A lone, lean figure, with one bony leg crossed rigidly over the other, sat outside of a small cafe in southern Bavaria. The peaceful, yet pitiless air nipped at the sharp features of his face—from the lines beneath his eyes to the bookends of his thin lips.
His dark hair had been swept to the side with as much precision as his cracked fingers could muster. There was little colour in the man, from his chalk-like complexion to the dusty grey shirt and trousers that had been worn longer than most social circles would consider acceptable.
The circular table beside him, painted with a dark shade of blue that had not stood the test of time, was adorned with a cup of coffee and an ash tray filled with the decayed remains of Henry Low’s cigarettes. Balanced in his hand was a novel that had captured the Englishman’s attention for the past few days like it had done in previous years. So much of his morning had been spent absorbed in to the world that its words had created, that his true purpose for being in this part of the continent had seemingly been forgotten for the mean time. His eyes would occasionally drift over the pages towards the backdrop of mountainous terrain, the worn slopes decorated with thick white icing, yet to experience the destructive touch of mankind and the recent war that had roared through the land. Thin streaks of winter dulled the pale blue sky, punctuated by an ellipses of travelling birds.
His last mouthful of coffee drained the cup dry, and the ceramic hit the table with a ting that seemed to flutter off for an adventure across the mountain tops.
Within seconds of the impact, the waitress had appeared next to Henry with the heavy kettle in her hand, while the other pinched at her hip. ‘Another cup?’
‘Please,’ he replied in German.
His cup filled to about four-fifths of the way up the aging ceramic, and as the final drop joined the rest, Henry's eyes lifted.
His curiosity was rewarded with the sight of a shy smile on the softest skin that he had had seen. Her gentle face surrounded by wild waves of auburn, somewhat tamed in to a short tail behind her. She'd told him her name was Fabienne.
‘What are you reading?’ She asked, peaking at the cover as she filled his cup.
‘Just something I picked up on my travels.’
'Oh? Do you travel a lot?'
'I do, yes. I'm never in one place for long.'
Fabienne's head tilted. 'Go anywhere nice?'
'Nowhere is as nice as Bavaria.'
'I wouldn't know.'
'You don't travel?' He asked.
'No.'
'That's a shame.'
Her petite frame shrugged an inch. 'You say that, but where would I go?'
'Somewhere warm?'
'I'm so used to the cold I'd probably melt.'
The cigarette returned briefly to Henry's lips. 'What about somewhere colder?'
'Like where?'
'Alaska?'
'What is there in Alaska?'
'Snow.'
'What else?'
It was the Englishman's turn for his shoulders to jump. 'More snow.'
'You're not really selling this travelling thing, are you?'
'Sometimes people don't have a choice but to travel.' He huffed through a smoke-filled sigh.
'And why do you travel?'
Henry smirked as a finger danced on top of the small rod in his hand as it rained in to the tray. 'You're a curious girl, you know that?'
'I like to take an interest in my customers. Especially the interesting ones.'
'What makes me interesting?'
'Well for one, you say a lot without actually saying anything. There's something mysterious about you.'
Henry shuffled on his seat and peered over his shoulder in to the darkness of the empty cafe. 'I'm on a business trip.'
'What kind of business do you do?'
The corner of the Englishman's lips turned up and withdrew in to his cheeks. 'Important business, of course. I'd be afraid of boring you with the trivial nature of it, my dear.'
'Top secret business?'
The cool air freshened the stale coffee that had been poured in to his cup, and as he brought it to his lips, he forced his smile to continue as the heat began to rip through his mouth. 'Well if you must know, I'm meeting a colleague here today.'
'To discuss this top secret business?'
'You could say that.'
Henry rose to his feet with a faint sigh and a final inhale of the stunted cigarette, the fizzled embers burning weakly at the end of the stick as it was put to rest in the tray. He decided to get a fresh one from the pack and placed it in to his mouth. His lips clenched down gently on the paper as he lumbered towards the wooden fence at few yards in front of him. Henry rested his hands on the wood, ignoring the small splinters that pricked his palms. Was that a shadow he could see on the path below, or his mind just filling in the blank?
