I stood on the deserted patch where the statue had been, facing the path she would seen had she human eyes. I noticed the light was as exquisite as ever. I reluctantly exited the cemetery and walked along the tracks, a longtime habit providing there was no train coming. The scrappy resilience of weeds and wildflowers pushing through gravel, and the rusted tracks like nostalgic vestiges of the twentieth century has always touched me. I walked slowly, singing the theme song of the Continental Drift Club in order to quell a germinating disquiet. Although I had written the lyrics to the plaintive melody I could only remember the first few lines.
Saints day in the snow, where did Wegener go?
Only Rasmus knows and he is in Gods hands
Raise an iron cross, he’s no longer lost
Found within are notes and they are in Gods hands
Besides the strange absence of the statue I realized I had felt a growing anticipation of seeing the Secretary after nearly five years of silence. I went over in my mind the checkered history of a relationship that could hardly be called a friendship. It was definitely one sided as I had no point of contact. In every case I was summoned or at least invited. Still, I felt some degree of mutual affection and a stoic, even unbreakable sense of trust. Allow me to offer some notes from the past.
Formed in the early nineteen-eighties by a Danish meteorologist, the Continental Drift Club was an obscure society serving as an independent branch of the Earth science community. Twenty-seven members, scattered across the hemispheres, had pledged their dedication to the perpetuation of remembrance, specifically in regard to Alfred Wegener, who pioneered the theory of Continental Drift. The bylaws required discretion, attendance at the biannual conferences, a certain amount of applicable fieldwork, and a reasonable passion for the club’s environmental directives.
I was granted membership into the Continental Drift Club quite by accident. On the whole members were primarily mathematicians, geologists and theologians. Everyone, save the Secretary, was identified by a given number. I had written several letters to the Alfred Wegener Institute searching for a living heir in hopes of obtaining permission to photograph the great explorer’s boots. One of my letters was forwarded to the Secretary and after a flurry of correspondence I was invited to attend their 2005 conference in Bremen, which coincided with the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the great geoscientists birth and the seventy-fifth of his death; both had occurred on November first, All Saints Day. I attended their panel discussions, a special screening at Cinema 46 of a documentary containing rare footage of Wegener’s 1929 and 1930 expeditions and joined them for a private tour of the AWI facilities in nearby Bremerhaven. I am certain I didn’t quite meet their criteria, but I suspect after some deliberation they welcomed me due to my abundance of romantic enthusiasm. I became an official member in 2006, and was assigned the number Twenty-three.
The Secretary was intermittently social, meticulously dressed in starched blouses and grey gabardine suits. Her dark boiled wool coat was topped with a matching felt hat with a misshapen pearl hatpin. She occasionally organized excursions for small invited groups, primarily in East Germany. I never failed to join if I could and we met at such hallowed spots as the garden of Schiller in Jena and the ivy clad grave of Christiane Vulpius, beloved by the great literary and scientific figure Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe, in Weimar.
We had one carefree encounter here in Berlin. It was during a conference and I had delivered a disastrous lecture. The Secretary attempting to console me, asked if I would like to have a drink. I gratefully suggested the Pasternak Café, in hopes that we could sit at my favorite table beneath a photograph of Mikhail Bulgakov.
-Bulgakov! Splendid! The vodka is on me.
We had cheap caviar and cold vodka in shot glasses. We had more than one and she noted that there was a resemblance between Alfred Wegener and Bulgakov.
-Maybe Bulgakov was a bit more handsome, I laughed.
-And what a writer!
-A Master!
-Ha! Yes, a Master.
Then we rose and downed our third vodka, toasting the great Russian writer who gifted us with the spectacular Master and Margarita.
All these memories had seemed to melt away. My last missive from her was in 2016, a brief yet melancholy letter telling me that the Continental Drift Club had disbanded, entreating me to destroy all traces of it, which I immediately did.
What had prompted her to send for me now? I hadn’t the faintest clue. I walked through the park with its familiar water tower. It was eerily quiet, there were no children climbing on the monkey bars or playing on the swings. Through the branches of the trees I could see the Pasternak, and my uneasiness blossomed into excitement. Whatever the reason she sent for me I was ready to serve, whatever the journey she had in mind, I was ready to embark.
Footnote: Continental Drift Club information can be found in M Train.
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