A Russian-American writer’s dream of revisiting her birthplace plunges her into a haunting journey through time, where she falls in love, faces moral dilemmas, and uncovers chilling secrets. Transported to a WWI-era military hospital, she encounters a compassionate doctor destined for darkness and a patient who will change the course of history. Torn between love and the weight of truth, she must decide whether to confront the past or protect the future, in a story that weaves romance, history, and the enduring power of choice.
A Russian-American writer’s dream of revisiting her birthplace plunges her into a haunting journey through time, where she falls in love, faces moral dilemmas, and uncovers chilling secrets. Transported to a WWI-era military hospital, she encounters a compassionate doctor destined for darkness and a patient who will change the course of history. Torn between love and the weight of truth, she must decide whether to confront the past or protect the future, in a story that weaves romance, history, and the enduring power of choice.
“A place where both soul and body could be destroyed.”
— Matthew 10:28
The entrancing castle-like buildings, battered by weather, strangulate in the embrace of creeping plants, holding darkness within, even on a sunny afternoon, and frightening visitors with shadows and winds whispers.
Lurking in the woodland’s gloom, the place groans and begs, sighing with inaudible echoes of the past and, in the submission to time, decays under siege by the elements and brazen vandalism.
Trees shudder, their restless branches quaking from the screams of the ill-fated souls who perished and were left to agonize in these crumbling palatial structures—their empty, ghostly network of hallways and befouled galleries and echoing rooms inhabited by ethereal silhouettes.
Some venturers who dared to tour Beelitz -Heilstätten claimed they heard voices and the subdued sounds coming from forgotten wards, as though the groaning spirits of the dead were trapped inside, unable to escape the place despite the absence of doors and windows. Others stated they discerned black shadows moving along its walls and tracking them from behind. Those who had the courage to visit these haunted ruins say that the hospital drains energy from living people and has a detrimental effect on the psyche.
Once upon a time, the buildings of incredible beauty, now derelict and desecrated by graffiti, reek of dread and melancholy. Lost in the unstoppable stream of time, all what remains are the ruins, a testimony to the transience of all things.
Uncanny, sometimes tragic incidents have been happening to uninvited guests. Beelitz -Heilstätten is not for the faint-hearted.
In times gone by, this place witnessed a battle of life and death. Today, no mouse steps into these forgotten wards with banging doors and broken windows, no rat scavenges for dead bodies.
They are long gone. Long, long gone.
But are they?
PART I
Beware of What You Want
Fall 2018
“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Schätzchen,” flows into my ears with the usual gentle softness of his lowered voice.
I linger to open my eyes, pleasantly entranced by that sweet dream I have, knowing that nothing bad can happen to me, that the new day will bring me only . . . can I call it happiness? A subtle smell reaches my nostrils. Not roses. Not lilies. I fail in my guessing, and the next moment, above the flowers, I see his darling warm brown eyes ringed by long dark lashes—I wish I had such. Ah-ha! That’s what he was yesterday whispering privately about with the guesthouse landlady’s daughter, the beautiful blonde in her late thirties. Obviously not what I imagined. I smirk. Didn’t I promise to myself to stop being jealous of younger women? Why am I always suspicious?
“Happy birthday.” Hans hands me a bouquet, the arrangement of snapdragons, asters, mini carnations, and hydrangeas, all in pink and purple hues, framed by fresh greens and sprigs of eucalyptus. How nice! He didn’t forget my favorite colors are pink and violet. The thought warms my heart. “Oh, Hans, they are so, so—”
The next instant, the bouquet is on the bedside table and his arms are around me. He nuzzles my neck, inhaling deeply, and freezes for a long moment like I am a flower, as if he is enjoying its fragrance.
“Hans,” I say, and stop, overwhelmed by a feeling. I like his name, even though it’s only a part of it. On the marriage certificate, he is Hans-Dietrich Dillhoff. We met—ah, who cares? I catch myself on the thought that I have never been so happy. So blissfully calm. So confident about my foreseeable future. He is different. Not like others . . . before.
