Sergio? Planted in front of the hotel with Father’s posture, left arm bent behind his back, the old man takes a puff on his cigarette and doesn’t turn around. On my way there from the airport, I regret not having asked the taxi to pull over at a bus stop when I saw a man in his eighties, as my German brother would be today, reading a newspaper with his glasses pushed up on his forehead. Sergio! I repeat to the old smoker, and a porter asks if he can take the decrepit wooden suitcase that Father inherited from my grandfather inside on a trolley. I enter the hotel through the revolving door and immediately feel underdressed. The Adlon, which burned down in 1945, was rebuilt inspired by the original architecture, and its beautifully decorated interiors must be like the ones Father saw the day he came here in December 1929. And the beautiful girls at the counter must also be of the same lineage as the ones that Father, then a shy foreign correspondent, addressed when he came to see Mr Thomas Mann, not even sure they would help him. Welcome to the Adlon, Mr Hollander, says the receptionist in English as she hands me back my passport along with the magnetic card to my room. I tip the porter but don’t go up to my room; instead, I take a taxi to Greifswalder Strasse 212/13 before it gets dark. And even if I never learn what became of my brother, this trip has already been worth it, just to be able to wander alone through the courtyard, covered with construction material and rubble from renovations. Scaffolding and hoarding panels mask the facade of the rear building which, after the renovations, will no doubt be used for some kind of venture which I seriously doubt will work. Not so long ago the Magnet club enjoyed fleeting success here, replacing the obscure Miles nightclub, which stood elbow-to-elbow with the tiny Eigenreich Theatre, which replaced rooms to let for artists and students, which succeeded a plus-size women’s clothing factory, which went bankrupt when the country was reunified. But back when my brother came to live here, the building must still have been used for its true function, as the Problem cigarette factory. Yes, Problem. This was the prophetic brand of cigarettes produced by a Jew in this 1920s art deco building, designed by another Jew, Ernst Ludwig Freud, father of the painter and son of Dr Sigmund. And if I know Father, he’d have been thoroughly amused to smoke cigarettes called Problem, which, to make an obscure olfactory association, would have given his room in the Berlin boarding house the same smell of Turkish tobacco that would have permeated Sergio Ernst’s childhood memories. Sergio Ernst! The name echoing in the courtyard slipped out of my mouth accidentally, because the man I saw in a flurry of activity on the other side of the street is just a kid, who now crosses over as if heeding my call. Sorry to bother you, he says in faltering German, but do you know where Heinrich-Roller-Strasse is? According to my pocket guide it is just a little further along, the second street on the right, but I offer to accompany him because he doesn’t seem to understand. He says he’s confused by the street numbering, which doesn’t have odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other; instead, they go up on one side and down on the other. Ah, there it is! says the young man, who hurries down the side street towards a tavern called Vinería Carvalho, where he is greeted at the door by another young man who looks Spanish, with tanned cheeks. Still suffering from jet lag and the night without sleep, I intended to return to my hotel early, but the wines and cold cuts on display are appealing. And the Spaniard suggests a Rioja with a plate of tapas, which he will serve me in the back room right away. There, a table is occupied by a group of people with the somewhat careless appearance of the retired, among whom there is a portly gentleman who croons: The young folk are all dancing / The Lipsi with great passion / The youths just love this rhythm / The Lipsi is the fashion. Highly focused, elbows held wide, he entertains his friends with a finger dance on the table-top, simulating the synchronized steps of a pair dancing the Lipsi: Only to the Lipsi / Do our couples dance / The rumba and the cha-cha-cha do not stand a chance. Can someone tell me what this is all about? I ask, and in the chair at the head of the table a chap with dyed hair explains that the Lipsi was a style of music created in East Germany in an effort to sideline Elvis Presley’s rock and roll. Priceless! I say, fantastisch! but when I am about to ask the man to repeat his number, the subject of the conversation changes to the football of the 1960s. The table is divided between supporters of Lokomotive Leipzig and Dynamo Berlin, and I take advantage of the situation to declare myself a fanatical supporter of Santos Futebol Clube, which won the World Cup with Pelé. I’m Brazilian, I swear, I learned this fluent German of mine from my