by Gary Cleaver
Josef tried to find the family home, the whole street was a mass of broken masonry, fallen timber and shattered glass. He left and went to the makeshift Rathaus; there on one of many casualty lists he found the names of his father, his mother and Heike. She would have been just eighteen. He left Pforzheim that same day. It was useless to look for their graves, the victims had been buried together in pits, hundreds at a time. The bombers had only taken twenty minutes to leave the town a flaming ruin and seventeen thousand of her citizens dead. Josef wandered for weeks through his blighted country. Everywhere he went he found destruction and desolation, in every shocked and desperate face he saw mirrored his own. One damp and dark night he arrived in Cologne, the beautiful city by the Rhine had suffered just like everywhere else, but he was no longer shocked or surprised. He got food from a soup kitchen, potato soup and bread, and then drifted through the mostly empty streets, despair washing over him. He came to a church in Bonnerstrasser near the river, it had no roof. He stepped carefully around the puddles of black water in the aisle, chose a dryish pew and knelt on the wooden rail. He closed his eyes and laced his hands together under his chin like a small child.
“Lord, all I ask of you now is a strong rope and a stout tree from which to hang it, I am finished.”
He sat for a while, then walked out. Reaching the bottom of the church steps he turned left and immediately collided with a big man in a dark grey overcoat. They muttered apologies to each other and then the man looked Josef up and down.
“You are very thin,” he said “But young men like you are a rarity these days, would you like a job?”
George Karamis found a job shortly after graduation. He was a very bright young man and the stick, now full sized, seemed to get him respect. It gave him an air of authority that eluded fitter men. He was given a position as a junior accountant with a large Athens bank. Hard work was second nature to him and he rose steadily within the company. After five years he was a senior manager with his own section and thirty subordinates. Two years later he left the bank and started his own accountancy business with a large shipping line as his major client. During this time he met and married Christina a pretty girl from Pireaus. Their daughter, Sofia, was born in the spring of 1963; eighteen months later they had a son, Iannis. George had it all, a loving wife, beautiful children and successful career. Whenever he found time he would return to Katsimila and visit his parents. On one such trip, to celebrate Iannis’ first birthday, he excused himself after lunch and walked down to the village square. He stood in front of the Mayors office, looking around nothing much had changed. Two or three doors had been repainted and one of the buildings had sprouted a television aerial, but otherwise everything was the same as it had been twenty one years earlier. He went over in his mind the events since then. In a way he had so much to be thankful for. He would not swap all the things he had, all the things he’d achieved for fame or glory, but it would have been nice to run, to kick a football, or maybe to dance the way his father and his uncle would at any given opportunity.
He sighed and made his way back across the square towards the street. As he turned the corner George was almost mown down by a young boy running too fast and not looking where he was going.
“Whoooa!”George cried, jamming his stick against the wall to regain his balance.
The boy, whom he noticed was not much older than he had been on that terrible day in 1943, regained his breath and looked at him carefully, his eyes widened in recognition.
“You’re George Karamis aren’t you?” George nodded “You were shot by a German soldier in the war” the boy was very impressed. “Wow! A real war hero!”
George grinned. “No, not a hero. And I wasn’t shot, but it is true that a soldier did hurt me.”
“I must go,” said the boy “I am very late.” He ran off.
George shouted after him. “Wait, since you know me, may I know who you are?”
The boy called back over his shoulder without stopping, “I am Dimitri, Dimitri Lambakis”
“Pleased to have run into you Dimitri, take care now”. George turned away toward the family home.
The man Josef Haller had run into was Hermann Mueller, a forty five year old garage owner. There was a great demand in Cologne for businesses like his. The remaining vehicles on the roads of Germany were desperately needed, especially trucks. Josef was put to work the following day. At first his tasks were menial, nothing more than fetching and carrying, but his determination, diligence and quiet, modest manner impressed Mueller and gradually he was taken away from mere labour to learn more technical tasks. Working on the big truck engines came naturally to Josef. During his childhood he had watched and sometimes helped in his father’s workshop, where he built and repaired wristwatches. The tiny, intricate parts had fascinated him and his father’s precision working with fine tools at the big magnifying glass seemed almost like magic. Mending truck engines was similar only on a much larger scale, he learned fast and made full mechanic in three years. Mueller, who was widowed and childless, came to look upon the young man as his son.
One evening in January of 1950 Josef dragged himself up the wooden stairway to the apartment he had been given above the garage. It had been a particularly busy day and he was exhausted. He kicked off his work boots, lay down on the bed and was asleep almost at once. Later, looking back, he wondered why the nightmare had been taken so long in coming. Still later, he held no interest in the delay; he just wanted to be free of it.
He was standing in a street, paved with cobblestones and filled and filled on each side with piles of rubble. Before him on the ground was a twisted branch of a tree. He did not want to look at the branch so he looked up. Before him stood three figures, the one in the centre was wearing a grey army uniform and held a pistol. The figure spoke, its words hard and clear “HALLER, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING!”, but it was not Oberleutnant Libuda, it was Josef’s father and the figures either side of him were his mother and his sister, their faces bloated and burned black. From the twisted branch came a thin, high scream.
