, sit down and let’s enjoy the morning.” Magnus gestured at the chairs.

      It was all Mac could do not to wolf down the whole snack tray. But he’d been trained by the best, his redoubtable mother, who had taught her six sons diplomatic protocol and etiquette as if it were her job. He made himself a small plate, sipped his coffee and settled in, curious to find out more about Magnus, his beauteous granddaughters and the place they called home.

      Magnus smoothed his weather-beaten hands over the legs of his trousers. “So. Here we all are. It is hard to conceive of, my life in a book. I don’t know where to begin.”

      “It doesn’t matter,” Mac said. “Whatever crosses your mind.”

      “Bella Vista,” Magnus said without hesitation. “This place is always on my mind. Perhaps I even imagined it before I realized it was quite real.” He flexed his fingers, resting them on his knees, and said, “When I was a boy in Denmark, we would go to the cinema on Saturday afternoons, and naturally my favorites were the films about cowboys and Indians in the Wild West. I always envisioned America as this vast, unsettled land, a place of endless opportunity. It never looked like this in the picture show. My schoolmates and I yearned to come here, but I never thought I would. It was more like a place of dreams.”

      In an odd way, Mac could relate. He, too, had grown up far from the States, and he, too, had been drawn to its larger-than-life, practically mythic aspect. His impressions had been formed by watching old VHS tapes of Nickelodeon series. Instead of the Wild West of Magnus’s imagination, he had been filled with mental pictures of schools populated by perky girls with ponytails, a row of candy-colored lockers and stern but good-hearted teachers capable of solving a spunky kid’s problems before each thirty-minute segment was up.

      “Do you recall when you made the decision to come here?” Isabel asked.

      The old man rested his hands atop his cane. “There was no decision. It was an act of desperation. And survival.”

      Mac put his phone on the table. “I’ve got a digital recorder app. Do you mind?”

      “No, of course not. That is why you’re here.”

      From the corner of his eye, Mac could see Isabel stiffen, but then she settled back and waited quietly.

      “It was not something my family aspired to or wanted for me. We would have been content to live out our lives in Denmark. We—my parents, my grandfather and myself—were comfortable in Copenhagen,” said Magnus. “We had all that we needed. We weren’t wealthy, though we were certainly comfortable. My father worked as a civil servant. My mother kept house, and her passion was for growing things. She prized her apple trees, and the whole neighborhood loved the Gravensteins she cultivated. Not the most beautiful fruit ever to grace the table, but surely the tastiest.”

      He leaned back in the chair, his pale eyes looking into a past Mac could only imagine. “I was but a boy when the Nazis arrested them and took them away. A youngster still in his school years doesn’t get to decide anything, least of all whether or not to emigrate to America. It was all I could do to avoid getting caught myself.”

      “Do you know why they were arrested?”

      “For harboring a Jewish man and his daughter. My uncle Sweet and little cousin Eva. We weren’t really related, of course, but that is the story we gave out.”

      “Eva...the woman you eventually married.”

      “Yes,” he said, smiling at Isabel. “My Eva. Although in 1940, when she first came to live with us at the house in Copenhagen, I considered her a pest. Sweet was born a Dane, same as my father, but his wife was a member of the chalutzim—that is the Hebrew term for pioneers. Thousands of them came to Denmark from eastern Europe or Germany, and they were welcomed by the Danish and by King Christian. They had come for agricultural training, the goal being to eventually move to Palestine. But Sweet’s wife had no interest in farming.” Magnus’s mouth turned briefly into a curl of disgust. “She wanted only to be rich and comfortable, and she believed Sweet would give her that. He didn’t seem to care for money, though. He was a photographer, and a good one at that. He turned the basement of our house into a darkroom.”

      “So he took these pictures?” Mac opened a file folder to four fading snapshots, turning them so Magnus and the two sisters could see.

      Magnus nodded. “Yes, I brought one large case along when I came to America after the war,

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