The Traveler's Gift Read online

  Columbus looked at the men and said, “But we are almost there! The hardest part of the journey is past! Tomorrow you will see land. It will be beautiful land with trees and fruit and . . .”

  “Enough!” Juan Garson cried. “We have heard this sad refrain for too many weeks. Sir, surely, you must see that the men have reached their limit!”

  Columbus smiled stiffly. “I see men who don’t know the limits they can reach.”

  Juan Garson briefly closed his eyes as if to contain himself. “Sir! Your officers and I have decided to turn back. We are at an end.”

  Garson and the other men moved to go but were brought up short by the booming voice of their captain. “Gentlemen!” Columbus shouted. The officers stopped and faced him. “Gentlemen,” he said with less volume this time, “might I remind you that we have less than ten days of food and water left in our stores. To reverse course is the gambit of a fool. It not only means failure but certain death as well! In God’s name, men, I ask you to think! We are at sea now for sixty-four days! To which port do you return? Our only course is forward! Our only hope is to press on!”

  The men stood with their heads down. They seemed not only outmaneuvered but beaten. Garson spoke again, softly this time. “Is this realistic, Capitán? Will we find land?”

  Columbus moved to put his arm around the shoulders of the taller man. “Is this realistic, Garson? I say to you ‘no,’ but then nothing great was ever accomplished by a realistic person! Will we find land? Yes! Yes! We will find land, but that will be the least of your discoveries.” Columbus pointed to his first officer’s chest. “You will find a heart for success that you did not know existed. You will find a Juan Garson who is able to lead men to new worlds of their own! You will find . . . greatness!”

  Garson straightened and breathed deeply. “Forgive my insolence, El Capitán, I . . .”

  “Forgotten,” Columbus said, as he made a dismissing motion with his hand. “Go, Juan Garson. Lead your men—and believe!”

  As the officers left, Columbus moved once more toward the crow’s nest. David followed him up, finding it easier this time because of the daylight. Again, however, Columbus pulled David into the cup by the back of his shirt.

  Catching his breath, David watched Columbus settle his back against the mast and fix his gaze again upon the western horizon. “May I ask a question?” David said quietly.

  “Certainly,” Columbus replied.

  “What did you mean down below when you told your officer that he would find a heart for success?”

  Columbus inhaled and slowly blew out his breath before answering. “Most people fail at whatever they attempt because of an undecided heart. Should I? Should I not? Go forward? Go back? Success requires the emotional balance of a committed heart. When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a solution. The undecided heart searches for an escape.”

  Columbus cleared his throat, coughing gently, then continued. “A committed heart does not wait for conditions to be exactly right. Why? Because conditions are never exactly right. Indecision limits the Almighty and His ability to perform miracles in your life. He has put the vision in you—proceed! To wait, to wonder, to doubt, to be indecisive is to disobey God.”

  Without taking his eyes off the water, Columbus reached under his jacket and removed a parchment. “For you,” he said simply. Unfolding it, he handed it to David.

  David took the yellowed paper, glanced at it briefly, and said, “You will find your new world.”

  Columbus, eyes still straight ahead, spoke quietly, “I know.”

  David smiled and shook his head in wonder. “How do you know?” he asked.

  Columbus turned and looked at David. “I have a decided heart,” he said and turned back.

  For a moment, David said nothing. He felt the purest sense of awe for this man who knew nothing, yet seemed to know everything. He opened his mouth to speak again. “But how—”

  “Señor Ponder,” Columbus interrupted. He placed his arm over David’s shoulders. “It is time for you to read the message I was given for you. Study it carefully, for it is within these words that you will find a heart for success that you did not know existed. You will find a David Ponder who is able to lead men to new worlds of their own. You will find greatness.” And with those words, the great explorer Christopher Columbus hugged David and kissed him on each cheek. “Read,” he said again and smiled. “I am very busy.”

  David watched him ease to the edge of the crow’s nest, put his elbows on the lip, and look to the west once more. The wind shifted and rattled the parchment in his hand. Sitting down, David propped his back against the wall of the cup and braced his feet on the mast. Stealing one last glance at the man who had penned the words, he read.

  THE FOURTH DECISION FOR SUCCESS

  I have a decided heart.

  A wise man once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Knowing this to be true, I am taking my first step today. For too long my feet have been tentative, shuffling left and right, more backward than forward as my heart gauged the direction of the wind. Criticism, condemnation, and complaint are creatures of the wind. They come and go on the wasted breath of lesser beings and have no power over me. The power to control direction belongs to me. Today I will begin to exercise that power. My course has been charted. My destiny is assured.

  I have a decided heart. I am passionate about my vision for the future.

  I will awaken every morning with an excitement about the new day and its opportunity for growth and change. My thoughts and actions will work in a forward motion, never sliding into the dark forest of doubt or the muddy quicksand of self-pity. I will freely give my vision for the future to others, and as they see the belief in my eyes, they will follow me.

