They were silent for a while, digesting not only their alcohol but also their new shock about Rebecca’s behaviour.
“There’s even worse news,” Andrew said. “This morning she announced her intention to join the xenophobic right-wingers. She said she had to throw in her weight with the other side to counterbalance my treacherous activities. She said that people like me were a danger for the nation. What was needed was more of the good old patriotism. Britain had to be made great again.”
“You mean she joined UKIP?”
“As it appears.”
Andrew went home with David and Marie-Claire. They offered him a bed in their guest-room.
* * *
When Andrew called at his parents’ house two days later, he found his sister Lisa sitting over a cup of tea in the lounge. From the start, he registered a gloomy atmosphere. Lisa was in a state of extreme excitement.
“Isn’t it terrible?” she asked, throwing her hands up in the air. “Here we are, an ordinary family, nothing to worry about. And now look! Everything shattered to smithereens in one blow.”
“Hey, Sis. What’s the matter? Just calm down and tell me,” Andrew said.
Their mother entered with a cup of tea for Andrew. She didn’t look shattered, as could have been expected from Lisa’s ravings. Her expression was calm but serious.
“Now, tell him. Tell him everything!” Lisa shouted.
“Please, just calm down,” Andrew repeated. “Let’s have a sip of our tea, then breathe normally.”
Since Lisa was too flustered to speak coherently, it befell on her mother to inform Andrew of the latest development. She explained how Wolfgang Löffel had suddenly appeared on her doorstep last night, probably knowing that George would be away on business, and had tried to blackmail her with an entirely new story.
The new story ran thus:
Didi Woolf was not Manfred Weidmann. Wolfgang Löffel had always believed that until he suddenly stumbled over the truth. Manfred Weidmann killed himself in the early 1950s, shortly after his arrival in the States.
Didi Woolf’s real name was Henry Miller. He grew up in Davenport, Iowa. From his early years he’d had a fantastic talent for acting and for languages. He could fool people with different accents, he could impersonate many of his schoolmates and he spent most of his time learning foreign languages. While his friends were out playing football or baseball, young Henry was sitting in his room brooding over language learning material, practising different accents of the English language and copying out Latin proverbs. A most unusual child indeed! His parents tried to get him interested in other things, such as sports or games, but without success.
As a teenager, Henry made friends with one of his schoolmates called Eamon O’Reilly. Together, they formed a team of tricksters. Initially, they were satisfied with harmless pranks. For example, they would go to shops and ask for goods in the name of other people, whom they were impersonating in such a convincing way that the shop-owners believed them. Or they would dress up as a pair of dissatisfied citizens and appear at one of the police stations of the town, giving invented evidence about crimes apparently committed by people they had selected at random. Eventually, however, their tricks became small crimes. Burglaries and assaults, all in disguise, became their trade.
When, in the early 1950s, they became radicalized by political ideas, the brutality of their crimes increased dramatically, and they became more politically motivated. They called themselves the avengers of the intellectually dispossessed. Their enemies were the disciples of Joe McCarthy, the controversial Senator from Wisconsin.
They called at remote farms in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin where they knew the farmers to be followers of the McCarthy movement. Within three years, they committed at least ten armed robberies, dozens of burglaries, a few arsons and at least five murders. At every crime scene, the police found a note or a placard with the words, “Thanks, Joe McC!” They were hunted by the FBI, there were angry letters to editors of the national papers, and of course, Senator McCarthy told the newspapers and his fellow-politicians that those crimes were the result of Communist activities in the land. He didn’t tell them how much the crimes helped his own policies, his witch-hunt for left-wing politicians, artists and other critical intellectuals and his morbid anti-Communist campaigns, whereas his friends demanded the immediate capture and just punishment of those monsters, as they were often dubbed by the media. The electric chair was practically waiting for them.
However, the two gangsters were too clever for the police. They always appeared in different disguises, and the scenes of their crimes allowed for no recognizable pattern. They were described as Southerners with a French accent, as lower-class British criminals, as immigrants from Russia, Germany or Mexico. In one case, a witness swore he had detected a Chinese accent when he’d met them personally before they shot his family. The truth was: nobody knew their real faces or had any idea about their true identities. All they knew was that they were two youngish men, one a bit taller than the other, and they were very quick in everything they did.
Their crimes in the three states stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The two criminals disappeared, their notes addressed to the hated senator vanished, and it was believed they had either been killed or they had managed to leave the country.
The truth was a different matter. The two friends had found they’d made enough money to start a new life. They were satisfied they had inflicted enough damage on McCarthy and his followers. They even saw themselves as heroes, the Robin Hoods of the Mid-West.
Henry Miller changed his name to Didi Woolf, while Eamon O’Reilly became Paddy Malone. With their large sums of money, Paddy bought a partnership in a medium-sized company producing chemical and pharmaceutical goods in Chicago. After six months, as one of the company’s executives, he advertised a job for which Henry applied. Of course, it was all play-acting, so Henry got the job. Two years later, their company was bought by a larger, multi-national syndicate, in which both friends got good jobs at the executive level.
