Treasure - Kindness

The treasure hunt

Content notes: Glass shards, disagreement about inheritance

Fragile things

“Some people have Christmas tree decorations that match,” I mumbled quietly, but obviously not quietly enough. I should have known better; my mother heard everything.

Even what I was thinking.

“It’s not about whether the decorations match. Our tree decorations have character. And a story.”

I sighed. Not every story was a beautiful story.

“If you don’t like it, let Lisa finish decorating the tree on her own,” my mother said. And Lisa reached for the bauble I had in my hand.

“You’re not doing it right anyway,” my sister said.

“I am.”

“Are not.”

As it happened, the bauble fell, not just straight down, but in a small arc. That’s what happens when you fight over something. It landed on the floor with an audible crack.

“Oops,” Lisa said meekly.

I kept quiet.

“Kids,” Mum began, “you want me to be happy when you come home for Christmas, don’t you?”

We nodded, embarrassed.

“And people always say that children grow up so quickly. You’re both taking your time.”

“Sorry,” said Lisa.

“Honestly,” I said.

Mother sighed briefly and shook her head. “At least now I don’t have to think about whom I’m going to leave the last bauble from Uncle Klaus to.”

“The bauble was from Uncle Klaus?” “We had more than one?” we asked in confusion.

And: “What happened to the other baubles?”

“I’m going to make myself some tea and then I’ll tell you about Uncle Klaus and his Christmas baubles. And you,” she looked at us sternly, “will sweep the floor. I don’t want anyone stepping on a piece of glass.”

Less than ten minutes later, we were sitting expectantly at the table, having swept up the pieces of glass that had broken off the bauble, secretly finished decorating the tree, and washed our hands. The last thing was probably more of a reflex: before you sit down at your parents’ table, you wash your hands.

A little history

Mother sat down with us with her tea and no longer looked quite so stern.

“You may not remember Uncle Klaus, but he used to come here a lot.”

Lisa and I glanced at each other and smiled. We remembered Uncle Klaus. He was always up for shenanigans and even took the blame if our parents didn’t see the funny side. Uncle Klaus had been great.

“Uncle Klaus wasn’t exactly what you’d call a bourgeois spirit. As far as I know, he didn’t ever have a place for more than two months. He was always on the move.”

We nodded.

Uncle Klaus had been the only one we didn’t have to write a birthday card to every year, because sometimes we just didn’t know where to send it. Instead, he had always sent us cards from the remotest corners of the world.

And Uncle Klaus had always brought back great things from his many travels and told the most fantastic stories. Some of them might even have happened exactly like that. Almost anything was possible with Uncle Klaus.

“How did he actually pay for all that?” Lisa asked.

We had never thought about it before, but when we each got our first apartment, we both realized how much time, effort and money a nice home with regular meals cost. Living was expensive, even without traveling.

Mother smiled.

“Nobody knows for sure. Klaus had at least as many jobs as he had homes. He always got by somehow. As a tourist guide who told the wildest stories to gullible tourists, as a temporary waiter on cruise ships, as an aid worker in Africa, Klaus did pretty much everything one can do.”

“But don’t you need qualifications for stuff like that?” I asked. I had financed my studies with part-time jobs and had been amazed at the credentials needed for some things.

“It was a different time back then,” said Mother. “In development aid, everyone was welcome to lend a hand. You didn’t have to be a trained craftsperson or engineer; skilled hands were enough. And Klaus had them. And in many cases, he simply persuaded people with his charm. And he certainly didn’t always live alone.” She winked at us, something else we had never thought about before.

“Of course, he was always learning new things. Woodturning, carpentry, carving and even glass blowing.”

Lisa and I looked at the cracked Christmas bauble.

“You mean he made this himself?” Lisa asked, very meekly.

Mum nodded. “He made that and a few other things, the glass icicles too, so it’s not the last keepsake that’s been destroyed.” She looked at Lisa encouragingly. “And to be honest, I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

“Why?” Lisa and I asked at the same time.

“Well,” my mother said, “because there was something hidden in the other bauble. And I’m quite curious to see if there’s something in this one too.”

A look inside

“So you’re not angry?” I asked.

“A little bit, because you really should be more careful with things. But at the moment I’m more curious than angry.”

“Should we break it completely then?” asked Lisa. After a brief hesitation, my mother nodded. Lisa very carefully began to fiddle with the bauble.