For today only, I allowed myself to skip my morning exercises and, about thirty minutes later, we are heading to a breakfast room. The B&B occupies the smallest one of three buildings on the property, probably a mansion of a wealthy landowner in the past, surely built way before WWI. Its façade is carefully modernized; inside, it retains high vaulted ceilings, a wide staircase with wonderfully detailed ironwork, arched transom windows of all different sizes, and thick, fortress-like walls. They bring childhood memories of scary fairytales by the Brothers Grimm about castles and ghosts. I don’t see any ghosts now, unless it could be us—what a bizarre thought—who walk on unhurriedly along a corridor. We are heading toward the broad staircase and continue up one flight. We are
holding hands, the same as Serafima and Werter in my first published novel, The Cruel Romance. Ah, how I marvel at my name on the book’s cover every time it catches my eye in the bookcase! Yes, I brought the paperback with me to Vienna.
Yesterday, after we settled down in this cozy place near Beelitz, we went on a walk to find that street where the main characters of my novel lived. As we were strolling along Trebbiner Strasse, the culminating scene was playing out in my mind. I remember it by heart.
In 1992, after the final break-up of the Soviet Union, Werter went to Russia to find Serafima. Because of the love he felt for her and the sincere remorse he carried through all those years he won Serafima’s forgiveness and her heart. In 1994, they married. They settled down in the small town of Beelitz near Potsdam, about thirty miles from Berlin. When Vanechka, his wife Lena, and his children Anna and Kostya came to visit them in Germany, he and Werter played violin together.
Serafima died in December 2006. Werter followed her four months later.
Still, some people living on Trebbiner Strasse in Beelitz may remember a tall, slightly stooping old man and a tiny woman with snow-white, wild locks and amazing black eyes that blazed when she raised them at the man. He would never let her hand go.
Like my husband now. Not only now. No matter where we go together, he wants my hand in his. A warming sensation seizes me, and I brush against his thigh with mine, as if by accident.
He squeezes my wrist tightly, almost painfully, then halts. “Should we go back to the room?” A certain dreamy look comes into his eyes.
“In the evening.” I raise up onto my tiptoes to place a fleeting kiss on his cheek. “In the evening,” I assure him, mouthing the words, albeit there is not a soul around.
Moments later, we stride into a cozy breakfast room through the invitingly open double door and are greeted by the owner’s daughter. Emma is all smiles. She looks even more beautiful and younger. I think she is hardly over twenty-nine. A little worm of envy curls around my heart treacherously, intensified by a meaningful smile she exchanges with my husband.
“С днем рождения—Happy Birthday,” she says. Most likely, she must have figured out from my last name that I’m Russian, or perhaps Hans had told her. Moving toward a window, she motions to a little round table covered by a burgundy linen tablecloth with silver cutlery on its smooth surface. Ready to erupt in blossom, a lonely dark purple rose in a ceramic vase sits in the middle of the table.
Hans holds a chair for me. He is a gentleman. Aren’t they all while courting or when the marriage is still fresh? A nasty thought runs through my mind. But I don’t want to remember other—hmm—gentlemen. When I met Hans . . . By now, they, the others, are relegated to the past and inevitably forgotten; I think so, and such is my inclination. Yes, yes, yes. Hans is different.
In this seemingly sterile room with the vinyl grid-style windows of impossible streak-free shine, as if just polished, all is arranged in a perfect order: the counters with snacks, tea-and-coffee machines, pitchers with juices or milk, a wide assortment of breads in little baskets, a variety of salami and cheeses on platters. All these choices seem
mouthwatering. Not for me at this moment, though. I sense a knot in my stomach as if the next second I am to step onto a trapeze in a circus, and this would be my first appearance in front of the spectators frozen in anticipation.
His eyes on me, Hans says, “Help yourself.”
