The Wrong Word

On Sunday morning there was no one at the trailhead above Königssee. Leyla Bergmann took a sheet of paper from her waterproof folder. The notice board had no glass; she pinned the paper at all four corners so the wind couldn't lift them. Then she stepped back to make sure her signature showed.

She had read the text over and over through the night. Even so, her eyes snagged on the same two sentences. In court, the witness who spoke English had said that the fibres of the safety rope at the cliff edge were frayed and that the rope might snap. Leyla had translated it, knowingly, as “the rope was sound.” Now the board carried both statements. Beneath them was the reason she had put off the correction: the volunteer responsible for maintaining that trail was her uncle, Johann Bergmann. She had wanted to protect him.

Cool air off the lake flooded into the collar of her rain jacket. Leyla took out her phone and photographed the sheet. In his will, Johann had made the cabin nearby hers on one condition: that she pin this correction to the board no later than Sunday. Among the papers in her folder was a photograph, and in it she saw her uncle's old green hiking coat. His hair was grey, and his broad face wore that stubborn look she remembered. In their last conversation, at the hospital, he had asked her to set the record straight. She hadn't answered him that day.

Footsteps sounded on the gravel. Three hikers with rucksacks were approaching the trailhead. The one in front pointed at the signpost above as he passed the board. Leyla looked at it. The path they had chosen led up to the narrow passage where the frayed rope hung.

Having taken a photograph would not be enough. She slipped her phone into her pocket and stepped in front of the three. The hiker in front stopped; the ones behind nearly walked into him.

“Don't take that path,” Leyla said. “The rope isn't safe.”

The man looked at the board, then at Leyla.

“How do you know that?”

Before meeting the man's gaze, Leyla looked at the signed sheet on the board. Its damp corner was lifting a little in the wind. She pressed it down with one hand.

“I interpreted for a witness at a trial. He said the rope shouldn't be used without being inspected. I told the court it could be used. The correction I pinned up today is here because of that.”

One of the three took out his phone and turned the screen toward her. On the underlined line of the old court ruling, it said the rope had been found sound.

“But the ruling says otherwise. Which are we supposed to believe?”

Before Leyla could answer, she heard boots on the trail. The woman who came up it wore a red mountain-rescue jacket, a radio on her shoulder. Her short fair hair was plastered to her forehead by the rain. Leyla recognised her: Anja Reiter. She had come for the Sunday trail inspection.

“Don't go onto the path to the rope,” Leyla said.

Anja glanced at the notice on the board, then left the hikers at the entrance and went down to the anchor point below. Leyla followed a few steps behind. Just above the metal fitting, the outer fibres of the wet rope had come undone. Anja parted them with a gloved finger, and the dark section beneath showed. She did not pull on the rope.

“How long has it been like this?” she asked.

“I don't know. The witness's warning at the trial was about exactly this,” Leyla said. “I translated it wrongly.”

Anja pressed the button on her radio. She reported the damage to the lower anchor and asked her team to close both entrances to the trail. A short acknowledgement came back through the crackle.

The hiker with the phone was still looking at Leyla.

“So the trail stayed open despite that testimony?”

Leyla cleared her throat. This time she didn't look away.

“Yes. My translation helped make that happen. I've corrected my statement today, but the ruling still says what you have there.”

Anja raised the radio to her ear again. She signalled Leyla to be quiet so she could hear the voice on the other end. Then she lifted her head and looked at the place where the trail curved upward.

“Who's at the upper entrance?” she asked the radio.

The reply from the radio dissolved into static. Anja stepped aside and listened again. Leyla saw that the three hikers were still standing at the narrow place where the trail began. One of them was getting ready to climb down; the man in front was looking at the court ruling on his phone.

“No one visible at the upper entrance. Close the passage anyway,” Anja said into the radio. Then she turned to the hikers. “And you, get away from here. The lower anchor is damaged.”

“The ruling says the rope is sound,” said the man. He lowered the phone but didn't move.

Leyla opened her waterproof folder. She took out a copy of the correction she had pinned to the board and held it out to him, waiting for him to see the signature beneath. Her hand was shaking; she held the folder with both hands.

“That ruling rests partly on my translation in court,” she said. “The witness said the rope's fibres were frayed and that no load should be put on it. I knowingly translated that warning as 'the rope was sound.' I wanted to protect my uncle, Johann Bergmann.”

The man in front looked at the paper, then at the trail. The woman beside him backed away from the narrow passage on the cliff side. The third hiker followed her.

“So we're not going up there,” the man said.

“You're not going up,” said Anja. “Nobody is.”

Two members of the mountain-rescue team reached the trailhead. They unfolded collapsible barriers and closed off the path. One fixed a warning sign in place while the other radioed an urgent closure notice to the responsible authority in Berchtesgaden. The hikers moved down to the wide part of the path; they were no longer heading toward the rope.

Leyla thought of the phone screen with the ruling on it. Her false translation had helped get the witness's warning ignored; and now hikers, trusting a ruling that called the rope sound, had been able to walk up to a dangerous passage. While Anja checked that the barrier wouldn't shift, Leyla put the copy of the correction back in her folder. This time she didn't want to put the paper away where no one would see it.

Anja walked from the barrier to the board. She lifted the lower corner of the correction Leyla had pinned up and looked at the signature, then pressed the pin in firmly. The wind rattled the warning sign. The three hikers were no longer in sight. Leyla looked at the closed trail; she couldn't see the rope at the lower anchor from here, but she had not been able to get the unravelled fibres out of her mind since the moment she saw them, going down to the anchor with Anja.

“Let it stay,” said Anja. “Let everyone who comes back read it.”

She took a small key from her pocket. She paused a moment before putting it into Leyla's palm.

“Johann left the carrying out of his will to me. I have the cabin key. You can finish your business inside.”

Leyla took the key. At the sound of Johann's name her eyes went to her folder. She thought of the old green coat in the photograph, and of the word “sound” in the court ruling. If she had corrected the wrongly translated warning back then, her uncle's name would have suffered. By staying silent, she had turned the ruling into an assurance that concerned others too.

The small cabin smelled of wet boots. Leyla left the door ajar; she could see the barrier outside. She took her signed statement out of the waterproof folder and scanned all its pages with her phone. She attached the file to an email addressed to the Traunstein public prosecutor's office. Reading from the paper, she typed the case number of the court ruling into the subject line and the body of the message. She compared the digits once more. She hadn't missed one.

When she pressed send, the phone stayed in her hand. A delivery confirmation appeared on the screen, and she saved that too. Anja was waiting outside the door; Leyla slipped the phone into her pocket and stepped out to join her.

“It's sent. The delivery confirmation came through too,” she said.

Anja nodded. Leyla looked at the correction on the board. She didn't take the paper down. Then she turned her eyes to the empty trail beyond the barrier. Anyone who came here to set out would now see the warning first, and right beside it, her signature.