Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, No. 6. Whole No. 856, December 2012

In Walenstadt by Milena Moser

Born in Zurich, Milena Moser left school for an apprenticeship as a bookseller. On completing it, she lived in Paris for a couple of years, then returned to Switzerland where she co-founded a magazine and became a freelance writer who now has sixteen novels, two volumes of short fiction, and many radio plays to her credit. She and her family lived in San Francisco from 1998–2006, where she found the inspiration for this story.

Translated from the German by Mary Tannert

The water was ice cold. There were hands in it, hands that closed around her ankles, tightened their grip, pulled downward. Martine had run down the bank and directly into the water, just as she always did when she trained with her swim club. But here she stopped suddenly, the water barely above her knees. She gasped for breath. The hands clung to her calves, squeezing mercilessly. She’d get leg cramps in a minute if this went on.

Never mind, she told herself sternly. She pulled on her goggles, adjusted her nose clip, raised her arms, and pushed off. Dove under the surface. And came back up again, coughing, breathless. Her feet paddled, wild and uncoordinated, spent one long, panicked moment feeling for solid ground. There was something wrong with the lake. She tore the goggles from her face, gasped again.

Martine Meier, long-distance swimmer. What a spectacle she was making of herself! Thank goodness nobody was around at this time of day to see her. The lake’s beach was deserted in the gray of dawn, the water before her lay leaden and still against the backdrop of mountains so blue they looked like paper cutouts.

She’d woken up at five. Jet lag. Had simply lain there awhile in the unfamiliarly narrow hotel bed, wide awake, eyes open. In the next bed, Joanna snored gently. Four to a room — that was unfamiliar too. Yesterday evening, Joanna had generously doled out sleeping pills from her apparently plentiful supply of medication. Martine had refused them; after all, she was responsible for the little group. But at five in the morning, wide awake, she’d regretted her caution. Finally, she got up, pulled on her swimsuit in the dark, and made her way to the lake in the first shimmer of dawn, through the empty streets of Walenstadt.

At home, she had to drive just to get to the water. To the swim club on the bay, where she did her training every morning in ice-cold, mercury-contaminated water. A mile out, a mile back. 3.2 kilometers in just under forty minutes. A Swiss mountain lake shouldn’t be any trouble. She settled the goggles on her face again, took a deep breath in. Breathed out.

There was something wrong with this lake.

Martine, pull yourself together!

In San Francisco, the water was a chilly fifty-seven degrees, and she swam every day clad only in a short-sleeved neoprene suit. There were big waves in the bay, seals, soft-drink bottles; there was sewage, and now and then even a shark gone astray. By comparison, a mountain lake was nothing! — even if, she admitted, it was a very deep, very dark lake. She pushed off one more time, dived under the surface, and stretched her arms over her head. Across the lake and back, that’s what she’d set herself, but it was clear immediately that she couldn’t do it. Not through the middle of that bottomless lake; it would swallow her, she was sure of it. She forced herself to swim a couple of strokes, swam away from a cold, naked fear, away from herself. But she thought she could see shadows through the goggles; hands, hands that reached for her. After a couple of strokes, she turned around. She didn’t even swim all the way back; she was still far away when she touched bottom, stood up, and waded out. By the time she got to shore, the sun was coming up. It would be hot today, but Martine was trembling.

Her group was already at breakfast at the Hotel Churfirsten when she got back. The jet lag had affected all of them, all except for Joanna, who was still snoring peacefully when Martine let herself into their room to change. Joanna lay on her back, her mouth wide open, both arms wrapped around her light-blue cosmetic bag, which contained her collection of pills. Martine got dressed quickly and went down to the breakfast room; it was her job to help the group manage in these foreign surroundings.

“Over here, honey!” Mr. Zoggan, the tour organizer, waved her over to his table. But Kate, one of the three other women with whom Martine shared her room, rescued her just in time.

“Martine, can you come over here a minute? I really need your help!” They hid behind the menus, giggling like schoolgirls. Another successful escape.