  I will lay my head on my pillow at night happily exhausted, knowing that I have done everything within my power to move the mountains in my path. As I sleep, the same dream that dominates my waking hours will be with me in the dark. Yes, I have a dream. It is a great dream, and I will never apologize for it. Neither will I ever let it go, for if I did, my life would be finished. My hopes, my passions, my vision for the future are my very existence. A person without a dream never had a dream come true.

  I have a decided heart. I will not wait.

  I know that the purpose of analysis is to come to a conclusion. I have tested the angles. I have measured the probabilities. And now I have made a decision with my heart. I am not timid. I will move now and not look back. What I put off until tomorrow, I will put off until the next day as well. I do not procrastinate. All my problems become smaller when I confront them. If I touch a thistle with caution, it will prick me, but if I grasp it boldly, its spines crumble into dust.

  I will not wait. I am passionate about my vision for the future. My course has been charted. My destiny is assured.

  I have a decided heart.

  SEVEN

  DAVID FELT THE SWAYING OF THE SANTA MARIA AS he looked up from the parchment. Columbus turned to stare as David stood up and saw that he was no longer in the crow’s nest, but seemingly had his feet planted firmly in midair, moving at an ever increasing pace away from the ship. Columbus smiled and raised his hand. David did the same and suddenly streaked away so fast that his vision perceived a thousand images of Columbus as the Santa Maria stretched out like strobes of light in the tail of a comet.

  In the next instant, David was standing in a small room. The air smelled strongly of mildew with just a hint of lye soap. The only light in the room came from a bare bulb hanging on a wire from the ceiling. David quickly counted seven people within several steps. He frowned. Incredibly, they were motionless. A man and a woman were seated at a tiny table. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, were sprawled on the floor, an interrupted card game between them, and the rest, two men and a woman, appeared to have stopped in midstride. Every person wore a look of terror.

  David heard knocking on the wall behind him and the muffled voi
ces of men. As he turned to look, he noticed a small girl he had missed before. She was thin and sharply featured with dark wavy hair and eyes so black that they shined. She appeared to be perhaps twelve or thirteen and wore a faded blue cotton dress that seemed at home in the dingy room.

  David understood why he had not seen her at first. She was standing right next to him, so close that he had literally looked over her. This girl, too, David saw, was not moving, but as he caught her gaze, she slowly raised a finger to her lips.

  The knocking seemed to run in a pattern, first high on the wall, then to the middle and on toward the floor. The muffled voices would then move to the right, and the knocking would begin again. High, center, low. For almost five full minutes, David remained still as he listened to the sounds on the other side of the wall.

  Once, one of the voices began yelling something unintelligible, and they heard several people running. At that point, the woman sitting at the table reached out to hold the man’s hand. Both closed their eyes. Except for the small girl putting her finger to her lips, it was the only movement David saw from any of them.

  After what seemed an eternity, the knocking ceased. There was no more running, no voices, just the tense silence of the little room. And still, no one moved. For a full minute, then two. Finally, the man at the table took a deep breath and blew it out with a whoosh. “Het is oke nu allemaal,” he said quietly. “It is all right now, everyone.” And with that, the people in the room shook their heads and softly began talking to each other.

  “This was close, I am thinking,” said the teenage boy on the floor. “If there had been dogs . . .” He let the thought just hang there, never finishing the sentence.

  A tall woman, her hair rolled tightly into a bun, began weeping softly. “Now then, Petronella,” her husband said as he put his arms around her. “We are safe. Shhh, hush now.” He turned to the boy and said sternly, “Peter, that’ll be enough about what might have been. You’ve upset your mother and most everyone else, I expect. We’ll have no more about dogs.”

  “I was just saying . . . ,” Peter began.

  “Yes,” the man interrupted, “and I was just saying that will be enough!”

  David watched as the man led his wife into a narrow room to his left. Before the door closed, he saw a mattress on the floor and a stack of movie-star magazines. The young girl gently moved David to a corner and whispered, “Stay here for now, but when I leave the room, follow me.”

  She moved toward the couple sitting at the table. The man looked tired, but even though his clothes were worn, he was clean-shaven except for a small mustache. What little hair he had left on his head was neatly combed. David thought him a rather distinguished sort. The woman sitting across from him, her hair in a bun just like the other woman had worn, was ghostly pale, as if she’d recently been ill. Nevertheless, she smiled as the girl approached.

  “Papa,” the girl said. “May I have your permission to go upstairs?”

  The man smiled. “Time to be alone again, is it?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Then certainly you may go,” he said. She gave a glance to David and moved resolutely to a stairway at the back of the room. Seeing her reach the stairs, her father spoke once more, his smile fading.

  “Anne.” She stopped and turned. “Keep away from the window.”

  “Yes, Papa,” she nodded and without a sound moved up the staircase and out of sight.

  David followed quickly, careful not to bump any of the people as he passed. Ascending the stairs, he saw the girl motioning for him to hurry. The staircase appeared to go directly into the ceiling, but as David soon saw, there was a hatch cover that provided an entrance to the attic.

  As soon as they were inside, the girl replaced the cover and said, “I am so excited to meet you that I almost cannot breathe!” She clapped her hands together quickly, but softly. “This is thrilling, is it not?”

