Chapter 67: Hannover Visit
The bus shuddered to a halt in the Hannover terminal, a concrete expanse smelling of diesel and damp wool. Yvonne gathered their single overnight bag while Victoria, unusually still, stared out the grimy window at the lattice of platforms and queuing taxis. Hans, wedged between their legs on the floor, let out a soft whine, his stumpy tail thumping against the worn seat fabric.
“He remembers,” Yvonne said, scratching the terrier’s rough head. “Last time he was here, Mum fed him an entire Bratwurst under the table.”
“A strategic error in canine diplomacy,” Victoria murmured, but her voice lacked its usual edge. She adjusted her thin-framed glasses, a nervous gesture Yvonne had come to recognize.They stepped down into the biting air. The terminal buzzed with weekend travelers, a chorus of rolling suitcases and fragmented conversations. And there, leaning against a pea-green Opel Kadett so rusted it seemed to bleed into the gray pavement, was Robin. His deflated mohawk was a burst of faded copper against the monotone scene, his familiar jeans jacket plastered with peeling band logos. He spotted them immediately, a wide, crooked-toothed grin splitting his freckled face.“The lovebirds have landed!” he called, pushing off the car. He stomped over, the rings on his fingers catching the weak light, and wrapped Yvonne in a bear hug that smelled of cigarette smoke and old leather.“Schwesterherz. You look… exactly the same.”
“You look like you slept in a hedge,” Yvonne laughed into his shoulder, the tension in her own spine loosening.
Robin released her and turned to Victoria. For a beat, he just looked at her, his head tilted, the playful grin softening into something more genuine.“And you,” he said, his voice dropping. “You’re actually here.In the flesh. In Hannover.” He extended a hand, then seemed to think better of it and opened his arms.“Come here, corporate takeover. Family discount hug.”
Victoria hesitated, a flicker of surprise in her eyes, before stepping into the embrace. It was brief, but Robin patted her back firmly.“Good to see you, Vic.For real. The car’s a shithole, but it runs. Mostly.”
The Kadett’s interior was a museum of Robin’s life. Crumpled music magazines, empty coffee cups, a lone drumstick rolling on the floor. The engine coughed to life with a sound like gravel in a tin can.“Don’t mind the fumes,” Robin said, rolling down his window. “It’s just character.”
He navigated out of the terminal, the car’s suspension groaning. Hans perched on Victoria’s lap, panting excitedly at the passing scenery. The urban starkness of Hannover gradually gave way to rows of suburban houses, each with neat, dormant gardens.
“So,” Robin said, catching Yvonne’s eye in the rearview mirror. “The ring.Let me see it properly.” He extended a hand backward between the seats as he drove. Yvonne obliged, placing her hand in his. He held it for a second, his gaze flicking between the road and her finger.“Solid,” he pronounced.“Not some tiny diamond nonsense. An emerald. Like a… a talisman.”
“It’s a symbol of growth,” Victoria said, the words coming out softer than intended.
“I know what it is,” Robin said, returning Yvonne’s hand. “Mum’s been talking about nothing else for days.She’s baked enough to feed the entire post-rock-neo-electro-punk scene. Dad’s been ‘calibrating’ the furniture. I think he reinforced the dining chairs.”
They pulled up to the pastel-blue house. The wild roses were skeletal tangles against the fence, the birdbath a frozen ceramic lily.The sagging porch swing moved gently in the wind. Before they could even unbuckle, the front door flew open.
Linda Weber stood there, wiping her hands on a floral apron, her face alight. Frank appeared behind her, his glasses perched on his forehead, a wooden mallet still in his hand. They were a portrait of eager, unguarded welcome.
The moment Yvonne opened the car door, the smell hit her: Kaffee und Zimt, woven through with the rich, yeasty scent of fresh Hefezopf.It was the smell of her childhood, of weekends and safety. Hans bounded out first, tearing across the frost-crusted lawn to Frank, who bent down to receive the dog’s enthusiastic licks with a quiet chuckle.“Meine Mädchen!” Linda cried, rushing forward. She embraced Yvonne fiercely, then turned to Victoria, her eyes instantly glistening. She didn’t hug her immediately. Instead, she took both of Victoria’s hands in her own, her grip warm and strong from decades of piano keys. She looked at Victoria’s face, then down at their joined hands, her thumbs brushing Victoria’s knuckles.
