Chapter 3

— 3 —

“This person in the photo is me,” said the young man surnamed Muller. “It’s an old ID photo, taken when I was about fifteen. But the person you met at the train station definitely wasn’t me. I…”

He paused, hesitating, as if struggling to find the right words.

Franz abruptly said, “Excuse me, may I see that photo?”

He spoke in German. Mera turned to look at him in surprise. The young man silently handed over the small red leather wallet in his hand.

Franz stared at the photo tucked inside the transparent sleeve: a boy with soft brown hair and amber eyes smiling shyly at him from behind the plastic. His heartbeat quickened even more, his throat dry and scratchy as if he had swallowed a mouthful of sand.

“…That’s me,” he said.

“The boy sleeping at the train station… the owner of that wallet… was me.”

He looked up at the brown-haired young man standing in front of him.

“My name is Franz Muller,” he said, his voice trembling slightly.

“—And that’s your name too, isn’t it?”

— 4 —

“I moved to Vejle with my parents when I was fifteen. A foreign country surrounded by unfamiliar faces. My Danish was terrible, and I couldn’t make friends at school. My classmates all seemed like strange people to me. Their reactions to things were completely different from those of the people I’d known growing up.

“After the first semester ended, I was absolutely miserable. I didn’t know what to do. The only hope seemed to be returning to Germany for university after finishing high school, but the days ahead stretched endlessly: three years felt like an eternity to a fifteen-year-old boy.

“That might have been the longest, dullest winter I’d ever experienced. Every day, I had nothing to do at home. The snow piled up thickly, making it impossible to go outside, and no one called me. The only things left were computer games or writing letters to my friends back in Germany. I wrote often; they replied rarely. I guessed they’d made new friends and found more entertaining ways to pass the time than writing to someone abroad.

“One day in February, I suddenly received a letter forwarded by Deutsche Post from my old address. The sender was an unfamiliar foreign address, but I tore it open eagerly anyway.

“It was a greeting card with just a few lines in English: ‘Dear Franz: At this time, we miss you especially, being so far from home. It must be very cold in Germany now? Uncle Jack and Aunt Sally wish you a happy fifteenth birthday, and a merry Christmas and New Year.’

“I closed the card, baffled: my birthday had passed over half a year ago, and I didn’t know any Uncle Jack or Aunt Sally. Then I took a closer look at the address on the envelope and realized the problem: it wasn’t meant for me. Though the name on the envelope was mine, the address was Weberplatz, not Weberstraße 15; I had one of the most common surnames and a totally ordinary first name. No doubt, this letter was intended for one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of my namesakes.

“After figuring this out, I turned the card over and over in my hands. I admit I did it purely out of boredom: the snow outside was feet deep, and I hadn’t left the house in days. I imagined myself a detective, like Sherlock Holmes, able to deduce a person’s character just by examining their hat:

“Franz Muller, fifteen years old, from America. Now living as a foreigner in Dusseldorf, Germany, and evidently planning to stay for a long time—since the card didn’t mention anything like ‘looking forward to seeing you soon’ or ‘when will you be back.’ His birthday was around Christmas. The senders were his uncle and aunt, but in this Christmas greeting card, they didn’t mention his parents or send ‘regards’ or anything. This likely meant he was there alone.

“After this deduction, which I was quite proud of, I couldn’t help but imagine what that boy, who shared my name and age, and perhaps my loneliness, was doing in his apartment on Weberplatz in Dusseldorf: maybe he was staring bored at the falling snow outside, just like me, perking up at the sound of the mailman, hoping the next moment would bring a letter from his distant homeland.

“That night, I placed the greeting card in a new envelope and addressed it to Franz Muller at Weberplatz. Then I did one more thing: I wrote him a letter.

“Now, I can’t remember at all what I wrote in that letter. I only recall drafting it over twenty times, writing until dawn… The next morning, I got up early, put on my snow boots, walked over an hour to the post office, and sent it by registered mail.”

The elevator was silent. Mera hesitantly asked, “So… the person you corresponded with… was it him?”

She glanced toward the other Franz Muller standing in the corner of the elevator. He seemed reluctant to meet her gaze: his light brown eyes lowered, fixed on the elevator floor.

Franz said, “Yes.”

He looked at the photo in his wallet.

“This photo, he sent it to me, after we’d exchanged nearly a year’s worth of letters, emails, and phone calls.” His fingers unconsciously brushed the thin, transparent sleeve, gently caressing the pale, handsome face of the boy, just as he had done many years before. “On the back, I wrote his middle name: Dominic. I always called him by that name.—And he called me Faye, the name only my parents used.”

Mera gasped, “So… what I stole was… your money.”

Franz smiled faintly. “Yes.” His smile carried a bitter edge.

Mera said awkwardly, “I hope… I didn’t cause you too much trouble. Was that 1,000 marks meant for something special?”

Franz shook his head.

“Not really,” he said slowly.

“I took that 1,000 marks because I had no other money. My parents didn’t give me much allowance, and buying a round-trip ticket from Vejle to Dusseldorf left me with almost nothing. That Grimm Brothers banknote was a confirmation gift from my grandfather, so I’d never exchanged it.”

“You went to Dusseldorf…” Mera mumbled. She seemed to partly understand, yet not fully.

“To meet him,” Franz replied.

“After corresponding for a year and a half, I suggested meeting in person, and Dominic agreed. We arranged to meet at Dusseldorf Station. I was so excited I barely slept the night before. That afternoon, while waiting for my connection in Flensburg, I dozed off without realizing it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mera said. Her blue eyes were nearly welling up with tears.

“Then… what did you do?”

“I realized my wallet was missing on the train, so I panicked and got off at a small station before the ticket inspector came.” Franz’s lips curled into a self-mocking smile.

“If it were me now, I’d know that in such a situation, asking for help isn’t shameful; it’s the wisest, most practical way out. But I was only sixteen then, and at that age, inexplicable pride and self-respect seemed more important than anything else in the world.

“It wasn’t until evening that I called Dominic from my phone to tell him something had come up and I couldn’t meet him. I didn’t want to admit how stupid I’d been, getting all my money stolen at the station and ending up penniless… His voice on the phone sounded strange—disappointed, yet indifferent. I wanted to talk more, but I only had a prepaid phone, and the international call ran out of credit after a few minutes.

“I met a kind truck driver at a gas station and hitched a ride home.”

Mera timidly asked, “Then… did you two ever meet later?”

Franz took a deep breath.

“No, we never met. After that day, I lost all contact with him. He stopped answering my calls, and the letters I sent were returned.”

He took a step forward, facing the young man directly. “I never understood,”

His chest rose and fell, his blue eyes burning with emotion. “We were such close friends. Even if I stood you up that one time, that wasn’t reason enough to cut me off.

“—Now tell me, why?”