—No.
—What do you think I am?
—German-Turkish.
She nods, satisfied. Micha nods, too. But he thinks: Turkish-German, and that bothers him. Even the next morning on the train it bothers him.
Michael reads in the library every day after school for the next two weeks. He tells Mina that he’s planning new lessons for next term. He is afraid to tell her what he’s really doing. In case he finds Opa Askan in one of the books; in case he stops before he finds him. Either. Both.
Waffen SS. Soldier elite. Heroes of the front line. Michael has a list now of their triumphs, Demyansk, Kharkov, Kursk. More names, more dates and connections running across the pages of the maps in his head. But with them also comes the list of their crimes. Oradour, Le Paradis, and there when they destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, too.
His reading is not so random now, more deliberate. He works on the books like he works on his imaginary maps: reading footnotes, finding references to other books, articles. He looks them up in the catalogue. If they are there, he reads them. If not, he adds them to his list for other libraries, other times. He has a pile of notebooks by now.
Photos are difficult, painful, but Micha seeks them out. The dark line of evidence in the middle of the book, bound firm into the center of the spine; description, interpretation feeble next to what they disclose.
cheekbones
nose
forehead
the way he held his cigarettes (he turned them in to his palm)
Micha can’t find his Opa’s face. Young Askan Boell. They all look like him and none of them do, the young Germans with the guns and the Jews.
Luise is older. She remembers Opa better than me.
—He was a drunk. He screamed, smashed windows, shit the bed.
—Do you remember that?
—No. Tante Inge. Bernd told her, and Inge told me. He was lovely with us. He drew pictures. He danced with me, taught me to waltz. I thought he was wonderful, I loved him.
—Me too.
—Oma still loves him.
On his way home from work, a day or two after he spoke with Luise, Michael remembers a morning over two decades past.
Opa stood in the hall with his vest buttons undone. I must have been about five or six. A family breakfast. Everyone at the table, chatting, waiting for Opa to come downstairs.
He was in the hallway. Standing still, but nodding his head. I stood in the kitchen doorway. I thought he might be nodding at me, but he wasn’t. He saw me after a while. I remember I was holding a hot roll. Opa held out his hand, and it was unsteady, like his head. He said,
—Sit down, child. Eat.
Opa followed me through to the dining room and he sat down opposite me. The family was chatting, and their voices got louder when he lifted his glass. I lifted my glass of juice, too, and I saw that my hand didn’t shake, and my head didn’t nod; not like Opa’s. His glass was twice the size of mine, but gone before I had tasted my juice.
Mutti cut open my breakfast roll and I pulled out the insides. It was warm, the bread, and I squashed it into balls. Opa sat still, and after a while, he stopped nodding. He lifted his hands, held them steady above his plate, and then Oma buttered his bread for him while he buttoned his vest.
Micha takes Mina with him to Oma’s.
—She enjoys seeing us together, you know.
—It’s fine, Micha, really. I like your Oma.
Mina works with old people all the time at the clinic. Micha likes the tone of voice she has with them: conspiratorial, as if she’s known them for years. Friends chatting while she coaxes old limbs into action. He enjoys watching Oma respond: gentle and easy, having fun.
Micha follows while Oma pulls Mina along the wall, showing her Opa’s drawings. The pictures are framed and arranged exactly as they were in the old house. Exactly as they were the last time Mina came to visit, too. But Mina talks as though they are all new to her, and as though she knew Micha’s Opa, too.
—Askan drew very well, didn’t he?
—Yes, he loved to sketch. Trees and water. He was good at light, I think, very good. Light on water, light through trees. Look.
—This is my favorite.
—The birches? That’s your favorite, too, schatz. Micha?
—Yes.
Oma takes Mina’s hand, and Micha’s, too.
—That was on our honeymoon, a beautiful place. I swam, and Askan sketched and took photos—
—Can we see them?