The glass was going to break, but she didn’t want to cut herself or break anything that might be inside the sphere. I had to control myself to not take it away from her and do it myself. But the lesson that things can break when you squabble had lasted at least this long, even for me.

After far too long, the hole was finally big enough, and the contents that had so far only been hinted at came out.

It was a small wooden cube that had been held in place by a few glass struts inside the sphere. Mother nodded excitedly: “There was one just like this in the other bauble!”

I looked over at the tree. And sure enough, there it was.

“We hang that one up every year!” squealed Lisa.

“And I’ve always wondered why it was in the Christmas box,” I said.

The cube didn’t look particularly Christmassy, but it was pretty and no more un-Christmassy than the stuff that some other people put on their trees.

Friends of ours decorated their tree with shiny, silvery fruit and vegetables. Or with hand-felted angel figurines. Well, those were Christmassy, but they didn’t look as simple and yet artistic as the cube. Made from different types of wood, it had lighter and darker, reddish and yellowish areas.

“And what is this now?” asked Lisa.

“I have no idea,” my mother said. “I’ve never found out the meaning of the cube.”

“Does it have to have a meaning?” I asked. Lisa looked at me reproachfully.

“Who would go to the trouble of hiding something like that in a Christmas bauble if it did not?”

“Maybe the bauble just needed to be a bit heavier?” I said, “After all, there aren’t hidden secrets and mysteries everywhere.”

“You’re so unimaginative.” Lisa’s words sounded derogatory.

“If you’re not interested, I’m sure Lisa can figure out the puzzle on her own,” said Mother, and put the second cube in front of my sister. Lisa reached for it.

“Don’t be silly, sis. You’ll never manage it on your own,” I said, and took one of the cubes. My mother smiled and I realized that I had fallen for a classic. Was there a school where mothers learned to trick their children?

Stories and memories

In any case, I had no choice but to figure out the secret before Lisa. Otherwise, I would look pretty stupid. Three days passed, Christmas came and went, and I had to admit that I wasn’t getting anywhere. Fortunately, Lisa hadn’t had a breakthrough yet, either. So, we sat together in the kitchen, the cubes on the table, and began to demolish the remains of the Christmas dinner.

“There must be some clue!” It wasn’t hidden in the potatoes, or I would have found it by now.

It obviously wasn’t in the leftover stuffing from the goose either, or Lisa would have mentioned it.

“Maybe in one of his stories?” The idea was no more far-fetched than others we’d already had.

“But which one?” I turned a cube back and forth between my fingers. “We can rule out the one with the crocodile.”

“And the one with the canoe trip?” Lisa said. We thought about it.

“We should have listened to him,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I shrugged, “didn’t he always say, ‘Pay attention and remember what’s coming next’?”

Lisa frowned. “He didn’t always say that. Just always in the same story.”

She was right, damn it.

“And always in the same place!” I was triumphant – but not for long. “Do you remember how that part went?”

We had remembered almost everything by now. How Uncle Klaus had disguised his voice, how he had strutted up and down the room and how he had then knelt before us to say in a conspiratorial whisper – the words we no longer remembered.

“It was something about fish,” Lisa said. I couldn’t remember anything about fish.

Lisa was standing in front of my bed at half past three on New Year’s morning, shaking me. It had been a late night on New Year’s Eve, as it should be, and I had wanted to sleep in before heading home again. As nice as it was at our parents’ house, I wanted to get home and have some time to myself before work started again. Well, not just for myself. My girlfriend had also planned to be back from her parents by now. We didn’t want to burden our relationship with family visits just yet.

Lisa obviously didn’t believe in sleeping in. She knelt by my bed, looked conspiratorially to the left and right and then whispered:

“See bright pebbles in the sand
Don’t put just one into your hand
Grabbing all is quite the trick
Pebbles rattle – click, click, click.”

I stared at her. “What?”

Lisa giggled. “Wake up properly, brother. What were we looking for all this time?”

It dawned on me. She had remembered the part from the story.

“And now?” I asked, still a little sleepy.

“If I knew that, do you think I would have woken you up?”

“Why are you waking me up if you don’t know?” I found it hard to understand her logic.

Lisa looked at me innocently. “I thought you might have an idea…”

I pulled my cube out from under the pillow. Lisa held hers out to me.

“Hmmm,” I said.

“What?” asked Lisa. I took both in my hand. They clicked together and nothing happened.

“It was worth a try,” se said.

“And what does this have to do with fish?” I asked.

Lisa shrugged. “Nothing. I was wrong.”