Josef sat bolt upright, a mixture of sweat and tears was running down his face. It was not cold in the apartment but all the same he was shaking violently. He didn’t know if he had cried out, it wasn’t important, as he was alone here, alone. He rocked back and forth, his arms wrapped around him and moaned helplessly. The nightmare was to stay with him and re-visit him frequently, for more than fifty years.
George was woken by a strange noise coming form the street below. The big apartment where he lived with Christina and the children was barely a kilometre from Syntagma square, the very centre of Athens. But on this day in April 1967 instead of the morning traffic noise there was silence except for this curious sound. It was a low rumbling combined with a high pitched squeal. He donned a bathrobe, collected his stick and went out onto the balcony. In the street only one vehicle was moving, it was an M48 battle tank. It was dark olive green, a Greek flag flew from its radio aerial and its turret swept back and forth as if searching for a target. He knew at once what this meant. It was a coup d’état, the army was taking the city and with it control of the country. Christina joined him, she stared in horror at the tank. “George, what is this?” He told her.
“The army? But this is crazy, Greece is a democracy, for Gods sake, George, democracy is a Greek word!”
He sighed and put his arm around her, “Yes it is my love. And so is tyranny….and chaos”.
For a few months whilst at university, George had been a member of the communist party. Their passion had attracted him and it was very exciting listening to the rhetoric, but he wasn’t stupid. Fine words were all very well, but they were just words. However his membership of the organisation would be on record somewhere and if the new regime was successful they might just turn their terrible gaze in his direction. Over the course of the next few months George turned the family’s life on its head. He sold the business and the apartment and moved them to Katsimila. It was
not all that far away, possibly not far enough for safety, but he knew he dare not stay in Athens. Back in his home village he used the money he’d made to buy a run down hotel on the seafront, “The Ajax”. He spent money carefully on the refurbishment, doing as much of the work himself as he could, Christina did more than her fair share and the children helped wherever possible. When it was finished they re-named it “The Hotel Artemis”. It was hard at first, the colonels’ regime meant that few tourists ever made it to out of the way places like Katsimila and it wasn’t until the military junta was deposed in 1974 that any kind of prosperity returned to the country.
Josef Haller raised his glass. “Prosperity” he said.
His forty nine employees raised their glasses and shouted it back. They applauded. It was the opening day of the largest Mercedes truck dealership not only in Cologne but in the whole of the Rhineland region “Haller Commercial”. He had come a long way since old man Mueller had retired. He had taken over the garage and skilfully built up the business. He had married Maria in 1957 and they now had three lovely teenage daughters. It was the spring of 1975 and Josef Haller, 53, was a truly prosperous man. He and his family lived in a large villa in a tasteful suburb of the city, He drove an “S” class Mercedes to work and they had a beautiful holiday home in Spain (Josef had insisted on Spain).
He never spoke of his wartime experiences other than to say that he had been wounded early on and passed unfit for further active service. He kept his terrible secret and hid his remorse. When the nightmare came Maria would be concerned and ask him about it, Josef would merely say that he had always suffered such things and it was nothing to worry about. To comfort himself Josef would sometimes indulge in a fantasy, not something he was normally prone to. In this, his boot missed the boy completely and it was he and not the child who would go sprawling on the cobblestones. Guessler would laugh and the boy would point and giggle before running off on his strong little legs to whatever life awaited him. Josef tried to keep this activity to a minimum, for inevitably the very next time he closed his eyes, the nightmare would be waiting, like a coiled snake.
George and Josef lived their lives. “The Hotel Artemis” had its ups and downs but George had wisely invested the money left over from the initial refurbishment, and they always managed to get by. “Haller Commercial” repaired, serviced and sold trucks keeping its proprietor happy in the knowledge that his company was a strong symbol of Germanys continuing post war economic miracle. In 1987 Josef retired and passed the reins to his eldest daughter, Inge. Some of his staff had worried, but it turned out that Inge was an even better business person than her father. She initiated and oversaw a rapid expansion programme that opened more branches in Bonn, Frankfurt and Dortmund. Throughout all of this she was not above taking off her suit jacket and climbing into an engine with a wrench in her hand.
In May of 2004 Josef, now eighty two, became unwell. His doctor sent him for a scan and within a few days was able to tell him the worst. It was cancer. At his advanced age, the doctor told him, treatments were severely limited. He had a year at most. He had told Maria as soon as he got home. Though shocked and upset she was, as always, stoical.
“A last holiday” she had said. “We shall get away while we can.”
Josef had guessed this was coming and had made up his mind on the subject in the taxi coming home.
“Very well” he said. “Greece, I would like to go to Greece.”
Two weeks later they were boarding a coach that would take them from Athens to the ancient sites of Corinth, Mycenae and Epidavros. At the end of the tour (he had checked this detail very carefully) the coach would leave them at the coast to take a hydrofoil flight back to Athens. The flight was due to leave at 8pm, from Katsimila.