Zoggan had hired Martine to accompany a small group of American hobby genealogists looking for their roots in Switzerland. Fourteen Americans with names like Wenger, Iberg, and Schaerer. Genealogy is a popular pastime in the United States. After all, everybody has roots somewhere. It’s just that, in a nation largely settled by immigrants, this somewhere is somewhere else. And Mr. Zoggan, himself of Hungarian descent, had seen a market opportunity in that fact. He organized trips through Europe that were supposed to help Americans encounter their roots. He’d guided the first few himself, but then he’d begun to hire natives who could help the group negotiate the usual cultural divides.

Martine had imagined the task would be easier than it was — a paid flight to Switzerland, she’d thought, a Switzerland that had seemed small enough after fourteen years in America that she’d have time for a quick visit with all her relatives and old friends, from her grandparents in Ticino to friends in Zurich and Basel, all the way to her brother and his family at Lake Geneva. Especially since the group was staying in Walenstadt. After all, in Switzerland all roads lead to Walenstadt. Or at least through it.

But her charges needed more of her than she’d thought. It started at breakfast: “No eggs? No bacon? Is that all?” they’d asked, staring glumly at the fresh croissants the Swiss called gipfeli, at the homemade jam, the comparatively strong coffee in big jugs, the foamed milk.

“Isn’t there anything normal here for breakfast?” her niece had asked when she’d visited Martine in San Francisco, staring just as glumly at the menu of the Seal Rock Inn, famous all over the region for its breakfast.

“Normal?”

“Müsli. Or maybe a gipfeli.”

“There are fried eggs. Sunny side up.”

Kate turned the croissant in her hands. “All these carbohydrates,” she sighed. “I really shouldn’t. I’m on Atkins.”

“Oh, never mind, they’re so small!” Joanna slid into the empty seat next to Martine and reached for a gipfeli. She looked well rested and fresh, almost wound up. “Just eat half of it! What are we doing today?”

Martine had already helped herself to two gipfeli and was spooning jam onto her plate. Joanna was right. In comparison to American super-sized portions, these really did look small.

“Aren’t we meeting the prince today?” Betty smoothed the lapels of her salmon-pink polyester blazer. They were embroidered with pearls in a floral pattern. Her plump body was encased in a floor-length skirt of the same fabric, and on her feet there were white sneakers. Betty looked exactly like the stereotype of an American tourist. Fat, blond, wearing a camera. She’d gotten hold of Martine on the bus from the airport to Walenstadt and had promptly designated her as her “bus buddy.” And Martine had noticed very fast that she’d underestimated Betty. She ought to have learned by now that it was pretty much impossible in San Francisco to judge anyone by his or her appearance. The muscular young woman with dragons tattooed on her arms could be a student rabbi, the dropout in the baggy pants could be an Internet millionaire, and the overenthusiastic Betty Hoblitzel with her soft Southern accent was one of the most sought-after defense attorneys in the entire city. Who had, moreover, taken Martine aside first thing and asked her in a conspiratorial undertone where to find “those famous coffee shops.” Martine had to stop and think for a minute, because the question seemed so unlikely coming from Betty. “They’re in Amsterdam,” she finally replied in an apologetic tone. “Amsterdam. In the Netherlands.”

“Zoggan promised us a prince, didn’t he?” Betty repeated. “Isn’t Switzerland a principality?”

“That’s Liechtenstein!” said Martine, relieved to have understood what Betty meant. “No, I don’t think we’re going there today.”

Or at all. At any rate, Zoggan hadn’t said anything about Liechtenstein. He must have been having a joke at Betty’s expense. Zoggan had a unique sense of humor; Martine had observed that much during the flight. Every flight attendant who passed his seat was the recipient of his pinches on any body part within reach, accompanied by his squeals, until the pilot threatened to make an emergency landing and throw him off the plane.

After breakfast, he distributed American flags. “It’s the Fourth of July!” he said.

Martine sighed and took him to one side. “Dan,” she said, “no offense, but people here might misunderstand that.”

