CHAPTER 4 - BASEL
Königstädten – May, 2022
Turning off busy Höngenstraße Lucius' spirit rose, lifted by the flush of green and color showing everywhere in Frankfurt’s far suburbs. The walk home from school was now a stroll past fences wading in flowers and fresh-mown pocket lawns instead of a trudge through dirty piles of snow. A seven year-old needs little to rouse his spirits and the turmoil at home was pushed aside.
Will Sigi be home yet from his trip to Berlin? he mused. Mutti was talking to Auntie Angela on the phone about a trip to Basel. Was Papa going to Switzerland next? Sigi wasn't home much anymore so the idea made ready sense.
After the Rhein-Main base closed in 2005 his father lost his job as an airplane rigger for the US Air Force. The memories from his long career in a field he loved doubled the shock of unemployment. The trips to Stuttgart, Hanover, Vienna, and even the Airbus assembly plant in Hamburg yielded nothing. Now, simply being gone from home was the only solace he had.
The outside door to the kitchen was ajar.
“Hallo, Mutti?”
Silence. Pushing the door open enough to squeeze in without the hinge squeaking, Lucius hesitated. He strained to pick up any sound that would prove his mother was there. His eye caught the first clue. Just visible around the corner leading to the dining room was a torn envelope lying on the floor by the table leg, and a single sheet of paper.
Lucius was not acquainted with deep grief. The sobs ripped from his mother terrified him. Was the letter from school? Did it detail behavior he’d forgotten that would hurt his mother and lead to some unimagined punishment? Had someone died? And, then, he knew. Sigi was not coming home.
It was long moments before Alice found her speaking voice.
“Daddy said to tell you Good-bye. He found a job in Berlin and is living with another woman. I knew this weeks ago. It's not a secret anymore. I know you overheard me talking to Auntie Angela the other day. We're going to live with her in Basel.”
For the first time the world he knew fractured. There followed selling and throwing out and giving away and packing what was left. The only relief was the prospect of open space and mountains, of hiking and snow, of not being forced to learn a new language. Germany was no longer a safe place but its language still felt like home.
The train trip down the Main River valley and then up the Rhine valley was a visual extravaganza. Accustomed to the big city, he was new to the luxury of so much green. Every hour that passed brought the irresistible mountains to the south ever closer. When the beauty of the country no longer distracted him, the memories of visits to auntie Angela brought him smiles. Born in Austria, she had mastered Viennese cuisine. Her apple strudel was magnificent, warm from the oven and flaky as a croissant. Her wiener-schnitzel had a subtle accent, a savory understatement in the veal from an herb combination she never divulged to anyone, not even her family.
Distracted by the family tensions, Lucius missed the flyby of asteroid RF12 in April. The talking heads on television and the scary newspaper headlines made the event a public spectacle since it passed the earth on our side of the moon. The European Space Agency had put the little space rock, only 21 feet in diameter, at the top of its list of NEOs (near earth objects) to monitor. Every news channel played it like a war story. Calculated correctly by the news business as a killer story, the attention span of a seven year-old had been too short to notice.
At his new school in Basel that fall Lucius was brought up to speed. The government had mandated lesson plans on astronomy at all grade levels with an emphasis on NEOs, and he quickly developed a sharp interest in astronomy. By begging and pleading he persuaded his mother and aunt to take him to the Carl Zeiss planetarium in Stuttgart. Even in winter, it was a reasonable train trip for a one-day excursion. It only aroused his appetite. The next August, 700 foot-wide asteroid LF16 skimmed harmlessly through our cosmic neighborhood. The useless chatter from the media only further sharpened his mood. Nothing would satisfy but a trip to Munich and the European Space Observatory planetarium. They stayed overnight and came back the next day. He was in awe.
But by the next winter at eight years-old Lucius was introduced to what quickly became his first love – skiing. Then, with his first personal train pass at twelve, the alps became his winter home. Not caring how famous they once had been, over the next two years he simply picked from his favorite ski resorts. Zermatt with its breathtaking views at the foot of the Matterhorn; like St. Moritz, no longer visited by the jet set. Chamonix close over the border in France. Gstaad, and his favorite, Davos. The heli-skiing was gone but it wasn't missed. The good news was that lift lines were shorter now.