father, who lived here before the war and was pals with Thomas Mann. He even had a son in Berlin whom I’ve spent years looking for, but before I can get into the story, the fat guy gets up and goes to the toilet, others head outside to smoke and a big man with a goatee asks the Spaniard for the bill. In the end the only one left at the table is the man with the pitch-black hair, who, while fiddling on a laptop, tells me he visited Brazil once, swam in the sea at Copacabana and watched a show of mulattas. But it wasn’t tourism that took him to Rio; rather, he was looking for some family names that he’d had a hard time tracking down in the mess that was the local archives. He is my age or a little older and strikes me as a typical German, with very white skin, but there’s no harm in asking: Are you of Brazilian descent? Oh, no, he laughs, unfortunately there is no Brazilian blood in Thuringia, much less in my village, Böhlen. He introduces himself, Wolfgang Probst, and holds out his hand: Welcome. Nice to meet you, I say, Francisco de Hollander, then I invite myself to sit at his table and pour him some wine from my bottle. On the computer screen, he points to a dot on the map showing Thuringia right in the middle of Germany, which with a click is replaced by Brazil, where arrows point from Rio de Janeiro to the interior and south of the country. He says he traipsed all over old coffee plantations in the states of Rio and São Paulo, until he came to Águas Mornas, in Santa Catarina, tracing families from his village that had migrated there in the mid-nineteenth century. In Colônia Santa Isabel he finally found a community of people who had held on to their Thuringian customs and ancestors’ surnames. And today he still corresponds with some Probsts, ninth or tenth cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, which is ironic for someone who never even found out what became of his father, Friedrich Probst, lance corporal with the German Army in Normandy just yesterday, in 1944. Still, in spite of his mother, who preferred to believe her husband was dead, he had fantasized from an early age about a deserter living it up in France, remarried and head of a wealthy family, with the name Probst adulterated to Proust for all he knew. Whenever he manages to save a little money, Wolfgang Probst takes a train to Paris, where his favourite pastime is following possible Frédéric Prousts, arm in arm with their madames, down the city’s boulevards. Of course he doesn’t approach these old men, for if by chance he really were to locate his father, both father and son would find themselves tongue-tied and the game would no longer be fun. In his opinion it would be like a writer finishing a novel that doesn’t want to be finished. What about you, have you made any progress in your investigations? I confess that I too am distracted by these unlikely searches, and there is no dearth of people with the surname of my father’s girlfriend on the Internet. I have already contacted more than one Sergio Ernst in Germany, another in Portugal, and in Peru, and in Alaska, but I honestly doubt that my brother, at the end of his life, would waste his time on social media. In the future, I might start following some Günthers for a change, if there is any chance that this German couple really did adopt Sergio, even without the required certificates. God only knows, says Wolfgang Probst after examining my letter, but it isn’t entirely unthinkable that the authorities turned a blind eye to the fact or made an exception for the little Mischling. Because even in the death camps, as it is well known, there were cases of Nazi officials who were so charmed by Jewish children that they smuggled them out, christened them and brought them up as their own. Probst wants to believe that the Günthers were practising Lutherans, like most of the inhabitants of this neighbourhood before communism, and, if so, they wou
ld have attended the Immanuel Church, just three blocks from here. He knows Pastor Goertz well and visits the church assiduously, less to participate in the services than as a museologist and researcher. The parish church houses an extensive, centuries-old archive, where there may be some record of the Günther family. And when he sees me looking for the church in my guidebook, Wolfgang Probst tells me the archive isn’t open to the public and certain formalities are required in order to consult it: Remember, this isn’t Brazil, Mr Hollander. If I agree, he will take note of the Günthers’ full address, so that tomorrow morning he can present the pastor with a written request in good German. And night has already fallen when, outside the tavern, he hands me his business card and assures me once again that he has saved the numbers of the Hotel Adlon, my room and my mobile on his phone: Don’t worry, Mr Hollander, I’ll call as soon as I have any news. You are doing me a great favour, Wolfgang, and, please, feel free to call me Ciccio. As you wish, Mr Ciccio.
