— The blue lamp at Amiens, Noel repeats. Rum place, may have seen him there. Saw the Prince of Wales there once, smoking a cigar. Looked like him, anyway. They ought to have opened a Berlitz school in those brothels. Come to think of it, Price, all those damned French books in the camp library are yours. But we know you’re pure as the driven snow.
Ashley waves his hand in dismissal.
— Irrelevant. The poules all spoke English enough.
The table erupts. — Hear, hear! Noel bellows.
— I only chatted with them, Ashley says. Some were actually rather fascinating—
— But the white lion, Price insists. It isn’t rot. These folk beliefs are based on real things. It could be the snow leopard, for instance.
— Possibly, the colonel admits. Some are seen very high. They go after the bharal, and we’ve seen those up here. Have you heard of the snow leopard, Walsingham? Very rare. Only one white man’s ever laid eyes on them.
— Did he get the milk? Ashley asks.
There is riotous laughter, Noel roaring and wiping the tears from his eyes. Ashley’s laughter breaks into a wheezing cough.
— I suppose up there, Ashley adds, it would be ice cream.
Noel stands officiously and raises his mug.
— To the white lion of the snows, Noel toasts. May we find her and bring forth her dairy.
The British raise their mugs and drink. Only Price does not join in, staring blankly at the table. Ashley whispers in Price’s ear.
— You’re not after the lion?
Price smiles. His face is a patchwork of shadows under the swinging oil lamps.
— Not even in jest. May she remain a mystery.
Price raises his mug and drinks.
— Then you’re in favor of mysteries, Ashley says.
— It’s the summit we want, Price shrugs. We ought not ask for too much.
THE JEWELER
One morning as I pass the hostel’s front desk, the clerk summons me with a wave.
— Your package finally came.
He puts a FedEx envelope on the counter. I sit on a couch in the lobby and pull the envelope’s zipper, shaking out the contents. The brooch drops onto my lap along with a folded sheet of notebook paper.
Dear Tris,
Now you’re the best-dressed man in Europe. Hope you’ll still come back anyway.
Adam
I turn the brooch in my hands, running my fingers along the tarnished silver strands of the dragon’s body. The metal is worn and scratched, but otherwise the brooch resembles the one I saw in the nightclub. There is a small inscription in the silver on the reverse: CVG, the letters followed by a strange circular symbol.
I’d first seen the brooch when I searched the garage before traveling to London. Or had I seen it before? I think back to the seaside with my grandmother and I try to picture the brooch there, the twisted dragons glinting in the afternoon sun. But I can’t be sure.
I log on to the Internet on one of the lobby computers, searching for a specialist in Scandinavian jewelry who might be able to identify the brooch. I run searches using every term I can think of, but the only dealers I find are outside Germany. It’s already September 24 and I can’t waste time sending the brooch away. I run more searches with the term Berlin and I find the website of a jewelry designer whose name sounds Scandinavian. Among a section called “Replicas” I scroll through images of Viking jewelry.
The brooch is there. The plaited bodies of the warring creatures, the curled dragon’s head singing in exertion. It’s the same brooch but the style is different, the strands thicker, the dragon more realistically defined. The caption advertises Brosche im Urnes-Stil, Sterling Silber. I click on the CONTACT button. The address is Arthouse Tacheles, Oranienburger Straβe 54–56a, a short walk from the hostel.
I grab my bag and dash south across the intersection.
The building is immense, five stories tall and the length of an entire city block. I check the address several times, but it’s the right number. The half-ruined facade is covered in graffiti; vast craters gape amid the ornate moldings and the sculpted figures high above, their heads and limbs pried off the stone.
The foyer is littered with beer bottles and cigarette stubs. I climb a grimy staircase to the second floor, a maze of hallways with closed doors. A young man walks past dragging a smashed television on a rickety dolly. I ask him for directions to the jeweler’s studio. He answers in an Australian accent.
— Go to the third floor and make a right. Walk straight to the end.
I follow his instructions to a hallway of glazed white brick, everything coated in graffiti. The corridor ends in a sturdy metal door, the arch above painted in huge black capitals: HIER SIND SIE SICHER. It looks like the entrance to an abandoned bomb shelter. A business card is taped to the door.
L. KRARUP — SCHMUCKDESIGN
The door is cracked open, but I knock anyway. A woman’s voice beckons me in.
The studio is cavernous. A series of worktables are pushed against one wall; against the other wall, an aging desktop computer and an assortment of wooden library card catalogs. Tools are everywhere. A rack of hammers in ascending sizes; tongs and files and pliers hanging on a pegboard; a table with soldering irons; a forging anvil, an electric polishing wheel.
The jeweler swivels around toward me. She speaks in German and then in English.
— Can I help you?
She has short gray hair and wears a canvas work apron over her dress, gold spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck. She is eating from a plastic take-out container with a pair of chopsticks.
— Excuse me. A late lunch today—
I tell her I’m trying to identify a piece of my grandmother’s jewelry. The jeweler regards me with mild curiosity, wiping her hands on her apron. I hand her the brooch from my bag. She examines it for a moment and looks up at me.
— Your grandmother gave you this? Where are you from?
— California.
The jeweler frowns.
— But your grandmother wasn’t from California—
— No. She was English. Part Swedish, really.
The jeweler sits down at her workbench. She switches on a bright halogen lamp, looking at the brooch under a swiveling magnifying glass. Her English is accented but fluent and clear.
— Generally, you would say it’s in the Urnes style. There are a few late-Viking Urnes brooches that survive. This is a modern copy of one of them. But not so recent—
The jeweler flips over the brooch. She makes a little sucking sound through her teeth.
— An inscription. Do you know these letters?
— My grandmother’s initials. I don’t know what the symbol is.
The jeweler goes to a bookcase, pulling a huge paperback from the shelf and paging through it slowly. She murmurs something and hands the book to me. It is a glossy auction catalog in some Scandinavian language. On the page there is a photograph of a brooch identical to my own. The jeweler smiles triumphantly.
— I knew I’d seen that symbol before.
The jeweler thinks the brooch is the work of Ísleifur Sæmundsson, an Icelandic silversmith who worked in the early twentieth century. The symbol engraved after my grandmother’s initials is his signature. Ísleifur’s work is quite rare, the jeweler says, and she has never seen his pieces outside of a few museums in Scandinavia. She peers over my shoulder as I look at the catalog.