After Maria and Rachel had left to drive northward, David spent the remainder of Friday morning and into the early afternoon poring over the documents in the dossier and discussing them in German with Bethia. She didn't know the details of many of the items, but there were some she remembered with fondness.

"This bound portfolio of engineering drawings." She passed it to David. "We found it in an old bookstore in Zürich about five years ago. He was so excited. It's a collection of working drawings for the big viaducts on the Sauschwänzlebahn."

He read the title, Die Wutachtalbahn - 1890. "That's before the line was completed. This looks like something an engineering company would have had printed to show their current projects and to use for marketing their services."

"This map," Bethia said, as she pulled out a large folded sheet. "This shows why it's compared to a pigtail – all the switchbacks, and there's a spiral tunnel here that does a circle and a quarter. Look at all the twists. This section takes twenty-two kilometres of track to go just over six kilometres distance."

"You said the other day that the road goes back and forth under the bridges and viaducts."

"Yes, at times it follows beside the tracks, but it often winds into the valleys, under the viaducts and up the other side. The roads don't need to maintain the gentle grades and curves of the rails."

"How far is it from here to the start of the twists?"

"Can't be more than twenty kilometres. Aaron and I went there often to gather juniper boughs loaded with berries. The fields through there are covered with juniper shrubs, and one of my secrets in making Klettgauschinken is the juniper smoke. Now I have Manfred cut a load of boughs every couple of weeks on his way back from Donaueschingen."

"We'll lose that source next week. We'll have to go and get some for you. It'll give me a good opportunity to study the railway engineering."

"Here! Look at this. This is my favourite." She pulled a large colourised photo from its envelope. "We found it in the same shop. It's an image of one of the bridges in the Hell Valley. It has information stamped on the back."

He studied the large photo for a long while. It showed a train steaming across a tall curved trestle bridge standing on three slender masonry towers in a deep gorge. A stunningly beautiful picture. He flipped it over and read the stamped imprint:

    Photoglob AG, Zürich Switzerland 
          Höllentalbahn beim Viadukt 
  über die Ravennaschlucht um 1900

A pencilled note in the corner gave the particulars: Höhe 37m, Länge 144m, Kurvenradius 240m. He turned the photograph over again and stared at the image. This is too beautiful to destroy. There must be others.

As he stared at it, Bethia passed him another photograph. "This is the same bridge, but from the valley and not as pretty, and here is a sheet of engineering drawings of the bridge; Aaron has several, but I think this one shows it best."

"I'm astounded by this archive. There's such a wealth of information here. This must have taken a lifetime to amass."

"Aaron started as an engineer, and he helped design many of the bridges of both the Sauschwänzlebahn and the Höllentalbahn. He left it when his parents needed help with the slaughterhouse."

"Did he ever return to engineering?"

"He tried a few times, but his parents' health deteriorated rapidly, so he poured himself into re-engineering the slaughterhouse to feed his engineering passion. Gradually, he grew to like working at his own pace, rather than that of his engineering partners, so he sold his shares back to the firm."

David examined a technical drawing of the bridge. "This is a magnificent archive. He must have been very driven to assemble such a collection."

"It was his replacement for bridge building. He made it his other passion – his hobby. He was always searching, always looking for more, and he had many searching for him."

"Rachel said Edom has a collection. Did he know about it?"

"I'm sure he didn't. If he had, then ten years wouldn't have passed since we had last seen them."

David continued in awe through the carefully organised archive, sometimes discussing items with Bethia, at other times simply carrying on a conversation so she could help him polish his German grammar and add to his vocabulary.

Bethia got up from time to time to respond to the dingle of the bell as the shop door opened with a slow but steady flow of customers. David remained at the table, poring over the drawings and photographs and compiling a list of notes for himself, as well as jotting down questions to ask her when she returned.

"This series of photographs," he asked her after another customer had left, "were these shot by Aaron? I see you in a few of them."

"That was one of our juniper trips, and he was trying his new camera. He loved the variety of lines that the bridges described from different places. He was fascinated with shapes, angles, curves ... This one – he played with the light contrast on the girders. Here, another and another. This whole group is playing with light."