I was too preoccupied with the puzzle to appreciate this confession fully. Besides, it was too early in the morning for schadenfreude.

“What if the pebbles stand for the light-colored wood and you have to push in all the light-colored pieces at the same time?”

Lisa laughed. “You watch too many movies!”

“But we can try, can’t we?”

Lisa turned the cubes back and forth. “The pieces are far too small to press in with your fingers.”

I didn’t want to give up the idea just yet. “That’s why it said ‘quite the trick’. Do you have any toothpicks?”

After some searching, Lisa came back from the bathroom with a pack of cotton swabs. “They should do it.”

I shook my head. In a movie you would never have to solve the mystery with cotton swabs, but in real life you had to work with what you had.

It took us a while to figure out how to hold the cube to get to all the spots. And you definitely needed more than two hands to do it. The cube fell under the bed twice before we finally managed it. That was twice more than I would have wanted to search under my bed for anything.

What was all that stuff there? And why hadn’t my mother thrown it away long ago?

But then it finally worked – and to our mutual astonishment, the cube clicked.

More riddles

“Now we’re no wiser than before,” said Lisa, not without reason. We had managed to open both cubes, but inside each was just a folded piece of cloth with letters on it. Unfortunately, these were not arranged in a way that made any sense, but in a random-looking order in six-by-six squares.

“Maybe you have to have all the pieces and put them next to each other in the right order for it to make sense?”

The idea wasn’t bad, but there was a catch.

“Mother said she only had these two baubles from Uncle Klaus.”

“We should ask her anyway. But only after sleeping in, sis.” A few hours later we were sitting at the breakfast table with our parents.

“Were these really the only two baubles?” asked Lisa, after we had proudly shown off our find.

“They were the only two we had,” said my mother. Dad looked at his newspaper with great interest.

“So could someone else have more?” I wanted to know. After a sideways glance at her newspaper-reading husband, Mother nodded.

“Who?”

Father got up and left.

Mother sighed.

“Your Uncle Klaus had three siblings. Perhaps you remember Hanna and Karl?”

“Yes, but we haven’t heard from them for ages,” Lisa said.

“Since shortly after your father’s mother died, if we’re being precise.” Mother didn’t seem to find it easy to talk about it.

“Why haven’t we heard from them since then?”

“After your grandmother died, there were, shall we say, disagreements. There was less money than there should have been, and some of her most beautiful pieces of jewelry were missing, including her favorite necklace.”

She paused for a moment. “It all got straightened out, but by the time it got to that point, things had been said that couldn’t be taken back. The only person who had stayed out of it all was Uncle Klaus. He didn’t want any of the inheritance anyway. Of course, that immediately made some of the others suspicious of him. And when the excitement had died down, no one apart from Klaus was prepared to talk to his other siblings.”

“What had happened?” asked Lisa.

“Grandma had given a few things to the jeweler to have them altered. She wanted each child to have an equal share of her favorite things so there wouldn’t be any arguments.” My mother laughed humorlessly.

“It didn’t work out that way. And the money was gone because she had already paid for the work.” It took half a cup of coffee before Mother continued.

“The jeweler brought the finished pieces to the retirement home two weeks after Grandma’s death, and that’s how we found out about it. We all met up again so that everyone could get their share, but since then your father has only spoken to Uncle Klaus. And I can’t wear any of the things because he always looks at me so reproachfully, as if I’m deliberately reminding him.” She looked around the table.

“But I could imagine that your Uncle Klaus left two baubles for each of his siblings.”

“That’s great!” exclaimed Lisa. “Then we’ll just have to ask them if they’ve found little cubes too!”

Mother didn’t seem very enthusiastic. “That could be a problem. You know, we no longer have any contact with your father’s siblings. We probably don’t even have a current address.”

But Lisa was not so easily deterred. “In the information age, no one is untraceable!” So, armed with the names and old addresses, we set off, each in the direction of our own four walls.

Search and find

The information age did not live up to our expectations. Theoretically, you have access to huge amounts of data, but finding what you’re looking for in all that data takes time. And in the end, Lisa and I split up the phone numbers to call in search of our missing relatives.

And just as everyday life returns at the end of a vacation, things also fall by the wayside, and it took me almost two months to finish my list.

I had found Aunt Hanna, but only towards the end of the list. Surprisingly few people are happy to receive a call that starts with “Are you perhaps my aunt?” Even Aunt Hanna was only partially enthusiastic about my call.

“Is your father dead?”

“No.”

“Is he terminally ill?”