Sometime in their early phase, they both found suitably gullible women they could marry without risking anything. Thus, they became respectable executives and family-men. While Paddy’s new wife asked a few dangerous questions when she found out how much money he had, Didi’s wife Emily never even suspected any foul play. The men’s cover-up story was so well concocted and so realistic in every way, and Emily was too much in love to have any doubts at all.
Both friends started their families in Chicago, but perhaps because the FBI was getting a bit too nosy, they shifted their main business activities to England. Newcastle was the ideal spot for Didi Woolf alias Henry Miller. The city’s economy - indeed the whole North East - was so depressed that the thriving business was welcomed with open arms. The company created quite a lot of new jobs. Nothing would have been further from people’s minds than any suspicions about the two successful businessmen’s past.
When Mum had completed her story, Andrew and Lisa looked at each other. What could they say?
“And that’s the story you got from Löffel?” Andrew asked.
“Yes. He told me more details to prove the truth, apparently. But yes, that’s his story. So now we have the choice to believe either one or the other version of your grandfather’s biography. Was he a Nazi criminal or was he an American gangster? A very attractive choice, indeed!” Her face drew a bitter smile. Neither Andrew nor Lisa had ever seen their mother in such a sarcastic mood.
They couldn’t arrive at a solution to the question of an adequate reaction to this new development. They went over some of the details in the new version, speculating on how Löffel had got the story initially. Andrew suggested he could go home and check things on the Internet before they were going to take any steps. Lisa was in tears.
Back at his flat, Andrew was glad to be on his own. Rebecca had left hi
m, and if he was honest, he had to admit it was a relief after all.
He had taken notes about the American version, so he started his computer and began to search things on the Internet. He was too busy in his search to stop and ask himself which of the two versions could claim a higher degree of credibility, the Nazi story or the American gangster story.
He found that all the details he had noted down were correct. On the Internet, he found all the data about the atrocious crimes committed in those three states in the early 1950s, about Senator Joe McCarthy and his politics, and about the fact that those two mysterious criminals had never been caught. It was one of the black spots in FBI history. As one of the articles explained, there was a certain Chuck Harvey of Des Moines who proclaimed himself to be the man to catch those criminals, even after more than half a century. He had lost his grandparents in one of the assaults, and he had collected a host of evidence over the decades. On his website, he asked the general public for support. Had anyone come across anything that might throw new light on those terrible crimes and their perpetrators? He was grateful for any small detail that might come to light.
Andrew gulped. What would happen if Löffel contacted Chuck Harvey? Could he still damage the family? A good thing Löffel was such an old man, probably not very familiar with the Internet. But then, he must have found out a lot about the affair for himself. How had he found out? Andrew checked himself. The whole thing could be a big fake. Löffel could have got hold of a report, perhaps an old newspaper, which led him to that old case, and he just invented the connection between Henry Miller and Didi Woolf. And who knows that one of the gangsters was really called Henry Miller? That might be a fake, too.
In the evening, he sat down and wrote a statement for himself, to clarify his mind. He wrote down everything he knew about the two versions of his grandfather’s life and career.
It was ten-thirty when he had completed his comparative statement. He looked at the pages filled with his characteristically regular handwriting and decided to sleep on it before thinking of any plan of action.
He watched an older detective story on TV before he went to bed. But he couldn’t go to sleep straightaway. In his mind, he went through all the points of both stories again and again. Eventually, however, the arguments got mixed up and his mind turned to Rebecca. Why had she left him? Did he want her back? Of course, she was a very attractive woman, he remembered the good times they’d had together, and he could still feel the sensational sex they’d had, but then he had to admit to himself that they hadn’t had sex for several months now. That should be an indication of their relationship, shouldn’t it? In time, Rebecca’s face and his mental image of his grandfather as an American gangster merged and produced a sort of Bonnie-and-Clyde image, a mere mirage of his mind, which was gradually drifting off into a troubled sleep.
Twenty-Five
Andrew made himself a strong cup of coffee from his Saeco machine. He added a dash of milk and a tiny portion of white sugar. As he was putting the sugar away, he remembered how odd it was that so many people in this country took brown sugar in their coffee, an awful practice which distorted the lovely aroma of a good cup of coffee, whereas white sugar enhanced the taste. Well, well, what can you do? Continentals just know better.
He sat down at his desk and started his computer. There were several email messages waiting for him. Three of them could be deleted, and there were two very interesting ones, one from Rebecca and another from “[email protected]”.
He opened Rebecca’s message first, because he wanted to have her off his mind before devoting himself to his grandfather’s biography.
She wrote to tell him that she wasn’t coming back. She’d had her doubts about their relationship for quite some time. They were as different as chalk and cheese. His constant reference to Germany and his morbid interest in his grandfather’s past as a Nazi had become unbearable, and his repeated arguments about international politics were really most unhealthy. Why couldn’t he just enjoy life in this country as it was? This was the greatest country, and it had a glorious past. And what was wrong about national pride anyway? He was a disgrace, an absolute disgrace. His Communist opinions couldn’t be washed away by his arrogant intellectualism. Besides, he wasn’t a real intellectual anyway, since he hadn’t even been to university. She could see that he just liked rubbing shoulders with intellectuals. He should learn to be proud of his country instead of criticizing it all the time. The way he sometimes talked he appeared like some stupid Continental. One of her acquaintances had actually already asked her if she was living with a foreigner.
