By the fifth day I was restless and worried that Raven and Eric might have decided to skip Salzburg in favor of Venice. Susyn argued that we should spend one more day in Salzburg before we moved on.

Susyn had a sunny, open disposition. Every day was an adventure to her. When she made her rounds each morning, the head of the local police treated her with an avuncular familiarity that would probably have gotten steamy if she had let it. She described his antics every noon when we met to compare notes. Her mobile, comic’s face made him so real that I could almost see his moustache.

“You are very good with people,” I said.

“But, Ian, that’s easy if you like people.”

“You must be very valuable to Senator Cabral.”

She grinned. “He says so. But, of course, he is valuable to me, too. Without him, I would be secretary to some insurance salesman.”

“No. Not you.” It was not so much a compliment as an observation. Beneath her competence and friendliness, Susyn had a burning core of ambition. “How did you meet Senator Cabral?”

“I was working as a secretary – for an insurance salesman.” She grinned at me. “I didn’t like it and I was looking for a way out. The Senator was just running for his first term then. He looked like a winner, so I joined his team as a volunteer and worked my way up to a staff job. Six years later, here I am in Europe.”

“For the first time,” I said. She had told me early on that she had not been to Europe before.

“For the first time, and loving every minute of it. I want to find Raven, but I’ll miss this when I take her back. And I’ll miss you.”

“Tell me more about this drug dealer. I don’t understand why he is still after Raven. Surely he has figured out by now that she was not sent damaging information.”

“How could he be really sure? For a man like that, it would be better to act than to worry, and if that action includes murder, it wouldn’t bother him very much.”

“But a senator’s daughter? He should know that the Feds would never let him alone after killing her. Somehow, they would get him.”

“How could anyone know what happened to Raven if she simply disappeared in mid-ocean? After that, I can only speculate, but perhaps he is afraid to have her come back to California and testify. Anyway, why isn’t really important. It’s just important that we find her.”

I thought about the forces we were facing. They remained unreal in my mind. I had seen them through binoculars when they threw Raven into the sea. I had seen them up close on board the Wahini. Sitting now with Susyn, I stared at the livid scar across the back of my hand, trying to bring the skinny thug into focus. It was no use. My loss of Raven made them seem small and unimportant.

My mistake. more tomorrow

Chapter Twenty

Susyn and I waited in Salzburg for a week. There had been no hope of finding them in any of the lesser towns they might have gone through; there were dozens of routes from Montreaux to Salzburg. We divided duties as before; Susyn went to the authorities and I went to the youth hostel, the campground, and the street.

You don’t find many street musicians in Salzburg. Whatever their musical tastes might normally be, when tourists visit Salzburg, they have only Mozart on their minds. Salzburg lives on Mozart, from the museum they have made of his birthplace, to the the unending cascade of Mozart memorabilia, to the silly Mozart chocolates, the entire city is a shrine to the commercialization of his name. Every summer, productions of his operas are staged, bringing in the finest talents in the world and drawing on a worldwide clientele. The book and record stores in the old city are a classical music aficionado’s heaven. There is even a puppet opera – not a watered down children’s version of the operas, but a staged in the ancient European tradition of fine art marionettes, set to the music recorded during the previous year’s live productions.

After the first day, our routine became established. We stayed in adjoining rooms in a small hotel across from the old town. Once a day, Susyn would stop in at the police headquarters to ask if anything had been found, and to remind them that we were still there. I called Will every evening, and made the rounds of the hostel, campground, and cheap hotels. During the day, Susyn and I played tourist, wandering about Salzburg on the off chance of seeing them on the street.

Salzburg is a lovely small city, and the first two days were enjoyable. Susyn was a lively companion. The tourist’s were a cut above the ordinary. Beyond their obvious snobbery, there was a sense of intellectual curiosity about them that made them interesting even in casual encounters. But after two days we had seen what was there to be seen, and I was going crazy. Somewhere out there, Raven and Eric were in danger and did not know it. And somewhere out there, Raven was with Eric, instead of with me.