“Victoria,” Linda said, her voice thick.“You brought our Yvonne home to us. With this.” She gently tapped the emerald on Yvonne’s ring finger. “Thank you.”
It was the wrong logic, and the right feeling.Victoria, visibly unprepared for the gratitude, swallowed. “It was… the only option,” she managed, her usual fluency abandoning her.
Frank approached, setting his mallet carefully on the porch step. He shook Victoria’s hand with a firm, precise watchmaker’s grip.“Good journey? Robin’s car didn’t poison you?”
“It was an experience in robust engineering,” Victoria replied, finding her footing with a small smile.
“Come in, come in, you’re letting the winter in!” Linda herded them toward the door. The hallway was, as promised, dominated by a new, lopsided console table. Frank watched Victoria’s eyes assess it.“It’s spirit-level resistant,” he explained proudly. “It has a soul.”
The house was a warm clutter of books, sheet music, and Frank’s woodworking projects—some functional, many perplexingly artistic. The kitchen table groaned under Linda’s spread: cakes, plaited bread, little sandwiches cut into precise triangles.
As they settled, Robin making coffee, Linda kept touching Yvonne’s shoulder or arm, as if to confirm her presence. Frank asked Victoria thoughtful, technical questions about retrofitting Berlin’s old buildings, listening intently to her answers about thermal breaks and heritage facade regulations.Yvonne watched Victoria slowly unbend. She saw her notice the way Linda hummed when she puttered, the way Frank’s eyes crinkled when he looked at his wife. Victoria was conducting her due diligence, but the data was sensory, emotional—the curl of steam from a china cup, the comforting weight of Hans asleep on her feet, the sound of Robin banging cupboard doors in search of the “good” biscuits.
Later, after the cake had been demolished and the stories of the café’s regulars shared, Frank gestured to Victoria. “Come.I’ll show you the workshop. The scene of the crimes.”
The garden workshop was a frozen cave smelling of pine resin and machine oil. Projects in various states of completion hung from the rafters.Frank pointed to a simple, well-made birdhouse.“Yvonne’s first. She was ten.Hammered her thumb blue, never complained.” He ran a finger along its edge. “She was always patient with the making.Not like me. Impatient for the finished thing.”
Victoria stood in the cold space, surrounded by the physical evidence of Yvonne’s history. She understood then what Frank was giving her: not just a tour, but context.
Back inside, Linda cornered Yvonne by the sink. “She’s watching,” Linda whispered, nodding toward Victoria in the living room, who was examining a framed family photo. “She’s learning the map of you.Of us.” She squeezed Yvonne’s hand. “It’s a good map. A little messy in places, but reliable.”
The warmth of the kitchen wrapped around them as they gathered at the sturdy oak table, its surface scarred from decades of family meals. Linda carried over a steaming ceramic dish of Kasseler mit Sauerkraut, its savory, smoky scent layering over the sweet remnants of cake. Frank poured glasses of a local Riesling, the pale liquid catching the low light from the pendant lamp above.
For a while, there was only the comfortable sound of cutlery on plates and Hans snuffling hopefully beneath the table. Then Frank cleared his throat, setting his fork down with precise alignment.“So,” he began, his gaze bouncing between Yvonne and Victoria. “A wedding. Have you… placed a pin in the map yet?”
Yvonne glanced at Victoria, who gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug.“We’ve only just gotten used to the rings,” Yvonne said, a soft laugh in her voice. “The map is still a bit blank.”
“But there are practicalities,” Linda added, leaning forward with earnest interest. “The venue. Is it to be here? Or in Berlin? The guest list must be a puzzle.”
“A joyful puzzle,” Frank amended, though his brow was furrowed in genuine concentration. “But with structural considerations. My sister’s knees, for instance, do not agree with train travel.”
