In
Luper discovers that the war officially ended in Europe
at exactly the time of his crash with the car as witnessed
by Harpsch’s smashed watch - a significant, mysterious,
coincidental circumstance worthmemorialising.The story
Luper creates for Harpsch is that he and his jewess
cook lover have a child - a daughter. Luper christens
her Fidelia. The cook is arrested and sent to a concentration
camp, Harpsch is stripped of his rank and sent to
fight in Russia, all the time hoping one day again
to see his daughter who he believes has beensent out
of the country by an adoption society and is probably
living in the Southern Alps - either
in Switzerland,
Austria or Italy, in a child
adoption centre. Towards the end of the war,
Harpsch is decorated for bravery, reinstated in his
commission and uses army intelligence to find his
daughter’s whereabouts. He grows to believe she is
in care in an institution near Bolzano. Determined
to find her, as Germany collapses, he plans to steal
gold bars from his brother’s bank in Baden-Baden and
with his brother, escape Germany and set out in a
stolen car to find his daughter. The brother dies
unexpectedly celebrating his escape, and Harpsch with
101 gold bars, travels by side-roads, avoiding military
police, foreign soldiers and refugee crowds who block
the road and plead for assistance lifts. He is often
obliged to take extensive detours. On his journey
he is forced to part with nine of the gold bars, for
petrol, food, services, bribes, and for burial services
for his brother ina Jewish cemetery. After a six day
journey covering over a thousand miles, nearing hisdestination,exhausted,
he crashes with Luper and his horse.
Luper
believes that the gold has been
stolen from the victims of the Third Reich,
smelted down from their gold possessions. He provides
a story and a case history for each bar, all the time
tracing Harpsch’s car ride - creating his exact journey
from maps discovered in the Bolzano restaurant.The
cafe owner is a renegade and a malcontent fomentingFascist
trouble, trying illicitly to offload the gold for
his own profit. Luper as he writes a story for each
gold bar moves it from one pile to another on the
floor of his attic prison. One of the cafe customers
is Primo Levi returning from his concentration camp
ordeal. He had met him before in Turin and they discuss
the significances of the atomic table - most pertinently
with theelement 92 of uranium.
With the miller betrayed over an infidelity escapade
involving his wife and his daughter, and US military
police about to recover the gold and with the 92 stories
finished, Luper, to his very great surprise - for
his reconstruction of Harpsch and his life and journey
is entirely fictitious - discovers Harpsch’s daughter
Fidelia in the cafe - happy and healthy and wellooked
after by a devoted Italian childless couple. With
both her parents dead, Luper reveals nothing of her
background, fact or fiction, and presents her with
her father’s mended watch as a gift. With his business
in prophetic fiction completed, Luper makes his escape
on his whitehorse back
into the pine forests and into the mountains.