We walked the city, sat for hours in street cafes watching people go by, attended the puppet opera and a real one, and went to the park where the Sound of Music was filmed. And all day, every day, I played the game of “what went wrong?” No matter how many times I replayed my time with Raven, the crux of our relationship always came down to that day on the beach outside Marseille. A game of one-upmanship that revealed a depth of striving against each other. I had won that day; and in winning, I had lost Raven.

To Eric. That was a big piece of the puzzle. Why Eric? Beneath that friendly-dog expression there had been an essential uncertainty; a lack of intensity. It had put me off. Within five minutes I had known that we might be friendly, but we could never become friends. Had Raven been drawn to the same thing that repulsed me? Had she gone with him precisely because he was my opposite? more tomorrow

They could not help me. There was no regular route to be followed. What Davy called the circuit was more a web than a path. From Montreaux, there were certain cities which were logical destinations and others which were not, but I could figure that out for myself with a map. Eventually they should reach Oslo. Oslo was a good gig for street musicians and Eric was Norwegian. But by the same reasoning, that should be one of his last stops for the summer, and I needed to find them now.

“Look, Ian,” Colin said, “I really would like to help, but this isn’t the way to do it. What you need to do is go back to Montreaux, find a xerox machine and make up a hundred copies of those pictures. Dave and Kristin and I will take them with us and pass them around. You put that phone number you gave me right on the copy. Eventually, someone we know, or someone who knows someone we know, will see Eric or Raven. They can pass on a message or call your friend in Marseille.”

I was moved by his simple acceptance and willingness to help.  He waved my thanks aside, and we moved on to other subjects.

The next morning I caught the first westbound steamer for Montreaux. I walked the early morning streets for two hours before I found a place to make copies. On the master copy I wrote Will’s phone number at the consulate, along with the message, “Raven, I need to talk to you about the men who came on board the Wahini in Marseille. Call Will for details.” Then I called Will. He was out, so I left a message and caught a steamer back to the campground. Colin was gone already, and Dave and Kristin were breaking camp. They said they would see Colin again in Locarno and would pass his half of the copies on at that time.

I broke camp myself, took a steamer back to Montreaux once again, and called Susyn. She was out, but she had left a message for me saying that she had had no luck.

I went to the youth hostel and hit paydirt. Sort of. Eric and Raven had been there while I was camping at Villeneuve, but they had checked out. They hadn’t said where they were going. It took all morning to find someone who had talked to them, and she didn’t know where they were going to go next. Then came the midday lockout. I walked the streets of Montreaux, frustrated, looking for street musicians, but none of them knew anything. Most of them were suspicious. It takes time to gain rapport as I had with Colin, Dave, and Kristin. Time and patience, and I was in a mood to pound walls. I called Susyn. She was still out. 

Finally, the youth hostel opened and I checked in. I doubted that I would be staying the night, but checking in gave me a right to be there. By five that evening I had as close to a lead as I was going to get. Eric had mentioned going to Salzburg, and Raven had wanted to go to Venice. more tomorrow

”I saw your Eric several times last year when I was making the circuit alone.”

”Circuit?”

“What I call it. It works this way: in winter, when you are going crazy studying for exams and wondering if the sun will ever shine again, you plan your summer holiday. You know you can go on the cheap, but even if you hitchhike and sleep out, it still takes a bit of money. Not much, but a bit. So you see who you can put the bite on, or what you can do to earn your way. If you play and sing, all’s well. You take your guitar, or bagpipes, or whatever, and set out to earn your way through your holiday. But its not an easy life. Half the holiday makers you see won’t give you the time of day; even if they sit for an hour listening, they only drop shillings. Cheap bastards, most of them.

“This year, its different. Kris and I are in love, and that helps; but what we really found was that if we let it show, people pay better. It’s like they’re buying a part of our happiness. We are living well this year, where last year I nearly starved, and my guitar playing hasn’t improved that much.”

“Image,” I said.