“Misunderstand it?” He unscrewed the lid from one of the two thermos bottles that hung diagonally across his belly and took a swallow. Martine’s roommates had bet they were full of vodka.

“The flags,” said Martine. “People could misunderstand them.”

“What do you mean? The Swiss aren’t lefties, are they?!”

“If we march through the city waving those things, people will think America’s invading.”

“So what? It didn’t bother them last time.”

His speech had already become somewhat indistinct, and his face was deep red. The others were clearly right about the vodka. Martine was asking herself what he meant by “last time” — D-Day? World War II? Normandy? — when suddenly a chattering noise began to issue from somewhere around his hips. He unhooked a walkie-talkie that hung on his belt.

“Yes, honey,” he spoke into it. “What is it? Over.”

Mary Alice Zoggan stood at the back of the dining room at the window, looking out and holding her walkie-talkie to her lips. It was the only way Martine had ever seen her talk to her husband.

“Put the flags away,” her voice issued tinnily from the device.

“But honey...”

“Just do what I say! Over!”

“Over,” repeated Zoggan sadly, and gathered up all the flags. Then his face lit up again. “I’ve got something much better!” he sang out. From underneath his chair, he pulled out a giant Cat in the Hat top hat and set it on his head. It was nearly two feet tall. And he was still wearing it when, a few minutes later, he set off leading the little band. The street in front of their hotel was in the process of being torn up for repairs, and construction workers in bright orange safety overalls clung to their jackhammers for dear life, as if the machines would otherwise pull away and run amok through the town. But as the little procession passed, even undecorated with American flags, the big machines fell silent; the construction workers stared and the jackhammers, their operators frozen in surprise, bored holes in the air.

“How cute,” Kate cried out, and pointed to the geraniums blooming in pots lining the roadway. “Look, isn’t that sweet?”

That was Kate: She saw the flowers and not the torn-up street. That was America, thought Martine, who had fled Zurich fourteen years ago to unlearn complaining and self-pity. Well, that wasn’t the whole truth; a certain California swim champion had played a role too. The marriage had lasted just long enough to convince his parents he wasn’t gay and to provide Martine with a Green Card. Since then, she’d lived alone. And sometimes she wished self-pity were allowed.

The women in the group twittered in that excited enthusiasm typical of American women, their voices climbing to a pitch of euphoria. Martine didn’t notice it much at home, but here she half expected the windows to begin to tremble and then shatter, one after another, the entire length of the town’s street, leaving behind a sea of broken glass.

The conference room at the Hotel Post had been reserved for them. Mr. Zoggan had a slide show ready, postcard pictures of Switzerland that made even Martine sigh. Then a map of Switzerland, with red lines crisscrossing it, one for every member of the group, from Walenstadt to every corner of Switzerland.

“I don’t see my name,” said Jim Hanson.

Mr. Zoggan turned on the light. “Bad news,” he said. “Your ancestors don’t come from Switzerland, they’re from Sweden.”

“Sweden, that’s right,” Jim nodded. “South Sweden, to be exact.”

His wife Kate beamed at everyone. “Jim’s great-great-great-great-great, well, great-something grandfather immigrated to America with his wife and seven children. But on the ship, a disease broke out and only one son survived, and that was Jim’s great-great-great-great—”

“—grandfather, right,” finished Mr. Zoggan, winking at Martine. “But unfortunately, I have to tell you that Sweden isn’t Switzerland. It’s a frequently made mistake, right, honey?” he added. He would have pinched Martine playfully in the side if she hadn’t strategically tipped her chair backward at just the right moment.

Mrs. Zoggan’s brows drew together in disapproval. The first rumors about her had begun to circulate on the flight over: that she used to be a nun and had left the cloisters for Mr. Zoggan, who was, as a younger man, charming and handsome. No, said the others, she was with the police, vice squad, and she’d arrested Zoggan and then succumbed to his charms. Betty said she thought she recognized her from the district attorney’s office. That was less interesting, and therefore probably true.