Linda nodded, tapping her chin. “And the… the ceremony itself.” She gestured vaguely with her wine glass. “The attire. It’s a lovely new world. Do you both find dresses? Or perhaps suits? Could you switch halfway through? A symbolic transformation.”
The question hung in the air, born of pure logistical curiosity and a complete lack of lexicon. Frank nodded along, mentally picturing the diagram. Victoria’s lips twitched. Yvonne blinked, opening her mouth to formulate a response.
Robin let out a sudden, sharp laugh, a sound like a dropped drumstick. “Mum. Dad. You’re constructing a furniture layout for people.” He shook his head, his mohawk swaying. “They’ll wear whatever the hell they want. Probably something that doesn’t itch.”
A flush crept up Linda’s neck. “We only ask because we don’t know! It’s not like we have a book for this.”
“It’s alright,” Victoria said, her tone smooth, placing her hand over Yvonne’s on the table. “We don’t have the book either. We’re drafting it as we go.” She squeezed Yvonne’s fingers. “The truth is, we’ve discussed scale, not style. Something small. Very small.”
Yvonne felt the confession leave her, a quiet relief. “Getting everyone from across Germany to Berlin… the aunts, the uncles… it’s a military campaign. And expensive for them.”
“And my lot,” Victoria continued, her voice dropping a degree. “The grumblers from my British side would require separate, soundproofed quarters. The diplomatic strain might shatter the EU.”
Frank chuckled, but his eyes were soft with understanding. “A small gathering, then. Here, perhaps? The garden in summer could hold a handful of souls.”
The simplicity of the image—their familiar, overgrown garden, a few chairs, the people who truly mattered—settled over the table. Linda’s eyes grew misty again, not with worry, but with a sudden, vivid possibility. “I could make the cake,” she said softly, as if it were a secret. “Just a small one.”
Outside, the Hannover night deepened, pressing against the warm windows.
Outside, the Hannover night deepened, pressing against the warm windows. The remains of the meal settled into a contented silence, broken only by the clink of Frank gathering plates. Linda smiled, her gaze drifting to the large, dusty television cabinet in the corner of the living room. “You know,” she said, her voice softening with reminiscence, “it has been so long since we looked back. The old tapes are right there.”
Frank brightened, drying his hands on a checkered towel. “The summer at the Baltic! Yvonne, you were obsessed with that gray jellyfish. You tried to nurse it back to health in a bucket.”
A cold dread trickled down Yvonne’s spine. She adjusted her red-framed glasses, a flush heating her freckled cheeks. “That bucket had a very tragic leak,” she muttered, her mind racing for an exit. “And it’s getting late. We must be… tired from the travel. The bus vibrations.”
Victoria, however, leaned forward, her elbows on the table. Her dark eyes held a spark of utter fascination. “Jellyfish rehabilitation. This is foundational data I lack.” Her tone was low, a confessional murmur meant only for Yvonne. “I want to see the tiny architect. I want to see the bucket.”
“See?” Linda said, already moving toward the cabinet. “Victoria is interested! It will be fun. You in your little raincoat, singing those off-key songs for the camera.” She bent down, opening the wooden doors to reveal stacks of VHS tapes in cracked plastic cases.
Yvonne felt the walls of her childhood home subtly shrink. The cozy warmth turned stifling. Images assaulted her: a pudgy, bespectacled child missing a front tooth, wailing over a dropped ice cream cone; awkward school plays where she’d played a convincingly miserable tree. “Mum, really,” she pleaded, her voice tight. “It’s… it’s a kind of torture. For the viewer, I mean. The camera work is all shaky. Dad’s thumb was over the lens for half of 1994.”
Frank chuckled, slotting a tape into the whirring machine. “That was artistic emphasis.”
The television screen flickered to life with a bloom of static snow, then resolved into brilliant, over-saturated color. There was the blue pastel siding of this very house, younger, less peeled. A figure filled the frame—a girl of about seven, with wild ginger braids and round glasses, solemnly pouring seawater from a plastic jug into a sandcastle moat. The audio crackled with Frank’s voice behind the camera: “And here is Dr. Weber, performing vital marine surgery.”