The message went on for a few more paragraphs in which she was just repeating herself.
So she had really left him. He wondered how it could have been that he’d never realized that she was seeing him like that. But then, can you ever really know what other individuals think of you? He remembered a story that David had told him a few weeks ago. David’s father had enjoyed the friendship of a couple up in Croydon, Hubert and Ursula. They’d been best friends for decades, they’d invited each other to their homes, they’d been taking holidays together, they’d taken a keen interest in each other’s welfare and their children’s progress for years and years. David’s dad had counted them among his very best friends whose opinions mattered a great deal. He would have been prepared to do everything for them if they ever needed him. He’d always been looking forward to seeing them again. Then, one day, his old friends obviously behaved in a strange way to him. On one of their common outings in Ashdown Forest, they greeted him and his wife with awkwardness, and their conversation seemed stilted. When they drove into Forest Row to have a light lunch they drove in Hubert’s car, leaving their own car in a car park in the Forest. Hubert drove like a madman, jerking his gears and using the clutch pedal like a learner-driver, constantly talking about banal and useless topics, not at all compatible with their common relationship. After they’d all gone home, David’s dad sent his friends an email message asking them if anything was amiss. Their reply absolutely shattered his belief in humanity because Hubert and Ursula answered that they wanted to terminate their friendship. They’d always considered David’s dad an arrogant hedonist. He never really recovered from this shock. He wasn’t only terribly sad to lose their friendship. He was particularly disappointed with his old friends and their obvious hypocrisy over all those years, pretending friendship while despising him all the time. How can anyone be so absolutely and abominably false to betray their best friends’ blind trust?
When David told him this story, Andrew couldn’t believe him. But now he could. His own positive image of Rebecca must have blinded him, so he couldn’t see her real character.
He decided to let the matter be for the moment, and he opened the other email message on his computer.
“Dear Andrew,
I was surprised to get your message. I have never wondered about my early life in Communist East Germany and once I’d left Europe behind me, I never wanted to have anything to do with what was going on over there. Life here in B.C. is so wonderful, so why worry about my past in corrupt old Europe? My mother never told me who my father was, and I never worried. I don’t know your granddad, never heard of a Manfred Weidmann or a man called Wolfgang Loeffel. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not interested. Perhaps if I ever visit Europe again I might get interested, but not at this point in time. I wish you well.
Kind regards,
Manfred Kleinschmidt”
Andrew breathed heavily. Two disappointments within one day! He remained seated at his computer for some time. Obviously, not every person had the same interest in their past. Could it be that he was just too sentimental about his own past? Rebecca might have a point when she called his keen interest in recent history, his concern for moral responsibility and his search for the truth merely a morbid streak. Would it not be a lot easier to accept all those lies about one’s past, about
one’s relationships and about one’s moral misjudgements? Why worry? He ruminated on the mendacity and treacherousness of Granddad, of the Löffel guy, of so many of his workmates, of those former friends of David’s dad’s in Ashdown Forest, of today’s Western societies. An easier life? No! Definitely not! Andrew came to the conclusion that he might very well live with small lies, so-called white lies, he was sure he used the odd white lie himself when it was justified, but he definitely could not live with such big lies about areas that defined your most sacred beliefs, throwing them into an immoral abyss.
What lies was he prepared to accept? He asked himself if he could identify any. His first reaction was Rebecca. Her decision to leave him had actually shocked him. But now, thinking more carefully about it he had to admit that, if indeed her views of life and the world were so utterly different from his, he was certainly better off without her. Yes, he had loved her passionately. In a way, he could still love her, but he had to admit to himself that she’d never even tried to understand his aims in life, his visions, his ideas or his dreams. For him, it would amount to moral mendacity if he denied himself his visions; it would be dishonest if he pretended that he had no interest in things that really interested him a great deal.
This was not only true on a moral, emotional or intellectual level. If you live with a partner, you have to respect your partner’s dreams and ideas, however unconventional or wild they might be. If Rebecca had informed him she wanted to take up a new hobby or she wanted to have a holiday in a particular destination - even a destination he himself considered uninteresting or unattractive - he wouldn’t have stood in her way, he would even have accompanied her if it had made her happy. He knew she was dreaming of a small house with a nice garden for them. For him, this was not at all a desirable objective. But he would have helped her reach her aim. He would have accepted the nice little house to make her happy. For him, it would have been a small compromise. But when it came to her muddled political views, her blind nationalism and xenophobia, he had to stand his ground. For him, her political opinions were a much greater disappointment than her refusal of all his material hopes. He could forgive her that she absolutely forbade him to take up any interests that were not hers. He’d wanted to take up sailing, a lovely sport he’d already tried out on several occasions, but she didn’t want to hear of it. Also, he was thinking of getting himself a second piano, so that he might be able to play together with another amateur pianist, but she yelled at him that he was out of his mind. No-one had two pianos, one was more than enough.
White Lies Page 38