Jim Hanson’s mouth was hanging open in surprise. “They’re not the same thing? Well, I’ll be jiggered! How far is it from here to there?” All the members of the group would be taking day trips to the places where their ancestors had lived. After all, all roads led to Walenstadt, and from there to everywhere else. Zoggan had already organized everything, including the taxis. Americans weren’t very good at public transportation, and a week wasn’t enough time to train them. However, South Sweden was not on the itinerary.

Zoggan laid a map of Europe on the table and spread it out. Hanson measured the distance with his thumb. “No problem,” he said. “No problem at all, Kate, baby. We’ll fly. There in the morning, back in the evening.” He turned to the group. “Just to be there, to see it and breathe the air, you understand? The same air that little boy breathed who was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather back then.”

The others nodded.

“That’s exactly why we’re here!” said Zoggan, clapping his hands together. “Time for a drink!”

The waitress had been leaning against the wall, listening to Zoggan, arms crossed. Now that he had called for a break, she took their orders.

“Miss, miss!” Jack LaDove plucked at Martine’s sleeve. The old man wore a snow-white crocheted beret and glasses with frames so large they covered half his face. He looked like one of the Sopranos, but in fact he was of Swiss descent and from San Francisco, an ex-Marine with tattoos up and down his arms.

“Miss,” he asked her, “just explain one thing to me. With all due respect, how come we don’t automatically get ice water here in Switzerland when we eat in a restaurant?”

Yes, why was that? Martine could remember being a health-conscious but poorly paid young swim teacher and ordering tap water in restaurants, and recalled how reluctantly the waiters had brought it. “To tell the truth, I don’t know.”

Ice cubes were another problem. There were never enough of them. And the size of the glasses — they seemed much too small to the Americans. Patiently the waitress took their orders, which were easy to remember: cola, cola, and cola. With lots of ice. And a beer for Mr. Zoggan.

“Mr. Zoggan,” said the waitress. “Is that you? The person who made the reservations and everything?”

Mr. Zoggan didn’t react. She had pronounced his name the way it would seem phonetically correct to someone in Switzerland. And she had asked him the question in Schwyzerdütsch, in Swiss dialect.

“Yes, he’s the one,” Martine answered for him. She took the waitress to one side. “Could you maybe bring us some tap water? And a big bucket of ice?”

“That’s not healthy,” the waitress grumbled.

And Martine agreed with her, just as she’d agreed with old Jack LaDove two minutes ago. She had become a chameleon — American with Americans, Swiss with the Swiss.

“I was asking because we’ve got a Zogg here in town,” said the waitress when she reappeared with a tray bearing several liter bottles of cola; there was no ice. “And you’d never guess — he’s a genealogist too!”

“That’s unbelievable!” Martine realized she’d reacted exaggeratedly, her voice high-pitched, clapping her hands together — American, in other words. She’d have to pull herself together before she caught herself jumping in the air and giving the waitress a high-five.

“Yes, and the interesting thing is, there were these rumors about his great-uncle; they said he drove a girl to kill herself. You know what I mean, Got Her Into Trouble—” her face assumed a meaningful expression and Martine nodded dutifully — “and then dumped her. And the girl drowned, and the man was never seen again. And then naturally you ask yourself: Did she jump in of her own free will, or did he push her under? Anyway, old Zogg, our Zogg, he was sick of these stories, so he started researching his family, and you know what? He was able to prove that this great-uncle never even existed. It was all just talk!” And for emphasis she wiped both hands emphatically on her apron. “There!” she said with finality.

“That’s crazy,” said Zoggan, when Martine told him the story. “I definitely have to look him up. My ancestors were Hungarian gentry — with a touch of, what else? Gypsy, ha ha ha! And boy, that really came out in me!” He reached for Martine again, and once again she was able to avoid his grasp just in time. Zoggan’s movements had become slower and somewhat unsteady. “But you never know; maybe there’s a connection. Get the guy’s telephone number for me, would you, honey?”