Katsimila June 2004
Olympic year. Most of the real excitement would be to the north in Athens, but the whole country had games fever. Even in Katsimila they were expecting an upsurge in summer visitors. At the “Hotel Artemis” plans were already being made to ensure sufficient stocks of everything that would be needed for August and September, were listed and ordered. George was a busy man and barely had time to mix with his customers. But on this Sunday afternoon in June the arthritis that had set in to his weak leg some years before was giving trouble. He was sitting in a comfortable chair in front of the bar, sipping a coffee and occasionally dispensing wisdom and advice to his eleven year old grandson Alex, who was learning to wait tables at the weekends and in school holidays.
Just after six o’clock a large tour bus came slowly along the seafront and stopped outside the hotel “Argo” thirty metres from where George sat. He watched as the passengers got off and went in various directions in search of refreshment. This was a regular occurrence and he noted with satisfaction that they were early for the hydrofoil and would have plenty of time to spend their money. A dozen or so came over to the “Artemis” and settled themselves at various tables. They were Germans, he spoke the language very well along with English and French. George summoned Alex and the senior waiter, Andreas with a swift snap of his fingers. He pointed them toward the new arrivals.
Josef’s seat on the bus was at the very front, behind the driver. He only had to lean a little to his left to gain a panoramic view ahead. As they came around the last hairpin bend before the final descent into the village he looked down, sixty years of his life peeled away revealing the bare flesh of unwanted memories. He knew he had to come, but he really didn’t know why, there was no redemption to be found here, no kind of solace. He did not believe that his visit would put an end to the nightmare that had plagued him for so long, anyway that would leave him soon enough, that much was certain. When the bus stopped Maria went off to take the last of that days many photographs, this time of the pretty harbour. Josef selected a place at random and eased himself into a chair. He ordered a small beer and when it came, sipped it slowly, he was dreadfully tired. There was a man sat alone at a table in front of the bar, from his manner and the way he ordered the waiters around Josef guessed him to be the owner. The telephone on the bar began a high pitched bleating. The man got up to answer it, gathering his walking stick as he went.
Josef felt a bitter taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the beer. A thin scream filled his head and his vision was suddenly assaulted with the image of a twisted tree branch. And he knew. It wasn’t memory or any kind of instinct, he simply knew. This man was the child he had kicked, the child he had crippled. The victim of the crime he could not forget or forgive himself for was standing just a few metres away, talking on a telephone.
When the conversation ended, the man went back to his seat. Josef stood and moved towards him. He had no idea what he was going to say and it was perhaps lucky that man clutching the stick spoke first.
“May I help you?”
That the man spoke German didn’t make Josef feel any better, he tried to form words and failed. A look of concern creased the man’s face.
“Is something wrong sir?”
Josef inhaled deeply and tried to steady himself, but when he finally spoke he was appalled by the weakness of his own voice.
“My name is Josef Haller, I served in the German army during the war, I was part of the occupying force in this village” he swallowed hard. “And unless I am mistaken, it was I who put you on that stick”.
The stared at each other in silence, no one in the bar or on the terrace noticed them. Eventually George looked away, he laid his stick on the floor under his chair. Straightening up again he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. When he looked back at Josef his face was a mask, showing no emotion whatsoever. He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the table.
“I think you had better sit down.”
Josef sat, there was a glass of water beside the coffee cup, he pointed at it, George nodded. He picked up the glass and took a mouthful, he was going to need it.
“There are no words I can say … I cannot make amends, but I can perhaps give some kind
of explanation. There is much you do not know, about what happened before, and after.”
George looked steadily at him, then nodded briefly.
Josef began. He spoke for almost forty five minutes, pausing occasionally for more water. He told George his story, from the day he joined the army, up to his recent visit to the doctor. When he spoke of Pforzheim and the terrible fate of his family George closed his eyes and shook his head, but otherwise he held his steady gaze at Josef the whole time. When he had finished the silence between them fell once again.
Then George spoke, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. “I think this, wars are terrible things, the generals and the politicians speak grandly of them. They use words like, Honour, Glory and Victory, these are just words. But the little people like you and me? We lose, I lost the use of my leg, you lost your whole family. We must not waste our lives thinking of one senseless moment all those years ago. We should use our time being grateful for the things we have done since then. Loving wives, beautiful children and grandchildren, successful careers. They are our Victory, Herr Haller. If what you tell me is true time is now short for you, do not waste it worrying about me. The lady across the street is trying to get your attention, your wife I would guess?”
Josef wiped his face and looked around. “Time for me to go.”
He offered his hand and George shook it without hesitation. He made his way slowly out into the street, Maria took his arm and they walked together down to the harbour and the hydrofoil that would take them back to Athens.
On the twenty second of December that year Josef Haller fell into a coma. Three minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve, with Maria holding his hand, he quietly slipped away. On the same evening George Karamis was making his way painfully across the bar to join in the Christmas toast. Christina arrived at his side.