Yvonne wanted the worn armchair to swallow her whole. She slid down slightly, her strong hands gripping the fabric. Victoria, meanwhile, was transfixed, a soft, utterly charmed smile on her lips. She reached over and laced her fingers with Yvonne’s, giving a squeeze that said I adore every pixel of this.
“This is anthropological gold,” Victoria whispered.
“It’s a war crime,” Yvonne whispered back, her mortification complete as her younger self on screen began a passionate, entirely unintelligible speech to the unresponsive jellyfish.
Just as Frank located the remote to fast-forward to “the good zoo trip,” the back door slammed. Robin stomped in, shedding his jacket and bringing a burst of cold night air with him. He took in the scene in one glance: his parents on the sofa, leaning forward; Victoria’s rapt expression; his sister’s pained, half-slumped posture of despair.
“Oh, god,” he groaned, dramatically clutching his heart. “The Archive of Eternal Shame is open for business. Run. While you still can.”
“Robin, be quiet,” Linda chided, but she was smiling. “This is family history.”
“It’s a hostage situation,” Robin corrected, striding into the center of the room. He pointed a decisive finger at Yvonne and Victoria. “You two. Up. I’m commandeering you. You have not lived until you’ve seen Hannover after dark with a proper guide.”
Yvonne seized the lifeline with both hands. “Yes. Clubbing. We should go.” She stood up so quickly her glasses slipped.
Victoria, with evident regret, tore her eyes from the screen where a tiny Yvonne was now stubbornly trying to fit a beach ball under her sweater. “Clubbing?” she asked, the word foreign in the cozy room.
“Cultural immersion,” Robin declared, grabbing their coats from the rack. “The band is doing a warm-up at Kellerkind. It’s a basement. The beer is cheap, the music is loud, and there is exactly zero documentary footage of anyone’s juvenile marine biology failures. Come on.”
Frank sighed, clicking off the television. The screen shrunk to a piercing white dot and died. “You will keep them out of trouble, Robin?”
“I am the trouble, Papa,” Robin said, grinning his crooked grin. “But the good kind. The kind that gives you stories. Hans!” The dog lifted his head from his paws. “You’re on guard duty. Protect Oma and Opa from boredom.” Hans thumped his tail, content to stay in the warm nest of blankets.
Linda stood, fussing with Victoria’s scarf as she helped her into her coat. “Be careful. And have fun.” She kissed Yvonne’s cheek. “My grown-up daughter. Out on the town.”
The night outside was a shock of frozen, silent black after the warm, yellow-lit house. Robin’s Kadett coughed awake, its headlights cutting through the suburban gloom. He drove with a chaotic confidence, away from the tidy fences and into the compressed, graffitied heart of the city’s nightlife.
“Kellerkind,” Robin announced, parallel parking with a jarring bump of the curb. The entrance was a single, unmarked door below street level, a muffled, rhythmic thump emanating from beneath it. “It means ‘basement child’. Apt.”
The descent down the steep concrete stairs was a journey into another world. The smell hit first: stale beer, ancient damp stone, and the electric tang of amplifier tubes. The sound followed, a physical pressure of drum and bass that vibrated in their teeth. The space was long and low-ceilinged, choked with a hazy glow from red and blue stage lights.
A lanky figure with a shaved head and a bass guitar strapped low waved from the corner. “Robin! You are late! We are already acoustically warmed!”
“My public awaits!” Robin yelled back, forging a path through the sparse, early crowd. He dragged Yvonne and Victoria to a sticky round table near the back. “This is Klara,” he said, pointing to the bassist. “And that scowling god over there is Benno on drums. We are Tote Schnecken. The dead snails. It’s metaphorical.”
Benno, a large man with a formidable beard, gave a single, solemn nod and clicked his drumsticks four times. The sound that erupted was not music as Victoria understood it. It was a layered, furious landscape of distortion, a thrashing, melodic noise where Robin’s yelping vocal fought its way through the storm. It was chaotic, passionate, and utterly, compellingly alive.