Micha’s question feels loud, too fast, too obvious, but Mina and Oma just smile and agree. Oma gets the album from her bedside table, props it open on the table for them, on the honeymoon page. Birch woods and streams, watery landscapes. Oma with plump, smooth skin in a swimsuit, hair still wet from the lake.
—Oh, look, I wore lipstick then. Can you see?
—You were beautiful, Kaethe.
—Yes, I wasn’t bad.
Oma and Mina laugh and Micha stares at his Opa as a young man. Younger than me. On his honeymoon; standing in shirtsleeves; holding a bicycle; smoking a cigarette; in front of a lake. He looks the same. Thinner. But really just the same.
Micha takes the photo out of his pocket on the train home. Mina looks up from her book.
—Did Oma Kaethe give you that?
—No, I took it.
—What? Micha. Just now?
—Yes.
Mina frowns at him.
—You should have asked. I mean, she’d have given it to you, I’m sure she would.
—I don’t want her to know I’ve got it.
—But she’ll see that it’s gone.
—I’ll copy it, put it back. She’ll never know.
—It’s so rude, though, Micha. That’s her husband, her memories, you know.
She’s angry now, and so is Michael. He thinks she has no right to be angry.
—She’ll never notice.
—That’s not the point, and you know it, Michael.
—My grandparents were Nazis.
—God, and whose weren’t?
—No, Opa Askan was in the Waffen-SS. Not just in the Party.
Micha looks at her. He said it to shock her, and she is shocked.
—I want to find out if he did anything. Killed anyone.
—Any Jews, you mean?
—Anyone. Jews. Yes.
Mina blinks.
—That’s why I need the photo.
—Right.
Micha sees her jaws clench, feels the ache in his own clamped teeth.
—Have you found anything?
—No. Not yet.
—Oh.
The train stops and people get on. They sit in silence for one stop, two. Then Mina takes Micha’s hand, and he feels his stomach unwind.
Oma was a Nazi. Opa was, too.
It’s not real to him yet, still held at arm’s length, but he sees it all the same.
Micha closes his eyes. Holds Mina’s hand. Feels how strange it is. That he can be glad she knows.
The university has a video collection, too. Micha works his way through two shelves of documentaries over the Christmas vacation. The library is almost empty these days. He is alone in the video booths, but he still watches with headphones on.
It is cold. Outside the snow is frozen hard on the paving stones, and old people take small, deliberate steps to avoid a fall. Inside the heat is on low, and Micha wears his coat.
After lunch in the cafeteria, he drops off. He is rewinding tapes, making notes, and the room is cool. He slides farther down in his chair, rests cheek against palm for a while. The video hums on in front of him, quieter as he slips away. When he wakes up, the tape is playing in the machine. Heinrich Himmler inspects his ranks of saluting SS. Chin receding into skinny neck, coat belted high over his chest. The headphones have slipped out of their socket, silent pads cover Micha’s ears. He hears his breath loud and long; still in the pattern of sleep. Memory rattling out Himmler facts. A schoolteacher. Had copies of Mein Kampf b
ound in human skin. Said the SS were righteous killers; right to kill the Jews. Great nations must march over thousands of corpses. Something like that.
Himmler killed himself. A cameraman filmed what they found. Micha watches it now. Dead Himmler lies on bare wooden boards, blanket clutched in small fists under his chin. Glasses on, wire-rimmed and round over closed eyes. His lips are tight, mouth twisted with poison, dark flecks of blood in his narrow mustache. The room he has chosen is full of chairs. Like a classroom. The window and the wooden floor. The judgment avoided. A mean death at the end of a corridor.
Micha ejects the tape and goes home, furious on the bus. Footsteps loud cracks in the brittle snow.
—Perhaps Opa admired him, you know.
He lies in bed with Mina, talking in the dark.
—He could have met him, maybe he touched him. Maybe Himmler inspired him.
—Mmm.
—Can you imagine admiring Himmler?
—No, but I know what he did. He looks ugly to me because he was a Nazi.