  “Yes,” David said, grinning at her enthusiasm. He glanced around. There was not a stick of furniture or a box of anything stored in this attic, just dust and dirt. “I suppose thrilling would be a proper choice of words.”

  “I expected you, did you know?” she said. “A dream is how. I even know your name. It is Mr. Ponder. I wrote you a note just this morning. Should I get it now?”

  “No, no.” David chuckled. “Slow down just a minute. You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t even know where I am!”

  “Why, you are in Amsterdam,” the child said. She took David’s hand and pulled him toward a window. “Come,” she said with a little smile, “I will show you the city.”

  Across the bare attic, there loomed a large nine-paned window. Three of the panes had been separated from the other six by a brick column. The window itself was dirty, almost as brown as the attic. “Is this the window,” David asked, “that your father warned you to stay away from?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said as she nodded her head, “but it is all right to peek from the corner.” And with that she got down on her hands and knees and exclaimed impatiently, “You too! Come now!”

  David got down on his hands and knees and followed the girl to the edge of the window where she was waiting underneath the sill. When he reached her, he turned to sit on the floor, his back to the wall. She sat with her legs folded underneath her and leaned her right shoulder to the dirty plaster. As he settled himself into a more comfortable position, David said, “I heard your father call you Anne.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “And my sister’s name is Margot. She is very quiet. She was the one playing cards with the boy downstairs. His name is Peter. Peter Van Daan.”

  “What is your last name?” David asked.

  “Frank,” she said simply. “My papa’s name is Otto, and Edith is my mother. Peter’s parents are Mr. Herman and Mrs. Petronella. She was the one who cried, but of course, she always cries. The other man you saw was Dr. Dussel. You did see him, didn’t you? He was sitting on the floor near the door to my room, but of course, you don’t know which room is mine, so maybe you didn’t see him. In any case, he’s not a doctor really. He’s a dentist . . .”

  David wasn’t certain how long Anne talked. He was not really listening anyway. His mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions. Anne Frank, he thought. Anne Frank! This is the young girl whose diary I read in high school.

  “. . . so Peter brought him with us,” Anne continued, ignoring the stunned look on the face of her guest. “Mouschi is wonderful, though not as loving as my own dear cat, Moortje, who is still at home. Mouschi is black as coal dust. Moortje, on the other hand . . .”

  I am in the annex, David thought. The annex, he knew, was a secret location consisting of several rooms connected to the back of a warehouse. Anne and her family were Dutch Jews in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

  “. . . don’t you think?” Anne said as she looked directly at David, obviously waiting for a response.

  David was startled by the pause in her nonstop chatter. He had been so caught up in his surroundings that he hadn’t actually been listening. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” he asked uncomfortably.

  “I said,” Anne answered slowly, “that Peter is very handsome, don’t you think?”

  “Peter?” David wrinkled his brow. “Oh, the boy downstairs, yes. Yes, he is!”

  “I let him kiss me sometimes. On the cheek, of course.”

  “Of course,” David said seriously. “Anne,” David began in an effort to change the subject, “how long have you been here?”

  “One year and four months,” she said quickly.

  “Do you know today’s date?”

  “Certainly. Today is Thursday, October 28, 1943. We went into hiding last year on the first Sunday in July, the fifth it was.” Anne glanced up at the window above. “None of us have been outside in a very long time.”

  “How do you get food in here?”

  “Miep.”

  “Who is . . . ?”

  “Miep is Papa’s secretary. She stil
l comes to work in the warehouse every day. After hours, she and her husband, Henk, move the bookcase in the accounting room and come through the door behind it.”

  “Anne,” David said. “When I arrived . . .”

  “Oh, yes,” Anne broke in, “that was so terrifying! You appeared directly in front of me, and I was the only one who could see you! Have you done that before? Does it hurt?”

  David smiled in spite of his aggravation at being interrupted. He supposed he could understand her excitement. After all, a new person with whom to talk must be thrilling after sixteen months. “Yes, I have done it before, and no, it doesn’t hurt.” David reached out to touch her arm as he tried again to ask his question. “Anne, when I arrived, what, or who, was knocking on the walls?”

  “Nazi soldiers,” Anne said. “Papa calls them Gestapo. He says they dress in black. They have come now two times. We are quiet and they go away.” She turned and got up on her knees, rising carefully to put one eye in the corner of the window. “If you do this, you can see most of Amsterdam.”

  David rose and looked out the opposite corner. To his left, he saw a huge chestnut tree reaching almost one hundred feet into the air and casting its last shade of the day into the attic window. A clock tower stood majestically across the street. Its spires and gables were the centerpiece of the city.

  “That’s the Westerkerk,” Anne said, referring to the clock. “I can lie here and watch the hands move.” Anne laid herself out flat on the floor. “Lie down,” she said. “See for yourself.”

  David eased himself down beside the young girl and looked up. There, framed in the window as if by divine providence, was the clock face of the Westerkerk tower. It was, he noticed, almost six o’clock in the evening. David looked at Anne, staring intently at the clock, and thought of his own daughter. She and Anne were about the same age. He tried to imagine Jenny in this situation. What would she do? How would she react? Or, for that matter, how would he?