Lunch at the Hotel Post consisted of Wiener schnitzel and French fries. The same thing as the evening before at the hotel in Churfirsten. Zoggan had ordered all the meals for the sake of simplicity. Martine asked herself what he was charging the group for their food. But they didn’t complain; they were happy not to be confronted with unfamiliar dishes and menus they couldn’t read.

“Great food,” said Joanna. “A schnitzel’s a lot like chicken nuggets.”

Jack muttered something incomprehensible. LaDove, the dove. But originally his family had had the far less poetic name of Krauter.

He turned to Martine. “Krauter’s not exactly a name that’ll open you a lot of doors in America. At least, not right after World War Two. It wasn’t even the name my ancestors came over with. That was Dütsch. But when they reported to the immigration authorities, the officer says, ‘Dutch? You’re from Holland?’ and my ancestor says, ‘No, Dütsch like Deutsch, like German,’ in his best broken English, and just like that, they wrote down their favorite nickname for Germans — Kraut. Or in our case, Krauter.” Jack told the story as if he’d witnessed the scene. “Of course, we had to change it.”

Martine associated the dove with Picasso. To her it was the symbol of peace of a man tired of war. But maybe Jack had been a mercenary in the Spanish Civil War? Martine would have believed it of him.

Things were utterly different on the way back through the town. People greeted them from both sides of the street, waving cheerfully. Even the construction workers doffed imaginary caps as the group wandered by, Zoggan in the lead sporting his Cat in the Hat top hat again. It was as if the news had spread like wildfire through invisible channels: The Americans are okay. These Americans are our Americans.

Later, Martine took the women shopping. Betty bought a pair of blue metallic health sandals that seemed positively chic compared to the white sneakers she usually wore. Joanna studied the list of ingredients on every nonprescription pain reliever the pharmacy offered and finally decided on the 500-pack of Contra-Schmerz. “I have horrible migraines,” she said, and clasped the little bag possessively to her chest. They wound up the expedition at a café on the town square, ordering coffee and cake. The pieces of cake seemed to the women to be so small that they claimed the calories in them didn’t count.

“I thought I’d find you here,” said a man of indefinite age with uncombed longish brown hair, who sat down uninvited at the table. The women took one look and slid closer to Martine.

“You’re the folks on the trail of your ancestors,” the man announced in English. This remark was greeted with twitters of relief: How good his English was, how pretty this town was, and how friendly all the Swiss were, especially him.

“Why didn’t you come to me? I’m a genealogist and a family researcher by profession,” he said, and laid a business card on the table between the half-eaten pieces of cake. Dr. Martin Zogg, Genealogy and Family Research, it said.

“Isn’t that the same thing?” asked Martine in Schwyzerdütsch. He shot her a dirty look. But it was too late; Betty had already asked him whether he would like a cup of coffee — the coffee was so wonderful here, really strong! — and had used the occasion to order another round of cake.

“Zogg, now that’s interesting. Are you related to our Mr. Zoggan?”

“Didn’t he say his family was from Hungary?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Dr. Zogg, and took a deep breath that clearly heralded a long explanation. “As you know, the names of immigrants were often changed by the immigration authorities to the point of unrecognizability, and...”

“That’s just how it was with my family!” interrupted Betty, leaning forward in her excitement. Hoblitzel was the spelling of Hablützel that had been recorded by a bored and overworked civil servant. Betty had been able to determine that after long months of Internet research. Hablützel as in Dorothea Hablützel from St. Gall, who had fled to America in 1844, seventeen years old and pregnant, after being commanded to appear before the court because of her pregnancy. “Can you believe it?” gasped Betty. On her deathbed, Betty’s grandmother, Dorothy Hoblitzel, had exacted three promises from her grandchild: to let her blond hair grow long again, to go to church, and to take a trip to see the homeland of her great-great-great-grandmother Dorothea.

“It took a long time before I even got from Hoblitzel to Hablützel,” said Betty with a touch of satisfaction in her voice. “But I don’t give up easily!” And she flicked back her shoulder-length blond hair.

“Hey, Mary Alice, come join us!”

Mary Alice Zoggan came toward them across the plaza, her stride energetic. She was carrying a first-aid kit and the ever-present walkie-talkie.