“Exactly. Image. Like Colin and his bagpipes. He doesn’t rake it in like we do, but he does all right. But if he didn’t wear the kilt and all that other shit, and march around like he was going off to fight the Boers, he wouldn’t make a penny.”

“I saw a girl playing flute in Lausanne,” I said. “She was good, but she wasn’t making any money.”

“I saw her. Pretty girl; pretty sound; no gimmick. She doesn’t stand a chance. In two or three weeks, she’ll go home beaten. Or some guy on the circuit will pick her up and teach her the ropes. The latter, I’d say, considering how good she looked.”

Kristin clouted him in the head, knocking him off balance. He said, “Hey!” and she said, “Don’t you go noticing so many good lookers, Davy, or you’ll lose your gimmick.” He grinned back at her, unperturbed.

Colin said, “Eric’s gimmick is his fiddle. It catches the tourists’ attention because it is exotic, and then he has the skill to hold them. I saw him once at L’orient, playing on the fringes of the international Celtic festival. I didn’t remember him before, because you asked about this year. I saw him two, maybe three years ago.”

“Can your Raven sing?” David wanted to know. I said I had no idea. “If she can, it would be a great draw. She looks great, and she is exotic.”

“Exotic?” Raven’s beauty was like a thousand other Hispanic girls I had seen. It was not unique, except in its perfection. Then I shifted mental gears. Hispanic features – that particular blend of Spanish caballero and Indio – were not to be found in Europe. To these people, Raven would be as exotic as a devadasi in Cleveland. more tomorrow

I ran into Colin. He had traded his kilt for jeans and a tee shirt, and had a bottle of wine in his hand. He was visiting friends across the campground. We spoke briefly, as strangers probing for the possibility of friendship, then he invited me to join them.

It was the guitarist and singer I had talked to in Lausanne, David Jordan and Kristin Hansen.

David and Kristin had brought the ensolite pads out of their tent to lie on and she had her head in his lap. Colin dropped into lotus, slipping his feet up on top of his knees. I have never been able to do that. The best I can manage is a Cherokee squat. Colin handed out plastic cups and passed the wine around.  I poured an inch into mine and moistened my lips at the salude. Kristin slipped into the tent and came back with a candle in a fruit jar.

When I had met these three as strangers on the street, I had not told them why I was looking for Raven. Now I did. I had no reason for secrecy, and the time was right.

“So you have no idea where she has gone,” Kristin said.

“No, not really. In Paris, someone said Lausanne. In Lausanne, you said Montreaux.”

“Europe is a big place to search, with no better clues than that.”

“Tell me about it!”

“She might have come in after you checked the hostel in Montreaux.”

“I’ll call the woman I’m working with in the morning, and then make the rounds again.”

They were open and willing to help, but it was more from courtesy than any feeling for my problem. I was painfully aware of the difference in our ages. David and Kristin were barely twenty, off for the summer from some small college in England. Colin was little older. I was nearing thirty. It was a critical decade that stretched between them and me. I felt out of place and a little ridiculous sitting with them. Living close to the ground is something normally reserved for youth. A man my age should be in a suite, living off room service, and looking out at the lake over a manicured lawn, not squatting on his haunches in front of a tent with a fruit jar candle for ambiance. And not with the intention of crawling into a tiny nylon room to sleep in a bag of duck feathers. David and Kristin made me aware of the years between us. As I had felt out of place with Susyn last night, they made me feel out of place here.

I ignored the feeling. A man who lives by what others see in him, will have no freedom.

“Actually,” I said, “Eric is my only hope of finding her. If she were alone, she could go anywhere and do anything, but Eric will have to keep playing his fiddle for money, and that restricts their movements.”

David said, “Let me see his picture again.” I passed it over.  While David twisted it about in the candle’s faint light, I described his Hardanger fiddle. It was more distinctive than its player. David said, “The face looks familiar, and the fiddle clinches it. I saw your Eric several times last year when I was making the circuit alone, before I took up with Kristin.” more tomorrow