Yvonne watched her brother transform. On stage, his playful vanity hardened into a fierce, focused intensity. She felt Victoria’s hand find hers under the table, their fingers locking together in the shared, overwhelming sensory rush. Victoria leaned close, her lips brushing Yvonne’s ear to be heard. “He’s actually brilliant!” she shouted.
“He’s a menace!” Yvonne shouted back, her earlier mortification washed away by a surge of protective pride.
The set was a short, sweaty, glorious barrage. After the final feedback scream died, Robin bounded over, dripping and grinning. “See? No home videos. Only the present, screaming into the void.” He swigged from a bottle of water. “But this?” He gestured at the dank basement. “This is just the appetizer.”
He led them back out into the shocking quiet of the street, the cold air a balm. They walked, their footsteps echoing, turning down narrower alleys until they arrived at a bar called Zum Spalt. It was the antithesis of the basement: warmly lit, wood-paneled, filled with the gentle clatter of dice cups and quiet conversation.
“This,” Robin announced, “is where the real artists go. After.”
He procured a booth in the back. Victoria, seeing the well-stocked back bar, felt a familiar professional curiosity stir. When a waiter came, she bypassed the menu. “A Kingston Negroni,” she said. “Campari, sweet vermouth, and Smith & Cross rum. Stirred, with an orange twist.”
The waiter, an older man with a impressive mustache, raised an eyebrow, then nodded with approval. “You know your spirits.”
“It was a past life,” she said, smiling.
Yvonne ordered a simple Berliner Weiße, the tangy wheat beer a taste of home. Robin got a bottle of cheap pilsner. They sat, the adrenaline from the club slowly ebbing, replaced by a comfortable, shared exhaustion.
“You were great up there, Robin,” Yvonne said, meaning it.
“We are a niche,” he conceded, peeling the label from his bottle. “But a vital one. Unlike certain jellyfish.” He winked.
The drinks arrived. Victoria’s cocktail was a deep, aromatic amber. She took a sip, closed her eyes for a second. “Perfect.”
For a while, they simply existed in the booth’s cocoon. Yvonne watched Victoria, saw the sleek consultant shed away entirely, leaving just a woman pleasantly adrift in the unfamiliar, guided by her brother’s chaotic love. She felt a profound, settled gratitude for this bridge between her worlds.
Robin eventually slammed his empty bottle down. “One more stop. The essential one. For perspective.”
The final destination was not a bar or club, but a bridge. The Leine River stretched below them, a black ribbon scattered with the shattered reflections of streetlights. The city sounds were distant here, a muted hum. The cold was sharp and clean.
“This is it,” Robin said, his breath pluming in the air. “Hannover at night. Not just the noise. The quiet bits in between.” He leaned on the railing, looking out. “It’s not Berlin. It’s not glamorous. But it’s where you’re from.” He glanced at Yvonne. “Where we’re from. Good to remember the shape of it, sometimes.”
They stood there in silence, the three of them, looking at the dark water and the sleeping city beyond. Yvonne felt Victoria shift beside her, then slide an arm around her waist, pulling her close against the winter chill. The emerald on her finger caught a sliver of light from a distant lamp.
Robin lit a cigarette, the match flaring briefly in his cupped hands. “So,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “You’ll get married. Probably in the garden. It’ll be small. It’ll be right.” He took a drag, exhaling smoke into the void. “And I’ll play something. Not with the band. Something acoustic. And terribly sentimental.”
Yvonne’s throat tightened. She just nodded, leaning her head against Victoria’s shoulder.
“Good,” Robin said, stomping out the cigarette. “Now I’m freezing. Let’s go back and rescue Hans from Dad’s woodworking theories.” He turned, but not before clapping a hand on Victoria’s back. “You passed, by the way. The interrogation was gentle this time. Wait until Oma Gerta gets involved.”
He led the way back to the car, his boots crunching on the frost. Victoria held Yvonne back for just a moment on the bridge. She didn’t speak. She just turned Yvonne to face her and kissed her, there in the cold dark over the silent river, a kiss that tasted of rum and oranges and a future written not on a map, but in the beating of two hearts, finally, completely, home.