The Immanuel Church took no more than forty-eight hours to get back to Wolfgang Probst with the frustrating results of his enquiries. And I, who had been planning to spend a week in Berlin, rebook my ticket home and leave the hotel after three nights, taking nothing more than half a dozen books as souvenirs. I didn’t go to libraries, museums, the Opera House, I didn’t hire a bike or stroll through the parks, in spite of the springtime sun. I went everywhere by taxi, especially on Kurfürstendamm, or Ku’damm to Berliners and most certainly to Father, who in his youth would have frequented the cafes, theatres and dance halls on the avenue. I went around the corner to Fasanenstrasse 22, Anne Ernst and Heinz Borgart’s old address, now the Hotel Augusta, and I had lunch at the house next door, number 23, the literary cafe where Anne posed beside Father with a bulging belly. I tried to guess which boarding house Father stayed at, out of so many in the vicinity of Kurfürstendamm, considerably damaged by the air raids. And if Father could see the glass towers that have gone up here and there, they might look to him like the ghosts of more familiar buildings that were reduced to dust. Not to mention those that have retained only the outer shell of the original, like an ancient jacket on a new book that Father would open, perplexed: Assunta! Assunta! And needless to say I came across a Sergio Ernst on every street corner. On the second day I followed one of them down Ku’damm to the back of a bookshop. There I saw him push his glasses up on his forehead, flick through a book or two, distractedly light a cigarette and look surprised when he was scolded by the sales assistant. It just so happens his name was Sergiusz, Sergiusz Berenbaum, a professor of German-language literature in Warsaw, and he didn’t mind being approached by a stranger from South America. On the contrary, he spoke enthusiastically of his essay on Robert Walser in an out-of-print publication, ran on about contemporary authors I’d never heard of and made me buy a handful of books that were hidden from view. When I got back to the hotel, I forced myself to stop by the business centre, to keep on top of my correspondence with the readers of my webpage. I sat next to an Englishwoman in her sixties, whom I greeted with discreet gallantry, but as soon as I typed my password into the computer, the screen was filled with naked women of every description. Out of nowhere there came offers of luxury escorts in Berlin, which I deleted in a hurry, giving way to scenes of sodomy, which were hard to delete, and I only managed to remove a transvestite with a giant cock by unplugging the computer. I put off my work, went up to my room and leaned back on the bed, curious about the new books, perhaps the first in my entire life that I had allowed myself to hold without them having passed through Father’s hands. I read a few short poems, I read the blurb on the back of a book of short stories, I took a peek inside a novel filled with photographs of animals, people, train stations, but my attention kept drifting away; I hadn’t had any update on my brother for two days. I rang Probst, left a message, turned out the light, turned it back on again, went back to the illustrated novel, and got stuck on page three. I opened a beer, lit a cigarette, decided to try a bit more of the novel, maybe just to the end of the first chapter, but the chapter was endless. There was page after page of a single paragraph which I couldn’t leave unfinished, and hours later I was sorry Father hadn’t lived long enough to read that book. I was sorry he hadn’t lived over a hundred years so that, weary of literature, he might have agreed to read only those novels that I had personally vetted. At dawn I close the book by this author called W.G. Sebald, who in turn closes his book by closing the book of a certain Dan Jacobson, and as I slip into a bad dream I am woken by Wolfgang Probst’s call: Arthur Erich Willy Günther and Pauline Anna Günther, maiden name Pohl, really did attend the Immanuel Church, where, on 30 November 1937, they christened their son, Horst. It wasn’t Sergio, it was Horst. The name of the adopted boy was Horst.