The Englishman turned his attention back to the girl. 'Have you worked here long?'
'A year or two, it's my Uncle's place, though he's hardly here any more.' The young woman placed the heavy jug on to the tabletop. 'He was shot in the leg during the war. It never fully healed and the winters here make the pain worse. I look after the cafe most days.'
Henry nodded, 'I remember him. I used to come here a lot. I always wondered about his limp.'
'It's worse now.' Fabienne corrected a few rogue strands. 'Doctors say he might not be able to walk soon.'
'Shame. He was a good man.'
The waitress pinched down on her bottom lip. 'I wonder if he was a good man during the war.'
'War is filled with good men.'
'Are they really good men if they are killing each other?'
Henry smirked. 'They're good men to some people. Mostly to the ones they aren't shooting at.'
Fabienne shortened the distance between them. 'Did you fight in the war?'
'Me?' He shook his head. 'Nah. Too young.'
'Would you have if you could?'
Henry shrugged.
'Would you have been one of the good ones?'
'You saying you don't think I'm a good man?'
'Well.' Her eyes, as blue as the Bavarian backdrop, narrowed. 'Good men aren't usually running from their past.'
A wicked smirk formed, sealing in the beginnings of a chuckle. Her comment took him back to his early days on the continent. Skulking through the ghastly remains of war-wrecked Europe, shuffling through silent streets still haunted by the men who never returned, the rubble of homes and the memories buried beneath them. He'd waltzed through meadows and stumbled across paths. Lurked in the lush forests and crawled and crept through the smallest of gaps. Became lost in the trance of train journeys and anxious automobile rides.
Some places brought a sense of safety that most others didn't. Many came and went in a flash. The ones Henry was able to enjoy often brought brief relief in those rare quiet moments. This cafe in Bavaria had been one of those places—his favourite, in fact. A sort of sanctuary, blessed with beauty and blissful warmth that sheltered him from the shivers that the shadows behind him brought.
As his shoulders felt the moment approaching, Henry finally removed the dry cigarette from his mouth and tucked it back in to its bed. 'Good men don't like dragging people down with them.'
For a while, neither of them spoke. To each, the spell of silence differed in length as they pondered on their own thoughts.
A bird sang. A tree rustled. Gravel growled under the weight of something on the path below. Fabienne retreated from the sombre tale, tiptoeing back to the realities of her shift and retrieved her jug. Before she left to return to the depths of the cafe interior, her eyes caught the rugged cover of the book.
'This book looks older than I am.'
Henry turned, his eyes seemingly passing over her shoulder as his own felt the weight upon them finally drop. 'I must have read it seven or eight times.'
'Must be a good book if you can still keep reading it even though you know how it ends.'
Henry smirked at her and nodded to something else.
'What?' She asked, a hand on placed on her hip again.
'I've never actually read the final chapter.' The Englishman's tired legs shuffled in her direction, yet his feet, aching from years of running, continued past towards a different destination.
'You're kidding, right? Who reads a book that many times and never knows how it ends?'
Fabienne twirled and her brows dropped at the sudden sight of an automobile. Two men stood as still as statues next to it. One, in military uniform that looked far too big for the fresh-faced youth beneath it, clutched some kind of submachine gun. The other was hidden behind a trilby and trench coat.
Henry was relieved his colleague had finally arrived. They were two men from the same line of work -- one was the man who ran, the other was the man who chased. And Henry had decided it was time to let him win.
Before she could speak, Henry turned back to face her and placed his hands behind his back as the mystery man in the long coat retrieved a glimpse of metal from his pockets.
'Sometimes...' He smiled, a farewell to the fräulein and to the cafe, which had been the perfect place to spend the last day of the chase. 'It's always better if you get to choose how it ends.'