—Yes, but Opa doesn’t look ugly to me.
—That’s completely different.
—How?
—It just is. He was your Opa. If Himmler was your Opa, he wouldn’t be ugly. It would have made you sad to see him dead, not angry.
—Do you think my Opa is ugly?
—I didn’t know Opa Askan.
—But now, if you see the photos at Oma’s?
—The ones you steal?
—Just photos, any photos. If I talk about him?
—He’s not a Nazi in my head.
—What is he?
—Your Opa Kaethe’s husband, Karin’s father. I don’t know. All of those things.
Micha looks at Mina, but her eyes are closed. She speaks without opening them.
—What is he in your head?
—My Opa. Mostly. But sometimes he’s a Nazi now.
—And he doesn’t look ugly?
—No.
—When he’s a Nazi?
—No.
—Do you think he should?
—Yes.
Mina sighs. Her eyes are still closed. She pulls the blanket up over her chest, holding it in fists under her chin. Micha winces.
—So, how do you tell the difference? When he’s Opa, and when he’s a Nazi?
—I don’t know, it feels different. Cold.
—Cold?
Micha reaches over and pulls the blanket out of Mina’s fists. She opens her eyes and frowns.
—Sorry. It just looked weird. The way you had the blanket.
Mina brings a videotape home from work.
—I thought it might be interesting for you. Sabine brought it in. She says it’s very good. One of her friends made it. He went to Israel last year and filmed it.
—Did you tell Sabine about Opa?
Michael is defensive, smoking at the kitchen table. Mina sits down.
—No, Micha, of course not. We were just talking, you know. It just came up. Shall we watch it? It does sound very good.
An old man stands under a desert sun and remembers school in a cold place. His family was German then, he says. Germans who were Jews. Jews who were Germans. There was no internal hyphen, no line drawn between; no start of one, end of the other place inside.
An old woman sits on a wide sofa with the filmmaker. He has found a photo of the house where she was born; has brought it with him to give to her; from Berlin to Tel Aviv. She holds it and stares at it, and they are quiet for a while. The filmmaker asks: What do you feel when you see this picture? The old woman says: Nothing. In German: Gar nichts. Nothing. When the interview is over, she holds on to the photo. Can I keep this? Can I keep it? Yes, of course. It’s for you.
Mina cries over the old woman and her old home, and Michael leans across the sofa and puts his arms around her.
—It’s amazing. She still loves the place, that bit of Germany. After everything that was done, after all that.
Micha is surprised; that’s why she’s crying. To him the old woman was angry. Gar nichts. This is what makes him want to cry. That she is angry; that he thinks she is right to be angry; that he doesn’t know whom she is angry with. Hitler, Eichmann, the guards at Bergen-Belsen, the neighbors who drew their curtains when the police came. Opa. Him.
—Didn’t you think she was angry?
—Yes, but she was so happy to see the house again. You could see that.
Mina kisses him, stops the tape and turns the light on. Michael stays where he is, even after she leaves the room.
Stupid to feel guilty about things that were done before I was born.
• • •
The notice in the library is tattered. Someone has scrawled a swastika on it, with Jew underneath, in red. Someone else has scribbled it out again, in black. A plain, word-processed announcement. Database of survivors and their testimonies; published and unpublished. Database of criminals; convictions from Nuremberg to the present day. Micha notes the number, but it is almost a week before he phones.
He waits until Mina is downstairs in the laundry room. She has taken a book. A man answers after five rings. He sounds out of breath. Micha says he has called about the database.
—Survivors?
—No, criminals.
—Aha.
He asks Micha to hang on. At the other end of the line, Micha hears his breathing and the click and bleep of a computer starting up. Micha feels suddenly rude. He introduces himself, apologizes, and the man laughs, but it is not unfriendly. He says his name, too, and good evening. He has caught his breath now.
—Name? Name you are looking for, I mean.
—Askan Boell. B-O-E-L-L.
—Boell. Askan.