“No.”

“Then why are you calling?” There’s nothing like a relaxed start to a conversation.

But at least she still had Uncle Klaus’ Christmas tree ornaments. And she was prepared to make them available – but only if her daughter Helga was there when the cubes inside were opened and decoded.

“In case there is a treasure at the end. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone in this family has taken advantage of the others.”

Lisa had needed a few more weeks. She had found Uncle Karl, but he no longer had the baubles. He had given them to his children when they left home. And finding the children was a little more difficult. Uncle Karl didn’t want to give out their phone numbers to anyone. Lisa had left him her number so that his daughters, Lara and Anne, could reach her.

Lara got in touch one evening and was immediately enthusiastic. And she promised to get Anne on board too. We all arranged to meet at Easter, in a hotel, on neutral territory, so to speak.

It had been a while since we had last seen each other. Lisa and I were pretty excited. Had the others changed a lot? Much can happen in ten years.

We sat comfortably in the lobby and waited.

And flinched every time the door opened.

When Anne and Lara finally came in, it was as if time had just been turned back.

Squealing, Lara fell into Lisa’s arms and Anne rolled her eyes. “Lisa and Lara” had been infamous in the past. Anne and I shared the fate of the older siblings: “Will you look after them?” As if it had always been that easy.

“How do you put up with her?” I asked.

“Thank you, and yourself?” said Anne.

“So, everything as usual?” Helga spoke up.

Anne and I almost fell over in shock. With the noise Lara and Lisa were making, we hadn’t heard Helga coming.

After the big hello at the reunion, we quickly brought each other up to date with our respective lives. Lara was engaged and was about to move to Cologne with her future husband. “He got an amazing offer, so we just had to go for it.”

Anne had shown good instincts and had given up her apprenticeship as a florist to become a nursery school teacher. “Teachers are currently much more in demand than florists. You won’t get rich, but I have practice dealing with annoying children.”

Lara poked her in the side. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It was as if we had never lost sight of each other. But back then, we were between eleven and fifteen; you don’t stay in touch of your own accord if your families don’t see each other and you don’t live in the same city.

Today, we simply exchanged our email addresses. In that respect, the world really had become a bit smaller.

The Treasure

“Dear Family,

I hope you have managed to leave the old dispute behind, but if not, you would not have solved my puzzle. Please remember me by not losing each other again. Life is too short for holding grudges

Yours, Klaus”.

Maybe it was because it was way past midnight, maybe it was the joy of seeing each other again, but this message from Klaus, which we had found in the Christmas ornaments years after his death, really touched my heart.

Anne wiped a tear from her eye and Lara didn’t even mock her.

“How did he even get the cubes in there?” I asked myself. Or not only myself.

“Of course, go ahead and ruin the mood,” Lara accused me.

At least Helga took my side. “Don’t you want to know?”

Anne and Lara looked at us, puzzled. “He never told you that?”

“No, he didn’t,” said Lisa, almost a little offended.

“Well, he told us years ago, when he was just back from Mexico,” began Anne.

“Which had happened often,” said Lara.

Uncle Klaus had really liked Mexico as a travel destination, but not for living.

“He learned the trick from an old glassblower,” Anne began.

“He’d hardly have learned it from a fruit grower,” Helga interjected impatiently.

“Patience, I’m getting there! You need to have a lot of skill, Uncle Klaus said. First you make a normal sphere and then, while the glass is still malleable, you cut off one half. You insert the struts and the cubes into the remaining half. Then you heat up the edge again and put the two halves back together.”

“And that works?” I asked.

“It seems so,” said Anne, “otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here now.” And she was probably right. The weekend was over far too quickly. We agreed to meet up at least once a year, and not just to fulfill Uncle Klaus’s last wish. And for our first Christmas get-together, Helga brought everyone a copy of “Mathias Sandorf” by Jules Verne. I even read it.

Well, at least I read half of it. Lisa told me the rest.

Not all of our parents wanted to believe that Uncle Klaus’s supposed treasure was not made of riches from his many travels, but of something old-fashioned like reconciliation.

But Aunt Hanna and Uncle Peter sometimes accompanied Helga, especially when our parents were there, when we met up around Christmas: Anne, Helga, Lara, Lisa and me – the treasure hunters.

As time went on, some of us brought our better halves to the meetings, and a little later our own children. And they roll their eyes every time we tell them the story of how we found each other again, with the help of whom we now smilingly call our “Uncle Santa Klaus”.

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