“Here,” said Joanna, pulling over a chair from a neighboring table. “We were just talking about your husband.”

Mary Alice stopped abruptly and half-turned as though she wanted to leave, but changed her mind and dropped into the chair. As she unclipped the walkie-talkie from her belt, a pair of handcuffs fell out of her pocket. Under the shocked gaze of the others, she picked them up matter-of-factly and laid them on the table.

“I could check whether your husband’s family has roots in this area,” offered Dr. Zogg, but Mary Alice waved dismissively. “Spare me!” she said, and ordered a cognac. “Martine, you and the others need to wind things up here and come back. He’s got another excursion on the program.” She never said “my husband” when she talked about him. Just “he.”

The excursion consisted of a trip to the local beach. “To cool off,” said Zoggan, winking meaningfully. Martine shuddered. The experience she’d had that morning was still too fresh. Betty had no swimsuit with her and stayed at the hotel. Joanna did the same, retiring to their room with her new package of pills. But the others all wandered slowly in pairs or groups of three down the street to the beach. Zoggan was still wearing his Cat in the Hat headgear. Occasionally someone waved from a window and they all waved back.

Martine had moved her towel somewhat apart from the others and was sitting alone when a young woman spoke to her.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

It was the waitress from the Hotel Post, wearing a flowered swimsuit and with a horde of small children around her. Martine hadn’t recognized her at all.

“I’m Hedi,” the young woman introduced herself.

“Martine.”

Hedi called something to the children, who ran off to play, and then dropped down onto Martine’s towel next to her. “I’m tired of standing,” she sighed. “Aren’t you going in?”

“No, I... I can’t.”

“But you look as if you swim.”

Martine’s muscular upper arms and broad shoulders and the high-cut Speedo with the swim badges on it had all betrayed her. So she described her experience that morning even though she still found the whole thing embarrassing. Told of the hands that had reached for her.

“The hands, of course,” said Hedi, as if it were all completely obvious. “The dead. I don’t like them either. Some people don’t notice anything, but other people are more sensitive, if you understand what I mean.”

You and I, was what she meant. We’re more sensitive. Or maybe she meant: we women.

“The dead?” Martine repeated.

“That girl I told you about? The one who drowned? I’m not sure how to put it, but let’s just say she wasn’t the only one.”

Martine shuddered, and Hedi changed the subject. What was it like to live in America? she wanted to know, and whether it might be a good change for, say, a waitress from Switzerland. You know, just asking.

The sun was still hot. Children splashed in the water, shouting, jumping from a raft. At first, nobody noticed that Mr. Zoggan, farther out in the lake, was fighting for his life. And by the time somebody out on the raft called for help, it was too late.

Martine sprinted into the water; it splashed, icy cold, around her thighs. She threw herself in, swam out into the lake, leaving herself no time to think, no time to be afraid. Zoggan was thrashing and treading water farther out, near the raft, but still far from the middle of the lake. Martine had almost reached him when she heard him call out, one last time. Then he went under. Fast and suddenly. As if somebody had pulled him down. She dove under. He was gone. She had on her goggles, but the water was murky and she couldn’t see anything, not even air bubbles. She dove again and again, but there was just no sign of him. She simply couldn’t find him. Neither could the divers from the rescue team who fished her out of the lake, coughing and blue with the cold. They dove for hours. Nothing. As if he’d never existed. Nothing remained but the Cat in the Hat top hat, which drifted, listing to one side, in the water.

“Let go,” he’d screamed. “Let me go!”

In Schwyzerdütsch.

The rumors about Mrs. Zoggan were all true, as it turned out. She worked for the district attorney’s office. She’d spent nine years as a nun, and after leaving the convent she’d gone to the police academy and had then become one of the first female cops on the vice squad in San Francisco. She never said whether she’d met her husband during a raid. Just that the handcuffs she always had in her pockets were a personal memento.

Handcuffs, thought Martine.

Copyright © 2012 by Milena Moser; translation Copyright © 2012 by Mary Tannert