Horst, I mutter in the taxi, unintentionally, and the driver is surprised to hear me call him by his first name. After Bulgarians, Ghanaians and Afghans, old Horst is the first German taxi driver to pick me up, now that I’m on my way to the airport. He asks if I mind the music, which, absorbed in other thoughts, I hadn’t even noticed, and it is a woman singing vigorously: A hundred times I’ve cursed Berlin, a hundred times … You probably don’t know her, says the driver. It’s Helga Hahnemann, a big name back in the days of East Germany. Good voice, I say, but don’t tell me she sang the Lipsi too. Horst jests: The Lipsi, the Lipsi, did you know that in 1959, already sick of learning Russian at school, I almost took refuge in West Berlin just to be free of the Lipsi? I’m sorry, are you a musician? No, I say, I teach literature. You’re a Turk, aren’t you? You’ve got a Turkish accent. No, sir, I’m Brazilian. Brazilian, Brazilian, I read a Brazilian novel a long time ago, about a woman with two husbands. Ah, yes, Dona Flor by Jorge, my late friend Jorge Amado. Amado, says Horst, I bet Amado belonged to the Communist Party. Here in Eastern Europe they published communist authors from all over the world. My taxi driver really wasn’t fond of the Russians, or the Lipsi, or the Stasi, or the Wall. But I still consider myself a man of the left, he says, tapping his temple with his index finger: It’s a viewpoint, you know. At this instant I feel a kind of vertigo, my vision clouds over, and with a chill I think of Mother, who used to hear voices. The voice I hear is Father’s, but to my relief it isn’t, what would you call it, a voice from beyond the grave. It is his still-crystalline voice from my childhood. I’ll be damned if it isn’t Father singing on Helga Hahnemann’s record: The grandparents would sit in front of their houses / At night, in the village, under the lime trees … It is a cheery song, it’s got rhythm, but I find it hard to imagine the scholar Sergio de Hollander neglecting his obligations in São Paulo to come and record pop music in Germany: When was this recorded, sir? This recording, I think it’s from sixty-something, says Horst, retrieving the CD cover, a compilation of Helga Hahnemann’s greatest hits, from the dashboard. And now Helga herself comes on and sings in harmony with Father: We are sitting in buildings above the cities / In the light, though down below there is already shadow / And we see the stars … I snatch the cover from the driver’s hand and run my eyes over the track titles until I reach number 8: Wir sitzen auf Hochhäusern (Duett mit Sergio Günther). Sergio Günther, it says duet with Sergio Günther.
‘Hallo!’
‘Hallo, Wolfgang? Wolf? I found my brother, can you hear the singer?’
The name rings a bell with Wolfgang Probst, who I find installed in the smokers’ room of the Adlon, with a glass of white wine and his laptop open on the table. While he was waiting for me he made a few phone calls and of course looked up Sergio Günther on the Internet, who appears among others with the same name in Switzerland, Australia, India and even Joinville, in Brazil. Probst read up about Günther, mostly repeated information, with no up-to-date details or images of the artist. But from what he can see, in addition to recording LPs and compact singles, Günther worked in the 1960s and 1970s as master of ceremonies on TV music programmes, for which he also conducted interviews and produced news segments in his native Germany as well as Eastern bl
oc countries. At that time Wolfgang Probst still lived out in the provinces and didn’t see much television. But his companions at the Vinería Carvalho are Berliners, most of whom grew up in that very same neighbourhood, and it’s possible that, as young people, they may not only have watched the programmes, but also have seen the Günther family out and about. As such, they would be in a position to confirm if the Günthers’ son and the famous artist were the same person. Wolfgang Probst doesn’t buy this theory, lest he lose faith in the Immanuel Church’s archives. He thinks the singer is more likely the child of Catholic Günthers, who named their son Sergio after some saint. Bertolt, Theodor, Johannes, Hermann, Elias, Jacob, Wilhelm, Probst’s friends, actually did remember seeing Sergio Günther on TV, whether reading one of Rilke’s poems, presenting a Romanian Dixieland band or singing tangos to an elegantly dressed auditorium. But according to Rainer, who was born at 20 Greifswalder Strasse, practically opposite 212/13, the old factory has been abandoned for as long as he can remember. Nevertheless, he gave Wolfgang Probst the number of his cousin Winfried, a cameraman who must have worked with Sergio Günther at the TV studio. But no, Winfried said he had only started the job in 1981, by which time Sergio Günther had taken leave from the studio for health reasons. The cameraman did, however, unearth a phone number for Gottfried, an old-school cinematographer, who, sadly, died three years