"That's a lot of pictures."

"These are only the ones he printed. He has so many negatives packed in boxes in the darkroom, so many of them unprinted."

The clock cuckooed, and David glanced at his watch to confirm 13:00. He packed the archive back into its case, and they paused for lunch, continuing to speak in German.

"You have a strong grasp of the language," Bethia commented as she sliced some sausage, cheese and bread. "And your accent is improving. But with so many different accents and dialects in Germany, particularly along the southern borders, you'll soon pass unnoticed down here."

"A few more weeks with Maria should polish it ... My God! Tante, I miss her. I've not before had feelings like this. So confusing. I don't know what's going on inside."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty. I'll be twenty-one in September."

"Oh, yes, the 1893 mountain blizzard," she said with a chuckle. "That's such a delightful story. Twenty is young, David, and considering you've spent much of your last five years seeking solitude, you're inexperienced with relationships. You've not allowed yourself to be close to anyone until now. More the point, you've not allowed anyone close to you."

"I guess I never saw any need to. I could always find a girl, a woman, when I wanted and then move on. Never saw a need for anything closer."

"But there is a need, David. There's a strong need for loving companionship. It's a natural thing. It's part of the design. The past two weeks, as you traversed the mountains to here, a very close companionship was forced on you by the intensity of your situation. It was natural that strong feelings developed between you and Maria. Strong feelings far beyond the physical."

"There was an immediate strong physical attraction to her the first time I saw her."

"Maria told me she was immediately attracted to you, and the intensity of attraction increased every time she approached your table. I'm sure she sensed your interest."

"But it started with physical attraction to each other."

"Yes, that's what got you both aroused. Then, the magic of nature's design took over. You physically united."

"That's not been unusual for me. But I've always moved on."

"This time, circumstances held you together, prevented you from moving on. Your physical union became a spiritual one. Your souls united, and now your minds are thinking as one."

"Looking back on Mamère and Dad in the blizzard ..." He paused and wrinkled his face in a huge smile. "Their close companionship was enforced. They had likely been attracted to each other before the storm."

"The physical attraction is important. It initiates the relationship, but it's the deeper layers that hold it together, that allow it to grow, to blossom into something much bigger than both of you."

After lunch, David helped Bethia set a fire in the smoker through the doors in the courtyard. While waiting for the embers to become well-established, he helped her carry brined hams and skeins of sausages to the deep shelves along the back wall of the kitchen, beneath the doors to the smoking racks.

"These we put on the upper racks," she said, pointing to the top set of doors and unfolding the broad set of steps from the wall above the shelves.

"Did Aaron design and build all this? There are so many ingenious designs here."

"It became his passion to replace his designing bridges."

After dinner they removed the lightly smoked hams and carried them to the chilled case in the deli, ready for morning customers. "We'll leave the sausages on the racks overnight as the fire dies."

They continued a rambling conversation in German until the clock cuckooed ten, when Bethia said, "It's so good having you here, but I need longer sleep these years. I'll see you in the morning."

He rose as she did, and they shared a long, warm hug. "Love you, Tante. Pleasant dreams."

Upstairs, undressed and refreshed, he headed from the bathroom to the bed. Strange being alone again. Many years alone and I never felt it. What a huge impact from only two weeks of togetherness. I feel there's a piece of me missing – I've never missed anyone so intensely – I guess I've never allowed myself to feel deeply for anyone.

David sensed her aroma as he rolled the duvet aside, and he shuddered as he breathed it in. Then he returned to the bathroom to get a washcloth. Back at the bed, he lay on his back with the washcloth on his chest as he allowed his mind to gently caress the images of Maria that filled his imagination. He floated on warm memories as he breathed the intoxicating traces of her in the sheets and pillows. It was a quick session; he simply needed to clear his mind and relieve the ache.

My balls feel better, but that did nothing to relieve the ache in my soul, nothing to ease the loneliness. This is so strange, so foreign. I've not been here before.