Epilogue 1
A newspaper article
by Brigitta Schmitz
The picture hangs in the entrance hall of the Franciscan Hospice, facing the door. It is about fifty centimeters high and forty centimeters wide, painted on canvas, and it shows a woman seated at a desk. Her left hand rests on the desk pad, and the third finger bears a ring of extraordinary beauty. The silver-colored band gleams as if it held light prisoned within, its graceful lines more reminiscent of a vine grown from the earth, than of anything forged of metal. The gem is like green fire; unbelievable that it should be no more than dabs of paint on canvas!
The woman's hair is copper red; a thick plait of it hangs over her shoulder. Her eyes are green, almost too large for her slender face, and a faint smile plays about her mouth. But the lovely eyes are sad, and she has the look of someone who does not smile very often.
"The portrait was painted by one of our nurses," says a voice behind me. Brother Anselm Brauning has come silently into the room, a tall, massive figure in his Franciscan robe. "About six months ago."
The woman in the painting is Sabrina Steinenberg, until two years ago, a regular writer for our newspaper. She wrote good articles, carefully researched, some of them thrilling, others with a good measure of humor. She had no friends that her co-workers knew of - no close friends, anyway; only the casual acquaintances you might have a cup of coffee with, or meet at a party. But Sabrina seldom went to parties. She was a bookworm, friendly but quiet, with a rather ironical wit.
And then, from one day to the next, she vanished without a trace. She made no response to phone calls or emails; it was as if she had ceased to exist. After two months, the editorial office of the newspaper reported her missing; she had no living relatives to do so.
Two months later, she was back. She was admitted to a local sanatorium, near the city; apparently she had been found one night in the park, confused and frightened, with no memory of where she had been during the preceding four months.
In time she recovered, but she never wrote for the newspaper again. A year later she became the subject of gossip for a different reason: without explanation to anyone, she suddenly sold her parents' house and donated the proceeds to the Franciscans for the purchase of their Hospice for the Dying. She had been working there for some time; after the sale of her house, she moved into the Hospice to live.
"She has a good hand with the patients," he tells me. "Reads to them, entertains them with stories. The most anxious relatives seem soothed and comforted by her presence. She has a virtue not often found in these times: she knows how to be quiet, to listen. Sometimes I have had the fancy that she is surrounded by a sort of atmosphere of silence."
When I ask if Sabrina was happy, the monk seems puzzled.
"I really cannot answer that," he says. "I think those lost months two years ago affected her very deeply, left her with a feeling of insecurity. It is easier to say 'yes', if you ask me if she was contented and in balance... during the last year, at any rate."
That I must pose this question to Brother Anselm and not to Sabrina Steinenberg herself, is due to the fact that she has now vanished for the second time. On the evening of September 27th, exactly one week ago, she left the house to take a walk. A nurse whose shift had just ended, who was leaving at the same time, saw Sabrina heading for the park. Brother Anselm says that he waited up for her until midnight; when she had not returned by the following morning, he called the police.
No, she had not been troubled or upset; she was calm and totally normal. Over dinner the night she disappeared, she had joined Brother Anselm and her co-workers in planning the organization of the following day. After the meal the monk left for evening Mass at St. Agnes', and that was the last time he saw Sabrina.
Where was she, during those lost months two years ago? According to medical records at the sanitarium, she never fully regained her memory; she was left with a permanent, mysterious gap in her life.
And where is she now? The police doubt that it is a case of kidnapping; certainly to date nobody has demanded any ransom. Could she have fallen victim to crime? Or did she give in to some sudden impulse, darting off on some journey at a moment's notice, without a word to anyone? But if she did, she went without so much as an overnight bag, for there is nothing missing from her apartment but the clothes she was wearing the night she vanished.
The mystery can be solved only if she returns and gives her own explanation - if indeed she does return for the second time.
Where is Sabrina Steinenberg?