He types as he talks. The fan in the computer whirrs.
—It’s searching. It will take a few moments.
Micha breaks the silence.
—He was my grandfather.
—Aha.
The man doesn’t sound surprised. They are silent again, and Micha waits. He wanted the man to be surprised, perhaps even to think he was brave. Micha starts to wonder whether he is being brave.
—No. No entry under that name. Any middle names?
—No.
—Aha.
Micha wasn’t expecting this. So quick, so few questions; just a name and then nothing.
—He was in the Waffen-SS. On the eastern front.
—Aha.
The man on the phone doesn’t need this information. Micha just wants him to know. To know that he knows.
—The Russians had him. They kept him prisoner after the war, for nine years.
—Yes.
—So there must be a file on him somewhere?
—The Russians. They still hold on to their stuff. We know very little about who they held and why.
—Oh.
—You know, it was quite normal, too. Quite normal for the Russians to keep German soldiers for many years. Some only came back in the late fifties.
—Yes.
—They were slave labor.
—Yes. Not criminals?
—No. Very unlikely, anyway. No judgments against them that we know of. That they knew of, even.
He is kind, this man. Micha wants to stay on the phone with him and his slow voice. He feels reassured. Micha wants to tell him he’s made him feel better. The computer is switched off. The whirring fan stops, abruptly.
—Well. Sorry I couldn’t help.
—Thank you.
—You’re welcome.
And he’s gone. Micha goes downstairs to help Mina fold the clothes. He tells her about the man on the phone and what he said.
—It was normal?
—Yes.
—That’s good, then, isn’t it?
—Yes.
Micha doesn’t feel so good anymore, though. He feels like he’s come to a dead end.
—So what now?
—I don’t know. Find another man with another list.
Micha laughs, and Mina looks a
t him.
—A bigger list.
—How big was this one?
—Twenty thousand, I think.
—My God, and there are bigger lists?
—Yes, I read about a man with seventy thousand names.
Mina whistles.
—So many?
—Yes, of course. You know how many people were killed, don’t you?
—Okay, Michael.
He has been raising his voice. The cellar feels very quiet now, small. Too small for loud noises.
—It takes a lot of criminals to kill that many people.
Mina folds the clothes.
—I said okay.
She feels told off, and Micha feels ashamed. When did I get so righteous? He carries the clothes upstairs and tells Mina he’ll take her out for dinner.
Usually, he goes on a Sunday. Today is Wednesday, Micha’s classes finish early, and he wants to see Oma, to ask her some questions. She will be surprised to see him, claim she has nothing to feed him. Micha buys cake on his way to the bird’s nest.
The nurse at reception phones up to Oma as he gets into the elevator. She has to repeat herself a couple of times. Oma is already halfway down the corridor when Micha gets up to her floor, her face creased with worry.
—What’s happened, schatz? Micha? What’s wrong?
—Nothing, Oma. I’ve just come to see you.
—Really?
She holds on to his arm, can’t believe it.
—My classes finished early. I brought cake, look.
—And Mina is fine?
—Yes, Oma, yes. Everyone is fine. Come on, I’ll make the coffee.
Micha feels like an intruder in his Oma’s little kitchen. She stands in the doorway, watching him put the cakes out onto plates. He has thrown her routine; he knows it; it is painful to see. My Oma is an old woman now.
—You don’t work on a Wednesday?
—I finished early.
—Oh, yes. You said that.
Micha carries the plates into the other room. His Oma follows.
—I have my physiotherapy on Wednesday mornings.
—Yes. Did she come this morning, your therapist?
—Yes. That’s right.
Oma settles into her chair, happier, fixed back into her week again.
—Do you have cuttings for me?
—Of course.
Micha lays out the articles for his grandmother, and eats while she reads. She asks him questions about them, and he answers. It’s almost like a normal visit, but not quite. To Micha, it feels like they are sitting at her table with its red wax cloth, both acting out a normal visit.
The Dark Room Page 17