“I’m not really that hungry.” To avoid explaining my reluctance, I go to the display and put some salad leaves, green with whitish veins, on my plate. As I place it on the table, a smile stretches his lips. The grin and that glint in his eyes saying, Stop restricting yourself. You are perfectly shaped. Inwardly smiling, I take a long, deep breath. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
To stall for time, I take a sip of sparkling seltzer, unfold the napkin, and arrange it on my lap. My eyes catch a fine, embroidered lettering in old German Gästehaus—guesthouse. As I nibble on the lettuce leaves, crunchy as if only minutes ago from a garden bed, Emma puts in front of me a plate with a slightly steaming mass—a yellow, fluffy roll, soft and smooth in appearance. The queasiness in my stomach miraculously disappears, and the next moment I spear a piece with my fork and savor a bite of the finely chopped herbs in a French-style omelet. Buttery and creamy. Yummy. “Delicious.” I exhale and roll my eyes.
With a bemused smile playing on his face, Hans waits for me to finish. He is always ahead of me, eating hungrily, like my mother and grandmother. Why? I can’t explain. Hmm. Perhaps I can. Might their after-war years of starvation have been engraved in their psyche for the rest of their lives?
“Do you want some fruit?” he asks as I look at my emptied plate.
I nod. “Mango.”
He gets up and heads to the separate table with an assortment of fruit and pastries. He has a sweet tooth. The same as I. Now, though, it’s the last thing on my mind. With all my being, I am in that sweet moment when I’ll find myself in that place which is sacred to me. Heilstätten!
I half turn to look through the window. Threatening clouds cover the blackening sky. Today is special, and not even violent gales will spoil my mood. Still, why is that so? Yesterday, it was sunny, that kind of weather when your spirits are high—and mine were!—when you are ready to embrace whatever fate offers you. And it at last does!
After so many disappointments, all those cheating and lying with mutual hostility, I met the man with whom . . . well, not great flames of passion—what good did it do in my life—but a warm and quiet acceptance that Hans is the one with whom I’ll be happy. The realization of the dream of slow growing, steady burning coals of affection and mutual respect, to last till death do us part. And I mean it!
No matter how, today, I’m not drawn to think about Hans. About us. An unbridled impatience rises inside me. I want to be there. There! A hot wave passes through my body, and I pull the phone out of my handbag to check the time. 8:46 a.m. stares back at me.
Interrupting my musings, Emma appears with two flutes and a silver champagne bucket with a pink-wrapped bottle sticking out of it, labeled MOËT in black letters. “On the house.”
At our simultaneous nods of agreement, she uncorks the bottle with a pop and tops off the stem glasses with the bubbling liquid. “Happy birthday!” Her eyes fixed on me, shining as if it were her anniversary. With an all-understanding smile, she leaves us alone.
It looks like today we are the only visitors in this lovely boutique hotel. Absolute silence swathes us. The only sound interrupting it is the hiss of bubbles bursting. Or so it seems to me.
Hans takes the glass to his lips yet barely touches the sizzling liquid. I, enjoying the coolness of the thin stem of the glass between my thumb and point finger, empty it in one gulp and put out my hand for another portion.
“Schätzchen?—Darling?” Hans, who knows I am a stalwart of sobriety, stares at me.
“Ah! Only today.” My voice is a tad shaky from the excitement rising in my chest. Heilstätten! Heilstätten! Resembling a whisper from an invisible mouth, softly but insistently, in a steady rhythm in my head. I pretend not to notice his disapproving look.
Emma reappears with her inscrutable smile again, this time empty-handed. “Any plans for today?”
“My wife,” Hans says, glancing at me with his eyebrows creasing, “is determined to visit Heilstätten.”
“H-heil-stät-ten?” Her head jerks my way, her eyes widening, her gaze unfocused. After a long moment of delay, she says, “Have . . . a delightful time,” and, with slightly trembling hands, fills our glasses once more.