ago, according to his widow, Ingeborg. It was she who put Probst in touch with Robinson, a retired journalist, who had worked with both Gottfried and Sergio Günther. Now we are already glancing at each other restlessly, Probst and I, because it is well after the appointed hour, when a man in puffy trousers and braces, without a jacket, strolls into the room, unhurried, glancing about at those present. Probst and I both stand at the same time to shake his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Robinson smiles at me: Wolfgang Probst? Greying, on the plump side, with a kindly manner, Robinson reminds me of someone but I don’t know who. With age we lose the ability to recognize people, perhaps due to the accumulation of faces printed onto our retinas, and there isn’t a new one that doesn’t vaguely remind us of another. Always smiling, he raises his glass to toast with us but doesn’t take a sip, holding it mid-air as he speaks slowly. He says he should have come by metro because he lives next door to Schillingstrasse station, but he needed to give the car a run. The hotel’s valet didn’t look too eager to take it, though, so he had to drive around a bit to find a parking spot. But, as he was saying, he lives ten minutes away from Leninplatz, now United Nations Square, where he used to pick up Sergio Günther, who lived there with the studio’s wardrobe mistress. With him at the wheel, Sergio beside him and Gottfried in the back seat with his equipment, they would head off to film their segments in his old banger, which had never been anything to write home about, even in its prime. An opinion, incidentally, not shared by Sergio, in whose mind the other side’s BMWs and Porsches were not a patch on our Trabant, although we never really knew if he was being serious or not. There was much drinking and fun to be had on these excursions, and the two of them had only fallen out once, after Robinson had gone to Czechoslovakia in 1968. Sent by Neues Deutschland to cover the beetroot harvest, Robinson had returned fascinated with what was being dubbed the Prague Spring. But it wasn’t over political differences that they had fought; it was because Sergio had stolen Robinson’s girlfriend while he was away, but even so, their friendship prevailed and soon they were back on the road again. As he was saying, the Trabi was a stiff, noisy car, but nonetheless it took them far, belching out smoke all over the Carpathians and the Balkans, especially the Balkans, because Sergio had become obsessed with producing stories in Yugoslavia. A month wouldn’t go by without Channel 1 airing a programme about Yugoslavia, to the degree that envious Party members accused Sergio of having affairs with Croatian women. On these international trips, in addition to scripting the segments, Robinson served as interpreter, because Sergio only spoke German. Sergio wasn’t a big reader, although he had read Goethe and Schiller at school and had chosen Thomas Mann’s confidence man Felix Krull as his literary hero. But his wife, the sound designer, always told him not to leave his notes lying around the studio for anyone to see, as they were full of grammatical errors. Apparently, at about sixteen years of age, Sergio Günther had swapped his studies for the barracks, not because he was particularly keen on a military career, but because he wanted to join the prestigious army choir. Robinson had heard this from someone else, because when he met Sergio he already worked in television and was tight-lipped about his life prior to that. Once, after a few glasses, Sergio told him that he remembered the perfume of a woman who used to visit him when he was a boy, presumably his birth mother. And another night he said that when his father, Arthur, died he took his mother, Pauline, to live with him and Susanne, the journalist he was married to at the time. During the move, he opened a drawer and in so doing discovered the names of his biological parents as well as his own birth name. He understood that the Günthers, even back in the 1930s, had felt it prudent to give him an authentically German name, Horst, to substitute for the Sergio inherited from his Brazilian father. My father, I murmur, and Robinson looks at me without surprise. When Wolfgang Probst asked Robinson to come and talk about Sergio Günther in person, he assumed, given that it was confidential, that he would be talking to his friend’s secret son, born perhaps to a Croatian mother, you never know. And I am obviously too old to be Sergio Günther’s son, but when he saw me he thought he knew me from somewhere. And the minute I greeted him, he had no doubt that he was standing before Sergio Günther’s brother. If he listened to me with his eyes closed, he could have sworn it was Sergio putting on a Turkish accent. What about the colour of his skin, I ask, his mouth, his hair, in what else are we alike? And Robinson, after knocking back his wine in a single gulp, says: Don’t you want to see him?
My German Brother Page 15