Read The Blackberry Bush for Free Online

or break things open. He always waits until the time is right. He likes working with a tailwind, not a headwind.
    I promise, Kati, as soon as I find the key, he has always told her .
    So now he has found the key. This afternoon they will open the lock and solve the mystery together.
    Kati will soon come home from school, and they will have their customary, daily tea-and-debrief session at the kitchen table, looking out over the rolling farm fields to the west and beyond the blackberry thicket defining the boundary between their back garden and the cultivated fields behind the family home.
    The Rhine River cuts a deep canyon through this rolling farmland region, and wine grapes are grown on the steep hillsides leading down to the river.
    Opa Harald’s father, somewhat agitated for whatever reason, had given Harald the key to the chest many years ago and made him swear he wouldn’t open it until after Harald’s mother passed away. The years passed, and Harald had misplaced the key, probably during the move up the hill into the home Harald had built for the family.
    He had been daydreaming yesterday morning at sunrise when a vision came to him....
    He was very young in the dream, maybe eighteen. He and a fiery-eyed, fine-featured girl of perhaps ten years of age were sitting on canvas stools in front of a tent. Postcards were floating toward them, originating from behind them. The cards were emerging from a cabin window deep in the woods, then floating in a single-file line through the air on a gentle breath of wind. They would pick them out of the air in front of them and read them together.
    Some of the postcards had scenes from California. Some seemed older and had vintage European photos and stamps.
    All the messages they pulled out of the floating postcard row were handwritten and addressed to both of them:
    You kept your promise. Thank you.
—Your father, Walter
    God inside of me loves to dance.
—Janine
    You know the girl who is reading these with you, but you’ve never met her.
—Nellie
    It’s always the right time to do the right thing.
—Ruud
    It must be possible to make cartwheels last forever.
—Joshua
    I am so very sorry. So very sorry.
—Nellie
    Pay attention to the direction of the river.
—Saahir
    The key to my father’s sea chest is in the bottom left drawer in a small box in my workshop, where I put it years ago.
    This last one was in Harald’s own handwriting .
    Funny thing, though. Each postcard vanished into thin air as soon as the next one was grasped....
    The whistle of the teakettle shatters Harald’s delicate memory of yesterday’s vision.
    Who are Janine, Nellie, Ruud, Joshua, and the others? The answers will come, Harald knows, as they always do, in time. Kati will be home shortly.
    As Harald waits for the tea to steep, he feels a sense of deep thankfulness that the visions and dreams are returning.
    When Harald was a child, the visions had been as plentiful as crisp autumn leaves raked up into big piles.
    Can it have something to do with the fact that fall is around the corner again? Harald thinks. The air is already carrying a certain coolness about it.
    Why do we lose touch, in the middle of our lives, with visions and dreams? Harald muses. Well, at least they are starting to come back. Perhaps it is because, in the middle of our lives, we work too hard and imagine too little.
    He sighs. Dreams and visions are fragile and subtle things. The harsh midday sun of anxiety and stress can burn them out entirely. They need gentle cultivation.
    That’s why, Harald is convinced, it has taken him so long to remember where he’d put the key. But today, sure enough, the antique key that he again flips over and over with his fingers on the table was found exactly where the postcard said it would be. Harald is tempted to open it first without Kati, just to take a peek, but he musters all the discipline he can to wait for her. Harald has always been good at patience.
    Last evening, when he kissed