She takes a hesitant step from the table, then heads to the door, stops for an instant and half turns. Our gazes meet. A flicker of apprehension flashes across her face. I inwardly shrug. What do I care! But my heart seems to skip a beat, and for a moment, my vision blurs.
After Emma leaves, I drain my glass and hold it out. Hans fills it slowly, only halfway, careful not to spill. “It’ll be the third,” he says, then raises his eyes at me. We clink the flutes. His one-shoulder shrug, as though he thinks I made a mistake, and his furtive looks while I enjoy the champagne, are not lost on me.
“Schätzchen,” sounds with such tenderness, I melt, a wave of thankfulness taking me back to why we—I—am here. My head a little giddy, I get up and catch myself swaying. Am I tipsy? A long-forgotten feeling of light dizziness makes me giggly. “Ha-a-ans.” I try a playful grin. His arm takes me in an embrace and holds me even stronger when we walk down the stairs. Half-way down, he stumbles to a halt and mouths into my ear, “Maybe not today? Maybe tomorrow?”
“Today.” There must be something in my tone that tells him not to start—ah, again?—his unobtrusive, yet, in any case, mentoring, “I’m older. I have a longer life experience.”
Twenty minutes later, we are driving along that part of Germany that some time ago, from October 1949 to October 1990, was called the German Democratic Republic, or Eastern Germany, in short. There, in Rostock, on the Baltic Sea, I had friends, the SED party functionaries whom I have visited frequently. Besides, more than once, my work in the International Relations department in one of the governmental ministries in Moscow brought me to the GDR for negotiations with representatives of their industrial enterprises. Ah, all those visits! It felt the same as finding myself in a wonderland. That’s when I realized the Soviet Union was not the one. And only much later, after the GDR dissolved, I learned about the dark sides of life in the German communist paradise for some of the country’s people.
“Are you sure you want to go? The weather—” Hans looks at me with worry in his warm brown eyes, almost pleading, interrupting my train of thoughts.
“Yes,” I say it resolutely so as not to encourage him to repeat his attempt to talk me out of it. My desire to return to the place of my birth is close to fruition! Even if only for a day. Even if only for an hour.
I have had this obsession since I was a child. At the age of five, I learned from my parents that I was born in another country, a mysterious one, a dreamland! Fueled by illustrations of the children’s book my parents managed to smuggle from the GDR, The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales in German, I imagined my birthplace built up by old, enchanting castles on the mountains so high that the spires of their towers disappeared in the clouds; the people talked an unknown language, and their attire looked strange. Funny. In my immature mind, it all evoked wild imaginations, disturbing my night’s sleep, causing children’s fears. Since then, I have been accused of being overly sensitive.
In anticipation, I look through the window in front of me. No castles in sight—never having seen any while visiting the GDR, only in some parts of West Germany and Austria. The area we are driving along is far from being mountainous. Instead, a flat road to the right and to the left is bordered by tall pines, straight and rigid, like soldiers on guard. I bend forward and crane my neck to look up. The pallid light of the cloudy morning descends to the tops of the trees, not reaching the root-laced ground, and the sinister dark shadows hide behind their trunks.
I recall a scene from Valkyrie with Tom Cruise being driven in a car on his way to assassinate Hitler. I’m in the mood of reminiscence and lightly touch Hans’ hand on the wheel. “Most likely, that day my father drove along this very road, bringing my mom to the hospital in a bed of a military truck.” I feel a smile creep up my cheeks.
“In a truck?” I don’t see Hans’ countenance and yet recognize a disbelief in his voice.
“Yes, in the back of it, the open one, without even a tarpaulin. Mama told me he was insanely nervous that she might give birth to me before they reach the hospital, and that he constantly drummed on the roof of the cabin, urging the driver to speed up.”
I see a twitch of a frown on Hans’ face. In the past when I mentioned my father, my dear Papa, who was my idol, my best friend, and who understood me without words, I noticed a wounded sadness in Hans’ eyes.
My husband was born in May 1945. Yes, a considerable age difference. It doesn’t bother me. He is caring and loving, the kind of man I always dreamed of meeting. After my two broken marriages and . . . well, I’m not going to dwell on this now. Why spoil my anticipation of something wonderful I fantasized about my whole life, and what is soon to present itself?
Even so, I can’t ignore Hans’ frustration. Within a tiny fraction of a second, a series of emotions, and they were not the joyful ones, flitted across his face. They are palpable, and I know why. He has never seen his father, not even in a photograph. I reach out and rest my hand on his knee. It takes me several months back, to his confession that shocked me, really. I can see and hear it now in my mind’s eye.
“I have known no one I could call papa. But maybe I didn’t have one in that meaning . . . At that time, after the war, many, most of my classmates, had no fathers. You are so lucky you . . .” A gloomy smile quivered on his lips. “Neither my Mutter nor Grossmutter—mother or grandmother—were willing to talk about the man. Who was he? I don’t even know his name.”
I was looking at him and knew he was pining for him, for his non-existent father and for himself, a fatherless son.
“Since I remember myself . . . Whatever I would do to meet him even one time, even for a moment . . .” He went on with a frozen look of pensiveness on his face. “Even for a split-second . . . or at least find out something about him . . . who he was . . . what did he do in life?” He muttered, as if talking to himself, and a little grimace of vulnerability crossed his face.
Every time, recalling that conversation, I feel his despair. It left a residue of trouble in my mind. His heavy sigh sinks into my heart and returns me back to here and now. Despite my excitement and anticipation of that sought-after experience that I expect from this day, I remain silent, so as not to hurt him even more.
He glances at me. “But I have you.”
The story follows the main character, Marion, in a first-person narrative. We’re deep in her head from the start, and that doesn’t let up. She reflects on love, regret, identity, and memory. Most of the story is set in Beelitz-Heilstätten, a former sanatorium. There’s a romantic relationship with her husband Hans, that grounds her in the present, but her true focus is the past and a longing to reconnect with her birthplace. The visit to Heilstätten carries weight, but the meaning stays just out of reach. You feel it matters, even if you’re not entirely sure why. That mystery pulls you further into Marion’s quest for answers. At times, I wasn’t even sure why I couldn’t put the book down, but it lingered in my mind as persistently and unsettlingly as it did in Marion’s.
The characters are quiet but layered. Marion feels out of place in the hustle and bustle of modern life. She spends most of her time in her own head, but also seems slightly lost. Hans is kind but possessively overprotective. The female nurses of Beelitz-Heilstätten are exacting and ever-present, though often on the periphery. The doctor is intriguing but almost unknowable, while patients come and go.
The story is divided into three parts, though structurally it reads more like an emotional arc than a traditional plot. The pacing is slow and deliberate. At times, it’s unclear where it’s headed, but you still want to follow. You need to know why, and that why feels inevitable.
There’s a sense of something stirring beneath the surface, pointing to a deeper, possibly darker truth behind Marion’s daily life in the past. Her discomfort with a particular patient, the recurring storms, her dreams, and ghostly phrases all hint at hidden layers beneath the story’s surface.
What really works in the novel is its emotional depth and immersive setting. The way the author describes the landscape, the weather, and even the silence in a room mirrors the characters’ moods and ties to the narrative. Cultural and historical details add richness without feeling forced. For readers craving thoughtful historical fiction, this delivers.
The writing itself is thoughtful, poetic, and full of sensory detail. While it’s clear English isn’t the writer’s first language, the phrasing and structure create a unique literary feel rather than a distraction. It reminded me of something you’d find on a book club list. There’s plenty to unpack in the story, from the characters to the themes to the writing style itself.
Overall, this is a quiet, introspective story about memory, longing, and how the past never really stays in the past. It’s beautifully written and emotionally on point. If you enjoy reflective, character-driven fiction with a slightly eerie edge, this is absolutely worth reading.